The Mythical Kingdom of Moronia

It's washed up in the sea. Somewhere below Atlantis. It's washed up.

Moronia: ancient mythical kingdom where the stupidest were the wealthiest. Public contests were held with expensive prizes given away to the participants who gave the most wrong answers. Scientists are generally in agreement that either evolution or intelligent design destroyed Moronia.
 - Wikipedia

Like Atlantis, Moronia is a legend. Though some evidence points to its actual existence and location, historians have had to go on writings found in other cultures citing this puzzling kingdom. At least in this regard they have not been left impoverished.

Child Rearing

Children were reared differently in Moronia than anywhere else ethnologists know of. A strictly seamless transition from the 'formula bottle' to something called the 'beige box' was used. Experts believe this method served to stunt growth and stultify normal extrovert social behaviour.

The 'Hands Free' Formula Bottle

Found in sketches, paintings, and rare photographs from the era, the hands free formula bottle was a central part of the Moronian philosophy of child rearing and way of life, and is credited with being the main way Moronia's peculiar culture proliferated.

Although ostensibly used so the child could keep both hands free for keyboard access, historians believe this was not the intent. Moronians gave their children toy computers (mostly beige in colour to match the colour of formula) at an early age but they did not teach them to 'keep both hands on the keyboard'.

In fact there is little evidence Moronians ever fully understood what the computer keyboard was for or why there was such a thing in the first place.

The idea instead was to get used to having one hand free to manipulate the computer mouse and keep the hand other free for getting out a credit card and/or occasional masturbation.

The formula bottle and the beige box: for the children it was a seamless transition.

Click Click Click!

An often used phrase used with children and adults alike was 'click click click'. People often greeted one another in this fashion and in parting would often say 'remember - click click click'.

'Click' was also the Moronian way to say 'OK'. 'So that's all right with you then?' 'Click.'

Surnames Clothing Labels

Moronians eschewed the otherwise common practice of using surnames. When asked what one's name was, one would reply 'Jim', and when asked what one's surname was, one would reply 'Jim - just Jim'. This of course made things very confusing, but the Moronians, we can't forget, were an extremely confused people.

Entire Moronian villages existed where everyone had the same name. Especially the rumour mill was bewildering. 'Did you hear that Jim dumped Jim and is now shacking up with Jim?'

Two girls meet on the street. 'You'll never guess who I slept with last night - Jim! He was dreamy!' 'So did I!' And so forth.

On the other hand when traveling abroad: 'You're from Moronia? Do you know Jim?' And the answer was always 'yes'.

Various luminaries in Moronian society tried to introduce the practice of surnames - and also a greater variation in first names - but without avail. If need arose, people would use a pronominal possessive. 'No I mean MY Jim.' And so forth.

Clothing labels were also used as a substitute. Instead of asking someone what their surname was, people would look inside their collars. 'Oh this Jim's a GAP.' And so forth.

Another method was colours. Officially a sort of surname, Moronians nevertheless used colours as a substitute and not as surnames proper. 'So you're marrying Jim? Is that the blue one or the red one?' And so forth.

Surnames and Computer Use

Naturally when it came time to use computers, Moronians were not favourable to the idea of using file extensions. The following was found in a Moronian discussion forum Carbon dated to be at least 15,000 years old.

To hide the extension of a file:

• Slow: Highlight file, press Command-I, check the Hide Extension box.
• Fast: Remove the extension by renaming the file without the .xyz extension in the Finder.

I don't think that removing the extension is desctructive. If you remove the extension in the finder, it will just turn on the 'Hide Extension' flag for that file. The extension is still there (which you can see in Get Info).

It can indeed affect the Mac's ability to open a file. I recently wanted to remove the .jpg extensions from a couple of hundred digital camera files on a CD (to make contact sheets for a university thesis - long story). Renamer4Mac did the job just fine, but Photoshop would no longer recognise the files as something it could open. The only solution was to run a Batch process to open each file in Photoshop, then save it again - after that, removing the extensions did no harm (something to do with resource forks, or whatever they're called these days? Geek input required...)

the original post said 'rename in the Finder', and by that it meant 'not in the Get Info window'. If you remove the extension in the Finder, it's still there, but hidden. Rob, maybe you could edit to clarify?

Completely different is if you remove it in the Get Info window, you're actually deleting it, of course, but the Finder will warn you first! You can't actually (destructively) delete an extension without the Finder giving you that annoying dialog box. Of course, if you use a third-party utility or the command-line you bypass the warnings, but you should know that already, no?

OK, I actually tested some of this stuff. Removing the extension (from the icon's name or in get info) DOES remove the extension. The only way to hide it is in an Info/Inspector window, or set it globally via Finder's advanced prefs.

Removing the extension CAN have an effect on how it opens on a Mac.

Dealing with multiple files, it's faster to get an inspector window, then hide the extension with one click, instead of renaming every file. Really, it's best practice to leave the extension alone. Why remove it if it can break things/change behaviou?

This is one of the reasons why I'm not sad to see Avie Tevanian leave Apple. This feature shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

The Fall of Moronia

Historians are in disagreement as to the cause of the demise of Moronia. Many believe it was evolution: a people bound by their own psychoses, they were simply doomed from the outset.

Others believe in a higher power - 'intelligent design'. They believe an almighty Creator looked down at the people of Moronia, was totally pissed, and just wiped them the fuck out.