So true. The lunatics are running the asylum.
I used to monitor the group to learn, and occasionally share, but things became very ugly when Jim went psycho between 9/11 and the 2004 elections.
He's obviously a corrupting influence here, but he doesn't want for gang members and lap dogs who contribute to the decline of this group. I can only tolerate a quick browse through here now, once every few months, and that is usually hard to stomach.
I remember Win trying to have reasonable discussions but Jim being an insulting asshole of megalomaniacal proportions, as he predictably is to anyone who doesn't buy into his peculiar world view. Perhaps he was snubbed by elitist Bostonian weenies back when he was young and barely out of the hills of West Virginia (or was it Kentucky, I forget) and he still holds a grudge.
Jim has appointed himself the Rupert Murdoch of SED except that he is also like a Glen Bleck or Rush Limbarf, front-line, thug / dancing clown.
It feels like a 50's or 60's high school movie where the delinquents are controlling the school, except our disruptive rebels average out in their 60's age wise. Arrgh!
Little wonder we haven't seen anyone as decent and sensible as Win around here anymore. As a Bob Dylan lyric once said, "Anyone with any sense had already left town."
P.S., On this pass through, I did stumble on an interesting link that pointed me at help toward a solution to something that I was looking for. It's nice that there still are a percentage of on-topic posts that get a bit of good discussion before they take off on some orthogonal tangent.
And there are quite a number of people still hanging out here who maintain a high level of purpose and sanity. Kudos to you!
Even many of the rebel rumblers also post good stuff between the OT episodes. Don't let the Off-Topic devils tempt you. There are other places to exorcise or exercise your demons. Remember back to when you were innocent witnesses of the circuits and physics. My brethren, come back to the electromagnetic and photon flow. Cast off the politics and egotistical ramblings. Call not your brother a leftist weenie nor a tea bagging nazi. Let logic, rationality and common decency once again come to the fore.
It's for our mutual health. Try to care. Weather the storm, be it hot or cold. (A lame parting shot, perhaps. Wrong. Forgive me.)