Gizmo Quotes

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.

Donald Trump has been called, by psychologists and clinical psychologists, over and over again, a narcissist with multiple sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies.

Donald Trump is a liar because he is a coward. It is fear and cowardice that make him lie. it is his fragile ego that makes him lie.

I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we'd use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertips tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings.

What's that you're doing, Sassenach?" "Making out little Gizmo's birth certificate--so far as I can," I added. "Gizmo?" he said doubtfully. "That will be a saint's name?" "I shouldn't think so, though you never know, what with people named Pantaleon and Onuphrius. Or Ferreolus." "Ferreolus? I dinna think I ken that one." He leaned back, hands linked over his knee. "One of my favorites," I told him, carefully filling in the birthdate and time of birth--even that was an estimate, poor thing. There were precisely two bits of unequivocal information on this birth certificate--the date and the name of the doctor who's delivered him. "Ferreolus," I went on with some new enjoyment, "is the patron saint of sick poultry. Christian martyr. He was a Roman tribune and a secret Christian. Having been found out, he was chained up in the prison cesspool to await trial--I suppose the cells must have been full. Sounds rather daredevil; he slipped his chains and escaped through the sewer. They caught up with him, though, dragged him back and beheaded him." Jamie looked blank. "What has that got to do wi' chickens?" "I haven't the faintest idea. Take it up with the Vatican," I advised him. "Mmphm. Aye, well, I've always been fond of Saint Guignole, myself." I could see the glint in his eye, but couldn't resist. "And what's he the patron of?" "He's involved against impotence." The glint got stronger. "I saw a statue of him in Brest once; they did say it had been there for a thousand years. 'Twas a miraculous statue--it had a cock like a gun muzzle, and--" "A what?" "Well, the size wasna the miraculous bit," he said, waving me to silence. "Or not quite. The townsfolk say that for a thousand years, folk have whittled away bits of it as holy relics, and yet the cock is still as big as ever." He grinned at me. "They do say that a man w' a bit of St. Guignole in his pocket can last a night and a day without tiring." "Not with the same woman, I don't imagine," I said dryly. "It does rather make you wonder what he did to merit sainthood, though, doesn't it?" He laughed. "Any man who's had his prayer answered could tell yet that, Sassenach." (PP. 841-842)

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.

The damn fool had brought a digital projector and roll-up screen. He connected his Gizmo and, as usual with technology, it didn’t work. Unfazed, he twiddled settings. Happy as a pig in shit.

NOTE: If Donald Trump continues to be stupid enough to respond to everyone who states the obvious fact that he is ignorant, he will starve to death because he won't have time to eat.

Every day we’re bombarded with information and images—with adolescents in heavy makeup pretending to be grown women as they advertise miraculous creams promising eternal beauty; with the story of an aging couple who climbed Mount Everest to celebrate their wedding anniversary; with new massage gizmos, and pharmacy windows that are chockablock with slimming products; with movies that give an entirely false impression of reality, and books promising fantastic results; with specialists who give advice about how to succeed in life or find inner peace. And all these things make us feel old, make us feel that we’re leading dull, unadventurous lives as our skin grows ever more flaccid, and the pounds pile on irrevocably. And yet we feel obliged to repress our emotions and our desires, because they don’t fit with what we call “maturity.” Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and allow in only things that won’t bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that.

Donald Trump's secrets are two. - He has mastered the art of persuasion. - He has absolutely no conscience.

So, you want to see the house?" he asked, standing up. "Sure. Any cool futuristic gizmos you can show me? Food replicators or a holodeck or something?" "Funny. It's not Star Trek.

We split the atom, we reached the moon, we’ve filled every household and business with more gadgets and gizmos than early sci-fi writers could have ever dreamed of.

The Donald is not a master of the deal; he is a reckless, foolhardy craps dealer playing with house money. He doesn't care at all about the lives and fortunes of the human beings peopling this planet.

Not only is Donald Trump the most despised candidate ever, but many of the people who have made the most scathingly censorious criticisms of him are members of his own party. This is absolutely unprecedented in our history, and it ought to give pause to all Americans, particularly supporters of Donald Trump.

Rick Wilson, a national GOP strategist, has called Trump "a virus that has infected the Republican party." He often recites a litany of vengeful acts Trump has engaged in which disqualify him from the position of Commander in Chief.

I think children want to believe that they can be heroes too.

...what a leveller this remote-control gizmo was...it chopped down the heavyweight and stretched out the slight until all the set's emissions, commercials, murders, game-shows, the thousand and one varying joys and terrors of the real and the imagined, acquired an equal weight...

No one as consistently, spectacularly, and admittedly greedy as Donald Trump could possibly give two poops about us. Absolutely impossible. I will go so far as to say that, if elected, Donald Trump would be the least likely President in the history of our nation to do anything for any of us that wouldn't also benefit him.

I've got a gizmo. No batteries required.

reading their books on electronic gizmos

Love may be blind, but cohabitation comes with all the latest X-ray gizmos.

Electricity, shelter, and a safe place to sleep . . . trump the need to preserve your credit score, or purchase a new gizmo.

He connected his Gizmo and, as usual with technology, it didn’t work.

Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an "integral part," a kind of switch with screw holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody knows what. This thing's use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by bluff, like certain insects that escape being eaten because of their formidable appearance.

Hell, are you birds telling me I can't lift that dinky little gizmo?' 'My friend, I don't recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets.

I can tell you he's a strong son of a bitch. He never punched me or anything. But one time he restrained me with one hand while typing on his Gizmo with the other [...] I still think about that sometimes late at night.

In Russia they have a strange disease. It makes membrane grow across the sick person's throat, and they start to choke. there's less and less air until they eventually die. They treat it with a strange gizmo, A little silver tube. the membrane can't tolerate silver. The healer inserts the little silver tube in the patient's throat and he breaths through it until it gets over the illness. You're my little silver tube. With you, I have started breathing.

You love them. The fives and twenties and the profit margins, overheads, the trading fees and tax-free fuckwhats.” “I love little more than a tax-free fuckwhat.” “How does anybody keep track of money anyway, when it’s zinging around all over the place? This guy puts it here for five minutes into pork asses, then whap! he kicks the asses and slaps it into gizmos, then shuffles some of that into peanut brittle.” “It’s never wise to put all your eggs into one pork’s ass.

It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos . . . a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them.

I see. And do you have this client’s room number?” “Nah.” “Do you have his Gizmo ID?” “Nah.” I pulled a compact out of my handbag and checked my ruby-red lipstick. “I’m sorry, madam”—she looked me up and down—“I’m unable to help you if you don’t have his room number or some other proof that you’ve been invited.” I shot her a bitchy glare (I’m good at that). “Oh, he wants me here all right. For an hour.” I set the compact on her desk and fished around in my handbag. She leaned away from the compact like she might catch a disease from it. I pulled out a piece of paper and read: “Jin Chu. Canton Artemis. Arcade District. Aldrin Bubble.” I put the paper away. “Just call the fuckin’ guy, okay? I got other customers after this.

Subtractor,” a boxlike contraption of wires, knobs, and gizmos. But the awkwardness of those years didn’t deter him from pursuing his dream; it probably nurtured it. He would never have learned so much about computers, Woz says now, if he hadn’t been too shy to leave the house.

“My Peregrination Cap,” he grumbles, straightening his tie and vest while wavering on wobbly legs. I gesture to the layer of moths crawling around on Gizmo’s roof. “We lost a few of them to the wind. Sorry.” “Brilliant.” Scowling, Morpheus walks over and sweeps his hand across the insects, coaxing them to form the hat. They manage all but the brim. He puts it on anyway and turns to me. I bite my cheeks in an effort not to laugh. He narrows his eyes. “Don’t get too cheeky, little plum. Though your prank may have been irresistibly wicked, I’m still in the lead by a set of wings.”

One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the devil.

I do understand. Every day we’re bombarded with information and images—with adolescents in heavy makeup pretending to be grown women as they advertise miraculous creams promising eternal beauty; with the story of an aging couple who climbed Mount Everest to celebrate their wedding anniversary; with new massage gizmos, and pharmacy windows that are chockablock with slimming products; with movies that give an entirely false impression of reality, and books promising fantastic results; with specialists who give advice about how to succeed in life or find inner peace. And all these things make us feel old, make us feel that we’re leading dull, unadventurous lives as our skin grows ever more flaccid, and the pounds pile on irrevocably. And yet we feel obliged to repress our emotions and our desires, because they don’t fit with what we call “maturity.” Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and allow in only things that won’t bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that. Do you think I don’t get judged and criticized at work? Well, I do—a lot! But I’ve decided to hear only the things that encourage me to improve, the things that help me correct my mistakes. Otherwise, I will just pretend I can’t hear the other stuff or block it out.

a curious gizmo that a bearded Scotsman named Alexander Graham Bell was calling his “telephone.” (Bell would read from Hamlet’s soliloquy at one end of the hall, and attendees at the other could plainly hear the inventor’s voice issuing from a little speaker. “My God, it talks!” exclaimed one prominent visitor, Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil.)

In short Donald Trump lies compulsively in large part because of who and what he is - a coward. This is why Mike Brzezinski said recently, "He brings nothing to the table.

MEANWHILE, THERE’S THE New Millennium technology craze . . . holy moly, is there ever . . . the breathless infatuation with hi-def, 3D, 5G, glued to the hand, glued to the ear, twenty-first-century cyber gee-whizzery. They’re coming at us so fast—the gizmos, the doodads, the gimcracks, the wonderments—so ubiquitously, so overwhelmingly, we’ve not yet found how best to wrangle each new miracle into genuine usefulness.

It was to be called Polasound, and the idea was truly eccentric: to attach an audio caption to each Polaroid integral picture. The idea seems to have been that you’d clip your picture into a little plastic carrier that held a strip of audiotape. For recording and playback, you’d pop each one into what looked like a small radio with a slot on top. The gizmo never got past the drawing board, but it’s one of the most bewitchingly weird notions Polaroid ever considered.

Here's what an e-reader is. A battery operated slab, about a pound, one half-inch thick, perhaps an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to produce the battery and printed writing and refine the minerals. The production of other e-reading devices such as cell phones, iPads and whatever new gizmo will pop up (and down) in the years ahead is similar. "The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book," says the Times. Then you figure that the one hundred million e-readers will be outmoded in short order--to be replaced by one hundred million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replace by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand.

The British accomplished much with little; at the height of empire, an insignificant number of Anglo-Celts controlled the entire Indian subcontinent. A confident culture can dominate far larger numbers of people, as England did for much of modern history. By contrast, in an era of Massively Applied Desultoriness, we spend a fortune going to war with one hand tied behind our back....So on we stagger, with Cold War institutions, transnational sensibilities, politically correct solicitousness, fraudulent preening pseudo-nation building, expensive gizmos, little will, and no war aims...but real American lives.

Experts have called Donald Trump's ignorance "breathtaking." Jeffrey Goldberg has said that Trump has "no understanding of the post-war international order that was created by the United States." Goldberg further stated that Trump shows "little interest in understanding why the world is organized the way it is.

With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them. Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

Neliss, why is this rug wet?” Legna peeked around the corner to glance at the rug in question, looking as if she had never seen it before. “We have a rug there?” “Did you or did you not promise me you were not going to practice extending how long you can hold your invisible bowls of water in the house? And what on earth is that noise?” “Okay, I confess to the water thing, which was an honest mistake, I swear it. But as for a noise, I have no idea what you are talking about.” “You cannot hear that? It has been driving me crazy for days now. It just repeats over and over again, a sort of clicking sound.” “Well, it took a millennium, but you have finally gone completely senile. Listen, this is a house built by Lycanthropes. It is more a cave than a house, to be honest. I have yet to decorate to my satisfaction. There is probably some gizmo of some kind lying around, and I will come across it eventually or it will quit working the longer it is exposed to our influence. Even though I do not hear anything, I will start looking for it. Is this satisfactory?” “I swear, Magdelegna, I am never letting you visit that Druid ever again.” “Oh, stop it. You do not intimidate me, as much as you would love to think you do. Now, I will come over there if you promise not to yell at me anymore. You have been quite moody lately.” “I would be a hell of a lot less moody if I could figure out what that damn noise is.” Legna came around the corner, moving into his embrace with her hands behind her back. He immediately tried to see what she had in them. “What is that?” “Remember when you asked me why I cut my hair?” “Ah yes, the surprise. Took you long enough to get to it.” “If you do not stop, I am not going to give it to you.” “Okay. I am stopping. What is it?” She held out the box tied with a ribbon to him and he accepted it with a lopsided smile. “I do not think I even remember the last time I received a gift,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek warmly. He changed his mind, though, and opted to go for her mouth next. She smiled beneath the cling of their lips and pushed away. “Open it.” He reached for the ribbon and soon was pulling the top off the box. “What is this?” “Gideon, what does it look like?” He picked up the woven circlet with a finger and inspected it closely. It was an intricately and meticulously fashioned necklace, clearly made strand by strand from the coffee-colored locks of his mate’s hair. In the center of the choker was a silver oval with the smallest writing he had ever seen filling it from top to bottom. “What does it say?” “It is the medics’ code of ethics,” she said softly, taking it from him and slipping behind him to link the piece around his neck beneath his hair. “And it fits perfectly.” She came around to look at it, smiling. “I knew it would look handsome on you.” “I do not usually wear jewelry or ornamentation, but . . . it feels nice. How on earth did they make this?” “Well, it took forever, if you want to know why it took so long for me to make good on the surprise. But I wanted you to have something that was a little bit of me and a little bit of you.” “I already have something like that. It is you. And . . . and me, I guess,” he laughed. “We are a little bit of each other for the rest of our lives.” “See, that makes this a perfect symbol of our love,” she said smartly, reaching up on her toes to kiss him. “Well, thank you, sweet. It is a great present and an excellent surprise. Now, if you really want to surprise me, help me find out what that noise is.

sheltie,

Founded in 2011, ToyTalk already produces popular animated conversational apps — among them the Winston Show and SpeakaZoo — that encourage young children to engage in complex dialogue with a menagerie of make-believe characters. Now the company’s technology, originally designed for two-dimensional characters on-screen, is poised to power tangible playthings that children hold in their hands. This fall, Mattel plans to introduce Hello Barbie, a Wi-Fi enabled version of the iconic doll, which uses ToyTalk’s system to analyze a child’s speech and produce relevant responses. “She’s a huge character with an enormous back story,” Mr. Jacob says of Barbie. “We hope that when she’s ready, she will have thousands and thousands of things to say and you can speak to her for hours and hours.” [Video: Hello Barbie is World's First Interactive Barbie Doll Watch on YouTube.] It was probably inevitable that the so-called Internet of Things — those Web-connected thermostats and bathroom scales and coffee makers and whatnot — would beget the Internet of Toys. And just like Web-connected consumer gizmos that can amass details about their owners and transmit that data for remote analysis, Internet-connected toys hold out the tantalizing promise of personalized services and the risk of privacy perils.

Realize that every minute you spend putting in extra hours at work or in front of an electronic gizmo is a minute you’re not spending with your partner.

The history of technology tells us that inventions are two a penny. There are many, many people who invent new things: machines, processes, tools, gizmos, gadgets, widgets, and the like. Such people are often portrayed as unsung heroes, ahead of their field, unrecognized in their own time

Because people never saw how it was going to end up like this. Hemmed in by gadgets; cut off from each other. Every man an island. And as there were less and less people we just humanised the gizmos so that nobody felt lonely. No neighbours, only a talking fridge to keep you occupied, or a stupid dancing toaster.

The era of garage biology is upon us. Want to participate? Take a moment to buy yourself a molecular biology lab on eBay. A mere $1,000 will get you a set of precision pipettors for handling liquids and an electrophoresis rig for analyzing DNA. Side trips to sites like BestUse and LabX (two of my favorites) may be required to round out your purchases with graduated cylinders or a PCR thermocycler for amplifying DNA. If you can’t afford a particular gizmo, just wait six months—the supply of used laboratory gear only gets better with time. Links to sought-after reagents and protocols can be found at DNAHack. And, of course, Google is no end of help.

The most important training involved the latest American breakthrough in communications technology: a handheld, portable, two-way radio transceiver that made ground-to-air communications possible for the first time. A predecessor of the mobile telephone, the equipment had been designed at the RCA electronics laboratories in New York before being refined and developed for the OSS by De Witt R. Goddard and Lieutenant Commander Stephen H. Simpson. The device would eventually become known as a “walkie-talkie,” but at the time of its invention this pioneering gizmo went by a more cumbersome and quaint title: the “Joan-Eleanor system.” “Joan” was the name for the handheld transmitter carried by the agent in the field, six inches long and weighing three pounds, with a collapsible antenna; “Eleanor” referred to the larger airborne transceiver carried on an aircraft flying overhead at a prearranged time. Goddard’s wife was named Eleanor, and Joan, a major in the Women’s Army Corps, was Simpson’s girlfriend. The Joan-Eleanor (J-E) system operated at frequencies above 250 MHz, far higher than the Germans could monitor. This prototype VHF (very high frequency) radio enabled the users to communicate for up to twenty minutes in plain speech, cutting out the need for Morse code, encryption, and the sort of complex radio training Ursula had undergone. The words of the spy on the ground were picked up and taped on a wire recorder by an operator housed in a special oxygen-fed compartment in the fuselage of an adapted high-speed de Havilland Mosquito bomber flying at over twenty-five thousand feet, outside the range of German anti-aircraft artillery. An intelligence officer aboard the circling aircraft could communicate directly with the agent below. As a system of communication from behind enemy lines, the J-E was unprecedented, undetectable by the enemy, easy to use, and so secret that it would not be declassified until 1976.

Imagine being a child with a secret for which there are no words, only dark shapes sliding around in your vision, shapes nobody else sees. Imagine what would be unleashed if so many people didn’t have to waste so much time dealing with flashbacks, secret-keeping, suicidal thoughts, low self-esteem, crippling fear of … everything, and on down the dreary list. Imagine the fantastic, the amazing, the mind-boggling things so many rape survivors could do, say, create or be if they didn’t have to waste time being traumatized and stymied and made small. Imagine the art that we could create, the songs we could sing, the forests we could plant, the life-changing planet-saving gizmos we could invent, instead of wasting our time trying to stop our hearts from pounding if we hear footsteps behind us on our way to the bus stop. It’s such a wholesale waste of potential.

The funny thing is, thinking back, I don't think all these modern gizmos actually make you any more productive. Hierarchical file systems—how do they make you more productive? Most of software development goes on in your head anyway. I think having worked with that simpler system imposes a kind of disciplined way of thinking. If you haven't got a directory system and you have to put all the files in one directory, you have to be fairly disciplined. If you haven't got a revision control system, you have to be fairly disciplined. Given that you apply that discipline to what you're doing it doesn't seem to me to be any better to have hierarchical file systems and revision control. They don't solve the fundamental problem of solving your problem. They probably make it easier for groups of people to work together. For individuals I don't see any difference.

As you’ll also find throughout the book, I am a proponent of using a variety of tools and techniques to enhance well-being. Why use only an Allen wrench when you have a whole toolbox at your disposal? The benefits compound when you use a range of the fantastic mental gizmos you’ll discover in this book, to work on one project—yourself—from different angles, including the mental, physical, and even spiritual (though you’ll find no religion in my kit even if I espouse the memorization of scripture from a variety of traditions).

Dishonesty is not only the destroyer of beauty, but of what beauty creates, even out of ugliness - understanding. Dishonesty is the extinguisher of understanding, and understanding is the foundation of compassion.

See,” said Gizmo, “we’re all starting out with some tools already forged, when it comes to what we expect of each other. One thing you learn in engineering, you have to understand something before you can change it, or you just get a big mess.

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo—which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead.

Greenblatt is not alone in this assertion. Many believe water is an issue of money and will be best solved locally, and without the aid of techie gizmos. It’s an opinion based on hindsight. The last century saw governments dithering while they searched for a high-tech, silver-bullet solution. Millions died in the interim, and the world is full of gadgets either unsuitable for the ruggedness of their deployment area or impossible to maintain because supply chains did not extend far enough.

Take an extreme case, where E-Prime seems overly pedantic: instead of “This is a chair,” I write “I call this a chair, and use it as a chair.” The is-ness statement tends, to a greater or lesser degree, to make you forget what the E-Prime statement helps you to remember: the non-verbal space-time event called a “chair” can have many other names, and many other uses — e.g., an aggressive weapon in a dysfunctional family, a defensive weapon if a burglar breaks in, kindling wood in some Ice Age situation, a scratching post for Kitty, etc. Similarly, “This is a rose” encourages you to forget that the non-verbal Gizmo “is” also a botanical specimen, a structure created by DNA out of other molecules, a source of pleasant aroma, a gift for a loved one, a subject for a painter, a mass of electrons, etc. etc. etc.

We are subject to a society that bombards us with temptation to buy the latest gizmos and gadgets to appease our social circle. Stop living to impress others.

thingamabob-a-gizmo-a-jig

Tools for surveying We often use whichever survey tools our clients use. Popular options include SurveyMonkey, Google Forms (which has few features, but is agile), Survey Gizmo, Medallia Digital, Survey Anyplace (specifically for mobile), Wufoo, Clicktools, Polldaddy, Typeform, and Uservoice

The colonel was clearly not one to beat about the bush. “I assume, Mr. Varg, that you are here about one of the men doing something or other. Let me apologise in advance: we try to choose our men very carefully, and by and large we make the right choices. But these days...” He shrugged. “You’ll know what I mean—we don’t have the choice that we used to have. Young men don’t fancy the military life.” “Of course, the reintroduction of national service will make a difference,” said Ulf. The colonel made an equivocating gesture. “We’ll see,” he said. “I don’t look forward to getting today’s eighteen-year-olds. Look at them, Mr. Varg, just look at them. Scruffy bunch, hah! High on drugs and electronic gizmos in equal measure.

The entire fabric of creation... is so intricately interwoven, cohesively working to re-orientate that which is disorientated. Like some precision navigational gizmo... or mysterious sacredly appointed compass, that can in effect... divinely connect the dots.

Sonicators are used for cleaning glasses, jewelry, and metal stuff like coins and watches. Even cell phone parts. Dentists, doctors, and hospitals use the gizmos to clean instruments.

Maybe it's old-fashioned, but I'm opposed to sneakers without laces. Digital watches and pocket calculators, too. Gizmos that make life easier and dull our minds. Besides being unable to read or write, today's kids have trouble telling time, multiplying nine time seven, and tying their shoes

He sells something high-tech and gadgety that I don't pretend to understand: techno gizmos that somehow make everything go faster, as if life weren't going fast enough already.

Gizmo’s girlfriend, the only girl he’d ever dated and hoped to marry, left her good looks on the windscreen

In our world of instant communication, we supplement our relationships with an assortment of technological devices in the hope that all these gizmos will strengthen our connections. This social frenzy masks a profound hunger for human contact.

Now ‘means’ is how she died, the method. Her throat was slashed with a knife. Blood everywhere. What kind of human would do something so horrible to their mate?” “Precisely, much too messy,” Winston said. “Why not use a gun? Very impersonal. Something simple, like a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight revolver.” “My Fresno human had the Revolver album,” said Meatloaf. “H played it a lot. He said he Beatles explored new ground with their work.” “A gun?” I said. “Too loud. The neighbors would hear and call the cops.” “What about hitting her on the head?” asked Gizmo. “That’s quiet. Messy, maybe - but quiet.” Meatloaf spoke up again. “I been hit with a newspaper, it makes a loud sound. Whack! Right on the butt.” “A crowbar. Silent but deadly.” “Who carries a crowbar? It would be something like a tire iron.” “Or a golf club.” “Everybody around here plays golf.” The pack nodded.

Bandit Baxter Bear Bella Buddy Chewy and Chica Cocoa Cody Cooper Flash Gizmo Goldie Honey Jack Liberty Lucky Lucy Maggie and Max Mocha Molly Moose Muttley Noodle Oscar Patches Princess Pugsley Rascal Rocky Scout Shadow Snowball Sweetie Teddy Ziggy Zipper

I’ve heard that He won’t lead you to it if He can’t get you through it, and I guess I started thinking that sounded reasonable, if the Gizmoe analogy was any guide. If I was just a puppy, afraid of the rain, maybe my God was looking out for me after all.

Serge thought he should probably ditch the limo, since it would draw attention, but he didn’t because, one, he was nuts, and two, it had gizmos.

There’s a Mesmer in our midst. We must consult with Gizmo immediately!

Hope in all forms should be distrusted. Hope is dumb breakaway glass shattered on the softest head. Survival maybe, blood and thunder, but not hope. While Billy can appreciate the technology of hope, the well-crafted mechanism of religion, the internal wiring of promise, the silicon of love, he has no idea how the gizmo works. In all likelihood hope would lay in his hands, unresponsive, the On button hidden from sight. He'd end up hammering nails with hope or employing hope as a paperweight, until someone would finally tell him, "Hey, you're using hope all wrong." Hopelessness is what Billy prefers. It has a simpler design and fewer moving parts.

Why not tinker up such devices now? The methane version could not be used in draft- tight close quarters but a hydrogen hearth might sell to apartment dwellers, especially singles wanting the latest in trendy mood-setting gizmos. Just knowing that we could take such “fire chamber” with us, could make the prospects of life on the space frontier just a little less daunting, just a little more reassuring.

home and taken up another life. But otherwise I was the same bridled girl I’d always been, if you don’t count my one bolt out of the barn at the age of fourteen, the consequences of which I have already committed to this little gizmo—under duress, I might add.

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD MALE COLLEGE FRESHMAN (laying down the law at a party): If Marlowe had lived, he would have written very much better plays than Shakespeare's. ME, A THTRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH (dazed with boredom): Gee, how clever you are to know about things that never happened. THE FRESHMAN (bewildered): Huh? OR EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL AT A PARTY: Men don't understand machinery. The gizmo goes on the whatsit and the rataplan makes contact with the fourchette in at least seventy percent of all cases. THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MALE PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING (awed): Gee. (Something wrong here, I think)

So,” Murphy said. “All we need to do is get you up to the top of the pit, and then you’re going to go one-on-four with a bunch of armed FBI agents-cum-werewolves and beat them in time to go up against the loup-garou that we couldn’t stop before with all of your magical gizmos and a building full of police officers.” “Essentially,” I answered.

As the late great comedian George Carlin put it, “My shit is stuff. Your stuff is shit.” That line explains much about why we humans can’t resist adding more and more stuff to our workplaces: staff, space, gizmos, software, meetings, emails, Slack threads, rules, training, the latest management fad. We are wired to see stuff we add as righteous and essential. And to see stuff that others add as annoying and unnecessary.