The influence of Norteamericano (a misnomer, since México is also part of Norteamérica) politics has boned México, but not so much because of our political corruption but because of our failed drug policy. The really horrible drug violence problems they're facing now are a result of caving to US pressure to try to stop the flow of drugs through Mexico. The attempt failed utterly, as anyone with a brain knew it was going to, and it turned the Mexican drug traffickers into ultra-violent thugs. The relatively peaceful traffickers from 20 years ago were imprisoned or killed, and the guys who replace them are seriously nasty.

Keep in mind that your statement has been true since the dawn of the age if scientific reasoning -- basically, the enlightenment -- and will be true forever. The only way that it will ever end is if we stop learning and just stick with believing in the erroneous beliefs we currently hold. Because our current knowledge will always contain a lot of errors.

Obviously, I'm speaking more broadly than just medicine and nutrition. The subjects about which we're rapidly overturning much of what we know drift around, but any scientific society will always be in the process of overthrowing old ideas as accumulating evidence and improving conjectures generate new knowledge.

This is often a problem with scientific progress. A hypothesis that seems reasonable and has some experimental support arises, but it takes years and a lot of work and money to test the implications of the hypothesis. And even when that is done, future research can still find that there were subtleties that, when understood, dramatically change the conclusion.

In the mean time, people have to live and have to make decisions. Science provides the best guide we have for doing that even though it's nearly always flawed in unknown ways. So, what do we do? Refuse to act until we've found all the answers? Obviously not. Instead, we have to act on the best knowledge we have at the time -- though applying a little bit of conservatism if the change predicted by that best knowledge is too radical -- and expect that we'll have to change our approach in the future when more knowledge is available.

If what you want is final, unequivocal and never-changing answers, don't look to science. Science asymptotically approaches correctness. However, no other decisionmaking method we have guarantees even eventual correctness on any time scale.

Not true, for two reasons.

First, advertisers only pay if you click the on the ad. Advertisers can easily verify that the number of clicks Google claims corresponds to the number of hits their web site receives with a Google referral. There's some noise in that measurement, so the correlation isn't perfect, but it would be easy to see if it were systematically off.

Second, Google provides advertisers with extensive tools to help them determine how effective their ads are, or click "conversion rate", which boils down to revenue per click. Advertisers like Google because they can know exactly how effective their ad campaign is.

Note that I'm talking about Google's traditional method. In the last few years, Google has also acquired a (much smaller) business in "display" ads, in which Google gets paid per thousand ad "impressions". Even there, the advertiser can measure click-through effectiveness, though.

Google does not sell any data to the government, or to law enforcement agencies. Google complies with proper, legal requests for data, as specified by law, but does not get compensated for fulfilling those requests. Google is a publicly-traded company, which means they have to file extensive financial reports detailing their incomes and expenses so if I were wrong you could easily prove it.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google but I'm not speaking in an official capacity. My job at Google is writing code. But everything I've said here has been stated repeatedly in public by people who are official spokespeople. In particular with respect to the government request question, see David Drummond's many public statements.)

Actually, it's not. Certainly there are cases in which one can pay for speedier service, but those aren't all that common, particularly not in interactions with government. And where they do exist, they're open, published fees that are paid to the agency or company in question, not under-the-table bribes to an individual. Bribery does exist in America, but it's pretty rare, and trying to bribe a public official is a good way to go to jail.

The one major exception, of course, is campaign contributions. Though, theoretically, those can't be used to enrich the receiver.

Pretty much.

When I worked for IBM we tried to do business in Mexico. We didn't fail completely, IBM does have some small operations there, but we were perpetually hamstrung by the fact that company policies defined under the American model prevented us from competing effectively in Mexico. It sounds like someone at HP decided not to be so limited.

It's really sad. The endemic corruption in some of these countries really holds them back. I spent two years living in southeastern Mexico when I was a young adult (as a Mormon missionary), and I really learned to love the country, the people, the food, the language... Mexico is a fantastic nation, rich in natural resources, with many interesting cultures and sub-cultures and (American stereotypes to the contrary) a powerful work ethic. But the endemic corruption and all that it enables (e.g. drug-related violence, election fraud and inefficient business and government) make it impossible for the nation to realize its full potential.

Does it have to be e-mail? Google does provide a feedback mechanism on all of their products (the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of the page or, in the case of the infinitely-scrolling G+, in the drop-down menu), and while that mechanism doesn't generally provide two-way communication, it definitely is read and taken into account. Sometimes the user does get a response, too, depending on the nature of their question or comment.

Google doesn't sell or otherwise share data with third parties. Google uses it to decide who to show third-party ads to.

I see you haven't followed this story at all. There is zero evidence that any of this data came from Google, and plenty of evidence that it did not. For that matter, look at some of the /. comments. Several posters found their e-mail addresses and passwords... and they were not passwords used on gmail.

I have an LG G Watch, and I find that calendaring is one of the things I like the best. The watch doesn't show my me week, it just shows the appointments for today, with a countdown timer to the next appointment/meeting coming up. Being able to just glance at my watch to see how much time I have before my next meeting is awesome.

Other really convenient features on the watch: music/audio-book remote control (just tap my watch to pause/play, or swipe and tap to go forward or back), navigation (shows upcoming turn and ETA), text and e-mail notifications (can tap and reply verbally) and a more convenient way to use Google's voice search. My Moto X is pretty good at listening for me to say "OK Google", but I find I don't ever do that any more, just double-tap my watch face and tell my wrist "Call Kris", or "What time does Home Depot close?", etc.

All in all, I'm finding it very useful.

There are several options. One of them is to use SMS or voice as the channel for receiving one-time passwords. For that, you have to provide the phone number they should send the passwords to. Or you can use the Google Authenticator app, which doesn't require providing any information (though it's recommended to provide a phone number as a backup), or you can just get a list of static OTPs to print out and carry around. Most people use that last one as a backup, but I suppose you could use it as your primary 2FA.