... While I do not recommend that all college undergraduates be required to take a course on rhetroic, I do think that they should be required to take a course that alerts them to the power of that art to win on style arguments that should loose on substance.

http://www.eurotrib.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2008/10/18/55252/796

... not to have mine or other contributions trashed just cos we can't furnish concrete proofs in sufficient detail to satisfy interrogators whose motives seem unclear.

Where has anybody attacked what you wrote ? So I don't get the point about vulnerability, apart from trying to get the sympathy vote. Discussions often veer off in ways not expected by the authors of diaries.

Now we get more caricature - not only is a simple request for some evidence - to someone else in another place - to support a claim about general hostility in ET to certain kinds of subjects: "brutal pedantic skepticism" and "silencing" - now it's also to "trash" something and "interrogation" - where did I leave my jackboots ?

Talk about rhetoric ! At least now my motives are just "unclear" - though clearly they are suspicious.  

"Drama queen" - I couldn't possibly comment :-)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.