>As a brand new member of UT, I have to say I'm amazed by all the political commentary in what I thought was a technical group. No matter, I guess -- but the question is, how can I disable "Chatter" altogether so that it does not clutter up all the other (hopefully more interesting, at least to me) threads?

Hi Jim,

Go into Account Setup -> Category Filter and add any categories you don't want to see to the filter list.