On "consideration" for personal plights good/bad...

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@asu.edu>]

I am not sure if my answer to Tahany's question (as to whether the fact
that people may have kids--even cuter than my own--ruling their lives)
will be taken into "consideration"-- I hope my answer was not
too flippant. 

Here is my policy, generally, about these matters (as articulated by
another colleague in a class he is teaching--which, surprisingly
enough--happens to be on the same subject 
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse454/02au/policies.html
):

------------------------
Reasonableness
The "Reasonable Person Principle" applies throughout this
course. This principle simply states that a reasonable request made in a
reasonable fashion shall be reasonably handled by reasonable persons. The
TA's and I are reasonable people: we expect that everybody else involved
in this class will be as well. 
----------------------------

The point is that  I am aware of (and am resigned to ;-) the fact
that people do continue to have lives outside of the class (the nerve of
them!), and will do my best to accommodate the vicissitudes of your life,
as long as the requests are "reasonable", and you have been
reasonable otherwise... 

Rao