In the zoo, the lions are denied the fundamental essence of their being, their chance to hunt prey, and bring it down and kill it, and to teach their cubs the skills they in turn will need to master. At meal time, they are thrown generous hunks of raw meat. But there is no hunt, no thrill, no skill, no challenge, no chance to be a real lion.

It’s hardly an accident that our art and literature, our operas and our country western songs, are filled with tales of cheating, forbidden love, and jealous rages.

When Barbie wonders, “Are they shtupping?,” “shtupping” is not likely to be a word that Barbie would’ve picked up from the family parties at Esther’s parents’ home

In the end, “trans” leaves out some crucial information – specifically, how trans they are (or what kind of trans they are). It’s a term without nuance, that we are expected to accept without question.

There are families in our culture who commemorate the memories of loved ones with rituals such as lighting yahrzeit candles on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, or going out to visit the graves of parents and loved ones, sometimes on particular days or in some cases as a weekly picnic or whatever. If the loved one is frozen, resting in some unclear legal and religious limbo, what happens to these kinds of visits? You wouldn’t exactly be mourning a “loss.” But neither is

“If it can be done, it will be done. Ethics are no more than a fart in a windstorm.” ("Prolegomenon to our cryogenic future")

Cultural trends and corporate greed will doubtless continue to do battle over our nether regions until global warming and societal collapse render the question moot.

LeGuin explains to us that the Gethenians (the locals) have no shame about sex, that during heat they retire to what might be described (though not by her) as “fuck houses.” Would that Ms. LeGuin were similarly liberated. For all the mention of these houses and their significance for the Gethenian outlook (as well as the not unlikely interest that we mature adults who read science fiction may have in these intimate ways and means of alien species), the doors remain barred to

Our real preoccupation, the question that animates public interest in science fiction, is the idea that we might discover other intelligent beings or species – that is beings we might communicate with and who might, in the long run, be, either friends or foes.

Favorite quotes about life, death and evolution Peter A. Hempel Steve Jobs (last words) – “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Richard Feynman (last words) – “I’d hate to die twice.” Woody Allen: “I’m not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.” “Life is. It goes. And it does not count. That was the hurtling truth that comes to rattle everyone as they grow up, grow old.” Jim Crace, Being Dead (quoted in a book review in Men’s Journal, March 2000, p. 56) "The mean

The picture-perfect ending. Kung Fu, complicated love, and death from a technique known only to an inner elite.

Cezanne's, "We live in a rainbow of chaos," and Jean-Paul Sartre's, "Hell is other people," are among the philosophical ideas to be recited by Tube drivers.