Quotes from Andrew Mayne

Zookeepers move the food around each day so the gorillas don't get bored. They turn it into an Easter-egg hunt. The gorillas need challenges. The lack of one makes 'em go nuts. We need someone to hide our food," I explain.

I'm wary of too-convenient explanations or mental boogeymen that exonerate us from being lazy and making bad choices, but I can't deny that the evidence is growing that a number of behaviors and diseases may not be due to defects in our genes, but to the survival mechanisms of the biome within us.

meal together, their internal lives far more interesting than the ones they share with each other.

it's not a gut instinct per se—it's a neurological response triggered by one or more stimuli that are either unconscious or barely at our sensory threshold.

Science is based on the premise that logic and reason can tell us the true nature of reality. Religion is based on the idea that when logic and reason don't support a predetermined view of reality, they are at fault.

We all pay our dues. Sometimes that price is integrity. Sometimes the tax is marrying for money instead of love. Sometimes the ticket is for following a dream other than your own.

My curiosity was more powerful than my fear.

But to paraphrase the Supreme Court's statement about obscenity, when it comes to patterns, I know them when I see them.

Authority." I say the word as if it's a foreign expression I've heard for the very first time. "What about me makes you think that's a word I care for or yield to?

Good science requires having your ideas challenged, and that's often difficult for the people whose paychecks you sign.

Cray, I've seen enough turkey shoots to know one when I see it. You set that little fucker up to dangle in the wind like a pro.

Blending in isn't too difficult if you wear the Southern "regular guy" uniform of khaki shorts, baseball cap and fisherman sunglasses with a strap running around the back.

Want to give up saving the world and come play with me?" There is something utterly fearless about her that I admire. While I've been fretting about how to put my skills to better use for humanity and almost dying or getting imprisoned in the process, here's a free spirit who's decided to let the world figure its own shit out while she has a blast making a fortune's worth of fuck-you money.

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. —Alfred Russel Wallace Faking my own death is

There's an intelligence there, a raging fire of curiosity.

A mistake we make too often in science is thinking that having a name for something is the same as understanding

A scientist is someone trying to see order in chaos. Sometimes it simply can't be done, as science tells us via quantum mechanics and chaos theory. A thing can

I hate myself for how much this grudging nod of respect means to me. But it does mean something . . . How do assholes make us care what they think?

It has the look of a home where the wife takes care of everything inside, while the husband neglects everything outside.

spend its life cycle buried in dirt.

The real danger is that the good guys will blindly keep doing bad things that they don't see as bad. It's why people who would give the shirt off their back to help the poor and the hungry will then march against genetically modified food, even if such food products could save millions of children from blindness or starvation. It's when people who want democracy in the Middle East find themselves building military bases instead of schools

The distractions I try to avoid the most are the ones I invite on myself.

Protocols are ideals. They're things we aspire to." I throw in an analogy that Jillian gave me when I explained the situation. "They're not enchanted proclamations from the Ministry of Magic that can't be broken. We break them all the time. I'm sure there's some protocol here that says I shouldn't interrupt you, but here I am, interrupting you.

If you want to do real damage, you don't just break a thing, you destroy a system.