ORAL SEX: Obscenity is ordinarily defined as "tending to deprave and corrupt" in the sense that exposure to an obscene book, article, film, piece of music, act of ritual, will have the capability, nay, the actuality of rendering the person so exposed more immoral in conventional terms than they were before that exposure - Explicit material involving oral sex might carry some expectation of being held to be obscene, but need the same anticipation necessarily apply to a work which undermines the rational basis of morality itself, without mentioning oral sex (or any other practice of erotic stimulation) other than as a device to catch the attention of a reader who probably knows more, or at least as much, about such recreations as the author

THE NON-LINEAR MODE OF EXPRESSION: The erstwhile Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, a Dr Friedrich Nietzsche, attributes the 'dialectical' method of presenting an argument - that is one where the reader is lead-by-the-nose through a more or less logical sequence of propositions towards some conclusion - to the schools of Socrates and Plato, although he himself frequently adopts an earlier 'aphoristic' style consisting of "thought-bites" around a general subject area presented in a seemingly random sequence; the latter may be a better mode of expression for a Philosophy of Chaos, "Chaosophy", as it mirrors more precisely the way people actually think and allows the reader to develop and build upon what is put forward. The total of what has come down to us from the earliest Greek Philosophers - the Pre-Socratics - consists of Aphorisms. It might be supposed that this is because all of that material is what has survived as quotations embedded in the works of later authors, but it seems that they wrote like that on purpose.

"THE THUNDERBOLT STEERS ALL THINGS": Never object if someone quotes from your material with acknowledgement; what would we know today of the writings of Heraclitus of Ephesus if it hadn't been for later critics slagging him off for his obscurity? - and giving examples.

OBJECTIVE DEBATE: On a philosophical level it is possible to take issue with any of the world's political, economic, social, moral, religious paradigms without arousing undue rancour - excepting Judaism. The unique distinction there is the isomorphic mapping between the belief system and the racial caste; any challenge to the philosophy inevitably attracts the taint of racist motivation, but this cannot make the philosophy an absolute truth-in-itself.

GOING OVER-THE-TOP: Some authors should have been encouraged to confine themselves exclusively to an aphoristic mode of expression, because when they let rip in dialectical style they lead their readers into obsessive territory and provide a launch-pad for the all-too-familiar absolutist excesses of our age - among such writers might be included Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler.

BURNING BOOKS: When the Romans burnt the libraries of Alexandria it was said that the Wisdom of the Ancients fuelled the palace boilers for many months; in 1945 the greater part of the Nag Hammadi codices were used for boiling kettles by the discoverer's mother before some prescient neighbour sussed they might be worth something; it's said, moreover, that the Qumran (Dead Sea) Scrolls were deemed, in the first instance, to be more useful for their calorific value than any discernible content, and, with the benefit of hindsight, one could visualise the Grand Inquisitor (oops - Director of the Sacred College for the Congregation of the Faith) personally operating the bellows, though his interest would have gone beyond that of keeping warm on a chill desert evening.

PICK-A-STICK: There's a kid's game called 'Pick-a-Stick' (various spellings) - you may have played it. The apparatus consists of a vertical plastic tube a couple of inches in diameter with the mid-section perforated with a number of small holes. To set up the game players push thin sticks through these holes so that they protrude from the other side of the tube creating a random criss-cross barrier half way up the apparatus; the top is then filled with glass marbles. Play commences with each participant in turn withdrawing one stick from the criss-cross lattice supporting the marbles, and experience shows that a lot of sticks can be pulled out before any sudden cascade occurs. A philosophical version which might be called Christian Pick-A-Stick has been running for the last 500 years or so - players pulling out the supports include Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Nietzsche, Russell, Gödel - sages all; none has come so close though to precipitation of the endgame as the young goat-herd who stumbled on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only stick now holding up the column of marbles is the cover-up of the Scrolls' contents allegedly orchestrated until last year by Dr John Strugnell, the 'Editor-in-Chief' of the International Team responsible for translating and publishing them - that team for many years has enjoyed Vatican sponsorship through the Sacred College for the Congregation of the Faith and its subsidiary the École Biblique. The world awaits the tumultuous death-rattle of the last Christian marbles crashing down the tube any day now; the wiser adherents, like the Bishop of Durham, appear to be jumping clear in anticipation.

CONCERNING TRUTH. Professor Kurt Gödel first published his 'Undecidability Theorem' in 1931. Using the mathematically rigorous methods of Propositional Calculus, he established that even within the most formally defined axiom systems there will always be constructs which defy proof and disproof alike. It is possible, in fact, to concoct a proposition according to the mathematical rules which states "I am not a theorem", and its negation, by definition NOT a validly formed proposition, which states "I am a theorem". Since this branch of mathematics deals with 'theorems about theorems about theorems about ....' into an infinity of dimensions, one winds up with precisely the cosmically undecidable contradiction so beloved of the Pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus. Put more directly "There can be no Ultimate Truth" - Not only does it stand to reason, you can prove it with maths!

HENRY FORD: The Great Architect of the Production Line gazes down and whispers gently, subliminally, to our traffic-jam consciousness "You can have any God you like: as long as it's Chaos"; and Nietzsche's madcap ghost replies, of course, "You must still have Chaos in you to give birth to a dancing car".

THE FARMYARD: If I ran a farm, I would certainly aim for a situation where the herd, the flock, the gaggle, and any other collective assemblies stayed where they were put, did what they were told, made the minimum of demands on me, and finally queued up meekly to board the wagon for the slaughterhouse. The attractions of running a country in the same way, and of demanding equivalent attitudes from the inhabitants are probably insuperable. How could Christianity have lasted so long if it hadn't been such a useful electric fence?

FRAUDULENT MEDIUMS: The philosophical ascendancy of 'Logical Positivism' in the earlier part of this century, with its abandonment of metaphysical concepts of the supernatural, filtered through into the British legal system in 1952 with the repeal of the Witchcraft Laws and their replacement by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Don't think though that it is any defence in the event of a prosecution to claim that you are a genuine medium; the statute effectively defines mediumship as a fraudulent activity - the best loophole is afforded by the apparent acceptability of such practices when presented as an entertainment. Be sure to "Banish with Laughter" after channelling your New Age Spirit Guide and you should get away with it!

FRAUDULENT RELIGIONS: It might be thought that 'Logical Positivism' would have supported an equally strong argument for a Fraudulent Religions Act, but there was little, if any, debate on the issue, and one or two difficulties might have arisen. For a start the Christian Testament is used as the reference standard for Affidavits and witness Oath-taking in Courts of Law; cast doubt on the veracity of the Testament and watch the foundation of nine centuries of jurisprudence tumble into a chaotic pit of doubt. The proceedings of the Mother of Parliaments herself fare no better, sanctified as they are each day by an Act of Christian Devotion.

"BY RIGHT AND BY HERITAGE": The Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher MP made a great song-and-dance about issues relating to 'Sovereignty' throughout her premiership (remember the Falkland Islands) and in a speech in the parliamentary debate on Europe on 26th June 1991 she proclaimed "Our Sovereignty does not come from Brussels, it is ours by right and by heritage". Since it is quite unthinkable that a Privy Counsellor could lie to the House of Commons, I have obviously been labouring for some time under a delusion that this country's Sovereignty, like that of most of the other member states of the European Community, derived ultimately from a document of purported Roman origin attributed to the year 314 and known as the 'Donation of Constantine'. Unless, of course, the unquestioned perpetuation of that spurious Deed of Title, which has been known to be utterly fraudulent ever since the promulgation of the 'Libellus' of Laurentius Valla in 1440, has now, by default, become definitive of the nebulous concept of 'Right and Heritage'. As Mrs Thatcher also once said "It's a funny old world".

FACT AND FORGERY: It was on the basis of the 'Donation of Constantine' under which the Roman Emperor of that name allegedly gave away all the territories of the old Western Empire to Pope Sylvester and his successors in perpetuity, that William Duke of Normandy (the Conqueror) was authorised by Pope Alexander II to mount an invasion of this country in 1066. The conquest was completed and sanctified by a magical ritual set out in the 'Donation' whereby the Archbishop of Canterbury as proxy for the Pope and the new King swear mutual oaths of support to each other for Church and State as represented by each other's persons while passing various magical weapons back and forth. This ritual is enacted at each new monarch's coronation up to the present day and the document on which it based is a forgery concocted in the Vatican around the year 753 to legitimise a coup by which the Carolingians were established as the ruling dynasty of the so-called Holy Roman Empire. The first coronation using this ritual was that of Charlemagne in 800, supposedly re-enacting a procedure which took place between Constantine and Pope Sylvester nearly 500 years earlier.

THE IRISH QUESTION: We have become accustomed to hearing in recent years that the difficulties in Ireland are rooted in history; variously that the issues date back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1689, to Cromwell's campaigns 40 years before that, and to the establishment of plantations in Elizabethan times. As regards the issue of Sovereignty, though, the root of the matter can be traced quite clearly to the year 1154. Quite simply, the principle of Sovereignty as established in the Donation of Constantine did not extend to Ireland, because that territory had never formed part of the original Roman Empire. Nonetheless, there had been Christians in Ireland certainly since the 4th century, and Rome was keen to assert authority there, and, more importantly, to collect revenues. In 1151, the Bishop of St Albans, one Nicholas Breakspear, was elected Pope, taking the name Adrian IV. He approached the matter of the Irish revenues by applying his papal infallibility to a reinterpretation of the Donation of Constantine to include "all territories upon which the Light of Christ hath shone" as falling within the jurisdiction of the document. Since Ireland clearly enjoyed that blessed condition, Adrian IV issued the Bull 'Laudabiliter' and thereupon donated Sovereignty over the island to the English monarch Henry II, and commissioned him to invade and collect the papal revenues. Nowadays, of course, this is somewhat embarrassing - those in the North of Ireland who wish to retain the link with the English crown would deny the infallibility of the Pope through which that link was established, while those in the South, being predominantly Catholic, accept the notion of Papal infallibility but find the consequence of such an acceptance unpalatable in that it legitimises the union of Sovereignty. Thus neither side cares to talk about it.

"EVEN UNTO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH": The ingenious and infallible extension of the bogus concept of Sovereignty dreamed up by Adrian IV is the basis on which all nation states on earth now claim their legitimacy. The migration process came about as a consequence of colonialism on the part of the European States covered by the original Donation of Constantine, extending their Sovereignty to encompass those overseas territories upon which they "shone the Light of Christ" while enslaving and slaughtering the indigenous inhabitants. When the former colonies gained independence, the essence of that independence was Sovereignty - recognised by other Sovereign States - sanctified by the Christian God, the Christian Pope, the British Monarch, all the countries with the biggest guns, and now, of course, the United Nations. That Non-Christian and Atheistic States have also taken the principle of Sovereignty on board does not alter the historical circumstances under which the concept came into being.

INTERNATIONAL CHAOS: The general perception in considering the affairs of nations throughout recorded history may well be that those who have the biggest armies, guns, tanks and weapon systems can march in where they like and subject anyone who happens to be living there to their will; that may be so, but even the most brutal conquerors like to try and lend some aura of legitimacy to what they are doing, and in current International Law the basis of that legitimacy has been the concept of Sovereignty. Currently there is much talk of a New World Order without it being very clear what is to be understood by that term. What is clear is that the extension of the historic notion of Sovereignty outside the old territories of the Roman Empire was an arbitrary scheme of an infallible English Pope re-interpreting a forged document, sanctified by a religious concept which is itself suffering a serious credibility problem from contemporary documentation (the Dead Sea Scrolls) which can no longer be hidden from academic and, ultimately, public view. Less a New World Order, it might be felt, than Chaos International.