Charles E. Tomlinson

December 2004 -- I have grown to think that life is a cosmic whack-a-mole game, where we are the moles and reality is the whackor. We make subterranean thought tunnels, mazes of connections, deep caverns of speculation, but sooner or later we must stick our heads up out of a hole. Reality whacks us or it does not, depending on whether our conclusions are right or wrong. If we do not get whacked, we should continue to enjoy the sunshine of being right. If we do get whacked, we should retreat to our tunnels, recompute our plans, and stick our heads up again.

December 2004 -- The world is covered with OPS. It is the detritus of thousands of years of human activity. It is the leavings of the billions of people who have lived before us on this planet—the ideas that work hidden in the muck of those that don't, the religions, the political principles, the edicts of kings, and the propositions of tyrants.