My father was not only a planetary scientist and a great popularizer of science, but he thought very deeply about the world. He was a scholar, he studied history. He taught a class in critical thinking, and he was very, very aware of the directions we might go.

Dad was a difference maker. He reached out to people. He took them by the awe and wonder we feel over the most important questions we can think to imagine. He pulled them away from blind faith, away from pseudoscience, toward a deeper, richer understanding of the universe.

Life in space is impossible,' we're warned, and amidst the hypnotic beauty of these heavens, we become painfully aware of what a hostile environment space is, how unforgiving, how unsympathetic to human desires.

Astonishingly powerful and poignant, 'Gravity' is the rarest of rares: a space survival film informed by a genuine reverence for the awe-inspiring cosmos we inhabit.

I do everything through Twitter, YouTube or the Internet somehow.

They don't call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I'm no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection - without pretending that access itself is such a right.

We need to make sure that there's art in the school. Why? Why should art be in the school? Because if art isn't in a school, then a guy like Steve Jobs doesn't get a chance to really express himself because in order for art to meet technology, you need art.