I'm truly glad I've managed to get the public interested in questions about basic research.
The questions I get invariably focus on Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. It's no secret Hannity is conservative, and O'Reilly certainly is not a liberal. Beck goes well beyond conservatism to some very strange places.
I've never worried about life's big questions.
I like the big questions.
Education in general, and higher education in particular, is on the brink of a huge disruption. Two big questions, which were once so well-settled that we ceased asking them, are now up for grabs. What should young people be learning? And what sorts of credentials indicate they're ready for the workforce?
I do find that I tend to write about big questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How do we relate to each other?
'SoulPancake' is a website that I founded with a couple of friends, and it is for exploring life's big questions.
I first started asking big questions when I was 12, and by big questions, I mean, 'Why are we here? What is this business? We're alive for a few short decades and then poof, we're out of here.'
When I was outed by Perez Hilton as bisexual, I suddenly started being asked personal questions, which was really difficult.
Some of the most interesting questions needing to be asked today can best be asked on television, or on stage, and they can be wonderful, great dramas, but they won't necessarily be blockbusters.
People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery.
The traditional practice is that the justices don't ask the attorney general any questions, so as not to embarrass him. But Bobby Kennedy had let them know that he didn't mind if they asked him questions and they did.
There are no figures in the Trump campaign who colluded with Russia - but there were at least five in the Obama administration who helped push the bogus narratives of collusion and obstruction, and they have plenty of questions to answer.
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
The question is the morning after. What sort of Iraq do we wake up to after the bombing? What happens in the region? What impact could it have? These are questions leaders I have spoken to have posed.
Whenever I'm on a book tour, one of the questions I always get asked is what to wear to various occasions.
The Census Bureau can ask citizens very invasive questions, and if they don't respond, the government shows up at their door and threatens them with a fine.
When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can't, and if we can't own the key technologies, we don't do it.
The question of causality is complex. For some philosophers and physicists, time might not exist. And since cause-and-effect reasoning needs the concept of time - of one thing preceding another - the effort to establish causality is a mug's game, an infinite regression of increasingly unanswerable questions.
