This is actually a bit surprising to me. Years ago, which admittedly was the last time I payed any attention to such things, the theory that life first formed in little pools was the common explanation. Up near the surface is where a lot of the energy was from sources such as the sun, volcanos, lightning, etc. I could be wrong in remembering this, but the primordial soup was always depicted as fairly shallow pools (though, perhaps, saltwater tide pools).

How about letting the airlines themselves be the passenger advocates? They're the ones with the financial incentive to get security under control, not some new federal agency, or worse yet, some new division of TSA with the same bosses. Plant some airline employees next to the radiation machines all day long for a while, and maybe some of them will talk to their superiors in the airlines and get the industry to start lobbying to end the TSA.

My security theater strategy is to just chat up the initial intake guy who looks at my ID. I'm friendly, polite, and they just wave me through with no extra security check needed. If they ever do pick me for the scanner, I plan to take the pat down, and talk about cancer clusters already detected, and radiation levels being higher than advertised from the scanners.

I think the pat down is just as atrocious as the scanner, and I fly a lot less now than I did before these new procedures got implemented, but the reality is you really can't drive everywhere. I'm not going to refuse both the scanner and the pat down, but I'm definitely not going to willingly take on more radiation exposure than I absolutely have to.

Clearly the Ludovico Technique is required to make this subway program actually work.

I suddenly have visions of A Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing ruining perfectly good Beethoven for ultraviolent youths.

Well, considering the people I'm arguing against are saying that Foxconn employment causes Chinese workers to commit suicide, it's a pretty important correlation to point out.

And no, I'm not sure it's discernible between employment and employment at Foxconn. I never claimed otherwise. Bear in mind though, the chose many of these workers has if not between employment and employment at Foxconn, but unemployment and employment at Foxconn. Foxconn is where the jobs are, so that's where the unskilled labor force goes to work.

I don't have any statistics between Foxconn employment suicide rates and other employment suicide rates. If somebody has those statistics then please share them, just make sure it's unskilled labor we're talking about, comparable to Foxconn, and not comparing doctors to factory line workers. If these Foxconn workers had other options for employment, they would probably take those jobs, if Foxconn employment is so terrible, right?

Well, that would be a fairly silly comparison to do, since the options these workers have is not between "be unemployed", "work at Foxconn", or "come to America". Unless you're saying Apple should be shipping Chinese workers over in shipping crates instead of Chinese-manufactured iPads?

I mean, seriously, can you think about what you're trying to say here and try it again? I'm really not getting your point. These workers don't have the option of moving to a westernized country (or they probably would have already).

If it helps, our own industrial revolution in the west is responsible for our higher standard of living, and no, it wasn't always easy or pretty, but look at where we are now. That'll be China someday, and probably quicker than it took us. Industrializing China by building factories over there to build our iPads is going to help those Chinese workers rise to western standards. Not giving them any jobs just means they'll stay in poverty forever. If that lower quality of life contributes to a higher suicide rate, then certainly Foxconn isn't just good for the immediate needs of the workers (lowering their suicide rate compared to their unemployed fellow nationals), but good in the long-run too.

I'm not suggesting suicidal workers are a good thing, but way to completely distort what I said. I'm saying quite the opposite, that less suicidal workers is better than more suicidal workers. I am not so naive as to think that suicide rates will ever be zero, at Foxconn, in China, or anywhere else humans work or live.

I'm simply saying that workers sometimes commit suicide, no matter where they are or who they work for. I'm also saying that Foxconn has a lower suicide rate than the rest of China, which means the opposite of what you and people like you try to imply, that Foxconn drives their workers to kill themselves with awful conditions. Foxconn does not cause suicide, Foxconn causes a reduction in suicide. This is a mathematical fact, and to argue otherwise shows a willful ignorance and irrational bias.

You're simply an anti-Apple troll.

Again, this is a misunderstanding of Foxconn. These are company towns. Foxconn employees kill themselves at the workplace, because they're living in Foxconn dormitories. If you work, eat, sleep, and hang out on company property, and decide to kill yourself, you're going to do it on company property.

There will always be specialization occurring somewhere. Perhaps a country will heavily subsidize computer manufacturing, or have sufficient cheap energy to give them an advantage. Perhaps somebody will develop a robot that requires minimal maintenance, can work 24/7 without complaining, and produce computer parts cheaper than any human labor force.

My theory is and always will be, if a robot can do your job better and cheaper, you're in the wrong line of work. Much of these factory jobs we lament losing in the west, as they move to the east, we didn't want anyway. Far better to be the ones designing the next iPad than building it, if building it can be done with cheap unskilled labor. Eventually even robot factories will be too expensive and obsolete, as we have 3D printers that can make anything we want right in our homes without expensive shipping costs or labor.

Building things, in a pre-designed rote way, may give you some satisfaction but it's hardly a job. Inventing things is what humans are good for, and the more inventors we have in society, and the less builders we need, the better off we'll all be.

I agree that these sorts of things are just PR stunts more than anything, and probably wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the media coverage.

But let's consider the nature of that media coverage, to begin with. It seems that only Apple gets mentioned in Foxconn stories. In some cases, like this story, it makes sense, but most of the negative coverage of Foxconn only ever mentions iPads and iPhones.

These are Foxconn's major clients:
Acer Inc., Amazon.com, Apple, ASRock, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Cisco, Dell, EVGA Corporation, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, MSI, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Vizio

And yet, only one of those companies appear in every single Foxconn story. Hmm. If people defending Apple here are just Apple shills, what level of bias can we attribute to the negative stories then, in light of the fact Foxconn makes everybody's tech but the stories only paint Apple in bad light?

Again, Apple's just doing what Apple needs to do, for PR. I don't think they're all a bunch of heartless bastards, though, any more than any other company. But the spotlight on Apple's relationship with Foxconn is a bit strange, since every competitor they have that I can think of is on Foxconn's client list.