This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, December 1, 2023. The fighting continues among people who should not be fighting—among those who have much to gain if they could stop. So, in that spirit, I offer these three quotations this week: If you want peace, you don’t talk to • Read More »
The heresy trial of Charles Augustus Briggs The word “heresy” probably calls to mind images of the Inquisition, medieval times, and burnings at the stake. All of those things should have passed away centuries ago, we might think, with the coming of the Enlightenment and its eventual victory over the Western mind and outlook. So • Read More »
Uncle Abner: The American Detective of Moral Virtue The Golden Age of Detective Stories, the time between the appearance of Sherlock Holmes in short stories in the late 1880s and the entrance of Hercule Poirot in novel form in the 1920s, produced many fictional sleuths with a number of common characteristics: — They were mostly • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, November 24, 2023. In this season of Thanksgiving, I find that one of the great blessings of my life is you — the readers of this newsletter. More than a thousand of you — sometimes as many as 1,100 to 1,200 — • Read More »
-This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, November 17, 2023. We are in the middle of the month of November, which in many ways, to my mind at least, is the best month of the year. November is the calm before the storm of excitement and activities of the • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, November 10, 2023. The beautiful fields that surround us here in East Tennessee have turned brown. Late this summer, they were green and lush, so much so that we commented on them almost daily. Then it stopped raining, and we haven’t had • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, November 3, 2023. Last week, I shared some of the basic principles/techniques that I would try to teach my writing students. This week, I share the single most important piece of advice that I could give to students to improve their writing • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, October 27, 2023. When you are writing: Use simple straightforward language to communicate with your readers. Don’t try to develop a writing style. If you have a style, it will come out naturally. Always use “said” as your verb of attribution. If • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, October 20, 2023. For the past two or three weeks, the weather and absence of other duties have allowed me to spend some time doing some woodworking. I have been building a “floating mantle” for some relatives, and I must say the • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, October 13, 2023. One of my favorite bloggers, Shane Parrish, has recently made the argument that people would be much better off if they simply stopped reading the news. Here’s part of his argument: Like a drug, the news is addictive. Once you • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, October 6, 2023. Book banning. The utter futility of it seems obvious to me. Even if you succeed in taking a book off a library or bookstore shelf, that doesn’t mean you are going to keep the book from being read. • Read More »
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 »