I think this has two problems. First, there is no "Atheist account" of how the world formed. Atheists don't have a creation myth. In the same way that there is no "Atheist account" for how to cure cancer, or what the grand unifying theory of everything is, there is no "Atheist account" for how the universe formed. I'm an atheist and I'll gladly say, I don't know how the universe started. I don't know lots of things. My ignorance is no reason to postulate a god or gods, or aliens, or anything else.

Secondly, that the universe is constructed the way it is is nothing like surviving a barrage of bullets fired by a firing squad. I can test the average accuracy of firing squads. I can put up a target and yell, "Fire!" as many times as you like and see how often they hit it. A deviation from that average is measurable and consequently needs an explanation. But the physical constants of the universe aren't like that at all. We don't know how the universe started in the first place, or even what the physical constants are as physical phenomena. Obviously we can't start universes in laboratories and measure how often the strong force is x and how often its y and derive a probability function from that.

This is a variation of the watchmaker argument, so I'll use an analogy. Imagine that you're walking along a beach but instead of seeing a watch you see something really weird that you've never seen before. It's beautiful and intricate and you don't see any thing like it nearby. Would you suppose that it had an intelligent designer or that it had been made by natural processes? Trick question! You don't have enough evidence to make either supposition.

That the universe is constructed the way it is, without knowing anything about universe construction in general, tells us nothing.

While there might be a good reason to call Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution the "Copyright Clause" when talking about copyrights specifically, this clause of the constitution also authorizes patent law and perhaps other kinds of intellectual property that Congress hasn't been innovative enough to think of yet. We could call it the "Intellectual Property Clause" or the "Copyright and Patent Clause," but for my money I like "Progress Clause."

Steve, is that you?

Well, sure. But your opinion of global warming is going to influence how you go about solving those problems. Oil has a limited supply, but there is still quite a bit of it. Instead of phasing it out before it runs out, we might like to invest in politically stabilizing the oil pumping regions (I don't know, but there are arguments that this is what the Iraq war was supposed to do). Similarly, instead of phasing out coal we might like to make mining safer, and invest in "clean coal" which aims at much of the pollutants in burning coal, but not the GHGs.

Also, your opinion of global warming is going to influence whether you think global approaches to these problems are worthwhile. Mining coal is dangerous, but Americans probably don't care all that much how many people in China die in coal mines. Burning coal is dirty, but the brunt of the particulate emissions are in the immediate area of the coal fired power plant, again Americans don't care how much of this happens in China. On the other hand, if you think global warming is a problem then you'd like to figure out a way to get China to stop using coal.

While I respect your skepticism of the scientific press, I think this reasoning suffers from two flaws. First

Relying on the press to get your scientific information is going to be incomplete. The press reports particularly sensationalistic doom & gloom stuff, whereas most science goes out of its way to take a neutral tone. It is too much to ask a non-scientist to pay attention to the leading journals (I'm thinking of Science and Nature here), but we are also at a point in our history where science needs to inform our politics. This is obviously troublesome for democracy, and why I sympathize with your skepticism of science.

Second,

This reasoning is suspect because, aside from global warming effects, green house gas emissions aren't very harmful. It is relatively easy to see the pollutant effects of particulate emissions: they make things dirty and also hard to breathe. GHG emissions, on the other hand, are fairly clean and only have a mediated effect on human health (through climate change). Your strategy would have us fix only the easy to see problems even if there are more important environmental matters that require advanced scientific techniques to understand.

The interaction between EULAs and the first sale doctrine is really interesting. Essentially it comes down to this: if you license a copy of a copyrighted work then first sale doesn't apply and the copyright owner can limit the possessor of the licensed copy from transferring it to somebody else. If you sell a copy of a copyrighted work then the first sale doctrine does apply and the copyright owner can't limit the new owner's ability to transfer it to somebody else. The idea here is similar to renting or leasing. Obviously if you're just renting your copy from the software maker then you can't sell it.

What makes a license a license and a sale a sale is still up in the air. Some courts say that if you get to keep the copy forever (there is no provision saying you have to give the copy back) then it is a sale. There are some courts that say if there are enough limitations on transferability then that itself makes it a license, because those limitations themselves show an intent to create a license not a sale.

I am not a lawyer, but a law student (although I'd like to be a lawyer some day, in this economy that future is in doubt).

After playing World of Goo for pc and wii, I have much more respect for the wiimote pointing function. In case you haven't heard of it, the game involves placing little balls using drag and drop mechanics to build structures. In some cases you have to be very fast and very precise and the wiimote handled it beautifully. It was at least as good as a mouse, and I think some extra polish on the wii controls actually made the game better on that platform.