It is difficult, but intriguing, to imagine seeing the world as a fly might. First, flies don't have nearly the same visual resolution that we do... so you have to imagine a fuzzier image. Second, fly eyes are faster than our own and are very sensitive to motion.

It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter.

A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That's a super-interesting problem from an engineering perspective.

For many years in my laboratory and other laboratories around the world, we've been studying fly behaviors in little flight simulators. You can tether a fly to a little stick. You can measure the aerodynamic forces it's creating. You can let the fly play a little video game by letting it fly around in a visual display.

We do care about planets like the Earth because by now we understood that life as a chemical system really needs a smaller planet with water and with rocks and with a lot of complex chemistry to originate, to emerge, to survive.

Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.

I was surprised that when you get into electoral politics how scientific the analysis was in the electorate. You can identify on a state-by-state or district-by-district basis fundamental building blocks that behave in different ways. I was impressed in general with the sophistication of polling.

If you're sending a message to extraterrestrials, what you want to send is what's special about us and our planet - what is unusual. Now, that's not basic chemistry or mineralogy; it's pretty much the cultural stuff and the consequences of evolution.