http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/198

EXCERPT: Physicist Jens Eisert likens himself to Sherlock Holmes. The fictional sleuth was famously preoccupied with eliminating the impossible in his hunt for the truth. Eisert is involved in a similar quest: eliminating "undecidable" problems that cannot, even in theory, ever be resolved by a computer.

Eisert, who is based at the Free University of Berlin, is interested in the quantum world, and how we understand and describe tasks in terms of their computational complexity. So far, he says he has found "the most crazy, the most extreme forms of difference," where a problem is perfectly decidable in the classical world, and not just hard, but undecidable in the quantum world. The approach could, for instance, help physicists exploiting quantum properties for securely encoding data....

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...ore-155596

EXCERPT: Gary Gutting: What’s your overall view on the morality of torture?

Jeff McMahan: I think that torture is almost always morally wrong and that, for moral reasons, it ought to be prohibited absolutely in law. Torture has been used to extract confessions, to terrorize people associated with the victims, to punish presumed wrongdoers, and even to gratify and amuse sadists and bullies. These uses are always morally wrong. The only use of torture that has any chance of being morally justified is to gain important information. But even when torture is used to gain information, the torturers are usually wrongdoers seeking information that will help them to achieve their unjust aims. And even when those seeking information have just aims, their victims are often innocent, or lack the information sought, or are sufficiently strong-willed to mislead their torturers, so that the torture is ineffective or counterproductive. Still, both those pursuing unjust aims and those pursuing just aims will continue to be tempted to engage in torture if they can do so with impunity. Hence, torture has been widely practiced, though its use has almost invariably been wrong. This means that the overriding goal of the law ought to be to deter the wrongful use of torture, even at the cost of forbidding the use of torture in those rare cases in which it might be morally justified. The legal prohibition ought therefore to be absolute; for those who think that torture would be advantageous to them will always be tempted to try to exploit any legal permission to use it.

G.G.: But you do agree that torture can, in extreme cases, be moral. Why do you reject the absolute view that any instance of torture is immoral?

J.M.: Torture can be morally justifiable, and even obligatory, when it is wholly defensive – for example, when torturing a wrongdoer would prevent him from seriously harming innocent people. It could do that by forcing a person to reveal the location where he has planted a bomb, or hidden a hostage who will die if not found. It can be morally justifiable to kill a person to prevent him from detonating a bomb that will kill innocent people, or to prevent him from killing an innocent hostage. Since being killed is generally worse than being tortured, it should therefore be justifiable to torture a person to prevent him from killing innocent people. In cases in which torture is defensive in this way, the person tortured is not wronged. Indeed, he could avoid the torture simply by doing what he is morally required to do anyway – namely, disclose the location of the bomb or hostage....

"So with over 500 votes, here's the top 20..."

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/20...op-20.html

When I was a little runt we had an old illustrated picture Bible filled with all sorts of images that set the stage for all my future imaginings. One picture really stood out. It was a picture of God himself on his throne with the muscular seraphim all around him singing. His hair was hoary white and his eyes were like fire, and his feet were like brass in a furnace, as it says somewhere in Isaiah. That image stayed with me forever. Every time I thought of God that is what would come to my mind. Strange that God was always this old bearded man on a throne. Why couldn't he be a young man, like Hugh Jackman in a skimpy toga? I guess that'd be a different god. Oh well...here's some pictures of God I found online.

"Too much time spent on your cell phone doesn’t mean you’re more connected and happier.

New research from scientists at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio shows that the more time college students spend on their cellphones, the more anxious they were and the more their academic performance suffered.

Jacob Barkley, Aryn Karpinski and Andrew Lepp studied 500 Kent State University students, each of whom reported their daily cell phone use for the year as well as their level of anxiety and satisfaction with their life.

At the end of the year, the students also permitted the researchers to see their official school records for their cumulative grade point average (GPA). Not only was greater cell phone use negatively correlated with satisfaction and happiness indicators, it was also associated with lower GPAs — presumably because the students were more anxious and unable to concentrate on their studies.

While previous research found that cell phones can improve social interactions and reduce feelings of isolation, the latest findings, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggest that constant access to information and people may be a double edged-sword. The researchers speculate, for example, that students may feel anxious if they feel obligated to be in constant touch with their friends. Some may have difficulty disconnecting, which only feeds into the stress linked to their phones. Occasional episodes of solitude can be important for well being, but students who are tied to their phones aren’t getting these respites.

But since the convenience of mobile phone technology only makes cell phones more ubiquitous and indispensable, the research team says it’s worth exploring some of the less obvious as well as the more transparent ways that the devices might be influencing how we act and even — if you’re a college student — the grades you get."====http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/06/do...e-anxious/

"Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something..." (Frank Gehry)

"To me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it." (Frank Gehry)

"Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you’re the only expert."— FRANK GEHRY

Among other things..

http://datazoid.deviantart.com/art/Heroe...-341609312

They need to come out with a Villians line of action figures: Deepak Chopra, Nietzsche, Feyerband, Derrida, Foucault, the Una Bomber, Karl Marx, Sylvia Brown, Uri Geller, the Pope, William Lane Craig, Dean Radin, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Charles Fort, Madam Blavatsky..

Don't you know there's billions to be made here if this ever becomes feasible? A whole new industry of stem cell baldness clinics across the nation!

"A new study from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), researchers have used human pluripotent stem cells to generate new hair. The study represents the first step toward the development of a cell-based treatment for people with hair loss. In the United States alone, more than 40 million men and 21 million women are affected by hair loss. The research was published online in PLOS One yesterday.

"We have developed a method using human pluripotent stem cells to create new cells capable of initiating human hair growth. The method is a marked improvement over current methods that rely on transplanting existing hair follicles from one part of the head to another," said Alexey Terskikh, Ph.D., associate professor in the Development, Aging, and Regeneration Program at Sanford-Burnham. "Our stem cell method provides an unlimited source of cells from the patient for transplantation and isn't limited by the availability of existing hair follicles."

The research team developed a protocol that coaxed human pluripotent stem cells to become dermal papilla cells. They are a unique population of cells that regulate hair-follicle formation and growth cycle. Human dermal papilla cells on their own are not suitable for hair transplants because they cannot be obtained in necessary amounts and rapidly lose their ability to induce hair-follicle formation in culture.

"In adults, dermal papilla cells cannot be readily amplified outside of the body and they quickly lose their hair-inducing properties," said Terskikh. "We developed a protocol to drive human pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into dermal papilla cells and confirmed their ability to induce hair growth when transplanted into mice."

"Our next step is to transplant human dermal papilla cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells back into human subjects," said Terskikh. "We are currently seeking partnerships to implement this final step."====http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...095919.htm