And here I thought they were a bit more expensive than a grand or two.

That isn't what the post to which you are replying says at all. He didn't marry just any random person who would be willing to kill him. He (presumably) married someone with whom he was/is compatible on any number of issues (desire for children, sexual preferences, social status, religion, cultural background, and so on). Of these many points of comparison, a common desire for a particular kind of end-of-life care was a deal breaker; i.e. even if the OP's spouse had been compatible on many other issues, the willingness to pull the plug (or more actively kill) was important. It is no different than someone choosing not to marry someone because they want children and their partner does not; or because they are Catholic and their partner is Jewish.

A: To hold the foreskin back.

I generally do it as part of an annual checkup. I don't have to see the physician to get the shot (clearly, I could go to Walgreens or something), but I might as well get it done when I am there. Anywho, it ensures that they have a record of what has been done to me.

Agreed. Though I would note that consulting with a physician can be a good idea. My GP recommended against my getting an annual flu shot until my wife and I adopted, at which point we moved into another risk category. Consultation with a physician can help you assess which vaccinations you might need and on what schedule.

I'm not sure if you are serious or not, but on the off chance that you are: there are better ways of managing population, such as condoms, birth control pills, and adequate sexual education. Killing off the elderly doesn't help that much (they have already had their children), and wishing for the death of anyone is rather anti-humanist.

My main point was about the benefits of vaccination in general, and not the benefits of specific vaccines. I only mentioned influenza in passing, as it is one of the diseases for which we have pretty good vaccines (most of the time), and it is a disease which can be quite dangerous (even in healthy people---there is some evidence to suggest that cytokine storms caused by influenze may be more dangerous to those with healthy immune systems in the event of a pandemic flu). That said, most physicians (and the CDC) will tell you that you don't really need a flu shot if you are healthy and don't hang around with vulnerable populations (again, the very young, the very old, the immunocompromsied, and so on). I considered mentioning this, but since I felt it diluted the overall message of "Please get vaccinated," I omitted it---a competent physician should be able to help a person decide which vaccines they need or don't need.

Again, the point is that one should get vaccinated. It benefits society at large. The specific schedule of vaccination for any particular person is something that should be discussed with a competent physician.

You seem very proud of the fact that you do not get an annual flu shot or other vaccinations. You have already received at least one hostile comment because of this fact, and I must admit that my first impulse was to say something similarly vague, cryptic, and hostile. However, I realized that you might not be an asshole, but simply ignorant. On the off chance that you are actually concerned with people beyond yourself: vaccinations are important, even for people who feel that they never get sick.

Vaccination does two things: first, it keeps the individuals who have been vaccinated from getting sick; and second, it reduces the number of viable hosts, thus preventing diseases from spreading through society. Now, you might be willing to risk getting sick yourself, so the first may not matter to you, but the second should. Society benefits when people are not sickened and killed by preventable diseases. And make no mistake: influenza, pertussis, measles, chicken pox, and many of the other diseases for which we have vaccines can cause permanent damage or death.

There are people who cannot be vaccinated (the very young, people who are immunocompromised, and so on) and vaccines are not 100% effective, so some number of those that have been vaccinated are still vulnerable. The way to keep these people healthy is to ensure that the possible exposure to disease is limited as much as possible, which means relying on herd immunity. Herd immunity comes from vaccinating as many people as possible.

So please, if not for you, for the sake of the people around you, get vaccinated.

Okay, but then who moderates the people who moderate the moderators?

Which the original poster addressed by noting that in the case of "sexting" the model is usually the photographer, therefore the owner of the copyright. The rest of his post followed from that assumption.

No kidding. I made more as a graduate student last semester teaching two classes than I will as an adjunct this semester teaching three classes.

Indeed. We were getting smoked out by the American fire, then the winds changed. We are now getting smoked out by the Rim fire. I live within walking distance of the University, and couldn't see my office from home this morning. 125k acres and only 5% contained. Joy.

Or in a sealed baggie in the tank. You wouldn't want a random house guest to leave you without TP.

Um... when was Hollywood about "making the best ART"? It seems to me that almost the entire history of Hollywood is about making money. The studio system, which thrived from the 1920s-40s was designed to make profits, not art. Are we talking about some period before the big studios came into existence? Like, the silent film era? Or is there some period of history that I don't know about during which profits were eschewed in the name of art?

For all of recorded history up to about 1990, marriage has always, in every society, meant a contract of union between a man and a woman.

Actually, for most of human history, marriage has consisted of a non-contractual union (contracts are a fairly modern invention, which reply on a state level society with rule of law) between (generally speaking) a man and as many women as he can afford to marry. There are a few societies where marriage has consisted of a similar non-contractual union between a woman and as many men as she can afford to marry. There are also a fair number of societies where same-sex marriages occur, though they are not the norm (generally, they occur in societies where a man's brother is expected to marry his sister-in-law in the event of the man's death---if the man has no brothers, but has sisters, the sister's might be expected to take over the husbandly duties).

Of course, this is utterly irrelevant, anyway. For the vast majority of Western history, women were treated like property, and marriage was an exchange of property which happened to include a woman. Is that really the institution that you want legally enforced? Since we all like fancy Latin: argumentum ad antiquitatem.