Michael, bravo, well stated.

I’ve often wanted to say (so I’ll go ahead and say it) that if you come to a Tavern expecting that anything (anything = Calvinism, Lutheranism, Bushism, Kerryism, Republicanism, Democratism, Libertarianism, etc..) other than Beer be served you’ve come to the wrong place.

I worked for a company a couple of years ago that used email extensively. I’d archived everything in Outlook and when I left I counted my messages both in and out. Over the period of just under a year I’d sent and received just over 17,000 email messages, a ridiculous amount of communication.

That said, I learned something about cyber communication during that time, I learned that it’s a lot like doing suicide assessments over the phone; you’re handicapped by the lack of visual cues. I don’t know how many times I’d see some sort of personality conflagration take place and at the end the sender would say “that’s not what I said”, and the recipient would say “I thought that’s what you meant”.

We add smiley faces, winks, JNs and SWs to our messages, but even though these cues have agreed upon meanings they still have different connotations to different people.

I used to get a bit lit whenever Phillip used the word “amusing”. Finally I figured out that he really meant “funny”. ;-}