Here, as I understand it, are some of the sects of the Church of Tony Soprano:

* Catholic. Tony was wacked, rubbed out, snuffed like a candle, by a shot to the head, right there in front of his family. That song was his funeral dirge, the onion rings his last supper. He never saw or heard it coming, just as Bobbie predicted. That black screen was five seconds of the Big Nothing. The series ended with a shocking act of spiritual violence; the viewpoint is murdered.

* Protestant. Tony lived, to continue his hell of a life. The blackout was a ruse; or the film arbitrarily ending; or perhaps another panic attack by Tony, his years of therapy for nought. The menacing atmosphere of the diner is Tony's permanent paranoia; the life he has condemned himself to. Tony's punishment is spiritual inferno, in this life.

* Apostate. The black screen is Chase's middle finger to the legions of devoted fans who made him rich. It resolves nothing, and proves nothing, other than artistic indecision. Not Tony, but the fans were wacked.

* Mystic. The whole episode was a dream. They cite inconsistencies of setting (the made-up bed and painted wall) and weather (cold and snowy, then leaves dry enough to incinerate an SUV) and motivation (AJ shaping up, NY making truce, Harris flipping). The blackout is either Tony waking up or someone sneaking in and rubbing him out; thus there are Catholic and Protestant Mystics; and Apostates too.

It's doubtful that living is the better outcome for Tony. He faces indictment, trial, possible imprisonment, and if he beats that then years of gang warfare and family scheming, and if he beats even that then following Uncle Junior into Alzheimer's oblivion. And all the while he's paranoid, 24/7. Even a family meal at a diner is a scene of mortal terror. If that's his future, then maybe whacking him now would be a kindness. So preaches the cult of Mother Livia.

Live or dead, he's as good as dead. So long, Tony.

Here, as I understand it, are some of the sects of the Church of Tony Soprano:

* Catholic. Tony was wacked, rubbed out, snuffed like a candle, by a shot to the head, right there in front of his family. That song was his funeral dirge, the onion rings his last supper. He never saw or heard it coming, just as Bobbie predicted. That black screen was five seconds of the Big Nothing. The series ended with a shocking act of spiritual violence; the viewpoint is murdered.

* Protestant. Tony lived, to continue his hell of a life. The blackout was a ruse; or the film arbitrarily ending; or perhaps another panic attack by Tony, his years of therapy for nought. The menacing atmosphere of the diner is Tony's permanent paranoia; the life he has condemned himself to. Tony's punishment is spiritual inferno, in this life.

* Apostate. The black screen is Chase's middle finger to the legions of devoted fans who made him rich. It resolves nothing, and proves nothing, other than artistic indecision. Not Tony, but the fans were wacked.

* Mystic. The whole episode was a dream. They cite inconsistencies of setting (the made-up bed and painted wall) and weather (cold and snowy, then leaves dry enough to incinerate an SUV) and motivation (AJ shaping up, NY making truce, Harris flipping). The blackout is either Tony waking up or someone sneaking in and rubbing him out; thus there are Catholic and Protestant Mystics; and Apostates too.

It's doubtful that living is the better outcome for Tony. He faces indictment, trial, possible imprisonment, and if he beats that then years of gang warfare and family scheming, and if he beats even that then following Uncle Junior into Alzheimer's oblivion. And all the while he's paranoid, 24/7. Even a family meal at a diner is a scene of mortal terror. If that's his future, then maybe whacking him now would be a kindness. So preaches the cult of Mother Livia.

Live or dead, he's as good as dead. So long, Tony.

Anybody who says the universe is bio-friendly hasn't taken a good look at the universe. Bio-tolerant, maybe, or better yet bio-indifferent. Looking at the night sky, I do not see a cosmos that is optimized for producing life. Instead it appears to be optimized for producing vacuum.

Even if the universe somehow needs life, then apparently it doesn't need very much life. Life seems to be minimized, not maximized.

And even granted the strongest of anthropic principles, what qualifies us humans as the destined observer? Was Australopithecus qualified? Were dinosaurs? Trilobites? Are amoeba qualified? If not them, then why us? Perhaps the real observer has yet to evolve, and not necessarily from us.

This is one of the cool things about the early 21st century; we get to worry about running out of angstroms. And we send messages to each other about those angstroms over a worldwide network of computers.

The early 21st century is like a bad SF flick; great special effects, some interesting ideas, but really bad scriptwriting.

I propose "Gates' Law", the counterpart to "Moore's Law", as follows; the slowness and bulk of operating systems doubles every eighteen months. Moore's Law is limited by physics, and will reach a limit; but Gates' Law depends on inefficiency, which has no limit. Natural stupidity defeats artificial intelligence.

You can say that Gates' Law is a consequence of "Parkinson's Law"; work expands to fill the time allotted it. Another consequence of Parkinson's Law is the "cyber-siesta"; the constancy of boot-up time over computer generations.

A megaflop machine takes 60 million operations to boot up, a gigaflop machine takes 60 billion, and so on. Show me a petaflop machine, and I will show you a machine that has to do a 60 quadrillion floating-point operations in order to turn on.

There are also cyber-siestas for opening programs, starting videos, etc.