Interesting post about geek communication

I recently came across this blog post summarising a talk by Michael Schwern at BarCampBlock about communication among geeks and between geeks and others. I recommend it to all, geek or otherwise, as it makes some interesting points about how geeks tend to communicate. One point I found interesting was about ‘tact filters’:

Most non-geeks have outbound tact filters: they filter what they want to say and add polite noise as it passes through. Geeks have inbound tact filters: they take bare communication with no politeness and just wrap it in assumed politeness as they interpret it.

When non-geeks talk, geeks think the polite sounds they make are redundant.

When geeks talk, non-geeks just think they’re being incredibly rude.

Do you think that this is true, and had you already realised it? What do you think of the rest of the article?

A tree

This morning, at around 9:50 am, I was walking from the fruit and vegetable market to church (as I do almost every Sunday), when a woman came up to me with a small tree in a green plastic pot with gold-coloured foil around it.
“Would you like a free tree?” she asked.
I replied that I did not really have anywhere to put it, but she gave it to me anyway, putting it into the bag in which I was carrying 3 carrots and 6 eggs which I had just bought. She said something about going away somewhere, it being a bonzai of some sort, and that she was sure that I would take good care of it, then returned to her car and drove off, leaving me with the tree. I continued my walk to church, with one bag rather more full than it had been. A few minutes later, I removed the foil.