[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Every so often we should all put down the calculator and turn off the computer and do things with pen and paper and with our minds,

Is he going to make the pen out of reeds, mix the ink and skin the lamb to make parchment?

The illusion that things done an older way are more virtuous then things done the new way is romantic pap. I really doubt Brandon could knap a hand axe. What is he going to do when all the metal rusts?

If he wants to waste his time standing in banks filling out forms that is his choice but it is no more "preserving the ways of the Ancients" then having a coke rather then a cherry seven up is.

The Ancient would have been to busy knaping his axe to spend time standing around a bank.

[JRandomFreeper]

Is he going to make the pen out of reeds, mix the ink and skin the lamb to make parchment?

I can do that...(and I have oak gall available) but I can also type > 55 wpm. Lets see. Get more work done more quickly? Or die at 30, a worn out old man...

2006 is a great year. 2106 will be better. I hate being a primitive, with only a manual interface to the internet.

/johnny

[NonLinear]

The illusion that things done an older way are more virtuous then things done the new way is romantic pap.

Ah, but it is not always the final number that tells the story. Sometimes the form of the equation speaks volumes, while the final result only mumbles a single short quotation.

dP/P = RT (-v_out/V) dt

tells me how this system will behave over time, what it's limits are, which model will fit best. This system will start at an initial condition, follow an eponential decay over time and asymptotically approach a limiting value. The change in time will always be proportional to the condition at that time. It will be well behaved, bounded and continuous. It will be easy to model.

42, while correct for a specific case, tells me the batteries are still good in my calculator, and that Douglas Adam's life was not in vain.