Klara wrote:

In message , Stephen Howard
writes
Are you suggesting that Alan is, by day, mild-mannered Urgler - and by
night the mad axe-weilding maniac of ( insert name of town here )?

Real life is no different. How many people did Shipman kill? How many
people trusted Thomas Hamilton? How many times have you heard it said
"Well, I never would have thought he was the type"?

Living involves risk, and we either teach our children ( and ourselves
) the skills to minimize that risk in order to live a full and sociable
life - or we resign ourselves to distrust and paranoia, and become
victims of our own accord...and all we really learn is how to hide and
lead theoretical lives.

Along these same lines, did anyone see yesterday's headline:

"A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to
reduce deaths from stabbing.
A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on
the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all
stabbings.
They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol
and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
The research is published in the British Medical Journal."

Oh dear. My primary means of escape from IT (apart from my delightful almost
2 year old DD) is cooking. I'm not too bad at it. Some of my prize
possesions in the kitchen are a couple of very thick based pans and three
Sabatier knives that are always razor sharp. While I admit that they'd be
deadly if used as a weapon, the cheap and mostly blunt 'sharp' knives that
I come across when cooking at the homes of friends are downright dangerous
to use as knives. How am I supposed to bone a joint without a long pointed
knife?

/rant

Warwick