On 04/15/11 5:05 PM, Virgilio A. P. Machado wrote:
So nobody has any idea why things are the way they are? Will I have to make a drawing?
A *relevant* drawing would be nice. Your offer of a drawing is no less sarcastic than David's about being consulted. We're not talking about elaborate theoretical ramblings purporting to explain how we got where we are. That solves nothing. What I addressed was a class of comments that is neither constructive nor a personal attack, but somewhere in between.
Ray
At 00:43 16-04-2011, you wrote:
It is a valid point about David's comment. Maybe us old hands have become too accustomed to David's sarcasm. Other than that it seems to have been a conversation where one person was offside to everybody else. I've been there before and know how uncomfortable it can become. The insensitive comment was certainly not essential to the main topic of the thread, but if in raising it the only result would be to have David personally change his ways nothing of significance to the community would have been accomplished. One person would have been fixed while the rest of us could go smugly on believing that that was the end of it.
The continuum from valid on-topic comments, through insensitive sarcasm to outright personal attacks is not made up of discrete and easily identifiable steps. Where is the middle ground between insensitivity and hypersensitivity.
Ray