On Fri, 13 May 2005 21:36:32 -0400, "Jack Painter"
wrote:

Way back when this thread was living, Ed apologized if anyone misunderstood
his tongue in cheek comments. If this was a group that was limited to PhD's
of EE who had all been Chief Broadcast Engineers at major facilities, then
the members could all pretend to be equal (which of course they still
wouldn't be). But this newsgroup is not that, and neither does its name
imply the lowest level of competence in the field. If you have such a
problem with standards, perhaps your moniker Flannery O'Conner has not been
a good teacher, as you have missed one of the defining marks of a man; to
have high standards. Without them, whatever happens is fine, and a wicked
place that will be, besides the dumbing down that results from whining about
achievement being more highly valued than mere existence.

I suspect the poster's objection was not to high standards per
se, so much as to the stuffy, "I hold hams to ...." part of he
pronouncement. A simple suggestion that best practices tend toward ...
or the like would be more accepable than using a tone suggesting that
someone was lecturing others with an authority not recognized.