( www.murrayjames.net ) You can read some of the things I've written below. Like an Olympic gymnast, they are short and bound to win medals. Enjoy. SHORT FITS OF BRILLIANCE a service to mankind 02/01/11 - I picked up smoking for three months. I quit when the air in China was bad enough to make my lungs sore enough to cough enough to worry my wife enough to make me promise her I'd never smoke again. 12/05/10 - Gulliver's Travels should be read by every man and woman of European stock. Swift gets us right: we are all Yahoos at heart. Of course no one knows human nature or religious excess as well as a clergyman. But his is a sermon worth reading, because it is funny. 12/04/10 - Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup. Three cheers for Qatar. Go Qatar. Hip hip hooray. 11/27/10 - Wow, the Art Pepper of the post-prison 1975 live recording "Renascence" is a Pepper I never heard before. Just fantastic. 11/25/10 - Spittle, Spackle, Speckle, Spurt 10/12/10 - In Christianity there's a lot of talk about salvation. It is said that man is saved by faith and not by works at all. In its strongest form this argument becomes a denunciation of works in general. This is of course is overstating the case. Christians are saved by works—Christ's. 08/22/10 - Redistribution of wealth in the form of excessive taxation is a violation of the 10th Commandment. It is the sign of a covetous nation (and a covetous electorate) when man seeks after the wealth of his neighbor. This is as true at the ballot box as it is in daydreams, at gunpoint or anywhere else.       But we are told to love our neighbor. What if the State is offering a service the Church is not? That is, what if sprawling federal entitlement programs are substitutes for Christian charity? Then whose fault is it, really? If Christians spent less time pledging future tithes to build church lobbies the size of airplane terminals, wouldn't they have more money to care for the poor? 08/19/10 - Back from Xinzheng where I ate fried scorpions—yes, scorpions—with Jonathan McWilliams. The verdict? They're tasty! 08/11/10 - A Great (Free) Chinese-English Font 08/07/10 - Stop What You're Doing and Do It in Chinese 07/30/10 - In the United States, April showers bring May flowers. In Chengdu China, however, April showers bring May showers, which bring June showers, which bring July showers, which bring August showers. Winter comes eventually. 07/29/10 - The King James Bible (completed in 1611) is apparently still under copyright in England. The copyright exists "in perpetuity," or until January 1st, 2040—whichever comes first. 07/26/10 - I'm learning the names of the books of the Bible in Chinese. 创世记、出埃及记、利未记等。In most cases it's a matter of memorizing a transliteration: 撒母耳 (sāmǔěr) for Samuel, 约翰 (yuēhàn) for John, 帖撒罗尼迦 (tièsāluóníjiā) for Thessolonica. But some are really hard, like 以斯拉 (yǐsīlā, Ezra), which I've already forgotten a half million times. 04/02/10 - Big Performances in Edmonton and Chengdu 03/14/10 - Some Vocabulary Practice 02/16/10 - Learning a Foreign Language? 02/04/10 - Afros, Beards, Biracial Marriage, and the Law 12/31/09 - A Fly in the Ointment 11/14/09 - What Causes Déjà Vu 10/30/09 - amazon.com Book Review 09/29/09 - A Letter from President Lincoln 09/20/09 - May I Have Your Attention Please 09/11/09 - Busy Beaver 06/15/09 - Sweet Like That 05/17/09 - Learning Chinese, etc. 05/15/09 - NYU Sends Me Letters 03/18/09 - Bad Chinese, Bad Canadian 03/09/09 - My CD Project 02/28/09 - Mozart, Then Beethoven 02/26/09 - Metheny & Schubert & Absalom Volstead 01/16/09 - Punctuation Rape 11/15/08 - The New James Bond Movie 11/02/08 - The Problem with Plucking Your Eyes Out 11/01/08 - So There Are Variables 10/29/08 - Love and Death... 10/14/08 - Remorse 10/04/08 - The Cowardice of Holocaust Denial 09/27/08 - An Ambitious Woman 08/30/08 - Finding a NYC Apartment 08/25/08 - Chess Master 08/18/08 - The Light Knight 07/28/08 - Enemies 07/24/08 - On the Merits of a University Education 07/13/08 - McDonald's Is Chinese Food 07/09/08 - Sins of Availability 03/28/08 - Decision Theology 03/07/08 - Reason Bends 03/01/07 - Martha the Talking Deer 01/21/07 - Affluence - up -