"Chuck Gould" wrote in
ps.com:

The title would seem promising, but
after the first couple of chapters it would wander off into politics,
editorial opinions, economics, foreign policies, abortion, you name it.
A couple of other library patrons were angrily throwing books at one
another and calling each other names.


Hey! Libraries are just like wrecked.boats!



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

On 18 Oct 2006 17:16:12 -0700, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:

I went to the library to find a good boat book.

There were a lot of different types of books in the library. There were
history books, political books, religious books, cook books, novels,
and biographies. I wanted to find a boat book, so I went to the boating
section. When I got to the boating section, it wasn't easy to find a
boat book! In fact, the shelf was jammed with political and religious
books, cookbooks, novels, and biographies. Here and there were some
boat books- but in a lot of cases it wasn't easy to be sure whether a
book was about boating or not. The title would seem promising, but
after the first couple of chapters it would wander off into politics,
editorial opinions, economics, foreign policies, abortion, you name it.
A couple of other library patrons were angrily throwing books at one
another and calling each other names.

I complained to the librarian. The librarian said, "What's the matter?
Don't you believe in freedom of the press? Shouldn't people be allowed
to make political and religious statements, write about foreign
affairs, etc? Aren't you interested in any of those other topics?"

"Of course I'm interested. And if your library only had one shelf in
it, I guess I'd expect to have to sort through all of the other
nonsense to find a boating book. But here you are, in the biggest
library on the planet, and readers should be able to preselect what
types of books they hope to find by going to the appropriate sections.
If I wanted to read about politics, I'd go to the political section. If
I wanted to read about foreign policy, I'd go to the appropriate
section."

"I'm sorry to tell you this," said the librarian, "but a lot of the
non-boating books in this section are deliberately misfiled by the
library patrons. They apparently believe that reading books called
"How Bush Screwed America" or "How Liberal Judges are Destroying Public
Morality" is more urgent than reading about boating. Yes, you could go
to those sections, but the partons who deliberately misfile these other
titles secretly believe that you're too stupid to find your way to the
appropriate shelf, so maybe they believe you're actually stupid enough
to fall for their ill-considered opinions as well."

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe the partrons who deliberately misfile
all of these other titles on the boating bookshelf are the stupid ones.
Too stupid to know where the non-boating books belong. If they can't
tell the difference between the boating bookshelf and the appropriate
places to file all of those other topics, why do they think anybody
would find their opinions worthy of consideration at all?"

The library wold be a lot more user friendly if the process of
preselecting the type of material you wanted to read (and going to the
appropriate section) wasn't deliberately thwarted by people with
non-boating priorities.

Go to the fiction section. Get all the books by Dudley Pope, Alexander
Kent, C. S. Forester, W. Clark Russel, and Patrick O'Brian. That'll keep
you busy for a couple months!

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:55:04 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
wrote:

basskisser wrote:

No problem, Chuck! Define the "purpose of the newsgroup" first and
foremost. Where is this purpose written in stone? In my opinion, the
"purpose of the newsgroup" is for a type of fellowship among people
with a common interest.

Bass,
The problem is you don't come here for "fellowship", you come here to
troll for fights. It is obvious no one is going to change your mind, so
I guess if someone gets bored with you, they really just need to filter
you.

Take care.

That is a *spectacular* idea!