Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.
We should educate more women and girls. Because that is the surest route to controllably, manageably reducing the human population. Educated women have fewer kids. And the kids they do have are better cared for and are more successful. As I like to say, it's not one thing that we need to focus on. It's everything all at once.
Not wasting any water bottles is good. Not leaving the lights on is good. Turning the thermostat down in the winter, up in the summer, is good. But the best thing any of us in the developed world, especially in the United States, can be doing is talking about it.
No matter what you may believe spiritually or otherwise, the Earth is clearly not 6,000 or 10,000 years old.
I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems.
America has had many other discoverers besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others.
I like to regard myself as someone who's capable of critical thought, that is to say, who can evaluate claims.
Humor is everywhere in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.
That's what makes a human a human, if we store information outside our bodies.
The most serious problem facing humankind is climate change.
Apparently there is redundancy in memory: You store the same memory in different parts of your brain for accessing at different speeds. That speed would depend on the frequency of use and the importance of the knowledge.
Along with the evidence of common sense, researchers have proven scientifically that humans are all one people. We're a lot like dogs in that regard. If a Great Dane interacts (can we say interact?) with a Chihuahua, you get a dog.
There is no debate in the scientific community...We need [Congress] to change things, not to deny what's happening.
If we raise a generation of students who dont believe in the process of science, who think everything that weve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, youre not going to continue to innovate.
We need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.
Teaching creationism in science class as an alternative to evolution is inappropriate.
Evolution is a theory, and it's a theory that you can test. We've tested evolution in many ways. You can't present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.
From an evolutionary standpoint you can't just wipe everything out and start over, and I don't think you can do it in the school system either.
I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.
Tax dollars intended for science education must not be used to teach creationism as any sort of real explanation of nature, because any observation or process of inference about our origin and the nature of the universe disproves creationism in every respect.
Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.
I tell personal stories associated with aspects of the theory, and I hope they are interesting and compelling. I don't feel you're going to change a grownup's mind in one reading. People have to be exposed to scientific ideas over and over again for years. It's also not a textbook.
When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?
Climate change is a real deal. So, hey deniers - cut it out, and let's get to work.
The philosophy of science is inherent in the process. This is to say, you think critically, you draw a conclusion based on evidence, but we all pursue discovery based on our observations. That's where science starts.
