The only load of bunk is your naive and lamely regurgitated BS. Thankfully you've "listened to teachers talk shop" so you're adequately qualified to evaluate their performance and professionalism. The reality is that the vast majority of our public school teachers are underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated. Even the best teachers can't teach kids whose parents have no interest in their own children. Stop blaming teachers for the deterioration of parental responsibility. No amount of NCLB can account for this.

I simply said that negative online information can affect you, anonymous or not, and in ways you may not anticipate. When you grow up you'll figure out that the ideal (in this case, people ignoring online anonymous postings) almost never gibes with reality. Nice language, too.

First, the adoption agency rarely connects you with a birthmother. You are selected by the birthmother using information from the agency and online. Second, the agency wouldn't interview your ex-girlfriend because they would assume she'd be biased against you. Third, if they interviewed your friends and they only had bad things to say about you then this is probably a good indication that you shouldn't be adopting. I agree that people shouldn't believe everything on the interwebs, especially anonymous postings. But don't be naive and think it won't affect you in ways you might not have expected.

Negative online information about you, anonymous or otherwise, can affect much more than a job search. Think about a new girlfriend (I know this is Slashdot, but work with me here) googling your name to find out you may have a much closer relationship to your dog than she's comfortable with. Or, more seriously, your hope to adopt a child falls through because the birthmother is concerned that the first search results link you to a pedophile ring. You should be able to come up with other examples. Not everyone will want to do a full background check before moving on to someone else.

So you don't think they would detect a cell phone? Perhaps they wouldn't catch everything, but they most certainly catch a cell phone, thus making them effectively useful for this purpose (barring the earlier, far more difficult, keistering suggestion). I never said anything about health consequences or moral issues pertaining to their use. I simply said they would be useful and effective to detect cell phones on potential cheaters, as the article in question is debating.

What exactly would they hide a cell phone in to confuse the machine? Additionally, a human interpreter of the backscatter image would be able to detect an anomaly of this kind more times than not. Additionally, it would be a bit conspicuous to "de-keister" an object during an exam. But I take your point. I'm not defending the usage of the machine. I'm simply pointing out that it would not be useless for this purpose.

I think it's a stretch to say that backscatter machines would be useless in the attempt to catch potential cheaters. They most certainly would be able to detect hidden items on their person. What you disagree with is their obvious invasion or privacy, not their usefulness or lack thereof.