Hello. I've been on this list for a long time and noticed some disturbing correlations between Perry Metzger's and Detweiler's posts. Now, bear with me on this. First of all, has anyone noticed how Perry flames Detweiler with the most rabid virulence of anyone? But what is more interesting is that his flames are always kind of lame. They don't have any cutting comebacks. They're just filled with ad-hominem insults. Now, if you recall how Detweiler was posting under tmp@netcom.com to the newsgroups, he intentionally poisoned the reputation of one of his tentacles, "Beavis Butthead", by having it hurl nasty insults, nasty words, and wallow in degrading thoughts. That way, to ridicule a position he finds abhorrent, he has Beavis take the position. An interesting "reputation cancellation" effect occurs, quite like in Shakespearan prose when a slow-witted rioter says, "First, let's kill all the laywers". Its a literary device. So Detweiler, posting from Perry Metzger's addess as a "tentacle", is accomplishing several things. First of all, he hasn't been discovered since the inception of the list. And by flaming Detweiler tentacles so hotly, he maintains the illusion of being a distinct enemy, someone else who is repulsed by Detweiler stuff. And he's been more effective in starting massive flamewars than Detweiler ever was. (In fact, when Detweiler was on the list under his own name, they got into heated arguments over ridiculous issues no one else cared about like "changing the cypherpunk name to something less radical"). But most of all, he has a "negative tentacle" to talk about ideas that he really detests, and causes other people to detest by association. Moreover: Have you noticed that "Perry" rhymes with "Larry"? And that "Lehman" (where he posts from) starts with "L"? And sounds a little like "madman"? Also, Perry talks about stock trading and digital cash. I think this reflects Detweiler's well-known interest in digital cash (he posted to the imp-interest list for a long time). And Detweiler liked to smirk at Perry being the same as Parry, the paranoid AI computer program simulation! I think he *built in* this insult by design! It's his little "inside joke"! Makes you wonder, eh? And has anyone actually MET Metzger? I mean, of the people we can TRUST? He's in New York and has had NOTHING to do with the CA cypherpunk meetings. And it's possible that the Metz part of his name is just based on the NY Mets baseball team! Another little "piece": he has been on the list forever, even when Detweiler leaves (but always comes back). Detweiler is *known* to be drawn to this list "like a moth to a flame". I think he was only *pretending* to go away to start a flamewar while sticking around as Perry (and post from Perry to help heat up the flamewar as he "left"). He reminds me of Sternlight. No one likes him. He has no reputation. But he's immensely effective in starting massive flamewars. Detweiler loves to hurl the ad hominem stuff all over talk.politics.crypto! Metzger has *got* to be a Detweiler tentacle. It makes perfect sense. I've listed far more reasons than those for Kragen (who I wasn't sure about). I have heard of other reasonable-minded people leaving because of the Perry flames, anyway. At least I hope the Perry-tentacle will tone down the routine scathing ad hominem face-slapping routine and posting lame drivel no one cares about. Demonizing people rarely serves anyone's best interests. BTW, I don't like what has been going on the list where there are anonymous attacks on people in the list. Do we really want to bring this kind of toxic rumormongering into cyberspace? If we had some reputation systems our remailers would probably be less dangerous. In fact, that inspires a Zen of Cyberspace joke: Q. If a remailer is yin and a reputation system is yang, what is Yin without Yang? A. The sound of one hand clapping. Voila! <g> Gotta run. Bye.