A picture of the Saviour parhaps? An icon with the face of Jesus, or Mohammed, or Richard Dawkins?

Icons are originally designed to resemble what they mean; making it easier to recognize and remember what they mean. Besides, icons (and pictures in general) can code much more information in a small space; this is a reflection of our incredible abilities to recognize shapes, colours and textures. On the other hand, text don't allow such mechanisms: words have the same overall shape and their meaning is heavily based on conventions. For instance, some people know how to justify text in Word, but they have no clue that the word for that is "justify". Finally, some icons end up becoming sort of general symbols, where the meaning is defined by convention (this very article talk about this). In this case, they are still more useful then text because, as I said, encoding meaning in visual features is generally more efficient then using words.

Cases of abuse have to be dealt with disciplinary actions, as with any other area of society. In any case, I doubt they are widespread. Also, pedophiles exist everywhere. For instance, there are numerous cases of pedophile teachers; but I doubt you feel uncomfortable to send your kids to the school.

I think everybody agrees that some kind of probing is needed. I prefer to show at once that I am not carrying nothing dangerous to other passengers rather then having to take out my shoes or the belt that hold my trousers (and then incurring the risk of having to show my actual body to the authorities).

Besides, I still don't see reason in your argument. You don't say, for instance, what actual harm such imaginary pervert can do to you or your kids. I think what makes people feel uncomfortable is the idea that there could be someone enjoying the images on the other side of the machine. But the fact is that: (a) this is quite improbable, given the security measures on these agents; and (b) it is not much different from anywhere else (how difficult is to smuggle a microcamera inside the changing room of a children clothing shop?).

I never quite understood this privacy thing. What is the problem of someone watching a shadow image of your genitalia? Even if some agent chuckle a bit at your not-so-male panties or broccoli-shaped penis, what is the matter? Probably this sort of thing gets boring after some days having to look at this machine...

I beg to disagree. There should be provisions in the law to guarantee comprehensive data migration and protection. Websites like Facebook provide a service which builds up a relation of trust with the user. I give them my data and I expect they can keep them well protected and accessible at all times. In a car analogy, it is like a garage going bankrupt while my car is in it and then refusing to give my car back.

Arrr, yes! Eastasia and their terror-muslin-children-eating terrorists. Let's bomb them all!

I am very far from being a specialist in this topic. The The Register article seems to imply that global warming must be true, given that there was ONE paper in 80s already anticipating it. That is not necessarily true. The prediction can be result of pure chance in a possibly erratic research study (I have no clue if that is the case or not). One could perhaps make an stronger statement in that direction if MANY papers anticipated global warming (possibly using different models).

This can happen in any system based in representation. However, for some reason, that doesn't happen (usually).

The good thing of this system is that now a group of people have the same power to propose laws as a unique MP. The rest of the process is the same and I don't see much differences of what can happen in a traditional system. First, it is not that people are voting for a law; they are voting to propose a law to be considered. Second, any crazy group of people can propose any crazy law, as any crazy MP can propose any crazy law in the current system. If the rest of the parliament is also mad fo the point of approving it, then probably the population in general is nuts in general. Third, the forms of pressure by the population are not all the same. Some are more easier than others, thus showing less (or more) eagerness of the population. The parliament will naturally take that into account, putting the population proposals into context. If it turns out that it is easy to build up 50k votes in a bill proposal, then the MPs will feel less pressured to vote for them. It certainly will not be the same as 50k people protesting and trying to invade the parliament.

Now I can be all the time under a good shade during the summer.