From: antennae@gn.apc.org
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: sci.physics.research: Are there imp
Date: 23 Jan 93 23:56:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:MATT.93Jan10010325@physics2.berk:2089954644:gn:1541700025:000:3074
Nf-From: gn.UUCP!antennae    Jan 23 23:56:00 1993



You don't need moderators.  You've already hounded Hannu and her
space- potatoes off the net and Abian is down to about two or
three entries out of about 150 on my conference menu.  You should
let people make up their own minds about what they want to read -
whether it's good enough to spend their time on.  It worries me to
hear you discussing how 'tough' you should be - as though this
newsgroup was a place to show off cleverness rather than a point
of communication for everyone on the net interested in physics and
physics-related issues.  If you want a showcase for your
knowledge, surely there are journals with editors who are probably
tougher than any of you are qualified to be.  No, what is
happening here is what inevitably happens when a group of
strangers come together, whether the forum is an electronic
'physics' conference, or a would-be-writers' circle in an English
village - people jostle to be noticed, the more visible ones form
alliances; a pecking-order - often based on nothing more than who
has the loudest voice and is prepared to be publicly nastiest -
emerges; runts are picked on and then picked off, dissenters are
regarded first with humour, then with scorn, contempt and finally
they are excluded (I am thinking of one name in particular here
and it ain't Abian).  I am no scientist, but the tone of your
bickerings and the fact that you are able constantly to pick one
another up on what appear to be the most basic points of fact,
indicates to me that most of you have a fairly unsure grasp of
your subject and are less than secure about your status vis a vis
the others in the newsgroup.  My god, the way you all reacted to
Abian was a real object-lesson in immaturity!  I have collected
more than 400 of Abian's 'articles' and your responses over a four
month period - what was really fascinating about them was not what
Abian had to say - it was you!  One by one like schoolboys in a
playground you lined up to kick the runt the bullies had started
on.  Do none of you really understand about Professor Abian?
Honestly?  Should I spell it out for you in words of one syllable?
Was your reaction wise, or kind, or necessary?  How you puffed and
strutted, as you put the boot in, one after another.  Well, you
people may be clever, but you're not very intelligent.  You're not
very wise.  You're not very kind.  And now you've all got so
worked up about winning one another's worthless approval that
you're going to let your conference be hijacked by a
self-appointed clique who are going to tell you what it's okay to
read and to know and to discuss.  How very dismal.   You ought to
re-read Abian's final comment - the one he intended to be his
epitaph - for not one of you has understood the beauty of it.
Abian said: 'On Judgement Day I will put the entire Creation on
trial'.  Your name is never going to be up there alongside
 Newton, Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli
and the rest until you realise that Judgement Day is not the day
the world ends, but the day it begins.  It's every day.
Especially today.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math