The only thing we ever do.

                                        Regeneration scene of the 3rd God.          Ever since He appeared in his first adventure thousands of years ago on Saturday the 23rd November*, God has been a hugely popular character thanks to his mastery of time and space, his interactions with his mainly human companions and, of course, his battles with the evil of the universe. Spanning the generations as parents pass on their love of Him to their children, His fans continue to praise and laud the show whilst arguing over the finer details of the stories. It's not surprising that a story as long in the telling as that of God's has often had armies of fans disagreeing over what is or isn't canon.          A lot of th...

Why was I even alive at all ?                Most of the thinking that has been done about  communication has been in the field of  Information Technology , with the general approach being concerned with  Claude Shannon 's idea that: " The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point." This is, of course, a very reasonable approach as long as you are dealing with machines. But another fundamental problem, and one that I would argue is infinitely more important at this time, is that human beings are, very clearly, not machines.         So how does communication work in people?                 Communication always most basically works as: Information --------> Idea . (With Idea here being define...

The midnight hour is close at hand.        In December 1982,  Michael Jackson's music video for Thriller emerged from the Stygian gloom of Union Pacific Avenue and proceeded to shuffle and clap its way across the planet; with continents and cultures of all kinds succumbing to the remorseless 40,000 year old funk.       This particular viewer, however, was moved to ask: Why is this called " Thriller" when it's clearly about a horror movie?               " It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature. "                     - Jorge Luis Borges *               All communication always (...

      When the events that came to be collectively known as 9/11 occurred in the United States it was late night in Asia.* That night I made a phone call to my brother in China to arrange a forthcoming trip to visit him. When he answered the phone, I asked how his evening had been. He said: "We had a great night in a bar, some Chinese guy was trying to convince us that some terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center and that the twin towers had fallen down!"       "It's true." I said.  And since that day, pretty much the only thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it happened. The who, what, how and why of that day however, have given rise to a much broader range of ideas.     As far as I know,* there is no-one claiming that the twin towers didn't fall down that day, and they are, in fact still there. But every other piece of information about that day has been lifted high or torn apar...