Word: harmless
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...reminder of where things began to go wrong. Last March, she had the honor of starting Obama's charm offensive by presenting her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with a little red button. It was supposed to have the Russian word for reset on it and was meant as a harmless bit of fun. But thanks to a spelling mistake somewhere in the State Department (presumably the Gimmicks Directorate), Lavrov had to explain that the button actually said overload. It caused some awkward laughter. "We won't let you do that to us," Clinton joked, and they went ahead and pressed...
...developing brain cancer, it should show up in long-term studies of cell-phone users. But many epidemiological studies have found no clear connection, including a 2007 Danish Cancer Society study of 421,000 cell-phone users, which led many in the media to conclude that mobiles are harmless. To date, "peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices do not pose a risk," says John Walls, a spokesman for CTIA, a global wireless association. (See how to prevent illness...
...like receptor 5 (TLR5), which most intestinal cells sprout on their surface. Its job is to recognize and bind to the whiplike flagella that bacteria use to move around. TLR5 acts as a traffic cop for controlling the mass of pathogens living in the intestine; without it, the normally harmless gut bacteria tend to overflourish and expand in number. (See and listen to an audio slideshow about obesity rehab...
Furthermore, the fabled choice between liberty and security is not the same as the choice between privacy and security. The possession of privileged, personal information by the federal government is not in and of itself problematic; information by itself is harmless. Only the potential abuses that could result from such knowledge threaten individual liberty. Thus, it is important to establish safeguards against government abuses like the Privacy Act of 1974, which prevents the unauthorized disclosure of personal information...
Early stage prostate cancer can be harmless, and might never present health problems even if untreated. But in some patients, the cancer metastasizes, spreading to other parts of the body and becoming more dangerous...