Americans didn't worry about fitness until JFK started talking about it, and it took years to catch on. Today's adults are far more fit than their parents were and have more muscle mass. That's going to make them heavier, but not fatter. Yes, there are probably more tubs of lard out there now, but the fitness freaks and body builders are helping bring the average up as well. (And, as the BMI doesn't take muscle mass into account, most of them are considered obese even though they have very little body fat.)

Well, for starters, this site is devoted to petitions, although very, very few of them get any response.

Covering over black so that it doesn't show isn't easy. It can take a surprising number of coats to do the job. Sometimes you can strip all of the paint off the wall and start fresh; other times you're better off going with wallpaper. Still, I agree with you that the father deserves an A++ for understanding that it was an accident.

...or I would walk across the building and we would talk in person, with the understanding that...

Every time I do so, your performance evaluation goes down because you're being an uncooperative asshole. And, every time that happens the odds that I'll decide it's not worth the bother and fire you instead go up.

Think of it this way: most of today's malware probably wouldn't run on it anyway.

If nothing else, this shows just how bad an idea it is to put too much trust in computer models. There are always factors that we either don't know about or don't know how to include properly and getting even one of them wrong can throw the whole model off. Yes, computer simulations and models can be very, very useful but you have to take the results with a grain of salt and remember that they're only approximations at best.

No where else in the world do people expect "Free" things to also mean that they then own the copyright.

This is why so many of us talk about software being FOSS: Free and Open Source. The graphics drivers that nVidia provides are free to use, but they're only provided as binary blobs and the company has never made their hardware specs or programming interface public so that anybody who wants to create an OSS version has to start out by reverse engineering the binary driver and hoping that they haven't missed anything important. Some people don't care, some don't like it but accept it because the OSS versions work well enough for them and some simply avoid using any graphics adapters that don't have Properly Open Drivers.

I don't use Ubuntu, I use Fedora. Fedora has very strict rules about licensing and any package that doesn't meet those guidelines can't be offered in their official repositories. There is, however a third-party set of repositories, known collectively as rpmfusion, that hold those packages, including things like codecs and binary-blob video drivers, that can't be directly offered and most of the Fedora help forums either contain instructions on how to install the repositories or links to those instructions. Once you've installed them, the only way to know if a package isn't offered directly by Fedora is by checking to see where it's hosted. When you come right down to it, the only difference between how Ubuntu and Fedora handle the issue is the fact that Ubuntu automates the process and Fedora doesn't.

If you can show, somehow, that the defendant was not in the habit of clearing his browser history or cache, but did it minutes after he learned that he might be under investigation, you've probably got a good case. But unless you can show something that blatant and obvious, a good defense lawyer will eat you alive if it ever gets to court.

...empty recycle bins...

Even better, don't use the recycle bin; if you don't need or want a file any more, just delete it. Gone is gone. If you're not sure, just rename it, then delete it once you're sure it isn't needed.

Your life is in the hands of twelve people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty.

If that's your opinion of jury duty, I wouldn't want you on the jury if I were being tried. Jury duty is a civic responsibility, and one to be taken seriously rather than something to dodge if at all possible. And, if you have that low an opinion of the average jury member, shouldn't you consider it even more important to do your part and help them do their job better? I've done jury duty, including a complex civil suit that required us to answer a number of questions, each depending on what had come before. (It had to do with a verbal contract. First, we had to decide if there was a contract because if we didn't think that there was any contract, the other questions became moot, and the others were tied together in a similar fashion.)

Glucose tests cost $1/test strip, and even mildly rigorous control takes roughly 5 strips/day.

That depends on how well controlled your diabetes is. My Endocrinologist has me checking before breakfast and at bed time, only. The only time he wants more is the four days before he sees me, and then he wants before each meal plus bed time. Of course, my readings are well controlled and my Ha1C has been within acceptable limits for the last several years. YMMV, and if you're having trouble with your numbers, I can easily understand needing to take four or five readings a day. Of course, I'm Type II, diagnosed about 13 years ago, but I can understand just how tired of the constant monitoring you can get.

That's an interesting idea and might just work. Of course, that also means that it won't ever get implemented.

I trust my sister not to abuse my ATM card, just as she trusts me. And, I'd trust a few of my friends the same way in an emergency. If you don't know anybody you'd trust that way, you might want to ask yourself why they're your friends.

On the other hand, maybe that is a good thing.

I don't know if it's a good thing or bad; it all depends, I'd guess, on how often people need to do things like that. I just wanted to point out that there can be times that the facial recognition can cause problems, even without the issue of false negatives.