How to Post to HBL
1. Where to send a post:
To minimize spam, I have to convey this address in a way that web-robots can't recognize. So, email submissions to: "post" (without quote marks) then the at sign, then hblist.com.2. Limits:
Please limit each post to 400 words, and limit your submissions to two posts, on each members' day, on different topics.3. Formatting style:
Please make your email's Subject header begin with the three capital letters: HBL followed by a space. This allows recipients to segregate HBL messages from their other email. (And you will probably want to establish a mailbox for HBL within your email program.)
Please begin the body of your message with From [your name] as below:
From John Doe
Please do not indent the beginnings of paragraphs, but do double space between paragraphs. And please add frequent paragraph breaks. Break up long paragraphs, even when it seems arbitrary as to where to do so. Long paragraphs are uninviting to the reader.
To ensure that everything in your post is plain text, please do not compose in Word; write your message directly in your email program (e.g., Outlook).
Instead of italics or underlines, emphasis is indicated *by asterisks.*
Finally, when quoting, be sure to identify who or what you are quoting, and where the quote begins and ends. (Quotes within quotes take a single quote mark--i.e., the apostrophe.)
4. Etiquette:
It is a widely recognized danger of email lists that they easily degenerate into "flames "--i.e., inflammatory back-and-forth arguments, often with personal attacks, among participants.
This is bad on any number of counts, and becomes tedious for the vast majority who are not involved in the dispute. Since I have to terminate threads eventually, the person who doesn't get "the last word" always feels he has been left defenseless.
So let me urge you to maintain a collegial, 19th-century-style attitude toward other posts and other posters. And please minimize the quoting of sections of other people's posts and instead just name the subject. Here's a contrived example:
First post:
From Immanuel Kant
There has been too much emphasis by HBLers on reason and values. Reason can deal only with the phenomenal world, not with things as they really are in themselves, and values introduce a subjective element into morality, because they depend on a lone individual's personal choices (though these "choices" are deterministic responses, considered phenomenally).
Sample reply post illustrating proper etiquette:
From John Doe
On the subject of whether there has been too much emphasis here on reason and values, the truth is exactly the opposite: only by reference to reason and values can we grasp reality and remain in reality. I reject any alleged distinction between a "phenomenal" realm and "things as they really are"--"'Things as they are' are things as perceived by your mind'" (Galt's Speech). Values are not subjective (or intrinsic) but *objective* ... <etc.>