On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 08:20 AM, John Young wrote:

Faustine's right that there is far too much effort wasted here on trying to control what gets posted, or should or shouldn't be, rather than improve the quality of the discourse and encourage new voices, in particular those different from one's own, and most especially different from one's pack-howling.

You mean like your foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of Declan and others? Odd, this, considering how much material you volunteered at Bell 2. You mean like your Toto-emulating incomprehensible ramblings? By the way, calling CJ Parker a "genius" is the strangest thing I've read in a long while. He fits the pattern we're now seeing with mattd, and that we saw in the past with Detweiler and Vulis. And that we often see with your own posts, John. Namely, a mix of schizophrenia, dyslexia, paranoia, and Tourette's Syndrome. Some are more dyslexic than others, and it's likely that with some the word juxtapositions and malapropisms are completely intentional. I used to thing folks were trying to emulate Detweiler, then Toto. Now I'm thinking there's some common miswiring in the brains of these folks. --Tim May "That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau

On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 01:41 PM, John Young wrote:

There are many voices and styles of discourse, and to be sure a variety of ways to moderate by intimidation and ridicule and proclaiming the one true way to do it without seeming to.

Different strokes, differing anarchies, and archies pretending otherwise. That is what makes this commons more interesting than the closed salons. Which by no means precluded all the vile behavior each of us foams about as if not a practitioner.

I miss the variety of serious and humorous discourse of Detweiler, Vulis, Toto, Perry, Gilmore, Sandy, Harry Hawk, Eric Hughes, come to think of it, a whole collection of accused misfits here,

Perry left because we were not staid enough. He formed his own moderated group. Sandy posts in bursts, vanishing for several months, then returning. Harry Shapiro/Hawk I have never seen on this list. Maybe a couple of posts in the early days, but I doubt it. I think you are confusing this list with Extropians, where he was once a frequent poster. John Gilmore was also never a frequent poster, as any check of the archives will show. He posted infrequently in 1992-4, and almost not at all since then. Occasionally he forwards articles he's published elsewhere. Longing for the good ole days is one thing, but longing for a past that was never there is just silly. As for Detweiler and Vulis, they contributed little of use, and reams of noise. Someone told me recently that Detweiler has surfaced in another forum, ranting about something weird. Vulis seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.

--Tim May "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams

On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 11:28 AM, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

As for paranoid schizophrenia, Tim, least Dr. Nash's beautiful mind won a prize or two before seeing a spook behind every Bush.

Back in the Plonk file you go. --Tim May "If I'm going to reach out to the the Democrats then I need a third hand.There's no way I'm letting go of my wallet or my gun while they're around." --attribution uncertain, possibly Gunner, on Usenet

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Tim May wrote:

I'm thinking there's some common miswiring in the brains of these folks.

If you think cpunks are bad, try cryonicists. Ugh.

Declan wrote:

Or there's something about the cypherpunks list that attracts 'em, which I tend to think is the case.

Agreed, that is what distinguishes this list, now, and based on the archives, from its beginning. While Tim used miswiring coyly, the term fits most of what produces innovative stuff in human affairs. The wired, no pun Declan, just repeat, exploit, copy, plagiarize, steal, and claim as their own what the miswired originated, again as evidenced here but hardly only here. And the wired are forever proclaiming the need for more innovation, but when they attempt to demonstrate what they mean, all too often it is very slyly repackaged fruit cultivated by, ahem, nobodies. Reputation is an obession with the wired, knowing as they do that without that they are nothing. So they must erect fantastic images of themselves, constantly culling their output for new ways of packaging it; they must destroy whatever innovation puts their reputation at risk; they must band together to promote each other's brand; and they must ever be alert for threatening other totems and taboos which diminish their own voodoo. The wired are pathetically traditional, are addicted to pantheons of heros, fear genuine novelty, vainly struggle to impose their carapacial vision on reality to hide their dread of the unknown. The love special connections to others like themselves, a web of trust, a secret, exclusive web is best of all (though cloaked with a scrim of openness). Miswired, yeah, that's the the true cypherpunk waywardness, and within that open-minded ambience a few self-filtered, -censored wired are tolerable to remind what not to do, how not to be, what not to say, who not to hang with, who to be kindly to despite the deliberate self-incapacitation to avoid risk. The wired love grammar and other strict rules of human affairs so they can play at defying them in an approved manner, having banked their all on insider cheating, using the rules to favor themselves. The wired love government and its perfect mate anti-government. But fear going too far and rationalize cowardice as shrewdness. None of this is to be taken seriously for it adopts the style of the long-winded wired: shut up and listen to my infallible preaching.