Look at the 10 states that did best. Almost all are rural: Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia.

Texas and Montana did better than NY or CA?

Time to ask, 'What and who were tested?' I suspect the sample was far from uniformly distributed across all US 8th graders.

It's also time to ask whether or not the presumptions that lead you to such astonishment and doubt are actually valid.
Such a thing is vital to your personal understanding of reality.
  (Your question is valid, but the way you posed it belies certain assumptions that need to be examined.)

You beat me to the punch. Likewise, many of these other systems will have hardwired safety systems that limit the danger they present.

I still think this equipment should be on isolated networks, but it's harder for me to get overly excited about ICS vulnerabilities.

But, God is omnipotent right? He doesn't need tools.
See how just a little thought about physics causes you to reject one of the most fundamental claims about God, his omnipotence.

'Little thought' accurately describes your post. It's a clever little turn of phrase that is actually quite shallow and reflects a lack of understanding about what you mock.

For there to be no 'tools' ( laws of the universe) that God used, our entire existence would be magical, and constantly upheld by miracles from God.

This would be proof that God exists, and as such, one would not be free to choose whether or not to follow the word of God, as you would know without a doubt that He is real, He is there, and you will in fact burn in hell if you disobey Him.

Free agency is therefor gone in this scenario, and our existence- the test of what we do with the free will that God gave us- would have no point.

Now, I'm not much of a Christian. I have come to see how much good certain religions have done for humanity, and I see how little atheists have to offer that would do the same.
  They offer mockery, derision, and emptiness to counter belief. Judeo-Christian belief (and the nations based thereon) offers charity, fellowship, self-restraint, functional guidance and, oh yeah, centuries of world dominance in all fields.
Humans are not purely rational, and it is fantasy to think the optimal society could be based on non-existent people. Pretending it's even possible requires a certain level of magical thinking.
I would caution you against feeling smug about imagining you're more rational than your fellow humans, as the emotional, irrational side of humanity is what makes everything possible.
There's a certain part of the brain responsible for emotions. If this is damaged, it leaves the rational part of the brain in charge. The result? Such patients are paralyzed by the array of options we face each moment, and are unable to properly analyze their choices- and hence do little at all. (Citation not handy. You're smart enough to find it on your own if you're actually curious.)

The only realistic way to get rid of religion is to prevent religious people from infecting the next generation and waiting for the current one to die off.
This, itself, is magical thinking, because the religious people out reproduce other sections of the population.
Practically speaking, the tyranny required to execute such a notion would likely offend you more than some old lady saying 'god bless you' after you hold the door open for her.
Otherwise, you would have to do your conversion to your enlightened rational humanism through voluntary persuasion, and the only practical 'benefit' to converting (notwithstanding biblical literalist) is the adoption of a smug attitude that you're better than all those superstitious fools.

Of course, that assumes the TSA will remain restricted to airplanes...

I present to you the TSA VIPR program.

Note how it consists of some Mall Ninja acronym/name, like the murderous "Fast and the Furious" program put on by the justice department and ATF clowns.

The reason I suggest it might not be too late is because they pissed off Amtrak by molesting train passengers (leaving the train, no less), and were banned from Amtrak property for a while (still?).

So, at least a government-sponsored entity is willing to tell these jack-booted thugs to go pound sand.

Any government that would replace the free market would still be run by mortal, falliable men, but with an unprecidented concentration of power in their hands.

Because it would assume the powers to direct all economic activity, it would necessarily become totalitarian, and moreover, a centralized authority would be unable to keep up with rapidly changing market conditions, causing their efforts to fail, and their distribution of resources to become inefficient- a problem you bemoan of the free market.

You are not the first person to think such a thing- that putting all economic authority in the hands of a beneficient- but all powerful- government would advance humanity.

Many people in history have actually managed to implement such states. The result has been oppressive and bloody. I leave it to you to trace the effects of central planning through the last two hundred years of history.

Now, I agree with you that we should not be governed by corporate lobbyism, but it is a predictable outcome of the regulatory state. Folks like you think they can direct the affairs of private people and companies better then they can do so themselves, so you implement regulations.

Then the regulated seek, and often obtain, control of the regulators. They change the process to their own ends. As a consequence, you get what we have today- companies profiting hugely by courting government favor, not by serving their customers in any real fashion.

All the same, the responsibility is all on you when it comes to your child(ren). If you expect that others will bend to your will just because it makes your job as a parent easier, that's selfish, IMHO.

So, if all I want to make my job as a parent easier is some basic decorum in the public library, a standard that you agree too, I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm not bringing my kids to a nudie beach and asking folks to cover up. I'm not bringing them to a strip club and asking the girls to skip the ping pong ball trick.

We're talking about a library here. Part of the way I do my job as a parent and control what they're exposed to is by choosing where I bring them. Given that we both agree that a public showing of 'two girls, one cup' shouldn't occur at a public library, I think we're really on the same page here.

I mean, I don't want to see 'TGOC' at the library, and you don't, and I don't want my kids to see it either. Does saying it that make you feel better?

So, insisting on some decorum in a library is the same as watching porno in a library?

If you avoid the crazy mindfuck of creationism and the idea that we somehow aren't animals, you'll simply realize that human children have been subjected to sex and reproduction from early ages for 10,000s of years at the very least (800,000 or so, depending on what you consider human).

Yeah, we're just animals, man. We should just drop our trousers and relieve ourselves where ever, because we're just animals. Instead of laughing at the guidos circling each other in domination rituals and getting into fistfights over some girl, we should cheer it on as representing our animal nature.

Good stuff man, good stuff. What else can we do as animals? Oh yeah, we could have whole cows shipped to us, and then kill them in our front yard. Then we could go out there and pick off some raw meat whenever we're hungry, and leave it there for the scavengers to clean up. We could reproduce with our siblings too, cause hey, we're just animals. That's what they do.

Have you picked up on the sarcasm yet? We've only gotten as far as we have, as humans, by rising above the animals purposefully. This means that certain daily activities have their time and place, and it's not always in public.

Hey, I'm with you on not being uptight about sex, but I want to discuss it in a manner that I think matches what I decide my children are capable of grasping. I don't want to go from 'zero' to 'two girls one cup' because some guy needs to rub his crank through his pants at the library, and my kid saw it.

If the ongoing activities at Sealand ever bother a major power, they'll work with the UK to simply demolish the platform.