“Baby boomers have this perception that marijuana is about fun and freedom. It isn’t; it’s about dependency, disease and dysfunction.”
John Walters, director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, after a federal raid on a Californian facility providing medical marijuana (The Guardian, London, 11 August)
“I don’t think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon.”
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Jason Valentine, researcher in one of the teams working on an “invisibility cloak” made from a metamaterial that can bend light the wrong way (Mail Online, London, 11 August)
“The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil.”
Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen explaining how the US can solve its energy crisis (The New York Times, 10 August)
“They could be hotter than 500 °C, and if they are that hot, they will probably have quite different chemistry and life forms – we expect to find new species.”
Jon Copley from the University of Southampton explains what he hopes to find when his autonomous submarine begins exploring the world’s deepest undersea volcanoes in the Caribbean (BBC News, 9 August)
“It smells like a mix of rotten fish and rotten meat. It’s quite impressive.”
Frederic Lebreux, visitor to Belgium’s National Botanic Garden, on Amorphophallus titanum, which translates as “misshapen giant penis”. The seldom-blooming flower is 1.6 metres high (Reuters, 7 August)