Hey, Murray. Thanks for listening. (01)
I'm on deadline, and I had to convert to scanning
only the day's messages for the last few days, to
pick out responses to queries that I need to act
on. So in this rare case, I wasn't reading the
whole thread, but only the responses people were
sending to you. (02)
It's possible that if I had read the whole thread,
I would have been saying something like "Murray
didn't mean what you inferred". (03)
I absolutely believe from your follow-on responses
and this post that you *didn't* mean what they
inferred. (04)
But the tenor of their responses suggests that the
inferences were there. I agree that it is a matter
of perception, rather than substance. But that matter
of perception is an important one. (05)
One heuristic I've found somewhat helpful in that
regard is avoiding the use of "you". As long as I'm
talking about me, myself, or I, and the ideas we're
discussing, I seem to be relatively safe. (06)
For example, I can say "that is the most hare-brained,
addlepated, brain-dead idea I have ever heard", and
still leave room for "you are a really intelligent,
sensitive person, so I probably misinterpreted what
you said". The two are not in conflict, because the
negative goes to the thought, the positive goes to the
person. (07)
Frankly, I could do a lot better at having face-to-face
discussions. I could do a lot better at remembering those
rules in person. But when I'm writing, I think I'm pretty
good at it. (08)
Sorry for the tension in your shoulders. I hope it
relaxes soon. But if there was tension in other people's
shoulders, I hope that I helped to relax that, too.
:_) (09)
Murray Altheim wrote:
> Eric Armstrong wrote:
>
>> Murray Altheim wrote:
>>
>>> Albert Selvin wrote:
>>>
>>>> A belated reply to Murray's post below (excerpted).
>>>>
>>>> I acknowledge that I will miss things of value by deleting without
>>>> reading. By the way, I didn't mean to cast any aspersions on
>>>> particular threads; I just chose some recent examples.
>>>
>>>
>>> Al,
>>>
>>> Nothing you said was taken as an aspersion, at least by me.
>>
>>
>> Ah, good. The issue, it seems, was not one of intention.
>> There is still the matter of style.
>
>
> Eric,
>
> Given your last message and the prior one seem directed at
> me, I might point out that at no point did I berate anyone
> for either choosing to ignore "chatter" or for choosing
> HTML email. I merely pointed out that one might miss something
> (in the same way that you miss the contents of books you don't
> read), and, that I did not want to be forced to use HTML email
> myself, which as you say above, nobody should be forced to
> justify their particular working style to anyone else. I was
> saying in essense the same thing as you did:
> >
> > I am astonished that anyone could berate you for using
> > whatever working style you have chosen to adopt. There
> > should be no need whatever for you to justify yourself.
> > The procedures you use are the ones you have found to
> > work for you, just as the email clients others use are
> > the ones they have found to work for them.
>
> The only thing I wrote to Bill that could have "smacked" of
> being an "ad hominem attack" (I said I found something he
> said was "rather offensive") came after a very long paragraph
> which I thought put the remark in its perspective. And that
> first paragraph wasn't directed at Bill, it was a series of
> general comments not directed at anyone in particular. If
> you read what I wrote to Al again, you'll find nothing that
> could be remotely characterized as an ad hominem, so his
> comments about not casting aspersions was him merely being
> polite (so far as I can understand), not him apologizing
> to me (which is what you seem to imply).
>
>> As my martial arts master used to tell me, you may not have
>> intended to harm, but you (we, me, us) are still responsible
>> for it. Also: You hit with a fist, it lasts a weak. You hit
>> with your words, it can last a lifetime.
>
>
> If you'd like, I can try to find some quote from my martial
> arts instructor, since these are taken as having some measure
> of authority. Here's one:
>
> "Be neither tense nor limp."
> -- Tri Thong Dang
>
>> Funny how such lessons stick with you...
>
>
> Agreed, but I still end up with a lot of tension in my
> shoulders...
>
> My comments on accessibility stand as they are, and I did not
> assume the worst of Al's or Bill's intentions, indeed, I would
> say that your comments seem to assume the worst of mine. If my
> tone seems overly antagonistic to you, that's a characteriza-
> tion that you've made about email messages I've written, not
> necessarily about my feelings on any subject. I did not for a
> moment think (for example) that Bill was necessarily being
> deliberately derogatory, insensitive, or anything else: he was
> just being funny. I do have a sense of humour. Saying that you
> find someone's comments offensive does not imply (to me) that
> they meant them as such, nor is it (to me) an ad hominem attack,
> nor (to me) does it require or in any way suggest the necessity
> of an apology.
>
> I'm not sure where anyone has on this list has the position
> of being judge of anyone else's style, but seems I've somehow
> become the whipping boy for poor style (I won't repeat some
> of the things that have been said about me in the few short
> weeks I've been on this list). I should probably say that at
> no point in *any* of these discussions have I been angry,
> though I must say I'm starting to feel pretty frustrated in
> that I have no sense at this point of being able to write
> anything here without somebody finding fault with either what
> I write or its tone, and my interest in further participation
> here is rapidly waning.
>
> Murray
>
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
>
> "Somebody is going to dominate space. When they do,
> just like when the British dominated the naval part
> of our globe, established their empire, just like the
> United States has dominated the air superiority,
> ultimately, whoever is able to dominate space will be
> able to control the destiny of the entire Earth."
> http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1232864&l=14817
>
>
>http://www.americanprogress.org/AccountTempFiles/cf/{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}/040115.HTM#2
>
>
> (010)
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