Number 270 - November 2005

And now, with apologies to W. Shakespeare... The Editor's dilemma... To Quote or Not to Quote
From the Internet attributed to Peter Ellis
To quote, or not to quote;That is the question.    Whether 'tis cluefuller on the Net to re-post    The tos and fros of diverse opinions,    Or to take arms against such attributions,    And, by excision, end them. To trim. to snip:    No more, and by a snip to say we end    The widows and the thousand orphaned words    That posts are heir to, 'tis a consummation    Devoutly to be wished. To trim, to snip.    To snip, perchance too much. Ay, there's the rub,    For in that joyous chop the sense we lose    When we have taken out the fluff and dross    Must give us pause. There's the factor    That makes calamity of so long threads.    For who would bear the tos and fros of chat    Th' cascader's screed, the geek's anality,    The pain of misplaced tags, the reeking trolls,	The cliquiness of in-jokes, and the flames    That studied satire draws from clueless fools,    When he himself might his quietus make    With a mere bobbit? Who would cudgel brains    To write a piece, witty and thoughtful too,    But that the hope of making people laugh,    That blessed gift of humour from whose touch    No traveller is safe, spurs on the soul,    And makes us rather bear those ills we read    Than carve them up, and mayhap lose the joke?    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,    And thus the native hue of resolution    Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,    And Usenet posters of great sense and content    In this confusion quote more then they should    And lose the name of Clueful. Read you, now,    The fair Emilia! Nymph, in thy reminders    Be all my posts remembered.
Number 270 - November 2005