Imagine two minor characters, rendered famous by Tom Stoppard, standing in a deceptive void. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern await their entrance on Denmark's stage - or Denmark's entrance on their stage (it all depends on your point of view). They pass the time by spinning coins: a simple game of chance, in which one player flips a coin and the other calls it (heads or tails), winner take all.
Upon them creeps the dawning realization that their coins have spun "heads" more than sixty times in a row. "Enough to make one doubt the laws of probability," one ventures. At any rate, sufficient to impart the dawning notion that something is happening, even though the action appears invisible or absent. Something is happening, the winds are changing direction, and our two unheroic heroes cannot tell which way those winds are blowing.
Imagine ourselves, unfamous, infamous, or otherwise, standing in a deceptive void, assured in the knowledge (if you can call it that) that change is upon us, but unable to discern direction or source - like those two expendable courtiers, unable to tell a hawk from a handsaw or even if the wind is southerly. We need weathervanes.
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