Monthly Archives: March 2013

Overbites, Flatware, and Chopsticks

“A Fork of One’s Own,” Jane Kramer, The New Yorker, 3/18/2013 Close your mouth and most likely you will find your upper incisors overlap your lower like the lid of a box.  This overbite is normal, if not too pronounced, … Continue reading

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Judgment and Forgiveness

“Broken Vows,” James Wood, The New Yorker, 3/11/2013 This article, which is a review of Jamie Quatro’s fiction that often has the theme of adultery, has an especially interesting passage that is easier to present in full than attempting to … Continue reading

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More on Sleep

“Up All Night,” Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 3/11/2013 Just when I thought I had covered the subject of sleep (see 2/21/2013 posting), along came this book review article with new insights. For starters, sleep is not just a problem … Continue reading

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Captain Peacock Dies

British actor Frank Thorton who played Captain Peacock in my favorite series, Are You Being Served? recently died at age 92. He played the part so well I could not imagine him as anything other than the pompous floorwalker at … Continue reading

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Eddie Waitkus Epilogue

When I posted the story of the 1949 shooting of Phillies Whiz Kid Eddie Waitkus here on August 6, 2010, the woman who shot him, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, was thought to be still living.  At the time of the shooting, … Continue reading

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Male Classmates

If you are one of my male classmates and are still alive to read this, you are beating the odds.  Maybe. A recent BBC article says that he average life expectancy for European men is 72.5 years while for women … Continue reading

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Children Anyone? Anyone?

“The Case Against Kids,” Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 4/9/2012 America’s population since our high school graduation has doubled.  That means twice as many houses, twice as many streets, twice as many cars.  Is that good? Most of our generation … Continue reading

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Well, . . .

Watching TV newscasts, I was struck by how often someone being interviewed begins speaking with “Well, . . .”  This sometimes happens when the person being interviewed is in the studio with the anchor person, but virtually always happens when … Continue reading

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Word of the Day: Snuffleupagus

A recent news report described the tennis star Rafael Nadal in their headline, as “Tennis’s Snuffleupagus.”  That quickly sent me to my online dictionary.  What could it possibly mean? I discovered it was puzzling to me because it was after … Continue reading

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Some Parts Grow Bigger, Some Smaller

Keep reading—this is not a gross-out posting.  And by the end you will understand the orangutan photo on the left.  His doppelgänger can be seen in any senior center. Some time ago, Leon West mentioned how he is shrinking.  He … Continue reading

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