nancerich -- the problem with screen names which persist for years, across various discussions, is that often enough info becomes available on a person that anonymity is compromised.

Lots of supposedly anonymous people have been "outed" on blogs -- there are a few disgusting conservative bloggers who made a sport of outing people and trying to get them fired. (Usually they can't do it without IP information, which they can get if you post on their blogs.)

So if people want to share a pertinent story that reveals a lot about their identity, they need to have the option of staying anonymous.

What I'd like to see is the following kind of system:

* Users can opt to be anonymous for a given discussion, since it can really help people share their opinions on controversial topics

* They may choose an anonymous identifier for that discussion, or they may be assigned one ("Anonymous Aardvark"..."Anonymous Coward")

* All posts by the user in that discussion will use that identifier

* The user cannot post in that discussion under other identifiers.

This would really help discussion, because people can figure out which Anonymous entities they're arguing with.

Also, it eliminates the possibility that someone can use Anonymous for sock-puppetry.

I haven't yet seen a site with this kind of persistent anonymity feature, but there's no reason Salon shouldn't be the first.

So the iPhone workarounds and hacks, whether developed by Americans or others, will end up being hosted abroad, and credited to anonymous hackers. Then they'll be legally applied by Americans.

Stupid, yes, and a tiny bit inconvenient, but I don't see what the real problem is.

The headline is enough for me to know that it offers nothing useful, and no new information.

This analysis isn't even clever or unconventional.

It's rehashing a standard trope of Maureen Dowd's columns, Washington pundit roundtables led by pasty-faced weirdos with masculinity issues, and right-wing talk radio.

...OK, I gave in and read the article. What a crock. Michael Scherer must really be angling to replace Maureen Dowd. Salon, stop publishing this crap.

First, this isn't the usual conspiracy theory; all the documents are publicly available in the tobacco lawsuit archive.

In short, the tobacco industry had long been interested in attacking the World Health Organization, because they fear international regulation of their deadly product more than just about anything.

So in the late 1990s, Roger Bate, the founder of the astroturf (fake grassroots) group Salon quotes, "Africa Fighting Malaria", pitched his organization to the tobacco companies as a way of forcing the WHO to defend itself.

See the links from the article at:

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/30/ddt-tobacco-and-the-parallel-universe/

Especially the blog "Deltoid" which has long had excellent coverage of this story.

It's all such a fraud. Rachel Carson didn't oppose DDT spraying for malaria control, she favored it. The idiots in the South African government (you know, the same one that thinks HIV doesn't cause AIDS, and opposes AIDS medication) were the ones responsible, not Carson.

Predictable contrarians like Crichton and Tierney are so hilarious, because they go around acting like they've caught on to some conspiracy, when they're swallowing (and regurgitating) bucketloads of tobacco and oil company disinformation.

to have my expose of Blumenthal's source followed up by an idiot Republican troll with "suicide pact" talking points straight from Fox News.

"And for the support of this Declaration...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Recognize those words? As Barbara Ehrenreich has noted, the Declaration of Independence was actually a pact sealed by the lives of its signers, who were taking an enormous risk with their lives.

This is underscored by the popular (but largely erroneous) email forward "The Price they Paid".

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

Of course, that won't stop the modern equivalent of cowardly Tory collaborators from repeating ad nauseum one judge's catchy truism about the Constitution.

But who cares what a bunch of dead enders think? It's nice to be in the company of the 74% of Americans who reject Bush's failed tyranny.