Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Computer gender

My dear friend Helen just forwarded this to me.....its really cute!

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

"House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa."
"Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."

A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun.Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The boy's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computadora"), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

(THIS GETS BETTER!)

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("el computador"), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

Helen's forward stated that the women won. I dunno, I think both sides had great points!



















Wishing everyone a great day!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey there! Just checkin' in to see your latest...the quilts look great! Thanks for the guidance on the diabetic "stuff" - we newbies get confused easily. Tim has hit the "I have loads of energy" part of the induction phase: a real eye opener to him, that he can feel that good again! The soonest we have been able to schedule a doc is the 25th - of Sept.!!! That meter is going to be very helpful since it looks like we are going it alone for a while. Thanks again, and lots of love :)