This looks like an important discovery in psychology:

In an exciting breakthrough for psychological science, researchers in the United States have demonstrated a drug-free way to prevent the return of a learned fear. Similar memory modification effects have been observed before, but these experiments have involved drugs such as the beta-blocker propranolol. It’s hoped the new drug-free procedure will lead to improved therapeutic techniques for people with phobias or intrusive traumatic memories. 

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I like where this theory is going.  I think it deserves more discussion:

Today, Ellis and Rothman introduce a significant new type of block universe. They say the character of the block changes dramatically when quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix. All of a sudden, the past and the future take on entirely different characteristics. The future is dominated by the weird laws of quantum mechanics in which objects can exist in two places at the same time and particles can be so deeply linked that they share the same existence. By contrast, the past is dominated by the unflinching certainty of classical mechanics.

…

They point out, for example, that this crystallization process doesn’t take place entirely in the present. In quantum mechanics the past can sometimes be delayed, for example in delayed choice experiments. This means the structure of the transition from future to past is more complex than a cursory thought might suggest.   

The part that seems most significant is the way it ties quantum dynamics to classical or relativistic mechanics.  The uncertainty that lies in the future just can’t be treated like a classical model, except in very narrow cases where all of the parameters are carefully controlled.  In the large majority of cases, small quantum effects trigger larger effects that go on to affect the final outcome in unpredictable ways.

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Technology keeps getting faster, but I wonder if it is fast enough to do real-time image processing to filter out pornography?  More on this idea soon, but let me first explain why the question came up.

Note: There is a network-based hardware solution that is similar to this idea called iBoss, but this is not the same technology. iBoss seems like it’s worth a look, however, if you’re looking for a hardware solution and don’t need my vaporware

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Infinity is such a “number”.  The irrational numbers are too, as is π (pi), and e, and so are a whole host of “numbers” derived through functions such as sin, cos, tan.

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This open letter is the product of a long and thoughtful process that I’ve been paying attention to, associated with a mailing list led by Jon Pincus.

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I’m playing with Node.js right now for one of my side projects and found that it was a little more difficult to read a file than I had anticipated.  First, I looked for an “obvious” function that would read in an entire file, but there didn’t seem to be anything like Ruby’s IO.read (I was wrong, however, see the posix.cat solution below).

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Kelty and I just went for a walk in Millenium Park and happened across an End the Fed rally. It was neat to see support for Ron Paul’s “Audit the Federal Reserve” bill there.

Sent from my iPhone

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The House Financial Services Committee has approved Rep. Ron Paul’s measure to drastically expand the government’s power to audit the Federal Reserve.

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Demonstrating the efficacy (or lack thereof) of vaccine and antivirals during flu season would not be hard to do, given the proper resources. Take a group of people who are at risk of getting the flu, and randomly assign half to get vaccine and the other half a dummy shot. Then count the people in each group who come down with flu, suffer serious illness, or die. (A similarly designed trial would suffice for the antivirals.) It might sound coldhearted, but it is the only way to know for certain whether, and for whom, current remedies actually work.

In the absence of such evidence, we are left with two possibilities. One is that flu vaccine is in fact highly beneficial, or at least helpful. Solid evidence to that effect would encourage more citizens—and particularly more health professionals—to get their shots and prevent the flu’s spread. As it stands, more than 50 percent of health-care workers say they do not intend to get vaccinated for swine flu and don’t routinely get their shots for seasonal flu, in part because many of them doubt the vaccines’ efficacy. The other possibility, of course, is that we’re relying heavily on vaccines and antivirals that simply don’t work, or don’t work as well as we believe. And as a result, we may be neglecting other, proven measures that could minimize the death rate during pandemics.

I wrote the following piece for my BYU American Heritage class as a final paper. It is my view on how to bring equality to marriage while preserving the boundaries required by tradition. Please download the PDF for footnotes and supporting references. The historical footnotes are actually quite interesting.

Strong Church, Strong State: The Marital Standard Foundation as a Solution (PDF)

In our modern Republic, varying ideas of marriage are vying for a monopoly over the whole. Rather than struggle for dominance, minorities should unite to create a new kind of entity: the Marital Standard Foundation. Each such foundation would be commissioned with the legal authority to marry and the legal obligation to maintain healthy communities.

There is general agreement from all segments of society that marriage should promote the well being of families while also granting social rights and responsibilities to mutually obligated adults. Historically, however, factions have tried to legislate marital morality on the underrepresented. One such minority—Utah’s Latter-day Saints—was once targeted by federal legislation that sought to force the Latter-day Saints to accept marriage as only between one man and one woman. Advocates of the one-size-fits-all legislation claimed a moral high ground, pointing at early Utah’s remarkably high divorce rate as justification for a Constitutional amendment to protect monogamous marriage.

While there has never been a true consensus view of marriage in America, monogamous heterosexual marriage has been upheld by law as a general standard. In this arrangement, churches have played the role of liaison between the modern state and the family. However, they have never truly been given charge of defining marriage—this power has generally been left to the states.

Given the need for families to form communities with common values, and for the state to decline jurisdiction over religious matters, the only reasonable alternative to the present struggle for dominance is a third party entity whose legal authority is conferred from the state and whose moral authority is given and maintained by a deep-rooted community such as a church or foundation.

In addition to binding like-minded people together, third party Marital Standard Foundations would permit legal discrimination based on age, race, and gender. This explicit right to discriminate would protect conservative organizations that seek to draw lines around the definition of marriage. Liberal organizations would also benefit from the latitude a Marital Standard Foundation would offer. Whatever their constitution, Marital Standard Foundations would suffer natural consequences—thus biology and sociology would naturally drive more traditional ideas to succeed due to popularity and better funding. Innovation, on the other hand, would provide a release valve for long oppressed minorities.

Further study is needed to determine the minimal stipulations and legal scope of a Marital Standard Foundation. It is clear that a solution is needed right now, however—it makes little sense that the definition of marriage should follow geographic boundaries. Instead, boundaries should be drawn around communities with shared values. I believe the possibility of convergence and tolerance on this long-standing American issue merits immediate attention before all states arrive at permanent and constitutionally binding disagreement.

Strong Church, Strong State: The Marital Standard Foundation as a Solution (PDF)

NOTE: I have changed the name throughout this article from “Marital Corporation” to “Marital Standard Foundation” because, after initial publication, I realized that corporation has a lifeless stigma that doesn’t seem to match the idea I’m trying to convey.