This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 29, 2023. The word “influencer” has been surfing on my brain waves lately. It’s a new word, but of course, an extremely old concept. It showed up recently in a Washington Post article that examines the way the lobbying organization for • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 22, 2023. Since writing about AI (artificial intelligence) software last week, I have discovered something of a “development” in the world of publishing with regard to AI. Amazon, by far the world’s largest bookseller, is asking publishers/authors: Did you use AI • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 15, 2023. For the past few months, it seems, the world has divided itself into three warring camps: those who believe that AI (artificial intelligence) is the greatest thing since sliced bread; those who think AI is a moral abomination and • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 8, 2023. I came across this quotation the other day: When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 1, 2023. People should be careful about what they say, about the words that they use. That’s a bit of age-old wisdom that good parents teach to their children. Sometimes people say crazy things, and everyone who hears what they say • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 25, 2023. Whatever your politics—and that’s a topic I generally try to avoid addressing directly in this newsletter—if you take the time and effort to read the indictment delivered last week against the former president by the district attorney of Fulton • Read More »
I WHERE the light slants down softly into one corner of a noted art museum in Boston there hangs a large picture. Its title is “Fulfillment.” Discriminating art critics have alternately raved at it and praised it; from the day it appeared there it has been a fruitful source of acrimonious discussion. As for • Read More »
“REALLY great criminals are never found out, for the simple reason that the greatest crimes—their crimes—are never discovered,” remarked Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen positively. “There is genius in the perpetration of crime, Mr. Grayson, just as there must be in its detection, unless it is the shallow work of a bungler. In this • Read More »
“Really great criminals are never found out, for the simple reason that the greatest crimes—their crimes—are never discovered,” remarked Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen positively. “There is genius in the perpetration of crime, Mr. Grayson, just as there must be in its detection, unless it is the shallow work of a bungler. In • Read More »
MATTHEW KALE made fifty million dollars out of axle grease, after which he began to patronize the high arts. It was simple enough: he had the money, and Europe had the old masters. His method of buying was simplicity itself. There were five thousand square yards, more or less, in the huge gallery of his marble • Read More »
I THE THINKING MACHINE—Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D, LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., etc., scientist and logician—listened intently and without comment to a weird, seemingly inexplicable story. Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, was telling it. The bowed figure of the savant lay at ease in a large chair. The enormous head with • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 18, 2023. This year, at my house, has been officially declared The Year of the Tomato. Home-grown tomatoes take a prominent place in our garden each year. They are planted carefully and with a real sense of anticipation. We have • Read More »
Practically all those letters remaining in the alphabet after Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen was named were afterward acquired by that gentleman in the course of a brilliant scientific career, and, being honorably acquired, were tacked on to the other end. His name, therefore, taken with all that belonged to it, was a wonderfully • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 11, 2023. The limerick has been a part of my very limited poetry knowledge for as long as I can remember, but I have just recently encountered the clerihew. That is a four-line, semi-nonsense poem that usually is biographical. That is, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 4, 2023. My recent reading has taken me into the Book of Exodus and the story of the descendants of Abraham in Egypt. This story was first written down nearly a century before the time of Christ, and in oral tradition, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 28, 2023. A question that frequently comes my way these days is, “How are the bees doing?” My typical response, unless the inquirer desires more details, is a simple, “They’re doing well.” During July and August in my region, bee • Read More »
Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org FATHER BROWN always regarded the case as the queerest example of the theory of an alibi: the theory by which it is maintained, in defiance of the mythological Irish bird, that it is impossible for anybody to be in two places at once. To begin with, James Byrne, • Read More »
Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org FATHER BROWN, at one period of his life, found it difficult to hang his hat on a hat-peg without repressing a slight shudder. The origin of this idiosyncrasy was indeed a mere detail in much more complicated events; but it was perhaps the only detail that remained to • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 21, 2023. A couple of Saturdays ago, I made the “supreme sacrifice.” Saturday is my day to meet some of my friends for breakfast, and we get there as soon as the restaurant opens at 7 a.m. But on this • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 14, 2023. College admissions procedures have, once again, become big news. A recent Supreme Court decision has “outlawed” some “affirmative action” procedures by those who determined who gets in and who doesn’t at certain colleges and universities. I have put some • Read More »