“He was the patron saint of all my favorite fellow travelers: the freaks; the fags; the dykes; the queers; the weirdos of all stripes; and that most dangerous creature of all, the artist. He was the crown prince(ss) of the unusual. He was so marvelously, spectacularly weird, and he gave so many oddballs, including this one, hope.”

“In yesterday’s post, I suggested that the difference in homicide rates between America and other First World countries were about two-thirds cultural, one-third gun-related. That’s sort of true, but people have reminded me to think of it as an interaction. Without the cultural factors in place, guns are pretty harmless. That’s why Wyoming can be the highest-gun-ownership state in the country, with 60% of households having a weapon, and still have a murder rate equal to Canada’s and lower than 45 other states’. With the cultural factors in place, guns make a bad situation worse.”

“It’s not that hard to build a vehicle to traverse interstellar distances. The problem isn’t engineering, it’s biology. Human bodies are not set up to endure a cold, dark, multi-millenia trip.  Squishy, watery cells just are not up to the job. If you want to become an interstellar explorer, you need to be made out of something a bit more rugged than meat.”

“When I see a problem, it’s becoming more and more of a reflex to immediately open my mental toolkit of models (otherwise called frameworks) to both dissect, understand, and solve the problem.”