George Bush's home is in Kennebunkport. He was born in New England, raised in New England, went to prep school in New England, and went to an Ivy League university in New England. He is not a Texan.
To be fair, his environmental record is actually not at all bad.
AND you still need a cell phone, because they're a practical necessity for modern life.
That's the mind-set that gets you into this sort of trouble. I have never owned a cell phone, and I don't expect I ever will, as I get along fine without one.
I tried to explain that distinction to a friend of mine a while ago...she said "But beer isn't free." I told her that it was only a figure of speech, meant to illustrate a thing with no monetary price, as opposed to a thing with no restrictions of any kind. I never got it across to her. As far as she's concerned, you can't get beer for free, you have to pay for it, so the expression makes no sense.
In something of a similar vein, another friend of mine published a short story, told in the first person, about a woman who made a habit of only dating married men. After the story came out, she got a lot of questions from people about her strange dating habits, as well as creepy approaches from married strangers. I asked her why she thought so many people just assumed that she was like the woman in her story; she said, "A lot of people can't make things up. So they can't see how other people can."
This can be a really aggravating barrier when explaining things. A classmate asked me to explain cardinality to her one time, and I told her what a one-to-one correspondence was, using the standard example of touching the fingers of your two hands together. Then I said something like this: "Imagine a school dance, where there are some number of boys and some number of girls. For the purpose of this thought experiment, we will make three assumptions. 1) Boys dance only with girls. 2) Girls dance only with boys. 3) Everyone who can find a partner will dance. Now, start the music, and look to see if there's anyone not dancing. If there are no non-dancers, then you know that the number of boys is the same as the number of girls, even though you didn't count either group." Her reaction: "But not everybody likes to dance." I reminded her that for this example we were assuming everyone would dance. And that's where the meeting of the minds derailed. She could not grasp that this was only a thought-experiment, where we were free to make any assumptions we wanted to, and its only purpose was to explain an abstract concept. She insisted that because, in the real world, the boys-and-girls-at-a-dance example could not be that tidy, then the example made no sense; and I never could get it across to her. I think the inability to grasp that concept must be the reason some people aren't good at math.
That's correct. It isn't Linux that's arrogant; it's people who use Linux.
The biggest single obstacle to Linux acceptance? The following scenario,which probably gets played out a hundred times a day:
Prospective New User: So, what's this Linux thing I've been hearing about?
Linux User's Group: F*** yourself noob, figure it out like I did, you're probably retarded so why don't you use Windows. (etc. etc.)
Prospective New User: You know what, Linux might be the best thing since sliced bread, but if these are the kind of people who use it, I'll go with something else.
In fact the Chicago Cubs sued their neighbors for precisely that reason. There are buildings near Wrigley Field where you can sit on the roof and see the field (I believe Wrigley is the only ballpark where that's possible) and the Chicago Tribune, which owns the Cubs, has tried for years to get the city to force their neighbors to take down the seats on their roofs. No success yet.
Like everything else, it depends on circumstances. The trades are neither as romantic nor as brutal as people who have not been in them seem to imagine. I worked as a carpenter for twenty years, starting when I was fourteen. It was hard work, and the job security depended on the economy--in 1991-2 we went more than two months with no work because of the recession. That meant that when there was work you made the most of it-- we worked sunup to sundown, turning on the halogen lamps to clean up afterwards (no overtime, either.) On the other hand, it made me enough money to put myself through college and grad school (eventually.) Sometimes I contracted for other people, working for, and with, guys I'd known all my life--we'd all gone to the same school, all went to the same church, all their parents had worked with my parents. Sometimes I ran contracts on my own. There was no office-type stress. (That was actually my biggest concern when I got my first white-collar job when I was in my thirties; I was coming from an environment where fist fights were an almost daily occurrence, and I wasn't sure how I was going to handle office politics.) I suppose the lesson is, if you have a good boss and good- co-workers--or if you're working for yourself--it doesn't really matter what youre doing.
The guy who taught me Morse code (my scout leader, in the early 80s) called it a "hand." He couldn't have been alone, either, because I was always a sloppy operator and more than one guy called me a "hand of mud."
That was also the only time they won that many games, and one of only five times that has happened in the history of baseball. So a "safe bet" is exactly what it isn't.
Anyway, the guy's method is based on past data, and most of the data he's using are metrics that do not tend to show a strong consistency from one year to the next. For example, he measures batters against individual pitchers; but the work of Voros McCracken strongly indicates that a pitcher only has individual predictability when it comes to preventing walks and home runs. When a ball is put in play, the individual ability of the pitcher has no effect, and whether a ball, once put in play, becomes a hit is determined about 50% by the fielding ability of the other players and about 50% by random chance.
For what it's worth, I have two armchair observations: 1) the Yankees will probably win between 90 and 95 games; and 2) a method that predicts such an extremely unlikely result should probably be reconsidered.
Not being social at all has to be pretty sucky over time
Not if you're the sort of person who just doesn't enjoy being social. I work at an office whose culture I consider pretty much perfect. I had a cube next to another guy for three years and we never spoke to each other once. I wouldn't even know his name except it was written on the outside of his cube.
Just because the guy doesn't go to lunch with you doesn't make him a crank. He probably just likes being by himself.
I am not an evangelical Christian, but here's what I think:
Remember that the Declaration holds kind of an odd place in US history. It is a statement of principle, and the same people who endorsed the Declaration wrote the Constitution, so naturally they held the same principles. However, the Declaration is not a legal document and has no force in law. Essentially, as I understand it, the Declaration is the statement of the guiding principles of the American identity, while the Constitution (which *is* a legal document, and from which all authority in the United States derives) is the implementation of that identity.
When the Declaration says that "all men are created equal", it means that every man stands in exactly the same relation to God as every other man; that there is no one man, nor any group of men, who are exalted above other men by God, and therefore deserve greater honor and freedom than other men. It is specifically a refutation of the divine right of kings, but it is also generally a statement that in order to be conformable to the natural order of the world (which was ordained by God), human law must deal with men in the same way that God deals with men: treating them all the same, and judging them by their actions rather than by their wealth or position or family.
The paper is using the editorial "we." The title does not mean "Things no one knew last year," it means "Things we, the editorial staff of this news organization, did not know last year."
You raise a good point: there is very little that has been written about her that is genuinely non-partisan, and the non-partisan sources are generally either not in-depth (articles about her in Time magazine, for instance) or written in circumstances that don't lend themselves to impartial consideration (such as her Nobel laureate biography.)
However, I believe you mistake in "skipping the sources that have a relation to the Catholic church". For one thing, since *all* sources that deal with her are partisan in one way or another, you are simply removing one source of bias and relying on a different source of bias, which of course will skew your conclusions. For another, you're mistaken in thinking that Catholic writers are universally hagiographical in dealing with her; she was criticised by orders within the Church (particularly the Jesuits) for what they saw, with some reason, as her Catholic bigotry ("bigotry" in the non-racial sense, meaning "excessive belief in the superiority of the Catholic religion.") (Of course, there are also Catholics even further to the extreme than she was, who criticized her for idolatry, because she attended Buddhist services.)
As you suggest, it is of course best to judge for yourself after looking at all the sources: from people who were her enemies for religious reasons; from people who supported her politically but opposed her theologically; from people who considered her solely as a temporal figure; and others. Some of the sources aren't worth anything, of course, both (on one side) the people who viewed her uncritically as a living saint, and (on the other) the people who castigate her as cynical and mercenary. For Catholic views you can see the Proceedings of the Roman Curia, which is charged with reviewing her life and actions, and takes into account all criticism of her from both within and without the Church. For external views, there is a Hindu group that publishes criticism of her, beginning with Aroup Chatterjee's "Open Letter to Mother Teresa" which was published a few years ago. Hindu criticism falls under three main heads: the nuns of her order generally did not speak Bengali (the native language of most of their patients); international funds raised for her order were, ultimately, under the control of the Vatican; and (in their view) she did not show enough respect for the Hindu religion. (Chatterjee also wrote a book about her that was called The Final Verdict; it's a good source, but calling his verdict "final" is probably optimistic.)
Finally, you can read op-ed pieces about her in any newspaper from the last thirty years; people seem to give more weight to the negative than the positive, but to me they all look equally poorly-researched and agenda-driven. You can't give much credence to a writer who speaks of Teresa's "journey to your heart", nor to one who makes an angry charge that she wasn't really dedicated to helping the poor because she herself lived in poverty.
Princess Diana, OTOH, was vocal about her chosen cause -- removal of mines in warfare and helping the non-military victims of them -- and raised millions for it
It's worth pointing out that Diana's cause was "chosen" for her by her employers, the British government. Her charity work was a clearly-defined part of her job description, which she accepted as part of her marriage agreement (it was, you'll recall, a political marraige arranged by the monarchy.) When she and the Prince of Wales were divorced, her employment with the British government also ended, and she stopped doing charity work and settled into the comfortable everyday life of European aristocracy. That doesn't make her a bad person in any way, but I still wouldn't compare her to Mother Teresa, who was genuinely ascetic and devoted, whether the allegations you mention are true or not.
Im guessing that the people who "Dont get this" dont live in swing states
I don't know...I live in Massachusetts, which is not a swing state--neither party spends much money here because both assume the commonwealth will vote Democrat whatever happens. Still, I get lots and lots of messages, both commercial and political. I can't say I've noticed any dimunition of call volume since I went on the do-not-call list, either. I probably get seven to ten calls a day, most of them during the day when I'm not home. It doesn't get up my nose enough that I feel like suing, though. I mean, how much time does it take out of my day? Get home, delete seven phone messages after listening to one second of each. End of problem. Total investment, seven seconds. Also, the vast majority of my phone calls are only a second or so long; they all go "Hello?" "Can I speak--" *Click.* I don't really see why people are concerned about being rude to telemarketers. It's not like I scream at them, I just hang up without saying anything. Why is that rude?
Looking at it from the other side, it's worth mentioning that back in college I knew a girl who worked for a while as a telemarketer, and then left that job to go work for a phone-sex line. She said the phone-sex place not only paid more but treated the employees better. Me: "Wait, you switched jobs because the sex-worker industry has more human dignity?" Her: "Don't scoff till you've done both."
But other people should be the most important thing in a person's life. Achievement should never eclipse having a life.
Translation:
But $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT should be the most important thing in a person's life. $ANYTHING_THAT_IS_NOT_WHAT_I_THINK should never eclipse $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT.
Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually.
I don't agree. I think you're confusing cause and effect; that is, I think some people are drawn to occupations or hobbies where they focus intensely on one subject, because that's what appeals to them.
Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.
Why? I see this sentiment a lot on/., and as far as I'm concerned statements like this are just another way of saying "Everyone should do what *I* think is right instead of following their own inclinations."
I had a professor from western Spain who spelt it "Quijote" and pronounced it "Key-shott."
It's surprising how much knee-jerk nationalism this sort of thing brings up. I have known people from Colombia and Puerto Rico who pretended they couldn't understand each other...though I could understand both of them fine, and I'm not even a native Spanish speaker.
Especially since the reason Heinlein set aside the unfinished book and forgot about it was probably that he'd decided it wasn't any good. In the years after Hemingway died, his heirs kept publishing "new Hemingway novels" that were really just unfinished books he'd abandoned because he thought they weren't going anywhere. (The result being that future generations will think Hemingway didn't know the difference between his own good writing and his own bad writing.) In this case I can't see any grounds for optimism, since A) Heinlein abandoned the book, which suggests he didn't think much of it himself, and certainly means he never went back and edited it; and B) it's being "finished" by a guy who has shamelessly fan-wanked over Heinlein (see Robinson's embarrassingly bad article "Rah Rah R.A.H.") and who firmly believes Heinlein can do no wrong, so will probably not edit those parts of the unfinished story that need editing. Robinson is one of those people who confuse the "I like Heinlein's writing" school of being a fan with the "I embrace Heinlein as my personal savior" school. So, unfinished and probably subpar book + adoring and uncritical editor = waste of paper.
A few weeks ago I forgot my password, for the first time in my career. Got the auto-reminder on Friday, changed the password, came in on Monday and couldn't remember it.
I absolutely could not face going to the sysadmin and telling him I'd forgotten my password. Picturing the "I keep hoping it will turn out that someone somewhere is not stupid but I'm always wrong" look that was certain to appear was enough to make me think about quitting rather than admit I'd done something that stupid.
I wound up spending a big chunk of the work day cracking the password from my (personal) laptop, because I would much rather answer "Why the hell are you putzing around with cracking at work?" ("Oh, just working out some security ideas") than "You actually forgot your password? Really?"
I have to agree. Isn't it kind of a waste of time to devote 4000 words to describing a problem everyone already knows about, but offer no solutions beyond "Somebody needs to do something?"
Terry Pratchett observed that no one ever seems to follow the sentence "Somebody should do something" with the sentence "And that someone is me!"
Slashdot Mirror
President Bush's home in Texas
George Bush's home is in Kennebunkport. He was born in New England, raised in New England, went to prep school in New England, and went to an Ivy League university in New England. He is not a Texan.
To be fair, his environmental record is actually not at all bad.
A Jewish neighbor of mine, when she got a bargain at a yard sale, used to say "I Christianed him down."
AND you still need a cell phone, because they're a practical necessity for modern life.
That's the mind-set that gets you into this sort of trouble. I have never owned a cell phone, and I don't expect I ever will, as I get along fine without one.
I tried to explain that distinction to a friend of mine a while ago...she said "But beer isn't free." I told her that it was only a figure of speech, meant to illustrate a thing with no monetary price, as opposed to a thing with no restrictions of any kind. I never got it across to her. As far as she's concerned, you can't get beer for free, you have to pay for it, so the expression makes no sense.
In something of a similar vein, another friend of mine published a short story, told in the first person, about a woman who made a habit of only dating married men. After the story came out, she got a lot of questions from people about her strange dating habits, as well as creepy approaches from married strangers. I asked her why she thought so many people just assumed that she was like the woman in her story; she said, "A lot of people can't make things up. So they can't see how other people can."
This can be a really aggravating barrier when explaining things. A classmate asked me to explain cardinality to her one time, and I told her what a one-to-one correspondence was, using the standard example of touching the fingers of your two hands together. Then I said something like this: "Imagine a school dance, where there are some number of boys and some number of girls. For the purpose of this thought experiment, we will make three assumptions. 1) Boys dance only with girls. 2) Girls dance only with boys. 3) Everyone who can find a partner will dance. Now, start the music, and look to see if there's anyone not dancing. If there are no non-dancers, then you know that the number of boys is the same as the number of girls, even though you didn't count either group." Her reaction: "But not everybody likes to dance." I reminded her that for this example we were assuming everyone would dance. And that's where the meeting of the minds derailed. She could not grasp that this was only a thought-experiment, where we were free to make any assumptions we wanted to, and its only purpose was to explain an abstract concept. She insisted that because, in the real world, the boys-and-girls-at-a-dance example could not be that tidy, then the example made no sense; and I never could get it across to her. I think the inability to grasp that concept must be the reason some people aren't good at math.
But, really, it isn't "Linux" that's arrogant
That's correct. It isn't Linux that's arrogant; it's people who use Linux.
The biggest single obstacle to Linux acceptance? The following scenario,which probably gets played out a hundred times a day:
Prospective New User: So, what's this Linux thing I've been hearing about?
Linux User's Group: F*** yourself noob, figure it out like I did, you're probably retarded so why don't you use Windows. (etc. etc.)
Prospective New User: You know what, Linux might be the best thing since sliced bread, but if these are the kind of people who use it, I'll go with something else.
In fact the Chicago Cubs sued their neighbors for precisely that reason. There are buildings near Wrigley Field where you can sit on the roof and see the field (I believe Wrigley is the only ballpark where that's possible) and the Chicago Tribune, which owns the Cubs, has tried for years to get the city to force their neighbors to take down the seats on their roofs. No success yet.
Like everything else, it depends on circumstances. The trades are neither as romantic nor as brutal as people who have not been in them seem to imagine. I worked as a carpenter for twenty years, starting when I was fourteen. It was hard work, and the job security depended on the economy--in 1991-2 we went more than two months with no work because of the recession. That meant that when there was work you made the most of it-- we worked sunup to sundown, turning on the halogen lamps to clean up afterwards (no overtime, either.) On the other hand, it made me enough money to put myself through college and grad school (eventually.) Sometimes I contracted for other people, working for, and with, guys I'd known all my life--we'd all gone to the same school, all went to the same church, all their parents had worked with my parents. Sometimes I ran contracts on my own. There was no office-type stress. (That was actually my biggest concern when I got my first white-collar job when I was in my thirties; I was coming from an environment where fist fights were an almost daily occurrence, and I wasn't sure how I was going to handle office politics.) I suppose the lesson is, if you have a good boss and good- co-workers--or if you're working for yourself--it doesn't really matter what youre doing.
The guy who taught me Morse code (my scout leader, in the early 80s) called it a "hand." He couldn't have been alone, either, because I was always a sloppy operator and more than one guy called me a "hand of mud."
The last time they broke 110 was 1998
That was also the only time they won that many games, and one of only five times that has happened in the history of baseball. So a "safe bet" is exactly what it isn't.
Anyway, the guy's method is based on past data, and most of the data he's using are metrics that do not tend to show a strong consistency from one year to the next. For example, he measures batters against individual pitchers; but the work of Voros McCracken strongly indicates that a pitcher only has individual predictability when it comes to preventing walks and home runs. When a ball is put in play, the individual ability of the pitcher has no effect, and whether a ball, once put in play, becomes a hit is determined about 50% by the fielding ability of the other players and about 50% by random chance.
For what it's worth, I have two armchair observations: 1) the Yankees will probably win between 90 and 95 games; and 2) a method that predicts such an extremely unlikely result should probably be reconsidered.
Not being social at all has to be pretty sucky over time
Not if you're the sort of person who just doesn't enjoy being social. I work at an office whose culture I consider pretty much perfect. I had a cube next to another guy for three years and we never spoke to each other once. I wouldn't even know his name except it was written on the outside of his cube.
Just because the guy doesn't go to lunch with you doesn't make him a crank. He probably just likes being by himself.
I am not an evangelical Christian, but here's what I think:
Remember that the Declaration holds kind of an odd place in US history. It is a statement of principle, and the same people who endorsed the Declaration wrote the Constitution, so naturally they held the same principles. However, the Declaration is not a legal document and has no force in law. Essentially, as I understand it, the Declaration is the statement of the guiding principles of the American identity, while the Constitution (which *is* a legal document, and from which all authority in the United States derives) is the implementation of that identity.
When the Declaration says that "all men are created equal", it means that every man stands in exactly the same relation to God as every other man; that there is no one man, nor any group of men, who are exalted above other men by God, and therefore deserve greater honor and freedom than other men. It is specifically a refutation of the divine right of kings, but it is also generally a statement that in order to be conformable to the natural order of the world (which was ordained by God), human law must deal with men in the same way that God deals with men: treating them all the same, and judging them by their actions rather than by their wealth or position or family.
some of those things I knew last year
The paper is using the editorial "we." The title does not mean "Things no one knew last year," it means "Things we, the editorial staff of this news organization, did not know last year."
[Mr. Burns] ....Release the bees! .....Release the hounds that spit bees!"
"Release the hounds!
[/Mr. Burns]
You raise a good point: there is very little that has been written about her that is genuinely non-partisan, and the non-partisan sources are generally either not in-depth (articles about her in Time magazine, for instance) or written in circumstances that don't lend themselves to impartial consideration (such as her Nobel laureate biography.)
However, I believe you mistake in "skipping the sources that have a relation to the Catholic church". For one thing, since *all* sources that deal with her are partisan in one way or another, you are simply removing one source of bias and relying on a different source of bias, which of course will skew your conclusions. For another, you're mistaken in thinking that Catholic writers are universally hagiographical in dealing with her; she was criticised by orders within the Church (particularly the Jesuits) for what they saw, with some reason, as her Catholic bigotry ("bigotry" in the non-racial sense, meaning "excessive belief in the superiority of the Catholic religion.") (Of course, there are also Catholics even further to the extreme than she was, who criticized her for idolatry, because she attended Buddhist services.)
As you suggest, it is of course best to judge for yourself after looking at all the sources: from people who were her enemies for religious reasons; from people who supported her politically but opposed her theologically; from people who considered her solely as a temporal figure; and others. Some of the sources aren't worth anything, of course, both (on one side) the people who viewed her uncritically as a living saint, and (on the other) the people who castigate her as cynical and mercenary. For Catholic views you can see the Proceedings of the Roman Curia, which is charged with reviewing her life and actions, and takes into account all criticism of her from both within and without the Church. For external views, there is a Hindu group that publishes criticism of her, beginning with Aroup Chatterjee's "Open Letter to Mother Teresa" which was published a few years ago. Hindu criticism falls under three main heads: the nuns of her order generally did not speak Bengali (the native language of most of their patients); international funds raised for her order were, ultimately, under the control of the Vatican; and (in their view) she did not show enough respect for the Hindu religion. (Chatterjee also wrote a book about her that was called The Final Verdict; it's a good source, but calling his verdict "final" is probably optimistic.)
Finally, you can read op-ed pieces about her in any newspaper from the last thirty years; people seem to give more weight to the negative than the positive, but to me they all look equally poorly-researched and agenda-driven. You can't give much credence to a writer who speaks of Teresa's "journey to your heart", nor to one who makes an angry charge that she wasn't really dedicated to helping the poor because she herself lived in poverty.
Princess Diana, OTOH, was vocal about her chosen cause -- removal of mines in warfare and helping the non-military victims of them -- and raised millions for it
It's worth pointing out that Diana's cause was "chosen" for her by her employers, the British government. Her charity work was a clearly-defined part of her job description, which she accepted as part of her marriage agreement (it was, you'll recall, a political marraige arranged by the monarchy.) When she and the Prince of Wales were divorced, her employment with the British government also ended, and she stopped doing charity work and settled into the comfortable everyday life of European aristocracy. That doesn't make her a bad person in any way, but I still wouldn't compare her to Mother Teresa, who was genuinely ascetic and devoted, whether the allegations you mention are true or not.
Im guessing that the people who "Dont get this" dont live in swing states
I don't know...I live in Massachusetts, which is not a swing state--neither party spends much money here because both assume the commonwealth will vote Democrat whatever happens. Still, I get lots and lots of messages, both commercial and political. I can't say I've noticed any dimunition of call volume since I went on the do-not-call list, either. I probably get seven to ten calls a day, most of them during the day when I'm not home. It doesn't get up my nose enough that I feel like suing, though. I mean, how much time does it take out of my day? Get home, delete seven phone messages after listening to one second of each. End of problem. Total investment, seven seconds. Also, the vast majority of my phone calls are only a second or so long; they all go "Hello?" "Can I speak--" *Click.* I don't really see why people are concerned about being rude to telemarketers. It's not like I scream at them, I just hang up without saying anything. Why is that rude?
Looking at it from the other side, it's worth mentioning that back in college I knew a girl who worked for a while as a telemarketer, and then left that job to go work for a phone-sex line. She said the phone-sex place not only paid more but treated the employees better. Me: "Wait, you switched jobs because the sex-worker industry has more human dignity?" Her: "Don't scoff till you've done both."
But other people should be the most important thing in a person's life. Achievement should never eclipse having a life.
Translation:
But $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT should be the most important thing in a person's life. $ANYTHING_THAT_IS_NOT_WHAT_I_THINK should never eclipse $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT.
Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually. I don't agree. I think you're confusing cause and effect; that is, I think some people are drawn to occupations or hobbies where they focus intensely on one subject, because that's what appeals to them. Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code. Why? I see this sentiment a lot on /., and as far as I'm concerned statements like this are just another way of saying "Everyone should do what *I* think is right instead of following their own inclinations."
Like anything else, it's only useful when you need it. I was terrible at trig in high school until I needed to build a staircase.
Too bad there's no mod point "+/- 1, Depressing".
I had a professor from western Spain who spelt it "Quijote" and pronounced it "Key-shott." It's surprising how much knee-jerk nationalism this sort of thing brings up. I have known people from Colombia and Puerto Rico who pretended they couldn't understand each other...though I could understand both of them fine, and I'm not even a native Spanish speaker.
Especially since the reason Heinlein set aside the unfinished book and forgot about it was probably that he'd decided it wasn't any good. In the years after Hemingway died, his heirs kept publishing "new Hemingway novels" that were really just unfinished books he'd abandoned because he thought they weren't going anywhere. (The result being that future generations will think Hemingway didn't know the difference between his own good writing and his own bad writing.) In this case I can't see any grounds for optimism, since A) Heinlein abandoned the book, which suggests he didn't think much of it himself, and certainly means he never went back and edited it; and B) it's being "finished" by a guy who has shamelessly fan-wanked over Heinlein (see Robinson's embarrassingly bad article "Rah Rah R.A.H.") and who firmly believes Heinlein can do no wrong, so will probably not edit those parts of the unfinished story that need editing. Robinson is one of those people who confuse the "I like Heinlein's writing" school of being a fan with the "I embrace Heinlein as my personal savior" school. So, unfinished and probably subpar book + adoring and uncritical editor = waste of paper.
No--clearly Pac-Man has an eating disorder.
A few weeks ago I forgot my password, for the first time in my career. Got the auto-reminder on Friday, changed the password, came in on Monday and couldn't remember it.
I absolutely could not face going to the sysadmin and telling him I'd forgotten my password. Picturing the "I keep hoping it will turn out that someone somewhere is not stupid but I'm always wrong" look that was certain to appear was enough to make me think about quitting rather than admit I'd done something that stupid.
I wound up spending a big chunk of the work day cracking the password from my (personal) laptop, because I would much rather answer "Why the hell are you putzing around with cracking at work?" ("Oh, just working out some security ideas") than "You actually forgot your password? Really?"
I have to agree. Isn't it kind of a waste of time to devote 4000 words to describing a problem everyone already knows about, but offer no solutions beyond "Somebody needs to do something?"
Terry Pratchett observed that no one ever seems to follow the sentence "Somebody should do something" with the sentence "And that someone is me!"