Thoughts upon waking:
A reasoning astrophysicist type regarding the Fermi Paradox offers: "Intelligent life with the ability to communicate across space is actually probably more rare than people think. Yes, there are a quadrillion stars out there, but without a comet strike to first wipe out billions of years of dinosaurs and mega flora you don't have fossil fuels, and without fossil fuels, you don't get high tech society."
My response: "Yeah, but if a planet is in the Goldilocks Zone, then life is gonna happen, and it's only a matter of time before something wipes it all out. On billion-year time scales, fossil fuel is inevitable, and probably just as common as Goldilocks planets."
Other thought upon waking:
If you don't have the ability to learn and say, "Yeah, I was wrong!" you don't experience character development. You stay the same. In terms of story structure, that means you're either scene padding or a plot device, not a character. When your page turns, you're gone. Books follow people.
That one is more alarming.
Okay. Breakfast time!
