Comment of the Fortnight
14 September 1998
Short Takes
It's All Relative
Last week I was teaching a class on how to use e-mail. The company where I was teaching
has Macintosh, PC, and UNIX users.
One UNIX user commented, "I don't like Netscape. It's very unstable; it crashes once
every two or three days."
The Macintosh and PC users gaped in amazement, and, discretion being the better part
of valor, I forebore to comment.
That Darned Article
In the last comment of the fortnight I said I'd been working on an article about Dynamic
HTML. I simply could not get the transitions to work, so I decided to see if anyone
had said the things I wanted to say already. I found this very wonderful site:
http://www.webcoder.com, which has scads of excellent
information about Dynamic HTML and the Document Object Model. You owe it to yourself
to find out about these technologies, as both will be
very important in the web's future. Remember, you heard it here first <grin>.
The Starr Report
As you may know, I substitute teach at the high school level from time to time.
Today, one student asked me what I thought of independent counsel's report in the matter
of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I said, "If you wrote
your English papers that way, you'd get an A in the course. The report is
beautifully structured, with a clear thesis and purpose. Starr wrote the entire
report in active voice, using simple declarative sentences. This is truly an
example of good writing."
The student responded, "If you paid me US$40 million, I would write that well too!"
Good New Year
The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) is coming up very soon.
Please, if you have Jewish friends, don't wish them a "Happy
New Year." The Hebrew phrase "shanah tovah" translates to "a good year," not
"a happy year." When non-Jews ask me about this, I reply that if your year is good,
happiness will pretty much take care of itself. So a good new year to all of you,
and may you all be inscribed in the book of life.
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