It's also a common theme of those complaining about R that it starts with 1 rather than 0 like a "real" programming language: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3135325/why-do-vector-in.... Now that you've outed yourself as an insidious traitor, Hadley will be by shortly to take back your copy of the book. At least, that's how I read the smiley.

Ah, thank you for the explanation. You'll probably get done for being a snitch.