...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
It's not the things you don't know what gets you into trouble. It's the things you do know that just ain't so. – Will Rogers
A man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest. – Paul Simon
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett[1]
Into the distance disappear
the mounds of human heads.
I dwindle - go unnoticed now.
But in affectionate books,
in childrens' games,
I will arise to say: the sun!
– Osip Mandelstam
Wikipedia time is 5:10 PM. This user's time is 5:10 AM (New Zealand)
This editor is a Looshpah Laureate of the Encyclopedia and is entitled to display this Book of All Knowledge with Secret Appendix, Errata Sheet, and Author's Signature.
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
Committed identity: 2df74e7010c0d8280c58c3eec1adf2ab682bfebccc74a9963c011f72661f329f4396ced2a556c833cea731f46f04748b5170e44dd5577b5e6af8bc848b3bb234 is a SHA-512commitment to this user's real-life identity.
^Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Balantine Books, p. 25