Much Ado About Nothing

I'd like to take a few moments to talk about nothing.

Why is it that a Google search for “nothing” returns about 541,000,000 results at the moment? Shouldn't that be zero? I wanted to search for nothing, after all.

But just what exactly is nothing? Think about it. It is absolutely impossible for you to point at something and truthfully say, “That is nothing.” If it exists, it is not nothing; it is something. Ergo, nothing does not exist.

Similarly, if anybody ever says to you, “I know nothing about x,” he has to be lying. Because if he knows that he knows nothing about x, he knows something (the something being that he knows nothing about x) and therefore his statement is false. Well, there is actually one exception to that. Perhaps Nothing is someone's name. But that could get pretty confusing. I can imagine it now. “I've known Nothing since grade six.” “Oh really, so how did you manage to graduate, then?”

But just remember... You know nothing about the horse!

Ping-B-Gone

Hip hip hooray! A new version of iTunes, 10.1, was released today. For me, the most exciting change is the ability to completely disable Ping. What is Ping? According to Apple, “Follow your favourite artists and friends to discover the music they're talking about, listening to, and downloading.” They're billing it as a social network centered around music. I personally had no interest in it when Apple announced it. Primarily because, like I just said, it's social networking. I have no interest in pretty much anything related to social networking.