【推荐1】Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant(执行令)if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest.

California has asked the justices to restore the practice that the police may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies.

The court would be careless if it followed California's advice. Enough of the implications are recognizable, even obvious, so that the justice can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants.

They should start by casting away California's lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone-- a vast storehouse of digital information is similar to say, going through a suspect's purse .The court has ruled that police don't violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook, of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one's smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee's reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of “cloud computing,” meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier.

Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches.

As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn’t ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be very difficult for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still ignore Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while a warrant is pending. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom.

But the justices should not swallow California's argument whole. New, destructive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution's protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of cars; similarly, they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

【推荐2】The Strangest Tradition in Some U.S. States

Alabama: The MoonPie Over Mobile

What's the better way to ring in the New Year than with a snack(小吃，点心 )? Mobile, a city of Alabama, has a tradition of watching a huge moon pie drop. The tradition is called the MoonPie Over Mobile, which shines the past and also the future. As the 12-foot, 600 pound moon pie drops during the midnight countdown, the crowd will cut the world’s largest moon pie to eat.

Florida: The Strawberry Festival

Other than The Beatles band’s song Strawberry Fields Forever,the annual Florida Strawberry Festival is an ode(颂歌 )to the fruit. The yearly celebration of the strawberry harvest occupies large farmland in Parkesdale Farms and Wish Farms. The festival has all the usual public festival attractions families love.What's unusual about the festival is its activity where people compete in eating strawberry noodles, strawberry-garlic potatoes, etc.

Kansas: The St. Lucia Festival

The town of Lindsborg is known as a Swedish capital in the United States. Because of the townspeople’s Swedish tradition, the St. Lucia Festival every year for Christmas. The eldest daughter of every family would be dressed up in an unusual way. They would wear white clothing, lights and an evergreen plant as a way to stand for light and hope in the darkness of winter.

Iowa: The Hobo Days

Nowadays, the word"hobo"leads to the picture of a homeless and extremely poor person. In the late 19th century, however, the term simply referred to the people who left their home to look for jobs in the remote places of America and took the train going to the west. In honor of the hobo tradition, Iowa hosts the Hobo Days every August，which contains competitions, parades, food， and arts on the streets. The lucky man and woman will get crowned (被加冕) as hobo king and queen each year.

【推荐3】At your next meeting, wait for a pause in conversation and try to measure how long it lasts.

Among English speakers, chances are that it will be a second or two at most. But while this pattern may be universal, our awareness of silence differs dramatically across cultures.

What one culture considers a confusing or awkward pause may be seen by others as a valuable moment of reflection and sign of respect for what the last speaker has said. Research in Dutch and also in English found that when a silence in conversation stretches to four seconds, people start to feel uneasy. In contrast, a separate study of business meetings found that Japanese people are happy with silences of 8.2 seconds — nearly twice as long as in Americans’ meetings.

In Japan, it is recognized that the best communication is when you don’t speak at all. It’s already a failure to understand each other by speaking because you’re repairing that failure by using words.

In the US, it may originate from the history of colonial (殖民地) America as a crossroads of many different races. When you have a complex of difference, it’s hard to establish common understanding unless you talk and there’s understandably a kind of anxiety unless people are verbally engaged to establish a common life. This applies also to some extent to London.

In contrast, when there’s more homogeneity, perhaps it’s easier for some kinds of silence to appear. For example, among your closest friends and family it’s easier to sit in silence than with people you’re less well acquainted with.