Catmachine

Telephone calls are shit. There's nothing wrong with phones themselves especially now you can use them to play games, take photos, access the internet, send email, mix music, edit images, watch films and listen to albums. The main problem is that you can still make calls on them. Or rather, the main problem is that you can still receive calls. Of course even this wouldn't be a problem if other people didn't insist on calling you. But they do. The bastards. From the beginning of recorded history until the late nineteenth century human communication fell into two broad categories; speech and written. Speech is the oldest and most comprehensive of the historical communication methods. When speaking you communicate with another human being face to face in person and are able to view and interpret non-verbal signals as well as the verbal ones. Anyone who has ever been on a staff development course of any description will no doubt have come across the old adage that d...

One of the criticisms levelled at vociferous atheists is that often they're just as bad as the godbotherers they're bashing, that science itself is as much of a "religion" as hard-core Islam or bible-belt Baptist. This is untrue and unfair. Whilst I don't define myself as an atheist (there are plenty of things I don't believe in aside from a god) I am a rationalist and can see that this argument just doesn't hold water. As far as debate is concerned it's about as sophisticated as playground name calling. " I know you are but what am I ?" I couldn't possibly repel this attack as well as Richard Dawkins does in the preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion . In it he says: "It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will." This is to say a scientist passionate about his beliefs nevertheless when presented with firm evidence to the contrary will - in fact ...

In a couple of blog entries near the beginning of the year I discussed the experience of being a member of a visual subculture. The experience of Being Punky (or Gothy or whatever else it might have been called at the time). In part one I revealed that like many things that teenage boys do it all came down to girls, whereas in part two I dug a little deeper to find that it was also the attitude, the music and most importantly what it felt like that appealed. After all if it hadn't I wouldn't have stayed. Any trouble comes with other people's reaction to this difference of appearance. Over the years I've come across a wide range of reactions from amused bewilderment to outright hostility. One person just couldn't accept the fact that I'd been to university due to an idea that was just far too deeply ingrained in his head - all people who looked like I did were stupid. Maybe I am stupid and perhaps I'm reading too much into it.  After all wasn't th...

I remember the first "officially" grown up book I was given. Unlikely to find its way onto school syllabuses even now, it was the collection First Love, Last Rights by Ian McEwan . I must have been about 15 at the time, so yes, these disturbing tales of masturbation, mental illness, incest, death and pregnant rats did make quite a bit of an impression. Some of the words and phrases therein have stayed with me throughout the years as good writing tends to do. So it was my first "proper" book, having up until that point only indulged in the allegedly juvenile genre of Science Fiction (or SF as it is known to its fans - not " SciFi "). Must have come as a bit of a shock to me, eh? All those serious, adult themes - sexual references especially? Not really. McEwan's short stories were quite tame compared to some of what I'd already read. As an avid devourer of SF anthologies and collections as well as novels I'd come across some right wei...

Note : I am trying to forge ahead with my novel at the moment so even though I will still attempt to post a blog at least weekly, today's entry is a slight rewrite of something I first wrote in the early 2000s; hopefully still relevant today. Everybody complains about their job. It's part of the human condition. We all wish that there was some miraculous magic answer whereby we could be given all the resources we need to live full, happy and comfortable lives and not have to lift a finger. Unfortunately we can't all work in senior management, and there will always be far more boring admin that needs doing than there are people willing to do it, and whilst there are better ways to spend your days than deciphering some self-important kingpin's scrawl and transcribing it into electronic form, there are worse ways too. However, this aside, some people do seem to end up in jobs that are quite specialised in their way, and yet eminently unsuitable for them. Furthermore, some...

Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? It's a very real sensation, far from mere paranoia (although it may be a contributory factor to that misunderstood delusion). Picture the scenario. It's 5am, it's Sunday morning, it's summer and you're walking back home through deserted streets after a club night. It's already daylight and you've got the beginnings of monstrous hangover. Nevertheless, there's something to be said for the silence and solitude. Then you stop. You've got the feeling . Someone's watching. You look around. No sign of anyone. In the distance you can hear the engine of a lone vehicle, but that's all. Even the birds are silent. Some thing is watching. You can feel it. Outwardly nothing has changed; the streets are just as deserted as they were two minutes ago but viewed through the filter of potential observation, everything is suddenly sharper and more sinister. Then you see it. Five floors up and loo...

If enough people agree on something it starts to exist. This is rather worrying. Suppose everyone starts believing in something that's wrong ? An agreed consensus of reality can result in everyone being dead wrong about certain facts. Look at those societies where they believed that the Earth was flat and at the centre of the universe. The fools. But at the time it made perfect sense and if everyone agreed that it was the case then it was so. Not so much a lie as a case of mistaken identity, but even so - the beliefs of the many outweigh the beliefs of the few. Effectively the Earth was flat in those days to all intents and purposes. However, even though we know better now, on some levels we still think of the Earth as flat. This is because maps are flat and if they want us to continue believing that the Earth is made in their image, they actually do have to start lying to us, or if not lying then at least distorting the truth. I'm sure we all have memories of a map ...

Have you ever wondered what it's like to die? I'm not talking about the famous tunnel of light reported by near death experience patients ; by definition that isn't what it's like to die otherwise those describing it wouldn't have been able to pass on their report. If this is the case, then it could very well be impossible to know; however, I'd like to make an informed guess. Ever since I've been writing this blog on a regular basis I've touched on topics like the nature of consciousness, time, space and reality. It shouldn't be that difficult to cobble together a basic description of the dying of the light. I'm not really that concerned with the actual cause of death, provided it's not being run over by a steamroller or evaporated by a nuclear explosion. I'm more interested in deaths of the slipping away variety. I'm going to start talking about noses here for a paragraph or so. It's not as much of a non sequitur as it m...

There are no emotional qualia . As I have discussed before , it's all very well saying you're happy, but how can we possibly tell that your happy is the same as my happy? Describing it is no good, because any qualitative words we use would by definition only refer to our own emotional experiences and our personal definitions. The only way to be sure would be to become each other and then... well we'd actually be each other so we still wouldn't be able to compare and contrast. Given that this is the case, it is odd that some emotions are treated the same in different people. Treated being the operative word. I am talking about depression. Unfortunately it's an emotion that is never really taken seriously and often misunderstood.  On the one hand the unsympathetic tell you to " snap out of it ", " pull yourself together " or " cheer up (it may never happen) " whilst on the other the condition is used to describe trivia: " ...

Readers of my recent blog entry about how reality is in all probability a computer simulation are quite right to feel sceptical. It's clearly a ridiculous notion, a clever bit of philosophical reasoning designed to invoke a paradox. Instinctively we know this. The Simulation Hypothesis goes against what we feel is the truth and as William of Occam himself carved with his famous Razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The original words of Occam's Razor are in fact particularly astute in this case; pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate or in plain English, plurality should not be posited without necessity . Why hypothesize a multitude of simulations when one simple reality will do? It's just common sense. However, common sense isn't always right. The ancients believed that the Earth was flat - and you can see why. It feels like common sense. Down is down - it's where things fall to. The ground is clearly flat and the sky "u...

" Burn up The Sun and all magazines / Pull down the abattoirs and all that's obscene... " I'd never bought The Sun and was uncomfortable about doing so now. It held all sorts of negative connotations for me. Recently I'd been supportive of the successful campaign to get its sale banned from the campus newsagent but it ran deeper than that. In my head The Sun would always be associated with The Fuckers at school, the bullies. They'd bought it regularly, imagining this made them adult and daring. They'd subsequently sellotaped an endless parade of monochrome newsprint breasts inside their desks and - on one memorable occasion - to the blackboard during an RE lesson. So I was in a quandary. Tom had sold his story to The Sun and I was curious to read it. You'll have to take my word for this - and some of you may be cynical - but it wasn't in a lascivious " I'm going to get to read all Toyah's secrets " way. I just wanted to k...

Nothing is real. No, that's not strictly true. To put it another way, everything is real. If it wasn't real it wouldn't be . The point I'm trying to make is that this world may very well not be the real one. Whatever that means. I'll start again. There is a theory that states that if it ever became possible to simulate reality in a computer, such a simulation would be indistinguishable from the real thing and any inhabitants of the simulation would be completely unaware that they were all simply part of a gigantic computer program. There is another theory that states that this has already happened. It's known as the Simulation Hypothesis and has been put forward by Nick Bostrom who is either a philosopher at the University of Oxford or (if his hypothesis is to be believed) a simulation of a philosopher at a simulation of the University of Oxford. The premise is very simple. If, hypothesises Bostrom, it ever becomes possible to simulate reality i...