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" Dragons are basically our pipe-dreams of what birds would be if they still looked liked ancient dinosaurs but followed evolution's flight plan. "

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" A rainbow is the product of physics working for your appreciation of beauty. "

" When we overestimate the benefits of exercise, underestimate how many calories we eat, and overcompensate for a job well done, exercise is really a false protection from fattening food. "

" We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at. "

" Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way. "

" For peer review, replication, and objectivity to make any headway on the continuum, for science to find the right answers to anything, there have to be wrong - or at least unlikely - answers. "

" Cancer is real-time evolution, and your body is the selective pressure. "

" The recipe for a human doesn't fill up a shopping list as you may suspect. Just twenty-two elements can describe almost all of the molecules that are, at this moment, you. "

" How the original 'Cosmos' affected me personally was long-term. I wasn't born early enough to see the original series, but after getting a hold of it in my teen years, it was one of the driving forces behind my passion for science. "

" Reality is on a delay. For you, nothing is now. Realizing this fact is unsettling. If we can only react to the past, how do we manage to navigate the present? It's easy to spiral into a treatise on free will while in the fetal position, overthinking our forever past. "

" If a process or adaptation seems too smart for nature, that's a failure of your imagination, not the hand of God. I can make that claim because we have a working model of life's morphing and molding without it. "

" When the first episode of 'Mythbusters' aired in 2003, I couldn't drive a car. I couldn't see a R-rated movie. I was 14 years old, and I couldn't do much of anything. But 'Mythbusters' taught me that I could do science. "

" People are misers of mental effort. If we don't have the interest or the capacity to look into the arguments, if the message isn't personally relevant, if we judge that we already know all we need to know about a topic, there is no reason to spend precious mental resources. "

" No matter how many times you've seen the movies and the TV shows that have a protagonist leaping in the path of a bullet, physics forbids such sacrifice. Because of a bullet's radical speed, you can't jump in front of it, but you could get in its way. It's not as dramatic, but it does save lives. "

" Human atoms are the notes, their life the symphony. "

" Making the leap from Monsanto's business practices - whatever you may think of them - to the 'dangers' of GM foods is a mistake in logical reasoning. It is akin to saying landscape paintings are potentially evil because the painter was a serial killer. "

" Climate change denial, anti-vaccination proponents, creationist teachers, faith healers, fake bomb detector peddlers, psychic frauds, alternative medicine pushers... we need scientific thinking. We need a generation of kids who think an experiment is more important than a preconceived notion or an argument from authority. "

" Researchers may like to think that, given all the facts, we make rational choices. Ask economists how that assumption works out for them. No, we are emotional creatures who use value-based reasoning in conjunction with our rationality. "

" Whether we know it or not, each of our decisions is influenced by what we want to see or think. "

" Imagine how many women could excel in science if not for the pernicious myth that science and math are a man's game. Likewise, fitness isn't defined by the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the world. "

" In science, the kind of evidence matters; all unlikelihoods are not created equal. "

" It's fashionable to think that the conservative parties in America are the science deniers. You certainly wouldn't have trouble supporting that claim. But liberals are not exempt. "

" By calling GMOs 'poison' and 'evil,' Bill Maher poisons the well of reasoned scientific discussion with ideologically driven fear mongering. "

" Raised on Bill Nye videos, LEGOs, and CD-ROMs of dinosaurs, I was a lump of nerdy clay waiting to be molded. 'Mythbusters' came to me at a critical time, and it transformed me into who I am today. "

" I have a save file in 'Final Fantasy XII' that is 125 hours long. I have gotten into legitimate arguments over the rules governing the tapping of mana in 'Magic: The Gathering.' I don't like hugs or parties, high school sucked for me, and Nathan Fillion deemed something I wrote his 'Favorite 'Firefly' fanboy rant to date.' "

" Bullets are fast - even a 9-millimeter handgun launches lead at Mach 1. And the bigger the bullet gets, the more grains of gunpowder it carries, the faster it goes. Modern rifles can fling the small pieces of metal at half the velocity needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Moon. "

" It could be the case that all the studies supporting a warming planet are wrong; science always leaves that door open, but anthropogenic climate change remains the best explanation for a mountain of data that scientists have been poring over for a century. "

" Bigfoot does not exist because there would be evidence left behind - hair, feces, bones, kills, offspring, a carcass - if it did. "

" Why would you envy a man who doesn't know the names of all the planets, is a 'high functioning' sociopath, and has no friends? Because Sherlock Holmes thinks in all the ways we wish we could. "

" Thor is magical, yes, but it is the magic of reality. His hammer was crafted 'in the heart of a dying star,' but so were you! Most of the atoms that make you up are in fact the innards of a ball of gas in space that got so heavy that it exploded. Stars died so that you could live, as physicist Lawrence Krauss would say. "

" Science is a highly technical and intellectual endeavor. Any theory or fact or discovery has an ocean of depth to it. You can always go deeper with science, and you can always ask a new and interesting question. That's what makes a topic nerdy: depth. "