Hi Prepaster,
I think Scott's original point was "this software is great, I haven't really tried this kind of stuff before" - just as if somebody who would have found a new text editor would come out excited "this software is really nice, I am not used to editing stuff without graphic user interface", or "this photo editing software is really cool, I want my photo editing stuff be easy, fast and intuitive" the text editor NOT meaning that vim or pine would be anything worse, or Photoshop being bad - people's needs and starting points are just different, both for software and life.
A change can start simply, maybe if someone tries something that makes them feel good, maybe they try something else that might feel them good after a while, if it comes natural. People come from different backgrounds, so on the other side waiting everybody to always have tried or even openly accept concepts totally different than theirs isn't always realistic. Let[s say someone tries to be afew weeks without eating meat and feels great, then tells :"I'm not really into vegetarianism or any animal activism, but I feel great without eating meat". So that could be heard on 2 ways: "I feel great" .. and the little hard core animal rights fighting vegan asking "what does he have against us"? But the poor guy who is trying his meat-free time would probably never go and want to know more about stuff like animal rights or anything even vaguely related to veganism or vegetarianism if what he got back as an echo to his "I feel great" would be "oh you #@$@%, what do you have against animal rights and what I have been working for all my life?"
So let's try maybe reading the orignal statement as "This software helps me feel great". Maybe it's the first step, maybe he'll later try something that might him feel even greater.
And .. I'm pretty sure Scottw isn't as hard headed as my mum. My mum will just never ever understand and accept a few things in the life, and there is no way I'd win a fight against that. So let her keep her hardcore Christian mind, eat all the meat she wants, tell me as often as she wants about how and how many babies this and that cousin of mine has - things like being a vegetarian, not eating meat, and not wanting to have any kids at all would go far above her brain. Even yoga would, even considering that I saw a yoga book at my grandmas house ... she must have "forgot" it from a hospital library, since it still had all the stamps from the library too...