When his mother goes off for her third honeymoon and leaves Colm behind to fend for himself, the practical youth makes plans to keep himself busy for the week, but things go awry quickly after his dog dies, he gets a call from his long-absent father, and finds out that his mother spontaneously wants to put the family house up for sale.

A book intended for researchers in computer science, in particular, artificial intelligence, theoretical computing, and programming languages. This volume honours John Mccarthy for his fundamental contributions to the field of computer science. The papers, written by leading computer science researchers, range from historical overviews to technical reports on the key areas of computer science in which McCarthy has worked - LSP, programming languages, symbolic computation, mathematical theory of computation, and artificial intelligence.