Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Flash!
The response you are soon to read (hopefully) is an exercise in contradictions. As I sit in a room filled with various and sundry computer equipment and help put together a multimedia journal, I find it hard to suggest this idea without sounding like much the hypocrite.

I totally agree with Mr. Heinlein's assessment of what we should be. Regardless of our differing opinions of how it originated, we must all agree that a human life has seemingly unlimited potential. True, and yet we idle - day by day - in front of a little box called a television.

I'm not saying that we should throw them all away. TV can be a wonderful tool - if we remember that is just a tool and not a replacement for living life. I firmly believe that if we all devoted ten hours a week to learning something, teaching something, or meeting someone new we would be a lot happier with ourselves.

I believe in babes. I believe in Van Halen. I believe in F.Scott Fitzgerald. I believe that no one should ever eat alone. I believe that we should all be learning something new every single day of our lives - or at least having great sex.

The original requirements were to be able to build a fire and throw a large enough stone to kill a small animal with a reasonable degree of velocity and accuracy.

The rest we pretty much made up as we went along.

Jimmy was changing the diaper on poor little Leslie while he was on the phone to GQ planning the invasion of Greece, when he realized that he hadn't started dinner. He dropped the squalling mass on the floor, hung up suddenly, and rushed outside with a knife. He attacked the pig with glee, but just as he looked up he realized that he was on the poopdeck of a mighty sailing ship, so he told them to turn left. He figured he needed a place to put this thing when he got home, so he whipped out his drafting board and started to draw a great big house for his new ship. He started to miss his wife, so he wrote her a dirty poem in the margin of his drawing, when he remembered that she had overdrawn their checking account, so he pulled out his checkbook and started to balance it. He got bored with that and went back to his building by placing row after row of bricks. Thrilled with his success, he turned and slapped one of the crewmen on the back, but he did it so hard that the broke the guy's back, so he had to set the bone. Unfortunately, he didn't do it right, so he talked to the guy as he died, while telling other people to "go about their business, nothing's wrong." Then the REAL captain showed up, who told him to go help the others with their homework. He tried helping them but then he knew that he had to start on his own homework, which was algebra. As he started on the first problem, he looked at it for a while, exclaimed "What a load of crap!", and tossed it out the porthole. Then he went to the galley, punched up the instructions for a pecan swirl pizza, and ran it, which tasted real good. Then they were attacked by specialized insects, who fought for hours, so he had to fight for seventeen hours without eating, but finally, with elan, he died.

In total disagreement I must respond. All humans had to do is to live a peacable life and to name animals, eat fruit (or veggies) and be happy. All of this secondary `responsibilities` in order to make us all responsible citizens of a society that can not deciede if killing is right or wrong, resulted from thinking more of ourselves than we should have.

think about what you wrote. becaus if one day while your changing a diaper, or taking over a country. you might slip and fall and inbed a sharp object in your brain, and about then i think that you will be very happy to see a human being that specialiizes in brain surgery. i really don't think that you would be to happy if a grasshopper sowed up to do the job.

Scott Ishman responds to the Heinlein quote as if Mr. Heinlein were here to respond in kind. Robert A. Heinlein was a multi-award winning science fiction author, dead at least ten years now. Heinlein's point wasn't that becoming an expert at something was bad. His point was that in order to be a whole human being, one should develop as many different skills as possible. I bet there's not a single brain surgeon out there who only does brain surgery, then goes home and vegetates for the rest of her day. Having other skills and interests would mean a surgeon had the social skills to respond to patients with compassion, deal constructively with conflict, be an example and leader, and go camping with her friends. Personally, I wouldn't want to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn't well-socialized.

Heinlein's point is about the choices one makes to lead a passionate, responsible life, and it's one I can't argue with.

Scott Ishman responds to the Heinlein quote as if Mr. Heinlein were here to respond in kind. Robert A. Heinlein was a multi-award winning science fiction author, dead at least ten years now. Heinlein's point wasn't that becoming an expert at something was bad. His point was that in order to be a whole human being, one should develop as many different skills as possible. I bet there's not a single brain surgeon out there who only does brain surgery, then goes home and vegetates for the rest of her day. Having other skills and interests would mean a surgeon had the social skills to respond to patients with compassion, deal constructively with conflict, be an example and leader, and go camping with her friends. Personally, I wouldn't want to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn't well-socialized.

Heinlein's point is about the choices one makes to lead a passionate, responsible life, and it's one I can't argue with.

Mr. Heinlein, who has my deepest respect, forgot the bit about changing a lightbulb.