Posted by Gedanken [Gedanken] on November 07, 1999 at 14:56:44 {zExURjw8QAHdgEG/iekYGxDfYXLgH2}:
In Reply to: ***TravisJ45 Post II? posted by AF on November 07, 1999 at 05:17:54:
AF,
This is unreal! I did see the TravisJ45II post right after it was posted together with Friend's response to it. Had Stafford's name not appeared as the actual author then any reader would simply have assumed that Greg, for some reason, could no longer participate at H2O. The reader would have concluded not that Travis was Greg but only that Travis supported Greg. In itself that would have been fair enough although Travis did come across as being a particularly servile creature. No one could, or would, have concluded that Travis wasGreg (if only because I couldn't see Greg praising anyone so effusively, except, as it turned out, himself.) If that were such an obvious conclusion to draw from TravisJ45II then could not his PO (or others out to sink him with his PO) have drawn the same conclusion? Of course they could. Since Greg's desire was supposedly to achieve anonymity then why would he want us to think that TravisJ45 was him? In any case, it all could have been done without such magnificent grandstanding by Greg.
The juxtaposition of Greg's name with TravisJ45's, taken together with the content of the first post, was incredible. My initial reaction, as was Friend's, was simply to ask Greg for an explanation. At that point he had some benefit of the doubt, which was reflected in the early replies to his first two "Travis" posts. His "last post," in which no apology was offered, was the final straw. Had he simply apologized for his uncalled for remarks and explained why he did what he did then maybe he would have been given some leeway. Nevertheless, to have used his nanosecond long existence as TravisJ45 to take cheap shots at you and, worse, to congratulate himself was beyond the pale. Instead, he basically sloughed off a huge gaffe and started to act as the injured party. Greg questions whether I am an academic or not which is irrelevant [wish I wasn't most of the time :-)] But I would throw a student out of my class for this type of deceitful behavior. It is called cheating. He simply has no idea what academic honesty is. That he has finally bothered to getting around to answering my post about his book (from some time ago) only shows that now he is frantically trying to restore his credibility when he no longer has any. The typical reaction of a student who is caught cheating is to try to butter you, and any onlookers, including outraged Deans of students, up with their supposedly genuine interest and command of the subject. It's as transparent as Bibleman wishes his ice canopy could be.
TravisJ45II added no mitigating information and, in the context of what happened (I was logged on during the whole incident) only added to the confusion. Despite having a fairly low opinion of Greg's book and his standards of intellectual honesty from the beginning, I am totally shocked that they could have descended this low. No low is too low to go it seems.
Gedanken