Quotes from Andrew Mayne

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

The real danger is that the good guys will blindly keep doing bad things that they don't see as bad.

The difference between a wolf and a sheep is that a sheep will stand by and watch a wolf devour its own lambs. If you threaten a wolf's pup, it'll rip your throat out. Wolves are foul, vicious creatures. But it's better to be a wolf pup than a dead lamb. Now good night.

Researchers have e-mailed text files across the Internet, uploaded them to DNA replicators, and then dropped the DNA copy into "blank" cells, which have then started up and become identical versions of the original organism. It still blows my mind that you can e-mail life like you can cat pictures. Any day now we'll read about some researchers actually e-mailing the cat across the Internet.

exsanguinates

That the human body or any other animal is a system comprised of millions of smaller systems, some of them completely separate from us genetically, shouldn't be an earthshaking revelation.

Tri-acetone tri-peroxide. TATP." "Like plastic explosive?" I ask.

very differently, has got to make you a little on edge.

Damian..." "Yes?" "Where are you?" "Wherever you want me to be." "I'll leave the door unlocked.

remember what my father taught me about orienting. Look for a large marker, then a small one. Find the mountain, then look for the valley, then the tree. Or in the treasure-hunting world, the breakers, the reef, then the cove.

If I were looking for a bacterium that could eat oil, I'd be collecting samples of dirt from the middle of busy freeways. I don't know if I'd find one, but I'm sure I'd discover something interesting.

A creative mind is always on (unless it's not).

We live in an incredible age. People like Laney get it, so do some of the general public. But I think they're still in that early phase like the internet in the 1990s. Yes, they know space is an industry now. Sure, they may know of someone who is peripherally involved. But they don't realize how big things are going to get.

Fun fact: the first manmade object in space was a Nazi V2 rocket in 1942. Space historians and people who like to remind you how there would be no private space industry without NASA tend to gloss over how much those goose-stepping assholes contributed to rocket technology.

Those crocodiles were all members of ISIS. My commander told me so.

Although the crew of Skylab 4 did a kind of mutiny back in 1973 when they thought they were being pushed too far. Ultimately they returned to work; although NASA never let any of the men fly again.

When the news feels too normal, we stop paying attention. But bad news grabs us by the throat—which we willingly bare—especially when it's the kind of news that feels proximal but somehow doesn't quite touch us.

I have a ready response for those people: What amount of evidence would convince you that you are wrong? For the truthers, moon-landing hoaxers, and extremists on both sides of any issue, the answer is simple: nothing.

But when I set it back down she's still staring up—almost as if she's looking to God for

Medicine is conservative. Sometimes for the right reasons. Sometimes for the wrong reasons. We'll let people die from a pandemic because we don't want to give them a cure that might also kill them. It's easier to deal with the repercussions of a death by natural causes than a death from an experimental procedure.

If you're Stephen King and you realized halfway through you've created far too many plot lines; you arbitrarily murder a few in the middle of the book. If you're George RR Martin; well, you just keep writing more books and murder them at your leisure.

You'd be surprised by how eager true believers are to talk." He smiles. "And if that doesn't work, I'll tell them I'm trying to catch a guy who punched a baby dolphin.

while the hunt for Osama bin Laden was still ongoing, there were serious talks about engineering a particular strain of flu virus that would target only him.

What's the delimiter between pyramid and ziggurat?