All I'm asking is that people read the stuff they're going to talk about.
And I'M regarded as the arrogant one. Amazing. RTFP.
Tim Romano



At 09:42 AM 3/8/03, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>In a message dated 03/08/2003 9:30:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
> >
> > This really won't wash. Conversation (even the conversation of the 18th
> > c. Paris salons) would be killed by such "expectations." To fulfill
> > those expectations _once in a while_ the basic expectations must
> > acknowledge that conversation, whether in a room or on a maillist, is
> > primarily phatic.
> >
> > Perhaps the standards for maillists must be looser yet, for maillists
> > (a) eliminate background knowledge of the participants (the kind of
> > background that allows recognition that the stupidity of a statement
> > does not reflect stupdity of the speaker) and (b) kill tone. Note that
> > this thread has degenerated into Did Too -- Did Not in reference to the
> > tone of a post.
> >
> > One way to learn through conversation is to make statements without
> > thinking them out too fully, and letting the conversation winnow out the
> > wheat from the chaff -- but that is only possible if participants don't
> > throw a fit about the chaff in the air.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
>
>Given the spirit of the Homeland Security, perhaps we could have a list
>director of  Pound Security.  This person would be responsible for vetting
>each listee, ascertaining that each participant has a prescribed level of
>knowledge, a perquisite IQ,  definitive intimacy with every publication on
>Pound, and sufficient wind with which to deliver proofs of one's mastery of
>verbosity.  Nominations?
>
>jb...
>
>
>
>They hang the man and flog the woman
>That steal the goose from off the common,
>But let the greater villain loose
>That steals the common from the goose.
>
>Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency
>to render the head too large for the body.  A standing military
>force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe.
>companions to liberty.  -- Thomas Jefferson
>
>
>"America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and disinformed
>by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say
>corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that the government doesn't
>want us to know."
>
>Gore Vidal