Stupid Guest Tricks

GRUMPY PIRATE wrote:OR...Just be polite the Pirate way!!

Offer 'em RUM!!!

with or without the plank?

Randy

Randy B wrote:with or without the plank?

Randy

Plank, pool spring board...same difference!


hehehehe

Amphigorey wrote:...On a tangent, I think it's more ethical to treat others as they want to be treated, not as I want to be treated. ...

Um... would that include not showing offense to a person who wants to hold a door open for you because you're a woman? :)

BRWombat wrote:Um... would that include not showing offense to a person who wants to hold a door open for you because you're a woman? :)

See above note: Don't hold the door because I'm a woman; hold it because I'm a person. I'm not going to be cranky at you because you held a door, but I'd vastly prefer it if you did it not out of deference to my gender but out of respect for my humanity.

It's a key difference, really. I don't know why this is so hard.

What's the difference?

Okay, so I was using two different cultures, randomly chosen. I was attempting to illustrate that different cultures, and therefore different people, have differing standards of politeness. Here, I'll illustrate with something a little closer to home, and with examples that I actually know something about:

People from the South and people from the Northeast (in America) have different ways of speaking, even though they share a language, and these different ways can come across to the other as rude. In linguistics, there is a concept called "conversational gap." That means the acceptable amount of pause you can have in a conversation before somebody gets uncomfortable and needs to fill the silence; it's the gap between speaker 1 and speaker 2. In general, Americans have a pretty small gap compared to people from other countries, but our gap still varies. In the South, the gap is bigger than in the Northeast; it's still well under a second, but it's enough to notice. Indeed, for some speakers in the Northeast, there is actually *no* gap; speakers will overlap each other in conversation. This can drive other Americans up a wall because they feel like they're being interrupted. To the Northeasterner, however, the overlap actually means that they are being polite, because they are engaged in the conversation and fully paying attention to the other speaker. So if you listen to a conversation between two New Yorkers, you might hear a lot of "uh huh" and "right, right" and "absolutely", spoken over someone else's sentences.

If you have a Southerner speaking to a New Yorker, you end up with a situation where the New Yorker thinks the Southerner is being rude because they seem to be aloof and disengaged from the conversation, and the Southerner thinks the New Yorker is being rude because they won't let the other person get a word in edgewise. However, both people are being perfectly polite from their own points of view. If both parties understood that, they would be much less frustrated.

That's why I think "do unto others as they want to have done" is better than "as you want to have done." It makes fewer assumptions, and therefore falls into fewer traps like the one I have just described.

I'm sorry, I tried to let this drop, in deference to the thread topic, since it was clearly upsetting people, but it's come up again so I will try one last time to explain my point: I never said people shouldn't hold doors for others. I never said it was rude for a man to open a door for a woman. I only mean that it should be considered just as much "the right thing" to do that they hold the door open for other men as well. Likewise it's "the right thing" for any woman to hold the door for any other person: man or woman, should she be the first to arrive at the door. We should ALL be held to the same standard of politeness. I'm not telling anyone to stop holding doors for anyone. I'm not advocating for rudeness, if anything for more civility. It should be considered just as rude for any person male or female not to hold the door for a man right behind them, as it is considered rude for a man not to hold the door for a woman right behind him.

8^S

Hunger, War, Pollution, all things to worry about. A man opening a door for a woman because of her gender, not something high on my list to get upset about. Man preventing woman from voting, yes, opening door, no.

Hey Wombat, wanna meet up at a mall sometime and just open doors for women ;)

Hallelujah! The site is finally updated. Here is the link to the GKTW page with some very tentative info on the auction and the story I mentioned earlier.

Very cool! I hope that the auction is a huge success, what a great thing you're doing for GKTW!!!

February wrote:Please, Mods, can we get a Wall-E emoticon???

We've had one for quite some time now. Look under "Pixar Characters" in the pull-down list and you'll find him.

:wall-e:

And folks, if you want to get my attention about the need for a smilie, please PM me. I don't always notice whines in sig files.

Zazu wrote:We've had one for quite some time now. Look under "Pixar Characters" in the pull-down list and you'll find him.

:wall-e:

And folks, if you want to get my attention about the need for a smilie, please PM me. I don't always notice whines in sig files.

I didn't whine :( I asked politely. I didn't know you were the man to ask. Sorry about that. Thank you for the emoticon.

Anyway-

Jessie's blanket is finished. I hope to mail it this weekend, or sooner if I can get to the PO before then.

You can't see the whole thing but it's round with twelve points, kind of looks like a flower when its unfolded but I forgot to take the pics before I washed it and I didn't want to spread it all out and risk getting anything on it before I send it.

Bru