Good programmers stay open minded to that even though there is no obvious way to improve what they've done they... they keep looking and they listen to what other people have to say.

R&D generally has been a bipartisan thing, because in the IT space, in the medical space, the U.S., the benefits to ourselves and the world and our economy have been very, very clear. I'm hopeful we can make a very strong case there. Energy is actually harder; it takes more time to get a product, but if you do it's a very, very big market and the constraints of doing that in a clean way are more obvious all the time.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

My wife thinks she's better than me at puzzles. I haven't given in on that one yet.

It's easier to add things on to a PC than it's ever been before. It's one click, and boom, it comes down.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

Until recently, over 98 percent of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory. If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better.