[OT]Re:[OS:N:] bash intro for high school students?

[Jeff Kinz <jkinz kinz org>]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 09:01:26PM -0400, Brian Wiese wrote:
>>> 175 lines of time and space wasting previous email deleted.
Brian, in the future please trim and quote your emails appropriately.

>Jeff -- please reexamine your 20 line reply to the 4 lines Jay took to 
>recommend Perl in minimal use, to complement an instruction in the Bash 
>shell.

Brian, if you can show me where I mis-read what Jay was saying I will
handsomely apologize to both of you.

Lay it out for me point by point, using the actual quoted text in
context and I'll be happy to study it fully.

>I thought Jay put it quite nicely in asking "why are you so
>adamant against Perl?" 

This is exactly the problem Brian. I was never adamant against Perl.
But his "question" re-frames things to imply that I did take that
position.  This is similar to asking someone "So have you stopped
beating your wife?"  No matter what they answer, they are now scum
in the eyes of anyone who heard the question.

Jay was claiming I was adamant against Perl. Effectively this was an
attempt (whether he realizes it or not) to paint me as a "Perl hater".
Which would be an extremely unlikable, untenable, and false position.

It is a favorite trick of trolls to claim that someone has said
something that they never said, and then attack the person for that 
position. (Some people call this tactic "re-framing").

This behavior is extremely sleazy.  It is an indirect form of an "Ad
hominem" attack - eg, smearing the reputation of the debater.
("he is a Perl hater!")

I will ALWAYS call a person on that type of behavior. 

If Jay did not mean to re-state what I was saying then he can say so,
and I will retract what I said as well.  Its possible that what Jay
actually meant to say was that I was being adamant against Perl being
taught to high school students. Which is also not true but is at least
not a completely reversed statement of my position. If that was what
he meant then he should have said that rather than what he did say.

> -- to which you replied another near 50 lines
> (and quoted lines) again in what I felt to be a 

Brian, If you go back into the archives on this list, and look up posts
and responses to posts by Ed Kunin you will see that your "feelings"
about this post are unwarranted.  Frankly I was quite mild and reserved
in my response to Jay considering his actions which were quite
troll-like.

>topic manner by turning the thread into your own critical rant, with
>closing attempt to get "the last word in".

I responded to Jay's attempt to re-write my position to something
untenable and completely the reverse of my actual position.  Your claim
that I turned an entire thread into my own is absurd.  One email
does not make a thread.  

As for the "last word", by which I assume you mean my comment that I was
finished with that thread.  That was simply an indication that I felt I
had invested too much time already and would not put in any more.

After all, on the internet, No one ever has the last word. :-)

Loyalty to a friend is a good thing, but unthinking endorsement 
is actually a long term liability.  

-- 
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.