re Hal Puthoff et al.'s "unconventional" theories on the nature of matter, tnx for pointer to article, but a caveat: they are very probably wrong, as are virtually all such attempts to overturn big chunks of physics. Does the article mention that Hal is most famous for his SRI work on remote viewing & spoonbender/magician Uri Geller some years ago? That doesn't disprove his current notions (and I've tried to read some of his technical papers, which he occasionally gets published in mainstream peer-reviewed physics journals, but I don't have the time or talent to poke holes in them; my Ph.D. is in astrophysics and general relativity) but perhaps raises some questions, if you're a skeptic by nature.... To give this msg a wee bit of crypto content, any news on the "quantum cryptography" front? Although that subject does seem to me to be legitimate physics, my current perception is that it's almost entirely an intellectual exercise, and that the proposed applications (key-distribution or the like) are contrived examples without plausible real-world use (and with many security holes to boot). Am I wrong? Best, ^z (Mark "no relation" Zimmermann)