Was Census Worker Bill Sparkman A Child Predator?

Update: Before any more people start going bonkers that I'm accusing Sparkman of anything, take a breath. ... . ...All I'm doing is looking at any and all possibilities. ... Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I've seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don't. I'm simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Well, golly, Mr. Riehl, I'm sure Mr. Sparkman's wife and son must really enjoy your coy little efforts to smear their tortured-to-death husband and father:

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our co-worker," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with William Sparkman's son, other family and friends."

Gee, how would Dan Riehl like it if we asked, without any evidence to back up our questioning, if Dan Riehl had raped and murdered any little boys? I suspect he wouldn't like it at all.

But of course, this isn't the first time Riehl's been deeply amoral and stupid in public. It isn't even the first time this month. That's just par for the course with him.

If you're out to create something truly great, you'll likely need to challenge some widely held but incorrect beliefs. Challenging conventional wisdom is much harder than most people realize, and those that do make us uncomfortable. Which is why it's so important to learn how to identify and embrace people who see the world differently than you do.

Evolutionary Biology and Conformity

Imagine our ancient ancestors out on the savanna in search of food. Chasing a large group of hunters who were running after something out of view was probably a better survival strategy than pursuing animal tracks that may or may not have led to food. Gregory Berns argues that mankind's propensity to follow the crowd is at least partially a result of evolutionary biology.

Such a propensity is so ingrained in human nature that we will go to ridiculous lengths in order to adjust our beliefs to those of a group, as proven in the series of conformity experiments run by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. According to Wikipedia:

In the basic Asch paradigm, the participants the real subject and the confederates were all seated in a classroom. They were asked a variety of questions about the lines (which line was longer than the other, which lines were the same length, etc.) The group was told to announce their answers to each question out loud and the confederates always provided their answers before the study participant. The confederates always gave the same answer as each other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually began providing incorrect responses. In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous view, only one subject out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer. However, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions (36.8%). 75% of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

It's very challenging to make decisions based on your own information and logic when everyone disagrees with your point of view. We have an urge to conform, as we learn again with each economic boom and bust. Unfortunately, as David Hirshleifer describes in The Blind Leading the Blind: Social Influence, Fads, and Informational Cascades, If there are many individuals, thenwith virtual certainty a point in the chain of decisions will be reached where an individual ignores his private information and bases his decision solely upon what he sees his predecessors do.

Weird Ideas That Work

The inspiration for the title of this post came from the book Weird Ideas That Work, in which Robert Sutton suggests hiring people who make you uncomfortable. He argues that employers typically hire people like themselves and that most interviews are more about the social fit between the candidate and interviewer rather than the candidate and the job.

So what can you do to embrace those who make you uncomfortable?

1. Identify your heroes.

Chances are that the historical figures you hold in high esteem made those around them uncomfortable in their day. Einstein did. Gandhi did. Jefferson did. Apple's Think Different campaign was as much about communicating what the company stood for to its employees as it was about selling Apple products to its customers. An organization that embraces unconventional thinkers has an unfair competitive advantage in a world governed by conformity.

2. Adjust your hiring process to focus on what really matters.

Jeff Cordova, a former Yahoo colleague of mine, puts all engineering candidates through a code test before he determines cultural fit or the like. He literally sits down in a room with a candidate and spends a few hours coding up an application with them. At the end of the test, he has a very good idea of their software engineering skills and often asks other members of his team to drill down in a particular area of expertise. It's only after qualifying their skills as an engineer that he allows his team to determine their fit within the organization.

While software engineering is relatively easy to test, you can apply a similar type of testing process for just about any role to reduce the impact of social bias in hiring. Microsoft notoriously put candidates through case study interviews (I don't know if they still do), as documented by William Poundstone in How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

Spend more time thinking about interview-based experiments that you can run on candidates to test what really matters for the role and you might find yourself hiring a different type of person.

3. If you have a negative reaction to an idea, use the 5 Whys.

The 5 Whys is a method to get at the root cause of a problem. When you hear an idea, before you immediately respond, try to understand the underlying reason for your knee-jerk reaction. You may find that your reaction is more about protecting existing orthodoxy or the source of the idea than it is about the merits of the particular approach at hand.

4. Consider increasing organizational diversity.

The true benefit of diversity is that it has the potential to produce better results. Diversity along the lines of age, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation has the potential to make an organization more resilient to conformity. Different people from different backgrounds bring in different biases. And groups that have experienced greater prejudice may have a membership inoculated from group think as a matter of self-preservation that is, when everyone hates your group, you tend to hold a differing opinion.

It's not easy working with one of the rare people who is deeply nonconformist. But if your goal is to be innovative, to create something great and to make a difference in the world, you should be prepared to make those around you uncomfortable and recruit others who do the same to you.

Mike Speiser is a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. His thoughts on technology, economics and entrepreneurship will appear at this time every week.

---

The future of mobile: GigaOM Pro provides insider perspectives and analysis on the trends defining tomorrow's mobile market. Learn more

Names added to that list yesterday included one local writer: the ludicrously prolific Michael Nagrant of Hungry Mag, Serious Eats, New City and just about any paper or website that publishes a byline. Owning to all sorts of biases here as both a colleague and friend, if the Times really wanted to make a splash in naming Bruni's heir apparent few food critics have the resume of Nagrant; one that includes collaborating on a Beard Award-winning cookbook; a critic whose voice is constantly evolving; a entertaining and engaging writer equally comfortable in traditional and new media; one whose personal code of food journalism ethics is downright Orthodox Catholic in the age of the Yelp! Elite Squad.

I contacted Nagrant about his name popping up. He responded by saying that he's sent Times "Dining In/Dining Out" Editor Trish Hall samples of his work in the past two months for her consideration. Nagrant replied, "The New York Times food critic position is one of the most important jobs in American food writing. Whether it's (Ruth) Reichl or Bruni or (William) Grimes et al, as a writer I've looked to those who've held that chair and always tried to write to that standard. The NYT critic spot is very much a goal of mine." As to wanting to take the job in these uncertain times for print journalism, Nagrant said, "In these tough times for print journalism where some would rather be the next food TV star or own a restaurant, I want to write. I don't want to be rich or famous. I only want to sustain myself, practice the craft and get better everyday. I want nothing more as a writer and I'm willing to give everything I am if the honor came my way."

Nagrant acknowledged Eater's speculation yesterday with (natch) twitter updates, paraphrasing Groucho Marx and even providing a headshot so the Times doesn't have to.

What websites do you usually go to for design news, inspirational, or tutorials?

I'd have to say probably my favorite place right now for inspiration is ffffound.com. It's not really web design exactly but it's a lot of really cool imagery, a lot of cool colors, shapes and stuff like that.

As far as design news, I don't know if there's anything so interesting out there that I'm really watching for, but there's new great design in all directions, coming from all different places all the time. Things like poster design, new typography ideas, etc.

Is there a particular web designer that you're looking up to right now?

You know, I'm seeing more and more good design actually all the time. However, I can't say that I have a favorite right now.

Generally I'm seeing just a lot of cool stuff and stylistically, style continues to advance. But the copy and the clarity isn't necessarily getting better. I'm not seeing very many sites where I think, Wow this was really well thought out and well written. I still don't see a lot of that.

Why is there a lack of copywriting skills among web designers?

Nobody seems to be talking about it. Where are all the blog posts about how to make really super-clear content?

The thing that's really easy to look at and copy are pixels, color combinations and type. I think it's really hard to look at a website as a writing project because as a designer, we have all these magic tricks we can do with our CSS and our HTML and everything and we kind of have to put that in the back and make that take a back seat to, do I really have anything to say here?

Last week I posted to our blog about Jacob Neilsen's site, praising the the Alertbox articles. Each one is completely crafted as a piece of writing. Something to be read and understood and digested. I love the way certain points are bolded and the way the whole thing is structured is really well thought out. I think it's a really inspiring example of great copy.

If you're a designer who doesn't do any writing, you're going to hit a brick wall in your career at some point.

What books can designers read to get better at copywriting?

One of my favorite books is by a guy, William Zinsser, it's called, On Writing Well. That was an inspiration for me and I remember reading that and feeling like it really helped me a lot.

What's the one skill that new designers focus on?

You gotta start handcoding! It's the number one basic craft of web design, if you don't handcode then you're not going to be able to move into doing web app interfaces, which is really what I'm doing now.

You're not going to able to work on applications or collaborate on code or make apps, websites that really have a lot of behavior unless you get into handcoding, so I think that's like the barebones thing that for sure everybody should be doing.

What software do you use for coding?

I happen to use Vim, which is a little bit of a nerdy tool, but a lot of my coworkers use Textmate and love it. A lot of people say that BBedit is great and I also hear that Coda is really nice. There are all kinds of options out there.

As a designer, do you need to understand frontend development?

The more you understand about frontend development, the better designer you'll be. If you are really familiar with handcoding and you understand basic HTML markup and you know how CSS selectors work then you're really well prepared, for example, to use the fact that jQuery and Prototype both have a way to refer to pieces of your mark-up using CSS selectors even though your not using CSS.

If you're designing web app user interfaces, then I think it's important to get into understanding how an MVC framework works like Rails or Django. If you can understand how your templates fit in to the view, as the V in MVC then that's a huge leap. You can really start doing work with programmers and you can have ideas and you can make them into reality instead of just making designs and handing them off to somebody and hoping that someone else can plug them in.

How do you learn about MVC?

It depends on your situation. If you're a designer and you work with programmers already (who are friendly) then just ask them questions. They can really get you started on the right path. Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions - they'll appreciate the fact that you're trying to learn.

If you are a little more programming minded and you're on your own, there's all kinds of stuff you could read, a basic primer on Rails would help a lot.

Getting into programming in general is quite useful. Before I did web design I setup Access databases and Filemaker databases and stuff like that. Jason Fried did the same thing actually - he started with Filemaker databases, and I think that basic understanding about how does a database work, just what are the pieces and trying to visualize, how could I display that or how could I manipulate that data, is a really good kind of foundation level.

What is a typical day in the life of Ryan Singer?

Ugh, it's pretty busy lately. We are a small team and we try to do a lot with a few people. We actually just brought on a new designer, so we're up to three designers now which is going to help. I spend a fair amount of time designing UI for new features. We always design the interface first, before building anything.

So part of my day is actually designing new features, another part of my day, because I'm also working as a product manager here, is to figure out what we should be doing next and who's going to be doing it.

Also I love, I just love, getting into Rails and making things work too, so I do a fair bit of programming everyday. As much as I can plug stuff in, I do it.

Do you think being a product manager has helped you become a better designer?

No, not at all. I think that it's the opposite actually. When you're wearing your Manager Hat' you start to create a barrier between you and the designers and developers that are actually implementing the app.

It's really harmful to the product because anytime you have a separation from the one whose coming up with the ideas and the ones who are doing the work, it's a bad thing.

As a designer, is it important to be interested in the business side of things?

No. Either you're interested in the business side or you're not. However, if you have an understanding of what compels people to make buying decisions and how marketing works, you can feed it into your design work.

Okay, well with that, I think that our time is up, thanks so much for your time.

Yeah sure thing, thanks for chatting.

Like this article?

If you enjoyed, this article, feel free to re-tweet it to let others know. Thanks, we appreciate it! :)

Photo Credit: DHH

Related posts:

• Jim Coudal: Copywriting, Inspiration and Working Farmer Hours
• Redefining Content Management
• Launch a Business, Not a Side Project

Larry Lessig, downloading YouTube, Facebook and Twitter EULAs and licensing, and more.

TWiL Wiki Shownotes

TWiL on Friendfeed

Talking points: http://delicious.com/thisweekinlaw/21.

Audible picks: Anathem, Unabridged, By Neal Stephenson, Narrated by Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, Neal Stephenson. For a free audiobook, visit AudiblePodcast.com/twil.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 1:44:34

It matched the Federal Trade Commission's largest fine levied under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. In 2006, the FTC dinged social-networking site Xanga.com $1 million on similar allegations. The settlement marked the 13th enforcement actionthe FTC has undertaken against companies for violating the act -- bringing to $3 milliion the amount in total fines.

According to an FTC lawsuit(.pdf) Sony unlawfully obtained and publicized personal information, including e-mail addresses and photos, from children under 13 via the registration process on its roughly 1,100 music sites.

Under the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, website operators must obtain the consent of parents or guardians before they may lawfully collect or publish personal identifying information of children under 13.

"On certain of the company's music sites, after collecting dates of birth from children indicating that they were under 13, Sony Music enabled children to create user profiles in the form of personal fan pages, through which children were able to interact with other Sony Music fans, including adults," the FTC's lawsuit alleged. "Sony Music publicly posted and made available for viewing on the internet certain items of information submitted by children in creating their user profile, including any photos they may have uploaded, as well as their gender, age, city and country."

The law cannot prevent kids under 13 from faking their dates of births or providing bogus e-mail addresses of their parents in a bid to acquire parental consent. Still, Sony collected and/or broadcasted on its websites information from 30,000 children who listed their dates of birth as being under 13.

"Sony Music is paying the penalty for falling down on its COPPA obligations," FTC Chairman William Kovacic said.

The lawsuit alleges that, since 2004, at least 30,000 children under 13 had registered on Sony's music websites, and that Sony had "actual knowledge" that it was breaching the law.

Businesses often use information they collect from web users for marketing purposes.

The Federal Trade Commission also faulted Sony for having a deceptive privacy policy. The policy indicated that if children marked they were under 13, they would be "restricted from participating in Sony Music's web page activities."

A spokeswoman for Sony was not immediately available for comment. The FTC said Sony is now complying with the protection act.

See Also:

• When Complaining About Your Job Becomes a Privacy Violation ...
• Barack Obama's Privacy Challenge
• Google Privacy Practices Worse Than ISP Snooping, AT&T Charges ...
• Bill Proposes Privacy for Americans' Laptops at Border
• Ask.com's Privacy Tool Tracks Users, Groups Tell Feds -- Updated ...
• Help Name the Homeland Security Privacy Pig - Closed
• Facebook Expands Privacy Features, Including a Faux One
• Bush Nominates Three to Empty Privacy Board
• ISPs Facing Privacy Scrutiny Likely to Point At Google

From a news release this week:

YouTube and The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) today collaboratively launched a comprehensive Internet video channel dedicated to the improved understanding of incurable neurodegenerative brain diseases. The UCSF Memory and Aging Center YouTube channel can be found here. The multimedia offering represents the latest step by one of the world's leading neuroscientific research teams to engage the public and the medical community in an aggressive search for the causes and cures of debilitating brain conditions known as dementias. ...

The YouTube collaboration was inspired by the Fight for Mike, an initiative by Silicon Valley leaders to save the life of former Apple/Netscape marketing ace Mike Homer, who was diagnosed last spring with CJD and is being treated at UCSF. Homer's close friends, Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, and Intuit Chairman William V. Campbell lead the initiative. ...

The idea to create the video-sharing channel resulted from a brainstorming session involving UCSF physicians and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that was hosted last fall by YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley, a protg of Homer's.

Well done, Chad.

To further support the initiative, UCSF is also reaching out with:

Memory and Aging Center CJD Web site

Defeat Dementia Know More Now widget

Defeat Dementia Facebook group

Veodia Partnership

D&D meets OmniGraffle - Vox

I finally posted the beginnings of my D&D kit for OmniGraffle. Maybe someone will notice it and encourage me to keep expanding it with more and more fun and useful gaming resources.

Go, William!

[With apologies in advance to Martin Nisenholtz, who I believe is genuinely fighting the good fight, and who will no doubt end up with a great job at some fine Internet company.]

The hiring of Bill Kristol was the last straw.

I can't take it anymore.

I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building.

Recent dispatches that are fit to print:

Leading the way [in terrible end-of-year news from the newspaper industry] was The New York Times Company, where total [quarterly] revenues fell 1.7% to $865.8 million, due mostly to a 4.1% drop in ad revenues... Advertising revenues at the news media group in particular fell 5.6%.

Source: Media Daily News.

Actually, that's being perhaps overly fair, since it takes into account an extra week last year. The straight year over year performance was:

[F]ourth-quarter revenue totaled $865.8 million, down 7.1% from $931.5 million a year earlier. The decline included a 9.1% drop in advertising revenue and a 4% fall in circulation revenue... [T]he company had an extra week in the final quarter of 2006, which boosted the year-earlier quarter's revenue by $50.8 million and its pretax income by $14.3 million.

Yes, we are dealing with a business where missing a single week means the difference between revenue falling 1.7% and 7.1%, and advertising revenue falling 4.1% and 9.1%. Go figure.

Source: Forbes.

Now, normally, beating up on someone like this isn't very much fun. But we are talking about a profession that specializes in passing judgment, often snide, on everyone else. And so, onward...

Turns out that December 2007 was particularly bad, and things may be getting even worse:

Separately, the [New York Times] reported that December ad revenue dropped 25.2%. Excluding an additional week in December 2006, ad revenue declined 12% for the month.

...[W]eakness across several national [advertising] categories including health care, books, technology products and transportation hampered results in the month. Classified ads, the traditional lifeblood of newspapers, saw steep declines in help-wanted, real estate and automotive sales. [Craig, you bad bad boy...]

"To date in January, the percentage decline in advertising revenue is trending similar to that of December..." said Janet Robinson, chief executive of New York Times...

As they say, sometimes it's darkest right before it goes pitch black.

Source: Marketwatch.

How are the company's other papers doing?

The [New York Times-owned] Boston Globe will soon announce cutbacks at the newspaper, including hundreds of layoffs, and an increase in the per copy price of the paper to 75 cents as of Feb. 1...

The Globe saw a nearly 7 percent decrease from 386,417 to 360,695 in its daily circulation between Sept. 2006 and Sept. 2007, according to numbers released in November by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That report showed the paper's Sunday circulation down about 6.5 percent...

When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price.

Source: Metro Boston, which amusingly itself is 49 percent owned by the Boston Globe, which is owned by the New York Times.

How about revenue at the Globe?

At the New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe, ad revenue fell nearly 16%. Circulation revenue fell 7%.

Source: Marketwatch.

How about the company's smaller newspapers?

The company's regional-media group, including papers in medium-sized markets such as Wilmington, N.C., and Santa Rosa, Calif., saw ad revenue decline almost 17%, while circulation fell 7.4%.

Source: Marketwatch.

Meanwhile, the Times faces its second assault from a major hedge fund in the last two years:

A hedge fund manager who acquired a stake in the New York Times Company and is pushing to gain seats on its board sent a letter to the company on Sunday in which he criticised directors as "ineffective" and called for it to shed more non-core assets.

Scott Galloway, founder of Firebrand Capital, who sent the letter, has joined with another hedge fund, Harbinger, to try to put forward their own nominees for the four independent seats on the media company's 13-member board at its meeting in April. The funds have amassed a combined 4.9 per cent stake in Times' shares.

Source: Financial Times.

An ineffective board? What could they be talking about?

Hmmmmm. That's not the direction you want to see those things go.

Well, given that the Internet is the central force dismantling the company's business, I'm sure that by now they've stocked their board with noted Internet experts. Let's see:

• Brenda C. Barnes -- CEO of Sara Lee; noted snack cake expert
• Raul E. Cesan -- former CEO of Schering-Plough; noted Levitra expert
• Daniel H. Cohen -- president of DeepSee LLC, "an oceanic exploration and submarine leasing company"; noted Jacques Cousteau expert
• Lynn G. Dolnick -- former head of exhibits for the National Zoologic Park in Washington DC; noted marsupial expert
• Michael Golden -- current publisher of the International Herald Tribune; former head of the company's Women's Publishing Division; noted sundress expert
• William E. Kennard -- former head of the FCC; noted "seven dirty words" expert
• James M. Kilts -- former CEO of Gillette; noted smooth, smooth shave expert; prior to that, unindicted coconspirator at Philip Morris; noted expert on your grandfather's hacking cough
• David E. Liddle -- here I have to take a pause as I actually know this one; based on what's happening at the company, it could be reasonably asked whether he's actually attending the board meetings.
• Ellen R. Marram -- former CEO of Nabisco; noted Oreo expert. Oh, wait, she actually ran an Internet company: "From 1999 until 2000, Ms. Marram was president and chief executive officer of efdex Inc. (the Electronic Food & Drink Exchange), an Internet-based commodities exchange for the food and beverage industry." Ooh. I wonder if that ended well.
• Thomas Middelhoff -- former CEO of Bertelsmann; noted expert on complicated family politics -- well, that's probably coming in handy...
• Janet L. Robinson -- current CEO of the New York Times Company; noted expert on horrific business implosions
• Doreen A. Toben -- CFO of Verizon; noted 30-year debenture expert
• And finally, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. -- the Big Kahuna -- the Man -- the Guy In Charge -- the chairman and scion -- the dude with the cojones to actually defend Judy Miller. Not noted Internet expert.

So, if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you're pretty much set.

Go team!

Especially in the case of Merrill Lynch, this is very serious money: the $11.5 billion write-down that Tanona now expects in Q4 is equivalent to 37% of the bank's book value, and is likely to result in a single-quarter loss of $7 per share.

But if Tanona has managed to draw a bead on the magnitude of Merrill's upcoming losses, that means that the same question now arises at Merrill that I had about Morgan Stanley earlier this month.

Not only has Singapore's Temasek bought into Merrill to the tune of $4.4 billion, but US-based Davis Selected Advisors is putting in $1.2 billion as well. So let's try to run through the different possibilities here.

1. Temasek and Davis are investing $6.6 billion into Merrill at $48 per share, but have no idea what Merrill's Q4 loss is likely to be. If it turns out to be enormous, they'll be surprised, and they'll be very upset at John Thain for not warning them of the enormity of the upcoming loss.
2. Temasek and Davis have done their due diligence on Merrill, and have been warned by Merrill that a large write-down is coming in Q4: they're walking into this announcement with their eyes open. In fact, they understand that their capital injection is necessary for Merrill to be able to take this write-down in the first place.
3. Temasek and Davis have done their due diligence on Merrill, and they know exactly what skeletons are located in its various closets. To them, it's largely immaterial whether and how Merrill marks its CDO holdings on a quarterly basis, since they're long-term investors. If Merrill decides to take a large quarterly loss, they might be surprised, but they won't be upset, since it's of no great matter to them.

Of these, the first is highly improbable: Thain would never treat a white-knight long-term shareholder in such a manner.

The second, I'm pretty sure, would constitute a breach of SEC regulations. Not on the part of Temasek or Davis, but rather on the part of Merrill. If Thain knows today that Merrill is going to take an enormous 11-figure write-down in the fourth quarter, that's material information, which he needs to communicate to the markets in a timely manner. ("Timely", in this context, has a precise definition: four days.) If he doesn't communicate that information by the end of the week, then one can assume that he doesn't have it.

What we're left with is a world in which the facts on the balance sheet can be known, but the way they're accounted for is largely left to the discretion of the bank's executives. Merrill has a shedload of CDOs on its books and isn't sure what to do about them? Well, now that it's got its capital injection, it can afford to take an enormous write-off. On the other hand, it could just as easily get away with not taking that write-off right now.

The last possibility is the most likely, but you'll never find a bank which will admit it's the case. According to them, they conform scrupulously with GAAP and all other reporting regulations, they have little if any discretion over what their results will be in any given quarter, and they certainly don't have discretion over whether or not to realize $11 billion in losses.

If Merrill reports a loss of more than a couple of bucks a share in the fourth quarter, then, it'll be very interesting to see which of these options they say corresponds to how things actually happened. Because none of them is something that Merrill would be very happy admitting.

"I should have been concerned at its being printed again and again by pirates, as they call them, and paragraph-men; but would that they do it justice and print it true according to the copy, they are welcome to sell it for a penny if they please."

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!