G'day Paul,

Thank you for your comments. They were appreciated. I am coming along with the post and have been deciding whether to actually include references somehow. I can certainly email to anyone the document with references if they were interested.

And words sometimes have considerable power. Witness the attacks on Mrs McCarthy in the British press in the last week or so with allegations that included she stared in a German porno film and that she was an expensive prostitute. He effectiveness as spokesperson on landmines, one of her projects, is seriously diminished by those words. That is why defamation laws do exist.

And I too have been a teacher, lecturing students. Some needling of students is just expected, especially if you can stop inattentive students from interupting those that want to learn with a pun or witty insult rather than a rant. Other comments made by teachers are simply not tolerated by the student or the campuses. Insults based on race, gender are good examples, because they have power to really hurt. So I do not accept the occupation of teacher as an excuse.

That is not to say that your comments were not taken in the spirit that they were made and again I appreciate you making them.


Richard

Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness