On Thol's "Sir, I exist" signoff: There was a poet (T. S. Eliot? I dunno)
who had a verse that went something like this (paraphrasing from memory):
The man said to the universe "Sir, I exist!"
"That may be," said the universe, "but that fact does not create any sense
of obligation in me."
(Thol, feel free to jump in and correct me on the errors in the above… I
would like to know the exact quote, who said it, where it's from, etc.) As
I always read it, it basically means not to expect the world to revolve
around you; every man has responsibility for himself.
-tc
You're remembering more or less correctly. I can't recall the poet myself,
but feel sure it was not Eliot. The () cout << syntax makes the whole line
a C++ statement, in particular an initialization routine.