“What can one say to a writer who thinks he’s arguing for the existence of our very essence? Thanks, but, uh, your timing is bad? That you have the misfortune of living in a time of exponential technological growth, where miniaturization is colliding head-on with genetics, where technologies may so on have the potential to turn the world to dust in a matter of mere hours, but get over it? Where parents, of course, will want to genetically enhance their children as soon as they’re safely able, as biologists Lee Silver and Gregory Stock have notably argued?” David Appell —Bill McKibben Spanks the FutureQuark Soup)