
Behind the picture is another story, one of unbelievable avian commitment. We've lost the ability, it seemed to me at the time, to function in a socially democratic way. At least, in any way we would be familiar with, having been familiar with over-comfort for some time. Meanwhile, the world at war with itself is showing no sign of surrender. Fishing fleets, prospectors and logging companies aren't really interested in sustainability, because nothing matters any more but more power. People, plants and wildlife are just collateral damage now. Supermarkets and petrol pumps still have plenty of customers, so no reason to roll over.

Only, it can't. Change is as inevitable as Uncertainty - in fact they're probably related. Time is a wave form we ride. The huge blockade in the way of certain progress is called Woo, which is by definition both an insult and a bias, even if the word does have certain quaint connotations. Woo stands in the way of intuition. Woo wants everything without a perfectly executed logical equation in tow to be kicked into the trash can and labelled Junk (which is, as I recall, what happened to 95% of our DNA not so long ago). A Woo merchant won't let you pass Go without a degree, or at least a grounding in maths so that you can understand what they mean when they say the Universe is flat. Woo merchants are not interested in sustainability of the human spirit, because they are determined to believe firmly that no such thing exists.

When you've done that, and know what I mean, which if you've read this far is very likely, you'll be able to appreciate how important it is to talk about this stuff without unconscious bias getting in the way of intuition, and finding the final keys to that GUT scientists are so keen on holding aloft for the next Nobel. Remembering as you do so that quantum mechanics, like time, is a shared yet relative commodity, that nothing can ever happen the same way twice, and that your particles, just like everyone/everything else's, have become waves and collapsed back into particles again during the nanosecond it took to read the last word.