Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

Everything comes to us in fifteen-second sound bites and photo opportunities. All possibility for ambiguity - the most precious trait of any adequate analysis - is erased.

Our current drug crisis is a tragedy born of a phony system of classification. For reasons that are little more than accidents of history, we have divided a group of nonfood substances into two categories: items purchasable for supposed pleasure (such as alcohol), and illicit drugs.

The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.