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There was so much unrecognized novelty in the collection that at one point18 upon opening a new drawer Conway Morris famously was heard to mutter, 'Oh fuck, not another phylum.' The
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Bill Bryson |
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zippy new tax called VAT, which was to be introduced a week or so later. The gist of the advertisement was that while some things would go up in price with VAT, some things would also go down. (Ha!) I
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Bill Bryson |
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Now my second story. Three years later, on a clear, bright, calm Sunday afternoon at Bondi Beach, also not far from where we now stood, from out of nowhere there came four freak waves, each up to twenty-five feet high. More than 200 people were carried out to sea in the undertow. Fortunately, fifty lifeguards were in attendance that day, and they managed to save all but six people. I am aware that we are talking about incidents that happene..
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Bill Bryson |
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litres for Neandertals versus 1.4 for modern people, according to one calculation. This is more than the difference between modern Homo sapiens and late Homo erectus, a species we are happy to regard as barely human. The argument put forward is that although our brains were smaller, they were somehow more efficient. I believe I speak the truth when I observe that nowhere else in human evolution is such an argument made.
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Bill Bryson |
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It isn't easy being an organism. In the whole universe, as far as we yet know, there is only one place, an inconspicuous outpost of the Milky Way called Earth, that will sustain you, and even it can be pretty grudging.
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Bill Bryson |
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In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition -- either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail.
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Bill Bryson |
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Houses are amazingly complex repositories. What I found, to my great surprise, is that whatever happens in the world - whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over - eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famines, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment - they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers, tucked into the folds of your curtains, in the downy softness of your pillows, in the pai..
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Bill Bryson |
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Until as late as the early 1950s a round-trip aeroplane ticket from Australia to England cost as much as a three-bedroom suburban home in Melbourne or Sydney. With the introduction by Qantas of larger Lockheed Super Constellation airliners in 1954, prices began to fall, but even by the end of the decade travelling to Europe by air still cost as much as a new car. Nor was it a terribly speedy or comfortable service. The Super Constellations ..
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Bill Bryson |
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Wallace, King and Sanders point out in Biology: The Science of Life (that rarest thing: a readable textbook),
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Bill Bryson |
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was just very compact, not much larger than a standard wardrobe. But it was a marvel of ergonomics. It included
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Bill Bryson |
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We're sending ye tae Wapping, ye soft English nancies, and if ye wairk very, very hard and if ye doonae git on ma tits, then mebbe I'll not cut off yer knackers and put them in ma Christmas pudding. D'ye have any problems with tha'?
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Bill Bryson |
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Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,
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Bill Bryson |
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The perils of aviation in the period are neatly encapsulated in the experience of Harold C. Brinsmead, the head of Australia's Civil Aviation Department in the first days of commercial aviation. In 1931, Brinsmead was on a flight to London, partly for business and partly to demonstrate the safety and reliability of modern air passenger services, when his plane crashed on takeoff in Indonesia. No one was seriously hurt, but the plane was a w..
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Bill Bryson |
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a7b3d50
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At the North Carolina border, the dull landscape ended abruptly, as if by decree. Suddenly the countryside rose and fell in majestic undulations, full of creeping thickets of laurel, rhododendron and palmetto.
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Bill Bryson |
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Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person. At
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Bill Bryson |
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Sadly, although the source of much enjoyment, Ginger the pig progressed from hunting and killing chickens to lambs and, after a stab at my mother's ankles, was banished to the freezer before she developed a taste for small children.
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Bill Bryson |
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But then, I suppose, that is the thing about the internet. It is just an accumulation of digital information, with no brains and no feelings - just like an IT person, in fact.
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Bill Bryson |
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fours
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Bill Bryson |
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THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY PICTURES ARE FLASHED BY WIRE AND RADIO SYNCHRONIZING WITH SPEAKER'S VOICE COMMERCIAL USE IN DOUBT BUT AT&T HEAD SEES A NEW STEP IN CONQUEST OF NATURE AFTER YEARS OF RESEARCH
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Bill Bryson |
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obligatory
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Bill Bryson |
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Poslednite dumi na general Sedzhuik bili: " Kazvam ti, choveche, ne bikha mogli da utseliat i bizon ot takova razs...."
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Bill Bryson |
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d00d3ad
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National Arboretum at Westonbirt, just south-west of Cirencester. It is stunning, sensational, absolutely gorgeous: something which should delight every person in the country.
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Bill Bryson |
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Jurassic refers to the Jura Mountains on the border of France and Switzerland.
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Bill Bryson |
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Permian recalls the former Russian province of Perm in the Ural Mountains. For Cretaceous (from the Latin for chalk) we are indebted to a Belgian geologist with the perky name of J. J. d'Omalius d'Halloy.
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Bill Bryson |
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Buffon found himself threatened with excommunication for expressing it. A practical man, he apologized at once for his thoughtless heresy, then cheerfully repeated the assertions throughout his subsequent writings.
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Bill Bryson |
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It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no "around" around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can't even ask how long it has been there--whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time does..
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Bill Bryson |
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In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.
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Bill Bryson |
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other such
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Bill Bryson |
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There are many other tree museums in the world - including the fine United States National Arboretum in Washington, DC
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Bill Bryson |
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The wind's on the wold And the night is a-cold, And Thames runs chill Twixt mead and hill, But kind and dear Is the old house here, And my heart is warm Midst winter's harm ...
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Bill Bryson |
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The author says the earliest Australian aborigines devoted extraordinary amounts of energy to enterprises no one now can understand.
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heritage
legacy
materialism
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Bill Bryson |
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So it's not the sight of stromatolites that makes them exciting. It's the idea of them - and in this respect they are peerless. Well, imagine it. You are looking at living rocks - quietly functioning replicas of the very first organic structures ever to appear on earth. You are experiencing the world as it was 3.5 billion years ago - more than three-quarters of the way back to the moment of terrestrial creation. Now if that is not an exciti..
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Bill Bryson |
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The number of chemicals in use in the developed world was more than 82,000 at the last count, and most of them - 86 per cent, according to one estimate - have never been tested for their effects on humans.
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Bill Bryson |
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A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English.
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Bill Bryson |
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Tokyo: "When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor."
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Bill Bryson |
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Italy: "Besmear a backing pan, previously buttered with a good tomato sauce, and, after, dispose the cannelloni, lightly distanced between them in a only couch."
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Bill Bryson |
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fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
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Bill Bryson |
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more students of English in China than there are people in the United States.
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Bill Bryson |
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You look at the modern humans that a lot of us have slept with and it is hardly a surprise if a Neanderthal maiden or two might have twinkled by the campfire light.
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Bill Bryson |
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Originally, geological history was divided into four spans of time: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary.
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Bill Bryson |
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among them Pleistocene ("most recent"), Pliocene ("more recent"), Miocene ("moderately recent") and the rather endearingly vague Oligocene ("but a little recent")."
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Bill Bryson |
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Nowadays, and speaking very generally, geological time is divided first into four great chunks known as eras: Precambrian, Palaeozoic (from the Greek meaning "old life"), Mesozoic ("middle life") and Cenozoic ("recent life"). These four eras are further divided into anywhere from a dozen to twenty subgroups,"
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Bill Bryson |
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Moreover, all this applies only to units of time. Rocks are divided into quite separate units known as systems, series and stages.
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Bill Bryson |
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Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and other historical sources and concluded, in a hefty tome called Annals of the Old Testament, that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4004 BC, an assertion
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Bill Bryson |