Take A Deep Breath, Y’all

Over the past week or so, we seem to have had a rash of misunderstandings, misread intents inferred, misread comments, and just plain misstatements and the unpleasant retractions thus obliged. There’s been a lot of flared tempers and some name-calling. Most ungentlemanly. Not everyone is guilty of it, but I offer my own mea culpa: for a lot of reasons, none of them good, I’ve commented in a less-than-gentlemanly way to a new commenter on at least one occasion, which is not conduct that I would not encourage in others and of which I disapprove in myself. I dialed it back but really that’s not the sort of thing we ought to be about.

What’s strange is that something at least in this ballpark seems to be happening to so many Leaguesters all at once. I don’t particularly understand how that can be the case, but there it is. We strive for an intellectually challenging but cordial culture, and for some reason it seems we’ve fallen short of that aspiration this week. The lesson here may be, “Yo, stop and think long enough to let the adrenaline dissapate from behind your eyeballs before you get to typing.” Granted, I’ve ignored that advice myself in the (recent) past, but seems to me that it’s good to be reminded of that from time to time.