It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?

With billions of years, who knows what science might make possible? Why, it might even make it possible for an intelligence, or data patterns representing it, to survive a big crunch and exist again in the next cycle of creation. Such an entity might even have science sufficient to allow it to influence the parameters for the next cycle, creating a designer universe into which that entity itself will be reborn already armed with billions of years worth of knowledge and wisdom.

The right things to do are those that keep our violence in abeyance; the wrong things are those that bring it to the fore.

It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.

Honor does not have to be defended.