Historical Sites Quotes

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The arenas are historic sites, preserved after the Games. Popular destinations for Capitol residents to visit, to vacation. Go for a month, rewatch the Games, tour the catacombs, visit the sites where the deaths took place. You can even take part in reenactments. They say the food is excellent
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
Children whose families take them to museums and zoos, who visit historic sites, who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge without even studying. For the impoverished child lacking the travel portfolio of affluence, the best way to accumulate background knowledge is by either reading or being read to.
Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook)
what a community erects on its historical landscape not only sums up its view of the past but also influences its possible futures.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Get out there and see your state. Go to museums and parks and historic sites. Get yourselves some culture so that when you do leave you can take it.
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
Valdin had learnt from Noren that there was no known passes over the Coe. Apparently Noren had heard stories about some underground passage that led through the mountains, but he had never visited the site. South of the Coe Mountains and stretching away to the east and the south were the endless grasslands of the Plains. Valdin had no idea how far he was from Bala’s eastern seaboard. From the vista below him it looked as though he had a long ride to catch up with his quarry.
Robert Reid (The Thief (The Emperor, the Son and the Thief, #3))
Socially, segregation labeled African Americans as less than human; the term “boy” itself, applied to the Scottsboro defendants even as they became elderly, implied that they were less than men.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I embarked on the project of touring historic sites and monuments having to do with the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley right around the time my country iffily went off to war, which is to say right around the time my resentment of the current president cranked up into contempt. Not that I want the current president killed. Like that director, I will, for the record (and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm – hello there), clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it.
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
I need to leave something behind. Something that will stay. This room should be a historical landmark, the site of the beginning and end of Colby and Bev. Several minutes have passed, and I know that if I wait too long there will be a knock on the door and I'll have to go, but I need to leave a mark. It has to be significant enough to last, but subtle enough that the maid won't notice and wash it away. As I'm looking around I realize that I never noticed the print above the bed. It's another in the family series - a faded wedding portrait. Groom in tux. Bride with pearls. It comes off the wall easily.I set the print on the bedspread and wit eht dust on the wall with the sleeve of my hood. I take out a Sharpie from my bag. The wall has yellowed to create a perfect rectangle where the photograph must have been hanging, unremoved, for years. I fill the whiter space with this: I never got to tell you how beautiful you are. And then I return the frame to its place on the wall and go back out into the night.
Nina LaCour (The Disenchantments)
For that matter an individual with the money (between $500 and $2,000) and a place to put it can erect a historical marker.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
I’m categorizing them according to attraction type,” said Marjory. “Outdoor activities, historical sites, shopping opportunities—subcategorized, of course, into fashion, antiques, and souvenirs.” “Of course,” said Andrew. “And, over here, you’ll find dining options.” Andrew smiled. “Isn’t informational organization awesome?” “Yes,” said Marjory. “It’s certainly more intellectually stimulating than video games.
Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics (Mr. Lemoncello's Library, #2))
What people look like, or, rather, the race they have been assigned or are perceived to belong to, is the visible cue to their caste. It is the historic flash card to the public of how they are to be treated, where they are expected to live, what kinds of positions they are expected to hold, whether they belong in this section of town or that seat in a boardroom, whether they should be expected to speak with authority on this or that subject, whether they will be administered pain relief in a hospital, whether their neighborhood is likely to adjoin a toxic waste site or to have contaminated water flowing from their taps, whether they are more or less likely to survive childbirth in the most advanced nation in the world, whether they may be shot by authorities with impunity.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited? Norman Spinrad: I think it’s a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov’s, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn’t. The supposed dichotomy between “literary fiction” and “popular fiction” is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn’t want to be “popular,” meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were “serious”? I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. “Genre,” if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. “Westerns” must be set in the Old West. “Mysteries” must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. “Nurse Novels” must have a nurse. And so forth. In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are “genres.” They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of “genre” in an absolute literary sense.
Norman Spinrad
Or guides might initiate a discussion of slave names. Many owners insisted on the right to name their newborn slaves—rather than allowing their parents this pleasure—and then deliberately gave them demeaning names or names that ironically invoked godlike figures from antiquity. George Washington, for instance, used Hercules, Paris-boy, Sambo, Sucky, Flukey, Doll, Suck Bass, Caesar, and Cupid. Most slaves received no last names. Guides could ask visitors to imagine the self-respect of black children under these conditions.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
The Civil War had been about something other than states’ rights after all. It began as a war to force or prevent the breakup of the United States.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Monuments look static - carved in stone and all - but their meanings change as the present changes and as people enact new rituals at them.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
One of the advantages to visiting historic sites as opposed to merely reading about them is the endearing glow of hometown pride.
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
In some odd gush of patriotism, my mother had once vomited on the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, and a bust of Benjamin Franklin in a single summer, aborting our vacation and causing my father to swear off historical sites until the day he died.
Jerry Stahl (Perv - A Love Story)
Native Americans also insist that “squaw” is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to “cunt” in English. Others believe it meant “bitch” in Algonquian dialects spoken in Virginia.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
It is not too much to say that the blacks in Georgia and the Carolinas made Sherman’s march possible. Their help meant that Sherman’s forces would not be traveling through hostile territory without supply lines. Rather, the soldiers were more like a huge guerilla force in friendly territory.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Britain has 450,000 listed buildings, 20,000 scheduled ancient monuments, twenty-six World Heritage Sites, 1,624 registered parks and gardens (that is, gardens and parks of historic significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day; more being lost, too), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 18,500 medieval churches, and 2,500 museums containing 170 million objects.
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain)
He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.
Jason Medina (A Ghost In New Orleans)
The first panel misquotes the preamble and conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, leaving out five words from within its selected excerpts. The architect requested the omissions so the text would fit better! Surely this memorable text should not be altered for so petty a reason. We know Jefferson would not approve, for whenever he sent correspondents a copy of the Declaration he took pains to show what the Continental Congress had added to his draft and what it had cut. The altered text reads,
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Official state historical markers form a smaller population, and early in my research I determined to read all of them. Texas dissuaded me. The Lone Star state has more state historical markers—nearly twelve thousand—than the rest of the United States put together. To read and digest one marker per minute would require 200 hours—five full weeks in the Texas office. At the other end of the spectrum is Maine, whose assistant director of historic preservation flatly assured me, “Maine does not have historical markers along its highways.” Maine has markers and monuments, of course, not put up by a state agency, so the only way to read them is to drive every road in the state, keeping a sharp lookout.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton warehouse
Nancy B. Brewer
Historical anthropologist Francois Richard finds it helpful to use a term coined by the renowned sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, calling Goree a site of 'sincere fiction.
Clint Smith (How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America)
significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day; more being lost, too), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 18,500 medieval churches, and 2,500 museums containing 170 million objects. Having such a fund of richness means that it can sometimes be taken for granted to a shocking degree, but
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain)
I suspect if we were as familiar with our bones as with our skin, we'd never bury dead but shrine them in their rooms, arranged as we might like to find them on a visit; and our enemies, if we could steal their bodies from the battle sites, would be museumed as they died, the steel still eloquent in their sides, their metal hats askew, the protective toes of their shoes unworn, and friend and enemy would be so wondrously historical that in a hundred years we'd find the jaws still hung for the same speech and all the parts we spent our life with titled as they always were - rib cage, collar, skull - still repetitious, still defiant, angel light, still worthy of memorial and affection. After all, what does it mean to say that when our cat has bitten through the shell and put confusion in the pulp, the life goes out of them? Alas for us, I want to cry, our bones are secret, showing last, so we must love what perishes: the muscles and the waters and the fats.
William H. Gass (In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories)
Background knowledge is one reason children who read the most bring the largest amount of information to the learning table and thus understand more of what the teacher or the textbook is teaching. Children whose families take them to museums and zoos, who visit historic sites, who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge without even studying.
Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook)
That's what we've been taught, this is the underpinning of all European culture-this firm belief that there are no secrets that won't sooner or later come to light. Who was it that said it? Jesus? No, Pascal, I think it was… so naïve. But this faith has been nurtured for centuries; it has sprouted its own mythology: the cranes of Ibycus, manuscripts don't burn. An ontological faith in the fundamental knowability of every human deed. The certainty that, as they now teach journalism majors, you can find everything on the Internet. As if the Library of Alexandria never existed. Or the Pogruzhalsky arson, when the whole historical section of the Academy of Sciences' Public Library, more than six-hundred thousand volumes, including the Central Council archives from 1918, went up in flames. That was in the summer of 1964; Mom was pregnant with me already, and almost for an entire month afterward, as she made her way to work at the Lavra, she would get off the trolleybus when it got close to the university and take the subway the rest of the way: above ground, the stench from the site of the fire made her nauseous. Artem said there were early printed volumes and even chronicles in that section-our entire Middle Ages went up in smoke, almost all of the pre-Muscovite era. The arsonist was convicted after a widely publicized trial, and then was sent to work in Moldova's State Archives: the war went on. And we comforted ourselves with "manuscripts don't burn." Oh, but they do burn. And cannot be restored.
Oksana Zabuzhko (The Museum of Abandoned Secrets)
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)
Across ideological differences, the femjnists have realized that a hierarchical ranking of human faculties and the identification of women with a degraded conception of corporeal reality has been instrumental, historically, to the consolidation of patriarchal power and the male exploration of female labor. Thus, analyses of sexuality, procreation, and mothering have been at the center of feminist theory and women's history. In particular, feminists have uncovered and denounced the strategies and the violence by means of which male-centered systems of exploitation have attempted to discipline and appropriate the female body, demonstrating that women's bodies have been the main targets, the privileged sites, for the deployment of power techniques and power relations. and power-relations
Silvia Federici (Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation)
Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848–1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew. Enroute to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. A second model crashed and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
When you see a roadside marker, take in what it tells but also ask, how might this be wrong? One giveaway is the use of qualifying phrases introducing statements of fact, as in: “According to tradition...” or “According to the legislature...” Visitors can count on the rest of such sentences to be unsubstantiated.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan’s village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn. In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie?
Thomas King (The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America)
Everything is brand-new, I will be the first and only tribute to use this Launch Room. The arenas are historic sites, preserved after the Games. Popular destinations for Capitol residents to visit, to vacation. Go for a month, rewatch the Games, tour the catacombs, visit the sites where the deaths took place. You can even take part in reenactments.
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
A generic National Park Service (NPS) brochure promises children, “Hidden within each national park is an exciting story waiting to be discovered. Learning the secrets of each national park is easy. Simply ask your teacher or Park Ranger...” This won’t work at Hampton, an estate built just after the Revolutionary War and located just north of the beltway that circles Baltimore. The staff at Hampton insists it has no story to tell and merely preserves the architecture. I have taken several tours at Hampton; each ranger begins by saying something like, “Every National Park Service site has a historical reason to be in the Park Service, except this one.” The NPS Web site groups its many sites under about 40 different topics. Many properties get multiple listings, but Hampton occurs only once, under “architecture.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
Other lakes get similar treatment. According to Michigan markers, whites discovered Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Superior. Lake Erie gets a more complex marker: “Named for the Erie Indians, this was the last of the Great Lakes discovered by white men...” Actually, none of them was discovered by white men, but this marker at least admits that Native Americans existed and implies they knew of Lake Erie.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
To many Native American tribes the Grand Canyon is a sacred place: site of numerous origin myths from the Havasupai to the Zuni; hushed repose of the Hopi dead. If I were forced to choose a religion, that’s the kind of religion I could go for. The Grand Canyon confers stature on a religion, outclassing the petty smallness of the Abrahamics, the three squabbling cults which, through historical accident, still afflict the world.
Richard Dawkins (Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist)
But what we did is we studied our town. We did an inventory of all of the things that were present there—farms and marshes and springs and historic sites, Indian trails, buildings, our tobacco farms included. And what happened after we did this very careful and very extensive inventory is, we fell in love with the place. Most of us didn’t know where we lived. We had just moved in and out rather oblivious to the beauty of things.
Krista Tippett (Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living)
She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didn't mind. She'd never been superstitious. The apartment was filled with items she'd collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which she'd found a note reading, "Long may we run. -Gilbert." Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmaker's twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community. Other people's treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. She'd probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmother's antique shop.
Susan Wiggs (The Apple Orchard (Bella Vista Chronicles, #1))
I’ll say, “Hey, guys, I was up on those hills that are apparently in my backyard and there’s all these carved rocks,” and they’ll say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a State Historic Site, the Moonshine Hill Stones. Didn’t you see the sign?” and I’ll say, “Isn’t there supposed to be a ranger or something?” and they’ll say, “Well, you know, budget cuts…” and we’ll nod sadly about the way local government cuts things like this, and also education, but the police department gets an armored assault vehicle even though they mostly deal with rogue cows.…
T. Kingfisher (The Twisted Ones)
Perhaps the most avid user of Amazon’s auction site was Bezos himself, who began to collect various scientific and historical curiosities. Most memorably, he purchased the skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear, complete with an accompanying penis bone, for $40,000. After the company’s headquarters moved yet again over the summer, out of the deteriorating Columbia Building and into the Pacific Medical Center building, a 1930s-era art-deco hospital that sat on a hill overlooking the I-5 freeway, Bezos displayed the skeleton in the lobby. Next to it was a sign that read PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BEAR.
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
Now, if I find liberation in moments of doubt, it comes with the one movement I always end up having to make, the only movement I can make—away from the abstract, general, and hypothetical and back into the jagged grain of the here and now, into the humanizing specificity of my love for my father, mother, brother, wife, and children, and into my sheer delight in their existence as distinct and irreplaceable people, not “bodies”—as contemporary lingo would have it—or avatars, sites of racial characteristics and traits, reincarnations of conflicts and prejudices past. Through these people I love, I am left with myself as the same, as a man and a human being who is free to choose and who has made choices and is not reducible to a set of historical circumstances and mistakes.
Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race)
The Netherlands capital of Amsterdam amsterdam cruise is a thriving metropolis and one from the world's popular cities. If you are planning a trip to the metropolis, but are unclear about what you should do presently there, why not possess a little fun and spend time learning about how it's stereotypically known for? How come they put on clogs? When was the wind mill first utilised there? In addition, be sure to include all your feels on your journey and taste the phenomenal cheeses along with smell the stunning tulips. It's really recommended that you stay in a city motel, Amsterdam is quite spread out and residing in hotels close to the city-centre allows for the easiest access to public transportation. Beyond the clichés So that you can know precisely why a stereotype exists it usually is important to discover its source. Clogs: The Dutch have already been wearing solid wood shoes, as well as "Klompen" as they are referred to, for approximately 700 years. They were originally made out of a timber sole along with a leather top or band tacked for the wood. Nevertheless, the shoes had been eventually created completely from wood to safeguard the whole base. Wooden shoe wearers state the shoes are usually warm during the cold months and cool during the warm months. The first guild associated with clog designers dates back to a number exceeding 1570 in Holland. When making blockages, both shoes of a set must be created from the same kind of timber, even the same side of a tree, in order that the wood will certainly shrink in the same charge. While most blocks today are produced by equipment, a few shoemakers are left and they normally set up store in vacationer areas near any city hotel. Amsterdam also offers a clog-making museum, Klompenmakerij De Zaanse Schans, that highlights your shoe's history and significance. Windmills: The first windmills have been demonstrated to have existed in Netherlands from about the year 1200. Today, there are eight leftover windmills in the capital. The most effective to visit is De Gooyer, which has been built in 1725 over the Nieuwevaart Canal. Their location in the east involving city's downtown area signifies it is readily available from any metropolis hotel. Amsterdam enjoys its beer and it actually has a brewery right on the doorstep to the wind generator. So if you are enjoying a historic site it's also possible to enjoy a scrumptious ice-cold beer - what more would you ask for? Mozerella: It's impossible to vacation to Amsterdam without sampling several of its wonderful cheeses. In accordance with the locals, probably the most flavourful cheeses are available at the Wegewijs Emporium. With over 50 international cheese and A hundred domestic parmesan cheesse, you will surely have a wide-variety to pick from.
Step Into the Stereotypes of Amsterdam
I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatorial courtesy prevented other members from disputing with Senators Ted Stevens (Republican) and Mike Gravel (Democrat) over a matter involving their home state. Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, my secretary of interior, and I began to study the history of the controversy and maps of the disputed areas, and I flew over some of them a few times. Environmental groups and most indigenous natives were my allies, but professional hunters, loggers, fishers, and the Chambers of Commerce were aligned with the oil companies. All the odds were against us until Cecil discovered an ancient law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted a president to set aside an area for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” such as Indian burial grounds, artifacts, or perhaps an ancient church building or the site of a famous battle. We decided to use this authority to set aside for preservation large areas of Alaska as national monuments, and eventually we had included more than 56 million acres (larger than the state of Minnesota). This gave me the bargaining chip I needed, and I was able to prevail in the subsequent debates. My efforts were extremely unpopular in Alaska, and I had to have extra security on my visits. I remember that there was a state fair where people threw baseballs at two targets to plunge a clown into a tank of water. My face was on one target and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s on the other, and few people threw at the Ayatollah’s.
Jimmy Carter (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety)
Rather, the issue is whether it is right to have a mosque and Islamic center in virtually the exact spot where so many Americans were killed in the name of Islamic holy war. I don’t think it is right, any more than I would support the idea of a neo-Nazi recruiting center at Auschwitz. My sympathies in this case are not with religiously deprived Muslims, but rather with Debra Burlingame, a spokesperson for a 9/11 victims group. “Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago,” she said.5 Some supporters of the mosque, such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, clearly missed the distinction being made here between the right to worship and how and where that right is exercised. Fareed Zakaria, writer and CNN host, recognizes the distinction; even so, he argues in favor of the mosque on the grounds that the folks building it are traditional Muslims who have condemned terrorism.6 Still, it’s not clear why these moderate Muslims disregarded the sentiments of the 9/11 victims’ families and decided on a site so close to Ground Zero. Undoubtedly radical Muslims around the world will view the mosque as a kind of triumphal monument. There is historical precedent for this. Muslims have a long tradition of building monuments to commemorate triumphs over adversaries, as when they built the Dome of the Rock on the site of Solomon’s Temple, or when Mehmet the Conqueror rode his horse into the Byzantine church Hagia Sophia and declared that it would be turned into a mosque. Many Americans may not know this history, but the radical Muslims do, and Obama does as well. The radical Muslims would like the Ground Zero mosque built so it can stand as an enduring symbol of resistance to American power, and President Obama evidently agrees with them.
Dinesh D'Souza (The Roots of Obama's Rage)
The Antigua cruise port of Saint. Johns almost guarantees that site visitors will find a lot of beaches pertaining to swimming as well as sunbathing. It isn't really an official promise. It's just that the island features 365 beaches or one for every day's the year. Vacation cruise visitors will see that the cruise amsterdam shorelines are not correct by the docks as they might find within other locations such as Philipsburg, St. Maarten. Getting to the higher beaches will need transportation by means of pre-arranged excursion shuttle, taxi as well as car rental. However, they will likely find that shorelines are peaceful, peaceful and uncrowded because there are a lot of them. 3 beaches in close proximity to St. Johns are Runaway These types of, Dickinson Beach and Miller's Beach (also called Fort These types of Beach). Saint. Johns Antigua Visit It is possible to look, dine as well as spend time at the actual beach after a cruise pay a visit to. Anyone who doesn't have interest in a seaside will find plenty of shopping right by the Barbados cruise fatal. Heritage Quay is the main searching area. It's got many stalls filled with colorful things to acquire, some community and some not really. Negotiating over price is widespread and recognized. Redcliffe Quay is close to Heritage and provides many further shopping and also dining chances. Walk somewhat farther and you'll find yourself upon well-maintained streets with more traditional searching. U.Ersus. currency and a lot major charge cards are accepted everywhere. Tipping is common which has a recommended range of 10 to 15 per cent. English will be the official words. Attractions Similar to most Caribbean islands, Antigua provides strong beginnings in Yesteryear history. Your island's main traditional district and something of its most favored attractions can be English Harbor. Antigua's historic section was created as a bottom for the United kingdom navy in the 1700s right up until its closure in 1889. It is now part of the 15 square mls of Nelson's Dockyard Countrywide Park.
Antigua Cruise Port Claims Plenty of Shorelines
Staten Island      Best for: Views of Manhattan from the ferry      What you won’t find: Notable museums, nightlife, hotels, theaters, truly great restaurants, interesting architecture      And I’ll again be blunt: Except for the fun and free ferry ride here, there’s no reason a tourist should visit here. Yes, there are a handful of cultural and historic sites, but none that justify the commute.
Pauline Frommer (Frommer's EasyGuide to New York City 2014 (Easy Guides))
There are good theological reasons to reject making authorial intention the goal of the interpretation of Scripture. First, we must recognize that what has traditionally been considered authoritative for the church is Scripture, not the intentions, real or imagined, of the original authors. Yes, Christian interpreters throughout history have talked about what Paul or some other biblical writer may have meant to say, but that has traditionally not been taken to limit the meaning of the text to that intention. Thus, even if the psalmist intended to speak of David or some other king of ancient Israel, the church has always considered it legitimate to interpret the psalm as referring also—or even only or supremely—to Christ. Even if the human authors did not intend to affirm the Trinity in the first century, the church may legitimately interpret Scripture in Trinitarian terms. The church has traditionally not located the site of inspiration to be in the mind of the human author but in the text of Scripture itself. The shift to concentrating on the intentions of the human author is something that only happened in the modern era, with the rise of historical criticism.
Dale B. Martin (Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation)
Separate vacations have become more popular among married couples. We don’t think this is a good idea. Over time, doing your own thing will cause you to lead separate lives. We are not talking about a three-day trip to Florida with your sister or best friend—if you want to take small trips like this, feel free to. But if you want to take a major vacation—say, to spend two weeks in Europe—your husband should be your travel companion. But suppose your idea of a fun vacation is going to Europe or lying on the beach in the Caribbean, while your husband loves tours of historic sites and museums. Our advice is to figure out a way to do a little of both. One year, you can go to the beach, the next year you can do a tourist package together, or go on a trip with a beach near some sites of cultural interest. Once you start planning separate vacations, you become like roommates, not lovers.
Ellen Fein (The Rules(TM) for Marriage: Time-tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work)
Top Reasons to Go to Vietnam There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam getaways will not have a single dull moment. Vietnam tours are another name of enjoyable and excitement. There are lots of tour operators that conduct interesting Vietnam tours and journeys through a number of Vietnam bundle trip. Holidaying in Vietnam is fantastic undoubtedly for sightseeing in Vietnam. The country is dotted with numerous well-known tourist websites in Vietnam. Amongst many places of interest in Vietnam astounding natural charm, tranquil villages, serene lakes, old pagodas, gorgeous lakes especially allure the travel freaks. Even the history fans like to discover the popular traveler destinations. Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Hoi An are significant cities of Vietnam that are frequented by visitors. Sightseeing tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historic, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Fantastic architecture of the citadels, royal tombs, temples and palaces is marvelous site. Dien Bien Phu, C? Loa citadel, Hoa Lo prison, Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and Ba Dinh square and Quang Tri are not to be missed out on while exploring in Vietnam. Things to do in Vietnam give a broad variety of options. Some locations like Hoi Chin Minh City and Hanoi are finest locations to have trendy clothes and actual antique pieces. People also like to have Vietnam War- Army watches and military clothes as momentums of the nation. Entertainment in Vietnam has numerous alternatives. Night life of Vietnam is pulsating and the celebration enthusiasts are thrilled by the revitalizing nightlife here. Vietnam tourist guide will assist you know more about nightlife in Vietnam. Pool, Nightclubs, bars, clubs are an usual website below. Even in the far-flung and remote mountainous areas like Sapa, Karaoke bars are popular amongst the different nightspots of Vietnam. There are numerous bars and clubs in Ho Chin Minh City, vietnam tours, the most popular ones among them being Apocalypse Now, Q Bar, Underground Bar and Grill and Carmen Bar. Nha Trang too offers a selection of choices with regards to bars and bars. With these options, you certainly wouldn't need to stress over things to do in Vietnam after dusk sets in. There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam trips will not have a single dull moment. There are many trip operators that conduct remarkable Vietnam tours and moves through a number of vietnam holiday packages. Holidaying in Vietnam is terrific certainly for sightseeing in Vietnam. Touring tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historical, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Vietnam traveler guide will help you know more about night life in Vietnam.
Vietnam
Tipped, their legs have fallen shut, and the more I look at them the less I believe my eyes. Corruption, in these bugs, is splendid. I've a collection now I keep in typewriter-ribbon tins, and though, in time, their bodies dry and the interior flesh decays, their features hold, as I suppose they held in life, an Egyptian determination, for their protective plates are strong and death must break bones to get in. Now that the heavy soul is gone, the case is light. I suspect if we were as familiar with our bones as with our skin, we'd never bury dead but shrine them in their rooms, arranged as we might like to find them on a visit; and our enemies, if we could steal their bodies from the battle sites, would be museumed as they died, the steel still eloquent in their sides, their metal hats askew, the protective toes of their shoes unworn, and friend and enemy would be so wondrously historical that in a hundred years we'd find the jaws still hung for the same speech and all the parts we spent our life with tilted as they always were—rib cage collar skull—still repetitious, still defiant, angel light, still worthy of memorial and affection. After all, what does it mean to say that when our cat has bitten through the shell and put confusion in the pulp, the life goes out of them? Alas for us, I want to cry, our bones are secret, so we must love what perishes: the muscles and the waters and the fats.
William H. Gass
Look at a current list of the most popular tourist attractions in London and you would probably come up with a Top Ten which would include the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the London Eye, the Science Museum, the V&A, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Works, the National Maritime Museum, and the Tower of London. Throw in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and you have a dozen of the most popular sites
Debra Brown (Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors)
drove by Copley Square, Fenway Park, Harvard Square, and many other historic sites before stopping to wander through Granary Burying Ground. There they visited the snow-covered graves of John Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, members of Benjamin Franklin’s family, and many others from America’s earliest days. Trevor looked at his watch. “We’re going to have to scoot to make our reservation at Mistral.
Diane Moody (At Legend's End (The Teacup Novellas, #4))
This simply will not work. As mentioned above, the labour militancy and revolutionary ferment of the 1960s and 1970s was at the same time as world-historic levels of income equality. The Black Panthers were established against a backdrop of a burgeoning skilled black working class and a concerted effort against school segregation and redlining. As the drug war picked up through the 1980s and deindustrialisation began in earnest, this compounded hugely the effect of the FBI’s efforts against black militancy. The focus on sites of resistance producing a radical rupture is bizarre when if anything, the left is fighting a desperate rear-guard action as the last social-democratic institutions and structures are pulled apart.
Anonymous
As an ancient cradle of Iron Age civilization, Zimbabwe has a great emotional importance to the economy of Southern Africa and that's especially true for Botswana since both countries are landlocked. Harare was the site of some historic scenes and the best trade regimes, and it is where generations of Southern African children have gone for their education. Bulawayo was a trade giant amongst the people of the north – the Bakalanga, the Venda and the Shona. Now brick-by-brick the empire was facing a second fall after the last fall of the Great Zimbabwe.
Thabo Katlholo (The Mud Hut I Grew Upon)
Of all the historic sites associated with the Witch Trials the one of exerts the most fascination is the controversial Gallows Hill. Visit Salem witch tour with us. Online:- spellboundtours dot com/salem-witch-trails/
Salem Witch Tour
Cape Canaveral. The ultimate historic site. And it’s underwater. How could they not have noticed what was going on? They went to the Moon, and they couldn’t see that the glaciers were melting?” “I’m sure they did,” said Alex. “But you know how people are. They’re going to resist changing a lifestyle unless the danger is looking them directly in the eye. The glaciers must have seemed like somebody else’s problem.
Jack McDevitt (Coming Home (Alex Benedict, #7))
The rising wave of nostalgia and an increasing interest in heritage sites and historic buildings is perhaps not only a sense of yearning for a lost Singapore, but also the recognition that neither 1959 nor 1965 marked Year One (...) In all the campaigns and features on Singapore's 50th anniversary that I've come across, the Kranji War Memorial was never mentioned. It just doesn't fit the slender narrative. That's such a shame because the cemetery is a fitting, dignified tribute to thousands of Singapore heroes, both local and foreign.
Neil Humphreys (Saving a Sexier Island: Notes from an Old Singapore)
She understood that becoming a nun was a lifetime commitment. Testing her daughter’s resolve was wise. The Koehler family together, 1923 First Homes As an adult, I visited Rosie’s first home at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, to get a sense of her early life and that of her famous family. The compact Victorian residence stands three stories tall on a small lot in the Boston suburb. It was easy to picture the young Kennedy children playing in the back yard. Rose Kennedy wrote in Times to Remember, her 1974 autobiography: “It was a nice old wooden-frame house with clapboard siding; seven rooms, plus two small ones in the converted attic, all on a small lot with a few bushes and trees . . . about twenty-five minutes from the center of the city by trolley.” 5 The family home on Beals Street is now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. From the deep browns and reds of the rugs on the hardwood floors to the homey couch and chairs, the home felt warm and comfortable to me. I suppressed a desire to kick off my sandals and flop on the sofa. The Kennedys’ house on Beals Street, Rosie’s first home But my perspective as a child would have triggered a different impression. I would have whispered to my mother, “They’re rich!” (I’ve since discovered that money isn’t the only measure of wealth. There’s wealth in memories, too.) A lovely grand piano occupies one corner of the Kennedys’ old living room. It was a wedding gift to Rose Kennedy from her uncles, and she delighted in playing her favorite song, “Sweet Adeline,” on it. Although her children took piano lessons, Mrs. Kennedy lamented that her own passion never ignited a similar spark in any of her daughters. She did often ask Rosemary to perform, however. I see an image of Rosemary declaring she couldn’t, her hands stretching awkwardly across the keys. But her mother encouraged Rosie to practice, confident she’d
Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff (The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women)
One of the reasons I enjoy being with Finlay is his ability to read landscapes back into being, and to hold multiple eras of history in plain sight simultaneously. To each feature and place name he can attach a story - geological, folkloric, historical, gossipy. He moves easily between different knowledge systems and historical eras, in awareness of their discrepancies but stimulated by their overlaps and rhymes. Scatters of stones are summoned up and reconstituted in his descriptions into living crofts. He took me to a green knoll in Baile n Cille in mid-Lewis, and recalled for me the scene in 1827 when a Reverend Dr MacDonald had gathered 7,000 people around the knoll for a mass conversion to Calvinism. A crag-and-tail outcrop of gneiss in the moor drew him back into the Holocene and an explanation of how, after the glaciers had retreated from the Western Isles around 12,000 years ago, the peat began to deepen in the lees of the exposed rock-backs. To Finlay, geography and history are consubstantial. Placeless events are inconceivable, in that everything that happens must happen somewhere, and so history issues from geography in the same way that water issues from a spring: unpredictably but site-specifically.
Robert Macfarlane (The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot)
Although the judge himself conceded that the structures shown to tourists at Auschwitz are not the original “gas chambers,” he nevertheless proceeded to reject every exhibit and expert witness for the defense on the grounds that the Auschwitz gas chambers have been historically proven. “If that is true,” the attorney interjected, “what would anyone have to lose by permitting Rudolf to testify?” Judge Selzner replied, “Uh, well, time would be lost. It would also be illegal.” In effect, the judge’s statement seemed to suggest that when the truth becomes uncomfortable, all one needs to do is outlaw it! Perturbed with the judge’s wretched equivocations, attorney Klaus Goebel protested: I have the impression that this court has something to hide, otherwise it would permit the expert witness to testify. I understand that the prosecuting attorney and the court is under political pressure. Nevertheless, the accused must be given the opportunity to prove his statements. It is intolerable that in a society of law that you can prevent me from questioning the expert witness about his on-site work, and then reject him because he was not asked about this. You are preventing any discussion of a matter of evidence.[19] Replying to these objections, the judge insipidly droned, “Yes, it may very well be that, from your point of view, I am hindering the presentation of the defense case.
John Bellinger
The Global Financial Crisis shows the credit cycle at the greatest extreme since the Great Depression. Debt markets historically had been marked by general conservatism, meaning excesses on the upside were limited and most bubbles took place in the equity market. Certainly it was the site of the Great Crash of 1929. But the creation of the high yield bond market in the late 1970s kicked off a liberalization of debt investing, and the generally positive economic environment of the subsequent three decades provided those who ventured in with a favorable overall experience. This combination led to a strong trend toward acceptance of low-rated and non-traditional debt instruments. There were periods of weakness in debt in 1990–91 (related to widespread bankruptcies among the highly levered buyouts of the 1980s) and in 2002 (stemming from excessive borrowing to fund overbuilding in the telecom industry, which led to prominent downgrades that coincided with several high-profile corporate accounting scandals). But the effects of these were limited because of the isolated nature of their causes. It wasn’t until 2007–08 that the financial markets witnessed the first widespread, debt-induced panic, with ramifications for the entire economy. Thus the GFC provided the ultimate example of the credit cycle’s full effect.
Howard Marks (Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side)
The exclusion of women’s racial experiences from dialogue on racial reconciliation is not simply a problem for women; it precludes any real understanding of the dynamics of race and racism. Historically, women’s bodies have been the sites upon which racial boundaries have been policed and racial wars have been fought. In the United States, for example, two of the primary ways by which White supremacist patriarchy has exercised its power have been by controlling what White women could do with their bodies and by demonstrating that Black women’s bodies were violable. Thus, marginalizing the voices of women of color results in anemic understandings of racism that hinder our efforts toward reconciliation. If we truly hope to work toward racial reconciliation, the perspectives of women of color must be moved from margin to center.
Chanequa Walker-Barnes (I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity (PC)))
Welcome to The Reef at King's Dock, our latest waterfront condo development in Singapore. Jointly developed by both Mapletree & Keppel Land Limited. It is a luxurious residence strategically sited at Harboufront Avenue and along the historic King's Dock of Keppel Harbour. A well-placed central location in the South of Prime District 04, we hope to see you in our Show Gallery soon! *All viewings will be appointment based going forward. Thank you!
The Reef at Kings Dock
An investigation by the U.S. Army’s Combat Studies Institute found that the Waygal elders might have deliberately drawn out a meeting that had been called to discuss the site for the new American outpost, keeping the officers from 173rd Airborne talking long enough for an ambush to get into place to attack the Americans as they left.10 The same study found that the local community, for historical, ethnic and economic reasons, had a strong incentive to stop the U.S. Army building a road into their valley—a traditional buffer zone between two antagonistic local population groups, Nuristanis and Safi Pashtuns, who competed politically and economically and had a long history of violent conflict.11
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
And taking the historical view, who, then, looking back, might be the first SRE? We like to think that Margaret Hamilton, working on the Apollo program on loan from MIT, had all of the significant traits of the first SRE.5 In her own words, “part of the culture was to learn from everyone and everything, including from that which one would least expect.
Betsy Beyer (Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems)
Our national parks receive more than 300 million visitations a year. What are we searching for and what do we find? As we Americans and visitors from abroad explore the 400-plus sites within the national park system that includes national parks, monuments, battlefields, historic sites, seashores, and recreation areas located in all fifty states, perhaps it is not so much what we learn that matters in these moments of awe and wonder, but what we feel in relationship to a world beyond ourselves, even beyond our own species.
Terry Tempest Williams (The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks)
Note: I regularly pull historical sales figures on specific complexes or neighborhoods from the MLS sites, but keep in mind that to really get to much of the important data on these sites you will need to work with an experienced realtor, or be a licensed real estate agent yourself.
Manny Khoshbin (Manny Khoshbin's Contrarian PlayBook)
Alternatively and more important historically, pneumonic plague can be transmitted directly from person to person by inhaling droplets from the coughs and sneezes of a plague victim whose respiratory system is the original site of infection, resulting in “primary pneumonic plague.” Since
Frank M. Snowden III (Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present)
Back in the car, we pass turnoffs for the Lakotas Buffalo Reservation and several pioneer homesteads turned into state monuments. There are bronze National Historic Site markers every five miles or so along the road. The quiet, the utter lack of people makes me feel watched. I continue glancing in the rearview as I drive, searching for pursuit.
Tessa Gratton (The Lost Sun (The United States of Asgard, #1))
Pragmatists fear losing the body. Idealists fear losing the soul. It’s the soul of Ireland that’s at risk, Piggy. For goddsakes, the country is becoming fuckin’ Paddyland. Planet Ireland. Every castle and historic site has a ticket booth and fence thrown around it. Where’s the giant mouse with the green ears? He can’t be long away, is he, Piggy?
D.P. Costello
Historical Santa Clara Santa Clara is the fifth largest city in Cuba with a population of over 210,000 people. It is the capital of the Province of Villa Clara and was founded by 138 people from only two families on July 15, 1689. As with many Cuban cities during the 17th century, it was constantly attacked and plundered by pirates. Santa Clara has had a number of names since it was founded. Its layout is clearly that of Colonial Spanish origin, having a squared design with a plaza and a church in the center. It is conveniently located along the highway connecting Santiago de Cuba with Havana. Santa Clara is known as the site of the last battle of the Cuban Revolution. Two columns of rebels attacked the Batista forces on December 31, 1958. One was led by “Che” Guevara and the other by Camilo Cienfuegos. Guevara’s troops destroyed the Trans-Cuban railroad tracks and overturned a train sent by Batista carrying reinforcements. The victory over the city’s demoralized defenders was decisive, forcing Batista to leave Cuba and fly to the Dominican Republic. Fleeing into exile, Batista opened the way for the rebel troops to take the capital city of Havana. From the award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba” by Captain Hank Bracker
Hank Bracker
A couple of weeks after Mia’s bone graft surgery in January 2014, she received a letter from Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona on official United States congressional letterhead. Mia was so excited about the letter that she stood on the fireplace hearth (the living room stage) and proceeded to read it to the entire family. In the letter, Congressman Franks told Mia that he, too, was born with a cleft lip and palate and underwent many surgeries as a child. He told her he understood how she felt and told her not to get discouraged because he recognized how she is helping so many people. He invited her to Washington, DC, to receive an award from Congress for service to her community. As soon as she had finished reading it to us, she exclaimed, “Can we go?” Knowing how Jase puts little value on earthly awards and how he likes to travel even less, I responded with a phrase that most parents can understand and appreciate: “We’ll see.” Mia immediately ran upstairs and tacked the letter to her bulletin board, full of hope and optimism. How could Jase say no to this? Oh, she knew her daddy well. He couldn’t, and he didn’t. That summer, Mia, Jase, Reed, Cole, and I spent a few days together visiting monuments and historical sites in Washington before meeting Congressman Franks on July 8 in his office on Capitol Hill. Mia’s favorite monument was the Lincoln Memorial because she had learned about it in school, so it was cool to see it “for real.” It was really crowded there, and people were taking pictures of us while we were trying to read about the monument and take photographs ourselves. Getting Jase out of there took a while because of so many fans wanting pictures--he’s very accommodating. That’s why it surprised me that this was Mia’s favorite site. I’m glad she remembers the impact of the monument and didn’t allow the circus of activity from the fans to put a damper on her experience. Congressman Franks presented Mia with a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for “outstanding and invaluable service to the community” at a press conference held at the foot of the Capitol steps. Both he and Mia made speeches that day to numerous cameras and reporters. Hearing my ten-year-old daughter speak about her condition and how she hopes people will look to God to help them get through their own problems was an unbelievably proud moment for me, Jase, and her brothers. After the press conference, Congressman Franks took us into the House chamber where Congress was voting on a new bill. He took Mia down to the floor, introduced her to some of his colleagues, and let her push his voting button for him. When some of the other members of Congress saw this, they also asked her to push their voting buttons for them. Of course, Mia wasn’t going to push any buttons without quizzing these representatives about what exactly she was voting for. She needed to know what was in the bill before she pushed the buttons. Once she realized she agreed with the bill and saw that some members were voting “no,” she commented, “That’s just rude.” Mia was thrilled with the experience and told us all how she helped make history. Little does she know just how much history she has made and continues to make.
Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
Before either men could commence a deliberation over who knew more of the hotel’s history, Coraline injected, “India was writing the last chapters of its saga of independence when The Imperial opened its doors in the 1930s.” She paused before proceeding, “Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met under congenial conditions to discuss the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan on the very ground we stand on. Adding to that, the Nehru family also had a permanent suite within the walls of this ‘Maiden of the East.’” She let out a discreet chuckle that I think only I caught. Both men stared at the female, not knowing how to respond. Before either one of them could opine, she continued, “If only walls could speak. Here indeed is a repository of fascinating anecdotal material for authors of romantic and detective fiction. It was here, at this very site, that one could clink glasses for the Royals to their war efforts, urge Gandhi to quit the India movement, or dance to the strains of Blue Danube, belly dance like a belle from Beirut or be serenaded by an orchestra from London.” The group of us stared at the big sister, wondering how in the world she knew so much about The Imperial. My teacher and Jabril pressed for affirmation. Instead, she vociferated, “Notably, The Imperial has the largest collection on display of land war gallantry awards in India and among its neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, Burma, Bhutan and China. It also holds a sizeable record of orders and decorations bestowed by the British Royalties to the Emperor of India as an honour to the local Maharajas, Sultans and ruling Princes from the various Indian states.” While Narnia’s chaperone continued her historical spiel, the recruit pulled me aside and whispered amusingly, “Although everything my big sister said is true, she’s having fun with you guys. Her information is from the hotel’s brochure in the guest rooms.” I quipped. “Why didn’t you tell the rest of our group? I thought she was an expert in India’s history!” She gave me a wet kiss and said saucily, “I’m telling you because I like you.” Stunned by her raciness, I was speechless. I couldn’t decide whether to tell her there and then that I was gay – but at that very moment, Andy appeared from around the corner. “Where did you two disappear to?” he inquired. When Narnia was out of earshot, I muttered knowingly to my BB, “I’ll tell you later.”, as we continued the art tour browsing portraitures of India’s Princely Rulers of yore.
Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
Clint Low, the sheriff of Mason County in Texas, told the Associated Press that pink walls were used to calm tempers at the cramped prison. Built in 1894, the tiny jail is a historical site and does not need to conform to the guidelines of the state prison. The sheriff also reported that the reoffending rate was down by a staggering 70 percent since introducing the color pink in the prison, and that no fights occurred among inmates since the walls were painted pink.
Cary G. Weldy (The Power of Tattoos: Twelve Hidden Energy Secrets of Body Art Every Tattoo Enthusiast Should Know)
Here, Veblen’s iconoclasm showed its range, as he simultaneously exposed modern corporations as hives of swarming parasites, derided marginalism for disingenuously sanitizing these infested sites by rebranding nonproductivity as productivity, and attacked economists for failing to situate themselves historically. On Veblen’s account, the business enterprise was no more immune from historical change than any other economic institution. As the controlling force in modern civilization, the business enterprise too would necessarily undergo “natural decay” and prove “transitory.” Where history was heading next, however, Veblen felt he could not say, because no teleology was steering the evolutionary process as a whole, only (as he had said before) the “discretionary action of the human agents,” whose institutionally shaped choices were still unformed. Nevertheless, limiting himself to the “calculable future”—to what, in light of existing scientific knowledge, seemed probable in the near term—Veblen pointed to two contrasting possibilities, both beyond the ken of productivity theories. One alternative was militarization and war—barbarism redux. According to Veblen, the business enterprise, as its grows, spills over national boundaries and fosters the expansion of a world market in which “the business men of one nation are pitted against those of another and swing“the forces of the state, legislative, diplomatic, and military, against one another in the strategic game of pecuniary advantage.” As this game intensifies, competing nations rush (said Veblen presciently) to amass military hardware that can easily fall under the control of political leaders who embrace aggressive international policies and “warlike aims, achievements, [and] spectacles.” Unchecked, these developments could, he believed, demolish “those cultural features that distinguish modern times from what went before, including a decline of the business enterprise itself.” (In his later writings from the World War I period, Veblen returned to these issues.) The second future possibility was socialism, which interested Veblen (for the time being) not only as an institutional alternative to the business enterprise but also as a way of economic thinking that nullified the productivity theory of distribution. In cycling back to the phenomenon of socialism, which he had bracketed in The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen zeroed in on men and women who held industrial occupations, in which he observed a growing dissatisfaction with the bedrock institutions of the modern age. This discontent was socially concentrated, found not so much among laborers who were “mechanical auxiliaries”—manual extensions—“of the machine process“ but “among those industrial classes who are required to comprehend and guide the processes.” These classes consist of “the higher ranks of skilled mechanics and [of people] who stand in an engineering or supervisory ”“relation to the processes.” Carrying out these jobs, with their distinctive task requirements, inculcates “iconoclastic habits of thought,” which draw men and women into trade unions and, as a next step, “into something else, which may be called socialism, for want of a better term.” This phrasing was vague even for Veblen, but he felt hamstrung because “there was little agreement among socialists as to a programme for the future,” at least aside from provisions almost “entirely negative.
Charles Camic (Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics)
Western Allied commanders didn’t want to destroy the abbey. Only weeks earlier, in one of his last acts before leaving Italy, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had issued an executive order stating that important artistic and historical sites were not to be bombed. Monte Cassino, one of the great achievements of early Italian and Christian culture, was clearly a protected site. Eisenhower’s order had provided exceptions. “If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men,” he wrote, “then our men’s lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go.”2 But he had also drawn a line between military necessity and military convenience, and no commander wanted to be the first to test that line.
Robert M. Edsel (The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, And The Greatest Treasure Hunt In History)
AncestryDNA is a different beast, an outgrowth of Ancestry.com's vast genealogical resources. Historically, in contrast to 23andMe's customers, many of whom were interested in medical data, AncestryDNA users signed up specifically for the purpose of researching their family lines. The site blends its genealogical resources with test results. When users are a predicted cousin match, AncestryDNA compares their trees to see if it can automatically pinpoint their common ancestors. Unlike 23andMe, AncestryDNA doesn't let users see precisely where their chromosomes overlap with predicted relatives. No actual genetic data is available to subscribers who match. But its "Thrulineis" feature looks at data even in locked trees or trees that aren't linked to users' DNA tests. While I'm selfishly glad to have that information, I worry for those of the site's 18 million users who don't realize how much of their family connections the site reveals.
Maud Newton (Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation)
Following is a sample list of some points you will want to include in your business plan. These can all be organized in a very professional manner in a notebook that includes tabs. • Executive summary. Include a one- or two-page summary of your plan. • Mission statement. Include one or two paragraphs that succinctly state your purpose. • Background. Present information about yourself and your experience. • Financial statement. List your assets, liabilities, and net worth. • Site location. Include a list of benefits, maps, and proximity to shopping and schools. • Demographics. Present information about the people living in the area (income, education, etc.). • Competitor analysis. Determine who your competitors are and present average rents and sales comparisons. • Marketing strategy. Define your target market (tenants, buyers, etc.). • Financial analysis. Include historical and pro forma operating statements. • Improvements. Define capital improvements to be made to the property. • Purchase agreement. Include your sales contract with the seller. • Exhibits. Include photographs of the property, tax returns, sample floor plans, and the like.
Steve Berges (The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings)
In the absence of social goods, ‘profit-first’ economic growth has fed a crony capitalism that serves not the common good but speculators in the ‘liquid economy.’ Collateral banking systems, offshore sites providing fiscal havens for corporate tax avoidance, extracting value from companies to boost the earnings of shareholders at the expense of stakeholders, the smoke-and-mirrors world of derivatives and credit default swaps-all these suck capital from the real economy and undermine a healthy market, creating historically unprecedented levels of inequality. There is a major disjuncture between the awareness of social rights on the one hand and the distribution of actual opportunities on the other. The stupendous rise in inequality of recent decades is not a stage of growth but a brake on it, and the root of many social ills in the twenty-first century. Barely more than one percent of the world’s population owns half of its wealth. A market detached from morality, dazzled by its own complex engineering, which privileges profit and competition above all else, means not just spectacular wealth for a few but also poverty and deprivation for many. Millions are robbed of hope.
Pope Francis (Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future)
Privilege is saving confederacy statues because they're 'historic' but bulldozing through ancient sacred sites & artifacts for pipelines. (8/18/2017 on Twitter)
Ruth Hopkins
Sewing is an enjoyable hobby that allows you to be creative and make a variety of items for yourself and others. At Clothingus.com, we offer a range of resources to help you learn how to sew, including easy projects and information about different sewing tools and their uses. Here are some interesting facts about sewing and related materials that may inspire you to try this useful craft: Cotton fabric can last for up to 100 years with proper care. In fact, cotton fabric has been found in many archaeological sites, indicating its longevity. Women's buttons are typically sewn onto the left side of a garment due to historical reasons. In the past, buttons were expensive, and only wealthy women with domestic help could afford them. To make it easier for the help to button up the garments, they were placed on the left side. Zippers were invented in 1893 and were initially used only on shoes and boots to make them easier to put on. Over time, they gained popularity and were used on other garments as well. The term "calico" refers to a type of cotton print that originated in the city of Calcutta, India. These hand-woven printed fabrics were made in the late 18th century and were named after the city. Buttons on sleeves were introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte. He wanted to prevent his soldiers from wiping their noses on their sleeves, so he ordered buttons to be sewn onto the ends of the sleeves. Sewing is believed to be one of the first skills that Homo sapiens learned. Archaeologists have found evidence of people sewing together fur, hide, skin, and bark for clothing dating back to 25,000 years ago. Early sewing needles were made of bone and ivory, with metal needles being developed later in human history. By the 20th century, more than 4000 different types of sewing machines had been invented. However, only those that made sewing simple, fun, and easy survived over time. If you're interested in learning more about sewing, visit Clothingus.com for lessons and projects that can help you build a solid foundation in this skill. Whether you're a beginner or have some experience, we have something for you. Visit Clothingus.com now.
Clothingus.com
KIRKUS REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW A retired professor explores the life and writings of Carl Sandburg in this debut book. “During the first half of the twentieth century,” Quinley writes, “Carl Sandburg seemed to be everywhere and do everything.” Though best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry and multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg had a wide-ranging career as a public intellectual, which included stints in journalism as a columnist and investigative reporter, in musicology as a leading advocate and performer of folk music, and in the nascent movie industry as a consultant and film critic. He also dabbled in political activism, children’s literature, and novels. Not only does Quinley, a retired college administrator and professor, hail Sandburg as a 20th-century icon (“If my grandpa asks you a question,” his grandchildren joke, “the answer is always Carl Sandburg”), but much of his own life has been adjacent to that of the poet as well. Born in Maywood, Illinois, a “few blocks” from Sandburg’s home 30 years prior, Quinley would eventually move to the Appalachian Mountains. He lived just a few miles from Sandburg’s famed residence in Hendersonville, North Carolina. As a docent for the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, the author was often asked for literature about the luminary’s life. And though much has been written about Sandburg, biographies on the iconoclast are either out of print or are tomes with more than 800 pages. Eschewing comprehensiveness for brevity, Quinley seeks to fill this void in the literary world by offering readers a short introduction to Sandburg’s life and writings. At just 122 pages, this accessible book packs a solid punch, providing readers with not just the highlights of Sandburg’s life, but also a sophisticated analysis of his passions, poetry, and influence on American culture. This engaging approach that’s tailored to a general audience is complemented by an ample assortment of historical photographs. And while its hagiographic tone may annoy some readers, this slim volume is backed by more than 260 endnotes and delivers an extensive bibliography for readers interested in learning more about the 20th century’s “voice of America.” A well-written, concise examination of a literary legend Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 2600 Via Fortuna Suite 130 Austin, TX 78746 indie@kirkusreviews.com
John W. Quinley
He now stood outside on the curb in front of a modern building in the middle of a city that had seen more prosperous days. It was making a comeback of sorts, to the extent that steel, asphalt, and concrete and the populations that reside in and on them can have second chances. And it was a historical city with many sites of cultural significance that could draw tourists.
David Baldacci (No Time Left (Kindle Single))
Human rights claims begin conversations that connect struggles and inform practices internationally. Claims documenting state-perpetrated human rights violations at Standing Rock were addressed to, and circulated among, activists in Puerto Rico, Ferguson and Palestine (and vice versa). They crossed territories and called into question states’ claims to sovereignty and legitimacy. They were starting points to share strategies of survival, resistance and imagination. As gateways, organisational human rights claims are part of blueprints for alternative futures, which will always be made in particular and historical sites of contestation.
Benjamin P. Davis (Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Contemporary Continental Ethics))
with Mark, it will be me.” Jack could have pushed back, but nothing in Tucker’s voice even hinted that the matter was up for debate. “Then we’ll need two days for prep.” “That’s fine.” The extra day was to talk him out of it, not to prep. But Jack let it be for now. “All right, then. See you Wednesday morning.” CHAPTER 15 At 10:00 a.m. Friday morning, Mark Towson was seated at the end of a long rectangular table in Peabody Hall. His father was at his side. They were in one of the oldest buildings on campus, a restored redbrick gem in the heart of the university’s historic district. Peabody was originally Teacher’s College, and it was still home to the College of Education when Mark’s great grandparents had met at the University of Florida. It was now the Office of the Dean of Students, including Student Conduct & Conflict Resolution—the site of Mark’s disciplinary hearing. “Just try to relax,” his father said. They were alone in a room that was much smaller than Mark had expected. Lying awake all night, he’d envisioned something on the order
James Grippando (A Death in Live Oak (Jack Swyteck #14))
Do you know much about Hogsmeade?" asked Hermione keenly. "I've read it's the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain-" "Yeah, I think it is," said Ron in an offhand sort of way, "but that's not why I want to go. I just want to get inside Honeydukes!" "What's that?" said Hermione. "It's the sweetshop," said Ron, a dreamy look coming over his face, "where they've got everything.... Pepper Imps- they make you smoke at the mouth- and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, and really excellent sugar quills, which you can suck in class and just look like you're thinking what to write next-" "But Hogsmeade's a very interesting place, isn't it?" Hermione pressed on eagerly. "In Sites of Historical Society it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack's supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain-" "- and massive sherbert balls that make you levitate a few inches off the ground while you're sucking them," said Ron, who was plainly not listening to a word Hermione was saying.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
That which occludes and that which is occluded have different sources, sites of intractability, forms of appearance, and temporal effects. They derive from geopolitical locations as much as they do from conceptual grammars that render different objects observable, that shape how we observers observe our chosen observers (as Niklas Luhmann might put it), and thereby construe the proper “lessons of empire” and what count as the salient “historical facts.
Ann Laura Stoler (Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times (a John Hope Franklin Center Book))
Pratt created the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and his motto was "kill the Indian, save the man." At this school, and others that would open and follow in its wake, tens of thousands of Native children faced abuse and neglect. They were often forcibly removed from their homes and taken to these schools that were sometimes across the country from their original lives. When they arrived, the children were forced to cut their hair and change their names. They were made to become White in look and label, stripped of any semblance of Native heritage. The children were not allowed to speak their Native tongues, some of them not knowing anything else. They were prohibited from acting in any way that might reflect the only culture they had ever known. At Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School alone, the numbers revealed the truth of what this treatment did. Of the ten thousand children from 141 different tribes across the country, only a small fraction of them ever graduated. According to the Carlisle Indian School Project, there are 180 marked graves of Native children who died while attending. There were even more children who died while held captive at the Carlisle school and others across the county. Their bodies are only being discovered in modern times, exhumed by the army and people doing surveys of the land who are finding unmarked burial sites. An autograph book from one of the schools was found in the historical records with one child's message to a friend, "Please remember me when I'm in the grave." The US Bureau of Indian Affairs seemed to think Pratt had the right idea and made his school the model for more. There ended up being more than 350 government-funded boarding schools for Natives in the United States. Most of them followed the same ideology: Never let the children be themselves. Beat their language out of them. Punish them for practicing their cultures. Pratt and his followers certainly killed plenty of Indians, but they didn't save a damn thing.
Leah Myers (Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity)
I am pro plaque. New York is lousy with them and I love how spotting them can jazz up even the most mundane errand.
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
I was amazed that the Pakistani authorities had done nothing to develop the tourism prospects of such a remarkable historical site. The ruins of Mohenjodaro were reasonably well maintained as it was a UNESCO Heritage site, but I could not spot any tourists. The Indian Foreign Secretary and his delegation were the only ones visiting Mohenjodaro, which was rather surprising given the archaeological importance of the place.
Prabhu Dayal (Karachi Halwa)
The Omarska geological region is rich in iron ore and has been historically lucrative for mining companies. After the Bosnian Genocide, The Mittal Steel Company bought the rights to extract iron ore from the camp site. In 2005, they announced plans to build a memorial replacing one of the camp buildings. Due to active political hostility from Serbs against building a memorial, the idea was abandoned. Bosniaks argue that the bodies of all victims should first be extracted and respectfully cremated before the memorial construction to avoid desecrating dead bodies. 20 years after the Omarska genocidal nightmare, there was no progress for building a memorial.
Aida Mandic
As early as November 1966, the Red Guard Corps of Beijing Normal University had set their sights on the Confucian ancestral home in Qufu County in Shandong Province. Invoking the language of the May Fourth movement, they proceeded to Qufu, where they established themselves as the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison State to Annihilate the Old Curiosity Shop of Confucius. Within the month they had totally destroyed the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family Mansion, the Cemetery of Confucius (including the Master’s grave), and all the statues, steles, and relics in the area... In January 1967 another Red Guard unit editorialized in the People’s Daily: To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution. And then, to make their point, they went on a nationwide rampage, destroying temples, statues, historical landmarks, texts, and anything at all to do with the ancient Sage... The Cultural Revolution came to an end with Mao’s death in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) became China’s paramount leader, setting China on a course of economic and political reform, and effectively bringing an end to the Maoist ideal of class conflict and perpetual revolution. Since 2000, the leadership in Beijing, eager to advance economic prosperity and promote social stability, has talked not of the need for class conflict but of the goal of achieving a “harmonious society,” citing approvingly the passage from the Analects, “harmony is something to be cherished” (1.12). The Confucius compound in Qufu has been renovated and is now the site of annual celebrations of Confucius’s birthday in late September. In recent years, colleges and universities throughout the country—Beijing University, Qufu Normal University, Renmin University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Shandong University, to name a few—have established Confucian study and research centers. And, in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Committee welcomed guests from around the world to Beijing with salutations from the Analects, “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?” and “Within the fours seas all men are brothers,” not with sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book. Tellingly, when the Chinese government began funding centers to support the study of the Chinese language and culture in foreign schools and universities around the globe in 2004—a move interpreted as an ef f ort to expand China’s “soft power”—it chose to name these centers Confucius Institutes... The failure of Marxism-Leninism has created an ideological vacuum, prompting people to seek new ways of understanding society and new sources of spiritual inspiration. The endemic culture of greed and corruption—spawned by the economic reforms and the celebration of wealth accompanying them—has given rise to a search for a set of values that will address these social ills. And, crucially, rising nationalist sentiments have fueled a desire to fi nd meaning within the native tradition—and to of f set the malignant ef f ects of Western decadence and materialism. Confucius has thus played a variety of roles in China’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times praised, at times vilified, he has been both good guy and bad guy. Yet whether good or bad, he has always been somewhere on the stage. These days Confucius appears to be gaining favor again, in official circles and among the people. But what the future holds for him and his teachings is difficult to predict. All we can say with any certainty is that Confucius will continue to matter.
Daniel K. Gardner (Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
For that matter, even if the owners and workers in a historic site had not included a president, most visitors would want to hear about the important events in their lives, not just about their furniture.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
That's it', said [the ranger at Ninety Six Historic Site]. 'Probably a thousand years old. The Cherokee chiefs, Old Hop and Hanging Maw, walked here. De Soto. General George Chicken. Millions of feet. The Park Service has plans for a visitor center and roads and more restoration. They've already brought in cannon replicas. If I managed the site, though, I'd leave it pretty much overgrown like it's been for two hundred years. Maybe clear the Cherokee Path for hiking, and that would be it. I love the place too much to change it. But one day, we'll have pavement so high-heeled ladies and overweight men can tiptoe a few steps to the Star Fort, see something they don't understand, take a snapshot of themselves, and hurry on. Without trees and isolation, you lose the mystery.
William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways)
During the Vietnam War, a new generation of scholars such as William Appleman Williams and Gabriel Kolko challenged long-standing legends about the workings of US foreign policy. Social and cultural historians in the 1970s and 1980s wrote new histories of the nation from the bottom up, expanding our view to include long-overlooked perspectives on gender, race, and ethnic identities and, in the process, showing that narrow narratives focused solely on political leaders at the top obscured more than they revealed. Despite the fact that the term revisionist history is often thrown around by nonhistorians as an insult, in truth all good historical work is at heart “revisionist” in that it uses new findings from the archives or new perspectives from historians to improve, to perfect—and, yes, to revise—our understanding of the past. Today, yet another generation of historians is working once again to bring historical scholarship out of academic circles, this time to push back against misinformation in the public sphere. Writing op-eds and essays for general audiences; engaging the public through appearances on television, radio, and podcasts; and being active on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Substack, hundreds if not thousands of historians have been working to provide a counterbalance and corrections to the misinformation distorting our national dialogue. Such work has incredible value, yet historians still do their best work in the longer written forms of books, articles, and edited collections that allow us both to express our thoughts with precision in the text and provide ample evidence in the endnotes. This volume has brought together historians who have been actively engaging the general public through the short forms of modern media and has provided them a platform where they might expand those engagements into fuller essays that reflect the best scholarly traditions of the profession.
Kevin M. Kruse (Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past)
Everett’s stature as an orator and statesman, and in particular his association with commemorations at vital American historical sites, meant he was the unanimous choice of all seventeen Union state governors whom the organizing committee consulted.
Matthew Mason (Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (Civil War America))
Archaeologists who want to establish the date of a particular site have a number of techniques they can use. If they find organic material, say the bones of an animal, they can use radiocarbon dating. If they find the remains of wooden structures, a post or lintel say, they can use dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating. If they find a firepit they can use archaeomagnetic dating. Radiocarbon dating works because, when alive, an organism takes in carbon from the air or through the food chain; carbon contains small amounts of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, which decays into nonradioactive standard carbon at a constant rate; when the organism dies it ceases to ingest carbon, so the proportion of carbon-14 in its remains steadily decays. Measuring the relative amount of carbon-14 content therefore establishes a fairly accurate date for the specimen. Dendrochronology works because tree rings vary in width season by season according to the rainfall received, and so trees that grow in a given climatic region and historical period show similar ring-width patterns. Comparing the ring pattern to a known and dated local ring pattern establishes exactly the years in which the wood in the structure was growing. Archaeomagnetic dating works because the earth's magnetic field changes direction over time gradually in a known way. Clays or other materials in a firepit, when fired and cooled, retain a weak magnetism that aligns with the earth's field, and this establishes a rough date for the firepit's last use. There are still other techniques: potassium-argon dating, thermoluminescence dating, hydration dating, fission-track dating. But what I want the reader to notice is that each of these relies on some particular set of natural effects. That a technology relies on some effect is general. A technology is always based on some phenomenon or truism of nature that can be exploited and used to a purpose. I say "always" for the simple reason that a technology that exploited nothing could achieve nothing. This is the third of the three principles I am putting forward, and it is just as important to my argument as the other two, combination and recursiveness. This principle says that if you examine any technology you find always at its center some effect that it uses. Oil refining is based on the phenomenon that different components or fractions of vaporized crude oil condense at different temperatures. A lowly hammer depends on the phenomenon of transmission of momentum (in this case from a moving object-the hammer-to a stationary one-the nail). Often the effect is obvious. But sometimes it is hard to see, particularly when we are very familiar with the technology. What phenomenon does a truck use? A truck does not seem to be based on any particular law of nature. Nevertheless it does use a phenomenon-or, I should say, two. A truck is in essence a platform that is self-powered and can be moved easily. Central to its self-powering is the phenomenon that certain chemical substances (diesel fuel, say) yield energy when burned; and central to its ease of motion is the "phenomenon" that objects that roll do so with extremely low friction compared with ones that slide (which is used of course in the wheels and bearings). This last "phenomenon" is hardly a law of nature; it is merely a usable-and humble-natural effect. Still it is a powerful one and is exploited everywhere wheels or rolling parts are used.
W. Brian Arthur (The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves)
Even when one restricts the notion of progress to conquering space and time, its human limitations are flagrant. Take one of Buckminster Fuller's favorite illustrations of the shrinkage of time and space, beginning with a sphere twenty feet in diameter, to represent transportation time-distance by walking. With the use of the horse, this sphere gets reduced in size to six feet, with the clipper ship, it becomes a basketball, with the railroad, a baseball, with the jet plane, a marble, and with the rocket, a pea. And if one could travel at the speed of light, one might add, to round off Fuller's idea, the earth would become, from the standpoint of bodily velocity, a molecule, so that one would be back at the starting point without having even the briefest sensation of having left. By so carrying Fuller's illustration to its theoretic extreme, one reduces this mechanical concept to its proper degree of human irrelevance. For like every other technical achievement, speed has a meaning only in relation to other human needs and purposes. Plainly, the effect of speeding transportation is to diminish the possibilities of direct human experience-even the experience of travel. A person who undertook to walk around the earth would actually, at the end of that long journey, have stored up rich memories of its geographic, climatic, esthetic, and human realities: these experiences retreat in direct ratio to speed, until at the climax of rapid movement, the traveller can have no experience at all: his world has become a static one, in which time and motion work no changes whatever. Not merely space but man shrinks. Because of the volume of jet travel and the rapid turnover of tourists, this means of transport has already ruined beyond repair many of the precious historic sites and cities that incited this mass visitation.
Lewis Mumford (The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2))