I'm crushed. I thought you knew everything, were right about everything too. Man, next thing you know you will say there's no Easter Bunny!

Compare the case of the unhappy Albanian. Has no one ever made fun of them? Why react so strongly?

I think the problem is that you have too may readers, Alan. High numbers on the hit counter makes people think you know what you are writing about. And it's not only the Albanians being offended. We Norwegians go ballistic when some foreign journalist dare to suggest we could behave differently. It is especially bad if we are victims of satire, which we do not grasp that well.

You are not admitting something of the Norwegian character now are you? I thought it was the Finns who were a bit grim, chippy and humourless in relation to jokes about themselves...as opposed to Prince Edward Islanders who are happy, chippy and humourless in relation to jokes about themselves.

Your taste in beer suxxxors!!

Clearly another Albanian.

I think, for my own part, that it's sometimes difficult to discuss issues with you because you can <i>pretend</i> to care so well, but one never knows if you really care, or if you're just sparring. And just when you seem to care, seem to have truly engaged with honesty and committment, you'll fall back into artful sparring again so as not to offend.

Honestly, it can be somewhat frustrating for those of us who eschew online personas as much as possible.

That is fair to a degree but really you have only reversed my complaint without explaining why the reversal is an improvement over my original statement.<p>And not to pick on you so I won't - but why is it people believe in the weirdest things and then hold really strong views about them. They complain, only for example, about the culture of entitlement as conservatives and then embrace the tawdry political shell-out of beer and popcorn money. They believe in Pepsi over Coke or their child over a child in a war zone. They cannot bear ridicule of Albania.<p>If you do not buy into the need to be firm and without contradiction - the need above all things to believe in <i>something</i> regardless of whether it is worth believing in that fiercely - you might, a little unfairly and a tad unthoughtfully, call that an on-line persona and it might be seen as pretending. The failure to attach the devotion of an acolyte to one's own beliefs is sort of rejecting the posture one is supposed to assume on-line, I agree. But do most people actually go about with a mess of untested, contradictory and half-baked notions scraped together as a personal ethic <i>and</i> spend their waking hours defending them within themselves rather than challenging the truth of them for fear of undermining the personal party line? That would seem - does seem - a far sadder sort of pretending to me. But it has been my experience that people each sort of have their own personal belief quota that needs filling up to a certain point and if there is not enough "A" grade belief going around that they can acquire then, well, pretty much anything else will do instead. We need as organisms to <i>believe</i> as an end in itself. As I said above "except for a few elemental things" I try quite hard to not do that and have for some time. I realize and sympathize that this may be either a fifth-rate challenge or just irritating so I do accept what you are saying and your honesty in saying so. [One friend years ago characterized your observation as "a butterfly mind" which I thought described it well.] <p>But, still, how is it ("it" being the over-admiration of our own personal beliefs) not unlike the undergrad college coach who once took me aside and said if I tried harder I could be on his team but failed to notice I have not even attended a try-out or wanted for a position in the first place?<p>[PS: this middle of the night comment was brought to you by a very tasty pork and cashew curry special at the Kingston Brew Pub.]

My question is not entirely unrelated to the quote from H.L. Mencken that Nicholas has selected for today.

Also related are the distinctions between reputation and brand as well as dedication and passion. The shift from the first to the second as part of the rise of personal secular belief systems appears to be related to the hyperbolic description of middle management as a heroic position and commerce as a heroic endeavor leading, among other things to the consequent over-application of heroism generally and the idea that we each can grab a piece of it is we only have belief worthy of a hero.

Well, you got a little heady for me there. My point is that you seem to enjoy debate for its own sake rather than because you have strong beliefs you wish to defend. That's what I mean when I kid about the lawyer in you coming out. You seem to thrive on the back and forth itself, the process rather than the result.

Is that a legitimate position? Sure, I guess. All I was getting at is that it can frustrate those of us working from a different position, looking for a different sort of online engagement.

I can't speak for the fellow who prompted this post, but for my own part, the mechanics of you-say-this, then I-say-that, then checkmate in three hold no interest for me. I want to know what a person really believes and why he or she believes it.

If I mistook your "butterfly mind" for a persona, I apologize.

I think that is somewhat correct, though I had to tell Chris T that I was an recreationally argumentative dink well before I ever thought of law school. But rest assured that when I am doing that I am testing my notions as much or more than yours. I take the challenge you might offer as extraordinarily important as you do not mirror many of my views. You learn very little in an echo chamber. I am as a result quite happy when I am corrected as I am aware I have a headful of half-baked notions on all topics that need fixing.<p>But I also think we all do which may make for irritation if one more closely associates one<i>self</i> with the ideas present in the non-stop cinema of the mind.

I envy people who really truly know what they believe.

Belief should always be treated as provisional. Gravity I believe in, although it turns out that we may be bleeding some of our precious gravity into another universe a millimetre away in 5-dimensional space. Provisional.