Netiquette

[Gary Cottrell]

>From: Stevan Harnad <harnad at clarity.Princeton.EDU>

>> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 12:38:09 PST
>> From: Gary Cottrell <gary%cs at ucsd.edu>
>> 
>> ...I find several of those limericks really offensive.
>> Degrading women degrades the degrader...
>> 
>> ...I also find the continued use of the "Missionaries and
>> Cannibals" problem in AI as really poor taste...
>
>Is there more than one Gary Cottrell on the net? Or has the one that
>posted the "Rumelphart" piece just a few weeks ago undergone some sort
>of an aesthetic conversion experience?
>
>Stevan Harnad

I think there's a big difference between satirizing individuals and
using notions that degrade a class of people. The notion of "whore" is
something that applies only to women. You can argue about this, and
*we should take this argument off the net*, but there is no equivalent
notion for men. It is an inherently sexist concept.

Yes, the fake names I use in my humor are sometimes cheap shots.
Sometimes they are just the closest funniest similar sounding thing I
can think of, and not meant to attribute any particular qualities to
the individuals so targeted.  As far as I know my farts are the worst
around.

gary