For scientists, reality is not optional.

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self."

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.