counterintuitive cryptography and comparative complexity

The technosecurity arms race will be won by the most technologically advanced combatant, right?

Wrong.

"This is a system that should be taken seriously," says security specialist Bruce Schneier, who founded network security firm BT Counterpane. He says he was seduced by the simplicity of the idea when it was first proposed by Kish, and now wants to see independent tests of the working model. "I desperately want someone to analyse it," he says. "Assuming it works, it's way better than quantum."

Click through to find out what "it" is.

Tangentially, PZ Myers discusses the various problems with ladders of biological complexity that put humans at the top rung.

The idea that complexity is a material and significant element in the genome, one that has a pattern of increase that has reached its pinnacle in humanity, is little more than one of the last vestiges of the mistaken notion of progress in evolution, and one that seems to be supported only by largely imaginary evidence. In particular, the often expressed idea that people, of all creatures, must be especially complex is like hearing someone with no knowledge of pianos explain that their favorite piano sonata is so wonderfully beautiful that it must have been played on an instrument with many more than 88 keys—and that Jerry Lee Lewis and Beethoven couldn't possibly have been composing on similar instruments.

Click through to find out why.