The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.

A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.

The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.

Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.

Scientists have established huge numbers of links between particular diseases and snippets of DNA, but in the great majority of cases, this has not yet been translated into treatments that can help cure patients. These treatments will come - tomorrow, or the day after.

The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.