Nobody is saying that the women who told Sodini that he was nice, whether honestly or dishonestly, were in any way in the wrong. Self protection by any means necessary is a right, and nobody is obliged to be honest, or even friendly or nice, when reacting to a stranger. It is possible to discuss these issues - the subtle gray area where politeness and dishonesty intersect, and the relative merits of an honest vs. dishonest response to an unwanted advance - without casting aspersions on anyone for any judgment they may or may not have made in these kinds of situations.

First off, I just want to say you have logged the most insightful and interesting post on this thread. Women, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE read it (page 16). He has articulated something that a lot of men feel but that is difficult to put into words. Hence, it often doesn't get articulated.

My only concern with it is that you seem to rather flippantly dismiss painful introspection and personal growth as only for the "truly masochistic." This concerns me because not only is this the only way out of the painful situation you have put to words - your other two options, giving in to despair or getting angry, are not going to do it - but because painful introspection and personal growth is pretty much the purpose of life, and the reason we are here on this planet in the first place. Avoiding it is not only avoiding fate, its stepping out on life.

The only way to deal with pain, and to change it into something other than pain, is to acknowledge it and take ownership of it. Running away from it - by way of projected anger - is not going to make it go away, and you can't keep running forever. Taking the painful steps necessary to transform our pain into something better is the only real way forward, and it starts with acknowledging the parts of ourselves that are causing us pain and accepting and embracing them. This is something that we all are fated to confront at some point, and success or failure at this task is essentially equivalent to success or failure at life.

Call me crazy, but it looked to me like the pole was just there because she needed an object to hang on to while being wheeled around on the cart.

Anybody know why the routine started with her and her dancers coming out of a trailer?

...believe that the fundamental problem with healthcare is the employer-pays model that we are working with, and the fact that it sets up a third party to pay your medical bills for you, thus insulating the consumer from the actual cost of the health care that he or she receives, and bucking the market signals that normally keep prices in check. The reason for the existence of this system has to do with the fact that employer healthcare expenditures are tax free, a tax break that is not similarly extended to individual consumers of health care. The solutions that these people endorse do not involve reinforcing the current employer-pays model, nor do they involve simply creating of the government one "single payer" third party, as these proposals would not solve the fundamental problem of the lack of a proper supply-and-demand relationship between heathcare consumer and provider. The solutions that most deficit hawks endorse on this issue involve somehow moving healthcare expenditures back from the employer to the individual, probably by way of reversing the tax incentives that have created the current system in the first place.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. Porn is not utilitarian, it is expressive. Thus, the First Amendment has something to say on it, and it says that the producer has the right to produce whatever image he or she envisions - and the peformer has the right to participate in that production in whatever way he or she sees fit.

Unprotected sex, while perhaps unwise, is not illegal. Depicting it ought not to be illegal either.

...is that in India, people actually pay their own medical bills, and thus do the actual cost-benefit analysis that consumers must do in order to accurately valuate a product or service. Whereas we Americans, as consumers of healthcare, are entirely insulated from the actual cost of it by the layers of bureaucratic finance channels that Indians apparently don't have.

This would also explain why it, in addition to being apparently decent to good in quality, is so cheap compared to ours. The seller of a product or service is only ever inclined to raise the price as high as possible. Without cost-benefit analysis and rational consumption decisions being done on the part of the buyer, there is no check on that impulse. Thus, the price goes up and up and up.

In acute, emergent situations, the seller can charge what he wants to - up to a point, because you can't get blood from a stone, and he is more likely to actually see his money if he doesn't bankrupt you first.

Besides, acute, emergent situations are really the only thing that insurance should be paying for in the first place. That's the way insurance is supposed to work - you buy it, and hope you never have to use it. Its the way insurance works in every other industry, and its really the only way insurance works effectively. One thing that our current system has made abundantly clear is that when every little transaction in an industry is filtered through a third party "insurance" company, market signals get distorted and prices get severely out of whack.

I live very much in the real world.

See my response to KitchenGirl above.

...that I don't believe the author addressed is whether or not Indians purchase their own health insurance with their own money or if their employers buy it for them.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135906.html