While genes are pivotal in establishing some aspects of emotionality, experience plays a central role in turning genes on and off. DNA is not the heart’s destiny; the genetic lottery may determine the cards in your deck, but experience deals the ha...
If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the twentieth century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry--treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of brain chemistry--has been a smashing success. Freud's ...
A world without glass would strike at the foundation of modern progress: the extended lifespans that come from understanding the cell, the virus, and the bacterium; the genetic knowledge of what makes us human; the astronomer's knowledge of our place...
The plant and animal kingdoms (excluding humans) offered some pleasant surprises. Organisms from these realms are much simpler to figure out. Their behaviours are not muddied by personality factors or flawed belief systems. If an insect smells like a...
Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right momen...
If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genet...
Elite runners are genetically gifted, sure, but without intense training, those gifts are wasted. Their training creates a strong work ethic that leaves humility in its wake. There are no short cuts in marathoning, so anyone who is a marathoner has w...
Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him. In addition it was humiliating, because it put you at a disadvantage, it gave the love object too muc...
I’m very fond of the concept of choice as the basis for sexual preference. This point of view is unpopular in an era in which every claim for gay rights is bases on pseudoscientific sulking about how we can’t help being queer; we’re just born t...
Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The eart...
Sure, genetics do play a role in alcoholism. You're more likely to be an alcoholic if one or both of your parents are also alcoholics. But that's just one part of the equation; the other part is your behavior. You can't become an alcoholic if you nev...
Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness ...
Logan: In the beginning the Sentinels were just targeting mutants. Then they began to identify the genetics in non-mutants who'd eventually have mutant children or grandchildren, and they started targeting everyone. Many of the humans tried to help u...
Batty: Yes! [smiles] Batty: Questions... Morphology? Longevity? Incept dates? Hannibal Chew: Don't know, I don't know such stuff. I just do eyes, ju-, ju-, just eyes... just genetic design, just eyes. You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes. Batty: Chew, ...
But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace.
This is the time of myths, Orphan. They are the cables that run under the floors and power the world, the conduits of unseen currents, the steam that powers the great engines of the earth.
My father was an engineer and my mother was a social worker, and they met as young socialists. That probably tells you everything you need to know about my attitude to money - I've never really been bothered about it.
How is it that mankind can engineer condoms to prevent pregnancy and STDs and not be able to invent some sort of emotional safeguard? Is it even possible to abstain from falling in love?
How is it that mankind can engineer condoms to prevent pregnancy and STDs and not be able to invent some sort of emotional safeguard? Is it even possible to from falling in love?
Every character in a story, I thought when I had folded up the phone, has both a purpose and a secret purpose.
Perhaps success is best defined as maximizing the ratio of your rear wheel horsepower to your engine horsepower. Higher %, happier times.
