I'm not implying she doesn't have other, better reasons to be annoyed -- celebrities are people too, and like their privacy. I'm just curious to what extent the outrage isn't somewhat motivated by a celebrity's desire to flog an image of sexuality for maximum return.

Bullshit. That's exactly what you're doing. Because of course the biggest reason someone would be annoyed by privacy violations is a loss of potential income.

I know, I know,. You're not allowed to accuse people of being sexist or racist behaviors, because it's like an ad hominem, and you're a social justice warrior, or whatever.

I see it as a "boy who cried wolf" scenario, wherein actual examples of sexism and racism get lost in the rather weird claims. For example, I once read an essay that claimed "prose" is racist since it evoked the notion of someone having leisure time to compose it, leisure time historically afforded to upper-class whites by black slave labor. Then you get such gems as "PIV is always rape", in which basic biology is now rape. When I worked as a grocery store cashier, a co-worker was accused quite loudly by a customer of being racist since he wouldn't honor an out-of-date coupon (as per the store policy). This year's Miss Nevada was berated by other women as anti-feminist for daring to suggest women should learn to protect themselves against rape.

When people are exposed to enough of these kinds of stories they start to see all accusations of racism and sexism as some sort of ridiculous witch hunt. Then when legitimate issues come around, such as Ms Sarkeesian's situation, people either downplay it or ignore it outright since they've been conditioned that racist and sexist are ridiculous charges.

"Ferguson was a town in which most of the population was black...One of the main sources of income for the town was stopping black motorists and giving them traffic tickets"

Statistically speaking, it stands to reason that if a population is majority black the majority of ticketed individuals would be black. Unless you have evidence that blacks were routinely given higher fines for similar offenses committed by white people or that no whites were ever ticketed in Ferguson, your statement is a bit of a reach.

I doubt the US government has weaponized ebola (it's unsuitable as anything other than a terror weapon for a number of reasons) but it's not ridiculous to assume there exists some sort of defense medicine. The US defense aparatus has spent quite a lot of money in the past century developing defenses against the threat of chemical, biological, and radiological agents* in the event of their use on the battlefield. There are a number of excellent books on the subject, but read cautiously as some of them have tin-foil-hat-and-black-helicopters tendencies. In particular I recommend "Undue Risk" by Jonathan Moreno in particular, thought it's more global in scope.

Some of these experiments quite unethical (MK Ultra and others), but that's another subject.

Because "normal" implies transgendered individuals are somehow mutant or different (which they are) and therefore such a term is somehow prejudiced. (For the record, I agree with your assessment on the subject, I'm just explaining the reasoning behind the creation of such a term).

Could you provide some stats for that? I've never heard this before and you've piqued my interest.

Amazon is striking back after the price-fixing business between Apple and the Big 5 that was intended to break Amazon's dominance in the e-book market.

Ask one of the "people on the internet in their garages"; they might know the answer.

It means you identify as the same gender you were born with. "I'm a man who was born a man and thinks I'm a man" or "I'm a woman who was born a woman and thinks I'm a woman" as opposed to "I'm a woman who was born a woman and thinks I'm a man" or vice-versa.

The added weight is an anti-theft measure. This way the thief leaves your desktop alone in favor of your more expensive and more easily portable television!

Sorry, I'm have trouble following your logic here, can you elaborate?

A "terrorist" is anyone who employs terrorism, especially for political aims. So we look up terrorism and we get: terrorism (noun) 1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. 2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. 3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

With such a nebulous definition we can classify every armed body in the history of the world as terrorists, if we accept Clausewitz' definition of war as the continuation of politics by alternate means. If you narrow it to include asymmetric "guerilla tactics" style warfare, you don't eliminate that many conflicts; WWII had the French resistance, Vietnam was basically a guerilla fight by the Vietcong, heck, Sherman's March to the Sea in the US Civil War could be considered guerilla tactics from a certain vantage point.

As best I can figure now, "terrorist" is basically a political title to signify a guerilla force with aims running counter to those of the speaker. If the guerilla force is neutral we call them "insurgents" or "militias." If we like them we call them "freedom fighters".

Has this happened to you? I'm genuinely curious.

Seconded. Frankly, the lighting situation at night is bad enough. Car manufacturers keep uping the brightness of their headlights. Some of the newer models are damn near blinding, even without their high-beams on, at least to me. Suddenly the whole road is glowing? I think I'd probably have to cease driving after dark.