Forum Stalkers

It seems to me an unhealthy number of respondents in this forum here love demanding to know just where there adversary is posting from. Why? Want to set up a fight? A date? Given the propensity of governments to compile data on "unreliable" citizens, one would have to be nuts to reply. "Rendition" is an ugly word that has entered English in recent years with a filthy sinister meaning. Right now, it's only for suspected real badasses. My wife hails from a country where, not so long ago, a lot of ordinary people disappeared in the middle of the night for sins far less grave than the verbal jousting that goes on in this forum. So again I ask: why does anyone need to know this?

Actually, I was thinking of others. Not only in this forum, by the by. And not only asking me. In a day and age when getting photographed at an anti-war rally gets an individual's name in a bevy of government computers, insistence on privacy is hardly paranoid. Oh, a note on style: buy a thesaurus. You have a decided propensity for the word "smug." That word is like codeine for a toothache. The first use is effective. After that, the law of (rapidly) diminishing returns kicks in with a vengence.