Author Archives: Brian D. Butler

The Hawking index is not what you think

Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg created an imaginative means of quantifying a metric that book publishers and writers had long suspected: most people don’t finish the books they buy. He called it the Hawking Index, named after Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History … Continue reading

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How well do you know geography

When I was just a nerdy little kid, my friends and I would play a simple game the we called “Geography”. It entailed a player naming a country and the next player challenged to name another nation starting with the … Continue reading

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There was once a country where everyone was a thief.

The Black Sheep Italo Calvino There was once a country where everyone was a thief. At night each inhabitant went out armed with a crowbar and a lantern, and broke into a neighbor’s house. On returning at dawn, loaded down … Continue reading

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Where in the world

I recently spotted the photo above on a random book blog. There was no attribution nor indication where or when the photograph was taken. However, I had the uncanny notion that at some unknown point in time I had actually … Continue reading

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there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds

“A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical … Continue reading

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And the 2025 lists begin

The staff of the New York Times Book Review choose the year’s top fiction and nonfiction titles. “The envelope, please: After a full year spent reading hundreds of books and meeting regularly to bicker — er, converse — about their … Continue reading

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Travel is the only way we have of feeling that we are somewhere.

“Travel was once a means of being elsewhere, or of being nowhere. Today it is the only way we have of feeling that we are somewhere. At home, surrounded by information, by screens, I am no longer anywhere, but rather … Continue reading

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Is Iceland Real

Last month, Icelandair launched a social media campaign that takes a tongue- in- cheek look at whether Iceland is  “real”  as opposed to AI-generated. The “Expedition Iceland” campaign was developed by social-first agency Kubbco in partnership with Icelandic agency Hvíta … Continue reading

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Paris, 1964

I’ve always been a big fan of Dionne Warwick and a fan of Burt Bacharach & Hal David tunes. So what a treat to stumble upon this YouTube clip of Dionne singing her Bacharach hit “Walk On By” on the … Continue reading

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Fables for the Frivolous

One of the earliest works by the American parodist Guy Wetmore Carryl, this collection of fables are adapted from Jean de La Fontaine’s Aesop-style originals from more than 200 years earlier. Carryl’s light-hearted re-tellings are rendered in verse, each ending … Continue reading

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