It's a wise decision to welcome us. We've already started to infiltrate your guts and the guts of your loved ones.

Really? From the same exact page - "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

Early religion was an attempt to fill in the gaps of a society's collective knowledge with some sort of narrative explanation. Before the various deities were imagined to fill in the gaps, humans weren't even smart enough to have gaps. In that sense, religion was the world's first "science".

It's not that simple. Being able to harbor the new bacteria is now a measure of fitness in these insects. Insects that reject the bacteria will die off (if they haven't already), and insects that do a better job accommodating the bacteria are more likely to survive to the next generation. We happen to be seeing the end product of that process.

I find this story pretty hopeful, actually. "Life finds a way". Maybe we are also a more resilient species than we give ourselves credit for...

Most of the choices require some sort of technological breakthrough that may or may not be possible. World Peace really just requires a fundamental change in perspective. Also, World Peace is unlikely to be a permanently stable system - there are always jerks - but it I think it can be temporarily achieved before, say, teleportation.

He's not blaming the victim. He's saying that the law is largely based on the expectation of privacy, and goes into some detail about how that works from a legal perspective (and how to define privacy in the first place).

Fourth Amendment protections don’t turn entirely on the conduct of any one individual; to a large extent they depend on whether we, as a society, treat something as private.

As the law stands right now, any time you share information with (or through) a third party, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, your browsing habits, or even your finances, the government can legally ask that third party for the information, without a warrant, and present it as evidence against you. The 4th Amendment doesn't prevent that data from being admissible in court; if you share the data with a third party, the third party can legally submit it as evidence. If you don't want a third party to be able to hand over your data in court, don't give them your data. Since people are routinely sharing their data with third party services these days (knowingly or not), it sets up a reduced expectation of privacy for everyone.

That's the law and how it works. Don't shoot the messenger.

It seems that most Facebook and Google users can't keep their mouths shut.

*cough* Slashdot *cough*

What if "X" is simply showing up to a friend's party? These days, I ask my friends not to tag me on Facebook when they take pictures of me at parties.

The Jury, apparently.

This is really interesting. Thanks for posting this!

Yes it is, even if the members of the jury are not. The people writing the laws, or the judge, could be Klansmen, too*. Corrupt justice is corrupt justice. At least putting the power in the hands of the jury (i.e. "the people") keeps the problem from being systemic and permanent, so that a new generation of jurors have a chance assert their rights.

If you expect that most of the randomly selected jury supports the Klan, then the legislators and judges they elect probably will, too.

As an American, it would be nice if a major US discovery got Americans excited about physics research again. Europe is already committed to high-energy physics.

Standardized dosage doesn't help if the side effects are known, and in some cases, worse than the problem being treated. Meanwhile, modern "sound medical advice" rarely takes nutrition, stress, or other environmental factors into account, even though these things are undeniably linked to all sorts of medical problems (these are some of the first things alternative practitioners ask about). These problems exist even assuming your doctor has your best interests in mind, and doesn't have any sort of conflict of interest that might make him or her more inclined to prescribe a particular medication to you.

I'm not saying herbal medicine is an acceptable alternative to synthetics in all cases. But the summary presented here (and the headline of the article) is slanted towards the nonsensical attitude that *only* Western medicine is worth pursuing, and that Australian universities should abandon alternatives. TFA, incidentally, includes a defense of these programs omitted from the summary.