I don't see any active misogyny where I work. No one picks on the females for being females or makes those demeaning comments that would make Al Bundy proud. I do see some dissatisfaction however with gender culture clashes. Men have a way of getting along, while I will be the last to defend it, it's how things have been done since we first set foot in school. Women have generally another way of getting along, and I find it at least as obnoxious as male methods, but I assume they have reached the same form of quiescence.

These two mechanisms do not frequently get along with each other, however, and for equally sexist reasons it is very hard for someone of the opposite gender to effectively play the game on the other's turf. Women who try the macho, alpha dog thing get labelled bitch. They talk the talk, but we secretly know we could beat them up, so they can't possibly be alpha, right? Alpha isn't about being right, it's about fear and intimidation. Men who try to play the clique game are seen as gay, weird or otherwise "creeps". The only reason that misogyny makes the news is male dominated fields pay more, in many cases.

The flip side is without the other gender present and forcing awkwardness, these cultures get out of control. Many men in male dominated fields and many females in female dominated fields complain about how tough a place can be to work in when these gender-specific culture mechanics are allowed to run unabated. Not all men like the macho bullshit game, I find in engineering that many a company has actually been ruined by meetings and decisions being dominated by the confident idiot who drives snappy decisions and overrides the thinkers. I have heard women complain about how resistant to change elementary school teachers can be, when the wrong clique gets in the way.

I'm not sure how we solve this problem, except to DEemphasize social behavior in children, and promote independence, self-reliance and critical thinking beyond these cheap interactions we seem to push hard (play dates, putting them in school ever younger, rushing them to certain milestones). Anyway this doesn't make as good of a headline as men are being sexist pigs.

No, not what I said, at all. I said absolutely feel free to do whatever you THINK is right. Those two words are very important.

You asked does right and wrong exist in a universe without God. My answer, is clearly yes. You are now changing the question to "what is right and wrong", and my only answer can be to study those that have come before you, understand their philosophy, understand the questions people have poked in the philosophy, and use it to evaluate your actions. Then choose the most optimal action. If you wish to judge me, judge me the same way. THINK, and THINK in the context of RIGHT/JUST/ETHICS.

There is no script for right or wrong in every case, either in the Bible or in secular belief. It has always been application of philosophy by way of careful thought. I feel the biblical version is myopic, and founded on a fundamentally flawed premise. That is not to say it does not have merit.

I never said that.

Or just say you can't sell your phones in our country with 3 billion people willing to sell kidneys for it w/o this software installed...

Are you aware that many of those who carried out the atrocities of the 20th Century thought they were doing right?

And many atrocities were performed in the name of doing God's work too. The list of people killed in the name of God would not fit in the pages of the Bible . The Bible is equally terrible at black and white, but provides a lot to think on and in some cases a template of a society we might want to live in. It is one of many sources of wisdom when it comes to difficult decisions.

so feel free to do whatever it is you think is right
Yes, absolutely. You're probably going to do better by understanding the study of right and wrong than just by doing whatever you feel like doing at the time. But you can rationalize almost any decision as well, and delude yourself. Religion does not have the market cornered as far as self-delusion goes.

If you want a list of right things and wrong things, I don't have one, no one does, though many will happily construct it for you and you can just blindly accept it. I am not sure that meets the letter, spirit, or common interpretations of the passage indicated above but it suffices for many. If you want to reject the idea of right and wrong outside of the concept of God, I gave you a list of people whose opinions were considered brilliant and well reasoned, both in the secular and non-secular context, who disagree with you. If you accept that right and wrong is, in many cases, difficult and a lot to ask, I completely agree.

I can't give any more concrete answers, perhaps less than religion, but as a system of thought it's well studied, here's a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Christmas is a fun holiday even for atheists, if that is your point. But I'm not sure that many of the rituals/beliefs of Hindu's I know here in America are compatible with atheism. Those that hold these rituals reliably and consistently seem to have strong beliefs behind them in some sort of spiritualism/mysticism mumbo jumbo that sounds as ridiculous as any other religion.

I have no doubt there are atheists who practice Hindu rituals, but I don't know that everyone/the majority hold that belief.

That same line is used by ministers all over the world to also refute atheists who while they reject the existence of God, do see wisdom in the Bible. The illogic being that if you do not embrace Jesus, you cannot possibly do right.

It's the single best reason to reject Christianity as a religion in general as far as I'm concerned.

What "theologians" think has very little to do with what the rank-and-file religious think

Them science nerds and their pocket protectors says they got them a gadget what can see aliens on far away planets? Hogwash! If there were alien planets I could see 'em with my trusty B'noculars. Keep sayin we all come from monkeys and the planets about to burn up too. Some people don't know how to make an honest livin.

Except it's not *sh, all my sh* is in *sh, and all my sh* runs on Linux's *sh and OS X's *sh. I'm not interested in being tied to anyone's platform, not in my shell, not in my language (No C#, .NET Obj-C, Swift, other bullshit).

Without *sh the OS is useless to me.

Doesn't see to have a real shell yet. Bash, csh, tcsh, I don't care. Windows is a gaming OS unless it can put productivity back. Otherwise it's OS X or Linux...

I think he's been using it to generate the story. After all, even his dead characters have a frequent habit of returning to the storyline, having apparently forgotten they are dead.

If you've only ever seen the TV series, you wouldn't know that. Which is interesting to me, at least.

two non-incestuous family leads

Are you sure of that? Most of the better theories put Jon Snow's father as Rhaegar and mother as Lyanna, making him her nephew. That's incest outside of west virginia.

If we were a nation of rebels we'd have lined our telecom exec's and board members against a wall and shot them, mulched them and prepared the wall for RIAA/MPAA/IP activists, and finally have led violent revolt against pretty much everyone in congress.

Instead we bend over backwards to accomodate dysfunctional, greedy monopolies. Watch idly as 12yo's are prosecuted for "piracy" and vote the same clowns in again.

We haven't been rebels in a real long time.

Let them move jobs overseas and have unemployed engineers and computer scientists become politicians (the greatest welfare program!). It may be that we need to form the same kind of bloc that lawyers and doctors have to stop this kind of bullshit.

There's only one way to hear "Firing 14%"/"Need oversea's labor", and that is "we don't really want to pay salaries, that's totally 1950s".