The five-year-old asked me to guess his favorite thing. "It starts with a 'T.'"

"Television?" I guess.

"No, tech-nol-o-gy," he says slowly as if I can't grok four-syllable words.

"Oh, just like daddy!" I praise.

"Yes. I like technology because it's like science," he clarifies.

"Well, yes, it's applied science," I impress.

"What's applied science?"

Now I'm stuck. But I bluffed this far so I say, "It's when you do something practical with your experiments." He buys it and tells me about an experiment at school involving two flowering plants, a cupboard and discriminative care. They guessed about the results a priori and were proved right!

They ought to nurse the wilted plant back to health but that's just my own thing: I think that science should neither create nor destroy.