🚀 go-pugleaf

Irene Anne Eckstrand writes:
>I also want to express my full support for Dave Kristofferson's
>management of the bulletin boards.  Without his efforts, both in
>day-to-day management and in lobbying everyone in sight about the
>importance of the boards, I can assure you that there would be NO
>bulletin board system.

  I have watched the discussion(s) of authorin, chimp-human hybrids,
freedom of speech, etc. with a mixture of amusement, interest and
concern.  At risk of adding to the noise, I would like to express a
couple of opinions.

(1) I have enjoyed the bionet groups for several years now, and I
believe that Dave Kristofferson has been an enormous force for good
for these newsgroups.  That is not to say that we should not disagree
with him (I frequently do!) but that we not forget to appreciate the
value of his efforts.

(2) I think there is nothing wrong with suggesting discussion go to
appropriate newsgroups.  This is not censorship.  Take the chimp
discussion to MOLECULAR-EVOLUTION.

(3) I would once again propose that bionet.general be converted to a
moderated newsgroup with VERY little traffic, and bionet.misc be
created for those of us with a high tolerance for noise and an
interest in thoroughly discussing a wide variety of issues and
meta-issues.  I cannot tell you how many people I know who have
abandoned the bionet groups because they cannot tolerate the traffic.

(4) I personally consider the chimp-human hybrid discussion the 
silliest discussion I have witnessed in the several years I have been
reading these groups.  I do not believe that anyone with the ability
to do such experiments would ever do them (or at least admit it, which
would amount to the same thing, practically speaking) and therefore
the question is moot.  Like Dave, I would not censor anyone, but I
hope most of our discussions are more interesting than this one.  But
if you must, post on - I'll just add you to my kill file.

Obviously all of this is just my $0.02 worth.




-- 
David Steffen
Department of Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston TX 77030
Telephone = (713) 798-6655, FAX = (713) 790-0545
Internet = steffen@mbir.bcm.tmc.edu