How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Line)
Quote #7
"[…] errors in [cell] reproduction start to increase, and everything gets weaker. The immune system is one of the first to weaken, and then other tissues, and then finally something goes wrong, or the immune system gets overwhelmed by a disease, and that's it."
"And you're saying you can stop these errors?" (5.6.23-24)
Thanks to science, humans have been living longer and longer and longer. If this keeps up, we might just live longer than American Idol has been on the air. Seriously, when is that show going to just end?
Quote #8
"But we'll never know! They'll end up debating it for centuries to come, there'll be a journal devoted to that issue alone, but we'll never really know."
"If it's too close to tell, it's probably Terran," John said, grinning at the boy. "Anything that evolved separately from Terran life would give itself away in an instant."
"Probably," Ann said. (5.8.121-123)
Probably can be an awful word sometimes. Case in point: it can be pretty awful in science when you just can't really know. On the other hand, we imagine all those professors snagging tenure by writing essays for those journals think probably is just hunky-dory. And we do love us some professors.
Quote #9
"A return is being demanded for our island. We were not doing pure research, you see, but applied research. And with the discovery of strategic metals the application has become clear. And so it all comes back, and we have a return of ownership, and prices, and wages." (5.9.22)
Pure science = science for science's sake. Applied research = science for money's sake. The implication is that science stops becoming true science once a profit gets involved. Hey politics, you should be paying attention here, too.