Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can't be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.
Climate change might be disastrous, but does that mean we want carbon taxes that raise the price of a gallon of heating oil to $10? And how exactly will those taxes affect economic growth?
Another cause of change, one less noticeable but fundamental, is the modern growth of population closely connected with scientific and medical discoveries. It is interesting that the United Nations has set up a special Commission to study this questi...
It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people.
Sureness is something like a neck brace, which we clamp around our lives, hoping to somehow protect ourselves from the frightening, constant whiplash of change. Sadly, the brace doesn't always hold.
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.
The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.
Somehow, having an office that I had to go to made me want to work from home, which is easier to do if you don't have a boss waiting for you at the office, even a very blue office.
I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot, but I'm a sucker for humor and strangeness.
My views as an individual ought not to be confused with my views as a scientist - the minute you try to mingle God and science, you get into trouble. Metaphysics has its place, and science has its place; don't mix the two.
As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.
It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.
It took me eight books to finally be at a point in my career where I could come out with a book and say, 'This is meant to be a funny book,' and we didn't have to make any bones about it.
I really like writing heroes who aren't necessarily 'Hollywood handsome.' Personally, I think men who are self-confident, intelligent, and funny are outrageously attractive - and my heroines tend to think that, too!
I try to write stories that are thrilling and full of mystery and funny all at the same time, stories that raise moral questions but come up with very few moral answers, stories that emotionally touch readers through the characters.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Obviously, because of my disability, I need assistance. But I have always tried to overcome the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. I have traveled the world, from the Antarctic to zero gravity.
I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life.
It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.
Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.
The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.
