It’s something tots do naturally. We browbeat them not to when they become kids (I’m doing this right now with my 4 year old. I forbid her to talk about farting outside the house). Then, if they are lucky, they learn how to again as older teens or young adults. At least that’s how it seems with girls. Maybe boys are different, I don’t know.

Some people just aren’t going to like your opinions. And some of them won’t like you, just for disagreeing with them. You can see that a lot on the internet. It’s pretty impressive the insults you can get for not liking a book or restaurant. Of course, that’s all the stupid stuff. Disagreeing at school or work is a much bigger problem.

My own opinion has always been that I like to discuss things and I like to talk to people who don’t share my perspective. I don’t mind being disagreed with, so long as its done politely and not as an excuse to insult me. Those who can’t tolerate not having their opinions chiselled in gold on my walls needn’t bother to speak.

So it was with some amusement that I saw my Amazon reviewer ranking. It’s 206829. Now, I’m not big on reviewing products–I’ve only got 14 reviews up. But I noticed that my ranking is based on the votes of readers on whether or not they found my reviews “helpful”. Which of course means whether they agreed. I have a lot of no votes from one book I panned (probably too tersely. I tend to be too terse). Anyway, this thing is a diet book called Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less by Mollie Katzen, who is apparently some kind of big name author, and Walter Willet. It got great reviews. So I bought it, regretted it, wrote about it, and pissed a lot of people off.

I can live with that.

But I did go back and give everyone who *I* agreed with a positive rating.