Occasionally I am asked to write about my sources, and I have to admit, with difficulty, that the regions of the logosphere that I inhabit regularly, or at least set my feelers onto, are distant, entwined, twisty, and thewn with metallic sinews. Let me give you an example. There are two (roughly speaking) universes. One of them has the ability to change mathematics in the other in such a way that some rational point that seemed like it ought be a member of the z^5+c->z mandelbrot set wasn't. The scientists in one thought this would make an ideal method of sending signals to the other universe: once the other scientists in the other universe figured out that the appropriate reverse method involved complicated rhythm modulation for an ancient tribe's drum-ceremonies and how to send (fairly low bandwidth) signals in the reverse direction. The real kicker occurred when they realized that there weren't *two* universes involved, but one, and the laboratories in question were three miles from each other. That made everyone's eyes all squinty for a while as academia had been given a strange fruit to chew on, and nobody was really certain what to make of it for a while.
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