Word: judgments
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...that business is bad. In fact, the bank is prospering. For efficiency's sake, it has installed LOANEX, a software system that supplants much of Paul's judgment. It is an "experience-based" program containing far more data than any loan officer could have in his head. Would-be borrowers type in answers to questions that appear on the screen. Credit reports are then factored in, after which the software says yes or no. Only if it prints out maybe is Paul's input needed, and this seems to be happening less and less. Nor do things look better higher...
...truly outsize, especially since Thurber's life was not very eventful, the book is hardly a literary curiosity. Reading it exposes in large type the problem with many biographies in recent years: a refusal to use editorial judgment to assess the relative worth of research. The first part of the book describes in separate chapters the important people in Thurber's early life: family, teachers, bosses and, yes, his dogs. Later the same method is used about the New Yorker years. As the cast expands, each previous character is reintroduced. The repetition is remorseless. Further, paragraphs of quotations--from letters...
...cause: the political ambitions of Republicans. "What we said about Whitewater in the beginning has been proven true," Mrs Clinton said, referring to a government investigation of Whitewater that exonerated the Clintons. "I think the American public is fair and smart and will be able to make their own judgment...
This may not be progress (What do guys know about lipstick stains on teeth?). At any rate, the results are, as critics say while fishing for a coin to toss, mixed. The Final Judgment, by Richard North Patterson (Knopf; 437 pages; $25), is less than it should be, given the author's success with his earlier books Eyes of a Child and Degree of Guilt. These are tough, well-plotted legal thrillers, set in California, with a good mix of believable male and female characters. The new story takes one of the supporting actors from the earlier books, a judge...
...again, archaeological finds have validated scriptural references. Discoveries of an astonishing variety of 1st century coins, for example, help explain the need for money changers, whom an angry Jesus drove away from Jerusalem's Great Temple. Still, there are many questions that archaeology cannot now answer. Did Pilate pass judgment on Jesus at the Antonia fortress near the Temple site, or at Herod's palace across town? (If the latter, then the famed Via Dolorosa--the route that Jesus followed carrying his cross to Golgotha--is incorrect.) Is the tomb of Jesus beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulcher...