AN OPEN LETTER TO STAR JONES

Dear Madam,

I have recently rediscovered your wonderful personal web page. I could compliment you all day about the minutiae of this incredibly adequate site, but I have only so much time in the day for such activities. Acknowledging the many virtues of you and your web page must be left for another day or, perhaps if necessary, a series of days having no not-acknowledging-the-virtue-of-you-and-your-homepage days in between them. Let me then get to the point.

You openly proclaim on the header of your homepage that you are author of the only dictionary that defines 'Star Jones'. I believe this claim to be false. Let me explain to you my reasons for thinking so:

1. Though I cannot show it to be correct beyond all possibility of doubt, it seems prima facie unlikely that the claim that no one besides you yourself has authored a dictionary that defines 'Star Jones'. We must accept then that unless you are able to provide some strong evidence in favor of your claim, we should [with a looming though appropriate sense of our own fallibility] go on as though your claim were false.
2. Furthermore, I believe I can prove beyond the need for considering all but the most damning contrary evidence that your claim is false, that you are not in fact the only dictionary that defines 'Star Jones'. Consider that you, though author of many books, has never in fact written a dictionary alone or on a team of lexicographers. That this is so is easy enough to establish. The following web page lists all the books you have ever been involved with in any authorial capacity. [Link] No dictionary is to be found on the list. So not only do you need establish that no one else has written a dictionary that defines 'Star Jones', you must also produce evidence that you are in fact an author of such a dictionary.
3. Let it readily granted that the list could possibly be incomplete. But as the author of all of the books you have authored, you can without problems correct the list of any such mistakes. But to prove yourself, you must correct not just any mistake [i.e., present just any book authored by you but not on the list], you must also correct the mistake by means of presenting a dictionary authored by you or by a team of lexicographers of which you are one member.

These are the facts. I await your response.

With the utmost collegiality and sternest sincerity, I must take my leave.

Colonel J. P. Bourbon, Esq.