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aa7a497
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The universe is an amazingly fickle and eventful place, and our existence within is a wonder.
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universe
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Bill Bryson |
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cb34963
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In ways that we have barely begun to understand, trillions upon trillions of reflexive chemical reactions add up to a mobile, thinking, decision-making you--or, come to that, a rather less reflective but still incredibly organized dung beetle. Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering.
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Bill Bryson |
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ba41d65
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Now here's a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days--that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls--adds up t..
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Bill Bryson |
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302b77d
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In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At
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Bill Bryson |
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2e3a0b8
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Americans alive today each have about 625 times more lead in their blood than people did a century ago.
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Bill Bryson |
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355db3e
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lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth's crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot.
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Bill Bryson |
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3351c7a
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Medieval banquets show people eating all kinds of foods that are no longer eaten. Birds especially featured. Eagles, herons, peacocks, sparrows, larks, finches, swans, and almost all other feathered creatures were widely consumed. This wasn't so much because swans and other birds were fantastically delicious--they weren't; that's why we don't eat them now--but rather because other, better meats weren't available.
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Bill Bryson |
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2d32135
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It is mildly disconcerting to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history--the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and writing and science and all the rest--has taken place within an atypical patch of fair weather.
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Bill Bryson |
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cdf5581
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The Pacific is about a foot and a half higher along its western edge--a consequence of the centrifugal force created by the Earth's spin. Just as when you pull on a tub of water the water tends to flow toward the other end, as if reluctant to come with you, so the eastward spin of Earth piles water up against the ocean's western margins.
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Bill Bryson |
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3cd3bee
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The animals we raise for food today are eaten not because they are notably delectable or nutritious or a pleasure to be around, but because they were the ones first domesticated in the Stone Age.
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Bill Bryson |
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6fa6d93
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pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s. Our
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Bill Bryson |
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071741f
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It's hard for people now to remember just how enormous the world was back then for everybody, and how far away even fairly nearby places were. When we called my grandparents long distance on the telephone in Winfield, something we hardly ever did, it sounded as if they were speaking to us from a distant star. We had to shout to be heard and plug a finger in an ear to catch their faint, tinny voices in return. They were only about a hundred ..
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Bill Bryson |
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746e7b7
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Only twenty-six British universities have total endowments greater than the amount given annually to the Ohio State University football team. I
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Bill Bryson |
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afd6543
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There is actually a certain value in not finding anything,' he said. 'It helps cosmologists to work out the rate at which galaxies are evolving. It's one of those rare areas where the absence of evidence is evidence.
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Bill Bryson |
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f2d48ac
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Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.
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Bill Bryson |
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2bfd429
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Ironing was another massive and dauntingly separate task. Irons cooled quickly, so a hot iron had to be used with speed and then exchanged with a freshly heated one. Generally, there would be one on the go and two being heated. The irons, heavy in themselves, had to be pressed down with great force to get the desired results. But because there were no controls, they had to be wielded with delicacy and care so as not to scorch fabrics. Heati..
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Bill Bryson |
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a0de7d4
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Each mobile phone today - indeed, each washing machine - has more computing power than NASA could deploy on the Apollo programme.
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Bill Bryson |
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9da66fd
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And it is all the more extraordinary when you reflect that despite perpetually modest funding Britain still has three of the world's top ten universities and eleven of the top one hundred. Put another way, Britain has 1 percent of the world's population, but 11 percent of its best universities, and accounts for nearly 12 percent of total academic citations and 16 percent of the most highly cited studies. I
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Bill Bryson |
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8aefa9f
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revert back is commonly seen and always redundant: 'If no other claimant can be found, the right to the money will revert back to her' (Daily Telegraph). Delete back.
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Bill Bryson |
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4d31bea
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It met its target, a remarkable accomplishment, but here's the thing. According to the 2014 Times Higher Education world rankings (which are generally held to be the most exacting of their type), the University of Virginia ranks 130th among the world's universities. Eighteen much more modestly funded British universities rank higher. On the world stage, according to the Times Higher, Virginia is about level with Britain's Lancaster Universi..
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Bill Bryson |
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e46ba3a
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At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance."
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Bill Bryson |
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ba890e2
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Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids--all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine--it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order.
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exercise
gym
humor
memoir
running
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Bill Bryson |
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e88f262
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In late 1998, the inhabitants were invited to become Australia's seventh state and roundly rejected the notion in a referendum. It appears they quite like being outsiders. In consequence, an area of 523,000 square miles, or about one-fifth of the country, is in Australia but not entirely of it. This throws up some interesting anomalies. All Australians are required by law to vote in federal elections, including residents of the Northern Ter..
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Bill Bryson |
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49542ed
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Shenandoah National Park is lovely. It is possibly the most wonderful national park I have ever been in, and, considering the impossible and conflicting demands put on it, it is extremely well run. Almost at once it became my favorite part of the Appalachian Trail.
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shenandoah
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Bill Bryson |
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3dacadc
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One thing you won't find much in Australian second-hand bookshops are 1950s or earlier editions of lots of books - The Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, Animal Farm, Peyton Place, Another Country, Brave New World and hundreds and hundreds of others. The reason for this is simple: they were banned. Altogether, at its peak, 5,000 titles were forbidden to be imported into the country. By the 1950s this had fallen to a couple of hundred, ..
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Bill Bryson |
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f6effb8
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It was full of lazy late-afternoon shadows and an impossible green lushness such as could only be appreciated by someone freshly arrived
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Bill Bryson |
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9f79d41
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It is an interesting experience to become acquainted with a country through the eyes of the insane, and, if I may say so, a particularly useful grounding for life in Britain.
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Bill Bryson |
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e98e946
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For reasons I couldn't begin to guess at, a balustrade along the roofline had been adorned with life-sized statues of ordinary men, women and children. Goodness knows what this is meant to suggest - I suppose that this is some sort of Hall of the People - but the effect is that it looks as if two dozen citizens of various ages are about to commit mass suicide.
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Bill Bryson |
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3849bde
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We don't know if he ever left England. We don't know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself. His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery. On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where he was.
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Bill Bryson |
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101f29b
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Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice, "Bear!" before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness."
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Bill Bryson |
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9c90c61
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All 2,100 miles of the trail, as well as side trails, footbridges, signs, blazes, and shelters, are maintained by volunteers--indeed, the AT is said to be the largest volunteer-run undertaking on the planet.
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Bill Bryson |
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36e4ba6
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I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth,
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Bill Bryson |
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01f8c9e
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I found my wife at the kitchen sink and told her the good news. She was more reserved in her enthusiasm than I had hoped. "You're going into the woods for weeks and weeks with a person you have barely seen for twenty-five years. Have you really thought this through?" (As if I have ever thought anything through.) "I thought you two ended up getting on each other's nerves in Europe." "No." This was not quite correct. "We started off on each o..
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Bill Bryson |
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392ea1c
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It seemed such an extraordinary notion--that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: "Sounds neat! Let's do it!"
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Bill Bryson |
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628beb0
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You have your whole life ahead of you. But here's the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn't forget it.
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Bill Bryson |
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72bad2a
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People are so addicted to convenience that they have become trapped in a vicious circle: The more labor-saving appliances they acquire, the harder they need to work; the harder they work, the more labor-saving appliances they feel they need to acquire.
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Bill Bryson |
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1c8a6e8
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I was beginning to appreciate that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences of everyday life that the most ordinary things--processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously beaded with condensation--fill you with wonder and gratitude.
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Bill Bryson |
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e931ac9
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So it needs to be said that nearly all of the anti-Shakespeare sentiment--actually all of it, every bit--involves manipulative scholarship or sweeping misstatements of fact. Shakespeare "never owned a book," a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested t..
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Bill Bryson |
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0ceaf79
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Then there were all the diseases one is vulnerable to in the woods -- giardiasis, eastern equine encephalitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, schistosomiasis, brucellosis, and shigellosis, to offer but a sampling. Eastern equine encephalitis, caused by the prick of a mosquito, attacks the brain and central nervous system. If you're lucky you can hope to spend the rest of your life propped in a chair with a bib aro..
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Bill Bryson |
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1f63805
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When simple plants colonized the land and the first creatures crawled gasping from the sea, the Appalachians were there to greet them.
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Bill Bryson |
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03abc1c
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Illiteracy was the usual condition in sixteenth-century England, to be sure. According to one estimate at least 70 percent of men and 90 percent of women of the period couldn't even sign their names. But as one moved up the social scale, literacy rates rose appreciably.
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Bill Bryson |
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863bf64
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But even men far tougher and more attuned to the wilderness than Thoreau were sobered by its strange and palpable menace. Daniel Boone, who not only wrestled bears but tried to date their sisters, described corners of the southern Appalachians as "so wild and horrid that it is impossible to behold them without terror." When Daniel Boone is uneasy, you know it's time to watch your step."
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Bill Bryson |
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00bed56
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When at last a cab arrived and pulled up directly in front of me, I was astonished to discover that seventeen grown men and women believed they had a perfect right to try to get in ahead of me. A middle-aged man in a cashmere coat who was obviously wealthy and well-educated actually laid hands on me. I maintained possession by making a series of aggrieved Gallic honking noises--"Mais, non! Mais, non!"--and using my bulk to block the door. I..
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Bill Bryson |
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c90fc6c
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Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.
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Bill Bryson |