“The Jesus tablet,” is what the wags are calling the iTab just unveiled by Steve Jobs. Other wits have dubbed it “an iPhone on steroids.”

 New Yorker writer on media, Ken Auletta, shared these descriptions during a discussion at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center this week. His book, “Googled: the End of the World As We Know It,” appeared last fall.

 For Auletta, it’s not yet clear whether the iPad will be a game changer. But Job’s introduction of it shows once again what a superb marketer the founder of Apple remains.

 As to Google, its huge workforce is one-half engineers. And they are the kings of the industry.  They are the people who are always asking “why not” However, they also lack emotional intelligence astoundingly. In Autletta’s experience, “they are blind to what they cannot measure.”

 Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page do value good information. That is why they welcome a connection with the New York Times. They also feel concern about privacy and copyrights.

 For simplicity, how about this Google motto?  -  “DON’T BE EVIL.”

The headline “Many Catholics react favorably to Brown’s election” occupied a front-page slot in the Boston Pilot of January 22, 2010.

I nominate it as among the most biased newspaper leads in recent history and one of the most banal.  Were a respectable secular newspaper to have published such a one-sided head, surely it would become the target of outraged protest. This official house organ for the Archdiocese of Boston, however, can expect to get away with pro-Republican propaganda.

The story could just as well have run “Many Catholics react unfavorably to Brown’s election,” an equally banal lead story. But that would have betrayed Democratic rather than Republican bias.

Has the Pilot not yet discovered how Scott Brown holds the same position on abortion as does Martha Coakley, his defeated Democratic candidate for U.S. senator?

Would not the Catholics of the Boston archdiocese be better served by an independent newspaper published by laypeople? That’s the way it was before the then archbishop of Boston, Cardinal O’Connell, bought the paper in 1908. Perhaps this journal would then avoid such clearly one-sided approaches to political life.

At the History Table yesterday, we commemorated the crime writer Robert Parker who died this week. This Cambridge author was found at his desk where he wrote, six days a week, his widely admired detective fiction.

Talking about Parker stirred mention of other writers in this genre. No one of us could remember the name of a Bostonian who had a reputation for similar work. I could recall the title of one book, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, but not the author. However, I promised to come up with his name by later in the afternoon.

In fact, I did better than that. Within the next five or ten minutes the name George Higgins printed itself on my inner brain screen. We all agreed that was he was the writer who, just a short time before, had eluded the memory of us all.

This recovery of memory is what I like to call a true “senior moment.” Why not emphasize the astounding power of memory, even when it may have slowed down, rather than focusing on the negative inability to produce a name, or other answer, immediately?

Thinking about your own death does not make you morbid. It may even be one of the best ways of appreciating one’s life, of getting more value out of every day.

The novelist Chaim Potok recounts a father answering his six-year-old son Asher’s question about why every living thing must die: “Why? So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever is never precious.”

My college classmate and longtime dear friend Carlos, writing from Monterrey, Mexico, knows how to pose difficult questions. Speaking of the murderer at Fort Hood, he asks:

The guy was a citizen, so what does "citizenship" mean ?  What should the core values of citizens be ? Can  a religion like Islam, many of whose members  hold "anti-American" views on the structure of society, be free like other religions are ?  What should be the values/beliefs of people joining the military ?
 
The freedom of one person´s belief  vs the well being of  society. What should  society´s attitude be towards newcomers  who don´t share some of the core values, or may implicitly threaten them ?

He wants me to respond but, as of now, the questions go beyond my knowledge and wisdom.
 

We live in a new era of history, one in which living to be old has become routine, at least for most of us. In the 20th century Americans gained 30 years in life expectency, more than had been reached in the preceding 5,000 years of human history.

What a mystery! Too much reality for us to grasp.

Great spiritual traditions have always taught the same message: there can be no foolproof security on earth. At this point in history no one needs to be convinced of this fact. What we do need is light on how to live in an insecure world. We want to know how to adjust to a new situation marked by threats that cannot be identified in advance.

In some ways we elders have an advantage. Many of us have become used to living with vulnerability. Disabilities have made us aware that it might not take much to do us in. We realize that a simple fall on the floor of our kitchen might be enough to start in motion a chain of events that could result in our becoming physically incapacitated.

Years of coping with physical problems that cannot be healed have accustomed us to coping. Reverses in health that seemed in prospect devastating have become familiar companions. We have learned to make the best of situations that continue to be uncomfortable and threatening.

This experience may have taught us to be more patient with ourselves and more compassionate toward other people. Paradoxically enough, a new wholeness may have emerged from our brokenness and an unexpected peace or soul from our suffering. We may have become veterans in the warfare against personal disintegration, emerging with suprprising victories of spirit.
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Written for the newsletter Aging and the Human Spirit in response to the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001.

The subtle joy of the bat hitting the ball squarely needs no further appreciation from me. Many times previously I have celebrated the satisfaction that comes with this contact. Regrettably, however, it's a pleasure that I have known too rarely in my Sunday softball games of the last four decades. Nowadays, for lack of a vigorous swing,I almost never experience this delight.

Of late, however, I have discovered another subtle pleasure in playing the game. This past Sunday, on a beautifully warm late September day without a cloud in the sky, I made a play in the field that brought me new joy. This play made me realize that you don't have to be at bat to have access to exquisite athletic satisfaction.

As usual, I was playing first base, a position that offers much action but requires relatively little fast movement. The batter, a strong left-handed hitter, drove a fierce ground ball right at me. On instinct, I reached down with my glove without having had time to think about it. When I looked down, somehow the ball had nestled safely in the glove. All I had to do was move a few paces, step on first base, and the inning was over.

In response to this amazing play, my teammates yelled at me their excitement. Presumably they did so because their expectations for me were appropriately low. I had astonished them as well as myself.

The tactile quality of my play has stayed with me for days afterward. Shamelessly, I have described this feat to family members and friends. I cannot, however, do justice to the subtlety of the play. Seeing the ball safely nested in my glove provides ongoing pleasure in memory and imagination.

The feel of bat's sweet spot  connecting with the ball continues to strike me as precious. But now so does the feeling that comes with discovering that the baseball glove has its own sweet spot.

Lurking among us in our cities and towns are older people who secretly experiment with truth. They have developed insight not shared by many younger than they.

Of course, the wise may not be easily recognizable as such. They do not walk around dispensing wisdom the way vending machines spew out coffee. In fact, they are probably reluctant to give any advice at all. The maxim about mystics holds here: "Those who say don't know; those who know don't say."