At 09:41 AM 1/21/2011, Solomon Schechter wrote:
>Please, please, please..  This is the only place in the world where
>I don't have
>to watch mom and dad fight over who is funnier, Leno or
>Letterman..  Please, pet
>your own viper all you want, but go talk about it somewhere
>else.  This forum is
>for the Vanagon and those things associated with it.  don't ruin it with one
>more response..  PUSH THE RESET BUTTON

Dear Solomon,

The reset button has been pushed, twice.  If a third push is
needed  Ben and I will be thinking seriously about sanctions.

If your interests run that way you might consider joining the model
engineering list.  It's a similarly sized similarly international
list but with much wider distribution around the world, and there is
a similar sense of community.  A number of the members are prominent
in their respective fields.  There are a few differences, other than
model engineering vs Vanagons: the great bulk of the membership is
age 50 or over, because few people under fifty have the patience for
model engineering.  The forbidden topics are Weetabix and Foucault
pendulums.  Bottom posting and trimming of quotes are
required.  Nobody ever breathes a word about
politics.  Nobody.  Ever.  The language tends slightly more toward
the shop, in a genteel sort of way.  Civility is taken for
granted.  In over ten years on the list I've seen exactly one sharp
response.  And I believe the list owner has put on his official hat
once but I can't think why.  It's remarkable, really.  But first,
that list is something that every member holds precious, because the
people there understand him (or in two or three cases her) much
better than the people he generally associates with.  Second, it only
spans about two generations instead of four.  And third, machinist
work is for patient people, so the people on the list are generally
speaking patient.  It took at least fifty or sixty knee-jerk "if you
were using Linux you wouldn't have this problem" responses over
several years from a member in Paraguay before another member asked
him to please pipe down.

Yours,
David