Re: Dear Paul, July 12, 2006, updated, July 13, 2006, updated

Blah, blah, blah...just like always

Instead of writing a novel espousing your infinite wisdom on the state
of this or other newsgroups and web forums, why not spend that time
out in your shop ramming a beautiful fountain or exhibition rocket?
Anyone who's been reading this group for more than a few months knows
your take on this issue.

Realize too that many of those "kewl bombz dudez" are now 20-something
adults with a real interest in pyro. I haven't seen a post here from
a kewl in many years...they tend to hang out on like-minded web
forums.



On 15 Jul 2006 17:42:06 -0700, "hhc314@xxxxxxxxx" <hhc314@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Jim, the last time I heard from Bill Nelson about 4 or 5 years ago,
regaeding updating the FAQ for this newsgroup. I was to buisy to help
out at the time, and also labored under the belief that the Usnewsgroup
advanced to much over the past 10 or so years, that the FAQ documents
had become more or less and archaic expansion on subject that are
better addressed in other forms of media. I lost track of him since
that time, although someone told me that both he and Tom sometimes
posted on the PML.

So far as I am aware, Tom Peregrin (of course not his real name) left
his faculty position at (IIRC) Arizona, and moved into business
ventures that began to take up more and more of his time. After writing
and Publishing IPP, the last I heard of from Tom was that he had become
involved in the design, manufacture, and sale of electroinc firing
systems, althoug I can't recall the company or brand name. Others here
like Lloyd or Mike may be better able to provide better information
about this. Other than that, I don't know if Tom remains engaged (at
least part time) in adadaemic still, but the fact remains that I
haven't seen Top (who posted under the name of TIP) post here for many
years.

Realize that I in previous posts mentioned that rec.pyrotechnics has
over the years going through a number of upturns and downturns, and it
is during the periods of downturns that most of the older and more
experienced posters simply become frustrated and disgusted with the
newsgroup as a whole. Then an upturn takes place because the name
callers, "kewl bombz dudez" have not interest in talking to each other,
hence more mature and experienced voices begin to appear -- once again.
Then after a few years, the cycle begins a new, probably because most
of the new posters haven't been around long enough to remember what has
happend in the past.

This hopefully will never become an issue with Google Advanced
Pyrotechnics, my guess is that it least to some degree it will. All of
the dialogue sites on the Internet eventually become a trade-off
between a form of censorship by moderation, and the acceptance that in
a free society, becasue some folks are reluctant to realize that the
price of reading the posts with fantastically useful information
content is that of accepting posts that either offend you or with which
you take emotional levels of disagreement.

Realize that it takes only one keystroke today to skip over the posts
that offend you becasue of a ego issue, oscene language, or have a
content of total nonsense. For me, the price of admissing to free
discussion is simply to filter out the gold contained in a post, or
simply hit a key to skip reading that individuals's post. That choice,
in a free-speech society which invites participation by anyone
(ignorant or brilliant) is to me implicit. To believe otherwise is an
opening for others to limit what you can read, and an open invitation
to the Clerics in the Middle-East to attempt to define their concept of
politics and moralit; or for historic groups like the German Nazi's to
burn books written by Jew, or addressing subject that they disagree
with.

Then too, readers are fully justified in pointing out the errors of an
ignorant, insulting, and obscene posters ways to him or her, which has
in is sometimes being done with one person's post here, with the
purpose of discouraging others of his ilk to do the same. A poster here
responded this by stating something to the effect that: "Hiroshima was
a fully justified reply to "Peal Harbor" and other gross events that
took place during WWII as and analog to the responses that some of
these extreme off-topic posters sometimes receive here. Others have
responsed by suggesting the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch and Society
of Friends (Quaker response) called "shunning". My personaly attitude
for the correct reply strongly depends on the nature of the offense,
plus if it continues to take place.

For perpetual offenders to fundamantal Internet rules of long standing,
you can always nuke them through sending copies of their mutiple
offending posts and emails to their ISPs, who in extreme cases will
share these with every ISP in the Western World. This is pretty
extreme, since today it will totally block someone's total Internet
access, be it Usenet Newsgroup or WWW for many years, possibly forever.
This is the ultimate harsh response, still I've seen it used to
effectively silence some people from annoying or persecuting others, or
groups, on the net. This can have some pretty harse consequences, since
some of the worst offenders I know of actually worked for an ISP, and
considered themselves pretty "bullet proof", but in two cases of which
I am aware, the offender lost not only his Internet access, but his job
as well. This rarely happans but does happen. Feel free to contact me
by email if you would like to lean the particulars of one such case I
became involved.

Kindest regards, and good luck with Advanced Pyrotechnics.

Harry C.










Jim B. wrote:
Sadly, many of the great posters
like Bill Nelson, Tom Peregrin, and so many others are now gone, but
thankfully been replaced by many other helpful and competent posters.

Hope this helps just a little.

Harry C.


Harry,

I wonder If Tom P. and Bill Nelson are still active in pyro? I mean
Tom P. Liked it enough to write a book, he obviously knows about rec.
Pyro, Did he just drop off the earth or what?


But then again I can see pyro being something that once you drop the
habit it might stay dropped. Everybody knows how Demanding and time
consuming it really is, not to mention pressure and nerves. hard to see
that for what it is worth in the midst of it but put it away for a few
months and It might be hard to get the head of steam up again.

Any thoughts on this?

Jim B

.

Relevant Pages

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