We live in a quick-fix society where we need instant gratification for everything. Too fat? Get lipo-sucked. Stringy hair? Glue on extensions. Wrinkles and lines? Head to the beauty shop for a pot of the latest miracle skin stuff. It's all a beautiful £1 billion con foisted upon insecure women by canny cosmetic conglomerates.

The Universe is not what textbook physics tells us except that we perceive it in this way - our instruments and measurement devices are simply extensions of our senses, after all. Reality is not what it seems. Deep down it's pure information - waves of potentiality - and consciousness creating it all.

We have failed to protect science against speculative extensions of nature continuing to assign physical and mathematical properties to hypothetical entities beyond what is observable in nature.

My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena Queen of the Jungle.'