Bravo Eva!

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@UDel.Edu)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 11:52:13 PST


Hi Eva--

I really laughed about
> Anyway, all in all, I take Eugene's implementation as a sendup of American
> legalism, rather than as an endorsement -- I may, naturally be totally
> wrong. But it IS a bit of a funny reversal to frame our Russian Mafioso #1
> = Eugene as a representative of American cultural Imperialism. Who knows,
> if it had been possible for him to get a professorate in Educational
> psychology in the USSR in the 80s he might also have been living with one
> foot on each side of the Atlantic today.

And I think you are right about
> One thing I
> have learned on the Xlists -- from Eugene, Matvey and others -- is how
> multilayered Russian irony is, especially when spiked with Jewish
> humour. I
> do not always understand it (perhaps I do not even always notice
> it :-) but
> most of the time I enjoy it even without understanding ;-)
> Considering that
> Eugene has raised his voice AGAINST rules, and that he also has
> placed THAT
> proposal as the first and thus most accessible item on the long list. As
> Mike noted, and anyone who actually visits the Voting Booth can see, the
> vote for "no rules" IS pretty overwhelming.

To illustrate how right you are let me give a Jewish joke:
A troubled young Jewish couple tired of constant squirrels and scandals with
each other decided to go to a very wise rabbi to decide who is right between
them and how to finish their conflicts. First, the husband told his story
and his complains. The rabbi thought in a while in silence and replied, "I
think you are right!" Then the wife told her story. The rabbi thought in a
while and replied, "You are right!" The husband got really upset over that,
he yelled at the rabbi, "How both of us can be right if we are telling
opposite things?! You are inconsistent!!" The rabbi thought in a while on
what the man said and replied, "Hum, you are right." The wife exclaimed,
"But you can't go both ways!!" The rabbi sighed and said, "And you are right
as well..."

Eugene
Russian Maffioso#1
American Imperialist
Univeristy of Delaware

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eva Ekeblad [mailto:eva.ekeblad@ped.gu.se]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 9:11 AM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: at least!
>
>
> Hi all
>
> Phillip Capper brings up something that relates closely to my interest in
> the intriguing dynamics of mailinglists. In one way this is something that
> was noted already by the organizational psychologists who studied computer
> mediated communication in its beginnings: this medium works
> excellently for
> brainstorming, but rather badly for decisionmaking (which apparently is a
> social activity that is dependent on an activity present at hand,
> or on the
> formal trappings (genre tools) of board meeetings, deadlines and
> suchlike).
> Thence, actually, the development of software facilities like the one
> Eugene has been using :-)
>
> With the multilogical (in a broad sense) nature of the flow of mailinglist
> discussion _it is just not the case_ that the path a discussion takes can
> in any way be taken as some sort of expression of general consensus on the
> list.
>
> I have looked at at the month-by-month statistics of messages distributed
> over contributors for 1999, and placed it in relation to an assumed number
> of 300 subscribers (there were 302 unique names on the only sample of the
> roster for 1999 that I have, and it agrees with figures I have for 1998).
> On the average there were 242 messages posted by 53 different contributors
> per month. On an average 6 contributors produced 50% of the postings. So
> 18% of the subscribers ever post anything in a month. And 12% of those who
> DO post, produce 50% of the mailflow. This means that 2% of the
> subscribers
> produce 50% of the mailflow. Who is IN those "sets" will of course vary.
> But my conclusion is that what is posted should in no way be taken as "the
> will of the List". And I would also dare to say that threads do
> not usually
> end in consensus, but rather by fatigue and the emergence of new topics.
>
> Nevertheless, it is very much a part of human psychology to READ it as
> consensus and as "the will of the List". I guess that we are by evolution
> prone to transfer our modes of perception from activities in a
> same-place&same-time context. The "we" includes myself: to me as
> participant my research findings are counter-intuitive.
>
> About Phillip's and Yrjö's takes on Eugene's voting procedure. One thing I
> have learned on the Xlists -- from Eugene, Matvey and others -- is how
> multilayered Russian irony is, especially when spiked with Jewish
> humour. I
> do not always understand it (perhaps I do not even always notice
> it :-) but
> most of the time I enjoy it even without understanding ;-)
> Considering that
> Eugene has raised his voice AGAINST rules, and that he also has
> placed THAT
> proposal as the first and thus most accessible item on the long list. As
> Mike noted, and anyone who actually visits the Voting Booth can see, the
> vote for "no rules" IS pretty overwhelming.
>
> Anyway, all in all, I take Eugene's implementation as a sendup of American
> legalism, rather than as an endorsement -- I may, naturally be totally
> wrong. But it IS a bit of a funny reversal to frame our Russian Mafioso #1
> = Eugene as a representative of American cultural Imperialism. Who knows,
> if it had been possible for him to get a professorate in Educational
> psychology in the USSR in the 80s he might also have been living with one
> foot on each side of the Atlantic today.
>
> Eva
>



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