Categories
Philosophy

You are Small, Fragile and Beautiful

Context: Solar storm on Thursday expected to make Northern Lights visible in 17 states These events are nothing if not a reminder of the diminutive transience of our own lives and (all of) our aspirations, agendas, affiliations and vanities. In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the character Zaphod Beeblebrox enters a machine called […]

Categories
Philosophy

What is Time?

Doctor Who is a classic character of science fiction. He travels through space and time in a sentient machine called the TARDIS. The first thing that most people remark when stepping into the machine is “It’s bigger on the inside!” This, I think, is the situation we find ourselves in with time. As a hybrid […]

Categories
Philosophy

The Mirror of Narrative Self-Inflection

Context: Aliens are a mirror to humanity Aeschylus, Shakespeare or Mary Shelley would all and also very likely recognise these narrative tropes of alien Other as being endemic behavioural and psychological reflections of humanity itself. More interesting, perhaps, than that we find ourselves serially encountering our own image and bundled native biases in fiction is […]

Categories
culture

Doctor Who ?

In an infinite Universe, anything that can happen *will* happen…