WWW = World Wide Waste?

In the dustbin of history, one often stumbles upon all sorts of gems, well almost. In my cache of old stuff in the D: drive, saved in July 2005, I found this scintillating bit of wisdom from Bill Coleman, senior vice president, Salary.com gleaned from a survey of 10,000 US workers conducted in May and June 2005. “Our results show that workers on average are wasting a little more than twice what their employers expect", i.e., 2.09 hours spent online daily, checking e-mail and surfing Web sites, to be exact. The second biggest time waster, in the opinion of the volunteer respondents, was socializing with co-workers. This was before social networking became the next really, really big thing, mind you. [Social networking timeline: http://yasns.pbwiki.com/.] I wonder what the WWW figure stands at as of now. http://www.salary.com/careers/layoutscripts/crel_display.asp?tab=cre&cat=nocat&ser=Ser374&part=Par555.

First impressions don’t last?

Re-reading Pride and Prejudice after more than four decades has been daunting. I cannot remember what I had thought of Jane Austen when I first read it. Today, I find her nineteenth-century usage quaint ('chuse', 'teaze', 'shew', 'stile', etc.) but her dialogue and story telling impeccable. Imagine keeping me riveted – in eager anticipation – to the exploits of young damsels in rural England seeking desirable husbands! And, that too, pushing aside a couple of topical books I'd been planning to read for quite a while now. Austen's most popular and well-known novel was originally written between October 1796 and August 1797 (qua First Impressions) but published only in 1813. In 1811, her Sense and Sensibility was published and became an instant success. After that, she revised First Impressions and it was published a couple of years later. If you wish to know more about her P&P characters, timeline and locales, go to the well-organised and copiously informative website at http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pridprej.html. Don't forget to take a good look at the 1895 edition illustrations by Charles E Brock, either.