> It takes a certain strength of intellectual character to expend effort
> on assimilating a point of view with which you think you disagree,
> discovering that it is coherent, and then announcing to a whole
> community that the elements of a picture you formerly rejected have
> fallen into place for you. Many people on this list lack that
> intellectual honesty. I may be one of them.
We are _all_ "one of them". It's human nature, and it's a strength
not a weakness.
> Jason, with this one post you have established yourself as an honest and
> thoughtful participant to this on-going discussion. I'm sending this to
> you personally because some would take it as a backhanded crticism, i.e.
> they'd see praise for you as implicit ridicule of thier own obstinate
> behaviour. Still, I suspect that you've elevated yourself in the eyes of
> many Virions and set an excellent example. I fear I'll be withdrawing
> from the discussion starting almost immediately. I'm about to start a
> new job which is going to eat up most of my time. I've seen a
> disturbing trend away from rational discourse on this list and toward
> sophmoric ego battles.
It's tough when you tell someone something you're proud of and they look
you dead in the eye and say "You're an idiot". But, if there's any
absolute truth, then this is it: The world's tough. We've all been
through it in the past, we'll all go through it in the future. To cry
about it and call those people "sophmoric" is to ignore the ways of the
world. Sprout a dick and deal with it.
> I trust that the contributions of people like
> David McFadzean, Ken Pantheists, Reed Konsler, and Hakeeb Nandalal and
> yourself will keep the Virus discussion list from degenerating into
> flame war hell.
If the Virus list becomes nothing more than "rational discourse",
stripped of all emotion, it'll die. Why? It will not speak the language
of Humanity.
BTW, I found this, your "Swan Song" posting, to be a windy, ass-kissing,
piece of drivel.
-- David Leeper dleeper@gte.net Homo Deus http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/index.htm 1 + 1 != 2 http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/CMath.html