"I feel very sorry for the Iraqis, who have been brutalized by decades of tyranny and strife. But quite frankly, as an opponent of the war, I feel no responsibility for them. They must resolve their own thousand-year history of sectarian violence."

American air strikes have killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Possibly the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands. I invite Camille Paglia to look at Michael Schwartz's writings in this area.

We have plenty of responsibility for creating this war, as well as for the somewhat less brutal decade of sanctions beforehand-- even if Ms. Paglia thinks she has none.

I don't see what the US has to offer to Iran while Bushco is in office-- Bush,jr, et al, have demonstrated that they're warmongering wackos, therefore not persons you want to negotiate with, especially after previous overtures have been rebuffed. Why wouldn't the Iranians just wait to see who replaces him?

I'm no economist but I have to wonder--I just don't see how migrating to other planets could possibly amount to anything but (maybe)saving the very wealthiest of human beings.

Moreover, if large numbers of people bought into it as a viable strategy, it might well make things much worse for everybody else much more quickly, as vital brainpower-and-technology resources are diverted from saving the planet to saving the Murdochs and Bransons, et al.

Cary is a well-meaning fellow, but often his advice only works for dealing with a world populated with people just like him.

Look: lots of us know things we don't want to know. So what?

Keep your mouth shut. For her sake, and for yours. Your desire to be "completely open and honest" isn't altruistic, it's a desire to be unburdened of the embarassment and guilt you feel-- and to put the burden of embarassment on her shoulders.

Why do you think she owes it to you, to help you get over your feelings of guilt, your actions, things for which she has no responsibility?

See, this is what I suspect-- you liked reading the ex's blog, and you want "permission" to keep reading it-- only you don't intend to ask for it explicitly. You want her to tell you your actions were and are "ok", i.e. forgiven, and you mean to rationalize and translate that into ongoing permission to keep reading the ex's blog.

No. You can't lay that on her either. If you really do value your relationship-- and her-- you can't ask for that either, whether implicitly or more directly. Own your guilt, keep your mouth shut, delete any files associated with your past furtiveness, and prohibit yourself from subsequent snooping.

O Ms. Joan,

please don't go to threaded comments or an interface which allows readers to block individual commenters. And please retain anonymous commenting.

I gave up on reading Slate's comments some time back in part because of the threads. First of all, they make comments substantially harder to navigate, and(just like banning anonymous commenting)they serve to encourage a certain mental regimentation, wherein you inevitably get people commenting who just gripe about other people going off-topic.

While I dislike ad hominem attacks, I think there's nothing inevitably wrong with going off-topic, if the trip is interesting. People should allow themselves to be more open to commentary that doesn't just fit neatly according to the dictates of a specific thread. Likewise, we should be open to the possibility that someone we've read before and disliked will then proceed to say something we'll see as valuable in a future comment.

I'm registered here, a subscriber, and I'm fine with that. But I know I get really tired of sites that insist that I register and tell them all sorts of tedious demographic data before I can comment or read an article, and I imagine other people feel the same way. Not all "drive-by" commenting is simply snide or trivial, just as not all registered commentary is free from ad hominem attacks and other pointless swipes at other people.

Excessive discouragement of casual "drive-by" commenting promotes a clannish, even incestuous enviroment in the virtual space of the commenting room, and may even promote uncivil commentary, as people lose a sense of "outsiders" also looking in who wouldn't understand.

The freewheeling openness of the salon forum is part of what makes it valuable, and I don't think you should discourage people who might want to post but would hesitate to do so because of having to register, and what their employers or clientele might think.

Doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, accountants, financial advisors, psychologists, priests(and no doubt others) may just not want to bother, even with fanciful made-up names, as they may find themselves wondering after the fact if they dimly remember using such-and-such handle before, in another, less anonymous context. Oops. Too late now.

How about this: instead of requiring registration(and yes, Salon's registration for comments is pretty simple and streamlined), give non-registered commenters an option-- either register, and choose a handle, or check a box that says:

"I don't feel like registering. Just show my IP address with my comment."

Of course, you'd have to reject comments coming from proxy IPs for that to be meaningful.