the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. - Isaac Asimov

"The Earth," he said, "is a large and very complex lifeboat. We still do not know what can or can't be done with a proper distribution of resources and it is notorious that to this very day we have not really made an effort to distribute them. In many places on Earth, food is wasted daily, and it is that knowledge that drives hungry men mad."

Muy al norte, las tribus suecas que tenían por jefe a Rurik se habían hecho con la ciudad septentrional de Novgorod en el 862. Los miembros de estas tribus se llamaban Varegos (que posiblemente signifique "hombres juramentados", en referencia a un grupo cuyos miembros se juran lealtad mutuamente). También se llamaban a sí mismos rus, y con el tiempo el nombre se aplicó a las llanuras orientales. Era la tierra que nosotros llamamos Rusia; así que los eslavos que sitiaron Constantinopla en el 865 eran los antecesores de los que hoy llamamos rusos

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.