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there is only one place, an inconspicuous outpost of the Milky Way called the Earth, that will sustain you, and even it can be pretty grudging. From
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Bill Bryson |
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no less than 99.5 per cent of the world's habitable space by volume, according to one estimate, is fundamentally--in practical terms completely--off limits to us. It
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Bill Bryson |
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The remote valley of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in Kenya is now one of the world's most productive sites for early human remains,
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Bill Bryson |
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This is a point known to geology as the KT boundary1 and it marks the time, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and roughly half the world's other species of animals abruptly vanish from the fossil record.
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Bill Bryson |
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If all the ice sheets melted, sea levels would rise by 60 metres--the height of a twenty-storey building--and every coastal city in the world would be inundated.
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Bill Bryson |
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clearly no thinking presence behind any of the actions of the cells. It all just happens, smoothly and repeatedly and so reliably
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Bill Bryson |
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Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering. Indeed,
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Bill Bryson |
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Not until 1902, at an early meeting of the International Congress of Zoology, did naturalists begin at last to show a spirit of compromise and adopt a universal code. Taxonomy
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Bill Bryson |
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How stupid of me not to have thought of it!" T. H. Huxley cried upon reading On the Origin of Species. It is a view that has been echoed ever since. Interestingly,"
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Bill Bryson |
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report in The Economist as much as 97 per cent of the world's plant and animal species may still await discovery. Of
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Bill Bryson |
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In short, the remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know. In
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Bill Bryson |
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Wallace's theory was, by Wallace's own admission, the result of a flash of insight; Darwin's was the product of years of careful, plodding, methodical thought. It was all crushingly unfair.
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Bill Bryson |
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Then, about seven million years ago, something major happened. A group of new beings emerged from the tropical forests of Africa and began to move about on the open savanna. These
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Bill Bryson |
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3.18-million-year-old australopithecine found at Hadar in Ethiopia in 1974 by a team led by Donald Johanson. Formally known as A.L.
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Bill Bryson |
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assumed to be australopithecines because there are no other known candidates. I
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Bill Bryson |
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DNA is, as it were, especially unalive. It is "among the most nonreactive, chemically inert molecules in the living world,"
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Bill Bryson |
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The British molecular biologist Rosalind Franklin, who played a central part in discovering the structure of DNA but suffered from the heavy chauvinism of her male colleagues.
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Bill Bryson |
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Female academics at King's in the 1950s were treated with a formalized disdain that
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Bill Bryson |
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However senior or accomplished, they were not allowed into the college's senior common room but instead had to take their meals in a more utilitarian chamber
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Bill Bryson |
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The bone was sent to Dr. Caspar Wistar, the nation's leading anatomist, who described it at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia that autumn.
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Bill Bryson |
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And there was this jerk named Dwayne who kept saying, 'Go on, have a beer. You know you want one. One little beer's not going to hurt ya. You haven't had a drink for three years. You can handle it.'" He looked at me again. "You know?" I nodded. "Caught me when I was vulnerable. You know, when I was still breathing."
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drinking
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Bill Bryson |
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Suponiendo que las cosas sigan siendo en general como ahora, el oceano Atlantico se expandira hasta llegar a ser mucho mayor que el Pacifico. Gran parte de California se alejara flotando y se convertira en una especie de Madagascar del Pacifico. Africa se desplazara hacia el norte, uniendose a Europa, borrando de la existencia al Mediterraneo y haciendo elevarse una cadena de montanas de majestuosidad himalayica, que ira desde Paris hasta C..
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Bill Bryson |
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wondering how many tens of thousands of days have passed since BBC One last showed a program that anyone not on medication would want to watch.
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Bill Bryson |
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Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
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Bill Bryson |
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By 1927, the average state was spending eight times more on enforcing fish and game laws than it spent on Prohibition.
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Bill Bryson |
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He had a curiously stunted sense of humor and loved practical jokes that veered dangerously close to cruelty. Once on a hot day he filled a friend's water jug with kerosene and mirthfully stood by as the friend took a mighty swig. The friend ended up in the hospital.
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Bill Bryson |
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was a book by Arthur Raistrick called Quakers in Science and Industry and I glanced through it for a few minutes, then carried it to a nearby chair and sat reading for about half an hour, so unexpectedly absorbed did I become. I hadn't realized it, but Quakers in the Darbys' day were a bullied and downtrodden minority in Britain. Excluded from conventional pursuits like politics and academia, they became big in industry and commerce, partic..
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Bill Bryson |
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In short, there is just a great deal we don't know.
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Bill Bryson |
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The queen also toyed with the idea of making the whole of St. James's Park private, and asked her prime minister, Robert Walpole, how much that would cost. "Only a crown, Madam," he replied with a thin smile."
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Bill Bryson |
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The few surviving photographs of Childe certainly confirm that he was no beauty--he was skinny and chinless, with squinting eyes behind owlish spectacles, and a mustache that looked as if it might at any moment stir to life and crawl away--but whatever unkind things people might say about the outside of his head, the inside was a place of golden splendor.
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Bill Bryson |
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In fact, overwhelmingly museum displays are artificial.
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Bill Bryson |
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Now algae bloomed as never before, causing snail populations to explode. The snails hosted tiny parasitic worms that harbored schistosomiasis, a horrible disease that leaves its victims chronically prostrate with abdominal pain, high fever, fatigue, and diarrhea. Schistosomiasis had been unknown in the region before Ford came along; after Fordlandia, it was endemic. Malaria, yellow fever, elephantiasis, and hookworm were rife as well. Agoni..
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Bill Bryson |
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we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.
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Bill Bryson |
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Humans are here today because our particular line never fractured--never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history." We"
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Bill Bryson |
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life wants to be; life doesn't always want to be much; life from time to time goes extinct. To this we may add a fourth: life goes on.
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Bill Bryson |
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Lobsters bred in such abundance around Britain's coastline that they were fed to prisoners and orphans or ground up for fertilizer; servants sought written agreements from their employers that they would not be served lobster more than twice a week.
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Bill Bryson |
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we should have a definitive total for insects in a little over fifteen thousand years.
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Bill Bryson |
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Indeed, if your pillow is six years old--which is apparently about the average age for a pillow--it has been estimated that one tenth of its weight will be made up of "sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung,"
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Bill Bryson |
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If you wash lousy clothing at low temperatures, all you get is cleaner lice.
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Bill Bryson |
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The movie was an enormous hit in 1927. With Wings, it confirmed Bow as Hollywood's leading female star. She received forty thousand letters a week--more than the population of a fair-sized town. In the summer of 1927, her career seemed set to go on indefinitely. In fact, it was nearly at an end. Winsome and enchanting as she was to behold, her Brooklyn accent was the vocal equivalent of nails on a blackboard, and in the new world of talking..
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Bill Bryson |
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The worst imposition of all was to be instructed to take on some costly, long-standing obligation to the crown. Such was the fate of Bess of Hardwick's husband, the sixth Lord Shrewsbury. For sixteen years he was required to act as jailer to Mary, Queen of Scots, which in effect meant maintaining the court of a small, fantastically disloyal state in his own home.
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Bill Bryson |
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Life appears to have been pretty good for the Skara Brae residents. They had jewelry and pottery. They grew wheat and barley, and enjoyed bounteous harvests of shellfish and fish, including a codfish that weighed seventy-five pounds. They kept cattle, sheep, pigs, and dogs. The one thing they lacked was wood.
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Bill Bryson |
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Eventually he made it to Buckingham Palace, where the king famously startled Lindbergh by asking him how he had peed during the flight. Lindbergh explained, a touch awkwardly, that he had brought along a pail for the purpose.
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Bill Bryson |
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He agreed with Laughlin that sterilization was necessary in society "to prevent our being swamped with incompetence." Then he gave his solution: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cu..
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Bill Bryson |