Society

While it may seem an altogether preposterous notion that people should have to pay for air, a very basic component of life- one must read this hypothetical tale in context of the fact that over 1.7billion people cannot afford food (also a very basic component of life)- and a similar amount have little access to clean drinking water (another very basic component of life).

The impact to one's own sense of happiness and prosperity of not being able to afford 'basic' goods is far greater than not being able to afford 'discretionary' goods. By increasing the financial stress on consumers abilities to purchase essentials- the rest of the economy suffers, as people are more likely to hoard than spend.

The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes. If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.

Renowned Linguist & Political Activist, Critic of US Foreign Policy

Even though we still have approximately twenty thousand hydrogen bombs in the arsenals of the United States and Russia (many of them ready to use at a moment's notice) the two risks that most experts think are the greatest and most likely are the risks of a single bomb being used by a terrorist group or the risk of a regional war involving dozens of weapons.

Nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund.

income inequality, as a measure of relative depravation, was consistently associated with violent crimes.

rates of homicides and violent crime were strongly associated with income inequality. In addition, unemployment was found to be associated with income inequality.

poverty seems to be an aggravating factor in all types of violence

inequality [was] a better predictor of violence than economic development… Increasing inequality was found to predispose more to lethal violence

About ten years, a guy told me about his father's death. He had to send twenty seven people on different buses and trains to inform relatives all over the country because phones didn't work. When his mother died, there were STD/PCO facilities in most-all villages. He had to only make twenty seven calls, and they were all informed in under half an hour.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

Because of connectivity, India has increased mobility. People from Orissa work in Gujarat, people from Gujarat can start businesses elsewhere. Because of telecommunications, a farmer can now get information on seeds and fertilisers.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

When I entered the telecom scene in India, in the early nineteen eighties, we had two million telephones for seven hundred and fifty million people. It used to take fifteen years to get a telephone connection. In a very short space of time, just twenty five years, we have seven hundred and fifty million telephones.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

In biology we are still in a kind of Ptolemaic era with man considering himself the centre of the universe.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

Only the educated are free.

Our body is a community of cells, in which each cell occupies a place appropriate for its tasks on behalf of the whole. Cancer cells, however, are rogues that trespass aggressively into other tissues. Metastasis is what makes cancer so lethal.

Cell biologist & discoverer of the RGD integrin-binding motif

At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system and a poisonous ideology of multiculturalism, is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war.

In the Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.