|
810ac5b
|
"Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet."
|
|
comet
osha
bran-stark
asoiaf
george-r-r-martin
fire-and-blood
|
George R.R. Martin |
|
103304a
|
The dangers that we face are part of the process, now well underway, of the unification of the planet--in language, culture, science, and commerce. They are both driven by the identical technological advances--this critical and delicate time coincides with the widespread availability of nuclear weapons. At the present rate of change, it seems likely that in the period between now and 2061, the turning point for the human species will have been reached. If we survive until then, our passage to the next apparition of Halley's Comet should be comparatively easy. That perihelion passage will be in March 2134, when the comet will make an unusually close encounter with the Earth. It will come as close as 0.09AU or 14 million kilometers, less than half the distance of the 1910 encounter. It will then be brighter than the brightest star. If there are those to do the commemorating, the years 2061 and 2134 should be celebrated for the courage, intelligence, and common purpose of a species forced by urgent necessity to come to its senses.
|
|
humanity
science
inspirationalal
human-species
comet
survival
|
Carl Sagan Ann Druyan |
|
874cb48
|
"One could imagine that a group of anthropologists and scientists sent off to study a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe today might be bound by similar strictures [not to reproduce with natives]. But suppose some of them disagreed? Suppose some of them "went native"--as used to be said of colonialists in the days of the British Empire who allowed themselves to get too close to indigenous populations they interacted with. Is that perhaps what happened to the troop of two hundred "Watchers" on Mount Hermon? Somewhere around 10,900 BC, did they break the commandments of their own culture and "go native" among the hunter-gatherers of the Near East? And were the first chance encounters with the fragments of a giant comet a century later in 10,800 BC--encounters that devastated the world--somehow blamed upon their moral lapse?"
|
|
reproduction
watchers
hunter-gatherers
deluge
cataclysm
comet
|
Graham Hancock |