I’d always assumed it stood for “General Education Diploma”. Actually, I can see it being a slight positive - it implies someone screwed up in high school (and/or had family problems that interfered with education), dropped out, matured, and went back to finish the job (or its equivalent). I can respect that more than some kid who slid through with a D+ average or managed to graduate through the generosity of overworked teachers but is functionally illiterate.
As for applying it to QED, it might have been mildly clever the first few times but has lost its value with overuse. That won’t stop lissener, though. I remember (but can’t cite) one of my early posts where I saw him repeatedly using the term “MicroSuck” to refer to the software company, even in posts that weren’t really all that critical of MicroSoft - it was just a joke that only he found funny, used well beyond its shelf-life.
I called him “pissener”. This didn’t catch on for some reason, but at least I didn’t try to force it.
Sorry, was reminded by another thread that I’d meant to respond to this. The formalized term for this type of defense of sanity is called the Typing Monkeys rule, which states: “Just because you might be able to teach a monkey to bang on a keyboard, it does not necessarily follow that the product of such typing is inherently worthy of a serious response.”