Copyrighteous

I had an existential experience in my local drug store last night while pondering this sign.

What does it mean for pain to be truly external to the person feeling it? Have I ever felt external pain? Is external pain merely another term for empathy? What might products to help with empathy entail? Would my local drug store stock them?

If you're interested in free software --- and free network services in particular --- and should try to join me in Boston for the weekend of March 21st and 22nd.

The FSF is organizing its annual members meeting again. This year the model is very different. For a start, the audience isn't limited to FSF members and the conference is not just about FSF projects and work.

Instead, the meeting has been rebranded LibrePlanet and has been broken up into a two-day event that is going to talk about and then try to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the world of free and open source software. Saturday March 21st will feature a series of talks about major issues facing free software. Sunday March 22nd will be focused on an unconference attempt to tackle and explore several of the key themes or tracks: network services, high priority projects, and the nascent LibrePlanet activism network.

I'll be focused on the track around free network services which I'm helping organize in part through Autonomo.us. For more information on that angle, please take a look at my blog post over at Autonomo.us. We're going to have a great group of people at the track and I'm excited by the idea that that we'll be able to make some real progress on the issues.

I encourage anyone who thinks they might be able to make it to consider doing so. There are details including travel, location, hotel information and much more on the event web page and wiki (login is required to RSVP). Please spread the word!

I recently ate a bag of potato chips made by FoodShouldTasteGood, Inc.. Their motto (as printed on that bag under their name) was, "It's our name. It's our brand. It's our motto." Now, either the antecedents for those three it's are different -- which seems implausible -- or their motto is lying in its final sentence. It's all very complicated.

Seth Schoen reminded me of a somewhat similar issue with the United States' national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The final stanza includes the line, "And this be our motto—'In God is our trust.'" This is not and has never been the U.S. motto. In fact, the U.S. had no motto at all until 1956 when "In God We Trust" -- which is very similar, but not quite the same -- became official.

It seems that nobody is quite sure where "In God We Trust" came from but there is some speculation that it originated in the anthem itself. Presumably, it became the motto because lawmakers thought it sounded good in the song and not because the U.S. government failed while trying to "correct" the embarrassing incorrect line in its anthem.