In this week's mini-mutiny of the generals against Donald Rumsfeld, it was awfully tempting to side with the generals.
Because the optimistic school implicitly argues that "things are different this time", it is tempting to side automatically with the pessimists.But the facts are a little more complex.
It's tempting to side with the gloaters; I'm as disgusted by Gawker as the next guy, and I'm not above feeling a frisson of glee when bad people face consequences for their actions.
"Would burrowing more deeply deter an attack, or would it only tempt both sides, all sides to attack the others' networks preemptively?" These, Kaplan writes, were the questions that "some tried to answer but no one ever did" during the nuclear confrontations of the cold war.
The better the two sides get along, the less likely outsiders can tempt either side to throw a spanner into the works.
Usually, I'm tempted to side with the armchair sneerers.
Initially one is tempted to side with Claudia and see Honor as a willing victim of George's ego.
Julian has seen some doctors who have suggested that there's nothing wrong with him and he is sometimes tempted to side with them.
For example, if fund managers run a company's pension plan and have voting rights in the company's shares, they might be tempted to side with its management, against the interests of their investors, to keep the retirement account.Proxy statements can easily be published on the internet.
In political and policy circles progressives are being invited to walk with bowed head into the Versailles railway carriage to sign the instrument of surrender, and many hardly know whether to know to holler their defiant rage at the enemy, or their own team for having been so milksop as to be defeated - or are perhaps tempted to side with the conqueror.
But even if it passed, Gov. Jerry Brown probably would be tempted to side with business and labor, vetoing the measure.
