Re: time travel paradoxes. I heard a particularly elegant hypothesis some years ago on this sort of thing (sorry I can't attribute it). The scenario is that a future version of you travels back to our present and shoots the current you, setting up the classic paradox - since you get shot in the present, you can't exist in the future to travel back to shoot yourself; so you don't get shot and can thus travel back etc etc. One way this could be prevented is for events to be arranged in such a way as to cause your future self's arm to jerk at the critical moment, inflicting nothing more serious than a shoulder wound. This wound, in turn, is what causes your future self's arm to jerk and save your life. The bottom line is that history relative to the time traveller will always find a way to protect itself. Similarly, if you travelled back to assassinate Hitler, either you would be captured before the attempt, or your gun or bomb or whatever would mysteriously jam, or instead of killing him you just end up pissing him off even more. Of course it's all speculation and guesswork based on zero evidence, but it really is a beautiful notion. Plus it makes great sci-fi.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
