I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.

In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.

That which does not kill me, has made a grave tactical error.

To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you're all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.

Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.

And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.