Does anybody else here think Golden Boy's hatred is of the same essence as the behavior he's supposedly decrying?

Credit and debt are good. Any person who imagines that they are inherently bad is a 19th Century Marxist long since 'discredited'.

Anybody who thinks credit and debt are inherently good were never credited in the first place. Availability of reasonable credit is wonderful, of course, and enable capitalism to provide resources where they're needed without heavy handed (and frequently wrong headed) intervention. But, of course, debt and credit can easily come back to bite both the creditor and the debtor; this is all very basic economics.

Please this idea that we are morally weak because of credit is nonsense.

Hmm, I personally might not classify it as a moral issue, but I can see why it gets rung up that way. Bad debt is a temptation for both the creditor and the debtor, and for their sake and the economies' sake that temptation should be resisted.

Ideally, all debt would be either productive (borrowing money to create more value than the principle) or palliative (getting through a temporary setback). The fundamental accusation against the U.S. government and consumer is debt that's basically just greedy; we're spending beyond our means for no good reason at all, and paying a heavy price for it.

The recidivism rate for pedophilia is not documented as being higher than other crimes (quite the contrary).

Can intent be figured into the definition of whether a given image is pornographic? I don't think so. If a cameraman is inexplicably aroused by balloons (I wish I were making this up), and he takes a picture of an otherwise innocent car dealership, that image does not magically become obscene just because it turns that particular guy on.

Or does it?

Meanwhile, Jose Padilla was convicted, despite rights violations on a whole different scale.

d) You accuse the foreign policy community of holding "rigid ideological views." After hearing reports about, say, YearlyKos, in what way are the outsiders you want included in the coversation (sic) more ideologically diverse? Indeed, would a netroots-driven foreign policy community be any more tolerant of ideas than the group you've been lambasting?

What I find interesting about this quote is that he deep-down assumes that exclusionary dialogue is necessary and proper, and then tries to engage on the basis of which exclusionary dialogue is less exclusionary - which is silly on the face of it.

...They're just more motivated to try to be funny. Women like funny men. Men like funny women. But, in general, women prioritize humor in men a lot more than men prioritize humor in women...

If I, Pyrian, were paying for some research I would damn well expect to have access to the results. When We, an Unnamed Research Company are paying for some research we damn well expect to have access to the results. If We the Public are paying for some research we should damn well expect to have access to the results, too.

But the significance of the bachelor/bachelorette party has always eluded me. Are they celebrations or wakes?

I've always thought of them as excuses. "Oh, yeah, I've been to strip clubs, but only at bachelor parties."

...on the whole rather less disempowered than...

No offense, Bob, but that wording should be taken out and shot. :P ;)

Etyfreak, the fact that Napoleon quickly defeated the existing government (using new and superior techniques) is hardly a break in the analogy.

1. What about partially government funded research?

You accept our dollars, you accept our terms.

2. What about subject confidentiality?

Unchanged. Subject confidentiality applies to all data access.

3. What are the incentives to collect the data if anyone can get access to them with no pain?

Funded research doesn't require an additional profit motive.

4. How do you prevent malicious individuals from making inferences from the data that responsible researchers would never make, on pain of damaging their reputations?

Nothing will ever prevent that. It certainly isn't prevented now!

5. The government paid for the research, but the guy asking for the data didn't pay. The data is not his or hers by right of purchase.

The government is an arm of the public, not vice-versa. The government's money is the taxpayers money, not vice-versa. So, the data DOES belong to the public by right of purchase because it's OUR money that purchased it.

Raise your hand if you think the anonymous poster pimping Glenn Sacks is Glenn Sacks.

Note to Pyrian: once again, you have launched a smear. You sir, or ma'am are little more than a smear merchant.

You're smearing me for smearing? Do you have absolutely no sense of your own hypocrisy at all?

Five dollars is a remarkable amount of money to charge for a TV show; I can see a matinee movie - in a theater - for about that price, maybe twice that price for a new release movie at regular times. Something's severely messed up, here.

What does that mean, really? Almost nothing, I think: "We asked for three brigades. We got two guys and a goat. We'll call that partially met."

It's not like public nudity is generally legal in the western world. All these arguments about dress codes that are predicated on their existence rather than their degree are ludicrous.

BTW, as a guy who channles his inner Man Show from time to time, I'm not sure I'm all that bothered with this particular "slippery slope" where the world will be overwhelming female :-)

Yeah, I think our societal instincts are geared from a time when men got themselves killed much more often.

Our Constitution came up for a vote in the Senate, and lost.

Next month I'm heading to a convention in Philadelphia (I live in San Diego). There will be two masquerades, and I have tickets to both. My costume involves a fairly elaborate crackling lightning motif - wires, batteries, an inverter, phospholuminescence, you name it. How the heck am I going to get it there?