My Kindle Clippings

2010

nothing here

2011

The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 337  | Added on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 02:28 PM

federaist 4 is basically usimg the example of britain amd its three or four parts to demonstrate need for union. also covers economic reasons for doing so. 
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 371  | Added on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 04:10 PM

interesting foreshadowing...
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 389-91  | Added on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 04:14 PM

And here let us not forget how much more easy it is to receive foreign fleets into our ports, and foreign armies into our country, than it is to persuade or compel them to depart.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 393  | Added on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 04:16 PM

definitely some eerie civil war foreshadowing concerning domestic and foreign conflicts and relationships among confederacies
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 398  | Added on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 04:19 PM

not just talking about disunion and multiple confederacies. specifically discussing interstate conflicts that will occur even in a union
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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Note Loc. 124  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 01:34 AM

article argues that arab spring is not sngular phenomena but is happening for different reasons and with different driving forces in each country. also addresses that each country is facing different challenges. america and american committment to ara spring originates in tone se by obaa in cairo speech. but historical and country specific understanding is necessary to making the right moves/decisions
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 484  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 01:49 AM

sources of conflict: territory. hamilton goes on to give examples from the colonies themselves and doesnt leave the argument abstract
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 520  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 01:54 AM

additional reason for conflict beyond territory is economic/commercial
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 538  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 01:58 AM

third source of conflict: government budget
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 555-56  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 02:01 AM

and, in addition to the rest, the reluctance with which men commonly part with money for purposes that have outlived the exigencies which produced them, and interfere with the supply of immediate wants.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 559  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 02:03 AM

legal conflicts, stemming from inconsistent contract or other law
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 603  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:27 PM

essentially what he is arguing is that the geography and progress of war are such that confederacies will result in something like europe, a bunch of monarchies and wars and continual conflicts
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 618  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:33 PM

how were the armies of greece organized?

this would require more research for me to be convinced
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 619  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:36 PM

what does he mean by internal invasions?
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 621  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:38 PM

why? because they can spend their time on other stuff?

it would be interesting to examine some of his claims in the context of the civil war
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 621  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:40 PM

also would be interestinng to examine his claims in light of modern wilsonian external conflicts
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 629  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:42 PM

like, uh, terrorism
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 628-34  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:43 PM

The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subjected to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors, but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters, is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions, to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 654-55  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 01:01 PM

This objection will be fully examined in its proper place, and it will be shown that the only natural precaution which could have been taken on this subject has been taken; and a much better one than
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 654  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 02:47 PM


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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 699-704  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 03:01 PM

So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism. ``It is very probable,'' (says he1) ``that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 765-66  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:10 PM

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 794-97  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:19 PM

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 857  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:34 PM


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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 947-48  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:52 PM

A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests, can only result from a unity of government.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 957  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:54 PM

typo?
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 959  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:54 PM


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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Highlight Loc. 136-42  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:58 PM

For a revolution to succeed, a number of factors have to come together. The government must appear so irremediably unjust or inept that it is widely viewed as a threat to the country's future; elites (especially in the military) must be alienated from the state and no longer willing to defend it; a broad-based section of the population, spanning ethnic and religious groups and socioeconomic classes, must mobilize; and international powers must either refuse to step in to defend the government or constrain it from using maximum force to defend itself. Revolutions rarely triumph because these conditions rarely coincide. This is especially the case in traditional monarchies and one-party states, whose leaders often manage to maintain popular support by making appeals to respect for royal tradition or nationalism.
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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Note Loc. 146  | Added on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:59 PM

north korea anyone?
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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Highlight Loc. 229-30  | Added on Thursday, June 16, 2011, 01:24 AM

Unemployment among the educated, moreover, has been even worse: in Egypt, college graduates are ten times as likely to have no job as those with only an elementary school education.
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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Note Loc. 242  | Added on Thursday, June 16, 2011, 01:28 AM

if circumstances had been different, maybe the military would have killed the arab spring before it could even start... kind of a depressing thought
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Foreign Affairs May-June 2011 (Foreign Affairs)
- Note Loc. 242  | Added on Thursday, June 16, 2011, 01:28 AM

if circumstances had been different, maybe the military would have killed the arab spring before it could even start... kind of a depressing thought. it wasnt the overwhelming power of the people alone, but confoumding factors that weakened leaders.
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Ulysses (James Joyce)
- Highlight Loc. 1237  | Added on Thursday, June 16, 2011, 11:34 AM

The king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.
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Ulysses (James Joyce)
- Highlight Loc. 1284-89  | Added on Thursday, June 16, 2011, 11:55 AM

Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight.
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Bookmark Loc. 808  | Added on Friday, June 17, 2011, 01:12 PM


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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 1047  | Added on Friday, June 17, 2011, 01:44 PM


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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Highlight Loc. 1834-35  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 10:52 AM

It is no use evading unhappiness by tampering with facts.
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Note Loc. 1952  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 11:10 AM

kind of a ridiculous attitude... he has no real reason to immediately agree with her and all the time be skeptical of the evidnce and all other accounts. poirot is certainly not a bayesian... he doesnt need information in the first place!!!
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Highlight Loc. 1993  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 11:13 AM

And he experienced in this moment the strongest doubts he had yet felt of the course to which he had committed himself.
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Note Loc. 1993  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 11:14 AM

yes, dont bother with evidence... commit to a course, commit to a hypothesis, regardless of the evidence. great detective... eye roll
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Note Loc. 2402  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 12:20 PM

this is twisted logic... creating a new narrative to suit ignored circumstances... like the reverse of what it shoul be
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Note Loc. 2503  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 12:28 PM

yes yes dont bother with evidence. the feeling of poirot has rubbd off into a feeling of meredith...
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Highlight Loc. 2992-98  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 12:47 PM

‘Reflect a minute. If you were to pass a fishmonger’s and saw twelve fish laid out on his slab, you would think they were all real fish, would you not? But one of them might be stuffed fish.’ Miss Williams replied with spirit: ‘Most unlikely and anyway—’ ‘Ah, unlikely, yes, but not impossible—because a friend of mine once took down a stuffed fish (it was his trade, you comprehend) to compare it with the real thing! And if you saw a bowl of innias in a drawing-room in December you would say that they were false—but they might be real ones flown home from Baghdad.’ ‘What is the meaning of all this nonsense?’ demanded Miss Williams. ‘It is to show you that it is the eyes of the mind with which one really sees…’
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Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
- Highlight Loc. 3276-77  | Added on Saturday, June 18, 2011, 01:07 PM

‘There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1333-34  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:28 AM

Brazil, China, India, and other fast-emerging states have a different set of cultural, political, and economic experiences, and they see the world through their anti-imperial and anticolonial pasts.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1346-48  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:29 AM

The struggle over international order today is not about fundamental principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it.Indeed,
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1357-58  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:34 AM

update the liberal order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the benefits of security and prosperity that it has provided since the middle of the twentieth century.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1358  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:44 AM

capitais ad constitutionalism work well becausethey account for human nature and huma greed. communism does not. but that capability leads to homeless peple and goldman sachs coexisting...
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1358  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:44 AM

capitais ad constitutionalism work well becausethey account for human nature and huma greed. communism does not. but that capability leads to homeless peple and goldman sachs coexisting...

liyong conversation
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1359-61  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:45 AM

China and the other emerging powers do not face simply an American-led order or a Western system. They face a broader international order that is the product of centuries of struggle and innovation. It is highly developed, expansive, integrated, institutionalized, and deeply rooted in the societies and economies of both advanced capitalist states and developing states.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1368-70  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:47 AM

The "problems of Hobbes," that is, anarchy and power insecurities, have had to be solved in order to take advantage of the "opportunities of Locke," that is, the construction of open and rule-based relations.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1370  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:48 AM

peace of westphalia establishes state relation framework

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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1370  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:49 AM

peace of westphalia establishes state relation framework from nothing

liberal world order orders these relations
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1370-72  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:49 AM

The original principles of the Westphalian system -- sovereignty, territorial integrity, and nonintervention -- reflected an emerging consensus that states were the rightful political units for the establishment of legitimate rule.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1374-75  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:50 AM

Under the banners of sovereignty and self-determination, political movements for decolonization and independence were set in motion in the non-Western developing world, coming to fruition in the decades after World War II.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1381  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:56 AM

nuclear test ban treaty... and that example in particular is interesting because it is very illustrative of the libera world order counttries, russia arguably included, bnning tests, but emerguing powers like china and india testing anywa... throwing out the old rulebook
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Bookmark Loc. 1389  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:56 AM


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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1389-90  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:56 AM

But in the interwar period of closed economic systems and imperial blocs, this experiment in liberal order collapsed.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1400-1401  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:58 AM

In the decades since the end of the Cold War, notions of "the responsibility to protect" have given the international community legal rights and obligations to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1401  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:59 AM

contrast with chinas position on noninterference policy wrt other countries internal affairs...
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1405-8  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 11:59 AM

But now, as this hegemonic organization of the liberal international order starts to change, the hierarchical aspects are fading while the liberal aspects persist. So even as China and other rising states try to contest U.S. leadership -- and there is indeed a struggle over the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the leading states within the system -- the deeper international order remains intact.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1408  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:01 PM

liberal world order has two parts... hegemony and liberal aspects. he is arguing tha hegemonic aspects are declining, not the entire liberal world order
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1420-21  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:02 PM

China is already deeply enmeshed in the global trading system, with a remarkable 40 percent of its GNP composed of exports -- 25 percent of which go to the United States.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1421  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:02 PM

wow.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Bookmark Loc. 1426  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:03 PM


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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1426-27  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:03 PM

China will feel pressures to establish these same institutional preconditions if it wants the benefits of a global
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1427  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:03 PM

currency.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1433-35  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:04 PM

The UN Security Council, the G-20, the governing bodies of the Bretton Woods institutions -- these are all stages on which rising non-Western states can acquire great-power authority and exercise global leadership.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1435-40  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:05 PM

Meanwhile, there is no competing global organizing logic to liberal internationalism. An alternative, illiberal order -- a "Beijing model" -- would presumably be organized around exclusive blocs, spheres of influence, and mercantilist networks. It would be less open and rule-based, and it would be dominated by an array of state-to-state ties. But on a global scale, such a system would not advance the interests of any of the major states, including China. The Beijing model only works when one or a few states opportunistically exploit an open system of markets. But if everyone does, it is no longer an open system but a fragmented, mercantilist, and protectionist complex -- and everyone suffers.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1442-43  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:05 PM

China would be successful enough with its authoritarian model of development to resist the pressures to liberalize and democratize. But if the rest of the world does not gravitate toward this model, China will find itself subjected to pressure to play by the rules.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1446-50  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:47 PM

In the background, meanwhile, democracy and the rule of law are still the hallmarks of modernity and the global standard for legitimate governance. Although it is true that the spread of democracy has stalled in recent years and that authoritarian China has performed well in the recent economic crisis, there is little evidence that authoritarian states can become truly advanced societies without moving in a liberal democratic direction. The legitimacy of one-party rule within China rests more on the state's ability to deliver economic growth and full employment than on authoritarian -- let alone communist -- political principles.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1451-52  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:47 PM

"China cannot succeed in its goal of becoming a modern developed society until it can take the leap and allow the Chinese people to choose their own rulers."
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1455  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:49 PM

why not try to move in that direction but in a controlled way? systematically introduce reforms i mea. i dnt know. mabe they are doing that already.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1458  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:49 PM

and no competing political ideals even lurk on the sidelines.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1458  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:52 PM

is this right? i mean acceptable right. democracy is easily abused. the reublic system is wha .adethe united states so dominant. it wasnt just democracy. maybe too many failures of democracies will convince people it doesnt work. andmaybeit doesnt! the real push sould be toward an acceptable working republican system... not a blind support of democracy in its plainest form...
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1465-68  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:53 PM

The Atlantic Charter, announced by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941, and the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944 were early efforts to articulate a vision of economic openness and social stability. The United States would do well to try to reach back and rearticulate this view. The world is not rejecting openness and markets; it is asking for a more expansive notion of stability and economic security.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1481  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:56 PM

article about advantages of an aggressive china... i cant exactly remember what it covered or what it cited as positive beavior...
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1485-87  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:58 PM

The country operated within layers of regional and global economic, political, and security institutions and constructed new ones -- thereby making itself more predictable and approachable and reducing the incentives for other states to undermine it by building countervailing coalitions.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1487  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:00 PM

and september 11th was perfect opportunity to renew or revisit this world order and make ourselves predictable and approachable and create an international coalition. but.........
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1491-93  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:01 PM

rising great powers are threatened less by mass armies marching across borders than by transnational dangers, such as terrorism, climate change, and pandemic disease. What goes on in one country -- radicalism, carbon emissions, or public health failures -- can increasingly harm another country.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1499  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:02 PM

i.e. decentralization or dehegemonization
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1501-4  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:03 PM

Markets and democracy have spread. Societies outside the West are trading and growing. The United States has more alliance partners today than it did during the Cold War. Rival hegemonic states with revisionist and illiberal agendas have been pushed off the global stage. It is difficult to read these world-historical developments as a story of American decline and liberal unraveling.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1515-16  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:05 PM

share the burdens of global economic and political governance,
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1517-18  | Added on Sunday, June 19, 2011, 01:06 PM

which is why states will continue to look to Washington for security and partnership.
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Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Agatha Christie)
- Highlight Loc. 900-902  | Added on Monday, June 20, 2011, 06:47 AM

“See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash. But in this case I would welcome a little scientific assistance. This compartment is full of clues, but can I be sure that those clues are really what they seem to be?”
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1050-54  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:00 AM

The money saved from one object may be usefully applied to another, and there will be so much the less to be drawn from the pockets of the people. If the States are united under one government, there will be but one national civil list to support; if they are divided into several confederacies, there will be as many different national civil lists to be provided for—and each of them, as to the principal departments, coextensive with that which would be necessary for a government of the whole. The entire separation of the States into thirteen unconnected sovereignties is a project too extravagant and too replete with danger to have many advocates.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1054  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:01 AM

hamilton doesnt seem worried about distribution of power instead of distillation of power...
an interesting and valid point
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1063-65  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:03 AM

Civil power, properly organized and exerted, is capable of diffusing its force to a very great extent; and can, in a manner, reproduce itself in every part of a great empire by a judicious arrangement of subordinate institutions.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1087  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:06 AM

interesting how the arguments against confederacies and disunion work almost equally i.e. without modification against sates rights
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1087  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:06 AM

interesting how the arguments against confederacies and disunion work almost equally i.e. without modification against states rights
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1090-92  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:08 AM

as the only substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World, and as the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have proved fatal to other popular governments, and of which alarming symptoms have been betrayed by our own.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1089-92  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:08 AM

WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark against foreign danger, as the conservator of peace among ourselves, as the guardian of our commerce and other common interests, as the only substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World, and as the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have proved fatal to other popular governments, and of which alarming symptoms have been betrayed by our own.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1098-1100  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:09 AM

It is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1148-50  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:16 AM

If they should derive less benefit, therefore, from the Union in some respects than the less distant States, they will derive greater benefit from it in other respects, and thus the proper equilibrium will be maintained throughout.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1150  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:17 AM

i seem to see a lot of these kind of arguments in the federalist paers. while they give good specific examples in some cases, they are completely vague in others and kind of handwave specifics
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1164-68  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 12:20 AM

To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 1183  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 04:51 AM


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01 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
- Highlight Loc. 1628-30  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 04:02 PM

Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
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01 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
- Highlight Loc. 2279-83  | Added on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 09:45 PM

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
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Ulysses (James Joyce)
- Bookmark Loc. 6867  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:12 PM


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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2366-75  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:15 PM

For a revolution to succeed, a number of factors have to come together. The government must appear so irremediably unjust or inept that it is widely viewed as a threat to the country's future; elites (especially in the military) must be alienated from the state and no longer willing to defend it; a broad-based section of the population, spanning ethnic and religious groups and socioeconomic classes, must mobilize; and international powers must either refuse to step in to defend the government or constrain it from using maximum force to defend itself. Revolutions rarely triumph because these conditions rarely coincide. This is especially the case in traditional monarchies and one-party states, whose leaders often manage to maintain popular support by making appeals to respect for royal tradition or nationalism. Elites, who are often enriched by such governments, will only forsake them if their circumstances or the ideology of the rulers changes drastically. And in almost all cases, broad-based popular mobilization is difficult to achieve because it requires bridging the disparate interests of the urban and rural poor, the middle class, students, professionals, and different ethnic or religious groups.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2377  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:32 PM

north korea anyone?
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2455-56  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:33 PM

Unemployment among the educated, moreover, has been even worse: in Egypt, college graduates are ten times as likely to have no job as those with only an elementary school education.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2468  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:41 PM

...military could have killed the arab string before it even started. kind of a depressing thought. it wasnt tha people had power and were able to overpower the government. it was just confounding factors.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2002  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:43 PM

and lack of military support
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2012-14  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:45 PM

What follows this transition will depend on whether the forces that staged the revolution can remain united and organized or whether some groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, strike a separate deal with the military. If this were to happen, the secular and youth movements that were the driving force behind the January 25 revolution would be effectively marginalized.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2031-36  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:48 PM

Over the past five years, many workers -- both blue-collar laborers and educated professionals -- took to organizing strikes and other protests to show their anger at their economic disenfranchisement. These protests took place outside the control or leadership of the country's labor unions and professional syndicates, which were constrained by laws that limited their freedom to strike or carry out any protest. In 2008, property-tax collectors established Egypt's first independent trade union since 1959, the year that all such unions were brought under the control of the state. In 2010 alone, there were around 700 strikes and protest actions organized by workers across the country. However, these protests tended to focus exclusively on labor-specific demands and to shy away from political issues.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2040-43  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:49 PM

Youth unemployment is highest among those with more education: in Egypt in 2006, young people with a secondary education or more represented 95 percent of the unemployed in their age group. Those who do find jobs often work for low pay and in poor conditions. This combination of high unemployment and low pay has kept many young Egyptian men from marrying and forming families. Approximately half of all Egyptian men between the ages of 25 and 29 are not married.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2061-67  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:52 PM

Beginning in the mid-1970s, in an attempt to bolster his legitimacy both at home and abroad, then Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat began to liberalize the political system. He allowed opposition parties and movements to gain some representation in the country's elected assemblies. As long as the ruling NDP maintained its two-thirds majority and its control over the real levers of power, the Egyptian opposition could contest elections and maintain a limited presence in parliament and in civil society. When Mubarak came to power, he continued to follow this same formula with few adjustments. However, over the last five years, the Mubarak regime began to violate this implicit agreement, by imposing renewed constraints on the ability of political parties and movements to organize and to contest elections.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2071-72  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:52 PM

The regime's tactics in the 2010 elections were part of a broader plan to ensure a smooth succession from Mubarak to his son Gamal during the upcoming presidential election in 2011.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Bookmark Loc. 2072  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:52 PM


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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2073-75  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 02:53 PM

who had come to assume greater influence over the ruling party and the government in recent years. Not only did the country's opposition strongly oppose the succession plan, but many important factions within the state bureaucracy and the military were also skeptical. As 2010 came to a close, the country's ruling edifice was beginning to crack.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2119-20  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 03:00 PM

The High Council of the Armed Forces assumed control of the country, and one week later, it announced the suspension of the constitution and the dissolution of both houses of parliament.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2120  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 03:00 PM

here ir wasnot s much that the military sat back and allowed the ara spring to happen, they actually made it happen
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2187-88  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:18 PM

Regimes fell and rose, countries united and fragmented, and armed conflicts erupted. Today's turmoil, then, is not unique; rather, it represents the second Arab revolution.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2204-7  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:20 PM

one, the number of politically significant actors within each state will increase; two, some of these actors will establish relationships across international boundaries. Malign and disruptive forces will benefit from this change. Transnational movements hostile to the interests of the United States -- such as al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood -- will find fertile new fields to plow.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2163  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:37 PM

this whole article is a great history lesson on middle east and in particular nasser
draws several parallels to current events 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 3  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:38 PM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 3  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:39 PM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:39 PM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:39 PM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1881  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:48 PM

wtf is he even talking about

tha analogy is horrible
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1887-89  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:49 PM

The nature of humans, quite reasonably, is to intervene in an effort to alter their world and the outcomes it produces. But government interventions are laden with unintended -- and unforeseen -- consequences, particularly in complex systems, so humans must work with nature by tolerating systems that absorb human imperfections rather than seek to change them.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1892-93  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:50 PM

The only difference this time around was the unprecedented magnitude of the hidden risks and a misunderstanding of the statistical properties of the system.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1899-1902  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:51 PM

The life of a turkey before Thanksgiving is illustrative: the turkey is fed for 1,000 days and every day seems to confirm that the farmer cares for it -- until the last day, when confidence is maximal. The "turkey problem" occurs when a naive analysis of stability is derived from the absence of past variations. Likewise, confidence in stability was maximal at the onset of the financial crisis in 2007.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1902  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:51 PM

ha ha ha
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1902-8  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:52 PM

The turkey problem for humans is the result of mistaking one environment for another. Humans simultaneously inhabit two systems: the linear and the complex. The linear domain is characterized by its predictability and the low degree of interaction among its components, which allows the use of mathematical methods that make forecasts reliable. In complex systems, there is an absence of visible causal links between the elements, masking a high degree of interdependence and extremely low predictability. Nonlinear elements are also present, such as those commonly known, and generally misunderstood, as "tipping points." Imagine someone who keeps adding sand to a sand pile without any visible consequence, until suddenly the entire pile crumbles. It would be foolish to blame the collapse on the last grain of sand rather than the structure of the pile, but that is what people do consistently, and that is the policy error.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1912-17  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:53 PM

Engineering, architecture, astronomy, most of physics, and much of common science are linear domains. The complex domain is the realm of the social world, epidemics, and economics. Crucially, the linear domain delivers mild variations without large shocks, whereas the complex domain delivers massive jumps and gaps. Complex systems are misunderstood, mostly because humans' sophistication, obtained over the history of human knowledge in the linear domain, does not transfer properly to the complex domain. Humans can predict a solar eclipse and the trajectory of a space vessel, but not the stock market or Egyptian political events. All man-made complex systems have commonalities and even universalities. Sadly, deceptive calm (followed by Black Swan surprises) seems to be one of those properties.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Bookmark Loc. 1929  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:55 PM


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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1932  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:55 PM

able to turn politics into the tractable randomness of
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1931-32  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:55 PM

No matter how many dollars are spent on research, predicting revolutions is not the same as counting cards; humans will never be able to turn politics into the tractable randomness of blackjack.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1954  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 07:59 PM

another horrible analogy
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1975-77  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:05 PM

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it, "A little bit of agitation gives motivation to the soul, and what really makes the species prosper is not peace so much as freedom." With freedom comes some unpredictable fluctuation. This is one of life's packages: there is no freedom without noise -- and no stability without volatility.∂
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 3  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:07 PM

interesting perspective on risk and probability analysis
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1802  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:19 PM

yea thanks for clarifying... nothing at all
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 4  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:21 PM

read. horrible analogies.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 4  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:21 PM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 6  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:23 PM

read... very interesting view. read while in car wit liyong and had a chance to discuss it with him
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01 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
- Highlight Loc. 2519-22  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 08:44 PM

The two philosophers gaped at him. “Bloody hell,” said Majikthise, “now that is what I call thinking. Here, Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?” “Dunno,” said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper; “think our brains must be too highly trained, Majikthise.”
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01 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
- Highlight Loc. 2887-91  | Added on Thursday, June 23, 2011, 09:08 PM

“Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I’m afraid where you begin to suspect that if there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise,” said Frankie.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1559  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:54 AM

In contrast, al Qaeda believes that democracy is blasphemous, arguing that it places man's word above God's.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1561-62  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:55 AM

Al Qaeda's message is clear: secular democracy is as abhorrent as secular dictatorship.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1568-70  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:56 AM

Even more distressing to al Qaeda, change occurred in the Arab world without an initial blow being struck against the United States. Al Qaeda has long insisted that Muslims must first destroy the region's supposed puppet master in Washington before change will come to Tunis or Cairo.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1579-80  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:57 AM

even declared that al Qaeda was behind the protests, warning Libyans, "Do not be swayed by bin Laden" -- most likely in an effort to gain legitimacy for his crackdown against the demonstrators.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1580-83  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:57 AM

U.S. counterterrorism officials have worked well with authoritarian leaders because their regimes have generally had a low bar for imprisonment and detention. The United States could send a suspect captured in Europe to Egypt and be assured that he would be kept in jail. This low bar also meant that many minor players and innocents were swept up in security-service roundups.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1589-91  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 10:59 AM

If new governments take popular opinion into account, as democratic leaders do, cooperation will not be as close as it once was. Many of the new political players, particularly the Islamists, see the United States as a repressive power that aids Israel and other enemies.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1621-22  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:02 AM

But excluding the Brotherhood from power would be worse, for it would endanger the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1662  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:09 AM

Many
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1662-64  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:10 AM

Many of the new security-service leaders will be new to counterterrorism. Even more important, they will be unaccustomed to the difficult task of balancing civil liberties and aggressive efforts against terrorism. Here, the FBI and other Western domestic intelligence services have much to offer.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1662  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:10 AM

Many of the new security-service
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1662  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:10 AM

possible
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1662-63  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:10 AM

Even more important, they will be unaccustomed to the difficult task of balancing civil liberties and aggressive efforts against terrorism.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 4  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:13 AM

read. grea perspective on how revolutions affect al qaeda and terrorism in general. some thoughts on a constructive path forward. some thoughts on not so constructive paths foward.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 5  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:15 AM

rea. very nteresting summary of existing liberal world orders. some thoughts on how tha ischanging. some thoughts on why it is not changing significantly and u.s. will remain imortant part of future world order.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1112-13  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 01:05 PM

providing the reasoning for Washington's backing of the Pakistani military's frequent interventions in domestic politics -- at the expense of its democratic institutions.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1118  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 01:06 PM

More than half its population faces severe poverty, which fuels resentment against the government and feeds political instability.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1130  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 01:08 PM

sunds like a great sales pitch... but that is partl in theory. i mean, howdemocratic is pakistan really?
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1134-36  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 01:09 PM

Pakistan is unlikely to collapse, but the imbalance of power between its civilian and military branches needs to be addressed if it is to become a normal modern state that is capable of effectively governing its territory.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1137-40  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 02:22 PM

The Pakistani military's political power is a historical legacy of the country's birth. The immediate onset of conflict over Kashmir in 1947-48 with a militarily and politically stronger India made the military central to the state's survival and placed it above civilian scrutiny. Today, after four wars with India, the military filters every internal and external development through the lens of Pakistan's rivalry with India.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1164-67  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 02:26 PM

Although ending the insurgency in Afghanistan will require more than just eliminating militant sanctuaries in Pakistan, the Pakistani military's reluctance to target Afghan militants in North Waziristan has been a particularly sore point in its relationship with the United States. U.S. officials believe that the lawlessness of North Waziristan hampers the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, since insurgents can easily escape to safety on the Pakistani side of the border.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1177-80  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:25 PM

enough U.S. security assistance -- roughly $300 million since 2002 in foreign military financing and around $1.1 billion since 2008 for increasing its counterinsurgency capabilities, to be followed by $1.2 billion more next year -- to acquire the capacity it claims to so desperately need. In contrast, in 2010, U.S. aid for Pakistan's poorly paid, undertrained, and underresourced police forces, which are crucial to fighting insurgencies, totaled a paltry $66 million.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1210-15  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:33 PM

Militant extremism can be fought effectively only through serious governance reforms that ensure the rule of law and accountability. This will require a strong democracy, a viable economy, and well-balanced civil-military relations. In FATA, it will require abolishing the Frontier Crimes Regulation and integrating the region into the adjoining Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province to end the Pakistani federal government's direct and oppressive rule, which the Pakistani Taliban have exploited to expand their influence, displace the already weakened tribal authority in the region, and establish parallel courts and policing systems in several FATA agencies, including North and South Waziristan. All of this seems daunting, but there is really no other long-term alternative. And despite its many failings and weaknesses, there are reasons to be optimistic about democracy in Pakistan.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1217-19  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:34 PM

In fact, a strong democratic system can mitigate the baser instincts of politicians. If anything, the experience of countries such as Chile, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand in the last few decades shows that the strength and quality of democracy may be linked to the stability of the party system.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1222-25  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:35 PM

The most recent civilian government is only three years old, yet the much-derided political elite seems to have developed a consensus that democracy is the only game in town and has enacted constitutional reforms to curb outsized presidential powers -- an artifact of previous military regimes -- especially the power to dismiss democratically elected parliaments and prime ministers, which past military or military-backed presidents used to neuter parliament.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1247-49  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:39 PM

Pakistan must also reckon with the need to alleviate the economic hardships faced by its poor. Skyrocketing inflation of basic commodity prices, chronic power cuts, persistently high levels of unemployment, and general lawlessness are fueling public resentment of the current government.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1258-61  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:41 PM

It is worth noting that Pakistan's economic difficulties are the result not just of bad luck and poor management, and therefore they cannot be fixed with development aid alone. They are rooted in fundamental structural problems as well: military expenditures dwarf spending on development. Pakistan has one of the world's largest out-of-school populations, yet it spends seven times as much on the military every year as on education, an investment with a higher national security payoff in the long run.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1261  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:42 PM

sounds like the U.S.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1261-62  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:42 PM

Some progress toward a resolution of the Kashmir conflict could induce Pakistan to scale back its military behemoth.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1265-66  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 04:42 PM

The point is that only a strong, stable, and legitimate elected government will be able to mobilize the public opinion necessary to clinch a lasting peace with India.
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 101-2  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:01 PM

Walton, whose fortune now stands at twenty-one billion dollars, has become a powerful force in the art marketplace.
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 96-97  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:01 PM

Alice Walton and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 147-49  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:07 PM

she had no idea what the heck she was talking about when confronted by the words “Paul Revere.” She had Revere warning the British—“ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells.”
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 151-52  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:07 PM

Her supporters took to Wikipedia, to tweak the Paul Revere entry to suit her syntax, touching off a Bunker Hill of Wiki revision and counter-revision.
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 210-17  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:11 PM

Yet the opposite line of argument, the sophisticated-sounding “I don’t give a damn what a politician does in his private life,” doesn’t quite convince, either. Certainly, there are examples where what a person does in private tells us something worth knowing about what he does in public. That would apply when a crime is implicated, as in the case of Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who allegedly paid a teen-age girl for sex, and of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the I.M.F., who is accused of attempting to rape a hotel maid. Weiner’s dirty pictures, small beer though they are in comparison, may suggest a problem with impulse control, which, compounded by an instinct to stonewall and to blame others, might have struck voters as relevant. On the other hand, the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child with a member of his household staff might not matter much to anyone but his family.
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The New Yorker (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 221-22  | Added on Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:12 PM

post-Watergate era, a zeal for exposing corruption and hypocrisy of all kinds fuelled franker coverage of politicians’ sexual escapades.
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xkcd (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 68-70  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 12:18 PM

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1272-78  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 12:21 PM

With Pakistan Act of 2009, authorized the U.S. Congress to triple civilian development assistance to Pakistan, raising it to $7.5 billion between 2010 and 2014. The aid package was designed to signal a new era in the United States' relationship with Pakistan, shifting the focus of U.S. aid from the military to civilian democratic governance and social development. Continued military aid was also tied to a yearly certification by the U.S. secretary of state that the Pakistani military has refrained from interfering in politics and is subject to civilian control over budgetary allocations, officer promotions, and strategic planning. Not surprisingly, the Pakistani military balked at this affront even as the civilian government welcomed the aid. Joining with opposition parties, the military publicly decried the bill as a threat to Pakistani national security and mobilized right-wing sections of the media against U.S. meddling. In response, the bill's sponsors buckled and effectively defanged the conditionality measures.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1285-88  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 12:22 PM

But by continuing to treat the Pakistani military as a state above the state, the United States only reinforces the military's exaggerated sense of indispensability and further weakens civilian rule. If the United States had stood its ground, the Pakistani military would have eventually backed down. It is dependent on the United States for military aid and high-tech armaments, including upgrading its aging fleet of F-16 fighters.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1301-4  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:13 PM

One relatively easy way for the United States to boost economic productivity in Pakistan would be to grant Pakistan emergency duty-free access to the U.S. market for textiles. This concession would face opposition from politically powerful U.S. textile interests, but the Obama administration should pursue this legislation on at least a temporary basis because it could crucially improve the economic stability of a vital ally by increasing the revenue it gets from this important industry.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1304  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:16 PM

investig in pakistan and ethical considerations       
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1307-8  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:17 PM

it is worth the effort because the international community has a stake in ending the nuclearized Indian-Pakistani rivalry, which not only endangers global security but also has spilled into Afghanistan.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1308-12  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:17 PM

With over a hundred nuclear weapons, a war-prone rivalry with India, and the presence of some of the world's most dangerous terrorists on its soil, Pakistan is too important to be left to the devices of its generals. For too long, the United States has sacrificed democracy for order. The results have been less than ideal, especially for the people of Pakistan. Pakistan urgently needs support from the international community to help stabilize its civilian democratic institutions and bolster its economy. Only such support will ensure its stability and reliability as a U.S. partner in the region.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1308  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:19 PM

add quotes to a google map, 
include link to wiki page containing text ... protected

moving notes to a page easy bc in plain text format. copy and paste.

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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 5  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:21 PM

read. gives some very interesting and powerful ideas for fixng pakistan and not just treating it as a lost cause... identifies the stakes as global
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 922-23  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:24 PM

Much of this has to do with the end of the Cold War, a conflict that turned Latin America into a battleground between U.S. and Soviet proxies.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 923  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:25 PM

dan mentioned all the communists he had met
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 924-26  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:26 PM

At the same time as U.S. influence has diminished, Latin America's own capabilities have grown. The region has entered into an era of unprecedented economic, political, and diplomatic success. Most visibly, Brazil has emerged as an economic powerhouse, attracting foreign investment with an economy that grew 7.5 percent last year.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 929-30  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:27 PM

Santos has been known to tell visiting foreign counterparts that this will be "Latin America's century."
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 930-34  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:27 PM

Although star performers such as Brazil and Chile have recently surged ahead, Latin America has yet to realize its full collective diplomatic and political capacity. The problems that have plagued the region in the past -- income inequality, a lack of law and order, illicit trafficking networks -- still exist, threatening to derail its hard-earned successes. Guatemala, to take just one example, not only ranks among the world's poorest countries; it also has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with 6,000 people murdered each year in a population of only 13 million.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 934  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:27 PM

map
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 936-38  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:28 PM

No one should underestimate the capacity of the Venezuela-led bloc of quasi-authoritarian leftist governments to stop the regional trend toward greater openness and democracy -- values that the bloc sees as representing a capitulation to the U.S.-controlled global system.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 943-56  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:30 PM

The era of U.S. hegemony in Latin America began over a century ago, when the United States started flexing its emerging economic and military might in Central America and the Caribbean. In the jungles and mountains of Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers and diplomats used persuasion, coercion, and force to advance U.S. political and economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington sought to stem the threat of Soviet and Cuban communism, acting directly, for example, when it invaded Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, and indirectly, as when it provided covert funding to undermine Chilean President Salvador Allende's leftist government in the 1970s. Sometimes these efforts worked, as in Chile and Grenada, but often they did not; both the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 and U.S. efforts to overthrow by proxy the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s were outright failures. For much of the twentieth century, there was a disconnect between Washington's lofty rhetoric of democracy and regional harmony and its demonstrated willingness to jettison these principles when its economic or geopolitical interests were at stake. Even after the Cold War, the United States was accused of peddling its "Washington consensus" of laissez-faire economic policies, such as the privatization of state-owned assets and free-trade agreements, as a sort of neoimperialism. Instead of U.S. marines or CIA agents, blame for doing the empire's bidding was now pinned on the "technocratic imperialists" from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Treasury Department.Yet over the past decade or so, the United States' willingness and ability to exert control in the region have diminished. This has occurred in part because more important issues, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have forced Latin America down the policymaking food chain.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 958-64  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:31 PM

The United States' relationship with Bolivia provides one example of Washington's declining power in the region. Believing that it was time to pay back the Americans for their years of backing his political opponents, Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 and suspended U.S.-funded democracy programs the following year. A decade or so ago, when Bolivia was a faithful client of the United States, it would have been unimaginable for a Bolivian government to even consider such acts, given the diplomatic and financial consequences of provoking Washington's ire. Yet even the ostensibly hard-line George W. Bush administration responded to Morales' repeated diplomatic insults largely with silence. Morales had gone eyeball to eyeball with Washington and lived to tell about it.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 966-67  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:31 PM

Yet the region struggled to convert democratic practices, such as open elections, into lasting democratic institutions, such as independent judiciaries.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 968-71  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:32 PM

Even in the 1990s, when Latin America finally began to slay inflation and replace it with impressive macroeconomic stability, countries had difficulty translating this into lasting social gains for the entire population. At times, Latin Americans used their newfound electoral power to elect "democratic populists," such as Venezuela's Chávez and Peru's Alberto Fujimori, who often governed in autocratic ways.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 975  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:32 PM

Armed revolution is now dead in the region that was once its cradle.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 975  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:33 PM

and to think how this influences people in los angeles... or even peple in china 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 979-83  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:34 PM

It has long been said that when the United States catches a cold, Latin America catches the flu. This has certainly been true in the economic realm, where jitters in the U.S. economy could quickly undermine Latin America's chronically weak financial and fiscal fundamentals. But during the recent global economic crisis, Latin America remained relatively unscathed. At the time, many predicted that Latin American governments -- especially leftist ones suspected of being more predisposed to fiscal profligacy -- would turn to the seductive tonic of populism. But leftist governments in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, to name a few, responded to the crisis with prudence.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 992-94  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:35 PM

Chile a level of policy flexibility during the recent global economic downturn that the United States and many other industrial economies could only envy. As Latin America's achievements suggest, the region is growing up fast. 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 994  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:36 PM

makes me think of all the construction arund the U during the downturn......
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1000-1004  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:37 PM

In some quarters, Brazil's responses to developments such as Chávez's ongoing assault on Venezuela's democracy and even the 2009 coup in Honduras have undermined its credibility as a serious leader. (Brasília's reluctance to speak out for hemispheric democracy is particularly inexcusable for a government that includes many officials who suffered under the successive military regimes of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.) Many Latin American officials quietly reveal that they are not eager to see Brazil replace the United States as the hemisphere's hegemon. As one diplomat recently put it, "The new imperialists have arrived, and they speak Portuguese."
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1004-7  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:37 PM

Yet Brazil is learning that leadership means responsibility. Relations with its neighbor Bolivia are a case in point. After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was kicked out of Bolivia, Brasília belatedly realized that Bolivia's cocaine exports -- most of which are destined for Brazil, Argentina, or Europe -- represented a serious challenge and so stepped up its counternarcotics cooperation with Bolivia.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1007  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:39 PM

i wonder what it was like for them to know they were dealing with a u.s. pesident who was a customr... not in the cia trafficking sense but in the direct sense.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1014-19  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:40 PM

Further evidence of Colombia's diplomatic and strategic maturity can be found in the way it has begun exporting its counterinsurgency and counternarcotics expertise to places as far away as Afghanistan. For almost half a century, the Colombian government has waged a bloody war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But it has been only in the past several years that the Colombian state, backed by billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, has gained the upper hand. Overwhelmed by this fight until recently, Colombia's security forces now use their hangars and equipment to train pilots from Mexico and Peru and counternarcotics operatives from Afghanistan.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1025-26  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:42 PM

And much to the chagrin of some in Brasília, the OAS demonstrated its importance when it helped coordinate the regional diplomatic response following the coup in Honduras in 2009, an effort that likely staved off even greater strife in the country.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1026-29  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:42 PM

The OAS also renewed its relevance during its General Assembly meeting that same year, when a debate regarding Cuba's 1962 suspension from the body produced a consensus that Cuba's return to full membership should depend on its transition to democracy. The seemingly moribund organization has shown some surprisingly gritty determination, but there is new competition in the neighborhood. 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1029-31  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:42 PM

the region's authoritarians -- Venezuela's Chávez, Cuba's Fidel and Raúl Castro, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega -- have taken the opportunity to expand their own influence. Chávez, the Castro brothers, and Ortega form part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a band of leftist governments led by Venezuela.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1031-34  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:43 PM

Contending that Latin America remains shackled by the imperial United States and its lackeys at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, members of this group remain committed to a nonaligned diplomacy and seek friendships with the governments of such countries as Iran, Russia, and, to some extent, China.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1034  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:43 PM

castro and mao?
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1040  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:44 PM

they are unwilling to confront other governments that undermine such
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1041  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:44 PM

rights.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1040-41  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:44 PM

they are unwilling to confront other governments that undermine such rights.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1044-50  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:45 PM

But these diplomatic spoilers have proved to be the biggest losers in Latin America's realignment. The Chávez model, inherited from Fidel Castro, sees the United States and global capitalism as permanent adversaries. Nothing hurts this approach more than when other Latin American governments, especially leftist democratic ones, opt for and succeed with capitalist, democratic, or U.S.-friendly policies. Indeed, the bloc has ended up enjoying less regional support than its members hoped for. A case in point is the drama surrounding a November 2010 OAS resolution that called for all Costa Rican and Nicaraguan military and security personnel to leave a disputed area on their countries' shared border. In a resounding defeat for the ALBA bloc, which wanted to isolate Costa Rica and the United States by outmaneuvering them diplomatically, 21 countries voted in favor of the resolution, and only four (including Venezuela and Nicaragua) voted against it. 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1051-56  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:45 PM

Iran, Russia, and China have all significantly increased their economic and political footprints in the region. Tehran is seeking to reduce its diplomatic isolation, and Moscow is mostly looking for markets for its weapons industry. Beijing, by far the most significant outside player, is principally concerned with obtaining natural resources. In 2005, it imported over $21 billion worth of goods from Latin America; in 2008, that figure was $71 billion. China has also increased its military engagement with the region, expanding military exchanges and selling sophisticated military equipment. That said, Beijing has generally been cautious in its diplomatic and military outreach, preferring to focus on the more mundane issue of purchasing raw materials.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 1056  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:46 PM

lithium
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 1063-64  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:47 PM

His deferential yet serious style quickly put the most conspiratorial anti-U.S. critics, such as Chávez, Morales, and Ortega, on the defensive -- where they have remained ever since.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 6  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 01:52 PM

read. this is exactly the kind of article that i subscribed to read. they all are... really great.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 627-32  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 03:15 PM

Over the last century, the Klamath's waters have been diverted for irrigation, polluted by runoff and dammed for hydropower. The number of fall-run Chinook that swim up the river and its tributaries to spawn has in some years amounted to fewer than 20,000, compared to historic populations of half a million. The plummeting levels of native fish have pitted farmers against environmentalists and tribes whose traditional cultures and diets revolved around salmon fishing. Many of the warring parties last year signed two agreements intended to bring peace to the river, which winds from southern Oregon through the Cascade and Coast ranges to California's Pacific Coast.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 649-54  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 03:17 PM

The agreements have strong critics, including the Hoopa Valley tribe, which refused to sign. "The agricultural practices that led to salmon being threatened in the system are the agricultural practices that will be continued," argued Thomas Schlosser, a Seattle attorney who represents the tribe. He cited provisions that call for the continued leasing of wildlife refuge lands for farming and substantial water diversions for irrigation. The agreements require nearly $1 billion in federal funding for water management, habitat restoration and monitoring efforts. PacifiCorp customers in Oregon and California are expected to pay $200 million more to dismantle the dams, and if necessary the state of California would provide as much as $250 million in bond money.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 763-65  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:18 PM

The request came three days after an agent in San Diego fatally shot a 40-year-old Tijuana man suspected of injuring an agent by throwing rocks and a nail-studded wooden board.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 765-67  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:19 PM

Such incidents typically lead to demands for congressional scrutiny, but Congress in recent years has not taken up the issue. The letter, addressed to congressional committees, was signed by 65 national and regional groups, including the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties and Amnesty International.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 767  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:19 PM

imperial canal district... spooky name
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 767-68  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:20 PM

Although confrontations between agents and smugglers have declined substantially in recent years, rock throwing is not uncommon in many urban areas where trafficking groups use aggressive tactics to prevent agents from arresting illegal immigrants.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 769  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:21 PM

Last year, agents in El Paso killed a teenage boy who was reportedly throwing rocks at them.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 769  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:21 PM

Last year, agents
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 769-70  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:21 PM

Last year, agents in El Paso killed a teenage boy who was reportedly throwing rocks at them. Other alleged rock throwers were killed in the Arizona towns of Nogales and Douglas within the last year, according to the ACLU. 
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 769-70  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:21 PM

Last year, agents in El Paso killed a teenage boy who was reportedly throwing rocks at them. Other alleged rock throwers were killed in the Arizona towns of Nogales and Douglas within the last year, according to the ACLU. Agents
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 769-70  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:22 PM

Last year, agents in El Paso killed a teenage boy who was reportedly throwing rocks at them. Other alleged rock throwers were killed in the Arizona towns of Nogales and Douglas within the last year, according to the ACLU.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 770-75  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:22 PM

Agents involved in fatal shooting incidents are usually cleared of wrongdoing by local and federal authorities. The agency has said deadly force is justifiable because rocks and other objects can cause disabling and sometimes fatal injuries. Numerous agents have been hospitalized over the years because of head wounds, authorities said. Critics argue that countering rocks with bullets amounts to an unacceptable and disproportionate use of force and should be stopped. "Deadly force should always be an action of last resort and only used if an imminent risk of death is present … to shoot stone throwers is exceptionally disproportionate and inhumane," the letter states.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 776-78  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:23 PM

been caught trying to cross the border 17 times since the 1990s. Citing official sources, the newspaper reported that the man worked as a mechanic and was also suspected of being a human smuggler.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 791-93  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:23 PM

James "Whitey" Bulger's image seemed set in stone. He was a Boston "Southie," a street punk who climbed out of the projects on a ladder of crime — petty larceny, then burglary, then bank robbery, then at least 21 murders, according to authorities, one in which a man standing in a phone booth was shot so many times his torso was nearly severed from his legs.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 793-95  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:23 PM

Savvy and feared, Bulger seized control of a mob empire, running rackets, shakedowns and drug deals over 40 years, officials say, before fleeing Boston in December 1994 on the eve of a federal indictment.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 796  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:23 PM

Even as he rose to No. 2 on the most-wanted list, right behind Osama bin Laden, he appeared to be living as an untouchable bon vivant.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 798  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:26 PM

MAP THIS
show liyong
date it... show it with our trip... how close is santa onica? thats basically where we were at, vienna beach

even mom anddad tonight asked me aout the weirdos at vienna beach

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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 803-5  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:42 PM

His apartment was a half a mile from the ocean at 1012 3rd St. But it was rent-controlled, perhaps 800 square feet, and faced the other direction, toward a truck rental shop and a nursing home. An exit sign cast a green hue over his door, and the dim overhead lights in the hall emitted a constant hum.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 805-8  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:45 PM

Most days, other residents said, he was cloistered inside apartment 303 — where he hoarded 30 guns and about $800,000 in cash, sources said. When he ventured out, he still put on an elegant jacket. But he'd turned 81 in September, and his mind appeared to be descending into dementia and paranoid rage, residents said. When his younger, gregarious girlfriend smiled and greeted neighbors, he'd begun barking at her: "Shut up! Don't talk!"
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 814-15  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:46 PM

He will also face state murder charges in Florida and in Oklahoma, where he has long been wanted in connection with the slayings of two businessmen.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 815-16  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:46 PM

Both states have indicated that they are exploring the possibility of seeking the death penalty; the federal charges would not carry the possibility of a death sentence.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 820-21  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:46 PM

"I never thought they'd capture him alive or in the country," said Michael Donahue, 42, who was 13 in 1982, when his father was gunned down, allegedly by Bulger.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 821-23  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:47 PM

The elder Michael Donahue had agreed to give a man a ride home from a bar. The man turned out to be an FBI informant; Bulger and an accomplice were waiting outside, and Donahue was killed along with the informant, authorities said.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 826-27  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:48 PM

Then on Monday, the FBI launched an unusual media blitz to find the couple — this time, aimed not at him, but at his companion.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 832-35  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:48 PM

Greig also had an extensive beauty regimen, which authorities suggest may have been the couple's undoing. A former dental hygienist, she reportedly underwent monthly teeth-whitening sessions and regularly got her hair done, sometimes bringing in her own dye if she found a particular shade she fancied. Authorities also speculated that she had undergone a number of plastic surgery procedures.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 839  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:49 PM

A surveillance team moved in Wednesday afternoon and spotted the couple a short time later.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 845-47  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:50 PM

"He wasn't a real good kid," saidJohn Baker, 84, who grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood, a block away from the house where the Bulgers lived before moving to nearby South Boston.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 847  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:50 PM

tats a loooong timefor an impression to stick
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 847-50  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:51 PM

Bulger reportedly started hijacking delivery trucks in the 1950s and then did a nine-year prison term for a bank robbery, a portion of which he served at Alcatraz after allegedly plotting an escape from custody. After his release, he joined the Winter Hill Gang, the most powerful gang in South Boston. In the 1970s, an arrest at the top of the gang provided an opening. Bulger seized control and became the most notorious gangster in Boston, according to authorities.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 859-60  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:52 PM

paying $1,145 in rent each month, always on time and always in cash.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 875-77  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:52 PM

Our Lady of Guadalupe mysteriously appeared in Encinitas a few days before Easter, not on a piece of toast, but riding a surfboard with her palms joined in prayer and an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 877  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

She arrived seemingly out of thin air — beautifully
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 877-81  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

She arrived seemingly out of thin air — beautifully rendered in a 10-foot-square mosaic of stained glass and stone that had been attached to a concrete railroad bridge without anyone noticing. Mother Mary's stance in the tube of a Tahitian-sized wave indicated she was no amateur. Her right foot forward on the board made her a goofy foot. Who knew? "Save the Ocean" was spelled out down the artwork's left side. Locals in this funky San Diego County beach town called her the Surfing Madonna. Pilgrims paid tribute, taking photos and leaving flowers and the occasional votive candle.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 881-83  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

City officials, though, labeled the work graffiti and began the process of having it removed. The affair was reported on locally and eventually went viral, with Facebook and Twitter pages rallying to save the Surfing Madonna.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 883-85  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

"I didn't expect the kind of reaction it got. We put it up at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, so it's not like I was sneaking around," said Mark Patterson, a 58-year-old long-time local who came forward earlier this month to claim authorship. "I've driven past that railroad bridge a million times. It always looked to me like a perfect frame."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1532-34  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:57 PM

An invitation-only conference of wealthy conservative activists organized by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch will convene just outside Vail, Colo., this weekend.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1536-37  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:57 PM

The groups have urged their followers to arrive with signs that read, "UnVail the Kochs," "Corporations are not people," and "Stop the War on the Middle Class."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1544-46  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:58 PM

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will attend. In the past, attendees have included GOP leaders and commentator Glenn Beck. House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia attended the Palm Springs event in January.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1546-48  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:58 PM

Koch spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer, in an interview in Palm Springs in January, said the event, "brings together some of America’s greatest philanthropists and job creators…who share a common belief that the current level of government spending in our nation is simply unsustainable.”
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1547  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10:59 PM

scary
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1568-69  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:18 PM

Afterward, a lightning-fast photo opportunity saw Khama and Obama pose side-by-side by the U.S. flag and the a blue, black and white flag of Botswana, which won its independence from the British in 1966.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1588-90  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:20 PM

"If the president believes that missile strikes and drone operations taking place in Libya are critical, it is his responsibility to explain [that] to the American people and to seek authorization from this Congress. Because the president has failed to do that ... we are here today," House Speaker John Boehner said from the floor before the vote.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1590-92  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:20 PM

The White House argues that because the United States is acting as a part of NATO, its engagement does not meet the definition of "hostilities" that requires congressional authorization under the War Powers Act.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2212-14  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:34 PM

Las Vegas: Bright lights, dance city With all its pool parties and nightclubs, the desert landmark is fast overtaking Ibiza, Spain, as the electronic dance music capital of the world. The Electric Daisy Carnival is only the latest proof.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-25  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:35 PM

It was Memorial Day weekend 2010 and the internationally famous American DJ Kaskade was standing in his hotel room on the 35th floor of the Encore hotel in Las Vegas looking down on the pool of the just-opened Encore Beach Club.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2225-26  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:36 PM

"There were thousands of people inside, and I could see thousands of people trying to get in," said Kaskade, whose real name is Ryan Raddon, by phone recently from Brazil, where he was due to spin that night. "When it was over, we were grinning ear to ear."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-29  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:36 PM

electronic dance music capital of the world, beating even Ibiza, the Spanish island long known for its hedonistic nightlife and top-name talent.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2230-32  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:36 PM

the nightclub business has floated Vegas during the recession and has grown by as much 20% annually over the last five years. Vegas is adding between three and five major nightclubs per year and now has more than 50.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2232-34  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:37 PM

According to Nightclub & Bar Magazine and the food service industry research and consulting firm Technomic Inc., which produce an annual list of the nation's leading nightclubs, bars and lounges, Vegas nightclubs account for 12 of the top 20.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2235-39  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:37 PM

And Vegas nightclubs are multimillion-dollar, multilevel temples to revelry. Take this year's hottest new club, Marquee at the Cosmopolitan hotel, a $50-million, 60,000-square-foot palace with coliseum-style seating and two dance floors. "The layout of the entire room is focused on the DJ," says co-founder Jason Strauss, adding that Marquee was the first club on the Las Vegas Strip to commit to electronic music programming on both Friday and Saturday nights.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2240-42  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:38 PM

the Electric Daisy Carnival, comes to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It will feature more than 150 artists with attendance projected to top 250,000, according to Pasquale Rotella, chief executive and founder of Insomniac Events, which produces the festival.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2245-50  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:38 PM

The boom in electronic music isn't all sizzling dance moves, however. The genre has long been known to attract a young crowd that is prone to experiments with drugs, particularly Ecstasy. A 19-year-old died at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Dallas this month, and a 15-year-old died of an Ecstasy overdose at last year's event at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, although Rotella says that "as tragic of a situation as that was, it wasn't why we took EDC to Vegas." Meanwhile, Las Vegas police said they will bring extra vigilance to the festival, deploying undercover narcotics officers to augment the more than 1,000 private security personnel.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2250-53  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:39 PM

Whatever happens this weekend, however, it's not likely to hinder the Vegas challenge to European hot spots as a dance capital. Clubs here are now part of the regular circuit of globe-trotting DJs such as Tiësto, Paul van Dyk, David Guetta, Dirty South, Kaskade, Deadmau5 and Armin van Buuren. Veterans of the club scene here trace the rise to 2008, when British DJ Paul Oakenfold began a long-term residency at the Palm's nightclub Rain.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2254-57  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:39 PM

"The casinos are spending a lot of money marketing their nightclubs and branding the DJs with them," says Zimmerman. And because Vegas is a transient market, "if you do more volume in Vegas over a period of time, you hit a humungous population base, which is the reason we would actually say to an artist, 'Why don't you play in Vegas 20 times this year?'"
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2258-62  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:40 PM

Christie, who in addition to his role at Encore Beach Club is also an operating partner of Surrender nightclub at Encore, where Steve Aoki is the resident DJ and musical director, says that this year's Memorial Day weekend was the biggest the city has ever seen in terms of nightclubs and pool parties. "As a whole, it was the most traffic I've seen coming into town. Outside of major festivals, I don't know that there has been that kind of collection of talent in one city in America. We had pretty much every major DJ in one town."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2275-78  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:41 PM

skirting traditional shipping lanes to avoid air pollution curbs, prompting California officials Thursday to extend the state's clean-fuel zone beyond the Channel Islands. The unanimous vote by the California Air Resources Board came after strong protests from the U.S. Navy that the jump in commercial ship traffic across the Point Mugu Sea Range was "seriously jeopardizing successful completion of vital Department of Defense testing and training missions."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2278-79  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:41 PM

California's clean-fuel zone, which took effect in July 2009, is the toughest ship pollution rule in the world, requiring oceangoing vessels to substitute less-polluting oil for the bunker fuel they commonly use.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2281-83  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:41 PM

But shippers began to travel beyond the islands — motoring through the 36,000-square-mile area where the Navy conducts tests involving missiles, ships, submarines and aircraft. Since the clean-fuel zone took effect, the number of ship transits through Navy waters jumped from an average of two a day to as many as 15 a day, according to the Navy.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2285-86  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:42 PM

More than 40% of U.S. imports travel through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2292-99  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:43 PM

Using the longer route outside the Channel Islands has saved shippers about $6,000 per round-trip, according to the air board, because bunker fuel is cheaper than cleaner alternatives. The two industry officials who testified Thursday, Dan Krokosky of Chevron Shipping and Henry Pak of Hanjin Shipping, did not object to the extension. Instead, they urged the board to delay until 2015 the next phase of clean-fuel rules, which require a transition from fuel with 1% sulfur content to fuel with 0.1% sulfur content. "It is unlikely that anyone is going to sell this 0.1% fuel," Krokosky said, adding that the fuel's viscosity had created safety issues. "One of the dangers is that a ship will not start," he said. Air board officials acknowledged that 2% of vessels using the lowest sulfur fuel have experienced propulsion failures. But they said the technical issues are being resolved.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2393-95  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:44 PM

The Obama administration announced Thursday that it planned to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as part of a coordinated international effort to drive down high crude prices and revive the flagging economic recovery in the world's most industrialized countries.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2395-96  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:45 PM

decision sparked a plunge in crude oil prices in the U.S. and Europe.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2398-99  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:45 PM

The oil will be released over the next 30 days, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, constituting half the 60 million barrels that the nations in the International Energy Agency plan to bring to market.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2401-4  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:45 PM

FOR THE RECORD: Oil prices: An earlier online version of this article stated that crude oil prices had stayed at or above $100 a barrel since February. Prices have been below $100 a barrel recently, and crude oil closed at $95.41 on Wednesday. Crude oil prices, which peaked at $113.93 a barrel on April 29, have slid as the economy has shown more signs of weakness.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2405-7  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:45 PM

Fighting in Libya has caused a loss of about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day from global markets, according to the Energy Department. Despite the absence of Libyan oil, there is no shortage of oil in the world. But nervousness about unrest spreading to other Arab oil producers, speculative investment in the oil markets and the revival of the Chinese and Indian economies have pushed crude prices to painful levels.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 2407  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:46 PM

even a relatively small scale supplier like libya exhibits enormous control over the world economy...
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2456  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:50 PM

Dr. Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2485-89  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:51 PM

NASA's pioneering Dawn spacecraft, a year late in being launched and 20% over budget, is slowly creeping up on the protoplanet Vesta and is expected to enter orbit around it about July 16, the first stop on a remarkable journey that will later take the craft to the larger dwarf planet Ceres. The craft, the largest probe ever launched by NASA, is about half-way through its three-month approach phase to Vesta, 96,000 miles away and closing in at the sedate speed of about 260 mph.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2489-91  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:51 PM

The whole procedure is happening so slowly, in terms of normal asteroid flybys and planetary encounters, that scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge will not be able to calculate precisely when the craft entered orbit until after the fact.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2491-92  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:52 PM

The craft's visit to Vesta will be the first prolonged encounter with an object in the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter and the first trip to a protoplanet, a large body that almost became a planet.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2497-98  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:53 PM

said Carol Raymond of JPL, deputy principal investigator for Dawn. Learning about it "will give us better tools to understand the thousands of fragments that are out there in the asteroid belt."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2499-2500  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:53 PM

Those problems also raised the cost of the mission from a planned $373 million to $446 million at launch.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2500-2503  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:54 PM

Dawn is a unique craft and mission on a variety of accounts. For one, it is not powered by a conventional rocket engine but by three ion engines. Electrical fields produced by two 27-foot solar panels accelerate xenon ions to high speed, expelling them out the three engines and providing a thrust about the same as "a single piece of paper pressing down on your hand," according to JPL's Robert Mase, the Dawn project manager.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2503-4  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:54 PM

That may not seem like much, but by the time the craft has used up its load of 937 pounds of xenon, the engines will have provided 24,000 mph of velocity change.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2508-10  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:55 PM

10,000 miles high, but it will spiral in, eventually getting as close as 120 miles above the surface, where it should produce breathtaking pictures of the craters. Spectrometers on the craft will also map minerals on the surface and in the craters, which should lead to a clearer picture of how Vesta formed.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2516-17  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:55 PM

Recent research suggests that the 606-mile-wide dwarf planet may hold a buried ocean under a thick layer of ice. Some estimates suggest that Ceres might even have more water than Earth itself.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2571-73  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:56 PM

The Supreme Court gave the pharmaceutical industry a pair of victories, shielding the makers of generic drugs from most lawsuits by injured patients and declaring that drug makers have a free-speech right to buy private prescription records to boost their sales pitches to doctors. In
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 2573  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:56 PM

whaaaaaaat
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2576-77  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:57 PM

But in a 5-4 decision, the high court said this same legal duty to warn patients of newly revealed dangers did not extend to the makers of copy-cat generic drugs.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2587-89  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:58 PM

But the dissenters, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the generic drug maker should have alerted the FDA to the danger and then updated its warning label. "This outcome makes little sense," she wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan agreed.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2594-95  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:59 PM

Several data-mining firms have made a billion-dollar business out of buying and selling the prescription data to drug makers and researchers.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2595-98  | Added on Saturday, June 25, 2011, 11:59 PM

Writing for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that "information is speech," and that under the 1st Amendment, the government usually cannot restrict speech because it does not approve of the message. "If pharmaceutical marketing affects treatment decisions," he said, it does so because doctors find it persuasive.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2600-2602  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:00 AM

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the decision for having "overturned a sensible Vermont law that sought to protect the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2617-19  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:01 AM

On Thursday, Kimberley Process Chairman Mathieu Yamba said Zimbabwe would be allowed to export rough diamonds from Marange under a system of minimal human rights oversight, participants said. The regulatory group's decisions are supposed to be made by consensus, but the United States, Canada and the European Union swiftly protested.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2623-27  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:02 AM

The Kimberley Process was created by the United Nations in 2003 to ensure that the trade in diamonds did not contribute to human rights abuses. But Thursday's decision calls into question its effectiveness. The Process grew out of the trade in blood diamonds that financed brutal rebel groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Many member countries and diamond-industry representatives argue that the Process was not meant to address state-sponsored violence, like that in Zimbabwe.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2646-47  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:03 AM

Children, mothers and grandparents have fled to Tunisia to escape the batteries of missiles launched from the valley below by military forces loyal to the longtime Libyan strongman.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2649-53  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:04 AM

centered on Tripoli and the large rebel-held cities of Benghazi and Misurata, the uprising is also playing out in rugged mountain communities in the west, near the Tunisian border, where Libya's long-oppressed Berber minority sees its own chance to shake off Kadafi's four-decade rule. The fighters here, who are increasingly in contact with rebels in Benghazi and elsewhere, also view it as an opportunity to help stretch Kadafi's forces: the more troops tied down in the west, the fewer available to control Tripoli or attack other rebel-held areas, primarily in eastern Libya.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2653  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:04 AM

Kadafi's forces, meanwhile, see Nalut as strategically important for cutting off supply lines from Tunisia
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2672-75  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 12:05 AM

Kadafi's forces have prevented residents from tending to their fields and have killed off livestock on farms at the foot of the mountains, denying them access to food save for expensive imports from Tunisia. Kadafi has also stopped gasoline supplies and cut off the city's utilities. "There's no electricity and there's no water," said Mohammad Naluti, 21, a university student who volunteers as a liaison between the city's military and media committees. "Who would want to live here?"
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 790-94  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:30 PM

But such bailouts are only stop-gap measures. Portugal and Spain, and to a lesser extent Belgium and Italy, remain vulnerable to pressure from bondholders. Portugal is likely to receive 50-100 billion euros over the next few months. But should Spain also need a bailout -- which could cost as much as 600 billion euros -- the 750 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility would soon be exhausted. In that event, the main euro creditors, primarily British, French, and German banks, might have to accept so-called haircuts, substantial cuts in the principals of their loans.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 801-2  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:31 PM

Germany had already incorporated such a cap into its own constitution, one that severely restricts any government deficit spending, including the kind that might benefit the country's long-term growth.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 807-8  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:45 PM

version of the gold standard, which wreaked economic havoc in the 1920s and led to a toxic political fallout.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 817-21  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:47 PM

As they begin to adopt Germany's model, or something along those lines, the other eurozone states will find it nearly impossible to use fiscal stimulus in times of crisis. And with monetary policy already in the hands of the dogmatically anti-inflationary European Central Bank, their only means of adjusting to crises will be to stand by as wages fall and unemployment soars. Ireland -- with its collapsed tax revenues, massive cuts in government spending, shrinking wages, and skyrocketing unemployment -- is the unhappy exemplar of rigid austerity measures in the new Europe.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 822-25  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:47 PM

Today, they are more suspicious. And if they come to think that further European integration is causing more economic hardship, their suspicion could harden into bitterness and perhaps even xenophobia. Ireland's new finance minister, Michael Noonan, has told voters that the EU is a game rigged in Germany's favor; editorials in major Irish newspapers warn of Germany's return to racist imperialism. As economic shocks hit other EU countries, politicians in those states will also look for someone to blame.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 837-39  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:51 PM

Instituting effective long-term reforms will be a harder sell. Germany adopted its own large-scale fiscal stimulus in 2009, but it returned to its traditional anti-Keynesian stance as soon as the danger of total systemic collapse had passed. Yet Keynesianism, at least properly understood, is the only way forward.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 845-50  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 02:52 PM

If anything, "hard" Keynesianism suggests that the problem with the macroeconomic rules governing the euro is not that they are too tough and too detailed but that they are not tough or detailed enough. States in the eurozone should not be allowed to run moderate budget deficits in boom years, the Keynesian argument goes; instead, they should be compelled to run budget surpluses. The surpluses could then be saved in rainy-day funds or used to pay down government debt or, if the country had reached a satisfactory debt-to-GDP ratio, spent as a fiscal stimulus in the event of a crisis. Unlike the kind of budget management advocated by the German government, this approach does not seek to eliminate or minimize governments' leeway to conduct fiscal policy. It gives governments up-front the means to manage demand whenever they might need to.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 625-27  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 03:08 PM

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund predicts that by mid-decade, in terms of GDP, India will have exceeded Germany, Brazil will have outpaced France and the United Kingdom, Mexico will have passed Canada, and Indonesia and Turkey will have superseded Australia.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 693-97  | Added on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 06:31 PM

Granted, the phenomenon of bilateral and regional trade agreements has been the result in part of a vicious cycle. Countries have pursued these agreements because Doha is faltering and bilateral and regional agreements can deliver commercial results; Doha is faltering in part because some countries think they can avoid difficult decisions by opting for easier bilateral or regional talks instead. But as the Doha talks meander, the international community may be reaching a tipping point, where the pursuit of these lesser agreements becomes the preferred option.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 7  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 01:52 AM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 379-83  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 01:55 AM

The ICC needs a new leader who has not only the necessary prosecutorial, diplomatic, and managerial skills but also a keen sense of the importance of this moment in the development of the still fledgling institution. To achieve the ICC's promise as a global court, the parties to the Rome Statute must select a prosecutor who can meet the court's most serious challenges: concluding trials; convincing governments to arrest fugitives; conducting credible investigations in difficult places, such as Libya and Sudan; and expanding the ICC's reach beyond Africa. This may be a lot to ask for, but the future of the ICC depends on it.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 416-18  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 01:59 AM

China, Russia, and the United States have chosen not to join it, for instance, for fear that it might one day take aim at their own nationals. Washington has slowly been softening its position, but it remains wary. Earlier this year, in an unprecedented show of support for the court, it voted for the Security Council's referral of the Libya situation.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 471-75  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:07 AM

But with all its formal investigations targeting African states -- the Central African Republic, Congo, Kenya, Libya, Sudan, and Uganda -- the court has also invited the charge that it is an agent for postcolonial Western interests. This is unfortunate. For one thing, Africa is the setting for innumerable atrocities, and international attention to them should be welcomed, not shunned. For another, the ICC has been conducting preliminary examinations (inquiries that may or may not turn into formal investigations) outside Africa, including in Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Honduras, and the Palestinian territories.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 519-20  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:12 AM

When it comes to the LRA file, the main challenge for the next prosecutor will be to continue to press for arrests without appearing powerless in the face of ongoing atrocities.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 7  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:17 AM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 209-14  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:18 AM

For much of its history, the United States drew on the strength of its citizens in times of crisis, with volunteers joining fire brigades and civilians enlisting or being drafted to fight the nation's wars. But during the Cold War, keeping the threat of a nuclear holocaust at bay required career military and intelligence professionals operating within a large, complex, and highly secretive national security establishment. The sheer size and lethality of U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals rendered civil defense measures largely futile. By the time the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, two generations of Americans had grown accustomed to sitting on the sidelines and the national security community had become used to operating in a world of its own.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 252-58  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:24 AM

On the surface, it seems sensible to avoid releasing information about vulnerabilities or security measures that potential adversaries could exploit. But this insularity often undermines the defense of critical infrastructure, such as seaports, dams, and waterworks. In determining the best way to protect a suspension bridge, for example, the bridge's chief engineer is likely to have ideas that would not occur to a law enforcement or military professional working in the Department of Homeland Security. But government officials frequently fail to consult that engineer. They will share security information only with vetted company security officers, who in turn are barred from passing this information on to senior executives and managers who do not hold active security clearances. As a result, investment and operational decisions are often made with scant attention paid to the potential security stakes.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 258-72  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:25 AM

The U.S. government should increase its transparency with the broader public as well. Many policymakers believe that candor about potential dangers may generate excessive public fear. Yet the secrecy reflex often contributes to public anxiety. People are most frightened when they sense their vulnerability to threats but feel powerless to address them. U.S. officials have stated for nearly a decade that terrorism is a clear and present danger, but they have given citizens little information about how to cope with that hazard. Instead, citizens are told to proceed with their daily routines because the government is hard at work protecting them. The psychological effect of this is similar to that of a doctor telling a patient that she is suffering from a potentially life-threatening illness but providing only vague guidance about how to combat it. No one wants to receive disturbing news from his physician, but a prognosis becomes less stressful when doctors provide patients with all the details, a clear description of the available treatments, and the opportunity to make decisions that allow the patient to assert some personal control over the outcome. In the same way, the U.S. government can decrease fears of terrorism by giving the American public the information it needs to better withstand, rapidly recover from, and adapt to the next major terrorist attack. Flight attendants routinely tell passengers that they may need to use their seat cushions to stay afloat in the event of an emergency water landing. Although escaping a plane in the water is a frightening scenario, this safety instruction does not generate panic among passengers. Similarly, there is no reason why civilians should not be told what bombs and detonators look like, on the very remote chance that someone like the "Christmas Day bomber" ends up seated next to one of them on a plane. Having better-informed airport workers, flight crews, and passengers could prove a far more effective safeguard than deploying hundreds of new body scanners at airports.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 304-5  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:30 AM

Building societal resilience requires a bottom-up, open, and participatory process -- that is, the exact inverse of the way U.S. policymakers have approached homeland security to date.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 340-42  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:36 AM

The approaching tenth anniversary of September 11 will provide Obama with an opportunity to recalibrate the nation's approach to homeland security. While honoring the enormous sacrifice of the U.S. armed forces and those who have been working to protect the U.S. homeland, he should ask citizens to step forward and assume their own unique role.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 348-50  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:37 AM

It is long past time for Washington to stop treating civil society as a child to be sheltered and to acknowledge the limits and counterproductive consequences of relying so heavily on protective measures. In good times and bad, the greatest asset of the United States has always been its people.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 7  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 02:37 AM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 144-45  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:18 AM

Totalitarianism is a twentieth-century enterprise that would have been impossible to realize in premodern, nonindustrialized societies.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 176-79  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:22 AM

in post-Baathist Iraq, boxes of files containing hundreds of pages of correspondence from the Office of the President providing guidance on the minutiae of wall posters and paintings and murals and monuments made in Baghdad under Saddam, even as he was waging wars with Iran, Kuwait, and the United States: this is the true measure of totalitarian culture, not what this or that Iraqi artist said about art before Saddam even came to power. 
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 8  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:24 AM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 8  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:29 AM

read. at progress and the pat in latin america. eated to a jan/feb article.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 8  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:29 AM

read. on progress and the past in latin america. eated to a jan/feb article.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 8  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:29 AM

read. on progress and the past in latin america. related to a jan/feb article.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 29-32  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:30 AM

Although Altman and Haass expect markets to remain calm "possibly for two or three years," the rising price of gold suggests otherwise. Gold has risen from $460 per ounce to $1,400 per ounce in the last five years -- representing a 67 percent devaluation of the U.S. dollar per unit of gold. As former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan has said, gold is "the ultimate means of payment."
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 33-35  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:31 AM

At 4.6 years, the average maturity of the U.S. federal debt held by the public (debt that now totals $9.1 trillion) is tight relative to, for instance, the average maturity of 13.5 years for British government debt. According to the International Monetary Fund, the maturing debt of the U.S. government will equal 18.1 percent of U.S. GDP during 2011 alone.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 35-38  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:31 AM

Altman and Haass rightly note that the U.S. government's annual interest expense will rise dramatically as its stock of debt increases and interest rates inevitably rise. Further debt increases would substantially darken the fiscal outlook for the federal government. And even a relatively small rise in interest rates would have a significant impact.
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 9  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:34 AM

read
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May-Jun 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 9  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:34 AM

read. cary perspectiveof rising gold prices and consequence of future debt
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Foreign Affairs (Subcription or (free) Registration) (calibre)
- Bookmark on Page 74 | Loc. 1134  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:36 AM


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Foreign Affairs (Subcription or (free) Registration) (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 1 | Loc. 4-6  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:36 AM

With European NATO allies drastically reducing their defense spending, there were legitimate fears as to whether they could still afford to respond to such complex crises.
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Foreign Affairs (Subcription or (free) Registration) (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 1 | Loc. 10-12  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:37 AM

The mission in Libya has revealed three important truths about military intervention today. First, to those who claimed that Afghanistan was to be NATO's last out-of-area mission, it has shown that unpredictability is the very essence of security.
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Foreign Affairs (Subcription or (free) Registration) (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 1 | Loc. 12-15  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:37 AM

Second, it has proved that in addition to frontline capabilities, such as fighter-bombers and warships, so-called enablers, such as surveillance and refueling aircraft, as well as drones, are critical parts of any modern operation. And third, it has revealed that NATO allies do not lack military capabilities. Any shortfalls have been primarily due to political, rather than military, constraints.
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The Philosophers' Magazine (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 199-202  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:43 AM

Hume left for posthumous publication a work that remains as important and as urgent today as when it was first written: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It should be (but, alas, is not) read by anyone who even thinks of inferring from the remarkable order and arrangement of the observable world as we know it the presence of an intelligent design of a concerned creator of the universe.
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The Philosophers' Magazine (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 215-23  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:45 AM

It is for Hume’s sympathetic attention to the complexity of human nature, and for his trying to do justice to it at the deepest levels of philosophical reflection, that we should honour his memory. He was a great philosopher who made lasting contributions to a subject fundamental to the understanding of human life. But for all his philosophical greatness, he was also, as a philosopher, a great man, an admirable human being. And for this too he should be honoured today, as he was at the time of his death. His life-long friend Adam Smith wrote in retrospect not only of Hume’s writings and achievements, which he admired above all others, but of Hume’s “temper [which] … seemed more happily balanced than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known … that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, … was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”
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02 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglas Adams)
- Highlight Loc. 538-39  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 10:47 AM

This was the gist of the notice. It said "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2823-26  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:23 PM

Today, the United States lacks the resources to continue as the primary provider of global public goods. Europe is fully occupied for the moment with saving the eurozone. Japan is likewise tied down with complex political and economic problems at home. None of these powers’ governments has the time, resources, or domestic political capital needed for a new bout of international heavy lifting.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2826-28  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:23 PM

Meanwhile, there are no credible answers to transnational challenges without the direct involvement of emerging powers such as Brazil, China, and India. Yet these countries are far too focused on domestic development to welcome the burdens that come with new responsibilities abroad.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2828-29  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:23 PM

We are now living in a G-Zero world, one in which no single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage -- or the will -- to drive a truly international agenda.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2834-37  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:24 PM

In 1997, the U.S.-dominated G-7 became the U.S.-dominated G-8, as U.S. and European policymakers pulled Russia into the club. This change did not reflect a shift in the world’s balance of power. It was simply an effort to bolster Russia’s fragile democracy and help prevent the country from sliding back into communism or nationalist militarism.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2839-41  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:25 PM

In September 2008, fears that the global economy stood on the brink of catastrophe hastened the inevitable transition to the G-20, an organization that includes the world’s largest and most important emerging-market states.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2863-67  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:28 PM

In fact, global defense policy has always been essentially a zero-sum game, as one country or bloc of countries works to maximize its defense capabilities in ways that (deliberately or indirectly) challenge the military preeminence of its rivals. International commerce is a different game; trade can benefit all players. But the divergence of economic interests in the wake of the financial crisis has undermined global economic cooperation, throwing a wrench into the gears of globalization.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2869-71  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:28 PM

combination of Washington’s declining international clout, on the one hand, and sharp policy disagreements, on the other -- both between developed and developing states and between the United States and Europe -- has created a vacuum of international leadership just at the moment when it is most needed.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2890-92  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:32 PM

Asset and financial protectionism are on the rise, too. A Chinese state-owned oil company attempted to purchase the U.S. energy firm Unocal in 2005, and a year later, the state-owned Dubai Ports World tried to purchase a company that would allow it to operate several U.S. ports: both ignited a political furor in Washington.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2904-11  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:35 PM

Following previous crises in emerging markets, such as the Asian financial meltdown of the late 1990s, policymakers in those economies committed themselves to maintaining weak currencies, running current account surpluses, and self-insuring against liquidity runs by accumulating huge foreign exchange reserves. This strategy grew in part from a mistrust that the IMF could be counted on to act as the lender of last resort. Deficit countries, such as the United States, see such accumulations of reserves as a form of trade mercantilism that prevents undervalued currencies from appreciating. Emerging-market economies, in turn, complain that U.S. fiscal and current account deficits could eventually cause the collapse of the U.S. dollar, even as these deficits help build up the dollar assets demanded by those countries accumulating reserves. This is a rerun of the old Triffin dilemma, an economic observation of what happens when the country that produces the reserve currency must run deficits to provide international liquidity, deficits that eventually debase the currency’s value as a stable international reserve.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2914-17  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:35 PM

Nor is it likely that China’s yuan will soon supplant the dollar as a major reserve currency, because for the yuan to do so, Beijing would have to allow its exchange rate to fluctuate, reduce its controls on capital inflows and outflows, liberalize its domestic capital markets, and create markets for yuan-denominated debt. That is a long-term process that would present many near-term threats to China’s political and economic stability.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2922-26  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:37 PM

From 1945 until 1990, the global balance of power was defined primarily by relative differences in military capability. It was not market-moving innovation or cultural dynamism that bolstered the Soviet bloc’s prominence within a bipolar international system. It was raw military power. Today, it is the centrality of China and other emerging powers to the future of the global economy, not the numbers of their citizens under arms or the weapons at their disposal, that make their choices crucial for the United States’ future. This is the core of the G-Zero
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Note Loc. 2  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:39 PM

read. depressing aticle about power vacuum in world.
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Highlight Loc. 2696-98  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:42 PM

By the end of the decade, a vast national network of service providers had emerged to administer these courses and other services -- at a cost of some 140 million euros ($186 million) a year. (The U.S. government, in comparison, spent $18 million last year to facilitate integration.)
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Mar-Apr 2011 (CharlesMartinReid.com)
- Bookmark Loc. 2705  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 06:46 PM


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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 63 | Loc. 952-55  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:16 PM

Many of the Chinese migrants who came to California to work on the railroads — and later in agriculture — were farmers who brought with them specialized knowledge of oranges, a fruit that originated in China. They were able to efficiently pick and pack oranges for mass consumption in the U.S., Akin said. "It was the Chinese laborers who carried the horticultural knowledge of citrus that was responsible for making Riverside the center of the citrus industry," she said.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 93 | Loc. 1420-21  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:46 PM

TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said that the security measures are based "on what we have learned from intelligence and the tactics used by our adversaries."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 93 | Loc. 1421  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:46 PM

what the fuuuuck
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 134 | Loc. 2053-55  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:51 PM

By 1990, work had shut down. The site sat fenced off for most of the decade as the pair battled in court — and were sued in turn by business partners who said they had been stiffed, including the noted golf course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. When
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 134 | Loc. 2055  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:52 PM

what a bunch of good for nothing human trash. non contributing zeroes.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 135 | Loc. 2059-61  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:52 PM

Marsch's dealings with San Diego's power elite went back decades: He had sold a Breckenridge, Colo., ski condo in 1979 to a group including Roger Hedgecock, a county supervisor and later San Diego mayor who wound up convicted for his role in a campaign-finance scandal.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 135 | Loc. 2061  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:53 PM

again. human trash.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 135 | Loc. 2069  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:55 PM

taxes owed on earnings from the Bridges.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 135 | Loc. 2069  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:55 PM

i did nt know tha a corporation can pay for your taxes
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 136 | Loc. 2084-86  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:58 PM

"Does it really take me dragging Lennar through trial … to end up as James Cameron did collecting what is owed to me and showing Lennar's accounting to be the fraud that it is?" Marsch wrote.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 136 | Loc. 2086  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 08:58 PM

omg somebody shut this guy the fuck up
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 137 | Loc. 2098  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:02 PM

Petrocelli,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note on Page 137 | Loc. 2098  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:02 PM

ummmmm wtf
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 51-53  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:13 PM

After government-backed protests in Hanoi demanded that China respect Vietnam’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the two countries conducted a joint naval patrol in disputed waters. China urged America to avoid getting involved in the dispute.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 48-50  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:13 PM

China released Ai Weiwei on bail from detention, after the artist and human-rights activist admitted evading tax. Mr Ai was arrested in April as he boarded a flight for Hong Kong, and was held in secret without access to a lawyer. China said it released Mr Ai for “his good attitude in confessing his crimes” and because of a chronic illness.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 54-58  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:14 PM

Pakistan arrested Brigadier Ali Khan for his ties to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned Islamist group. The most senior Pakistani army officer to be taken into custody in a decade, Brigadier Khan was detained shortly before India’s foreign secretary flew to Islamabad for talks with her Pakistani counterpart. Both sides started a dialogue in February for the first time since the Mumbai attacks of 2008, in which Pakistani officers are accused of involvement.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 58-60  | Added on Monday, June 27, 2011, 09:15 PM

Barack Obama proposed withdrawing 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of next summer, with 68,000 remaining to support the transition of responsibility for security to the Afghans by 2014.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 56-58  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:30 AM

Wrobel could have stayed on until retirement -- he said he loves Nevada -- but since becoming department chairman in June 2008 all he has been able to do is watch in dismay as state support for higher education was repeatedly reduced, including a 15 percent cut due Friday.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 59-60  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:30 AM

What bothers me is the attacks by some people on state employees. It is like people transferred their anger from illegal immigrants to state employees."
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 65  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:31 AM

And as a result, the public suffers through longer waits in offices and less efficient and productive agencies,
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 63-64  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:31 AM

When people like Rocha retire or like Wrobel just leave, state government loses trained and skilled workers who cannot be replaced quickly,
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 82  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:34 AM

school teachers in Nevada -- who earn 5 percent less than the national average
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 88-90  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:35 AM

Wrobel said UNLV has a "highly mobile" and attractive faculty. Many professors can and will find jobs elsewhere, hurting the university's attempt to attract a higher quality faculty. He said 48 professors just recently took buyouts rather than continuing to teach.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 96-99  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:36 AM

Subramaniam is tired of people who believe state employees are well-paid, lazy fat cats. Because of its average pay, too often state government has become a training ground for young people and college graduates, he said. Once they gain experience, he said, they transfer to better paying jobs with Clark and Washoe counties or the cities of Reno and Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 99-100  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:36 AM

"The problem with so many state workers retiring is we have the lowest number (on a per capita basis) of state workers in the country,"
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 446-47  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:59 AM

prejudice against Mormons has held steady over the years despite its growth in the United States to 5.5 million members and around the world with another 7.5 million members.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 447-49  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:59 AM

Opposition to having a Mormon as president has been about 20 percent across America since 1967, when Gallup first began to measure it, the polling organization said.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 500-504  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:04 AM

"As far as I'm concerned, this is a very worthwhile and good program that's kept a lot of people out of jail who didn't need to be in jail," said Jim Carmany, Las Vegas' Municipal Court administrator. Bond companies have had to cut jobs and hours, but there is more to the complaints than just loss of business, Ceballos said. He argued that marshals are collecting bail when they accept a partial payment and let a defendant go, and state law bars law enforcement officers from being bail agents or bail enforcement agents as a wall against corruption.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 555-57  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:08 AM

If politics is allowed to control the process, the dominant party could get more seats in the Legislature and Congress than its population merits, and that could shift government policies in ways that most Nevadans don't support. This
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 557  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:08 AM

This
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 555-57  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:08 AM

If politics is allowed to control the process, the dominant party could get more seats in the Legislature and Congress than its population merits, and that could shift government policies in ways that most Nevadans don't support.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 572-73  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:10 AM

The hyperpartisanship seen in the Legislature simply does not exist on the state high court, and it shouldn't, he said.
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Las Vegas Review Journal (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 630-32  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:15 AM

In 1981 he was named special hearing master for the MGM Grand Hotel fire litigation. Eighty-five people were killed in that fire. Cherry was also named special master of the Las Vegas Hilton fire litigation. That fire occurred just three months after the MGM Grand blaze, killing eight.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 7 | Loc. 106-8  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:15 AM

Once considered to be the hottest wireless device around, the BlackBerry has not gained much from the growing demand for smartphones; its share of the market in North America has shrunk to 17% from around 50% just two years ago.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 8 | Loc. 109-11  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:16 AM

An annual survey estimated that the combined wealth of the world’s 10.9m rich people (27% of whom are women) stood at $42.7 trillion in 2010, more than in 2007, the year the financial crisis was brewing. More than half of the monied classes live in the United States, Japan and Germany, though Asia has more in total than Europe for the first time.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 8 | Loc. 110  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:16 AM

meaning financial crisis cased shift in wealth?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 10 | Loc. 139-40  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:20 AM

As the climate gets more poisonous and elections approach in France, Germany and Greece itself, the risk of a disastrous accident—anything from a disorderly default to a currency break-up—is growing.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 10 | Loc. 151-53  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:21 AM

While the EU’s leaders are trying to deny the need for default, a rising chorus is taking the opposite line. Greece should embrace default, walk away from its debts, abandon the euro and bring back the drachma (in a similar way to Britain leaving the gold standard in 1931 or Argentina dumping its currency board in 2001).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 10 | Loc. 153-58  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:22 AM

That option would be ruinous, both for Greece and for the EU. Even if capital controls were brought in, some Greek banks would go bust. The new drachma would plummet, making Greece’s debt burden even more onerous. Inflation would take off as import prices shot up and Greece had to print money to finance its deficit. The benefit from a weaker currency would be small: Greece’s exports make up a small slice of GDP. The country would still need external finance, but who would lend to it? And the contagion risk would be bigger than from restructuring alone: if Greece left, why not Portugal or even Spain and Italy? If the euro zone were to break up it would put huge pressure on the single market.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 11 | Loc. 160  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 11:22 AM

It would hardly be a shock to the markets, which have long expected a default (an important difference from Lehman).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 12 | Loc. 176  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:39 PM

the Chinese Communist Party marks its 90th birthday on July 1st
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 187-89  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:42 PM

However, the love affair between a party that calls itself the vanguard of the proletariat and its actual, middle-class supporters is now under threat. At the root of this is an inevitable slowing in economic growth.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 190-95  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:42 PM

A sudden crash is not impossible: there could be a botched attempt to tackle either the property bubble or what the prime minister calls the “uncaged tiger” of inflation (now at 5.5%, its highest level in nearly three years). But an immediate upset is still unlikely: inflation is not yet out of control, still far below the 27.7% it reached in 1994. The danger is more in the medium term: growth will inevitably slow over the next decade, as China settles into its status as a middle-income country, and the burden of caring for an ever larger number of elderly people in a slower economy may make middle-class life far more uncomfortable.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 195-97  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:43 PM

To compensate, the party will have to usher in wrenching change. It is struggling to shift China away from the current unsustainable model, where growth is propelled by vast investment and export-led manufacturing, towards one where domestic consumption plays a bigger role.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 197-98  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:43 PM

build health-care, pension and social-security systems to reassure citizens: all of these are necessary to persuade the middle class to save less.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 198-200  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:43 PM

China’s state-owned businesses have an insatiable appetite for capital, which many of them waste. Curbing state companies means taking on all of the well-connected people who ride on their coat-tails,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 14 | Loc. 201-3  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:44 PM

an official report in 2008 said that, of new applicants for membership, by far the biggest category comprised university students over the age of 18. Although the decision by these young careerists to sign up shows the party’s clout, they have very different ambitions from those of the old ideologues.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 14 | Loc. 204-7  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:45 PM

attracting underemployed young rural residents to urban jobs. But the supply is beginning to slow. It would help if farmers could sell or mortgage their rural land and use the money to help gain a stronger foothold in the cities. But the party remains overly fearful of privatising farmland, partly for atavistic fears of a destitute peasantry, and partly for ideological reasons.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 14 | Loc. 208-9  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:45 PM

Of the tens of thousands of protests each year, most are still rural, typically by farmers
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 14 | Loc. 213-15  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:46 PM

Here it runs up against the middle class most directly. To give migrants the same housing and other benefits as urban hukou holders, and to build a proper social safety-net will be expensive. And if more tax is the solution, then the middle class could well begin demanding a greater political say. That is a day the party dreads.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 15 | Loc. 222-24  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:47 PM

The most recent leadership transition, in 2002, went smoothly. But every previous generational shift in the party’s 90 years has been chaotic, and, a decade on, the tasks faced by the leaders who took over in 2002 look almost easy by comparison with today’s.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 15 | Loc. 224  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:47 PM

so true...
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 15 | Loc. 229-30  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:48 PM

marked an end to the mission that took 100,000 troops to a distant and dismal part of the world. Afghanistan will cost America roughly $120 billion this year.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 16 | Loc. 234-36  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:48 PM

The middle ground is often good politics; it is less comfortable in warfare. In this case, history will probably judge that Mr Obama took out too many soldiers too early.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 16 | Loc. 245-47  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:49 PM

Even with the best outcome there, women will suffer discrimination, poppies will flourish and corruption will eat away at daily life. But any hope of a decent life there depends on peace. Avoiding a full-blown civil war is crucial for Afghans.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 16 | Loc. 245  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:49 PM

It will continue to be plagued by violence and insurgency.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 17 | Loc. 253-54  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 01:50 PM

Such doubts will make Afghans less likely to reckon on the government enduring—and hence more likely to fight it.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 18 | Loc. 269-70  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:07 PM

Take Egypt. Outside agriculture, over 40% of the economy is in state hands,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 22 | Loc. 328-29  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:40 PM

It all sounds suspiciously like the subprime mortgage boom, when banks parked illiquid assets in off-balance-sheet vehicles. The problem is not on the same scale: synthetic ETFs and ETNs are a small proportion of the industry. But the subprime market also started small.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 22 | Loc. 331-34  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:40 PM

The exact nature of the collateral should be disclosed on a regular basis, like the main investments in a mutual fund’s portfolio. Investors ought to be told that the market for ETFs may not always be as liquid as they would like. And the industry should look to its own self-interest: it would be a shame if reckless expansion spoiled a good innovation.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 28 | Loc. 415-19  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:47 PM

Regarding Germany’s decision to reduce nuclear power output, I can only say that we have all gone collectively insane in Europe (“Nuclear? Nein, danke”, June 4th). There were only a few deaths resulting from the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan and about a dozen people were treated for minor burns and released from hospital. Deaths from the latest E. coli outbreak in Germany, blamed on organic bean sprouts, number at least 35; more than 3,000 people have been taken ill with different levels of exposure to the bacteria.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 28 | Loc. 420-21  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:47 PM

Uncharacteristically, it is the French who are showing remarkable common sense so far and will likely reap the rewards through their nuclear-power industry in the form of increased demand from both Germany and Italy.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 30 | Loc. 455-58  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 02:50 PM

Minutes before the vote the opposition walked out because of a noisy, petty argument over whether “democracy” had returned to Greece in 1974, when the military dictatorship fell, or in 1981 when the first left-of-centre administration was elected. Mr Papandreou managed to coax his opponents back by pointing out what an appalling impression such squabbles make on the rest of the world at such a grave hour in the country’s history.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 32 | Loc. 490-91  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:15 PM

In a passionate speech during the confidence vote, he caught public attention by saying that whatever the numbers might show, the government understood how desperate things were for many ordinary folk.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 36 | Loc. 542-45  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:24 PM

Across the entire financial system these CDS exposures largely net off, Barclays reckons, and collateral and margin-calls should have reduced the outstanding exposures to relatively small amounts. However, not everyone will end up with a net position close to zero. It is reasonable to suppose that there would be some large losses (and some large gains) on CDS contracts if Greece stopped paying its bills. Quite where these would emerge is causing some worry in markets.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 36 | Loc. 547-48  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:26 PM

Were panic to seize the banking system, regulators could do much to restore calm by releasing information they have collected in the past three months as part of “stress tests” of Europe’s banks.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 37 | Loc. 561-65  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:31 PM

First and second in line would be the next-wobbliest members of the euro zone: Ireland, whose government has debts of around €150 billion, and Portugal, which owes €160 billion. Partly because they have also reduced their holdings of Irish and Portuguese bonds, European banks should be able to cope if these countries joined Greece in default or in restructuring their debts. However, if contagion were to spread to Spain or Italy, and banks had to accept losses on their governments’ bonds, the sums would look grim even for some banks outside the affected countries (see chart 2). Italy owes €1.8 trillion, or 120% of a far bigger GDP than Greece’s, Ireland’s or Portugal’s. Spain’s debts amount to €640 billion.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 575-77  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:34 PM

The ECB could counter money-market flight, for instance, by supplying more liquidity, as the Fed did after Lehman crashed. It could also reopen the foreign-exchange swaps set up with the Fed during the crisis.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 577-78  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:34 PM

Some good ideas are already being discussed. One is to conduct credible stress tests and recapitalise banks that fail.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 583-86  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:35 PM

Some policies, though, might cause trouble. The ECB has threatened not to accept Greek government bonds as collateral if the country’s debt were restructured. If it carried out that threat, a liquidity crisis in Greece, bank runs and other mayhem could ensue. “It would be almost like an act of war,” says a senior executive at a Greek bank. “I don’t think that they’d pull the plug.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 40 | Loc. 601-2  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:38 PM

Television images of Greeks haranguing their government over reforms do not help. The protests make it “very difficult for MPs to explain the rescue measures to voters”, says Klaus-Peter Flosbach, the CDU’s fiscal-policy spokesman in the Bundestag.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 40 | Loc. 601-3  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:38 PM

Television images of Greeks haranguing their government over reforms do not help. The protests make it “very difficult for MPs to explain the rescue measures to voters”, says Klaus-Peter Flosbach, the CDU’s fiscal-policy spokesman in the Bundestag. Nearly half the electorate favours throwing Greece out of the euro, according to a recent poll.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 635-38  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:46 PM

Much is at stake in Egypt economically, as well as politically. Like other Arab economies, the country has what might be called a patriarchal economy, with a weak private sector dependent on a dominant state one. Such an economy is the counterpart to autocracy, and in the economic sphere, just as much as in the political one, Egypt is a test for the Arab world. If it can prosper, others can too.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 42 | Loc. 638  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:46 PM

economist reading... this is a test
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 43 | Loc. 657-63  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:50 PM

The task of managing the mess has fallen to an interim government of technocrats, former opposition politicians and a few Mubarak holdovers. The circumstances look inauspicious. Though the government says it is laying the foundations for reform over three to five years, in reality it is only a stopgap administration, in office until elections planned for later this year. Though needing to make changes, it is cramped by hostility to the market reforms launched in the last years of the Mubarak regime. And though supported by demonstrators from Tahrir Square, it has no real mandate. It does not even seem to have the full backing of the military council that has the ultimate say over things in Egypt. The secretive generals—so far as one can tell—are mostly concerned with keeping the peace and deterring anyone who wants to stop them resuming their former position back-seat-driving the country. The result has been a government that is risk-averse to a fault.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 665-66  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:50 PM

and is low enough not to destroy jobs
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 44 | Loc. 666  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:51 PM

why would a minimum wage destroy jobs?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 672-73  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:52 PM

if you include all the various promises from Gulf states, the grand total could be over $20 billion—a remarkable vote of confidence in Egypt.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 672-73  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:52 PM

raising $11 billion from foreign governments and international financial institutions. In fact, if you include all the various promises from Gulf states, the grand total could be over $20 billion—a remarkable vote of confidence in Egypt.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 675-78  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:53 PM

It came to power at a heady moment of change, when Egyptians were ready to accept painful measures as well as handouts. Its freedom of manoeuvre was greater than it seemed. It did not have to please a constituency of supporters, nor did it have to look for votes in a future election. At the very least, it had a chance to come clean about some of the hard choices facing the country. That chance was lost.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 45 | Loc. 683-86  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:53 PM

But its worst failure is over what Mr Heikal calls the elephant in the room: fuel subsidies. For years the government has sold every kind of fuel at below—often well below—world market prices, and paid the difference. It also subsidises bread and other staples. The direct costs are soaring (see chart 1): food subsidies now account for 2% of GDP; fuel consumes 8%. In all, subsidies cost almost three times the size of the education budget.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 46 | Loc. 699-700  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 03:55 PM

The government could and should have done better than this. It avoided the worst, and bought democracy some time. But it postponed decisions that need to be taken if Egypt’s economic problems are not to worsen.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 47 | Loc. 708-9  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:00 PM

If this demographic dividend is to be cashed, and if democracy is to take root, then living standards will have to improve.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 47 | Loc. 711  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:01 PM

(its GDP per head at purchasing-power parities was $5,500; Egypt’s is $6,300 at PPP).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 47 | Loc. 711  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:01 PM

what is PPP?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 47 | Loc. 714-15  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:02 PM

If Egypt is to catch up, it will have to do what Turkey did: reduce the overweening power of the state and provide an environment in which private firms, especially long-suffering small and medium ones, can thrive.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 47 | Loc. 720-21  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:03 PM

Yet where a strong government is needed—as regulator, enforcer of contracts and guarantor of competition—it is weak.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 731  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:05 PM

Educational failures cast a shadow over the quality of the workforce.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 48 | Loc. 731  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:05 PM

how well educated is the u.s. in comparison? how could you compare spending versus quality of education?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note on Page 49 | Loc. 741  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:07 PM

all has signed up... sic?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 49 | Loc. 745-47  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:08 PM

On balance, if the politics stays stable, the economy should do well enough to consolidate democracy eventually. But that is a big if. As Mr Heikal says: “If we get things right, we could be Turkey in ten years. If we get them wrong, we could be Pakistan in 18 months.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight on Page 49 | Loc. 746-47  | Added on Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 04:08 PM

As Mr Heikal says: “If we get things right, we could be Turkey in ten years. If we get them wrong, we could be Pakistan in 18 months.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 931-34  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:00 AM

For the first time since 1933, the (Democrat-controlled) state legislature has the power to enact a budget with a simple majority, thanks to a ballot measure voters approved last year. So it passed a budget on June 15th, meeting the constitutional deadline—also for the first time in years. But the next day Governor Jerry Brown, himself a Democrat, vetoed that budget—apparently the first such veto in California’s history. The budget was not balanced, he said, and contained “legally questionable manoeuvres”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 936  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:00 AM

the state’s independently elected state controller, John Chiang, decided to stop paying legislators.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 947-50  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:01 AM

In January, facing what was then a deficit of more than $25 billion, Mr Brown proposed to solve half the problem by cutting spending and the other half by extending some temporary taxes. For the cuts, he expected support from his fellow Democrats. For the revenues, he did not ask for support from hostile Republicans, merely for their consent to put that question before voters in a special election, which requires a two-thirds majority in the legislature.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 954-56  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:01 AM

Meanwhile, the economy and tax receipts have grown just enough to make Mr Brown’s argument look weaker and to shrink the remaining budget hole—to about $10 billion—but not nearly enough to solve the problem.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 963-64  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:03 AM

Barack Obama is a formidable campaigner and fund-raiser. In 2008 his campaign raised a record $745m; this time his haul may exceed $1 billion.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 964  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:03 AM

hooooly shit
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 980-83  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:05 AM

Defenders of the more cautious approach—and there were many—may be motivated less by love than by fear. Mr Obama may not be perfect, but even gloomy progressives realise he is better than the alternative. “Imagine the enforcement and regulating of the Affordable Care Act under President Rick Perry,” cautioned Eve Gittelson, a blogger from New York, at a panel on health reform.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 993-95  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:06 AM

In a weak and divided field—it is hard to imagine a supporter of Mr Paul succumbing to Mr Santorum’s religiosity, or a fan of Mr Romney’s country-club Republicanism finding much to like in Mrs Bachmann’s pitchfork populism—room exists for an all-things-to-all-men candidate such as Mr Perry.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1032-36  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:10 AM

AMERICA thinks of itself as having not only liberty, but “justice for all”, as the Pledge of Allegiance has it. The World Justice Project disagrees, releasing a report on June 13th on the status of the rule of law in 66 countries around the world. America ranked in the top echelon in many categories. For example, it got high marks for open government, limits on government powers and “order and security”. But on access to civil justice, America did badly: it came 21st, just behind the Czech Republic and just ahead of Jordan. The cost of the system was the most important thing dragging America’s score down.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1039  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:10 AM

The worst problem comes in the pre-trial phase known as discovery.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1042-43  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:11 AM

The right to discovery has been used by aggressive lawyers not just to find pieces of information, but to exhaust and impoverish adversaries through endless motions for more.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1051  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:11 AM

Even the stronger party in a case has a strong incentive to settle, to avoid the time and cost.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1052-53  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:12 AM

the ratio of federal trials to initial filings in 2009 was a twelfth of what it was in 1962.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1071-72  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:01 PM

Data from the Census Bureau show that married couples, for the first time, now make up less than half (45%) of all households.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1072-75  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:02 PM

In every state the numbers of unmarried couples, childless households and single-person households are growing faster than those comprised of married people with children, finds the 2010 census. The latter accounted for 43% of households in 1950; they now account for just 20%. And the trend has a potent class dimension. Traditional marriage has evolved from a near-universal rite to a luxury for the educated and affluent.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1086-89  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:03 PM

Americans with a high-school degree or less (who account for 58% of the population) tell researchers they would like to marry, but do not believe they can afford it. Instead, they raise children out of wedlock. Only 6% of children born to college-educated mothers were born outside marriage, according to the National Marriage Project. That compares with 44% of babies born to mothers whose education ended with high school.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1089  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:03 PM

wow...
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1090-92  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:04 PM

She and other researchers have linked as much as half of the income inequality in America to changes in family composition: single-parent families (mostly those with a high-school degree or less) are getting poorer while married couples (with educations and dual incomes) are increasingly well-off.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1098-99  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:05 PM

“I VENTURE to say that no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.” Edmund Burke should be alive today. None of America’s several wars is popular.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1110-11  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:06 PM

Now the Republicans’ own wobbles, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the public’s spreading war fatigue and the transfer of the gung-ho General David Petraeus from Afghanistan to the CIA have given the president unexpected flexibility.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1123-24  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 03:07 PM

With no vital American interest at stake, argues Michele Bachmann, another of the Republicans’ presidential candidates, the “Obama doctrine” has set a precedent for American intervention in “one country after another”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1134-35  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:00 PM

until one of Mr Obama’s advisers was quoted as describing it as “leading from behind”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1136-38  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:01 PM

Since its publication in the New Yorker, “leading from behind” has become a prime exhibit in the Republicans’ scornful excoriation of Mr Obama’s foreign policy. The president now finds himself accused of being both a warmonger for entering the war and a wimp for his lame prosecution of it.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1144-45  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:02 PM

He is making a good fist of extricating America from the big wars he inherited from George Bush. But the tiny one he entered so cautiously himself, in which not a single American soldier has died, has brought him disproportionate grief. Even
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1184-85  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:08 PM

So far this year the Guatemalan government has seized guns, drugs and cash worth 9% of its annual GDP. (In 2010 the figure was 5% for the whole year.)
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1190-91  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:09 PM

Most foreign aid and loans for security still go to individual countries, rather than to regional efforts. That may now change a bit.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1232-33  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:21 PM

since the mid-1980s, when Chileans braved General Pinochet’s water cannon to demand a return to democracy.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1247-48  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:23 PM

Chile, with little oil and gas, faces an energy shortage, especially if the economy continues to grow by 6% a year.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1411-14  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:39 PM

At present 35 of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are shut, mostly for routine safety inspections. Yet since March 11th local governments have refused to reopen them until there are credible safety assessments. It is conceivable that by next March all 54 could be out of action, since there are fresh inspections every 13 months (see map). That would in effect strip Japan of about 24% of its pre-March 11th power-generation capacity.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1416-17  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:40 PM

The Kansai Institute for Social and Economic Research says a mere 5% drop in energy consumption this summer would wipe out the region’s expected GDP growth of 0.5% in this fiscal year.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1418-19  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:40 PM

Japan Centre for Economic Research estimates that, without nuclear power, GDP in 2012 would be 1.6% lower than it would otherwise be.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1428-30  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:41 PM

So sour is the prevailing mood that this really might put a nail in the nuclear coffin. Repression in China No
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1434-36  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 06:58 PM

Officially, Mr Ai is “on bail”. China’s state-owned news agency, Xinhua, said he had been freed because of his “good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from” (he has diabetes and high blood pressure).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1575  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:14 PM

The once docile middle, weighing up options as the unrest persists, is no longer finding it easy to be neutral.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1582-83  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:15 PM

Those in the middle are wary, not just because they fear violence. Hounded as it is by the regime, the opposition has yet to reassure ordinary Syrians of their credentials as future rulers.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1612-13  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:18 PM

Few Bedouin say they want to rid Sinai of Egyptian rule altogether, though the more wistful wonder whether Western powers might yet set up a Bedouin dynasty in Sinai as they did with the House of Saud in the Arabian peninsula.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1613  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:18 PM

huh?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1638-39  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:21 PM

when a mission from the Fund cheered the Islamic Republic’s economy earlier this month, heaping praise on the policies of its ruthless government, eyebrows spiked upwards as in a comic scene in a Persian miniature.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1642-44  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:21 PM

This is not because Iran’s economy is performing brilliantly. Whereas other big oil exporters have boomed on the back of high prices, Iran has grown sluggishly, nudging upwards only last year to 3.5%. That is not enough to dent a rising unemployment rate, which is now close to 15%.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1644-45  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:21 PM

The reason for the praise is Iran’s exemplary execution of a task dear to the IMF’s heart: structural reform.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1646-47  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:21 PM

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared this to be the “year of economic jihad”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1657-59  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:24 PM

Until December, economists estimated the annual cost of subsidies on food, fuel and electricity at $60 billion-100 billion, a quarter of Iran’s GDP and equal to or greater than the value of annual energy exports.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1657-60  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:24 PM

Until December, economists estimated the annual cost of subsidies on food, fuel and electricity at $60 billion-100 billion, a quarter of Iran’s GDP and equal to or greater than the value of annual energy exports. Most of this burden was carried as an implicit subsidy to domestic energy consumers, with the price of diesel fuel, for example, set at the equivalent of two American cents a litre, and petrol selling for less than bottled water.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1661-63  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:25 PM

Iranian governments have long grappled with this problem. Mr Ahmadinejad’s liberal-leaning predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, was stymied by a squeamish, conservative parliament.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1664-66  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:25 PM

Ironically, it may have been international sanctions, intended to punish Iran for its suspect nuclear programme, that at last persuaded its opponents of the need to scrap subsidies. Lacking the refining capacity to meet domestic demand, Iran found itself vulnerable to a sudden cut-off in petrol imports.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1672-75  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:26 PM

The government cleverly doled out two months’ worth of family cash transfers, amounting to some $90 per person, before unleashing its shock. When the first tranche of price rises hit, quadrupling the cost of some kinds of bread and shooting diesel prices up by 2,000%, among other things, there was barely a peep from the public. Iranians have rapidly got used both to paying a lot more for some things and to having more money to spend as they wish.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1683-85  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:27 PM

Trouble brews in the kingdom, too. King Abdullah is 89 or so and weak with age. Crown Prince Sultan, his anointed successor, is 87 and ailing. The next in line, Prince Nayef, the feared interior minister, is 78 and badly diabetic. The young grow restless and impertinent.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1689-90  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:27 PM

The money showered on them by the state still buys individual complacency and the complicity of big business and big religion.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1698-1700  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:28 PM

Saudi Arabia may ramp up oil production by 500,000 barrels a day (b/d), snubbing calls by other OPEC members to curb supplies and keep prices high. Investment in new oilfields and infrastructure suggest that the Saudis can sustain production at a hefty 10m b/d—worth around $1 billion at current prices—for some time to come.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1726-28  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:30 PM

the result of toppling Mr Berlusconi, as Mr Bossi reminded the crowd at Pontida, would probably be to let in the left. Since the League’s leader has steered his party so far to the right, it would have enormous difficulty in forging any alliance with the opposition—and that is assuming the party would win enough seats to be of any use.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1732  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:31 PM

wha is diff. btwn president and prime minister...
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1745  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:32 PM

Harold Wilson’s aphorisms. “I know what’s going on,” he told a rally in 1969 as he faced a similar crisis. “I’m going on.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1762-64  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:33 PM

As much as three years ago, some of Warsaw’s finest political brains were invited to contribute ideas for the presidency. Experts such as Pawel Swieboda, a former bureaucrat and now head of DemosEuropa, a think-tank, have identified the best and worst practices in past presidencies (Sweden’s 2009 stint is seen as an exemplar, whereas Spain and Hungary, the current president, are said to have stumbled).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1767-68  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:33 PM

This week Poland showed its teeth by vetoing moves to set a higher target for cutting EU carbon-dioxide emissions by 2020.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1778-81  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:35 PM

In 1988 leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, demanded a transfer from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. The Kremlin refused and a nasty war between Azeris and Armenians followed. As Thomas de Waal, an author on the Caucasus, writes, “it was the first stone in an avalanche that swept away the entire multinational construction of the Soviet Union.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1783-84  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:35 PM

Worryingly, Azerbaijan has poured energy revenues into its army—it spends $3 billion a year (5% of GDP).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1823-24  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:39 PM

Others, such as the Committee of Statistical Confidentiality, or the Strategic Committee for Intensive Calculation, are less so.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1839  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:40 PM

whaaaaa is that a cypress hill reference??
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1841  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:41 PM

ha ha blazing
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1841  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:41 PM

ha ha rolling
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1848-49  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:42 PM

Mr Bergman fears the emergence of a new criminality, such as illegal trade in membership passes or street dealing, which could increase exposure to hard drugs.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1852-54  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:42 PM

A potentially precedent-setting case was initiated by a coffee-shop owner from Maastricht, a southern Dutch city, against an earlier decision by the city’s mayor to impose a membership scheme for residents only. After wrangling in Dutch and EU courts (which allowed an apparent breach of the single market on health grounds), the case is now being considered by the Council of State, the highest Dutch appeal body.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1870-71  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:44 PM

The dilemma is summed up by Keynes’s adage: “If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1871  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:45 PM

niiiiiice
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1885-90  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:46 PM

But even if ultimate salvation is possible, Greece could fall into plenty of immediate traps. One is the mood at home, with almost daily mass protests outside parliament, interspersed with riots. What if Mr Papandreou cannot get a majority for unpopular reforms? Another is the sternness of the IMF, which says it cannot release next month’s tranche of money before it knows that the euro zone will fully fund Greece next year. A third is the mood of creditor countries such as Germany, which have been insisting on a “substantial” contribution by private bondholders. After much argument, this is now supposed to be done “voluntarily” by rolling over the debt at maturity. But nobody really knows how much room this can create.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1892-94  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:47 PM

Even if Greece can be salvaged, attention is turning to the long-term survival of the euro. To Eurosceptics, notably British ones, it should be given up as a bad job. The tragedy of Greece is the inevitable outcome of EU leaders’ hubris in imposing a single currency and a single interest rate on incompatible economies.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2168  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:49 PM

PANELS of experts assessing scientific investigations tend to be messy affairs,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2168-70  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:50 PM

PANELS of experts assessing scientific investigations tend to be messy affairs, particularly when their customers are governments. People with expertise in one field, such as renewable energy, may have a bias towards it. Summaries of their work are the result of political negotiations. And findings are further boiled down in an attempt to win media coverage.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2171-73  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:50 PM

Possible conflicts of interest, revealed by Steve McIntyre, a blogger, have led to another controversy about the panel—only 18 months after its embarrassment over an incorrect claim about the imminent demise of the Himalayas’ glaciers.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2183-84  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:51 PM

What is more, a Greenpeace publication based on this scenario was graced by a foreword written by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC’s chairman.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2187-91  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:52 PM

it is not necessarily the most worrying conflict of interest. Environmentalists are concerned about the number of “pro-dam” people on the team of authors reporting on hydropower. And it is not just the authors that may be conflicted. Each chapter of an IPCC report goes through a review process to ensure that all comments have been addressed satisfactorily. One of the two editors overseeing this process for the chapter on wind energy was Christian Kjaer, the boss of a lobbying group, the European Wind Energy Association.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2197-98  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 09:54 PM

the summary glosses over the problem, for instance by not mentioning that, although renewables have accounted for almost half the world’s new generating capacity in the past two years, the other half has probably generated a lot more electricity.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2200-2201  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:18 PM

The lesson of the latest IPCC row is that its authors and organisers must fight harder against groupthink—and speedily implement the new conflict-of-interest policy.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2209-10  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:19 PM

Climatic conditions still dictate where some drugs are grown. Virtually all the world’s cocaine comes from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. Three-quarters of global opium production is in Afghanistan,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2212-14  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:20 PM

Likewise, synthetic drugs—amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy, plus a growing list of new potions—can be cooked up in factories anywhere (and increasingly with harmless ingredients: researchers at Harvard University are trying to make lysergic acid, the basis for LSD and many other pharmaceuticals, from baker’s yeast).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2215-16  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:21 PM

In America, where cannabis consumption had been falling, the UNODC has spotted a “resurgence”. More than three in ten 18-year-olds and more than one in eight 14-year-olds now use it.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-26  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:21 PM

This new localism has made life more comfortable for dealers, because they have been able to shorten their supply chains. Most cannabis is now grown in its country of consumption, according to the report. In Japan the number of arrests for domestic cannabis cultivation increased by 17% in 2009, whereas the number of arrests for importing fell by almost half. Sixty countries now report synthetic-drug factories on their territory. More than 10,000 were shut down in 2009,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-30  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:22 PM

This industrialisation of production brings new problems. Cultivating cannabis in factories tends to improve its quality, which partially explains why stronger varieties have become more widespread. In America average concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient, doubled in the 1990s, as growers focused on
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-30  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:22 PM

This industrialisation of production brings new problems. Cultivating cannabis in factories tends to improve its quality, which partially explains why stronger varieties have become more widespread. In America average concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient, doubled in the 1990s, as growers focused on stronger, more expensive cannabis. Synthetic-drug
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2233-34  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:23 PM

If gringos switch from cocaine to home-grown drugs, many in Latin America will breathe a sigh of relief.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2238  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:23 PM

the global army of between 50m and 100m domestic workers, most of them women
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2269-70  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:26 PM

Last year China became the world’s biggest manufacturer, displacing America from a position it had held for more than a century. In less than a decade it could become the world’s largest economy.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2271-72  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:26 PM

China’s rapid recovery from the global financial crisis, and the West’s continuing malaise, have had a profound psychological impact on many Chinese.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2273-74  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:26 PM

What is great about socialism, crowed the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in March last year, is that it enables China “to make decisions efficiently, organise effectively and concentrate resources to accomplish large undertakings”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2275-76  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:26 PM

A big parade of missiles, tanks and goose-stepping soldiers in central Beijing in October 2009, the capital’s first such display in a decade,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2303-6  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:30 PM

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences struck a rare note of modesty in a report last October. It rated China a mere 17th in a global league of “national competitiveness”. But it pointed out that the country had risen from 73rd place in 1990 and had left India, which was ranked 42nd, in the dust. China’s aim, the report said, should be to reach the top five by 2020 and be second only to America by 2050.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2310-13  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:32 PM

they appear more nervous now than at any time for over a decade. They have massively increased spending on domestic security, which in this year’s budget has overtaken that on defence for the first time. The government has been reviving a Maoist system of neighbourhood surveillance by civilian volunteers. In the past few months the police have launched an all-out assault on civil society, arresting dozens of lawyers, NGO activists, bloggers and even artists. The Arab revolutions have spooked the leadership.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2314-18  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:33 PM

Late next year, probably in October, the party will hold a national congress, the 18th since its founding 90 years ago. This meeting, a smaller one of the party’s central committee immediately afterwards and a session of the legislature in March 2013 will endorse the biggest shuffle in China’s leadership for a decade. The president, Hu Jintao, and Mr Wen will step down from the pinnacle of power, the nine-member standing committee of the Politburo. A younger generation will begin to take over.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2321-22  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:34 PM

new leadership will not have such an easy ride with the economy, which on average has grown by over 10% a year since 2002,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2327-29  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:35 PM

China’s leaders will find it enormously difficult to rebalance China’s economy so that growth is led by consumption rather than by exports and investment. Their efforts will be hampered by the growing clout of state-owned businesses. In the past decade these have risen from the ashes of tens of thousands of government-owned enterprises dismantled in the 1990s.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2329-30  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:35 PM

their economic and political influence is enormous and growing.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2331-32  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:35 PM

Banks are still almost entirely in government hands. Their profligate lending to other parts of the state empire, in order to keep the economy booming after the financial crisis, will revive a bad-debt problem that China thought it had licked years ago.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2334-37  | Added on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 11:36 PM

China is likely to disappoint those who believed that the country’s embrace of globalisation would usher in greater political freedoms over the next few years. James Mann, an American journalist, gave warning of this in a 2007 book, “The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China”, suggesting that a quarter of a century from now China’s “current system of modernised, business-supported repression could well be vastly more established and entrenched”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2345-46  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 01:54 AM

Like every other Chinese politician since 1949, he avoids stating his ambitions openly,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2351-53  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 01:54 AM

Hu Jintao’s posts of president, party chief and military commander are almost certain to go to Xi Jinping, the vice-president, and Wen Jiabao’s job as prime minister is likely to be taken by Li Keqiang, his senior deputy. But Mr Bo could well be offered the portfolio of China’s internal security chief, currently held by Zhou Yongkang, with whom he is believed to have close ties.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2382-84  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 01:57 AM

social democrats who want a fairer distribution of wealth. Many in this camp believe that China is far from enjoying the golden age now being proclaimed by some. The country is too divided between rich and poor to be experiencing a shengshi.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2408-10  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:00 AM

Chongqing officials proudly note that the municipality, which ranked 19th among Chinese provinces by value of its state assets in 2003, has since moved up to number four, thanks to a more than sevenfold increase in their worth to 1.25 trillion yuan ($192 billion).
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2414-15  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:01 AM

as this special report will argue, if China’s state-owned enterprises enjoy a renaissance under China’s new leaders, it will be to the detriment of competition and increased consumption as a new driver of growth.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2421-23  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:02 AM

CHINA’S LEADERS ARE usually shy of telling things as they are, but the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, put it bluntly when he described China’s economy in 2007 as “unstable, unbalanced, unco-ordinated and unsustainable”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2430-34  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:03 AM

China has foreign-exchange reserves of more than $3 trillion and ran a modest budget deficit of 2.5% of GDP last year. Its worries are longer-term. The economy will certainly begin to slow in the next few years after three decades of nearly 10% average annual growth. Exports will be constrained by depressed Western markets, and investments in fixed assets will produce diminishing returns. But the slowdown will be less pronounced if the government succeeds in boosting consumption as a new growth engine.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2457-58  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:06 AM

But even though it rose to 5.5% in May, considerably above the government’s 4% target for the year, it shows little sign as yet of returning to previous highs of about 20% in 1988 and more than 25% in 1994.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2459-60  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:06 AM

America’s Treasury says that because of the higher inflation rate in China, the yuan is in effect appreciating against the dollar by more than 10% a year.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2467-69  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:07 AM

Some worry that China could be approaching a Japanese-style crisis: a boom in exports and investment along with bubbly property markets, followed by many years of stagnation. In China’s case the added sting would be that it has not yet got rich. Officials and experts debate endlessly whether the country is slowly heading towards a “middle-income trap”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2483-84  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:10 AM

number of people in relative poverty (with 50% or less of the median income) grew from 12.2% of the population to 14.6% between 2002 and 2007,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2491-92  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:11 AM

It promises 36m new “affordable housing” units, more than Britain’s entire housing stock.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2493-94  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:11 AM

government has pledged to ramp up spending on health, education and other social-welfare programmes. Eventually too this could encourage people to save less and consume more.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2494-95  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:12 AM

government also wants the high-speed railway network, already the world’s longest at 8,300km, to quintuple in length by 2015.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2496-97  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:12 AM

These investments, officials hope, will help to boost urban growth, and with it consumption.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2499-2500  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:14 AM

believes that investments are becoming increasingly inefficient and that China is heading towards a “brick wall” of government debt. Growth, he says, will remain high in the early half of the decade but could drop off sharply thereafter as loans turn sour.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2501-3  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:14 AM

looming debt problem, exacerbated by the recklessness of local governments during China’s stimulus-spending spree. Not being allowed to borrow directly, many of them set up companies to borrow on their behalf, using land as collateral. “There is a hidden danger of an asset bubble
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2513-15  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:15 AM

In 1980 one-fifth of China’s people lived in urban areas. Today the figure is 49.7%. Very soon the country will become predominantly urban, with over 51.5% forecast to be living in urban areas by the end of the five-year plan.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 12-14  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:56 AM

Students at the University of California and Cal State University systems are likely to face a second round of tuition hikes this fall in response to deeper funding cuts in the new state budget,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 14-15  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:56 AM

Discussions are underway for tuition increases of at least 10%. That hike would come on top of an 8% increase at UC and a 10% boost at Cal State that already are set to take effect this fall.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 18-19  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:57 AM

A decade of increases has more than tripled tuition to about $11,000 a year at UC and $4,884 at Cal State, not including room, board and other fees.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 19-20  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:57 AM

this again represents the ongoing disinvestment in higher education in California," said Christopher Chavez, outgoing president of the Cal State Student Assn.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 23-24  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:58 AM

"The general sentiment seems to be that my generation and those that follow mine don't deserve an accessible and affordable university," he said.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 28-29  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:59 AM

the 10-campus university might need more to help pay for growing pension and healthcare costs, he said. The costs of graduate and professional school programs are expected to rise as well.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 29  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:59 AM

23-campus Cal State system
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 32  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:59 AM

uh..... from where?
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 36-37  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:00 AM

The $650-million reduction represents a cut of about 25% from last year's state support,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 37  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:01 AM

really? cutting funding that much for some of the best schools in the country?
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 37-38  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:01 AM

At UC, the $650-million reduction represents a 21% drop in state funds. UC's overall budget is $20 billion,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 41-43  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:02 AM

At UC Riverside, administrators said they were unable to win the stable state funding that an accreditation agency required before giving the proposed medical school its stamp of approval.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 62  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:05 AM

wha areeconomic impacts of this?

and why should the state get a slice of online sales? its not like they actually do anything in particular to acilitate the transaction. no more than any other sttae btwn amazons distribution center and your home state.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 69  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:22 PM

yea tha menas big economic impact
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 73-74  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:37 PM

California's basic sales tax rate also will drop to 7.75% on Friday when a 2-year-old temporary increase expires.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 78-79  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:38 PM

"You can't give one segment of retail a 10% discount every day. It's just not fair,"
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 85-86  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:39 PM

California's new law was drafted to circumvent a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that sellers can't be forced to collect sales taxes unless they have a physical presence in the state.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 102-3  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:40 PM

"These are bills that Congress ran up," President Obama said at a news conference. "They took the vacation. They bought the car. Now they're saying, 'Maybe we don't have to pay.'"
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 103  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:41 PM

its about time the president explains who is responsible
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 107  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:42 PM

moving the debt talks out of the realm of closed-door Washington meetings and into full public view,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 112  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:44 PM

this is realy the crux of the debate... higher taxes or less spending

sounds like the WH recognizes a solution must include both. top republicans dont.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 112  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:47 PM

this is realy the crux of the debate... higher taxes or less spending

sounds like the WH recognizes a solution must include both. top republicans dont.

ridiculous. all of this so they dont get chastized for compromising. like jon huntsman for being ambassador and mitt romney for providing healthcare for MS.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 112  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:47 PM

this is realy the crux of the debate... higher taxes or less spending

sounds like the WH recognizes a solution must include both. top republicans dont.

ridiculous. all of this so they dont get chastized for compromising. like jon huntsman for being ambassador and mitt romney for providing healthcare for MA.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 112-14  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:48 PM

The news conference represented a rare instance of Obama using the presidential megaphone to defend his position. In the past, the president has been prone to delivering lengthy answers in a professorial tone, relying on abstract ideas. By contrast, Obama on Wednesday laid out his arguments in simple, everyday terms, echoing an ex-president that he has been studying: Ronald Reagan.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 114  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:48 PM

wow... very interesting
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 127-28  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:49 PM

Obama cited the high-profile tax break offered to owners of corporate jets several times in the news conference, even though it would bring in only an estimated $3 billion over 10 years.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 128  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:50 PM

ONLY???
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 128  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:50 PM

ONLY??? how many kids could eat lunch or go to college or get new textbooks for that amount?
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 134-35  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:51 PM

federal officials warn that maneuvers to continue paying the nation's bills will be exhausted by Aug. 2, risking a default on federal obligations.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 148-49  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 02:53 PM

we've got to make some tough choices here if we want to reduce our deficit."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 261-62  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 03:03 PM

"I defer to medical doctors," U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns said at an emergency hearing requested by the defense. "I have no reason to disagree with doctors. I didn't go to medical school."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 267-68  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 03:04 PM

Reuben Cahn, one of Loughner's attorneys, said his client "has a right not to be medicated."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 295-96  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 03:06 PM

delay enforcement of the state's complex carbon trading program until 2013,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 688  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:40 PM

This will be only the sixth time in the last 25 years that a budget has been enacted by the start of the fiscal year,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 691-92  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:40 PM

That means Democrats can ignore Republicans and not spend all summer trying to buy their votes with various versions of pork while the cash-strapped state stiffs small business vendors, drives its credit rating further into the basement and embarrasses itself.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 702-3  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:41 PM

German politician Otto Von Bismarck, who famously observed: "Politics is the art of the possible."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 712-15  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:43 PM

Republicans are "wrapped up in cut, cut, cut," says Czyzyk, chairman and chief executive of Mercury Air Group. "Cutting only works as a stopgap measure. It's not going to solve our problems. Our problems have to do with getting jobs. And you're not going to get jobs until the private sector says, 'The place to reinvest in is California.' That's not going to happen until we get regulatory reform.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 715  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:43 PM

true of many more places than CA i think
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 715-17  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:44 PM

"As in business, you can always cut expenses, but if you don't increase sales you're not going to make it. Cutting doesn't grow you. We've done the cutting. We can't continue to cut in places that completely harm the state. We need to create jobs."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 722-23  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:44 PM

in case that money doesn't materialize, he and Democrats agreed on "trigger cuts" to higher education, K-12 schools, libraries, prisons and services for the needy and disabled.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 727-28  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:45 PM

It may have been the best budget possible. But it wasn't befitting a great state and its needs in an increasingly competitive world.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 727-29  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:45 PM

It may have been the best budget possible. But it wasn't befitting a great state and its needs in an increasingly competitive world. Point No. 4: We need a Son of Prop. 25 — a ballot measure that reduces the vote requirement for raising taxes to a simple majority. Allow the majority party to function and hold it accountable.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 729  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:46 PM

this is a great philosophy to have... but maybe only in theory. i ca see how a freehand to rase taxes could potentally wreak havoc
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 897-98  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:50 PM

What Bush used to call "the global war on terrorism" is neither, in Obama's view, Brennan said. "This does not require a 'global' war," he said. "But it does require a focus on specific regions."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 900-901  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:50 PM

"We intentionally do not use the term 'war on terrorism, global war on terrorism'.... Terrorism is a tactic. We're in a war with Al Qaeda."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 901  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:52 PM

wow. so nice to finally hear the government outright saying what their policy is AND it making sense. and also it being a reversal of idiotic past mistakes.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 903  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:53 PM

expansion of rone strikes likely to be in anticpation of troop draw downs...

and plus if drones work here they can also work in yemen or somalia or libya or etc etc
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1021  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 09:58 PM

holy crap... if he is a hick compared to bush... woooooooooooieee
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 1043  | Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:00 PM

so basically a super conservative george bsh
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1907-9  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:40 AM

The imminent departures of the three — all members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences — has unsettled leaders of the UC system. Officials say a worsening UC budget picture is emboldening other schools, particularly top private institutions, to recruit UC faculty and may prompt other professors to leave.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1911  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:40 AM

18,000 faculty members.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1910  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:41 AM

increasingly include overseas universities.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1926-28  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:43 AM

The most common destinations were Stanford, NYU, USC, Columbia and Harvard — private schools that tend to pay more — and the University of Michigan, a top public university.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1930-31  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:43 AM

Private research universities increasingly pay professors more than public institutions, with the gap growing from an 8% advantage in 1980 for full professors at private doctoral-granting schools to about 25% this
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1945-46  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:45 AM

At Rice, their funding will also include a $10-million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, created with a $3-billion state bond issue approved by voters in 2007.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1950-52  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 08:46 AM

UCLA and UC Berkeley reported no significant change in outside recruiting this year and some experts said that because the two campuses are seen as the most prestigious in the UC system, faculty may be more reluctant to leave.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2140-45  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 10:52 AM

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming recently reported that its data-crunching effort produced results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view on climate change. Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies who launched the reexamination, told a congressional hearing in April that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed temperature trends underlying climate science was "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2252-54  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 10:58 AM

Animal rights groups, arguing that finning is an inhumane practice, have joined with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the California Academy of Sciences and environmental groups to lobby for a ban.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2276-77  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 10:59 AM

Concrete river channels, dams and pollution caused by urban runoff have played roles in the suckers' decline,
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2614-16  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:04 AM

Sudan is a map of enduring crises. Southern Sudan, after decades of civil war that took more than 2 million lives, gains independence July 9. About 75% of Sudan's oil reserves are in the south and Bashir's north could lose billions of dollars a year in revenue. He is also attempting to crush separatist ambitions in South Kordofan, Blue Nile state and the Darfur region, where the ICC has accused him of genocide.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2619-21  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:04 AM

The south, which is controlled by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, needs the north's pipelines to transport the oil. The two sides have yet to reach an agreement to share revenue from the country's production of about 500,000 barrels a day. Bashir has threatened to shut off the pipelines if the emerging independent south does not pay substantial fees.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2622-24  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:05 AM

"President Bashir knows very well that the survival of his regime depends on oil, and the oil is going to be lost. He knew he needed to indulge himself in a war with the south," said Alhajj Hamad, a political analyst. "Now he is getting only 37% of the oil revenues. That is barely enough to pay the staff. Food prices are soaring in the north and the mood in the streets is heading toward revolt."
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2630-31  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:06 AM

China National Petroleum Corp. already pumps much of southern Sudan's oil. The
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2631-32  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:06 AM

although Beijing is "maintaining traditional ties with the north of Sudan, China has worked to develop friendly exchanges and expand mutually beneficial cooperation" with the south.
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Note Loc. 2632  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 11:07 AM

same thing i noticed before... beijing stance is to be everyones friend unless they are very powerful. or the u.s.a. 
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Los Angeles Times (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2860-62  | Added on Friday, July 01, 2011, 06:34 PM

But many analysts are skeptical that Athens will have the political will or muscle to enforce its new austerity regime in the teeth of growing public opposition. A large state sector and government ownership of assets remain articles of faith for many Greeks; so is civil disobedience against unpopular policies.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2545-49  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 11:01 AM

The slaughter of many thousands of landlords (not including Liu, who died of natural causes) by officials and vengeful peasants shortly after the communist takeover resulted in profound changes in the system of rural land ownership. Peasants got the land Mao promised them, but only briefly. In the late 1950s the party took it back again and forced farmers into collectively owned “people’s communes”. The legacy of that disastrous decision, which contributed to a famine that left tens of millions dead, still weighs heavily on rural China. So too does a decision to confer hereditary status on peasants, who would be all but barred from cities to stop them rushing in to find work.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2551-54  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 11:03 AM

The system has been much eroded since the Mao era because of the need for cheap labour to fuel China’s manufacturing boom. But its lingering impact, combined with the still collective ownership of rural land, will retard China’s urbanisation in the years ahead just when the country is most in need of its consumption-boosting benefits.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2578-82  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 11:58 AM

In the name of building a “new socialist countryside” (a slogan launched in 2005), local governments have been corralling farmers into new apartment blocks in order to free up land which they can use for profitable purposes. Officials have justified the practice as a way of reducing incentives for local governments forcibly to appropriate farmland and sell it to developers. Two million peasants a year have lost their land this way in the past five years, a senior government adviser in north-east China said in March.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2588-89  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 12:00 PM

Thoroughgoing land reform, of the sort that would enable farmers to cash in on the value of their farmland and establish permanent and prosperous lives in cities (and at the same time encourage larger-scale farming), thus remains stuck.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2594-95  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 12:01 PM

As many as 20m workers returned to the countryside when the crisis broke in 2008 and China’s exports slumped.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2596  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 12:01 PM

As officials often say in China, “stability trumps everything.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Note Loc. 2596  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 03:10 PM

do they emphasize importance of domestic stability over international stability? 
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2599-2601  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 03:11 PM

Though the hukou divide is widely resented, peasants have often been reluctant to give up their rural status for fear of losing their land, as well as the added benefit in the countryside of being able to have two children rather than one. In effect, Chongqing and Chengdu have created a new class of urban residents who enjoy the best of both worlds.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2617-20  | Added on Saturday, July 02, 2011, 03:17 PM

For the past two decades or more, urbanisation in China has come relatively easily. As the country proudly claims, slums and shantytowns are rare compared with other developing countries. But ensuring a continuing net inflow of migrants into the cities as the youngest cohort shrinks will mean giving workers from the countryside more incentives to stay permanently (such as affordable housing and schooling). More money is being spent on these, but not yet enough. Too much responsibility is devolved to local governments that usually try hard to shirk it.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2730-32  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:51 AM

James McGregor of APCO Worldwide, a consultancy, described the government’s strategy in a report last year as a “massive and complicated plan” to turn China into a technology powerhouse by 2020 and a global leader by 2050. He said it was “steeped in suspicion of outsiders” and constituted “a blueprint for technology theft” on a large scale.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2727-32  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:51 AM

Far more worrying to foreign businesses is a more overt form of government intervention involving support for Chinese companies that develop new technologies and discrimination against their foreign competitors. Complaints about this began to surface five or six years ago but have been growing much louder in the past two years. James McGregor of APCO Worldwide, a consultancy, described the government’s strategy in a report last year as a “massive and complicated plan” to turn China into a technology powerhouse by 2020 and a global leader by 2050. He said it was “steeped in suspicion of outsiders” and constituted “a blueprint for technology theft” on a large scale.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2745-46  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:54 AM

any further reform would affect the interests of people in the top echelons of the party as well as their families, who have extensive connections with state-owned firms.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2760-61  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:56 AM

Over the next few years China will undergo a huge demographic shift. The share of people over 60 in the total population will increase from 12.5% in 2010 to 20% in 2020. By 2030 their number will double from today’s 178m.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2779-81  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:57 AM

Wang Feng of the Brookings Institution notes that China’s primary-school enrolment dropped from 25.3m in 1995 to 16.7m in 2008. Revoking the one-child policy would probably not make a big difference. Chinese couples have small families mainly because children are expensive, Mr Wang argues.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2803-6  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:06 PM

Young urban couples, many of them without siblings, will find themselves with four parents to look after and will themselves have only one child (known as the 4-2-1 phenomenon). If they are sensible, they will save hard to prepare for such a future, which will not help the government’s efforts to shift China towards more consumption-led growth.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2812  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:07 PM

The people’s will is almost as much of an obstacle to reform in China as the party’s.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2815-21  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:10 PM

FOR A PRINCELING and former chairman of a state-owned company, Qin Xiao is far from typical. Instead of retiring quietly or taking up a party-funded sinecure, the gaunt one-time apparatchik has emerged in recent months as the standard-bearer of a liberal force in Chinese politics that refuses to be subdued by chest-thumping supporters of the “China model”. He believes there is no such thing, only “universal values”. Mr Qin caused a stir in July last year when, in a speech at one of China’s most prestigious universities, Tsinghua, he accused the China modelists of trying to replace enlightenment values of democracy, freedom and individual rights with “Chinese” ones, such as stability and the interests of the state.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2849-51  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:11 PM

Zhang Weiwei, a scholar and proponent of Chinese exceptionalism, wrote in March that China’s evolution was “as if the Roman empire had never collapsed and had survived to this day, turning itself into a modern state with a central government and modern economy, combining all sorts of traditional cultures into one body and with everyone speaking Latin.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2851-53  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:12 PM

the vocal nationalist left is having a similar effect on China’s Communist Party as America’s tea-party movement is having on the Republican Party: pushing it towards inward-looking conservatism. Statism is becoming the new ideological fashion,
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2858-59  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:12 PM

David Shambaugh, an American scholar, wrote in the Washington Quarterly that 2009 and 2010 “will be remembered as the years in which China became difficult for the world to deal with”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 2868-70  | Added on Sunday, July 03, 2011, 01:14 PM

a brooding animosity towards competitors that erupts occasionally into self-destructive rage. Spats last year with Japan and South-East Asian countries over maritime territorial issues badly tarnished China’s image in the region.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 99-100  | Added on Wednesday, July 06, 2011, 09:39 PM

News Corporation finally managed to sell off its troubled Myspace social-networking site in a deal that values the business at $35m. News Corp paid $580m for it in 2005.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 485  | Added on Wednesday, July 06, 2011, 10:01 PM

A company selling car-engine oil has seen sales drop by 80%. “And this is not a luxury product,” says one of the owners.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 486-88  | Added on Wednesday, July 06, 2011, 10:02 PM

unemployment has doubled this year from about 10%. Officials worry that grain supplies are low and food shortages could come soon. Trade is down between 30% and 70%, depending on where you are, and that was before a new round of sanctions imposed by the European Union, Syria’s biggest trading partner.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 694-99  | Added on Thursday, July 07, 2011, 08:34 PM

As well as providing financial firepower and a network for sourcing deals, private-equity firms can shroud the identity of publicity-shy investors. They are also well equipped to structure the fiddlier bits of deals and to guide the integration of partners from different cultures. Getting that sort of thing right is undoubtedly hard for Chinese firms with limited experience of international deals—witness the bafflement of one firm at foreigners’ habit of taking time off for holidays. Europeans, of course, have plenty of experience of cross-cultural deals. According to one Briton, the Chinese are no worse than the neighbours. “The French are way more difficult than the Chinese,” he says.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 969-70  | Added on Sunday, July 10, 2011, 01:12 PM

Even Reagan, a supply-sider persuaded by Arthur Laffer’s pretty curves that his tax cuts would pay for themselves, raised taxes when they did not.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 974-77  | Added on Sunday, July 10, 2011, 01:13 PM

To non-partisans, the idea of taming the deficit by spending cuts alone flies against both common sense and arithmetic. America’s tax-take is not high either by international or its own historical standards. One commission after another has advocated mixing spending reductions and revenue increases. Without the latter, entitlement programmes will have to be eviscerated, even if, as now looks possible, the defence budget takes a share of the pain. But the Republicans will not budge from their dogma.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 988-91  | Added on Sunday, July 10, 2011, 01:15 PM

For example, the blue-collar whites who make up 40% of the electorate are fed up with Mr Obama, but also wary of sudden change and attached to entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security (pensions). As Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute notes, this group has handed power to the Republicans before, only to defect when the party threatened the welfare state.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 999-1001  | Added on Sunday, July 10, 2011, 01:16 PM

Since 2001 average income growth per person has been below 1% a year, one of the lowest rates in the world. Whereas the drug war has raged mainly along the cocaine trail, with two-thirds of its estimated 40,000 killings occurring in just 3% of the country’s municipalities, economic hardship has touched nearly everyone.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1001-4  | Added on Sunday, July 10, 2011, 01:16 PM

security is now a greater concern for Mexicans than the economy is. That is partly because GDP is growing again: last year it rose by 5.5%. But it is also because the violence caused by the crackdown on gangs continues to spread. Last year the government recorded more than five times as many mafia-linked murders as in 2007.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1479-82  | Added on Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 11:05 AM

The UAE is by many standards a contented place. Its citizens, who account for less than a fifth of the country’s 8.2m residents, are among the world’s most pampered. They enjoy cradle-to-grave welfare lavished by the oil-rich state and the advantages of what has long been the Gulf’s most open and tolerant way of life. No wonder many Emiratis think it churlish to demand such things as full political rights and free speech.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1745-47  | Added on Saturday, July 16, 2011, 02:11 PM

No German institution is among the leaders in global rankings, and money is part of the problem. The United States spends nearly twice as much per student as Germany does. Two-thirds of American universities’ revenues come from private sources, compared with just 15% in Germany.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1747-48  | Added on Saturday, July 16, 2011, 02:11 PM

The federal government is pumping in money through programmes like the “excellence initiative”, which promotes mainly research at a few select universities. But it so far has done little to improve teaching, which is what students tend to care about.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1755-57  | Added on Saturday, July 16, 2011, 02:12 PM

In most states they pay €500 ($720) per term—nothing like the mortgage-sized sums levied on American, and soon British, students. Fees produced €1.2 billion for German universities in 2008, a modest but useful sum compared with their total spending of €36 billion.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1427-31  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:34 PM

so far Egypt’s courts have largely shielded the biggest fish from punishment, including Mr Mubarak himself and the security officers responsible for widespread torture, as well as the killing of hundreds of people during the revolution. “In 1952 we had a coup that turned into a revolution,” grumbles a young activist in Cairo, referring to the army putsch that overthrew King Farouk and then replaced his liberal democracy with a socialist dictatorship. “This time we seem to have had a revolution that turned into a coup.”
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1453-55  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:36 PM

On the tricky question of Islam and the state, the likely outcome may be a sort of fudge, with the state described as “civil” rather than secular, and Islamic law being accepted as an underlying principle for legislation rather than a literal prescription.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1464-65  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:37 PM

foresees a return to the regional politics of the 1960s, when Saudi Arabia sparred with revolutionary republics in what some dubbed an Arab cold war.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1467-71  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:39 PM

$120 billion in new social spending, while slapping extra restrictions on its press and tightening police control of public gatherings. Some of that cash may subtly undermine reforms elsewhere. While welcome, given Egypt’s squeezed finances, a generous Saudi pledge of $4 billion in aid raises Egyptian fears that strings may be quietly attached. Private Saudi funding, often filtered through lavishly government-supported charities, bolsters Salafists in Egypt who believe that Muslims should blindly obey their rulers and deride democracy as “man-made law”.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1480-81  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:40 PM

A gap in outlook yawns between young people attuned to the world and an older generation restrained by deference to power and tradition.
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1482-84  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:40 PM

In a few years countries such as Saudi Arabia could find themselves surrounded by fellow Arab states whose citizens gleefully express their entitlement to accountable government. Some may prove models of constitutional monarchy that look easily applicable elsewhere. Others may evolve ways of accommodating Islamic rules within a consensual context of tolerance and pragmatism. The question then would be, why not here?
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The Economist (calibre)
- Highlight Loc. 1489-91  | Added on Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:41 PM

Yet the overall trend towards democratisation is no more stoppable in the Arab world than it has been elsewhere. “You have to understand that this is not a bunch of different revolutions,” explains a sunken-eyed Syrian student, taking a breather in Lebanon from weeks of protest-organising in Damascus. “This is one big revolution for all the Arabs. It will not stop until it reaches 
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1914-22  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:10 AM

The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries. The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for their support. These powers ought to exist without limitation, BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND VARIETY OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND VARIETY OF THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1925-27  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:11 AM

intrusted with the care of the common defense, is a question in the first instance, open for discussion; but the moment it is decided in the affirmative, it will follow, that that government ought to be clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1960-62  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:15 AM

Every view we may take of the subject, as candid inquirers after truth, will serve to convince us, that it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority, as to all those objects which are intrusted to its management.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1962-63  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:15 AM

the people, to see that it be modeled in such a manner as to admit of its being safely vested with the requisite powers.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2026-36  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:26 AM

Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security. On one side of us, and stretching far into our rear, are growing settlements subject to the dominion of Britain. On the other side, and extending to meet the British settlements, are colonies and establishments subject to the dominion of Spain. This situation and the vicinity of the West India Islands, belonging to these two powers create between them, in respect to their American possessions and in relation to us, a common interest. The savage tribes on our Western frontier ought to be regarded as our natural enemies, their natural allies, because they have most to fear from us, and most to hope from them. The improvements in the art of navigation have, as to the facility of communication, rendered distant nations, in a great measure, neighbors. Britain and Spain are among the principal maritime powers of Europe. A future concert of views between these nations ought not to be regarded as improbable. The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is every day diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection. These circumstances combined, admonish us not to be too sanguine in considering ourselves as entirely out of the reach of danger.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2038-51  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:29 AM

These garrisons must either be furnished by occasional detachments from the militia, or by permanent corps in the pay of the government. The first is impracticable; and if practicable, would be pernicious. The militia would not long, if at all, submit to be dragged from their occupations and families to perform that most disagreeable duty in times of profound peace. And if they could be prevailed upon or compelled to do it, the increased expense of a frequent rotation of service, and the loss of labor and disconcertion of the industrious pursuits of individuals, would form conclusive objections to the scheme. It would be as burdensome and injurious to the public as ruinous to private citizens. The latter resource of permanent corps in the pay of the government amounts to a standing army in time of peace; a small one, indeed, but not the less real for being small. Here is a simple view of the subject, that shows us at once the impropriety of a constitutional interdiction of such establishments, and the necessity of leaving the matter to the discretion and prudence of the legislature. In proportion to our increase in strength, it is probable, nay, it may be said certain, that Britain and Spain would augment their military establishments in our neighborhood. If we should not be willing to be exposed, in a naked and defenseless condition, to their insults and encroachments, we should find it expedient to increase our frontier garrisons in some ratio to the force by which our Western settlements might be annoyed. There are, and will be, particular posts, the possession of which will include the command of large districts of territory, and facilitate future invasions of the remainder. It may be added that some of those posts will be keys to the trade with the Indian nations. Can any man think it would be wise to leave such posts in a situation to be at any instant seized by one or the other of two neighboring and formidable powers? To act this part would be to desert all the usual maxims of prudence and policy.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Bookmark Loc. 2084  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:31 AM


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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2080-88  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:32 AM

Reasons have been already given to induce a supposition that the State governments will too naturally be prone to a rivalship with that of the Union, the foundation of which will be the love of power; and that in any contest between the federal head and one of its members the people will be most apt to unite with their local government. If, in addition to this immense advantage, the ambition of the members should be stimulated by the separate and independent possession of military forces, it would afford too strong a temptation and too great a facility to them to make enterprises upon, and finally to subvert, the constitutional authority of the Union. On the other hand, the liberty of the people would be less safe in this state of things than in that which left the national forces in the hands of the national government. As far as an army may be considered as a dangerous weapon of power, it had better be in those hands of which the people are most likely to be jealous than in those of which they are least likely to be jealous. For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2090-91  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:33 AM

The truth is, that the existence of a federal government and military establishments under State authority are not less at variance with each other than a due supply of the federal treasury and the system of quotas and requisitions.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2095-2102  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:34 AM

When armies are once raised what shall be denominated ``keeping them up,'' contrary to the sense of the Constitution? What time shall be requisite to ascertain the violation? Shall it be a week, a month, a year? Or shall we say they may be continued as long as the danger which occasioned their being raised continues? This would be to admit that they might be kept up IN TIME OF PEACE, against threatening or impending danger, which would be at once to deviate from the literal meaning of the prohibition, and to introduce an extensive latitude of construction. Who shall judge of the continuance of the danger? This must undoubtedly be submitted to the national government, and the matter would then be brought to this issue, that the national government, to provide against apprehended danger, might in the first instance raise troops, and might afterwards keep them on foot as long as they supposed the peace or safety of the community was in any degree of jeopardy. It is easy to perceive that a discretion so latitudinary as this would afford ample room for eluding the force of the provision.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2095-2110  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:35 AM

When armies are once raised what shall be denominated ``keeping them up,'' contrary to the sense of the Constitution? What time shall be requisite to ascertain the violation? Shall it be a week, a month, a year? Or shall we say they may be continued as long as the danger which occasioned their being raised continues? This would be to admit that they might be kept up IN TIME OF PEACE, against threatening or impending danger, which would be at once to deviate from the literal meaning of the prohibition, and to introduce an extensive latitude of construction. Who shall judge of the continuance of the danger? This must undoubtedly be submitted to the national government, and the matter would then be brought to this issue, that the national government, to provide against apprehended danger, might in the first instance raise troops, and might afterwards keep them on foot as long as they supposed the peace or safety of the community was in any degree of jeopardy. It is easy to perceive that a discretion so latitudinary as this would afford ample room for eluding the force of the provision. The supposed utility of a provision of this kind can only be founded on the supposed probability, or at least possibility, of a combination between the executive and the legislative, in some scheme of usurpation. Should this at any time happen, how easy would it be to fabricate pretenses of approaching danger! Indian hostilities, instigated by Spain or Britain, would always be at hand. Provocations to produce the desired appearances might even be given to some foreign power, and appeased again by timely concessions. If we can reasonably presume such a combination to have been formed, and that the enterprise is warranted by a sufficient prospect of success, the army, when once raised, from whatever cause, or on whatever pretext, may be applied to the execution of the project. If, to obviate this consequence, it should be resolved to extend the prohibition to the RAISING of armies in time of peace, the United States would then exhibit the most extraordinary spectacle which the world has yet seen, that of a nation incapacitated by its Constitution to prepare for defense, before it was actually invaded.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2110-12  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:35 AM

the presence of an enemy within our territories must be waited for, as the legal warrant to the government to begin its levies of men for the protection of the State. We must receive the blow, before we could even prepare to return it.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2115-23  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:36 AM

Here I expect we shall be told that the militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defense. This doctrine, in substance, had like to have lost us our independence. It cost millions to the United States that might have been saved. The facts which, from our own experience, forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion. The steady operations of war against a regular and disciplined army can only be successfully conducted by a force of the same kind. Considerations of economy, not less than of stability and vigor, confirm this position. The American militia, in the course of the late war, have, by their valor on numerous occasions, erected eternal monuments to their fame; but the bravest of them feel and know that the liberty of their country could not have been established by their efforts alone, however great and valuable they were. War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perserverance, by time, and by practice. All violent policy, as it is contrary to the natural and experienced course of human affairs, defeats itself.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2146-50  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:27 PM

A failure in this delicate and important point is the great source of the inconveniences we experience, and if we are not cautious to avoid a repetition of the error, in our future attempts to rectify and ameliorate our system, we may travel from one chimerical project to another; we may try change after change; but we shall never be likely to make any material change for the better. The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2168-73  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:32 PM

As incident to the undefined power of making war, an acknowledged prerogative of the crown, Charles II. had, by his own authority, kept on foot in time of peace a body of 5,000 regular troops. And this number James II. increased to 30,000; who were paid out of his civil list. At the revolution, to abolish the exercise of so dangerous an authority, it became an article of the Bill of Rights then framed, that ``the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, UNLESS WITH THE CONSENT OF PARLIAMENT, was against law.'' In that kingdom, when the pulse of liberty was at its highest pitch, no security against the danger of standing armies was thought requisite, beyond a prohibition of their being raised or kept up by the mere authority of the executive magistrate.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2182-87  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:35 PM

Even in some of the States, where this error was not adopted, we find unnecessary declarations that standing armies ought not to be kept up, in time of peace, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE LEGISLATURE. I call them unnecessary, because the reason which had introduced a similar provision into the English Bill of Rights is not applicable to any of the State constitutions. The power of raising armies at all, under those constitutions, can by no construction be deemed to reside anywhere else, than in the legislatures themselves; and it was superfluous, if not absurd, to declare that a matter should not be done without the consent of a body, which alone had the power of doing it.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2196-2201  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:37 PM

Let us examine whether there be any comparison, in point of efficacy, between the provision alluded to and that which is contained in the new Constitution, for restraining the appropriations of money for military purposes to the period of two years. The former, by aiming at too much, is calculated to effect nothing; the latter, by steering clear of an imprudent extreme, and by being perfectly compatible with a proper provision for the exigencies of the nation, will have a salutary and powerful operation. The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-32  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:41 PM

Few persons will be so visionary as seriously to contend that military forces ought not to be raised to quell a rebellion or resist an invasion; and if the defense of the community under such circumstances should make it necessary to have an army so numerous as to hazard its liberty, this is one of those calamaties for which there is neither preventative nor cure. It cannot be provided against by any possible form of government; it might even result from a simple league offensive and defensive, if it should ever be necessary for the confederates or allies to form an army for common defense. But it is an evil infinitely less likely to attend us in a united than in a disunited state;
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2233-36  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:41 PM

It is not easy to conceive a possibility that dangers so formidable can assail the whole Union, as to demand a force considerable enough to place our liberties in the least jeopardy, especially if we take into our view the aid to be derived from the militia, which ought always to be counted upon as a valuable and powerful auxiliary. But in a state of disunion (as has been fully shown in another place), the contrary of this supposition would become not only probable, but almost unavoidable.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2236  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:42 PM

wow. really? that seems really naive.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2245-47  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:44 PM

I believe it may be laid down as a general rule that their confidence in and obedience to a government will commonly be proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administration. It must be admitted that there are exceptions to this rule; but these exceptions depend so entirely on accidental causes,
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2249-56  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:45 PM

Various reasons have been suggested, in the course of these papers, to induce a probability that the general government will be better administered than the particular governments; the principal of which reasons are that the extension of the spheres of election will present a greater option, or latitude of choice, to the people; that through the medium of the State legislatures which are select bodies of men, and which are to appoint the members of the national Senate there is reason to expect that this branch will generally be composed with peculiar care and judgment; that these circumstances promise greater knowledge and more extensive information in the national councils, and that they will be less apt to be tainted by the spirit of faction, and more out of the reach of those occasional ill-humors, or temporary prejudices and propensities, which, in smaller societies, frequently contaminate the public councils, beget injustice and oppression of a part of the community, and engender schemes which, though they gratify a momentary inclination or desire, terminate in general distress, dissatisfaction, and disgust.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2256  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 03:45 PM

ever been to utah?
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2298-2302  | Added on Friday, October 07, 2011, 08:46 PM

THAT there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied. Our own experience has corroborated the lessons taught by the examples of other nations; that emergencies of this sort will sometimes arise in all societies, however constituted; that seditions and insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body; that the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government), has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2330-37  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:51 AM

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. The usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of the territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to form a regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the more easy will it be to defeat their early efforts.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2358-61  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:19 PM

When will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of independent nations? The apprehension may be considered as a disease, for which there can be found no cure in the resources of argument and reasoning. PUBLIUS.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2361  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:19 PM

so the whole system is founded on mistrust
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2401-6  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:24 PM

To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2406  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:25 PM

this is kind of like a tirade against insurance
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2408-16  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:26 PM

``But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.''
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2436-39  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:32 PM

If there should be no army, whither would the militia, irritated by being called upon to undertake a distant and hopeless expedition, for the purpose of riveting the chains of slavery upon a part of their countrymen, direct their course, but to the seat of the tyrants, who had meditated so foolish as well as so wicked a project, to crush them in their imagined intrenchments of power, and to make them an example of the just vengeance of an abused and incensed people?
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2439  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:33 PM

not if the military is run like the military...
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2443-44  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:33 PM

If we were even to suppose the national rulers actuated by the most ungovernable ambition, it is impossible to believe that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2444  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:33 PM

oh sure. like syria.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 2453  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:36 PM

nowi am confused. i thought he was advocating a militia
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2456-66  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:37 PM

Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. A complete power, therefore, to procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every constitution. From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish. In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is that he permits the bashaws or governors of provinces to pillage the people without mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need, to satisfy his own exigencies and those of the state. In America, from a like cause, the government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt, that the happiness of the people in both countries would be promoted by competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues which the necessities of the public might require?
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 2588-89  | Added on Saturday, October 08, 2011, 12:49 PM

It should not be forgotten that a disposition in the State governments to encroach upon the rights of the Union is quite as probable as a disposition in the Union to encroach upon the rights of the State governments.
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Highlight Loc. 1687  | Added on Monday, October 10, 2011, 12:18 PM

To the People of the State of New York:
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1687  | Added on Monday, October 10, 2011, 12:18 PM

notes
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The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay)
- Note Loc. 1687  | Added on Monday, October 10, 2011, 12:18 PM

notes
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 2502-5  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 10:39 AM

The argument between Jesry and his brother decayed into sporadic sniper fire across the table, suppressed by glares and arm-squeezings from exasperated females who had wordlessly squared up into a peacekeeping force. Jesry’s brother had decided that with our hair-splitting debates about how many Tetrarchs there were, we’d shown ourselves to be a lot of insignificant pedants. Jesry informed him that this was an iconography that dated back to before the founding of the city-state of Ethras.
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3242-48  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 09:10 PM

“Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible,” I said, “using Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates, so that when she teaches you how it’s really done, it’ll seem that much easier.” Barb was dumbfounded. I went on, “Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop.” This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn’t heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse. “What’s the right way to do 
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3231-66  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 09:10 PM

“You want to know what’s stupid?” “Sure, Barb. Lay it on me,” I said, hauling a fistful of vegetable trimmings up out of the drain against the back-pressure of twenty gallons of dammed-up dishwater. The drain gargled and began to empty. “Any sline could stand out on the meadow at night and see some satellites in polar orbits, and other satellites in orbits around the equator, and know that those were two different kinds of orbits!” he exclaimed. “But if you work out the xs and ys and zs of it, guess what?” “What?” “They just look like a lot of xs and ys and zs, and it is not as obvious that some are polar and some are equatorial as it would be to any old dumb sline looking up into the sky!” “Worse than that,” I pointed out, “staring at the xs and ys and zs doesn’t even tell you that they are orbits.” “What do you mean?” “An orbit is a stationary, stable thing,” I said. “The satellite’s moving all the time, of course, but always in the same way. But that kind of stability is in no way shown by the xs and ys and zs.” “Yeah! It’s like knowing all of the theorics only makes us stupider!” he laughed excitedly, and cast a theatrical glance over his shoulder, as if we were up to something incredibly mischievous. “Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible,” I said, “using Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates, so that when she teaches you how it’s really done, it’ll seem that much easier.” Barb was dumbfounded. I went on, “Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop.” This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn’t heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse. “What’s the right way to do it?” “Orbital elements,” I said. “Six numbers that tell you everything that can be known about how a satellite is moving.” “But I already have those six numbers.” “What are they?” I asked, testing him. “The satellite’s position on Saunt Lesper’s x, y, and z axes. That’s three numbers. And its velocity along each one of those axes. That’s three more. Six numbers.” “But as you pointed out you can look at those six numbers and still not be able to visualize the orbit, or even know that it is an orbit. What I am telling you is that with some more theorics you can turn them into a different list of six numbers, the orbital elements, that are infinitely easier to work with, in that you can glance at them and know right away whether the orbit goes over the poles or around the equator.” “Why didn’t Grandsuur Ylma tell me that to begin with?” I couldn’t tell him, because you learn too damned fast. But if I tried to be overly diplomatic, Barb would see through it and plane me. Then I had an upsight: it was my responsibility, just as much as it was Ylma’s, to teach fids the right stuff at the right time. “You are now ready to stop working in Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates,” I announced, “and begin working in other kinds of spaces, the way real, grown-up theors do.” “Is this like parallel dimensions?” said Barb, who apparently had been watching the same kinds of speelies as I had before coming here. “No. These spaces I’m talking about aren’t like physical spaces that you can measure with a ruler and move around in. They are abstract theorical spaces that follow different rules, called action principles. The space that cosmographers like to use has six dimensions: one for each of the orbital elements. But that’s a special-purpose tool, only used in that discipline. A more general one was developed early in the Praxic Age by Saunt Hemn…” And I went on to give Barb a calca* about Hemn spaces, or configuration spaces, which Hemn had invented when he, like Barb, had become sick of xs and ys and zs.
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3375-83  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 09:20 PM

“I spent almost all of Apert extramuros,” Orolo said with a sigh, as if he had finally been run to ground. “I was expecting that it would be a wasteland. A cultural and intellectual charnel house. But that’s not exactly what I found. I went to speelys. I enjoyed them! I went to bars and got into some reasonably interesting conversations with people. Slines. I liked them. Some were quite interesting. And I don’t mean that in a bug-under-a-microscope way. They have stuck in my mind—characters I’ll always remember. For a while I was quite seduced by it. Then one evening I had an especially lively discussion with a sline who was as bright as anyone within this concent. And somehow, toward the end, it came out that he believed that the sun revolved around Arbre. I was flabbergasted, you know. I tried to disabuse him of this. He scoffed at my arguments. It made me remember just how much careful observation and theorical work is necessary to prove something as basic as that Arbre goes around the sun. How indebted we are to those who went before us. And this got me to thinking that I’d been living on the right side of the gate after all.”
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3416-26  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 09:23 PM

Whatever his name, that boy was going to save me. There was a lot he didn’t know, but nothing he was afraid to ask about, and ask about, and ask about, until he understood it perfectly. I decided to make him my fid. People would think I was doing it to be charitable. Maybe some would even think I was getting ready to fall back, and was making the care of Barb my avocation. Let them think so! In truth it was mostly self-interest. I had learned more theorics in six weeks, simply by being willing to sit next to Barb, than I had in six months before Apert. I saw now that in my desire to know theorics I had taken shortcuts that, just like shortcuts on a map, turned out to be longcuts. Whenever I’d seen Jesry get it quicker than me, I had misread equations in a way that had seemed easier at the time but made things harder—no, impossible—later. Barb didn’t have that fear that others were getting it faster; because of how his brain was set up, he couldn’t read that in their faces. And he did not have the same desire to reach a distant goal. He was altogether self-centered and short-sighted. He wanted only to understand this one problem or equation chalked on the slate before him now, today, whether or not it was convenient for the others around him. And he was willing to stand there asking questions about it through supper and past curfew.
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5210-16  | Added on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 09:16 PM

“The aliens are jamming the nav satellites,” I announced. “Or maybe they just shot them down!” said Barb. “Let’s buy a sextant, then,” suggested Fraa Jad. “Those have not been made in four thousand years,” I told him. “Let’s build one then.” “I have no idea of all the parts and whatnot that go into a sextant.” He found this amusing. “Neither do I. I was assuming we would design it from first principles.” “Yeah!” snorted Barb. “It’s just geometry, Raz!”
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5210-29  | Added on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 09:17 PM

“The aliens are jamming the nav satellites,” I announced. “Or maybe they just shot them down!” said Barb. “Let’s buy a sextant, then,” suggested Fraa Jad. “Those have not been made in four thousand years,” I told him. “Let’s build one then.” “I have no idea of all the parts and whatnot that go into a sextant.” He found this amusing. “Neither do I. I was assuming we would design it from first principles.” “Yeah!” snorted Barb. “It’s just geometry, Raz!” “In the present age, this continent is covered by a dense network of hard-surfaced roads replete with signs and other navigational aids,” I announced. “Oh,” said Fraa Jad. “Between that and this”—I waved the cartabla—“we can find our way to Saunt Tredegarh without having to design a sextant from first principles.” Fraa Jad seemed a little put out by this. A minute later, though, we happened to pass an office supply store. I ran in and bought a protractor, then handed it to Fraa Jad to serve as the first component in his homemade sextant. He was deeply impressed. I realized that this was the first thing he’d seen extramuros that made sense to him. “Is that a Temple of Adrakhones?” he asked, gazing at the store. “No,” I said, and turned my back on it and walked away. “It is praxic. They need primitive trigonometry to build things like wheelchair ramps and doorstops.” “Nonetheless,” he said, falling behind me, and looking back longingly, “they must have some perception—” “Fraa Jad,” I said, “they have no awareness of the Hylaean Theoric World.” “Oh. Really?” “Really. Anyone out here who begins to see into the HTW suppresses it, goes crazy, or ends up at Saunt Edhar.” I turned around and looked at him. “Where did you think Barb and I came from?” Once we had gotten clear as to that, Barb and Jad were happy to follow me and discuss sextants as I led them on a wide arc around the west side of Saunt Edhar to the machine hall.
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5242-70  | Added on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 09:20 PM

“Do you think he is going to physically assault me? Because I know a little vlor. Not as much as Lio but—” “That would be an unusual way to handle it. Out here it would be a legal dispute. But you guys have your own separate law, so he can’t touch you. And it sounds like the Powers That Be are leaning on him to let this thing happen. He’ll negotiate with them for compensation. He’s also negotiating with the insurance company to make sure that none of this voids his policy.” “Wow. Things are complicated out here.” Cord looked in the direction of the Praesidium and sniffled. “And they’re not…in there?” I thought about that for a while. “I guess my disappearance on Tenth Night probably looks as weird to you as your boss’s insurance policy looks to me.” “Correct.” “Well, it wasn’t personal. And it hurt me a lot. Maybe as much as this mess hurts you.” “That is unlikely,” Cord said, “since ten seconds before you walked in here I got fired.” “That is wildly irrational behavior!” I protested. “Even by extramuros standards.” “Yes and no. Yes, it’s crazy for me to get fired because of a decision you made without my knowledge. But no, in a way it’s not, because I’m weird here. I’m a girl. I use the machines to make jewelry. I make parts for the Ita and get paid in jars of honey.” “Well, I’m really sorry—” “Just stop,” she suggested. “If there’s anything I can do—if you’d like to join the math—” “The math you just got thrown out of?” “I’m just saying, if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you—” “Give me an adventure.” In the moment that followed, Cord realized that this sounded weird, and lost her nerve. She held up her hands. “I’m not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I’m old.” Now for the first time I reviewed everything that had happened in the last twelve hours. It made me a little dizzy. “Raz?” she said, after a while. “I can’t predict the future,” I said, “but based on what little I know so far, I’m afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing.” “Great!” “Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.” That quieted her down a little bit. But after a while, she said: “Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?” “Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,” I said. “We have a protractor.” “Okay, I’ll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.” “That’d be great.” “See you here at noon. If they’ll let me back in, that is.” “I’ll see to it that they do. Hey, Cord—” “Yeah?” “This is probably the wrong time to ask…but could you do me one favor?”
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5432-36  | Added on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 09:35 PM

Before leaving town we stopped, or rather slowed down, at a place where we could get food without spending a lot of time. I remembered this kind of restaurant from my childhood but it was new to the Hundreders. I couldn’t help seeing it as they did: the ambiguous conversation with the unseen serving-wench, the bags of hot-grease-scented food hurtling in through the window, condiments in packets, attempting to eat while lurching down a highway, volumes of messy litter that seemed to fill all the empty space in the mobe, a smell that outstayed its welcome.
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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Bookmark Loc. 8678  | Added on Saturday, October 22, 2011, 01:33 PM


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Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
- Bookmark Loc. 12744  | Added on Thursday, October 27, 2011, 10:18 PM


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Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Bookmark Loc. 6638  | Added on Monday, November 14, 2011, 11:59 PM


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Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6904-10  | Added on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 12:01 AM

Dropping his bag on the floor and looking around at the room, he cursed aloud. To have to be in Burroughs in person— as if one’s physical presence made any difference these days! It was an absurd anachronism, but that’s the way people were. Another vestige of the savannah. They lived like monkeys still, while their new god powers lay around them in the weeds. Slusinski came in. Though his accent was pure New York, Frank had always called him Jeeves, because he looked like the actor in the BBC series. “We’re like dwarves in a waldo,” Frank said to him angrily. “One of those really big waldo excavators. We’re inside it and supposed to be moving a mountain, and instead of using the waldo capabilities we’re leaning out of a window and digging with teaspoons. And complimenting each other on the way we’re taking advantage of the height.”
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Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 7012-20  | Added on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 12:12 AM

In a few months’ time, when the elevator was maneuvered into its remarkable orbit, Pavonis Mons was going to become the hub of Mars, superceding Burroughs as Burroughs had once superseded Underhill. And as the elevator’s touchdown was not far off, signs of the area’s coming predominance were already everywhere. Paralleling the train piste as it ascended the steep eastern slope of the volcano were two new roads and four thick pipelines, as well as an array of cables, a line of microwave towers, and a continuous litter of stations, loading tracks, warehouses, and dumps. And then, on the last and steepest upcurve of the volcano’s cone, there was a vast congregation of tents and industrial buildings, thicker and thicker until up on the broad rim they were everywhere, and between them immense fields of insolation-capture sheets, and receivers for the energy microwaved down from the orbiting solar panels. Each tent along the way was a little town, stuffed with little apartment blocks, and each apartment block was stuffed with people, their laundry hanging from every window. The tents nearest the piste had very few trees in them, and looked like commercial districts. Frank caught quick glimpses of food stands, video rentals, open-front gyms, clothing stores, laundromats. Litter piled in the streets.
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 35-41  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 12:33 AM

Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, which was (more or less) an extrapolation of the ideas in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, applied to a galaxy-wide empire in some far future time. The novel set me, not to dreaming, but to thinking, which is Asimov’s most extraordinary ability as a fiction writer. What would the future be like? How would things change? What would remain the same? The premise of Foundation seemed to be that even though you might change the props and the actors, the play of human history is always the same. And yet that fundamentally pessimistic premise (you mean we’ll never change?) was tempered by Asimov’s idea of a group of human beings who, not through genetic change, but through learned skills, are able to understand and heal the minds of other people.
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 43-46  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 12:34 AM

Those were some of the ideas that played through my mind as I read Foundation, curled on my bed—a thin mattress on a slab of plywood, a bed my father had made for me—in my basement bedroom in our little rambler on 650 East in Orem, Utah. And then, as so many science fiction readers have done over the years, I felt a strong desire to write stories that would do for others what Asimov’s story had done for me.
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 60-65  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 12:36 AM

Far more deeply rooted in my mind was my experience, five or six years earlier, of reading Bruce Catton’s three-volume Army of the Potomac. I remembered so well the stories of the commanders in that war—the struggle to find a Union general capable of using McClellan’s magnificent army to defeat Lee and Jackson and Stuart, and then, finally, Grant, who brought death to far too many of his soldiers, but also made their deaths mean something, by grinding away at Lee, keeping him from dancing and maneuvering out of reach. It was because of Catton’s history that I had stopped enjoying chess, and had to revise the rules of Risk in order to play it—I had come to understand something of war, and not just because of the conclusions Catton himself had reached. I found meanings of my own in that history.
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 66-69  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 12:37 AM

I learned that history is shaped by the use of power, and that different people, leading the same army, with, therefore, approximately the same power, applied it so differently that the army seemed to change from a pack of noble fools at Fredericksburg to panicked cowards melting away at Chancellorsville, then to the grimly determined, stubborn soldiers who held the ridges at Gettysburg, and then, finally, to the disciplined, professional army that ground Lee to dust in Grant’s long campaign. It wasn’t the soldiers who changed. It was the leader.
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 600-602  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 01:02 AM

“With Ender, we have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative—otherwise he’ll adopt the system here and we’ll lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead.” “If he earns rank, he’ll lead.”
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 1647-55  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 02:27 AM

“Why?” asked Ender. “I’ve watched your practice sessions with the Launchies. I think you show some promise. Bonzo is stupid and I wanted you to get better training than Petra could give you. All she can do is shoot.” “I needed to learn that.” “You still move like you were afraid to wet your pants.” “So teach me.” “So learn.” “I’m not going to quit my freetime practice sessions.” “I don’t want you to quit them.” “Rose the Nose does.” “Rose the Nose can’t stop you. Likewise, he can’t stop you from using your desk.” “I thought commanders could order anything.” “They can order the moon to turn blue, too, but it doesn’t happen. Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.”
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Highlight Loc. 2039-40  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 02:53 AM

“Peter, you’re twelve.” “Not on the nets I’m not. On the nets I can name myself anything I want, and so can you.”
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Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
- Bookmark Loc. 4608  | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 03:36 PM


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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 1230-32  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 03:23 PM

“Continuous expansion is a fundamental tenet of economics. Therefore one of the fundamentals of the universe itself. Because everything is economics. Physics is cosmic economics, biology is cellular economics, the humanities are social economics, psychology is mental economics, and so on.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 1262-66  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 03:28 PM

“We understand the world through paradigms. The change from empty-world economics to full-world economics is a major paradigm shift. Max Planck once said that a new paradigm takes over not when it convinces its opponents, but when its opponents eventually die.” “And now they aren’t dying,” Art said. Fort nodded. “The treatments are keeping people around. And a lot of them have tenure.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 1442-48  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 03:46 PM

“For development! Mars isn’t just an empty world, Randolph— in economic terms, it’s nearly a nonexistent world. Its bioinfrastructure has to be constructed, you see. I mean one could just extract the metals and move on, which is what Subarashii and the others seem to have in mind. But that’s treating it like nothing more than a big asteroid. Which is stupid, because its value as a base of operations, as a planet so to speak, far surpasses the value of its metals. All its metals together total about twenty trillion dollars, but the value of a terraformed Mars is more in the neighborhood of two hundred trillion dollars. That’s about one third of the current Gross World Value, and even that doesn’t make proper assessment of its scarcity value, if you ask me. No, Mars is bioinfrastructure investment, just like I was talking about. Exactly the kind of thing Praxis is looking for.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2353-55  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:33 PM

“To figure things out,” he said. “But terraforming is not figuring things out.” “Terraforming isn’t science. I never said it was. It’s what people-do with science. Applied science, or technology. What have you. The choice of what to do with what you learn from science. Whatever you call that.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2407-13  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:39 PM

She did not reply. It was distressing, it really was. Once, in an attempt to understand Ann, to be able to talk to her, he had done research in the philosophy of science. He had read a fair amount of material, concentrating particularly on the land ethic, and the fact-value interface. Alas, it had never proved to be of much help; in conversation with her, he had never seemed able to apply what he had learned in any useful manner. Now, looking down at her, feeling the ache in his joints, he recalled something that Kuhn had written about Priestley— that a scientist who continued to resist after his whole profession had been converted to a new paradigm might be perfectly logical and reasonable, but had ipso facto ceased to be a scientist. It seemed that something like this had happened to Ann, but what then was she now? A counterrevolutionary? A prophet?
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2476-81  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:50 PM

The formula governing the number of possible relationships in a group was n(n-1)/2 where n is the number of individuals in the group; so that, for the 1,000 people at Biotique Burroughs, there were 499,500 possible relationships. This seemed to Sax well beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend— even the 4,950 possible relationships in a group of 100, the hypothesized “design limit” of human group size, seemed unwieldy. Certainly it had been at Underhill, when they had had a chance to test it. So it was important to find a smaller group at Biotique, and Sax set about doing so.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2571-76  | Added on Monday, November 21, 2011, 12:00 AM

He breathed in a cold rush of the gas, held it briefly, exhaled, and felt all the weight go out of him— that was the subjective impression. It was fairly humorous to see how responsive mood was to chemical manipulation, despite what it implied about the precarious balance of one’s emotional equanimity, even sanity itself. Not on the face of it a pleasant realization. But at the moment, not a problem. In fact it made him grin. He looked over the rail at the rooftops of Burroughs, and noticed for the first time that the new neighborhoods to the west and north were shifting to blue tile roofs and white walls, so that they were taking on a Greek look, while the old parts of town were more Spanish. Jessica was definitely making an effort to keep their upper arms in contact. It was possible her balance was impaired by mirth.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2669-73  | Added on Monday, November 21, 2011, 09:52 PM

And so he worked on, trying to incorporate into the calculation skylight radiance intensities, Chandrasekhar’s radiative transfer equation, chromaticity scales, aerosol chemical compositions, Legendre polynomials to evaluate the angular scattering intensities, Riccati-Bessel functions to evaluate the scattering cross sections, and so on— occupying the better part of the drive to Arena Glacier, concentrating hard and steadfastly ignoring the world around him and the situation in which he now found himself.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 3123-33  | Added on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 01:17 AM

And it occurred to him that this vision was not a matter of accident (the lensing of tears over his cornea, for instance) but the result of a new and growing conceptual understanding of the landscape. It was a kind of cognitive vision, and he could not help but remember Ann saying angrily to him, Mars is the place you have never seen. He had taken it as a figure of speech. But now he recalled Kuhn, asserting that scientists who used different paradigms existed in literally different worlds, epistemology being such an integral component of reality. Thus Aristoteleans simply did not see the Galilean pendulum, which to them was a body falling with some difficulty; and in general, scientists debating the relative merits of competing paradigms simply talked right through each other, using the same words to discuss different realities. He had considered that too to be a figure of speech. But thinking of it now, absorbing the hallucinatory clarity of the ice, he had to admit that it certainly described what his conversations with Ann had always felt like. It had been a frustration to both of them, and when Ann had cried out that he had never seen Mars, a statement that was obviously false on some levels, she had perhaps meant only to say that he hadn’t seen her Mars, the Mars created by her paradigm. And that was no doubt true.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 3925-33  | Added on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 11:10 PM

“Power,” Desmond said. “Power and gain.” “Ah.” Sax had always been so uninterested in those things that it was hard for him to understand why anyone else would be. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one’s options, and reduce one’s freedom. One became a servant of one’s wealth or power, constrained to spend all one’s time protecting it. So that properly seen, the freedom of a scientist with a lab at his command was the highest freedom possible. Any more wealth and power only interfered with that. Desmond was shaking his head as Sax described this philosophy. “Some people like to tell others what to do. They like that more than freedom. Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it’s high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It’s safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 4093-95  | Added on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 11:27 PM

So that human beings were miraculous indeed— conscious creators, walking this new world like fresh young gods, wielding immense alchemical powers. So that anyone Michel met on Mars he regarded curiously, wondering as he looked at their often innocuous exteriors what kind of new Paracelsus or Isaac of Holland stood before him, and whether they would turn lead to gold, or cause rocks to 
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 4566-73  | Added on Thursday, November 24, 2011, 01:42 AM

Maya was clearly in a foul mood, Nirgal recognized the look from childhood, although this one was worse, her face hard and her mouth set in a downturned sickle. “I killed Phyllis,” she told Coyote. There was silence. Nirgal’s hands went cold. Suddenly, looking around at the others, he saw that they all felt awkward. It was the sole woman among them who was the killer, and for a second there was something strange in that which they all felt, including Maya— who drew herself up, scornful of their cowardice. None of this was rational or even conscious in them, Nirgal saw as he read their faces, but rather something primal, instinctive, biological. And so Maya only stared them down the more, contemptuous of their horror, glaring at them with an eagle’s alien hostility. Coyote stepped to her side and went on his toes to peck her on the cheek with a kiss, meeting her glare foursquare. “You did good,” he said, putting a hand to her arm. “You saved Sax.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5369-72  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 02:40 AM

Maya was at their table, and she looked at Art as suspiciously as she had in Echus Chasma. “It isn’t possible,” she declared. She looked much better than she had when they had parted, Nirgal thought— rested, tall, rangy, graceful, glamorous. She seemed to have shrugged off the guilt of murder as if it were a coat she didn’t like.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5990-95  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

“No. But would they fight without orders from their leaders?” “Some might. It’s their job, after all.” “Yes, but they have no great stake beyond that,” Nadia said, thinking it out as she spoke. “Without nationalism or ethnicity, or some other kind of home feeling involved, I don’t think these people will fight to the death. They know they’re being ordered around to protect the powerful. Some more egalitarian system makes an appearance, and they might feel a conflict of loyalties.” “Retirement benefits,” Maya mocked, and people laughed again.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5986-95  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 10:53 PM

“Mandatory retirement?” Maya suggested acidly. People laughed, and Nadia glared at her old friend. “Forced disemployment,” Art said loudly from the back, where he had just appeared. “You mean a coup,” Maya said. “Not to fight the entire population on the surface, but just the leadership and their bodyguards.” “And maybe their armies,” Nirgal insisted. “We have no sign that they are disaffected, or even apathetic.” “No. But would they fight without orders from their leaders?” “Some might. It’s their job, after all.” “Yes, but they have no great stake beyond that,” Nadia said, thinking it out as she spoke. “Without nationalism or ethnicity, or some other kind of home feeling involved, I don’t think these people will fight to the death. They know they’re being ordered around to protect the powerful. Some more egalitarian system makes an appearance, and they might feel a conflict of loyalties.” “Retirement benefits,” Maya mocked, and people laughed again.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6167-71  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 11:10 PM

Nadia would have expected Coyote to be among those arguing with him, but in fact he said, “We have to argue all of it! Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you— anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. No! If you want to make the minimum-state case, you have to argue it from the ground up.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6210-15  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 11:14 PM

“You will only repeat the socialist catastrophe!” Vlad shrugged. “Don’t be too hasty to judge that period. The socialist countries were under assault from capitalism without and corruption within, and no system could survive that. We must not throw the baby socialism out with the Stalinist bathwater, or we lose many concepts of obvious fairness that we need. Earth is in the grip of the system that defeated socialism, and it is clearly an irrational and destructive hierarchy. So how can we deal with it without being crushed? We have to look everywhere for answers to this, including the systems that the current order defeated.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6259-63  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 11:19 PM

So out they went, ready to work, two sharp young men and one blunt old woman. It was strange, Nadia thought, to see who emerged as leaders in situations like these. It wasn’t necessarily the most brilliant or well-informed, as Marina or Coyote would serve to show, though both qualities helped, and those two people were important. But the leaders were the ones people would listen to. The magnetic ones. And in a crowd of such powerful intellects and personalities, such magnetism was very rare, very elusive. Very powerful. . . .
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6378-80  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 11:32 PM

Coyote came by and said to Art, “Don’t tell me about how different Praxis is. That’s the oldest dodge in the book. If only the rich would behave decently, then the system would be okay. That’s crap. The system overdetermines everything, and it’s the system that has to change.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6491-6510  | Added on Friday, November 25, 2011, 11:45 PM

“Work points for a Martian government!” He peered over the screen at the crowd, and they subsided into an attentive silence. “One. Martian society will be composed of many different cultures. It is better to think of it as a world rather than a nation. Freedom of religion and cultural practice must be guaranteed. No one culture or group of cultures should be able to dominate the rest. “Two. Within this framework of diversity, it still must be guaranteed that all individuals on Mars have certain inalienable rights, including the material basics of existence, health care, education, and legal equality. “Three. The land, air, and water of Mars are in the common stewardship of the human family, and cannot be owned by any individual or group. “Four. The fruits of an individual’s labor belong to the individual, and cannot be appropriated by another individual or group. At the same time, human labor on Mars is part of a communal enterprise, given to the common good. The Martian economic system must reflect both these facts, balancing self-interest with the interests of society at large. “Five. The metanational order ruling Earth is currently incapable of incorporating the previous two principles, and cannot be applied here. In its place we must enact an economics based on ecologic science. The goal of Martian economics is not ‘sustainable development’ but a sustainable prosperity for its entire biosphere. “Six. The Martian landscape itself has certain ‘rights of place’ which must be honored. The goal of our environmental alterations should therefore be minimalist and ecopoetic, reflecting the values of the areophany. It is suggested that the goal of environmental alterations be to make only that portion of Mars lower than the five-kilometer contour human-viable. Higher elevations, constituting some thirty percent of the planet, would then remain in something resembling their primeval conditions, existing as natural wilderness zones. “Seven. The habitation of Mars is a unique historical process, as it is the first inhabitation of another planet by humanity. As such it should be undertaken in a spirit of reverence for this planet and for the scarcity of life in the universe. What we do here will set precedents for further human habitation of the solar system, and will suggest models for the human relationship to Earth’s environment as well. Thus Mars occupies a special place in history, and this should be remembered when we make the necessary decisions concerning life here.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6691-6726  | Added on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 12:05 AM

In psychology we believe we have scientifically identified a certain pathology in which a person needs to know everything because he is afraid of not knowing. It’s a pathology of monocausotaxophilia, as Pöppel called it, the love of single causes that explain everything. This can become fear of a lack of causes. Because the lack might be dangerous. The knowledge-seeking becomes primarily defensive, in that it is a way of denying fear when one really is afraid. At its worst it isn’t even knowledge-seeking, because when the answers arrive they cease to be of interest, as they are no longer dangerous. So that reality itself doesn’t matter to such a person. Everyone tries to avoid danger. But motivations are always multiple. And different from action to action. Time to time. Any patterns are a matter of— observer’s speculation. Psychology is a science in which the observer becomes intimately involved with the subject of observation. That’s one of the reasons I don’t think it’s a science. It is certainly a science. One of its tenets is, if you want to know more, care more. Every astronomer loves the stars. Otherwise why study them so? Because they are mysteries. What do you care about? I care about truth. The truth is not a very good lover. It isn’t love I’m looking for. Are you sure? No surer than anyone else who thinks about— motivations. You agree we have motivations? Yes. But science cannot explain them. So they are part of your great unexplainable. Yes. And so you focus your attention on other things. Yes. But the motivations are still there. Oh yes. What did you read when you were young? All kinds of things. What were some of your favorite books? Sherlock Holmes. Other detective stories. The Thinking Machine. Dr. Thorndyke. Did your parents punish you if you got upset? I don’t think so. They didn’t like me making a fuss. But I think they were just ordinary in that respect. Did you ever see them get upset? I don’t remember. Did you ever see them shout, or cry? I never heard them shout. Sometimes my mom cried, I think. Did you know why? No. Did you wonder why? I don’t remember. Would it matter if I had? What do you mean? I mean, if I had had one kind of past. I could still have turned into any kind of person. Depending on my reaction to the— events. And if I had had another kind of past. The same variations would have followed. So that your line of questioning is useless. In that it has no explanatory rigor. It’s an imitation of the scientific method. I consider your conception of science to be as parsimonious and reductive as your scientific activities. Essentially you are saying we should not study the human mind in a scientific manner because it is too complex to make the study easy. That’s not very bold of you. The universe outside us is complex too, but you don’t advise avoiding that. Why so with the universe inside? You can’t isolate factors, you can’t repeat conditions, you can’t set up experiments with controls, you can’t make falsifiable hypotheses. The whole apparatus of science is unavailable to you. Think about the first scientists for a while.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6769-74  | Added on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 12:08 AM

he had understood people speaking to him, his thinking had been much the same as far as he could tell, and he had had no trouble with the spatial and other nonlinguistic tests. But when he tried to talk, sudden betrayal— in the mouth and in the mind. Things lost their names. Strangely enough, without names they were still things. He could see them and think about them in terms of shapes, or numbers. Formula of description. Various combinations of conic sections and the six surfaces of revolution symmetrical around an axis, the plane, the sphere, the cylinder, the catenoid, the unduloid, and the nodoid; shapes without the names, but the shapes alone were like names. Spatializing language. But it turned out that remembering without words was hard.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6776-77  | Added on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 12:09 AM

And in each place an object. Or another place. On one counter, all the Acheron labs. On top of the refrigerator, Boulder, Colorado. And so he remembered all the shapes he thought by their location in the mental lab.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 7362-65  | Added on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 01:16 AM

He raised a finger admonishingly. “Your anger will help, but it can’t be everything. Frank was nothing but anger, remember? And you see where it got him. You have to fight not only against what you hate, but for what you love, you see? And so you have to find what it is you love. You have to remember it, or create it.” “Yes yes,” she said, suddenly irritated. “I love you, but shut up now.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 7473-78  | Added on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 11:32 AM

found a photo of Frank at age twenty-three, in the beginning of his work with the NSC: a dark-haired kid with a sharp confident smile, looking at the world as if he were ready to tell it something it didn’t know. So young! So young and so knowing. At first glance Maya thought it was the innocence of youth to look so knowing, but in fact the face did not look innocent. His had not been an innocent childhood. But he was a fighter, and he had found his method, and was prevailing. A power that couldn’t be beaten, or so the smile seemed to say. But kick the world, break your foot. As they said in Kamchatka.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8038-44  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 01:09 AM

Very few nisei or sansei or yonsei ever came to visit him, however, which surprised him. “No doubt it is a good sign for the long-term prospects of Martian habitation,” he said one evening as he came up from a quiet day in his office on the bottom floor. Maya shrugged. “They could be crazy and not know it. It looked like it might be that way to me, when I went around the basin.” Michel eyed her. “Do you mean crazy or just different?” “I don’t know. They just seem unaware of what they’re doing.” “Every generation is its own secret society. And these are what you might call areurges. It is their nature to operate the planet. You have to give them that.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8115-19  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 01:18 AM

“Hmm,” Maya said. She couldn’t remember. She recalled instead the looks on the faces of the people at that night’s meeting. It was true, they had revealed everything— they had been like masks expressing exactly the sentences their owners had spoken. The metanats are out of control. They’re screwing things up. They’re selfish, they only care about themselves. Metanationalism is a new kind of nationalism, but without any home feeling. It’s money patriotism, a kind of disease. People are suffering, not so much here, but on Earth. And if it doesn’t change it will happen here too. They will infect us.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8166-77  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 02:24 AM

Michel was in there cleaning up, making room for people to sleep on the floor. It was going to be an irritating evening. The next morning when she got up early to go to the bathroom, feeling hung over, Art was already up. Over the sleeping bodies on the floor he whispered, “Want to go out and get breakfast?” Maya nodded. When she was dressed they walked down the stairs and out, through the park and along the corniche, which was lurid in the horizontal beams of dawn sunlight. They stopped in a café that had just washed down its section of sidewalk. On the dawn-stained white wall of the building, a sentence had been painted with the help of a stencil, so that it was neat and small, and brilliantly red: YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK “My God,” Maya exclaimed. “What?” She pointed at the graffito. “Oh, yeah,” Art said. “You see that painted all over Sheffield and Burroughs these days. Pithy, eh?” “Ka wow.” They sat in the chill air by a small round table, and ate pastries and drank Turkish coffee. The ice on the horizon blinked like diamonds, revealing some movement under the ice. “What a fantastic sight,” Art said.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8199-8203  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 02:27 AM

Maya said, “But these metanationals are squabbling all the time yes?” “That’s right.” “The thing to do would be to start a big fight between some of them.” Art’s eyebrows shot up. “A dangerous plan!” “For who?” “For Earth.” “I don’t give a damn about Earth,” Maya said, tasting the words on her tongue. “Join the crowd,” Art said ruefully, and she laughed again.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8728-33  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 12:49 PM

She handed out the teacups, and as Spencer came in and had the story told to him, she got a robe and draped it over Michel’s shoulders, excoriating herself for the miserable timing of her assault on him. She sat by him, squeezing his thigh, trying to tell him by touch that she was there, that she was his family too, and that all her games were over, to the best of her ability— no more treating him as pet or punching bag. . . . That she loved him. But his thigh was like warm ceramic, and he obviously didn’t notice her hand, was scarcely even aware she was there. And it came to her that it was precisely in the moments of greatest need when people could do the least for each other.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8970-72  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 01:14 PM

there were more and more incidents of sabotage in the cities, which caused a corresponding increase in police surveillance, until it seemed very possible that things could break wide open.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Note Loc. 8972  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 01:15 PM

monkey wrench gang.......... on mars
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 8985-87  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 01:17 PM

This kind of work, and the destruction of the southern sanctuaries, had created what looked from a distance like a sort of war fever in Dorsa Brevia, and Maya was worried by that too. Sax, at the heart of it, was a stubborn secretive brilliant brain-damaged loose cannon, a bona fide mad scientist.
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 9195-97  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 03:55 PM

“We’ve got to let the Transitional Authority know how widespread the resistance is, so that when the moment comes, they don’t try to crush us out of ignorance, see what I mean? At this point we need them to feel disliked and outnumbered. Hell, mass numbers of people in the streets are about the only thing that scare governments, if you ask me.”
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Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 9397-9401  | Added on Sunday, November 27, 2011, 04:15 PM

Another July revolution, then, and another October revolution too. A decade past the bicentennial of the Bolshevik revolution, she seemed to remember. Which was another strange thought. Well, but they too had tried. All the revolutionaries, all through history. Mostly desperate peasants, fighting for their children’s lives. As in her Russia. So many in that bitter twentieth century, risking all to make a better life, and even so it had led to disaster. It was frightening— as if history were a series of human wave assaults on misery, failing time after time.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 195-204  | Added on Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 01:14 AM

Ann walked on. As she walked she felt more and more uneasy, without knowing why. This is how people change— in little quantum jumps when struck by outer events— no intention, no plan. Someone says “the look in people’s eye,” and the phrase is suddenly conjoined with an image: a face glowing with passionate conviction, another phrase: you can’t just do what you want! And so it occurred to her (the look on that young woman’s face!) that it was not just the cable’s fate they were deciding— not just “should the cable come down,” but “how do we decide things?” That was the critical postrevolutionary question, perhaps more important than any single issue being debated, even the fate of the cable. Up until now, most people in the underground had operated by a working method which said if we don’t agree with you we will fight you. That attitude was what had gotten people into the underground in the first place, Ann included. And once used to that method, it was hard to get away from it. After all, they had just proved that it worked. And so there was the inclination to continue to use it. She felt that herself. But political power . . . say it did come out of the look in people’s eye. You could fight forever, but if people weren’t behind you. . . .
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 760-67  | Added on Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 11:41 PM

So he talked it over with the Da Vinci space scientists, who had effectively taken over control of the mirrors. The lab rats, people called them behind their backs, and his (though he heard anyway); the lab rats, or the saxaclones. Serious young native Martian scientists, in fact, with just the same variations of temperament as grad students and postdocs in any lab anywhere, anytime; but the facts didn’t matter. They worked with him and so they were the saxaclones. Somehow he had become the very model of the modern Martian scientist; first as white-coated lab rat, then as full-blown mad scientist, with a crater-castle full of eager Igors, mad-eyed but measured in manner, little Mr. Spocks, the men as skinny and awkward as cranes on the ground, the women drab in their protective noncoloration, their neuter devotion to Science. Sax was very fond of them. He liked their devotion to science, it made sense to him— an urge to understand things, to be able to express them mathematically. It was a sensible desire. In fact it often seemed to him that if everyone were a physicist then they would be very much better off.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 1254-63  | Added on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 01:54 AM

formulate a first approximation constitution, a working draft.” Maya shook her head. “That won’t be easy, with this crowd.” “Take the constitutions of the twenty or thirty most successful Terran countries,” Sax suggested, thinking out loud, “and see how they work. Have an AI compile a composite document, perhaps, and see what it says.” “How would you define most successful?” Art asked. “Country Futures Index, Real Values Gauge, Costa Rica Comparisons— even Gross Domestic Product, why not.” Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before. But what the hell—”Use several different sets of criteria, human welfare, ecologic success, what have you.” “But Sax,” Coyote complained, “the very concept of the nation-state is a bad one. That idea by itself will poison all those old constitutions.” “Could be,” Sax said. “But as a starting point.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2187-91  | Added on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 10:32 PM

“It’s dangerous,” Charlotte said when Art brought this matter up in the nightly meeting with Nadia. “When you have a country formed out of a lot of groups that don’t trust each other, with one a clear majority, then you get what they call ‘census voting,’ where politicians represent their groups, and get their votes, and election results are always just a reflection of population numbers. In that situation the same thing happens every time, so the majority group has a monopoly on power, and the minorities feel hopeless, and eventually rebel. Some of the worst civil wars in history began in those circumstances.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2225-80  | Added on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 11:25 PM

Antar spoke often for this last group, with Jackie sitting right next to him, obviously in support. This along with his ties to the Arab community gave his statements a kind of double weight, and people listened. “This new economy that’s being proposed,” he declared one day at the table of tables, repeating his theme, “is a radical and unprecedented intrusion of government into business.” Suddenly Vlad Taneev stood up. Startled, Antar stopped speaking and looked over. Vlad glared at him. Stooped, massive-headed, shaggy-eyebrowed, Vlad rarely if ever spoke in public; he hadn’t said a thing in the congress so far. Slowly the greater part of the warehouse went silent, watching him. Art felt a quiver of anticipation; of all the brilliant minds of the First Hundred, Vlad was perhaps the most brilliant— and, except for Hiroko, the most enigmatic. Old when they had left Earth, intensely private, Vlad had built the Acheron labs early on and stayed there as much as possible thereafter, living in seclusion with Ursula Kohl and Marina Tokareva, two more of the great first ones. No one knew anything for certain about the three of them, they were a limit-case illustration of the insular nature of other people’s relationships; but this of course did not stop gossip, on the contrary, people talked about them all the time, saying that Marina and Ursula were the real couple, that Vlad was a kind of friend, or pet; or that Ursula had done most of the work on the longevity treatment, and Marina most of the work on eco-economics; or that they were a perfectly balanced equilateral triangle, collaborating on all that emerged from Acheron; or that Vlad was a bigamist of sorts who used two wives as fronts for his work in the separate fields of biology and economics. But no one knew for sure, for none of the three ever said a word about it. Watching him stand there at the table, however, one had to suspect that the theory about him being just a front man was wrong. He was looking around in a fiercely intent, slow glare, capturing them all before he turned his eye again on Antar. “What you said about government and business is absurd,” he stated coldly. It was a tone of voice that had not been heard much at the congress so far, contemptuous and dismissive. “Governments always regulate the kinds of business they allow. Economics is a legal matter, a system of laws. So far, we have been saying in the Martian underground that as a matter of law, democracy and self-government are the innate rights of every person, and that these rights are not to be suspended when a person goes to work. You”— he waved a hand to indicate he did not know Antar’s name—”do you believe in democracy and self-rule?” “Yes!” Antar said defensively. “Do you believe in democracy and self-rule as the fundamental values that government ought to encourage?” “Yes!” Antar repeated, looking more and more annoyed. “Very well. If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue— control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is— a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives’ labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.” “Business leaders work,” Antar said sharply. “And they take the financial risks—” “The so-called risk of the capitalist is merely one of the privileges of capital.” “Management—” “Yes yes. Don’t interrupt me. Management is a real thing, a technical matter. But it can be controlled by labor just as well as by capital. Capital itself is simply the useful residue of the work of past laborers, and it could belong to everyone as well as to a few. There is no reason why a tiny nobility should own the capital, and everyone else therefore be in service to them. There is no reason they should give us a living wage and take all the rest that we produce. No! The system called capitalist democracy was not really democratic at all. That is why it was able to turn so quickly into the metanational system, in which democracy grew ever weaker and capitalism ever stronger. In which one percent of the population owned half of the wealth, and five percent of the population owned ninety-five percent of the wealth. History has shown which values were real in that system. And the sad thing is that the injustice and suffering caused by it were not at all necessary, in that the technical means have existed since the eighteenth century to provide the basics of life to all. “So. We must change. It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including in the workplace where we spend so much of our lives. That was what was said in point four of the Dorsa Brevia agreement. It says everyone’s work is their own, and the worth of it cannot be taken away. It says that the various modes of production belong to those who created them, and to the common good of the future generations. It says that the world is something we all steward together. That is what it says. And in our years on Mars, we have developed an economic system that can keep all those promises. That has been our work these last fifty years. In the system we have developed, all economic enterprises are to be small cooperatives, owned by their workers and by no one else. They hire their management, or manage themselves. Industry guilds and co-op associations will form the larger structures necessary to regulate trade and the market, share capital, and create credit.” Antar said scornfully, “These are nothing but ideas. It is utopianism and nothing more.” “Not at all.” Again Vlad waved him away. “The system is based on models from Terran history, and its various parts have all been tested on both worlds, and have succeeded very well. You don’t know about this partly because you are ignorant, and partly because metanationalism itself steadfastly ignored and denied all alternatives to it. But most of our microeconomy has been in successful operation for centuries in the Mondragon region of Spain. The different parts of the macroeconomy have been used in the pseudometanat Praxis, in Switzerland, in India’s state of Kerala, in Bhutan, in Bologna Italy, and in many other places, including the Martian underground itself. These organizations were the precursors to our economy, which will be democratic in a way capitalism never even tried to be.” A synthesis of systems. And Vladimir Taneev was a very great synthesist; it was said that all the components of the longevity treatment had already been there, for instance, and that Vlad and Ursula had simply put them together. Now in his economic work with Marina he was claiming to have done the same kind of thing. And although he had not mentioned the longevity treatment in this discussion, nevertheless it lay there like the table itself, a big cobbled-together achievement, part of everyone’s lives. Art looked around and thought he could see people thinking, well, he did it once in biology and it worked; could economics be more difficult?
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2404-10  | Added on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 11:40 PM

They could do anything. That, however, was part of what made it difficult to bring the congress to a close. Infinite possibility was going to collapse, in the act of choosing, to the single world line of history. The future becoming the past: there was something disappointing in this passage through the loom, this so-sudden diminution from infinity to one, the collapse from potentiality to reality which was the action of time itself. The potential was so delicious— the way they could have, potentially, all the best parts of all good governments of all time, combined magically into some superb, as-yet-unseen synthesis— or throw all that aside, and finally strike a new path to the heart of just government. . . .To go from that to the mundane problematic of the constitution as written was an inevitable letdown, and instinctively people put it off.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2438-43  | Added on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 11:53 PM

This expansion of the judiciary satisfied what desire they had for a strong global government, without giving an executive body much power; it was also a response to the heroic role played by Earth’s World Court in the previous century, when almost every other Terran institution had been bought or otherwise collapsed under metanational pressures; only the World Court had held firm, issuing ruling after ruling on behalf of the disenfranchised and the land, in a mostly ignored rearguard and indeed symbolic action against the metanats’ depredations; a moral force, which if it had had more teeth, might have done more good. But from the Martian underground they had seen the battle fought, and now they remembered.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2559-65  | Added on Thursday, December 01, 2011, 10:26 AM

“She is counting on history to take its usual course,” Maya said as they sat in the baths watching the news. “Power is like matter, it has gravity, it clumps and then starts to draw more into itself. This local power, spread out through the tents—” She shrugged cynically. “Perhaps it’s a nova,” Nirgal suggested. She laughed. “Yes, perhaps. But then it starts clumping again. That’s the gravity of history— power drawn into centers, until there is an occasional nova. Then a new drawing in. We’ll see it on Mars too, you mark my words. And Jackie will be right at the middle of it—” She stopped before adding the bitch, in respect for Nirgal’s feelings. Regarding him with a curious hooded gaze, as if wondering what she might do with Nirgal that would advance her never-ending war with Jackie. Little novas of the heart.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2585-87  | Added on Thursday, December 01, 2011, 10:29 AM

They were taking the north fork, down to Trinidad. From their elevator car they looked down on most of the Western Hemisphere, centered over the Amazon basin, where brown water veined through the green lungs of Earth.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2657-67  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 12:22 AM

“Mars is a mirror,” he said in the microphone, “in which Terra sees its own essence. The move to Mars was a purifying voyage, stripping away all but the most important things. What arrived in the end was Terran through and through. And what has happened since there has been an expression of Terran thought and Terran genes. And so, more than any material aid in scarce metals or new genetic strains, we can most help the home planet by serving as a way for you to see yourselves. As a way to map out an unimaginable immensity. Thus in our small way we do our part to create the great civilization that trembles on the brink of becoming. We are the primitives of an unknown civilization.” Loud cheers. “That’s what it looks like to us on Mars, anyway— a long evolution through the centuries, toward justice and peace. As people learn more, they understand better their dependence on each other and on their world. On Mars we have seen that the best way to express this interdependence is to live for giving, in a culture of compassion. Every person free and equal in the sight of all, working together for the good of all. It’s that work that makes us most free. No hierarchy is worth acknowledging but this one: the more we give, the greater we become. Now in the midst of a great flood, spurred by the great flood, we see the flowering of this culture of compassion, emerging on both the two worlds at once.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2904-7  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 10:36 AM

So in every meeting he was painfully focused, and fairly coherent and engaged, especially compared to his deep abstraction during the voyage to Earth. And Sax Russell was after all The Terraformer Of Mars, the current living avatar of The Great Scientist, a very powerful position in Terran culture, Nirgal thought— something like the Dalai Lama of science, a continuing reincarnation of the embodiment of the spirit of science, created for a culture that only seemed to be able to handle one scientist at a time.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2909-15  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 10:37 AM

As all these things, his odd halting style actually helped to build the Terrans’ image of him. Simple verbal difficulty turned him into a kind of oracle; the Terrans seemed to believe that he thought on such a lofty plane that he could only speak in riddles. This was what they wanted, perhaps. This was what science meant to them— after all, current physical theory spoke of ultimate reality as ultramicroscopic loops of string, moving supersymmetrically in ten dimensions. That kind of thing had inured people to strangeness from physicists. And the increasing use of translation AIs was getting everyone used to odd locutions of all types; almost everyone Nirgal met spoke English, but they were all slightly different Englishes, so that Earth seemed to Nirgal an explosion of idiolects, no two persons employing the same tongue.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2935-45  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 10:41 AM

“It’s going to be all right,” he said, looking at as many of them as he could. “Every moment in history contains a mix of archaic elements, things from all over the past, right back into prehistory itself. The present is always a melange of these variously archaic elements. There are still knights coming through on horseback and taking the crops of peasants. There are still guilds, and tribes. Now we see so many people leaving their jobs to work in the flood-relief efforts. That’s a new thing, but it’s also a pilgrimage. They want to be pilgrims, they want to have a spiritual purpose, they want to do real work— meaningful work. They won’t tolerate being stolen from anymore. Those of you here who represent the aristocracy look worried. Perhaps you will have to work for yourselves, and live off that. Live at the same level as anyone else. And it’s true— that will happen. But it’s going to be all right, even for you. Enough is as good as a feast. And it’s when everyone is equal that your kids are safest. This universal distribution of the longevity treatment that we are now seeing is the ultimate meaning of the democratic movement. It’s the physical manifestation of democracy, here at last. Health for all. And when that happens the explosion of positive human energy is going to transform the Earth in just a matter of years.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2935-67  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 10:44 AM

“It’s going to be all right,” he said, looking at as many of them as he could. “Every moment in history contains a mix of archaic elements, things from all over the past, right back into prehistory itself. The present is always a melange of these variously archaic elements. There are still knights coming through on horseback and taking the crops of peasants. There are still guilds, and tribes. Now we see so many people leaving their jobs to work in the flood-relief efforts. That’s a new thing, but it’s also a pilgrimage. They want to be pilgrims, they want to have a spiritual purpose, they want to do real work— meaningful work. They won’t tolerate being stolen from anymore. Those of you here who represent the aristocracy look worried. Perhaps you will have to work for yourselves, and live off that. Live at the same level as anyone else. And it’s true— that will happen. But it’s going to be all right, even for you. Enough is as good as a feast. And it’s when everyone is equal that your kids are safest. This universal distribution of the longevity treatment that we are now seeing is the ultimate meaning of the democratic movement. It’s the physical manifestation of democracy, here at last. Health for all. And when that happens the explosion of positive human energy is going to transform the Earth in just a matter of years.” Someone in the crowd stood and asked him about the possibility of a population explosion, and he nodded. “Yes of course. This is a real problem. You don’t have to be a demographer to see that if new ones continue being born while the elderly are not dying, population will quickly soar to incredible levels. Unsustainable levels, until there will be a crash. So. This has to be faced now. The birth rate simply has to be cut, at least for a while. It isn’t a situation that has to last forever. The longevity treatments are not immortality treatments. Eventually the first generations given the treatment will die. And therein lies the solution to the problem. Say the current population on the two worlds is fifteen billion. That means we’re already starting from a bad spot. Given the severity of the problem, as long as you get to be a parent at all, there is no reason to complain; it’s your own longevity causing the problem after all, and parenthood is parenthood, one child or ten. So say that each person partners, and the two parents have only a single child, so that there is one child for every two people in the previous generation. Say that means seven and a half billion children out of this present generation. And they are all given the longevity treatment too, of course, and cosseted until they are no doubt the insufferable royalty of the world. And they go on to have four billion children, the new royalty, and that generation has two, and so on. All of them are alive at once, and the population is rising all the time, but at a lower rate as time passes. And then at some point, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a thousand years from now, that first generation will die. It may happen over a fairly short period of time, but fast or slow, when the process is done, the overall population will be almost halved. At that point people can look at the situation, the infrastructure, the environments of the two worlds— the carrying capacity of the entire solar system, whatever that might be. After the biggest generations are gone, people can start having two children each, perhaps, so that there is replacement, and a steady state. Or whatever. When they have that kind of choice, the population crisis will be over. It could take a thousand years.” Nirgal stopped to look outside of himself, to stare around at the audience; people watching him rapt, silent. He gestured with a hand, to draw them all together. “In the meantime, we have to help each other. We have to regulate ourselves, we have to take care of the land. And it’s here, in this part of the project, that Mars can help Earth. First, we are an experiment in taking care of the land. Everyone learns from that, and some lessons can be applied here. Then, more importantly, though most of the population will always be located here on Earth, a goodly fraction of it can move to Mars. It will help ease the situation, and we’ll be happy to take them. We have an obligation to take on as many people as we possibly can, because we on Mars are Terrans still, and we are all in this together. Earth and Mars— and there are other habitable worlds in the solar system as well, none as big as our two, but there are a lot of them. And by using them all, and cooperating, we can get through the populated years. And walk out into a golden age.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 2979-80  | Added on Friday, December 02, 2011, 10:47 AM

“There are values higher than economic values,” Vlad had insisted back in the congress on Mars, and Nirgal saw now how there were people on Earth who had always believed that, at least in part.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 4863-71  | Added on Sunday, December 04, 2011, 05:16 PM

So she did the job. But all the time she wanted off Pavonis. Art saw her patience get shorter by the day; she knew by his look that she was becoming crochety, crabby, dictatorial; she knew it, but could not help it. After meetings with frivolous or obstructionist people she often unleashed a torrent of vicious abuse, in a steady low cursing voice that Art obviously found unnerving. Delegations would come in demanding an end to the death penalty, or the right to build in the Olympus Mons caldera, or a free eighth spot on the executive council, and as soon as the door closed Nadia would say, “Well there’s a bunch of fucking idiots for you, stupid fools never even thought about tie votes, never occurred to them that taking someone else’s life abrogates your own right to live,” and so on. The new police captured a group of Red ecoteurs who had tried to blow up the Socket again, and in the process killed a security guard out of his position, and she was the hardest judge they had: “Execute them!” she exclaimed. “Look, you kill someone, you lose your right to live. Execute them or else exile them from Mars for life— make them pay in a way that really gets the rest of the Reds’ attention.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 4863-73  | Added on Sunday, December 04, 2011, 05:16 PM

So she did the job. But all the time she wanted off Pavonis. Art saw her patience get shorter by the day; she knew by his look that she was becoming crochety, crabby, dictatorial; she knew it, but could not help it. After meetings with frivolous or obstructionist people she often unleashed a torrent of vicious abuse, in a steady low cursing voice that Art obviously found unnerving. Delegations would come in demanding an end to the death penalty, or the right to build in the Olympus Mons caldera, or a free eighth spot on the executive council, and as soon as the door closed Nadia would say, “Well there’s a bunch of fucking idiots for you, stupid fools never even thought about tie votes, never occurred to them that taking someone else’s life abrogates your own right to live,” and so on. The new police captured a group of Red ecoteurs who had tried to blow up the Socket again, and in the process killed a security guard out of his position, and she was the hardest judge they had: “Execute them!” she exclaimed. “Look, you kill someone, you lose your right to live. Execute them or else exile them from Mars for life— make them pay in a way that really gets the rest of the Reds’ attention.” “Well,” Art said uneasily. “Well, after all.” But on she raged. She couldn’t stop until she felt less angry. And Art could see that it was getting harder every time.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5447-48  | Added on Sunday, December 04, 2011, 11:05 PM

No, Nirgal had no desire for nostalgia— the meaning of life lay not in the past but in the present, not in resistance but in expression.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5555-58  | Added on Sunday, December 04, 2011, 11:54 PM

People came in wanting to talk about something else, and Nirgal withdrew to the window, near the nurse and the infant. He was not interested in what they were doing, not any of it— it was both ugly and abstract, a continuous manipulation of people devoid of any of the tangible rewards that so much work had. That’s politics, Jackie would say. And it was clear she enjoyed it. But Nirgal did not. It was strange; he had worked all his life for this situation, ostensibly, and now that it was here, he did not like it.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5651-57  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 12:02 AM

seeing everything as if through the wrong end of a telescope, a telescope consisting of the question Is this the life I want to lead? This distancing and somehow miniaturizing question kept returning to him, spurring him by day as he banked in the sunlight, haunting him at night in sleepless hours between the timeslip and dawn. What was he to do? The success of the revolution had left him without a task. All his life he had wandered Mars talking to people about a free Mars, about inhabitation rather than colonization, about becoming indigenous to the land. Now that task was ended, the land was theirs to live on as they chose. But in this new situation he found he did not know his part. He had to think very specifically about how to go on in this new world, no longer as the voice of the collective, but as an individual in his own private life.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 5659-62  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 12:03 AM

It was hard to give up being a revolutionary. Nothing seemed to follow from it, either logically or emotionally. But something had to be done. That life was past. In the midst of a banking slow dive in his blimpglider, he suddenly understood Maya and her obsessive talk about incarnations. He was twenty-seven m-years old now, he had crisscrossed all Mars, he had been to Earth, he had returned to a free world. Time for the next metempsychosis.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Bookmark Loc. 5662  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 12:03 AM


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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6627-30  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 02:47 AM

After repeated experiments it had become clear— on Mars at least— that all these sometimes contradictory goals could be best achieved in polyarchy, a complex system in which power was distributed out to a great number of institutions. In theory this network of distributed power, partly centralized and partly decentralized, created the greatest amount of individual freedom and collective good, by maximizing the amount of control that an individual had over his or her life.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6818-20  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 10:40 AM

“Like those people who think they’ve seen Hiroko,” he murmured tentatively, to see what Michel would say. “Ah yes,” Michel said. “Magical thinking— it’s a very persistent form of thinking. Never let your rationalism blind you to the fact that most of our thinking is magical thinking.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 6889-95  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 08:32 PM

The mathematician said, “Travel times will change so radically. Three weeks from Mars to Uranus. Ten days from Mars to Jupiter. From Mars to Earth, three days. Three days!” She looked around at the others, frowning. “It will make the solar system something like Europe in the nineteenth century. Train trips. Ocean liners.” The others nodded. The engineer said, “Now we’re neighbors with people on Mercury, or Uranus, or Pluto.” The head adviser shrugged. “Or for that matter Alpha Centauri. Let’s not worry about that. Contact is a good thing. Only connect, the poet says. Only connect. Now we will connect with a vengeance.” He raised his cup. “Cheers.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 7144-46  | Added on Monday, December 05, 2011, 08:54 PM

Once two adults got in a fight and afterward they had to present their cases to the four kids, who decided against one of them. The butcher woman explained to Nirgal: “We teach them, they judge us. They’re hard but fair.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 9734  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 08:37 AM

Wherever you go, there we are.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 9733-34  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 08:38 AM

Later he got a print message by radio from deep space. Wherever you go, there we are.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 10043-50  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 09:19 AM

The language of the poem was mathematics, because this appeared to be the language of nature itself; there was no other way to explain the startling adherence of natural phenomena to mathematical expressions of great difficulty and subtlety. And so in this marvelous family of languages their songs explored the various manifestations of reality, in the different fields of science, and each science worked up its standard model to explain things, all constellating at some distance around the basics of particle physics, depending on what level or scale was being investigated, so that all the standard models hopefully interlocked in a coherent larger structure. These standard models were somewhat like Kuhnian paradigms but in reality (paradigms being a model of modeling) more supple and various, a dialogic process in which thousands of minds had participated over the previous hundreds of years; so that figures like Newton or Einstein or Vlad were not the isolate giants of public perception, but the tallest peaks of a great mountain range, as Newton himself had tried to make clear with his comment about standing on the shoulders of giants.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 10237-44  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 01:49 PM

As he watched them Sax realized for the first time that the versatile, responsive, highly focused nature of science that he was getting used to in Da Vinci was not confined to Da Vinci alone, but was a feature of all the labs arranged as cooperative ventures; it was the nature of Martian science more generally. With the scientists in control of their own work, to a degree never seen in his youth on Earth, the work itself had an unprecedented rapidity and power. In his day the resources necessary to do the work would have belonged to other people, to institutions with their own interests and bureaucracies, creating a ponderous and often foolish clumsy scattering of effort; and even the coherent efforts were often devoted to trivial things, to the monetary profits of the institution in control of the lab. Here, on the other hand, Acheron was a semiautonomous self-contained community, answerable to the environmental courts and to the constitution of course, but to no one else. They chose among themselves what to work on, and when they were asked for help, if they were interested, they could respond immediately.
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 10368-70  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 01:58 PM

Nothing came back to Sax of that, nothing. It occurred to him with a lurch that just as there were many things that he had done that no one else would ever know about, there were also things he had done that others remembered, that he himself could not recall. So little they knew! So little!
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 11209-12  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 08:41 PM

Ann was looking at him closely. Finally she said, “Everything dies someday. Better to die thinking that you’re going to miss a golden age, than to go out thinking that you had taken down your children’s chances with you. That you’d left your descendants with all kinds of toxic long-term debts. Now that would be depressing. As it is, we only have to feel bad for ourselves.”
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Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Highlight Loc. 11489-98  | Added on Saturday, July 31, 2010, 09:36 PM

The response of the people to the takeover of the cable’s lower facility was rapid and tumultuous. Those UN storm troopers didn’t know what to make of us, a detachment tried to take over Hartz Plaza and we just flowed around them, moving out from in front of them but shoving in at the sides so that it was like a kind of vacuum pull. This snarling foam-toothed rabid demon at my throat, it was a fucking nightmare. Took them right out to rim park and these goddamned starship troopers couldn’t have moved a centimeter at that point, not without slaughtering thousands of people. People in the streets, that’s the only thing governments are afraid of. Well, or term limits. Or free elections! Or assassination. Or being laughed at, ah, ha-ha-ha! And there were hookups to all the other cities and giant street parties in every one of them. We were in Lasswitz and everyone went down to the river park and stood with candles in their hand, so that cameras could shoot down from the overlook and see this sea of candles, it was great. And Sax and Ann standing there together, it was amazing. Amazing. Unbelievable. They probably scared the UN to death saying each other’s lines like that, the UN probably thought we had brain-transfer devices all ready to zap them.

2012

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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 843  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:20 AM

The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell.
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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 851-58  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:24 AM

A breeze sends the beach ball skating all the way across the blue pool to the other side, and Orin watches its noiseless glide. The white iron tables have no umbrellas, and you can tell where the sun is without looking; you can feel right where it is on your body and project from there. The ball moves tentatively back out toward the middle of the pool and then stays there, not even bobbing. The same small breezes make the rotted palms along the condominium complex's stone walls rustle and click, and a couple of fronds detach and spiral down, hitting the deck with a slap. All the plants out here are malevolent, heavy and sharp. The parts of the palms above the fronds are tufted in sick stuff like coconut-hair. Roaches and other things live in the trees. Rats, maybe. Loathsome high-altitude critters of all kinds. All the plants either spiny or meaty. Cacti in queer tortured shapes. The tops of the palms like Rod Stewart's hair, from days gone by.
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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 862-67  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:26 AM

Watching the Jacuzzi funnel and bubble and foam around the leg. And out of nowhere a bird had all of a sudden fallen into the Jacuzzi. With a flat matter-of-fact plop. Out of nowhere. Out of the wide empty sky. Nothing overhung the Jacuzzi but sky. The bird seemed to have just had a coronary or something in flight and died and fallen out of the empty sky and landed dead in the Jacuzzi, right by the leg. He brought his sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose with a finger and looked at it. It was an undistinguished kind of bird. Not a predator. Like a wren, maybe. It seems like no way could it have been a good sign. The dead bird bobbed and barrel-rolled in the foam, sucked under one second and reappearing the next, creating an illusion of continued flight.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3418-22  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:19 AM

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival’s democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It’s hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3418-28  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:20 AM

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival’s democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It’s hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related. It is also loud, and a good percentage of the total noise is masticatory. The suppers come in styrofoam trays, and the soft drinks are iceless and flat, and the coffee is convenience-store coffee in more styrofoam, and the utensils are plastic (there are none of the special long skinny forks for pushing out the tail meat, though a few savvy diners bring their own). Nor do they give you near enough napkins considering how messy lobster is to eat, especially when you’re squeezed onto benches alongside children of various ages and vastly different levels of fine-motor development—not to mention the people who’ve somehow smuggled in their own beer in enormous aisle-blocking coolers, or who all of a sudden produce their own plastic tablecloths and spread them over large portions of tables to try to reserve them (the tables) for their own little groups. And so on.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3433-38  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:21 AM

What the Maine Lobster Festival really is is a midlevel county fair with a culinary hook, and in this respect it’s not unlike Tidewater crab festivals, Midwest corn festivals, Texas chili festivals, etc., and shares with these venues the core paradox of all teeming commercial demotic events: It’s not for everyone. 6 Nothing against the euphoric senior editor of Food & Wine, but I’d be surprised if she’d ever actually been here in Harbor Park, amid crowds of people slapping canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3466-67  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:24 AM

Most of us have been in supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobsters, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3470-73  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:24 AM

So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the US: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is the whole thing just a matter of personal choice?
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3526-31  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:32 AM

For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself—or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site. 14 As mentioned, the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, which is highlighted as an attraction in the festival’s program, is right out there on the MLF’s north grounds for everyone to see. Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival 15 at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something—there’s no way.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3550-56  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:35 AM

There are, of course, other ways to kill your lobster on-site and so achieve maximum freshness. Some cooks’ practice is to drive a sharp heavy knife point-first into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobster’s eyestalks (more or less where the Third Eye is in human foreheads). This is alleged either to kill the lobster instantly or to render it insensate, and is said at least to eliminate some of the cowardice involved in throwing a creature into boiling water and then fleeing the room. As far as I can tell from talking to proponents of the knife-in-head method, the idea is that it’s more violent but ultimately more merciful, plus that a willingness to exert personal agency and accept responsibility for stabbing the lobster’s head honors the lobster somehow and entitles one to eat it (there’s often a vague sort of Native American spirituality-of-the-hunt flavor to pro-knife arguments).
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3606-7  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:39 AM

The truth is that if you, the festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF begins to take on the aspect of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3626-29  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:41 AM

These last few queries, though, while sincere, obviously involve much larger and more abstract questions about the connections (if any) between aesthetics and morality—about what the adjective in a phrase like “The Magazine of Good Living” is really supposed to mean—and these questions lead straightaway into such deep and treacherous waters that it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3705-10  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:21 PM

Dostoevsky is a literary titan, and in some ways this can be the kiss of death, because it becomes easy to regard him as yet another sepia-tinted Canonical Author, belovedly dead. His works, and the tall hill of criticism they’ve inspired, are all required acquisitions for college libraries … and there the books usually sit, yellowly, smelling the way really old library books smell, waiting for somebody to have to do a term paper. Dahlberg is mostly right, I think. To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people. 10
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Bookmark Loc. 3725  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:25 PM


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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3725-27  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:26 PM

The point is that it’s not just the death-by-canonization thing: there is real and alienating stuff that stands in the way of our appreciating Dostoevsky and has to be dealt with—either by learning enough about all the unfamiliar stuff that it stops being so confusing, or else by accepting it (the same way we accept racist/sexist elements in some other nineteenth-century books) and just grimacing and reading on anyway.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 51-59  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 02:02 PM

It is not a coincidence that the Oscars ceremony is held during TV’s Sweeps Week. We pretty much all tune in, despite the grotesquerie of watching an industry congratulate itself on its pretense that it’s still an art form, of hearing people in $5,000 gowns invoke lush clichés of surprise and humility scripted by publicists, etc.—the whole cynical postmodern deal—but we all still seem to watch. To care. Even though the hypocrisy hurts, even though opening grosses and marketing strategies are now bigger news than the movies themselves, even though Cannes and Sundance have become nothing more than enterprise zones. But the truth is that there’s no more real joy about it all anymore. Worse, there seems to be this enormous unspoken conspiracy where we all pretend that there’s still joy. That we think it’s funny when Bob Dole does a Visa ad and Gorbachev shills for Pizza Hut. That the whole mainstream celebrity culture is rushing to cash in and all the while congratulating itself on pretending not to cash in. Underneath it all, though, we know the whole thing sucks.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 67-70  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 02:04 PM

It is no accident that Adult Video News—a slick, expensive periodical whose articles are really more like infomercials—and its yearly Awards both came into being in 1982. The early ’80s, after all, saw the genesis of VCRs and home-video rentals, which have done for the adult industry pretty much what TV did for pro football.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 134-40  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 04:41 PM

Nor let us forget Vegas’s synecdoche and beating heart. It’s kittycorner from Bally’s: Caesars Palace. The granddaddy. As big as 20 Wal-Marts end to end. Real marble and fake marble, carpeting you can pass out on without contusion, 130,000 square feet of casino alone. Domed ceilings, clerestories, barrel vaults. In Caesars Palace is America conceived as a new kind of Rome: conqueror of its own people. An empire of Self. It’s breathtaking. The winter’s light rain makes all the neon bleed. The whole thing is almost too pretty to stand. There could be no site but Las Vegas’s Caesars for modern porn’s Awards show—here, the AAVNAs are one more spectacle. Way more tourists and conventioneers recognize the starlets than you’d expect. Double-takes all over the hotel. Even just standing around or putting coins in a slot machine, the performers become a prime attraction. Las Vegas doesn’t miss a trick.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 302-12  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 02:44 AM

So yr. corresps. were, for a couple hours, at least logistically speaking, In. For a regular civilian male, hanging out in a hotel suite with porn starlets is a tense and emotionally convolved affair. There is, first, the matter of having seen the various intimate activities and anatomical parts of these starlets in videos heretofore and thus (weirdly) feeling shy about meeting them. But there is also a complex erotic tension. Because porn films’ worlds are so sexualized, with everybody seemingly teetering right on the edge of coitus all the time and it taking only the slightest nudge or excuse—a stalled elevator, an unlocked door, a cocked eyebrow, a firm handshake—to send everyone tumbling into a tangled mass of limbs and orifices, there’s a bizarre unconscious expectation/dread/ hope that this is what might happen in Max Hardcore’s hotel room. Yr. corresps. here find it impossible to overemphasize the fact that this is a delusion. In fact, of course, the unconscious expectation/dread/hope makes no more sense than it would make to be hanging out with doctors at a medical convention and to expect that at the slightest provocation everyone in the room would tumble into a frenzy of MRIs and epidurals. Nevertheless the tension persists, despite the fact that the actresses are obviously tired and disassociated from the day’s CES,
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 817-21  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:38 AM

My point is not that his wit is too subtle for US students. In fact, the only halfway effective strategy I’ve come up with for exploring Kafka’s funniness in class involves suggesting to students that much of his humor is actually sort of unsubtle—or rather anti-subtle. The claim is that Kafka’s funniness depends on some kind of radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical. I opine to them that some of our most profound collective intuitions seem to be expressible only as figures of speech, that that’s why we call these figures of speech expressions.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 832-33  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:40 AM

What Kafka’s stories have, rather, is a grotesque, gorgeous, and thoroughly modern complexity, an ambivalence that becomes the multivalent Both/And logic of the, quote, “unconscious,” which I personally think is just a fancy word for soul.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 4274-84  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:42 AM

There are probably whole Johns Hopkins U. Press books to be written on the lallating function that humor serves in today’s US psyche. A crude way to put the whole thing is that our present culture is, both developmentally and historically, adolescent. And since adolescence is acknowledged to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development — the stage when the adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitations (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn* — it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i.e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc. Jokes are a kind of art, and because most of us Americans come to art now essentially to escape ourselves — to pretend for a while that we’re not mice and walls are parallel and the cat can be outrun — it’s understandable that most of us are going to view “A Little Fable” as not all that funny, or maybe even see it as a repulsive instance of the exact sort of downer-type death-and-taxes reality for which “real” humor serves as a respite.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 839-41  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:44 AM

No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 841-44  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:45 AM

You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens … and it opens outward—we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2281-95  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:04 AM

For although the pettiest lawyer might be to some extent capable of analyzing the state of things in the Court, it never occurred to the lawyers that they should suggest or insist on any improvements in the system, while -- and this was very characteristic -- almost every accused man, even quite simple people among them, discovered from the earliest stages a passion for suggesting reforms which often wasted time and energy that could have been better employed in other directions. The only sensible thing was to adapt oneself to existing conditions. Even if it were possible to alter a detail for the better here or there -- but it was simple madness to think of it -- any benefit arising from that would profit clients in the future only, while one's own interests would be immeasurably injured by attracting the attention of the ever-vengeful officials. Anything rather than that! One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the disposition of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery -- since everything interlocked -- and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2388-96  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:13 AM

The contempt which he had once felt for the case no longer obtained. Had he stood alone in the world he could easily have ridiculed the whole affair, though it was also certain that in that event it could never have arisen at all. But now his uncle had dragged him to this lawyer, family considerations had come in; his position was no longer quite independent of the course the case took, he himself, with a certain inexplicable complacence, had imprudently mentioned it to some of his acquaintances, others had come to learn of it in ways unknown to him, his relations with Fräulein Bürstner seemed to fluctuate with the case itself -- in short, he hardly had the choice now to accept the trial or reject it, he was in the middle of it and must fend for himself. To give in to fatigue would be dangerous.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Bookmark Loc. 2408  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:15 AM


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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2406-23  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:15 AM

From this standpoint the conclusion was inevitable that the case must be withdrawn from Dr. Huld as soon as possible, preferably that very evening. According to him that was something unheard of, it was true, and very likely an insult, but K. could not endure that his efforts in the case should be thwarted by moves possibly originating in the office of his own representative. Once the lawyer was shaken off, the petition must be sent in at once and the officials be urged daily, if possible, to give their attention to it. This would never be achieved by sitting meekly in the attic lobby like the others with one's hat under the seat. K. himself, or one of the women, or some other messenger must keep at the officials day after day and force them to sit down at their desks and study K.'s papers instead of gaping out into the lobby through the wooden rails. These tactics must be pursued unremittingly, everything must be organized and supervised; the Court would encounter for once an accused man who knew how to stick up for his rights. Yet even though K. believed he could manage all this, the difficulty of drawing up the petition seemed overwhelming. At one time, not more than a week ago, he had regarded the possibility of having to draw up his own plea with merely a slight feeling of shame; it never even occurred to him that there might be difficulties in the way. He could remember that one of those mornings, when he was up to his ears in work, he had suddenly pushed everything aside and seized his jotting-pad with the idea of drafting the plan of such a plea and handing it to Dr. Huld by way of egging him on, but just at that moment the door of the Manager's room opened and the Assistant Manager came in laughing uproariously.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2438-48  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:17 AM

And besides how dreary such a task would be! It would do well enough, perhaps, as an occupation for one's second childhood in years of retirement, when the long days needed filling up. But now, when K. should be devoting his mind entirely to work, when every hour was hurried and crowded -- for he was still in full career and rapidly becoming a rival even to the Assistant Manager -- when his evenings and nights were all too short for the pleasures of a bachelor life, this was the time when he must sit down to such a task! Once more his train of thought had led him into self-pity. Almost involuntarily, simply to make an end of it, he put his finger on the button which rang the bell in the waiting-room. While he pressed it he glanced at the clock. It was eleven o'clock, he had wasted two hours in dreaming, a long stretch of precious time, and he was, of course, still wearier than he had been before. Yet the time had not been quite lost, he had come to decisions which might prove valuable.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2457-73  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:19 AM

As it was, he tugged papers covered with statistics out of every pocket, spread them before K., explained various entries, corrected a trifling error which his eye had caught even in this hasty survey, reminded K. of a similar transaction which he had concluded with him about a year before, mentioned casually that this time another bank was making great sacrifices to secure the deal, and finally sat in eager silence waiting for K.'s comments. K. had actually followed the man's argument quite closely in its early stages -- the thought of such an important piece of business had its attractions for him too -- but unfortunately not for long; he had soon ceased to listen and merely nodded now and then as the manufacturer's claims waxed in enthusiasm, until in the end he forgot to show even that much interest and confined himself to staring at the other's bald head bent over the papers and asking himself when the fellow would begin to realize that all his eloquence was being wasted. When the manufacturer stopped speaking, K. actually thought for a moment that the pause was intended to give him the chance of confessing that he was not in a fit state to attend to business. And it was with regret that he perceived the intent look on the manufacturer's face, the alertness, as if prepared for every objection, which indicated that the interview would have to continue. So he bowed his head as at a word of command and began slowly to move his pencil point over the papers, pausing here and there to stare at some figure.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2517-35  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:24 AM

But as no one came in he recovered his composure, went over to the washbasin, washed his face in cold water, and returned to his place at the window with a clearer mind. The decision to take his defense into his own hands seemed now more grave to him than he had originally fancied. So long as the lawyer was responsible for the case it had not come really home to him, he had viewed it with a certain detachment and kept beyond reach of immediate contact with it, he had been able to supervise it whenever he liked, but could also withdraw whenever he liked. Now, on the other hand, if he were to conduct his own defense he would be putting himself completely in the power of the Court, at least for the time being, a policy which would eventually bring about his absolute and definite acquittal, but would meanwhile, provisionally at least, involve him in far greater dangers than before. If he had ever doubted that, his state of mind today in his encounter with the Assistant Manager and the manufacturer would have been more than enough to convince him. What a stupor had overcome him, merely because he had decided to conduct his own defense! And what would develop later on? What days were lying in wait for him? Would he ever find the right path through all these difficulties? To put up a thoroughgoing defense -- and any other kind would be a waste of time -- to put up a thoroughgoing defense, did that not involve cutting himself off from every other activity? Would he be able to carry that through? And how was he to conduct his case from a Bank office? It was not merely the drawing up of a plea; that might be managed on a few weeks' furlough, though to ask for leave of absence just now would be decidedly risky; but a whole trial was involved, whose duration it was impossible to foresee. What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career!
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2888-92  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 02:49 PM

"Impervious only to proof which one brings before the Court," said the painter, raising one finger as if K. had failed to perceive a fine distinction. "But it is quite a different matter with one's efforts behind the scenes; that is, in the consultingrooms, in the lobbies or, for example, in this very studio." What the painter now said no longer seemed incredible to K., indeed it agreed in the main with what he had heard from other people.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4110-46  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:03 PM

"In the writings which preface the Law that particular delusion is described thus: before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. `It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, `but not at this moment.' Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: `If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hail to hail, keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. And the sight of the third man is already more than even I can stand.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long thin Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: `I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.' During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged study of the doorkeeper he has learned to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. `What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, `you are insatiable.' `Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, `how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: `No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.'"
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4286-88  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:16 PM

"That means I belong to the Court," said the priest. "So why should I want anything from you? The Court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go."
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4484-88  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:32 PM

How closely non-publication was bound up for Kafka with the problem of how to conduct his life (a problem which, to our immeasurable grief, no longer obtains) could be gathered from many of his conversations and can be seen in this letter to me: . . . I am not enclosing the novels. Why rake up old efforts? Only because I have not burned them yet? . . . Next time I come I hope to do so.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4552-59  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:39 PM

As someone said to me -- I can't remember now who it was -- it is really remarkable that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in exactly the same place as the evening before. For when asleep and dreaming you are, apparently at least, in an essentially different state from that of wakefulness; and therefore, as that man truly said, it requires enormous presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold as it were of everything in the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening. That was why, he said, the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the day. Once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace for the rest of the day.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 159-62  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 06:40 AM

The problem with cadavers is that they look so much like people. It's the reason most of us prefer a pork chop to a slice of whole suckling pig. It's the reason we say "pork" and "beef" instead of "pig" and "cow." Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial. Physicians and anatomy students must learn to think of cadavers as wholly unrelated to the people they once were.
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Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 713-15  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 08:26 AM

“What is this thing, anyway?” said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. “It’s called a shovel,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I’ve seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.”
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Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 1080-86  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 08:55 AM

The Chief Priest moved a little closer. “I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock.” “Mrs. Cake? What’s a Mrs. Cake?” “You have…ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and things, yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?” said the Chief Priest. “Yes.” “We have someone called Mrs. Cake.” Ridcully gave him an enquiring look. “Don’t ask,” said the priest, shuddering. “Just be grateful you’ll never have to find out.” Ridcully silently passed him the brandy.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 2386-90  | Added on Friday, February 17, 2012, 05:19 PM

have trouble believing Thomas Edison to be a loopy individual. I offer as evidence the following passage on human memory, taken from his diaries: "We do not remember. A certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in that part of the brain which has become known as the 'fold of Broca.'…There may be twelve or fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory….Therefore it seems likely that remembering a thing is all a matter of getting in touch with the shift that was on duty when the recording was done."
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 3472-73  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 08:37 AM

In the Bradbury story, the protagonist ends up having his bones pulled out through his mouth, by an alien disguised as a beautiful woman. Though he was reduced to a jellyfish heap on his living-room floor, his body remained intact. No blood was spilled.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 3507-13  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 08:42 AM

If you are considering becoming a brain donor, the best thing for you to do is stay away from the Brain Bank. Within ten minutes of arriving, I was watching a twenty-four-year-old technician slice a sixty- seven-year-old brain. The brain had been flash-frozen and did not slice cleanly. It sliced as does a Butterfinger, with little shards crumbling off. The shards quickly thawed and looked less Butterfingerlike. The technician wiped them up with a paper towel. "There goes third grade." He has gotten in trouble for saying things like this.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 661-65  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:04 AM

And no US novelist has mapped the inner terrain of the solipsist better than John Updike, whose rise in the 1960s and ’70s established him as both chronicler and voice of probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV. As were Freud’s, Updike’s big preoccupations have always been with death and sex (not necessarily in that order), and the fact that his books’ mood has gotten more wintry in recent years is understandable—Updike has always written mainly about himself, and since the surprisingly moving Rabbit at Rest he’s been exploring, more and more overtly, the apocalyptic prospect of his own death.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 670-72  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:05 AM

First, though, if I may poke the critical head into the frame for just one moment, I’d like to offer assurances that your reviewer is not one of these spleen-venting spittle-spattering Updike haters one often encounters among literary readers under forty.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 679  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:07 AM

“Just a penis with a thesaurus.”
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Bookmark Loc. 679  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:07 AM


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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 686-87  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:08 AM

But I think the deep reason so many of my generation dislike Updike and the other GMNs has to do with these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 690-93  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:12 AM

They always live in either Pennsylvania or New England, are either unhappily married or divorced, are roughly Updike’s age. Always either the narrator or the point-of-view character, they tend all to have the author’s astounding perceptual gifts; they think and speak in the same effortlessly lush, synesthetic way that Updike does. They are also always incorrigibly narcissistic, philandering, self-contemptuous, self-pitying … and deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Note Loc. 693  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:14 AM

once again foster wallace articulates precisely the unformed and subconscious impression i can never seem to put my finger on
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Note Loc. 693  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:17 AM

once again foster wallace articulates precisely the unformed and subconscious impression i can never seem to put my finger on. except in my case it was norman mailer. same impressions that walce describes. it is neary irresistable reading, but a completely absurdly mysoginistic narcissistic narrator. harlots ghost could have been the escapades of a frat boy (fratire) and would have been enjoyable anywa.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 697-702  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:18 AM

I’m guessing that for the young educated adults of the sixties and seventies, for whom the ultimate horror was the hypocritical conformity and repression of their own parents’ generation, Updike’s evection of the libidinous self appeared refreshing and even heroic. But young adults of the nineties—many of whom are, of course, the children of all the impassioned infidelities and divorces Updike wrote about so beautifully, and who got to watch all this brave new individualism and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation—today’s subforties have very different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 739-43  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:24 AM

Turnbull is particularly keen on subatomic physics and something he calls the “Theory of Many Worlds”—a real theory, by the way, which was proposed in the fifties as a solution to certain quantum paradoxes entailed by the Principles of Indeterminacy and Complementarity, and which in truth is wildly complex and technical, but which Turnbull seems to believe is basically the same as the Theory of Past-Life Channeling, thereby explaining the set pieces where Turnbull is somebody else. The whole quantum setup ends up being embarrassing in the special way something pretentious is embarrassing when it’s also wrong.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 749-51  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:25 AM

The clunky bathos of this novel seems to have infected even the line-by-line prose, Updike’s great strength for almost forty years. Toward the End of Time does have flashes of beautiful writing—deer described as “tender-faced ruminants,” leaves as “chewed to lace by Japanese beetles,” a car’s tight turn as a “slur” and its departure as a “dismissive acceleration down the driveway.”
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 758  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:26 AM

they seem less like John Updike than like somebody doing a mean parody of John Updike.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 770-74  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:28 AM

Maybe the one thing that the reader ends up appreciating about Ben Turnbull is that he’s such a broad caricature of an Updike protagonist that he helps clarify what’s been so unpleasant and frustrating about this author’s recent characters. It’s not that Turnbull is stupid: he can quote Pascal and Kierkegaard on angst, discourse on the death of Schubert, distinguish between a sinistrorse and a dextrorse Polygonum vine, etc. It’s that he persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 497-500  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

To this extent, Louisville has integrated itself right out of the South, and now faces problems more like those of a Northern or Midwestern city. The white power structure has given way in the public sector, only to entrench itself more firmly in the private. And the Negro -- especially the educated Negro -- feels that his victories are hollow and his "progress" is something he reads about in the newspapers.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 567-70  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 05:40 PM

It is the same assumption that motivates a homeowner to sell to whites only-- not because of race prejudice but out of concern for property values. In other words, almost nobody has anything against Negroes, but everybody's neighbor does. This is galling to the Negroes. Simple racism is an easy thing to confront, but a mixture of guilty prejudice, economic worries and threatened social standing is much harder to fight.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 669-70  | Added on Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 04:24 AM

Indeed. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. John Mitchell said that -- shortly before he quit his job and left Washington at 90 miles an hour in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 675-97  | Added on Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 04:27 AM

There is a bond, among pros, that needs no definition. Or at least it didn't on that Sunday morning in Houston, for reasons that require no further discussion at this point in time. . . because it suddenly occurred to me that I had already written the lead for this year's Super Bowl game; I wrote it last year in Los Angeles, and a quick rip through my fat manila folder of clips labeled "Football '73" turned it up as if by magic. I jerked it out of the file, and retyped it on a fresh page slugged: "Super Bowl/Houston '74." The only change necessary was the substitution of "Minnesota Vikings" for "Washington Redskins." Except for that, the lead seemed just as adequate for the game that would begin in about six hours as it was for the one that I missed in Los Angeles in January of '73. "The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Minnesota Vikings today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stops around both ends. . ." The jangling of the telephone caused me to interrupt my work. I jerked it off the hook, saying nothing to whoever was on the other end, and began flashing the hotel operator. When she finally cut in I spoke very calmly. "Look," I said. "I'm a very friendly person and a minister of the gospel, to boot -- but I thought I left instructions down there to put no calls -- NO CALLS, GODDAMNIT! -- through to this room, and especially not now in the middle of this orgy. . . I've been here eight days and nobody's called me yet. Why in hell would they start now?. . . What? Well, I simply can't accept that kind of flimsy reasoning, operator. Do you believe in Hell? Are you ready to speak with Saint Peter?. . . Wait a minute now, calm down. . . I want to be sure you understand one thing before I get back to my business; I have some people here who need help . . . But I want you to know that God is Holy! He will not allow sin in his presence! The Bible says: 'There is none righteous. No, not one . . . For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' That's from the book of Romans, young lady. . ." 30 The silence at the other end of the line was beginning to make me nervous. But I could feel the sap rising, so I decided to continue my sermon from the balcony. . . and I suddenly realized that somebody was beating on my door. Jesus god, I thought, it's the manager; they've come for me at last. But it was a TV reporter from Pittsburgh, raving drunk and demanding to take a shower. I jerked him into the room. "Nevermind the goddamn shower," I said. "Do you realize what I have on my spine?" He stared at me, unable to speak. "A giant leech," I said. "It's been there for eight days, getting fatter and fatter with blood." He nodded slowly as I led him over to the phone. "I hate leeches," he muttered. "That's the least of our problems," I said. "Room service won't send any beer up until noon, and all the bars are closed. . . I have this Wild Turkey, but I think it's too heavy for the situation we're in." "You're right," he said. "I got work to do.
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 23 | Loc. 350-55  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 09:24 AM

her new pastor, Revered Ty Willis of the New Promise Church, which has usurped my mother's Catholic faith, encouraged us to read the book of Job. I'm not sure if my mother read it—to her, church, in her post-Catholic phase, was a bit of a social club more than anything—but I did, and I was less than comforted. The horror of the Lord engaging in high-stakes bets with Satan, and the absolute lack of comfort that Job's so-called friends bring to his grief, did change my view of God. The book made me feel as though God, if he existed, was sort of capable of being a major, reckless dick. Christians in the Midwest are fond of saying, "Everything happens for a reason." The book of Job illustrates, I think, that that's not the case at all.
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 646-49  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:07 AM

It is difficult to see so many people you know, so many busy and active people, if, frankly, you don't care how somebody's novel, thesis, art, job, marriage, life is going, not because you are heartless or cruel, but because you simply don't have the energy to hear about other people's struggles and triumphs. Your own joys and woes are exhausting enough, aren't they?
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 45 | Loc. 692-705  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:14 AM

How quickly has such an American ideal faded! Now, we are all slaves to institutions. Educated in them from the age of five, or younger, and often imprisoned within them, accumulating piles of debt, until we are pushing thirty. At the end of our educational process, we know what? How to plant a garden? Build a home? Repair and maintain machines? Hunt? Fish? Camp? Hardly. Rather, we leave these institutions with only one small skill—trading commodities, analyzing prose, ceramics, welding widget A to widget B—and we immediately need to find another institution to take us in: General Motors, Yale, the Federal Reserve, the UAW, Target, any place that will allow us to put food on the table. Once food is on the table, we must find shelter, often for a growing family, and instead of having any idea of how to build a shelter, we must buy a shelter, and because the costs of shelter are so absurdly prohibitive in comparison with actual wages, we must move immediately into the debtor system Thoreau likened to slavery. We must move into a home that is owned by an institution—Bank of America, Countrywide, CitiFinancial—and we must make ourselves adhere to a payment schedule. We must then secure health care coverage from a large institution, finance transportation through a large institution, deficit-spend based on the leverage of a large institution, worship the Lord at an approved institution, and then, one morning, our children enter a federally mandated pre-K program or a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year private preschool. And the cycle begins again. You can almost hear the tiny hearts of America's children breaking as they gather around the story circle or line up for a carton of milk. Slaves!
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 735-37  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:17 AM

"There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 733-37  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:17 AM

I suppose the idea for my project came to me shortly after college, when I was rather absent-mindedly thumbing through a copy of The Portable Chekhov, during a register shift at the bookshop where I once worked. Rereading the story "Gooseberries," I came across these lines: "There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 151 | Loc. 2127-32  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 09:56 PM

In the blue light of the bus, on this, the first crisp and frosty evening of the autumn, all of the passengers look to me as if they are trapped in some giant, mobile freezer. They wear winter caps and thick coats for the first time in months, and their expressions are frozen and devoid of smiles, a motley crew of grimaces, pensive looks, and dour, soured expressions. Just a week ago they went coatless, bare-midriffed, sandaled. Now, this, the siege of winter already hinting at its arrival. It makes me feel as if we're awaiting somebody's death in that bus and I am thrilled to get off when my stop finally arrives.
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The Cambridge Companion to Carnap (sfn)
- Bookmark on Page 8 | Added on Sunday, March 04, 2012, 01:41 PM


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The Cambridge Companion to Carnap_k2opt 
- Bookmark on Page 123 | Added on Sunday, March 04, 2012, 04:29 PM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 537-39  | Added on Sunday, March 25, 2012, 12:29 PM

That public virtue, which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53  | Added on Sunday, March 25, 2012, 12:31 PM

it was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy. From such laudable arts did the valor of the Imperial troops receive a degree of firmness and docility unattainable by the impetuous and irregular passions of barbarians.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 989-96  | Added on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 07:24 PM

The opinions of the Academics and Epicureans were of a less religious cast; but whilst the modest science of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged them to deny, the providence of a Supreme Ruler. The spirit of inquiry, prompted by emulation, and supported by freedom, had divided the public teachers of philosophy into a variety of contending sects; but the ingenious youth, who, from every part, resorted to Athens, and the other seats of learning in the Roman empire, were alike instructed in every school to reject and to despise the religion of the multitude. How, indeed, was it possible that a philosopher should accept, as divine truths, the idle tales of the poets, and the incoherent traditions of antiquity; or that he should adore, as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must have despised, as men? Against such unworthy adversaries, Cicero condescended to employ the arms of reason and eloquence; but the satire of Lucian was a much more adequate, as well as more efficacious, weapon.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Bookmark Loc. 1077  | Added on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 07:34 PM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 971-74  | Added on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 03:22 PM

But the equitable Nerva, who then filled the throne, refused to accept any part of it, and commanded him to use, without scruple, the present of fortune. The cautious Athenian still insisted, that the treasure was too considerable for a subject, and that he knew not how to use it. Abuse it then, replied the monarch, with a good-natured peevishness; for it is your own.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1061-64  | Added on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 03:35 PM

The coasts of Italy are, in general, destitute of safe harbors; but human industry had corrected the deficiencies of nature; and the artificial port of Ostia, in particular, situate at the mouth of the Tyber, and formed by the emperor Claudius, was a useful monument of Roman greatness. From this port, which was only sixteen miles from the capital, a favorable breeze frequently carried vessels in seven days to the columns of Hercules, and in nine or ten, to Alexandria in Egypt.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1098-1101  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 12:31 PM

But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1156-57  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:35 PM

The name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1167-73  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:37 PM

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. * A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1286-91  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:57 PM

By declaring themselves the protectors of the people, Marius and Cæsar had subverted the constitution of their country. But as soon as the senate had been humbled and disarmed, such an assembly, consisting of five or six hundred persons, was found a much more tractable and useful instrument of dominion. It was on the dignity of the senate that Augustus and his successors founded their new empire; and they affected, on every occasion, to adopt the language and principles of Patricians. In the administration of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council, and seemed to refer to its decision the most important concerns of peace and war.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1338-40  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:07 PM

A distinction was, however, soon introduced. The sacred title of Augustus was always reserved for the monarch, whilst the name of Cæsar was more freely communicated to his relations; and, from the reign of Hadrian, at least, was appropriated to the second person in the state, who was considered as the presumptive heir of the empire. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1348-57  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:10 PM

The death of Cæsar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished wealth and honors on his adherents; but the most favored friends of his uncle were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions might defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance could not secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican; and the Romans, who revered the memory of Brutus, would applaud the imitation of his virtue. Cæsar had provoked his fate, as much as by the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself. The consul or the tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1358-63  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:12 PM

There appears, indeed, one memorable occasion, in which the senate, after seventy years of patience, made an ineffectual attempt to re-assume its long-forgotten rights. When the throne was vacant by the murder of Caligula, the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol, condemned the memory of the Cæsars, gave the watchword liberty to the few cohorts who faintly adhered to their standard, and during eight-and-forty hours acted as the independent chiefs of a free commonwealth. But while they deliberated, the prætorian guards had resolved. The stupid Claudius, brother of Germanicus, was already in their camp, invested with the Imperial purple, and prepared to support his election by arms. The dream of liberty was at an end; and the senate awoke to all the horrors of inevitable servitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1374-79  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:14 PM

During a long period of two hundred and twenty years from the establishment of this artful system to the death of Commodus, the dangers inherent to a military government were, in a great measure, suspended. The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and afterwards, productive of such dreadful calamities. Caligula and Domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics: * the convulsions which agitated Rome on the death of the former, were confined to the walls of the city. But Nero involved the whole empire in his ruin. In the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword; and the Roman world was shaken by the fury of the contending armies.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1380-81  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:14 PM

The emperor was elected by the authority of the senate, and the consent of the soldiers.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1457-59  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:28 PM

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1474-79  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:31 PM

The golden age of Trajan and the Antonines had been preceded by an age of iron. It is almost superfluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign) Rome groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny, which exterminated the ancient families of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and every talent that arose in that unhappy period.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1512-20  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:38 PM

The object of his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of Imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drags his gilded chain in Rome and the senate, or to were out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen bank of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive. "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror."
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1523-24  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:00 AM

His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1537-39  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:06 AM

The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1543-44  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:06 AM

he lived long enough to repent a rash measure,
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1547-48  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:07 AM

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1547-49  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:15 AM

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1550-51  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:15 AM

From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood; but these motives will not account for the unprovoked cruelties of Commodus, who had nothing to wish and every thing to enjoy.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1574-76  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:20 AM

One evening, as the emperor was returning to the palace, through a dark and narrow portico in the amphitheatre, an assassin, who waited his passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, "The senate sends you this." The menace prevented the deed; the assassin was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the conspiracy. It had been formed, not in the state, but within the walls of the palace.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1582-83  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:22 AM

But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the senate.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Bookmark Loc. 1597  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 11:13 AM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1609-18  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:03 PM

The negligence of the public administration was betrayed, soon afterwards, by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings. A spirit of desertion began to prevail among the troops: and the deserters, instead of seeking their safety in flight or concealment, infested the highways. Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station, collected these bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble at Rome, during the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele. To murder Commodus, and to ascend the vacant throne, was the ambition of no vulgar robber. His measures were so ably concerted that his concealed troops already filled the streets of Rome. The envy of an accomplice discovered and ruined this singular enterprise, in a moment when it was ripe for execution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1619-20  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:04 PM

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion, that those who have no dependence, except on their favor, will have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1657-70  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:12 PM

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient historians have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution, which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the decency of modern language. The intervals of lust were filled up with the basest amusements. The influence of a polite age, and the labor of an attentive education, had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected to excel, in the elegant arts of music and poetry: nor should we despise his pursuits, had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure hour into the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus, from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace; the sports of the circus and amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with inattention and disgust; whilst the Moors and Parthians, who taught him to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the 
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1671  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:13 PM

The servile crowd, whose fortune depended on their master's vices, applauded these ignoble pursuits.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1683-91  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:16 PM

On the appointed day, the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity, attracted to the amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators; and some degree of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon skill of the Imperial performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart of the animal, the wound was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose point was shaped into the form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted the rapid career, and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich. A panther was let loose; and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Æthiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1693-1701  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:18 PM

But the meanest of the populace were affected with shame and indignation when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and glory in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with the justest note of infamy. He chose the habit and arms of the Secutor, whose combat with the Retiarius formed one of the most lively scenes in the bloody sports of the amphitheatre. The Secutor was armed with a helmet, sword, and buckler; his naked antagonist had only a large net and a trident; with the one he endeavored to entangle, with the other to despatch his enemy. If he missed the first throw, he was obliged to fly from the pursuit of the Secutor, till he had prepared his net for a second cast. The emperor fought in this character seven hundred and thirty-five several times. These glorious achievements were carefully recorded in the public acts of the empire; and that he might omit no circumstance of infamy, he received from the common fund of gladiators a stipend so exorbitant that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon the Roman people.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1752-54  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:25 PM

it. These effusions of impotent rage against a dead emperor, whom the senate had flattered when alive with the most abject servility, betrayed a just but ungenerous spirit of revenge. The legality of these decrees was, however, supported by the principles of the Imperial constitution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1754-57  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:25 PM

To censure, to depose, or to punish with death, the first magistrate of the republic, who had abused his delegated trust, was the ancient and undoubted prerogative of the Roman senate; but the feeble assembly was obliged to content itself with inflicting on a fallen tyrant that public justice, from which, during his life and reign, he had been shielded by the strong arm of military despotism. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1796-1802  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:30 PM

On the third day of his reign, the soldiers seized on a noble senator, with a design to carry him to the camp, and to invest him with the Imperial purple. Instead of being dazzled by the dangerous honor, the affrighted victim escaped from their violence, and took refuge at the feet of Pertinax. A short time afterwards, Sosius Falco, one of the consuls of the year, a rash youth, but of an ancient and opulent family, listened to the voice of ambition; and a conspiracy was formed during a short absence of Pertinax, which was crushed by his sudden return to Rome, and his resolute behavior. Falco was on the point of being justly condemned to death as a public enemy had he not been saved by the earnest and sincere entreaties of the injured emperor, who conjured the senate, that the purity of his reign might not be stained by the blood even of a guilty senator.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1803-13  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:34 PM

These disappointments served only to irritate the rage of the Prætorian guards. On the twenty-eighth of March, eighty-six days only after the death of Commodus, a general sedition broke out in the camp, which the officers wanted either power or inclination to suppress. Two or three hundred of the most desperate soldiers marched at noonday, with arms in their hands and fury in their looks, towards the Imperial palace. The gates were thrown open by their companions upon guard, and by the domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy against the life of the too virtuous emperor. On the news of their approach, Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to meet his assassins; and recalled to their minds his own innocence, and the sanctity of their recent oath. For a few moments they stood in silent suspense, ashamed of their atrocious design, and awed by the venerable aspect and majestic firmness of their sovereign, till at length, the despair of pardon reviving their fury, a barbarian of the country of Tongress levelled the first blow against Pertinax, who was instantly despatched with a multitude of wounds. His head, separated from his body, and placed on a lance, was carried in triumph to the Prætorian camp, in the sight of a mournful and indignant people, who lamented the unworthy fate of that excellent prince, and the transient blessings of a reign, the memory of which could serve only to aggravate their approaching misfortunes.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1856-59  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:45 PM

He had already begun to use the only effectual argument, and to treat for the Imperial dignity; but the more prudent of the Prætorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1856-65  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:46 PM

He had already begun to use the only effectual argument, and to treat for the Imperial dignity; but the more prudent of the Prætorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction. This infamous offer, the most insolent excess of military license, diffused a universal grief, shame, and indignation throughout the city. It reached at length the ears of Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, who, regardless of the public calamities, was indulging himself in the luxury of the table. His wife and his daughter, his freedmen and his parasites, easily convinced him that he deserved the throne, and earnestly conjured him to embrace so fortunate an opportunity. The vain old man hastened to the Prætorian camp, where Sulpicianus was still in treaty with the guards, and began to bid against him from the foot of the rampart. The unworthy negotiation was transacted by faithful emissaries, who passed alternately from one candidate to the other, and acquainted each of them with the offers of his rival.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1869-72  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:47 PM

It was now incumbent on the Prætorians to fulfil the conditions of the sale. They placed their new sovereign, whom they served and despised, in the centre of their ranks, surrounded him on every side with their shields, and conducted him in close order of battle through the deserted streets of the city. The senate was commanded to assemble; and those who had been the distinguished friends of Pertinax, or the personal enemies of Julian, found it necessary to affect a more than common share of satisfaction at this happy revolution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1881-87  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:49 PM

He had reason to tremble. On the throne of the world he found himself without a friend, and even without an adherent. The guards themselves were ashamed of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept; nor was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror, as the last insult on the Roman name. The nobility, whose conspicuous station, and ample possessions, exacted the strictest caution, dissembled their sentiments, and met the affected civility of the emperor with smiles of complacency and professions of duty. But the people, secure in their numbers and obscurity, gave a free vent to their passions. The streets and public places of Rome resounded with clamors and imprecations. The enraged multitude affronted the person of Julian, rejected his liberality, and, conscious of the impotence of their own resentment, they called aloud on the legions of the frontiers to assert the violated majesty of the Roman empire.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1891-95  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:50 PM

Their immediate and unanimous revolt was fatal to Julian, but it was fatal at the same time to the public peace, as the generals of the respective armies, Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger, and Septimius Severus, were still more anxious to succeed than to revenge the murdered Pertinax. Their forces were exactly balanced. Each of them was at the head of three legions, with a numerous train of auxiliaries; and however different in their characters, they were all soldiers of experience and capacity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1981-84  | Added on Thursday, April 05, 2012, 04:10 PM

That assembly, convoked by the consul, unanimously acknowledged Severus as lawful emperor, decreed divine honors to Pertinax, and pronounced a sentence of deposition and death against his unfortunate successor. Julian was conducted into a private apartment of the baths of the palace, and beheaded as a common criminal, after having purchased, with an immense treasure, an anxious and precarious reign of only sixty-six days.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2042-44  | Added on Thursday, April 05, 2012, 07:14 PM

The fame and person of Severus appeared, during a few moments, irrecoverably lost, till that warlike prince rallied his fainting troops, and led them on to a decisive victory. The war was finished by that memorable day.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2081-86  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:13 AM

Thirty-five senators, however, accused of having favored the party of Albinus, he freely pardoned, and, by his subsequent behavior, endeavored to convince them, that he had forgotten, as well as forgiven, their supposed offences. But, at the same time, he condemned forty-one other senators, whose names history has recorded; their wives, children, and clients attended them in death, * and the noblest provincials of Spain and Gaul were involved in the same ruin. Such rigid justice—for so he termed it—was, in the opinion of Severus, the only conduct capable of insuring peace to the people or stability to the prince; and he condescended slightly to lament, that to be mild, it was necessary that he should first be cruel.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2091-94  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:14 AM

In the administration of justice, the judgments of the emperor were characterized by attention, discernment, and impartiality; and whenever he deviated from the strict line of equity, it was generally in favor of the poor and oppressed; not so much indeed from any sense of humanity, as from the natural propensity of a despot to humble the pride of greatness, and to sink all his subjects to the same common level of absolute dependence.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2111-13  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:20 AM

The Prætorians, who murdered their emperor and sold the empire, had received the just punishment of their treason; but the necessary, though dangerous, institution of guards was soon restored on a new model by Severus, and increased to four times the ancient number.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2121-24  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 05:12 AM

The command of these favored and formidable troops soon became the first office of the empire. As the government degenerated into military despotism, the Prætorian Præfect, who in his origin had been a simple captain of the guards, * was placed not only at the head of the army, but of the finances, and even of the law. In every department of administration, he represented the person, and exercised the authority, of the emperor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2145-47  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 05:19 AM

The lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2207-11  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:48 AM

The declining health and last illness of Severus inflamed the wild ambition and black passions of Caracalla's soul. Impatient of any delay or division of empire, he attempted, more than once, to shorten the small remainder of his father's days, and endeavored, but without success, to excite a mutiny among the troops. The old emperor had often censured the misguided lenity of Marcus, who, by a single act of justice, might have saved the Romans from the tyranny of his worthless son. Placed in the same situation, he experienced how easily the rigor of a judge dissolves away in the tenderness of a parent.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2213-17  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:49 AM

He expired at York in the sixty-fifth year of his life, and in the eighteenth of a glorious and successful reign. In his last moments he recommended concord to his sons, and his sons to the army. The salutary advice never reached the heart, or even the understanding, of the impetuous youths; but the more obedient troops, mindful of their oath of allegiance, and of the authority of their deceased master, resisted the solicitations of Caracalla, and proclaimed both brothers emperors of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2220-28  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:50 AM

Such a divided form of government would have proved a source of discord between the most affectionate brothers. It was impossible that it could long subsist between two implacable enemies, who neither desired nor could trust a reconciliation. It was visible that one only could reign, and that the other must fall; and each of them, judging of his rival's designs by his own, guarded his life with the most jealous vigilance from the repeated attacks of poison or the sword. Their rapid journey through Gaul and Italy, during which they never ate at the same table, or slept in the same house, displayed to the provinces the odious spectacle of fraternal discord. On their arrival at Rome, they immediately divided the vast extent of the imperial palace. No communication was allowed between their apartments; the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. The emperors met only in public, in the presence of their afflicted mother; and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers. Even on these occasions of ceremony, the dissimulation of courts could ill disguise the rancor of their hearts.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-37  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:51 AM

This latent civil war already distracted the whole government, when a scheme was suggested that seemed of mutual benefit to the hostile brothers. It was proposed, that since it was impossible to reconcile their minds, they should separate their interest, and divide the empire between them. The conditions of the treaty were already drawn with some accuracy. It was agreed that Caracalla, as the elder brother should remain in possession of Europe and the western Africa; and that he should relinquish the sovereignty of Asia and Egypt to Geta, who might fix his residence at Alexandria or Antioch, cities little inferior to Rome itself in wealth and greatness; that numerous armies should be constantly encamped on either side of the Thracian Bosphorus, to guard the frontiers of the rival monarchies; and that the senators of European extraction should acknowledge the sovereign of Rome, whilst the natives of Asia followed the emperor of the East. The tears of the empress Julia interrupted the negotiation, the first idea of which had filled every Roman breast with surprise and indignation. The mighty mass of conquest was so intimately united by the hand of time and policy, that it required the most forcible violence to rend it asunder.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2239-49  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:52 AM

Had the treaty been carried into execution, the sovereign of Europe might soon have been the conqueror of Asia; but Caracalla obtained an easier, though a more guilty, victory. He artfully listened to his mother's entreaties, and consented to meet his brother in her apartment, on terms of peace and reconciliation. In the midst of their conversation, some centurions, who had contrived to conceal themselves, rushed with drawn swords upon the unfortunate Geta. His distracted mother strove to protect him in her arms; but, in the unavailing struggle, she was wounded in the hand, and covered with the blood of her younger son, while she saw the elder animating and assisting the fury of the assassins. As soon as the deed was perpetrated, Caracalla, with hasty steps, and horror in his countenance, ran towards the Prætorian camp, as his only refuge, and threw himself on the ground before the statues of the tutelar deities. The soldiers attempted to raise and comfort him. In broken and disordered words he informed them of his imminent danger, and fortunate escape; insinuating that he had prevented the designs of his enemy, and declared his resolution to live and die with his faithful troops. Geta had been the favorite of the soldiers; but complaint was useless, revenge was dangerous, and they still reverenced the son of Severus. Their discontent died away in idle murmurs, and Caracalla soon convinced them of the justice of his cause, by distributing in one lavish donative the accumulated treasures of his father's reign.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2255-57  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:53 AM

The crime went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten and upbraid him.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2294-97  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 07:05 AM

The wise instructions of Severus never made any lasting impression on the mind of his son, who, although not destitute of imagination and eloquence, was equally devoid of judgment and humanity. One dangerous maxim, worthy of a tyrant, was remembered and abused by Caracalla. "To secure the affections of the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of little moment."
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2300-2302  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 07:12 AM

The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of a common soldier.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2315-20  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 11:56 AM

Macrinus read his fate, and resolved to prevent it. He inflamed the discontents of some inferior officers, and employed the hand of Martialis, a desperate soldier, who had been refused the rank of centurion. The devotion of Caracalla prompted him to make a pilgrimage from Edessa to the celebrated temple of the Moon at Carrhæ. * He was attended by a body of cavalry: but having stopped on the road for some necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful distance, and Martialis, approaching his person under a presence of duty, stabbed him with a dagger. The bold assassin was instantly killed by a Scythian archer of the Imperial guard. Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced human nature, and whose reign accused the patience of the
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2340-44  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 11:59 AM

and to arraign the nasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be always chosen in the senate, and the sovereign power, no longer exercised by the whole body, was always delegated to one of its members. But Macrinus was not a senator. The sudden elevation of the Prætorian præfects betrayed the meanness of their origin; and the equestrian order was still in possession of that great office, which commanded with arbitrary sway the lives and fortunes of the senate.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2351-56  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 12:01 PM

a whisper that circulated in the camp, disclosed the fatal secret of the conspiracy against the late emperor, aggravated the guilt of murder by the baseness of hypocrisy, and heightened contempt by detestation. To alienate the soldiers, and to provoke inevitable ruin, the character of a reformer was only wanting; and such was the peculiar hardship of his fate, that Macrinus was compelled to exercise that invidious office. The prodigality of Caracalla had left behind it a long train of ruin and disorder; and if that worthless tyrant had been capable of reflecting on the sure consequences of his own conduct, he would perhaps have enjoyed the dark prospect of the distress and calamities which he bequeathed to his successors.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 20 | Loc. 834-44  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 03:23 PM

I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so.” I said. “Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here”—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.” “Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,” said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 20 | Loc. 852-53  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 03:24 PM

Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 26 | Loc. 1148-49  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:08 PM

The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a very serious case against the son of the murdered man.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 1183-85  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:12 PM

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” answered Holmes thoughtfully. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very possible that he is indeed the culprit.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 29 | Loc. 1285  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:21 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 1283-86  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:22 PM

He had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the most lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her violet eyes shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her cheeks, all thought of her natural reserve lost in her overpowering excitement and concern. “Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” she cried, glancing from one to the other of us, and finally, with a woman’s quick intuition, fastening upon my companion, “I am so glad that you have come.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 30 | Loc. 1319-24  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:24 PM

Watson, I fear that you will find it very slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours.” I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the action to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room and gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the day.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 31 | Loc. 1384-89  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:29 PM

Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 32 | Loc. 1421  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 32 | Loc. 1419  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 32 | Loc. 1417-28  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM

It was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove back into Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he had picked up in the wood. “This may interest you, Lestrade,” he remarked, holding it out. “The murder was done with it.” “I see no marks.” “There are none.” “How do you know, then?” “The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few days. There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It corresponds with the injuries. There is no sign of any other weapon.” “And the murderer?” “Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears thick-soled shooting-boots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt pen-knife in his pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be enough to aid us in our search.” Lestrade laughed. “I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,” he said. “Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a hard-headed British jury.” “Nous verrons,” answered Holmes calmly. “You work your own method, and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon, and shall probably return to London by the evening train.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 33 | Loc. 1468-70  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:36 PM

He had stood behind that tree during the interview between the father and son. He had even smoked there. I found the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 36 | Loc. 1591-96  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:44 AM

“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with some details as to your case.” “It is no ordinary one.” “None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.” “And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events than those which have happened in my own family.” “You fill me with interest,” said Holmes. “Pray give us the essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to those details which seem to me to be most important.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 37 | Loc. 1632-35  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:47 AM

“ ‘I wish you, John,’ said my uncle, ‘to witness my will. I leave my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can’t say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 37 | Loc. 1650-53  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:49 AM

“One moment,” Holmes interposed, “your statement is, I foresee, one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and the date of his supposed suicide.” “The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later, upon the night of May 2nd.” “Thank you. Pray proceed.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 1700-1704  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:43 AM

“I have seen the police.” “Ah!” “But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.” Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 1700-1708  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:43 AM

“I have seen the police.” “Ah!” “But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.” Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried. “They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the house with me.” “Has he come with you to-night?” “No. His orders were to stay in the house.” Again Holmes raved in the air. “Why did you come to me,” he cried, “and, above all, why did you not come at once?” “I
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 39 | Loc. 1748-70  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:51 AM

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. “The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion.” “Yes,” I answered, laughing. “It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.” Holmes grinned at the last item. “Well,” he said, “I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the American Encyclopaedia which stands upon the shelf beside you. Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters which were received by himself and his successors.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1831-33  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:56 AM

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him. “That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1831-36  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:56 AM

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him. “That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death—!” He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands. “They must be cunning devils,” he exclaimed at last.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1837-39  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:57 AM

Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!” “To the police?” “No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1837-51  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:57 AM

Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!” “To the police?” “No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.” All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o’clock before he entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard, and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously, washing it down with a long draught of water. “You are hungry,” I remarked. “Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since breakfast.” “Nothing?” “Not a bite. I had no time to think of it.” “And how have you succeeded?” “Well.” “You have a clue?” “I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish trade-mark upon them. It is well thought of!” “What do you mean?” He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote “S. H. for J. O.” Then he sealed it and addressed it to “Captain James Calhoun, Barque Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia.” “That will await him when he enters port,” said he, chuckling. “It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 1869-73  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:59 AM

There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for news of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters “L. S.” carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the Lone Star.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Note Loc. 2356  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 09:02 PM

circumlocuting wages pay cuts
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2448-52  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:35 AM

A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a vestal virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he more properly styled himself, of the empress's husband.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2453-55  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:41 AM

It may seem probable, the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been adorned by fancy, and blackened by prejudice. Yet, confining ourselves to the public scenes displayed before the Roman people, and attested by grave and contemporary historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of any other age or country.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2475-82  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:44 AM

It was impossible that such a reconciliation should last, or that even the mean soul of Elagabalus could hold an empire on such humiliating terms of dependence. He soon attempted, by a dangerous experiment, to try the temper of the soldiers. The report of the death of Alexander, and the natural suspicion that he had been murdered, inflamed their passions into fury, and the tempest of the camp could only be appeased by the presence and authority of the popular youth. Provoked at this new instance of their affection for his cousin, and their contempt for his person, the emperor ventured to punish some of the leaders of the mutiny. His unseasonable severity proved instantly fatal to his minions, his mother, and himself. Elagabalus was massacred by the indignant Prætorians, his mutilated corpse dragged through the streets of the city, and thrown into the Tiber. His memory was branded with eternal infamy by the senate; the justice of whose decree has been ratified by posterity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2489-93  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:45 AM

In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies, however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a singular exception; and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of exercising the smallest employment, civil or military.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2536-39  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:52 AM

Such a uniform tenor of life, which left not a moment for vice or folly, is a better proof of the wisdom and justice of Alexander's government, than all the trifling details preserved in the compilation of Lampridius. Since the accession of Commodus, the Roman world had experienced, during the term of forty years, the successive and various vices of four tyrants. From the death of Elagabalus, it enjoyed an auspicious calm of thirteen years.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2563-72  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:55 AM

The Prætorian guards were attached to the youth of Alexander. They loved him as a tender pupil, whom they had saved from a tyrant's fury, and placed on the Imperial throne. That amiable prince was sensible of the obligation; but as his gratitude was restrained within the limits of reason and justice, they soon were more dissatisfied with the virtues of Alexander, than they had ever been with the vices of Elagabalus. Their præfect, the wise Ulpian, was the friend of the laws and of the people; he was considered as the enemy of the soldiers, and to his pernicious counsels every scheme of reformation was imputed. Some trifling accident blew up their discontent into a furious mutiny; and the civil war raged, during three days, in Rome, whilst the life of that excellent minister was defended by the grateful people. Terrified, at length, by the sight of some houses in flames, and by the threats of a general conflagration, the people yielded with a sigh, and left the virtuous but unfortunate Ulpian to his fate. He was pursued into the Imperial palace, and massacred at the feet of his master, who vainly strove to cover him with the purple, and to obtain his pardon from the inexorable soldiers. * Such was the deplorable weakness of government, that the emperor was unable to revenge his murdered friend and his insulted dignity, without stooping to the arts of patience and dissimulation.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3094-3105  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:47 AM

“I’ve got him here,” he whispered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder; “he’s all right.” “What is it, then?” I asked, for his manner suggested that it was some strange creature which he had caged up in my room. “It’s a new patient,” he whispered. “I thought I’d bring him round myself; then he couldn’t slip away. There he is, all safe and sound. I must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the same as you.” And off he went, this trusty tout, without even giving me time to thank him. I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control. “I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor,” said he, “but I have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table.” I took
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-15  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:48 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-29  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:49 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.” He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots. “Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.” “Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.” “Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.” “It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.” “This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and sharp instrument.” “A thing like a cleaver,” said he. “An accident, I presume?” “By no means.” “What! a murderous attack?” “Very murderous indeed.” “You horrify me.” I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. “How is that?” I asked when I had finished. “Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-35  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:50 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.” He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots. “Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.” “Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.” “Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.” “It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.” “This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and sharp instrument.” “A thing like a cleaver,” said he. “An accident, I presume?” “By no means.” “What! a murderous attack?” “Very murderous indeed.” “You horrify me.” I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. “How is that?” I asked when I had finished. “Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.” “Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently trying to your nerves.” “Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police; but, between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing evidence of this wound of mine, I should be surprised if they believed my statement, for it is a very extraordinary one, and I have not much in the way of proof with which to back it up; and, even if they believe me, the clues which I can give them are so vague that it is a question whether justice will be done.” “Ha!” cried I, “if it is anything in the nature of a problem which you desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you to come to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the official police.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Note on Page 69 | Loc. 3135  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:50 AM

republican healthcare
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 69 | Loc. 3151-52  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:53 AM

Holmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavy-lidded expression which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat opposite to him, and we listened in silence to the strange story which our visitor detailed to us.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 69 | Loc. 3153-60  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:55 AM

“You must know,” said he, “that I am an orphan and a bachelor, residing alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a hydraulic engineer, and I have had considerable experience of my work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner & Matheson, the well-known firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago, having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of money through my poor father’s death, I determined to start in business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria Street. “I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in business a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so. During two years I have had three consultations and one small job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought me. My gross takings amount to �27 10s. Every day, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to believe that I should never have any practice at all.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3175-81  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:58 AM

“ ‘If I promise to keep a secret,’ said I, ‘you may absolutely depend upon my doing so.’ “He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye. “ ‘Do you promise, then?’ said he at last. “ ‘Yes, I promise.’ “ ‘Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?’ “ ‘I have already given you my word.’ “ ‘Very good.’ He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was empty.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3205-7  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:02 AM

I should like, however, to understand a little more clearly what it is that you wish me to do.’ “ ‘Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which we have exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I have no wish to commit you to anything without your having it all laid before you. I suppose that we are absolutely safe from eavesdroppers?’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-21  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:03 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-25  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:05 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’ “ ‘I quite follow you,’ said I. ‘The only point which I could not quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in excavating fuller’s-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like gravel from a pit.’ “ ‘Ah!’ said he carelessly, ‘we have our own process. We compress the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-28  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:05 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’ “ ‘I quite follow you,’ said I. ‘The only point which I could not quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in excavating fuller’s-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like gravel from a pit.’ “ ‘Ah!’ said he carelessly, ‘we have our own process. We compress the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.’ He rose as he spoke. ‘I shall expect you, then, at Eyford at 11:15.’ “ ‘I shall certainly be there.’ “ ‘And not a word to a soul.’ He looked at me with a last long, questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank grasp, he hurried from the room.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Note on Page 71 | Loc. 3270  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:14 AM

endof part one start of part two
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 72 | Loc. 3286-95  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:17 AM

“The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man with a chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double chin, who was introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson. “ ‘This is my secretary and manager,’ said the colonel. ‘By the way, I was under the impression that I left this door shut just now. I fear that you have felt the draught.’ “ ‘On the contrary,’ said I, ‘I opened the door myself because I felt the room to be a little close.’ “He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. ‘Perhaps we had better proceed to business, then,’ said he. ‘Mr. Ferguson and I will take you up to see the machine.’ “ ‘I had better put my hat on, I suppose.’ “ ‘Oh, no, it is in the house.’ “ ‘What, you dig fuller’s-earth in the house?’ “ ‘No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that. All we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us know what is wrong with it.’
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2775-78  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 09:51 AM

The daring hopes of ambition were set loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but dangerous station.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2824-32  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 05:16 PM

The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were all dissolute and unexperienced youths, educated in the purple, and corrupted by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious voice of flattery. The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a different source, the fear of contempt. Though he depended on the attachment of the soldiers, who loved him for virtues like their own, he was conscious that his mean and barbarian origin, his savage appearance, and his total ignorance of the arts and institutions of civil life, formed a very unfavorable contrast with the amiable manners of the unhappy Alexander. He remembered, that, in his humbler fortune, he had often waited before the door of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of their slaves. He recollected too the friendship of a few who had relieved his poverty, and assisted his rising hopes. But those who had spurned, and those who had protected, the Thracian, were guilty of the same crime, the knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors, Maximin published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2940-52  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 05:39 PM

The fate of the Gordians filled Rome with just but unexpected terror. The senate, convoked in the temple of Concord, affected to transact the common business of the day; and seemed to decline, with trembling anxiety, the consideration of their own and the public danger. A silent consternation prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy. He represented to them that the choice of cautious, dilatory measures had been long since out of their power; that Maximin, implacable by nature, and exasperated by injuries, was advancing towards Italy, at the head of the military force of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was either to meet him bravely in the field, or tamely to expect the tortures and ignominious death reserved for unsuccessful rebellion. "We have lost," continued he, "two excellent princes; but unless we desert ourselves, the hopes of the republic have not perished with the Gordians. Many are the senators whose virtues have deserved, and whose abilities would sustain, the Imperial dignity. Let us elect two emperors, one of whom may conduct the war against the public enemy, whilst his colleague remains at Rome to direct the civil administration. I cheerfully expose myself to the danger and envy of the nomination, and give my vote in favor of Maximus and Balbinus. Ratify my choice, conscript fathers, or appoint in their place, others more worthy of the empire." The general apprehension silenced the whispers of jealousy; the merit of the candidates was universally acknowledged; and the house resounded with the sincere acclamations of "Long life and victory to the emperors Maximus and Balbinus. You are happy in the judgment of the senate; may the republic be happy under your administration!"
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2955-58  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:13 AM

Balbinus was an admired orator, a poet of distinguished fame, and a wise magistrate, who had exercised with innocence and applause the civil jurisdiction in almost all the interior provinces of the empire. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent, his manners liberal and affable. In him the love of pleasure was corrected by a sense of dignity, nor had the habits of ease deprived him of a capacity for business.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3059-67  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:31 AM

nothing could reconcile the haughty spirit of the Prætorians. They attended the emperors on the memorable day of their public entry into Rome; but amidst the general acclamations, the sullen, dejected countenance of the guards sufficiently declared that they considered themselves as the object, rather than the partners, of the triumph. When the whole body was united in their camp, those who had served under Maximin, and those who had remained at Rome, insensibly communicated to each other their complaints and apprehensions. The emperors chosen by the army had perished with ignominy; those elected by the senate were seated on the throne. The long discord between the civil and military powers was decided by a war, in which the former had obtained a complete victory. The soldiers must now learn a new doctrine of submission to the senate; and whatever clemency was affected by that politic assembly, they dreaded a slow revenge, colored by the name of discipline, and justified by fair pretences of the public good. But their fate was still in their own hands; and if they had courage to despise the vain terrors of an impotent republic, it was easy to convince the world, that those who were masters of the arms, were masters of the authority, of the state.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3071-79  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:33 AM

Their silent discord was understood rather than seen; but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the Prætorian camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden, they were alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Ignorant of each other's situation or designs, (for they already occupied very distant apartments,) afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt, stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of Rome, with the design of inflicting a slow and cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a rescue from the faithful Germans of the Imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the insults or to the pity of the populace.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3071-80  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:33 AM

Their silent discord was understood rather than seen; but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the Prætorian camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden, they were alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Ignorant of each other's situation or designs, (for they already occupied very distant apartments,) afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt, stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of Rome, with the design of inflicting a slow and cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a rescue from the faithful Germans of the Imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the insults or to the pity of the populace. In the space of a few months, six princes
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3094-96  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:36 AM

The minister, with the conscious dignity of virtue, congratulates Gordian that he is delivered from the tyranny of the eunuchs, and still more that he is sensible of his deliverance. The emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the errors of his past conduct; and laments, with singular propriety, the misfortune of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labor to conceal the truth.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3278  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 09:53 AM

The sword of Aristotle (such was the name given by the Orientals to the polytheism and philosophy of the Greeks) was easily broken;
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3525-28  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 05:36 PM

The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear. It roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and, by strong exercise of the body, and violent emotions of the mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his existence. In the dull intervals of peace, these barbarians were immoderately addicted to deep gaming and excessive drinking; both of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their passions, the other by extinguishing their reason, alike relieved them from the pain of thinking.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3533-35  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 05:37 PM

Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3533-38  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:23 PM

Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3557-61  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:26 PM

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. "Among the Suiones (says Tacitus) riches are held in honor. They are therefore subject to an absolute monarch, who, instead of intrusting his people with the free use of arms, as is practised in the rest of Germany, commits them to the safe custody, not of a citizen, or even of a freedman, but of a slave. The neighbors of the Suiones, the Sitones, are sunk even below servitude; they obey a woman." In the mention of these exceptions, the great historian sufficiently acknowledges the general theory of government. We
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3567-75  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:27 PM

Civil governments, in their first institution, are voluntary associations for mutual defence. To obtain the desired end, it is absolutely necessary that each individual should conceive himself obliged to submit his private opinions and actions to the judgment of the greater number of his associates. The German tribes were contented with this rude but liberal outline of political society. As soon as a youth, born of free parents, had attained the age of manhood, he was introduced into the general council of his countrymen, solemnly invested with a shield and spear, and adopted as an equal and worthy member of the military commonwealth. The assembly of the warriors of the tribe was convened at stated seasons, or on sudden emergencies. The trial of public offences, the election of magistrates, and the great business of peace and war, were determined by its independent voice. Sometimes indeed, these important questions were previously considered and prepared in a more select council of the principal chieftains. The magistrates might deliberate and persuade, the people only could resolve and execute; and the resolutions of the Germans were for the most part hasty and violent.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3576-83  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:27 PM

and policy, and it was the practice to signify by a hollow murmur their dislike of such timid counsels. But whenever a more popular orator proposed to vindicate the meanest citizen from either foreign or domestic injury, whenever he called upon his fellow-countrymen to assert the national honor, or to pursue some enterprise full of danger and glory, a loud clashing of shields and spears expressed the eager applause of the assembly. For the Germans always met in arms, and it was constantly to be dreaded, lest an irregular multitude, inflamed with faction and strong liquors, should use those arms to enforce, as well as to declare, their furious resolves. We may recollect how often the diets of Poland have been polluted with blood, and the more numerous party has been compelled to yield to the more violent and seditious. A general of the tribe was elected on occasions of danger; and, if the danger was
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3678-79  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 11:24 PM

The view of arms and of danger heightened the effect of the military song; and the passions which it tended to excite, the desire of fame, and the contempt of death, were the habitual sentiments of a German mind. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3761-64  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 11:35 PM

Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part I. From the great secular games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders, and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3792-95  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:49 AM

This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western empire, that the name of Goths is frequently but improperly used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3812-18  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:54 AM

Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient traditions.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3812-24  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:54 AM

Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient traditions. Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the North, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the invincible valor of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated, during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the God of war.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3827-32  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:56 AM

It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the Lake Mæotis, till the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the North with servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in numerous swarms from the neighborhood of the Polar circle, to chastise the oppressors of mankind.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3834-42  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:57 AM

To cross the Baltic was an easy and natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient number of large vessels, with oars, and the distance is little more than one hundred miles from Carlscroon to the nearest ports of Pomerania and Prussia. Here, at length, we land on firm and historic ground. At least as early as the Christian æra, and as late as the age of the Antonines, the Goths were established towards the mouth of the Vistula, and in that fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing, Koningsberg, and Dantzick, were long afterwards founded. Westward of the Goths, the numerous tribes of the Vandals were spread along the banks of the Oder, and the sea-coast of Pomerania and Mecklenburgh. A striking resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were originally one great people. The latter appear to have been subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidæ. The distinction among the Vandals was more strongly marked by the independent names of Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, and a variety of other petty states, many of which, in a future age, expanded themselves into powerful monarchies.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3855-61  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:59 AM

The windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress. The Bastarnæ and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and the flower of their youth, either from choice or compulsion, increased the Gothic army. The Bastarnæ dwelt on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains: the immense tract of land that separated the Bastarnæ from the savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted, by the Venedi; we have some reason to believe that the first of these nations, which distinguished itself in the Macedonian war, and was afterwards divided into the formidable tribes of the Peucini, the Borani, the Carpi, &c., derived its origin from the Germans. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3870-75  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:01 PM

The Goths were now in possession of the Ukraine, a country of considerable extent and uncommon fertility, intersected with navigable rivers, which, from either side, discharge themselves into the Borysthenes; and interspersed with large and leafy forests of oaks. The plenty of game and fish, the innumerable bee-hives deposited in the hollow of old trees, and in the cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of the air, the aptness of the soil for every species of gain, and the luxuriancy of the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of Nature, and tempted the industry of man. But the Goths withstood all these temptations, and still adhered to a life of idleness, of poverty, and of rapine.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Note Loc. 3875  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:01 PM

this is NOT kind to Germans...
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-97  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-3900  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance, Philoppopolis, destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that great city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable accession to the spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late emperor Philip, blushed not to assume the purple, under the protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-3904  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance, Philoppopolis, destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that great city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable accession to the spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late emperor Philip, blushed not to assume the purple, under the protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome. The time, however, consumed in that tedious siege, enabled Decius to revive the courage, restore the discipline, and recruit the numbers of his troops. He intercepted several parties of Carpi, and other Germans, who were hastening to share the victory of their countrymen, intrusted the passes of the mountains to officers of approved valor and fidelity, repaired and strengthened the fortifications of the Danube, and exerted his utmost vigilance to oppose either the progress or the retreat of the Goths. Encouraged by the return of fortune, he anxiously waited for an opportunity to retrieve, by a great and decisive blow, his own glory, and that of the Roman arms.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3905-27  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:06 PM

At the same time when Decius was struggling with the violence of the tempest, his mind, calm and deliberate amidst the tumult of war, investigated the more general causes, that, since the age of the Antonines, had so impetuously urged the decline of the Roman greatness. He soon discovered that it was impossible to replace that greatness on a permanent basis, without restoring public virtue, ancient principles and manners, and the oppressed majesty of the laws. To execute this noble but arduous design, he first resolved to revive the obsolete office of censor; an office which, as long as it had subsisted in its pristine integrity, had so much contributed to the perpetuity of the state, till it was usurped and gradually neglected by the Cæsars. Conscious that the favor of the sovereign may confer power, but that the esteem of the people can alone bestow authority, he submitted the choice of the censor to the unbiased voice of the senate. By their unanimous votes, or rather acclamations, Valerian, who was afterwards emperor, and who then served with distinction in the army of Decius, was declared the most worthy of that exalted honor. As soon as the decree of the senate was transmitted to the emperor, he assembled a great council in his camp, and before the investiture of the censor elect, he apprised him of the difficulty and importance of his great office. "Happy Valerian," said the prince to his distinguished subject, "happy in the general approbation of the senate and of the Roman republic! Accept the censorship of mankind; and judge of our manners. You will select those who deserve to continue members of the senate; you will restore the equestrian order to its ancient splendor; you will improve the revenue, yet moderate the public burdens. You will distinguish into regular classes the various and infinite multitude of citizens, and accurately view the military strength, the wealth, the virtue, and the resources of Rome. Your decisions shall obtain the force of laws. The army, the palace, the ministers of justice, and the great officers of the empire, are all subject to your tribunal. None are exempted, excepting only the ordinary consuls, the præfect of the city, the king of the sacrifices, and (as long as she preserves her chastity inviolate) the eldest of the vestal virgins. Even these few, who may not dread the severity, will anxiously solicit the esteem, of the Roman censor." A magistrate, invested with such extensive powers, would have appeared not so much the minister, as the colleague of his sovereign. Valerian justly dreaded an elevation so full of envy and of suspicion. He modestly argued the alarming greatness of the trust, his own insufficiency, and the incurable corruption of the times. He artfully insinuated, that the office of censor was inseparable from the Imperial dignity, and that the feeble hands of a subject were unequal to the support of such an immense weight of cares and of power. The approaching event of war soon put an end to the prosecution of a project so specious, but so impracticable; and whilst it preserved Valerian from the danger, saved the emperor Decius from the disappointment, which would most probably have attended it. A censor may maintain, he can never restore, the morals of a state.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3932-36  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:07 PM

The Goths were now, on every side, surrounded and pursued by the Roman arms. The flower of their troops had perished in the long siege of Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer afford subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious barbarians. Reduced to this extremity, the Goths would gladly have purchased, by the surrender of all their booty and prisoners, the permission of an undisturbed retreat. But the emperor, confident of victory, and resolving, by the chastisement of these invaders, to strike a salutary terror into the nations of the North, refused to listen to any terms of accommodation.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3936-37  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:08 PM

The high-spirited barbarians preferred death to slavery.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3938-48  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:09 PM

In the beginning of the action, the son of Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated to the honors of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of his afflicted father; who, summoning all his fortitude, admonished the dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier was of little importance to the republic. The conflict was terrible; it was the combat of despair against grief and rage. The first line of the Goths at length gave way in disorder; the second, advancing to sustain it, shared its fate; and the third only remained entire, prepared to dispute the passage of the morass, which was imprudently attempted by the presumption of the enemy. "Here the fortune of the day turned, and all things became adverse to the Romans; the place deep with ooze, sinking under those who stood, slippery to such as advanced; their armor heavy, the waters deep; nor could they wield, in that uneasy situation, their weighty javelins. The barbarians, on the contrary, were inured to encounter in the bogs, their persons tall, their spears long, such as could wound at a distance." In this morass the Roman army, after an ineffectual struggle, was irrecoverably lost; nor could the body of the emperor ever be found. Such was the fate of Decius, in the fiftieth year of his age; an accomplished prince, active in war and affable in peace; who, together with his son, has deserved to be compared, both in life and death, with the brightest examples of ancient virtue.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3957-66  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:11 PM

In the age of the Scipios, the most opulent kings of the earth, who courted the protection of the victorious commonwealth, were gratified with such trifling presents as could only derive a value from the hand that bestowed them; an ivory chair, a coarse garment of purple, an inconsiderable piece of plate, or a quantity of copper coin. After the wealth of nations had centred in Rome, the emperors displayed their greatness, and even their policy, by the regular exercise of a steady and moderate liberality towards the allies of the state. They relieved the poverty of the barbarians, honored their merit, and recompensed their fidelity. These voluntary marks of bounty were understood to flow, not from the fears, but merely from the generosity or the gratitude of the Romans; and whilst presents and subsidies were liberally distributed among friends and suppliants, they were sternly refused to such as claimed them as a debt. But this stipulation, of an annual payment to a victorious enemy, appeared without disguise in the light of an ignominious tribute; the minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to accept such unequal laws from a tribe of barbarians; and the prince, who by a necessary concession had probably saved his country, became the object of the general contempt and aversion.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3970-73  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:11 PM

But the Romans were irritated to a still higher degree, when they discovered that they had not even secured their repose, though at the expense of their honor. The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of the empire had been revealed to the world. New swarms of barbarians, encouraged by the success, and not conceiving themselves bound by the obligation of their brethren, spread devastation though the Illyrian provinces, and terror as far as the gates of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3995-4006  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:13 PM

Valerian was about sixty years of age when he was invested with the purple, not by the caprice of the populace, or the clamors of the army, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. In his gradual ascent through the honors of the state, he had deserved the favor of virtuous princes, and had declared himself the enemy of tyrants. His noble birth, his mild but unblemished manners, his learning, prudence, and experience, were revered by the senate and people; and if mankind (according to the observation of an ancient writer) had been left at liberty to choose a master, their choice would most assuredly have fallen on Valerian. Perhaps the merit of this emperor was inadequate to his reputation; perhaps his abilities, or at least his spirit, were affected by the languor and coldness of old age. The consciousness of his decline engaged him to share the throne with a younger and more active associate; the emergency of the times demanded a general no less than a prince; and the experience of the Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the Imperial purple, as the reward of military merit. But instead of making a judicious choice, which would have confirmed his reign and endeared his memory, Valerian, consulting only the dictates of affection or vanity, immediately invested with the supreme honors his son Gallienus, a youth whose effeminate vices had been hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the sole administration of Gallien continued about eight, years. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4006-10  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:14 PM

As the Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, we shall consult order and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much the doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, were, 1. The Franks; 2. The Alemanni; 3. The Goths; and, 4. The Persians. Under these general appellations, we may comprehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the reader.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4049-53  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:18 PM

They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy. Jealous as the Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the superior valor of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose arms the immortal gods themselves were unequal.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 268-70  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:51 PM

The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he? I dont believe he much had me in mind. Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world's he seen that he liked better?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 274-76  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:52 PM

You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that? I dont know. Believe that.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 304-8  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:56 PM

You see old Lonnie down there you tell him get a piece for me. Tell him old Oren. He'll buy ye a drink if he aint blowed all his money in. In the morning they ate flapjacks with molasses and the herders saddled up and moved on. When he found his mule there was a small fibre bag tied to the animal's rope and inside the bag there was a cupful of dried beans and some peppers and an old greenriver knife with a handle made of string. He saddled up the mule, the mule's back galled and balding, the hooves cracked. The ribs like fishbones. They hobbled on across the endless plain.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 387-93  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:36 PM

through the sacristy into the church again and got his saddle. He drank the rest of the bottle and he put the saddle on his shoulder and went out. The facade of the building bore an array of saints in their niches and they had been shot up by American troops trying their rifles, the figures shorn of ears and noses and darkly mottled with leadmarks oxidized upon the stone. The huge carved and paneled doors hung awap on their hinges and a carved stone Virgin held in her arms a headless child. He stood blinking in the noon heat. Then he saw the mule's tracks. They were just the palest disturbance of the dust and they came out of the door of the church and crossed the lot to the gate in the east wall. He hiked the saddle higher onto his shoulder and set out after them.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 402-5  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:37 PM

He found it about a hundred yards downriver. It was wet to its belly and it looked up at him and then lowered its head again into the lush river grass. He threw down the saddle and took up the trailing rope and tied the animal to a limb and kicked it halfheartedly. It shifted slightly to the side and continued to graze. He reached atop his head but he had lost the crazy hat somewhere. He made his way down through the trees and stood looking at the cold swirling waters. Then he waded out into the river like some wholly wretched baptismal candidate.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 434-41  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:40 PM

I dont know nothin about soldierin. The man eyed him. He took the unlit cigar from his teeth and turned his head and spat and put it back again. Where ye from? he said. Tennessee. Tennessee. Well I dont misdoubt but what you can shoot a rifle. The kid squatted in the grass. He looked at the man's horse. The horse was fitted out in tooled leather with worked silver trim. It had a white blaze on its face and four white stockings and it was cropping up great teethfuls of the rich grass. Where you from, said the kid. I been in Texas since thirty-eight. If I'd not run up on Captain White I dont know where I'd be this day. I was a sorrier sight even than what you are and he come along and raised me up like Lazarus. Set my feet in the path of righteousness. I'd done took to drinkin and whorin till hell wouldnt have me. He seen somethin in me worth savin and I see it in you. What do ye say?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:52 PM

human flesh seemed outrageous presences even in that fabled company. The recruits rode with their animals close reined and they turned up past the courthouse and along the high walls of the carcel with the broken glass imbedded in the topmost course. In the Main Plaza a band had assembled and were at tuning their instruments. The riders turned down Salinas Street past small
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 583-89  | Added on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 08:24 PM

He looks at his comrades. He leans toward the Mennonite. What does that mean, old man? Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed yell not cross it back. Dont aim to cross it back. We goin to Sonora. What's it to you, old man? The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs. But they berated the old man and swore at him until he moved off down the bar muttering, and how else could it be?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 639-43  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 11:40 AM

They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 645-48  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 11:41 AM

Now wolves had come to follow them, great pale lobos with yellow eyes that trotted neat of foot or squatted in the shimmering heat to watch them where they made their noon halt. Moving on again. Loping, sidling, ambling with their long noses to the ground. In the evening their eyes shifted and winked out there on the edge of the firelight and in the morning when the riders rode out in the cool dark they could hear the snarling and the pop of their mouths behind them as they sacked the camp for meatscraps.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 665-70  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:26 PM

They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 673-75  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:26 PM

All night the wind blew and the fine dust set their teeth on edge. Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature. The animals were failing. They halted and made a dry camp without wood or water and the wretched ponies huddled and whimpered like dogs.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 684-88  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:27 PM

Pray it up, some called, and kneeling he cried out among the thunder and the wind: Lord we are dried to jerky down here. Just a few drops for some old boys out here on the prairie and a long ways from home. Amen, they said, and catching up their mounts they rode on. Within the hour the wind cooled and drops of rain the size of grapeshot fell upon them out of that wild darkness. They could smell wet stone and the sweet smell of the wet horses and wet leather. They rode on.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 739-44  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:30 PM

What do you make of that, Captain? I make it a parcel of heathen stockthieves is what I make it. What do you? Looks like it to me. The captain watched through the glass. I suppose they've seen us, he said. They've seen us. How many riders do you make it? A dozen maybe. The captain tapped the instrument in his gloved hand. They dont seem concerned, do they? No sir. They dont. The captain smiled grimly. We may see a little sport here before the day is out.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 859-67  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 01:27 PM

Atrides saw, and thus, reproachful, spoke: "O son of Peteus, Heav'n-descended King! And thou too, master of all tricky arts, Why, ling'ring, stand ye thus aloof, and wait For others coming? ye should be the first The hot assault of battle to confront; For ye are first my summons to receive, Whene'er the honour'd banquet we prepare: And well ye like to eat the sav'ry meat, And, at your will, the luscious wine-cups drain: Now stand ye here, and unconcern'd would see Ten columns pass before you to the fight." To whom, with stern regard, Ulysses thus: "What words have pass'd the barrier of thy lips, Atrides? how with want of warlike zeal Canst thou reproach us? when the Greeks again The furious war shall waken, thou shalt see (If that thou care to see) amid the ranks Of Troy, the father of Telemachus In the fore-front: thy words are empty wind." Atrides saw him chafed, and smiling, thus Recalled his former words: "Ulysses sage, Laertes' high-born son, not over-much I give thee blame, or orders; for I know Thy mind to gentle counsels is inclin'd; Thy thoughts are one with mine; then come, henceforth Shall all be well; and if a hasty word Have pass'd, may Heaven regard it as unsaid." Thus saying, them he left, and onward mov'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 893-914  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 01:30 PM

When to the midst they came, together rush'd Bucklers and lances, and the furious might Of mail-clad warriors; bossy shield on shield Clatter'd in conflict; loud the clamour rose. Then rose too mingled shouts and groans of men Slaying and slain; the earth ran red with blood. As when, descending from the mountain's brow, Two wintry torrents, from their copious source Pour downward to the narrow pass, where meet Their mingled waters in some deep ravine, Their weight of flood; on the far mountain's side The shepherd hears the roar; so loud arose The shouts and yells of those commingling hosts. First 'mid the foremost ranks Antilochus A Trojan warrior, Echepolus, slew, A crested chief, Thalesius' noble son. Beneath his horsehair-plumed helmet's peak The sharp spear struck; deep in his forehead fix'd It pierc'd the bone; then darkness veil'd his eyes, And, like a tow'r, amid the press he fell. Him Elephenor, brave Abantian chief, Son of Chalcodon, seizing by the feet, Dragg'd from beneath the darts, in haste to strip His armour off; but short-liv'd was th' attempt; For bold Agenor mark'd him as he drew The corpse aside, and with his brass-tipp'd spear Thrust through his flank, unguarded, as he stoop'd, Beside his shield; and slack'd his limbs in death. The spirit was fled; but hotly o'er him rag'd The war of Greeks and Trojans; fierce as wolves They fought, man struggling hand to hand with man. Then Ajax Telamon a stalwart youth, Son of Anthemion, Simoisius, slew; Whose mother gave him birth on Simois' banks, When with her parents down from Ida's heights She drove her flock; thence Simoisius nam'd: Not destined he his parents to repay Their early care; for short his term of life, By godlike Ajax' mighty spear subdued. Him, to the front advancing, in the breast, By the right nipple, Ajax struck; right through, From front to back, the brass-tipp'd spear was driv'n, Out through the shoulder; prone in dust he fell; As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead, Smooth-stemm'd, with branches tapering tow'rd the head; Which with the biting axe the wheelwright fells, To bend the felloes of his well-built car; Sapless, beside the river, lies the tree; So lay the youthful Simoisius, felled By godlike Ajax' hand. At him, in turn, The son of Priam, Antiphus, encas'd In radiant armour, from amid the crowd His jav'lin threw; his mark, indeed, he miss'd; But through the groin Ulysses' faithful friend, Leucus, he struck, in act to bear away The youthful dead; down on the corpse he fell, And, dying, of the dead relax'd his grasp. Fierce anger, at his comrade's slaughter, filled Ulysses' breast; in burnished armour clad Forward he rush'd; and standing near, around He look'd, and pois'd on high his glitt'ring lance: Beneath his aim the Trojans back recoil'd; Nor vainly flew the spear; Democoon, A bastard son of Priam, met the blow: He from Abydos came, his high-bred mares There left to pasture; him Ulysses, fill'd With fury at his lov'd companion's death, Smote on the head; through either temple pass'd The pointed spear, and darkness veil'd his eyes.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 959-63  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:48 PM

Him, Phyleus' warrior son, approaching near, Thrust through the junction of the head and neck; Crash'd through his teeth the spear beneath the tongue; Prone in the dust he gnash'd the brazen point. Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Hypsenor slew, the worthy progeny Of Dolopion brave; Scamander's priest, And by the people as a God rever'd: Him, as he fled before him, from behind Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Smote with the sword; and from the shoulder-point The brawny arm he sever'd; to the ground Down fell the gory hand; the darkling shades Of death, and rig'rous doom, his eyelids clos'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1002-7  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:51 PM

Nor horse have I, nor car on which to mount; But in my sire Lycaon's wealthy house Elev'n fair chariots stand, all newly built, Each with its cover; by the side of each Two steeds on rye and barley white are fed; And in his well-built house, when here I came, Lycaon, aged warrior, urg'd me oft With horses and with chariots high upborne, To lead the Trojans in the stubborn fight; I hearken'd not--'twere better if I had-- Yet fear'd I lest my horses, wont to feed In plenty unstinted, by the soldiers' wants Might of their custom'd forage be depriv'd; I left them there, and hither came on foot, And trusting to my bow: vain trust, it seems; Two chiefs already have I struck, the sons Of Tydeus and of Atreus; with true aim Drawn blood from both, yet but increas'd their rage. Sad was the hour when down from where it hung I
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1028-44  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:56 PM

began, To Diomed, Lycaon's noble son: "Great son of Tydeus, warrior brave and skill'd, My shaft, it seems, has fail'd to reach thy life; Try we then now what hap attends my spear." He said; and, poising, hurl'd his pond'rous spear, And struck Tydides' shield; right through the shield Drove the keen weapon, and the breastplate reach'd. Then shouted loud Lycaon's noble son: "Thou hast it through the flank, nor canst thou long Survive the blow; great glory now is mine." To whom, unmov'd, the valiant Diomed: "Thine aim hath failed, I am not touch'd; and now I deem we part not hence till one of ye Glut with his blood th' insatiate Lord of War." He said: the spear, by Pallas guided, struck Beside the nostril, underneath the eye; Crash'd thro' the teeth, and cutting thro' the tongue Beneath the angle of the jaw came forth: Down from the car he fell; and loudly rang His glitt'ring arms: aside the startled steeds Sprang devious: from his limbs the spirit fled. Down leap'd AEneas, spear and shield in hand, Against the Greeks to guard the valiant dead; And like a lion, fearless in his strength, Around the corpse he stalk'd, this way and that, His spear and buckler round before him held, To all who dar'd approach him threat'ning death, With fearful shouts; a rocky fragment then Tydides lifted up, a mighty mass, Which scarce two men could raise, as men are now: But he, unaided, lifted it with ease. With this he smote AEneas near the groin, Where the thigh-bone, inserted in the hip, Turns in the socket-joint; the rugged mass The socket crush'd, and both the tendons broke, And tore away the flesh: down on his knees, Yet resting on his hand, the hero fell; And o'er his eyes the shades of darkness spread. Then had AEneas, King of men, been slain, Had not his mother, Venus, child of Jove, Who to Anchises, where he fed his flocks, The hero bore, his peril quickly seen: Around her son she threw her snowy arms, And with a veil, thick-folded, wrapt him round, From hostile spears to guard him, lest some Greek Should pierce his breast, and rob him of his life. She from the battle thus her son removed; Nor did the son of Capaneus neglect The strict injunction by Tydides giv'n; His reins attaching to the chariot-rail, Far from the battle-din he check'd, and left, His own fleet steeds; then rushing forward, seiz'd, And from the Trojans tow'rd the camp drove off, The sleek-skinn'd horses of AEneas' car.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1070-72  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:59 PM

The blue-ey'd Pallas, well I know, has urg'd Tydides to assail thee; fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life Who fights against the Gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field return'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Note Loc. 1072  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:59 PM

macbeth
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1102-5  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:03 PM

As when the wind from off a threshing-floor, Where men are winnowing, blows the chaff away; When yellow Ceres with the breeze divides The corn and chaff, which lies in whit'ning heaps; So thick the Greeks were whiten'd o'er with dust, Which to the brazen vault of Heav'n arose Beneath the horses' feet, that with the crowd Were mingled, by their drivers turn'd to flight.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1231-37  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:19 PM

Whom answer'd thus the Cloud-compeller, Jove, With look indignant: "Come no more to me, Thou wav'ring turncoat, with thy whining pray'rs: Of all the Gods who on Olympus dwell I hate thee most; for thou delight'st in nought But strife and war; thou hast inherited Thy mother, Juno's, proud, unbending mood, Whom I can scarce control; and thou, methinks, To her suggestions ow'st thy present plight. Yet since thou art my offspring, and to me Thy mother bore thee, I must not permit That thou should'st long be doom'd to suffer pain; But had thy birth been other than it is, For thy misdoings thou hadst long ere now Been banish'd from the Gods' companionship." He said: and straight to Paeon gave command To heal the wound; with soothing anodynes He heal'd it quickly; soon as liquid milk Is curdled by the fig-tree's juice, and turns In whirling flakes, so soon was heal'd the wound.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Bookmark Loc. 1243  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:20 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1417-33  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 08:02 PM

Glanton crossed in front of his horse, passing the reins behind his back. Watch her, Cap. She bites. She had raised her eyes to the level of his knees. Glanton pushed the horse back and took one of the heavy saddle pistols from its scabbard and cocked it. Watch yourself there. Several of the men stepped back. The woman looked up. Neither courage nor heartsink in those old eyes. He pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired. The explosion filled all that sad little park. Some of the horses shied and stepped. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy. Glanton had already put the pistol at halfcock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and was preparing to recharge the cylinder. McGill, he said. A Mexican, solitary of his race in that company, came forward. Get that receipt for us. He took a skinning knife from his belt and stepped to where the old woman lay and took up her hair and twisted it about his wrist and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp. Glanton looked at the men. They were stood some looking down at the old woman, some already seeing to their mounts or their equipage. Only the recruits were watching Glanton. He seated a pistolball in the mouth of the chamber and then he raised his eyes and looked across the square. The juggler and his family stood aligned like witnesses and beyond them in the long mud facade faces that had been watching from the doors and the naked windows dropped away like puppets in a gallery before the slow sweep of his eyes. He levered the ball home and capped the piece and spun the heavy pistol in his hand and returned it to the scabbard at the horse's shoulder and took the dripping trophy from McGill and turned it in the sun the way a man might qualify the pelt of an animal and then handed it back and took up the trailing reins and led his horse out through the square toward the water at the ford.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 92 | Loc. 4248-50  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 05:18 PM

mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 92 | Loc. 4248-55  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 05:19 PM

mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.” “It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s singular character. “No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4126-35  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 09:41 PM

enclosure of walls seemed to defy the fury of the Goths, and the usual garrison had been strengthened by a reenforcement of ten thousand men. But there are not any advantages capable of supplying the absence of discipline and vigilance. The numerous garrison of Trebizond, dissolved in riot and luxury, disdained to guard their impregnable fortifications. The Goths soon discovered the supine negligence of the besieged, erected a lofty pile of fascines, ascended the walls in the silence of the night, and entered the defenceless city sword in hand. A general massacre of the people ensued, whilst the affrighted soldiers escaped through the opposite gates of the town. The most holy temples, and the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. The booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense: the wealth of the adjacent countries had been deposited in Trebizond, as in a secure place of refuge. The number of captives was incredible, as the victorious barbarians ranged without opposition through the extensive province of Pontus. The rich spoils of Trebizond filled a great fleet of ships that had been found in the port. The robust youth of the sea-coast were chained to the oar; and the Goths, satisfied with the success of their first naval expedition, returned in triumph to their new establishment in the kingdom of Bosphorus.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4241-48  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 09:52 PM

Valerian was reduced to the necessity of intrusting his life and dignity to the faith of an enemy. The interview ended as it was natural to expect. The emperor was made a prisoner, and his astonished troops laid down their arms. In such a moment of triumph, the pride and policy of Sapor prompted him to fill the vacant throne with a successor entirely dependent on his pleasure. Cyriades, an obscure fugitive of Antioch, stained with every vice, was chosen to dishonor the Roman purple; and the will of the Persian victor could not fail of being ratified by the acclamations, however reluctant, of the captive army. The Imperial slave was eager to secure the favor of his master by an act of treason to his native country. He conducted Sapor over the Euphrates, and, by the way of Chalcis, to the metropolis of the East. So rapid were the motions of the Persian cavalry, that, if we may credit a very judicious historian, the city of Antioch was surprised when the idle multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements of the theatre. The splendid
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4328-34  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 02:52 PM

The lieutenants of Valerian were grateful to the father, whom they esteemed. They disdained to serve the luxurious indolence of his unworthy son. The throne of the Roman world was unsupported by any principle of loyalty; and treason against such a prince might easily be considered as patriotism to the state. Yet if we examine with candor the conduct of these usurpers, it will appear, that they were much oftener driven into rebellion by their fears, than urged to it by their ambition. They dreaded the cruel suspicions of Gallienus; they equally dreaded the capricious violence of their troops. If the dangerous favor of the army had imprudently declared them deserving of the purple, they were marked for sure destruction; and even prudence would counsel them to secure a short enjoyment of empire, and rather to try the fortune of war than to expect the hand of an executioner.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4337-40  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 02:53 PM

The apprehensions of Saturninus were justified by the repeated experience of revolutions. Of the nineteen tyrants who started up under the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace, or a natural death. As soon as they were invested with the bloody purple, they inspired their adherents with the same fears and ambition which had occasioned their own revolt.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4534-41  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:47 PM

The pestilence which swept away such numbers of the barbarians, at length proved fatal to their conqueror. After a short but glorious reign of two years, Claudius expired at Sirmium, amidst the tears and acclamations of his subjects. In his last illness, he convened the principal officers of the state and army, and in their presence recommended Aurelian, one of his generals, as the most deserving of the throne, and the best qualified to execute the great design which he himself had been permitted only to undertake. The virtues of Claudius, his valor, affability, justice, and temperance, his love of fame and of his country, place him in that short list of emperors who added lustre to the Roman purple. Those virtues, however, were celebrated with peculiar zeal and complacency by the courtly writers of the age of Constantine, who was the great grandson of Crispus, the elder brother of Claudius. The voice of flattery was soon taught to repeat, that gods, who so hastily had snatched Claudius from the earth, rewarded his merit and piety by the perpetual establishment of the empire in his family.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4558-62  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:50 PM

The reign of Aurelian lasted only four years and about nine months; but every instant of that short period was filled by some memorable achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire. It was the rigid attention of Aurelian, even to the minutest articles of discipline, which bestowed such uninterrupted success on his arms.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4575-82  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:52 PM

the Gothic and Vandalic tribes embraced the favorable opportunity, abandoned their settlements of the Ukraine, traversed the rivers, and swelled with new multitudes the destroying host of their countrymen. Their united numbers were at length encountered by Aurelian, and the bloody and doubtful conflict ended only with the approach of night. Exhausted by so many calamities, which they had mutually endured and inflicted during a twenty years' war, the Goths and the Romans consented to a lasting and beneficial treaty. It was earnestly solicited by the barbarians, and cheerfully ratified by the legions, to whose suffrage the prudence of Aurelian referred the decision of that important question. The Gothic nation engaged to supply the armies of Rome with a body of two thousand auxiliaries, consisting entirely of cavalry, and stipulated in return an undisturbed retreat, with a regular market as far as the Danube, provided by the emperor's care, but at their own expense. The treaty was observed with such
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 143-47  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 09:53 AM

Chaos erupted inside and outside of the garage. People ran everywhere. Little Birds and Black Hawks filled the skies with deafening rotor blasts. I was in my own little world, though. Nothing existed outside my scope and my mission. Let the Unit guys handle their business in the garage. My business was reaching out and touching the enemy. This wasn’t the first time I’d killed for my country. It wouldn’t be the last.
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 152-72  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 09:56 AM

A year earlier I’d been stationed at SEAL Team Six in Virginia Beach, Virginia. While on standby, I wore my hair longer than standard navy regulations, so I could travel anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice without being marked as military. Usually I stayed clean-shaven. When I deployed with SEAL Team Two to Norway, I wore a beard, but normally I didn’t like wearing facial hair. Waiting for a callout, I practiced my skills in a building called the “kill house,” used for urban counterterrorist training, and on the shooting range. After standby would come three months in individual training phase, when we could go off to school: Bill Rogers’s shooting academy, driving school, free climbing, or whatever we put in for. The great thing about being at SEAL Team Six was that I got to go to almost any of the best schools anywhere I wanted. Training phase was also a good opportunity to take leave, maybe a vacation with the family, especially for those returning from an overseas deployment. Then came three months of getting together for Team training: diving, parachuting, and shooting school—each part of training followed by a simulated operation using the skill recently trained in. *   *   * One night I was sitting in a pizza place called the Ready Room (the same place Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn stood outside of arguing in the movie Navy SEALs) talking about golf with my seven-year-old son, Blake, and a playful grizzly bear of a guy nicknamed Smudge. In the background, a Def Leppard tune was playing on the jukebox. We inhaled a pepperoni, sausage, and onion pizza—my favorite. When on standby, I wasn’t allowed to drink more than two beers. In SEAL Team Six, we took the limit seriously. Our drink was Coors Light. Whenever traveling in groups, my Teammates and I used the cover story that we were members of the Coors Light skydiving team—our explanation for why thirty buff guys, most of us good-looking, would walk into a bar wearing Teva flip-flops, shorts, tank tops, and a Spyderco CLIPIT knife in our front pocket. Every time we walked into a bar, the men started changing their drinks to Coors Light. Then the women would begin drinking Coors Light. Coors should’ve sponsored us. The cover worked well because if people asked us about skydiving, we could answer any question. Besides, our story was too preposterous not to be real.
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 193-97  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 10:02 AM

Three SEAL snipers joined me: Casanova, Little Big Man, and Sourpuss. In the Teams, many of the guys went by nicknames. Some guys called me Waz-man. Others had tried to call me Howie, but that didn’t stick because I wouldn’t answer to it. Sometimes a guy gets his nickname for doing something really stupid—there’s a reason a guy gets named “Drippy.” Other times a difficult name like Bryzinski becomes “Alphabet.” A Team Two friend of mine was called “Tripod.”
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6511-30  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 04:10 PM

"Wait a minute," Dawes said. "I have something for him to try." Fergesson waited wearily, as Dawes groped inside his coarse gray shirt. He fumbled and brought out something wrapped in old newspaper. It was a cup, a wooden drinking cup, crude and ill-shaped. There was a strange wry smile on his face as he squatted down and placed the cup in front of the Biltong. Charlotte watched, vaguely puzzled. "What's the use? Suppose he does make a print of it." She poked listlessly at the rough wooden object with the toe of her slipper. "It's so simple you could duplicate it yourself." Fergesson started. Dawes caught his eye -- for an instant the two men gazed at each other, Dawes smiling faintly, Fergesson rigid with burgeoning understanding. "That's right," Dawes said. "I made it." Fergesson grabbed the cup. Trembling, he turned it over and over. "You made it with what? I don't see how! What did you make it out of?" "We knocked down some trees." From his belt, Dawes slid something that gleamed metallically, dully, in the weak sunlight. "Here -- be careful you don't cut yourself." The knife was as crude as the cup -- hammered, bent, tied together with wire. "You made this knife?" Fergesson asked, dazed. "I can't believe it. Where do you start? You have to have tools to make this. It's a paradox!" His voice rose with hysteria. "It isn't possible!" Charlotte turned despondently away. "It's no good -- you couldn't cut anything with that." Wistfully, pathetically, she added, "In my kitchen I had that whole set of stainless steel carving knives -- the best Swedish steel. And now they're nothing but black ash." There were a million questions bursting in Fergesson's mind. "This cup, this knife -- there's a group of you? And that material you're wearing -- you wove that?"
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6612-18  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 04:14 PM

Dawes arranged three objects on the ash. The exquisite Steuben glassware, his own crude wooden drinking cup and the blob, the botched print the dying Biltong had attempted. "This is the way is was," he said, indicating the Steuben cup. "Someday it'll be that way again. . . but we're going up the right way -- the hard way -- step by step, until we get back there." He carefully replaced the glassware back in its metal box. "We'll keep it -- not to copy, but as a model, as a goal. You can't grasp the difference now, but you will." He indicated the crude wooden cup. "That's where we are right now. Don't laugh at it. Don't say it's not civilization. It is -- it's simple and crude, but it's the real thing. We'll go up from here."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6674-78  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 05:54 PM

He sat on the park bench, eye half shut, wasted lips twisted in a snarl of bitterness and defeat. Nobody was interested in a decrepit half-blind old man. Nobody wanted to hear his garbled, rambling tales of the battles he had fought and strategies he had witnessed. Nobody seemed to remember the war that still burned like a twisting, corroding fire in the decaying old man's brain. A war he longed to speak of, if he could only find listeners.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 7909-27  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 02:05 AM

"They didn't call it politics, back in those days. The industrialists hammered away at the people to buy and consume. It centered around this hair-sweat-teeth purity; the city people got it and developed an ideology around it." Betty set the table and brought in the dishes of food. "You mean the Purist political movement was deliberately started?" "They didn't realize what a hold it was getting on them. They didn't know their children were growing up to take such things as underarm perspiration and white teeth and nice-looking hair as the most important things in the world. Things worth fighting and dying for. Things important enough to kill those who didn't agree." "The Naturalists were country people?" "People who lived outside the cities and weren't conditioned by the stimuli." Walsh shook his head irritably. "Incredible, that one man will kill another over trivialities. All through history men murdering each other over verbal nonsense, meaningless slogans instilled in them by somebody else -- who sits back and benefits." "It isn't meaningless if they believe in it." "It's meaningless to kill another man because he has halitosis! It's meaningless to beat up somebody because he hasn't had his sweat glands removed and artificial waste-excretion tubes installed. There's going to be senseless warfare; the Naturalists have weapons stored up at party headquarters. Men'll be just as dead as if they died for something real." "Time to eat, dear," Betty said, indicating the table. "I'm not hungry." "Stop sulking and eat. Or you'll have indigestion, and you know what that means."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 8053  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 02:12 AM

consumerism taken to absurdextreme
takeover of companies
surrealism
robots
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2732-36  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 10:11 PM

"Sad!" Lehrer bristled. "Good riddance." There: that had been the foremost eccentric and idiot of the world. All Lehrer needed was the opportunity to rub shoulders with a follower of the newly parasitic Anarch. He shivered, recalling from his professional eclectic books -- examining at the library the accounts of mid-twentieth century race violence; out of the riots, lootings and killings of those days had come Sebastian Peak, originally a lawyer, then a master spellbinder, at last a religious fanatic with his own devout following. . . a following which extended over the planet, although operating primarily in the F.N.M. environs.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2754-59  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 10:13 PM

"You must recall. But that's so. You're under Phase, here. I'm oriented in the opposite, normal time-direction; therefore what for you will soon happen is for me an experience of the immediate past. My immediate past. May I take a few minutes of your time? I could well be of great use to you, sir." The man chuckled. " 'Your time.' Well-put, if I do say so. Yes, decidedly your time, not mine. Just consider that this visit by myself took place yesterday." Again he smiled his mechanical smile -- and mechanical it was; Niehls now perceived the small but brilliant
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2887-94  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 11:48 PM

On a tree branch a butterfly had begun the intricate, mysterious process of squeezing itself into a dull brown cocoon, and Eng paused to inspect its slow, labored efforts. It had its task, too, but that task, unlike his, was not hopeless. However the butterfly did not know that; it continued mindlessly, a reflex machine obeying the urgings programmed into it from the remote future. The sight of the insect at work gave Eng something to ponder; he perceived the moral in it, and, turning, walked back to confront the child who squatted on the grass with his circle of gaily-colored luminous marbles. "Look at it this way," he said to the Anarch Peak; this was probably his last try, and he meant to bring in everything available. "Even if you can't remember what a swabble is or what the Hobart Phase does, all you need to do is sign; I have the document here."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3003-16  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 11:59 PM

"This is extremely difficult," the Bard said, with agitation. "Eng will probably throw together his first swabble at any moment. And once more we will be cycled in a retrograde direction." What worried him now was one terrible, swift insight. This would occur again and again, and each time the interval would be shortened further. Until, he ruminated, it becomes a stall within a single microsecond; no time-progression in either direction will be able to take place. A morbid prospect indeed. But one redemptive factor existed. Eng undoubtedly would perceive the problem, too. And he would seek a way out. Logically, it could be solved by him in at least one way: he could voluntarily abstain from inventing the swabble. The Hobart Phase, then, would never assert itself, at least not effectively But such a decision lay with Ludwig Eng alone. Would he cooperate, if the idea were presented to him? Probably not. Eng had always been a violent and autistic man; no one could influence him. This, of course, had helped him become an original personality; without this Eng would not have amounted to anything as an inventor, and the swabble, with its enormous effect on contemporary society, would never have come into existence. Which would have been a good thing, the Bard thought morosely. But until now we could not appreciate this. He appreciated it now.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3059-65  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:02 AM

"Tell him I died in office," Lehrer said harshly. "But you can't die, sir. You're under the Hobart Phase. And Mr. Arbuthnot knows that, because he mentioned it. He's been sitting out here doing a Hobart type horoscope on you, and he predicts that great things have happened to you during the previous year. Frankly he makes me nervous; some of his predictions sound so accurate." "Fortune-telling about the past doesn't interest me," Lehrer said. "In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's a hoax. Only the future is knowable." The man is a crank, all right, Lehrer realized.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3072-81  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:03 AM

Undoubtedly, Ludwig Eng did not intend to show up. The time, Lehrer said to himself, must be two o'clock by now. He glanced at his wristwatch. And blinked. The watch hands semaphored two-forty. "Miss Tomsen," Lehrer said into the intercom, "What time do you have?" "Leaping J. Lizards," Miss Tomsen said. "It's earlier than I thought. I distinctly recall it being two-twenty just a moment ago. My watch must have stopped." "You mean it's later than you thought. Two-forty is later than two-thirty." "No sir, if you don't resent my disagreeing with you. I mean, it's not my place to tell you what's what, but I am right. You can ask anybody. I'll ask this gentleman out here. Mr. Arbuthnot, isn't two-forty earlier than two-twenty?" Over
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3148-57  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:19 AM

The wind, rushing about, gathered up a quantity of leaves, swirled them onto the branches of the trees, adhered them in a neat arrangement which decidedly added to the beauty of the trees. Already, some of the brown leaves had turned green. In a short while autumn would give way to summer, and summer to spring. He watched appreciatively. As he waited for the Erad sent out by the syndicate. Due to the crank's deranged thesis, time had once more returned to normal. Except -- Lehrer rubbed his chin. Bristles. He frowned. "Miss Tomsen," he said into the intercom, "will you step in here and tell me whether or not I need a shave?" He had a feeling that he did. And soon. Probably within the previous half hour.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3247-62  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:26 PM

"Without feedback the computer does not possess any method of determining that there has been no counterattack by its military arm. In the abeyance it will have to assume that the counterattack has taken place, but that the enemy strike was at least partially successful." Stafford said, "But there is no enemy. Who's attacking us?" Silence. Sweat made Stafford's forehead slick with moisture. "Do you know what would cause a Genux-B to conclude that we're under attack? A million separate factors, all possible known data weighed, compared, analyzed -- and then the absolute gestalt. In this case, the gestalt of an imminent attacking enemy. No one thing would have raised the threshold; it was quantitative. A shelter-building program in Asiatic Russia, unusual movements of cargo ships around Cuba, concentrations of rocket freight unloadings in Red Canada. . ." "No one," the man at the controls of the flapple said placidly, "no nation or group of persons either on Terra or Luna or Domed Mars is attacking anybody. You can see why we've got to get you over there fast. You have to make it absolutely certain that no orders emanate from Genux-B to SAC. We want Genux-B sealed off so it can't talk to anybody in a position of authority and it can't hear anybody besides us. What we do after that we'll worry about then. 'But the evil of the day --' " "You assert that in spite of everything available to it, Genux-B can't distinguish an attack on us?" Stafford demanded. "With its manifold data-collecting sweepers?" He thought of something then, that terrified him in a kind of hopeless, retrospective way. "What about our attack on France in '82 and then on little Israel in '89?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3288-91  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:29 PM

"And you're certain," Stafford said, "that we're not under attack?" Even if Genux-B had been wrong both times before, it at least theoretically could be right this time. "If we are about to be attacked," the nearest FBI man said, "we can't make out any indication of it -- by human data processing, anyhow.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3338-40  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:32 PM

genuine threat faces us --" "I wonder," Stafford said slowly, pondering, "what's meant by 'artificial' color."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3404-20  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:41 PM

"What you're doing," the engineer said, "is implicitly maintaining that Genux-B is functioning properly. That it's somehow right; there is a hostile warlike menace to us. One so great it justifies pacification of Northern California by hard first-line weapons. As I see it, isn't it easier simply to operate from the fact that the computer is malfunctioning?" Stafford, as they walked down the familiar corridors of the vast government building, said, "Genux-B was built to sift a greater amount of data simultaneously than any man or group of men could. It handles more data than we, and it handles them faster. Its response comes in microseconds. If Genux-B, after analyzing all the current data, feels that war is indicated, and we don't agree, then it may merely show that the computer is functioning as it was intended to function. And the more we disagree with it, the better this is proved. If we could perceive, as it does, the need for immediate, aggressive war on the basis of the data available, then we wouldn't require Genux-B. It's precisely in a case like this, where the computer has given out a Red Alert and we see no menace, that the real use of a computer of this class comes into play." After a pause, one of the FBI men said, as if speaking to himself, "He's right, you know. Absolutely right. The real question is, Do we trust Genux-B more than ourselves? Okay, we built it to analyze faster and more accurately and on a wider scale than we can. If it had been a success, this situation we face now is precisely what could have been predicted. We see no cause for launching an attack; it does." He grinned harshly. "So what do we do? Start Genux-B up again, have it go ahead and program SAC into a war? Or do we neutralize it -- in other words, unmake it?" His eyes were cold and alert on Stafford. "A decision one way or the other has to be made by someone. Now. At once. Someone who can make a good educated guess as to which it is, functioning or malfunctioning."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3421-28  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:42 PM

"An ultimate decision like this has to be his. He bears the moral responsibility." "But the decision," the engineer spoke up, "is not a moral question, Stafford. It only looks like it is. Actually the question is only a technical one. Is Genux-B working properly or has it broken down?" And that's why you rousted me from bed, Stafford realized with a thrill of icy dismal grief. You didn't bring me here to implement your jerry-built jamming of the computer. Genux-B could be neutralized by one shell from one rocket launcher towed up and parked outside the building. In fact, he realized, in all probability it's effectively neutralized now. You can keep that Phillips screwdriver wedged in there forever. And you helped design and build the thing. No, he realized, that's not it. I'm not here to repair or destroy; I'm here to decide.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3431-37  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:43 PM

A diagnosis, he realized. That's all you want. This is a consultation of computer doctors -- and one repairman. The decision evidently lay with the repairman, because the others had given up. He wondered how much time he had. Probably very little. Because if the computer were correct -- Sidewalk gum machines, he pondered. Penny-operated. For kids. And for that it's willing to pacify all Northern California. What could it possibly have extrapolated? What, looking ahead, did Genux-B see?
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3464-76  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:45 PM

"I have one more spurious datum I want to feed it," Stafford said. Again he put a card in the typewriter and began to punch. IT APPEARS NOW THAT THERE NEVER WAS AN INDIVIDUAL NAMED HERBERT SOUSA; NOR DID THIS MYTHOLOGICAL PERSON EVER GO INTO THE PENNY GUM MACHINE BUSINESS. As he rose to his feet, Stafford said, "That should cancel out everything Genux-B knows or ever did know about Sousa and his penny-ante operation." As far as the computer was concerned, the man had been retroactively expunged. In which case, how could the computer initiate war against a man who had never existed, who operated a marginal concession which also never existed? A few moments later the engineer, tensely monitoring the output signal of Genux-B, said, "Now there's been a change." He studied his oscilloscope, then accepted the reel of tape being voided by the computer and began a close inspection of that, too. For a time he remained silent, intent on the job of reading the tape; then all at once he glanced up and grinned humorously at the rest of them. He said, "It says that the datum is a lie."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3478-82  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:45 PM

"A lie!" Stafford said unbelievingly. The engineer said, "It's discarded the last datum on the grounds that it can't be true. It contradicts what it knows to be valid. In other words, it still knows that Herb Sousa exists. Don't ask me how it knows this; probably it's an evaluation from wide-spectrum data over an extensive period of time." He hesitated, then said, "Obviously, it knows more about Herb Sousa then we do."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3487-89  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:46 PM

"What it must be doing," he said to the engineer, "is to go on the assumption if if X is true, that Sousa never existed, then Y must be true -- whatever 'Y' is. But Y remains untrue. I wish we knew which of all its millions of data units Y is."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3493-3509  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:47 PM

"Instruct it to produce its stored data inventory on Herb Sousa. All of it." The engineer kept his voice deliberately patient. "God knows what it's sitting on. And once we get it, let's look it over and see if we can spot what it spotted." Typing the proper requisition, Stafford fed the card to Genux-B. "It reminds me," one of the FBI men said reflectively, "of a philosophy course I took at U.C.L.A. There used to be an ontological argument to prove the existence of God. You imagine what He would be like, if He existed: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immortal, plus being capable of infinite justice and mercy." "So?" the engineer said irritably. "Then, when you've imagined Him possessing all those ultimate qualities, you notice that He lacks one quality. A minor one - a quality which every germ and stone and piece of trash by the freeway possesses. Existence. So you say: If He has all those others, He must possess the attribute of being real. If a stone can do it, obviously He can." He added, "It's a discarded theory; they knocked it down back in the Middle Ages. But" -- he shrugged -- "it's interesting." "What made you think of that at this particular time?" the engineer demanded. "Maybe," the FBI man said, "there's no one fact or even cluster of facts about Sousa that prove to Genux-B he exists. Maybe it's all the facts. There may be just plain too many. The computer had found, on the basis of past experience, that when so much data exists on a given person, that person must be genuine. After all, a computer of the magnitude of Genux-B is capable of learning; that's why we make use of it."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3617-25  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:52 PM

The engineer, paying attention to his headphones, interrupted all at once. "An answer's coming." He began rapidly to scribble; the others collected around him to see. HERBERT SOUSA OF SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, IS THE DEVIL. SINCE HE IS THE INCARNATION OF SATAN ON EARTH, PROVIDENCE DEMANDS HIS DESTRUCTION. I AM ONLY AN AGENCY, A SO TO SPEAK CREATURE, OF THE DIVINE MAJESTY, AS ARE ALL OF YOU. There was a pause as the engineer waited, clenching the ballpoint metal government-issue pen, and then he spasmodically added: UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY IN HIS PAY AND THEREFORE WORKING FOR HIM. Convulsively, the engineer tossed the pen against the far wall. It bounced, rolled off, disappeared. No one spoke.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3627-37  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:52 PM

The engineer said finally, "We have here a sick, deranged piece of electronic junk. We were right. Thank God we caught it in time. It's psychotic. Cosmic, schizophrenic delusions of the reality of archetypes. Good grief, the machine regards itself as an instrument of God! It has one more of those 'God talked to me, yes, He truly did' complexes." "Medieval," one of the FBI men said, with a twitch of enormous nervousness. He and his group had become rigid with tension. "We've uncovered a rat's nest with that last question. How'll we clear this up? We can't let this leak out to the newspapers; no one'll ever trust a GB-class system again. I don't. I wouldn't." He eyed the computer with nauseated aversion. Stafford wondered, What do you say to a machine when it acquires a belief in witchcraft? This isn't New England in the seventeenth century. Are we supposed to make Sousa walk over hot coals without being burned? Or get dunked without drowning? Are we supposed to prove to Genux-B that Sousa is not Satan? And if so, how? What would it regard as proof? And where did it get the idea in the first place?
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3692-3719  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 05:06 PM

A machine, he thought. Believing in the Evil Spirit entrenched solidly on Earth. A mass of solid-state circuitry diving deep into age-old theology, with divine creation and miracles on one side and the diabolic on the other. Plunged back into the Dark Ages, and by a man-made electronic construct, not by one of us humans. And they say humans are prone to error. When he returned home that night -- after participating in the dismantling of every Genux-B-style computer on Earth -- seven colored spheres of candy-coated gum lay in a group of the vanity table, waiting for him. It would create quite a gum empire, he decided as he scrutinized the seven bright balls, all the same color. Not much overhead, to say the least. And no dispenser would ever become empty -- not at this rate. Going to the vidphone, he picked up the receiver and began to dial the emergency number which the FBI men had given him. And then reluctantly hung up. It was beginning to look as if the computer had been right, hard as that was to admit. And it had been his decision to go ahead and dismantle it. But the other part was worse. How could he report to the FBI that he had in his possession seven candy-coated balls of gum? Even if they did divide. That in itself would be even harder to report. Even if he could establish that they consisted of illegal -- and rare -- nonterrestrial primitive life forms smuggled to Terra from God knew what bleak planet. Better to live and let live. Perhaps their reproduction cycle would settle down; perhaps after a period of swift binary fission they would adapt to a terran environment and stabilize. After that he could forget about it. And he could flush them down the incinerator chute of his conapt. He did so. But evidently he missed one. Probably, being round, it had rolled off the vanity table. He found it two days later, under the bed, with fifteen like it. So once more he tried to get rid of them all -- and again he missed one; again he found a new nest the following day, and this time he counted forty of them. Naturally, he began to chew up as many as possible -- and as fast. And he tried boiling them -- at least the ones he could find -- in hot water. He even tried spraying them with an indoor insect bomb. At the end of a week, he had 15,832 of them filling the bedroom of his conapt. By this time chewing them out of existence, spraying them out of existence, boiling them out of existence -- all had become impractical. At the end of the month, despite having a scavenger truck haul away as much as it could take, he computed that he owned two million. Ten days later -- from a pay phone down at the corner -- he fatalistically called the FBI. But by then they were no longer able to answer the vidphone.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 8223-32  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 09:11 PM

Half to himself, Fred Doubledome said, "It's psychotic, all right. I asked it if it knew where it was and it said it was floating on a raft in the Mississippi. Now get a confirm for me; ask it who it is." Dr. Pacemaker touched command-request buttons on the console of the vast computer, asking it: WHO ARE YOU? The answer appeared on the vidscreen at once. TOM SAWYER "You see?" Doubledome said. "It is totally out of touch with the reality situation. Has reactivation of Ms. Simpson begun?" "That's affirmative, Doubledome," Pacemaker said. And, as if proving him correct, doors slid aside to reveal the lead-lined container in which Ms. Simpson slept, listening to her favorite daytime soap opera, Ma Perkins.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 8416-21  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 10:20 PM

Once he had experienced vague dreams. They had to do with giving to the poor. In high school he had read Charles Dickens and a vivid idea of the oppressed had fixed itself in his mind to the point where he could see them: all those who did not have a one-room apartment and a job and a high school education. Certain vague place names had floated through his head, gleaned from TV, places like India, where heavy-duty machinery swept up the dying. Once a teaching machine had told him, You have a good heart. That amazed him -- not that a machine would say so, but that it would say it to him. A girl had told him the same thing. He marveled at this. Vast forces colluding to tell him that he was not a bad person! It was a mystery and a delight.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9247-51  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 10:57 PM

McVane turned on the dome's vacuum circuit and it sucked up the spilled tea. He said nothing. He felt amorphous anger all through him, directed at nothing, fury without object, and he sensed that this was the quality of her own hate: it was a passion which went both nowhere and everywhere. Hate, he thought, like a flock of flies. God, he thought, how I want out of here. How I hate to hate like this, hating spilled tea with the same venom as I hate terminal illness. A one-dimensional universe. It has dwindled to that.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9672-83  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:34 PM

After a pause, Martine said, "Call Ray." "The cat --" he said. "What cat?" "There." He pointed. "In the poster. On Fat Freddy's lap. That's Dorky. Dorky killed Ray." Silence. "The presence told me," Kemmings said. "It was God. I didn't realize it at the time, but God saw me commit the crime. The murder. And he will never forgive me." His wife stared at him numbly. "God sees everything you do," Kemmings said. "He sees even the falling sparrow. Only in this case it didn't fall; it was grabbed. Grabbed out of the air and torn down. God is tearing this house down which is my body, to pay me back for what I've done. We should have had a building contractor look this house over before we bought it. It's just falling goddam to pieces. In a year there won't be anything left of it. Don't you believe me?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9696-9705  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:35 PM

"Just a moment," the ship said. "I'm not equipped to do psychiatric reconstruction of you; I am a simple mechanism, that's all. What is it you want? Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing?" "I want to arrive at our destinalion," Kemmings said. "I want this trip to be over." Ah, the ship thought. That is the solution. One by one the cryonic systems shut down. One by one the people returned to life, among them Victor Kemmings. What amazed him was the lack of a sense of the passage of time. He had entered the chamber, lain down, had felt the membrane cover him and the temperature begin to drop -- And now he stood on the ship's external plaiform, the unloading plalform, gazing down at a verdant planetary landscape. This, he realized, is LR4-6, the colony world to which I have come in order to begin a new life.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9762-72  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:37 PM

"You could hardly have a memory of completing the trip." "Wish fulfillment, then. It's the same thing. I'll prove it to you. Do you have a screwdriver?" "Why?" Kemmings said, "I'll remove the back of the TV set and you'll see; there's nothing inside it; no components, no parts, no chassis -- nothing." "I don't have a screwdriver." "A small knife, then. I can see one in your surgical supply bag." Bending, Kemmings lifted up a small scalpel. "This will do. If I show you, will you believe me?" "If there's nothing inside the TV cabinet --" Squatting down, Kemmings removed the screws holding the back panel of the TV set in place. The panel came loose and he set it down on the floor.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 10059-64  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:10 PM

"Both propositions are true," I said. "It is a genuine window on the next world and it is a presentation of Rautavaara's own cultural racial propensities." What we had, in essence, was a model into which we could introduce carefully selected variables. We could introduce into Rautavaara's brain our own conception of the Guide of the Soul, and thereby see how our rendition differed practically from the puerile one of the Earth persons'. This was a novel opportunity to test our own theology. In our opinion, the Earth persons' had been tested sufficiently and been found wanting.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 10065  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:11 PM

emerging theme of these stories ss
eems to be mentality and subjectivity. internalness.

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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 10137-43  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:15 PM

It is striking, the gulf which separates races developing in different star systems. We have tried to understand the Earth persons and we have failed. We are aware, too, that they do not understand us and are appalled in turn by some of our customs. This was demonstrated in the Rautavaara Case. But were we not serving the purposes of detached scientific study? I myself was amazed at Rautavaara's reaction when the Savior ate Mr. Travis. I would have wished to see this most holy of the sacraments fulfilled with the others, with Rautavaara and Elms as well. But we were deprived of this. And the experiment, from our standpoint, failed. And we live now, too, under the ban of unnecessary moral blame.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.2 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 79-82  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:19 PM

The Earth reduced to a nuclear ash heap. Robot weapons systems evolving towards baleful anti-empathetic pseudo-life. Human freedom ground down in the name of military security, economic prosperity, or even order for its own sake. Interpenetrating realities. Ironic time-loops and paradoxes. Ordinary people holding ordinary jobs as the heroes and heroines trying to muddle through.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.2 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 112-20  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:21 PM

Paranoia, in some respects, I think, is a modern-day development of an ancient, archaic sense that animals still have -- quarry-type animals -- that they're being watched. . . I say paranoia is an atavistic sense. It's a lingering sense, that we had long ago, when we were -- our ancestors were -- very vulnerable to predators, and this sense tells them they're being watched. And they're being watched probably by something that's going to get them. . . And often my characters have this feeling. But what really I've done is, I have atavized their society. That although it's set in the future, in many ways they're living -- there is a retrogressive quality in their lives, you know? They're living like our ancestors did. I mean, the hardware is in the future, the scenery's in the future, but the situations are really from the past. -- Philip K. Dick in an interview, 1974
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 94-99  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:27 PM

Think of Tung Chien in Faith of Our Fathers, and Ragel Gumm in Time Out of Joint. Their prosaic drudgery proves central to the fate of their worlds. Recall Herb Ellis in Prominent Author, an ordinary guy rewrites the Old Testament for inch-tall goatherds. Reflect on the significance of Herb Sousa's gumballs in Holy Quarrel; on the moral influence of wub-fur, in NotBy Its Cover, and the battle with the sentient pinball machine in Return Match. Small is written large. Large is written small. Shop clerks and storekeepers are just as likely as warlords and messiahs to be at Dick's ontological foci. Old Mrs. Berthelsen, in Captive Market, possesses the ultimate secret of time and space, and uses it to sell vegetables out of a wagon.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 105-11  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:29 PM

Perhaps Dick, who began his writing career in Berkeley, California, absorbed the sensibilities of a town that had a carefully nurtured liberal commitment. Perhaps Joe McCarthy and the Korean War sensitized a beginning writer's imagination. We know little of his juvenile years during the Second World War. But we can identify, early and consistently, a mistrust of the military mentality, a fear of what he had seen of the total war machine on either side. He had a great disinclination to accept the slogans of the period that supported the ends over the means. Victory at all cost for Democracy, for Freedom, for the Flag are hollow aphorisms when the price of victory is totalitarian submission to a heartless military bureaucracy: Phil feared this particular future for all of us.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 203  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

wings time machine stability
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 599  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

toy soldiers movement
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1028  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:32 PM

self repairing gun as sole artifact of a civilization
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1437-49  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:37 PM

"The First Church has an interesting past," he said. "I suppose you are familiar with it, but I'd like to speak of a few points that are of relevancy to us. "It was in the twentieth century that the Movement began -- during one of the periodic wars. The Movement developed rapidly, feeding on the general sense of futility, the realization that each war was breeding greater war, with no end in sight. The Movement posed a simple answer to the problem: Without military preparations -- weapons -- there could be no war. And without machinery and complex scientific technocracy there could be no weapons. "The Movement preached that you couldn't stop war by planning for it. They preached that man was losing to his machinery and science, that it was getting away from him, pushing him into greater and greater wars. Down with society, they shouted. Down with factories and science! A few more wars and there wouldn't be much left of the world. "The Founder was an obscure person from a small town in the American Middle West. We don't even know his name. All we know is that one day he appeared, preaching a doctrine of non-violence, non-resistance; no fighting, no paying taxes for guns, no research except for medicine. Live out your life quietly, tending your garden, staying out of public affairs; mind your own business. Be obscure, unknown, poor. Give away most of your possessions, leave the city. At least that was what developed from what he told the people."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1457-62  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:38 PM

"But the wars," Conger said. "About them?" "The wars? Well, there were no more wars. It must be acknowledged that the elimination of war was the direct result of non-violence practiced on a general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value, perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war the mass of useless, incompetent mankind, without training or intelligence, is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers; like storms and earthquakes and droughts, it was nature's way of eliminating the unfit.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1467-75  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:38 PM

They crossed the dark roof. "Doubtless you now know whom those bones belonged to, who it is that we are after. He has been dead just two centuries, now, this ignorant man from the Middle West, this Founder. The tragedy is that the authorities of the time acted too slowly. They allowed him to speak, to get his message across. He was allowed to preach, to start his cult. And once such a thing is under way, there's no stopping it. "But what if he had died before he preached? What if none of his doctrines had ever been spoken? It took only a moment for him to utter them, that we know. They say he spoke just once, just one time. Then the authorities came, taking him away. He offered no resistance; the incident was small." The Speaker turned to Conger. "Small, but we're reaping the consequences of it today."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1486-90  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:39 PM

The Speaker nodded. "You will be instructed on the use of the gun and the operation of the cage. You will be given all data we have on the time and location. The exact spot was a place called Hudson's field. About 1960 in a small community outside Denver, Colorado. And don't forget -- the only means of identification you will have will be the skull. There are visible characteristics of the front teeth, especially the left incisor --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1567-80  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:42 PM

He walked back through the main section of town, past the library, past the grocery store. It would not be hard; the hard part was over. He would go there; rent a room, prepare to wait until the man appeared. He turned the corner. A woman was coming out of a doorway loaded down with packages. Conger stepped aside to let her pass. The woman glanced at him. Suddenly her face turned white. She stared, her mouth open. Conger hurried on. He looked back. What was wrong with her? The woman was still staring; she had dropped the packages to the ground. He increased his speed. He turned a second corner and went up a side street. When he looked back again the woman had come to the entrance of the street and was starting after him. A man joined her, and the two of them began to run toward him. He lost them and left town, striding quickly, easily, up into the hills at the edge of town. When he reached the cage he stopped. What had happened? Was it something about his clothing? His dress? He pondered. Then, as the sun set, he stepped into the cage. Conger sat before the wheel. For a moment he waited, his hands resting lightly on the control. Then he turned the wheel, just a little, following the control readings carefully. The grayness settled down around him.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1789-98  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:50 PM

Conger looked toward the shelf. There was the neat package. He took it down and unwrapped it. He held the skull in his hands, turning it over. In spite of himself, a cold feeling rushed through him. This was the man's skull, the skull of the Founder, who was still alive, who would come here, this day, who would stand on the field not fifty yards away. What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and corroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring? What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? Better they should enjoy their temporary lives, while they still had them to enjoy. A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite --
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1887-99  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:53 PM

"Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!" "Let 'em have it!" "Toss a few A Bombs!" They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken." There was a flurry of murmuring. "I have a gun," he went on. "A very good one. Made by science even more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that, either." They were puzzled. "Why not?" someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1887-1902  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:54 PM

"Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!" "Let 'em have it!" "Toss a few A Bombs!" They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken." There was a flurry of murmuring. "I have a gun," he went on. "A very good one. Made by science even more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that, either." They were puzzled. "Why not?" someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why. Conger grinned. So he would escape death, the man who right now was voluntarily accepting it. They were laughing, laughing at a man who had a gun but didn't use it. But by a strange twist of science he would appear again, a few months later, after his bones had been buried under the floor of a jail.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1908-15  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:54 PM

A police car came on the edge of the field and stopped. The people retreated a little. Conger raised his hands. "I have an odd paradox for you," he said. "Those who take lives will lose their own. Those who kill, will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again!" They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, remember it. Smiling, Conger awaited a death foreordained.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1357  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:57 PM

back n time to kill The Founder. skull. reds. denver. sixties.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 230-72  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:03 PM

"What is it?" Bill demanded. "What's the matter, Doug?" Laura caught his arm. "What's wrong? Are you sick? Say something! Doug!" Professor Douglas jerked free and pulled open the front door. He stepped out onto the porch. There was a faint moon. A soft light hovered over everything. "Professor Douglas!" The voice again, sweet and fresh -- a girl's voice. Outlined by the moonlight, at the foot of the porch steps, stood a girl. Blonde-haired, perhaps twenty years old. In a checkered skirt, pale Angora sweater, a silk kerchief around her neck. She was waving at him anxiously, her small face pleading. "Professor, do you have a minute? Something terrible has gone wrong with. . ." Her voice trailed off as she moved nervously away from the house, into the darkness. "What's the matter?" he shouted. He could hear her voice faintly. She was moving off. Douglas was torn with indecision. He hesitated, then hurried impatiently down the stairs after her. The girl retreated from him, wringing her hands together, her full lips twisting wildly with despair. Under her sweater, her breasts rose and fell in an agony of terror, each quiver sharply etched by the moonlight. "What is it?" Douglas cried. "What's wrong?" He hurried angrily after her. "For God's sake, stand still!" The girl was still moving away, drawing him farther and farther away from the house, toward the great green expanse of lawn, the beginning of the campus. Douglas was overcome with annoyance. Damn the girl! Why couldn't she wait for him? "Hold on a minute!" he said, hurrying after her. He started out onto the dark lawn, puffing with exertion. "Who are you? What the hell do you --" There was a flash. A bolt of blinding light crashed past him and seared a smoking pit in the lawn a few feet away. Douglas halted, dumfounded. A second bolt came, this one just ahead of him. The wave of heat threw him back. He stumbled and half fell. The girl had abruptly stopped. She stood silent and unmoving, her face expressionless. There was a peculiar waxy quality to her. She had become, all at once, utterly inanimate. But he had no time to think about that. Douglas turned and lumbered back toward the house. A third bolt came, striking just ahead of him. He veered to the right and threw himself into the shrubs growing near the wall. Rolling and gasping, he pressed against the concrete side of the house, squeezing next to it as hard as he could. There was a sudden shimmer in the star-studded sky above him. A faint motion. Then nothing. He was alone. The bolts ceased. And -- The girl was gone, also. A decoy. A clever imitation to lure him away from the house, so he'd move out into the open where they could take a shot at him. He got shakily to his feet and edged around the side of the house. Bill Henderson and Laura and Berg were on the porch, talking nervously and looking around for him. There was his car, parked in the driveway. Maybe, if he could reach it -- He peered up at the sky. Only stars. No hint of them. If he could get in his car and drive off, down the highway, away from the mountains, toward Denver, where it was lower, maybe he'd be safe. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Only ten yards to the car. Thirty feet. If he could once get in it -- He ran. Fast. Down the path and along the driveway. He grabbed open the car door and leaped inside. With one quick motion he threw the switch and released the brake. The car glided forward. The motor came on with a sputter. Douglas bore down desperately on the gas. The car leaped forward. On the porch, Laura shrieked and started down the stairs. Her cry and Bill's startled shout were lost in the roar of the engine. A moment later he was on the highway, racing away from town, down the long, curving road toward Denver.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 326-32  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:04 PM

Douglas peered up. He couldn't see them, but they were there, waiting for him to get out of his car. His knowledge, his ability, would be utilized by an alien culture. He would become an instrument in their hands. All his learning would be theirs. He would be a slave and nothing more. Yet, in a way, it was a complement. From a whole society, he alone had been selected. His skill and knowledge, over everything else. A faint glow rose in his cheeks. Probably they had been studying him for some time. The great eye had no doubt often peered down through its telescope, or microscope, or whatever it was, peered down and seen him. Seen his ability and realized what that would be worth to its own culture.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 345-57  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:05 PM

Shapes. Two enormous shapes squatting down. Two incredibly huge figures bending over. One was drawing in the net. The other watched, holding something in its hand. A landscape. Dim forms too vast for Douglas to comprehend. At last, a thought came. What a struggle. It was worth it, thought the other creature. Their thoughts roared through him. Powerful thoughts, from immense minds. I was right. The biggest yet. What a catch! Must weigh all of twenty-four ragets! At last! Suddenly Douglas's composure left him. A chill of horror flashed through his mind. What were they talking about? What did they mean? But then he was being dumped from the net. He was falling. Something was coming up at him. A flat, shiny surface. What was it? Oddly, it looked almost like a frying pan.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 28  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:06 PM

nuclear physics professor eaten by aother race
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 28  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:26 PM

fair game ... nuclear physics professor eaten by aother race
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 360  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:30 PM

hanging stranger ... strangerhaging from lamppost to id non insect non fake humans
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 711  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:31 PM

the eyes have it ... various uses of eyes that lead one to think of them as aliens
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 3739  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:33 PM

to serve the master ... abandoned computer relic wit fake story to trick imtorebuilding
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4028-33  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:34 PM

"Try to understand, Fleming. By accustoming myself to everyday objects of my research period I transform my relation from mere intellectual curiosity to genuine empathy. You have frequently noticed I pronounce certain words oddly. The accent is that of an American businessman of the Eisenhower administration. Dig me?" "Eh?" Fleming muttered. "Dig me was a twentieth-century expression." Miller laid out his study spools on his desk. "Was there anything you wanted? If
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4033-38  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:35 PM

I've uncovered fascinating evidence to indicate that although twentieth-century Americans laid their own floor tiles, they did not weave their own clothing. I wish to alter my exhibits on this matter." "There's no fanatic like an academician," Fleming grated. "You're two hundred years behind times. Immersed in your relics and artifacts. Your damn authentic replicas of discarded trivia." "I love my work," Miller answered mildly.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4179-98  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:43 PM

Miller rubbed his forehead vaguely. "I don't know. It's all confused. I don't remember looking for any newspaper. I remember coming back in the house. Then it gets clear. But before that it's all tied up with the History Agency and my quarrel with Fleming." "What was that again about your briefcase? Go over that." "Fleming said it looked like a squashed Jurassic lizard. And I said --" "No. I mean, about looking for it in the closet and not finding it." "I looked in the closet and it wasn't there, of course. It's sitting beside my desk at the History Agency. On the Twentieth Century level. By my exhibits." A strange expression crossed Miller's face. "Good God, Grunberg. You realize this may be nothing but an exhibit? You and everybody else -- maybe you're not real. Just pieces of this exhibit." "That wouldn't be very pleasant for us, would it?" Grunberg said, with a faint smile. "People in dreams are always secure until the dreamer wakes up," Miller retorted. "So you're dreaming me," Grunberg laughed tolerantly. "I suppose I should thank you." "I'm not here because I especially like you. I'm here because I can't stand Fleming and the whole History Agency." Grunberg protested. "This Fleming. Are you aware of thinking about him before you went out looking for the newspaper?" Miller got to his feet and paced around the luxurious office, between the leather-covered chairs and the huge mahogany desk. "I want to face this thing. I'm an exhibit. An artificial replica of the past. Fleming said something like this would happen to me."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4281-93  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:47 PM

Fleming grunted sourly. "In other words, you're going to stay in there." "It's a pleasant place," Miller said easily. "Of course, my position is better than average. Let me describe it for you. I have an attractive wife: marriage is permitted, even sanctioned in this era. I have two fine kids -- both boys -- who are going up to the Russian River this weekend. They live with me and my wife -- we have complete custody of them. The State has no power of that, yet. I have a brand new Buick --" "Illusions," Fleming spat. "Psychotic delusions." "Are you sure?" "You damn fool! I always knew you were too ego-recessive to face reality. You and your anachronistic retreats. Sometimes I'm ashamed I'm a theoretician. I wish I had gone into engineering." Fleming's lips twitched. "You're insane, you know. You're standing in the middle of an artificial exhibit, which is owned by the History Agency, a bundle of plastic and wire and struts. A replica of a past age. An imitation. And you'd rather be there than in the real world." "Strange," Miller said thoughtfully. "Seems to me I've heard the same thing very recently. You don't know a Doctor Grunberg, do you? A psychiatrist."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4319-29  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:48 PM

"Of course. The exhibit is only a bridge, a link with the past. I passed through the exhibit, but I'm not there now. I'm beyond the exhibit." He grinned tightly. "Your demolition can't reach me. But seal me off, if you want. I don't think I'll be wanting to come back. I wish you could see this side, Carnap. It's a nice place here. Freedom, opportunity. Limited government, responsible to the people. If you don't like a job here you quit. There's no euthanasia, here. Come on over. I'll introduce you to my wife." "We'll get you," Carnap said. "And all your psychotic figments along with you." "I doubt if any of my 'psychotic figments' are worried. Grunberg wasn't. I don't think Marjorie is --" "We've already begun demolition preparations," Carnap said calmly. "We'll do it piece by piece, not all at once. So you may have the opportunity to appreciate the scientific and -- artistic way we take your imaginary world apart." "You're wasting your time,"
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4331-38  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:49 PM

In the living room he threw himself down in the easy chair and snapped on the television set. Then he went to the kitchen and got a can of ice cold beer. He carried it happily back into the safe, comfortable living room. As he was seating himself in front of the television set he noticed something rolled up on the low coffee table. He grinned wryly. It was the morning newspaper, which he had looked so hard for. Marjorie had brought it in with the milk, as usual. And of course forgotten to tell him. He yawned contentedly and reached over to pick it up. Confidently, he unfolded it -- and read the big black headlines. RUSSIA REVEALS COBALT BOMB TOTAL WORLD DESTRUCTION AHEAD
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 4015  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:49 PM

exhibit piece ... twentieth century exhibt time gate cobalt bmb world destruction
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4447-48  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:36 AM

The old woman's eyes flashed. "You people and your machines. See what you've done!" She jabbed a bony finger at him excitedly. "Now you have to fix it. You have to do something."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4515-24  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:40 AM

He built, and the more he built the more he enjoyed building. By now the city was over eighty miles deep and five miles in diameter. The whole island had been converted into a single vast city that honeycombed and interlaced farther each day. Eventually it would reach the land beyond the ocean; then the work would begin in earnest. To his right, a thousand methodically moving companions toiled silently on the structural support that was to reinforce the main breeding chamber. As soon as it was in place everyone would feel better; the mothers were just now beginning to bring forth their young. That was what worried him. It took some of the joy out ot building. He had seen one of the first born -- before it was quickly hidden and the thing hushed up. A brief glimpse of a bulbous head, foreshortened body, incredibly rigid extensions. It shrieked and wailed and turned red in the face. Gurgled and plucked aimlessly and kicked its feet. In horror, somebody had finally mashed the throwback with a rock. And hoped there wouldn't be any more.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 4341  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:41 AM

the crawlers ... subterranean human species branch. caused by radiation lab.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 3160  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:36 AM

holy qarrel ... supercomputer n control of military sets off red alert over gumball machines
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8172  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:42 AM

the day mr computer fell out of its tree ... computer crazy because joe contemptible is crazy
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8352  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:45 AM

the exit door leadsin ... bob bibleman gets selected to attend military college remote place. trns out to be a test re classified information about engine.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8352  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:45 AM

the exit door leads in ... bob bibleman gets selected to attend military college remote place. trns out to be a test re classified information about engine.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9374  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:46 AM

strange memoriesof death ... apartment. lysol lady. paranoia. money separaing sane and insane. buying apartment.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8833  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:48 AM

chains of air web of aether ... technicians on remote stations. one gets sick. death spreading organism. 
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9492  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:49 AM

i hopei shall arrive soon ... ship suspended consciousness feeding memories depression last time real
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9919  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:51 AM

rautavaaras case ... plasma beings rescue human. brain still alive. afterlife experiment. our version of god
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 10145  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 12:03 PM

the alien mind ... ship is redirected off course. kills cat. lands. takes off.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 228-34  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:14 PM

"Isn't there some limiting injunction?" Ferine asked nervously. "Were they set up to expand indefinitely?" "Each factory is limited to its own operational area," O'Neill said, "but the network itself is unbounded. It can go on scooping up our resources forever. The Institute decided it gets top priority; we mere people come second." "Will there be anything left for us?" Morrison wanted to know. "Not unless we can stop the network's operations. It's already used up half a dozen basic minerals.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 282-87  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:17 PM

The factory representative moved toward the door. "Until such time as your community finds other sources of milk supply, the network will continue to supply you. Analytical and evaluating apparatus will remain in this area, conducting the customary random sampling." Ferine shouted futilely, "How can we find other sources? You have the whole setup! You're running the whole show!" Following after it, he bellowed, "You say we're not ready to run things -- you claim we're not capable. How do you know? You don't give us a chance! We'll never have a chance!"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 330-38  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:19 PM

"Ruins-squatters," O'Neill said gloomily. "Too far from the network -- not tangent to any of the factories." "It's their own fault," Morrison told him angrily. "They could come into one of the settlements." "That was their town. They're trying to do what we 're trying to do -- build up things again on their own. But they're starting now, without tools or machines, with their bare hands, nailing together bits of rubble. And it won't work. We need machines. We can't repair ruins; we've got to start industrial production." Ahead lay a series of broken hills, chipped remains that had once been a ridge. Beyond stretched out the titanic ugly sore of an H-bomb crater, half filled with stagnant water and slime, a disease-ridden inland sea.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 375-79  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:21 PM

"What happens when we've identified the missing element?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What happens when we've got two tangent factories short on the same material?" "Then," O'Neill said grimly, "we start collecting the material ourselves -- even if we have to melt down every object in the settlements."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 529-45  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 04:59 PM

A single battered ore-gathering cart was creeping clumsily toward the factory. One last damaged mobile unit trying to complete its task. The cart was virtually empty; a few meager scraps of metal lay strewn in its hold. A scavenger. . . the metal was sections ripped from destroyed equipment encountered on the way. Feebly, like a blind metallic insect, the cart approached the factory. Its progress was incredibly jerky. Every now and then, it halted, bucked and quivered, and wandered aimlessly off the path. "Control is bad," Judith said, with a touch of horror in her voice. "The factory's having trouble guiding it back." Yes, he had seen that. Around New York, the factory had lost its high-frequency transmitter completely. Its mobile units had floundered in crazy gyrations, racing in random circles, crashing against rocks and trees, sliding into gullies, overturning, finally unwinding and becoming reluctantly inanimate. The ore cart reached the edge of the ruined plain and halted briefly. Above it, the dot of black still circled the sky. For a time, the cart remained frozen. "The factory's trying to decide," Ferine said. "It needs the material, but it's afraid of that hawk up there." The factory debated and nothing stirred. Then the ore cart again resumed its unsteady crawl. It left the tangle of vines and started out across the blasted open plain. Painfully, with infinite caution, it headed toward the slab of dark concrete and metal at the base of the mountains. The hawk stopped circling. "Get down!" O'Neill said sharply. "They've got those rigged with the new bombs."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 109  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 05:17 PM

autofac .. automatic factory that wont stop producing. war started. multilevel plant. bottom is generating miniature factories.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 995-1001  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:11 PM

"And your job," Pesbroke muttered, "is to keep the swibbles working?" "They do get out of adjustment, left to themselves." "Isn't it a kind of paradox?" Pesbroke pursued. "The swibbles keep us in adjustment, and we keep them in adjustment. . . it's a closed circle." The repairman was intrigued. "Yes, that's an interesting way of putting it. But we must keep control over the swibbles, of course. So they don't die." He shivered. "Or worse."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1009-19  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:13 PM

"The swibble has direct access to human minds?" Anderson asked, fascinated. "Naturally. It's an artificially evolved telepathic metazoan. And with it, Wright solved the basic problem of modern times: the existence of diverse, warring ideological factions, the presence of disloyalty and dissent. In the words of General Steiner's famous aphorism: War is an extension of the disagreement from the voting booth to the battlefield. And the preamble of the World Service Charter: war, if it is to be eliminated, must be eliminated from the minds of men, for it is in the minds of men that disagreement begins. Up until 1963, we had no way to get into the minds of men. Up until 1963, the problem was unsolvable." "Thank God," Fay said clearly. The repairman failed to hear her; he was carried away by his own enthusiasm. "By means of the swibble, we've managed to transform the basic sociological problem of loyalty into a routine technical matter: to the mere matter of maintenance and repair. Our only concern is keep the swibbles functioning correctly; the rest is up to them."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1405-18  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:05 PM

Masterson and Crowley looked uneasily at each other. "She sure is mad," Masterson said apprehensively. Tellman hurried up, glanced at the old woman getting into her truck, and then bent down to root around in one of the cartons of groceries. Childish greed flushed across his thin face. "Look," he gasped. "Coffee -- fifteen pounds of it. Can we open some? Can we get one tin open, to celebrate?" "Sure," Crowley said tonelessly, his eyes on the truck. With a muffled roar, the truck turned in a wide arc and rumbled off down the crude platform, toward the ash. It rolled off into the ash, slithered for a short distance, and then faded out. Only the bleak, sun-swept plain of darkness remained. "Coffee!" Tellman shouted gleefully. He tossed the bright metal can high in the air and clumsily caught it again. "A celebration! Our last night -- last meal on Earth!" It was true. As the red pickup truck jogged metallically along the road, Mrs Berthelson scanned "ahead" and saw that the men were telling the truth. Her thin lips writhed; in her mouth an acid taste of bile rose. She had taken it for granted that they would continue to buy -- there was no competition, no other source of supply. But they were leaving. And when they left, there would be no more market.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1467-76  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:08 PM

On Masterson's shattered face glittered the first stirrings of hysteria. "Do you think--" "No, Crowley muttered. "It isn't possible." Masterson began to giggle. Tears streaked the grime of his cheeks; drops of thick moisture dripped down his neck into his charred collar. "She did it. She fixed us. She wants us to stay here." "No," Crowley repeated. He shut out the thought. It couldn't be. It just couldn't, "We'll get away," he said. "We'll assemble the remains -- start over." "She'll be back," Masterson quavered. "She knows we'll be here waiting for her. Customers!" "No," Crowley said. He didn't believe it; he made himself not believe it. "We'll get away. We've got to get away!"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 672  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:09 PM

service call ... service for unknown device by service man from future. 
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 1096  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:10 PM

captive market ... woman travels through time to find a captive market
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 831  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:54 PM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 826-35  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:55 PM

The Optus went off, wordless. Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank. "How's it coming?" he asked. He looked at his watch. "We got a good bargain here." The mate glanced at him sourly. "How do you explain that?" "What's the matter with you? We need it more than they do." "I'll see you later, Captain." The mate threaded his way up the plank, between the long-legged Martian go-birds, into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it. "My God!" He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by a string.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 864-77  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:56 PM

"Let's have a look at it." He advanced, squinting critically. "You got this for fifty cents?" "Yes, sir," Peterson said. "It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain and it liked that. And then potatoes, and mash, and scraps from the table, and milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats it lies down and goes to sleep." "I see," Captain Franco said. "Now, as to its taste. That's the real question. I doubt if there's much point in fattening it up any more. It seems fat enough to me already. Where's the cook? I want him here. I want to find out --" The wub stopped lapping and looked up at the Captain. "Really, Captain," the wub said. "I suggest we talk of other matters." The room was silent. "What was that?" Franco said. "Just now." "The wub, sir," Peterson said. "It spoke." They all looked at the wub. "What did it say? What did it say?" "It suggested we talk about other things."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 880-90  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:57 PM

"Oh, goodness!" the wub cried. "Is that all you people can think of, killing and cutting?" Franco clenched his fists. "Come out of there! Whoever you are, come out!" Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belched suddenly. "I beg your pardon," the wub said. "I don't think there's anyone in there," Jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other. The cook came in. "You wanted me, Captain?" he said. "What's this thing?" "This is a wub," Franco said. "It's to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out --" "I think we should have a talk," the wub said. "I'd like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 903-13  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:57 PM

"And you speak English? You've been in contact with Earthmen before?" "No." "Then how do you do it?" "Speak English? Am I speaking English? I'm not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind --" "My mind?" "I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it --" "I see," the Captain said. "Telepathy. Of course." "We are a very old race," the wub said. "Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run, too soft to fight, too good-natured to hunt for game --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 924-32  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:58 PM

"Indeed." The Captain nodded. "But to get back to the problem. . ." "Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes? Eat me? Rather you should discuss questions with me, philosophy, the arts --" The Captain stood up. "Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage --" "I know." The wub nodded. "But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws, or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts one vote
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 937-44  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:59 PM

The room was quiet. "So you see," the wub said, "we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar, Odysseus --" Peterson sat silently, staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair. "Go on," he said. "Please go on." "I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 973-78  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:00 PM

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the wub said. "Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native --" The gun jerked. "See," Franco said. "I thought so."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 973-87  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:00 PM

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the wub said. "Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native --" The gun jerked. "See," Franco said. "I thought so." The wub settled down, panting. It put its paws out, pulling its tail around it. "It is very warm," the wub said. "I understand that we are close to the jets. Atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it -- technically. Apparently your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to solve moral, ethical --" Franco turned to the men, crowding behind him, wide-eyed, silent. "I'll do it. You can watch." French nodded. "Try to hit the brain. It's no good for eating. Don't hit the chest. If the rib cage shatters, we'll have to pick bones out." "Listen," Peterson said, licking his lips. "Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I'm asking you. And anyhow, it's still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn't belong to you."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1013-26  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:02 PM

"It is only organic matter, now," he said. "The life essence is gone." He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. "I, myself, love to eat. It is one of the greatest things that a living creature can enjoy. Eating, resting, meditation, discussing things." Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The Captain drank some water and sighed. "Well," he said. "I must say that this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true -- the taste of wub. Very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this in times past." He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table. The Captain watched him intently. He leaned over. "Come, come," he said. "Cheer up! Let's discuss things." He smiled. "As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in the myths --" Peterson jerked up, staring. "To go on," the Captain said. "Odysseus, as I understand him --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2912-24  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:09 AM

One day he and the Professor had been sitting together in the school chapel, talking leisurely. "Well, you'll be out of school, soon," the Professor had said. "What are you going to do?" "Do? Work at one of the Government Research Projects, I suppose." "And eventually? What's your ultimate goal?" Kramer had smiled. "The question is unscientific. It presupposes such things as ultimate ends." "Suppose instead along these lines, then: What if there were no war and no Government Research Projects? What would you do, then?" "I don't know. But how can I imagine a hypothetical situation like that? There's been war as long as I can remember. We're geared for war. I don't know what I'd do. I suppose I'd adjust, get used to it." The Professor had stared at him. "Oh, you do think you'd get accustomed to it, eh? Well, I'm glad of that. And you think you could find something to do?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3137-40  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:55 AM

"I don't doubt that. My conception, my plan, came to me as soon as you began to describe your project, that day at my house. I saw at once that you were wrong; you people have no understanding of the mind at all. I realized that the transfer of a human brain from an organic body to a complex artificial spaceship would not involve the loss of the intellectualization faculty of the mind. When a man thinks, he is.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3145-53  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:56 AM

The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so. "But is it innate in mankind? I don't think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well. "But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us. "But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and to
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3145-53  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:56 AM

The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so. "But is it innate in mankind? I don't think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well. "But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us. "But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and to --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3163-67  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:46 AM

That would be time enough, sufficient to see the direction of the new colony. After that -- Well, after that it would be up to the colony itself. "Which is just as well, of course. Man must take control eventually, on his own. One hundred years, and after that they will have control of their destiny. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps war is more than a habit. Perhaps it is a law of the universe, that things can only survive as groups by group violence.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 16  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:50 AM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 2475  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:50 AM

mr spaceship ... old man brain in ship new eden
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2044-55  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 11:05 AM

The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting. "We are interested in learning something," Franks said. "Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?" "No. The war continues." The leady's voice was automatic and toneless. "We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some --" "That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there's too much room for error." "Error?" the leady asked. "In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they're sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2073-87  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:12 PM

He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped -- Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady! "Good God!" Taylor said. "But it's radioactive!" The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully. "OK, sir," one of them said to Franks. "It's as cold as a long winter evening." "Good. I was sure, but I didn't want to take any chances." "You see," Moss said to Taylor, "this leady isn't hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed." "But what does it mean?" Taylor asked blankly. "It may be an accident," Franks said. "There's always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it's happened that we know of. There may be others." "The second time?" "The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2116-21  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:13 PM

He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light. "It looks real," he murmured. "Ruins, deadness, slag. It's convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven't seen it for ourselves, not after the first months. . . ." "What are you talking about?" "Nothing." He put the paper down. "I'm leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let's turn in."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2186-2211  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:27 PM

"This is Security," Franks said. "Have an A-class sent to me at once." The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around. "Obey!" Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. "You've been ordered!" The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two Class-A leadies appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front. "From the Surface Council," Franks whispered tensely. "This is above ground, all right. Get set." The two leadies approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down. "I'm Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to --" "This is incredible," one leady interrupted him coldly. "You know you can't live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can't possibly remain on the surface." "These suits will protect us," Franks said. "In any case, it's not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?" "You human beings can't survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger." "We know that. Please assemble the Council." Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. "Is it night or day right now?" "Night," one of the A-class leadies said, after a pause. "Dawn is coming in about two hours." Franks nodded. "We'll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it." A stir went through the leadies. "It is an unpleasant sight," one of the leadies said. "You've seen the photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-27  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:29 PM

"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here --" "We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise." "If you insist."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-36  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:29 PM

"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here --" "We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise." "If you insist." There was silence. The leadies seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound. "For your own good," the leader said at last, "you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good." "We are human beings," Franks said sharply. "Don't you understand? We're men, not machines." "That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore --" The leadies moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2237-2306  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM

"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary." "What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. "Shall we blast them?" Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go back." He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking. At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if --" "Here comes the car," Taylor said. There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it. "I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit." The car rose to the surface. Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men. Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came off just right." The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse. "Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared." "Very carefully," Franks said. They closed in. "How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands --" The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies. "They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff. They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember that." They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out. Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them. Franks breathed a shuddering sigh. "All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be long now." The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks.and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows. "Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not in here." A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily. "Come on," Franks said. "Outside." He walked out through the door, the others following him. They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible. "It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it's the last thing we see --" "Watch," Franks snapped. They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed. "A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?" Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them. "God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed. Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them. "Look!" Moss whispered. Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind. Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them. "Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface --" "Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased. You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up." "But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below, "Why?" "You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2237-2308  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM

"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary." "What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. "Shall we blast them?" Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go back." He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking. At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if --" "Here comes the car," Taylor said. There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it. "I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit." The car rose to the surface. Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men. Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came off just right." The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse. "Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared." "Very carefully," Franks said. They closed in. "How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands --" The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies. "They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff. They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember that." They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out. Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them. Franks breathed a shuddering sigh. "All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be long now." The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks.and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows. "Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not in here." A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily. "Come on," Franks said. "Outside." He walked out through the door, the others following him. They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible. "It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it's the last thing we see --" "Watch," Franks snapped. They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed. "A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?" Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them. "God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed. Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them. "Look!" Moss whispered. Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind. Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them. "Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface --" "Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased. You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up." "But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below, "Why?" "You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 2308  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2308-11  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:34 PM

"We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2311-21  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:35 PM

"At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost -- not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind. "It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him." Taylor was listening intently. "Do you think this time will come?" "Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture -- a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2463-70  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:45 PM

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles. "It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history." "The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy. "The meaning of life," Moss added. "Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2463-74  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:45 PM

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles. "It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history." "The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy. "The meaning of life," Moss added. "Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor. The leady opened the door of the ship. "All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great." The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1916  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:46 PM

the defenders ... underground.robots on surface. leadies. new civilization.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 85-120  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:56 PM

An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close on to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a cigar even in this nomadic house of God and he seemed to have removed his hat only to chase the rain from it for now he put it on again. The reverend had stopped his sermon altogether. There was no sound in the tent. All watched the man. He adjusted the hat and then pushed his way forward as far as the crateboard pulpit where the reverend stood and there he turned to address the reverend's congregation. His face was serene and strangely childlike. His hands were small. He held them out. Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an imposter. He holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised. He is altogether devoid of the least qualification to the office he has usurped and has only committed to memory a few passages from the good book for the purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the piety he despises. In truth, the gentleman standing here before you posing as a minister of the Lord is not only totally illiterate but is also wanted by the law in the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Oh God, cried the reverend. Lies, lies! He began reading feverishly from his opened bible. On a variety of charges the most recent of which involved a girl of eleven years—I said eleven—who had come to him in trust and whom he was surprised in the act of violating while actually clothed in the livery of his God. A moan swept through the crowd. A lady sank to her knees. This is him, cried the reverend, sobbing. This is him. The devil. Here he stands. Let's hang the turd, called an ugly thug from the gallery to the rear. Not three weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas for having congress with a goat. Yes lady, that is what I said. Goat. Why damn my eyes if I wont shoot the son of a bitch, said a man rising at the far side of the tent, and drawing a pistol from his boot he leveled it and fired. The young teamster instantly produced a knife from his clothing and unseamed the tent and stepped outside into the rain. The kid followed. They ducked low and ran across the mud toward the hotel. Already gunfire was general within the tent and a dozen exits had been hacked through the canvas walls and people were pouring out, women screaming, folk stumbling, folk trampled underfoot in the mud. The kid and his friend reached the hotel gallery and wiped the water from their eyes and turned to watch. As they did so the tent began to sway and buckle and like a huge and wounded medusa it slowly settled to the ground trailing tattered canvas walls and ratty guyropes over the ground. The baldheaded man was already at the bar when they entered. On the polished wood before him were two hats and a double handful of coins. He raised his glass but not to them. They stood up to the bar and ordered whiskeys and the kid laid his money down but the barman pushed it back with his thumb and nodded. These here is on the judge, he said. They drank. The teamster set his glass down and looked at the kid or he seemed to, you couldnt be sure of his gaze. The kid looked down the bar to where the judge stood. The bar was that tall not every man could even get his elbows up on it but it came just to the judge's waist and he stood with his hands placed flatwise on the wood, leaning slightly, as if about to give another address. By now men were piling through the doorway, bleeding, covered in mud, cursing. They gathered about the judge. A posse was being drawn to pursue the preacher. Judge, how did you come to have the goods on that no-account? Goods? said the judge. When was you in Fort Smith? Fort Smith? Where did you know him to know all that stuff on him? You mean the Reverend Green? Yessir. I reckon you was in Fort Smith fore ye come out here. I was never in Fort Smith in my life. Doubt that he was. They looked from one to the other. Well where was it you run up on him? I never laid eyes on the man before today. Never even heard of him. He raised his glass and drank. There was a strange silence in the room. The men looked like mud effigies. Finally someone began to laugh. Then another. Soon they were all laughing together. Someone bought the judge a drink.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 171-83  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:07 PM

You got a match? The kid searched his pockets and came up with a crushed and stained wooden box. The man took it from him. Need a little tinder here, he said. He was crumbling the box and stacking the bits against the door. He struck a match and set the pieces alight. He pushed the little pile of burning wood under the door and added more matches. Is he in there? said the boy. That's what we're fixin to see. A dark curl of smoke rose, a blue flame of burning varnish. They squatted in the hallway and watched. Thin flames began to run up over the panels and dart back again. The watchers looked like forms excavated from a bog. Tap on the door now, said Toadvine. The kid rose. Toadvine stood up and waited. They could hear the flames crackling inside the room. The kid tapped. You better tap louder than that. This man drinks some. He balled his fist and lambasted the door about five times. Hell fire, said a voice. Here he comes. They waited. You hot son of a bitch, said the voice. Then the knob turned and the door opened. He stood in his underwear holding in one hand the towel he'd used to turn the doorknob with. When he saw them he turned and started back into the room but Toadvine seized him about the neck and rode him to the floor and held him by the hair and began to pry out an eyeball with his thumb. The man grabbed his wrist and bit it.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 191-93  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:08 PM

Toadvine was running down the street, waving his fists above his head crazily and laughing. He looked like a great clay voodoo doll made animate and the kid looked like another. Behind them flames were licking at the top corner of the hotel and clouds of dark smoke rose into the warm Texas morning.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 311-14  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:51 PM

His eyes lay dark and tunneled in a caved and haunted face and a foul stench rose from the wells of his boot tops. The sun was just down and to the west lay reefs of bloodred clouds up out of which rose little desert nighthawks like fugitives from some great fire at the earth's end. He spat a dry white spit and clumped the cracked wooden stirrups against the mule's ribs and they staggered into motion again.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 595-96  | Added on Wednesday, June 06, 2012, 10:14 PM

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. He had been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again and turned and went out the gate.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 634  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:01 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 635-38  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:01 PM

On this day two men fell sick and one died before dark. In the morning there was another ill to take his place. The two of them were laid among sacks of beans and rice and coffee in the supply-wagon with blankets over them to keep them from the sun and they rode with the slamming and jarring of the wagon half shirring the meat from their bones so that they cried out to be left and then they died. The men turned out in the early morning darkness to dig their graves with the bladebones of antelope and they covered them with stones and rode on again.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 657-63  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:04 PM

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 739-87  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:30 PM

What do you make of that, Captain? I make it a parcel of heathen stockthieves is what I make it. What do you? Looks like it to me. The captain watched through the glass. I suppose they've seen us, he said. They've seen us. How many riders do you make it? A dozen maybe. The captain tapped the instrument in his gloved hand. They dont seem concerned, do they? No sir. They dont. The captain smiled grimly. We may see a little sport here before the day is out. The first of the herd began to swing past them in a pall of yellow dust, rangy slatribbed cattle with horns that grew agoggle and no two alike and small thin mules coalblack that shouldered one another and reared their malletshaped heads above the backs of the others and then more cattle and finally the first ofthe herders riding up the outer side and keeping the stock between themselves and the mounted company. Behind them came a herd of several hundred ponies. The sergeant looked for Candelario. He kept backing along the ranks but he could not find him. He nudged his horse through the column and moved up the far side. The lattermost of the drovers were now coming through the dust and the captain was gesturing and shouting. The ponies had begun to veer off from the herd and the drovers were beating their way toward this armed company met with on the plain. Already you could see through the dust on the ponies' hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes niade from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. Oh my god, said the sergeant. A rattling drove of arrows passed through the company and men tottered and dropped from their mounts. Horses were rearing and plunging and the mongol hordes swung up along their flanks and turned and rode full upon them with lances. The company was now come to a halt and the first shots were fired and the gray riflesmoke rolled through the dust as the lancers breached their ranks. The kid's horse sank beneath him with a long pneumatic sigh. He had already fired his rifle and now he sat on the ground and fumbled with his shotpouch. A man near him sat with an arrow hanging out of his neck. He was bent slightly as if in prayer. The kid would have reached for the bloody hoop-iron point but then he saw that the man wore another arrow in his breast to the fletching and he was dead. Everywhere there were horses down and men scrambling and he saw a man who sat charging his rifle while blood ran from his ears and he saw men with their revolvers disassembled trying to fit the spare loaded cylinders they carried and he saw men kneeling who tilted and clasped their shadows on the ground and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. Among the wounded some seemed dumb and without understanding and some were pale through the masks of dust and some had fouled themselves or tottered brokenly onto the spears of the savages. Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows. And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 796-802  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 11:45 AM

With darkness one soul rose wondrously from among the new slain dead and stole away in the moonlight. The ground where he'd lain was soaked with blood and with urine from the voided bladders of the animals and he went forth stained and stinking like some reeking issue of the incarnate dam of war herself. The savages had moved to higher ground and he could see the light from their fires and hear them singing, a strange and plaintive chanting up there where they'd gone to roast mules. He made his way among the pale and dismembered, among the sprawled and legflung horses, and he took a reckoning by the stars and set off south afoot. The night wore a thousand shapes out there in the brush and he kept his eyes to the ground ahead. Starlight and waning moon made a faint shadow of his wanderings on the dark of the desert and all along the ridges the wolves were howling and moving north toward the slaughter. He walked all night and still he could see the fires behind him.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 833-36  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 11:48 AM

They went slowly through the little mud streets. There were goats and sheep slain in their pens and pigs dead in the mud. They passed mud hovels where people lay murdered in all attitudes of death in the doorways and the floors, naked and swollen and strange. They found plates of food half eaten and a cat came out and sat in the sun and watched them without interest and flies snarled everywhere in the still hot air.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 941-49  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:19 PM

He swung the stopper up from where it hung by a thong and drove it home with the heel of his hand. He pitched the canteen to the man behind him and looked down at the travelers. Why you no hide? he said. From you? From I. We were thirsty. Very thirsty. Eh? They didnt answer. He was tapping the flat of the sword lightly against the horn of his saddle and he seemed to be forming words in his mind. He leaned slightly to them. When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf. He smiled at them and raised the sword and ran it back where it had come from and turned the horse smartly and trotted it through the horses behind him and the men mounted up and followed and soon all were gone. Sproule sat without moving. The kid looked at him but he would look away. He was wounded in an enemy country far from home and although his eyes took in the alien stones about yet the greater void beyond seemed to swallow up his soul.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1053-55  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:47 PM

the birds holding out their own dark vestments in postures of strange benevolence while about them flapped on the wind the dried scalps of slaughtered indians strung on cords, the long dull hair swinging like the filaments of certain seaforms and the dry hides clapping against the stones.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1056-60  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:48 PM

They passed old alms-seekers by the church door with their seamy palms outheld and maimed beggars sad-eyed in rags and children asleep in the shadows with flies walking their dreamless faces. Dark coppers in a clackdish, the shriveled eyes of the blind. Scribes crouched by the steps with their quills and inkpots and bowls of sand and lepers moaning through the streets and naked dogs that seemed composed of bone entirely and vendors of tamales and old women with faces dark and harrowed as the land squatting in the gutters over charcoal fires where blackened strips of anonymous meat sizzled and spat.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1056-63  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:48 PM

They passed old alms-seekers by the church door with their seamy palms outheld and maimed beggars sad-eyed in rags and children asleep in the shadows with flies walking their dreamless faces. Dark coppers in a clackdish, the shriveled eyes of the blind. Scribes crouched by the steps with their quills and inkpots and bowls of sand and lepers moaning through the streets and naked dogs that seemed composed of bone entirely and vendors of tamales and old women with faces dark and harrowed as the land squatting in the gutters over charcoal fires where blackened strips of anonymous meat sizzled and spat. Small orphans were abroad like irate dwarfs and fools and sots drooling and flailing about in the small markets of the metropolis and the prisoners rode past the carnage in the meatstalls and the waxy smell where racks of guts hung black with flies and flayings of meat in great red sheets now darkened with the advancing day and the flensed and naked skulls of cows and sheep with their dull blue eyes glaring wildly and the stiff bodies of deer and javelina and ducks and quail and parrots, all wild things from the country round hanging head downward from hooks.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1246-49  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:52 PM

First through the Trojan phalanx broke his way The son of Telamon, the prop of Greece, The mighty Ajax; on his friends the light Of triumph shedding, as Eusorus' son He smote, the noblest of the Thracian bands, Valiant and strong, the gallant Acamas. Full in the front, beneath the plumed helm, The sharp spear struck, and crashing thro' the bone, The warrior's eyes were clos'd in endless night.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1257-68  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:54 PM

Then Menelaus, good in battle, took Adrastus captive; for his horses, scar'd And rushing wildly o'er the plain, amid The tangled tamarisk scrub his chariot broke, Snapping the pole; they with the flying crowd Held city-ward their course; he from the car Hurl'd headlong, prostrate lay beside the wheel, Prone on his face in dust; and at his side, Poising his mighty spear, Atrides stood. Adrastus clasp'd his knees, and suppliant cried, "Spare me, great son of Atreus! for my life Accept a price; my wealthy father's house A goodly store contains of brass, and gold, And well-wrought iron; and of these he fain Would pay a noble ransom, could he hear That in the Grecian ships I yet surviv'd." His words to pity mov'd the victor's breast; Then had he bade his followers to the ships The captive bear; but running up in haste. Fierce Agamemnon cried in stern rebuke; "Soft-hearted Menelaus, why of life So tender? Hath thy house receiv'd indeed Nothing but benefits at Trojan hands? Of that abhorred race, let not a man Escape the deadly vengeance of our arms; No, not the infant in its mother's womb; No, nor the fugitive; but be they all, They and their city, utterly destroy'd, Uncar'd for, and from mem'ry blotted out." Thus as he spoke, his counsel, fraught with death, His brother's purpose chang'd; he with his hand Adrastus thrust aside, whom with his lance Fierce Agamemnon through the loins transfix'd; And, as he roll'd in death, upon his breast Planting his foot, the ashen spear withdrew.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1304-7  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 01:03 PM

Nine days he feasted him, nine oxen slew; But with the tenth return of rosy morn He question'd him, and for the tokens ask'd He from his son-in-law, from Proetus, bore. The tokens' fatal import understood, He bade him first the dread Chimaera slay; A monster, sent from Heav'n, not human born, With head of lion, and a serpent's tail, And body of a goat; and from her mouth There issued flames of fiercely-burning fire: Yet her, confiding in the Gods, he slew.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Bookmark Loc. 1326  | Added on Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:46 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 1073  | Added on Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:47 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 1447  | Added on Sunday, June 24, 2012, 12:44 PM


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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 112-13  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:45 PM

By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 112-15  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:45 PM

By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn't brought down on us yet is a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both. . . but he still has time, and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 127-28  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:46 PM

which is understandable, perhaps, because when you're locked into that kind of do-or-die gig, you keep pushing and ask questions later.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 147-52  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:48 PM

And how much longer will we have to wait before some high-powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face-to-face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it? Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn't worked out, to hell with it. That milkman who made me his bagman was no fool. I took my orders from him and it never 11 occurred to me to wonder where his came from.
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Soul Music (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 48-52  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 02:57 PM

Miss Butts knew how to handle these occasions. It was painful, but the thing ran its course. There was shock, and tears, and then, eventually, it was all over. People had ways of dealing with it. There was a sort of script built into the human mind. Life went on. But the child had just sat there. It was the politeness that scared the daylights out of Miss Butts. She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn’t going.
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2013

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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 41-46  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 06:03 PM

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. “How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood. And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 50-51  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 06:04 PM

now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 219-21  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 06:16 PM

I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 240-44  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 06:18 PM

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 295-96  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 06:21 PM

When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 390-94  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:33 PM

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a chapter of SIMON CALLED PETER.—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 464-80  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:37 PM

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room. “I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost married a little kyke who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s ‘way below you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.” “Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn’t marry him.” “I know I didn’t.” “Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the difference between your case and mine.” “Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.” Myrtle considered. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.” “You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine. “Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.” She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past. “The only CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. ‘oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘this is the first I ever heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 489-94  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:39 PM

“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 593-99  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:48 PM

“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany,” he assured us positively. “Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.” As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. “You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.” She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 604-7  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:48 PM

“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half-hour. “This is much too polite for me.” We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 652-59  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:51 PM

“I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.” He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 790-95  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:59 PM

At first I was flattered to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and every one knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning—and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached the proportions of a scandal—then died away.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 797-803  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 08:59 PM

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man’s coat.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 803-12  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 09:00 PM

“You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.” “I am careful.” “No, you’re not.” “Well, other people are,” she said lightly. “What’s that got to do with it?” “They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.” “Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.” “I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.” Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 815  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 09:00 PM

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1112-20  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:23 PM

“I have been glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car.” “It’s too late.” “Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming-pool? I haven’t made use of it all summer.” “I’ve got to go to bed.” “All right.” He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness. “I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to call up Daisy to-morrow and invite her over here to tea.” “Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” “What day would suit you?” “What day would suit YOU?” he corrected me quickly. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble, you see.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1224-30  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:29 PM

I went in—after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove—but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room. “Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1255-65  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:31 PM

And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration salons, I felt that there were guests concealed behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Merton College Library.” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter. We went up-stairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms with sunken baths—intruding into one chamber where a dishevelled man in pajamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It was Mr. Klipspringer, the “boarder.” I had seen him wandering hungrily about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby’s own apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall. He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1311-20  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:33 PM

“I don’t play well. I don’t—I hardly play at all. I’m all out of prac——” “We’ll go down-stairs,” interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The gray windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light. In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. He lit Daisy’s cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her on a couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the gleaming floor bounced in from the hall. When Klipspringer had played THE LOVE NEST. he turned around on the bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom. “I’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all out of prac——” “Don’t talk so much, old sport,” commanded Gatsby. “Play!” “IN THE MORNING, IN THE EVENING, AIN’T WE GOT FUN——”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1322-30  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:34 PM

“ONE THING’S SURE AND NOTHING’S SURER THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET—CHILDREN. IN THE MEANTIME, IN BETWEEN TIME——” As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon whe Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1332-34  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:34 PM

They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Bookmark Loc. 1442  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:43 PM


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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1443-44  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:43 PM

and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1486-93  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:46 PM

Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek. “I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.” But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place.” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1507-12  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:47 PM

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air. “Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said suddenly. “That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way in and he’s too polite to object.” “I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And I think I’ll make a point of finding out.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1534-39  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:49 PM

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.” He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1541-53  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:51 PM

. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1674-78  | Added on Friday, January 25, 2013, 11:58 PM

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of——” I hesitated. “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . .
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1823-29  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:06 AM

“He isn’t causing a row.” Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.” “Self-control!” Repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.” Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization. “We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1856-72  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:08 AM

“You’re revolting,” said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.” Gatsby walked over and stood beside her. “Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s all wiped out forever.” She looked at him blindly. “Why—how could I love him—possibly?” “You never loved him.” She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late. “I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance. “Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly. “No.” From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air. “Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone. . . . “Daisy?” “Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said—but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet. “Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob helplessly. “I did love him once—but I loved you too.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1873-90  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:09 AM

“You loved me TOO?” he repeated. “Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “She didn’t know you were alive. Why—there’re things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.” The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby. “I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. “She’s all excited now——” “Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” she admitted in a pitiful voice. “It wouldn’t be true.” “Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom. She turned to her husband. “As if it mattered to you,” she said. “Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now on.” “You don’t understand,” said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. “You’re not going to take care of her any more.” “I’m not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. “Why’s that?” “Daisy’s leaving you.” “Nonsense.” “I am, though,” she said with a visible effort. “She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.” “I won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s get out.” “Who are you, anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfsheim—that much I happen to know. I’ve made a little investigation into your affairs—and I’ll carry it further to-morrow.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1911-21  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:11 AM

“You two start on home, Daisy,” said Tom. “In Mr. Gatsby’s car.” She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn. “Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.” They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity. After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whiskey in the towel. “Want any of this stuff? Jordan? . . . Nick?” I didn’t answer. “Nick?” He asked again. “What?” “Want any?” “No . . . I just remembered that to-day’s my birthday.” I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1924-26  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:12 AM

Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 1927  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:12 AM

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2088-92  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:51 AM

“You ought to go away,” I said. “It’s pretty certain they’ll trace your car.” “Go away NOW, old sport?” “Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal.” He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2103-5  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:52 AM

But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously—
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Bookmark Loc. 2119  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:54 AM


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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2118-25  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:54 AM

“I can’t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she didn’t, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her. . . . Well, there I was, ‘way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2134-40  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:56 AM

Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand. That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2155-62  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:58 AM

He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach—he was penniless now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2176-82  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:59 AM

“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2503-14  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 01:36 AM

She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say good-bye. “Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly. “You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.” We shook hands. “Oh, and do you remember.”—she added——” a conversation we had once about driving a car?” “Why—not exactly.” “You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.” “I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2514-15  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 01:36 AM

She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
- Highlight Loc. 2547-49  | Added on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 01:40 AM

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world.
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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 36-37  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:28 AM

What had shaped the relationship between scientists and the state  in history in different cultural and national contexts? What should be the proper  role of science in a democratic society?

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 47-50  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:30 AM

What I have found, as I have tried to argue  in the book, is that the most important contribution of PSAC was not its advice  to the government on what technology could do, but, rather, what it could not  do. It is this sense of technological skepticism, I believe, that we still need in our  own age of global technological enthusiasm and renewed American militarism if  we are to prevent future Great Leap Forwards and escape the various shadows  of Sputnik.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 110-12  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:36 AM

"You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists  was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be  there to help the country and not help themselves. "4 In Eisenhower's eyes, PSAC  appeared not only free of self-interest, but also a "good" scientific-technological  elite that presented a counterbalance to the military-industrial complex that he  would warn the nation of shortly in his famous farewell address.'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 110-14  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:37 AM

"You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists  was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be  there to help the country and not help themselves. "4 In Eisenhower's eyes, PSAC  appeared not only free of self-interest, but also a "good" scientific-technological  elite that presented a counterbalance to the military-industrial complex that he  would warn the nation of shortly in his famous farewell address.' To what extent  this perception corresponded to the reality of PSAC and American politics of science   is a question of more than historical interest. As we enter a new era of technological   enthusiasm, we need more than ever to scrutinize the historical forces  still shaping our perceptions of what science and technology can and cannot do  for social progress.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 119-22  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:38 AM

The illusion of technological fixes, PSAC scientists believed, often led to  not only a waste of societal resources on impractical developmental projects, such  as the si billion failure to make a nuclear-powered airplane, but also, sometimes,  dangerously misguided public policy, such as the perilous arms race and later the  war in Vietnam. Thus, with any given project, the allure of the technological  imperative must be tempered with a critical, independent evaluation of both its  technical limitations and policy implications. Has the necessary basic research  been completed and the project's technical feasibility been proven before going  into costly production?

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight Loc. 119-23  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:39 AM

The illusion of technological fixes, PSAC scientists believed, often led to  not only a waste of societal resources on impractical developmental projects, such  as the si billion failure to make a nuclear-powered airplane, but also, sometimes,  dangerously misguided public policy, such as the perilous arms race and later the  war in Vietnam. Thus, with any given project, the allure of the technological  imperative must be tempered with a critical, independent evaluation of both its  technical limitations and policy implications. Has the necessary basic research  been completed and the project's technical feasibility been proven before going  into costly production? Has it passed a rigorous cost-benefit analysis? Can it fulfill  its stated mission and, most important of all, does that mission make sense in the  context of broad, long-term policy considerations?

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 3 | Loc. 136-37  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:41 AM

Most also had supported J. Robert Oppenheimer  and James Conant in their tumultuous conflict with physicists Edward Teller and  Ernest Lawrence over the H-bomb in late 1949•

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 148-50  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:43 AM

Clearly not all American scientists subscribed to PSAC's technological skepticism.   As perhaps the most prominent nuclear physicist of the day, Teller, for example,   was conspicuously missing from the committee roster. Indeed, he would often  make a formidable one-man anti-PSAC not only by battling the committee's various  arms control proposals but also by advocating technological fixes, especially nuclear  energy, in all areas of national life. As a popular joke among physicists went, "You  got a problem? Eddie's got a bomb."7

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 151-52  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:44 AM

The split in the scientific community, which can  be traced to the hydrogen bomb debate in 1949-1950, was not only over the direction  of American nuclear policy, but also over whether technology offered a solution to  social and political problems.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 4 | Loc. 156-57  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:45 AM

Eventually, many PSAC scientists came to agree with critics of the war  outside of the committee that the American sense of technological superiority  played a significant part in leading the country into the conflict.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 5 | Loc. 163-65  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:46 AM

Yes, they consciously tapped into the undercurrent of anxiety in the age of  technological enthusiasm, and their technological critique might have contributed  to the countercultural movement of the late 196os and early 19706 and even the  postmodern questioning of science and technology.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 5 | Loc. 169-71  | Added on Monday, April 08, 2013, 02:48 AM

Rationality, to them, should not stop at the technical but should  be extended into the policy arena as well. Thus theirs was not an argument against  technology, but one for appropriate technology, for a broadened concept of technological   rationality that encouraged technological development not for its own  sake but for its benefits in achieving social, political, cultural, and economic goals  in a democratic society.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 5 | Loc. 171-72  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:00 AM

By insisting on looking at the "big picture" whenever they examined a particular technology, they abandoned a purely technical approach to the evaluation of technology and adopted instead what historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes calls the systems approach to technology'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 5 | Loc. 178-81  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:03 AM

PSAC also deserves our attention as a key institution at the interface between the scientific community and the broader polity during the Cold War.9 As historian
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt argues, institutional histories can be a powerful "point of convergence" of intellectual, social, and cultural history of science." Studies of scientific institutions, including laboratories, academies, and societies, have long held a key place in the history of science and blossomed especially in recent years."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 5 | Loc. 177-78  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:03 AM

Although PSAC was abolished decades ago and the Cold War has finally ended, the tension between technological enthusiasm and skepticism with which PSAC grappled during the Cold War has not left us.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 8 | Loc. 219-20  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:12 AM

Instead of showing science's positive contributions toward technological progress, PSAC focused on the role of basic research in evaluating technology, or, more important, in showing the limits of technology.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 8 | Loc. 231-32  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:15 AM

Thus, basic research was justified not only as a source of new technological initiatives, as Vannevar Bush had argued, but perhaps more important, as a way to prevent the government from going into blind alleys in costly applied research and development.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 9 | Loc. 238-39  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:16 AM

in the everyday life of a science adviser in the trench, technical proficiency probably counted more than the scientific discoveries on which the science advisers made their reputations."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 256  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:22 AM

American joke that the Soviets could not sneak a nuclear "suitcase bomb" into the country because they had not perfected the suitcase.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 258-60  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:22 AM

It led many, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to realize that a "total Cold War" had dawned in which science, technology, education, and the pursuit of national prestige ranked with military and economic strengths as vital forces.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 13 | Loc. 265-67  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:24 AM

Because Sputnik called into question the adequacy of both the government's support for and use of science, PSAC scientists took on both "science in policy" to make science better serve the government's needs and "policy for science" so that the government could support science effectively.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Bookmark on Page 15 | Loc. 288  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:30 AM

the

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 15 | Loc. 288-90  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:31 AM

providing the United States with a "worthy counterpart" to the Royal Society of London and the French Academy.' Indeed, by the early twentieth century, the NAS had largely evolved into an honorific society of scientific elites, ill prepared to serve the government's needs when another crisis, World War I, came along.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 16 | Loc. 318-21  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:38 AM

Jewett resented FDR's restrictions of the scientists' role to "details of research problems
of the government departments." "I say this," Jewett continued, "because of a feeling that if my training, experience and judgment were of any value to the scientific departments of the Government that value lies rather in the field of matters of scientific policies which may or may not embrace research, than in the narrower field of research alone ."s'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 17 | Loc. 328-31  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:40 AM

The 1933 World's Fair ("Century of Progress") in Chicago captured this faith in pure science with its motto: "Science Finds, Industry Applies, and Man Conforms.` Notably, Lewis Mumford, a prominent American public intellectual and one of the fiercest critics of what he called megatechnics, put an important twist on the thesis of scientific superiority when he wrote approvingly in the 1930s about "a liberated scientific curiosity" as "a counterweight to the passionate desire to reduce all existence to terms of immediate profit and success."23

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Bookmark on Page 18 | Loc. 340  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:42 AM

'All

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 18 | Loc. 340-41  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:42 AM

'All science stopped during the war except the little bit that was done at Los Alamos," recalled Richard Feynman, a talented young group leader at the bomb laboratory during World War II. `And that was not much science," Feynman added, "it was mostly engineering.""

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 18 | Loc. 344-45  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:43 AM

Furthermore, in the hard times during the Depression, only the most enterprising experimentalists and most talented theoreticians survived the selection process and got to play key roles in the wartime research projects.3°

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 19 | Loc. 356-59  | Added on Sunday, April 14, 2013, 01:47 AM

When a naval officer asked Rabi to make a certain radar device but refused to tell him what it was for-"We prefer to talk about this in our swivel chairs in Washington"-Rabi knew exactly what to do: "I didn't say anything. Neither did I do anything." Finally the officers relented and the two sides worked together to produce "a fantastically great radar." Fortunately, Rabi reflected, "our money did not come from the military directly" but from the OSRD.34

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 22 | Loc. 409-10  | Added on Saturday, April 20, 2013, 07:38 PM

the question of dual allegiance to science and government had long frustrated American scientists' pursuit for a role in public policy.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 22 | Loc. 414  | Added on Saturday, April 20, 2013, 07:39 PM

Although many scientists continued to concentrate on their science either as a personal preference-Feynman claimed to practice "active irresponsibility"-or

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 24 | Loc. 435-36  | Added on Saturday, April 20, 2013, 07:42 PM

Science, Mumford insisted, should not only pursue truth for its own sake, but be made to answer the question: "Is it beneficial?", Such public questioning of their responsibility contributed to scientists' resolve "to make science serve the cause of peace"

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 24 | Loc. 437-38  | Added on Saturday, April 20, 2013, 07:42 PM

Such appeals encouraged scientists to leave the ivory tower or weapons labs, if temporarily, to enter the public sphere and attempt to shape nuclear policy.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 28 | Loc. 508-12  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:26 PM

The resultant GAC report marked several important departures in the history of science advising. Even more than the Franck Committee, the GAC based its recommendation against the H-bomb on explicitly social, political, and moral considerations: the H-bomb was not a military instrument but a weapon of geno- cide.'9 The majority appendix to the report, drafted by Conant, and cosigned by DuBridge, Rowe, Smith, Buckley, and Oppenheimer, argued that it was both necessary and possible to stop the development of this technology. "Mankind would be far better off not to have a demonstration of the feasibility of such a weapon, until the present climate of world opinion changes."3° The minority appendix to the GAC, signed by Rabi and Fermi, condemned the H-bomb even more forcefully, calling it "necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."3'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 28 | Loc. 508-15  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:26 PM

The resultant GAC report marked several important departures in the history of science advising. Even more than the Franck Committee, the GAC based its recommendation against the H-bomb on explicitly social, political, and moral considerations: the H-bomb was not a military instrument but a weapon of geno- cide.'9 The majority appendix to the report, drafted by Conant, and cosigned by DuBridge, Rowe, Smith, Buckley, and Oppenheimer, argued that it was both necessary and possible to stop the development of this technology. "Mankind would be far better off not to have a demonstration of the feasibility of such a weapon, until the present climate of world opinion changes."3° The minority appendix to the GAC, signed by Rabi and Fermi, condemned the H-bomb even more forcefully, calling it "necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."3' Thus, in advising the government, the GAC sought to explain not what a technology could do, but rather what it could not do. "[I]t is not a weapon," the committee agreed, "which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations of military or semi-military purposes." In other words, it would not help the United States win the Cold War militarily even if it could be made.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 526-29  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:29 PM

Both the majority and the minority views of the GAC enraged its critics. Edward Teller, who firmly believed in the necessity of deterring Soviet aggression with superior American military technology, denounced the GAC for abandoning Oppenheimer's earlier position on a scientist's duty. "The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature," Teller argued:
It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find the ways in which these laws can serve human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.38

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 534-35  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:32 PM

President Truman did not share the GAC's moral concern over the development of the H-bomb. Three years ago he had privately dismissed Oppenheimer as a "cry-baby scientist" when the physicist told him that he had blood on his hands in the aftermath of Hiroshima.'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 30 | Loc. 544  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:33 PM

It reinforced the idea that scientists, as experts, should be strictly "on tap" and not "on top."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 32 | Loc. 575-77  | Added on Monday, April 22, 2013, 09:42 PM

"Either my comments and advice must play an important part in the councils of your administration or I must be free to speak plainly in public on all those matters of science in which I feel that my war experience gives me a duty to speak."3 Soon he left the White House, disillusioned by what he perceived to be Truman's unwillingness to heed outside scientific advice.'

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 35 | Loc. 622-25  | Added on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 06:28 PM

Although freed from possible military encroachment and left to support basic research, the NSF was forced to accommodate itself to a federal science funding mechanism dominated by the DOD and the AEC. Its budget languished both in the BOB and in Congress, due partly to its detachment from direct defense concerns. This situation would change with Sputnik, but for much of its formative period, the NSF remained an underfunded promise for the future.

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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 210-24  | Added on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 01:44 PM

He was laughing wildly. "Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!" I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My assignment is to take pictures of the riot." "What riot?" I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the newspapers?" The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin about?" "Well. . . maybe I shouldn't be telling you. . ." I shrugged. "But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They've warned us -- all the press and photographers -- to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting. . ." "No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. "Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!" Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?" I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country-- to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed like everybody else. You know -- coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts. . . well, that's why the cops are so worried." He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh. . . Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?" "Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink. . . and good luck." He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 239-42  | Added on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 01:48 PM

and now, humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition."
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 286-91  | Added on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 01:53 PM

There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried. "Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 325-35  | Added on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 01:57 PM

He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for the lead drawing. It was a face I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry-- a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient -- to the parents -- than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. ("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!") So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.
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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 670-73  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:22 AM

The action in science advising on nuclear weapons took place largely outside of ODM-SAC as the H-bomb program headed toward its first test in 1952, code-named "Mike." Although a Panel of Consultants on Disarmament in the State Department, chaired by Oppenheimer but led largely by Bush, argued for a postponement of the test to give the test ban another chance, Edward Teller counterattacked, effectively, not only for proceeding with the test but also for establishing a second nuclear weapons laboratory at Liver- more.38

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 39 | Loc. 691-94  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:25 AM

Remarkably, the key to ODM-SAC'S justification of scientists' role in the government was not what science and technology could contribute directly to the military strength, but their role in shaping planning and policy. "Perhaps the greatest single improvement in the effective use of science in the national defense will lie," the committee argued, "in its use in helping to bring about the increasing clarification of our over-all strategic objectives and priorities, and a greater understanding of where our problems lie and of their relative importance."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 39 | Loc. 694-99  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:26 AM

Continuing earlier attempts in the same direction, the ODM-SAC'S quest for science in policy implied a concurrent demand for scientists in policy. Such science advisers would not only alert the government about opportunities offered by scientific and technological developments, but also, more important, carry out critical evaluations at the interface between technology and policy so that both the potentials and limits of new technologies could be recognized and incorporated in the making of policy. Such integration of science and scientists in policy would, the committee believed, "serve to reduce waste, confusion and futility in technical development." Finally, the scientists also linked its advice on science in policy with policy for science when the committee contended that such critical technical and policy evaluations would in turn have to rest on "the best available estimates of scientific
fact and technical promise," offering, implicitly, rationale for federal support of scientific research.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 717-18  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:33 AM

the intensified Cold War abroad and rising anti-Communism at home severely circumscribed the space for the kind of technological skepticism that was first identified with the GAC and then associated with the ODM-SAC.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 718-20  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:33 AM

At a time when the Truman administration was preoccupied with "fighting tomorrow's wars with tomorrow's weapons," these liberal-moderate scientists' advocacy of critical evaluations of military technology, with its accompanying demand for scientists to play a role in strategic policymaking, generated much less enthusiasm in the government than Edward Teller's fervent promotion of direct scientific and technological contributions to national defense.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 735-36  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:39 AM

Thus the new administration appreciated scientists' critical role in military technology, but it was reluctant to allow them to enter into policymaking.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 761-62  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:48 AM

The ODM-SAC watched in horror as McCarthy's reckless investigations devastated an Army research laboratory at Fort Monmouth and threatened to do the same for MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in December 1953•

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 774-77  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:51 AM

Ironically and tragically, Oppenheimer had foreseen the gathering storm as early as the summer of 1946 when he discussed with Lilienthal the consequences of a Soviet opposition to international control of atomic energy. Speaking in "a really heart-breaking tone," Oppenheimer predicted, in Lilienthal's paraphrase:
This will be construed by us as a demonstration of Russia's warlike intentions. And this will fit perfectly into the plans of that growing number who want to put the country on a war footing, first psychologically, then actually. The Army directing the country's research; Red-baiting; treating all labor organizations, CIO first, as Communist and therefore traitorous, etc."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 45 | Loc. 785  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:53 AM

Unjustified attacks on scientists "are reducing the morale of important research laboratories and reducing the availability of key scientists for important posts in the Government," DuBridge warned.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 45 | Loc. 791-95  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 08:56 AM

The hearing on Oppenheimer's security clearance before the AEC Personnel Security Board, chaired by Gordon Gray, presented such a rich and fascinating
window on modern American science and politics that it has attracted the attention of various scholars from historians to dramatists. Among the many issues it highlighted was one that has been central in the history of American science advising: the boundary between the technical and the political that defined the proper role of scientists as government advisors. Oppenheimer was attacked not only for giving "wrong" advice on matters such as the hydrogen bomb, but for giving such advice at all.

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 47 | Loc. 811-14  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 09:20 AM

policy-drew not only rebuttal from Oppen- heimer-"Does this mean that a loyal scientist called to advise his Government does so at his peril if he happens to believe in the wisdom of maintaining a proper balance between offensive and defensive weapons?"-but also from other scientists such as Bush, who argued that "Scientists need to be used not as lackeys or underlings but as partners in a great endeavor to preserve our freedoms."

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In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (Zuoyue Wang)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 836-38  | Added on Friday, May 31, 2013, 09:24 AM

It was to the president's and the AEC's relief, that the "mass exodus" from weapons laboratories that had been predicted by the ODM-SAC and the AEC's GAC failed to materialize in the wake of the Oppenheimer case.44

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The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook (Julie Kaufmann and Beth Hensperger)
- Bookmark Loc. 1942  | Added on Sunday, June 02, 2013, 12:56 PM


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The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook (Julie Kaufmann and Beth Hensperger)
- Highlight Loc. 1942-64  | Added on Sunday, June 02, 2013, 12:56 PM

As guests of the Old ways Food Preservation Society of Boston, a group of food writers and restaurateurs traveled en maze to Morocco a few years ago. The result has been an epiphany regarding North African cuisine, so influenced by the French and Arabs, with the food-loving public reaping the benefit of many excellent articles, travelogues, and exceptional recipes from the little-known land of Casablanca fame. While couscous is the most prevalent starch in Moroccan cuisine, rice is also made. Serve this slightly spiced rice with an array of plain, separately steamed vegetables—green beans, fava or lima beans, carrots, butternut squash, celery, zucchini—and some chickpeas. Preserved lemons are often available in Middle Eastern markets, or you can easily make your own. MACHINE: Medium (6-cup) rice cooker ; fuzzy logic or on/off CYCLE: Regular/Brown Rice YIELD: Serves 4 to 5 1½ cups aromatic long-grain brown rice, such as Texmati 2¾ cups water or vegetable stock ¾ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon ground coriander ½ teaspoon ground cardamom 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces ¼ cup minced preserved lemon, for garnish 1. Coat the rice cooker bowl with nonstick cooking spray or a film of vegetable oil. Place the rice in the rice bowl. Add the water, salt, pepper, coriander, and cardamom; swirl just to combine. Close the cover and set for the regular/Brown Rice cycle. 2. When the machine switches to the Keep Warm cycle, add the butter. Close the cover and let the rice steam for 10 minutes. Fluff the rice with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or wooden spoon. This rice will hold on Keep Warm for 2 hours. Serve hot, sprinkled with a bit of the preserved lemon.
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The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook (Julie Kaufmann and Beth Hensperger)
- Highlight Loc. 1864-83  | Added on Sunday, June 02, 2013, 12:57 PM

Salty miso, a fermented soybean paste that is thick like peanut butter, adds a nice, healthy dimension to plain brown rice (a little dab will do ya, as it is quite strongly flavored). Miso is a traditional Japanese food and there are many types from which to choose, although sometimes finding the one to suit your palate is a challenge. There are the traditional misos, found in Japanese groceries, and unpasteurized misos, geared to health food devotees. The mildest misos are white and a creamy yellow-white, suitable for this recipe (the darker the color of the miso, from red to brown, the stronger the flavor). This rice is really good alongside simple steamed or sautéed vegetables. You can use long,medium-, or short-grain brown rice in this recipe. Top with minced fresh Italian parsley, mitsuba (a Japanese herb found fresh in Asian markets), or green onion tops, and some cubed hot or cold tofu. MACHINE: Medium (6-cup) rice cooker ; fuzzy logic or on/off CYCLE: Regular/Brown Rice YIELD: Serves 3 to 4 1½ tablespoons white or yellow miso 2¼ cups water or vegetable stock One 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled Juice of ½ small lemon (about 2 teaspoons) 1 cup brown rice 1. In a small bowl, mash the miso in ¼ cup of the water to dissolve. 2. Place the dissolved miso, the remaining 2 cups water, the ginger, and lemon juice in the rice cooker bowl. Add the rice; swirl to combine. Close the cover and set for the regular/Brown Rice cycle. 3. When the machine switches to the Keep Warm cycle, let the rice steam for 15 minutes. Fluff the rice with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or wooden spoon. Remove and discard the ginger before serving. This rice will hold on Keep Warm for 1 to 2 hours. Serve hot.
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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page xvii | Loc. 104-5  | Added on Friday, June 07, 2013, 08:22 AM

This doesn't mean that controversies are suppressed; in fact, quite the opposite is true. The IPCC brings controversy within consensus, capturing the full range of expert opinion.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page xvii | Loc. 116  | Added on Friday, June 07, 2013, 08:25 AM

In the words of T. S. Eliot,
We

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page xviii | Loc. 119-21  | Added on Friday, June 07, 2013, 08:28 AM

Yet these countless versions of the atmosphere's history have also converged. Could it be that one day some grossly different data image will emerge, in which the planet did not really warm across the period of historical records, or human activity played no significant role in climate change? Sure, it's possible; in science, never say never. But the chances of such a thing happening today are vanishingly small.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page xviii | Loc. 127-29  | Added on Friday, June 07, 2013, 08:30 AM

In the mid 1990s, environmental conservatives and climate-change skeptics promoted the idea that "sound science" must mean "incontrovertible proof by observational data," whereas models were inherently untrustworthy. But in global climate science, at least, this is a false dichotomy. The simplistic "models vs. data" debate lingers on, but in recent years it has been largely replaced by more sophisticated approaches.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page xix | Loc. 141  | Added on Friday, June 07, 2013, 08:33 AM

Computer models hold the key to transforming these information resources into knowledge.

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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 12-13  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:34 PM

Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Note Loc. 13  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:35 PM

novel starts with a time sequence. quantifying time and controlling it.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 18-20  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:36 PM

“I cried till I didn’t have any tears left,” she tells me. “I just lay here counting the seconds.” “How many seconds?” I ask her. “Millions and millions of them.” “No, but how many exactly?” “I lost count,” says Ma.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 54-55  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:39 PM

Ma’s blue dress is hanging over a bit of my sleeping eye, I mean the eye in the picture but the dress for real in Wardrobe.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 93-94  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:43 PM

I don’t like nine. I find a tiny leaf coming, that counts as ten.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 108-9  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:44 PM

“What’s wrong with needing?” “It’s hard to explain.”
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 134-35  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:51 PM

Before I came down from Heaven Ma left it on all day long and got turned into a zombie that’s like a ghost but walks thump thump. So now she always switches off after one show,
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 156-58  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 12:52 PM

When I step away there’s a black 5 a little bit over the 4. I love five the best of every number, I have five fingers each hand and the same of toes and so does Ma, we’re our dead spits. Nine is my worst favorite number. “What’s my tall?”
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 247-49  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:02 PM

We recycle the cereal box from Ancient Egyptian Pyramid, Ma shows me to cut a strip that’s as big as her foot, that’s why it’s called a foot, then she puts twelve little lines. I measure her nose that’s two inches long. My nose is one inch and a quarter, I write it down.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 250-53  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:02 PM

“Hey,” I say, “let’s measure Room.” “What, all of it?” “Do we have something else to do?” She looks at me strange. “I guess not.” I write down all the numbers, like the tall of Door Wall to the line where Roof starts equals six feet seven inches. “Guess what,” I tell Ma, “every cork tile is nearly a bit bigger than Ruler.”
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 357-58  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:12 PM

The Bugs are invisible but I talk to them and sometimes count, last time I got to 347. I hear the snap of the switch and Lamp goes out all at the same second.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 393-94  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:15 PM

Brightness is coming in Skylight, the dark snow’s nearly gone. Ma’s looking up too, she’s got a small smile on, I think the prayer did magic.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 456-57  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:21 PM

Stealing is when a boy takes what belongs to some boy else, because in books and TV all persons have things that belong just to them, it’s complicated.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 464-65  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:21 PM

Here come the turtle babies out of their shells, but the turtle mothers are gone already, that’s weird. I wonder if they meet sometime in the sea, the mothers and the babies, if they know each other or maybe they just swim on by.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 555-56  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:27 PM

It would be cool to sometimes go smaller again and sometimes bigger like Alice.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 656-59  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 01:35 PM

Ma?” “Yeah.” “Where are we when we’re asleep?” I can hear her yawn. “Right here.” “But dreams.” I wait. “Are they TV?” She still doesn’t answer. “Do we go into TV for dreaming?” “No. We’re never anywhere but here.” Her voice sounds a long way away.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 714-15  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:34 PM

Germs are real, and blood. Boys are TV but they kind of look like me, the me in Mirror that isn’t real either, just a picture.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 764-66  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:40 PM

We watch the medical planet where doctors and nurses cut holes in persons to pull the germs out. The persons are asleep not dead. The doctors don’t bite the thread like Ma, they use super sharp daggers and after, they sew the persons up like Frankenstein.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 771-80  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:42 PM

“The bottle where he took the pill, that’s the exact one we’ve got, the killers.” Ma stares at the TV, but it’s showing a car speeding around a mountain now. “No, before,” I say. “He actually had our bottle of killers.” “Well, maybe it was the same kind as ours, but it’s not our one.” “Yeah it is.” “No, there’s lots of them.” “Where?” Ma looks at me, then back at her dress, she pulls at the hem. “Well, our bottle is right here on Shelf, and the rest are . . .” “In TV?” I ask. She’s staring at the threads and winding them around the little cards to fit back in Kit. “You know what?” I’m bouncing. “You know what that means? He must go in TV.” The medical planet’s come back on but I’m not even watching. “Old Nick,” I say, so she won’t think I mean the man in the yellow helmet. “When he’s not here, in the daytime, you know what? He actually goes in TV. That’s where he got our killers in a store and brung them here.”
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 787-89  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:42 PM

“Jack—” Jack what? What does Jack mean? Ma leans back on the pillows. “It’s very hard to explain.” I think she can explain, she just won’t. “You can, because I’m five now.”
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 802-4  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:44 PM

“Not tonight, I can’t think of the right words to explain.” Alice says she can’t explain herself because she’s not herself, she knows who she was this morning but she’s changed several times since then.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 816-20  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:45 PM

I hate when she’s Gone, but I like that I get to watch TV all day. I put it on really quiet at first and make it a bit louder at a time. Too much TV might turn me into a zombie but Ma’s like a zombie today and she’s not watching even. There’s Bob the Builder and Wonder Pets! and Barney. For each I go up to touch hello. Barney and his friends do lots of hugs, I run to get in the middle but sometimes I’m too late. Today it’s about a fairy that sneaks in at night and turns old teeth into money. I want Dora but she doesn’t come.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Note Loc. 820  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:46 PM

television blurring line between reality and not. same thing happening to everyone but on different scales.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 821-23  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:47 PM

Cartoons are over so I watch football and the planet where people win prizes. The puffy-hair woman is on her red couch talking to a man who used to be a golf star. There’s another planet where women hold up necklaces and say how exquisite they are.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 825  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:47 PM

How can TV be pictures of real things?
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 848-50  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:50 PM

Dora is a drawing in TV but she’s my real friend, that’s confusing. Jeep is actually real, I can feel him with my fingers. Superman is just TV. Trees are TV but Plant is real, oh, I forgot to water her.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 878-79  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:53 PM

“Some really sticky kind, so you’ll end up with teeth like mine?” I don’t like when Ma does sarcasm.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Highlight Loc. 889-91  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 02:55 PM

In the night she’s flashing, it wakes me in Bed. Lamp on, I count five. Lamp off, I count one. Lamp on, I count two. Lamp off, I count two. I do a groan. “Just a bit more.” She’s still staring up at Skylight that’s all black.
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Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Bookmark Loc. 1484  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 03:48 PM


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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 111 | Loc. 1526-27  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 05:53 PM

Between 1945 and 1965, digital computers revolutionized weather forecasting, transforming an intuitive art into the first computational science. Unlike many scientific revolutions, this one was planned.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 112 | Loc. 1539-42  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 05:57 PM

In a process I have called "mutual orientation," scientists and engineers oriented their military sponsors toward new techniques and technologies, while the agencies oriented their grantees toward military applications. This relationship mostly produced general directions rather than precise goals; rarely did military funders require scientists to specify exactly how their research might be used by the armed forces. Nonetheless, military funders did expect that at least some of the work they paid for would ultimately lead to weaponry or to other forms of strategic advantage, including useful practical knowledge.'

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 112 | Loc. 1545-47  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 06:00 PM

General George C. Kennedy of the Strategic Air Command claimed in 1953 that "the nation which first learns to plot the paths of air masses accurately and learns to control the time and place of precipitation will dominate the globe."'

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 115 | Loc. 1580-81  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 06:51 PM

In an early postwar funding request, von Neumann mentioned "high speed calculation to replace certain experimental procedures in some selected parts of mathematical physics.""

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 116 | Loc. 1587-89  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 06:53 PM

The widely recounted D-Day story, along with many others, entrenched meteorology as a military science. For example, commanders used "applied climatology" in siting new bases, choosing transport routes, and deciding when to launch operations.17 Statistical climatology had also assisted in scheduling the Normandy invasion: analysis had revealed that May and July would probably be worse than June for operations in the English Channel.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 117 | Loc. 1601-3  | Added on Sunday, June 09, 2013, 06:56 PM

"The leak indicated that a comprehensive meteorological theory existed (when it most certainly did not) and emphasized the weather control aspects." In order to sell a project that could forecast, or control, the weather, the meteorologists needed to have a plausible theory to back it up."23

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 119 | Loc. 1634-37  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 08:36 AM

In March and April of 1950, Jule Charney, Ragnar Fjortoft, George Platzman, Joseph Smagorinsky, and John Freeman spent five weeks at Aberdeen. Von Neumann's wife, Klara, taught the team to code for the ENIAC and checked the final program. Von Neumann himself rarely appeared, but called in frequently by telephone. Working around the clock for 33 days, the team at Aberdeen carried out two 12-hour and four 24-hour
retrospective forecasts. A second ENIAC expedition took place a year later, but the group never published its results.29

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 130 | Loc. 1747-50  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:20 PM

Hurd Willett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing around 1950, bemoaned the absence of noticeable improvement: "... probably there is no other field of applied science in which so much money has been spent to effect
so little real progress as in weather forecasting. . . . In spite of ... [the] great expansion of forecasting activity, there has been little or no real progress made during the past forty years in the verification skill" of basic surface forecasts.55

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 132 | Loc. 1765-68  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:29 PM

The history of NWP is often presented as one of continuous success and steady progress. Indeed, many scientists with whom I spoke while researching this book expressed surprise or outright skepticism when I noted that it took several decades for computer models to approach human forecast skill. Yet, as we have seen, climbing the hierarchy of models did not lead instantaneously to better forecasts; in fact, initially the opposite was true. Simple barotropic models remained extremely popular with working forecasters well into the 1970s, long after baroclinic and primitive-equation model forecasts had become routinely available.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 132 | Loc. 1768-75  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:29 PM

Why, then, did the national weather services of most developed countries commit themselves so rapidly and completely to this new technological paradigm? First, older techniques had reached their limits; no one put forward any competing vision for major progress in forecast quality and scope. Second, it marked a generational change. As meteorology's scientific sophistication increased, and as the field became professionalized during and after World War II, consensus had developed around the desirability
of grounding forecasting in physical theory. Roger Turner has argued that a small group of theoretically savvy meteorologists, led most notably by Carl-Gustav Rossby and Francis Reichelderfer, "actively constructed" this consensus around what Turner calls "universal meteorology": "... between the 1920s and the 1940s, Rossby, Reichelderfer and their allies designed the institutions, established the curriculum, and cultivated the values that guided the weather cadets trained during World War II.i6O This new cadre of theorists stood ready, on both sides of the Atlantic, to tackle the risky physics and thorny mathematics of numerical modeling. Finally, Charney, Rossby, and von Neumann together articulated a clear research and development program for NWP. As computer power increased, researchers would climb the hierarchy of models, increasing grid resolution and adding ever more realistic physics.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 133 | Loc. 1776  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:30 PM

With the ENIAC as proof of concept, von Neumann staked his considerable reputation on the belief that electronic digital computing would develop rapidly and inexorably.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 133 | Loc. 1777-79  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:30 PM

From the beginning, Charney, Rossby, and von Neumann framed numerical weather prediction as a plan, not a gamble. In the end it worked, of course. But 20-20 hindsight makes it easy to miss the many ways in which it might have failed.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 134 | Loc. 1796-1801  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:35 PM

Second, computer modeling required a considerably different range of expertise than previous forecasting techniques. The ideal modeler had a
strong background in physics and mathematics as well as in meteorology. Anticipating this requirement in 1952, John von Neumann pointed out that an "educational problem" blocked the path to operational NWP:
There is an educational problem because there are practically no people available at the present time capable of supervising and operating such a program. Synoptic meteorologists who are capable of understanding the physical reasoning behind the numerical forecast are needed to evaluate the forecasts. . . . Mathematicians are needed to formulate the numerical aspects of the computations. During the first several years of the program the meteorological and mathematical aspects probably cannot be separated and personnel familiar with both aspects are needed. An intense educational program could conceivably produce enough people in about three years.12

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 135 | Loc. 1801-2  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:35 PM

Von Neumann did not mention-and may not have anticipated-that veritable armies of computer technicians, programmers, and other support personnel would also be required.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 136 | Loc. 1821-22  | Added on Monday, June 10, 2013, 07:38 PM

And price was only one factor. Scientific programmers, skilled technical support personnel, and expertise in numerical methods all remained in short supply.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 136 | Loc. 1822-23  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:43 AM

The most successful institutions paired theorists with technical wizards, many of them meteorologists who had discovered an aptitude for programming.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 136 | Loc. 1823  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:43 AM

Without the latter, the crucial, highly complex translation of mathematics into computer code could not proceed.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 137 | Loc. 1828-29  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:44 AM

For this reason, meteorology has historically been the foremost civilian consumer of supercomputer power. Only the designers of nuclear weapons have laid a greater claim to the world's most advanced computers."

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 140 | Loc. 1848-49  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:49 AM

As we saw in chapter 6, John von Neumann and others understood the significance of this power "to replace certain experimental procedures" almost immediately, although the full extent of it would take some time to dawn on anyone.3

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 141 | Loc. 1856-61  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:51 AM

"infinite forecast."' By this phrase, von Neumann did not intend deterministic prediction of weather over long or "infinite" periods. Instead, he had in mind the statistically "ordinary circulation pattern" that would emerge when "atmospheric conditions . . . have become, due to the lapse of very long time intervals, causally and statistically independent of whatever initial conditions may have existed." This phrase sounds remarkably like the mathematical concept of chaos, by which minute variations in initial conditions rapidly generate extreme divergences in outcomes: a butterfly flaps its wings over Brazil and causes a tornado in Texas. In fact, the theoretical meteorologist Edward Lorenz first discovered what we now call chaos theory while working with atmospheric models in the early 1960s.8 But in the mid 1950s, these results, and the idea of chaos itself, remained unknown. In 1955, von Neumann's "infinite forecast" expressed the widespread belief that global atmospheric flows might display predictable symmetry, stability, and/or periodicity. Research aimed at finding such predictable features remained active throughout the 1950s.9

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 142 | Loc. 1874-75  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 08:54 AM

What counts are not mere tabulations of data; it is their intelligent organization according to physical laws so as to lead to physical depiction of relevant processes and schemes of motion.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 143 | Loc. 1890-93  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 07:08 PM

If Earth had no atmosphere or oceans, its average surface temperature would be about -19°C. Instead, the heat retained in the atmosphere and oceans maintains it at the current global average of about 15°C.
At the equator, Earth receives more heat than it can re-radiate to space; at the poles, it re-radiates more heat than it receives. Thus the climate system, as a thermodynamic engine, serves to transport heat from the equator toward the poles.

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 144 | Loc. 1899  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 07:09 PM

Svante Arrhenius's calculations of carbon dioxide's effect on Earth's temperature constituted one of the earliest one-dimensional (zonal) EBMs.13

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A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Paul N. Edwards)
- Highlight on Page 146 | Loc. 1922-23  | Added on Thursday, June 13, 2013, 07:14 PM

Parameterizing physical processes accurately is the most difficult aspect of climate modeling and is a source of considerable scientific and political controversy.

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