The tragedy isn’t that people don’t think. It’s that they do think; they’re just not very good at it.

Philanthropists are fine, I guess, if that’s the way you roll. But what we really need is more people leveraging their fortunes for the betterment of the non-human natural world. Needing a word to describe that activity, I suggest: philanimalism. (Sadly, I am merely a co-discoverer here. The word appears in Anthony Trollope’s 1877 book The American Senator.)

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
– Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

If there’s a hole in the bottom, rocking the boat may be the only way to stop it from sinking.

I am mostly interested in the aesthetic experience associated with the unification of scientific theory. Why? Because the fact that such unification is possible is the deepest truth about the universe, and the fact that we find such unification aesthetically appealing is the deepest truth about us.