Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.

... people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning.

Personality and socialization aren't the same thing.

A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence.

I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.

The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives for acts of violence that bring them no tangible benefit.