hello everyone, i am a new list member unlurking for the first time. let me introduce myself. i am called xe, i am a conceptual and video artist currently living in southern california. starting sometime in the early nineties i was creating ambient environment projects, a pursuit that later folded itself into the local rave culture. after the inevitable burnout period and a rest i went back to my first love video/cinema and that is what i do now. i remember encountering 1987 when it came out in a little record store in the mission district of san francisco. as i imagine many of you were, i was blown away by the strong conceptual basis for thier work as well as the irresistible pop hooks in equal measure and avidly followed jim and bill's activities throughout the years. i have an observation that i'd like to ask you all regarding the recent skirmish about off-topic posting on the list. im hoping to get opinions from both camps. i know its off-topic in and of itself but im really curious. i belong to many lists mostly to do with music, film, and liturature. ive noticed that the literary and cinematic lists seem to have a relatively laissez faire attitude about off-topic posts as long as they started somewhere on-topic, but music lists are, as a rule, very intolerant off off-topic posts. the crux seems to be regarding 'content'. the writer people and the cinematic people seem to accept content as a valid topic for discussion and let it go on for some time within reason, whereas on music lists there seems to be a universal phobia about discussing content. for instance on the j.g. ballard list theres been an endless on/off discussion about class relations for some time now and to my knowledge ballard has never actually said he is writing about class but on the muslimgauze list any discussion about palestine gets its share of rabid instantaneous complaints despite the fact that byrn jones made it explicitly clear that ALL his music was about and inspired by the middle east and the plight of the palestinian people in particular. does anyone have any reasons why they think this is? as annoying as i find these these gigantic 9/11 posts on one level, i can see the relevance to this list in regards to content which, on another level, makes them entirely appropriate. thanks in advance for your ideas, and i do apologize to those that need it for the off topic first post. xe ===== ' the flowers in your hair to air-conditioned air children revoluting to apple computing...' - dr. calculus- __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com