Hello Georg,
A serious point, however, is that (in my first language) Finnish, the
spoken language doesn't only *not* differentiate between gender, it
also /doesn't/ differentiate between humans and other instances (be
they living or inanimate!!!). You'd say
"se meni ulos" -- {he | she | the dog} went out
"se putos" -- {he | she | the dog | a flowerpot | a brick} dropped
Contrast this to "modern, politically correct American English", where
one says "she" of the programmer, and "they" of any third person. The
latter of which is not only semantically + grammatically incorrect, it
also makes sentences cumbersome, but foremost, diffuses and murks up
the original intent of the author.
Ah! One of my favorite qwerks of the English language, how to refer to a
specific single someone of unknown gender without insulting them: "it"?
And, BTW, if we're discussing changes to the newsgroup structure, it
might make sense to have an "off-topic" newsgroup for these kinds of
discussions.
Errr, the mid-thread derailing of a topic is what makes the most
entertaining, often even unexpectedly informative (and therefore
idirectly, very valuable) contributions to our newsgroups.
I really ought to have a filter set up to flag for extra attention any thread
with OT in the title :)
The fact that (even NG discussions) tend to derail intermittently,
does seem at first look, as simply an annoyance that only introduces
static and clutter to an otherwise worthwhile use of bandwidth. Fact
is, the cost of that is actually less than the benefit, because only
by allowing it, many treasures otherwise forever undiscovered, are
found.
I love "mark thread as read" it makes reading even the most boring thread
easy.
