I just got this message at about 3 pm EDT after sending an e-mail to Phil G:

"I'm not considering shutting down any forums. I wonder if someone posted using my email address or name falsely. I have been traveling for most of the summer and will be out of town through August 10." Philip.

This forum is really special. Despite its flaws. I told Philip that, despite some annoying problems, we have a whole clutch of people here who present original ideas, and they have formed a community. Many of us are meeting in October. We talk in Bok chat. We even have a prayer group.

I have often felt that the name of this forum represents a "time bomb of the Year 2000," a graduation from its original purpose... explosive ideas, from creative, brilliant and abrasive minds, presented during this still wild and crazy year that is 2000.

Trying to rebuild this forum elsewhere ("Clones of Algernon"?) would only gut it more, and we might never recoup this exceptional community and energy.

-- (Normally) Oxy (Oxsys@aol.com), July 07, 2000

Answers

LOL.

Thanks, Normally. Your solution was marvelously simple, but the rest of us were just too lazy to get off our butts and use our email.

Besides, it added some excitement to our lives. I think some people were looking forward to waiting until midnight to see what happens. Sort of like rollover all over again.

Oh well. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 07, 2000.

That settles that. Thanks Oxy. Well stated.

Shimmy up to the cyber-bar ya'll, I'm buyin' the 1st round.

-- Bingo1 (howe9@shentel.net), July 07, 2000.

Small clue.

I am so sick and tired of all the complaints of Andy Ray and his cohorts to the MIT staff

If you have worked at a university, staff means people like the secretary, janitor, etc. The question would be; is Andy emailing the janitors at MIT.

-- DB (Debunker@nomore.xxx), July 07, 2000.

Hi Normally,

The Phil and forum issue is great news! Thanks; much relief here.

But I really wanted to show my appreciation for your beautiful testimonial to the value of this forum and its community; although I was aware of these things, it's hard to describe how uplifting it was for me to read this -- to see it in words. Thank you so much.

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), July 07, 2000.

Normal/Ox, thanks for the good news there :-)

Lakewood is fine!!! Gas is lower here now, tell your parents west- side sumer says hi.

Yep I was too lazy to actually email anyone. (grin)

------sumer who will buy round 2, ps I bought my own blender and am now good at mudslides!!!

-- consumer (shh@aol.com), July 07, 2000.

Nicely done, Oxy.

And now -- hark -- is that the bell for the next round I hear ringing?

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), July 07, 2000.

(Pssst... BTW, let's not tell You-Know-Who...)

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), July 07, 2000.

Oxy,

What a wonderful post. Your post represents the good side of this forum, and a side that I myself find lacking on most days. The next question that needs to be asked is, how do we bring this forum back to the discussion of ideas?

I'm Here,

I had to ROTFLMAO when I read the bell for the next round. You brought a smile to my very tired lips today. Thank You!

-- (Sheeple@Greener.Pastures), July 07, 2000.

The next question that needs to be asked is, how do we bring this forum back to the discussion of ideas?

The solution to that is also very simple. Just create a new post of something that is of interest to you.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 07, 2000.

Oxy!!!

Cooool!!! The sleeez's don't get to have their worst non-nightmare come true ; )

Sumer!!!

You bringin' that blender to LV? I want samples of your conconctions,no,I mean whole pitchers for moi's self : )

Have a GREAT weeked Yaw'll

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), July 07, 2000.

Hmmm,

Kudos!,that's a damn fine idea and point well taken.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), July 07, 2000.

Foxy Oxy----Ya done well. Thanks.

CPR and Andy Ray--

Why don't you guys just knock it off? You've made your points over and over. Those who want your message have gotten it. Your continued harranging is akin to vandalism. It has the all the ethics of someone who spraypaints a schoolyard with scatological graffiti. More and more this forum is a cyber community. It has nothing to do with y2k.

Why don't you join us?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), July 07, 2000.

I noticed that the EZboard people were unanimously gleeful about the "demise" of this forum. NO doubts were expressed. So long as they heard what they WANTED to hear, the rumors didn't need to be verified, didn't need to be accurate, and didn't even need to be plausible.

Wasn't there some other event, recently passed, where this same approach proved hilariously silly? Oh well, we've "moved on", we don't think about that anymore. We've learned our lesson, right?

You gotta laugh.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 07, 2000.

Not quite accurate that nobody doubted it or that every post rejoiced on the other board. And of course NOBODY on THIS board doubted for a moment that the post was a hoax, did they? (Sarcastic laughter.) Maybe you should ask Stephen Poole if HE did it. I hear he does good hoaxes.

-- Flint (must need@new.glasses), July 07, 2000.

I, for reasons that I will keep to myself, was absolutely certain that the forum closing post was pure bullshit. I said so early this morning. Where are you now Brian?

-- Ra (tion@l.1), July 07, 2000.

glasses:

I saw no doubts until AFTER this thread appeared here, nor any serious disappointment. And you're quite right, falling for hoaxes isn't the exclusive property of the EZboard people, they've just raised it to an art.

And to be honest, I don't feel either Andy Ray or cpr make a substantive contribution here. For most of us, braying at the losers becomes thin entertainment pretty damn quick. I think there's a lot to be learned from y2k. Why WAS there such widespread misassessment of what turned out to be an easily manageable computer problem, and why was there so much panic among some people?

These are interesting issues. They're related to why Three Mile Island (which injured nobody) is famous, whereas nobody can name a single coal mine that collapsed and killed dozens or hundreds, though this has happened many times. Amorphous, indeterminate threats bother people MUCH more than specific, well-understood threats. Why? Interesting material there.

The search for (and mockery of) "villains" misses the point. The point is, some people don't WANT to know the truth, when the rumors are agreeable. Why not?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 07, 2000.

I don't know if this forum will close down or not.I hope not.I have lurked a lot and posted once in a while.I may have ruffled a few feathers,but did not do so mean spiritedly.I like the give and take of the posters.It's not so much about y2k,whch has come and gone.But what any one wants to talk about.I dish it out,I also take it.Peace to each of you.Dan

-- Dan Newsome (BOONSTAR1@webtv.net), July 07, 2000.

>> I, for reasons that I will keep to myself, was absolutely certain that the forum closing post was pure bullshit. I said so early this morning. <<

Congratulations. Very astute. I was fooled.

Can you give us a hint why you feel it is necessary to keep the reasoning that allowed you to see through the hoax a secret?

>> Where are you now Brian? <<

Here. I just entered this thread, after replying to you in the one I started last night shortly after the hoax was hatched, called If a new forum starts, let me know. No promises.

The link is:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003Rza

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), July 07, 2000.

Ra,

I also said, last night, that I thought the post was BS. So what? Are you trying to imply that "doomers" fall for something, but "pollys" don't? Sorry, even the king polly, cpr, went for this one, hook, line and sinker.

This does look like Stephen's work. But some of us, myself included, did question Stephen's original hoax. I asked him to contact Drew Parkhill, just like Dan the Power Man did, to verify his identity. But it never got that far.

Not all of us "doomers" believe everything that we read. Not all of us accept just the bad news, and reject the good. But most of us do point out, and question the "bad" as well as the "good". If this makes me a doomer, so be it. I kinda like it, and myself, that way...

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 07, 2000.

Why WAS there such widespread misassessment of what turned out to be an easily manageable computer problem, and why was there so much panic among some people? These are interesting issues. They're related to why Three Mile Island (which injured nobody) is famous, whereas nobody can name a single coal mine that collapsed and killed dozens or hundreds, though this has happened many times. Amorphous, indeterminate threats bother people MUCH more than specific, well-understood threats. Why? Interesting material there.

Flint, there is no relation between the two. One was a local threat that affected those who lived nearby and downwind and who had nothing to do with the plant, the other was global and had the potential to affect everyone. Big difference there, wouldn't you say?

Why the TMI incident is famous and the coal mines aren't is because the coal mines affected only those who were in them at the time and their families and friends, versus those who had no inkling of what happened at TMI and yet were affected. Poisoned soil, water, air, and so forth.

To try and draw a correlation between the three is absurd.

As to the wide misassessment, that is because each person made up their own minds as to the level of threat. And who said it was easily manageable?

-- not a fair comparison (this@that.here.there), July 07, 2000.

I'm glad the forum is staying. Don't know what I'd do without it.

And let me confess: I'm "hooked" on CPR's and Andy Ray's threads -- they are at times so bizarre and nonsensical, I actually find them hilarious. (As a "doomer", maybe I'm warped....)

-- WD-40 (wd40@squeak.not), July 07, 2000.

not fair:

I didn't mean to be unfair at all. I was kind of feeling around in the dark for some understanding of y2k's effect on people. I was trying to suggest that Three Mile Island is famous is for the sheer difficulty of assessing the threat. It's invisible, it's possibly long term, it might be a lot and it might be (and indeed has been) nothing, and if you're in the vicinity (and we were all in the vicinity of y2k), you simply cannot determine what if any danger you might be in. This is in contrast to coal mine collapses where those who aren't killed know *they* are in no danger of any kind.

I'm guessing that when you know there's a danger, but you can't really tell how serious, or whether it will affect you, or if it does, HOW it will affect you, this permits your imagination great scope. We now know (and most people could tell ahead of time) that most (not all) of these fears were in fact imaginary. The worst scenarios dreamed up, could not have happened if every computer in the world had ground to a permanent stop all at once.

There were in fact countless date bugs that bit, probably in the millions. Net impact, zilch. That's beside the point. I'm trying to say that the more misunderstood, and hence apparently open-ended, any threat, the more room people have to overreact.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 07, 2000.

Imaginations will wander as far afield as they can, absent clear boundaries. And when those boundaries can't be set -- or won't be set -- or aren't believed when they are set -- things can run wild.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), July 07, 2000.

you mean there were people that really believed that post was from Phil? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! talk about gullable.....GEEZ the trolls know how to pull chains around here, don't they?!?!

-- Super Polly (FU_Q_Y2kfreaks@hotmail.com), July 07, 2000.

Sysman,

It might "appear" to be "my work," but just for the record, it was complete news to me, too.

Nor did I believe it when I first saw it.

Nor do I have any idea who DID do it.

The guy (or gal) obviously read Phil's comments on the main pages of the Greenspun site and concocted a nice little scam.

(Remember, if I'd done it, there would have been a "Q7" in there somewhere.[g])

(That's A JOKE.)

-- Stephen (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), July 08, 2000.

Hi Stephen,

It would be pretty funny if it was you. Your first hoax took in quite a few people, and this one seems to have also.

Ya know Stephen, you and I used to fight like cats and dogs over Y2K. But now, while I don't know if friends is the right word, I think I'm safe is saying that we are no longer enemies. Now, if you and I, who were on "extreme" opposite ends of the Y2K scale, can "get over it" and "make up" I sure as hell think that just about everyone else should be able to!

I'll let it go at that. Maybe some will take the hint.

How was your 4th, Stephen? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 08, 2000.

Sysman,

My fourth was wonderful, because it's also our wedding anniversary. Birmingham puts on a nice fireworks show. :)

If only I wasn't quite so busy ...

-- Stephen (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), July 08, 2000.