Around The Time Of The Terran Caesar

But Space Travel Can't Ease The Pressure On A Planet Grown Too Crowded Not Even With Today's Ships And Probably Not With Any Future Ships-because Stupid People Won't Leave The Slopes Of Their Home Volcano Even When It Starts To Smoke And Rumble. What Space Travel Does Do Is Drain Off The Best Brains: Those Smart Enough To See A Catastrophe Before It Happens, And With The Guts To Pay The Price-abandon Home, Wealth, Friends, Relatives, Everything-and Go. That's A Tiny Fraction Of One Percent. But That's Enough.

The Most Ridiculous Concept Ever Perpetrated By Homo Sapiens Is That The Lord God Of Creation, Shaper And Ruler Of The Universes, Wants The Saccharine Adoration Of His Creations, That He Can Be Persuaded By Their Prayers, And Becomes Petulant If He Does Not Receive This Flattery. Yet This Ridiculous Notion, Without One Real Shred Of Evidence To Bolster It, Has Gone On To Found One Of The Oldest, Largest And Least Productive Industries In History.

Any Priest Or Shaman Must Be Presumed Guilty Until Proved Innocent.

Moving Parts In Rubbing Contact Require Lubrication To Avoid Excessive Wear. Honorifics And Formal Politeness Provide Lubrication Where People Rub Together. Often The Very Young, The Untravelled, The Naive, The Sophisticated Deplore These Formalities As 'empty,' 'meaningless,' Or 'dishonest,' And Scorn To Use Them. No Matter How 'pure' Their Motives, They Thereby Throw Sand Into Machinery That Does Not Work Too Well At Best.

His Older Self Had Taught His Younger Self A Language Which The Older Self Knew Because The Younger Self, After Being Taught, Grew Up To Be The Older Self And Was, Therefore, Capable Of Teaching.