So it's actually smoking women that cause autism?

That's just joking. I agree with you otherwise. This is like those creepy commercials that shows some dude that claims he lost his legs because of smoking.

Smoking is just plain bad, which is why I gave it up in 1976. All of this FUD is becoming cruel.

Nothing like suggesting to a pregnant woman that being around cigarette smoke is yet one more thing that she has to fear she'll harm her child with. She feels a tremendous weight of responsibility in the first place - who wouldn't. Let's just amp that up some, eh?

Both of my parents smoked. And aside from the webbed fingers, and the nictating membrane on my eyes, I'm pretty normal.....

That is not only sad, but really disturbing. Well, I guess if you would love an adopted child more than one you home-brewed, you did the right thing

There is a bit of a conumdrum here. As a smoker, you are supposed to die young, and suddenly from a massive heart attack or stroke. Stick with me here, I wish you good health.

Okay, so lets see what happens, the fate of the evil smoker, as compared to "healthy" people. I've told this story before, but here goes again. My mother in law who was a strict teetotaler, a non smoking person who did everything the healthy way, including drugs that kept all the "danger" readings in line, spent the last ten years of her life as a dementia patient, really hitting the Medicare trough. The last two years of her life ,which is when most healthy people really start racking up the bills, she cost around 600 thousand dollars in hospital bills. Pretty impressive.

Now let us take the example of my mother. She smoked, and on weekends, we'd enjoy a few beers. She did die of a massive heart attack, and it was over essentially immediately. So even though this is a sample of two, who cost the system more? My Mother in law, who was probably well over a million dollars during her dementia riddled last ten years, or my Mother who lived healthy up to the end of her days, then went out not costing that asshole anything (and she did die several years older than my mother in law anyway.

Smug people and their ideas on health care are probably the same people that buy high and sell low on the stock market. Using their logic, you would think they would encourage people to smoke. Nope, I've often thought that you could just exchange "smoker" with say the N-word, and see what they got. Just hate.

But we all do die, regardless of wht way too many people think.. I hope I go out the way my mother did, and my worst nightmare is my smart mother in law's protracted death.

Much better if she was provided free birth control, don't you think?

THIS! A million times this.

The smokers as legal (insert n-word here) being blamed for every ill, every problem of society, and now apparently smelling cigarette smoke will immediately cause any woman in the vicinity to bear screwed up children, just reminds me of the various child based witch hunts we engage in every so often, from facilitated writing, to the world's most expensive trial where psychologists manipulated children into making up stories about people who molested them, and on and on.

So, here we are in 2014, and where are all these defective people? And with all the other things that have been found to be actually responsible for babies with big problems, like BPA and excessive phytoestrogen consumption.

Humans have so much chemical exposure today, even from foods considered the best stuff you can ever eat, that we have a pretty rough time determining what does what.

Now keep in mind that smoking tobacco is abysmally stupid, and chewing tobacco resmbles nothing more than stooping down, picking up a piece of week old dog shit, and puting a pinch twixt cheek and gum. It will kill you, and will kill you in a bad way. I had two immediate family members die from it, nothing like spitting blood into a handkerchief and drowning of the course of a few years.

But this study just seems like a way to make expectant mothers feel even more guilty than they already do.

She's carrying a new person inside, and worried that at any time, she might do something to damage or kill the kid. Let's just make her even more nervous.

Come on - mod this guy up!. The insistence on a monoculture by some folks is the source of a lot of problems, and th epursuit ok knowledge is almost always a very good thing.

Just watch me get modded as troll for saying knowledge is good.

Which "smug" comment you seemed to approve of until I used it as an example of possible issues on your part - as part of your comment egarding how you enjoy lording it over other people. Saying someone is "smug" is merely saying they show excessive pride. Which you do. But coupled with your reflexive accusation of me as having an inferiority complex. might start to look like aggressive compensatory behavior.

We are very lucky to have you as the arbiter of who does and does not deserve compassion. And hopefully if and when you need a little, someone will be there to give it to you.

Now you are just being silly. Reading your posts would probably convince most people that you are suffering from self-esteem issues, and trying to compensate for it via adopting a disdainful attitude toward other people. Your pulling out the "inferiority complex" card so quickly is another red flag symptom.

Try a little compassion, unless you have a fear of getting close to people, and getting emotionally hurt.

Consider that I am not offended, but just letting you know that unless you want to come off as pompous, rigid, and condescending you might be having a different effect than you think.

I'm at least as atheistic as you are, it is irrelevent to the conversation.

But I also understand that you seem to have a really rigid outlook on this. I know a woman who was in a car accident. Spent a month in the hospital, and came out addicted to pain killers. Quite a conundrum when you have to wean yourself, but as you do, the pain returns.

My wife takes prescription pain killers for a collapsed disc. Kind of keeps her able to function. But If she goes off them, I have no doubt there will be minor withdrawal symptoms, along with the return of constant pain. Where do these people fit in your rigid ideology? Would you refuse to take painkillers if your pain level was at 10?

Or do you figure they are just just following this mythical "crowd" you refer to?

Even these Silicon Valley people, they aren't taking drugs to escape, they are taking them to try to get their jobs done. Addiction through work ethic. And that is mildly insane. But pathetically so.

DId something happen to you in the past that makes you so bitter? Your lordliness doesn't get you much, merely causes people to either laugh at you or feel pity (more so than your desired annoyance).

I've done both now, having at first laughed at your pomposity and rigidity, but now seeing this remark, I feel kind of sorry for you.

And once you learn to not lord your obvious superiority over us weaklings, you will have achieved perfection.

It has to be lonely up there are the top though. So consider donating sperm. They really go for perfect people in those places. You could be the start of a new race of overlords.

What's it like having to live among the Visigoths? You probably should tine down your message of superiority, For there but for the grace of (insert favorite deity here) go you.

The point here is not how great you are, and how if only these weak minded individuals would have listened to their teachers all would be well in. The point of the story is that this is a different story.

Your teachers probably did not sell the idea of the suburban living, family person, with a good paying job and college education as the drug addict.

They probably sold you the bleary eyed guy living under a bridge, stealing to support his addiction, or the once beautiful woman in an alley with her fubber hose, having turned to prostitution to support her heroin habit, or at best, just a stoner, who has permanently addled his brain by taking a hit off that kickass doob some cute girl handed him saying "Come on - everyone's doing it - don't you want to do it?

No, this is an entirely different group. What is worse, by their addiction, they are serving the stockholders. If you have 10 people working 80 plus hours a week, you don't have to pay 25 people to work 40 (remember the inefficiencies - it doesn't scale 1 for 1). This is not your teacher's and societies addicts.

Having worked my share of 24+ hour days, and having my full complement of hours in by Tuesday morning, I can imagine a lot of people becoming addicted to something that keeps them going, then getting involved in downers to bring them back. I never did, managing to get by on coffee abuse only. But I understand very well the pressure. You have the stockholders, the family, and the corporation behind you, demanding anything to increase your productivity.

So yes, I fully understand exactly how this can happen. I avoided it because I understand there is a price to pay, an inevitable crash and burn if you try to do this on a extended basis.

I just don't have your smug attitude about it.

Only perfect people are allowed to be smug. And smugness is a sign of imperfection.

tl;dr: The world runs on Windows, and the school does a disservice to the students by not preparing them for reality.

And will forever, until the end of time. Just like MS-DOS.

Congratulations, bringing biblical style circular arguments to the world of computers.

Windows is the gold standard because it is the gold standard because it is the gold standard. World without end, amen.

In some faraway universe, you might make sense.

Otherwise this thread is exactly about speakers and sound systems.

If somehow some way, Bose makes an awesome mousetrap, or some kind of gastraphagus that makes enemies shit their pants, that's all very nice. But tell me how the other stuff they do is relevent to them suing Apple?

You must have been a blast in debate class. Declaring the topic of the debate off topic.

Oh, awesome, smashing riposte. It's not like we were discussing Bose as related to their speakers as related to Beats, eh? Yeah - OK buddy.

I really don't give a stinky rat's ass about the other things Bose does, I'm just here to talk about the shitty audio of Bose and the equally shitty audio of Beats.

Which makes me think that Bose's best argument in this whole lawsuit is to demonstrate how both sound bad. If you want to have an argument about the other stuff Bose does, submit a story.

Right about now, 93 Escort Wagon is pretty high on the list.....