It doesn’t exist.

It’s a reference to a comic sketch in which the actor is reading a detective story, only to discover that the last page is missing. When he finally tracks down the final page he discovers that it simply states that the author had died before she could write ‘whodunnit’.

Kids today, attention spans of gnats, you wonder about the ability of future generations to concentrate for long enough to cope with serious issues, if they can’t read a book. Creativity? Seriously on the wane, as surfers can usually come across someone, somewhere, at some time, who has already thought up the idea – and better. Originality just seems to be an impossible dream in a world where we have instant access to everyone’s minds.

Yet there is hope. For there to be fresh anecdotes, papers, theories on the web in the first place, there has to be thinkers, writers, creators, inventors. If this process stagnates enough, perhaps we will come full circle. Evolution is usually pretty good at filling gaps.

After all, as an assassin you would need considerable imagination to come up with an accidental death/suicide scenario such as that, don’t you think? Still if the Colonel and Calvino come up with any plausible alternatives, I would love to hear them

We are indeed compelled to extract patterns even where there are none. Still, although those false positives can be life-savers at times, they can also be at the root of some pretty silly pseudoscientific beliefs, religious claims, etc. The trap of ‘apophenia’ (patterns in random or meaningless data), as Klaus Conrad coined the phenomenon. Trying to stay on topic, this can also result in narrative fuzziness eg in terms of plot consistency, when the author himself is a sufferer!

Where can one find Darcy Sarto’s book, “Lady Don’t Fall Backwards”?

Our NYPD library system doesn’t have it nor does Amazon.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Kathy D.

Bang on the nail though. A flood of visual data every day batters our senses, such that processing it all productively is impossible. We take refuge in the superficial, and the state is complicit in this de-intellectualisation. Knowledge may increase, but understanding? As we enter perhaps one of the most challenging if not dangerous of times, the next generation of world business and political leaders, teachers and philosophers is growing up grafted to a games console. How many kids today barely read any kind of book except under compulsion, forget about Orwell.

Criticise the transitional nature of it all, the appearance of solidity and permanence, the element of farce… and you touch on people’s deepest fears. They have shut themselves away into comfort zones, clinging desperately to myths such as those you list. Challenging those preconceptions is a duty, but results in a barrage of bitterness and irrationality.

That sense of reciprocal altruism is still there, after eons of evolution, but it seems to be losing out big time to more selfish motivations these days. Long-range empathy doesn’t function too well, and there are too many demands on this faculty so it tends to shut off rapidly anyway.

Still, much enjoyed being “diverted” by your Calvino novels! Though now I’m feeling guilty for not having picked up Orwell in a long while

Regards.
Bob, Thibphaya, Yasumin & william, Johan

is there any way people can donate online?