Sorry, Norman. Thanks for the kind words and the clarification!

Robby


On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Norman Gray <nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> Robby (and Matthias), hello.
>
> On 2013 Feb 10, at 21:05, Robby Findler <ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Is this intended to be sarcastic? Do you believe the creators of
> something (that they give away even) are not free to plan for its future?
>
> Sarcastic?  Ermmm, no, it was not intended to be sarcastic.  Really not.
>  Indeed, in a couple of decades of posting via uucp and smtp I think this
> may be the bit of any text I've written which has been most diametrically
> misunderstood.
>
> My remark was intended to be straightforwardly laudatory.  Matthias's call
> seems a fine manifesto for a better and highly parenthesised future, and
> the sort of thing that should probably end up blu-tacced to somebody's
> wall, with or without a highly contrasty picture of Matthias (who may or
> may not be photogenic, I don't know).
>
> I see that Matthias says:
>
> > I see myself much more as the Milton Friedman of the Lisp family than
> some fake clone of a murderer-terrorist :-)
>
> Friedman and the Chicago School?  Hmm, I'm not entirely sure where we're
> going there.
>
> Guevara?  I was intending to invoke iconic optimism rather than the messy
> intricacies of brute history, and bracketing this with 'We hold these
> truths...' was intended to evoke other iconic optimisms (rather than messy
> intricacies).  However I think this may have been a poor choice, since he
> (and as it turns out Friedman) are figures with radically different
> valencies here and in the various Americas, and are ipso facto a poor
> choice for apothegms.
>
> I don't think those valencies are obviously useful to discuss on-list.  In
> case it's not clear: any negative personal connotations a reader detects in
> these remarks, that reader should consider retracted.
>
> Oh dear....
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Norman
>
>
> --
> Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
>
>
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