Bela Lugosi is alive.

     50% of communication is, most basically, asking and checking ( most usually referred to as: Bela Lugosi ).
        In schools, how often are students graded on their ability to ask questions? How often are they tested on their ability to check? Clearly, the usual education systems see no real value to communication as they ignore half of what it takes for it to be most effective.
        Here's Bela with some interesting ideas about life:

       
        Why is asking and checking so vital to communication? Because communication always works like this:
                            
                                       Information -------------> Idea


       
      Any information gives an idea. And any information can always give more than one idea. Naturally then, we will often need to ask and check in order to try to better understand the idea.    As an example let's take this statement from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a Labour Party conference in 1996: "Ask me my three priorities for government and I tell you: education, education,education."
        This information, like any information, leads to ideas. So did the audience at the party conference, which mostly consisted of University graduates, ask and check in order to better understand Tony's idea? Did anybody ask him for his definition of "education"? Or did they rise like the front rows of a Bros concert and give him a standing ovation?
         It's not difficult to guess what happened if we consider how "educated" people are generally trained not to ask and check about certain basic things.
          Tony got into power, and nearly 20 years later his idea of "education" still has the consistency of Dracula in gaseous form. We are not allowed anything solid, for then we might be able to understand the idea and could do something about it.

                                          Bela Lugosi's pyramid.

          The universe, and everything in it, most basically consists of information. And all that information can be simply expressed like this:

                                                
           If we wish to try to understand anything, then we need the information in Bela's pyramid.
           It always starts with: "What is it?" Yet, as we are usually not encouraged to ask, the simple and natural desire to find out what something is, is often squashed, and people are often left with ideas that are simply presented to them. Ideas that usually don't help us understand much.
           To take the simple example of Gaza; in order to have a better idea of the problems there, we would first need to understand what it is. Is it a place where nut-cases fire AK-47s randomly into the air, or is it "the world's largest open-air prison"?
           It is an interesting exercise to actually ask  people what they think things are, as it quickly becomes clear that people don't often apply the simple question: "What is it?" to the information that rolls across our screens.
           But never fear, for the great Tony Blair, that good Christian man, is a special peace envoy to the Middle East!
           Hang on... he's a war criminal isn't he? Or is he?
           A war criminal? What is it? Surely it's not one of us?

           Definition of terms is a corner-stone of critical thinking and the question, what is it? is at the apex of Bela Lugosi's pyramid. If we are to make any serious effort to understand anything at all, we need to find the information in the pyramid. Finding that, we can have a better idea whether someone like Tony Blair is a great man, a war criminal, or just some kind of dangerous vampire. Hmm... perhaps the stakeholder society is a good idea.
           
           But of course, because any information gives many ideas, there's always another opinion. Here's another, more musical, view of Bela Lugosi: