When I returned to bustling Motovun from a week on desolate Ilovik, two issues of The Economist, my favorite read for many a year, awaited me in the post office. Of course, I first read the newer issue, and I wrote three letters to the editor on articles it carried. Only today I picked up the older issue, covering the period from July 25 to 31, and I found it rather uninspiring. Actually, boring. Even if I could have written a letter to the editor this late in the game, I would not have been able to find anything of sufficient interest in any of the articles. Or so I thought until I realized that I must be biased because of the very fact that it was too late for my response. Were the same issue to have arrived today, I would surely have read it with an entirely different attitude. And letters to the editor would have poured forth with the usual ease. Having been incommunicado for the fateful week, I have only exposed an emotional prejudice of my own, of which there must be quite a few.