[EM] James A.: That's what it is? Real cool playful language.

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

James A.--

You'd said:

>
>See... A, B, and C are in the Schwartz / Smith ? GETCHA / GOCHA /
>minimal dominant / minimal undominated set... and D ain't not in the
>nuthin'
>set.
>Ta-da!
>
I replied:
>I'm sorry but the; meaning of that isn't entirely clear. If I could
make
>a suggestion, you might not want to partake of recreational substances
when
>posting to EM.

	Don't know if you're being playful, if you actually disapprove, or if
you
just want to take me down a peg.

I reply:

None of the above. Just speaking frankly, if that's ok. Disapprove? I 
wouldn't care if you post gibberish, when you're not replying to a message 
of mine. But if you want to come down a peg, I have no objection.

You continued:

	I'm not sure if you know this, but what you call the Smith set is also
known as the minimal dominant set, or the GETCHA set. GETCHA stands for
GEneralized Top CHoice Axiom.
	What you call the Schwartz set is also known as the union of minimal
undominated sets, or the GOCHA set, which stands for Generalized
Optimal
CHoice Axiom.

I reply:

When I use acronyms on EM, I've previously defined them. In the "context" of 
your posting, there was no reason to believe that GOTCA or GETCHA meant 
anything.

You continued:

	If these nicknames seem wacky to you,

I reply:

Do you think that it was just those 2 terms? I dildn't say that I was 
referring only to them. What I said was about the entire posting, overall.

I'd said:

>Go for it. But try not to post when you're all f***ed-up.


You replied:

	Can you relax, man?

I reply:

Instead of guessing about other people's emotional states, you could just 
try to do a better job of saying what you mean. I said nothing about myself, 
but I'll tell you now that no one can be expected to know what to make of a 
frantic-gibberish reply to a message that he's posted.

You continued:

Sometimes it's okay to use playful language to get
serious points across.

I reply:

Oh, so that's what you were doing--getting serious points across :-)  
Actually you weren't getting anything across. Except for some sort of 
unexplained intent to dump a nonsense reply on my posting.

Send a copy of my posting and your reply to "Miss Manners", for an 
explanation of why someone might not appreciate your reply.

You continued:

	In other words, why you gotta be hating all the time?

I reply:

Why do you hate America?

No, of course I have no reason to believe that you do. You have no 
justification to say that I hate anything or anyone, or, in general, to 
speculate or guess about unstated opinions, attitudes or emotional states. 
Better to talk about what's known, and reply to what's said, not what you 
imagine.

"Hate" is a strong word, but I won't claim that I liked your reply to my 
posting. By all means, be playful and real cool, but, when postinlg messages 
that contain no seriously-intended meaning, it would be better if they 
weren't posted as replies.

Since you say you were conveying serious meaning, what was the serioius 
meaning conveyed by your statement that you use the 
BeatpathWinner-&-RP-distinguishing example because it seems occult, in your 
opinion? Or your statement that you get your power from diagrams of voting 
systems? There are just 2 possibilities: Either those and many similar 
statements in your posting are believed by you to be true, in which case 
you've overtaken Don Davison and Craig Carey, or else you're making 
intentionally false statements. Sure, satire is fine in order to make a 
point. But, you see, there aparently wasn't a point, in your case. When 
there isn't a point, then it isn't satire or humor anymore. It's just Craig 
Carey. And when it purports to be a reply to someone else's posting, it's a 
bit rude as well.

Mike Ossipoff

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