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   The Chronicle of Higher Education
   
   From the issue dated August 18, 2000
   
 Of Flames, Fan Mail, and Software That Can Tell the Difference

By ELLEN SPERTUS

...

In the offline world, some people enjoy baiting others with
intentionally offensive behavior, then enjoying their reactions.
Online, this has become a sport called trolling for flames. Some
trolls lack subtlety, like the one posted to the cat lovers'
discussion group that asked for recipes for cooking cats.

But others are deliciously clever. For example, in response to a
discussion of the mystical and mathematical importance of ratios in
the Great Pyramid of Cheops, John Baez posted a note that the ancient
Greeks, too, were very sophisticated: If you take the ratio of the
circumference to the radius of the columns they built, he wrote, you
get an excellent approximation of pi. Gullible readers, not realizing
that Baez was a mathematics professor with a sense of humor, protested
that this was true of any circle. "That's what makes it so spooky,"
Baez cryptically replied, adding to the confusion.

..