I've known people who've given their whole lives over to the same kind of search, but if they find nothing in a century or two they usually become discouraged. The only way we could do this was by refusing to make it the be-all and end-all. The only way we could afford to try was by ensuring that we could also afford to fail.- Incandescence, Greg Egan
"I'm migrating to Carter-Zimmerman. What they're doing makes sense, and I want to be part of it."
Inoshiro nodded blithely. "Then I wish you well."
"That's it? Good luck and bon voyage?" Yatima tried to read vis face, but Inoshiro just gazed back with a psychohlast's innocence. "What's happened to you? What have you done to yourself?"
Inoshiro smiled beatifically and held out vis hands. A white lotus flower blossomed from the center of each palm, both emitting identical reference tags. Yatima hesitated, then followed their scent. It was an old outlook, buried in the Ashton-Laval library, copied nine centuries before from one of the ancient memetic replicators that had infested the fleshers. It imposed a hermetically sealed package of beliefs about the nature of the self, and the futility of striving ... including explicit renunciations of every mode of reasoning able to illuminate the core beliefs' failings.
Analysis with a standard tool confirmed that the outlook was universally self-affirming. Once you ran it you could not change your mind. Once you ran it, you could not be talked out of it.
Yatima said numbly, "You were smarter than that. Stronger than that." But when Inoshiro was wounded by Lacerta, what hadn't ve done that might have made a difference? That might have spared ver the need for the kind of anesthetic that dissolved everything ve'd once been?
Inoshiro laughed. "So what am I now? Wise enough to be weak? Or strong enough to be foolish?"
| Country | Land Area (sq. km.) | Population (Millions) | Density (people/sq. km.) | |
| India | 3,287,240 | 1147.99 | 349 | |
| Pakistan | 803,940 | 172.80 | 206 | |
| Nepal | 147,181 | 29.51 | 184 | |
| Bangladesh | 144,000 | 150.45 | 1045 | |
| Sri Lanka | 65,610 | 19.67 | 319 | |
| Bhutan | 47,000 | 0.67 | 14 | |
| Maldive | 298 | 0.35 | 1105 | |
| Total | 4,495,269 | 1521.45 | 338 | |
| The World | 148,940,000 | 6750 | 45 | |
| Fraction | 3.02% | 22.54% | 751.11% |
....
Improved “transparency” – a favorite remedy of politicians, commentators and financial regulators for averting future train wrecks – won’t cure the problems that derivatives pose. I know of no reporting mechanism that would come close to describing and measuring the risks in a huge and complex portfolio of derivatives. Auditors can’t audit these contracts, and regulators can’t regulate them. When I read the pages of “disclosure” in 10-Ks of companies that are entangled with these instruments, all I end up knowing is that I don’t know what is going on in their portfolios (and then I reach for some aspirin).
....
"NGC 5257/8 (Arp 240) is an astonishing galaxy pair, composed of spiral galaxies of similar mass and size, NGC 5257 and NGC 5258. The galaxies are visibly interacting with each other via a bridge of dim stars connecting the two galaxies, almost like two dancers holding hands while performing a pirouette. Both galaxies harbor supermassive black holes in their centers and are actively forming new stars in their disks. Arp 240 is located in the constellation Virgo, approximately 300 million light-years away, and is the 240th galaxy in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. With the exception of a few foreground stars from our own Milky Way all the objects in this image are galaxies."
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