*I know this is a gross over-simplification of many of the flame wars that occur here (and anywhere online), but a great deal of arguments are no doubt born out of misunderstanding.

That is the true downside of the written word. Humourous banter becomes aggressive argumentativeness when read in the unintentioned tone.

*Those are very good points, but there is another side of the coin:  people whose posts are phrased in terms that are, by any understanding, excessively abrasive, but who litter the same posts with smilies.   They seem to think that they can give any amount of offence, but deflect all blame by inserting a few insincere smilies.

Sorry, Drifterlee, but that pig looks yummy, if a bit on the unfattened side.   A Hindu friend of mine, totally vegetarian, confessed that she loved the smell of frying bacon.   It's quite common around here for butchers' shops to have curious images on display that involve grinning pigs.   I've always found those a bit peculiar;  I like eating pig-based products, but I don't really imagine that the pigs are quite so taken with the idea.   I think that that sort of thing is even more common in France than here.   I don't remember seeing smug-looking sheep or cattle used in the same way (apart from on that frightful "La vache qui rit" so-called cheese that gets inflicted on you at 35000 feet, halfway across the Atlantic).    Pigs are certainly far more intelligent than cattle or sheep.  Perhaps, that makes a grinning pig more plausible than a smiling Friesian, although a philosophical pig would make at least as much sense.