Construction Site Quotes

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I don’t think male gamers are more or less sexist than non-gamers. Sexism is unfortunately still a large problem in our culture overall. It is not unique to gaming. Have a pretty girl walk by a construction site in a mini-skirt and you’ll see that. For anyone to imply that male gamers are somehow inherently more sexist than the rest of society smacks of insincerity or naiveté.
Julie Ann Dawson
One of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones – I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents
Angela Y. Davis
do you think flowers will grow here when you and i are off building something new with someone else - the construction site of our future
Rupi Kaur (The Sun and Her Flowers)
I circled the site before I came in. If there's anyone within five kilometers, I'll eat my quiver." Halt regarded him, eyebrow arched once more. "Anyone?" "Anyone other than Crowley," Will amended, making a dismissive gesture. "I saw him watching me from that hide he always uses about two kilometers out. I assumed he'd be back in here by now." Halt cleared his throat loudly. "Oh, you saw him, did you?" he said. "I imagine he'll be overjoyed to hear that." Secretly, he was pleased with his former pupil. In spite of his curiosity and obvious excitement, he hadn't forgotten to take the precautions that had been drilled into him. THat augured well for what lay ahead, Halt thought, a sudden grimness settling onto his manner. Will didn't notice the momentary change of mood. He was loosening Tug saddle girth. As he spoke, his voice was muffled against the horses's flank. "he's becoming too much a creature of habit," he said. "he's used that hide for the last three Gatherings. It's time he tried something new. Everyone must be onto it by now." Rangers constantly competed with each other to see before being seen and each year's Gathering was a time of heightened competition. Halt nodded thoughtfully. Crowley had constructed teh virtually invisible observation post some four years previously. Alone among the younger Rangers, Will had tumbled to it after one year. Halt had never mentioned to him that he was the only one who knew of Crowley's hide. The concealed post was the Ranger Commandant's pride and joy. "Well, perhaps not everyone," he said. Will emerged from behind his horse, grinning at the thought of the head of the Ranger Corps thinking he had remained hidden from sight as he watched Will's approach. "All the same, perhaps he's getting a bit long in the tooth to be skulking around hiding in the bushes, don't you think?" he said cheerfully. Halt considered the question for a moment. "Long in the tooth? Well, that's one opinion. Mind you, his silent movement skills are still as good as ever," he said meaningfully. The grin on Will's face slowly faded. He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" he asked Halt. THe older Ranger nodded. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Will continued and Halt nodded once more. "Is he...close enough to have heard what I said?" Will finally managed to ask, fearin teh worst. This time, Halt didn't have to answer. "Oh, good grief no," came a familiar voice from behind him. "he's so old and decrepit these days he's as deaf as a post." Will's shoulders sagged and he turned to see the sandy-haired Commandant standing a few meters away. The younger man's eyes dropped. "Hullo, Crowley," he said, then mumbled, "Ahhh...I'm sorry about that." Crowley glared at teh young Ranger for a few more seconds, then he couldn't help teh grin breaking out on his face. "No harm done," he said, adding with a small note of triumph, "It's not often these days I amange to get the better of one of you young ones." Secretly, he was impressed at teh news that Will had spotted his hiding place. Only the sarpest eyes could have picked it. Crowley had been in the business of seeing without being seen for thirty years or more, and despite what Will believed, he was still an absolute master of camouflage and unseen movement.
John Flanagan (The Sorcerer in the North (Ranger's Apprentice, #5))
This, Tony, is a living land, not a construction site. This is real and breathing, not a fabrication that can be bullied into being. When you choose technique over relationship and process, when you try and shortcut the speed of growing awareness and force understanding and maturity before its time, this”—he pointed down and over the length
William Paul Young (Cross Roads: What If You Could Go Back and Put Things Right?)
The patriarchal/kyriarchal/hegemonic culture seeks to regulate and control the body – especially women’s bodies, and especially black women’s bodies – because women, especially black women, are constructed as the Other, the site of resistance to the kyriarchy. Because our existence provokes fear of the Other, fear of wildness, fear of sexuality, fear of letting go – our bodies and our hair (traditionally hair is a source of magical power) must be controlled, groomed, reduced, covered, suppressed.
Yvonne Aburrow
Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing? I've long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia. It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child, the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.
Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
What joke?” “The one about the guy who rolls a wheelbarrow full of sawdust out of a construction site every night.” “I don’t know that one,” Cochran said. Lucas said, “The security guy keeps checking and checking and checking the wheelbarrow, thinking the guy had to be stealing something. Never found anything hidden in the sawdust, and nobody cared about the sawdust. Couple of years later, they bump into each other, and the security guy says, ‘Look, it’s all in the past, you can tell me now. I know you were stealing something. What was it?’ And the guy says, ‘Wheelbarrows.
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209)
Alain de Botton (The Architecture of Happiness)
When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and dusty quarries. Their homes were occupied by hunger-and policemen. The forests were filling up with armed guerrillas. They found that the wars from the edge of India, in Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, had migrated to its heart. People returned to live on city streets and pavements, in hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was meant for them.
Arundhati Roy (Capitalism: A Ghost Story)
a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.175
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
Where did you find construction guys swapping dirty jokes in proto-Númenorean?” Aura asked. “On construction sites. Is that coffee ready?
John Barnes (Raise the Gipper!)
A criminal investigation is like a construction site. Everything has to be done in the proper order or the building won’t hold up.
Henning Mankell (The Fifth Woman (Kurt Wallander, #6))
For I did not yet understand fame, this public demolition of something still forming, onto whose construction site the crowd breaks in, scattering its stones.
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (German and Austrian Literature))
The second evolutionary contribution that the REM-sleep dreaming state fuels is creativity. NREM sleep helps transfer and make safe newly learned information into long-term storage sites of the brain. But it is REM sleep that takes these freshly minted memories and begins colliding them with the entire back catalog of your life’s autobiography. These mnemonic collisions during REM sleep spark new creative insights as novel links are forged between unrelated pieces of information. Sleep cycle by sleep cycle, REM sleep helps construct vast associative networks of information within the brain. REM sleep can even take a step back, so to speak, and divine overarching insights and gist: something akin to general knowledge—that is, what a collection of information means as a whole, not just an inert back catalogue of facts. We can awake the next morning with new solutions to previously intractable problems
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
In a real road-construction situation, I would never get out of my car when traffic is backed up, walk over to the foreman of the crew, and ask if I can help make the road so that it all moves more quickly. Yet I found myself doing just that with God in my past when He was trying to repair me. Construction sites have caution cones and broken pavement and heavy equipment I'm not qualified to operate. I must have looked just as out of place trying to make repairs on myself all those years. When I put my trust in Him and have patience in Him as the foreman of my life--the One who is repairing a broken relationship with my mom, building me a stronger and healthier body and assembling healthier friendships and a marriage with a solid foundation--I live a life with much fewer obstructions on my ultimate commute to becoming fearless. And I trust that God has made the plans to finish the good work He has already begun. He will continue constructing the life He knows I'm meant to lead as I travel freely in my journey of "becoming.
Michelle Aguilar (Becoming Fearless: My Ongoing Journey of Learning to Trust God)
When evangelist Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, died in 2007, she chose to have engraved on her gravestone words that had nothing to do with her remarkable achievements. It had to do with the fact that as long as we are alive, God will be working on us, and then we will be free. She had been driving one day along a highway through a construction site, and there were miles of detours and cautionary signs and machinery and equipment. She finally came to the last one, and this final sign read, “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” That’s what is written over Ruth Graham’s grave: “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” Construction today. Freedom tomorrow.
John Ortberg (Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You)
Leon Hubbard died ten minutes into lunch break on the first Monday in May, on the construction site of the new one-storey trauma wing at Holy Redeemer Hospital in South Philadelphia. One way or the other, he was going to lose the job.
Pete Dexter (God's Pocket)
When leaving the ground, our ears were assaulted by language that you wouldn’t normally hear on a building site. In fact, most people in construction wouldn’t normally swear in public or in front of children. It appeared to me that the men in their twenties using these words were doing so on purpose, perhaps to make themselves appear ‘hard’ amongst other Millwall supporters, or to intimidate the opposition. But looking at them, they were pigeon chested and weak armed, and I suspected their use of foul language was intended to boost their stature to compensate for their lack of physical strength
Karl Wiggins (Calico Jack in your Garden)
My husband, a man with a university degree, an engineer, seriously tried to convince me that it was an act of terrorism. An enemy diversion. A lot of people at the time thought that. But I remembered how I’d once been on a train with a man who worked in construction who told me about the building of the Smolensk nuclear plant: how much cement, boards, nails, and sand was stolen from the construction site and sold to neighboring villages. In exchange for money, for a bottle of vodka. People
Svetlana Alexievich (Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster)
We had reached tipping point. It was no longer possible to call it a demolition site. Tomorrow, today perhaps, the workers would return and it would become a construction site. The past demolished, it was time for them to start building the future.
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
The 1970s-80s social movement called U.S. third world feminism functioned as a central locus of possibility, an insurgent social movement that shattered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct site where truth can be represented. Indeed, without making this kind of metamove, any 'liberation' or social movement eventually becomes destined to repeat the oppressive authoritarianism from which it is attempting to free itself, and become trapped inside a drive for truth that ends only in producing its own brand of dominations. What U.S. third world feminism thus demanded was a new subjectivity, a political revision that denied any one ideology as the final answer, while instead positing a tactical subjectivity with the capactiy to de- and recenter, given the forms of power to be moved. These dynamics are what were required in the shift from enacting a hegemonic oppositional theory and practice to engaging in the differential form of social movement, as performed by U.S. feminists of color during the post-World War II period of great social transformation. p. 58-59.
Chela Sandoval (Methodology of the Oppressed)
What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed. From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenary.
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece “Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of “over,” “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk.* If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground—like the rifle range or the car sales total board or the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do? If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece, "Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty, you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of, “over,” and “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk. If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground- like the rifle range or a car sales total board of the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
If you see one hundred insects working together toward a common goal, it’s a sure bet they’re siblings. But when you see one hundred people working on a construction site or marching off to war, you’d be astonished if they all turned out to be members of one large family. Human beings are the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by creating systems of formal and informal accountability. We’re really good at holding others accountable for their actions, and we’re really skilled at navigating through a world in which others hold us accountable for our own. Phil Tetlock, a leading researcher in the study of accountability, defines accountability as the “explicit expectation that one will be called upon to justify one’s beliefs, feelings, or actions to others,” coupled with an expectation that people will reward or punish us based on how well we justify ourselves.8 When nobody is answerable to anybody, when slackers and cheaters go unpunished, everything falls apart.
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
I know you're quiet a workman on God's eternal construction site and don't like hearing about demolition, but what can I do? Myself, I'm not one of God's bricklayers. Besides, if God's bricklayers built real walls, I doubt we'd be able to demolish them. But instead of walls all I see is stage sets. And stage sets are made to be demolished.
Milan Kundera (The Joke)
I pass a construction site, abandoned for the night, and a few blocks later, the playground of the elementary school my son attended, the metal sliding board gleaming under a streetlamp and the swings stirring in the breeze. There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead o me. It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. I love my life, but I haven't felt that lightness of being in ages. Autumn nights like this are as close as I get.
Blake Crouch (Dark Matter)
The site of her warmed my heart, like a mitten over my penis. 
Can you please pass me the empty handshakes?
Jarod Kintz (How to construct a coffin with six karate chops)
electrical and water supplies, for example, had to be manufactured, transported to the right places and fitted. The artillery pieces, radar equipment, communications equipment and observation equipment all had to be ordered, transported and installed. But what was built and where and the order in which the sites were selected for the construction work was not
Anthony Saunders (Hitler's Atlantic Wall)
During the thousand years of her history Russia had seen many great things. During the Soviet period the country had seen global military victories, vast construction sites, whole new cities, dams across the Dnieper and the Volga, canals joining different seas. The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.
Vasily Grossman (Forever Flowing)
Tabula Rasa can make you feel like you’ve taken a train to Bizarro world. I remember my very first night here—and this is goin’ on fifteen years ago—I was takin’ a walk downtown, tryin’ to get a feel for the place. And I’m walkin’ through a construction site—and it was all construction sites back then, you understand—and I come across this hole in the ground, ’bout ten feet in diameter. I look down and I can’t see a bottom, so I pull a quarter out of my pocket and toss it down, and listen for a clink or a splash. Nothin’. Coin just tumbles into the darkness and disappears. So now I’m real curious, and I look around for somethin’ else to throw down there. And teeterin’ right on the edge of the hole is an old refrigerator. So, I circle around and I give it a good kick and it tumbles down into the hole. I hear it bang off the side a few times but once again, there’s no crash, no splash, like it just kept fallin’ forever. It was the strangest thing. So I figure this is the first of this city’s many unknowable mysteries and I start to go on about my way. But then I see the second strange thing—this goat, it goes flying past me, in midair. Like it was fired from a cannon. And now I think I’m losin’ my mind, like maybe it’s not just tobacco in my cigar, if you know what I’m sayin’. So I walk along and I come across a guy sittin’ on the curb and I say, ‘Holy cow, partner, did you see that goat?’ And the fella says, ‘Well, that’s my goat.’ And I say, ‘Well, I hate to tell ya, but I think it’s gone. It took off flyin’.’ And the fella says, ‘That’s impossible. I had him chained to a refrigerator.’” Zoey stared for a moment, then snorted a laugh that almost caused her to choke on her sandwich.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
Istanbul was an illusion. A magician’s trick gone wrong. Istanbul was a dream that existed solely in the minds of hashish eaters. In truth, there was no Istanbul. There were multiple Istanbuls – struggling, competing, clashing, each perceiving that, in the end, only one could survive. There was, for instance, an ancient Istanbul designed to be crossed on foot or by boat – the city of itinerant dervishes, fortune-tellers, matchmakers, seafarers, cotton fluffers, rug beaters and porters with wicker baskets on their backs … There was modern Istanbul – an urban sprawl overrun with cars and motorcycles whizzing back and forth, construction trucks laden with building materials for more shopping centres, skyscrapers, industrial sites … Imperial Istanbul versus plebeian Istanbul; global Istanbul versus parochial Istanbul; cosmopolitan Istanbul versus philistine Istanbul; heretical Istanbul versus pious Istanbul; macho Istanbul versus a feminine Istanbul that adopted Aphrodite – goddess of desire and also of strife – as its symbol and protector … Then there was the Istanbul of those who had left long ago, sailing to faraway ports. For them this city would always be a metropolis made of memories, myths and messianic longings, forever elusive like a lover’s face receding in the mist.
Elif Shafak (10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World)
Gunung Padang is not a natural hill but a man-made pyramid and the origins of construction here go back long before the end of the last Ice Age. Since the work is massive even at the deepest levels, and bears witness to the kinds of sophisticated construction skills that were deployed to build the pyramids of Egypt, or the largest megalithic sites of Europe, I can only conclude that we're looking at the work of a lost civilization and a fairly advanced one.
Danny Hilman Natawidjaja
Here is one way to conceptualize NASA's heroic era: in 1961, Kennedy gave his "moon speech" to Congress, charging them to put an American on the moon "before the decade is out." In the eight years that unspooled between Kennedy's speech and Neil Armstrong's first historic bootprint, NASA, a newborn government agency, established sites and campuses in Texas, Florida, Alabama, California, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and the District of Columbia; awarded multi-million-dollar contracts and hired four hundred thousand workers; built a fully functioning moon port in a formerly uninhabited swamp; designed and constructed a moonfaring rocket, spacecraft, lunar lander, and space suits; sent astronauts repeatedly into orbit, where they ventured out of their spacecraft on umbilical tethers and practiced rendezvous techniques; sent astronauts to orbit the moon, where they mapped out the best landing sites; all culminating in the final, triumphant moment when they sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to step out of their lunar module and bounce about on the moon, perfectly safe within their space suits. All of this, start to finish, was accomplished in those eight years.
Margaret Lazarus Dean (Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight)
On a construction site sabotage could be potentially deadly. Alarm jumped through her. “Is anyone hurt?” “No, thankfully. But… I need to be there.” “Then go. I’ve got my communicator and everyone knows I’m yours now anyway.” She liked saying that she was his. He liked it as well if the smoldering look he gave her was any indication. As the elevator made a soft ding, she leaned up and kissed him, not caring about the public affection. He didn’t seem to mind either as he deepened the kiss for a little longer than was probably publicly acceptable. When the doors opened, there were two males inside who didn’t appear to be getting off— until Con growled at them. Without pause, they politely stepped off and let her get on. Even though there was enough room for about twenty warriors, apparently Con was feeling extra protective today. She bit back a smile and blew him a kiss goodbye in full view of the two males. To her surprise his ears tinged red. It was the last thing she saw before the doors closed. A short laugh escaped as she pressed the correct floor.
Savannah Stuart (Claimed by the Warrior (Lumineta, #3))
Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and his chief construction engineer on the site, an Arkansas-born bulldog named L. F. “Lem” Wylie, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Floyd Dominy had sanctioned January 21 as the day the diversion tunnel in the west wall of the canyon would be sealed.
Russell Martin (A Story that Stands Like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West)
In the course of my new work I had occasion to go roaming about the whole construction site and time to sit on the ceiling of the eighth floor of our building, in other words, as if on the roof. And from there we prisoners had a panoramic view of Moscow. ... But no matter how much of a greenhorn I was in champing at the bit to be out "in freedom," this city did not arouse in me envy or the wish to soar down onto its streets. All the evil holding us prisoner had been woven here. This arrogant city had never before provided such a justification as it did now after the war for the saying: "Moscow turns its back on tears!
Alexander Solschenizyn (The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged))
Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the “Peoples of the North” was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners. This enabled him to increase appreciably the slave labor force on royal construction sites and in the army. Such was invariably the procedure for acclimating white-skinned persons in Egypt, a process that became especially widespread during the low period. By bearing this in mind, we may avoid attributing a purely imaginary role to people who contributed absolutely nothing to Egyptian civilization.
Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality)
The world’s first commercial railroad opened for business in 1830, in Britain. By 1850, Western nations were criss-crossed by almost 25,000 miles of railroads – but in the whole of Asia, Africa and Latin America there were only 2,500 miles of tracks. In 1880, the West boasted more than 220,000 miles of railroads, whereas in the rest of the world there were but 22,000 miles of train lines (and most of these were laid by the British in India).5 The first railroad in China opened only in 1876. It was 15 miles long and built by Europeans – the Chinese government destroyed it the following year. In 1880 the Chinese Empire did not operate a single railroad. The first railroad in Persia was built only in 1888, and it connected Tehran with a Muslim holy site about 6 miles south of the capital. It was constructed and operated by a Belgian company. In 1950, the total railway network of Persia still amounted to a meagre 1,500 miles, in a country seven times the size of Britain.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Don't get me wrong, a lot has changed...lynchings have become white knees pressed against a black neck. Black knees in kneepads, in protest on the ground have become career enders for Super Bowl-contending quarterbacks. Attempting to spend a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill has become guilty before investigation--a death sentence without a trial--a public execution. Looking at a construction site has become justification for chasing, harassing, fighting, shooting, and killing a man...a man...amen. I agree with myself, as I have to do because whiteness doesn't allow itself to agree with my truth. We tell you we're hurting. You tell us we're not. I hurt. I said, I hurt! When will this country ever begin to believe me?
Razel Jones (Wounds)
I must say, it is rare to find a person, let alone a woman, fearless of Tristan." Morana turned on the spot, her eyes finding Dante Maroni standing a few feet away, his huge frame encased in a suit that was completely out of place at this construction site and rather belonged to the party she'd seen him in last week. His dark hair was perfectly styled, slicked back on his head, exposing high cheekbones models around the world would weep for. His jaw was shaven clean, two big silver rings adorning his right index finger and left middle finger. With a smooth smile on his face that Morana didn’t trust one bit, she observed the Mediterranean heritage obvious in the bronze of his skin, and could not deny that Dante Maroni was one beautiful man.
RuNyx (The Predator (Dark Verse #1))
As you know, a small vessel was brought in from an outer-zone construction site. They seem to be of a new civilization, with a mix of old and new technologies. This occurence is only the start of more to come. Kame, what would you do about the new trespassers?" Jackie smiles at Kyo's wisdom, putting his potential replacement to the test. Kame takes a second to think it over. She answers confidently, like a leader. "I would try to negotiate a way to absorb them into our culture and offer them a way to be happy without leaving. Keeping the Nation secret is the top priority of the people. This would suit both sides." Kyo smiles. Negotiations rarely work that way. "And if they refuse?" Kame replies quickly. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
Julian Fernandes (Kyo (Earth's Final Chapter #9))
The patricians urge [Coriolanus] to set aside his most deeply held convictions for the purpose of getting elected. They want him to lie and to pander and to play the demagogue. Once he is securely in office, there will be plenty of time for him to resume his actual stance and to roll back the concessions that have been made to the poor. It is the most familiar of political games: the plutocrat, born into every privilege and inwardly contemptuous of those beneath him, who mouths the rhetoric of populism during the electoral campaign, abandoning it as soon as it has served his purposes. The Romans had boiled it all down to a conventional performance, comparable to a well-coiffed politician's donning of a hard hat at a rally held at a construction site...
Stephen Greenblatt (Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics)
Construction work was the city’s new brutalist art form, erecting its installations wherever you looked. Tall buildings fell and construction sites rose. Pipes and cables rose from and descended into the hidden depths. Telephone landlines ceased to work and water and power and gas services were randomly suspended. Construction work was the art of making the city become aware of itself as a fragile organism at the mercy of forces against which there was no appeal. Construction work was the mighty metropolis being taught the lessons of vulnerability and helplessness. Construction workers were the grand conceptual artists of our time and their installations, their savage holes in the ground, inspired not only hatred—because most people disliked modern art—but also awe.
Salman Rushdie (The Golden House)
The Temple of Hekate at Lagina, Caria, Anatolia was the last major temple built during the Hellenistic period. The temple was constructed on the site of an older settlement, which may have included an earlier temple. Lagina is the largest known temple which was dedicated entirely to Hekate and is famous for being the site of a key-bearing procession. In this procession, a key was carried by a young girl along the Sacred Way, an 11km road which connected the temple at Lagina to the nearby city of Stratonicea. Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable information on the purpose of the ceremony. Johnston writes that: "None of our sources explain what it was supposed to accomplish, but if it took its name from a key that was carried, then that key must have been of central importance - it must have been used to lock or unlock something significant." [89] Johnston further explains that although we don’t know what the key opened, the number of inscriptions naming the festival indicates that it was a significant festival. We can speculate that it was the key to the city, the key to the temple at Lagina, or the key to another (unknown) precinct. Considering Hekate’s ability to traverse between the worlds of the living and the dead, it is conceivable that the key opened the way to some form of ritual katabasis. At Lagina, the goddess Hekate was given the epithet Kleidouchos (key-bearer), so it is also possible that the young girl who carried the keys in the procession represented the goddess in the ceremony.
Sorita d'Este (Circle for Hekate - Volume I: History & Mythology (The Circle for Hekate Project Book 1))
The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary reason for this practice. Another early custom was that a newly built house should be provided for each couple that married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days. The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient rites which still obtain at the present day. The observance of these customs was only possible with some form of construction as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily pulled down, easily built up. A more lasting style, employing brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable, as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.
Kakuzō Okakura (The Book of Tea)
These men, and the boys following in their footsteps, were socialized in childhood to exhibit the ideal masculine traits, including stoicism, aggressiveness, extreme self-confidence, and an unending competitiveness. Those who do not conform are punished by their fathers in the form of physical and emotional abuse, and then further socialized by the boys in their school and community who have been enduring their own abuse at home. If that isn’t enough, our culture then reflects those expectations in its television shows, movies, music, and especially in advertising, where products like construction-site-quality trucks, power tools, beer, gendered deodorant, and even yogurt promise to bestow masculinity for the right price. The masculinity that’s being sold, that’s being installed via systemic abuse, is fragile because, again, it is unattainable. Humans are not intended to suppress their emotions indefinitely, to always be confident and unflinching. Traditional masculinity, as we know it, is an unnatural state, and, as a consequence, men are constantly at war with themselves and the world around them.
Jared Yates Sexton (The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making)
If the body is no longer a site of otherness but of identification, then we have urgently to become reconciled with it, repair it, perfect it, turn it into an ideal object. Everyone treats their bodies the way men treat women in projective identification: they invest them as a fetish, making an autistic cult of them, subjecting them to a quasi-incestuous manipulation. And it is the body's resemblance to its model which becomes a source of eroticism and 'white' seduction -- in the sense that it effects a kind of white magic of identity, as opposed to the black magic of otherness. This is how it is with body-building: you get into your body as you would into a suit of nerve and muscle. The body is not muscular, but muscled. It is the same with the brain and with social relations or exchanges: body-building, brainstorming, word-processing. Madonna is the ideal specimen of this, our muscled Immaculate Conception, our muscular angel who delivers us from the weaknesses of the body (pity the poor shade of Marilyn!). The sheath of muscles is the equivalent of character armour. In the past, women merely wrapped themselves in their image and their finery -- Freud speaks of those people who live with a kind of inner mirror, in a fleshly, happy self-reference. That narcissistic ideal is past and gone; body-building has wiped it out and replaced it with a gymnastic Ego-Ideal -- cold, hard, stressed, artificial self-reference. The construction of a double, of a physical and mental identity shell. Thus, in `body simulation', where you can animate your body remotely at any moment, the phantasy of being present in more than one body becomes an operational reality. An extension of the human being. And not a metaphorical or poetic extension, as in Pessoa's heteronyms, but quite simply a technical one.
Jean Baudrillard (The Perfect Crime)
is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece “Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of “over,” “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk.* If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground—like the rifle range or the car sales total board or the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
Men like my father, and men like him who attend Trump rallies, join misogynistic subcultures, populate some of the most hateful groups in the world, and are prisoners of toxic masculinity, an artificial construct whose expectancies are unattainable, thus making them exceedingly fragile and injurious to others, not to mention themselves. The illusion convinces them from an early age that men deserve to be privileged and entitled, that women and men who don’t conform to traditional standards are second-class persons, are weak and thus detestable. This creates a tyrannical patriarchal system that tilts the world further in favor of men, and, as a side effect, accounts for a great deal of crimes, including harassment, physical and emotional abuse, rape, and even murder. These men, and the boys following in their footsteps, were socialized in childhood to exhibit the ideal masculine traits, including stoicism, aggressiveness, extreme self-confidence, and an unending competitiveness. Those who do not conform are punished by their fathers in the form of physical and emotional abuse, and then further socialized by the boys in their school and community who have been enduring their own abuse at home. If that isn’t enough, our culture then reflects those expectations in its television shows, movies, music, and especially in advertising, where products like construction-site-quality trucks, power tools, beer, gendered deodorant, and even yogurt promise to bestow masculinity for the right price. The masculinity that’s being sold, that’s being installed via systemic abuse, is fragile because, again, it is unattainable. Humans are not intended to suppress their emotions indefinitely, to always be confident and unflinching. Traditional masculinity, as we know it, is an unnatural state, and, as a consequence, men are constantly at war with themselves and the world around them.
Jared Yates Sexton (The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making)
Whatever you focus on is your reality. You tend to move in the direction of what you’re focused on--especially when it’s bad. I remember when I was about nine years old, staying with my grandma and grandpa at the lake, I was playing with my cousins at this construction site. Not the safest place to play, which I suppose is what attracted me to it. I saw a two-by-four with a nail sticking out of it, and I remember running and thinking, Oh man, wouldn’t it be terrible if I fell on that? A few moments later, it actually happened. I tripped and the nail went straight through my knee. I ended up going to the hospital with a two-by-four stuck to my knee because we were afraid to pull it out. The nail was about a centimeter away from cutting a vital tendon that would have required major surgery. So I was really fortunate in that regard. But I couldn’t help thinking that my focus on this nail created the situation. I’ve learned since then that we all have the power to create our own destiny. On some level, we ask for things that happen to us in our lives. You have to know what you want, then be aware of the thoughts you hold in your mind. Negative ones--fear, anger, jealousy, frustration--will undermine you. If you see the nail tripping you up, it will.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
At the time, about to graduate from college, I was operating mainly on impulse, like a salmon swimming blindly upstream toward the site of his own conception. In class and seminars I would dress up these impulses in the slogans and theories that I'd discovered in books., thinking - falsely - that the slogans meant something, that they somehow made what I felt more amenable to proof. But at night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I'd never known. ... Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me (although even this much understanding may have come later, is also a construct, containing its own falsehoods) that I wasn't alone in my particular struggles, and that communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men... Through organising, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned... I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my life. That was my idea of organising. It was a promise of redemption.
Barack Obama (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance)
Once I leave — once I start the car or catch the bus to the airport, by which the voyage is initiated — my brain starts to relax at the absence of my things, and thus the familiar thoughts that they inspire. And it is not just about the books and trinkets on my desk, because a real trip usually means leaving behind innumerable other forms of familiarity: the faces and the voices that we know well, and which cause their own cataracts of memories and associations through their long histories with us. There are the sounds we always hear, and the recognition of what caused them, like the scraping of the gate at the construction site across the square from my apartment, which arrives every morning at 7 a.m. There are the quotidian streets of daily life, lined with memories of events at each address. The shops and offices we visit most often; the foods we buy, with their familiar tastes as we eat them. But as we go away from these things, our own thoughts change, or grow into the space previously occupied by the familiar. The light itself becomes different once we start to travel, as we change setting, latitude, or geography. And with these changes, with the disappearance of the familiar and its many calls upon our thoughts, we finally begin to think differently, or even just begin to think at all.
Evan Rail (Why We Fly: The Meaning of Travel in a Hyperconnected Age (Kindle Single))
My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do? If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece, "Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty, you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of, “over,” and “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk. If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground- like the rifle range or a car sales total board or the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
To the aesthetic crimes against the city of Jerusalem can be added those of culture and religion. One of the most important parts of the Mamilla area was its Muslim cemetery dating back to the seventh century. The graves were removed at night so that no one could witness this, and in their place the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation built a Museum of Tolerance! To ensure that Muslims could not reach this sacred site, it was surrounded by an electric fence.12 Desecrating Muslim graveyards for new constructions was nothing new, however: the old cemetery in Haifa, al-Istiqlal, was desecrated in a similar way when a highway was driven through it, scattering the gravestones to either side.
Ilan Pappé (The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories)
When Hodges was presented to Harmon the next morning for a positive ID, Harmon reportedly couldn’t be sure he was her attacker. “I can’t tell,” she said. “I can’t say he is the negro, but I can’t say he is not the negro.” Unfortunately, many citizens of Tyler subscribed to the guilty until proven innocent philosophy where African Americans were concerned. At approximately 11:15 a.m., a white mob three to four thousand strong broke into the county jail and seized Hodges. The lynch mob transported Hodges to the site of the new Smith County Courthouse, which was then under construction. A few members threw a rope up over an enormous derrick—which was being utilized at the site for hoisting large stones for the new courthouse—and fashioned a noose on one end, placing it around Hodges’s neck. Several men then took hold of the other end and, with one simultaneous pull, jerked Hodges up into the sky. Hodges squirmed as he swung back and forth high above the mob, and then his movements dwindled to a twitch or two before he grew still. Within ten minutes, the construction site was empty, save the deceased, whose gruesome figure hung motionless in midair. No one involved in the crime even attempted to conceal his identity. As the May 7, 1909 edition of the Alto Herald put it, “Those who took part in the lynching went about it just as they went about their daily business.
E.R. Bills (The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas)
I was takin’ a walk downtown, tryin’ to get a feel for the place. And I’m walkin’ through a construction site—and it was all construction sites back then, you understand—and I come across this hole in the ground, ’bout ten feet in diameter. I look down and I can’t see a bottom, so I pull a quarter out of my pocket and toss it down, and listen for a clink or a splash. Nothin’. Coin just tumbles into the darkness and disappears. So now I’m real curious, and I look around for somethin’ else to throw down there. And teeterin’ right on the edge of the hole is an old refrigerator. So, I circle around and I give it a good kick and it tumbles down into the hole. I hear it bang off the side a few times but once again, there’s no crash, no splash, like it just kept fallin’ forever. It was the strangest thing. So I figure this is the first of this city’s many unknowable mysteries and I start to go on about my way. But then I see the second strange thing—this goat, it goes flying past me, in midair. Like it was fired from a cannon. And now I think I’m losin’ my mind, like maybe it’s not just tobacco in my cigar, if you know what I’m sayin’. So I walk along and I come across a guy sittin’ on the curb and I say, ‘Holy cow, partner, did you see that goat?’ And the fella says, ‘Well, that’s my goat.’ And I say, ‘Well, I hate to tell ya, but I think it’s gone. It took off flyin’.’ And the fella says, ‘That’s impossible. I had him chained to a refrigerator.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
sighed. “I can’t say that you weren’t expected.” “I’m just going to be walking around here and taking some measurements. It says here… you own eighty acres? That is one of the most gorgeous mansions I have ever seen,” he rambled on. “It must have cost you millions. I could never afford such a beauty. Well, heck, for that matter I couldn’t afford the millions of dollars in taxes a house like this would assess, let alone such a pricey property. Do you have an accountant?” Zo opened her mouth to respond, but he continued, “For an estate this size, I would definitely have one.” “I do have an accountant,” she cut in, with frustration. “Furthermore, I have invested a lot of money bringing this mansion up to speed. You can see my investment is great.” “Of course, it would be. The fact of the matter is, Mrs. Kane, a lot of people are in over their heads in property. You still have to pay up, or we take the place. Well, I’ll get busy now. Pay no mind to me.” He walked on, taking notes. “Clairrrrre!” Zo called as soon as she entered the house. “Bring your cell phone!” Two worry-filled months went by and many calls were made to lawyers, before Zoey finally picked one that made her feel confident. And then the letter came with the totals and the due date. “There is no way we can pay this, Mom, even if we sold off some of our treasures, because a lot of them are contracted to museums anyway. I am feeling awfully poor all of a sudden, and insecure.” “Yes, and I did some research, thinking I’d be forced to sell. It’s unlikely that anyone else around here can afford this place. It looks like they are going to get it all; they aren’t just charging for this year. What we have here is a value about equal to a little country. And all the new construction sites for housing developments suddenly popping up on this side of the river, does not help. Value is going up.” Zo put her head in her hands. “Ohhh, oh, oh, oh!” “Yeah, bring out the ice-cream and cake. I need comforting,” sighed Claire. The cell phone rang. “Yes, tonight? You guys have become pretty good to us, haven’t you?! You know, Bob, Mom and I thought we were just going to pig out on ice cream and cake. We found out we are losing this estate and are going to be poor again and we are bummed out.” There was a long pause. “No, that’s okay, I understand. Yeah, okay, bye.” “Well?” Zo ask dryly. “He was appropriately sorry, and he got off the phone fast, saying he remembered he had other business to take care of. Do you want to cry? I do…” “I’ll get the cake and dish the ice cream. You make our tea and we’ll cry together.” A pitter patter began to drum on the window. “Rain again. It seems softer though, dear.” “I thought you said this was going to be a softer rain!” It started to pour. “At least this is not a thunder storm… What was that?” “Thunder,” replied Claire, unmoved and resigned. An hour had gone by when there was a rapping at the door. “People rarely use the doorbell, ever notice that?” Zo asked on the way to the door. She opened it to reveal two wet guys holding a pizza, salad, soft drink, and giant chocolate chip cookies in a plastic container. In a plastic
Zoey Kane (The Riddles of Hillgate (Z & C Mysteries #1))
Professional Bio of Shahin Shardi, P.Eng. Materials Engineer Welding and Pressure Equipment Inspector, QA/QC Specialist Shahin Shardi is a Materials Engineer with experience in integrity management, inspection of pressure equipment, quality control/assurance of large scale oil and gas projects and welding inspection. He stared his career in trades which helped him understand fundamentals of operation of a construction site and execution of large scale projects. This invaluable experience provided him with boots on the ground perspective of requirements of running a successful project and job site. After obtaining an engineering degree from university of British Columbia, he started a career in asset integrity management for oil and gas facilities and inspection of pressure equipment in Alberta, Canada. He has been involved with numerus maintenance shutdowns at various facilities providing engineering support to the maintenance, operations and project personnel regarding selection, repair, maintenance, troubleshooting and long term reliability of equipment. In addition he has extensive experience in area of quality control and assurance of new construction activities in oil and gas industry. He has performed Owner’s Inspector and welding inspector roles in this area. Shahin has extensively applied industry codes of constructions such as ASME Pressure Vessel Code (ASME VIII), Welding (ASME IX), Process Piping (ASME B31.3), Pipe Flanges (ASME B16.5) and various pressure equipment codes and standards. Familiarity with NDT techniques like magnetic particle, liquid penetrant, eddy current, ultrasonic and digital radiography is another valuable knowledge base gained during various projects. Some of his industry certificates are CWB Level 2 Certified Welding Inspector, API 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector, Alberta ABSA In-Service Pressure Vessel Inspector and Saskatchewan TSASK Pressure Equipment Inspector. Shahin is a professional member of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.
Shahin Shardi
I believe that disclosure represents a particular kind of inventional site within autism land. Because autism, in the cultural imagination, is an ambiguous and often mystery-laden construct, any disclosure around autism invokes questions, invokes guesswork, incites demands for particularity. One cannot claim autism without being pressed for more -- more information, more cross-examination, more refutation, more response, more words flowing from more mouths. But there is likewise a problem of ethos (or kakoethos, to quote Jenell Johnson) inherent in these disclosures, wherein autistic people are figured as lacking authority to speak on or from within autism. Autistic academic Dinah Murray laments these figurations of autism and ethos, noting, "Disclosure of an autism spectrum diagnosis means disclosure of the fundamentally flawed personhood implied by [autism's] diagnostic criteria. It is likely to precipitate a negative judgment of capacity involving permanent loss of credibility." In disclosing autism, we are both too autistic and not autistic enough...
Melanie Yergeau (Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Thought in the Act))
We cannot casually accept the loss of oaks without also accepting the loss of thousands of other plants and animals that depend on them. Oak declines in the United Kingdom, for example, threaten the survival of some 2,300 other species (Mitchell et al. 2019). Fortunately, there is no reason why we should accept the loss of oaks as inevitable; there is no trick to restoring oak populations, and no shortage of places in which to restore them. If you were to add up the amount of land in various types of built landscapes that is not dedicated to agriculture—suburban developments, urban parks, golf courses, mine reclamation sites, and so forth—it would total 603 million acres, a full 33% of our lower 48 states. We have not targeted these places for conservation in the past, but that was back when our conservation model was based on the notion that humans and their tailings were here and nature was someplace else. That model of mutual exclusion has failed us dismally; there simply are not enough untrammeled places left to sustain the natural world that until now has sustained us. Our only option, then, is to find ways to coexist with other species. That’s right, we must construct ecosystems that contain all their functional parts right where humans abound.
Douglas W. Tallamy (The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees)
Dopamine enhances the ability of neurons to transmit signals between one another. How? By acting as an agonist (as opposed to antagonist), or a substance that enhances neural activity. Dopamine binds to specific receptor molecule sites on the synaptic clefts of the neurons, as if it were the CTS that normally bind there.12 It increases the rate of neural firing in association with pattern recognition, which means that synaptic connections between neurons are likely to increase in response to a perceived pattern, thereby cementing those perceived patterns into long-term memory through the actual physical growth of new neural connections and the reinforcement of old synaptic links. Increasing dopamine increases pattern detection; scientists have found that dopamine agonists not only enhance learning but in higher doses can also trigger symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations, which may be related to that fine line between creativity (discriminate patternicity) and madness (indiscriminate patternicity). The dose is the key. Too much of it and you are likely to be making lots of Type I errors—false positives—in which you find connections that are not really there. Too little and you make Type II errors—false negatives—in which you miss connections that are real.
Michael Shermer (The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths)
Throughout the autumn and the winter activity increased in the Beaulieu area, and with it came mysteries. Lepe House, the mansion at the entrance to the river, was taken over by the Navy and became full of secretive Naval officers; it became known that this was part of a mysterious Navel entity called 'Force J'. Near Lepe House and at the very mouth of the river a construction gang began work in full strength to make a hard, sloping concrete platform running down into the river where the flat-bottomed landing craft could beach to refuel and let their ramps down to embark the vehicles and tanks. This place was about two miles from 'Mastodon'. A mile or so along the coast a country house was occupied by a secret Naval party who did strange things with tugs and wires and winches, and with what looked like a gigantic reel of cotton floating in the sea; this was 'Pluto', Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was to lay pipes from England to France to carry petrol to supply the armies which were due to land in Normandy. On a bare beach nearby a thousand navvies were camped making huge concrete structures known as 'Phoenix', one of many such sites all along the coast. It was not till after the invasion that it became known that these were a part of the artificial harbour 'Mulberry' on the north coast of France.
Nevil Shute (Requiem for a Wren)
Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude
Chris Turner (The Patch: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands)
Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.
Anonymous
Elephanta caves, Mumbai-- I entered a world made of shadows and sudden brightness. The play of the light, the vastness of the space and its irregular form, the figures carved on the walls: all of it gave the place a sacred character, sacred in the deepest meaning of the word. In the shadows were the powerful reliefs and statues, many of them mutilated by the fanaticism of the Portuguese and the Muslims, but all of them majestic, solid, made of a solar material. Corporeal beauty, turned into living stone. Divinities of the earth, sexual incarnations of the most abstract thought, gods that were simultaneously intellectual and carnal, terrible and peaceful. ............................................................................ Gothic architecture is the music turned to stone; one could say that Hindu architecture is sculpted dance. The Absolute, the principle in whose matrix all contradictions dissolve (Brahma), is “neither this nor this nor this.” It is the way in which the great temples at Ellora, Ajanta, Karli, and other sites were built, carved out of mountains. In Islamic architecture, nothing is sculptural—exactly the opposite of the Hindu. The Red Fort, on the bank of the wide Jamuna River, is as powerful as a fort and as graceful as a palace. It is difficult to think of another tower that combines the height, solidity, and slender elegance of the Qutab Minar. The reddish stone, contrasting with the transparency of the air and the blue of the sky, gives the monument a vertical dynamism, like a huge rocket aimed at the stars. The mausoleum is like a poem made not of words but of trees, pools, avenues of sand and flowers: strict meters that cross and recross in angles that are obvious but no less surprising rhymes. Everything has been transformed into a construction made of cubes, hemispheres, and arcs: the universe reduced to its essential geometric elements. The abolition of time turned into space, space turned into a collection of shapes that are simultaneously solid and light, creations of another space, made of air. There is nothing terrifying in these tombs: they give the sensation of infinity and pacify the soul. The simplicity and harmony of their forms satisfy one of the most profound necessities of the spirit: the longing for order, the love of proportion. At the same time they arouse our fantasies. These monuments and gardens incite us to dream and to fly. They are magic carpets. Compare Ellora with the Taj Mahal, or the frescoes of Ajanta with Mughal miniatures. These are not distinct artistic styles, but rather two different visions of the world.
Octavio Paz (In Light Of India)
we were all itching for dick jokes and male bonding. The team took photos for the web site on an abandoned construction site (camp was in central Florida at the beginning of the mortgage crisis, so the area was filled with ruins, not unlike ancient Rome). The next day, we rode back to the same spot and took our own pictures, this time with our genitals out, and slipped it into the photographer’s slideshow. Someday, I’ll frame that photo and put it on the wall.
Phil Gaimon (Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro)
but if your job site looks like a disaster zone, your visitors will not think twice about making judgments about you and your abilities. Subconscious or not, these judgment will have a negative affect on how you are perceived. On the other hand, if your visitors “catch you” with your prints, your trailer, your tools, your material, and even your crew organized and neat, they will be sure to go away feeling that you take pride in your work and that you have high standards. They will leave confident that you are doing your best to turn out a quality product.
Jason McCarty (Construction Leadership Success: The Construction Foreman's Definitive Guide for Running Safe, Efficient, and Profitable Projects)
Pyongyang dismissed the report as baseless. The officially-sanctioned itinerary consisted mostly of newly built projects, testament to a recent jump in construction activity in the capital funded partly by booming business with China. This was further reflected in a large number of residential building sites across the city. Officially recorded trade between China and North Korea reached $6.5bn last year, up more than a 10th from 2012. The developments included the Okryu children’s hospital, equipped with modern medical scanning equipment – although
Anonymous
Turns out there’s a reason smoking is not allowed on construction sites.
Kathy Bryson (Restless Spirits)
The digging continues ... Ground Zero it looks more and more like a construction site. Too much of the horror is gone. No fire. No smoke ... What was war becomes peace, becomes peaceful. But in the coil of my testicles there's an angry residue and in places I can't even name, places inside my throat and behind my chest, I'm sad, and sometimes worse than sad, less than sad, a cavity of empty.
Adam Berlin (The Number of Missing)
the origin of eusociality requires the preadaptation of a constructed and guarded nest site.
Edward O. Wilson (The Social Conquest of Earth)
In ordinary times the Jhelum river flows gently between high stable banks of deep soil, and until the stream shrinks in November, navigation, in spite of the absence of a proper tow-path, is easy. But in the winter the river above Sriiiagar is blocked by shoals, and the boatmen often have to dig out a channel for the heavy grain barges. In times of flood the river overtops its natural banks, and when the flood is high the water pours over the artificial embankments which have been constructed on either side of the river. Great damage is then caused to the crops of maize and linseed, and sometimes stacks of wheat, barley, and rape-seed are swept away. The loss caused by floods is always greatest below Srinagar, as the fall of the country is slight and the flood-water remains on the land rotting the crops. Above Srinagar the fall of the river and the slope of the country cause the flood-water to run down quickly and the crops often recover. In former times the villages lying along the river were obliged to keep the artificial embankments in repair, and flood-gates existed which let out the water of the mountain streams, and protected the country against the floods of the Jhelum. For many years this obligation had not been enforced, and under my supervision the embankments below Srinagar were repaired, and the normal floods of 1892 were kept in check. Above Srinagar the question of repairing embankments is complicated by the presence of the city, the safety of which must not be endangered. It is unfortunate that Srinagar should have been built on its present site. It is not only exposed to constant danger from floods, but is itself the cause of floods, because it checks the drainage of the country. The old Hindus were wise for they chose high land for their cities, and ancient Srinagar stood on ground secure from floods. Akbar, the first of the Mughal rulers, selected the slopes of the Hari-Parbat for his city Nagar, but his successors, without thought for the future, closed the Dal lake to the floods of the Jhelum, and thereby robbed the river of one of the escapes for its flood-water. Later the Pathans built their palace on the left bank of the Jhelum and prevented the river from escaping to the west, and now all the flood-water from the south of the valley must pass through the narrow waterway of Srinagar. There the channel of the river is narrowed by stone embankments, by the piles of encroaching city magnates, and the flow is further
Anonymous
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repeatedly patrolling the shoreline of jagged rocks and debris, Rocco walked back to the construction site then to his car parked
Thomas Benigno (The Good Lawyer (Good Lawyer, #1))
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SRS International Biodiesel
A road sign up ahead. He veered off, crossing the Port-Jérôme industrial zone with his windows shut and the AC going full blast. Even so, the air smelled viscous, heavy with metal shavings and acid. Here, embedded in nature, the big names parceled out the empire of fossil fuels and oils. Total, Exxon Mobil, Air Liquide. The inspector drove nearly two miles in this magma of smokestacks, finally crossing past it into a quieter area, a full-on industrial wasteland. Frozen bulldozers shredded the landscape. He parked just short of the construction site, got out, and loosened his shirt collar. To hell with his jacket—he abandoned it on the passenger seat, along with the sports bag that contained his effects for the hotel. He stretched his legs, which cracked when he bent them. “Jesus…
Franck Thilliez (Syndrome E)
It happened two days ago. Some dump between Le Havre and Rouen. Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon—how’s that for a name? Bodies unearthed on the banks of the Seine—you must have heard about it on the tube.” “That thing at the construction site, where they’re laying a pipeline?” “Right. The media was all over it. They were already there because the site itself is such a hot-button issue. They discovered five stiffs with their skulls sawed off. Criminal Investigations in Rouen is on the scene, working with the local cops. Their DA was about to send in the CSI boys, but in the end we caught it. I can’t say I’m too thrilled—in this weather, it’s disgusting.
Franck Thilliez (Syndrome E)
Step By Step Guide To Finding A Good Roofing Contractor The local roofing repair contractor you choose should always have a great reputation in the community and a track record of exceptional customer service. When you can't be on site, you need to know that your service provider is doing an excellent job. You also need to be sure that old-fashioned craftsmanship and quality materials are part of the roofing repair contractor's vision for his work. The following are methods to make sure that you hire the right roofing repair contractor. A reliable roofing repair contractor will make an effort to bring you the highest quality results. Well-regarded roofing repair contractors preserve their good reputations by always keeping their promises. Give your roofing repair contractor an appropriate timeline and do not interrupt his work unnecessarily. Discover how the contractual worker arrangements to handle any obligation issues. Once you start seeing bids, do not make the mistake of assuming that a low bid will lead to a similarly low work performance. Check the cost of the needed materials and compare them to the pricing of the low bid. In addition, it's important to think about all the labor costs. Construct a legal contract only when you have determined the price is within reason. Often when you are searching for a local roofing repair contractor with a great reputation and who will provide the very best work, this is usually one of the busier people in his field. If your local roofing repair contractor has a reputation for doing a great job, be prepared to wait to engage his services. There is a downside to roofing repair contractors who are in high demand as they might not be able to focus entirely on your project. The most vital thing in finding a local roofing repair contractor is to trust your instincts. Every time a roofing expert comes to you with a legal contract that requires your signature, read the legal agreement to really ensure all of your requests are present in the legal agreement and the roofing expert recognizes them. If you're taking the time to ensure the legal agreement has everything you and your service provider had agreed on and is put in clear terms, it'll save you much stress and money down the road. Ensure you have posed all questions and concerns to your service provider prior to signing an agreement. If there are any terms or conditions you do not understand, give the legal agreement to a lawyer for clarification. Roofing contractors with excellent reputations consider it good business practice to provide each client with a written quote before starting work on any job. If the info is needed, pronto, your roofing repair contractor might be willing to provide you with a quote over the phone. Inspect the schedule and qualifications of the roofing repair contractor to effectively ensure that the project will be finished exactly how and when you would like it and within your financial requirements. Make sure to ask any questions and address all concerns to your satisfaction before you employee a roofing repair contractor
Anchor Roofing, Inc.
It turns out that prayer is one more way through which we can create changes in the land. By setting aside some places as sacred, we engage in an interaction with wild nature in which we do not take our sustenance from the earth, but instead make an offering to it. To construct “a portal to another world” through ceremony or ritual or private meditation is to create another type of working landscape—one that is at work by being a sanctuary and a site of communion with the wonders of Earth. Prayer, too, is a use of the landscape. It’s how we can give back to wild nature, by doing what humans do best: investing a place with meaning and with myth.
Jason Mark (Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man)
It was almost possible to ignore that the church was also an active construction site. While tremendous progress had been made in recent years with the interior structures, still there was much to be done: scaffolding and interior lifts abounded, cordoned off with yellow tape. Their first destination was the apse and they wandered in that direction with necks craned and eyes open in awe.
Glenn Cooper (The Resurrection Maker)
He reached for his thermos and took a pull of coffee, wondering A) what she was doing creeping around a dark construction site at night with her face pressed firmly against the window, and B) if she bent over just a little farther what color silk would he find peeking back. His brain already knew the answer to the first. Too bad his dick couldn’t stop thinking about the second.
Marina Adair (From the Moment We Met (St. Helena Vineyard, #5))
He reached for his thermos and took a pull of coffee, wondering A) what she was doing creeping around a dark construction site at night with her face pressed firmly against the window, and B) if she bent over just a little farther what color silk would he find peeking back. His brain already knew the answer to the first.
Marina Adair (From the Moment We Met (St. Helena Vineyard, #5))
He bogged down in traffic three blocks from the freeway. Yet another apartment building was being framed on a lot intended for a single-family home. A lumber truck was blocking the street as it crept off the site, and a food truck maneuvered to take its place. Locked in the standstill, Scott watched the framers perched in the wood skeleton like spiders, banging away with their nail guns and hammers. A few climbed down to the food truck, but most continued working. The banging ebbed and flowed around periods of silence; sometimes a single hammer, sometimes a dozen hammers at once, sometimes nail guns snapping so fast the construction site sounded like the Police Academy pistol range. Scott
Robert Crais (Suspect (Scott James & Maggie, #1))
Pike said, “What were they saying?” “Couldn’t hear, but it’s an easy guess. The nephew here just lost two hundred thousand and a boatload of workers. They probably weren’t talking about a promotion.” Their next stop was a large two-level strip mall on Vermont. The strip mall was in the final stages of being remodeled, with a club and a restaurant taking up most of the upper level and what looked like another bar and a karaoke lounge on the lower level. A large sign in Korean script and English hung across the front of the karaoke lounge: OPENING SOON. Stone said, “Y’see? This is what I was talking about. You can’t open for business without the right staff.” I liked it. Under construction was good. Opening soon was good. The more pressure Park felt to recover his people, the more desperately he would look for ways to do so. We stopped at two more strip malls and a large commercial building on Western Avenue. Park met people at each site, and toured the properties as if checking their progress, but no one looked happy, especially Park. One
Robert Crais (Taken (Elvis Cole, #15; Joe Pike, #4))
The Nazis began construction of the camp in November 1938, at a site near the village of Ravensbrueck in northern Germany, about fifty miles north of Berlin,” Avigail explained. “The first inmates were approximately nine hundred women. They were Jews, gypsies, communists, and criminals. By the end of 1942, the prisoner population had expanded to nearly ten thousand. By the beginning of 1945, the camp had more than forty-five thousand prisoners and was bursting at the seams.
Dan Eaton (The Secret Gospel)
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Expertvillagemedia
After I have demonstrated how ancient Egypt is connected with Mecca, let's look at the phrase 'Sema Tawy': It was not meant originally to be a reference to 'The Two Lands' because Sema as a noun means transcendence/elevation/sky, and as a verb it means to soar/rise/transcend; and Tawy as a noun is constructed from the verb which means to plummet/fall/descend and also to pleat/fold. Therefore, both words are references to the (Upper and/or Lower) Heavens and Earth/Land. However, trying to connect that which is above with that which is below should originally be observed on the Benben itself (aka, pyramidion) for that it resembled the mound that arose from the primordial waters 'Nu'; now one can appreciate with awe the repeating syllable of 'Ben' after I have proven the connection with Mecca, for that the water spring there (which saved the prophet Ishmael and his mother by God's order unto Gabriel to force its water gushing out of Earth to guarantee the survival of Noah's heir upon whom the tidings are yet to come) is called 'ZamZam'. Replacing 'Z' with 'S' takes place in non-Semitic and non pure Semitic tongues alike'; for example it even exists today in Italian when 'S' comes between vowels or before b, d, g, l, m, n, r, and v. In other words, that is a recurring theme which when applied to the word 'Sema', it shows how it is derived from 'Zam' = زم which means: 'tuck,tighten'. Therefore, not only the theme of the black cornerstone along with the Bennu bird were taken from Arabia's heritage, but even the creation story of the pyramidion is built upon that important site in Mecca which is a valley, or better said, a Tawy. Putting the capstone above it to lift it high into the sky thereby (while operating as a portal to the Upper Heavens as I have shown earlier) directly points to the fact that ancient Egypt was yearning to receive Noah's heritage for herself and it devised a whole tradition to reproduce Arabia's theme for that zeal. If 'Sema Tawy' later on came to mean 'Union of the Two Lands', then its context is now clear that: as in Mecca, so is in Egypt. Note that the word 'ZamZam' (bring together, collect) was that action which Ishmael's mother was doing once she saw water coming out of the ground as the sources tell us, for that she was afraid that what happened before her eyes was coincidental rather than being brought up from a well beneath her.
Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
testosterone flowing out of him like a leaking drum on a construction site.
Melia Alexander (Driven to Temptation: A Romantic Comedy (Driven to Love Book 1))
a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
You open your door one evening to find a uniformed police officer standing outside. Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry. This is just a courtesy call. There’s been a burglary in the area and they’re just letting you know so your home isn’t next. Lock your doors and windows. Keep valuables out of view. Think about installing an alarm. You chat for a few minutes. You might mention the door at the back that doesn’t lock. Or that fact that you live here alone. Or that the couple who owns this construction site is living here while the work goes on—or, well, one of them is, because her husband is going back to San Francisco for a few weeks next week. Maybe you don’t reveal any information, but while you speak he’s still gathering it. The integrity of the front-door lock. The layout of the ground floor. Whether or not he likes the look of you. If he’d like to do to you what he’s already done to the others. That’s how he was choosing them, we felt sure. Donning a Garda uniform and doing door-to-door calls in the aftermath of a real burglary. But was he really a guard? Neither Tom nor Johnnie could remember seeing a Garda car, and we thought it would be relatively easy to convince a member of the public that you were wearing a Garda uniform when in actual fact you were wearing an approximation of one. He could’ve also easily gotten hold of a real uniform—if he was prepared to murder innocent people, he was probably willing to steal items of clothing too. Moreover this behavior would have been an incredible risk for a serving member to take, when one phone call to the local station would’ve been all it took to bring his little rogue scouting missions crashing down.
Catherine Ryan Howard (The Nothing Man)
we forget Joseph F. Glidden's 1874 invention of barbed wire, which, more than the rifle or the plow, transformed Buffalo Bill's Great Plains by insuring the survival of thousands of family farms, and making possible the growth of enormous-and enormously profitable-cattle ranches. In addition, I feel a personal connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where they found only one completed log house and another under construction. There they homesteaded the town of Blair, Nebraska. For three generations there were Carters in Nebraska, first in
Robert A. Carter (Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend)
Let me tell you for a FACT. On a construction site it doesn’t matter what color you were, you have to prove your worth as an individual because on a construction site ain’t no one else wants to pick up your slack or carry your dead weight when we’re being paid the same amount of money so it’s largely sink or swim.
J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Book Series Update and Urgent Status Report: Vol. 3 (Rise of the New World Order Status Report))
Nothing tempers Coriolanus’s obnoxiousness, and yet the play is oddly sympathetic to him, at least compared with the others of his class. The patricians urge him to set aside his most deeply held convictions for the purpose of getting elected. They want him to lie and to pander and to play the demagogue. Once he is securely in office, there will be plenty of time for him to resume his actual stance and to roll back the concessions that have been made to the poor. It is the most familiar of political games: the plutocrat, born into every privilege and inwardly contemptuous of those beneath him, who mouths the rhetoric of populism during the electoral campaign, abandoning it as soon as it has served his purposes. The Romans had boiled it all down to a conventional performance, comparable to a well-coiffed politician’s donning of a hard hat at a rally held at a construction site: the candidate for office would set aside his richly dyed robes and, entering the marketplace, put on a threadbare white garment, “the napless vesture of humility” (2.1.222). Then, if he had any battle scars, he would show them, like a résumé, and solicit the people’s votes.
Stephen Greenblatt (Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics)
connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where they found only one completed log house and another under construction. There they homesteaded the town of Blair, Nebraska. For three generations there were Carters in Nebraska, first in Blair and then in Omaha, where I was bom. As a native Nebraskan, I feel a particular affinity for William F. Cody, who lived most of his adult life in Nebraska. My father, George W. Carter, could have seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West when it came to Omaha in August 1908. I wish I had known the old scout personally; I am glad I have come to know him better while writing this book. It is also my fond hope that readers will feel as I do, that Buffalo Bill Cody is well worth knowing. Writing a biography of someone long dead is always a challenge. You must come to understand the person, the motivations, the key events that altered the course of history. And there are the records, the letters, the reminiscences of contemporaries. In Bill. Cody's case the documentation is plentiful but sometimes contradictory. Did Buffalo Bill kill Yellow Hand-the "first scalp for Custer"-for example? There are those who say he did and detractors who say he did not. Who are. we . to ' believe? For the most part, if I found two or three accounts that agreed with each other, particularly if there were official government .records supporting him, I felt sure I could give the credit to Cody.
Robert A. Carter (Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend)
I walk past a construction site and manage a fond smile as I watch the workers clean up for the day, their behemoth starting to claw its iron talons toward the sky as the materials come together, magically creating a new economy where once there was none.
Melanie A. Smith (The Safeguarded Heart (The Safeguarded Heart #1))
This is because the Fourth Temple—the one Jesus will Himself have constructed on the Temple site at that time, will be enormous—much larger than the previous structures.
Thomas Horn (The Rabbis, Donald Trump, and the Top-Secret Plan to Build the Third Temple: : Unveiling the Incendiary Scheme by Religious Authorities, Government Agents, and Jewish Rabbis to Invoke Messiah)
As a child, I was fascinated by construction sites. Later, I worked on them, selling houses. I love the whole idea of building in the literal, and the metaphorical sense. Good writers are good architects and builders - it's all about structure.
Suzy Davies
(It’s about here our Tinfoil Hat readers start cheering wildly)! The Camp Century site beneath the Greenland ice sheet was selected by US Army engineers in May, 1959. Construction began in 1960 and it was soon a fully-fledged subterranean city that ran entirely on nuclear
James Morcan (The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy)