Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

Scientists appear most often in horror movies. Through childlike curiosity or God-defying hubris, they unleash destructive forces they can't control - 'Forbidden Planet's Monsters of the Id.

Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.

Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all Americans over 65, and on the medical practices of almost all physicians. Medicare decides what is legitimate and what is not: which prices may be charged and which services may be rendered.

Writing 'If Chloe Can' has taken me on an amazing journey: from launching the event at Downing Street, to a performance to 1,000 inner-city school girls at a West End theatre, then to an audience of hundreds more at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

If I want to speculate wildly about the future, I have my science fiction. Anybody who tells you they can predict the future is either crazy or lying.

What shocks me is people who have no expertise championing a view that runs counter to the mainstream scientific consensus.

It's like playing tennis, you play a different rally with different people. Every actor is different and the chemistry between actors is different.