AP News: Chatbots sometimes make things up. Not everyone thinks AI’s hallucination problem is fixable BY MATT O’BRIEN — August 1, 2033 Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots and it doesn’t take long for them to spout falsehoods. Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it’s now a … Continue reading Chatbot fantasies
Washington Post — archive THE REALITIES (& Speculations) BEHIND THE RHYMES By Jennifer Howard — June 11, 1997 Humpty Dumpty. Jack Horner. Miss Muffet. You knew them as a child, and if you have youngsters of your own, chances are they know them, too. Mother Goose and her nursery rhymes are old friends. Seems as … Continue reading Dog Days Diversions — Nursery Rhymes: A Scholarly Sampler
Washington Post From, “Behind a pseudonym, literary provocation” James Campbell’s ‘NB by J.C.’ brings together the columns of an incendiary cultural critic. . . . By Michael Dirda – May 12, 2023 Even before catching up with the latest scholarly kerfuffle in the Letters column, readers of Britain’s Times Literary Supplement turn first to its … Continue reading Maybe The Best Column I Never Read; Plus Many of the Best Typos
FOUR: Bringing Them, Home, and Bringing It Back Part One is here. Part Two is here. Part Three is here. While on Nantucket, I managed to draft about sixty pages of my Quaker novel, and several episodes of the quilt story, before cash ran too low for more room rent. Than I had reluctantly taken … Continue reading The Island of Two Stories: Part Four of Four
Part ONE Once long ago, in late 1976, I set out to write the great American Quaker novel. Or at least, a page-turning historical potboiler. It was to be be about Quakers on the island of Nantucket, during the American Revolution. Two of them in particular: the gruff but pious William Rotch, — who was … Continue reading The Island of Two Stories: A Four-Part Mini-Saga