With millions of family wage manufacturing jobs lost since 2001 we need an energy bill that takes bold action to tap into American ingenuity in order to lead the world in new clean energy technology rather than playing catch-up to the Japanese Danish and Germans.

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it it's for naught.

I am a teacher and I am proud of it. At Cornell University I have taught primarily undergraduates and indeed almost every year since 1966 have taught first-year general chemistry.

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once and I could play it.

What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you since that is already enlightened and has no need to seek. No it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.

As a student I learned from wonderful teachers and ever since then I've thought everyone is a teacher.

Well the teacher I studied with for nineteen and a half years was a man named Paul Gavert. He was a great lieder singer so basically I'm a trained lieder singer because of that teacher. The teacher I currently study with - since 1995 - is Joan Lader who also studied with Gavert.

There is a shortage of teachers but the January 2001 schools census showed that teacher numbers were at their highest level than at any time since 1984 - and 11 000 higher than 1997.

TV is bigger than any story it reports. It's the greatest teaching tool since the printing press.

Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.