An anonymous reader writes: "The Marvin that I knew was a wonderful mixture of serious and quirky. About almost any subject he’d have something to say, most often quite unusual. Sometimes it’d be really interesting; sometimes it’d just be unusual. I’m reminded of a time in the early 1980s when I was visiting Boston and subletting an apartment from Marvin’s daughter Margaret (who was in Japan at the time). Margaret had a large and elaborate collection of plants, and one day I noticed that some of them had developed nasty-looking spots on their leaves.
Being no expert on such things (and without the web to look anything up!), I called Marvin to ask what to do. What ensued was a long discussion about the possibility of developing microrobots that could chase mealybugs away. Fascinating though it was, at the end of it I still had to ask, “But what should I actually do about Margaret’s plants?” Marvin replied, “Oh, I guess you’d better talk to my wife.”"
