Pax Writer said:
Hey Hank, I gotta give it to you: You're a really funny and imaginative person.
Hey, thanks! This was one of my better moments - I've written some quite critical things lately on this site, especially in the ****-Chat forum. I stand by everything I've written, but every now and then I forget to keep things light. Truth is, I'm an extremely self-critical person, and until people know me, my characteristic criticism to them comes across as a personal attack (which I don't do, except in very, very rare cases).
That said, there are a few members of this forum who I've, let's say, "shared my piece (peace?) of mind with." In the off-chance any of those folks (and I think they know who they are) read this, I hope they understand that my criticism is mostly vicarious. What I mean is, I have a strong connection, be it through gender, geography, nationality, politics, generation, ethnicity, or personality, to the people I criticize most.
The reasoning behind my criticism is two-fold. First, what most draws me to criticize a person is when I see them making the same mistakes I made. Knowing that might help people get past the idea that I write the things I write in order to fuel my own ego, or whatever. Second, I feel compelled to direct my criticism at people most like me due to my sense of a kind of communal self-consciousness, or call it guilt by association. I think this sense is compounded given the nature of the medium (international forum), that is, knowing that what's read is mostly being read by people very much unlike me, and hoping that they get a good impression of me and my type of people.
Ron H said:
That's a new one! Looks like something right out of the Douglas Adams dictionary. For the record, I don't suggest anyone does anything that they know will harm their wenis, themselves or others. There's no Hippocratic Oath for electical engineers, but I see no reason to expect it to be exclusive to doctors.