Melanie Mitchell’s book investigates, among many other things, how relatively complex things like ant colonies and minds arise from relatively simple things like ants and neurons. The full title is Complexity: A Guided Tour, and the reviews suggest that it’s a pretty good book for explaining a complex conversation to the general public. Here’s the quote:

Galileo did not have the sophisticated experimental devices we have today. He timed the swinging of a pendulum by counting his heartbeats, and measured the effects of gravity by dropping objects off the Tower of Pisa.

I certainly wouldn’t time anything by counting my heartbeats.

I hate product names like iPhone in puzzles with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns.

Do the Welsh have word puzzles?

I saw a bumper sticker in my mind’s eye saying “PROMOTE EVOLUTION: MUTATE!”

Did you bite on “Russian” as “Native of Moscow?” I didn’t, because a two letter word starting with s didn’t seem to fit in the quote.

I knew Thisbe from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but I thought Shakespeare just made her up as an excuse for a play within a play. I learned something.