Anticipate

Preface

When I graduated from high school some thirty years ago, the school’s principal—who had also been our draconian German class teacher—subtly criticized my attitude of continuous challenge during the diploma ceremony. After putting in a few nice words for my parents, he mentioned that he would remember me as a vigilant student who was always willing to point out a different perspective. I think he was just trying to tell me that I had behaved like a wiseass know-it-all more often than he had liked.

I was raised in Europe (the Netherlands) and went through high school in the early eighties, amid vivid political debate about the pros and cons of capitalism vs. those of socialism, the madness of the nuclear arms race both sides had entered, ...