Slashdot Mirror

That means a fall chance of zero

At the moment it has to be manually switched between walking mode and sitting mode. The shifting of weight triggers it to take the selected action, and as demonstrated in this BBC video, if you leave it in walking mode and try to sit, you will end up hitting the streets in a much more literal fashion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tech...

1m46s

Stronger for everyone except them, perhaps.

They did something similar, put a couple of specific constants, into the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator. It was later shown that they amounted to a skeleton key - if you knew the numbers used to derive the constants, you could predict the future output of a given RNG instance with only a small amount of sample data. So any encryption based on Dual_EC_DRBG could be considered to be broken by the NSA (somewhat conveniently, in a way that only the NSA could actually prove).

Despite the poor performance of this algorithm which lead most implementers to ignore it, it managed to end up as the default in the product of one of the most trusted vendors, RSA. There was speculation that the NSA bribed them to make this design choice. [1]

Unsurprisingly, it was withdrawn from the standard in 2014.

[1] The only comment on that story makes the same point - that the NSA, in the past, had reinforced weaknesses in DES. In the light of the later evidence about Dual_EC_DRBG, that may bear further examination - if the change was the tweaking of constants, it's entirely possible that this reinforced the standard for everyone but the NSA.

Already happens.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eur...

Personally I would like to see using a satellite navigation system on a truck/lorry/HGV that is not designed for such purposes as an offence that will attract points on the license of the driver.

Then when they go down some inappropriate road and get stuck it is an automatic fine.

My personal favourite of stupid truck/HGV drivers is this incident in York (that's the historic city of York in England nothing to do with the interloper New York)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

I dunno if AC will check back or not - but in no particular order:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.reuters.com/
http://rt.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/
http://www.news.com.au/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com....
http://news.sky.com/
http://kurdishdailynews.org/
http://rt.com/
http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.aljazeera.com/
http://www.china.org.cn/
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
http://english.pravda.ru/
http://www.projectcensored.org...
http://www.arabtimesonline.com...

I think I've covered the best - be aware, some national sites are heavy into propaganda. Pravda very much so, RT somewhat less so.

Depending on your own interests - you might type in some country in a Google search, and add "times" or "post" or "news". From time to time, I do something like that - the earthquake in Tibet for instance. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=pale... That search offered up a number of sites, but I didn't add any of them to my feeds. Note that many of the hits are very politicized, but you can still find Tibetan news sources among them.

Have fun!

These last 13 years have made the place so safe and secure and fun for the whole family, haven't they? Well, as long as the opium pipeline remains open, there's not much else to worry about, I suppose. After all, that is why we are there...

More herby solutions can be found as can be seen from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02vzssm

> If people don't trust banks with their money, they'll end up with mattresses full of cash.

People don't trust banks anyway. They just know the government will bail them out if the bankers act irresponsibly, which relieves people of the need to choose their banker responsibly.

> I know that if I put my money in the bank, unless the whole country turns to shit, I will get it back, with interest.

Granted people (at least those trying to keep pace with inflation e.g. me included) need somewhere safe to stash their cash - but you yourself say you want *interest* too. The greater the return the greater the risk. Take the UK pension funds who sent their cash to Iceland which was offering too good to be true returns. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_... and http://www.theguardian.com/bus...

Problem is banks get that money cheap, and businesses never say "because I got that for cheap, I don't need much profit." Nope. They'll always try and get the greatest return from it. This was the problem with the US S&L scandal. You can try and regulate the bankers to act responsibly, but they inevitably lobby the government to take off the controls and get into bed with the regulators.

Federal bank insurance is a bit different from what's happened to Greece. Doesn't get around the fact you shouldn't lend someone money if they can't pay it back, and if they walk from the debt, that's on your head. Why should the government pay for your bad judgment? If you say, yes, "for the integrity of the financial system," that works both ways.

Yeah, cause all of the developed countries in the world that have public healthcare, have "drafted" their doctors.

Oh wait, no they haven't. Guess that was just a strawman by you after all.

Are you sure about that?

I prefer the 135-degree angle slouch in a chair that can lean back over a standing desk. The ergonomics just can't be beat, especially when you consider what a standing desk does to your forearms (I see a lot of people with standing desks leaning on them).

Why would you assume that they're succumbing to US Pressure?

This is fucking France, which spent most of the Cold War technically out of NATO, and didn't come back until it was safe in '09. They actively supported Rwanda's genocidal government because they thought the English-speaking rebels were lying about the genocide, to the point of sending troops to try to protect the fleeing government troops. Their response to PRISM was to condemn it as 'espionage' the very fucking day their biggest paper announced they'd been doing the same damn thing to their citizens for years.

They support Assange and Snowden in public, solely because idiots like you will mistakenly assume this means they actually support Assange and Snowden. In private they will do their best to get those guys fucked over, because if those guys are fucked over they can't do interesting things like tell Le Monde about the DGSE. Which is why, despite their PR as privacy advocates, neither guy has actually asked for Asylum. It's not a surprise they were one of the countries that got Morales' plane stopped, and that of the four involved they were the only one that had clout with the other three (Portugal, Spain and Italy were all in the midst of EU-recovery programs at the time, and guess whose the most important economy in the Euro not named Germany?).

So they have a long history of fucking privacy activists over, and then letting the US take the blame.

The population of the UK, in a referendum:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-p...

Facebook's policy is to delete all user data including photos after 3 months of an account being deleted.

There was an uproar about not being able to trace a user account just two days ago regarding a revenge porn case in Holland.

Now, how are they going to physically remove data from a cold storage solution? I highly doubt they'll be using R/W discs as removing the data would require wiping the disc and rewriting 50gb of data again.

Prove it.

Given the number of times they've been caught lying in the past — including very recent past — the burden of proof is on Iran — and its apologists. The same apologists, who have no problems protesting Iran's innocence, while at the same time arguing for their right to have nuclear weapons...

Oh, and TFA itself is proof — the argument, that Iran are doing it "for energy" is defeated by the simple Math presented here.

It is admirable, that you wish to apply the "innocent until proven guilty" principle even to foreign regimes, but it is also naïve. Even in the legal system and offender on probation has to continuously prove innocence...

But realize that the propaganda machine is using the WMD line to trance you into gearing up for war, just like they did for Iraq.

So, your argument for Iran's innocence is our attack on Iraq? I fail to see a connection... The above-enumerated lies are totally independent of whether or not I am unduly influenced by some ominous propagandists — whom you would not even cite.

Have you considered the possibility, that it just might be you, who are a propaganda-victim? A "deal" with Iran (and Cuba) is the only good legacy Obama can have: despite all the Statist interventions (like the "Cash for Clunkers" flop) the economy is contracting, the Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia should've been Georgia-related and tightened instead of abolished in 2010, Obamacare is increasingly unpopular.

Bringing "peace for our time" with the mullahs would be — he foolishly thinks — something he could point a finger at. The way Clinton can point to his — equally foolish deal with North Korea. This is why they push for the "deal" — the same inept morons, who tried to befriend Putin with a plastic button...

Guess what, licensed taxi drivers do that too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-s...
http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/03/...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...

Then there was the case in Dublin where a woman was dropped of by a taxi driver (after first dropping of the guy she was with), driving around the block and raping her. It turned out the taxi was sublet by the plate owner.

Here's the first link I found related to a politician.

And guess what: if you search either for the politician or his son, the article is still found (first hit on the BBC site, in fact):
* https://www.google.com/search?...
* https://www.google.com/search?...

So neither the politician nor his son had the search results removed. Although if it had been removed when searching for the son's name, I would understand it. While politicians are public figures and cannot have such search results removed under the ruling (because there is a public interest in those results), I'm not sure the same holds for their family (it's not the son's choice that his father is a politician).

If what you say is true, the content should be deleted according to the BBC's own guidelines:

7.4.6 When children are to be featured in our output in a way that would infringe a legitimate expectation of privacy, we should normally gain their informed consent (wherever possible) and the informed consent of a parent, legal guardian or other person of 18 or over acting in loco parentis.

[emphasis mine]
This policy is quite progressive compared to the outrageously widespread opinion that children are per definition incapable of giving consent and totally subject to the whims of their custodians.

Here's the first link I found related to a politician.

If someone told me this was from The Onion , I would have believed them.

Here is one to debate.

It seems to me the first teaser and the interview have both been edited. The teaser seems to skip a bit from the interview, and the interview seems to skip a bit from the teaser. I suspect this makes the interview sound much worse than it otherwise would have.

BBC Today 10/06/2015

01:15:45 Teaser

Reporter:

It's now quarter past seven.

There are three problems with having women in the laboratory, according to the Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry. That's what he told a conference of senior women scientists and journalists in South Korea, and it didn't go down terribly well.

We caught up with Sir Tim a few hours ago as he was about to board a plane back to the UK. He told us his comments had been intended as a joke, but that he stood by some of what he said.

Sir Tim (recording):

[This section seems to be clipped from the interview] I did mean the part about having... having trouble with girls. I mean it is true that people... I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and that people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it's very disruptive to the science. Um, because it's... it's terribly important that in the lab, people are, sort of, on... on a level playing field, and I found that, um, you know, these emotional entanglements made life very difficult.

[A section from the interview seems to be clipped from here]

I mean I'm really really sorry that I caused any offence, that's awful. I'm, I certainly didn't mean... I just meant to be honest actually.

Reporter:

Well, it's a subject we'll return to later in the programme. We'll be speaking to one of his colleagues, and to a scientist who was at that speech.

02:08:58 Teaser

Reporter:

The British Nobel prize winner Sir Tim Hunt has insisted he was joking when he said that women scientists shouldn't work with men, because they fall in love with male colleagues, and cry when criticised. Sir Tim, who was awarded the 2001 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, made the comments to a group of female scientists in South Korea, but he told this program he didn't mean to offend anyone.

Sir Tim (recording):

I came after three women, who very nicely thanked the organisers for the... for the lunch, and I said it was odd that they had asked a man to make any comments. I'm really sorry that I... I said what I said, it was a very stupid thing to do in the presence of all those journalists, and what was intended as a sort of light-hearted ironic comment, apparently was interpreted deadly seriously by my audience.

02:21:30 Story

[Which I didn't transcribe.]

Get your facts straight. He was not "dismissed." He resigned from the UCL. He resigned from the Royal Society. Just as importantly, neither of those positions are real jobs. He's not losing any money from the resignations.

Tim Hunt clarified his original comments in a BBC interview immediately after the conference in Korea. He backed up the original claims by Connie St. Louis and the other witnesses that heard his talk. He confirmed what they had witnessed and reported.

Actually, Tim Hunt has spoken: listen for yourself. No accusation required. Those are his words. He's calling women in his lab "girls". That's sexist. And calling for segregation in the labs based on gender is also sexist.

He was given that chance. On the BBC, right after the conference. Listen for yourself: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02tc22c.

He meant the sexist comments. And he used the BBC to assert this.

Tim Hunt backed Connie St. Louis' report. He did so in a BBC interview recorded soon after the shit hit the fan on Twitter. That's the evidence, in full audible glory. He's not under duress. He's not being misquoted. It's 100% calm and collected Tim Hunt repeating his sexist comments. He's not joking as anyone with any first grade grasp on the English language can tell.

Only after it dawned on him that it was 2015 and that sort of stuff doesn't fly anymore that he changed his story.

Actually, he did double-down. Listen to how to says in the BBC interview...

"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field."

He said it. He wasn't joking. He confirmed what the original witnesses in Korea said he said. He double-downed and wanted everyone, via the BBC, to know it.

He changed his story afterwards. And you're buying the revised story.

Scientist Tim Hunt responds to criticism of 'girls in labs' comments

Transcript of BBC 4 "Today" clip. 10/6/2015

''I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,'' he said.

''It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.

''I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult.

''I'm really, really sorry I caused any offence, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually.''

Tim Hunt's version of events changes a little even before a friendly interviewer.

His brief remarks contained 39 words that have subsequently come to haunt him.

'''Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry,'' he told delegates.

''I stood up and went mad,'' he admits. '' I was very nervous and a bit confused but, yes, I made those remarks --- which were inexcusable --- but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way. There was some polite applause and that was it, I thought. I thought everything was OK. No one accused me of being a sexist pig.''

[Hunt's wife] clutches her head as Hunt talks. ''It was an unbelievably stupid thing to say,'' she says. ''You can see why it could be taken as offensive if you didn't know Tim. But really it was just part of his upbringing. He went to a single-sex school in the 1960s. Nevertheless he is not sexist. I am a feminist, and I would not have put up with him if he were sexist.''

The next morning, as he headed for Seoul airport, Hunt...recorded a clumsily worded phone message [for "Today.''] ''It was a mistake to do that as well. It just sounded wrong.''

Tim Hunt: ''I've been hung out to dry. They haven't even bothered to ask for my side of affairs''

The audience at the conference was expected to be about 40% Asian. "If you don't know Tim..." as well as his wife? No in Seoul could be reasonably be expected to know him that well. No one in the audience for Radio 4.

Indeed. And he was given the chance to put his side of the story on June 10th. Unfortunately for him, he made a non-apology apology, saying:

"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field. I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult."

and

"It's terribly important that you can criticise people's ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth. Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science."

As for the idea that he was taken out of context, the linked article which is supposed to support that idea quotes him as saying:

"Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?”

So yeah. He was sexist in context, he was given the chance to put his side of the story, he doubled down and said he stood by his comments and made more sexist remarks, and only then did he lose his job on June 11th.

Submitter should probably spend less time reading Brietbart.

It's about damn time.

Time? No, it is long overdue. Now it is time for incest.

There is no argument for making acceptance of gay marriage mandatory, that would not also apply to making sex between and marriage of parent and (adult) child or between siblings legal. "Troll" my foot — do try to come up with one...

This is hardly news — and some legal professionals have said so. And the fight for Full Marriage Equality is already ongoing. All over.

Oh, and before you say "Think of the (malformed) children of such unions!" — sorry, that's not enough. First of all, they don't have to have children with each other — like gay couples, they can adopt. Second, most of the existing laws banning incest make no difference between actual close blood-relatives "in laws" — it is equally illegal for a step-father to marry his adopted daughter (Woody Allen got away with it, because he never formally adopted his wife's child).

And third, the courts have ruled for years (here is a "1948 decision for example!), that any concerns for the health of the offspring are not sufficient grounds for denying the right to marry.

Within a generation the term "motherfucker" will become a disparaging sign of bigoted microaggression — which is, of course, much worse than the actual bona-fide aggression it manifests in our parochial times.

Healthy food is tasty as hell once your palette has had a chance to get used to it again

No, when your palette gets used to it again, it becomes bearable ("as hell" is quite an apt a metaphor, actually) — but not especially tasty. Ice-cream or chocolate will still trump "healthy" and an ongoing effort of will is required to stick to broccoli.

I'd say, the results of the study show, that we increase cognitive abilities, when experiencing shortages, rather than decline, when eating, what we want. Which makes sense from evolutionary stand-point — if you are starving, you better think harder about finding sustenance...

But, however one spins the same facts, we better adapt to the 21st century of plenty. All of our evolution to day was spent with starvation constantly looming and occasionally hitting whereas today — and only for the last few decades — "starving" became a synonym for "dieting". And that we view the thinness as beautiful today is not a result of some evil conspiracy, but simply a reflection of what is healthy today — for a never-starving Westerner. Our super-thin ideals of today would not have survived even in the 19th century... The still-hungry Africans, for a counter-example, still think "fat is beautiful" and Mauritania even has a concept of "wife-fattening".

It is not "cultural" — they just still remember famine, whereas the "golden billion" has blissfully forgotten it.

If you're fed up (pun intended) with safe food and other consumables I suggest that you order the cheapest possible products directly from China. Unlike the commies here in the US, manufacturers there are mostly unencumbered by effective regulation, so anything goes.

You're not kidding. Just today there's this article on the BBC (and elsewhere) titled China 'seizes 40-year-old meat in crackdown on smugglers'

According to state newspaper the China Daily, officials from Guangxi, a southern region bordering Vietnam, found meat dating back to the 1970s.

Yang Bo, an anti-smuggling official in Hunan province, was quoted as saying food was often transported in ordinary rather than refrigerated vehicles to save money. "So the meat has often thawed out [and re-frozen] several times before reaching customers," he said.

and the pangolin, what's not used for trinkets or medicine is simply scoffed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

"They asked up to $1,500 (£1,000) a kilo. Asked why they were so expensive, one woman replied with no apparent shame: "Because they're rare and illegal."

My only hope here is that when the pagolins are all dead, the ants they used to eat in great quantities rise up and eat the vietnamese and chinese who put profit above ecology.

• ref 1
• ref 2
• ref 3
• ref 4 related
• ref 5

Some teacher in the UK came up with this new concept:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire...

probably was discussed on /. already, but too lazy to look it up!

Well, as anyone who's ever unlocked car door just by reaching for its handle with a key in their pocket knows, keyless cars are 'increasingly targeted by thieves using computers'

There, fixed that for you.

There's also the Coventry Blitz conspiracy.

Knowing the exact location would be important in determining whether it will get sunlight - and therefore revive - as the comet draws closer to perihelion.

Quite important apparently - as it has just done exactly that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33126885

This seems well-timed, just two days after David Anderson QC's report calling the UK surveillance powers "undemocratic", "fragmented" and "obscure". Got to keep the populace onside while working towards the next set of even-more intrusive laws, all in their own interest of course!

He has since said that it wasn't a joke and that he stands by his comments, at least in part: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-3...

He has since clarified his position: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-3...

In short he thinks men and women working together is a problem. Not sexist by itself, but the fact that he followed that up by suggesting that women will end up crying when you criticise them suggests that it is probably derived from some sexist notion that women are unable to work with men without using the feminine wiles like it's a 1960s Star Trek episode.

He has now clarified that he wasn't joking about the falling in love bit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-3...

The average college graduate has around $30,000 of debt, hardly hundreds of thousands. The average trade school graduate has $10,000 of debt. Given that college grads have significantly higher salaries, and significantly more horizontal and vertical movement potential, I'd hardly say that a college degree is not worth it. ...

You must be talking about the US. In Europe I'd be surprised if the average university debt is even 1/4th of that. The last time I checked Oxford medical school had almost exactly the same tuition as MBTI (before their financial scandals saw daylight.) Asian, South American and African Universities cost even less and techies (unlike some tradesmen) are competing in this global market. Yes, your college degree is worth something but first consider that in India there are tens of millions of middle-class people with PhDs in whatever you think you're an expert at. In Spain, Brazil, China there are hundreds of millions of highly-educated and unemployed university graduates.

If I were a chancellor or comptroller of a state or alumni-subsidized university I'd be worried that people will find out that many US universities don't even give a fiscal ROI, much less a societal one. They are morphing into either trade schools or glorified country clubs.

Those with money focus on the fraternity aspect, rub elbows with wealth and push themselves into a cushy job with friends. They can major in some of the useless esoteric degrees (believe me, philosophy and psychology are quite practical compared to some college curriculum.) The others are channeled down the "trade- school" quick fiscal ROI path. They get a degree in Management Information Systems, Accounting, MBA or Computer Science and hope what they learned is relevant for at least as long as it takes to payoff their student loan.

Yes your college degree is worth something, so is a house, so are dot com stocks, beanie babies and tulips. But it isn't worth as much as most people believe it's worth.

or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Just as real. Perhaps we should agitate for it and show these zealots who cry for fairness what they are really about.

"wow is eq dumbed down"

This statement MIGHT have been true at WoW launch. Certainly, it was easier to level by a ludicrous amount (and they made it even easier later). But many EQ features were post WoW *and copied WoW*, such as instanced raid bosses, and after a few years WoW had features that EQ never touched- entire game modes, really.

So no, it's not dumbed down EQ. It's an MMO that is very approachable to a casual, yet denies those casuals effective end game gear unless they want to get on the same gear treadmill as the raiders. The first part gets them their subs and pays all their bills for the second part, which is a lot like the older part of the industry.

I remember all those cool EQ stats back when they were being thrown around too, but the point is, WoW quadrupled their numbers in months. Oh, that stuff you copypasta from Wikipedia points to this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/tec...

Which gives that "all MMOs are two million players number", which was true when the study was done... in August 2004.

WoW launched in November 2004, three months later.

WoW had 1.5 megasubs in first quarter 2005.
WoW had 3.5 megasubs in second quarter 2005.

It took WoW six months triple the existing GENRE, becoming two thirds of it.

It hit six megasubs at the beginning of 2006.

Look, I get how everyone wants to shit on WoW. But you all know it redefined everything about the industry, and still dominates it solidly to this very second. Arguably, the MMO genre died years ago, and a new genre, the "WoW-like", took its place- almost all MMOs that would follow duplicate WoW down to preposterous detail, from the exact same gear treadmill, the exact same model for instanced raiding, the exact same model for acquiring and balancing pvp gear, the exact same types of group pvp offered, the exact same lack of 1v1 pvp, the exact same model for ground mounts, all of which are part of your character and can never attack, whether they are a horse, a dragon, a speeder from Star Wars, or a hoverboard, and all of which go at exactly the same speed.

No one would implement that all by accident. EQ had character collision, WoW does not. None of the games now do.

You would get nothing like the current genre if everyone wasn't copying every single decision, design or technical, that WoW made. So many things were created by WoW that it's just like, a damned joke that anyone pretends otherwise.

Hate WoW if you like- I stopped playing because I don't like the things it does now (and even when I did play, I didn't like everything they did). But it's so vastly influential and popular that there's just no way you can't say it isn't those things.

Harold Blumenthal at The Fat Duck restaurant found that stocks made with pressure cookers were both faster and better-tasting once they understood the effects of diffusion laws on stock making.

His brother Heston speaks very highly of them, too. Not sure I'd want to eat at his restaurants, though:

2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...
2014: http://www.theguardian.com/lif...

You mean something like what was voted on in 1975?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisda...

So YOU'RE this guy, the one who the tribe force him to marry to a goat after being caught having sex with it! No wonder you post anonymously here!

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

No... but if every single person in the world donated 10 cents once we would get >$700M.... Invest that money with a modest 1% return we would have >$60M per year for this... And that is load's more than the $10M number (i read from other posts) we currently spend on these things..

The avarage income in the world is ~$10,000 ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga... )
Avarage lifespan is 71 years ( http://www.who.int/gho/mortali... )

So.. $10000 * 71 years = $710000 .1 cent of $710000 = .00000014% of a lifetime income..

Odds of being killed by an astroid:
1 in 74,817,414 ( http://www.cnet.com/news/odds-... ) .000000013%

Do the same calculations on how much we invest to reduce other risks...

even outside the US: a foster parent had a child removed because he became a member of UKIP. I bullshit you not. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...

(Rotherham Council have since made a public apology but have offered no restitution, and continue to waffle over the unrelated systemic child abuse scandal).