I thank Chris Mooney for bringing up this subtle point about modern-day science (and Katharine Mieskowski for drawing it out of him). The change from hypothesis-based science to model-based science has crept up around me in my 30 years of observing Earth science. Suddenly modeling seems like the default approach. The use of computer models has opened exciting, promising new areas of inquiry. But the older modes of research are not suddenly irrelevant, and Dr. Gray's warning not to lean our whole weight on model-based research is worth heeding. Maybe he's expressing himself in a cantankerous way, but his attitude is not the denialism of the industry-funded lobbyists but scientifically respectable skepticism.

The world corresponds with mathematics in profound and wonderful ways, but mathematics is a human invention and nature has tricks we haven't dreamed of yet.

Size isn't the only thing that matters. If CPU technology stabilizes, maybe standards can be perfected. Maybe chip fabricators can stop frantically retooling and pay their shareholders more, or lower their prices. Maybe things won't go obsolete in mere months. The technology we have already has barely begun to do its transformative work.

The end of the revolution in processer size does not preclude a bunch of other revolutions. The music will just go into a new key.

I'm fine with corporations getting the vote. That would mean that none of corporation's owners could vote since otherwise they would have more than one vote. That would suit me. And then I could negate Halliburton's single corporate vote all by myself, if I moved to Delaware.

Sounds great.

The woods of California have become more and more dangerous from booby-trapped plots and armed guards on one side and cops in copters on the other. It has concerned me for a long time that public lands and wilderness have been invaded by rogue growers. People with business or pleasure in the woods--geologists, naturalists, loggers, fishers, rafters, fourwheelers and park rangers--face a doubly hostile environment. I think because the redwoods are poor sites for marijuana plots, citified tree-huggers don't have this problem on their radar.

If pot were grown in proper fields and our backyards, we'd only have to watch for bears, pumas, rockfalls, flash floods and poison oak in the back country.

Illegal pot creates problems everywhere.

Posting a photo of the guy and telling us "just look at him" is not a style of argument I like to see. Please explain exactly what we should notice about the photograph. Maybe you should also post a photo of what you consider a real he-man, so we can assess your thinking process. Normally you spend several paragraphs establishing and repeating one of your points. What's your point with the photo? You don't say.

I don't use a person's physical appearance to demean them or refute their arguments. I didn't even want to post pictures of people ever out of concern that it would seem to be doing that. But this is plainly NOT doing that. This is examining their relevant attribtues to see if they embody the virtues they accuse others of lacking.

What are the relevant attributes you see in the picture? What virtues are embodied in this guy's image? I thought you had an argument to make, but apparently you're ashamed to post it in public.

I hope you never try this unworthy stunt again.

Many of our nation's most boisterous war advocates - the ones most eager to send our nation into new wars - obviously perceive themselves to be weak and lacking in what they understand to be manly virtues, and they compensate through the feelings of power they get -- through war, a strong leader, many things. It's relevant -- very relevant, I believe -- and I'm going to talk about it.

I'll ask you -- is Larry Craig's behavior in bathrooms relevant? Is David Vitter's with prostitutes?

Behavior is fair game; appearance is in the beholder's eye. I'm asking you, what is obvious in Hemingway's photo? Exactly how does that show he perceives himself to be weak and lacking in manly virtues?

Is it his haircut? His shirt? Don't you like his expression?

Why won't you parse the photo for us? Clearly you don't want to. Your readers are having a great time, why make them critical?

Look, your thesis is excellent and true, but this line of argument-by-innuendo is unworthy. It's ugly when anyone does it. The more you argue, the deeper the pit you're digging.

Let me be explicit, since you don't want to. Hemingway looks as fit as a cop to me. Not as fit as George Bush, Gen. Petraeus, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby or Arnold Schwarzenegger, maybe, but I don't judge their motives against their physiques. Is he fat? Is that what you can't say?

I don't think this is the kind of argument you want to be making.

Tom Bachtell's caricatures in The New Yorker are the worst thing in that fine magazine. Couldn't you pick some other aspect to copy, like short fiction, a poem or two, foreign-affairs coverage, twee advertisements, Talk of the Town? Or get Ralph Steadman or Bil Keane to do the art for this pointless strip.