Good post. Current events forums litter the internet and are a good idea for the most part. Occasionally people need an anonymous medium to vent their feelings, frustrations or blathering rhetoric about information of which they have lots of opinion, but no intellect. I think that you see some of this venting in the sailing forums, because we are all mostly sailors, first and foremost. We come to discuss sailing, but we come to discuss what's on our mind with other sailors. I think we stuck more to topic before September 11. I think we will stay more on topic once the world settles down a bit. It's easy to not read posts, or to read part of them to determine if you are interested in going further. It is impossible to avoid media coverage unless you put on blacked out glasses, cover your ears and crawl in a hole. It's tough to sit with people who share your passion and not talk about the things that affect us. Especially when the scale of current events is as large as it is currently.
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<br>The one thing that has set this forum apart from many or even most of the other forums I have ever come across is that the group that participates here allows for the uncritisized expression of thought. You may not agree, you may think people are totally without thought, you may think that some posters are full of sh*t and just flat out wrong, but we don't openly challenge eachother in a juvenille fashion. We reply with information and not cynisism. We respond with critical (not in the negative sense) information that gives us all a chance to learn more and participate to a higher standard in our passion. We act as adults and show eachother the respect that we should show others. This is good forum, a great site, and a superb bunch of people and I understand your sentiment and probably agree with you.
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<br>Good night all!<br><br>