From the NYT obit:

"His father said Sunday that Mr. Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years and that it had allowed his son to be productive...

...James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor’s suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said.

“He was being very heavily medicated,” he said. “He’d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=wallace&st=cse&oref=slogin)

Cat Vs. Roomba is an old Salon troll - he was ~~~~~~ and I forget the user name before that one. He seems like a sad, obsessed and very angry individual. One of the people who's helped make Salon's letters a waste of time to read. I thought the quality might be different on a non-political thread like this one. Not so much.

Mr. Marker, I don't personally like a lot of the PoMo "Believer" stuff that comes out of MFA programs. I did not go to an MFA program myself. I kept on writing anyway. I recently signed with an agent at one of the best literary agencies in the US. Does this mean I'm going to have a successful career? Who knows, it's too soon to tell. But regardless of what happens, I'm certainly not going to blame my success or failure on the EEEEEVillll Post-Modern MFA conspiracy.

Maybe you've had a run of bad luck. Maybe you stopped trying too soon. Maybe you're just not as brilliant as you think you are. I have no idea.

But I'm pretty damn sure it's not Wallace's fault.

If you look at the people who worked to free Gennaro Wilson, teen victim of an absurd sex crime prosecution, I'm willing to bet that more than a few of them are self-described "feminists." If you look at the signers of the petitions circulated to call attention to his plight, I'm sure that more than a few (if not the majority) are feminists as well.

This notion that feminists somehow do not care about injustices perpetrated against male teens who are being unfairly prosecuted for normal expressions of sexuality is a canard - nothing more than wishful thinking from trolls who are so insecure in their own sexuality that they can't deal with women fighting to define themselves for themselves and not for men.

Most feminists I know care deeply about justice and equality for everyone. This is part and parcel of a worldview that tries to address deep societal inequality. Of course feminism focuses on women - that's what it's about. But a huge part of the problem is the sexual repression and attendant hysteria that gets us into situations where 12 year old girls (and 17 year old boys) are being treated as criminals for life for teenage sexual experimentation.

= Screaming Steam Hammer of Hate = ~~~~~ = the "blame the Jews" troll. I know I've missed a few handles but the style is hard to mistake.

Because here comes Hawkpsd, the latest handle of Steaming Hammers of Hate, ~~~~, Beagle whatever it was...dude, you are so predictable. I don't know what your pathology is, but it sure is easy to spot.

Blueamberal, why don't you try enlightening us as to why Andrew is wrong, rather than sniping and running?

I've been following Chinese politics since 1979 and I think Andrew has been involved at least as long. This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw from the available evidence. If you don't think so, I'd love to hear why. Because I actually would like to understand the situation better, you know?

Of course there's a gap between China's netizens and the laobaixing, but by the Chinese government's own reporting, there were something like 87,000 "mass incidents" in 2007, a time when China's economy grew by something like 13%. According to Liaowang, a magazine owned by a state run news service, labor protests rose by nearly 100% in the first 10 months of 2008.

You have a young generation in the cities that is relatively prosperous and nationalistic but is also used to a much greater degree of personal freedom than their parents. It's not clear how they will respond if their opportunities are suddenly limited by the economic downturn.

I don't know if increased internet access actually increases public protests and dissent, but the internet provides a platform that is very difficult to completely control, and sometimes expressions of dissent reinforce one another.

(here's a link to John Pomfret's blog for the stats I cited: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/pomfretschina/2009/01/10_million_have_lost_jobs_in_c.html)

do not want to see China "blow up." I have to agree with the significant percentage of Chinese who want a peaceful evolution to a more democratic system based on a real rule of law (as opposed to an arbitrary "rule of laws").

Space alien, how many different aliases have you used to post your spew? Here are a few that I can recall off the top of my head: ~~~~~, steaming steam-hammers of death, beagle of doom - you drop your odious, paranoid stink-bombs then run and change your name and do it again.

I resent having my tax dollars spent on the Gaza invasion. What the government of Israel practices in the Palestinian territories is very close to collective punishment.

And I'm sorry, no state based on a religion is truly democratic.