So it came out the other day the people who hang around Julian's office (Julian, Hunter, Jordan) have a Harry-Nic scale of people. See, I'm one end, and Nic is the other. Intermediates on the scale go Harry-Julian-Hunter-Jordan-Nic. (There was some discussion that Emily Clader might be even more to the Nic side of the scale than Nic himself, but I don't think any consensus was reached there.)
I objected that Nic and I can hardly be considered opposites. Well, I was told, the scale only applies to the ways that you and Nic are different.
The others then attempted to see if they could describe just what it was a scale of, but all their attempts failed (in that they caused reversals of some of the comparisons); eventually they concluded that this was a foolish exercise in verbal overshadowing[0] and left it at "the Harry-Nic scale".
What really bugs me is that in their attempts at verbal descriptions, I'm not sure which end of those scales I was supposed to be on.
-Harry
[0]I introduced this term to Hunter last week. His initial reaction after "that's a really useful term" was along the lines of "Oh no! It's overshadowing my pre-existing verbal-overshadowing-like-concept!". It took me a bit to convince him that this was not a real problem.
I objected that Nic and I can hardly be considered opposites. Well, I was told, the scale only applies to the ways that you and Nic are different.
The others then attempted to see if they could describe just what it was a scale of, but all their attempts failed (in that they caused reversals of some of the comparisons); eventually they concluded that this was a foolish exercise in verbal overshadowing[0] and left it at "the Harry-Nic scale".
What really bugs me is that in their attempts at verbal descriptions, I'm not sure which end of those scales I was supposed to be on.
-Harry
[0]I introduced this term to Hunter last week. His initial reaction after "that's a really useful term" was along the lines of "Oh no! It's overshadowing my pre-existing verbal-overshadowing-like-concept!". It took me a bit to convince him that this was not a real problem.
