David M Lerman wrote:

At 04:27 PM 2/1/97 -0700, Chris Davies wrote:
          <text deleted>

      I would like to apologize to anyone who was offended by my
humourously intended sixth question.  I should have put a smilie after it,
so that people knew that it should not be taken as a serious question.

  Please, no more smilies! This phenomenon is ruining readers' abilities to
  recognize and appreciate irony, satire, and sarcasm. Will we see smilies
  added to on-line versions of "A Modest Proposal", or put into the collections
  of Steve Wright jokes? Also, Miss Manners does not care for them.

'A Modest Proposal'? Yay! Let's eat some little kids! Five pence apiece!