I'm going to use the term God. If you find yourself dragging your religious preconceptions into this as a consequence of this label, feel free to substitute the word "Reality" where you see the word "God". I do this because, to my mind, they are describing the same thing using different technical languages that come from different knowledge systems, and I hope to provoke others to look at them the same way.

The universe can be understood in terms of the complexity of the arrangement of God's substance.

The singularity is the ultimate victory of Gravity and Entropy
The big bang is the ultimate failure of Gravity and Entropy

The creation of this universe is the eruption of the substance of God into an increasingly complex pattern. The limits of this complexity are imposed by, gravity, entropy and the amount of God. These limits will cause the complexity of the pattern to peak, and the complexity will degenerate back into simplicity, which will be pulled back into a singular state.

These perspectives as I've articulated them are written from the observing position of a living creature within the multiverse and bound by time.

From the position of an imagined observer outside of God, and thus outside of time, this would look very different.

To model this in your mind, it may be helpful to imagine the universe as a soap bubble being blown from a wand. The force of the big bang is like the air being blown at the soap film.

As this force causes the soap film to erupt out of a two dimensional plane into a three dimensional sphere, there are other forces at work that keep the soap film from simply disintegrating.

By acting in opposition to this "creative wind", these forces maintain the coherency of the soap film, allowing it to be a bubble with a beautiful complex pattern rather than simply dust.

However, from a perspective inside the soap film, these forces would look like the forces of entropy and gravity look to us. They drag us back towards the simplicity of death, just as the surface tension in the soap film drags the film back towards the state of being a plane.

This model makes an interesting segue into contemplation of the contrast between the infinite model of the universe and the finite model of the universe.

I believe the evidence does not support the perspective that we live in an infinitely expanding universe, because such a model would look like the soap film being blown into dust by the creative wind rather than assembling itself into the complex patterns that we see around us.

Some other interesting things to consider when looking at this model from the perspective of the outside observer watching the soap bubble of our universe being blown:

Does the ending of the creative wind cause the soap bubble to fall back into a simple plane, and have all it's complexity vanish as though it never was?

Does the creative wind cause the soap bubble to resolve into a sphere and blow off the wand?

Does the soap bubble resolve into a sphere but remain stuck to the wand?

If the observer sees the soap bubble fall back into a simple plane, that would imply that time resides outside the universe. This isn't really consistent with what we've observed about relativity.

If the creative wind causes the soap bubble to resolve into a sphere and blow off the wand, that would imply that the universe either is in the process of being created by some sort of God and cast away, or it already has been. This also implies that time resides outside the universe.

The model in which the soap bubble resolves into a sphere but remains stuck on the wand is the model that is consistent with relativity. It is the model in which the definition of time is permitted to remain relative to this universe.

In this model, the imaginary observer outside of the universe does not see any dynamic action in time because, residing outside the universe, there is no capacity to relate, and thus, they see the soap bubble in its entirety, at all of its "times".

Following this line of reasoning, the universe in its complex state and the universe in its simple state is something that can only be expressed in terms of time,

How can I verify this?

Not the right question

How might I make this a more useful predictive tool to govern behavior than others who have espoused similar views before me and failed to do so?

I might use the model to imply useful and previously unrecognized boundaries between what is local and what is global in scope in terms of the "laws of nature" and thus find new "patterns of reality" by implication or learn how to break "laws of nature" that were previously considered inviolate by moving beyond the scope of their pattern.

I might use the model to help people recognize the difference between knowledge systems derived from experimentation and knowledge systems derived from deduction, allowing people to abandon the false assurance of faulty tools and work towards reconciling the conflict between science and religion.

I wonder if Paul Davies would consider this to be #3 or #5?

I draw comfort from the fact that I am not really a 3 dimensional object transforming and translating. I am actually a 4 dimensional object experiencing becoming. I have a boundary on the top of my head, and on the soles of my feet. I have a boundary at the surface of my chest, and at the surface of my back. I have a boundary on my left side, and on my right. And, finally, I have a boundary at my birth and at my death. I will never cease, but will exist forever within these 4 axis. At the time of my death, I will finally consciously know myself in my entirety. I consider that something to look forward to.

So I'm sick, and instead of sleeping like a normal person I'm roaming the web because apparently that's in some way intelligent or something.

And I run across this poll by the economist, and I'd never seen this exact poll before, but I've seen about a thousand like it...It's basically a contrast of the American groupthink vs the European groupthink. In this case, it's the Brits.

First section is "Religion" and the third question is:

"Which explains the origin of the Earth?"
~30% of Americans and ~65% of the Brits said "Evolution"
~40% of Americans and ~10% of the Brits said "The Bible"
~20% of Americans and ~18% of the Brits said "Intelligent Design"

Now, to me there is only one right answer to that question: The fucking Bible.

Evolution is ..."the changes seen in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the next. These changes are relatively minor from one generation to the next, but accumulate with each subsequent generation and can eventually cause substantial changes in the organisms." It's go no fucking thing what-so-ever to do with the origin of Earth or life on Earth.

Intelligent Design is too stupid and intellectually bankrupt to even rate a place on the list, so that leaves only the Bible, which, imho, is wrong, but the question doesn't say anything about accuracy so it remains the only thing on the list that correctly answers the question.

So, on the one hand, we have a bunch of people who think the sky fairy made everything. On the other hand, we have a bunch of people who think Evolution has something to do with the origin of fucking life!

Part of me hopes that the 10% or so who actually knew that the poll was horseshit hung up, or answered "Evolution" as a short-hand way of saying "Whatever scientific theory of abiogenesis has the most evidence behind it today." But in the end, the only thing the poll really says is that the cult of the jewish sheepfarmers is less popular in Britain than the cult of the toaster oven...And that 20% of both population groups believe whatever you tell 'em.

I guess I should take comfort in the fact that at least they're more secular over there, but all it really does is drive home the fact that, of any group of humans, the vast majority are completely ignorant at any given time, and that science can be just as irrationally religious as any religion.

So yesterday this article pops up, a piece of article trolling not-so-subtly designed to appeal to people like yours truly (wordy ego-driven serial karma-whores). So I bang out a reasonably obvious reply. Fine, mission accomplished.

Then along comes some AC who decides that I need some kind of affirmational literary blowjob which basically throws my trite and whorish soul into sharp relief, provoking a fit of cleansing-through-self-loathing which is immediately moderated to +5 insightful, and adorned with yet still more affirmation.

Truly, I am the king of whores. I don't do it on purpose, I just can't seem to stfu. I used to write a column in my college newspaper; at least those led to free beer and sex.

J.K. Rowling didn't make enough money on Harry Potter, so she had to make sure that the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' was shut down. After a trial in Manhattan in Warner Bros. v. RDR Books, she won, getting the judge to agree with her (and her friends at Warner Bros. Entertainment) that the 'Lexicon' did not qualify for fair use protection. In a 68-page decision (PDF) the judge concluded that the Lexicon did a little too much 'verbatim copying', competed with Ms. Rowling's planned encyclopedia, and might compete with her exploitation of songs and poems from the Harry Potter books, although she never made any such claim in presenting her evidence. The judge awarded her $6750, and granted her an injunction that would prevent the 'Lexicon' from seeing the light of day.

An anonymous University of Michigan student targeted by the RIAA as a 'John Doe', is asking for the RIAA's investigator, Safenet (formerly MediaSentry), to be prosecuted criminally for a pattern of felonies in Michigan. Known to Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth -- the agency regulating private investigators in that state -- only as 'Case Number 162983070', the student has pointed out that the law has been clear in Michigan for years that computer forensics activities of the type practiced by Safenet require an investigator's license. This follows the submissions by other 'John Does' establishing that Safenet's changing and inconsistent excuses fail to justify its conduct, and that Michigan's legislature and governor have backed the agency's position that an investigator's license was required.

Well, I was afforded the opportunity to write for a slightly different audience -- the judges who belong to the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association. I was invited by the The Judges' Journal, their quarterly publication, to do a piece on the RIAA litigations for the ABA's Summer, 2008, 'Equal Access to Justice' issue. What I came up with was 'Large Recording Companies vs. The Defenseless : Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigations', in which I describe the unfairness of these cases and make 15 suggestions as to how the courts could make it a more level playing field. I'm hoping the judges mod my article '+5 Insightful', but I'd settle for '+3 Informative'. For the actual article go here (PDF). (If anyone out there can send me a decent HTML version of it, I'll run that one up the flagpole as well.)

Tiffany's has lost its bid to hold eBay liable for trademark infringement of Tiffany's brands taking place on eBay. After a lengthy bench trial (i.e. a trial where the judge, rather than the jury, decides the factual questions), Judge Richard J. Sullivan has issued a 66-page decision (PDF) carefully analyzing the facts and legal principles, ultimately concluding that 'it is the trademark owner's burden to police its mark, and companies like eBay cannot be held liable for trademark infringement based solely on their generalized knowledge that trademark infringement might be occurring on their websites'.

There is no truth, and there is no knowledge.

All the things we know are things which we have decided, and we have decided them from a position of gross ignorance.

There was a time when we knew of the great and terrible fire god in the sky.

It was wise that we knew of him thus. To know of him thus was to understand that our lives sprung from him, that without his presence we would die. It was to understand his terrible power and be wary of it, lest he burn you to death. It was to understand that there was a pattern to his actions, and that we could build patterns among ourselves that were supported by the resolute and predictable nature of his actions. We could create time and history where once there was only timeless story and myth and the endless now.

This was not the truth. It was an arbitrary decision that we believe this, and that decision withstood the test of time because it was useful to view things in this fashion. It was a viewpoint that let you do things that you couldn't do before. Those savages who didn't believe were defeated by the weaknesses of their perspective.

There was a time when we knew that the earth was a round globe that the sun revolved around.

It was wise that we knew the sun thus. We spent so long worrying about offending that thing, ascribing motives to it that didn't exist, being blinded to the inconsistencies of our view.

Now we could predict its motion around the earth as we travelled its survace. We could do all sorts of useful things with this knowledge that we couldn't do before. Those who didn't believe as we did were defeated by the weaknesses of their perspective. Those who believed as we believed thrived and multiplied. This was knowledge.

Except that it was an arbitrary truth. It wasn't true. But it was useful. So it was good. This was knowledge.

Now we know that the earth revolves around the sun, and so do the rest of the planets. This is a useful perspective. It has empowered us.

The truth is, we see glimpses of the nature of the universe. We make a bunch of things up, and the more useful those made up things prove to be in helping us continue to exist, the more you see them among us as knowledge and truth.

Now, we have scientists contemplating the microscale of the universe, the macroscale of the universe.

Can you consider the effects your actions when you get up in the morning on the microscale? Or how what's happening on the microscale at the moment should influence what it's wise to do? What it's good or evil to do?

Could you consider how what's happening on the macroscale relates to the morality of your existance and your actions?

You can't.

You can't consider these things.

You're floating along with a whole bunch of made up rules that are there because they're empowering. Inevitably, the falseness of them will come along to bite you on the ass as you struggle to make some sense of the universe with these crude tools that are our truths and perspectives and knowledge.

At the end of the day, you must not get too caught up in defending the truths of things.

You must look around you.

Look at what truths you see bandied about, and try to understand what the purpose of those truths is.

Understand that none of this is really the truth, but every bit of it has some utility that is the reason for its existance.

Try to understand what that utility is.

This will help you deal with the ugliness in the world.

Every ugly evil thing you see has a reason why it is there, that is why its evil ugliness is tolerated.

It serves a moral purpose. It allows us to be.

Reconcile with it. Understand that it has an inherent goodness that is larger than the ugliness of what you can see.

Then look for a new truth that can serve the moral purpose of the ugly one you have reconciled yourself with.

It is in this way that you will find your truth.

It will be a truth that you have chosen. It will not be an inherently true truth, but it will be a useful truth.

It is up to you what you do with the truth you have chosen.

But for it to be a good and moral truth, it must ultimately serve the purpose of continuing to allow us to be.

If it does not serve that purpose, it will ultimately destroy those who choose it as the truth, and thus destroy itself.

What are your truths doing?

According to commentator Therese Polletti at Dow Jones MarketWatch, "the RIAA's tactics are nearly as bad as the actions of mobsters, real or fictional. The analogy comes up easily and frequently in any discussion of the RIAA's maneuvers." Among other things she cites the extortionate nature of their 'settlement negotiations' pointed out by Prof. Bob Talbot of the University of San Francisco School of Law IP Law Clinic, whose student attorneys are helping private practitioners fight the RIAA, the illegality of the RIAA's use of unlicensed investigators, the flawed evidence it uses, and the fact that the RIAA thinks nothing of jeopardizing a student's college education in order to make their point, as support for the MAFIAA/Mafia analogy.

Recommended reading for all interested in the RIAA's litigation war against p2p file sharing is the amended class action complaint just filed in Oregon in Andersen v. Atlantic. This landmark 109-page document (pdf) tells both the general story of the RIAA's campaign against ordinary folks, and the specific story of its harassment of Tanya Andersen, and even of her young daughter. The complaint includes federal and state RICO claims, as well as other legal theories, and alleges that "The world's four major recording studios had devised an illegal enterprise intent on maintaining their virtually complete monopoly over the distribution of recorded music." The point has been made by one commentator that the RIAA won't be able to weasel its out of this one by simply withdrawing it; this one, they will have to answer for. If the relief requested in the complaint is granted, the RIAA's entire campaign will be shut down for good.

Although based in San Francisco, and only an amicus curiae in the Phoenix, Arizona, case of Atlantic v. Howell, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is sending its senior intellectual property lawyer Fred Von Lohmann to Phoenix to argue the Howell case, on behalf of the defendant, who is not represented by counsel. Due to the RIAA's attempt to take advantage of Mr. Howell's being undefended to try to convince the judge that merely 'making files available for distribution' -- i.e., just having them on one's computer in a manner that is accessible to sharing -- and that copying files from one's cd onto one's computer in mp3 format is itself "unlawful", EFF filed an amicus brief in January. Now it's taking the unusual step of actually sending someone to the courthouse to orally argue the motion.

A technology battle is raging in UMG v. Lindor in Brooklyn over whether the RIAA's investigator, SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry), which has produced certain *txt printouts, now needs to disclose its digital files, validation methodology, testing procedures, failure rates, software manuals, protocols, packet logs, source code, and other materials, so that the validity of its methods can be evaluated by the other side. SafeNet and the RIAA say no, the information is "proprietary and confidential". Ms. Lindor says yes, if you're going to testify in federal court the other side has a right to test your evidence. A list of what is being sought is here (pdf). MediaSentry has produced 'none of the above'. "Put up or shut up" says one commentator to MediaSentry. What do you say?

A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory, which is the basis of all of the RIAA's peer to peer file sharing cases. In Atlantic v. Brennan, in a 9-page opinion (pdf), Judge Janet Bond Arterton held that the RIAA needs to prove "actual distribution of copies", and cannot rely -- as it was permitted to do in Capitol v. Thomas -- upon the mere fact that there are song files on the defendant's computer and that they were "available". This is the same issue that has been the subject of extensive briefing in two contested cases in New York, Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Judge Arterton also held that the defendant had other possible defenses, such as the unconstitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory and possible copyright misuse flowing from the record companies' anticompetitive behavior.

In the beginning, language is spoken.

It is communicated from one person to another with the accompaniment of cues like body language, pitch and intonation, even pheromones communicating fear or excitement. It is intended to be used together with these cues.

And so it is for many years.

Then written language is created.

Written language is tough, because you have to deal with the fact that language is meant to be accompanied by many cues which you no longer have at your disposal.

It's also tough to be precise, because the language is very flexible and meant to be suitable for a great many other expressive pursuits whose needs are contrary to the goal of precision.

Writing is intended to be done once and distributed to an audience to stand as it is written, and so it is treated as an art. A writer is expected to put effort into making it just right before releasing it.

And so it is for many years.

Writing is used to codify laws.

Societies get more complex, the limitations of the common language are met, and new languages are created with new syntax, based around old ones.

Legal language is created to express such things as rules and contracts.

We are all systematically bound by what is expressed in these languages, and irrespective of our personal opinions or even our ignorance, we materially put our support behind these expressions by our participation.

Most people don't understand this language, and its meanings are often unintuitive and convoluted. Unless you have access to great wealth, you can't even learn it.

If you do have access to great wealth, you can hire teams of experts who have dedicated their lives to exploiting the convolutions of this language.

And so it is for many years.

Technologies arrive that allow the written word to be communicated broadly with great speed and great ease.

Speed enough that it can be used for a casual conversation.

Ease enough that you can casually reach a world audience during any 5 minute break in your schedule.

Language starts to break down.

Emails and instant messages are misunderstood more often than not.

People attempt to inform themselves, and they encounter linguistic constructs that exist for the higher purpose of eliciting emotional responses when used by artists.

They are manipulated and misled with misdirection and emotive imagery.

People are unable to concisely specify their agreements with their fellows without the assistance of a professional, but they are bound by them in ways they do not understand.

They are unable to understand the agreements that they make with commercial interests, but they are bound by them in ways they do not understand. These agreements are crafted by teams of people who dedicate their lives to being skilled in exploit your lack of understanding to their advantage.

Most people are unable to walk into a courthouse and express for themselves why they should not be punished.

If the attention of the system is ever placed upon them, their fate lies in their capacity to find someone who understands the language and rules of the law well enough to compete on their behalf.

It leads a person to think... shouldn't the language we use to make our agreements and our laws be straightforward enough that everyone can learn and understand it?

Shouldn't we insist that it not only be understandable, but understandable in a timely enough fashion to make all our decisions from an informed position?

Shouldn't every single human being on earth be capable of communicating with precision?

How would you do it?

My mind drifts to the book 1984.

Language is stripped down, shorn of the capacity to communicate things which disadvantage the state. Extraneous words are discarded. A standard is made, everyone is taught and kept up to date, and it is impossible to communicate outside of a very rigid framework.

It is put forth as a nightmare vision. The ultimate control of the population by the state.

But what if everyone was bilingual?

What if there was one language that was very precise, and it was engineered to be easy to understand.

Imagine if it was utterly devoid of the sorts of communications that could elicit emotional responses in people and make them choose something because the language made them feel good.

Now, if that was the only language that you knew, it would be very easy to organize with precision, but there would be no room for creativity, or expressions about the human experience, or creating things that were appealing to the primitive side of what we as humans are.

So you'd need a second language. One that was rich with multiple interconnected meanings, flexible, emotive, organic. A romantic language.

Two modes of communication, understood by all, with a social structure that indicated by decorum which mode should be used for which purpose.

This would still allow for that decorum to be broken when important things that fall outside the realm of tradition need to be said.

This would mean we could get rid of both lawyers and advertising.

We would have a civilization where every one of us understands what is going on well enough to participate, well enough to put transparency to purpose when we demand it, well enough not to be bamboozled and swindled anymore.

If you were going to pursue it as an agenda, you might choose something like English, which has strong representation as the language of business, then have an engineering team skilled in information theory create a suitable subset of the language, and go about the developing world educating people in that subset of it, allowing them to be advantaged by participating in world business.

Then choose a romantic language well represented in the developing world, Spanish perhaps, and take the two pronged approach of providing easy access to education in the romantic language to children in the English speaking world, while investing heavily in the creation of cultural works in that language. These children would end up thinking of English as the language for serious things and Spanish as the language for creativity and expressions of feeling and passion.

Inside of a couple of generations of spreading bilingualism in this fashion, such a structure could be realized across the globe.

Peoples cultural languages would end up being folded into the Romantic language over time, making it an increasingly rich means of expression and preserving history.

"A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution" says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's college students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of 2 University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (pdf) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's "making available" complaint as mere "conclusory", "boilerplate" "speculation". The 2 students represented by Cumberland join the 8 students represented by a prominent Portland law firm, bringing to 10 the number of University of Maine students fighting back in this case.