Fun Facts from Wired
When I was young, I was a serious lad. I used walk up to my dad and tell him fun facts. That’s what he used to call them, ‘fun to know and tell,’ we’d say. I just got this month’s Wired. Full of such treats. There is a new Finnish […]
Fox News Gets Ratings but Not the Big Bucks
It’s Fox News Channel’s 10th anniversary this October. But the cable network doesn’t want a diamond bauble to commemorate the occasion. It wants cold, hard cash — and plenty of it. Today’s Wall Street Journal had the story. Fox News executives well remember their early days, when the channel got […]
Airline Sardine Can Planes Adding Seats
Today’s NY Times included this story about how airlines are figuring out ways to fit more bodies into their planes. “One of the first to use the thinner seats in coach was American Airlines, which refitted its economy-class section seven years ago. “Those seats were indeed thinner than the ones […]
Frank Deford, Stand Up Sports Guy
As it happened, the year Frank Deford joined Sports Illustrated was the year it finally became profitable. Sports, too, took off as never before: TV networks began vying for games, the National Football League and National Basketball Association blossomed. “I was suddenly valuable!” Deford says in that booming, gruff voice […]
The Lure of the Alaska Pipeline
Oil companies ordered 3 million tons of pipe in 1969. This was before they had even completed the drawings for the Alaska pipeline. The route from Prudhoe Bay at the top of the state, down the entire width of Alaska to the port of Valdez, where the water wasn’t frozen. […]
Traveling the Sahel with Jeffrey Tayler
Jeffrey Tayler wrote a compelling book I am now reading called Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel. I have waited months to read this, I devoured his other book about a trip down the Congo river, and I finally found this at my son’s […]
Meeting Olga, Ben and Mark at a Pelham Party
At a party on Saturday night in Pelham Manor, NY, I met several interesting people. They had gathered to celebrate our friend Tom’s 50th. First was Mark, a 53-year-old Englishman who looked no older than 35, who said he was a retired musician. I later found out that he had […]
Turning Fifty, Hawaiian Style
We are off to New York tonight for a Fiftieth Birthday celebration. That seems to be the year that people decide is a big party year, rarely do we celebrate 60, and 30 isn’t that big a deal either. Tom Bricker turned 50, so it’s time to go to a […]