Subj : Re: What's "lunch"?? (was: Personal connections) To : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp From : rem642b Date : Wed Sep 07 2005 10:31 pm >>> You guys didn't eat lunch? > From: Richard Heathfield > I am beginning to think that Mr Maas has been gently trolling us. > He's actually got us to the point where he can say "I don't know what > you mean by 'lunch'" and still have some of us take him seriously! You're taking a fragment out of context. The context was my work at Stanford. The situation was that I worked alone until I got hungry enough to prompt me to stop work and lock up and go across the street to get a vending-machine burrito, then back to work. There was no such thing as standard meals at the same time every day, nothing that would deserve a name such as "lunch". So in that context, the word "lunch" is meaningless. I suppose I could have just posted a criptic minimal answer to the direct question (>>> quoted above): "I didn't." and left everyone wondering what that was supposed to mean. But actually one of my vending-machine snacks might qualify as "lunch" in the mind of whoever asked that question, so I really don't know what the question was supposed to mean in that context. .