Category Archives: Kewel!

Roman Dodecahedron

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Alaska

One of these and some cordage would be a bloody useful piece of kit for the pocket or backpack. For the last 20 years I’ve kept a pair of cheap Wal-Mart glove liners (usually seasonal items, about a buck a … Continue reading →

Posted in By Ourselves, For Ourselves, Kewel! | Leave a comment

Belgrade, 1926

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Alaska

Eric Ambler’s A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (1939) is one of my favorite novels, for the noir atmospherics alone. (That I number more than one fellow as casually amoral and exotic as Dmitrios Makropoulos among my professional colleagues just adds relish … Continue reading →

Posted in Evil walks the earth, Kewel!, Useful Idiots | Leave a comment

L’Estro Armonico (and, tangentially, Gene Simmons)

Posted on March 19, 2018 by Alaska

Nowadays you can find even obscure pieces of classical music but a click away on YouTube (such as the Wolf’s Glen scene from Weber’s Der Freischuetz, I mean, that’s amazing really).   In the past, music majors such as my … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers, Kewel! | Leave a comment

Mandocello Madness!

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Alaska

As a child I wondered why you could not find a acoustic bass guitar. Enter the mandocello: Hat tip: Allison Hayward, whose sighting of Mike Marshall at Wintergrass 2017 spurred me down the rabbit hole. Check this out!

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RNS Quote of The Day, 01/02/17 — Vice Edition

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Alaska

(He had done, he liked to say, all the vices.) —Larissa MacFarquhar, describing philosopher Bernard Williams in her endlessly-delightful New Yorker article on the late Derek Parfit, “How to Be Good.” I find her prose, BTW, to be both astonishing … Continue reading →

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Time Travel: Berlin, 1900

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Alaska

I found this video, film of 1900 Berlin colorized and slowed to normal speed, tremendously affecting. The facial expressions did it. Those ghosts are all too real.    

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Stephen Hsu and Some Guy Who Played Bongos

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Alaska

To some of us, this photo has the same emotional resonance as the one of Bill Clinton shaking JFK’s hand had to a very different tribe: I still try to reread Feynman’s QED every year. You should too.  

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Heroes, Comrades and Brothers, Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Ta-Da

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Phil Kadath

So, two weeks off from the blog. Yeah, so, now that work is slowing down a bit as I get caught up, the wife has stated that I need to do some repairs on the home front. Spending time sitting … Continue reading →

Posted in Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | 2 Comments

Catching Up

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Phil Kadath

I’m still in the process of getting the metal shop I hope to inherit caught up. And still putting in 60+ hour weeks to do so. One of the projects I was looking forward to getting at was a trellis … Continue reading →

Posted in Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | 1 Comment

Rewarding

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Phil Kadath

One of the other projects at the new job that was in pieces when I arrived was a set of 17 bar stools for the VIP Lounge of a local casino. They are no longer just pieces. It’s a horrible … Continue reading →

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel, Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments