. . . getting back at the C-language community for the lame use of "=" as an assignment operator and allowing explicit state changes (assignments -- you still have function evaluation side effect to worry about) within condition tests.

Just so long they don't where clothes. That is the ultimate depravity.

One likens such thieves to the Biblical Philistines.

The account is that the Israelites received Divine Punishment For Something that the Ark of the Covenant was captured by their enemy, the Philistines.

Now the Ark didn't do much good for the Philistines either. I guess they took it as a war trophy or because it was kewl, but they didn't believe in the religion behind the Ark so their possession of it was a sacrilege. In the Hollywood movie, the Ark melted the faces of the Nazis, who coveted the Ark but they weren't Good People who would benefit from the Ark. What happened to the Philistines? Depending on the translation, they got rectal lesions -- hemorroids or even rectal cancer, depending on whom you believe.

So if a thief, say, swipes 100 dollars, you are 100 dollars poorer and the thief is 100 dollars richer. Suppose the thief swipes your prized vinyl record collection. To you, the collection was beyond value, irreplacable 60's vintage recordings in their original jackets. To the thief, let's say the thief gets only 1 cent on the dollar "for that junk." That thief took something of value from you but did not obtain anything of value to him. That thief is a Biblical Philistine.

Although not (major) language inventors, I still see value in the writings of the Dutch dude and the Scandinavian-American dude . . .

But didn't the Vikings carry a credit card that gave them more usable Rewards Points for their overseas travels?

Maps are for VFR pilot weenies.

IFR navigation is largely following directions in relation to radio beacons, largely VOR headings marking "Victor airways" and the intersecting points of VOR headings.

Pre-9-11, I had conversations with cockpit crews and was told that IFR nav, in turn, is for General Aviation weenies as the Big Guys up in the Positive-Control Airspace of the Flight Levels and Terminal Control Areas do it by The Great Spirit in the Sky giving them radar vectors . . .

Meteorite origin, I suppose it had enough nickel to qualify for Stainless and was on the Stone Age bride registry?

My understanding is that the Navajo Nation is as much a valid political entity as, say, the State of Wisconsin. Navajo Nation is almost but not completely unlike one of the 50 states in our Federal system. So if you Find and Replace "Wisconsin" into the parent post, it doesn't seem at all racist.

Oprah was refused to be shown a handbag by a Swiss shopkeeper claiming it was too expensive for her.

In a fit of pique, she purchased the entire country and now Stedman is evicting all its citizens to make way for condos . . .

Yeah.

We don't even know what "employment" is, what a "salary" is, and what "benefits" are . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

C'mon people, Dr. Who has always had a female sidekick, a very youthful and "pneumatic" (borrowing a term from Huxley) female sidekick, or somehow acquires such a woman companion in the course of the particular adventure or story arc. One such companion was a "cave woman" dressed in (poorly draped, yes!) skins; another was a flight attendant from an airliner that got caught up in a time warp.

These sidekicks are hot by the standards of women on British TV where the extremes in cosmetic dentistry, dermatology, and plastic surgery are not followed as rigorously as in Hollywood.

So would the female Dr. Who have a beefcake dude sidekick? Would the female Dr. Who be a babe or perhaps a mature woman in the tradition of Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, or Amanda Richardson? Or maybe a West Indian babe with a delicious regional accent as the police captain who thinks Holmes is a dangerous vigilante and medler into police business as in that Sherlock Holmes reboot (and gosh no, not the Robert Downey Jr. one).

I read "New Doctor Who Actor" as Ebonic grammar . . .

I have an 18 year old car with 186,000 miles. I drove it a couple miles, parked the car for an hour, and then I proceeded to drive home.

The engine had trouble shifting out of 1st gear. I pull off the road, turn off the engine and restart to "reboot", drive off, and it shifts, but the engine labors.

I pull into the garage at home, and I am starting to trail smoke. Turn off the motor and the car smells real bad. Oh oh, the transmission just gave out and time to call the scrap dealer.

Curiousity takes over and I pull the transmission dipstick, and the fluid looks clean and smells fresh. Hmmm.

I start the car up thinking that an alternator or water pump is frozen, but the belt runs OK and no burning smell. I take the car up the road and pull over. It shifts OK but is running kinda sluggish. I had a problem with stuck brake calipers so a spit real good and touched each rotor.

The front rotors are cold. A back rotor is hot. Is that brake acting up again, just had the back brakes done. The other back rotor is hot. Is the parking brake dragging? Open the driver's door and, dang, I had left the parking brake on.

The brake light doesn't light anymore, and I parked in a public lot on a slight incline, so I set the brake. I put a sheet of paper over the steering column as a reminder. I had got in the car, pulled the sheet, and promptly forgotten what I had done so I drove away. No car problem -- I have a brain problem. Pop spent his last days in long-term care and I am age 56.

Is there a box to check for willingness to pound one's head against the wall solving a problem?

I had a vanity Web page where I posted a workaround in a once popular programming language/system.

I received a "cold call" in effect interviewing me for a job. I guess there is not a big market for skill in the once popular programming language/system, but when a person needs that kind of developer, that need that kind of developer and cast a wide net.

I guess the solution I posted communicated that I had a lot of skill in that system. The person calling proceeded to ask me a lot of interview-type questions, "Did I know feature X? Did I know feature Y?"

I guess I didn't need to change jobs or I wasn't going to leap at freelancing when I had enough work to do or I may be lacking in some social skills. I guess I blurted out that I didn't know any of those things because I used this system but didn't have that level of skill in it. I explained that I really needed a solution to the problem I had encountered and I didn't let my lack of skills stop me from reading source code to that system to get to the bottom of what was happening and I posted what I came up with should anyone else benefit by that discovery as I am in an academic environment. The finding didn't rise to the level of a publication but it merited a vanity Web page.

A colleague describes that as "banging your head on the wall." Some hardware or software doesn't work according to spec, you can't scrap it, so you keep testing and debugging and searching and head scratching until you come up with a fix. It isn't skill, it isn't talent, it is simply a willingness to do whatever work it takes and not quit.