I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons. They've come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That's why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.

Everything around us is scale dependent. It's woven into the fabric of the universe.

My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a - put into a predictive framework. That's the quest.

Pizza certainly has its place in school meals, but equating it with broccoli, carrots and celery seriously undermines this nation's efforts to support children's health and their ability to learn because of better school nutrition.

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it.

That a man built the biggest church in the world is not an issue, not something to be excited about. The people of Satan also have money to build a big place and worship him.

We Americans can be rightly proud of the fact that the right to the free and unfettered exercise of religion is a primary principle in the vision and founding of our country. It defines us as a people, and has uniquely contributed to making this nation great.