(Well, technically, they'd have to turn you over to the military and have them shoot you...)

This is unlikely to happen in very many cases, however, even though it's legal.

Nowhere does it say, or even imply, that each of the four possibilities is equal. Only that there are only four of them.

As you yourself immediately pointed out in your own more verbose example, four possibilites does *not* mean a 25% chance of each.

Perhaps you literally don't know the meaning of the word literal?

And the conclusion is correct - Reason is irrelevant to anyone who still holds to the idea that the moon landing was a hoax. There is no evidence you can show them that they will be unable to justify away.

It could be worse, depending.

Having your SSN compromised can be fixed through filling out some forms, paying some fees, and forwarding a few dozen letters to wishful creditors.

But whenever a new HR department googles you and finds that one picture...

What's really bad about this is that a fast-food restaurant like McDonald's should, in theory, be the last place you might get food poisoning.

Yeah, I blame employees not washing their hands too.

I haven't been able to bring myself to set foot in the place (or wheel in the drive-through as it were) since the late 90s, when I ended up in the emergency room after three days of vomiting so badly I couldn't even keep water down. No fun.

You obviously don't have any sisters.

I'm not discounting the possibility.

I'm still sending in my application, though.

Why pick on the one that didn't?

And, really, if my only choice was to go to Mars, but be unable to land because something went wrong, and have to loop around and come back, I'd still do it.

Umm.... really? You think it's outlandish that if someone really cared to read your Facebook posts, they could?

They can read my slashdot posts, too, and if I mentioned my birthday here, they could find out what it is.

What, to you, makes that "tinfoil hat" worthy?

Or did you just recently hear that phrase and think it's clever and couldn't wait for a more appropriate time to use it yourself?

Anybody doing any serious investigation of any competency will read your wall (so the FBI knows your real birthday, but the Department of Homeland Security does not), but when sold in bulk to advertisers, they aren't going to take the time to analyse everybody's entire history of wall posts.

I do the same thing, and probably get as many or more "happy birthday" posts on my fake birthday as on my real one.

Remember all those people who caused the tech boom of the 90s grew up during a time when post-apocalyptic fiction was one of the most popular genres.

Between the cold war and the religious mania of the early 80s, "If Jesus doesn't get you, Oppenheimer will" was the phrase of the day.

But a lot of people still went into science and engineering...