--- Peter D'Souza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Gratuitous, yes; defensive, no. All I did was to >point out that the anecdote was meant to inspire and >(in my opinion) did nobody any harm. You're a >researcher (from what I understand), and you tell me >that society has been caused "grievous harm", so I >will wait for you to supply proof of such grievous >harm and injury to society. >
Peter, I want to thank you for your mea culpas without questioning your motive and intent in offering them. I do not want to lessen in any way the pleasure you derive from grinning and giggling while sending your gratuitous (but not defensive) posts under this thread. Perhaps, your expressing of a personal opinion about Cynthia's motive to inspire is more important than my expressing the fact that her recycled copied and pasted material contained blatant falsehoods. However, I am surprised that you are demanding proof to back my statement of a common universally accepted rational moral principle that propagating lies and half-truths does grave harm to society. It should be quite obvious to anybody that I am simply being consistent in applying this principle to all urban legends circulated in this forum by anybody, a principle whose validity has been amply demonstrated over the course of recorded history. I am also sensing the compulsion you are now beginning to feel to defend your own private urban legend debunking record (without being defensive, I assume), and to somehow get back at me (without being defensive or offensive, I assume) by distorting my past public record of debunking urban legends and hoaxes. Regarding Mario's AIDS needles hoax, I have already said all I wanted to say. No amount of post-hoc rationalization can raise that urban legend from the lowly position that it occupies. But the really interesting and curious thing for me is the following from you: > >Cynthia had a posting about what to do in the event >of a tsunami, it contained a lot of useful advice. You >proceeded to tear it apart. At the end of it all I >don't think you really helped anyone, and I don't >think Cynthia harmed any one. > Please tell me which posting this was, and what useful advice Cynthia gave us. We will see then if I didn't help anyone in "tearing it apart", as you say. > >Many months ago Cynthia sent out a chain letter to >this group which contained falsehoods, so I promptly >wrote her privately and explained that it was false. > Please also tell me which chain letter this was, in which you managed to detect some falsehoods. Considering that you have detected none in her last installment of inspiring, copied and pasted material, I am really curious to know your threshold of detection of obvious falsehoods in chain letters. > >Hope that helps clarify. > Unfortunately, it does not. Cheers, Santosh
