Quotes from Douglas E. Richards

China is one of only two superpowers on Earth, and they haven't made their interest in global domination a secret. They're a ruthless, totalitarian regime. One that has done a brilliant job of showing a friendly, benign face to the world, and managing public relations. Partly because with almost a billion and a half people, more than four times our population, they wield considerable financial resources and punish anyone in the West who tells the truth about them.

There's no evolutionary advantage to long life.

The progress of your technology has been exponential. And the exponent itself has been growing.

And you can't be told the essence of a person, anyway. That's something you have to experience

It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.

Satan is also known as the accuser, the slanderer, and the deceiver.

Einstein: His Life and Universe,

I've always loved bright people. But at the same time, I can't stand intellectual snobs. You know, the type of people who look down their noses at anything mainstream, because they're way too smart for that. The type who have to say everything as pretentiously as possible, using the most obscure vocabulary every chance they get.

I hate to keep treating the universe like it is a living being, but the way I think of it is that the universe wants to deal with changes in time in the most efficient way possible. And it wants to maintain a single timeline, as infinite timelines aren't very efficient.

Here are a few selections from Ridley's Rational Optimist: Page 27: Besides, a million years of natural selection shaped human nature to be ambitious to rear successful children, not to settle for contentment: people are programmed to desire, not to appreciate.

Our adversaries had found a way to wipe the professor's backups in the cloud, as well.

The Rational Optimist: How

I carry out orders given by the first being who activates me," responded the AI, its directed thoughts now coming at her more quickly, displaying the urgency she had called for. "Provided I deem the being worthy, well-intentioned. A being who ultimately wants to use the power of the cube for constructive, rather than destructive, purposes.

The great martial artist Bruce Lee had once commented, "If someone comes at you with a sword, run if you can. Kung Fu doesn't always work.

Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

The need for sleep could be a terrible burden, but she was glad sleep existed. If it didn't, one would never get any real downtime. This way, no matter what happened the night before, you could wake up and feel like you had a new lease on life, a clean slate, that a chapter had ended and a new one had begun.

It was time to admit that his feelings for Megan would be the same, regardless of the presence or absence of the ESP curse that Kelvin Gray's experiments had brought into his life.

When a stampeding herd of cattle were coming your way, it didn't much matter what had caused the stampede. You only had to know that no argument would alter its course, no persuasion would save your life if you were standing in its path. Recinos

Dark energy can be tapped into, and all of this crazy energy can be bottled and used after all. But only by using it at right angles to the four dimensions of space and time. By driving the energy usage through a fifth dimension. My

even after he had slipped a knife between your shoulder blades, you would think that this was somehow your fault.

And sometimes a less common word needs to be used to convey a nuance, or achieve a necessary level of precision. But if something can be said simply, it should be. Using big words isn't impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.

Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once." —Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II)

Doogie mouse, apparently after a very old television show.

The founding fathers had the right idea. They never envisioned professional politicians. They wanted citizen legislators, leaving their farms for a few years to serve their fellow man. A civic responsibility like jury duty. But under our current system, you almost have to be a megalomaniac to have interest in entering the sewer that is politics. And success in this realm requires that backstabbing, shamelessness, lying, and manipulation become an art form.