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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Today we drove up to Greenfield to scout out a location for my daughter Kate’s wedding in July. The White Eagle Society’s Polish Picnic Grounds looked like the perfect spot. A big pavillion, acres of grass, tables, a huge barbecue pit and a nearby river. It will be great in […]
Clive Thompson writes in the NY Times magazine about Google and China. “Google was not, in fact, a pioneer in China. Yahoo was the first major American Internet company to enter the market, introducing a Chinese-language version of its site and opening up an office in Beijing in 1999. Yahoo […]
A few months ago we had dinner on San Francisco’s Fishermen’s Wharf with another couple, and I learned a lot that night about the man, Stan. We began talking about his father, with whom he has always had a stormy relationship, fraught with terrible fights, accusations, and a tangled web […]
I love words and expressions, and sometimes I chuckle to myself as I am driving or walking about certain turns of phrase. Yesterday I mulled over “poor man’s,” for example. I was thinking about a friend who is an adventure writer, and thought “he’s a poor man’s Jon Krakauer.” Meaning […]