David Pedrick

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October 26, 2026

I’ve been on a bit of a kick this year to read more books from arguably the most fascinating decade of the 20th century, the 1920s. José Ortega y Gasset (Decline of the Novel…

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October 19, 2026 

At 70, Eisenhower’s 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act isn't aging especially well. Sold as a matter of national defense and economic stimulus, an escape from the two-lane bottlenecks of mid-century America, it delivered in the brisk…

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October 12, 2026

A global second-home problem exists in just about every location on the planet with a gorgeous view. That’s how this week’s post was meant to begin. It then dawned on me, as I chased that…

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October 5, 2026

The Beatles signed with Parlophone in June 1962. Their first single, “Love Me Do,” was not released until October 5th. In retrospect, four months feels like an awkward pause before the starting gun. Why the…

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September 28, 2026  

By inadvertently discovering penicillin, the Scottish physician-scientist Alexander Fleming helped reshape modern medicine. His September 28, 1928, discovery began with a contaminated Petri dish. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain later developed it, enabled mass production…

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September 21, 2026

Difference Engines

in the chasm between intention and effect,
where the cause can be lost in translation
or found in frustration,
there is often an urge to overprotect,

and despite modern instruments of memory,
whose…

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September 14, 2026

Perchance

Asleep in a dream
Or is it just a half-life of waking?
Unknown in the shroud of languor,
Suspending disbelief in real time.

Or is it just a half-life of waking?
Put on view…

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September 7, 2026

I think it’s safe to say that a song can now be written (generated?) with software as its first audience. A potential listener may still be someone driving to work or relaxing on the beach…

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August 31, 2026 

It’s a tired little ritual of American sprawl. Developers clear-cut a forest, fill in a wetland, grade a hillside flat, and then, with a flourish, name the resulting cul-de-sac “Treetops.” The irony is so reliable…

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August 24, 2026  

Last week, three researchers from the University of Cambridge published a paper in Nature Machine Intelligence, in which they used AI to analyze the musical idiosyncrasies of 20 legendary jazz pianists. Why? I’m still…