Re: virus: Tim regains his mount

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Sun, 19 Oct 1997 12:48:21 -0700 (PDT)


On Sat, 18 Oct 1997, Wade T.Smith wrote:

> And my refusal to respond to your earlier (and inconsequential) vitriole
> in no way denies my personal disgust about them.

A bomb must be tossed from time to time in every revolution.

> Now that you've totally relegated Neil to the castaways, (gee, I never
> noticed him...), are you on some campaign to rid yourself of all of us?

Actual I was quite surprised when I scared off the Nateman, not my
intention at all.

Rid myself of you? Never! But I do tire of all of *our* habits of
countering instead of advancing. Look at your own posts (I have mine!),
what is the percentage that offer new ideas or directions of thought, as
opposed to those which counter another's ideas?

I think the percentage is too low (for myself as much as any other). And
I suspect that we are generating a culture here that accepts that low
percentage and, worse still, one which indeed encourages it. New ideas
are not given the chance to prove there usefulness before being
offhandedly dismissed. This pattern marks the death-song of any
institution committed to creating new ideas (although it often takes much
longer for the decay to bring th superstructure down) and it is happening
here.

I don't want to see this forum die, I love you all too much for that. But
the growth curve is slowing. What can we do to reverse the trend?

-Prof. Tim