Once upon a time, people photocopied books from friends and exchanged cassette tapes. Nevertheless, those kinds of copies took time and money to make, and everytime a copy was made the “fidelity” decreased. We all know the story. That was illegal too – but the entertainment industry still thrived because the spawn rate of the copies back then was low.

Today, everybody can make copies of everything. You can do it too. It’s easy and it costs virtually nothing to make copies of movies and music, copies of the same quality as the originals – people just don’t talk about fidelity anymore. And given the numbers of people actually doing it, you probably don’t have to. Chances are, someone has already made a copy of what you are looking for and has put it on the internet. Copies multiply faster than fruitflies – and people just won’t pay to buy fruitflies.

No wonder the entertainment industry is hurting and afraid. Still, it has enough resources to put up a fight. Geek-raids and test trials nowadays make the news on a regular basis. Politicians feel the need to show their concern. According to president Obama’s campaign website

Intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the industrial age.

Them’s fighting words – but is intellectual property worth the fight? While president Obama and the entertainment industry seem to think so, I am not so sure.

I believe that we, as a species, have evolved to feel remorse when we take something without permission. That something, however, has to be a physical, tangible object. It’s just not possible to take a “duplicate” of a physical object without at least bearing the cost of the resources necessary for the duplication. It is this difference that determines our attitude towards intellectual property. We have no inhibition against intellectual theft. Intellectual property just hasn’t been around long enough to matter.

If I am right, then if “piracy” is as common a practice as its foes would have us believe, it is because people don’t care. We just can’t help ourselves. Piracy is obesity for informavores. Of course, this does not make piracy right – but I do wonder whether it makes any sense to outlaw an activity that most people will perform without a second thought or a moment of hesitation.

• See the wired article “With Landmark Trial Half Over, Pirate Bay Crew Celebrates Early Victories“,
• and the redOrbit article “Copyright Test Trial Starts In Sweden.
• Also, see “Barak Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need: Technology.”

The motions of particles are notoriously unpredictable and inexplicable at the quantum level, but at the cosmic level we have the problem of explaining galaxy acceleration–the universe is expanding more slowly than the calculated amount of matter in it would make us expect, given the accepted rules of gravity. Physicists have taken to speaking of “dark matter” a what accounts for the extra pull, but there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of such a thing–and isn’t the idea of intrinsically invisible matter an oxymoron? It’s just sheer handwaving. So we don’t know why the cosmos is movingas [sic] it is.

It surprises me how easily McGinn dismisses modern physics and cosmology in particular.

McGinn continues:

Do we know why animal bodies move as they do? Doesn’t the mind play a role in “determining” these movements? But physics has nothing to say about the forces that govern the mind and its capacity to induce motion.

I’m not sure physics is supposed to directly explain “the movement of animal bodies” as McGinn implies. I expect the answers will come from the field of computational neuroscience and I’m sure they will be grounded in physics.

I do wonder though if McGinn is implying that physics will never have anything to say about “the forces that govern the mind and its capacity to induce motion.” I get the impression he is circling around an unspoken argument for some sort of dualism. Of course, it’s just an impression.

Science neither makes nor tolerates such nefarious promises. And science does deliver true magic: artifial limbs, airplanes, automobiles, computers, internet, vaccines – the list is enormous. Furthermore, it exposes religion for the dubious promise, human weakness, and unsupported belief it is.

This, I think, is where science and religion conflict. Science infringes on religion’s market. The appeal of the deliverables of science is too great, and its rewards are obvious and immediate. In contrast, religion is chain-bound to its one and only proposition: “Pay now, receive when you are dead.”

It’s not just the tune, it’s the whole thing. I’ve heard every version of it I could get my hands on, and they’ve all been imprinted somewhere in my head, only to come back and distract me when I least expect it.

Be it as it may, this piece will stay with me for a long, long time – until death or dementia gets it.

This reminds me of Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks.

Granted, all clothing is unnatural. But belts – belts are downright evil. They restrain our breathing, restrict our movements, put unnatural pressure on our organs and bodily gasses and fluids. Surely, that can’t be right. Surely, that is detrimental to our health, psyche, chi, genetic fitness.

No, I don’t have scientific proof of this. But should I wait for proof while the children of the world keep wearing these evil devices? And do you expect belt-wearing scientists, corrupt as they are, and on the payroll of the belt-industry, to tell you the truth?

Gaia disapproves of belts. Hear her cry of despair as you put on your belt. Don’t!

Let the world know that belts are evil! Let’s ban belts! Let’s boycott the beltmongers! Parents, do not impose your belt-culture on your children!

Just kidding.

After all, when a news-station uses a very thin anchor, does it not follow that it promotes anorexia? Notice that it does not even matter if the person is, in fact, anorexic. The appearance of very thin people on television validates and enforces the unhealthy body image of all anorexics.

Nevertheless, this law does seem unjust to me. Why target only extreme thinness? Why even target extreme thinness? Is not extreme fatness a bigger problem in the western world? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate, and more effective for the general health of the people, to criminalize the promotion of obesity? We’d certainly have to ban commercials for plus-sized fashion, fast food, super markets – anything plus-sized or super-sized for that matter. No more Roseanne on television. No more Pavarotti. Surely, there are enough regular-sized people out there who can do the job.

Perhaps, we should consider criminalizing the promotion of all extreme body-images. People who are too tall, let’s say. Did you know that some people willingly submit themselves to unnecessary orthopedic surgery to add a few inches to their height? It happens. Surely, that can’t be right. But what can they do when they see that people prefer taller partners, taller people get the “higher” positions etc? Why doesn’t anyone notice how tall those extremely thin models are?

There goes diversity. (Freedom must have left earlier.)

Philip Johnson’s Glass House is beautiful. It is stunning. But stunning is not the word for it, there’s no element of surprise in the impression it makes – it fits its surroundings so that you would almost expect it to be there.

I realize, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

And there’s no place for it in the Netherlands, where I live. A house like this needs a forest.

I would like to have a house like this. If I could afford it, I would probably build a house that would be halfway between the Glass House and a Minka. But I would build it to last, my house, with comfort, security, and autonomy in mind. Have you read Charles Platt’s “The Silicon Man”? That’s what I have in mind when I talk about security and autonomy. Or the house from that Bruce Willis movie with the hostages, where the house turns into a fortress at the push of a button.

It’s a libertarian fantasy, I suppose. I’m sure I’m not the only one to think of this. A fortress of one’s own… Not quite what Henry David Thoreau had in mind, I suppose.