As a newbie, however, I have to wonder out loud why a community that trumpets the independence from "central authorities" as one of the merits of its alternate currency is obsessed with chaining it back together with some form of government-backed currency.  I mean, everyone is worried about its (declining) exchange rate with the US dollar.  Or when I look around, any kind of services or goods that can be bought with bitcoins is always converted to its US$ equivalent.  Unless I misread the part that reads:

money is any object, or any sort of record, accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context

Why aren't many more services and goods being offered without having to reach for the calculator and plugging in the current USD:BTC exchange rate?

Hello hello!  Since I'm still restricted, I'll ask here.  I understand how merged mining works and I (kinda) understand the reason for namecoins but wouldn't merged mining hurt the value of namecoins?

I just checked bitparking and the last exchange rate is 1NMC=0.0066BTC (the highest I saw was .01BTC yesterday).  I suppose that's great if you only use namecoins but wouldn't the rush devalue it (depending on your pool, you could be mining 6NMC:1BTC).