John,
>What? Were you around for the thread where K. Goff was threatened to a duel with swords? there have been many threads where physical violence was mentioned. This thread is no where near the most nasty.

at least to my understanding you cannot be threatened with a duel: You have to accept to get into danger, it is a mostly ritualzied violence you are invited to. Threads with threats of physical violence seem to be rather ludicrous via wire, probably across a few thousand miles - by far another league than hurtling accusations across a bar, because in a bar other "messages" might easily be exchanged.

A more probable scenario at trying to hurt "here" could be a hacking attempt on another machine - and perhaps more frightening, but even that risk I consider very minuscule.

OTOH there might be a greater chance that the wording of "stealing taxpayer money" will affect Naomis business life now or later - and I am trying to formulate this as neutral as possible, because I have witnessed worse scenarios, which Marcia describes as stealing and I also know of scenarios where relatively low work-correlated access is allowed if the person spends more time in the office. But such accusations and statements can stick even when totally unfounded, and on that particular dimension I find the thread *more* than unwanted. Granted BTW that I see no "need" for the topic it drifted to at all, but that might be my personal make-up<g>.

Then there is the point of bashing the thin skinned - probably the majority thinks that such people should be protected and pampered. I think Naomi should get a thicker skin, and we are probably both atavistic enough to think that a process like this might help her, even if not pleasant.

regards

thomas