I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had. Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up.

The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.

Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with the other words in perfect syntax. There is no place for verbosity or carelessness. To become fluent in a computer lnaguage demands almost the antithesis of modern loose thinking. It requires many interactive sessions, the hands-on use of the device. You do not learn a foreign language from a book, rather you have to live in the country for year to let the langauge become an automatic part of you, and the same is true for computer languages.