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Explosive, Daring Cosmos Just Launched a New Crusade for Science

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On Sunday night, viewers saw the first episode of a followup series, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, hosted by astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson. It had been nearly 35 years since Carl Saganinspired a generation of scientists with 1980s 13-part series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Immediately, one thing became clear: This is not your parents Cosmos.

The ideas and driving principles behind it are the same, but along with its new host, Cosmos has new urgency, and a new edge. Sagans Cosmos was awash with dream-like wonder, as personal as its title implied, colored by Sagans agnosticism. Tysons is different: informed by a generation of additional understanding and discovery and special effects too, its faster, brighter, and more explosive and more daring in its evangelism for science.

Sagans approach to science education was personal, almost intimately so. In contrast, Tyson has mastered the art of communicating his passion for ideas without exposing much about the man behind them. Tyson has gone to great lengths to avoid identifying with any specific ideological groups hes famous for saying that the only -ist he identifies as is scientist and hes long argued that science itself is fundamentally apolitical.

There comes a point, however, where the choice to present the universe through an evidence-based lens is itself a political act.

We live in an era where the very concept of truth is politicized; where policy-makers and voters and journalists stand in denial of demonstrable science in favor of magical thinking and faith; where science warped by dogma is given equal footing in classrooms and Congress; where teaching the controversy forces educators to lend false weight to bad science in the name of religion and tradition. And that has cost science the luxury of neutrality. In choosing to argue actively for science, without apologies or appeasement, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey has thrown down a gauntlet.

But it might not be the gauntlet you expect.

Most of the controversy and criticism thats arisen around the first episode of A Space-Time Odyssey surrounds the choice of 16th-century philosopher Giordano Bruno as the first historical figure for the show to highlight. Bruno was a philosopher, not a hard scientist, and as Tyson points out, his theory of a heliocentric solar system and infinite cosmos was a lucky guess rather than the result of concrete evidence or research.

The value in Brunos tale and its relevance to Cosmos lies in what it says about science in a social and cultural context. In a recent interview with Space.com, Tyson emphasized that the shows historical profiles exist not only to highlight the discoveries of scientists, but also what comes when those [discoveries] encountered the social, political, cultural and religious mores of the day.

Brunos story, then, is less about a specific scientific discovery than the curiosity and willingness to challenge the reigning philosophy of the time that enables science. Its about the moral and human imperative to discovery, even in the face of opposition, and testament to the power of imagination as a catalyst for exploration. That Brunos view of the cosmos happened to be correct is incidental: what matters is that there, as elsewhere in his heretical philosophy, he dared to question rather than bow mindlessly to tradition.

It would have been easy to frame the segment as anti-religious, and its certainly been decried as such by some religious blogs, but that criticism is short-sighted and it misses a larger point.

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Explosive, Daring Cosmos Just Launched a New Crusade for Science

Finding the courage to be blatantly believer-ish

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At the Academy Awards on March 2, I heard something surprising: "Lord God, I praise you."

Darlene Love said these words as she joined the director and producers of "20 Feet from Stardom" to accept the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. Then Love, one of the singers who stars as herself in the documentary, broke into an a cappella version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."

The moment is in a YouTube video of the most memorable speeches of the night. It is rare that Oscar recipients burst into song -- the awards go to technicians and performers who aren't necessarily singers, after all -- but Love's invocation intrigued me more. Hearing it made me a little confused about which awards show I was watching. God gets a lot of credit at the Grammy Awards, even if it seems hypocritical or disingenuous (e.g., saying, "I thank God for helping me write this song full of curse words and misogynistic rhetoric), but I can't remember ever hearing anything as blatantly believer-ish as, "Lord God, I praise you" at the Oscars. People thank the academy, the people who funded their project, their colleagues on the set, parents, life partners and sometimes a teacher who made a difference. But God? No, the Oscars aren't his night to shine.

I've had passing thoughts about why this is, and they all come down to comfort and culture. The Grammys, with its awards for gospel music and its abundance of black artists who start their singing careers in church, presents a safe place to go into Christian-speak. At the Oscars, God is out of place among an audience full of celebrities who either are known to practice Scientology or who aren't known to practice anything at all.

At the Academy Awards, Darlene Love didn't care about what religious beliefs might be represented in the audience. I know she's a singer, and she probably just wanted to sing, but she started her acceptance speech with giving God the credit, and she sang a gospel song. I'm sure no one was hiding tomatoes in their couture dresses to throw at performers they disliked, but still, it takes guts to do that in front of an audience that might not share your beliefs.

When I'm in that situation, I code switch. "Code-switching" refers to mixing languages and speech patterns in conversation as the speaker deems appropriate given his or her surroundings. I've all but abandoned this practice in its traditional sense in my work vs. home worlds; the way I speak is probably about 90 percent consistent between both places. I know I'm more relaxed with my speech and that I speak with a different cadence when I'm with only my mom, the person I'm most comfortable with. But alterations in my use of slang or jargon that only certain groups would understand happens most often when I go between church and very liberal work spaces.

My full-time job is in social justice and in academia. Although I'm well aware I'm not the only Christian in the social justice community in Louisville, Ky., I almost never see people from my church attending the talks or rallies I attend. I also know that plenty of people in attendance have experienced discrimination from Christians. And in academia, I rarely meet scholars who have been able to reconcile their accumulated knowledge with the myths they were taught as children.

In these settings, I don't go into Christian-speak. I don't call victories "blessings" or attribute challenges to tests of faith. Everything isn't in God's plan, and he doesn't work things out. And when other people are open about their atheism, agnosticism or more general secularism, I don't try to change their minds.

I've wondered if my quiet comes off as shame for being Christian or if people can tell I'm Christian at all without knowing my writing. Not being as blatantly believer-ish as Darlene Love was at the Oscars protects me against ridicule and allegations of hypocrisy or pretense, and it keeps the peace by preventing discussion of religion, always an explosive topic. But I shouldn't base sharing my beliefs on what others may think.

For the next several weeks, people will notice Christians not eating meat or sugar. They'll stop smoking and watching reality television shows, or they'll temporarily close all their social media accounts as part of Lenten fasts. Christians and non-Christians alike will notice the changes, and even if they've never given any indication of their faith before, the fasting Christians suddenly will be exhibiting blatantly believer-ish behavior. They'll open themselves up to ridicule, hostility and allegations of hypocrisy.

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Finding the courage to be blatantly believer-ish

agnosticism: Definition from Answers.com

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Agnosticism is the belief that the existence or non-existence of any deity is unknown and possibly unknowable. More specifically, agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claimsespecially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claimsare unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable.[1][2][3] Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively.[2] In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.

Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1869.[4] However, earlier thinkers and written works have promoted agnostic points of view. They include Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher,[5]Sanjaya Belatthaputta, a 5th-century BCE Indian philosopher,[6] and the Nasadiya Sukta concerning the origin of the universe in the Rig Veda, an ancient Sanskrit text, which is one of the primary scriptures of Vedic Hinduism.[7]

Since Huxley coined the term, many other thinkers have written extensively about agnosticism.

Thomas Henry Huxley said:

Agnosticism often overlaps with other belief systems. Agnostic theists identify themselves both as agnostics and as followers of particular religions, viewing agnosticism as a framework for thinking about the nature of belief and their relation to revealed truths. Some nonreligious people, such as author Philip Pullman, identify as both agnostic and atheist.[9] In contrast, the philosopher William L. Rowe said that in the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities, whereas a theist and an atheist believe and disbelieve, respectively, and that in the strict sense agnosticism is the view that human reason is incapable of rationally justifying the belief that deities do, or do not, exist.

Agnostic (from Ancient Greek - (a-), meaning "without", and (gnsis), meaning "knowledge") was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869[10] to describe his philosophy which rejects all claims of spiritual or mystical knowledge. Early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) to describe "spiritual knowledge." Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular; Huxley used the term in a broader, more abstract sense.[11]

Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.[12]

In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean "not knowable".[13] In technical and marketing literature, "agnostic" often has a meaning close to "independent"for example, "platform agnostic" or "hardware agnostic."[14]

Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt.[15] He asserted that the fallibility of human beings means that they cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition (i.e. tautologies such as "all bachelors are unmarried" or "all triangles have three corners"). All rational statements that assert a factual claim about the universe that begin "I believe that ...." are simply shorthand for, "Based on my knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of the prevailing evidence, I tentatively believe that...." For instance, when one says, "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy," one is not asserting an absolute truth but a tentative belief based on interpretation of the assembled evidence. Even though one may set an alarm clock prior to the following day, believing that waking up will be possible, that belief is tentative, tempered by a small but finite degree of doubt (the clock or its alarm mechanism might break, or one might die before the alarm goes off).

Agnosticism can be subdivided into several categories, some of which may be disputed. Variations include:

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agnosticism: Definition from Answers.com

CON: Prayer in school doesnt account for all religions

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Schools have not been allowed to have prayers for the entire student body since the Engel vs. Vitale Supreme Court case in 1962. America has always prided itself on its First Amendment right to freedom of religion, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Schools have not been allowed to have prayers for the entire student body since the Engel vs. Vitale Supreme Court case in 1962. America has always prided itself on its First Amendment right to freedom of religion, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Since the First Amendment was first written, it has taken the United States centuries (until just the past few decades) to become more sensitive to other religions and non-religions. With more people transitioning from Christianity to Buddhism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Confucianism, Judaism, Rastafarianism and so many more, there are no limits to what people worship or do not worship today.

But Christianity is still the prevalent religion in the United States, and it has a lot of leverage.

Separation of church and state is a very important idea in the United States. It allows for government institutions and ideals to be kept separate from religious ones. Since the Supreme Court ruled that schools can no longer engage students in prayer, schools have become part of this muddy separation.

Pocahontas County High School senior Emily Hefner agrees with this.

"I still think the church should be separate from the state," she said.

It has become more common for schools to receive students from many different backgrounds and religions. Prayer for an entire student body is no longer acceptable because of the variety of beliefs a single population now can share. A single prayer could satisfy one group of students but cause a revolt amongst another, thus causing the entire learning environment of the school to be upset and unproductive.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Schools have not been allowed to have prayers for the entire student body since the Engel vs. Vitale Supreme Court case in 1962. America has always prided itself on its First Amendment right to freedom of religion, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Since the First Amendment was first written, it has taken the United States centuries (until just the past few decades) to become more sensitive to other religions and non-religions. With more people transitioning from Christianity to Buddhism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Confucianism, Judaism, Rastafarianism and so many more, there are no limits to what people worship or do not worship today.

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CON: Prayer in school doesnt account for all religions

Humanist, Religious Freedom & Scientology Writers Launch Featured Contributor Program on WorldReligionNews.com

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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 05, 2014

WorldReligionNews.com officially launched its "Featured Contributor" program today with three articles: the first, written by Babu Gogineni, the International Director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union; the second, written by Stuart A. Wright, Professor of Sociology at Lamar University; and the third, written by Bob Adams, International Spokesperson, Church of Scientology.

WorldReligionNews.com has established its "Featured Contributor" program to offer both writers officially affiliated with all faiths and belief systems, as well as independent writers and authors of note, a public platform from which to publish religion focused articles that will reach not only WRN visitors but also appear via syndication partner Outbrain on sites like CNN, FOX, New York Daily News and others.

If you are an officially affiliated spokesperson/writer who would like to be considered for a "Featured Contributor" article placement on WRN, contact us here: http://www.worldreligionnews.com/contact-us/.

About WorldReligionNews.com WRN exists to cover the news generated by ALL major world religions, A to Z, from Agnosticism to Wicca and all in between, in ways that will inspire, challenge, enlighten, entertain & engage within a framework wired for a connected and distracted world. http://www.WorldReligionNews.com/

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Humanist, Religious Freedom & Scientology Writers Launch Featured Contributor Program on WorldReligionNews.com

agnosticism – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com

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Agnosticism is the position of believing that knowledge of the existence or non-existence of god is impossible. It is often put forth as a middle ground between theism and atheism. Understood this way, agnosticism is skepticism regarding all things theological. The agnostic holds that human knowledge is limited to the natural world, that the mind is incapable of knowledge of the supernatural. Understood this way, an agnostic could also be a theist or an atheist. The former is called a fideist, one who believes in god purely on faith. The latter is sometimes accused by theists of having faith in the non-existence of god, but the accusation is absurd and the expression meaningless. The agnostic atheist simply finds no compelling reason to believe in god.

The term 'agnostic' was created by T. H. Huxley (1825-1895), who took his cue from David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Huxley says that he invented the term to describe what he thought made him unique among his fellow thinkers:

They were quite sure that they had attained a certain "gnosis" -- had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.

'Agnostic' came to mind, he says, because the term was "suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant...." Huxley seems to have intended the term to mean that metaphysics is, more or less, bunk. In short, he seems to have agreed with Hume's conclusion at the end of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.*

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason resolved some of the main epistemological issues raised by Hume, but at the expense of rejecting the possibility of knowing anything beyond appearances of phenomena. We can't know god but the idea of god is a practical necessity, according to Kant.

Finally, there is an argument, popular among some who fancy themselves intellectuals, that agnosticism is the only intellectually honest position to take with regard to gods. According to this viewpoint, theism and atheism are arrogant affirmations of being certain about something that is intrinsically unknowable. It is, of course, true that it is possible there is some unknowable being or entity who creates universes, has unimaginable powers, and is like nothing we have any experience of. No atheist that I know of has ever denied such a possibility, nor have we denied the possibility of an unknowable Easter Bunny who lays eggs on Saturn or any other imaginable epistemic improbability. So what? Atheists and theists do not concern themselves with epistemic improbabilities, but with gods about whom stories have been told for millennia. The more we learn about the universe, the less reason there is for believing that any of these gods were not created by human imagination. Agnosticism regarding Zeus or Abraham's god is not an intellectually honest position, as it can be maintained only by a fatuous and dishonest treatment of the available evidence. That evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that all gods fashioned thus far in the minds of men are highly improbable. Agnosticism regarding unimaginable, unknowable beings is redundant.

See also atheism, bright, gods, theism, and theist.

further reading

books and articles

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agnosticism - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

Hawthorne Heights Interview – piano lessons, agnosticism, oyster wrap – Video

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Hawthorne Heights Interview - piano lessons, agnosticism, oyster wrap
http://www.enochmagazine.com MUSIC by: False Idle http://www.falseidlepunk.com In this video interview with Hawthorne Heights, the guy wears sunglasses the whole time! Eno...

By: Enoch Magazine

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Hawthorne Heights Interview - piano lessons, agnosticism, oyster wrap - Video

How China Fooled the World With Fiat

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By Dr. Jeffrey Lewis

The Chinese financial system, along with the rest of the emerging market, exist as an extension of "the world is flat monetary policy" on a scale never seen before. It is equally a giant leverage play on the last remaining resources for a population that has overproduced its stay.

The financial blog Zerohedge.com recently presented a summary of a BBC program featuring a report from Robert Peston, who traveled to China to investigate how the mighty economic giant could actually be in serious trouble.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mgxx

We've excerpted and commented below...

"China is now the second largest economy in the world and for the last 30 years China's economy has been growing at an astonishing rate, wowing the world, as spending and investment has been undertaken on a scale never seen before in human history - 30 new airports, 26,000 miles of motorways and a new skyscraper every five days have been built in China in the last five years. It is all eerily reminiscent of what happened in the West... the vast majority of it has been built on credit."

Credit equals fiat or currency backed by faith. It is held up by law and force by proxy or by fiat. And while this currency can be created at the will of issuing authorities, it is readily exchangeable and/or replaced by another of the same quality or nature. While exchange rates give rise to the perception of relative value, and massive trade arbitrages the differences, in the end it is all an illusion hanging by a thread of confidence. This confidence, by definition, is unstable and obviously unsustainable.

"This has now left the Chinese economy with huge debts and questions over whether much of the money can ever be paid back (spoiler alert: it can't and it won't)".

Faith is pure emotion. Emotions rise and fall with the tides and the winds of change. It is just a matter of time before the tipping point arrives, driving the masses toward a kind of fiat agnosticism.

"There is an unresolved self-contradiction in Chinas current policies: restarting the furnaces also reignites exponential debt growth, which cannot be sustained for much longer than a couple of years."

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How China Fooled the World With Fiat

Spanish pilgrims of Muslim charity

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Three women fulfill their obligations as Muslims, passing seven times around the Kaaba, the most sacred symbol of Islam, inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca. But their names are not Laila or Fatima or Aisha, just as their native tongue is not Arabic.

They are Mara Antonia, ngeles and Consuelo, three Spaniards who converted to Islam and traveled to the holy city with help from the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, which each year pays for travel and lodging expenses (around 4,000 euros) for several people like this group of women.

In October, a group of 15 Muslim Spaniards from Madrid, Granada and Crdoba performed Hajj in Saudi Arabia on the invitation of a foundation from the UAE. "The trip was a gift from God," says ngeles Crespo, a 49-year-old former school teacher from Madrid.

"It was an adventure, an experience and an emotional feeling," adds Consuelo, 51, who is from Zamora.

These are very expensive trips that you cannot easily afford"

"It helped us learn a lot about the history of this religion and we were able to visit the holy places," says Mara Antonia Garca, 56, from Extremadura. All three women are back in Spain, wearing their veils, as they recount their journey near the women's oratory at Madrid's Central Mosque. But their journey really began with their own conversion to Islam.

Garca was a Christian who married a Palestinian man, with whom she had five children. "When they were born, I began wondering which of the two religions we had at home would bring more to my children," she says. "They started going to Islamic religion school, and I would go with them, and I slowly began to be interested. I realized that I felt really good about it, and I started going deeper into it." That was over 20 years ago.

Consuelo, who married an Arabic man over two decades ago, has a similar story to tell. "I used to be a Christian, but a lot of things didn't make sense, while Islam made complete sense to me," she says.

For Crespo, conversion from her initial agnosticism was more recent: "Three years ago I began a relationship with a Moroccan person, and at the same time I began reading books on Islam. I was suffering from depression at the time, but ever since I came into contact with this religion I have found great peace."

There are 1,732,000 Muslims in Spain, of which 1,163,000 are foreign nationals mainly from Morocco and Algeria, as well as other Arab countries. There are also 568,000 Spaniards who profess the faith of Islam, which includes foreigners who were nationalized Spanish, the children of mixed couples and native Spanish converts (21,000), according to the latest data from December 2013 provided by the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain.

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Spanish pilgrims of Muslim charity

How an On-Air Panic Attack Improved My Life

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Shortly after seven on a sunny spring morning in 2004, I freaked out in front of five million people.

I was filling in on "Good Morning America," anchoring the news updates at the top of each hour. I had done this job plenty of times before, so I had no reason to foresee what would happen shortly after the co-hosts, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson, tossed it over to me for my brief newscast: I was overtaken by a massive, irresistible blast of fear. It felt like the world was ending. My heart was thumping. I was gasping for air. I had pretty much lost the ability to speak. And all of it was compounded by the knowledge that my freak-out was being broadcast live on national television. Halfway through the six stories I was supposed to read, I simply bailed, squeaking out a "Back to you."

My job as a reporter generally does not require me to reveal too much about my private life, beyond innocuous banter on Twitter and with my co-hosts on the weekend edition of "GMA" (Likes: animals, music, baked goods. Dislikes: math, reporting outside during snowstorms). But what I discovered as a result of the panic attack has genuinely improved my life, and could, I suspect, help many other people. So even though telling the story makes me uncomfortable, I've decided it's worth the risk.

One of the first things I learned when I consulted a shrink after the on-air meltdown was that the probable cause was my well-hidden and well-managed (or so I thought) drug use. In 2003, after spending several years covering the wars in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine and Iraq, I became depressed. In an act of towering stupidity, I began to self-medicate, dabbling with cocaine and ecstasy. I'm not talking "Wolf of Wall Street"-level debauchery. My intake was sporadic, and mostly restricted to weekends. I had never been much of a partier before this period in my early thirties. In hindsight, it was an attempt, at least partly, to recreate some of the thrill of the war zone. A side-effect of all of this, as my doctor explained to me, was that the drugs had increased the level of adrenaline in my brain, dramatically boosting the odds of a panic attack. It didn't matter that I hadn't gotten high in the days or weeks leading up to my on-air Waterloo; those side-effects lingered.

The doctor decreed in no uncertain terms that I needed to stop doing drugs -- immediately. Faced with the potential demise of my career, it was a pretty obvious call. But as I sat there in his office, the sheer enormity of my mindlessness started to sink in -- from hurtling headlong into war zones without considering the psychological consequences, to using drugs for a synthetic squirt of replacement adrenaline. It was as if I had been sleepwalking through a cascade of moronic behavior. I knew I needed to make some changes to get my life in check -- but I didn't know how, or what they would be, exactly.

By pure happenstance, and despite my lifelong agnosticism, my boss and mentor, Peter Jennings, had assigned me to cover faith. Thus began a strange little odyssey. Leveraging my position as a reporter, I explored everything from mainstream religion to the bizarre fringes of self-help to the nexus of spirituality and neuroscience. The accidental yet enormously helpful end result of all this poking around: I became a reluctant convert to meditation.

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How an On-Air Panic Attack Improved My Life

Perks of Open Bridge Rack : Customization + agnosticism | #OCPSummit

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Joining the already impressive bill of speakers at the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose, California, Brian Obernesser (Director of Data Center Architecture with Fidelity Investments) gave a short and powerful presentation simply titled the Open Bridge Rack walking the audience through the process of designing this device, from inception through manufacturing.

Fidelity has been active in OCP since the beginning, leading and participating in a variety of OCP projects and forums.

In addition to the obvious benefits of the mechanical and the electrical efficiencies on the hardware side, Fidelity embraces the spirit of innovation, open collaboration thats so prevalent in the community today, said Obernesser.But when it comes to adopting OCP hardware, for Fidelity it starts with the rack. We had some challenges with the initial OpenRack designs.

There were the obvious hardware incompatibilities between EIA and OCP standards, but for us OCP adoption meant rack replacement. Power systems were sometimes welded to racks, meaning manufacturers would have to operate or design outside their core competencies. Serviceability was a challenge as well. Some of the welded components were difficult if not impossible to access if they required repair, explained Obernesser.

The initial OCP OpenRack designs were not ready for enterprise consumption. That led Fidelity to design their own.

We submitted an idea to the Hackathon in January 2013, an idea of a convertible rack, and a team of five people came up with the first schematics, recalled Obernesser. It was still pretty bulky, heavy, difficult to manufacture and expensive.

This led Fidelity to search for strategic partners in the industry, with experience in manufacturing these components, bringing them where they are today.

The benefits of OpenRack are multiple: it is compatible with both OCP and EIA and it can be converted from the EIA to OCP standards very rapidly, explained Obernesser. The power has been disaggregated from the rack, so this allows subject matter experts and manufacturers to innovate within their respective areas. It also allows Fidelity to respond to the rack demands in our environment.

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Perks of Open Bridge Rack : Customization + agnosticism | #OCPSummit

Windows apps and desktop are coming to Chrome OS, thanks to Google and VMware

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Google, acknowledging that many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications has teamed up with VMware to bring the Windows desktop and apps to Chrome OS. Apparently 21% of commercial laptop sales in the US last year were Chromebooks and with Windows XP soon to be retired, Google and VMware think its prime time you make the jump to Chrome OS.

The setup goes something like this: You (or rather your companys IT admin) installs the VMware Horizon DaaS server. Horizon (which costs thousands of dollars) is basically a big server that runs virtualized instances of Windows. Then, when a user wants to use a Windows desktop or app, they simply connect to the server and request one of those instances. In this case, that connection is made using VMware View and as of 2011, theres an HTML5 version of VMware View that works in all major browsers, including Chrome OS. (In the photo above you can see an early beta version of VMware View logging into Windows 7 on a Chromebook.)

The HTML5 viewer is surprisingly good, especially over a high-speed LAN but you probably wont be using it to play fast-paced games on your Chromebook. The main use-case here is giving employees access to legacy applications old, sometimes bespoke Windows programs that are very difficult to upgrade or migrate. This solution could also allow you to use high-performance applications like Photoshop on your wimpy, low-spec Chromebook.

Beyond platform agnosticism, the biggest benefits of running the Windows Desktop as a Service (DaaS) are ease of management and security. As you may know, Windows (for a variety of reasons) isnt the safest OS for enterprise use while Chrome OS, at least according to Google, is highly secure and doesnt require additional antivirus software. With Windows XP finally being retired in April, Google is hoping that business customers will switch to Chromebooks + VMware, rather than upgrading to Windows 7 or 8. This is probably a bit too optimistic on Googles behalf, but theres no denying that theres a large, ongoing shift towards cheaper, thin clients that leverage remote computing power (the cloud, a local server, etc.)

The hard truth is that, in a large number of cases, most users dont need a full Windows machine. Almost everything can now be done in the browser a fact that Google must be very, very happy about.

To use Windows apps on your Chromebook, youll need to be running VMware Horizon DaaS and have access to VMware Horizon View 5.3 which are currently only available as subscription-based services. Google says Horizon View will soon come to the Chrome Web Store, but Im fairly certain you will still need the very expensive Horizon DaaS software to use it.

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Windows apps and desktop are coming to Chrome OS, thanks to Google and VMware


  1. Agnosticism