begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Sun, Jan 14, 2007 at 04:28:48PM -0800: > Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade wrote: [snip] > >No, he's completely serious, being the greatly insensitive clod that he > >is. We should all gang up together and roll him at the next meeting. > > > >... > > > > > >Sheesh, people, what's with the sudden uptightness? > > First, you are correct. Lan has a dry wit. One of the hazards of a dry > wit is the ability to be misunderstood. Doubly so in email. You may
Being misunderstood is the basis of a dry wit.... ideally up to the point of the listener preparing to respond rashly, whereupon enlightenment dawns. It helps to put a longer-than-normal pause after an excessively dry statement, partially to signal that the statement isn't as it seems, and partly to enjoy the sound of jaws dropping, and then foreheads being slapped. > note that I don't take particular offense at Lan calling me part of the > religious developer whackos in his second retort. Heh. I'm the worst sort of developer -- I have opinions. And a loud voice. > Second, Lan often sounds off about source control stuff since it is near [chop] > So, I chose a subset of those and nailed a response to see which ones > Lan was actually targeting. You had me scratching my head... > Third, while I am not a believer that female/male ratio numbers should a > priori be equal in computers, there are many little things which stack > up to drive out some who should be there. Research continues to accrue > that discrimination borne of microreactions is far more important than > overt group pressure. Too bad we can't harness this power for good instead of evil... > Lan's offhanded comment made me cringe twice. It > would also make some of the female portion of one of my teams or one of > my classes cringe while the rest would simply mumble "stereotypical male > developer" even if they found it humorous. On previous projects (where we all worked in a lab), a collection of "squishy toys" (foam-rubber swag, generally) was kept distributed around the room, and anyone saying something stupid, potentially offensive (including punning), or, indeed, dry, was a legal target. (Everyone was expected to be a target on a regular basis.) Lan's comment would have resulted in a rain of foam rubber, all aimed at his head. > And one woman I know would > say, "You just try to swap my Caps and Control keys and see what I do > with this rusty fork ..." But... was she a conformist heretic, or an angelic true believer? These things are *important*! > Finally, his comment is a subset of the "well, if women were in charge > ...". One of the nice things about the 21st century is that we finally > have some women in true upper management slots. In the true spirit of > equality, they are turning out to run the gamut of competent, > incompetent, generous, nasty, trustworthy, criminal, etc. just like > their male counterparts. The fact that both sexes really do appear to > be pretty equal in both good *and* bad characteristics gives me great > hope for the future. Ayup. -- I resent those who use crying as a weapon in the workplace. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
