You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

Our children change us... whether they live or not.

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.