Index, by Dennis Dutton was favourably reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the NY Times and the Washington Post. I put a hold on it while the Greater Victoria library system had it on order. As the reviews promised, the book has anecdotes about British writers, including the historian MacAulay, the 18th century …
I have listened to Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review podcast, on an Ipod and more recently on podcatcher apps on my phones, since 2011. The podcast was a repeat of a radio program broadcast on the BBC Radio 5 channel in the UK, with added audio. In the podcast on April 1, 2022, Simon Mayo …
A Wulfrunian is a resident of Wolverhampton in the English midlands, once an industrial town in the English Black Country. 1 In the 19th century, many Irish immigrants to England lived and worked there. The English journalist and writer Sathnam Sangera notes in his 2021 social history book EmpireLand: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain …
Energy Transitions by Vaclav Smil, published in 2010, is short. Reading it took time. The book is a narrative survey of some studies of changes in the way humans have used energy to perform work. Humans and animals convert biological mass (food) and heat and light from the sun into chemicals that grow into muscles …
Introduction/Resources Most of a bike has solid two dimensional surfaces, protected with paint – like an automobile or motorcycle. The solid parts can be hosed off or gently scrubbed. Cleaning the bike exposes the joints and the open parts, including the chain, to dirt, water and detergents. Cleaning a chain is necessary to use the …
Bikes Other Drive Systems The Sturmey-Archer 3-speed AW internal gear hub system was used on Raleigh bicycles for many years. There are articles and resources at Bicycle Technical Information (“BTI” – the Sheldon Brown site), such as “Servicing Sturmey-Archer 3-Speed Hubs“, and other manuals and support resources. There is a BTI article on Internal-Gear Hubs. …
The London Review of Books (“LRB”) published “Too Specific and Too Vague“, a review by the English culinary writer Bee Wilson of two recent books that refer to the ways that Asian cooking met tastes in England. One book is about the work of 7 women presenting immigrant dishes in British and American restaurants and …
In William Deresiewicz’s article in the online service UnHerd March 8, 2022 “Escaping American tribalism” he says that he started to listen to contrarian podcasts including Meghan Daum’s The Unspeakable in 2021, when he thought that American National Public Radio (“NPR”) has become partisan, on the “woke” side of the cultural divide: “Moral clarity” became …
Lubricants Science The bicycle is made of materials and components “invented” by mechanics and engineers before late 19th century scientists articulated the periodic table of elements or the fundamental modern theories of physics and chemistry. The physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote: The ability to understand something before its observed is at the heart of scientific thinking. …
Chain Drive Bicycle drive trains are chain drives with roller chains. Chain drives were used in industrial machines for decades before they were adopted by the bike industry late in the 19th century. The manufacturing of roller chains, bicycles and lubricants was based on trial and error, experimentation and the concepts and models used by …