If you don't want politics in science don't take Government money. Government money always comes with strings attached, doesn't matter which political party happens to be calling the shots.

Every carrier has SIM cards now that Verizon and Sprint have moved to LTE. There is nothing stopping device manufacturers from selling devices directly to consumers who can then activate them without any interaction whatsoever with their carriers. Even Verizon has caved to reality on this one with devices like the Nexus 6. They don't advertise this fact of course but they don't stop you from doing it either.

Well yeah. If you breathe it you'll DIE! Only a Teabagger would be against Government regulation of a chemical that's so dangerous as to cause DEATH when inhaled. Why do you hate the children? How much did Big DHMO pay you for this astroturfing?

I despise Facebook but it's something of a necessary evil when you have friends scattered all over the world. That's why I was rooting for G+ to displace it, or at least become big enough that I could plausibly use it as my sole social networking account, but neither of those things happened. :(

Google was quite annoying for awhile there in trying to convince you to sign up and/or linking G+ into everything but they've backed away from that of late.

Which is why political parties love these voters. Because they'll vote straight party line ticket every single time. They make an effort to identify these people and physically drag them to the polls if necessary.

Back in the day before New York got rid of our battleship gray lever machines it was easy as pie to identify these voters. "*click* *click* *click* *click* *click*" as they pulled the levers across their party line without even bothering to read the names of the candidates they were voting for. In and out in 5 seconds flat with 15+ offices on the ballot.

There is no way that you can conduct online voting and ensure that the voter is not being intimidated. Offsite voting is a necessary evil for certain people (the handicapped and those who are unavoidably out of town on election day) but it does not need to be expanded to cover everyone. Here in New York we very specifically keep those most likely to intimidate you out of the voting booth, i.e., your employer and union official. The people that can hold a financial gun to your head if you don't vote the way they want. With online voting (or offsite voting on paper, i.e., absentee ballots) there is no way to actually ensure that the voter doesn't have a gun (real or proverbial) aimed at their head when they click 'submit.' For this reason alone I will always oppose it and other measures (vote by mail) that take people out of the polling place.

The summary also makes the assumption that low voter turnout is a big problem. This is an oft-repeated claim but there's zero evidence to suggest that increased participation rates equate to better results. People choose not to vote for many reasons; apathy likely being the biggest one, followed closely by a generalized disgust with the available options. "None of the above" is a perfectly valid option in an election, whether exercised via the write-in for "Mickey Mouse" or by staying home on Election Day.

Why? I love G+ when compared against the competition; better software, a slicker interface, higher signal to noise ratio, it's better than Facebook in every metric except for the minor little detail that hardly anybody uses it. I was hoping that they would mount a serious challenge to FB but it seems unlikely that is going to happen, barring some huge mistake on FB that alienates a critical mass of people.

Wouldn't it be better to treat them like PCs and remove the OEMs from the equation entirely? Why should I have to rely on Motorola/Samsung/LG/Nokia (or worse, Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint) to get patches for my Android operating system? I don't have to wait for Dell to push out Microsoft's latest round of security patches, I download them directly from Microsoft and install them myself.

There's no reason phones need to work any differently than PCs have worked for the last two decades except a desire by the carriers and handset manufacturers for planned obsolescence. If Google had any backbone whatsoever they would push the ecosystem in this direction, they've certainly got enough of a user base now to throw their weight around as Apple has done since the very beginning.

That's because the unwritten "Right Not To Be Offended" trumps the written "Right To Free Speech" in the United States. I particularly love the irony of seeing college kids chanting "Je suis Charlie" while they simultaneously shout down speakers that they don't agree with and do their utmost to get them banned from speaking at their universities.

Would you make the same statement if we were talking about Scientology and the target of the attack was Comedy Central?

Because, once again, our feckless President doesn't understand the importance of symbolism outside of political campaigns. As an American who has friends scattered all over the EU I'm extremely disappointed that he couldn't be bothered to make the trip.

"Abusive" and "hateful" speech are not limited in the United States. You must be confusing us with Europe and/or Canada.

That's an awesome find. Thank you very much for sharing it. :)

Chuck Norris is a cute reference but in reality there are a nearly infinite number of factors that come into play. Gender, size, training, existing injuries, number of opponents, and so on. A fight might even start out as a normal fisticuffs where deadly force would not be permissible but escalate to a situation where the defending party is too injured to continue to defend themselves without resorting to deadly force. If you beat the snot out of me to the point that I'm about to pass out I'm well within my rights to shoot you, since I'll no longer be able to defend myself whilst unconscious. If you come after me with three of your friends I'm well within my rights to resort to deadly force, since even a well trained individual is not likely to prevail against 4 to 1 odds. Ditto if you've got 200 pounds on me. The relevant term is "disparity of force" and it seems to have applied in the incident in Ferguson.

Which is what happens the lion's share of the time. Cases where the suspect surrenders without a fight don't make the news though.

Grand Jury is part of the prosecution in the United States. Before you can be prosecuted for a felony offense the Government needs to secure an indictment against you. This is the job of the Grand Jury. The standard they must meet is significantly lower than a Petit Jury at trial, which must find beyond a reasonable doubt with a unanimous ruling that you committed the crime in question. The Grand Jury need only find that there's probable cause you committed the crime in question. They do not need a unanimous ruling to do this, simply a majority of the empaneled Grand Jurors must vote for indictment. The State is allowed to introduce evidence at Grand Jury that it would not be allowed to use at trial, like hearsay or illegally obtained evidence, and the deck is further stacked against the defendant in that if he chooses to testify he waives his right to be represented by counsel and his right to refuse to answer questions that might incriminate him.

If the State can't meet this simplified burden of proof under rules that greatly favor it then what is the point of preceding to trial? More than 90% of cases presented before the Grand Jury result in indictment. The remaining cases are so exceedingly weak that there's less than zero chance they would result in conviction at trial were the Grand Jury system to be abolished. Additionally, it's mandated by our Constitution, so the process of abolishing it is not a simple one.

If you read the summary you'll note that concern was with regards to when these cameras should be on vs. when they should be off. Should they be on while the officer is sitting in his patrol car doing paperwork, bitching to his partner about the litany of mundane things (both work related and personal) that co-workers across all professions bitch to one another about? I have friends and family in law enforcement and I'm generally supportive of body cams, but they're going to fundamentally change the nature of policing and not always for the better. Do you think you're going to get the polite "Please slow down." admonishment when you get pulled over by an officer wearing a body cam? Think your pot smoking kid gets the joint taken from him, ground into the dirt, and an admonishment to shape up his act? Not likely. It's going to be letter of the law by the book policing, with all the pros and cons that go along with that. On balance it's for the best but let's not pretend there won't be drawbacks to it or that there aren't legitimate concerns about the best way to implement such technology.

Unarmed has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a threat that warrants the use of deadly force. There are a litany of informative articles that you can read on the subject if you're so inclined. Start by Googling "disparity of force" and "ability, opportunity, and jeopardy." Those are the standards taught to law enforcement (and armed civilians, incidentally) in all 50 States. If you're alluding to what happened in Missouri, I read the Grand Jury transcripts in their entirety, and if the Officer's testimony is to be believed his actions were completely justified. The Grand Jury apparently thought they were and the Feds haven't bothered to bring charges against him.

I wonder what will happen to the "Hands up, don't shoot!" movement when we see another such incident happen with a body cam wearing officer who turns out to be completely justified in his actions? Will we still see the parade of childhood pictures of some 280 pound thug? Attention seeking asshats (*cough* Sharpton *cough*) jumping in for their share of the headline? Riots in the streets? I'm guessing that all of those things will happen, because these things have never been about justice, but are rather precipitated by a handful of assholes taking advantage of legitimate longstanding grievances in disadvantaged communities. It fits a narrative so let's run with it, never mind what the actual facts are on the ground.