Occam Razor

So Say We All

Yesterday was the season finale of Battle Star Galactica.

Friday's finale did satisfy with a classic sci-fi future history ending that left more unresolved than at the beginning of the show and posed a poignant question about the nature of man that has been four seasons, one mini-series, a 2-hour special and a handful of webisodes in the making. Indeed it's not over yet, there's still another 2-hour special (from the cylon point of view) to come before the prequel series, Caprica kicks off.

The show has a reputation for addressing difficult issues and current affairs. And it had all the good ingredients for a space opera: really cool "realistic" space battles, tough chicks, brave heroes, an unstoppable threat, robots, old salts and humanity in the balance. Although I'm not sure what a realistic space battle looks like, at least this was different and somehow seemed more real. I like how it ended up that the biggest threats on the show came from those trusted most and with benign interests, not from external forces. I think they got that part right about us. All the characters were deeply flawed, evolved over time and many met their end before the show was over. Great story arcs abounded. It is a great show. I'm glad it's over. It's good that it has an end here, now, and didn't drift off into several bad years of falling ratings and weak material. Good to go out on top without having to jump the shark.

I think perhaps the show's real finale was not on the Sci-Fi channel last night but was rather Wednesday when the Admiral of the Fleet and the President of the Colonies met with the UN in New York to discuss the issues of race in society.

Classic BSG from the first season can be found on Hulu. And although the sets and costumes haven't held up as well, you can clearly see the roots of the dark, social and current affair commentary that makes the new series UN worthy.

Occam's Razor

For at least one semester during college, but definitely not more than two, I wanted to be a Philosophy teacher.  At the time I got pretty into it and even took a job as a logic tutor for a bit.  As I recall I had more than a few one-semester-wonder majors before finally graduating; collecting little bits of information from each that have stuck with me in a jumble of facts, metaphors and bits of errata. About all I retained from my semester in philosophy was the principle of Occam's Razor--the principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. At the time it seemed like it might be a useful tool to remember and a clever thing to whip out in a conversation to impress people with. I'm guessing that the impression it left was more Cliff Clavin than
it was Frasier Crane. It was short enough to be easily remembered and quoted on demand, like Rudyard Kipling's White Man's Burden, which I memorized from the inscription to P.J. O'rourke's, Holiday's in Hell and often quoted at parties and college gatherings to make me sound like a disgruntled idealist with a subversive wit....and to impress girls. The impression it left? All Cliff--no wit, just git.

It may also have stuck with me due to the fact that it seems to comes up all the time in the classic science fiction I was addicted to at the time. Robert Heinlein and Philip K Dick appear unable to write a novel without referring to it. Their heroes and protagonists would quote the principle all the time to discover the explanation of some phenomenon critical to the survival of the human race and save the alien amazon heroine in the skin tight jumpsuit. This is also likely the source of influence that made me think it would sound cool and mysterious to quote things I knew little about at parties. That phenomenon, which in the 80's and 90's was fodder for John Hughes movies, NPR now referes to as Modern Jackass.

It had stuck with me long enough to come up as a search term for available URL's late one night, a decidedly less impressive use of Occam's Razor. The URL OccamRazor.com was available, it's previous owner was a World of Warcraft guild by the name of....Occam's Razor...who seemed to have abandoned or let lapse ownership.  Perhaps they felt it was a somewhat imperfect URL with it's missing 's'. Incidentally, the one with the 's' belongs to a finacial software consultancy in London, a group on the other end of the cool spectrum from the WoW guild. At any rate I snatched it up and intended to put it to good use. That was over a year ago and the best idea I've come up with is to start this blog. It's an idea I rate above the financial software consultancy's but not as good at the WoW guild.

It's Occam Razor, a blog about the zeitgeist and my opinions on them. The things and ideas that most simply explain the phenomenon of what's cool.  Zeitgeist, incidentally was another concept that made that late night URL search, it wasn't available though. Coincidentally it is owned by another financial technology consultant writing a blog on an astoundingly similar topic to this one. Already you must be questioning how good of an idea this is based on the company the URL is keeping, excepting of course the very cool WoW guild. WoW makes the cut and is part of the zeitgeist that I can only aspire to for OccamRazor.com.