If you read Joe Lampe’s funny book, The “S” Word, you will be smiling like he is! Pure silliness in 26 pages! GRADE: A

Desiderio’s Dinner Theater is one of our favorite local establishments. Over the years, we’ve seen some wonderful plays and enjoyed some wonderful food.

I had never heard of An Old-Fashioned Family Murder by Joe DiPietro but the actual play is both clever and funny. The Colonel, a wealthy but ill father, decides to change his Will. His two daughters, Clarice and Dotty Claythorne, discover one of them might be cut out of the Will.

Arthur Whittington, a once successful mystery writer, intends to begin writing his come-back novel in the Claythorne mansion on a dark and stormy night. Shirley Peck, the widow of a legendary police detective, has a knack for solving crimes. Her young son, a junior Detective Paul Peck of the local police force, struggles to find the clues to the murder and to make sense of them when he does.

An Old-Fashioned Family Murder is plenty of fun. It premiered on September 2024 at the New Theatre & Restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas, featuring a cast that included Sally Struthers, Caitlin Kinnunen, and Kevin Ligon. The local cast, Justin Chortie, Jay Byron, John DellaConttrada, Lilian Reszel, Lisa Hinca, and Steven J. Brackmann, put on a good show that garnered plenty of applause at its conclusion. GRADE: B+

I read Mary Beard’s Talking Classics (2026) and Confronting Classics (2013). “One big question drives this book. What is the point of the ancient classics? To put it another way, why should we bother about. what people did 2,000 years ago or more…” (p. 1)

“Nor should we imagine that classics can hand us ready-made answers to contemporary problems on a grader scale, or neat comparisons with modern politics. The fall of the Roman Empire in the west (not likely to have been caused by anything as simple as mass immigrations or lead in the water pipes) does not help very much to examine the decline of modern empires…. The historian Tacitus, for example, seems almost to anticipate George Orwell in exposing how language itself is polluted by autocracy, how in a regime of dissembling and flattery words no long meant what they one did. But Tacitus doesn’t have a solution ready for us.” (p. 71-72)

Beard waffles around a bit while discussing “the Classics.” Are they still relevant? Can we discern the world and culture of 2000 years ago? I should have stopped here, but I went on to read Beard’s earlier book, Confronting the Classics.

I found reading Mary Beard’s Confronting the Classics a frustrating experience. Clearly, Beard is very knowledgeable, but she clearly doesn’t understand the Common Reader. For example, in “Which Thucydides Can You Trust?” Beard criticizes several translations of Thucydides. Far enough. Beard’s criticisms seem valid. But then Beard leaves the reader hanging. What is a good translation of Thucydides? Beard never says. The second frustration with Confronting the Classics is more of a marketing quibble. When I picked up Confronting the Classics I thought I was going to read about which classics should be read and how to read them most productively. Instead, the reader discovers Confronting the Classics is a collection of Mary Beard’s book reviews. True, the books she reviews all have something to do with the Classics. But reading over 30 book reviews, some of them fairly technical, isn’t what I thought this book would be when I started reading it. GRADE: B
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Do Classics have a Future?

SECTION ONE: ANCIENT GREECE
1. Bulder of Ruins
2. Sappho Speaks
3. Which Thucydides Can You Trust?
4. Alexander: How Great?
5. What Made the Greeks Laugh?

SECTION TWO: HEROES & VILLAINS OF EARLY ROME
6. Who Wanted Remus Dead?
7. Hannibal at Bay
8. Quousque Tandem…?
9. Roman Art Thieves
10. Spinning Caesar’s Murder

SECTION THREE: IMPERIAL ROME–EMPERORS, EMPRESSES & ENEMIES
11. Looking for the Emperor
12. Cleopatra: The Myth
13. Married to the Empire
14. Caligula’s Satire
15. Nero’s Colosseum?
16. British Queen
17. Bit-part Emperors
18. Hadrian and his Villa

SECTION FOUR: ROME FROM THE BOTTOM UP
19. Ex-slaves and Snobbery
20. Fortune-telling, Bad Breath and Stress
21. Keeping the Armies out of Rome
22. Life and Death in Roman Britain
23. South Shields Aramaic

SECTION FIVE: ARTS & CULTURE; TOURISTS & SCHOLARS
24. Only Aeschylus Will Do?
25. Arms and the Man
26. Don’t Forget you Pith Helmet
27. Pompeii for the Tourists
28. The Golden Bough
29. Philosophy meets Archaeology
39. What Gets Left Out
31. Asterix and the Romans

Afterward: Reviewing Classics
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Sources
List of Figures
Index

TABLE OF CONTENTS (TALKING CLASSICS)

INTRODUCTION — 1

1. A Sense of Wonder — 13
2. How to Be Modern? –51
3. Rights and Wrongs — 91
4. The Case for Classics — 137
Epilogue: The Boy Who Breathed on the Glass in the British Museum — 171
Further Reading and Some Explanatory Notes — 175
Acknowledgements — 187
List of Illustrations — 189
Index — 193

I was in the mood to listen to some live performances from a couple of singers have admired over the years. Some critics consider Sinatra at the Sands one of his best performances. It’s surprising because this 1966 performance was Sinatra’s first live recording for Reprise Records.

In addition to the Count Basie Orchestra with Quincy Jones arranging and conducting, Sinatra delivers some of his best songs: “I’ve Got a Crush on You”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” ,“Street of Dreams”, “The Shadow of Your Smile”, “One For My Baby”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, and wrapping up the set with “My Kind of Town.”

Sinatra was at the top of his game on this album!

Lou Rawls Live at the Century Plaza was released in 1973. Some critics view this album as a progression of Rawls moving from his gritty 1960s Capitol Records style toward his smoother 1970s Philadelphia International sound. 

I enjoyed the dynamic covers of Beatles songs like “Something” and “Golden Slumbers,” along with a four-part blues medley, and electric versions of Rawls’ classic hits like “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing”, “A Natural Man”, and “Tobacco Road”.

Both Sinatra at the Sands and Lou Rawls Live at the Century Plaza show Sinatra and Rawls at their best. Do you have a favorite Sinatra and/or Rawls song? GRADE: A (for both)

TRACK LIST: SINATRA AT THE SANDS

TRACK LIST: LOU RAWLS LIVE AT THE CENTURY PLAZA

Jeff Vorzimmer’s brilliant Introduction “Jack Ritchie By the Numbers” (p. 7-8) opens the new Stark House collection of 38 stories by the master short story writer, Jack Ritchie. Vorzimmer provides some eye-popping numbers that illustrate the success of Ritchie’s writing career. Ritchie published 345 short stories. Vorzimmer says 85 of those stories were reprinted in 142 anthologies. Amazing!

Vorzimmer supplies more astonishing Ritchie numbers: 117 stories published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, 31 stories published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 19 stories published in Mike Shayne Mastery Magazine, and 23 stories published in Manhunt. Ritchie was prolific but the quality of his stories is consistently high.

Of the 38 stories in The Crime Machine, 16 have never been reprinted. That’s a bonanza for Jack Ritchie fans!

At the end of The Crime Machine you’ll find this blurb: “Jackie Ritchie died in 1983 but his stories live on. This STARK HOUSE edition brings some of Richie’s best stories to a new audience. It you’re a fan of well crafted short stories, The Best of Manhunt 4: The Jack Ritchie Stories should be high your your list of books to read. GRADE: A“.

Those words might ring a bell because I wrote them here.

The Crime Machine: The Jack Ritchie Stories From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (1957-1961 is the best reprint collection of the year. GRADE: A+

Jill Lepore, Harvard professor, warns that Artificial Intelligence is going to impact our Government…in a negative way. She notes that currently, we have no guard rails to protect us from rogue AI. We are building massive Data Centers that will increase the cost of electricity and water. And the impact on the Job Market will be…devastating!

My favorite chapter in The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is Chapter 11, “I, Robot.” Lepore explores the early Science Fiction stories about Artificial Intelligence and Robots. She especially focuses on Isaac Asimov’s series about robots and his Three Laws of Robotics. It would be nice if those Laws existed in AI today.

If you’re interested in the current State of the Art of AI, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State will orient you to what is happening today…and tomorrow. Are you ready for The Terminators? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PREFACE — xiii

PART ONE: GOVERNMENT BY MACHINES –1

1. The Book of Numbers — 17
2. Technocracy Inc. — 26
3. Machines That Think — 37
4. Computopia — 52
5. The Twitter Revolution — 72
6. AI.gov — 93

PART TWO: WHAT ROBOTS WANT –– 117

7. La Bete-Machine — 131

8. Darwin Among the Machines — 140

9. Man and Nature — 149

10. War With the Newts — 165

11. I, Robot — 184

12. Murderbot — 205

EPILOGUE: THE LAST DAYS OF THE ARTIFICIAL STATE — 225

Acknowledgements — 229

Notes — 231

Index — 259

Theo Baker’s experience as a freshman at Stanford University was not what he expected: “Over the course of my freshman year, people I got to know in the tech world would admit to me to tax evasion and tax fraud, research misconduct, embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, securities fraud, insider trading, academic dishonesty, operating slush funds and shell companies, hacking, reckless endangerment, and and abetting foreign dictators.” (p. 6)

If you’re a fan of Scott Turow’s classic One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School you’ll enjoy Theo Baker’s incredible first year at Stanford. Initially, Theo’s plan was to become a computer science major. But, while Theo was the best computer geek at his High School, he was just average at the elite Stanford.

Theo Baker’s parents are two superstars of reporting: Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker. So it comes as no surprise that Theo starts spending time writing for The Stanford Daily (it’s in his genes!) and discovers a story that could rock Stanford University to its core!

Marc Teasier-Lavigne, the famed neuroscientist and multi-millionaire biotech executive, is the President of Stanford University. But Theo finds evidence that Tester-Lavigne tampered with key research studies over two decades. Could Theo bring down the President of Stanford?

Not only does Theo Baker deliver a real-life thriller, but he shows how an investigative reporter works. This story of a teenager shaking up Stanford (yearly tuition: $95,000) is an exciting page-turner! GRADE: A

CODA: Although Theo Baker achieves fame and glory with his incredible reporting, he finds out he has to Pay a Price: “By spring of my sophomore year, I couldn’t leave my dorm room without being harassed. I received numerous death threats, had events canceled over nebulous ‘security concerns,’ and eventually had to leave campus altogether for a spell. Someone threatened to waterboard me, but with gasoline, and then set me on fire; another threaten to gas me like my relatives who died in the Holocaust.” (p. 318-319)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

YOUR STANFORD POCKET DICT IONARY — xi

Prologue: Fear the tree — 1

Drafted to the war on fun — 15

The impostor — 35

Coupa circuit — 53

Binary bomb — 73

A fucking menace — 99

Rule — 119

Duck syndrome — 141

Harriet the spy — 155

[[NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION]] — 173

The good paper — 197

TreeHacks — 215

Solve for people — 229

Free to speak — 243

No room for error — 257

Money is a rush — 265

Finis origine pendet –279

Coda — 295

Acknowledgements — 303

Notes — 309

Trump’s decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense.

By The Editorial Board

Aug. 23, 2026 at 3:19 pm ET

President Trump took exception last year when we called his tariffs against Canada and Mexico the dumbest trade war in history. It got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.

Mr. Trump issued his latest tariff threat against Canada last month under Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act. The law lets the President impose tariffs up to 50% on countries that discriminate against “commerce of the United States, directly or indirectly” in relation to foreign countries. No previous President has used this power.

Mr. Trump set a deadline of midnight on Friday for Canada to reach a deal to avert 50% tariffs on $20 billion of goods. The countries were close to an agreement until, poof, the cease-fire blew up at the last minute with each side blaming the other.

The result: Mr. Trump’s threatened tariffs took effect Saturday morning. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney threatened to retaliate dollar-for-dollar starting Sept. 8. Both sides could still walk back from the ledge, though Mr. Trump’s escalation could make this harder for Mr. Carney politically since Canadians don’t like being bullied by Washington. 

To justify his new tariffs, Mr. Trump said Canada discriminated against the U.S. by retaliating against his national-security tariffs on autos. He also claimed that Canadian provinces had restricted sales of U.S. alcoholic beverages in response to his “emergency” tariffs last year. Yet U.S. distillers begged Mr. Trump to hold off on his Section 338 tariffs. They know the longer Canada locks out American booze, the tougher it will be to regain market share.

The President also cited longstanding grievances over how Canada treats U.S. dairy. Press reports say the Trump team raised other issues during recent negotiations, including Canada’s treatment of U.S. tech companies and digital taxes. Most of these issues could have been addressed as part of a renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. 

But Mr. Trump doesn’t want to update the deal. He wants to rewrite it unilaterally. As Mr. Carney noted Saturday, the President has contrived an array of pretexts—from fentanyl trafficking to trade deficits—to bludgeon Canada with tariffs.

Mr. Trump’s complaint about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada is particularly ironic since the latter owes entirely to imports of heavy crude oil that is especially well-suited for U.S. refineries. Exclude Canadian oil, and the U.S. would have a trade surplus. But U.S. refineries would also operate at lower capacity. 

In any event, last week the two sides were close to an agreement that would reduce the U.S. auto tariffs on Canada to 15% (the same rate as South Korea and Japan) from 25%, and on steel and aluminum to 25% from 50%. These tariff reductions would help U.S. manufacturers, which have integrated cross-border supply chains. 

Prices for steel and aluminum mill products have surged 22.5% and 40.5%, respectively, over the past year. General Motors last month projected a $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion hit this year from tariffs. U.S. auto makers have been lobbying the Administration to reach a truce with Canada. 

Mr. Carney said Saturday that a major reason the deal blew up is that the Trump team refused to ease tariffs on heavy and medium duty trucks, including those made at Ford’s plant in Ontario. Why is Mr. Trump punishing Ford, America’s largest auto producer?

Mr. Trump’s latest round of border taxes will hit an array of consumer goods, construction materials and manufacturing components. Republicans are already getting pounded on the campaign trail over his tariffs and inflation. One reason for Mr. Trump’s frigid approval rating is that voters believe Mr. Trump is waging blunderbuss wars without a strategy, and on trade they’re right.

I completely agree with the WSJ on this matter. I’ve lived next the Canada for most of my Life and have visited it hundreds of times. The Canadians are friendly neighbors and allies. Why Trump is “warring” with Canada makes no sense and damages our economy and security. What do you think?

Signora Volpe (Mrs Fox) is a British mystery crime television series, produced by Route 24, of which season 1 was broadcast on Acorn TV in 2022.  The series was created by Rachel Cuperman and Sally Griffiths, and stars Emilia Fox in the title role.

Former British spy Sylvia Fox tries to settle down in a new life in picturesque Panicale, Italy. However, she soon becomes involved in solving local crimes.

Diane and I like Sylvia Fox (aka, Emilia Fox) and the beautiful Italian scenery in this mystery series. Once again, a tiny village seems to harbor a lot of crime…and dead bodies.

A second series premiered on Monday, 29 July 2024, on both Acorn TV and BBC America, and ran through to 12 August. A third three-episode series began production in September 2025. Our local PBS station started running Signora Volpe late at night–like 3 A.M.–so we DVRed them. GRADE: B+