Workers are responsible for half of cyber incidents? Well, if opening an email or clicking a link as described in the article makes the worker responsible, then so be it. But, in the days before the internet, when corporate (or government) espionage was the issue, it wasn't the worker who created the report that was responsible for it being stolen, but the actual thief. So, other than another attempt to denigrate government workers, why if somebody sends a malicious link is it not the person who sent the link responsible versus the unknowing end user?

Saying the government workers are the cause of the problem is like saying the woman wearing a short skirt was the cause of the rape. Blaming the victim just diverts attention from the real problem.

St. Nicholas was a real person. He was the Bishop of Myra. What has become the commercialized Christmas began relatively recently. Traditionally, December 25th was celebrated as the Nativity of the Lord and was not a big consumer celebration. That began in the Victorian Age, but was pretty mild compared to today. As for occurring at or near the winter solstice, that made sense because the Christ was supposed to bring light to the darkness. For things like evergreens being co-opted by from the pagans, well, yes people did that, but the Christmas Tree is not an official symbol of any Christian religion. Again, that really began in the Victorian Age, so blame the English, not religion.

So, if there is a surrogate involved, whose flora will the fetus inherit, the surrogate's or the biological mother's?

While there can be microbes in a placenta, usually they are not the types found in the intestinal tract, which is what this article is about. So, yes, flora from the mouth can travel through the blood stream to the placenta, but those are not the flora which ultimately colonize the intestinal tract.

But, no. If that were true than in vitro fertilization with implantation into another woman's womb would mean the baby would inherit the biological mother's microbes. That is not the case. The transmission of the microbes is an environmental transfer, not a genetic one.

I thought dinosaurs were birds?

You can, if you are on your own property. The problem occurs when you are taking something of value from property that you do not own.

Yes, but low carb diets, at least described by the OP are not "entirely" animal products (or plant products). It would make sense that microbes that are needed to break down plants, would cease to exist in the gut if there were no plant material to break down. Likewise, for animal protein. We don't really need a new study for this, anybody who has changed a dirty diaper has experienced it. When babies go from breast milk, alone, to other foods, there is a distinct change in the stool. The gut flora needed to break down the new food source is picked up from the environment and begins to do its work. The old gut flora can't compete in the new environment and is replaced.

But, when going from a normal diet to a relatively low carb diet (using the term diet to describe what is consumed, versus weight loss), there still are ample plant sources, so the flora is not replaced, at least not in the dramatic fashion as going to an all animal or all plant diet.

But that is my point, if the microbes are from an external source, they are not heritable.

Diet doesn't really change the microbes. Location may have an impact on it, though (which is why there is the old adage of not drinking the local water). Going to a low carb diet works by the body, after about three days of not having enough carbs to convert to energy switches to burning fat reserves. The improved health effects you experience are not because of the microbial change but instead the diet change. Chances are, the same microbes that were there before the diet switch are still there.

If the fetus is in a sterile sack, how do these heritable "gut" microbes get in there? For instance, e.coli isn't in there, but comes from the environment. Wouldn't these microbes follow the same path, in which case they aren't actually heritable, but instead environmental?

Actually I have taken calculus, however, but there is a difference between "as x approaches 0" is not the same as 0/0 = x. It is only an approximation of x. 0/0 is undefined because anything times 0 is 0, so 0 divided by 0 is anything. 3*0=0, so 3=0/0 4*0=0 so 4=0/0, 5*0=0, so 5=0/0 etc.

But, if your definition of nothing is something that is really close to nothing, but actually isn't nothing, well, yes, we have different definitions and will continue to disagree. For 99.99999% of people and things almost nothing is close enough to nothing. However, when talking about the universe springing from nothing, it isn't close enough because if something that is almost nothing exists, then the universe already exists at the point in space/time. It is simply a closer point to the beginning of the universe than we had before.

Put differently, the universe doesn't have to exist, so there must be a reason it does exist. If that reason is because something almost nothing exist, then it begs the question of does it have to exist and if the answer is no, then there, too, must be a reason. If the answer is yes, it must exist, then the universe must exist at that point and the quantum vacuum could not, therefore, cause the universe to come into existence, because it is required to exist for there to be a quantum vacuum.

I don't have to prove it. Even Stephen Hawking accepts it and relies on it in "A Brief History of Time" It isn't new, what is new, for this research is that they have re-defined what nothing is. No longer is it the absence of everything, but now is a quantum vacuum. It ignores though, that for there to be a quantum vacuum, by definition there already has to be quantum particles, somewhere. And if quantum particles already exist, then so does the universe. Therefore, if nothing requires something, then it isn't really nothing. Put differently, if nothing really is something, then division by nothing (zero) is possible and we can prove that 0 = 1.

You are correct, I am relying on ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing). To get around this, the theory in question changes the definition of nothing to be a quantum vacuum, which is already something. So, yes, if we can change the definition of nothing, then anything is possible, include division by zero.

Trying to leave religion out of it. The article states that spontaneous quantum fluctuations could have created the big bang. I am only asking that if there needed to be something that existed that allowed these spontaneous quantum fluctuations to occur that then led to the big bang, then maybe the big bang wasn't the start of the universe and/or time.