On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 15:00 -0700, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
I read an interesting take on "why" once. Can't remember the link though... nerds need to remember that normal folk appreciate niceities in conversation, and normal folk need to remember that nerds are often very blunt but aren't really trying to be offensive.
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html