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bce581e
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If we get out of this, will you be my girl?
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Neal Stephenson |
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dfaa016
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Arjuna asteroid.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7e0ab46
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Linguistics got me into this excellent mess--only physics can get me out.
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Neal Stephenson |
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578cf8a
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battering
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Neal Stephenson |
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7bd8283
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Crusaders
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Neal Stephenson |
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9cdaf57
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These are one-time pads.
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Neal Stephenson |
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25783d0
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Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking and thrilling."--Time"
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Neal Stephenson |
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bb25443
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but women
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Neal Stephenson |
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af8bc2d
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Ego audio Domine. Animus humilis igitur sub potenti manu Dei est. Mundus sum ego, et absque delicto immaculatus. Verbum vester in me caro et ferrum erit.
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Neal Stephenson |
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39a2ca9
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Le persone che aveva consultato gli avevano unanimemente risposto che la matematica, come il restauro degli organi a canne, era si una bella cosa, ma che a un certo punto bisognava pur trovare un lavoro che desse da mangiare.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7dac235
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Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military.
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Neal Stephenson |
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867bdcf
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So say we all," she said."
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Neal Stephenson |
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d56ee49
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unbidden and unwanted thoughts are the hardest to expel from one's mind.
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Neal Stephenson |
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853b64f
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THE QUILL SWIRLED and lunged over the page in a slow but relentless three-steps-forward, two-steps-back sort of process, and finally came to a full stop in a tiny pool of its own ink. Then Louis Phelypeaux, first comte de Pontchartrain, raised the nib; let it hover for an instant, as if gathering his forces; and hurled it backwards along the sentence, tiptoeing over i's, slashing through t's and x's, nearly tripping over an umlaut, building..
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Neal Stephenson |
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dec7eae
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What's the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.
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Neal Stephenson |
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26785e9
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desperate run for help to save the remnant of his failed
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Neal Stephenson |
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4fd943b
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it was more likely that they would lose consciousness from the gee forces first--a relatively painless way to go.
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Neal Stephenson |
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85de4d8
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encircling a large new habitat called Akureyri,
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Neal Stephenson |
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9b0e7aa
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None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts.
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Neal Stephenson |
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860d590
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This may not however elevate your stature during the years you have remaining; for fame's a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns.
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Neal Stephenson |
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82cc67a
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at this point in their lives, neither one of them is important enough to kill, kidnap, or interrogate.
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Neal Stephenson |
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8715765
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Plane-change maneuvers are expensive.
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Neal Stephenson |
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62e4321
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kaffeeklatsch.
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Neal Stephenson |
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37a4b95
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Excuse me," Erszebet said sharply, as Frink began wandering into an explanation of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory that even I could sense was painfully cack-handed. "Have you taken up a day of my life and quite a lot of taxpayer money to bring me in your foul-smelling airplane, all the way here, to this room, where you do not have the courtesy of introducing yourself to me . . . just so you can inform me who I am, and why ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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9c50318
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Academics being no less nomadic than Congregational preachers, he took work where he could find it. He became a Professor of Greek and Latin at
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Neal Stephenson |
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15b0365
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Bulgarian professor named John Vincent Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, who were building a machine that was intended to automate the solution of some especially tedious differential equations.
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Neal Stephenson |
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50c7b4a
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as normally solved by engineers, would require any number of perfectly reasonable but aesthetically displeasing approximations. Lawrence's solution would provide exact results.
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Neal Stephenson |
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6afb2a7
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He went back to Iowa State, considered changing his major to mathematics, but didn't. It was the consensus of all whom he consulted that mathematics, like pipe-organ restoration, was a fine thing, but that one needed some way to put bread on the table.
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Neal Stephenson |
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fb5fa27
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He remained in engineering and did more and more poorly at it until the middle of his senior year,
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Neal Stephenson |
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cd19bba
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He had abundant free time, which he spent working on a series of new theorems in the field of information theory.
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Neal Stephenson |
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fb185a8
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Shaftoe wasn't a boxer. He was a wrestler. This was to his advantage. The other Marines would put up their dukes and try to fight it out--Marquis of Queensberry style--no match for chop-socky. Shaftoe had no illusions about his boxing, so he would just put his head down and charge like a bull, take a few blows to the face on his way in, but usually get a solid hold on his opponent and slam him into the cobblestones. Usually that shook the N..
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Neal Stephenson |
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3d2c752
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Get this one a copy of the Cryptonomicon. And a desk--as close to the coffee machine as possible. And why don't you promote the son of a bitch as long as you're at it.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0a7bfe9
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The barriers placed in his path (working his way through the Cryptonomicon, breaking the Nipponese Air Force Meteorological Code, breaking the Coral naval attache machine cipher, breaking Unnamed Nipponese Army Water Transport Code 3A, breaking the Greater East Asia Ministry Code) present about as much resistance as successive decks of a worm-eaten wooden frigate.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f86600c
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He has found that he works best when he is not horny, which is to say in the day or so following ejaculation.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e939551
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Hollywood was merely a specialized bank--a consortium of large financial entities that hired talent, almost always for a flat rate, ordered that talent to create a product, and then marketed that product to death, all over the world, in every conceivable medium.
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Neal Stephenson |
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8a5b444
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The goal was to find products that would keep on making money forever, long after the talent had been paid off and sent packing.
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Neal Stephenson |
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caeb946
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In the view of Hollywood, the techies of Silicon Valley were just a particularly naive form of talent.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0fd2477
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Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power
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Neal Stephenson |
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6a9c449
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what he's really thinking is: why did I waste all those years in academia when I could have been doing great shit like this?
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Neal Stephenson |
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3e692c7
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Trying to crack the code used on these sheets will be a perfect puzzle to fill the gaping void
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Neal Stephenson |
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7c5af81
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And I tell you straight out: suspicious this makes me, for what is the cause to bring magic back when it has been replaced by something clearly more serviceable? So the first riddle I put my mind to was this: in a world where carriages travel without beasts to pull them, and food is effortlessly abundant, and there is ample light to sunder any darkness, from all manner of peculiar torches, none of them given to burning down a place even if ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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b80175f
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Most people, on listening to a string of nonsense, will tend to doubt their own sanity before they realize that the person who is jabbering at them is really the one with the damaged brain.
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Neal Stephenson |
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a28dd1e
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She's not a shy person. Her body language is eloquent enough: "I am aware that men are in the habit of looking at whatever women happen to be nearby, in the hopes of deriving enjoyment from their physical beauty, their hair, makeup, fragrance, and clothing. I will ignore this, politely and patiently, until you get over it."
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Neal Stephenson |
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a868ad2
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couple of dozen CDs in it, mostly albums by American woman singer-songwriters of the offbeat, misunderstood, highly intelligent but intensely emotional school, getting rich selling music to consumers who understand what it's like not to be understood.
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Neal Stephenson |