The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Andy Perrin:

You mean the overhuffed Hypington Post? I dote on Arianna Huffington. For starters, her name is "Arianna Huffington." Sounds like a spammer. Her style is such that I can't tell whether it's affected or she's afflicted. Sample:

And, because the DeLay Foundation for Kids is a charity, not a political fundraising entity (wink, wink), donations to it are unfettered by campaign finance restrictions--the sky's the limit on the amounts that can be donated. (from here)

Wink, wink.

the imminent wholesale shipping of liberals to the glue factory

I thought they were going to use liberals in pregnancy tests to spare the rabbits?

MD^2, Xopher:

I Google-translated before I saw MD^2's attempt. The Google version starts out, "There is something of comic of white clown..."

Chuck, two words that are important to every Ph.D. student: literature search.

My department was buzzing about Google Scholar all day. For fluid mechanics Ph.D.s it looks superb.

I'm not knocking Patrick's point that usefulness to Ph.D.s shouldn't be the sole measure of googly goodness. The genius of this is that it opens up real science to people who don't have university libraries next door. I can't wait to see the science fair projects devised by high school students with OpenCourseWare and Google Scholar educations. When I was younger, my public library had no good technical info and it was really frustrating.

Of course, the first half of this sentence had me thinking he was using his teeth, and wondering if the shrink wrap was that tough.

It was—he used a letter opener in the end. I was trying to capture the expression induced by tugging on the shrink-wrap, but I missed the mark.

Garrison Keillor:

Here's what happened to the Republican Party

(by way of Out of Ambit)

I just want to see the eight-by-ten colored glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is to be used as evidence against him.

Jonathan Strange is out. It's a very pretty book. You have a choice of two covers. One is dark on light, and the other is light on dark.

For some reason, the books come shrink-wrapped. Does anyone know why Bloomsbury does this? I had to bring a copy to the information desk to have it unwrapped. The poor man tore at the stuff until his jaw ached, and he so wanted to use his teeth. I felt for him.

Speaking of jet-powered wheelchairs, which we weren't, here's one now.

If my grandma had wheels...oh never mind.

Go forth and be distracted. I think I was beating a dead horse anyhow.

The website I googled when I made the original post said that the latest data seems to indicate that short-term HRT makes sense for women with symptoms.

Xopher: I used to know that. Thanks for reminding me.
*saves face*

Do you read The Straight Dope (www.straightdope.com)?

Marilee, I wasn't disputing your case, or any other particular case. I'm sorry I picked HRT as an example, because it seems to have become a distraction from the point I was trying to make. HRT is enough of a borderline situation that people have to make individual risk-vs.-benefit judgements. I ought to have chosen some ancient and indisputable example, like putting uranium in false teeth to make them shiny, or adding cocaine to Coca Cola, or fluoroscopes in shoe stores. There are any number of deadly dangerous practices that we didn't realize were dangerous at one time.

Marilee: I don't think vaccines and HRT compare.

Ok, substitute any other long-standing treatment that was substantially revised due to new information. My argument has nothing to do with HRT per se. I was looking for a recent example of a medical treatment on which scientific views changed rapidly.

In the case of HRT, my impression is that lots of women were told to stop taking it. ('lots' != 'all') What would happen if all those women had to keep receiving the treatment because of some law?

Xopher: The fact that it can't be prosecuted as either is a flaw in our legal code.

I think legislating vaccinations is a bad idea. Yeah, the general idea of vaccination is well established, and (IMHO) inarguable. Specific vaccines, however, may well have problems. I'm not at all confident that the law would keep up with the science. Look at all the research on long-term hormone replacement therapy that was recently revised-- what if women had to get it by law? Baaad thing.

(The fact that HRT affects only a particular woman but lack of vaccination affects everyone is not relevant here. We could as easily be discussing the multiple vaccine issue-- what if a large study demonstrated that they aren't worthwhile on a risks vs. benefits basis?)

One might also ask about authors who publish books under pseudonyms.

A blogger/soon-to-be author wrote about her decision to use a pseudonym on Tuesday. Apparently her biological father is a deadbeat dad who abandoned her family when she was eighteen (and her sister was younger) after committing several crimes. She'd just as soon not put his last name on her book. Her pseudonym will be the same one she uses on her blog, which is how she is consistently known online. Most of her audience for the book is likely to know her by her screen name. The book is fiction, and questions about responsibility for words seem unlikely to arise. I would consider these good reasons for using a pseudonym.

Let's not forget the famous scam literary agent Melanie Mills, whose real name turned out to be Roswitha Elizabeth Von Meerscheidt-Huellessem. I would argue that poor Roswitha was driven to fraud by her unfortunate appellation. If anyone is entitled to an alias, Roswitha is.

[/Thung in theek. Thung THTUCK in theek! ELP!]

I don't need to go far. I have personal opinions on lots of things which, by virtue of my being in the Army,

Point taken. I'd ask you if the Army is a repressive regime, but you might not be able to answer that one, at least under your own name... All kidding aside, that circumstance (criticizing one's employer) would be on my list of exceptions.

PNH: It's the people who come in, use a name once, and then fly away who irk me.

Me: Me too. Would you call such a name a 'nominal name?'

Terry: I like Patrick's, "nonce."

'Nunce' might better catch the spirit of such posts.

"And it does bear mentioning that there are thousands of people out there writing easily-Googled things under their real names who should think again about what they're posting..."

When everyone has something (easily googled!) that he or she wishes unsaid, maybe it will be considered impolite to drag a thirty-year-old comment into a current conversation? The favor might be returned by the other party...

I'm with you, TomB. I think we need to protect the right to anonymity. I also think that we are better off not making use of that right most of the time, because it leads to so many complications. I'm worried about a "what's said online, stays online" ethos, in which the worst that can happen to a poster (for, say, making a death threat) is to be booted out of a particular online community. If you connect your online self to your offline self, it's one way of making a statement that you support personal responsibility. (There are others, natch.) You're right that we can't stamp out rudeness (or worse), but we can go on record against it.

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