On one level, this is another version of the "Moral Fiction" panel we used to have at every 4th St. People who are doing art ought to be aware of the political/moral consequences of a given artwork.
If you're writing a book, which takes months or years, you have to be pretty naive/dense/unaware, if the notion of "how might this change the way people think", never enters your head. On the other hand, if you mull over every bit of repartee at the dinner table you're unlikely to be much of a conversationalist, and at least for me, trying to do that would destroy the "in the moment" enjoyment, which is most of the point of dinner conversation.
The people making the joke were in dinner conversation mode, and are at least somewhat rightly annoyed at being jerked into creating "ART" mode. On the other hand since it's on the web everyone can see it, forever. So worrying about the consequences isn't silly either. There has got to be a middle ground between looking over your shoulder all the time and playing into the hands of the enemy.
And mayakda, I don't think Patrick ever said the image wasn't funny. He said it wasn't wise. In fact, the funnier it is, the less wise it is.
There are two points that are nearly always got wrong in the "what do we replace fossil fuels with" discussion.
The first is about wind. People pick numbers like 20% or 25% and claim that wind can't provide more than that portion of the grid's power becaus wind is an intermittent source. Actually, looked at on a regional level, the variation in airflow is small. There is no technical bar to wind replacing all fossil fuel generation of electricity.
The second is about nuclear. The anti-nuke argument that always gets skipped over in the limited amount of uranium in the world. Any major expansion of nuclear power requires using plutonium produced in breeder reactors and shipped around the country. The proliferation problem here should be glaringly obvious.
I know lots of people have old scars around the psuedonymity issue. I mean none of the following in a moralizing way.
I think this issue is tied up to our differing reactions to the compartmentalization of our lives that is so much a part of the modern world. When we mostly lived in small communities of course the teacher ran into the students at the gym, or at least the metaphorical equivalent. There was no way to avoid it.
Over on live journal someone was talking about wanting to switch coffee shops becaus the barrista knew her regular order, and a lot of people empathized with her. I like being a regular. Not so much that I go out of my way to always go to the same gas station/restaurant/grocery store etc, but I understand people who do.
I remember a friend who was outraged when a coworker showed up at a science fiction convention she was attending. She hated when separate parts of her life came in contact. I on the other had get a warm feeling when various disparate parts of my life come in contact.
I'm not saying this is THE explanation of the psuedonym/real name dichotomy, just that it's part of the explanation.
In response to Will's question
"Oh, a question that has nothing to do with Nader. Does anyone know anyone who was a Kerry supporter before Kerry became the frontrunner?"
Kerry was my favorite out of the field long before he became the front runner. I knew a tiny bit about him from the Senate contest between him and William Weld (I was visiting my sister in Boston at the time), I also vaguely remembered him from the Iran Contra hearings and I thought he seemed like the best choice out of the field. On the other hand Lieberman, Sharpton, and Gephart were the only candidates in the field I would have been grumpy about having to support.
While I normally think of myself as being rather anti-union, the article is clearly correct. Another example would be the crucial role the Korean trade unions played in South Korea's transition to a real democracy.
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