GNU/Linux is an operating system that lets you interact with your computer’s hardware. Microsoft’s Windows is also an OS. So is Apple’s OSX. The article I will be taking as a reference is called OS shoot-out: Windows vs. Mac OS X vs. Linux published at InfoWorld.

You might infer from the title, which evokes images of people with guns trying to kill each other, discussions of OS superiority are generally heated. And also, since people are not actually firing guns at each other, you can see that the title is purposefully provocative, in the “best” ad/marketing tradition.

As expected, the content of the article is woefully short on facts, while being long on broad generalisations. This doesn’t bother me as long as the generalisations can be traced back to fact, and are not sloppy in what they lead the reader toward. I’m hoping to help cut through some of the prevailing marketing deception to give a clearer picture that is not biased.

First, it is important to know that Windows is made by a company named Microsoft. OS X is made by a company named Apple. GNU/Linux is not made by a company, but rather by hundreds (and I’m sure thousands) of companies and individuals around the world.

OS X is based upon Unix. Unix can (sloppily) be thought of as a very well-designed and academic way of doing things in your computer. GNU/Linux is also based upon Unix, and carries the “tradition” much further. Windows is not based upon Unix.

Apple and Microsoft’s primary goal is to make money. It has to be, by law. GNU/Linux’s primary goal is to do the best stuff, in the best way possible. As such, Apple and Microsoft care a great deal about the percentage of the OS market they dominate, while GNU/Linux has no care whatsoever about any market share. That’s not entirely true, though. Some GNU/Linux people see growing market share as an indication that what they have contributed is something as beautiful and wonderful as they imagined it was, while other GNU/Linux people will see their growing market share as being good progress in their effort to “free” people from the domination of purely corporate interests. The mindset is different. Apple and Microsoft development is driven by a strategy that wants to dominate the marketplace of users. GNU/Linux development is driven by a strategy that wants to create the best thing possible.

Everyone knows that Microsoft has a long history of doing bad and bully-ing things, while many people believe that Apple is an altruistic, cool and good company. The truthier thing is, Microsoft has been so bad and mean that their gigantic marketing department could not even alter the public’s perception entirely, to make them seem good. Apple focuses their marketing on the sexy and cool, while their bad behavior goes largely unnoticed. And from the fallout of these marketing wars, GNU/Linux gets stuck with an impression of freakish computer geniuses doing arcane stuff that is well beyond the reach of most users. Or rebels using piece-meal computer equipment fastened with duct tape who just hack.

Don’t believe the hype. The InfoWorld article suggests that Apple’s OS X may be “the best operating system available.” Yet, at the same time, they claim that the growing adoption of OS X within business is not because of IT department choices, but rather users who push the IT guys until get it. This suggests an entrenchment in Microsoft products within IT departments that Apple is working very hard to overcome. I’m happy seeing that, because Microsoft-based products have a tendency to grow considerably in cost, as you need to add functionality that other platforms like Apple’s and GNU/Linux, already have.

From the IT department’s standpoint, heterogeneous operating system environments are a problem. First, you must have people who know about each different platform. Second, there must be a way for those platforms to work together. This is where standards are important. Just like people, no matter what background you come from, if you can speak the same language, you can get stuff done. Microsoft has a long history of trying to take control of language then twisting certain words and phrases so that only people from the land of Microsoft can understand it. This influences people to wish they were from the land of Microsoft. Microsoft calls this subversion, enhancement. The GNU/Linux people call this Microsoft tactic, Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. They seem to attempt this tactic with nearly anything created that they do not control. Fortunately, people’s creativity appears to outpace Microsoft’s capabilities to wage this tactic on every new development. Now, they must be more selective about their targets.

Standards are also important to enable the complexities of various computer hardware to function together, as a whole unit. Apple is very aware of this. It is why they choose, very selectively, which hardware goes into their Mac systems. It is also why you can only purchase OS X and run it on Apple-purchased computers. If you try making OS X run on hardware other than Apple-purchased hardware, you may well find yourself sued by Apple. Apple claims these draconian tactics are in the best interest of people, because it assures that OS X will always run beautifully, since you can only run it on Apple-purchased hardware. It’s certainly in the best interest of Apple. Microsoft doesn’t care what hardware on which you run Windows. Neither does GNU/Linux.

Now, suppose you need to do something that’s never been done before. In both OS X and Windows, you can, to a degree. But Microsoft and Apple only allow you access to the way your computer functions in limited ways. A Microsoft or Apple employee will have had to imagine already something similar to what you wish to accomplish, if even in abstract terms. You only can access your computer in ways they allow and control. In GNU/Linux, you have absolutely no restrictions, and you can see or change everything, if you choose to.

This is why strange, new things are often created using GNU/Linux. I was amazed on my tour of astronomical observatories that the use of GNU/Linux was so prevalent. The world’s fastest supercomputers, the Large Hadron Collider, little microwave communication towers or sensing stations - anything that might require very low level access to a computer hardware system - Linux is likely the best choice. Not always. But when it is not, Windows or OS X certainly is not. Unless you are designing your new computer hardware system specifically for Windows or OS X.

Which brings us to hardware drivers. Hardware drivers are pieces of programming that live, pretty much, between your OS’s “brain”, and a given piece of hardware that must communicate with that brain. Sometimes strange hardware can avoid the necessity of having a special driver, if that hardware follows standards. But if it does not follow standards, or cannot, then the people who made the hardware are generally the people who write the driver. Almost always they will write a Windows driver. Often they will write an OS X driver, now that Apple has gained more market share. Rarely will they write a GNU/Linux driver. Two very notable exceptions to this are the primary video card manufacturers, Nvidia and ATI. They have been creating GNU/Linux drivers for a long time.

As the InfoWorld article points out, hardware driver availability is a headache in Linux. There is some truth to this, but there are also benefits to this, as well as headaches. When a company produces a hardware product and does not write a Linux driver, it is usually only a matter of time before an employee of that company, or a Linux user somewhere in the world who likes that hardware, writes one themselves, and then gives it out to the rest of the world. Once this is done, Linux forever supports that hardware. Here is the benefit in that:

My workstation computer system has a few pieces of strange hardware. When I install Windows on it, I have to go hunting for the disks that came with that hardware, so that I can install the drivers, so my computer can boot with Windows. It sometimes takes me a long time to find those driver installation disks, and I have to hope that they are still good. However, with Linux, I don’t have to go find any disks, because Linux knows about the hardware. The drivers have become part of Linux. Apple faces the same problem as Microsoft in this, if you purchased any hardware that did not come from Apple, for your Apple computer system. It is far less effort, and fewer steps, for me to install, say, Ubuntu, than it is to install Windows. And I can’t install OS X, because my hardware was not purchased from Apple - and even if I did, the nice Mac guy might come chasing me with an ax.

But the key point is fundamentally a perceptual one. What is reality, and what is marketing? It’s not always easy to tell in a technically complex field. The InfoWorld article mentions virtualization software, where OS X users and Linux users can actually run programs written for Windows. However, they also say, “Because Linux distributions run on Windows-compatible hardware, it’s straightforward to use desktop virtualization software.” This makes it sound like GNU/Linux is trying to run on hardware meant for Windows, and mentions nothing else. Actually, Microsoft’s Windows runs only on Intel’s x86 hardware platform (and derivatives) while GNU/Linux runs on this, and many others — even Apple’s former hardware platform, before Apple, also, moved to this “Windows-compatible” hardware. GNU/Linux systems are not limited by hardware platforms the way Apple and Microsoft are.

For the end user, who normally purchases computers based upon the x86 platform, and yes, that includes Apple now, that flexibility is not so important. What is important is being able to use the computer, in ways that matter to you. Similarly important, to some, is “doing the right thing” by not supporting companies that seek to control what you can and cannot do.

I know, from an IT perspective, it is far less expensive and much easier to maintain a huge fleet of GNU/Linux systems. But as IT people, we are there for the end users. Most of them have no idea what using GNU/Linux can be like. Many now know what using OS X can be like, and they are asking for more. As always, the best place to look is individual experience because it reflects the diversity of need. The rhetoric of marketing wars, or “shoot-outs”, distract from reality.

Explore. Have an open mind. Educate yourselves. Learn to distinguish between marketing and reality. The best choice is not always the best choice. Nor is the worst, the worst. Openness, and open minds. Trust. Intent. Even purpose. Motives.

GNU/Linux does not mean that everything should be free, as in never make money. It means, what is out there, ought to be free, as in liberated, not hidden, and no hidden agendas, either. That distinction has taken a very long time to settle in, and probably will take a very long time more.

Think of it as a big, Merry Christmas gift, that will always be there, year ’round, waiting for you to open, under that big as the world tree. It’s a gift for people, as well as businesses. And for some reason, it’s a gift that makes a lot of people shoutin’ mad. Strange, isn’t it?

I’ve put the cookies off for far too long, saying more than I intended, and not nearly enough. Merry Christmas to those of you I won’t see or talk to. This isn’t a very holiday thing to write, I suppose. A bit of a digression, too, though not completely, from the material consciousness/spirit issue lately. But Merry Christmas anyway! I’ll never get all this cooking done now… damn distractions. Oh, Merry Christmas!

That last piece

Here’s a reminder, too. I was criminally negligent in supporting the positions for those three main views of consciousness in the last piece, Am I Alive? I am working under the assumption there is a reason philosophy departments are small. Very intricate and in-depth discussions for each of those positions exist, and are easily accessible if you have an interest in the detail. Even more importantly, distilling those arguments into quick examples lets me be lazy, too.

In addition to being told definitively what consciousness actually was, I was also pointed to a fascinating project within IBM’s Cognitive Computing group. This project just received $5 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same agency that funded the creation of the Internet, and many other incredible (and dubious) things.

The award funds IBM’s proposal, “Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing (C2S2)”, which will be the first step in fulfilling DARPA’s “Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE)” initiative. Another company, HRL Laboratories, which is owned by Boeing and General Motors received three times this amount. HRL Laboratories is also involved in DARPA’s Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System, and their Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program, which wants to revolutionize urban combat using three-dimensional object recognition.

Anyway, IBM has built a rat brain. Well, not really. They’re simulating one on a supercomputer. Neural networks were long considered the most promising path toward simulating cognitive functions with computational devices. That approach focuses upon the role of neurons in the brain. However, neurons actually account for a very small fraction of the brain’s circuitry. Most of the circuitry are synapses, which connect the neurons together. Many synapses are connected to a single neuron. In fact, IBM’s rat brain has 55 million neurons and 442 billion synapses. That’s pretty much the same as a real rat brain. In comparison, a human cortex has around 22 billion neurons and 176 trillion synapses.

The IBM rat brain is somewhat larger than a rat, though. Their rat brain requires a 32,768 processor supercomputer with 8 trillion bytes of memory. It consumes more energy than 1,000 typical households. That is one fat rat.

And alas, it will probably never be on par with a real rat. Real rat brains, like our own, operate asynchronously, with variable timing (frequencies) and ooze chemicals as well as electricity. Being biological, they are also adaptable and fault tolerant. And most importantly, memory is not so separate from the processing. Traditional computers always keep memory separate from the processor. Then again, rat brains don’t run Linux.

But the IBM folks are well aware of their limitations. This is an incubation project. Cognitive Computing differs significantly from traditional artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence identifies problems, then comes up with ways to address those problems programmatically. On the other hand, cognitive computing does the engineering first (by reverse-engineering the brain) and worries about the more programmatic problems later.

The supercomputer is used only as a simulation. The intention is to build chips and electronics with a similar structure like a brain. They then plan to ram it full of sensory input from sensors all over the world, to create a “world brain”. I tell ya, these military guys are crazy. The idea is actually to overload this brain with sensory input. Part of me is suspicious, thinking these guys are hoping to create a physical structure modeled after a brain, and then by flooding it with sensory data, it might just burst into life with some ability to perform cognitive functions on that data. Or maybe even come alive… No, they would never say that.

What they do not intend to create is an actual rat brain, or human brain. At least that’s what they are saying. But you know mad scientists, particularly when they’re working for the military. They want to create computers that can get closer to the efficiency and power of biological brains, and this is, to them, in large part a structural issue.

What is interesting, philosophically, is suppose they do create a synthetic human brain. Would any mind, or consciousness, that arose from this brain also be synthetic? Or, for that matter, what exactly does synthetic mean? If souls exist, what is mind without a soul? If mind, or consciousness, is simply an illusion, is there anything wrong with just shutting it off and dismantling it, after we turn it on? Or if consciousness is only an illusion, is there anything wrong with just “turning off” a person’s mind?

Before we can deal with any of these questions we must define, if only in very broad terms, a nature of consciousness. Consciousness is something more than illusion. It may be an aggregate of biochemical processes, or it may be something related more closely to a notion of spirit. But to say that consciousness, which we all seem to experience, is merely illusion is to side step, in the name of convenience, the very basis of our ability to reason and perform science. Consciousness must exist or there is no context in which we might ask questions, formulate answers, be curious about matters, or feel anything at all. If consciousness is illusion, what is being tricked, if not consciousness itself? Consciousness precedes itself, when examining itself.

However, to say that consciousness exists is not to say that spirit exists. It may very well be that consciousness cannot exist independently of some physical substance. It is to say, however, that consciousness currently appears to be a more abstract quality than something wholly physical. That is, though consciousness may be dependent upon the physical, consciousness itself may not physical, any more than the processes of mathematics is physical. In fact, it is metaphysical (devoid of the pedestrian connotations).

I cannot touch my consciousness, or the consciousness of another person, nor can I smell it, see it, or measure it. This is does mean that consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness must exist before I carry out any processes of science. In order for me to see, taste, smell or feel, or on higher orders, evaluate, determine and hypothesize, I must have a consciousness. Whether or not this consciousness is dependent upon the physical, I am stuck with its necessity. Even though considering the consciousness illusory may help win some arguments, the problems created by such a proposition far outweigh any gains. Consciousness does exist and it is something metaphysical. It might even remain metaphysical, even if the bridging problem between physical, biochemical processes and the manifestation of consciousness are eventually solved.

This admission should not, in any way, fly in the face of science. Many abstract, not altogether tangible things exist that are, for some reason, wholly accepted by science. One of these things is mathematics. Another is the laws of physics themselves. Scientists have no problem accepting that some abstract laws exist that somehow determine the behaviour of everything physical. The question here is, what holds these laws? Why is there an electromagnetically negative charge and a positive charge, and only those two? What determines the probabilities associated with quantum mechanics? In science’s inference of multiple universes, where even the laws of physics can be utterly different in different universes, how are those laws of physics imprinted into that particular nature of reality? Perhaps consciousness is something abstractly structural like this. But it is abstract, similarly, beyond any given physical system. But again, that is not to say that it is not dependent upon a given physical system.

And now to the meat of things, the reason for this piece, which continues after the last one that left us questioning whether consciousness even exists, as most of us assume it must. For if we are questioning the epistemology of consciousness itself, where does that leave us when we consider other people, or other beings, or things, besides ourself? If we question the very possibility of consciousness, what possible hope is there for any sense of ethics or morality - of right or wrong?

First, I want to distinguish between ethics and morality. Here, ethics will mean something we can think about and discuss to reach conclusions. Morality will mean something that we learn through tradition, or are told. This being said, morality will be left out of the discussion altogether. This is done in the interest of expediency, since morality does not lend itself well to any reasonable discussion. Its basis sits in absolute notions that are generally entrenched and immobile. I leave it for people to shout about on the back porch between beer drinking and farts, until they reach their conclusions through a wrestling match, or a bloody club.

If a scientist or philosopher is of the ilk to question the existence of actual consciousness, it is altogether likely they are also of the ilk to question the existence of a basis for any ethics, let alone good or evil.

When you consider consciousness an illusion it is very difficult to reasonably consider ethics. Ethics seems intrinsically oriented toward life, and becomes more relevant the higher you go up on the complexity of life scale. If there is no consciousness, any notion of a higher order of life scale is arbitrary at best. Would you consider applying ethics to the way a physical cluster operates as individual components? How can mechanical operations be ethical or unethical if no consciousness guides them? Without consciousness, things function as they do. Ethics is replaced by gross domination through a preponderance of purpose, or just simply strength.

However, since we can more sanely say that consciousness is something more than illusion, we can also find a place for ethics. Perhaps not for good and evil, but ethics, most certainly. Here the question becomes, is there such a thing as right and wrong, or good and bad, that exists, similar to consciousness, or the laws of physics, in its own true abstraction? Stay with me scientists…

The question of ethics is a very old one; ancient even. Right now we are looking at these questions of ethics and consciousness, framed by a backdrop of new technologies, during a period increasingly dominated by scientific thinking. It is important to keep in mind that rational thinking is timeless, though not all rational positions remain rational over time. The questions of ethics are richly discussed in texts throughout many centuries, distinct from religion. My one selection here, for your consideration is this:

Let’s say that a dog exists. It’s a good dog, but occasionally bad, as dogs are. There is plenty of food for the dog, and the dog will not harm its environment. It will not overly reproduce. In fact, let’s assume there are no ill effects whatsoever from this dog existing, and there never will be. The question is, is it better that the dog lives or dies?

You would be an unusual person indeed if you claim the dog ought to die, when there are no bad effects from it living. If you just hate dogs, substitute a cat, or a monkey, or better yet, yourself. Particularly when you substitute yourself, even saying that it makes no difference whether you live or die rings a little untrue. Most people would agree that, all things being equal, it is better the dog, or you, should live, rather than die. But what makes it better? This is certainly not something purely mechanical.

Interestingly, you can take this even further back, to address concerns about the origin of the universe. Why does the universe exist? Why did it come into being? Well, is it better that the universe came into being, than if it did not? This is the exact line of reasoning early philosophers used to posit the existence of an ethical universe. Personally, I have a hard time accepting that the universe sprang into being because it was supposed to, along with all its physical laws. Nevertheless, there is something to be said about a natural state of ethics, alongside our conscious determination and use of the natural laws of nature.

It will be interesting, if we manage to create a synthetic, or even “real” consciousness - will that consciousness have a similar sense of the inherently ethical? Will it know that being alive is better than being dead? Will it know that promoting non-truths is bad? Or does it require emotion for such determinations? Does consciousness itself require emotion?

But I think the important thing for us to realize is that science and rational thinking does not require us to throw out any value we place upon life, nor to give up on what we know to be ethical choices. Science is still entrenched in its long war against the domination of religious thought. Unfortunately, it runs the risk of creating a narrow dominion of thought all its own, in the process. If we are to have truly open minds, our thoughts and perspectives must be willing to travel beyond their comfortable and familiar contexts, if only just to take a quick peek.

For all the dogma and doctrine out there, the important thing is that we are all alive, participating in, and affected by what each of us embrace, promote, or even just participate within. Life has intrinsic value that is greater than any equation or any religion. Life’s value is greater than any system of government, economy or social tradition.

It is a quality of life that it must grow. Consciousness must grow. However, reductionism and normalization should only be considered a fertilizer for the soil, and not the cage. Otherwise, we run the risk of scientific oppression that would make religious oppression pale in comparison.

In other words, is your awareness of the world and who you are, simply a condition of electrical and chemical interactions between cells?

This is a very simple question. It’s the simple answer that reveals enormous problems. Yes, or no.

My consciousness is considering the ramifications of either answer right now. Don’t mind me. It’s just some chemicals sloshing about. But consider - the answer, yes or no, is important. If known with certainty, the answer to this simple question would topple many fundamental assumptions we currently entertain. Either way it goes. And most of these fundamental assumptions we do not consider. In grossly simplistic terms, do we have a spirit? What does it mean to be conscious?

If our consciousness is a by-product of chemical interactions, there are few compelling reasons that we should also have a spirit. If I feel joy as a result of something I hear, it’s just chemicals flowing around in one area, which trigger a blob of chemicals in another area which creates a “sensation” (whatever that is) of joy, which in turn triggers more blobs of chemicals in another place which may bring back memories to my consciousness of similar joyful things, in whatever region of the mass of neurons in which the consciousness actually manifests.

However, if our consciousness is spiritual in nature, how do we explain the oftentimes profound alteration of our conscious state through brain injury, biological diseases, or chemical alterations? If we have a spirit, how can our personalities be so radically altered by physical changes to a materialistic brain?

These issues may seem purely academic, with little importance in our daily lives. But the issue is significant. Both science and religion exert tremendous force upon our lives. When considering the nature of consciousness, each “team” plays by a completely different rule book, and their game effects us all both directly and profoundly.

For example, brain drugs are now prescribed to people of all ages, even children, with alarming frequency. These drugs represent a major portion of pharmaceutical profits. They are backed by science and the belief that consciousness is, at least, in large part a materialistic process. But if we believe our consciousness is purely biochemical, why not throw chemicals at our biology? Doing so, we can alter our state of mind to happily accommodate any feelings or perceptions we have of the world, or ourselves. We can alter our consciousness to be content with any stimulus or situation. In essence, we can engineer a paradise for ourselves that is completely independent of anyone or anything in the external world. If we are simply biochemical, why not have this bliss?

Well, for one, the people handing out the drugs could get away with murder. But so what? Isn’t some notion of morality and ethics dangerously close to spiritual considerations? I admit there are possible reasons why not, that do not require us to have a spirit. For example, if we all were engineered happy and content regardless of our environment, we might find ourselves soon extinct as a species. Why does it matter that a plague kills everyone? We are happy. Perhaps there is some biologically hard-coded imperative for survival. If we have engineered ourselves into happiness, have we engineered out this imperative? This could be a valid reason to avoid engineering our biochemical consciousness that is not dependent upon having a spirit.

But even this raises a question toward the spiritual. Is our biological imperative toward survival an imperative for only our own survival, and not necessarily the survival of other people? It would seem so. If many other people were to die, there is less competition for food, for mates, and less chance that I will be killed by someone else. Though rational, this is not how most people think. For some reason we find it important that other people should live, instead of die, even when they are not part of our “pack”. Perhaps we feel this way because mirror neurons in our brain somehow allow our consciousness, whatever that is, to place ourselves in the position of others. And because we can imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes, we choose to want them to live, rather than die. Of course, this argument skips the whole problem that we simultaneously know that we are not that person, yet still choose that they should live. That argument relies upon us having, at minimum, empathy. Who knows what combination of cell types and chemicals would cause our consciousness, in whatever grouping of cells it lives, to experience empathy. But maybe empathy isn’t a feeling. Maybe it’s a purely mathematical phenomenon.

One of the largest problems science faces when trying to explain consciousness is providing an account for consciousness in the first place. Is consciousness inside our brain? Where is it? Does it simply manifest itself somehow as a combination of all biochemical processes which occur in the brain? Would our consciousness exist if we had no body, other than a brain, nor external senses? You see, it is one thing for us to affect consciousness in some physical way, but it is quite another to actually pin it down.

The prevailing wisdom of science says that consciousness does not exist, in and of itself, but is rather an illusory result of electrical and biochemical processes that occur within the brain. What we consider our self, or our consciousness, is really an illusion. Our consciousness is just a systematic and recursive material, or mechanical, process that results in some meta-state that we imagine we experience, which we call consciousness. But really, this consciousness is nothing more than a plethora of mechanical processes occurring, which give us the illusion.

To some, believing this explanation turns us into little more than zombies who wander about doing our mechanistic things. You might appear conscious to me, but really you are a mass of predictable mechanics. I must confess there are times when this seems true. But is it the whole picture?

In the West we have a long history of separating the mind from the body. Our thoughts, and therefore our ability to reason, are dependent upon our ability to sense and observe the world. Our mind, which most agree is the seat of our consciousness, is dependent upon our body to provide the sensory input we use to consider the questions of science, and even questions of our own consciousness.

One of the first questions we must ask is, why would this mechanical process have a curiosity about its own consciousness? Is it another biological imperative related to survival that has trickled up over centuries of evolution, that makes us curious in growingly abstract ways, as our brain power develops? I wonder, also, at what point during our evolution, did consciousness, or our illusion of it, spring into being? Are dogs and cats conscious? It is evident to me that they do, at least, have something equivalent to mirror neurons. Or are they just different models of a machine?

But if we believe that consciousness is an illusion, then what, exactly, is being tricked? Is it an illusion that fools itself?

Something rationally critical breaks when we say that consciousness is an illusion that rises up from materialistic processes. But we can fix that. If we say that consciousness does, in fact, exist, and that it is not an illusion, but is solely dependent upon materialistic biochemical processes in the brain — that works. In this sense, consciousness really does exist, but not without our physical gray matter.

This seems far more likely to me than consciousness being an illusion. But it does little to explain how our consciousness comes into being from these material processes. The best explanation I have heard claims that the brain operates in an electro-chemical “loop”. When it operates above a certain frequency, we have consciousness. Below that frequency, we do not. Perhaps it is just a matter of putting all the materialistic pieces together, and eventually we will have our answer about the nature of consciousness. Or, it may be that we are only side-stepping and delaying the inevitable problem: trying to tie the metaphysical to the physical.

But what is metaphysical about having consciousness arise from something material? The same question confronts the science of artificial intelligence. How can something intangible and unphysical, like consciousness, be created from a machine? Their answer? Well, we find ourselves back to the original, predominant scientific position: that there really is no such thing as consciousness — it is mere illusion. By saying this, science does not have to confront any questions about the metaphysics of consciousness. Consciousness just doesn’t exist. Our sense that we are conscious is an illusion. Then here I am again, fooling myself. Or my consciousness. Or whatever. Brainsss!!

Another way to consider the problem is to return to Descartes. The one thing I can say with certainty is that I have consciousness. Anything I learn beyond this comes to me through my senses which may be wholly inadequate to determine any true reality. In this scenario, our consciousness becomes the most fundamental thing in the universe, while all other things are speculative. There is something comfy in this manner of thinking, but it is also an isolating and wholly inadequate position to explain consciousness.

In a similar vein, we might say that consciousness is our spirit which inhabits a materialistic body. In this, we are back to dualism, and we also cannot easily explain why our consciousness is altered by physical changes to our brains. It just doesn’t work.

So, if we look at big score board so far, it appears the spiritualists lag far behind the materialists — yet of the materialists, the ones supporting a true existence of consciousness, rather than some illusion of consciousness, are ahead. OK. Now let’s give the spiritualists some game.

Let’s think of our life, clear back to childhood. Remember how different you were back then? Imagine how different you were, all along the way of your life, up until where you find yourself right now. Some people can’t believe the things they used to believe. It’s almost as if you were another person. But you weren’t another person. You were you, all along the way. It still is you. But you’ve changed. Your consciousness has changed. It’s evolved. You perceive things differently, yet still the “essence” of what makes you, you — it’s still there. And it’s the same. This is one quality of our observed experience of consciousness that materialists will have a difficult time resolving satisfactorily. Not only do we have a current sense of self, but we also have the sense of a meta-self that has always remained in place throughout our life’s experiences.

In many ways, the older civilizations of the world, such as India, have dealt with the concepts of the spirit in relation to science for far longer than the West. Their philosophical works are an interesting read. Interestingly, a good deal of their philosophy deals with an integration of the mind and body, including through such practices as yoga. Yoga seeks to bring the mind and body into a harmony. It does not treat the mind separately from the body — they are one organism, and that organism is you. They take it even further, though. The mind may have many thoughts and ideas running around within it. The practice of yoga seeks to still that chaos in the conscious mind. In their terms, the content of the mind is constantly changing. However, the context of the mind is unchanging. This contextual representation of consciousness is what we might call a spirit, and it sits beyond both the mind and the body. In this way, if the mind or body is damaged, the spirit remains, while life remains. This is true, even when our mental consciousness appears radically altered — the content of the mind can change, but the context of the mind does not.

In this way, the essence of who we are, or our spirit, escapes the logical problem associated with having a notion of spirit in the event of brain damage. In other words, just because our behaviour or personality changes after physical brain damage does not mean that the essence of our spirit is changed. It is only the mental processes that are changed, much like a broken bone. This escape trick is no worse than the escape trick of saying that consciousness is only an illusion. It also explains how we maintain an abstract sense of self despite radical changes to our consciousness over time, even though the natural acts of learning.

If we can look internally, which is, of itself, another argument against illusion, we can actually get a hint of the difference between the content of our thoughts, and the context in which those thoughts occur. Similarly, most people in the world believe in reincarnation, where after death, and before we were born, we were someone else, or even something else. We might have been male or female. We might have been a dog, or a spider. In each of these, the content of our minds would change. However, the context would always be us.

As rigorously as many scientists rail against any notion of spirit, claiming access to tangibly provable and all-encompassing knowledge, it is somewhat ironic to hear, so often coming from them, this notion that we humans are “star stuff”, and, in essence, the universe trying to understand itself. Perhaps they mean this purely mechanistically. Why would the universe seek to understand itself? Is that mechanical?

Who knows? I like the idea, though. Unless I just seem to like it. But maybe that’s enough. It certainly isn’t going to keep from exploring more. And it’s certainly not going to cause me to just patently accept all sorts of things that stem from people believing one way or another on these issues. Perhaps that makes me a squeaky cog in the great cosmic zombie machine. Perhaps it damns me. I just want it to be an honest game. And this game is far from over.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

The better parts of ourselves, even collectively, continue moving forward despite any terrible things others might do. Even as we work to correct any wrongs that are committed, it is important to remember the great and wonderful accomplishments of which we are equally capable.

Some of us believe that money and power should not hold such a central focus for the aspirations of humanity. We believe that the universe itself and our mysterious existence within it is an incomparably better focus for our energies. If there is such a thing as “trickle down”, our better understanding of the principles that define our fundamental reality offers far more to humanity than green paper, numbers stored in bank computers, or the elevation of some individuals who might impose rule over us. If leaders, distant from the realities we all face, are what we must have, my hope is that these leaders learn to rule with a subtlety which enshrines the more noble aspects of our nature rather than our more gross and primitive instincts like greed and territory.

Above is a picture of the Mars Rover “Spirit”, one of two ground-roaming probes we sent to the planet Mars more than four years ago, in January of 2004. They were expected to survive for 90 days. Today, almost five years later, they are still operating, sampling soil and rocks from various terrain and analyzing the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere as it changes across the Martian seasons.

Some day we might all travel to Mars, just as people traveled to America from Europe on transatlantic ships. We know that Mars used to have water, and still has vast polar ice caps. We currently have several probes both on and orbiting Mars, continuing the exploration. Plans are in the works to send people within the next few years, who will utilize the natural resources we have found to sustain themselves. At this point, humanity will have taken its first real step into inhabiting a far more vast and wondrous universe than we have ever known. What becomes of territorial boundaries, in this?

Spirit, for all these years, generates its power to function by harnessing the light of the sun. But as you can see, Mars is very dusty; an almost powdery dust. If the solar panels get too dusty, no sunlight can be absorbed. But Mars also has many, many dust devils that whirl constantly about, across the landscape, which have, through a happy accident, worked to keep the solar panels clean. It was not just chance that helped these rovers perform their mission so well. The scientists and engineers took their time to design and build good stuff, and do it right. Monetary budgets can wreak havoc with good science. More than half of all “budget” missions NASA has farmed to private sector corporations have failed. However, the missions built in-house at NASA have a stellar success rate.

Interestingly, NASA does not blame private sector corporations for their failings. Instead, they blame the US Navy. Apparently the US Navy produced a report many years ago that suggested private sector companies can do the same work the government can, only much cheaper. Somehow, this report has become gospel. Now, private sector companies, as an unspoken rule of government funding, receive only this fractional allocation of money to get the same job done. And where NASA projects are concerned, this can be disastrous. Most likely, this is true with any leading science-based projects.

Ah, but mortgage lending bankers and assorted usurers need their Christmas bonuses. Just so we know, we could have completed 1,000 comparable Mars missions with this money. Or built 20 more space stations. We could even have started another war! Actually, it would have been nice just to have a tiny fraction of that money to complete the space station we already have, to its original design.

It makes me a little curious. Which costs more money: the wasteful habits of scientists who work in government and academia, or the necessary profits that private companies must produce both for themselves and their shareholders?

It’s an interesting question, with more than few ramifications. It’s not a simple one. What money-people might call waste in an academic setting can lead to unforeseen revolutions in both science and for all humanity — even for all other species on the planet. The big answers we get, the answers that are truly revolutionary, usually happen unexpectedly, hitting us square atop the head from out of the blue. It is nothing something you can pre-plan. This is true for both large, collective issues as well as our own private, individual epiphanies.

And what happens when we channel all of our money into companies whose business is making more money? Why would our money ever leave that corral? Of course, there are appearances generated, intended to lend credence to their purpose. But taken as a whole, the vast majority of the money never leaves that corral. No discovery and curiosity exists in that corral. Only greed, hoarding, self-gratification, and a lust for some abstract notion of power. Any benefit to humanity is merely incidental. Giving our money to money-people is the true waste of money, despite what money-people say.

I wonder what would happen if we gave our money to NASA, who could then hire whole generations of scientists in many disciplines, devoted to their passion of uncovering the nature of our existence. I wonder what would happen if we gave our money to doctors and biologists whose passion was understanding how our bodies work and keeping them healthy. In other words, what would happen if we made our hearts and minds the focus of our energy, instead of money?

In a few days, on November 29th, the orbits of Mars and Earth will position us on opposite sides of the sun. This solar conjunction will block all communication with Spirit for approximately two weeks. Winter is also fast approaching on Mars. The rovers will be commanded to sit still with their solar collectors aimed at some hopefully optimal position to collect enough sunlight to keep them alive through the winter. Spirit is barely finding enough energy to stay alive even now, before the onset of winter, after a recent, large dust storm dirtied much of its panels. Hopefully another little devil might find its way by, to do some accidental cleaning for us.

Right now, the power is so low in Spirit that it keeps switching into a safe mode in an attempt to protect itself. It stores its discoveries for several days at a time, and only speaks to a satellite orbiting Mars via its low power antenna. This satellite then speaks for Spirit, relaying its discoveries back to us. Spirit’s only hope for survival is to avoid its instincts to enter safe mode. Today, NASA is trying to shut down all the distractions so that just a bit of warmth might remain to see it through.

Recently we discovered even more. The incredibly wacky THEMIS probes have revealed some strange connections between our little island home and the sun. You can read some background on our home and this mission in a piece from early last year, if you like.

It’s a good feeling having solid science. We know now that every few minutes magnetic “portals” open between the sun and the earth, connecting us across all those 90-some million miles of space. When these magnetic connections happen, charged particles flow between us. This is plasma, the so-called fourth state of matter, that is so energized that electrons are stripped from atoms, floating freely.

These periodic magnetic connections are called flux transfer events (FTE’s). Their existence is a shock to many scientists who, although they have been proposed by others for decades through good science, have refused to believe in them. And rightly so. But what a happy vindication today is for those scientists who have fought for the acceptance of FTE’s.

It is inevitable that the fringe Electric Universe people will interpret this as another tick mark on their “told ya so” column. Then again, back in 1984 they were already comparing an electrical connection between the Earth and sun to a capacitor that must periodically discharge, while mainstream scientists are now confused about why these magnetic connections happen every few minutes.

For those of you interested, the Electric Universe people believe that electromagnetism is the predominant force of the universe and that gravity is not what holds things in shape. They believe electrical currents are everywhere in space, flowing between all things. This is why novae look like plasma in magnetic fields, for example. Mainstream science says that no electrical currents travel through space. However, mainstream science is happy saying that the energy observed in “empty” space is the result of particles spontaneously coming into existence by borrowing energy from the future, from which they soon annihilate. What do I know? I like chocolate.

Oh, right, that giant, glob of a gas ball pressing down on us all the time. I was going to say how nice it is, at least, having its goodness trickle down upon us to energize the processes of life. Here’s another example. Nine banks are receiving $125 billion dollars from us taxpayers, the justification being that it will give them cash to free up the credit markets. However, they have apparently reserved $108 billion for executive bonuses.

This includes our Treasury Secretary’s former company. He claims that they needed to be allowed to do this, otherwise they would not have been likely to participate in the bailout we offered them. Sounds more like blackmail to me.

Also, don’t forget that our Vice President’s former company Haliburton made over $20 billion in the last year, mostly through US government contracts that were not put out for competition bids from any other companies, related to war and oil industry maintenance. Oh, and prisons. Also, our patriotic Vice President’s company has the vast majority of its business operations based overseas, effectly paying little or no taxes on any of the money.

Yup, that giant, garishly fat sun, shining down its radiance upon us. I don’t exactly understand how religious people can be so behind these guys. So many of the poor an disenfranchised people just keep giving them more. Is it because they mention God?

I wonder what kind of blindness it is that allows people to adopt and support the very things that have made their lives miserable. It’s as strange as 70% of black people voting to support California’s Proposition 8, which curtails the civil rights of a minority. These people actually voted to oppress a minority.

Ugh. Yes, happy, happy Obama. He really does have his work cut out for him, if he plans to break many of his campaign promises, to accomplish what he originally stood for, before the vote pandering began. I really do hope that he is a liar and a weasel. Sort of. But not really. Actually, I’m just confused.

Which is likely why these invisible magnetic connections are so inspiring and appealing to me, even if they are to just a bloated ball of gas. Maybe it is because I hope that, in being connected, the flows might travel both ways — that the sun might come to appreciate its position and gain the awareness of its responsibilities as the collective source.

I suppose that is as far into optimism I am willing to tread, presently. Neither optimism nor pessimism is very scientific. Rationality can stretch there, however. But not just yet.

- René Descartes

This was a clever Frenchman, born in the late 1500’s. René was a philosopher and a mathematician. In fact, he invented analytic geometry, or Cartesian geometry. For some reason, truth was important to René. He is also considered the founder of modern philosophy, creating a solid intellectual basis from which the natural sciences could evolve.

René believed we must throw out all ideas that cannot be reasonably proven. Often, he toyed with more abstract mathematics as an exercise to better understand truth. In doing so, he laid the foundations that led to Newton’s calculus. He is also the origin of the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”

Unfortunately, that phrase is not exactly mathematical. But we’ll afford him some leeway. After all, he was bringing philosophy and mathematics together in new and exciting ways, and the “why am I?” question is an oldie but a goody. However, it does bring to light a certain difficulty that we still face today.

Modern philosophers know that “Cogito ergo sum” is not, actually, a very good proof. But René was hindered in large part by not taking his own advice: doubt, as far as possible, all things. René believed that our minds exist separately from the physical world, and as such, were not really subject to ontological considerations. He did not imagine that our consciousness might arise from the physical properties of our existence. So, in a way, he was putting the cart before the horse.

This is not surprising. The duality of mind and body was a concept solidified within the minds of his contemporaries. It was both a social given, and a spiritual “truth”. Interestingly, he did not believe animals had minds. Nor did they feel pain. This was well-reasoned. He often performed vivisections upon live animals to study them. I wonder how he held to his belief, as the animals cried out and struggled. Perhaps it is one of the powers of science, that allows us to carry on in our convictions despite contrary appearances. At least when our convictions are well-reasoned.

Chris and I have had some fun discussions lately, some of which are related to consciousness and existence. There is always something refreshing about returning our attention to origins. One thing is clear, we live in very different times than René, when Western civilization was taking its first steps toward the Age of Enlightenment. They were trying to make sense of the physical within a world of the spiritual, while we are left trying to find at least some room for the spirit in a world of mathematics.

How different we have become, even those of us who claim to lead “the simple life.” Our electricity flows to us through the equations of electromagnetism. Our shoes, ropes, jackets and food containers, formed by petrochemistry. Our money, an imaginary collection of computer memory addresses, modified by equations. Our minds, altered, repaired or enhanced through specific chemicals, electricity and physical modification. The machine work within the cells of our bodies, re-programmed and turned loose by conscious design. And the very fact that my words enter your mind now, a result of quantum positions within the subatomic…

Who needs a spirit any more? When the cells of my body that somehow comprise the mind that speaks to you, are not even real, but are instead a vibrating collection of particles that both exist and do not exist. And each of them, surrounded by a vast sea of empty space. Who needs a spirit, when I am mostly insubstantial already?

When mathematics has all the answers, what is the difference, if you maximize a ledger balance or not? What does it matter, the risk assessments in war? In the collection of particles, of dust, that we are, that move out with our will, which among them is the greatest? Which is the least? Which is me? When all things are functions to be weighed and solved, playing out from their own accord, what does anything truly matter?

This abstraction, with its dehumanizing characteristics, can be attributed to the inherently metaphysical status of mathematics. It brings us far up above ourselves, where we can look back down. It is a peculiar phenomenon. In science, phenomenology is making observations that lead to some conclusion that pays no attention to how we feel things should be, nor what they actually mean. Quite differently, in philosophy, phenomenology is, in a way, the search for a bridge that might somehow lead out from just yourself, to other people, ideas or things.

In philosophy we reached a crisis of sorts with the Existentialists, after our long passage through the the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. In a sense, it carries us through the processes of logic and mathematics, then plops us down squarely into meaninglessness. We can observe the processes of our world, but in doing so we must acknowledge that these observations originate from our bodies. However, our bodies and the senses we inhabit, are limited. We may construct machines that extend our senses well beyond their limitations, but only along the narrow lines we designate as extensions, i.e., vision or sound. The question arises, is the truth of truths constrained by our physically perceptual and rationally conceptual human limitations? Such a notion is extraordinarily prejudiced and leads us to consider the absurdity that lives at the foundation of science when it purports to be anything more than an art. Art, which merely hints at truths through the tools of its trade. And like all art, what is pleasing to our aesthetic we grant validity, meditation and devotion.

Mathematics exists within its own universe. It is self-referential — self-contained. It follows a logic more pristine than our human thoughts, nestled within the gross confines of language, can achieve. In mathematics, we can determine with certainty whether something is true or not, yet this truth is only valid within the universe of mathematics. If we choose to apply the universe of mathematics to the larger reality we inhabit, we do so only with risk. The bridge between the universe of mathematics and our universe of existence is a metaphysical bridge. In other words, an atom does not work out the equations of quantum mechanics to decide its next action. Nor can we pass laws in mathematics that force the physical universe to behave in different ways. We shape, and reshape our presumptions within the universe of mathematics in an effort to conform to the phenomena we observe within our own. And in doing so, we claim the prize: physics and metaphysics merge. This is the beauty we attribute with truth. However, philosophers, except for the exceedingly naïf ones, understand that truth need not be beautiful. In fact, truth does not, necessarily, require any aesthetic at all.

In this sense, the aesthetically pleasant merging of the physical and metaphysical universe through mathematics can, at best, be considered a metaphor for truth. This metaphor is constrained by the limitations of our senses. Although science can make predictions and often control our physical universe via its metaphysical tools, it is important to remember its more artistic basis when considering the truth of truths.

As we discover an aspect of our existence, even through science, it is often our first thought to re-shape that metaphorical truth toward something even more ideal. In effect, to “correct” a part of our existence within the physics we believe we inhabit. In other words, we may discover a truth, yet even though our understanding of this truth is incomplete, we might have within our minds an improvement upon this truth, which, through our metaphysical tools, we often seek to modify into an idealized state. This is a dangerous flaw inherent within the belief of science as truth: our incomplete understanding of truth often leads us to alter that truth toward an ideal, founded upon nothing but our own prejudices or desires. This is what leads us to consider the prospect of filtering out gay babies, since they will not procreate or will be evil. This is what leads us to ethnic cleansing, based upon a system of rationality. Or war. where millions can be killed based upon probabilities or the maximization of abstract numerics which we imbue with cultural power. Or pharmaceuticals that restrict our minds within the narrow bounds of some normalized function.

Unlike other art, a strongly absolute and literal validity is bestowed upon science. This is, perhaps, why science, like all art, is often under attack by social forces who are determined to instill their own ideas of truth. There is, perhaps, some characteristic of art that we innately recognize as a metaphor for truth. This can easily threaten ideologies based upon weak tautologies. Science, even more than other arts, can threaten as a result of the profound validity we bestow upon it.

However, this power comes at a price. Unlike other arts, science is incapable of critiquing itself. In other words, science cannot question the foundations of science, within the terms of science. In this sense, as a means of determining truth, science becomes, like mathematics, a universe unto itself, self-referential and solipsistic. As such, it lives in isolation as an abstract construction as all beliefs do. We imbue science with its power through a conscious act of attribution: a belief in its indisputable access to truth. To my mind, as beliefs go, this is better than most.

Interestingly, other arts do not suffer in cold isolation like science. Then again, other arts do not claim any absolutism within their basis. What gives science its power is the same force that isolates it from us: the notion of a purely objective and utterly rational universe, despite the limitations inherent within our humanity to fully experience it.

Caught within our consciousness, we seek that which is outside ourselves. Perhaps we desire to understand ourselves within the boundaries of our own perception. Perhaps we simply wish to feel less isolated. In this way, science and the mechanics of rationalism have led us to marvel at the outside world, drawing our attention to the menagerie of pseudo-objective materials that presumably comprise our existence, while simultaneously discounting the importance and highlighting the fallibility of our own subjective experience, and hence, the subjective experiences of others, even though we sense some inherent access to truth within our own subjectivity. Science can only approach this from the outside, and we doom ourselves to conform to its edicts. However, other arts are somewhat gentler. It is a characteristic of all art that we may discover bridges between what might exist within the world, that can span, at least in part, to our experience of individuality; and across those bridges find, perhaps, something truly meaningful. This is, in part, the philosophical meaning of phenomenology.

When we look at the processes of science, we find two primary symbols: theoretical terms and observational terms. “Good” science is generally defined by observational terms linked to correspondence rules into theoretical terms. That is, theoretical entities do not exist unless they can be shown, through correspondence rules, to be connected to observation. What makes science more of an art is the recent lack of distinction between theory and observation, which correspondence rules rely upon as a given. The result is, any disconcerting observations can always, eventually, be accommodated by any theory. Science chooses theories pragmatically: those which fit best with other theories blessed into general acceptance. Observation is no longer required. This is most certainly closer to art than any truth of truths. And as such, it is as close to the truth of truths as art.

The phenomenological philosopher at the outset finds themselves trapped in the isolation of Existentialists, much like science is trapped within its own objectively solipsistic universe. However, the phenomenological philosopher finds themselves in a somewhat different landscape. We suspend any disbelief in ourselves. We assume that we, as an individual, must exist, in one way or another. And in what others might consider a leap of faith, though there are some compelling arguments otherwise, we assume that other things also exist. Even sentient things. Like, and unlike ourselves. Each of us perceives the universe through our own subjective senses. I have no access to the truth of what you see, except through the objects of language and metaphor that we build and share, both within and outside of ourselves.

A phenomenological philosopher is very skeptical of anything claimed to be an absolute object of truth existing within the shared, intersubjective experience we inhabit. However, they are not ruled out. Nor is any object in the intersubjective world blessed into the objective, as a Truth, lightly. It is here that scientists fail as philosophers. They are hasty and reckless in their determinations, with flawed claims of an objective process that is, largely, metaphysical. However, as artists, and even tortured artists, scientists are magnificent. Most scientists will perceive this as a wild accusation.

But, like all artists, an engrossment within your work can lead to a dangerous myopia. It is also the signature of genius. Any passionate pursuit leads inevitably to the darkened beauty of egoism. It is an irony that, in the endless pursuit of the objective truth, the subjective ego should flourish and grow. “The holy egoism of genius,” the The Art of Noise sang.

It leaves me wondering, when you look into the eyes of another — a stranger — and something profound between you is shared and known, without any words, without any hints, that hits at the gut… Who among us is quick to attribute the experience to an equation? Who is quick to say, this is a spiritual exchange? What we do know, is that it is a phenomenon, experienced by us all. And the meaning is to be found within each of us.

This is not really surprising. When you mention Free Software, or Open Source software, most people immediately think of Linux, and the personality most associated with Linux, Linus Torvalds. Undoubtedly, Linus has played a monumental role. However, it is Richard Stallman’s unwaivering adherence to ethics and the cause of freedom that originated the Free Software movement. And it is Richard who continues to act as the little angel (or devil, if you prefer) who whispers within the goodly minds of every Free and Open software developer.

Most end user consumers of Free Software remain unaware of its history and the ongoing forces that drive it. The consumer hears that Free Software is excellent stuff, and that it is free, in every sense of the word. And that is enough to know. That’s fine. In fact, it’s wonderful. Have at it! That’s what it’s there for. Software developers love that you love what they create. They’re happy to help, in fact, they’re usually honored to help. Well, sort of. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, when their creation becomes popular. But strangely, communities tend to grow around such things, and those communities exist to help. They also exist to continue the process of building creations, together. It’s a remarkable phenomenon. In a sense, it is an accidental manifestation of a virtual Socialism. No membership required.

Developers using Free Software for the first time encounter something different than end users do. First, they are happy they haven’t had to pay any money. Second, they are often astonished by the sheer scope and detail that is often available to them within Free Software. It is not uncommon for Free Software developer documentation to exceed any commercial offering by orders of magnitude. I suspect this happens because, as developers, everyone is in the same boat. And that boat should make for a comfy ride. Developers in Free Software also, refreshingly, detect the aura of science behind the tools they employ, rather than marketing. Nothing is hidden, including agendas.

One of the peculiar side-effects of writing with Free Software tools is that your conscience gets tweaked a bit. Even when you are, perhaps, building a system that is meant to be closed and kept secret for some business interest, you feel a compulsion to give back to the community in whatever way you can. This, I believe, is a universal feeling. Perhaps it even speaks volumes about our inherent nature. And it is speaking good things.

But Richard pointed out a few things in that last piece. These are things we should not forget, nor overlook. Speaking of it will require a bit of context. Free Software has been an incredible benefit to the world. As I pointed out, it’s not just about free software. It’s also a statement about freedom. In many ways, we can think of the Free Software movement as a tangible embodiment that represents and vividly demonstrates the benefits available to us from a higher order of freedom. The Free Software movement happened because someone took a stand for freedom, and other people did too. And now, all of us benefit. All of us, except for those who seek to take away freedom, to solidify their own power. There are many ramifications in this, at many levels, both societally and personally. We’ll stick to software, though, for now.

TiVo

I mentioned the TiVo, which created a revolution of its own in home entertainment. The TiVo was the first digital video recorder successfully adopted by the masses. It has always run GNU/Linux. Justin introduced me to the TiVo, and when I first saw it, I was amazed at the capabilities and the sheer beauty of it operation. He had the Series I model, and he could use it just like a normal GNU/Linux computer, as well as a DVR. He could write or install his own programs on it. In fact, a whole community formed around the TiVo where people shared the interesting and amazing new programs they wrote for the TiVo, enhancing its capabilities.

I was sold. I shelled out the money and purchased a TiVo for myself, and now I can’t imagine watching TV any other way. However, by the time I purchased mine, the Series I TiVo was no longer manufactured. I purchased a Series 2. It had a faster processor, more external ports, and more upgrade capabilities than the Series I. However, TiVo had done something bad, too. They began locking down the TiVo, making it impossible to customize it to you desires, unless you wanted to do something risky and radical to gain access. In essence, they continued to take advantage of the GNU/Linux Free Software, but shackled it behind bars, claiming your system as fully their own.

This angered many people, and rightly so. However, TiVo placated the developers by releasing a software development kit, where developers were still unable to access the GNU/Linux system, but they were, at least, able to write custom applications for the TiVo — much like what Apple is doing with their iPhone. TiVo even went so far as to have contests to see who could write the best TiVo application. Many of these applications were very good and eventually found their way onto everybody’s TiVo, through TiVo’s regular software updates. Then, with the release of the Series 3, TiVo closed down all modifications, happily keeping for themselves what others had contributed as part of their own product offering.

Now, although this is somewhat nightmare-ish from the standpoint of freedom, one good thing came about. All GNU/Linux systems are released to the public with legal licensing requirements, just like commercial software. This license is called the GPL (GNU General Public License). When TiVo decided to use GNU/Linux to build their product, they were bound by this license. As a result, and only after a good deal of saber rattling, TiVo released to the public the source code modifications they made to Linux, as was required by the GPL. That may sound a little draconian on the part of the GPL. And it is. This is why:

Free Software is all about freedom (and other good stuff). If someone releases their free software under a GPL license, they get the draconian dragon. It lives within the license for a few reasons. One of the primary reasons is to safeguard the freedom of that software forever afterwards from those would would seek to take that freedom away. The GPL says, in essence, that this software is free! Take it. Use it. Give copies of it to other people. Sell it. Modify it to you heart’s content. But if you do modify it, you must give those modifications back to the community from which the free software was born. And if you sell the free software, or give it away, you can only do so under the terms of the GPL, which basically means, you must always give credit to the programmers who actually wrote it. And other people who accept the software from you must also be bound by the GPL. The freedom dragon follows along, always on vigil.

In this way, once software is made free and released to the world under the GPL, then the dragon works to keep that software free. TiVo didn’t want it to be free. They made some modifications so that GNU/Linux would work with their hardware, but they didn’t want to tell anyone else about it. In other words, they wanted to benefit from Free Software, but they didn’t want to share, and they wanted to lock GNU/Linux into their box. They still do. However, eventually they did release the modifications they made to the GNU/Linux system, which are available for anyone to use.

That is all fairly straight-forward. But as we know, corporations love their money. They like to say, “mine, mine!”, and then make you pay. The record companies are great at this. So are the movie companies. I’m sure many of you remember the CSS encryption fiasco… the young Norwegian boy who cracked CSS encryption that is used to encrypt data on DVDs… Movie companies do not want you to make copies of DVDs. CSS encryption of the DVD data was meant to thwart duplication. However, this boy figured out how to get around that encryption. He nearly went to jail… (thank goodness he was Norwegian).

Similarly, TiVo, to please movie and television companies, does not want you to have the capability to copy shows. However, if you can access GNU/Linux on your TiVo, they feel you are more likely to gain duplication capabilities. As such, they are doing all they can to keep you locked away from your hardware. They are also doing all they can to keep the software locked in.

This is bad enough. But TiVo has done something even more sinister. They are making it impossible for you to use your TiVo hardware for anything other than what TiVo wants. In other words, TiVo must have complete control of your hardware, or your hardware will not work.

They accomplish this by building hardware that expects encryption from the GNU/Linux system TiVo is using. If the hardware does not receive the proper encryption keys, the hardware will not function. So, although technically not breaking the “letter” of the GPL version 2, it does circumvent the intent via technological tomfoolery.

On first glance, it might appear that nothing is wrong with this. Why shouldn’t TiVo be able to do what they want with the hardware they build? They will still release any modifications they make to the GNU/Linux system. But, like many things that appear innocuous on first glance, the more nefarious implications are hidden in subtlety.

TiVo is, in essence, holding GNU/Linux hostage, through a veil of smoke and mirrors. TiVo is using GNU/Linux. However, they have, through hardware modifications, created a requirement that only TiVo can provide you with your GNU/Linux system. If your GNU/Linux system comes from anyone but them, your hardware will not work. This is what flies in the face of the GPL’s spirit. And, it is very terrible for TiVo to do such a thing. Currently, GNU/Linux on TiVo is no longer Free Software.

As a countermeasure, the newest version of the GPL, GPL version 3, contains language that prohibits this sort of circumvention trickery, giving the dragon some new teeth to defend GNU/Linux’s freedom, and ours. In many ways, the GPL behaves the opposite of copyright by protecting freedom instead of restricting freedom. This sort of behavior in a license is often called copyleft. Hopefully, Linus will see fit to release subsequent versions of Linux under the GPLv3, which contains the additional protections, instead of GPLv2 which does not.

So here we have an example of Freedom under attack in some subtle and underhanded ways. I will be discontinuing my TiVo service and building a free Linux MCE system, which is actually a considerable step up in capabilities (and far less expensive). This is my personal act to further the cause of freedom. I’ve been considering switching to MythTV for some time. Linux MCE is a nice bundle of free software, including MythTV. Unfortunately, this requires effort. It is why I have delayed. But I am re-convinced now, after writing this all down. My machines want to be free. Thanks to Chris for pointing Linux MCE out to me.

Apple OSX

Early in Apple’s history they aired a commercial about Big Brother and how you could escape his tyranny if you purchased a Mac. Today, Apple can control aspects of your iPhone without you even knowing. And your computer. Just like Microsoft. In essence, your computer is fundamentally more under their control than it is yours. That is not Free Software.

With OSX, the operating system from Apple that runs newer Macs, Apple has taken a peculiar turn. Apple needed a new, modern operating system for their hardware. They wanted something flexible so they could easily develop, and they wanted something both secure and rock solid. They chose Unix.

Today Apple’s OSX is really FreeBSD Unix. Apple takes FreeBSD, makes some modifications, and re-releases it as an operating system called Darwin. They don’t release their modifications to FreeBSD for ARM CPU’s, however. Those are the CPU’s used in the iPhone. I am not certain about the legalities of this — much of FreeBSD is released under a different license than the GPL. This FreeBSD license does not have provisions to require people to contribute back to FreeBSD.

Regardless, Apple is certainly taking something that is free, exploiting it, and taking away that freedom. Apple will attack any person or company that installs OSX on any hardware that is not built by Apple. In this way, Apple is playing the same game TiVo is. Take something that is free, exploit it, then lock it into a hardware cage where only you have the key. Such an ugly thing, from something as beautiful as Apple products.

Interestingly, too, even if you install Darwin on your computer, you will not have the Apple desktop, nor will you be able to run any of the Apple programs that are so wonderful to look at on that desktop. Apple releases what they feel they should, but it stops there.

Apple is far from a model for Free Software. They happily take from Free Software, but they immediately entrap it. Microsoft does the same. And even as Microsoft takes from Free Software, at the same time they enjoy threatening Free Software with their patent claims. They say, anyone who dares to use and contribute to Free Software is in danger. Thankfully, the Free Software community has been busy on the patent front, as well, and companies like Microsoft and Apple are violating some.

Carry a Big Stick?

These are just two small examples taken from the last piece, addressing some of the concerns Richard raised. It was originally my intention to focus only upon the good stuff that Free Software has brought us, keeping the ongoing war against Freedom hidden. Usually people do not like unpleasant things. There is a tendency to stick your fingers in your ears, cover up your eyes, and run away. Just mind the big pits in the dark.

Unfortunately, we sometimes need to look at the unpleasant. War happens for a reason. The true reasons may not always be clear, and, in fact, may be hidden. Just as I hid them. But the underlying reasons are what contain the broader truths. And broader truths are always important.

A root concept within the struggles of Free Software to remain free is this notion of “intellectual property”. There is a prior post called Healthy Intellecual Symptoms you might want to read for some background information. Keep in mind that copyright (and copyleft) are different from patents. Basically, the question is, can we own thoughts? And if we can, should we?

The piece I just cited goes into some details related to problems we encounter when we try to own intangible things, like ideas. If we believe we can own ideas, the inevitable question arises: where does the scope of this idea begin and end? If I patent, say, clicking on a link with a mouse, does this mean that a patent issued for one-click shopping infringes upon my patent? How about 2-click shopping?

Suppose I invent a new and revolutionary machine. It’s a new way we can interface with computers. This is a tangible, physical object. That’s normal ground for patents. But now let’s look to the intangible patents. Should I be able to patent all possible fundamental uses of this new physical device, as well as the device itself? Can I patent one-eye-look shopping, instead of one-click shopping? Can I make all these new patents on intangible things, before I even release my hardware to the public for sale?

The notion of “intellectual property” is excellent business for patent lawyers. However, it also stifles creativity and innovation. Imagine if the TCP/IP protocol were patented, requiring the payment of royalties for its use. Imagine if Domain Name services required royalty payments. You would be effectively “taxed” for every use of the Internet. Thankfully, we don’t have that. As a result, we can use it, and contribute things to each other across the Internet freely.

Microsoft readily admits that it perceives Free Software as a threat. It also believes Free Software is its main competitor. Free Software is free, so it really doesn’t care what Microsoft thinks. Until Microsoft starts attacking it. By threatening users of Free Software with lawsuits. By scaring businesses who choose Free Software; saying they are violating the law. By funding ridiculous and wasteful lawsuits through other companies, like SCO.

Fortunately, the history of the Internet is difficult to erase, and we see Free Software vindicated on every front. But this doesn’t deter Microsoft. Microsoft has been very busy patenting ideas. Even ideas that were not their own, yet the desire to own. Patents on ideas are like fabricating an arsenal of bombs for warfare. If you have bombs, and deep enough pockets, you can easily prevail over the smaller people, who are the ones supposedly protected by patents. But Free Software has gathered a patent arsenal of their own, in response to threats. And Free Software has many friends, including legal scholars and lawyers, who are happy to do their part in the name of Freedom. So far, this has pretty much kept the patent dogs at bay, curtailing any full-scale confrontations.

If this were not enough, Microsoft has another favorite assault tactic. They call it, “embrace, extend and extinguish”. However, it might be more accurately called, “steal, corrupt and behead”. This is where Microsoft identifies a protocol, data format or program, usually innocent and free, that they either like and want for themselves without competition, or view as a threat. They take it (embrace it), then change it so that it only works with Microsoft products (or sometimes best with) (extend it), and then claim it as their own, forever afterward a part of their closed, proprietary software offerings (extinguishing it). Oftentimes the effect can be devastating to other companies who originally created or rely upon those technologies. Microsoft uses their monopoly position to provide their users with the Microsoft corrupted technology. Then, when this Microsoft corruption becomes the de facto standard, they disallow other companies from using the very technology they “embraced” and “extended”. That’s the “extinguish” bit.

In a sense, this is exactly what TiVo is doing, and very much what Apple is doing with OSX. The only difference is, they are not doing it with the intention to extinguish Free Software. They just want to make a buck. And they are not concerned with any impact they might have upon Freedom while making their buck.

So there you have it. A brief glance into the sordid underbelly of a mostly invisible war. Do not think for a moment that the war’s outcome will leave you unaffected. Many of the same ideologies being fought for are relevant within other sectors as well. Fair use of the Internet, otherwise known as Net Neutrality, shares much in common with Free Software. As does openness in government, through the efforts of such organizations as The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and OpenTheGovernment.org. Actually, when thinking about it, I realize that the tenets within Free Software are similarly shared and held dear by many human-oriented organizations. And unquestionably, the thread that each holds in common is, a firm commitment to fight for what is right and ethical in the world.

So throw off those shackles, me hearties! Ok, so I’m a day or so late. Silly pirates, anyway.

This may seem a little strange, and it is. It could well be wrong, too. But evidence is growing, only not quite as quickly the wild imaginings of scientists. However, we do know with certainty that something strange is afoot. Vera Rubins was the first person to empirically disclose it. If you remember, she was observing the huge galaxies out there, where you see lots of stars clumped together, turning like giant wheels. The strange thing is, there is not enough substance in galaxies to hold them together in their shapes as they turn. They should be flying apart. But they don’t. And that’s crazy.

More evidence for invisible dark matter comes from subtle observations. Einstein said that any object with mass will warp the space it occupies. That’s what makes gravity, according to him. It’s not really a force. You just slide down that warping, toward the center of the warp. Or rather, you slide toward the center of mass, like the center of the Earth. Or the sun. We orbit the sun because we’re falling toward it, but our centrifugal force of motion counters it, so we keep our distance. (I know, it’s more accurate to talk about inertia…)

But there are other implications to the warping of space. If space actually warped, it should change the path light travels, which is normally in a straight line. People trying to prove Einstein wrong tested this by looking at the stars visible around the sun. They found that they could see stars that should have been hidden behind the sun, but were visible anyway. This is called gravitational lensing, where light appears bent around massive objects, so that you can, amongst other things, see what is behind them. These people ended up proving Einstein right. It appears that objects with mass actually do warp space.

As a side note, this is a huge problem for particle physicists in quantum mechanics. They like to think of gravity as being a force-like thing that is “communicated” between objects with mass through a particle called a graviton. Even if they discover a graviton, it’s a huge leap to tie it back into whatever substance space is made of, so that they can also warp it, as we know that it must.

Anyway, the larger the mass of something, the more it warps the surrounding space. Galaxies have a lot more mass than our sun. And this is where we find another strong case for dark matter. We have observed gravitational lensing happening around galaxies. And the lens strength is far too strong to be coming from the mass of only the visible parts of the galaxy. There must be a considerably larger amount of material in the galaxies to account for the degree of warping we observe.

Cluster MACS J00254-1222 Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, M. Bradac (University of California, Santa Barbara), and S. Allen (Stanford University)

Another compelling piece of evidence is found in observations of cluster MACS J0025.4-1222. This is a composite image, created by combining observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble. This is apparently a collision of two clusters. The red part is Chandra showing the glowing gases of the two clusters being excited as they collide. The blue part is the implied dark matter distribution based upon gravitational lensing effects observed by Hubble. It appears that the dark matter passed through the collision unaffected by any matter, while the baryonic matter interacts in the center. The evidence is compelling. But it is not definitive, as many people portray it.

There are also a couple mathematical arguments that suggest dark matter, but they confuse me. I won’t even pretend to understand them. I don’t trust them, either. String theorists, particularly those with a passion for supersymmetry, are too comfortable building houses of cards, and cheating their way out of death. I’ll stick with the experimental physicists.

So we know something massive needs to exist in every galaxy — a massive thing that we cannot detect. For a long while, many scientists thought it might be brown dwarf stars (very dim) and black holes which might account for all this extra mass. We wouldn’t be able to see them. However, despite having thoroughly watched, we have never seen something unexpectedly blot out any objects behind it, as should occur with large objects. So it seems the invisible stuff is something altogether new.

If dark matter is, indeed, non-baryonic, how can we know for certain that it exists? Well, if dark matter is actually WIMPs, as the theoretical physicists suspect, it would exist as a massive invisible cloud that fairly evenly surrounds galaxies (and us!). Dark matter would annihilate with itself whenever it came in contact with other dark matter, too, possibly creating an electron and an anti-matter electron (positron) in the process, with a burst of gamma energy. In this case, dark matter would likely be neutralinos, which is yet another subatomic particle in the particle physicist’s menagerie.

It is possible some evidence of this will be forthcoming. Remember all those space observatories I wrote about a while ago? One of them was WMAP and its job was to measure and map the background radiation of the entire universe. As it was looking around, it also had to look through the center of our own Milky Way. It was very, very bright. Too bright. And there are many who suspect this might be a result of the energy released by dark matter self-annihilation. And though it’s not saying much with theorists, it does say something — they can make the math work, too.

Dark matter is most certainly strange. Excluding dark energy, nearly 85% of the stuff around us is actually invisible dark matter, whatever it might turn out to be. We would have to ignore a lot of evidence to discount the existence of dark matter — or perhaps we are just not taking something very fundamental into account. And some galaxies are even stranger. For example, the dwarf galaxy Segue 1, which orbits our own Milky Way, looks to be composed of over 98% dark matter. It is a large turning cluster of invisibility, with just a few stars rotating along with it.

So here you go. Hopefully it will help you get into the Halloween spirit, knowing that there actually may be dark, invisible things literally surrounding us. It’s certainly looking more and more true.

Pretty much everyone has heard of Free Software, or Open Source Software by now. If you use a computer, particularly for the Internet, it is nearly a certainty you are relying on Free Software at many levels. For example, most websites are served by the Apache Web Server, which was created and is maintained by the Apache Foundation along with many other technologies. Back in 1995, most websites were served by a web server developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. When the author of the NCSA web server, Rob McCool, left NCSA, development of the web server software stopped. The Apache project came into being from a group of webmasters who wanted to continue developing the software into something ever more powerful and useful. Now, for over a decade, the Apache HTTP server has set the bar for all other web servers.

There are many other free technologies we take for granted, too. The Internet domain name system, for example, that translates the names you type into your browsers and email clients into IP addresses. Or NTP (Network Time Protocol) that keeps computer clocks synchronized across the world. Even such things as LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) that companies like Microsoft have taken, twisted and made their own within their closed Active Directory systems. And, of course, the Linux kernel.

Interestingly, Linux was just emerging into something useful to more people than specialized hobbyists around the same time Apache began. But even a decade before this, Richard Stallman of MIT had a radical idea: he believed that software should be free. And by “free”, Richard meant free, as in free speech, unshackled by any rule of tyranny, and meant for everyone.

That was almost 25 years ago. In fact, the birthday of the GNU Project is coming up in just a couple days, on the 20th. Steven Fry, which surprised me, has some wonderful words to say about GNU software, and free software in general, in a short video statement he gave for the anniversary. Nobody seems to appreciate the truly profound revolution that Richard Stallman started all those years ago. But this man, with his keen technical skills, his highly developed sense of ethics, his humility, and his generosity, fundamentally re-wrote the very fabric of the information revolution. If I have a modern day hero, Richard Stallman, that kind and insightful lunatic, is the man.

When Richard broke with “just the way things are”, software was locked into monolithic entities and controlled by the few. In his words:

The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy.

This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule made by the owners of proprietary software was, “If you share with your neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make them.”

The choice for Richard became a moral, or rather ethical one. In 1984 he quit his position at MIT so he would be free of any interference and wrote a C compiler that he released to the world. This was the genesis of the Free Software movement, and continues to the be a fundamental basis. Over a decade later, Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel under the GNU public software license. By this time, the cooperative software development paradigm, founded upon sharing, openness and mutuality was beginning to pick up some serious momentum. By combining the Linux kernel with the GNU operating system, people had, at last, totally free and open use and control of their own computer systems.

Today, as the efforts of developers across the world continue to make and improve upon their proud and beautiful creations, a growing number of people are turning to Free and Open Software for their daily computing needs. Some do it because free is a good price, while others do it because free means freedom, in every sense of the word.

As a testament to the power and profundity of what Richard has accomplished, all we need to do is look at the pathologically closed, dark and nefarious world of intelligence agencies. The ranks of their own people are now speaking of “Open Source Intelligence”, which is a movement to bring as much light as possible into what is hidden and closed from us.

All of us owe a great debt to Richard Stallman, and also to the people ceaselessly working on the GNU projects, the crazed and bickering little geniuses who continue proudly enhancing the Linux kernel, and all the thousands of other projects that have made the Internet into the whacky and wonderful thing it is today.

The number of websites and programs written from Free Software are too numerous to count. The fastest computers in the world, manufactured by IBM, are now powered by Free Software. Even your TiVo, a happy part of your daily life, runs on Free Software. And Apple Macs running OSX? Well, that’s FreeBSD Unix.

So here’s a toast to Richard Stallman, and the GNU Foundation, for their 25th birthday. And another toast to all you hackers out there making the best software humankind can make. And a toast to you, too, you nitpicky, set-in-your-way end users. Because we care about you, and want to make you happy. And we want you to be free. Just because you ought to be.

Addendum: More information on Free Software and its struggles to maintain its freedom can be found in a subsequent post.

Comic courtesy of xkcd.com

Now, I’m pretty aware of my surroundings and I’m not clumsy. Nor am I prone to hallucination. I am also very skeptical. So maybe I shouldn’t believe my senses. Is that insanity? But skepticism of my senses, I can cope with.

Something inexplicable happened today. Those of you prone to hard-core reason will probably dismiss this. Rightly so. I pretty much dismiss it myself, but I can’t, at the same time. Because I was very much aware and in control at the time of the occurrence. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the occurrence was impossible.

I play fetch with Jake, a dog, every day. He likes playing with two balls at once. These are tennis balls. They are thrown from a contoured, solid plastic extension that grips the ball, resulting in longer throws with less effort. The balls are gripped tightly.

I throw the balls hard and fast, with accuracy. This takes a keen awareness of the ball within the grip — both the ball’s weight and the angle at which the grip is held and moved. It is part of the throw — an extension of my awareness. I do not drink, take drugs, nor any medications. I was not tired. There seems to me a very low probability that my senses were playing tricks on me.

I picked up a ball from the ground. Jake always sniffs it. It was firmly seated in the grip. As I raised the thrower up in the air, I was aware of the ball’s weight, while Jake took off running, anticipating my throw. He stopped, and turned around, staring at me. I held the thrower and the ball in the air, as we watched each other, him crouching and hopping slightly from side to side, tail wagging, preparing for the catch. This throw would hit the ground with a thwack about four feet in front of him and to the right, bouncing once in an arc that would land it in the bushes, which he would leap and pounce upon to retrieve it.

Here is the impossible bit. I know! As I started to throw the ball, everything was nominal. Then suddenly, there was no weight in the thrower. This was not an unusually hard throw. The thrower whizzed in the air with my throwing motion, but it was shockingly light — there was no ball. The ball had vanished.

I know! I must be mistaken. But I firmly seated the ball in the grip. Jake sniffed it before running. This is all very routine. I heard no ball drop, which I would do, had it. Startled, I searched all around upon the ground for it, in a large radius, methodically. It was nowhere to be found. Jake always sees where the ball goes. This time, he was just standing out there dumbfounded, then started running around sniffing, looking for it, too.

Nobody has to tell me that it’s far more likely I only imagined putting a ball in the thrower, or that somehow I wasn’t aware of it leaving the thrower at some point before or along the toss. I know that it’s far more likely I made a mistake, than for a ball to just vanish without a trace. But, at the same time, I know that it did. The ball simply vanished. And, for the rest of the time, we had only one ball to play with.

And Coleena, down there in Belize, I know what you’re thinking. It’s just like Ted the poltergeist who used to hide things. I was reminded of him, too. After today, I feel like I should be the one living in a land where lizards run around on their hind legs.

I suppose this is a deserved irony after harping on scientists to follow their own precepts within science. I’m also reminded of making my mom cry, when the newspaper accidentally printed the date one day into the future, and I backed up their mistake, making her think she had lost a day somehow. I suppose I’m thankful that I almost never know what day it is. And, that a ball impossibly vanishing only sparks a deep curiosity, rather than some flavor of panic.

Actually, I’m a little pleased that it happened. Is it because I am reminded that life is, blah blah blah? No. Because it gives me something to write about? Not at all — in fact, I’d rather not write about it. But I feel obligated. You see, something impossible happened today, that only me and the dog know about. It was a small, silly thing.

It’s just that there is something about the inexplicable that ought to be shared. Particularly when you might be thought insane. Perhaps it is a test of character, or a confession of fallability. Or being honest, despite inviting ridicule. Maybe hearing about it could help someone else to feel less isolated within their own experience of some apparent impossibility. I have no idea. And that, is a little bit fun. Except for the price tag, at least.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to repeat it.