Whipping Boy

Popular culture doesn't always appreciate the virtues of pragmatism.

All the glory goes to the guy with the crazy ideas who refused to listen to naysayers and nervous Nancys and ended up miraculously saving the day. You see? You thought that visionary was a lunatic! But now look, he's up and invented time travel! That'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

How much oftener are the naysayers right, though? Nervous Nancys get little glory for rescuing us all from visionary wackos. In movies, someone always stammers, "That's... that's so crazy it just might work!" And it always does. In reality, it's much more likely that gruesome, untimely death is in store for everyone involved.

The Voice of Reason has saved incalculable numbers of lives, but the Reckless Visionary (if he survives) gets all the (surviving) girls.

Such is life, I suppose. Anyway, our fancy website redesign, timed to launch immediately prior to the time it's needed most, isn't working. There was a naysayer in my office insisting that it was a terrible idea to launch during a high-stress period without extensive prior testing. We'll probably make him field all the complaints.

That's what you get for being such a Nervous Nancy.