Anonymous Comments & Trolls

Anonymous comments have been disabled.

Most of the anonymous comments were substantive, although I question whether some of them were posted by bots. I deleted one that was clearly not on topic. To avoid more annoying restrictions on the blog, help us police this space by politely confronting anyone who shows up and pollutes the blog with their self-indulgent junk and/or alerting me so it can be deleted.

About trolls -- trolls are commenters who throw out ridiculous arguments and inflammatory statements just to cause a distraction. They may or may not know better, but in general it is best to ignore them as they are a waste of time. Don't feed the trolls. So far, nothing overtly trollish has popped up.

The elementary school freedom of speech case mentioned in one class today as an example of "the right to be heard does not automatically come with the right to be taken seriously" is also a good example of trollish behavior, in this case a dad living vicariously through his 11 year old kid. (The school asked for kids to dress patriotic; a kid came in with an "Obama: the terrorist's best friend" shirt, and was disciplined when he refused to turn it inside out.) In any case, while I am always in favor of confronting stupidity, sometimes the best approach is to ignore. Attention-seekers who don't get the attention they are looking for tend to move along.