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bb935bb
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There are always fuckups, and there is always a goat. Sometimes the goat is you.
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Neal Stephenson |
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eccab12
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The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people--and this is true whether or not they are well-educated--is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations--in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious..
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Neal Stephenson |
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e2facd4
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Waterhouse's new roommate is out of town just now, but by glancing over his personal effects, Waterhouse estimates that he is paddling a black kayak from Australia to Yokosuka Naval Base, where he will slip on board a battleship and silently kill its entire crew with his bare hands before doing an Olympic-qualifying dive into the bay, punching out a few sharks, climbing back into his kayak and paddling back to Australia for a beer.
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Neal Stephenson |
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19b65da
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No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They hav..
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Neal Stephenson |
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8431fba
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The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money." "I hadn't known that," I said. "I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." "There might as well be," Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators."
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science
particle-accelerators
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Neal Stephenson |
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8014e6d
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boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals--something
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Neal Stephenson |
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68cff04
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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. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored in reality, as the largest oak tree was rooted, ultimately, in a system of rootlets no larger than the silver hairs on the president's head.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f32f2e6
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The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God's understanding of the world." "And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer."
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Neal Stephenson |
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8a13a0f
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Princess Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f8bd2c7
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I made it into Wikipedia," sang Erszebet. "I'll bet none of my enemies ever made it into Wikipedia."
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Neal Stephenson |
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4032d13
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You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you, as well as consequential psychological and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk," the first MetaCop says. There ..
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funny
police
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Neal Stephenson |
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2b3e78f
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Passing through the utility section she considered getting herself a cup of coffee. Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee anyway and stepped into the Farm.
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Neal Stephenson |
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6456936
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The Police Minister's toilet chided him
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Neal Stephenson |
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b55df7a
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I apologize if my limbic system has misinterpreted your gesture of emotional support.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3beb64b
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The cat, morbidly obese from eating virtually all of Isaac's meals, fell off the table like a four-legged haggis, and trudged away.
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Neal Stephenson |
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495ce34
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Lawrence concluded that Alan's penis scheme must have finally found a taker.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c534686
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if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.
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Neal Stephenson |
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eb75b5a
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If she screws up this delivery, that means she's double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7f4630d
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What he wasn't so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans wass that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that hed been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective r..
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sales
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Neal Stephenson |
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a367bed
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And then she figures out something important: These people aren't looking at her. They're not even giving her a second glance. They're all looking at Raven. And it's not just a case of celebrity watching or something like that. All of these Raft dudes, these tough scary homeboys of the sea, are scared shitless of this guy. And she's on a date with him. And it's just started.
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Neal Stephenson |
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cf17010
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Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger's end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4e78fa9
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Gold is gold everywhere, fungible and indifferent. But when a disk of gold is stamped by a coiner with certain pompous words and the picture of a King, it takes on added value -- seigneurage. It has that value only in that people believe that it does -- it is a shared phant'sy.
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Neal Stephenson |
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86dee18
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And so what moved him onward and down the office building's stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic.
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Neal Stephenson |
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bb6703b
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Most of the people around the entrance were, of course, bellhops and taxi drivers. Guests went in and out. Some were dressed in business suits, others in casual tourist attire. He did not see any commandos in tracksuits.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f522beb
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The same thrust, pushing against a greatly reduced burden, would then yield acceleration that Lio had cheerfully described as 'near-fatal.' 'But it's okay,' he'd said, 'you'll black out before anything really bad happens to you.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3e7a2bf
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There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner that, in normal circumstances, would have seemed just plain ungentlemanly. What would have been designated, in a Western office, as a hostile environment was soon in full swing as numerous rough strong hands were all over her, easing her to a c..
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Neal Stephenson |
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ef9533e
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Hacker with Bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!" Prospective Station Wagon Buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something g..
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Neal Stephenson |
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a3e99f7
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She definitely heard the words for airplane and airport, which delighted some little-girl part of her soul ("Yay, going on a trip!") even as her higher brain was ticking off all the bad things that could happen when men like Jones came into proximity with jet aircraft."
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Neal Stephenson |
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2c50b67
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She considered hypothesis 3 to be quite unlikely, since she didn't feel the least bit psychopathic, but included it in the list out of respect for the scientific method.
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Neal Stephenson |
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12341b9
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Other bits of England might be cramped, crowded, and cluttered, but only because all the available space had been claimed by this guest suite. It was situated right in Trinity College, and Richard guessed it had been laid out eight hundred years ago so that noble guests could ride their horses directly into the bedchamber and bring all of their squires and wolfhounds with them too.
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Neal Stephenson |
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019dd40
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But when you walk through yonder gate," Churchill said, pointing toward the Middle Tower at the end of the causeway, which was visible only as a crenellated cutout in the orange sky, "you'll find yourself in a London you no longer know. The changes wrought by the Fire were nothing. In that London, loyalty and allegiance are subtle and fluxional. 'Tis a chessboard with not only black and white pieces, but others as well, in diverse shades. Y..
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Neal Stephenson |
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1006e7e
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But Henry wasn't a parent, and he didn't understand that when you were, almost nothing was more satisfying than seeing your kid sleep.
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Neal Stephenson |
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661ec44
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It would be easier," Doob said, "if I could figure out what the hell she wanted." "You're assuming," Luisa said, "that she has a plan. I doubt that she does. She is driven to seek power. She finds some way to do that and then backfills a rationalization for it afterward."
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Neal Stephenson |
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2d401ce
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There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5ad629c
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No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.
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Neal Stephenson |
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d25bd69
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Daniel understood the complaint. For Daniel, too, had once designed a building, and savored the thrill of seeing it built, only to endure the long indignity of watching the owner clutter it up with knick-knacks and furniture.
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Neal Stephenson |
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05ed2ae
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I see there are no heroes any more. Where is my head of Joseph Kony on a plate? Slice him thinly so there's enough to go around.
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Neal Stephenson |
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d1a557d
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You know," said Jack, "I was a King for a while in Hindoostan, and my subjects would get worked up into a lather about a potato, which to them was worth as much as a treasure-chest. At first I'd want to know everything about the potato in question, and I would take a large stake in the matter, but towards the end of my reign--" Here Jack rolled his eyes, as Frenchmen frequently did during encounters with Englishmen. Leroy seemed to take his..
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Neal Stephenson |
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1307308
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he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4306dc8
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The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique." (describing a young man who flew off a bicycle at high speed)"
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Neal Stephenson |
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fcf614f
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If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.
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religion
science
philosophy
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Neal Stephenson |
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72e0eff
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Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god's wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him-the helpless, innocent victim, that is-into let's say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a di..
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Neal Stephenson |
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a1902ef
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But what little I'd heard had left me amazed by how clever people were at finding ways to make each other crazy and miserable.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c204b8d
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It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news.
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Neal Stephenson |