You mean to say that you wasted everyone's time (although I suspect that many already filter you out, with cause) and energy to spout this nonsense? I had to go back and find what on earth the "degenerate linguistic usage elided" referred to. As you can see, I figured it out. I apologize ahead of time to Susan, to save her the private scolding that otherwise would almost certainly be headed my way. That said, you sir, are a fool. "Dr. Jeffrey Race" wrote:
I wonder if perhaps a solution would be doing something I saw a gentleman from China, IIRC, do on this list quite a while ago. He had added (Mr.) to his .sig to make it easy for people to figure out his gender. Perhaps
On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 20:58:50 -0500, Vivien M. wrote: this
would be an easyish way to somewhat-subtly warn people of the correct gender?
Female personal-status-specific honorifics (Miss, Mrs.) used to be essential elements of any signature block, at least for written correspondence, in the days when persons honored one another. Lack of such an honorific implied not female. Now it's just 'Hi $first_name'. I'm glad I'm on the way out.
Puh-leeze. Does this mean that anyone female ought to let you know ahead of time, because otherwise they're male? Perhaps you are implying that the first name basis of some folk is offensive to you (trust me, if the phrase "this sucks" is offensive to you, you don't want to hang out in a router room). Maybe I misunderstand. Perhaps you mean that we should all put our important titles and other status-signifying characteristics in our "signature blocks" so that everyone will know how important we are (or not). I know some Ph.D. folk, but unlike you, they don't consider it an integral part of their name (except Dr. Mudge, but that's another story, and it's over anyway). Oh, I could go on, but I won't. How's this for "degenerate linguistic usage?" *plonk* -- Traceroute is a disconcertingly blunt hammer; that we continue to use it to essentially nail moving jello to a wall says more about us than about anything on the Internet. k claffy (at 8:43 -0700 10/17/02 on NANOG)