Allow me to start with an anecdote from my post-college days working as a temp at Cambridge University Press. My job was to enter book orders, both individual and commercial. Academic and professional conferences generated huge stacks of individual orders and I would be entering them for days.

After one such conference, I found that I was entering a book order for Noam Chomsky, the man responsible for probably the majority of the material I’d learned for my brand new BA in Linguistics. There was only one title selected, and I moved on to enter the shipping information.

There were scratch-outs everywhere. Noam Chomsky filled out the address form incorrectly. He also messed up when adding in the tax.

We all make silly mistakes. No one is immune. Not even Noam. Continue reading →