The AIs Are No Longer Science Fiction
The Sorcerer’s Apprentices If you are old enough, you may recall the 1940 Disney movie Fantasia, especially the cartoon of Dukas’ symphonic poem, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” starring Mickey Mouse and a host of magic brooms. The grizzled old wizard goes to bed for the night, and Mickey works a spell […]
Words, Words, Words
Authors can learn a lot about writing from computer programmers. Substack and Medium overflow with articles praising alternatives to Microsoft Word: Ulysses, Scrivener, whatever’s hot this week. Everyone craves a “distraction-free” writing environment, but I submit that “distraction-free” has less to do with the interface than with the benefits […]
The Other Side Of Unsustainable
During the last U.S. presidential election, American voters insisted that the economy was issue number one, but neither candidate campaigned on managing the national debt, or even mentioned it. Now the experts all agree that the government’s $37 trillion debt is unsustainable, a scary thought, given that, since 2001, […]
Ten Thousand Repetitions
Skills When I was a boy in the 1960s, long before the Internet and 24-hour news cycles, people didn’t get their news by scrolling through feeds on phones and tablets. No, they got their news from me. I was a paper boy. A professional! As were my brothers and most […]
A Brush With Death and a First Novel
The Eternal Footman Snickers I was 34 in July 1988—a lawyer living in St. Louis. I was at my desk, leaning back in my swivel chair, hands folded on top of my head, when I felt a rough spot on my scalp. Probably that old scar I got running […]
The Baby Boomers Are Arriving In Montana
By Richard Dooling Originally published in the Wall Street Journal. In the 1950s and ’60s, when televisions had three channels, the “Davy Crockett” series about the fearless frontiersman was so popular that Disney sold 5,000 imitation coonskin caps a day. I wore one of those caps for several summers. My […]
Has A Witch Spirit Taken Over Your Soul?
The issue, then, is whether a witch person, or witch host would always know he or she had a witch spirit. The Mende disagree on this point, and so do the anthropologists. Some say that when a witch enters a village, it is like a powerful sound in a room […]
Justice Holmes Teaches The First Amendment
Originally published in The Wall Street Journal. The more certain you are, the more you should resist the temptation to silence those who disagree. If you are absolutely certain that President Trump is or is not an idiot, that climate change is or is not the most pressing problem of […]
The Writer’s Guide To Bread Baking
Most Of These Guys Are Lawyers, Right?
Recent posturing by politicians hoping to censor their political opponents with obviously unconstitutional laws against speech remind me that there is nothing new under the sun. I wrote this piece for the New York Times back when online pornography, not vaccine misinformation, was the fear. NYT Op-Ed, June 15, 1996, […]
It’s a mystery . . .
I have a short story, Sycamore Acres, in the July/August 2021 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Dark!
Bush Pigs: A Tale of Reverse Culture Shock
Published in The New Yorker magazine, Richard Dooling’s Bush Pigs is a harrowing tale of reverse culture shock and a cult favorite among expats who wander abroad and are sometimes unprepared for the trauma of returning to the first world. After three years in the bush, a Peace Corps Volunteer […]
Why Books Aren’t Dead Yet
I spent my undergrad years painting dorm rooms to pay my tuition and never once allowed schooling to get in the way of my education. I graduated from St. Louis University in 1976 and decided it was time to actually read all of the books that I never had time […]
Who Was Cornell Woolrich?
