I was watching the Colbert Report last night, as I do on most weekday nights (it doesn’t air on Friday, dangit!) and I was enthralled by his guest, a theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall.

I’m not sure if it was expressly stated, but there was a discussion of what I’m going to like to call Transdimensional Particles. Particles that could exist in two dimensions at once. Wouldn’t you like to be in two places at once? I can tell you that there are many times I wish I could be in two places at the same time. Heck, I wouldn’t mind being in three or four places at once.

It’s important, sometimes, to at least appear to be in more than one place at a time, and that comes with a bit of help, and a lot of information. People may often ask where you heard this or that, and sometimes it’s important to tell them, but many times it’s just not prudent to be revealing your sources, it might just be more important to provide that illusion of being in more than one place at a time.

I have strong feelings for the different parts of my life, I have a wonderful family, on both sides and all around. Being a family isn’t restricted to blood relation either, I’ve got many people I consider far to friendly to be just friends, and I rely on them very much. In everything I do I try to make sure that I “first do no harm.” It’s what many take as the important meaning of the Hippocratic oath, and something I hold forward as a motto to live by. I have, in the past, and perhaps in the future will again, caused harm by my actions and my speech. To say that these things are intentional is flat out wrong, and I’ve tried to make amends whenever I’ve inadvertently done wrong. But in many cases I’ll come into information about something that will put me in a spot where revealing that info will both cause harm and protect another. What is the right action, can I also be on two sides of the same argument? No, of course not, so I have to take my pick, use my moral compass to direct me in the right direction and deal with the consequences. Sometimes it’s a question of someone not necessarily telling the truth, sometimes it’s a question of not being told the “rest of the story.” But sometimes too, it’s because I’ve been specifically asked not to say the rest. Perhaps I’ve been told not to use the words that would, perhaps, open up the dialogue that is needed.

Well, I speak only for me, and can only judge myself by my own moral compass, others may wish to see the worst, while those who know, will see what is real.

Ray