I'm being pedantic, but I downvoted you because you started with the obvious observation "Motl is really really rude" (yeah, he's a real piece of work, check ou

I'm being pedantic, but I downvoted you because you started with the obvious observation "Motl is really really rude" (yeah, he's a real piece of work, check out the rest of his blog for stuff much worse), and then wrote "I find this rudeness and pedantry in academia infuriating.", which isn't supported by the observation that that one guy is rude. (But the rest of your comment is fine.) Individual people can be really rude with or without it being a cultural problem. There's no need to bring academia up like that—that's a lot of people, decent people, and most of them are really quite nice people and good scientists.