For me, the meaning of life is pretty clear: Living things strive to pass their genes into the future.

I am so old, I entered engineering school with a slide rule. And I left engineering school with a calculator. I can still use a slide rule but it's not a skill you especially need anymore.

I just want to remind us all there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious, who get enriched by the wonderful sense of community by their religion. But these same people do not embrace the extraordinary view that the Earth is somehow only 6,000 years old.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.

Talk about science with everyone you meet. Especially talk about climate change. It needs to become a part of our everyday conversation (the way it is everywhere else in the world).

People confuse the word cynicism with the word skepticism. One is “you’re not gonna pay attention to anything, think everything’s screwed up, nothing’s ever gonna work out right”, that’s cynicism. But skepticism is, “you’re presented with evidence and you do your best to draw conclusions based on that”. So, as the saying goes, Bill Nye, do you believe in ghosts? No. However, I would love to see one. Bring it on. I’m open minded to the idea, but the more I look into it in a skeptical frame of thinking, the less likely it seems.