But see, your theory ‘explains’ all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself. - Vernor Vinge

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all.

Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such—and those living more peaceably around them—we say look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.