7 Continents Quotes

But I’ve come to realize that this continent is dying a slow death. Europe is receding quietly into history. It’s old and tired, and its young are so pessimistic about the prospects of the future they refuse to have enough children to ensure their own survival. They believe in nothing but their thirty-five-hour workweek and their August vacation.

They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.

It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, the spirit of discovery, the spirit of creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness. You become a trailblazer, a pathfinder. You open new possibilities, new territories, new continents, so that others can follow.

Women enjoy doing things they excel at, praise guarantees repeat performances, every repeat performance is more practice for the woman, which guarantees the next man even better head. Given how long I’ve been at this, and on how many continents, I’m pretty sure I’ve single-handedly improved the quality of head around the world.

Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up, Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones. The shortage wouldn't be so bad if the bones were distributed evenly through time and space, but of course they are not. They appear randomly, often in the most tantalizing fashion. Homo erectus walked the Earth for well over a million years and inhabited territory from the Atlantic edge of Europe to the Pacific side of China, yet if you brought back to life every Homo erectus individual whose existence we can vouch for, they wouldn't fill a school bus. Homo habilis consists of even less: just two partial skeletons and a number of isolated limb bones. Something as short-lived as our own civilization would almost certainly not be known from the fossil record at all. In Europe, Tattersall offers by way of illustration, you've got hominid skulls in Georgia dated to about 1.7 million years ago, but then you have a gap of almost a million years before the next remains turn up in Spain, right on the other side of the continent, and then you've got another 300,000-year gap before you get a Homo heidelbergensis in Germany and none of them looks terribly much like any of the others. He smiled. It's from these kinds of fragmentary pieces that you're trying to work out the histories of entire species. It's quite a tall order. We really have very little idea of the relationships between many ancient species which led to us and which were evolutionary dead ends. Some probably don't deserve to be regarded as separate species at all.

The course of training of the yogī was divided into eight stages, reminding us of the eightfold path of Buddhism, but far less practical: (1) Self-control (yama), the practice of the five moral rules: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity, and the avoidance of greed. (2) Observance (niyama), the regular and complete observance of the above five rules. (3) Posture (āsana), sitting in certain postures, difficult without practice, which are thought to be essential to meditation. The most famous of these is padmāsna, the “Lotus Posture”, in which the feet are placed on the opposite thighs, and in which gods and sages are commonly depicted. (4) Control of the Breath (prānāyāma), whereby the breath is held and controlled and the respiration forced into unusual rhythms, which are believed to be of great physical and spiritual value. (5) Restraint (pratyāhāra), whereby the sense organs are trained to take no note of their perceptions. (6) Steadying the Mind (dhāranā), by concentration on a single object, such as the tip of the nose, the navel, an icon, or a sacred symbol. (7) Meditation (dhyāna), when the object of concentration fills the whole mind. (8) Deep Meditation (samādhi), when the whole personality is temporarily dissolved.

They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs.

The remaining integer is either 6, 7, 8 or 9. It is more likely to be 8 or 9. The number of continents was either 68 or 76 and a half. Can you guess the equation? What is the formula for calculating the last integer, the continent one? I bet you don’t know unless you are skilled in maths. Fine. Here’s the answer. 68 divided by 8.5 is 8, and 76.5 divided by 8.5 is 9.

There is a kind of ocean wave Whose origin remains obscure. Such waves are solitary, and appear Just off the cliff-line of Antarctica Lifting the ocean's face into the wind, Moistening the wind that pulls, and pulls them on, Until their height (as trees), their width (As continents), pace that wind north for 7,000 miles. And now we see one! - like a stranger coast Faring towards our own, and taste its breath, And watch it whale, then whiten, then decay: Whose rainbow thunder makes our spirits leap.

What are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce; compared with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the accuser’s voice, with a bosom that never throbs with fear of exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no stain of dishonor? To have done no man a wrong; … to walk and live, unseduced, within arm’s length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude—this is to be a man.

The ancient rishi Patanjali6 defines yoga as “neutralization of the alternating waves in consciousness.”7 His short and masterly work, Yoga Sutras, forms one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy. In contradistinction to Western philosophies, all six Hindu systems8 embody not only theoretical teachings but practical ones also. After pursuing every conceivable ontological inquiry, the Hindu systems formulate six definite disciplines aimed at the permanent removal of suffering and the attainment of timeless bliss. The later Upanishads uphold the Yoga Sutras, among the six systems, as containing the most efficacious methods for achieving direct perception of truth. Through the practical techniques of yoga, man leaves behind forever the barren realms of speculation and cognizes in experience the veritable Essence. The Yoga system of Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path.9 The first steps are (1) yama (moral conduct), and (2) niyama (religious observances). Yama is fulfilled by noninjury to others, truthfulness, nonstealing, continence, and noncovetousness. The niyama prescripts are purity of body and mind, contentment in all circumstances, self-discipline, self-study (contemplation), and devotion to God and guru. The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects). The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration), holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation); and (8) samadhi (superconscious experience). This Eightfold Path of Yoga leads to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), in which the yogi realizes the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension.

The crucial turning point came in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed westward from Spain, seeking a new route to East Asia. Columbus still believed in the old ‘complete’ world maps. Using them, Columbus calculated that Japan should have been located about 7,000 kilometres west of Spain. In fact, more than 20,000 kilometres and an entire unknown continent separate East Asia from Spain. On 12 October 1492, at about 2:00 a.m., Columbus’ expedition collided with the unknown continent. Juan Rodriguez Bermejo, watching from the mast of the ship Pinta, spotted an island in what we now call the Bahamas, and shouted ‘Land! Land!

Her eyes, even when fixed on an object, gave one the impression of motion, just as on days of high wind the air, although invisible, lets us perceive the speed with which it courses between us and the unchanging azure. For a moment her gaze intersected mine, like those travelling skies on stormy days which hurry after a rain-cloud that moves less rapidly than they, overtake, touch, cover, pass it and are gone; but they do not know one another, and are soon driven far apart. So our eyes were for a moment confronted, neither pair knowing what the celestial continent that lay before their gaze held of future blessing or disaster.

One author, in writing of the Bible’s uniqueness, put it this way: Here is a book: 1. written over a 1500 year span; 2. written over 40 generations; 3. written by more than 40 authors, from every walk of life— including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc.: Moses, a political leader, trained in the universities of Egypt Peter, a fisherman Amos, a herdsman Joshua, a military general Nehemiah, a cupbearer Daniel, a prime minister Luke, a doctor Solomon, a king Matthew, a tax collector Paul, a rabbi 4. written in different places: Moses in the wilderness Jeremiah in a dungeon Daniel on a hillside and in a palace Paul inside a prison Luke while traveling John on the isle of Patmos others in the rigors of a military campaign 5. written at different times: David in times of war Solomon in times of peace 6. written during different moods: some writing from the heights of joy and others from the depths of sorrow and despair 7. written on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe 8. written in three languages: Hebrew… , Aramaic… , and Greek… 9. Finally, its subject matter includes hundreds of controversial topics. Yet, the biblical authors spoke with harmony and continuity from Genesis to Revelation. There is one unfolding story…

The Yoga system of Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path. 9 The first steps are (1) yama (moral conduct), and (2) niyama (religious observances). Yama is fulfilled by noninjury to others, truthfulness, nonstealing, continence, and noncovetousness. The niyama prescripts are purity of body and mind, contentment in all circumstances, self-discipline, self-study (contemplation), and devotion to God and guru. The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects). The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration), holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation); and (8) samadhi (superconscious experience). This Eightfold Path of Yoga leads to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), in which the yogi realizes the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension. “Which is greater,” one may ask, “a swami or a yogi?” If and when oneness with God is achieved, the distinctions of the various paths disappear. The Bhagavad Gita, however, has pointed out that the methods of yoga are all-embracing. Its techniques are not meant only for certain types and temperaments, such as those few persons who incline toward the monastic life; yoga requires no formal allegiance. Because the yogic science satisfies a universal need, it has a natural universal appeal. A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world;

In the Brhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad7 the first form of the doctrine of transmigration is given. The souls of those who have lived lives of sacrifice, charity and austerity, after certain obscure peregrinations, pass to the World of the Fathers, the paradise of Yama; thence, after a period of bliss, they go to the moon; from the moon they go to empty space, whence they pass to the air, and descend to earth in the rain. There they “become food,… and are offered again in the altar fire which is man, to be born again in the fire of woman”, while the unrighteous are reincarnated as worms, birds or insects. This doctrine, which seems to rest on a primitive belief that conception occurred through the eating by one of the parents of a fruit or vegetable containing the latent soul of the offspring, is put forward as a rare and new one, and was not universally held at the time of the composition of the Upaniṣad. Even in the days of the Buddha, transmigration may not have been believed in by everyone, but it seems to have gained ground very rapidly in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. Thus the magnificently logical Indian doctrines of saṃsāra, or transmigration, and karma, the result of the deeds of one life affecting the next, had humble beginnings in a soul theory of quite primitive type; but even at this early period they had an ethical content, and had attained some degree of elaboration. In

Permanent Revolution THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OPENED up new ways to convert energy and to produce goods, largely liberating humankind from its dependence on the surrounding ecosystem. Humans cut down forests, drained swamps, dammed rivers, flooded plains, laid down hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad tracks, and built skyscraping metropolises. As the world was moulded to fit the needs of Homo sapiens, habitats were destroyed and species went extinct. Our once green and blue planet is becoming a concrete and plastic shopping centre. Today, the earth’s continents are home to billions of Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. Our children’s books, our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world.1 Ecological degradation is not the same as resource scarcity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the resources available to humankind are constantly increasing, and are likely to continue to do so. That’s why doomsday prophesies of resource scarcity are probably misplaced. In contrast, the fear of ecological degradation is only too well founded. The future may see Sapiens gaining control of a cornucopia of new materials and energy sources, while simultaneously destroying what remains of the natural habitat and driving most other species to extinction. In fact, ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even worse chaos. Many call this process ‘the destruction of nature’. But it’s not really destruction, it’s change. Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid. Still, the rumours of our own extinction are premature. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world’s human population has burgeoned as never before. In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens.

1. ‘’Astfel, esenta lumanarii nu este ceara care lasa urme, ci lumina.’’ 2. ‘’Cel ce iubeste doar aproprierea dragostei, nu va cunoaste niciodata intalnirea cu ea.’’ 3. ‘’Caci am aflat ca omul este asemenea unei citadele. Rastoarna zidurile pentru a-si gasi libertatea, dar nu mai e decat fortareata nimicita, deschisa inspre stele. Atunci incepe spaima de a nu mai fi.’’ 4. ‘’Si am inteles ca au nevoie de liniste. Caci numai in liniste adevarul fiecaruia se leaga si prinde radacini. Caci ceea ce e important, inainte de toate,…, este timpul.’’ 5. ‘’ …limbajul nu contine nimic care sa fie vrednic de interes. Invata sa asculti nu zarva cuvintelor, nici rationamentele ce le permit sa se insele. Invata sa privesti mai departe.’’ ‘’Iata pentru ce am dispretuit dintotdeauna, ca fiind zadarnica, zarva cuvintelor. Si nu m-am increzut in artificiile limbajului. ‘’ 6. ‘’ Caci abilitatea nu este decat un cuvant gol. In creatie nu exista ocoluri. Creezi ceea ce faci si nimic mai mult. Iar daca pretinzi ca urmarind un scop, te indrepti spre un altul, deosebit de primul, doar cel pe care cuvintele il inseala te va crede abil.’’ 7. ‘’Caci fiecare iubeste in felul sau aceeasi imagine. Doar un limbaj insuficient ii opune pe oameni unii altora, caci dorintele lor nu difera. N-am intalnit niciodata pe cel care sa doreasca dezordinea sau josnicia sau ruina. Imaginea care-i framanta si pe care ar vrea s-o intemeieze se aseamana de la un capat la celalat al universului, dar caile de atingere a ei difera.’’ 8. ‘’ Desigur, cu cat munca pe care o consumi in numele dragostei este mai grea, cu atat mai mult te exalta. Cu cat dai mai mult, cu atat cresti mai mult. Dar trebuie sa existe cineva care sa primeasca. A pierde nu inseamna niciodata a darui.’’ 9. ‘’ Caci, o data mai mult, am aflat ca logica ucide viata. Si ca nu contine nimic prin ea insasi… Dar facatorii de formule s-au inselat asupra omului. Au confundat formula, care este umbra plata a cedrului, cu cedrul, din volumul, greutatea si culoarea lui, cu incarcatura sa de pasari si frunzisul sau, care nu s-ar putea exprima si cuprinde in cuvinte firave…Caci aceia confunda formula care desemneaza, cu obiectul desemnat. Si cum ar putea suporta ceea ce nu se poate formula, sau nu s-a implinit inca, sau intra in contradictie cu un alt adevar? Cum sa stie ca, intr-un limbaj care formuleaza dar nu cuprinde, doua adevaruri se pot opune?’’ 10. ‘’ Dar daca nu te ating, te construiesc ca pe un templu. Si te inalt in lumina. Si tacerea ta inchide in ea campiile. Iar eu te iubesc dincolo de mine sau tine. Si inventez imnuri pentru a-ti celebra imperiul…Nu esti decat o treapta in drumul meu spre eternitate.’’ 11. ‘’ Dar cei pe care ii numesc liberi si hotarand numai pentru ei insisi, inexorabil singuri, aceia nu sunt condusi, plutesc fara vant in panze, iar rezistenta lor nu este decat capriciu incoerent. Cei pe care ii urasc, sunt, mai ales, cei care nu exista cu adevarat. Rasa de caini ce se cred liberi, fiind liberi de a-si schimba opiniile, de a nega (cum ar putea sti ca neaga, de vreme ce ei insisi sunt judecatori?), liberi de a trisa, de a renega si de a se vinde , si pe care ii fac sa-si schimbe parerile doar aratandu-le troaca atunci cand le e foame.’’ 12. ‘’Caci dragostea nu-ti e data ca un cadou al acestui obraz, la fel cum linistea si calmul nu sunt produs al privelistii, ci al ascensiunii reusite, al muntelui dominat, al instalarii tale in cer. La fel- dragostea. Iluzia este ca o intalnesti, cand de fapt se invata.Si se inseala cel care rataceste prin viata, pentru a fi cucerit, cunoscand prin scurte fioruri , gustul tumultului inimii si visand sa intalneasca marea febra ce il va incinge pentru totdeauna, desi ea nu este decat o desarta victorie a inimii sale. De asemenea, nu te odihnesti in dragoste, daca ea nu se transforma din zi in zi, ca in maternitate.

The Yoga system of Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path.9 The first steps are (1) yama (moral conduct), and (2) niyama (religious observances). Yama is fulfilled by noninjury to others, truthfulness, nonstealing, continence, and noncovetousness. The niyama prescripts are purity of body and mind, contentment in all circumstances, self-discipline, self-study (contemplation), and devotion to God and guru. The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle life currents); and (5) pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from external objects). The last steps are forms of yoga proper: (6) dharana (concentration), holding the mind to one thought; (7) dhyana (meditation); and (8) samadhi (superconscious experience). This Eightfold Path of Yoga leads to the final goal of Kaivalya (Absoluteness), in which the yogi realizes the Truth beyond all intellectual apprehension.

Although for several centuries the Roman Catholic Church was the only legal religion in Latin America, its popular support was neither wide nor deep.5 Many huge rural areas were without churches or priests, a vacuum in which indigenous faiths persisted.6 Even in the large cities with their splendid cathedrals, mass attendance was very low – as recently as the 1950s perhaps only 10 to, at most, 20 per cent of Latin Americans were active participants in the faith.7 Reflective of the superficiality of Latin Catholicism, so few men entered the priesthood that all across the continent most of the priests had always been imported from abroad.

While the reasons why hunter-gatherers became farmers may still be the subject of debate, the most important consequences are now established. This change in the means of subsistence initially represented great success for the human species: according to some authors, the global population increased tenfold from 8 million at the start of the Neolithic to 85 million in 5000 BCE.6 At the same time, a gradual process of sedentarization and hence the accumulation of goods occurs, firstly of food and subsequently also of household effects and even valuables. It started with the semi-permanent establishment of hunter-gatherers in places that were so rich in natural nourishment that they no longer had to constantly hunt for their food. But this only became possible for larger parts of humanity with the development of agriculture. This, too, was a lengthy process. In many parts of the world, farmers who employed the slash-and-burn method remained highly mobile. Every year, or every few years, an area of forest was burned down and crops were sown in the fertile ash. These farmers were thus continuously changing land. The specialization of certain farmers as pastoralists also involved a high degree of mobility. Finally, permanently established farmers could decide to move for all kinds of reasons – as evidenced by the immigration from the Old to the New World following Columbus’s discovery of that continent.7 These caveats aside, it remains the case that, since the Neolithic, humanity has become considerably more place-bound, which has had an enormous impact on the organization of work. It was a

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

It was the feel of the cigarette between his fingers he wanted, the sharp intake of tobacco smoke into the lungs, not some slow oozing of poison through his skin into his blood. Pity about the health problems. He felt rather like St. Augustine must have felt when he wrote in his Confessions: “Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

1 We abelieve in bGod, the Eternal Father, and in His cSon, Jesus Christ, and in the dHoly Ghost. 2 We believe that men will be apunished for their bown sins, and not for cAdam’s transgression. 3 We believe that through the aAtonement of Christ, all bmankind may be csaved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. 4 We believe that the first principles and aordinances of the Gospel are: first, bFaith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, cRepentance; third, dBaptism by eimmersion for the fremission of sins; fourth, Laying on of ghands for the hgift of the Holy Ghost. 5 We believe that a man must be acalled of God, by bprophecy, and by the laying on of chands by those who are in dauthority, to epreach the Gospel and administer in the fordinances thereof. 6 We believe in the same aorganization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, bprophets, cpastors, dteachers, eevangelists, and so forth. 7 We believe in the agift of btongues, cprophecy, drevelation, evisions, fhealing, ginterpretation of tongues, and so forth. 8 We believe the aBible to be the bword of God as far as it is translated ccorrectly; we also believe the dBook of Mormon to be the word of God. 9 We believe all that God has arevealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet breveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. 10 We believe in the literal agathering of Israel and in the restoration of the bTen Tribes; that cZion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will dreign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be erenewed and receive its fparadisiacal gglory. 11 We claim the aprivilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the bdictates of our own cconscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them dworship how, where, or what they may. 12 We believe in being asubject to bkings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in cobeying, honoring, and sustaining the dlaw. 13 aWe believe in being bhonest, true, cchaste, dbenevolent, virtuous, and in doing egood to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we fhope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to gendure all things. If there is anything hvirtuous, ilovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. Joseph Smith.

1.       Is the Daughter the Same as the Mother? 2.       The Hammer of the Whole Earth 3.       A Latter Day Nation 4.       A Nation of Wealth and Luxury 5.       A Multi-Nation ‘Melting Pot’ of a Nation 6.       You Who Live on Many Waters 7.       Center of World Commerce 8.       The Great Voice 9.       They Are Mad Upon Their Idols 10.     The Daughter of Babylon Mounts Up to the Heavens 11.     Where the Nations Gather 12.     She Has Been Proud Against the Lord 13.     Large Jewish Population 14.     Deep Water Port Nation 15.     The Kings of the Medes Won’t Destroy Themselves 16.     A Land of Entertainment 17.     Historical Babylon is Gone and Won’t be Back 18.     Who sits on the Seven Continents of the Earth? 19.     Ancient Babylon has already been Punished 20.     Past Use by God of the Daughter of Babylon 21.     Which Nations are sworn to Defend Israel?                 Scott allowed a minute for everyone to look over the list and then said, “Who’ll be first? Which one of these twenty-clues identifying Mystery Babylon jumps out at you as clearly applying to America?

What the reference to Babylon the Great riding on a beast with seven mountains, could refer to instead, however, is the fact that the earth has seven major land masses, or continents, containing various heights of mountains: Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Australia and Antarctica, each rising up out of the depths of the seas. Since the Daughter of Babylon/Babylon the Great is described as the end times ‘hammer of the whole earth,’ its depiction as riding on, or having power or authority over, the seven continents of the earth makes sense. No prior world empire could make this claim. The Bible only describes one entity, Babylon the Great, as riding upon the back of the whole world. Only America can claim such sweeping influence over the globe. In addition, since Revelation 17:3 and 17:7 refer to Babylon the Great sitting upon or riding on a beast, a dominant position of Babylon the Great is clearly being depicted.

By 1750, Rhode Island was recognized as the nation’s most active trading center for slaves.7 In 1774, Newport was declared the most active city in the slave trade of any town on the continent.8 From 1725 to the end of 1807, it can be proven that Rhode Island was the most important base for American carriers of African slaves.9 While a number of Rhode Island families participated in the trade, including the famous Brown family of Providence, among the most successful was the DeWolf family.10 Their longevity in the trade was predicated on the lasting participation of central figure James DeWolf, who did almost anything to continue amassing economic and political power. The DeWolf story begins in 1744 with Simeon

About the breakup to what we have today, the text of Scripture gives us some clues. By the 150th day of the Flood, the mountains of Ararat existed (Genesis 7:24–8:48). These mountains (as well as the others in the Alpide stretch of mountain ranges that go from Europe to Asia) appear to have been built by the continental collisions of the Arabian, African, Indian, and Eurasian plates. Thus, continental movement for these mountains and plates may well have been largely stopped by the 150th day.9 This makes sense as the primary mechanisms for the Flood (springs of the great deep and windows of heaven) were stopped on the 150th day as well. Thus, it triggered the waters to now be in a recessional stage as the valleys go down (e.g., ocean basins etc.). This is subsequent to the mountains rising, which had already been occurring up to the 150th day (e.g., mountain ranges and continent extending above the waters) at this stage of the Flood (Psalm 104:6–910

If we take ocean basins and bring them up and take mountain ranges and continents and bring them down to a level position, there is enough water to cover the earth 1.6 miles deep (2.57 km deep), so there is plenty of water on the earth for a global Flood. Yet there was only the need for the highest underwater peak during the Flood to be covered by 15 cubits (22.5 feet or ~6.8 meters based on the small cubit to 25.5 feet or ~7.8 meters based on the long cubit) per Genesis 7:20.

Sartaq laughed, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “It means,” he said against her skin, “that we are going home. That you are coming home—with me.” And even with the battle freshly ended, even with the dead and wounded around them, Nesryn smiled. Home. Yes, she would go home with him to the southern continent. And to all that waited there.

L'Océan est impitoyable et puissant. Il donne autant qu'il prend. Insaisissable, il s'étend par-delà l'horizon et contournes les barrages des continents par ses bras de rivières, ses mers, ses lacs. Omniscient, il ne prend jamais parti. Indomptable, il est le plus grand prédateur de l'homme. Alors n'aie crainte fille des abysses, avec lui pour guide, tu ne risques rien.

Kissinger’s deputy sent an “immediate action” cable to the embassies, ordering the ambassadors to provide more information and reply to him by June 7, the day he was to leave for Santiago. Titled “Possible International Implications of Violent Deaths of Political Figures Abroad,” the cable included these questions: Do you believe that the deaths of political refugees or asylees from your country abroad could have been arranged by your host government through institutional ties to groups, governmental or other, in the country where deaths took place? Do you have evidence to support or deny allegations of international arrangements among governments to carry out such assassinations or executions?

By 2020, the revenue of the global pharmaceutical market was US$1.27 trillion, of which the North American market share was 48.7 percent. The EU has a 14 percent share.4 African nations, which were suffering the worst of the HIV epidemic, accounted for 0.7 percent of the global pharmaceutical market. Despite being the worst affected, the African continent remained on the sidelines during the first two decades of the HIV response.

We have increased our population to the level of 7 billion and beyond. We are well on our way toward 9 billion before our growth trend is likely to flatten. We live at high densities in many cities. We have penetrated, and we continue to penetrate, the last great forests and other wild ecosystems of the planet, disrupting the physical structures and the ecological communities of such places. We cut our way through the Congo. We cut our way through the Amazon. We cut our way through Borneo. We cut our way through Madagascar. We cut our way through New Guinea and northeastern Australia. We shake the trees, figuratively and literally, and things fall out. We kill and butcher and eat many of the wild animals found there. We settle in those places, creating villages, work camps, towns, extractive industries, new cities. We bring in our domesticated animals, replacing the wild herbivores with livestock. We multiply our livestock as we've multiplied ourselves, operating huge factory-scale operations involving thousands of cattle, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, and goats, not to mention hundreds of bamboo rats and palm civets, all confined en masse within pens and corrals, under conditions that allow those domestics and semidomestics to acquire infectious pathogens from external sources (such as bats roosting over the pig pens), to share those infections with one another, and to provide abundant opportunities for the pathogens to evolve new forms, some of which are capable of infecting a human as well as a cow or a duck. We treat many of those stock animals with prophylactic doses of antibiotics and other drugs, intended not to cure them but to foster their weight gain and maintain their health just sufficiently for profitable sale and slaughter, and in doing that we encourage the evolution of resistant bacteria. We export and import livestock across great distances and at high speeds. We export and import other live animals, especially primates, for medical research. We export and import wild animals as exotic pets. We export and import animal skins, contraband bushmeat, and plants, some of which carry secret microbial passengers. We travel, moving between cities and continents even more quickly than our transported livestock. We stay in hotels where strangers sneeze and vomit. We eat in restaurants where the cook may have butchered a porcupine before working on our scallops. We visit monkey temples in Asia, live markets in India, picturesque villages in South America, dusty archeological sites in New Mexico, dairy towns in the Netherlands, bat caves in East Africa, racetracks in Australia – breathing the air, feeding the animals, touching things, shaking hands with the friendly locals – and then we jump on our planes and fly home. We get bitten by mosquitoes and ticks. We alter the global climate with our carbon emissions, which may in turn alter the latitudinal ranges within which those mosquitoes and ticks live. We provide an irresistible opportunity for enterprising microbes by the ubiquity and abundance of our human bodies. Everything I’ve just mentioned is encompassed within this rubric: the ecology and evolutionary biology of zoonotic diseases. Ecological circumstance provides opportunity for spillover. Evolution seizes opportunity, explores possibilities, and helps convert spillovers to pandemics.

Profit-seeking planters and industrious husbandmen, on the other hand, were needed to cultivate the ground for its riches, and in doing so impose a firm hand.7 This powerful conception of land use would play a key role in future categorizations of race and class on the experimental continent.

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Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…” She thought: when will it come—that moment when that no longer resonates with people too tired of others and their demands, too exhausted to open their doors to those in need, too overwhelmed by the scale of humanity in all its billions to value individual human life.

It was on May 6, 1607 that three ships of the Virginia Company, the Godspeed, the Discovery, and the Sarah Constant, sighted the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The settlers numbered 105, and they built a fort, a church, and huts with roofs of thatch. None of the original settlement survives but an elaborate reconstruction shows us what it looked like, and it was extremely primitive. It was in fact more like a Dark Age settlement in western Europe during the 6th or 7th centuries than a neat township of log cabins—as though the English in establishing a foothold on the new continent had had to go back a thousand years into their past. As it was, lacking a family unit basis, the colony was fortunate to survive at all. Half died by the end of 1608, leaving a mere fifty-three emaciated survivors.

Australia had escaped. It had escaped because of a stringent quarantine of incoming ships. Some ships arrived there with attack rates as high as 43 percent and fatality rates among all passengers as high as 7 percent. But the quarantine kept the virus out, kept the continent safe, until late December 1918 when, with influenza having receded around the world, a troopship carrying ninety ill soldiers arrived. Although they too were quarantined, the disease penetrated—apparently through medical personnel treating troops. By then the strain had lost much of its lethality. In Australia the death rates from influenza were far less than in any other Westernized nation on earth, barely one-third that of the United States, not even one-quarter that of Italy. But it was lethal enough.

Portuguese craftsmen such as Agostinho de Goes Raposo, Francisco Gois and João Dias perfected the construction of nautical instruments. The Portuguese caravel – and its successors the great nau (1480) and the galleon (1510) – were also significantly better than other sailing ships of the time. Finally, with the Cantino Map of 1502, the Portuguese achieved a breakthrough in cartography: the first modern projection of the world’s geography, with largely accurate depictions of the world’s major continents aside from Australia and Antarctica (plate 7).

As they continued, Humboldt also investigated the cinchona forests in Loja (in today’s Ecuador) and once again recognized how humankind devastated the environment. The bark of the cinchona tree contains quinine which was used to treat malaria, but once the bark was removed, the trees died. The Spanish had stripped huge swathes of wild forest. Older and thicker trees, Humboldt noted, had now become scarce. Humboldt’s enquiring mind seemed inexhaustible. He studied layers of rocks, climate patterns and the ruins of Inca temples, and was also fascinated with geomagnetism – the study of the magnetic fields of the earth. As they climbed across mountain chains and descended into valleys, he set up his instruments. Humboldt’s curiosity originated in his urge to understand nature globally, as a network of forces and interrelationships – just as he had been interested in vegetation zones across continents and the occurrences of earthquakes. Since the seventeenth century scientists had known that the earth is itself a gigantic magnet. They also knew that the needle of a compass doesn’t show the true north, because the magnetic North Pole is not the same as the geographic North Pole. To make matters even more confusing, the magnetic north and south move, which caused great navigational problems. What scientists didn’t know was whether the intensity of magnetic fields across the world varied randomly, or systematically, from location to location. As Humboldt had moved south along the Andes from Bogotá to Quito, coming closer to the Equator, he had measured how the earth’s magnetic field decreased. To his surprise, even after they had crossed the Equator near Quito the intensity of the magnetic field had continued to drop, until they reached the barren Cajamarca Plateau in Peru which was more than 7 degrees and about 500 miles south of the geographic Equator. It was only here that the dip of the needle turned from north to south: Humboldt had discovered the magnetic equator. They

For us on the East Coast of the United States the systematic change in the calendar begins on December 31, 2017. It starts in the South Pacific nation of Samoa, which is always the first country to welcome in the New Year. Just 101 miles to the east is American Samoa, which will have to wait for an entire day to pass, before they can celebrate the New Year in…. Around the globe there are 39 different local time zones, which cause this phenomenon to take place over a period of 26 hours, before everyone on Earth enters the New Year. The year of 2018 is first celebrated at 5 a.m. on December 31, 2017, in Samoa and on Christmas Island in Kiribati. I have actually been on that small island, located in the figurative center of the largest ocean in the world. Only fifteen minutes later, the New Year arrives on Chatham Island in New Zealand. It isn’t until 8 a.m. that larger land masses are affected and then by 9 a.m., much of Australia and parts of Russia can ring in the New Year. In rapid succession North & South Korea, China and the Philippines fall to the moving clock. By noon Indonesia, Thailand and 10 more countries enter into the New Year. Having been in Malaysia and Thailand, I personally know what it’s like, hanging from your heels, on the opposite side of the Earth from where we are now. The ever moving midnight hour visits our troops in Afghanistan, at 2:30 p.m. and washes over Europe, starting at 4 p.m. It continues to flow over the continent until leaving the United Kingdom three hours later. Entering the Atlantic Ocean it does not reappear in America, until it reaches parts of Brazil at 9 p.m. Midnight finally comes to us on the east coast of North America where we celebrate the New Year with more gusto than anywhere else on Earth. In the United States and Canada we celebrate for three hours, before handing the baton over to Alaska, Hawaii and the United States owned Pacific Islands. By 7 a.m. the last of the American Islands in the Pacific Ocean can finally herald in 1918. I have heard it said that if you had the resources and time, you could fly from Sydney to Honolulu and celebrate the New Year twice. I can imagine that this little bit of fun could be quite expensive!

But Yrene stepped up to Chaol’s side once more. “I am the heir apparent to the Healer on High of the Torre Cesme. I came at your son’s behest, back to the lands of my birth, to help in this war, along with two hundred healers from the Torre itself. Your son spent the last several months forging an alliance with the khaganate, and now all of the khagan’s armies sail to this continent to save your people. So while you sit here in your miserable keep, tossing insults at him, know that he has done what no other could do, and if your city survives, it will be because of him, not you.

First edition, July 2016 Cover art © 2016 by Joy Ang Cover design by Phil Falco Excerpt from Wings of Fire Book Eleven: The Lost Continent by Tui T. Sutherland. © 2018 Tui T. Sutherland. Wings of Fire Book Eleven: The Lost Continent cover illustration by Joy Ang e-ISBN 978-1-338-05364-7 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.