Can It Be a Good Thing to Be Deaf?

Can it be a good thing to be deaf?

Increasingly, Deaf activists claim that it can be good to be Deaf. Still, much of the hearing world remains unconvinced, and continues to think of deafness in negative terms. I examine this debate and argue that to determine whether it can be good to be deaf it is necessary to examine each claimed advantage or disadvantage of being deaf, and then to make an overall judgment regarding the net co...

Voting Early and Often Can Be a Good Thing

The current political climate has almost ruled out the use of Internet voting. Many politicians, led by vocal computer scientists, are pushing for voter verified paper receipts; which is likely to push us even further away from even electronic voting systems. On the other hand, cryptographers have created homomorphic encryption and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs with features that can su...

Mitosis: Too Much of a Good Thing (Can Be Bad)

Recent studies reveal that the precise regulation of microtubule dynamics is essential for an error-free mitosis. Kinetochore microtubule attachments that are too stable increase the rate of chromosome mis-segregation, a leading cause of chromosomal instability in tumors.

It can be smart to be dumb

An important problem in game theory is why bounded rationality occurs, e.g., why altruism to non-kin occurs. Previous explanations involved computational limitations of the players, repeated play among the players etc. As an alternative, we introduce a pre-play step in which each player i chooses a “persona”, i.e., a ficticious utility function she commits to use in the game. By adopting differ...

“Not Everything That Is Faced Can Be Changed, but Nothing Can Be Changed Until It Is Faced”: A Response to Recent Commentaries