[las3rjock]

I remember that chapter from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman quite well. One of my favorite passages is the following, which is the source of the title of the chapter:

  We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by
  the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

  I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."

  Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"

  "I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."

  The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain
  that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet.
  There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the
  publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers,
  and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and
  hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third
  one would be late."

  It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They
  couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the
  rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The
  fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.