META: What is Sexual Activity
Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Fri, 22 Aug 97 10:45:29 CST
Tony Hollick requested:
Rick, kindly cease from using provocative language: 'flame wars' are
'not on' hereabouts; and when I 'flame' people, they _burn_. OK?
Rick Knight responds:
Rather than address this in a private e-mail, let me first say that it
wasn't my intention to start a flame war although your posts as a rule
do tend to find me patting my pockets for a lighter. And speaking of
"lighter", please lighten up. This is a digest of *ideas* and if you
don't like the ones I express, try to look at the source of that
dissatisfaction rather than as some guy (me) as your perceived enemy
which is *flaming* you in some personally damaging way.
A veiled threat such as your last statement prompts me to keep this
discussion public because if my credit goes whacko all of a sudden,
I'd like an audit trail of where that dysfunction may have originated.
The moral of the story is that it is unwise to threaten people without
just cause. It causes them to be defensive unnecessarily. The verb
"burn" in conjunction with human beings is usually regarded as a bad
thing. Unless I am to assume you are limiting your countermeasure to
verbal assaults (which I don't publically respond to and I have a very
thick skin), your response was inappropriate because the only thing I
might've said that could be remotely interpreted as hostile was to
refer to your post as a "rant".
As for a response to your questions about the mating rituals of
American teachers and their students, Sarah pretty much covered the
topic adequately for me. Thanks Sarah.
Rick