I can tell you that in my modern life I enjoy language. I enjoy words, their meaning, what they sound like to the ear, what they sound like to the listener. I strive to write the perfect sentence in all that I do, and when I write [the] perfect sentence I know it. If I had a second life I'd be a librettist for Broadway musicals.

But you will hardly ever read about them. Why? Because once again, the media has predetermined what is not worthy of coverage, even when the news item is something as uninteresting as the cosmic origin of every element in your body.

You don't discard Newton. Newton becomes the limiting case of how you would apply Einstein's theories.

Great scientific minds, from Claudius Ptolemy of the second century to Isaac Newton of the seventeenth, invested their formidable intellects in attempts to deduce the nature of the universe from the statements and philosophies contained in religious writings.... Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same. But they are not.

Some morning while your eating breakfast and you need something new to think about, though, you might want to ponder the fact that you see your kids across the table not as they are but as they once were, about three nanoseconds ago.

Some memories are best absorbed through your eyes in real time, even if you have no record of it later. Because then you can access that memory and how you felt in that moment. If you're looking at your cellphone screen, taking a video of something that is otherwise unforgettable, watching it later will not recover the emotion you would have had, had you witnessed it directly.

If your belief system is not founded in an objective reality, you should not be making decisions that affect other people.