Bash Alternating Quotes

I don't care," Kami informed him. "All you are to me are sex objects that I choose to imagine bashing together at random. Oh, there you go again, look at that, nothing but Lynburn skin as far as the mind's eye can see. Masculine groans fill the air, husky and-" "Stop it," Ash said in a faint voice. "That isn't fair." Behind them, Jared was laughing. Kami glanced back at him and caught his eye: for once, it made her smile, as if amusement could still travel back and forth like a spark between them. "Ash is right, this is totally unfair," Jared told her. "If you insist on this-" "Oh, I do," Kami assured him. "Then I insist on hooking up with Rusty instead of Ash. It's the least you can do." "Ugh," Ash protested. "You guys, stop." "She's making a point," Jared said blandly. "I recognize her right to do that. But considering the alternative, I want Rusty." Ash gave this some thought. "Okay, I'll have Rusty too." The sound of the door opening behind them made them all look up the stairs to where Rusty stood, with one eyebrow raised. "Don't fight, boys," he remarked mildly. "There's plenty of Rusty to go around.

Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done ... without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody's head bashed in. That's politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in ... and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That's why I say politics is good even when it is bad because the only alternative is force-and somebody gets hurt. -- Senator Tom Fries

Wow, Angela and Holly,” Ash said, sounding awed. “Hot.” “Excuse me, what is wrong with you?” Kami demanded. “Other people’s sexuality is not your spectator sport.” Ash paused. “Of course,” he said. “But—” “No!” Kami exclaimed. “No buts. That’s my best friend you’re talking about. Your first reaction should not be ‘Hot.’ ” “It’s not an insult,” Ash protested. “Oh, okay,” Kami said. “In that case, you’re going to give me a minute. I’m picturing you and Jared. Naked. Entwined.” There was a pause. Then Jared said, “He is probably my half brother, you know.” “I don’t care,” Kami informed him. “All you are to me are sex objects that I choose to imagine bashing together at random. Oh, there you go again, look at that, nothing but Lynburn skin as far as the mind’s eye can see. Masculine groans fill the air, husky and—” “Stop it,” Ash said in a faint voice. “That isn’t fair.” Behind them, Jared was laughing. Kami glanced back at him and caught his eye: for once, it made her smile, as if amusement could still travel back and forth like a spark between them. “Ash is right, this is totally unfair,” Jared told her. “If you insist on this—” “Oh, I do,” Kami assured him. “Then I insist on hooking up with Rusty instead of Ash. It’s the least you can do.” “Ugh,” Ash protested. “You guys, stop.” “She’s making a point,” Jared said blandly. “I recognize her right to do that. But considering the alternative, I want Rusty.” Ash gave this some thought. “Okay, I’ll have Rusty too.” The sound of the door opening behind them made them all look up the stairs to where Rusty stood, with one eyebrow raised. “Don’t fight, boys,” he remarked mildly. “There’s plenty of Rusty to go around.

Economists often tell a variant of the tale about an entrepreneur who introduces a good—say a toaster—costing far less than alternatives. He credits the lower price to new technology. Happy consumers flock to his toaster. They stop buying expensive toasters and call him a genius who has increased the purchasing power of their income. Then he reveals that he did not invent a new process. He bought the cheap toasters in China. So this was his great revolution. This was a fake miracle, people say. And he is bashed because the Chinese are taking away jobs. The two outcomes are identical, but people don’t see them that way.

[The double-slit experiment] has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. —Richard Feynman296 The mystery Feynman was referring to in the preceding quote is the curious fact that a quantum object behaves like a particle when it is observed, but it behaves like a wave when it’s not observed. This can be easily demonstrated in a double-slit interferometer, which is a simple device in which one sends particles of light (or electrons, or any elementary particle) through two tiny slits and then records the pattern of light that emerges onto a screen, or a camera. One might expect that if particles of light (called photons) behaved like separate hunks of stuff, like tiny marbles, then the pattern of light emerging from two slits would always be two bright bands of light. And indeed, if you track each photon as it passes through the slits, then that is what you will see on the screen. However, if you do not trace the photons’ paths, then you will see an alternating sequence of light and dark bands, called an “interference pattern.” This then is the mystery of the dual nature of light—whether you see a wavelike or particle pattern on the screen depends on how you’re looking at it. It’s as though all matter—photons, electrons, molecules, and so on297—“knows” that it is being watched. This exquisitely sensitive bashfulness, known in physics jargon as wave-particle complementarity, lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. It is also known as the quantum measurement problem, or QMP. It’s a problem because it violates the commonsense assumption that we live in an objective reality that is completely independent of observers. The founders of quantum theory, including Neils Bohr, Max Planck, Louis de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein, knew that introducing the notion of the observer into quantum theory was a radical change in how physics had been practiced, and they all wrote about the consequences of this change. A few physicists, like Wolfgang Pauli, Pascual Jordan, and Eugene Wigner, believed that consciousness was not merely important but was fundamentally responsible for the formation of reality. Jordan wrote, “Observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it.… We compel [the electron] to assume a definite position.… We ourselves produce the results of measurement