Re: separation of church and state?

From: Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:38:14 -0000
Message-ID: <1191742694.188301.91520_at_k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>


On Oct 6, 9:48 am, "Roy Hann" <specia..._at_processed.almost.meat> wrote:
> "paul c" <toledobythe..._at_ooyah.ac> wrote in message
>
> news:hoONi.6504$_K.2827_at_pd7urf3no...
>
> > It seems a little doctrinaire to me. I can agree that the "result isn't a
> > relation" but on the other hand a user could see such a result without
> > knowing that "ORDER BY" was involved and not be faulted for taking it to
> > be a relation.
>
> What user ever would? Users never see relations. They see various kinds of
> reports (using the word "report" to mean anything users get to see).

Not really. Users only see a *representation* of a report. The actual report cannot be seen.

Well, that's not really true, either. Users only see photons reflected off of the paper the representation is printed on.

Okay, that's a simplification. Since black ink *fails* to reflect, users
really see the photons reflected off the part of the paper that doesn't
have ink on it, and their brains reconstruct a mental image of the glyphs that make up the representation of the report of the relation.


All that goofy stuff I wrote above can be argued for, but why? It's much simpler just to point to a paper with "{1, 2, 3}" written on it and say "that is the set containing one, two, and three."

Marshall Received on Sun Oct 07 2007 - 09:38:14 CEST

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