. I’ve been reading a book, “Semantic Antics,” by Sol Steinmetz, that traces the change of meanings for a number of interesting English words from as early as 800 AC to the present time. Amazing, for instance, to learn that a word like “nice” originally had a meaning that was opposite to its current one. … Continue reading
. . Germanna is a curious word, a concatenation of “Germany” and “Anna” — Queen Anne. It refers to the name of a colony of immigrants from Germany — all iron miners and smelters with their families — in Virginia. We are talking the beginning of the 18th century, and all these immigrants came from … Continue reading
. . . . Each year, the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting brings close to 600 young scientists from all over the world together with Nobel laureates for a week of talks and informal gatherings. I showed above slide after my science talk on June 27, telling the young scientists that apart from science I do … Continue reading
. . Riverside Park in Manhattan’s Upper West Side — near the area, 72nd to 79th, where I once volunteered weeding flowerbeds and taking out Coca Cola bottles and other leftovers of nightly romps among consenting adults, I hoped, even equipped with a key to the tool shed near the kids’ playground which I never … Continue reading
. . Arrived in Copenhagen, we needed to get out of it again, on the second day, to visit the legendary Louisiana Arts Museum, a 30-min train ride away. I will not bore you with the details. It is a breath-taking collection of art objects, on a sprawling estate situated on a slim peninsula. Wiki: … Continue reading
. . At a time when the US Supreme Court, stacked by Trump and now entirely out of step with the majority of the American people, is acting to undo decades of progressive legislation regarding reproductive rights, racial discrimination, and affirmative action, it is important to keep watch on the accuracy and, well, appropriateness of … Continue reading
. . I had a look at the transcript of the arraignment. You cannot make this up. The judge addresses the plaintiffs and defendants as “folks.” Folks this and folks that. Trump is bail-free, can keep his passport, he is clearly still a trusted man. But most of the time is spent on the way … Continue reading
Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull (from his unfinished book Confessions of Felix Krull) was a Hochstabler, a con-man. My first encounter with a con-man was in my class in elementary school. My class mate sailed through his day by lying. He lied about the most mundane things, just for the heck of it. We were … Continue reading
. I found unexpected wisdom in World Scientific’s attempt to define what a tensor is: (https://www.worldscientific.com › doi › pdf) Chapter 1 Confusions: What Are Tensors Exactly? Chapter 1 starts by posing this profound question: “What do love and tensor have in common?” and then proceeds by trying to find answers to the question … Continue reading
. . I discovered Melina maybe three years ago. She seemed a true gem, unpretentious. I loved this scene with her friends. Since then I have discovered she has made it big. I saw her all decked up in performances everywhere in Europe. She seemed a true gem, unpretentious. I loved this scene with her … Continue reading
. . Trump is a unique phenomenon. To find in the archives of history a similar shady, immoral character, with a similar influence on the affairs of a nation or the world, we might have to go back a millennium or two. We might also want to leaf through Borges’ story A Universal History … Continue reading
. . I’m spending some leisure time to navigate in the stream of documentaries and pseudo-documentaries on Youtube. General Relativity, the Twin Paradox, history of philosophy, Isaac Newton, lectures by Nabokov on Don Quixote, you name it. This is how I found “Daily Life in Ancient Greece” which attempts to bring ancient Greece alive with … Continue reading
. . Anderson Cooper was trying to do damage control for his network about the town hall event with Donald Trump two days ago. It didn’t go well. What Anderson apparently doesn’t understand (and I always thought he is a smart man!) is the psychology of the masses — that the broadcasting of an event … Continue reading
. . It often happens that I see emergence of life against all odds. The crack has been carefully sealed, and you would think it should be sterile for some time, perhaps for eternity. Not so, speaks Life (and we see her here, dreamy-eyed, like a gravure in a seventeen-century book on biology, or botany). … Continue reading
. . I recently attended, on-line, the symposium commemorating Constantine Cavafy’s 150th anniversary (born April 26, 1863 and died on the same day, April 26, 1933) at Columbia University, on May 1, 2023. It contained a very interesting general section on translation. I’m in the unfortunate position of admiring Cavafy’s poetry without having a sense … Continue reading
. . This is series of photographs I took on a beach in Del Mar, California. There is an interesting competition for attention between the shadows, whose direction is determined by the time of the day and the day of the year we were having this picnic, and the direction of the most recent swoop … Continue reading
Hawkeye Why did the chicken cross the road? — a compilation of fictitious answers from renowned physicists by David Morin, Physics Department, Harvard University David Morin: “After finding the first four of the following answers on the web, I figured I’d make up some more, and I got on a roll. Have fun with … Continue reading
. . We have here a stunning display of an ancient civilization. It was unearthed by the equivalent of raking — the treatment of an overgrown wilderness with a giant fork-like machine, the ones, or bigger ones than those, employed by Bechtel during the George W. Bush-inspired Iraq War. The presence of oversized boulders, … Continue reading
. The offense of the blue-hooded minor On Tuesday March 28, 2023 I was on the Amtrak train from New York to Huntingdon, PA to give an invited lecture at Penn State. I say the train since there is only one per day going in that direction. A young Black boy stood before me in … Continue reading
. SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK STATEMENT OF FACTS IND-71543-23 -against- DONALD J. TRUMP, Defendant. INTRODUCTION The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting … Continue reading