The magic words 'on the Internet,' if inserted into nearly any sentence, seem to protect it from normal critical scrutiny.

Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a very scientific way.

Many of the things the slow food people honor were innovations within historical times. Somebody had to be the first European to eat a tomato.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

Universities ought to be aware of the degree they would want to accept funding from governments like China to work on, say, face recognition technology.

The transition from unknown to known-in-publishing has been empowering but also challenging. It's an honor to know that people actually want to know what I think about certain issues, but I also have to be careful about what I say or, rather, how I say it. The Internet is forever, y'all.

In addition to needed gun control reforms, America urgently needs a stronger protest movement dedicated to reducing the glorification of violence in our culture - in music, film, television, video games, and even the Internet.

So as I look at transitioning to the communication platforms of the future, I see that the beauty of Internet protocols is you get the separation of the layers between service and technology.