On 1/17/2010 12:37 PM, Lawrence Kestenbaum wrote:
> I am not talking about blasphemy, irreverence, luridness, bad jokes, black humor or inane and useless chatter... but attempts at censorship of innocent curiosity about what we do not know and the desire to learn from each other and to share in open discourse.
>    
> Maybe I haven't been following BP closely enough, but this sounds like it's about something very specific, and I don't have a clue what that could be.  Google and China?
>    
Larry,

It is fairly specific. I won't go into details for fear to make the 
situation more incendiary.
It involves one (only one) BP correspondent that was hit by someone 
outside of BP for an innocent thread of inquiry. They know who they are.
cp mentioning the burnt wood set me off... but it was not the 
cross-posting dilemma that I am focused on.

We cannot learn from each other, we cannot share, if we feel an 
inhibition to reveal our weaknesses or a reserve to not admit what we do 
not know.
We can disagree with each other, but there needs to be a measure of 
fairness in response.

Bad things often come in benign packages and are not obviously seen as 
bad things until they have done their work.
If the work is to cause friends to self-censure and to be silent and not 
speak openly then I am not for that.

When the strong-arm move is made from someone outside of BP and uses BP 
as a source then I am really not for that.
We have all said stupid things in our lives, some of it on BP... and I 
have made a habit of saying real stupid things on BP.

I think a very important aspect of the small BP community is trust and 
that we give each other the benefit of being human.

Ken (Shaman)

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