DID you ever try to learn new ideas and understand something that's way out of your comfort zone?

About ten years ago, I had a go at getting my head around the laws of thermodynamics - the most fundamental laws of physics - which control the interactions of everything in the universe.

It's a big idea, and if I'm honest, remained largely incomprehensible to me no matter how many times I tried - until I stumbled across Ginsberg's Theorem.

Named for poet Allen Ginsberg, it's part parody, part adaptation of the three scientific laws into a more quotable and understandable format, and state that:

1) You can't win.

2) You can't break even.

3) You can't even get out of the game.

Easier to understand, but kind of pointless in real life, I thought, but these three rules have become lodged in my mind along with countless bits of useless trivia at the expense of genuinely useful things like passwords and birthdays.

But while stuck in traffic this week, I got to thinking about how these laws can be applied to elements of life we experience on a daily basis.

For example; I've made it clear in past columns that I'm a bit of a film and television geek, and a couple of weeks ago, like millions of others around the world, I watched on tenterhooks as series six of The Walking Dead introduced a major new bad guy, and created the biggest cliffhanger in its six-year history, teasing the death of another (as-yet unidentified), major character.

Immediately after the credits rolled, many fans took to the internet to complain about or praise the cliffhanger, which won't be resolved for about another six months.

In this case, the producers can't win. They show viewers who died and cut to credits, you lessen the impact of the death. They don't show them? They're a tease or making it up as they go along.

To break even, the showrunners have to give the viewers exactly what they want - more time, more story, all at once, just to keep them sated. Obviously, these things take months to write, film and edit before broadcast, so that's not possible.

To stop playing the game, they'd just have to quit. Not make any more episodes, slaughter the cash cow and just move on. Obviously, that's not going to happen.

In politics it's the same. Look at any local, national or international council or government, and you'll see Ginsberg's Theorem playing out on a much broader (and less geeky), stage.

Politicians can't win. Full stop, end of. It doesn't matter if you can balance the country's books, you're going to rub someone up the wrong way. Whether it's a protestor, a keyboard warrior, or a politically-biased national media outlet, someone will gleefully shout about what you're doing wrong.

They can't break even, because even if they're not upsetting the populace or media, there's a whole bunch of opposition parties who disagree with them simply as an ideology. And they can't stop playing the game because, well, someone's got to do it otherwise what's the point of democracy?

Even in my role, stories and columns generally irk someone, even when they're positive. Regardless of how much copy gets written, there's always the call for more, and the day always starts with a collection of blank pages which need to be filled.

Obviously, Professor Brian Cox would be able to put this all much more eloquently, and in a way that would lead to BAFTAs, not sarcastic internet comments, but as the first law of thermodynamics (sort of) states - you just can't win.

Next month I'll be looking at how the slew of 'manufactured reality' shows are in fact well-meaning tributes to Homer's Iliad*.

*Just kidding. They're literally all kinds of terrible.