We probably don't have the depth to compete as a team with some of the best in the state, but both of these players should be contenders.

The [anti-Shakespeare] theories are always pinned on two points,

We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development — part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" — has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so — and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few — have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author.

If the informant got too good a deal, it would diminish his credibility.

If the informant got too good a deal, it would diminish his credibility,

What's going on in biology, and is really very major, is we're understanding how really spectacular cells are at figuring things out, processing information, analyzing complicated situations and making good decisions about them. The research agenda, at least for the beginning of the 21st Century, is focusing on cells and organisms as very sophisticated and powerful processors of information.