Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.

A similar shift of interpretation of CT took place at about the same time in another context, namely homological algebra.

I wanted to give Debbie all the details of the weekend so she knew I hadn't hung around the bar drinking coladas the entire time.

I am interested in discussing some of the tensions and contradictions of Carey's distinction between the ritual and transmission models of communication and in focusing upon those instances where his binarism breaks down.