This wee tiff
Interesting little exchange here, between Remoak and ?Kiwi Blue. I've seen this happen before, ironically on Pprune - there was a huge long thread on Rotorheads, in which one person posted asking about an accident, and suggesting there may have been more to the accident than the FAA had found. Everyone else nearly took his head off, over several pages, and then at the end of the exchange, he wrote something that completely changed the sense and context of his original post, and all the de-capitaters were most embarrassed. This seems to be another example of the phenomenon. Because email is devoid of body cues, it is a much "narrower" communication channel. Go back and read Remoak's original post - "because XXX, one would assume XXX". It is POSSIBLE that it was written sarcastically, but it's also quite possible that it wasn't. The statement makes perfect sense if you read it in either contexts. When I first read Remoak's comment, it didn't even occur to me that it could have been sarcastic, so I was quite surprised by the response. Looking at it again, one can see how it COULD have been sarcastic, although it doesn't seem to me that it was. Hence the flare-up. Some interesting lessons here, methinks, on the limitations of email...