On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, J. van Baardwijk wrote:

> >Because you're not the damn police.  Why should anyone be happy that
> >someone who's not the police "graciously" declines to give them a ticket?
> >Why should I let you unilaterally define the terms of a conversation so
> >that it can only go your way?
>
> Thank you for proving my point, Marvin.

I'm sorry, you had a point?  :-)  Apologies:  yes, I would much rather
receive a warning than a ticket.  And after further consideration, I think
that if we all calm down we'll see that there's no grand Brin-L police
state conspiracy going on, just some clumsy modes of expression.

Still, the police metaphor is a bad one, for reasons I've already
outlined.

Marvin Long
Austin, Texas

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