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f82af08
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You could get used to anything. You got used to it and then time raced by, and before you knew it, time was up.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0a3da93
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The rough-and-ready intellectual consensus of the mid-Twentieth Century is being pushed out by a New Superstition whose victims can find testimony on the Internet for anything they choose to believe. The only cure for it is reading books, and lots of them.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9ca9fb1
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Natural Philosophy cannot advance without attacking theories that are old, and beating back new ones that are wrong, neither of which may be accomplished without doing some injury to their professors.
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Neal Stephenson |
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06a87a7
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The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has b..
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Neal Stephenson |
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bf70cca
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SHE LET US INTO THE house, which had the subtle smell of old wood and old wool--as I used to imagine Victorian homes smelled in Victorian times, before I was recently alerted to the painful truth that actually, at least here in London, they stink of whale oil, patchouli (woven into shawls to keep worms from eating the fabric in transit), and backed-up sewers. I am now convinced everyone here goes to church for the incense.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e924540
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But this was how the mind worked. The mind couldn't think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial.
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Neal Stephenson |
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584abd0
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In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.' " Teague considered it for a moment, then nodded. "In Connaught," he added. "In Connaught," Bob agreed, then eyed the ditch."
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Neal Stephenson |
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6e86c97
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Fair or not, Tavistock Prowse would forever be saddled with blame for having allowed his use of high-frequency social media tools to get the better of his higher faculties.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4238af3
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It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They'd never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. In a way, Amelia had said, this had led to a kind of renaissance in pedagogy. Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning's sake--which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curricu..
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Neal Stephenson |
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582be78
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The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c750954
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He finds an open boulevard of water that leads inward to the Core. It has a sort of pedestrian catwalk running along one side of it, pieced together haphazardly, a seemingly endless procession of gangplanks, pontoons, logs, abandoned skiffs, aluminum canoes, oil drums. Anywhere else in the world, it would be an obstacle course; here in the Fifth World, it's a superhighway.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5c5b0fe
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Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women. There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long per..
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space-travel
gender
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Neal Stephenson |
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04efae1
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It was not the sharp bracing fear one felt on an adventure,
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Neal Stephenson |
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e87b2e4
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The biggest single-celled organisms in the world. They live beneath the Antarctic ice. And as they grow, they take grains of sand from their environment and glue them together to form hard outer skins.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3f31855
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Once she gets over the shock of it and settles into a routine, she starts looking around her, watching the other fish-cutting dames, and realizes that this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend a..
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Neal Stephenson |
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efc5300
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I deal in information," he says to the smarmy, toadying pseudojournalist who "interviews" him. He's sitting in his office in Houston, looking slicker than normal. "All television going out to Consumers throughout the world goes through me. Most of the information transmitted to and from the CIC database passes through my networks. The Metaverse -- -the entire Street -- exists by virtue of a network that I own and control. "But that means, i..
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Neal Stephenson |
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ec46581
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It's daytime. A wall of billowing orange flame grows up silently from the tank farm a mile away, like a time-lapse chrysanthemum. It is so vast and complicated in its blooming, uncontrolled growth that Rife stops halfway up the stairs to watch.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e5f21c0
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An impressionistic map of the South China Sea has been dashed across these covers by molecularly reconstructed Ming Dynasty calligraphers using brushes of combed unicorn mane dipped into ink made of grinding down charcoal slabs fashioned by blind stylite monks from hand-charred fragments of the True Cross.
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Neal Stephenson |
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28c9bde
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Hiro and Y.T. have eaten a lot of junk food together in different joints all over L.A. -- doughnuts, burritos, pizza, sushi, you name it -- and all Y.T. ever talks about is her mother and the terrible job that she has with the Feds. The regimentation. The lie-detector tests. The fact that for all the work she does, she really has no idea what it is that the government is really working on. It's always been a mystery to Hiro, too, but then, ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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ca92cb2
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Bud, you had to bribe the shit out of numerous Shanghai cops. There was no reason to economize here. Bud had a rich and boundless career ahead of him, vaulting up a hierarchy of extremely dangerous drug-related occupations for which decoy served as a paid audition of sorts. A start weapons system was a wise investment.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9993b2e
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A man dressed in a radiant white uniform stands below the ragged maw of the jetway holding his hands downwards with fluorescent orange sticks in them, like Christ dispensing mercy on a world of sinners.
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Neal Stephenson |
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50e97b1
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and two cats. He teaches medieval fighting techniques to members of the armed forces. The Mongoliad is his first published fiction. Erik Bear lives and writes in Seattle, Washington. He has written for a bestselling video game and is currently working on several comic book series. Cooper Moo spent five minutes
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Neal Stephenson |
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fd5b115
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I doubt you even know what duty is," she retorted. A risky response--such flippancy of the tongue--and it might provoke them, but showing fear would invite a response. Half of combat is causing your opponent to think you are stronger than you are, Gansukh had told her. Scarface"
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Neal Stephenson |
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0c995ef
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they have commandos and astronauts who know this kind of thing cold." "But Raz, you are educable, you can learn 'this kind of thing,' if by that you mean how to maneuver an S2-35B and how to assemble a Cold Black Mirror. You've spent your whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable."
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Neal Stephenson |
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542d37b
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organizers had been able to find interpreters for. First up on the dais was Mary Bulinski, the United States secretary of the interior, an inveterate hiker and climber, spry at sixty. By training she was a wildlife
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Neal Stephenson |
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8b96cb2
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Got what?" Pete Starling asked, over the video link. "Am I missing something?" "No," Dinah said. "We are just proceeding adaptively to leverage our core competencies."
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Neal Stephenson |
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7c1ae39
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Sumerian culture -- the society based on me -- was another manifestation of the metavirus. Except that in this case, it was in a linguistic form rather than DNA." "Excuse me," Mr. Lee says. "You are saying that civilization started out as an infection?" "Civilization in its primitive form, yes. Each me was a sort of virus, kicked out by the metavirus principle. Take the example of the bread-baking me. Once that me got into society, it was a..
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Neal Stephenson |
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b442ee1
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The Praesidium stood on four pillars and for most of its height was square in cross-section. Not far above the dials, however, the corners of the square floor-plan were cleaved off, making it into an octagon, and not far above that, the octagon became a sixteen-sided polygon, and above that it became round. The roof of the Praesidium was a disk, or rather a lens, as it bulged up slightly in the middle to shed rainwater. It supported the meg..
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Neal Stephenson |
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c7f0e87
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And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and out labia and inner labia....It made him feel naked and weak and brave.
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Neal Stephenson |
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8b9a52a
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Lagos, typically for a nonbusinessman, had a fatal flaw: he thought too small. He figured that with a little venture capital, this neurolinguistic hacking could be developed as a new technology that would enable Rife to maintain possession of information that had passed into the brains of his programmers. Which, moral considerations aside, wasn't a bad idea. "Rife likes to think big. He immediately saw that this idea could be much more powe..
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Neal Stephenson |
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94caa07
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Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie were very strange men, and such is the nature of the written word that their personal strangeness shines straight through all the layers of Disneyfication like X-rays through a wall. Probably
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Neal Stephenson |
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24ed60a
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So the Sumerians worshipped Enki, and the Babylonians, who came after the Sumerians, worshipped Marduk, his son." "Yes, sir. And whenever Marduk got stuck, he would ask his father Enki for help. There is a representation of Marduk here on this stele -- the Code of Hammurabi. According to Hammurabi, the Code was given to him personally by Marduk." Hiro wanders over to the Code of Hammurabi and has a gander. The cuneiform means nothing to him..
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Neal Stephenson |
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1fd6749
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Why, exactly, is Marduk handing Hammurabi a one and a zero in this picture?" Hiro asks. "They were emblems of royal power," the Librarian says. "Their origin is obscure." "Enki must have been responsible for that one," Hiro says. "Enki's most important role is as the creator and guardian of the me and the gis-hur, the 'key words' and 'patterns' that rule the universe." "Tell me more about the me." "To quote Kramer and Maier again, '[They be..
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Neal Stephenson |
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64548f1
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The lieutenant looks somewhat taken aback that Uncle Enzo is concerning himself with such a tiny detail It is as if the don were going up and down highways picking up litter or something. But he nods respectfully, having just learned something: details matter.
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Neal Stephenson |
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054f834
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Did you hook up with your girlfriend yet?" "No. But I have high hopes for that. Assuming I can stay alive." "High hopes for what?" "Our relationship." "Why?" she asks. "What's changed between then and now?" This is one of these utterly simple and obvious questions that is irritating because Hiro's not sure of the answer. "Well, I think I figured out what she was doing -- why she came here." Another simple and obvious question. "So, I feel l..
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Neal Stephenson |
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3d8b118
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But for the moment it was just a pattern of sensory impressions painted on the screen of her memory, not soaked in yet, not understood, not even granted the dignity of having really happened.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7819898
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In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your home-own. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jer..
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Neal Stephenson |
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17bcd7d
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He pokes his katana through the side of the cube and follows it through the wall and out the other side. This is a hack. It is really based on a very old hack, a loophole that he found years ago when he was trying to graft the sword-fighting rules onto the existing Metaverse software. His blade doesn't have the power to cut a hole in the wall -- this would mean permanently changing the shape of someone else's building -- but it does have th..
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Neal Stephenson |
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22536c7
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The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code--but their children believe it for entirely different reasons." "They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it." "Yes. Some of them never challenge it--they grow up to be small-minded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillu..
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Neal Stephenson |
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8388289
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He had spoken with such absolute confidence that I knew he had to be blowing this out of his rectal orifice.
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humorous
humor
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Neal Stephenson |
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5b20399
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Dinah could spend the rest of her life living by her word, giving everyone a fair shake, and all of that. Rufus would no doubt approve of all those things. But it was not the charge he had given her. He had told her, though not in so many words, to get busy building a future.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0d2578a
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Yo, Y.T.," Roadkill says, " 'sup?" "'Sup with you?" "Surfing the Tura. 'Sup with you?" "Maxing The Clink." "Whoa! Who popped you?" "MetaCops. Affixed me to the gate of White Columns with a loogie gun." "Whoa, how very! When you leaving?" "Soon. Can you swing by and give me a hand?" "What do you mean?" Men. "You know, give me a hand. You're my boyfriend," she says, speaking very simply and plainly. "If I get popped, you're supposed to come a..
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Neal Stephenson |
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d4d7da9
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We've got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we're using now is acquired. It patterns our brains as we're learning it. But there's also a tongue that's based in the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares. These structures consist of basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to allow our brains to acquire higher languages." "Linguistic infrastructure," Uncle Enzo says. "Yeah. I guess 'deep structure' and 'infras..
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Neal Stephenson |
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9feb765
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THE MONASTERY GATE was as weak as Finn surmised, the timbers splintering after three strong kicks from Finn's boot. Using his spear as a wedge, he ripped and tore the rotted wood away until there was a large enough hole to pass through. After ducking and looking, he went first, leaping nimbly through the gap. Cnan followed, more readily and eagerly than she had anticipated, and Yasper came close on her heels.
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Neal Stephenson |