Oh well... I wasn't going to start anything here, but as I have no better way to spend my time....
In response to the war waging on Chad's blog... I would like to point out that I don't care what "notchback" is... I was trying to make a point, and my point was lost in the technicality of it all.
My point was this: I did some research, and refuted some thing said by someone, not in an effort to make them feel stupid, but in an effort to display how annoying it is to be constantly contridicted.
Not fun when it's reversed, huh?
And the comment from Chad was not solicited by me... he reacted to the use of notchback in his comments the same way he did when I asked about it.
Generally, the nice thing to do when people get tetchy about being corrected all the time is to let it be. If they say the sky is brown, just let them say it... it doesn't make it true, nor does the fact that they have voiced their opinion force you to believe it. Research if you like... just don't point out everything they say as being wrong. Even if they are. You can think they are wrong, without tellign them. I promise.
And, for the record, "not well-read" doesn't mean stupid... it just means that you haven't read from a wide range of books. Generally, well-read refers to literature. I consider someone well-read who has read greek and roman myths, and selections from CS Lewis, Tolkien, Jane Austen, Louisa May Allcott, Dorthy Sayers, Shakespeare, Milton, Eugene Field, Poe, Mark Twain, Asimov (not just the sci-fi), Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne, James Joyce, Dickens, and Ogden Nash, to name a few. If you haven't read, or can't at least make culturally literate references to most of the list, I would be willing to say you are not well-read. This isn't an insult to your intelligence... only to your reading habits. Which, in the engineering world, means absolutely crap.
But that's not my point either.
Because something is outside your realm of experiance, doesn't mwan it is limited to a geographic region, or a specific culture. It may just mean you haven't run across it. And dismissing it as being limited to specific regions or cultures is not typical of a quest to know or to learn why...
"Notchback" could mean "meatballs with rice" for all I care...
posted by Deedee 11:13 AM
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
