People come here to get away from the type of flame you let loose with - there's enough of the Eminem type c--p out there to deal with every day that one doesn't need or desire to see this place become a s--tflinging festival. Here the average age group is easily over thirty, no one really has anything to prove and it's a place where new ideas can be exchanged, topics discussed openly and honestly without the need of sitting in a classroom listening to a one-sided presentation.

No one here is really into verbally assaulting eachother unless it is done in a way in which it is clever and temporary. The HZ was created as a response to get away from the garbage that was being posted on the now-defunct MSNBC News bulletin boards, where interesting threads would be pushed off the pages by random jerks, creationists with twenty page cut-n-paste posts and folks who liked to see their name in every thread.

This flame board has gotten very little use. Weeks can go by without a flame emerging. As a result the flame board here is like the well manicured dueling grounds on an estate of the 18th or 19th century - its amazingly clean, very succinct and geared towards the educated over-thirty crowd. I even have been known to crack out the phrase "oppugning onanist" from time to time if I am really upset. ;-)

Needless to say this is not the Eminem flame board, or the flame board for anyone else naming themselves after any other misspelled candy bar. Anyone can talk trash but few can create flames worthy of the omnilegent, omnispective members of the HZ. This doesn't mean we're "feminized wussies" - far from it - we just stopped throwing ineffective rocks and spitwads and wield synaptic sabres.

In some ways our flames have the potential to hurt people much deeper and longer - and that's why we use them so sparingly. That's not really what the zone is about.

At least that's my take on it.

SDAI-Tech1