RE: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 10:37 AM -0700 11/14/97, Fisher Mark wrote:
...stuff elided...

>I dunno... Sometimes, Bob, I think that you and Tim have so much trouble
>because you are in such violent agreement about the importance of
>cryptography...

I had no "trouble" with Bob recently until he launched a major attack on
one little phrase, and chose to buttress it with over-the-top foamings
about "snot running down his barrell" and allusions to me being a hermit,
being a fool, styling myself as a freedom fighter, and various other
metaphors about The Old Man of the Mountain, and other stuff I can't quote
exactly because I chose to delete Bob's rants after glancing at them.

(I found one I hadn't deleted yet, the actual kick-off of this campaign:
"Tim's Way Cool Latter-Day Farnham's-Freehold in the Santa Clara
mountains.... a bunch of "freedom fighters" like the one you fancy yourself
to be these days... instead of shoving your favorite Mac-10 up the nose of
every statist treehugger you bump into out there in lotusland.... you won't
have to clean the snot off the end of your
gunbarrel so often...)

A charming way of making his point, eh? Some would call it "clever"
writing. I call it just a string of insults. And not even as creative as
Detweiler used to pull off.

His general writing style, liberally laced with what I think of as "New
Wave Journalism" metaphors, is not my writing style, and I usually don't
have the patience to wade through his verbiage to find his actual points.
Fine. His style is not mine. Neither is John Young's. Or Toto's. Or even
Bill Stewart's. Such is life.

But overly personal attacks which concentrate on Bob's apparent intense
dislike of _my_ style (despite his overuse of disingenuous smileys, like
":-)"), is a different matter.

As Monty noted, "Physician heal thyself!  Much of your discussion consists
of ad
hominem attacks with little content such as the paragraph quoted above."

I've tried to keep my replies to him brief. It delights me that many of my
brief replies have generated long, overwrought replies from him. Delights
me as I skim them to get the gist of his insults, then send his missive
into oblivion.

If Bob has objections or differences of opinion, fine. But he should not
squander his reputation capital by foaming about my personal choices, by
referring to snot running down my barrel, by claiming I said I was going to
kill a judge, and other such lies.

And he really ought to tone down his "Hunter S. Thompsen wannabee" style of
writing. It was old a couple of years ago.

--Tim May



The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."