Hang on a second.

Atheism states that there is no higher power in the world. That there is no god, gods or any higher form of life. ... if there was no god, gods or higher forms of life other than man...

That does not follow logically. "I have no belief in a supernatural entity" does not necessarily flow to "Humans are the highest form of life." It may seem that way to us, but there's no logical connection to those statements whatsoever. You may find an atheist who firmly believes that bacteria represent a form of life far superior to that of humans, and there are many arguments that could be made to that effect.

Atheism, as a label, announces one thing and one thing only: The disagreement with, or denial of, the idea that something can exist outside the natural, knowable universe. Anything else, whatsoever, is not part and parcel of atheism as such.

It is not, as you put it, a "natural conclusion" that atheism means that man's life is meant to benefit man. That's an interpretation you invented on your own and has nothing to do with the disbelief in the supernatural.

Not a smartbook, not a sub-notebook, etc. Those are just market-droid's attempts to re-brand and differentiate from past models of the same thing. It's a netbook.

And "netbook" isn't also just a vague marketing term? What are you talking about?

I opted out of the mail. I just stopped checking it, period. Eventually the box filled up, and after a brief check from the apartment manager to find out if I was dead, the post office was forced to take the mail back, return it all to sender, because there was nowhere to put it. Now that the box was empty again, they started putting more mail in it, only to have the cycle repeat. After another iteration of this, they simply stopped delivering any mail, claiming that they were holding it at their facility for a period of time before returning it to sender, but I never checked because I don't care.

Mail today is almost entirely useless. Checking the mailbox is, in essence, taking time out of your day to throw away someone else's trash that they stuffed in a little metal box for no reason. Bills? Online. Letters? Email. Packages? Send them to my office. I don't need a box filled with pointless advertisements to throw out every day.

So, if you don't like the mail, simply stop checking it, and they'll stop delivering it. It really is that easy.

First, we have more than enough food to feed the masses right now. There's no need to spend more. They're not starving because there's some shortage; they're starving because of distribution problems. It also doesn't help that we can't just waltz in and give food to the people -- we give it to their governments, who are often corrupt, and hoarde it for themselves or sell it.

Second, giving them more food sounds like a great idea, but it also leads to population growth in an area that can't sustain even the population they currently have.

Does it still have that godawful "awesome bar" which, through some supernatural force, manages to be even worse than Firefox's? Does it still think it knows better than me why I opened a new tab? Does it still look ugly as sin? Does it still silently install stupid google updaters alongside without asking or telling me?

Nothing it can ever do, in my mind, will make up for these atrocities. Ditch the "awesome bar", give me a BLANK SCREEN when I open a new tab, integrate well with my current DE, don't install anything alongside, and I'll consider trying it again. Until then, Chrome is a complete disaster in my eyes.

Of course, using a browser from a company that has a profit motive for keeping track of where I'm going and what I'm doing seems like a bloody stupid idea to begin with.

You know, nevermind. Even if they get rid of all that crap, I will never use Chrome. They had their chance to make a good first impression and failed, and I've come to loathe every product Google has ever produced past their actual search engine and perhaps their news aggregator.

Depends on the application, I guess. Years ago, I was out of work, and so my phone got shut off, along with my DSL, leaving me with no useful way of communicating with the world. If I put a laptop on this certain part of the kitchen counter I could get a really weak wireless signal from one of the neighbors, but not enough to be useful. So I put a wok next to the antenna of the computer, and with a little adjustment in direction here and there, got a signal that way, decent enough to actually stream video most of the time.

It was an ancient 233mhz laptop with Windows 2000, so I enabled ICS and ran a cable from it to my router, which then fed the rest of my network. I did this for two months, which was very useful for sending out resumes and such. Without the wok, it didn't work at all; with the wok, it was fairly reliable.

So, yes, you may be better off with a wok or something similar, if your needs are modest. I did have a cantenna, built by my friend, but didn't feel like opening the laptop case to figure out how to connect the wires properly, and that would have been even more directional than the wok with no good way to prop it up to aim.

"Works On My Machine!"

I'm trying to think of other businesses that have that kind of uniform/plainclothes distinction. Delivery drivers, pest control people, UPS, the people who go out in the field wear the uniform. They're also the lowest paid of the bunch.

Those people aren't wearing a uniform because they're viewed as less important employees, but rather, for the other reason you mentioned -- they're the ones out in the field. Having them wear a uniform does a few things: It keeps the company image visible to the public, and it also provides customers with at least some insurance that the random doofus knocking on their door or asking to be let into the office is, in fact, there for a legitimate reason.

In some cases the "uniform" is less to maintain a uniform appearance among employees and more of a practical consideration. You offered mechanics at dealerships as an example. They're wearing coveralls because that's the only practical garment for someone who will be tinkering with grease and oil-covered engines all day. What would you suggest they wear, a suit? Besides, any dealership worth a damn appreciates skilled mechanics.

Similarly, a chef's clothes are practical as well, at least to an extent. The crisp white looks clean and hygenic and that's important for people to see from a chef. The pockets along the sleeves and shirtfront are useful for carrying thermometers and other tools, and the double-breasted construction can be reversed to hide any accidental stains. And you'd better believe that in any fine restaurant, the chef is highly valued.

Another notable counterexample to your list is an airline pilot, who, particularly the more senior ones, can command an impressive salary with all kinds of perks and benefits, and is obviously nowhere near the bottom of the totem pole.

Pretty much anyone in uniform is on the lower end of the totem pole.

Perhaps, but at least in our culture, people expect service personnel to be in uniform. Your examples are all service personnel. And the truth is, helpdesk is the lowest end of the totem pole in IT.

Having worked helpdesk before I naturally balk at the idea, but in most places, I don't see how helpdesk is fundamentally any different from the waiters, cashiers, bus drivers, skycaps, security guards, and so forth, all of whom we expect to be in uniform.

We can't even get the masses to understand things like "stop forwarding that stupid chain email" and "stop downloading and running every random thing you see on the web" and "those emails aren't really coming from your bank, okay?"

Now you want them to buy another computer and set up a KVM switch so they can use both on the same desk and actually remember which one is which and why they need to do this?

It's not going to happen.

rumor hype will excite people to impossibly high standards, and when the actual product comes out, forums will be filled with sarcastic bitching

Or grasping-at-straws rationalisation as to why, despite the objective observation that it is a very mediocre product, it is in fact the greatest thing that has ever been invented since the last thing Apple did, and how you're a fool for not seeing that.

What kind of brainwashing and delusions made him think he could take down an airliner with a bag of stuff he regurgitated and cooked up in a plane toilet? This guy was a clown.

Perhaps, but remember, the weapon of a terrorist is not a gun, or a bomb, or a knife, or even crashing planes into buildings. Those are all only incidental. The terrorist's weapon is terror. Fear. His goal is to disrupt and cause panic in a society, which will then in turn pressure its government to do something. In that respect, some clown lighting his pants on fire was pretty effective.

Think about it -- a couple of guys crash planes into buildings one time (well, three times, but you know what I mean). For the next ten years and beyond they don't have to lift another finger. They don't have to plant one more bomb, fire one more shot, or issue one more threat. Their target country did a fine job of working itself into a tizzy, curtailing the freedoms of millions, overlooking its own laws, spending itself into massive debt, and completely tarnishing its image on the world stage, all on its own, without any further "encouragement" from the responsible parties.

That, to me, is astonishing.

It's also astonishing how the same people who advocate all this War On Terror nonsense are usually the same ones who whine about how if we don't do this and that, the terrorists win. The terrorists already won. They got exactly the reaction they wanted and we played into their hands.

I'm not suggesting that reasonable steps shouldn't have been taken, or that we should have just pretended nothing happened. Deploy your troops to Afgahnistan with the mission of arresting (or, failing that, killing) the responsible parties, and maybe review your security procedures a bit. Fine. But the paranoia leading to two massive, ongoing wars, secret arrests, stuff like Gitmo, and slowly stripping both liberty and dignity from your own citizenry.. that's just the reaction they were trying to provoke.

A stark white screen with black text focuses the mind wonderfully.

Almost. But it's also like staring into a light bulb.

I kind of miss those ancient word processors with white or green text on a black background that ran on old DOS machines. Great for just writing something with a bit of formatting thrown in, and fools the world over had no way to crap up their documents with fifty different font sizes, colors, and faces.

he abbreviation "SoCal" long predates recent abbreviations such as you mention, going back at least into the 1980s.

That doesn't make it right, useful, or clever; it just means something stupid has been around a bit longer than something else stupid. Of course, silliness like "rents" and "vaca" have been around since at least the 80s as well, used primarily by teenagers trying to sound cool. Your rationalisation of earlier origins justifies those too.

At no point was I trying to imply that you, personally, use such words as "Brangelina" -- I was using them as examples of how ridiculous these types of portmanteaus can be.

However, I find it interesting that you take such harsh exception to that sort of thing, while claiming that "SoCal" is perfectly acceptable, merely because it slightly predates the other examples.

As for origins, you realise the dunderheads that brought us "Brangelina" are of the same stock as the chowderheads who brought us "SoCal" slightly earlier?

A silly word being invented by media twits in an effort to appear cool is no more legitimate than another silly word being invented by media twits in an effort to appear cool just because the first media twits invented their silly word twenty years prior to the second media twits.

It showed very short clips of bits of play so you had little idea of what was actually going on with some crazy overexcited presenter yelling for the entire thing.

I don't think soccer matches are much different. This is pretty accurate.

In SoCal, we

Stop. Just stop. If you must bastardise the language like that, at least go find "Brangelina" or "Tomkat" and tell them about it first. In return maybe they'll tell you about what hot new "romcom" they're going to star in next. They may be on "vaca" though, so you might want to call their "rents" to see when they're expected back.

If all that's too much trouble, you could just stop talking like a thirteen year old girl.

That said, I agree. In Atlanta, the merest hint that a light dusting of snow might be in the forecast is greeted with panic-stricken weathermen beating the HOLY EMERGENCY! drum for three days in advance, advising everyone not to drive, and to stock up on essentials. As a result the idiot masses hit the stores and buy enormous quantities of the two most perishable items they can find -- bread and milk, because god forbid you get snowed in for a day or two and don't have those. Of course, in my thirty years here, I've seen actual crippling snow exactly once, and crippling ice exactly once. Otherwise, every year we get maybe one snowfall annually, which amounts to barely an inch and is usually melted by noon the next day. Insanity.