We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own cul...
I am often asked why there is discrimination against women in science. And I have given it some thought. With prejudicial attitudes, you can't really do much. You can point out when people discriminate and ask them not to.
I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.
Socialism appeals to better classes and has far more strength. Attack the state and you excite feelings of loyalty even among the disaffected classes; but attack the industrial system and appeal to the state, and you may have loyalty in your favor.
Millennials are more aware of society's many challenges than previous generations and less willing to accept maximizing shareholder value as a sufficient goal for their work. They are looking for a broader social purpose and want to work somewhere th...
I became a member of the faculty at Northwestern University in 1965 but did not complete my thesis until two years later at a graduate ceremony at which Carnegie Institute of Technology became Carnegie-Mellon University. At Northwestern, I was mentor...
Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.
These days the technology can solve our problems and then some. Solutions may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than 'able-bodied' folks. The person who has a disability today may have a superability tomorrow.
I am fascinated by all the new technology that creates places for us to meet in what is called cyberspace. I understand what it must have meant for the rebellions in the 19th century, especially in 1830 and 1848, when the mass circulated newspaper be...
It's important with any new technology to try to pay conscious attention to what the drawbacks might be. We choose to multitask. Sometimes our choices aren't the wisest of choices, and we regret them, but they are our choices. I think it'd be wrong t...
The entire political elite has mismanaged the Indian economy for the last 50 years. You cannot solve a crisis that is borne as a symptom of mismanagement in just five minutes or in a week. It will involve significant sacrifices and pain, and I doubt ...
Forcing companies to recruit away from the golf course might lead to the appointment of more women from NGOs and academia and medicine, all of whom are likely to understand such concepts as stewardship and sustainability much better than men picked f...
I spend way too much time watching television, going to sports games, going to movies. It struck me that there's an awful lot of data in the public domain for these sectors. The movie industry publishes weekly sales numbers - not many industries do.
The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control.
From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?
The data does not support that high-income tax cuts are the main drivers of growth, so I don't think that uncertainty over what the tax rate will be for someone that makes a million dollars a year has that big an impact on the economic growth rate in...
It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.
I think the easiest application to help people understand what quorum sensing is and why it's important to study is to tell them that if we could make the bacteria either deaf or mute, we could create new antibiotics.
I realized that lab research was the perfect path for me. It allowed me to spend every day figuring out mysteries/puzzles that have to do with what make us alive. What could be a bigger mystery or puzzle?
If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come o...
When herding behaviour among investors ramps up, a stock's or index's growth rate can increase faster than exponentially, leading to more herding. This positive feedback brings the system to a tipping point. About two-thirds of the time, a crash resu...
