The post office doesn't guarantee delivery, but it tries really hard. It's called best efforts communication. If you put two postcards in the post-box, they don't necessarily come out then in the same order that you put them in. So, that means that t...
If market pricing is the only legitimate test of quality, why are we still bothering with proven theorems? Why don't we just have a vote on whether a theorem is true? To make it better we'll have everyone vote on it, especially the hundreds of millio...
I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get ...
I envision a day when a businesswoman will be having lunch, and then her phone will ring. When she opens it up, she will see an image of the latest Marc Jacobs coat that just arrived in stock. With a click of a button, she can purchase it and then fi...
Wine lovers have known for centuries that decanting wine before serving it often improves its flavor. Whatever the dominant process, the traditional decanter is a rather pathetic tool to accomplish it. A few years ago, I found I could get much better...
Now, to find dinosaurs, you hike around in horrible conditions looking for a dinosaur. It sounds really dumb, but that's what it is. It's horrible conditions, because wherever you have nice weather, plants grow, and you don't get any erosion, and you...
Three things about water affect almost all of cooking. First are the hydrogen bonds, which is why it has an incredibly high boiling point. Another is that it's a polar molecule, so that it dissolves a lot of things, and there are things that won't mi...
It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellect...
A child who was born with a silver spoon is likely to not appreciate all he is provided with. And it is likely that a child who grew up from the dust to look down on others once the floods gate of success opens up for him. It is NOT where you come FR...
We put on shows at Golden Gate Park with the Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and the groups were part of the community they emerged out of, not some superstars. We had multiple stages, diversions, communal entertainment. There is something slightly fasc...
WhatsApp is both disrupting and demonetizing the entire wireless industry, and now the Facebook acquisition provides the infrastructure needed for WhatsApp to begin offering voice calls. So instead of people paying on average $80 per month, users onl...
Do you really think anyone needs some kind of notarized statement saying 'Dear Saint Peter, here's another stiff, pass him through the gates, signed, Father McGonnigill.'...'PS: He once had a hot dog on a Friday, but don't hold that against him.'
I would never come out and say I was gay, because I'm not gay. And there's part of me that kind of wishes I was gay, and I think that that comes from anybody who is constantly wishing they were in the minority, you know, and constantly wants to be ki...
It's strange - there's a public persona of me that does nothing for me: the side of me where it's 'US Weekly,' where 12 cars sit outside my house because of who I married. That side never shuts off. I would like that to shut off sometimes, yes.
Naismith: The Gate was found inside a spaceship buried at the foot of Mount Snowden. It was moved to an institute known as Torchwood. But when Torchwood fell.... Let's just say I acquired it. The Master: I like you. Naismith: Thank you. The Master: Y...
It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, expos...
I decided to be an inventor when I was five. My parents had given me a few various enrichment toys like erector sets, and for some reason I had the idea that if I put things together just the right way, I could create the intended effect.
If you want to build an open source project, you can't let your ego stand in the way. You can't rewrite everybody's patches, you can't second-guess everybody, and you have to give people equal control.
There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘w...
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are ...
That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [Busin...
