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This week we celebrate the 88th anniversary of the recording of West End Blues by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five who blew, drummed and scatted with perfection on June 28, 1928. One music critic called it “the greatest record ever made during the 20th century.” In a week filled with hyperbole every bit as hyper as that statement […]
Over three thousand years ago, ancient Babylonian shippers paid an additional fee to merchants so that they would be compensated should their shipment be stolen or lost at sea. and thus, insurance was created. An ancient papyrus scroll was recently discovered detailing a shipper’s complaint about the merchant’s stinginess in providing said compensation. Today, in the […]
International Need to Know recently stated to someone that by the time we need to purchase a new car, self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous and with the rise of car sharing platforms we may never need to buy an automobile again. But, the future has a way of making fun of us, and certainly the driver who ran […]
Not too long after eating shrimp and grits this week, we saw that obesity rates are again up in the United States. But bigger news than how large Americans are is that you can now access thearchives of International Need to Know at the Gittes Global website. So skip that donut (beignets are better anyway) […]
This week International Need to Know attended a discussion regarding International Conflict on a Cyber Battlefield featuring the author Adam Segal. There was much angst expressed in the audience at the vulnerabilities in our computer systems and how at risk we are to being hacked. We would give you more details but it was an off-the […]
In 1977, when International Need to Know was but a mere lad, we attended the first Seattle Mariners baseball game ever in the concrete confines of the Kingdome. The Mariners lost that night and for much of the last 40 years have continued to lose in ways both conventional and confounding. So we are unaccustomed […]
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that in the same week UFO aficionados came out for Hillary Clinton, and in the same year that Mulder and Scully made a triumphant return, NASA announced this week that they have discovered another 1284 planets using the Kepler telescope, more than doubling the number of known planets. Apparently nine of these newly […]
The Broadway sensation Hamilton received a record 16 Tony nominations this week leaving the John Jay Society seething in resentment. All of this raises the question of which of today’s current policy and political figures will inspire musical tributes two centuries from now? We’ll take your suggestions even as we try to explain why you […]
Some weeks the world can be especially disorienting. As we continue to reconcile ourselves to a world without Prince, a fall election featuring Donald Trump and a Seattle Mariners team in first place, we still find time to take a passage to India, wonder about Moore’s Law of Mad Scientists and ponder where the part-time […]
Many years ago I was traveling to Melbourne, Australia for work and brought gifts for some of the people we would be meeting with. Unbeknownst to me, the gifts–glass art work made by local artists–contained plants pressed between the glass. Australia is very rigid about plants and animals coming into their isolated continent and my […]
