On these pages it was reported that certain musical instruments formerly on display in the Ethnographic Museum of Guinea-Bissau had been destroyed. In fact, they were stolen. The problem was not that I mistranslated the Portuguese – I knew despojado meant despoiled – but that I misunderstood the English – despoiled doesn't mean spoiled or ruined, it means robbed. Management regrets any confusion this may have caused. If you see, hear, or are asked to fence these instruments, please inform the competent authorities in Guinea-Bissau.

On these pages it was asserted that Beto O'Rourke's use of the first-person plural in his campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate was not an implicit invitation but an explicit command. On further consideration, I have decided that calling a pronoun an explicit command is a bit too imaginative, but saying that the use of "we" constitutes a peremptory recruitment pretty much nails it. Management regrets any miscast votes this may have led to. If you see Beto snoozing next to a big cactus with a big sombrero on his head, please don't wake him up.

On these pages it was stated with stupid wonder that Facebook could hardly require legions of programmers. I believe now that such wonder wasn't stupid at all, and wish to boggle at this "public utility's" needing any programming at all. Management regrets that anyone might imagine Facebook is a technological achievement. If you are on it and anywhere on the page you are viewing is the word "ferret," then obviously that swings the mighty Ferret Chow Ad knife switch into its heavy-duty clips, and that is all that any reasonable man expects of life, statesmanship, and marketing. In such a medium, thoughts aren't controlled, or even confirmed; they are echoed. How profound, how tricky can that be?

As for closer-to-the-surface programming, on these pages there has been bitter disappointment expressed at the pages' own. This I have been guilty of – and I do feel guilty – after failing to get an image uploaded or a hyperlink installed. Management sincerely regrets any hurt feelings. Because management has learned over the years that, while Facebook with its paltry aspirations has absolutely no excuses, computers just don't work very well. It is too much to expect web developers to program for every piece of hardware, every monitor size, every browser, and every combination of patches and fixes for browsers and operating systems. I am no longer surprised to find websites whose programmers have clearly given up. Ricochet's have not given up, and the site works pretty darn well.

There are other errata, and I will atone for them sooner or later. But for now, I will close with this one: on these pages was recounted the story of the winner of the 1940 Nobel Prize for literature, and a friend of his, a man who in his own youth had been a Caribbean pirate and had set a drinking record one morning in a bar in Panama. Since the bar, the pirate, the prize, and the prizewinner are all fictitious – I was summarizing a 1982 Brazilian novel – it probably doesn't matter what I said. But I do care about words and want to get one right, right here. I had said that the pisco sour-count remains unofficial because the other customers in the bar were too drunk to "testify" to it. But that verb isn't quite it. "Attest" to? Maybe...but we're not talking about a courtroom proceeding here. More of a legislative operation. A great act had been worked, and now a great conclave was to recognize this formally. No one denied that landmark drinking had been done, but there remained the business of getting it solemnly...what? The novelist's own verb was as I recall homologado. In my experience, that usually means "ratified." Yes, THAT is it! Management regrets conveying less than 100% of the amusement generated by the original author.

(7/14/18)