A cornucopia of samples . . .

My writing spans newspaper and magazine journalism (specializing in feature writing and personality profiles), advertisements, brochures, direct mail packages, newsletters, and much more. Here, in no particular order, are just some of the publications in which my work has appeared, along with a few samples of marketing collateral I've written. I invite you to take a closer look in person!

Attorney's 'Guest Editorial' Takes Practical Look at 'Intelligent Design'

(Blogger's note: I enjoyed this piece so much, written by Western New York attorney Jeffrey Allen Spencer and published some years ago in The Buffalo News, that I've taken the liberty of posting it on my blog -- strictly for the enlightenment of those fortunate enough to read it.)


Theory Doesn't Account for Life's Amazing Complexity

By Jeffrey A. Spencer

Like a giant colossus, Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution have for more than a century cast a huge shadow over scientific and intellectual thought, shaping our view of ourselves and our world. The theory has gained such widespread acceptance that almost any criticism is viewed at best as a misguided denial of reality and at worst as a stealth effort to sneak creationism into our public schools.

The "spin" one usually gets in public commentary is that this is a battle between science and religion, the old Scopes monkey trial revisited but dressed in new clothes. The bigger story that never seems to hit the front page is that well credentialed scientists from across the globe have raised serious questions concerning the viability of the theory.

Good science takes a hard look at the facts while keeping an open mind to new or alternative interpretations of those facts. From the beginning, the theory of evolution has always been a controversial interpretation of the facts.

The theory is based on assumed innumerable small changes over long periods of time. However, Darwin himself noted the absence of transitional species in the fossil record and shuddered at the incredible complexity of nature. We now know that even a "simple" cell has the complexity of a modern city, and that each living creature has billions of those interdependent cells, perfectly coordinated to perform thousands of functions. All this complexity is directed by an information system (DNA) that far exceeds the Encyclopedia Britannica in its magnitude.

As any computer geek can tell you, you can't get a more complex information program out of a simple one. Einstein recognized that one of the fundamental laws of the universe is that matter moved over time from order to disorder (Second Law of Thermodynamics). The theory of evolution asks us to believe that all this incredible complexity, organized through an amazingly complex information system, happened by accident over time.

The clear evidence for the adaptability of a species within limits as part of a species' genetic code (i.e., the great variation in dog breeds) demonstrates the marvelous flexibility of these codes. But even determined breeders have never been able to produce anything other than a dog. One wonders how an undirected, "accidental" process could have done better.

Doctrinaire evolutions take issue with the "intelligent design" movement, alleging the theological implications of a "designer," yet are comfortable in continuing to proselytize for their own "faith" that astoundingly complex life on planet Earth somehow arose through a haphazard accidental process.

In spite of reasonable questions about whether the theory still fits the facts, evolution seems to have been elevated to a place of "scientific correctness" to which serious criticism is not permitted. The fear that some critics of evolution may have a religious agenda is surely not sufficient reason to ignore contrary evidence or to close one's mind to alternative interpretations. Good science, good education and intellectual honesty demand more.

Is God for Real?

By Paul Chimera


It takes real hubris to proclaim that God does not exist, that all that’s here is here by chance, that life itself is an accident.

To a large extent, I think Dr. Francis Collins nailed the reason why some people – without even considering the evidence – choose to be non-believers: it gets them off the hook (albeit in their minds only). Dr. Collins is director of the national Human Genome Project, and is both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of North Carolina and Yale University, respectively. He’s also a devout Christian.

But until age 27, Dr. Collins was actually an atheist, he admits. In a public presentation he gave not long ago about his pioneering work on the genetic code of human life, he said, “I decided to become an atheist without considering the evidence. It was convenient being an atheist – not being answerable to anybody, surrounded by lots of temptations and not having to worry about the consequences.”

But then Collins, like many of his brethren in the scientific community, began to follow the evidence and where it might lead, and their conclusions were inescapable.

Dr. Mark Eastman, M.D., in a speech about science and faith, quoted the esteemed physicist and information scientist, Hubert P. Yockey, who noted that the mathematical probability of a single protein arising by chance is one in 2 x 10 to the 75th power. That’s a “2” with 75 zeros after it.

Sir Fred Hoyle, the famed English astronomer, said this about the origin of life: “The probability that higher life forms might have emerged by chance is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

Human Genome Project Director Collins noted, after reading C.S. Lewis’s seminal book, Mere Christianity, that “based on pure logic, it was more reasonable to believe in God than not to. Jesus Christ was a person unlike any other…the historical evidence for Jesus Christ was very overwhelming to me.”

But let’s question for a moment that, if we accept that God is real, how come we don’t see him? The irony is that we do; we just don’t look very carefully, and we take way too much for granted. A nun, speaking recently on the EWTN religious television network, reduced all this down to a rather clear way of understanding how God’s hand is evident in our daily lives.

She posed, for example, the notion of the planets revolving around the sun. Why do they not steer off-track, but instead remain rigorously on their same course, she asked? What about the billions of stars? Or even that we have summer, then fall, then winter, and spring? “How,” she queried, “did the world come into being?”

Dr. Eastman underscores that it was surely not by chance – not some wondrous emergence from a primordial soup. He recalls, when in medical school, holding a human brain. In his younger days he considered himself an evolutionist and, yes, even an atheist. In a sardonic tone, as he recalled holding that brain, he recently told an audience, “Billions of years of random molecular collisions produced this!” He chuckled, and the audience joined him.

Western New York attorney Jeffrey A. Spencer, in an insightful essay published a few years back in The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, stated, “As any computer geek can tell you, you can’t get a more complex information program out of a simple one. Einstein recognized that one of the fundamental laws of the universe is that matter moves over time from order to disorder (Second Law of Thermodynamics). The theory of evolution asks us to believe that all this incredible complexity, organized through an amazingly complex information system, happened by accident over time…Doctrinaire evolutionists take issue with the ‘intelligent design’ movement, alleging the theological implications of a ‘designer,’ yet are comfortable in continuing to proselytize for their own ‘faith’ that astoundingly complex life on planet Earth somehow arose through a haphazard accidental process.”

Several years ago, Anthony Flew, the British philosophy professor who had been the leading champion of atheism for over a half-century, changed his mind. His thoughts were documented on video (you can look him up on youtube). An Associated Press report out of New York stated, “At age 81, after decades of insisting that belief in God is a mistake, Anthony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.”

It is said that when Albert Einstein was asked about his work, he explained, “I merely trace the lines that flow from God.” Still, of course, there are skeptics. When the aforementioned medical doctor, Mark Eastman, was giving a presentation about his religious convictions, a professor at the back of the room raised his hand in dissent. “We are scientists,” he said adamantly about himself and a group he had with him. “We do not believe in things that can’t be seen, felt, or empirically measured.”

Dr. Eastman was thus forced to tell the academician, in so many words, “Well, sir, no one has ever seen or felt the human mind, yet we know it exists. According to your theory, then, am I not justified in believing you don’t have one, since we can’t see it?” (Not a precise, word-for-word direct quote).

The professor and his colleagues were speechless.

Dr. Eastman explains that our mind – though non-physical – nonetheless is real. We know it exists, just like God. “When we see the things that are made, we see the evidence of an information scientist, the evidence of an engineer in the machine-like structure of living systems, and the evidence of a vastly powerful biochemist,” said Dr. Eastman.

Dr. Michael J. Behe, a molecular biologist and professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and an unabashed Christian, points out the “irreducible complexity” of astoundingly harmonious systems, such as that of the flagellum (tail) of a single bacterium. He refers to these amazing, microscopic creatures as “molecular machines,” where – if even one tiny component of the perfectly orchestrated system were to not operate properly – the bacterium would cease to function.

In his web-based Research Summary, Dr. Behe declares, “Despite much general progress by science in the past half century in understanding how complex biochemical systems work, little progress has been made in explaining how such systems arise in a Darwinian fashion. I have proposed that a better explanation is that such systems were deliberately designed by an intelligent agent.”

Dr. Francis Collins, speaking about the same microscopic organism – the bacterium that Behe was referring to – said that the nanotechnology here suggests that the bacterium’s flagellum “is an impossibly complicated thing for evolution to have created.”

Let me return to Dr. Behe for a moment. In speaking of a “designer” behind such marvels of nature, he illustrates his point by asking us to consider the ordinary mouse trap. You need three things to have an effective mouse trap: the spring-trap, bait, and a mouse. But until someone (a designer) puts those elements together, you’ll never catch a mouse. Dr. Behe has also posed the thought-provoking scenario of a wrist watch. No one questions that the device was designed – yet the design of the human wrist below it – a far more complex “device” – is subjected to doubt.

“We now know,” wrote attorney Jeffrey A. Spencer in the previously mentioned Buffalo News article, “that even a ‘simple’ cell has the complexity of a modern city, and that each living creature has billions of these interdependent cells, perfectly coordinated to perform thousands of functions. All this complexity is directed by an information system (DNA) that far exceeds the Encyclopedia Britannica in its magnitude.”

One of the most eloquent and popular advocates of Intelligent Design and Christianity is Lee Strobel, author of, among other books, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. In a speech about how DNA proves God’s existence, Mr. Strobel noted that when America announced the Human Genome, President Clinton said, “Today we are learning the language in which God created life.”

Strobel points out that DNA is literally a language, encoded with a 4-character chemical alphabet that precisely spells out the assembly instructions for all the thousands of different proteins our body is constructed of. DNA, in fact, is “the most efficient information-storage system in the universe,” Strobel said. “Where,” he asks rhetorically, “did that come from?”

His talk concluded with a reference to nanoscientist Dr. James Tour of Rice University, one of the leading experts in the molecular world. Tour wrote, “Today I stand in awe of God because of what he has done through his creation. Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”

____________

Good writing is good thinking, but how the hell do you teach someone how to think? So, what's the greater challenge: writing, or teaching writing? In my case, they're both a challenge -- and I live for a good challenge. Bring it on! -- Paul Chimera

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

My Proudest Achievement? Simple: My Book.

In 2006, after about a year's research and writing, I self-published my first book, Nuts, Bolts & Anecdotes: Journalists Discuss Interviewing & Note Taking in Their Own Words. It's subtitled, A Handbook for Journalists and Students of Journalism and Media Writing.

I'm proud to note that the 170-page paperback was successfully peer-reviewed by the English faculty at Daemen College in Amherst, New York (near Buffalo), where I teach media-writing courses and serve as faculty advisor to the student newspaper.

Nuts, Bolts & Anecdotes was a labor of love. It's always fascinated me how different journalists go about the "mechanics" -- the before the story efforts -- involved in gathering information. It's a part of journalism the public seldom thinks, or even cares, about -- yet it's so crucial to good reporting.

I've written countless news stories, feature stories, sell sheets, brochures, radio & TV commercials, websites, newsletters and more, but writing my book has been the highlight of my career to date. It's my magnum opus, even if it wasn't exactly a best-seller. A not very good snap shot of it appears above.

Please see the rest of my site for a wide range of writing samples -- from the light-hearted to the rather serious, from the ridiculous to the sublime! All-around, I think it's pretty good stuff. Hope you agree.

A Good Writer Can Write About (Almost) Everything.

Prospective clients occasionally ask, "Do you have experience writing about (fill in the blank)?"

The answer, sometimes, is "Yes," but usually, "No, not in your precise field -- but don't let that come between us!"

First off, it's unlikely (although possible) a client is going to find a copy writer who happens to have experience in the exact field or area of specialization they're talking about. But a good, experienced writer can write effectively on virtually any topic. What's more, it's often an advantage for the writer not to be especially experienced in a certain area, because the objectivity he brings to the task at hand may prove helpful -- something someone too close to the subject simply may not possess.

In my case, I've written about such disparate subjects as elevators and Italian sub rolls; cleaning agents for scrubbing 18-wheelers to monitors that check critical-care patients' vital signs.

But I'm NOT a "technical writer." Sure, I can comfortably take (most) technical subjects and translate them into plain English for a lay audience. But if you're looking for someone who's conversant in ohms and amps and can navigate effortlessly through the architecture of a printed circuit board, you're probably looking for someone with an associate's degree in electrical engineering who also happens to be a passable wordsmith.

That's not me. I'm a wordsmith, all right, but I'm not a "techy." Just wanted to be clear on that.

My strengths? I'm both a journalist and marketing writer (copy writer). My writing is creative, interesting and clear. And I have a reputation for turning work around extremely quickly -- never, ever missing a deadline in more than 40 years in the business. Sprinkle in very competitive pricing and you've got a recipe for success -- yours and mine. Let's eat!

(Below, you'll find a variety of writing samples -- from poems to magazine articles. I don't have things like brochures in a form where they can be uploaded onto this site, but hard copies of such materials can be snail-mailed to you, if you'd like. Thanks for checking out my All-Around Writer site!)

Tribute to Salvador Dali

Those who know me know I'm perhaps the world's most fervent Salvador Dali enthusiast (see my blog: www.meetingdali.blogspot.com). Shortly before the Spanish artist's death (on Jan. 23, 1989), I wrote this poem in tribute to the timeless genius of the Catalan Master:


Ode to Dali: The Fire Dimmed
By Paul Chimera

He retreats into a darkened world,
His body weak and drawn,
A once vital man of mystery,
The drama sadly gone.

Where's the Dali we once knew,
Whose antics made us smile,
Painter of dreams and limpid clocks,
Horizons that stretch for miles?

We weep before your Glasgow Christ,
Whose beauty means compassion,
We praise the sureness of your brush,
Which you guided with such passion.

What your paintings say to me,
No poet can convey,
What words could ever match the grace,
Of your landscapes by the bay.

So cruel the persistence of time can be,
To finally dim the fire,
How dark the shades of night descend,
How sadly they conspire.

"I'll have a 'Jif & Jam'!"

We writers are creative types, which brings me logically to peanut butter. Ok, that nonsequitor sounds like the opening of a Dave Barry column. But here's my sticky point: I've come up with what I'm convinced is the best marketing approach ever for the popular "Jif" brand peanut butter:

Jif & Jam

The idea is deliciously perfect! Jif is so synonymous with peanut butter, that the traditional "peanut butter & jelly" (or jam) sandwich becomes a "Jif & Jam"! Both words start with "J." Both words are one-syllable. They roll off the tongue as easily as grape preserves.

And the concept just plain makes perfect sense. Can't you just picture the TV spot: "Ok, kids, who wants lunch?" mom announces, and the kids come running into the kitchen with "I do! I do!" "And what would you...." mother's question is interrupted with a chorus of "Jif & Jam! Jif & Jam!" (Or "Jif & Jelly" -- they both work admirably, despite jelly having two syllables; the rhythm's still very much there.)

So, dear readers, you've heard it here first. Take note, Jif marketing moguls. I know, I know -- you can steal my idea and never acknowledge it or pay me a dime. But I'm thinking that, if one day the world comes to replace the PB&J with the Jif & Jam, the makers of Jif will at least give me a few cases of the stuff. And maybe some milk.

The Complaint You'll NEVER Hear!

I teach writing courses at Daemen College in Amherst, New York, near Buffalo. And rising above all else in my non-fiction courses is one inarguable point: No one ever complains that a piece of writing is "too clear!"

Clarity. It's what you want to achieve in all your written communications. Clarity wins the day.

That's today's writing tip from the All-Around Writer. Contact me at: chimera1@verizon.net -- whether you need an article, brochure, ad, website copy, white paper, newsletter, press release, direct mailer, radio, TV or corporate video script, and more.