The news media reported the $250 million as an unthinkably huge waste of money and proclaimed that something was wrong with NASA. The result was an investigation and a congressional hearing. Not to defend failure, but $250 million is not much more than the cost to produce Kevin Costner's film flop Waterworld.

There are as many atoms in each molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. This is true for dogs, and bears, and every living thing. We are, each of us, a little universe.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

There's a saying in the scientific community, that every great truth goes through three phases. First, people deny it. Second, they say that it conflicts with the Bible. Third, they say that they've known it all along.

We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.

Many people are unhappy because there was some point in their past where there was some glory day, and as they get older they're not creating more glory days. They reflect on a time that they will never reach again, and it brings some level of dissatisfaction into their lives. I have circumvented that by simply making incumbent upon myself to always be productive in ways that are consistent with my physical body, my mental state of knowledge, but more important, my presumed growth in wisdom that would come with age.