When I go out or on holidays I take cardboard cutouts of people or backdrops with me. It's to ensure that facebook's algorithms are confused by as many fake people, places, activities and false social connections I can get into their datastream.

At first I just did it out of spite to add noise to the advertising signal. But then it got out of hand when I grew attached to Martha, sure she's two dimensional and all but that smile...

rag head? Have you read Revelations - modern technology allows us to make that a reality!

I've been telling the guys in the subs to blow thing up for like ages. Seems its all about who you know though, typical.

Sarkozy is currently thinking of rejoing NATO no?

Imperial Japan killed a LOT of people in their invasion of Manchuria and were not even remotely nice about it. Far more civilians died in Asia than in the European half of the war.

The invasion was forced to end externally by Russia and the US. As a consequence many countries aren't really convinced Japan as a country ever really showed proper remorse, hence the anger. Contrast Japan's behavior as a socitey with the clear remorse Germany has shown over the last 60 years. In terms of not dealing with the nastier parts of their history they are far closer to the Austrian/Italian WWII response or the response of Britian/France/Belgium/Germany/Holland to their African colonial histories.

We are born into the same world it just looks different to each of us. If you were born in an igloo in the middle of Siberia how likely is it you would be here right now on /.

I'm not talking about genes, just the social situations we find ourselves in the US. If your white access to education and job oppourtunities is a little easier (it used to be MUCH easier). Historically more white families have accumulated wealth; these are the families from which the people who innovate often, but by no means always, arise. How many of the big political families are generational (Bush's, Clinton's, Kennedy's etc.)?

Even 50 years ago just being white gave you far more privilage than today - better access to law and order, assumed correctness in contract disuptes, easier credit. Most of that has been levelled to some extent today which is why Obama is now president - in the long run though he is just a man like any other.

If you were forced to move right now into a town in the middle of rural China how long before your decendents would have: overcome racism; developed language-skills; obtained country-specific education; the political connections and the oppourtunity to run for major?

You see no social equality because people of eropean-decendent have done a mediocre job of trying to bring it about. While on the other side of the equation people of African decent are trying to jump up 1000-years of technological development with all the historical power-imbalences that entails.

Think about how HUGE social differences were - 200 years ago every black man in America was a slave, think on the sheer brutality that implies. In the 1960's (within living memory) seggregation was an established part of much of American society. When slavery was abolished it's not like education or skilled-jobs suddenly jumped into black communities, these things take generations to nuture from parent to child.

Any "physical differences" between races are at most 3rd or 4th order effects. My guess is it wil take a 100 years or more before social equality has advanced to the point where being black and in power in AMERICA is not noteworthy let alone the rest of the world. You've just elected your first black president - celebrate man this is how progress is made, and how we make up for the misdeeds and ill-gotten gains of pyshcopathic forefathers (on every side).
 

Agree witht the above, toll roads should solely be "additional but avoidable throughfares", that is a free but longer alternative needs to exist.

If a company wants to pay to build a shorter route this is okay, if people can afford the toll they spend money and save time, but if not they take the longer route and pay with their time. It can never be the only-connection and all toll-roads should revert to free-roads in 10-20yrs time.

So your saying the average slashdotter is still likely to have problems pulling chicks even when they own their own spaceship and have control of the fundamental force of GRAVITY!

That is one seriously harsh hypothetical world your living in there man ;)

"But in the meantime, they'll continue to increase our reliance on them "

Ummm, don't you think that perhaps you have a bit of a say in this part? Your the bigger country here fella's. Maybe, just maybe, China is offering a service that you are buying. No gun at your head or anything, this is free-trade capatalism pure and simple. If it is not really in US long-term interest is a second point we could debate, but even if this trade is detrimental to the US why is that China's problem to worry about and not yours?

I think what concerns me is the inability to deal with uncertainty. As you say the scientific-percentages are normally forced into not-proven/proven in criminal proceedings or balance of evidence in civil proceedings.

Science by contrast normally comes with error bars but court judgments not so much. Not sure how you give out a sentence of guilty +/- 30% so perhaps there is no better system. Maybe the law is fine we just need to focus on better diagnostics in the science area.

Thimerosal does not need to be in modern vaccines - single dose sterile packaging SHOULD be able to render it unnecessary. This is a good thing, while injecting trace amounts may not be statistically linkable to autism if you can avoid any unnecessary heavy metal exposure then you should. Same with radiation, X-rays or pesticides, each will eat away at your ability to live to 90.

We currently have the technology and economics to avoid thimerosals use, perhaps some poorer countries do not. In the West problems only arise when health staff get sloppy and reuse packs or are unable to notice a seal broken during shipment. Blaming such incidents on the FDA not allowing mercury use is incorrect - its plane old management failure, its harder to fix and most of know it too well.

They've always made decisions but courts sometimes crave a level of certainty that science isn't always able to provide and that is where mistakes can be made IMHO. Not that I think this is the case with the MMR vaccine, this issiue IS actually black-and-white. Others are not.

I think problems can arise when the science is new - e.g. shaken baby syndrome. Forensics thought they could tell when babies where being deliberately shaken to death. Unfourtunately they hadn't calibrated their forensic screens against a large enough sample of accidental trauma injuries to be able to distinguish the two - several innocent parents went to jail as a result.

Your a doctor and THAT is your sig? Please tell me your not using slashdot to record experimental subject data.

So what your saying is Facebook should have a downgrade button so you can rank people.

Then come monday morning 190 of your "Friends" would get a little: -1 you've just lost a Friend message. That is so mean, what fun you could have...