I read the below three times before realizing it wasn't a wonderful piece of snark, but actually a serious comment.

------------

Sallieparker said:

1. The whole point of being gay is that you DON'T get married. You opt out of the mainstream married life.

WTF? Seriously? That's the *point* of being gay? Says who? You?

Well, I say the whole point of people named "sallieparker" is that they need to give free oral sex and a smile to anyone who demands it, at any time of day or night. People named Sallie have opted out of "normal life," obviously.

2. Gays have a job to do in society--to stand aside and make critical observations, like a Greek chorus. By becoming another flavor of Straight, Gays lose that critical facility.

Right! Just like illegal immigrants have a job to do in our society, and that's to mow our laws. And homeless people have a job to do, and that's help us feel better about ourselves.

3. Homosexuals have had exactly the same marriage "rights" (actually covenants or privileges) as so-called heterosexuals: to marry exactly one person, at a time, of the opposite sex, and of sufficient age and health. To extend another opportunity to homosexuals does not give them "equal rights," rather it doubles their privileges.

"So-called" heterosexuals? So now they're not actually heterosexuals, except in name? Homosexuals are just being greedy, sucking up all the marriage covenants and privileges, and soon there will be a marital drought, and all the poor "heterosexuals" will be forced into living between quotation marks, where they will be made fun of for being "so-called."

4. From a common-law perspective, "gay marriage" is fraught with impossible hazards. Inability to consummate a marriage is traditionally a cause for the marriage's dissolution (civil annulment). Same-sexers cannot consummate their marriage in the first place, according to the usual definition of consummation. We could in theory redefine the word for this purpose and enshrine it in the new statutes. Except these legal definitions of homosexual consummation is simply NOT going to happen (toothsome and fascinating though those definitions might be)! How then will homosexuals annul their state-sanctioned matrimony? Answer: they won't! They can't! They will always be at a disadvantage. They can never have equal "rights" in this regard.

Fraught! Impossible hazards! Like jumping a motorcycle over a pool filled with sharks! Scary! Homosexuals can't consummate a marriage! Sallieparker is totally an authority on consummation! And you know how important consummation is--without it, marriages are mere vapor, borne away like fluff with the slightest breeze. That's why we force all people who ever "consummate" to get married. I mean, vaginal penetration is SACRED!

Wait, no, she already answered herself, albeit nonsensically.

5. What to do about bisexuals? Following the logic of the gay-marriage proponents (that they are just like heterosexuals, only they want a same-sex lover to be a spouse), bisexuals would seem to merit two spouses. That is only fair. No one has made a provision for these members of our society.

You know how militant those bisexuals are about their demands for multiple partners! God, will they never shut up about their right to marry multiple men and women and fish and cobras and cars? Seriously, who or what would a bisexual person NOT marry? Sluts.

6. There is no reason to call a homosexual coupling "marriage." Marriage is not about love or sex, not primarily anyway. It's a legal entanglement to define a family and inheritance of property, and by definition requires a man and a woman. Homosexuals need to create their OWN legal partnership sanction, and not attempt to be a lame imitation of the marryin' kind (see point 1).

That's right! We could just called it "coupling," or maybe "Anal Sex Sqad Formation," or better yet, "AAAAAAAAARRRGH! EW EW NO NO NO PLEASE STOP!" That would certainly take care of the legal "entanglement" that everyone strives for so desperately, and then teh gayz could go play with their own separate-but-equal knockoff marriages while the heterosexuals enjoy their Malibu-Barbie style awesome super-duper-no-buttsex marriages.

...you're done for.

More and more devices are becoming touch-enabled. Whole operating systems are being rewritten to take advantage of touch.

It's about to become a touchy world, although maybe a little less feely.

I concur with your take on the imprecision of the iPhone's keyboard, but...if you ignore your mistakes (as I learned to do), about 80% of the time the phone actually fixes the word properly. It takes a measure of letting go that I didn't like, initially, and when it bungles the word, it's even harder to go back and fix it.

I don't really see the "smugness" in the design that you do. I think that's probably because I can't anthropomorphize a phone like that. It's...just a phone. A computer running software, that's all. Take issue with the designers--it's not the phone itself that's being smug.

And finally--a word on the "blight" part of this post. I'd agree and also disagree. At the moment, the trend is to set up any and every new phone with a touchscreen, regardless of how clunky the interface may be, or the software underlying it, or the hardware itself. It's just a mad rush to touchscreen every mobile device.

But...in the midst of all that, there are some genuine paradigm-shifting features and concepts that will change how we interact with our technology yet again. Those make me pretty excited!

The GOP's efforts to make all things equal when they look bad by pulling down, diminishing, or attacking the successes of the opposition, and playing up their own disasters as victories to be heralded.

Horowitz, go back where you came from. Salon gave you a stump, and THIS is how you used it? I don't see you making friends on either side of the aisle with this piece, and if you're addressing it to the GOP, well...you've come to the wrong place.

Try posting this sort of thing on TNR, or better yet, call Rushbo. Let's see how that goes.