Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines - of molecular machines that are part of replicators - and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise.

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb because it is through us - through our brains our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

One of the things I keep coming back to in my writing is that society doesn't work on this mirror principle you don't have an exact replica on the left of what you have on the right. It just doesn't work that way.

That said ID does not qualify as science because it gives us nothing to test or measure. Science requires replicable tests involving measurable variables.

I did an album a long time ago called 'Replicas ' which was entirely science-fiction driven or science-fantasy. Since then it's been a song here a song there. It's not really a constant theme. I've written far more about my problems with religion with God and all that.

In the transmission of human culture people always attempt to replicate to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning not DNA.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time you want to be truthful to the predecessors because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

My dad's a scratch golfer and I've got the knack of seeing something and then replicating it. I saw my dad swing a club and I worked out how to do the same thing. My backswing and follow-through have been basically the same since I was two.

I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.

It's art that pushes against psychological and social expectations that tries to transform decay into something generative that is replicative in a baroque way that isn't about progress and wants to - as Walt Whitman put it - 'contain multitudes.'

I just had that conversation this morning with my doctor. I just got back from the hospital a half-hour ago and nothing will make me happier than to replicate the DNA of my amazing husband. I'm optimistic.

Let there be no mistake. A gay man alone could never begin to replicate the inner workings of the female mind.