Question: has anybody actually had any contact with Detweiler recently? I know he used to be a rational and respectable Usetter; keeper of the Privacy FAQ, runner of an autoposter service for other people's FAQs, etc. I'd like to think this is all somebody's research project or piece of performance art, but otherwise... it's pretty ugly to watch this disintegration happen. The deterioration has been marked even within the last few weeks. The RISKS posting was coherent enough, and no more paranoid than say, the average talk.politics.guns poster. My opinion is just from his language, logic, reaction to other people - whether his conspiracy theories are true are not is pretty irrelevant. Multiple identites mapping to one person is hardly unusual in electronic spaces, but most people regard tracking them down as a challenge or an entertainment, not as the cause for desperate rage and paranoia. Cf. the netsport of hunting down John Palmer identities. Is he actually a student at Colorado State? If so, and he's genuinely sending out death threats, the recipients might seriously consider forwarding them there. Not to get him in trouble, but perhaps to get someone to look into the situation before this accelerating downward curve gets where ever it is going. There's plenty of nuts on the net, but the level of their nuttiness is stable enough. I don't think I've ever seen someone fall apart like this before. Of course, maybe it *is* just performance art... Laura -- -------------- Laura Burchard / burchard@digex.net ---------------- "It didn't take very much reductio to get right down to absurdium from where you started." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about this anonymous remail service, send mail to remail@tamsun.tamu.edu with the word "remail help" as the only words in the subject field.