Bonjour mon amie Poirot, Mesdames et Mesdemoiselles,

Ce sont eux qui sont beaux. J'ai eu tort ! Oh ! comme je voudrais être comme eux. Je n'ai pas de corne, hélas ! Que c'est laid, un front plat. Il m'en faudrait une ou deux, pour rehausser mes traits tombants. Ça viendra peut-être, et je n'aurai plus honte, je pourrai aller tous les retrouver. Mais ça ne pousse pas !

: )

Grim: "I much prefer discourse with gentle souls, like David f. and Pelican; come to think of it all the females that I'm aware of, and I daresay a few that I'm not".

I agree and it's hard not to admire the mostly serene female temperaments of many of the ladies, and some of the men. However I'm sometimes confrontational and I think that's a good thing to a point. Sometimes we need to have our cages rattled and it can force us to drop our defences and pretences. My other concern is that if we cultivate an overly mannered persona it can tend to fit like a straight jacket; we've created this unreal representation that represses the dark side like Jekyll's Hyde. So yes, polite discourse is admirable and all that, but it can be a wish-washy mode of forbearance that's too polite to interrogate seemly surfaces and established bias. The great rhetoricians of the past, indeed all ages, were not afraid of being acerbic and deconstructive, and often found it a necessity, in pursuit of the truth, which is never on the surface.
There does come a point though where confrontation as a tactic is overdone and loses its efficacy, and even alienates debate--and Squeers has been guilty of that.
I think you get the balance just right, Grim.

I've often felt the brunt of DavidF's impolitic side, btw, so am happy to exonerate him of the charge of breeding accord.

Antiseptic,
"agenda" may have been a poor choice of words, you just seem to maintain a constant bias against the ladies when men are often just as deserving. You often make excellent observations too though and I enjoy reading your comments.

*It's so rigid that I've been fascinated to see that when I occasionally make a contribution, it's as though my post is invisible*

Well there you go, Cossomby, your post was clearly not invisible!

In fact I enjoy reading the thoughts of new posters, one might
always learn something or examine a different perspective.
That does not mean that I would feel compelled to comment, but
perhaps just take it in for contemplation.

Interesting would be to know, how many people are simply lurkers
and don't post at all. Some people are in fact quite nervous about
posting on public forums, even using a nick.

Some posters I always read, such as Pericles, Houllie and Poirot.
Some, like UOG, I tend to skip over, as its more a jumble of thoughts
rather then anything worth seriously contemplating.

Dear Antiseptic,

Thanks for the links.

In the first link I notice that your post
was deleted for being offensive. Proves my point.
In the second link - your post did not appear.

As I stated earlier - perhaps it would be a good
idea for you to actually read what you're posting
prior to doing so. Then, if you were to edit
out all the abusive references - people may become
interested in inter-acting with you - especially
the females that you continue to regularly criticise.
At present the only meeting of the minds that you seem
to accept are ones that agree with your opinion.

How about from now on you try focusing on the topic of
the debate and the substantive issues of the subjects
under discussion and not descend into a maze of meaningless
tactical stream of insults. You may then get the coherent
conversations that you say you're after. Take a risk -
and make this start - what have you got to lose -
except perhaps the meaningless tactical tit-for-tat.

Lexi:"In the second link - your post did not appear."

Really? Perhaps you just have a case of selective blindness

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13162#227610

I shan't go into the reason for the deletion in the first link, other than to say it was down to prurience rather than anything substantive in the comment.

Nonetheless, the thread proceeded to a less than combative conclusion.

Perhaps that's something to which the crow chorus might aspire.

Poirot, thanks for the two links to the MTR discussion. Some interesting point's in the original article and some disturbing views about men.

Both pieces were worth a read.

R0bert