Monthly Archives: February 2016

General Tso’s Chicken

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Roger Walck

General Tso’s chicken is my favorite Chinese dish, even though it is unknown in China. As comedian Margaret Cho has quipped, “It’s sweet, it’s fried, and it’s chicken. Everything Americans love.” The dish is supposedly derived from Hunan cuisine (wrong) … Continue reading →

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Squad Goals

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Roger Walck

“Frontier Squad Goals,” by Cora Frazier. The New Yorker, 2/29/2016. This short, hilarious fictional article from The New Yorker alerted me to the growing (for now) use of the term “squad goals.”  Like many of their cryptic cartoons, they stretch … Continue reading →

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Rewards In Words

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Roger Walck

I rarely read anything without my trusty small tablet by my side to quickly look up words in an on-line dictionary.  These are words that I once felt I could safely skip, or words I could reasonably guess at the … Continue reading →

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Learned Hand’s Own Human Comedy

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Roger Walck

After discovering the quotes of Judge Learned Hand by Justice Scalia for the recent posting of February 16, I Googled his name to learn more about him. The results were far different than I expected. Hand was deeply insecure throughout … Continue reading →

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The Amazing Bosom

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Roger Walck

While at Longwood Gardens, I handed a large, 5-inch, antique key attached to an even larger metal tag to a stout (-ish), older woman employee who promptly dropped the whole thing down her bosom. Plop!— gone, like an ice cream … Continue reading →

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Justice Scalia Quoting Learned Hand

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Roger Walck

Notable & Quotable, The Wall Street Journal, 2/16/2016. (“Learned Hand” is not a metaphor, but the name of an actual person, Billings Learned Hand, who was a federal judge and  judicial philosopher, 1872–1961, well-known to those in the field of … Continue reading →

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Gravity Waves, Interferometers, and Light

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Roger Walck

In all of the articles on the newly discovered gravity waves, none I have read mentions how the interferometer principle that detected them started Einstein thinking about relativity back in the early 1900s. Back then, they knew light was a … Continue reading →

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Driving As a Rite of Passage

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Roger Walck

“Driver’s Licenses Lose Allure for Young,” by Christina Rogers and Gautham Nagesh. The Wall Street Journal, 1/21/2016. In our day, everyone wanted to get their driver’s license as soon after their 16th birthday as possible. For many of us, this … Continue reading →

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To the Suburbs and Back

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Roger Walck

“Office Glut Strains Suburbs” by Eliot Brown. The Wall Street Journal, 2/9/2016. A while back, corporate giants were all for moving their headquarters from expensive center-city locations to the cheaper suburbs. Now, the trend is a major reversal to move … Continue reading →

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Misleading Ads

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Roger Walck

Must we read ads like a lawyer to avoid the traps? Apparently so, as this ad for hearing aids in our local newspaper illustrates: “WANTED! Miracle-Ear Hearing Centers is looking for qualified people to test their latest product . . … Continue reading →

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