Dear Gavin,
I think you may misunderstand my motivation.
> Shucks, Steven, don't quit posting!! David does mean
> to be Grouchy - he just can't help himself sometimes,
> that's all. No filter, and all that.
Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly a frequent poster
here. I've had my bursts over the years, but they're generally pretty
short, separated by fairly notable tracts of time, and I think most of
them were actually about the publishing rights as opposed to the game
system itself.
Generally, I stop posting when I think I'm done contributing usefully to
the thread. Unfortunately, that's often about six messages after
everyone else has come to that same conclusion. :-D
I love David's candor, actually. But I'm pretty candid, myself.
I once saw a judge reprimand a lawyer, saying, "The law need not be
written with mathematical precision. It need merely be worded
sufficiently that an average citizen understands its meaning."
With me having spent most of my life as one of those nth-degree lawyer
types when it comes to communicating in English, this moment gave me
pause to reconsider that perfection in communication may be *my* goal,
but I don't get to force that goalset onto others. THEY get to choose
what's important to them.
I also worked in an NCO club once, where the maitre d' misspoke himself,
grammatically. The person whom he'd addressed responded with, "do you
mean, '[corrected statement]'?". The maitre d' went into Master
Sergeant mode and said, "You understood me well enough to correct me.
Therefore there was no failure in communication. Therefore there was no
need to correct me. Right?"
These two incidents weigh heavily in my (admittedly occasional) bouts of
conversational flexibility and tolerance.
So when I see others who appear to be trapped in that same cycle of
demanding precision from others in conversation, I am from time to time
moved to poke at it a bit and see if there's room for growth.
Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes I'm mistaken.
And then I move on.
Don't get me wrong -- there is huge danger of miscommunication in making
assumptions. This issue is compounded by the fact that, generally, the
speaker and the listener are both doing so. That's *why* honest
miscommunications occur.
But I find there's generally room in any friendly forum for a little
less efficiency in communication to permit such miscommunications to be
corrected, all in the spirit of being able to type messages more quickly.
:: looking around :: Wow, how did I get on this soapbox?
:: stepping down ::
Anyway --
If you think I'm going to stop posting because I've irritated
David...well, all I can say is you don't know me very well (and
congratulations on that, may you live long and prosper from that trait).
I love David for all his occassional irrascibility, because his
contributions are generally priceless. But I can always count on one
thing from David's posts: Honesty.
And I value that VERY highly. I can filter the rest as needed.
On the other hand, I've run out of useful things to add to this thread.
Hmm...several messages ago. :-D So I guess I'm still me, after all.
:: sigh ::
Seeya!
- Steve M.
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