Day: April 26, 2006

Attachment Extractor Extension for Thunderbird

For the most part I don’t want Thunderbird to automatically extract all attachments, but I also receive about 15 automated e-mails every day that have large attachments where I’d like to automatically extract the attachments to a directory.

Attachment Extractor is an extension for Thunderbird that does just that. Simply select the messages that you want the attachments extracted from, right click and select the “Extract Selected Attachments” and the extension takes care of the rest.

Blogs and Jobs — Whatever

There have been a lot of stories like this one about whether or not maintaining a personal web site, weblog or Myspace/whatever area might potentially harm someone’s job prospects. The Chronicle of Higher Education has run a number of pieces on the effects that student weblogs have had on those students when applying for Master’s and PhD programs or teaching jobs.

I have one diehard rule about my websites — never write about work. It is mind boggling how many people have easily identifiable blogs or web sites who regularly post about their day-to-day conflicts/problems/successes in their jobs. Unless you’re blogging about your job as part of a company-sponsored effort, it is beyond stupid to blog about work, and I have no sympathy for people who have been fired for blogging about their co-workers or the person in the NY Daily News article who was applying for a job at the university at the same time she was posting insulting remarks about the head of the search committee at the university. Duh.

Beyond that, though, anything goes. It is certainly possible that someday I will apply for a job and someone will find this blog and decide that I’m not quite what they’re looking for. Frankly, life’s too short to worry about stuff like that.

It’s Not Easy Being Heathen

A University of Minneapolis survey has revealed that atheists are America’s most distrusted minority. According to a University of Minneapolis press release (emphasis added),

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

The survey found that 47.6 percent of people interviewed said they would disapprove of a child’s wish to marry an atheist, compared to a mere 33.5 percent disapproval for marrying a Muslim.

According to an ABC News commentary by John Allen Paulos (author of the crappy book Innumeracy,

Many of those interviewed saw atheists as cultural elitists, amoral materialists, or given to criminal behavior or drugs. She states, “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”

Huh? What’s wrong with a little amoral materialism and self-interested anti-social behavior?

On the other hand, it doesn’t exactly help the atheist PR case that the two worst mass murderers in history — Stalin and Mao — were both doctrinaire atheists. Atheists like to bitch about things like the Inquisition or the witch hunts, but those would have been slow days for Stalin and Mao.

But seriously. What almost none of the commentators on this study noted was that the low opinion of atheists is almost certainly motivated by prominent media coverage of atheist idiots like Timothy Shortell, Natalie Anger, and Michael Newdow. When most of the atheists that the average American hears about are raving lunatics who seem to have nothing better to do than be offended by every public display of religious belief, it is hardly surprising that so many Americans think atheists are completely alien to their values.

Thanks guys!