John Denker wrote: It often helps to know where a question is coming from.
One very biting example of this is the ordering of lecture
demonstrations. As often as not, the idea comes from a well
identifiable source, but the requester elects to pose the request as
if were an original idea, requiring elaborate and lengthy
description. Once it is recognized that a new text was adopted with
the apparatus depicted in one of the figures, a thousand words can be
eliminated...of course, the originality goes away, as well. Knowing
*where* the question came from helps immensely. Karl
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