Nitwittery Update

Ann Arbor, Michigan gets rid of "neighborhood watch" signs.

Albert Had No Idea of What Was Coming

 We live in a time when men, driven by mediocre ferocious ideologies, are becoming used to being ashamed of everything. Ashamed of themselves, ashamed to be happy, to love and to create . . .. So we have to feel guilty. We are being dragged before the secular confessional, the worst of all.

- Albert Camus, Actuelles. Écrits politiques, 1948

Black-and-White Film Flashback

 From "Sweet Smell of Success":

High Tech and Defense

City Journal: The Far Left goes after Palantir.

Hmm. Are the Chinese tech companies refraining from doing defense work?

Omar Bradley

Take a few seconds to visit A Layman's Blog and read the insight of General Bradley.

We need such reminders. We need such people.

Citizen Free Press

Have you discovered Citizen Free Press? Click here.

I just learned of it.

{HT: Jonathan Wade]

Black-and-White Film Flashback

 

The film version of the Nevil Shute novel. I recall when it came out. 

Everyone saw "On the Beach."

First Paragraph

The Woke Army is an organized, well-financed global network of Muslim radicals and leftist activists who exploit the freedoms of the West to promote a system of beliefs that runs counter to any values of freedom.

- From Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Destroying America's Freedom by Asra Q. Nomani

From 1981: A Better Culture

 

Great Book for Our 250th

 

What A.I. Can't Replace

 

CJ Chilvers has an intriguing perspective.

Land's End

 Christopher Caldwell on how mass migration has transformed Great Britain.

Crank It Up!

 

Free A.I. Classes

 MIT Open Learning is offering classes on Artificial Intelligence and many of them are free.

First Paragraph

This book is about intelligence. On the one hand, it's a portrait of a remarkable human, a chess prodigy, a Nobel laureate, a polymathic thinker. On the other hand, it tells the story of his quest to build remarkable machines: systems that are intuitive, creative, and even original. At some point in the not-so-distant future, artificial intelligence will beat human intelligence at almost every mental task, and to say this marks a watershed would be a parody of understatement. Artificial intelligence heralds a transformation more profound than anything since Homo sapiens acquired the capacity for abstract thought, some seventy thousand years ago.

- From The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby

Many Thanks for Your Reviews!

 

Many thanks to those of you who've posted reviews of Pilate's Magician online and on Amazon.

We're working out the Amazon pages, so the e-book and paperback versions show up on the same page along with the Amazon reviews.

The primary goal, of course, is to create a buzz in the circles that are most likely to enjoy the novel and spread the word.

I wrote my first nonfiction book in 1976 and received an early education on which books get reviewed, which ones get ignored, and how building an audience beyond the original group is vital.

That makes me all the more appreciative of your support.

Chronic Stress and Your Body

 

Work

The Hammock Papers has an observation by J.M.W. Turner that should be placed in every classroom in America.

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by NASA at Unsplash]

Take The 52-Week Black-and-White Film Challenge

 

True film buffs know that less can be more.

Ringo

 

Sharp As A Tack

 Ann Althouse got a very strange, and highly inaccurate, correction from ChatGPT.

An excerpt:

• Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over.
• He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee.
• Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee.

Rejection Letters

A great post by Patrick Rhone. 

Bravo to Beatrice and her classmates!

I have a bias for people who've been punched and keep on going.

Music Man

 

Side Conversation

 "They've canceled all of their training and are hiring very few people. Not clear on the lay-off situation. We're in limbo."

I have seen that before. When uncertainty arises, the reaction is to hold in place. That's regarded as a safe bet. Anyone pushing for big spending outside of A.I. endeavors may be regarded as reckless.

Developing A.I. training is an option, of course, but even that is risky unless it presents the material with a good dose of modesty.

More of a conversation than a presentation.

First Paragraph

 The end of Europe is upon us.

- From The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchick

Bear with Me

I am meeting today with a group of managers to discuss how to analyze and prevent various types of discrimination cases.

Always timely. It will be a groove. 

Back this afternoon.

Best First Lines

 Sippican Cottage gives his list and a grand list it is.

And yet, because it was compiled several years ago, it missed:

"I, Julian Fabius, an advocate for discretion in all things, should have known better."

From this.

On the Origins of Everything

 

Treasure Chest

There is always a great deal to enjoy at Yahooey's Blog.

Guaranteed.

Room Ramble

 I'm teaching a workshop later this week on employment discrimination. At the moment, much of my time is devoted to returning order to my office. 

A chunk of material that was needed for "Pilate's Magician" is being filed, although boxed is more accurate. [I have misplaced things in files but never in a box.]

Several boxes of books will be going to the used bookstore. I'm keeping most of the Roman history and religion books related to the novel, but others have piled up and I'm ruthlessly culling those. Mainly management titles because if there is any field in which the book promotions tend to overstate value, it's management.

In contrast, history, government, religion, and philosophy tend to hold up well.

Anyway, progress is being made. It won't be a Marie Kondo make-over but it will produce a lot of floor space.

Robert McGinnis: King of Movie Posters

 

Books in My Reading Stack

 

- Old School: Future-proof yourself. AI-proof your career by Nicholas Bate. I'm starting this today.

- Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans by James Gill.

- The Monastery of the Damned: From the Ivy League to the French Foreign Legion by Nicholas Tobias.

- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

- Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine by Owen Matthews

- Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang

- Mobilize: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III by Shyam Sankar

- Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939 - 1945 by Ian Buruma

On My List

 

Still The One

 

When a person who has not seen the film versions of A Tale of Two Cities said that the BBC is planning one, I advised her to see this one first. 

 

Memorable with a great cast.

Just In

 

A Need for Candor

Tough Love has an opposite.

My Substack essay is out.

Bravo!

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by David Clode at Unsplash]

Kite & Key Media

Very interesting.

Detachment 201

The U.S. Army's Executive Innovation Corps.

I need to sign up.

See IP Wave: "Silicon Valley Goes to War."

Horseman

 

Woe Canada!

The National Post estimate is Trudeau cost Canada $1 trillion.

On Sale

Bram: A Spy Story.

Don't delay.

The Great Feminization of Culture

 

On Iran

 

On My List

The novel was great. Looking forward to this.

The Coming British Civil War?

"We Shall Not Fight on the Beaches"

The plot is simple. A huge armada of rotting hulks, bearing a million impoverished and half-starved Bengalis desperate to reach Europe, which they suppose to be a land flowing with milk and honey, sets out from Calcutta and eventually reaches the south coast of France. The local population flees before this invasion, no official efforts having been made to repel it. French society collapses; the success of the armada spells the downfall of Europe, and the whole of the West, as a civilization.

Read all of Theodore Dalrymple's review of The Camp of the Saints.

First Lines

It hurt us to breathe.

Inside a small barrack room whose remarkable cleanliness derived from its inhabitants' sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping three times a day, six of us lay down on worn mattresses of wool, with thin cotton sheets to cover us. Yellowish lamplight outside passed through the room's square windows without curtains, mixing with its darkness and recasting our surroundings in grisaille hues. 

- From The Monastery of the Damned: From the Ivy League to the French Foreign Legion by Nicholas Tobias

Hmm

 

"Seven Myths About the Iran War"

 Tablet magazine: Michael Doran on how people keep getting Trump wrong.

Win the War and Win the Peace

My Substack on the final stage of the Iran War.

[Photo by Tianlei Wu at Unsplash]

Music Break

 

Marketing Twist

 

Have been getting marketing feedback on Pilate's Magician. I was pleased, of course, to hear that the novel has been recommended by a minister but was surprised at the primary nature of his audience: lawyers.

[Photo by Rick Rothenberg at Unsplash.

Time to Go "Old School": Available Now on Amazon

 

Recognize Free Iran

 I don't want a peace agreement with the mullahs of Iran. I want them gone.

No agreements with a "mullah-lite" regime. It would be like negotiating with Vichy bureaucrats.

Today's diplomatic task should be to recognize the new Iranian government. 

Period.

Europe Fails the Test

 Batya Ungar-Sargon on Europe's dismal performance.

The European governments have one of the weakest batches of leaders in decades.

[I am old enough to remember when President Eisenhower met with Prime Minister Macmillan, President De Gaulle, and Chancellor Adenauer.]

First Paragraph

Boog warned me about Washington, but until I saw the rich lady set her pugs on the dinner table, I didn't take him seriously. A staple of my relationship with Boog is that he warns and I ignore.

- From Cadillac Jack by Larry McMurtry

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by Stephanie Le Blanc at Unsplash]

"Why the Past 14 Years Have Felt So Insane"

Rogue Highway explains how society was affected by The Great Blurring.

Thought provoking. Most great changes don't arrive with trumpets.

[Photo by Luiz Gonzaga at Unsplash]

First Paragraph of a Major Book

For thousands of years, human civilizations did something unimaginable by modern standards: They set rules to limit the power of their technologies. In the Hebrew Bible, God commands the Israelites to build an altar for worship but forbids them from using stonecutting tools in its construction. Classical Greek philosophers warned that new inventions would bear costs equal to their power. Socrates tells the story of an ancient king who laments that the advent of writing will make men lose their faculty of memory and become ignorant. Plato looked down on the "base mechanic arts" of technology for weakening the body and enfeebling the soul.

Master List Follow-Up

In the wake of the usual income tax preparation madness, I sat down to update my Master List.

Prompted by Nicholas Bate's blog post, I quickly discovered that there had been some detours into separate lists.

I expected a one-page Master List but wound up with three-pages.

The largest portion, of course, is the Important but Not Urgent category from the Eisenhower Quadrants.

Self-Published and Then

Collin Hansen on "The Great American Novel That Almost Wasn't."

The Best of Hollywood Stories

 

First Paragraph

The white men in jackets and ties were obviously out of their element. Normally, at this time of day, they would be preparing to leave home or office for a couple of drinks, lunch and maybe a card game at their clubs. Now, on December 19, 1991, they shifted in their seats, returning hostile glares from black men and women in the packed basement of New Orleans City Hall. The city council was meeting in spartan surroundings while its regular chambers were being renovated, but the physical discomforts were nothing compared to the general psychic unease as everyone waited for the great debate on an ordinance to desegregate Mardi Gras parades and gentlemen's clubs. 

From Lords of Misrule: Mardis Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans by James Gill

[This was recommended to me by an old friend who, when Mardi Gras rolls around, can always be found throwing beads from a float. I may join him some year.]

Why Keep a Master List?

 

Nicholas Bate, whose productivity shows that he a Master of Lists, tells us why keeping one makes a huge difference.

[I use Dingbat journals for most of my lists simply because they possess a certain beauty.]

Once Upon a Time in a White House Receiving Line

History's small moments can be revealing.

[Photo by Eric Prouzet at Unsplash]

First Paragraph

I wasn't trying to play the victim until the world taught me what a powerful grift it is. Believe it or not, all I wanted was to be successful. To hustle like my Pops but to keep my life and freedom in the process. My desperate chase for your approval was really all about that. I needed that approval in order to be considered successful. I needed it to feel like my life mattered.

- From Victim: A Novel by Andrew Boryga

Glory Road

 

Have recently been reading Glory Road before bedtime. Bruce Catton was far more than a great historian. There is a poetry in his prose.

Inspirational

 My high school reunion is this weekend.

My job is to stand near the end of the bar so people can mutter, "Well, at least I look better than that guy."

I am a river to my people.

The Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives

American Affairs: Musa al-Gharbi examines evidence indicating that liberals tend to be more depressed than conservatives.

AI Staff Work?

 Writing on Substack, law prof and Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds presents a fascinating and highly plausible possibility:

"So this is purest speculation on my part. But watching the incredibly complex multi-domain rescue mission this weekend, it suddenly struck me that new, powerful AI might be behind this. Moving all these units into so many places at once, making sure that they have communications organized, fuel, ammunition, food, the right troops with the right transports, and so on is enormously complex. It normally requires the work of hundreds of staffers to do this sort of thing, and that takes time. But it happened awfully fast, and nearly flawlessly."

[HT: A Large Regular]

The Art of Noticing

 Live & Learn is an exercise in life and beauty.

The photographs of the birds are enchanting.

On the Proms

 

"I am going to run nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages. Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music."

- Sir Henry Wood on his formation of the BBC Proms in 1927.

Just Arrived Last Night

 

Reverse Compass

The Free Press: Armin Rosen on the "experts" who insist that Iran is winning.

[Photo by Jordan Madrid at Unsplash]

Flashback

 

Heard in the Heartland

"What if $36 trillion in debt looks a lot smaller the second you stop underwriting a continent that sneers at you in three languages?"

- John Konrad

He's Back!

 The Free Press: Coleman Hughes on "What Ibram X. Kendi Doesn't Admit."

No One Left Behind

 

Happy Easter!

Reading

“A man who has read a thousand books is armed for life; a man who has read none is easy prey. The man who has read a thousand books has lived a thousand lives. He has seen cities he has never visited, spoken to men who died centuries ago, and walked in worlds that no longer exist. Reading does not merely inform him; it enlarges him. It stretches the boundaries of his own experience until he becomes something more than himself.”

- G. K. Chesterton

Good Taste

Many people who are buying Pilate's Magician have also purchased this book:

 

Sweetness and Beauty

Cultural Offering: There's a new member of the Harden family.

A Lethal Sentence

I hope those who are in power in Western Europe understand the potential damage that can result when this line is uttered by a variety of Americans:

"They denied us airspace."

A Good Story is a Good Story

 

Book agents and publishers need to drop their bizarre word count requirements.

[Photo by Taylor Wright at Unsplash]

Good Friday

 

Joining the Stack

 

Should Be on European Foreign Office Reading Lists

 

And Speaking of Novels Related to Rome

In addition to the obvious, here's my short list:

Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem

Claudius the God by Robert Graves

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Julian by Gore Vidal

Pompeii by Robert Harris

The Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris

The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough [All of the books in her series are excellent.]

[Photo by iam_os at Unsplash]

Out for Easter

A nifty (tuck it in a briefcase or purse) sized paperback of Pilate's Magician is now out on Amazon. [It's also out in e-Book form.]

Although I am a tad biased, the short novel contains aspects of the trial of Jesus which most people don't know.

A Roman lawyer and his capable assistants seek a clear view of what really happened when Pontius Pilate decided whether a verdict by the highest court in Judea warranted the uniquely Roman punishment of crucifixion.

I hope the novel gains a wide general readership, of course, but religious leaders and lawyers who may not be acquainted with the technical aspects of the case will also find it to be illuminating.

It is not, however, a somber or dry read.

Check out the sample on the Amazon page and you'll see what I mean.

Munich

 

The Unregretted

 

• Strong coffee.
• A reading addiction.
• Chocolate mint ice cream.
• Unread books.
• Dickens.
• C.S. Lewis.
• Swimming.
• Bacon.
• War and Peace.
• Old friends.
• The scent of wet creosote.
• Cognac and Cuban Cigars aftershave.
• A valid passport. 
• Dingbats journals.
• Fountain pens.
• Swiss Army knives.
• People I've helped.
• Things I didn't say.
• Stonehenge.
• The C.I.D.
• My enemies.
• Orange marmalade.
• Poetry.
• Proverbs.
• BBQ.
• Legal pads.
• Dogs.
• Horses.
• Ginger tea.
• Rib-eye steak.
• Consulting.

[Photo by John Vowles at Unsplash]

Crank It Up

 

We Need an Ed Sullivan Show

On Substack, I explore the day the music sorta died.

[Photo by Mick Haupt at Unsplash]

Pretend It's a City

 

The European Sophisticates

I was in Germany for an Army investigation back in the Seventies. 

Frankfurt. Heidelberg. Kaiserslautern.

The German highways had a lot of military traffic in those days. The big emphasis, of course, was on being able to thwart a Soviet invasion.  Everything else was secondary.

It was accepted that if anything bad was going to happen, it would happen quickly and would require a very strong response.

The American commitment was enormous but there was a sense of gratitude from the German people. We felt they truly appreciated our presence in those days along with that of the British and the French.

The size of the European defense budgets was much higher then, even though the nations were poorer than today.

If the current European leaders think that Americans do not notice their mild levels of military and diplomatic support, they are making a huge mistake. 

The Iranian missile program was designed to bring pressure on Europe and only ultimately on the United States. There should be clear and strong support from Europe.

To borrow an old line once used by Winston Churchill with regard to the Russians, if this is how they behave in the green wood, how will they behave in the dry?

Music Break

 

Truth

“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did.’”

-    - Kurt Vonnegut