When I was young, I flirted with the idea of a career in journalism on one hand and politics on the other.

My big break was back in the third grade playing the third monkey in 'Horton Hears a Who.'

I'm a first generation American. My mother is Italian and Russian and a lot of other things, and my father is Uruguayan. In fact, my mother's been married twice, and both men were Uruguayan. So I grew up in a very European/Latin American-influenced home.

I do love Christmas, although my wife puts me to shame. She is a huge Christmas fan, so we do love us some Christmas in our house.

The once-science-fiction notion of hyper-connectivity - where we are all constantly connected to social networks and other bubbling streams of digital data - has rapidly become a widespread reality.

Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'

To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.