[tomjen3]

In general secretaries have way more power than one would normally think.

[cema]

I wanted to joke about Secretaries General but then thought it below the HN level.

[cabacon]

The "I was going to say X but I didn't" joke seems common in the CS/computer community. I find it vaguely irritating, because you're saying something you know you shouldn't be saying, as evidenced by distancing yourself from the statement. I was going to downvote, but maybe I can add to the discussion instead.

This technique has a name, either paralepsis (http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/paralepsisterm.htm) or preterition (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/preterition). I mention this, because I feel like having a name for it helps point it out, and perhaps can convince people that they aren't as clever as they think they are when they employ it.

Please don't bring down the level of discussion here by making the joke you are pretending not to make. Thanks.

[cema]

I have noticed that many people here think that jokes do not add to the quality of discussions. A joke is just one of several ways of introducing non-direct references to arguments (I think I can call them "hints"). I had a hypothesis that people may not like such hints which, after all, may be culture-dependent. So I tried other ways of hinting and found out that they do not seem to evoke such a hostile response. So it must be something else, but I am not sure what exactly. Another possibility is that people may be offended at jokes, even inoffensive ones, but this is not something I would like to test.

As far as rhetorical devices are concerned, there are many of them that may be used in a discussion without detracting from it. HN does not need to be dry and often is not.