The Big and the Little
And Mallow laughed joyously, "You've missed, Sutt, missed as badly as the
Commdor himself. You've missed everything, and understood nothing. Look,
man, the Empire can replace nothing. The Empire has always been a realm of
colossal resources. They've calculated everything in planets, in stellar
systems, in whole sectors of the Galaxy. Their generators are gigantic
because they thought in gigantic fashion.
"But we, – we , our little Foundation, our single world almost with...
notes Science is Not Built, But Evolves
The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognisable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile and vain. notesIt is not like a city being built through dramatic changes, but like a species that gradually changes, leaving hints of what it once was.
Human Space Exploration is Overrated
Perhaps what we should do is genetically engineer new forms of Intelligent life that can survive the stress of space yet still conduct scientific experiments. Actually, such creatures have already been made in the lab. They're called robots. You don't have to feed them, they don't need life support, and they won't get upset if you don't bring them back to Earth. People, on the other hand, generally want to breathe, eat, and eventually come home.
It's probably true that no city has ever held... notesWe don't remember most of the astronauts, but we do have favorite space photos taken by all the robots we've sent out into the solar system.
Cognitive Prostheses
The sense-represent-plan-act picture is a heroic one, but it is biologically implausible. I don't need to memorize the layout of the physical environment around me — this desk, this room, this city, this country. After all, the desk, room, city are there before me and we are built — through evolution — to have ready sensory access to it.
Shut your eyes. Can you remember the detailed layout around you? It turns out that beyond the broad outlines — the basic schematic organization of... notesGoogle doesn't make us stupider by letting us get by without having to remember things we can retrieve, and the idea that it does comes from a misunderstanding about how humans remember things and how we have always used technology to supplement our memories.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on NASA Funding
First of all, let's clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA?
And so when someone says, "We don't have enough money for this space probe," I'm asking, no, it's not that you don't have enough money, it's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.
You rem... notesThe economic bailout was more than the entire history of NASA's budget. America is prioritizing toward the next quarter instead of the future.
If the Stars Only Came Out One Night in 1,000 Years
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
2 
2 This Emerson quote begs the question: What if we lived on a planet like Venus, where perpetual cloud coverage obscures the skies?
Jesus Describes the End Times
The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times
5 Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 6 “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
8 He replied: “Watch out that... notesAnd tells his followers it will all happen in their lifetime.
Sarajevo and the Importance of Trees
Do whatever you can to stop the killing, to bring about peace, and then bring us trees. notesIn 1992, the city of Sarajevo had 26,111 trees. Three years of war later, only 6,117 remained. Kemal Kurspahic, the editor in chief of a Sarajevo newspaper, articulated the importance of trees in the city. His first wish was for peace. The second thing on his list-- trees.
