We're not nice

[Craig Clark]

Craig G. Bleakley <cgbleak at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu> wrote:

> I'm not terribly surprised by the sometimes pointedly cut-throat nature of
> discusison here.  The technology itself does not lend itself to diplomacy,
> for starters.  If we didn't expect occasional flames, we wouldn't have a
> name for them.  The only other lists I'm on are academic-local, and things
> can get a lot more vindictive there.
> 
> But consider the individuals who dominate this list, textually.  How would
> their friends, associates, describe them?  Bright, articualte, engaging,
> perhaps.  But "nice" might be a lot further down the list.  This probably
> goes for a lot of us.  W're not nice, we're smart, and although the two are
> quite symbiotic in theory, it doesn't always work that way in practice.

Opportunity for a gratuitous Stephen Sondheim quote:
               
            "I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right."
                                     (from _Into The Woods_)

Lotta foax out there think this applies to them...




Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"