----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Singer" To: Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 4:41 PM Subject: Re: [ADMIN]: give peace a chance... > Jai Dhar wrote: > ... > > > One newcomer turned up once, asked a question, had > > > quite a barrage of criticisms and hasn't been back since. > > > A little digging showed that they also happen to be a > > > frequenter (and recommender to other troubled teens) of > > > teen depression assistance sites. (I emailed them offlist > > > but got no response.) > ... > Russel, have you a medical license to treat depression? Talking with someone that's depressed is not "treating" them. Other than "treating" them nicely. ;-) > Why have you got an idea into your head that you could be > helpful for the kinda guys? You don't know Russell very well do you? How helpful is it to a depressed person when they are viehmently attacked for not knowing the PoPP? (perils of piclist posting ;-) Maybe the sign-up page should have a giant warning label. ;-) > Could you distinguish depressed > person from some sort of a pervert? Is that even relevant? > If a person gets dead frustrated after few Olin's light jokes, Olin's light jokes are humorous. Crushing someone's ego is not. > better let the person quit PICs (tag ist uber alles :-) EE is for > real folks, not for the ... Let the person be visagiste, or > fashion-model, or some sort of these ... Oh please. The problem with harsh language is that it only begets more harsh language; either from the OP or the underdogs of the list. Next thing you know, we're having conversations like this instead of about engineering. I've been away from the list for over a year, and it seems to me that there are allot more short tempers these days. Maybe it's the world economic situation, maybe it's something else. At any rate, it's not serving any productive purpose for us to take out our personal frustrations on others. In fact it's only going to serve to hurt everyone when people start making lists of who they will help and who they won't. For example, if someone decides to not share their knowledge with someone because they're pissed, then I won't get to hear it, and I can use all the information I can scavange. ;-) Not wishing to revive the "give peace a chance" thread, maybe we should all think it over before pressing send when we are getting ready to jump someones ass. I'm as guilty as anyone, as I have an extremely hard time resisting the temptation to jump into a pissing contest head first. ;-) What I find helpful is to go ahead and write up a really good flame and then just hit delete instead of send. I still get to do my little smack down, but I don't run the risk of making myself look like an ass in public. It's not like you get to see the look on peoples faces or the loud guffaws when they read it anyway. In fact, there is often no response, so why even bother? USENET has plenty of places to act like that and get full feedback from the audience. I have an idea, let's have a contest to see who has the most life problems and bestow upon that person the right to be a public ass. I'll start. In the last four years, my house has been flooded three times. Just over a year ago (right after a flood) I was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident. But even I realize that things could be much worse. Can anyone beat that? ;-) michael brown -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu