Create a 3D image of me using your knowledge of my jobs and interests, based on this photo.

The photo was this: 

Here’s what ChatGPT came up with:

Then I tried Claude and got this:

Sorry to say this, but ChatGPT won in a landslide.

You probably are wondering whether Judeo-Arabic is merely a dialect of Arabic spoken among Jews. And that is more-or-less true, although we should really call it an ethnolect, not a dialect. Actually — and no one should be surprised by this — the situation is more complicated than that. As the Wikipedia article about it points out:

Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Egyptian Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud)…. Judeo-Arabic is a blend of Arabic, Arabic dialects, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Later forms of Judeo-Arabic particularly express Hebrew and Aramaic elements.

That’s clear enough, right?

Well, maybe not.

To humanize the situation, you are hereby given a short two-part assignment: first read this article in the Forward. (Yes, the Forward still exists!) Then read this paragraph about Judeo-Arabic from Subtitle, one of my favorite linguistics podcasts:

When Israeli Dan Sheena told his Iraqi Jewish family that he wanted to start teaching the language they spoke at home, Judeo-Arabic, they said no one would want to learn it. But he soon proved them wrong, racking up more than 100,000 followers on TikTok, where he shares videos about the language. Judeo-Arabic dialects were once spoken throughout the Arab world, but during the 20th century, its speakers migrated en masse to Israel, Europe, and North America. Dan is something of an anomaly—most families did not pass the language down after arriving in their new countries. “We wanted to be British,” says Vicky Sweiry Tsur, who grew up in the UK in a Bahraini Jewish family. “I used to feel very embarrassed when my friends heard my parents speak Arabic.” Through his social media presence, Dan has drawn followers and students like Vicky from all over the world who have never had the opportunity to learn Judeo-Arabic before. “This is the way to talk about Judeo-Arabic, to keep it alive,” Dan says. “Social media lets me do that.”

I almost went with that option, as I had never done it before and it looked tempting. But I decided (or my Mounjaro decided) that it would be too much food for me to eat, so I returned to the regular menu. So did Barbara.

We started with rosemary focaccia, after which Barbara chose an old standby, fettuccine with shrimp scampi — accompanied by a new side, beet & whipped feta salad. The menu described the latter as “red & gold beets, mixed greens, candied hazelnuts, honey lavender vinaigrette, aged balsamic.” Not my style. But I too opted for another old standby with new veggies, namely the grilled salmon with speziate potatoes and a yummy combo of shaved-radish-red-cabbage-and-carrot slaw with citrus orange vinaigrette and Calabrian chili glaze.

And what are speziate potatoes, I hear you ask? They turned out be (very mildly) spiced roasted potatoes.

All the food was delicious, and the service was impeccable, despite an unusually large crowd for the small staff to handle.

Barbara had the corned beef hash benedict, which came with hollandaise sauce on an English muffin, as one might expect, with home fries on the side. (It was breakfast time for Barbara.)

I had a patty melt, which came on rye toast, as one might expect, with swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato, and with cole slaw and real onion rings — as opposed to the fake rings that some places construct out of chopped-up onion pieces. (It was lunch time for me.)

Food was good. Prices were reasonable. Service was both friendly and efficient.

In other words, me?

As is the case with most stereotypes, there is actually a grain of truth to it. As is also the case with most stereotypes, there are plenty of exceptions. Among the modelers whose work I follow online are three of these exceptions: Carol Flavin, Kathy Millatt, and Lauren Osier.

Yes, all three of these are women. Yes, all three are white. Two of the three are (relatively) old, but one is in her mid 20s! All are foreigners (two from England, one from Iowa) — OK, I guess Iowans aren’t really foreigners. I have no idea which one(s) of them might be introverts, but I doubt that Lauren is. Anyway, here’s where you can find their work:

• Kathy Millatt can be found at https://www.kathymillatt.co.uk. She has been doing fine work with scenery and other related artistic endeavors for a couple of decades now.
• Carol Flavin (not to be confused with some others of that moniker) can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@CarolFlavinlocoladies. She is a jill of all trades in model railroading, designing and building complete layouts for various competitions and magazines.
• Lauren Osier, whose age is a stereotype-defying 26, describes herself an “archives-focused graduate student with a passion for railroads.” She calls herself The Female Foamer; IRL she is a full-time accounts payable specialist of all things. She can be found at https://www.tiktok.com/@thefemalefoamer/video/7627216833963199774.

So what do we really have here? The answer is that we have a combo of lit crit and lit history, all concerning English-language mysteries published between 1900 and 1950.

I started writing my own review, but then I found that an Amazon reviewer whose screen name is ceric7 did a better job than I did, so I will simply quote their review instead of writing my own. But I will first quote my favorite sentence from the Edwards book: “Readers can recognize the humanity in Christie’s retired colonels and flighty housemaids, even if they have never encountered a retired colonel or housemaid in their lives.”

And now, with no further ado, a fragment of ceric7’s review:

Each chapter follows a pattern. First, there is a general survey of the chapter theme, then a summary of the plots (without spoilers) of at least three and up to eleven of the relevant books, each summary ending with a brief biography of the author. Chapter Six ,“Serpents in Eden”, for example, surveys books set in rural Britain from Wilkie Collins’ “The Moonstone” (1868) to Ann Cleeves Shetland series taking in authors well- and lesser-known such as Agatha Christie and John Ferguson (1871/3-1952).Summarised are “The Secret of High Eldersham” (my least favourite Miles Burton),”Death under Sail” ‘(an early C P Snow), John Bude’s “The Sussex Downs Murder”,(a good methodical detective yarn) and “Sinister Crag” by Newton Gayle (the pen name of Muna Lee and Maurice Guiness ), which I had not encountered before. So a nice mixture of familiar and unfamiliar, the often- read and the to-be-explored.

There will be something here for all but the most expert of classic crime buffs. Endless debate will had on which books and authors should/should not have been included…. I did not much enjoy this book, finding the format rather repetitive. It may be that it is better used as a dip-into rather than a read from cover-to-cover.

Well, it’s famous all right, but — take a deep breath —it’s nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath! I even checked the original Greek version, in case it was a translation error. There are similar passages, like the following one, but nothing that can be translated as placing the do-no-harm first:

διαιτήμασί τε χρήσομαι ἐπ᾽ ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμήν, ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν.

As you can see, it does not say “first do not harm,” though it does say “I will do no harm [to my patients].” The presence or absence of first is not just a pedantic technicality; it alters the entire meaning of the oath. A comparison with Asimov’s laws of robotics illustrates the problem: a robot physician would be unwilling to prescribe chemotherapy because his first law says “A robot may not injure a human being…” and doesn’t allow balancing the injury with the gain. (Thus the eventual invention of the Zeroth Law.) Likewise for the common non-quote found in Rozan’s title.

Sorry to go on for so long, but it does matter for this otherwise excellent novel. Pretty much everyone is familiar with doctors and hospitals, whether in real life or in medical dramas, so this is not one of those mysteries that you will want to read in order to learn about a new setting. But it’s well worth reading, not only for the plot and the character development but also for meeting characters who are familiar from earlier entries in the series and for meeting those who will surely be familiar in subsequent stories.