dhewi.co.uk

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.” I have never really understood the English class system. I’m English. Very English. I nodded to myself when Hugh Grant said we’re born one gin-and-tonic below par. And we all swim in this sea of class consciousness, whatever we might like to say about it being a relic of the past. For all we ignore it and pretend otherwise, it makes a massive difference to almost everything experienced by anyone, like me, who comes from a very obvious long-standing English background....

Some time ago, working for a company that was growing fast, I was asked to write an article to appear in a trade magazine. That wasn’t my job, but they liked my writing and my know-how. When the result was passed around the upper levels of the company and the sales team, some people loved it. But overall, it made senior people too nervous, and it was revised beyond recognition, with just the core message still retained for those who could detect it....

In the nineteen-nineties, there was a small chain of shops devoted to men who wished to be, or seem to be (both were catered for), women. I discovered this after reading the autobiography of the transgender owner, part of an exploration that was very important in my life. Visiting the shop in London blew my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things then had been like they have been in the twenty-twenties, I would have gone the whole way down the gender reassignment road, the sheer inevitability carrying me....

Wrestling with the theory of Artificial Intelligence is not a new thing. Two books have occupied space in my head for many years now that still have some of the best questions, at least – The Emperor’s New Mind Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid What they have in common is that they attempt to deal with consciousness, and they take Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a basis for it....

Dusk is later than it was, And, waiting on the path outside karate, It isn’t dark, just getting grey. As we wait, the air is full of shrieks, Cries and clouds of shapes around the tallest trees. The rooks are busy, noisy, crowded, And possibly the tree above us is their pub, With all the noise their sharing of the week. I have no clue what any rooks are doing....