The genetic code is not a binary code as in computers, nor an eight-level code as in some telephone systems, but a quaternary code with four symbols. The machine code of the genes is uncannily computerlike.

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence.

Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up.

I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.

It is a remarkable coincidence that almost everyone has the same religion as their parents and it always just so happens they're the right religion.

God is an idea that people believe in and I spend time arguing with people that subscribe to that idea(man made idea).

Reductionism is a dirty word, and a kind of 'holistier than thou' self-righteousness has become fashionable.