Plague Land Quotes

He sighs. "I miss the days when females could be ordered around and they'd have no choice." "Sure that wasn't just a myth? I'm pretty sure nobody ever ordered my mom around - ever." "You're probably right. The unruliness of the women in your family must go back for generations. You're like a plague upon the land.

Raffe: "The unruliness of the women in your family must go back for generations. You're like a plague upon the land." Penryn: "So long as we're also a plague upon angels, I'm sure everyone else will forgive us." Raffe: "Oh, you're definitely a plague upon at least one angel.

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across the thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see.

Every fairy tale has blood flecked on its muzzle. Sometimes it’s licked up in the second before the story begins— a queen slowly bleeding out onto her birthing bed, a plague having laid waste to a land before “Once upon a time” slouches from the dark. But every so often, one can trace the thick flow of blood as it seeps from the pages.

As they stood in the heavy silence, they knew there was only one plague larger than the world's hostility--its indifference.

Christ," Henry says, slapping at a bug that's landed on him, "what are these infernal creatures?" "Mosquitoes," Alex supplies. "They're awful," Henry says loftily. "I'm going to catch an exotic plague." "I'm... sorry?" "I just mean to say, you know, Philip is the heir and I'm the spare, and if that nervy bastard has a heart attack at thirty five and I've got malaria, whither the spare?

Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn't fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way.. i like that..

That --ing zombie is going to end up on the end of a couple of --ing handy and versatile kebab skewers,' said Mr Tulip. 'An' then I'm gonna put an edge on this --ing spatula. An' then... then I'm gonna get medieval on his arse.' There were more pressing problems, but this one intrigued Mr Pin. 'How, exactly?' he said. 'I thought maybe a maypole,' said Mr Tulip reflectively. 'An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-filed system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar.

Fleas plague you, she says. Swamp skitters can kill you, an a little thorn- so small you hardly notice- it can work it's way unner the skin an bit after bit, yyer hand's infected. Maybe you loose a couple fingers, maybe the whole hand. Maybe yer blood goes bad an you die. Tiny things can cause plenty of trouble.

The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’ In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances… and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Having a brilliant, beloved leader at the helm of a country when the land is in turmoil is one of the best situations people can hope for. That becomes apparent when that leader is dead.

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way...

I took a very careful hold of the metal door handle. No shocks and nothing exploded. I pulled gently and the door yielded, but I stayed on the balls of my feet. If I felt the tension of a wire or heard a click, I was going to set a new land speed record for a scared white guy in a hazmat suit.

Maia was either going to grow up to rule the world or loose a planetwide plague upon the land. Maybe both.

in the last thousand years: empires have risen and fallen and I have loved you, plagues have leaped from rat to daughter and I have loved you humanity has conquered sea and sky and I have loved you kings have been slain and forests razed and witches burned and and gold struck and maps redrawn and fortunes traded and volcanoes erupted and moons landed and cathedrals sculpted and rivers dirtied and masterpieces painted and battlefields bloodied and I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.

Bodies feel pain; only the mind can suffer. Indeed, it’s possible to be in pain and yet not suffer at all.

while, and told them that London was the place by which they, that is, the townsmen of Epping, and all the country round them, subsisted; to whom they sold the produce of their lands, and out of whom they made the rents of their farms; and to be so cruel to the inhabitants of London, or to any of those by whom they gained so much, was very hard; and they would be loath to have it remembered hereafter, and have it told, how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they were to the people of London when they

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

Pharaoh was the son of Re. Israel was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Exod 4:23; cf. Hos 11:1). Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing the land into chaos.2

But what factor, or combination of factors, may have caused the famine(s) in the Eastern Mediterranean during these decades remains uncertain. Elements that might be considered include war and plagues of insects, but climate change accompanied by drought is more likely to have turned a once-verdant land into an arid semidesert.

If we fail, the planet will grow sterile and your people will die in hunger, thirst and waves of plagues. Our people and the thrm's will die more slowly because the poisons here will render us unable to conceive. The skies will cease to be blue, the land will lose its verdure and the seas, well, the seas will be the first to go. Anything that does survive will be broken, mutant, discontinuous from us and mutually exclusive. It will be the new life of a shattered world, a world for chitinous, crawly things, not one for soft and tender emotion. I hope, child, I have answered your question." Meg said nothing. None of it made sense, but she still felt an urge to deny it, deny it, even though Ekaterina's strange, rolling words carried a ring of truth. Suddenly, the autumn chill cut through all her layers of bundling wraps. She could not stop shivering.

How does a plague start inside a sealed disc that has had no contact with any other living thing for almost six and a half decades?

You thought perhaps you would drink it away, the plague? Was that the plan?" "I thought perhaps I'd try to die drunk." "Such ambition. And this from a dragon-slayer.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the [external] situation but your thoughts about it.

New England, would face no real Indian challenge. Indeed, the plague helped prompt the legendarily warm reception Plymouth enjoyed from the Wampanoags. Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader, was eager to ally with the Pilgrims because the plague had so weakened his villages that he feared the Narragansetts to the west.28 When a land conflict did develop between new settlers and old at Saugus in 1631, “God ended the controversy by sending the small pox amongst the Indians,” in the words of the Puritan minister Increase Mather. “Whole towns of them were swept away, in some of them not so much as one Soul escaping the Destruction.” 29 By the time the Native populations of New England had replenished themselves to some degree, it was too late to

Blackwing, the humans were a plague on the earth. They were not able to control their numbers or their consumption of the land, and so Nature did it for them. She is not kind, she is balanced.

In the middle of the cemetery is a grassy plane, strangely vacant. There are no granite tombs or crumbling concrete, just a sun-washed treeless patch of green known as "No Man's Land." Here 1,500 unidentified bodies are buried. At one time, their skin burned with yellow fever; now they lie in a cool, dark place where long ago their arms and legs, hands and feet, were intertwined for eternity.

Declaring war on Skaal increased patriotism among the people, made them forget about all their other problems, killed off some of the excess population, often resulted in the acquisition of some valuable booty, and — most importantly — relieved Boric’s crushing boredom. It was too bad about the killing, of course, but most of the peasants were probably going to die of plague or starvation anyway.

Why didn’t we ever consider sailing as a profession?” Hadrian asked Royce as he moved to the side and faced the wind. He took a deep, satisfying breath and smiled. “This is nice. A lot better than a sweaty, fly-plagued horse—and look at the land go by! How fast do you think we’re going?” “The fact that we’re trapped here, with no chance of retreat except into the ocean, doesn’t bother you?” Hadrian glanced over the side at the heaving waves. “Well, not until now. Why do you always have to ruin everything? Couldn’t you let me enjoy the moment?” “You know me, just trying to keep things in perspective.

He saw the sickness of the world and of his own country during the years after the great war; he saw hatred and suspicion become a kind of madness that swept across the land like a swift plague; he saw young men go again to war, marching eagerly to a senseless doom, as if in the echo of a nightmare. And the pity and sadness he felt were so old, so much a part of his age, that he seemed to himself nearly untouched.

Many centuries ago, I discovered your world by accident. After a long and wonderful career of helping people (like Cinderella) achieve their dreams, I was only eager to do more. So one day I closed my eyes, waved my magic wand, and said, “I wish to go someplace where people need me the most.” When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the Land of Stories. When I first arrived, your world was enduring a time known as the Dark Ages, and there couldn’t be a better description. It was a period consumed with poverty, plague, and war. People were suffering and starving, and they were very doubtful that conditions would get any better.

Naysayers at their polite best chided the rewilders for romanticizing the past; at their sniping worst, for tempting a 'Jurassic Park' disaster. To these the rewilders quietly voiced a sad and stinging reply. The most dangerous experiment is already underway. The future most to be feared is the one now dictated by the status quo. In vanquishing our most fearsome beasts from the modern world, we have released worse monsters from the compound. They come in disarmingly meek and insidious forms, in chewing plagues of hoofed beasts and sweeping hordes of rats and cats and second-order predators. They come in the form of denuded seascapes and barren forests, ruled by jellyfish and urchins, killer deer and sociopathic monkeys. They come as haunting demons of the human mind. In conquering the fearsome beasts, the conquerors had unwittingly orphaned themselves.

θεοὶ is the gods, ἐπεκλώσαντο means they spun, ὄλεθρον is death, plague, destruction. Ruin. That’s what the gods do, they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.

I work at T-Town, which is about ninety-nine percent men, and all of them either are alpha personalities or think they are. That said, what we have here is the standard dynamic for sexual tension. I'm moderately good-looking. I have big boobs, and I get hit on by everyone from the pastor of my church to baristas at Starbucks, and by every single guy at T-Town except for my boss and the range master. I don't blame them and I don't judge them. It's part of the procreative drive hardwired into us, and we haven't evolved as a species far enough exert any genuine control over the biological imperative. You, on the other hand, are a very good-looking man of prime breeding age. Old enough to have interesting lines and scars--and stories to go with them--and young enough to be a catch. You probably get laid as often as you want to, and you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times women have said no to you. Maybe--and please correct me if I've strayed too far into speculation--being an agent of a secret government organization has led you to buy into the superspy sex stud propaganda perpetuated by James Bond films." "My name is Powers," I said. "Austin Powers." She ignored me and plowed ahead. "We're in the middle of a crisis. We may have to work closely together for several days, or even several weeks. Close-quarters travel, emotions running high, all that. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not spend the next few days living inside a trite office romance cliche. That includes everything from mild flirtation to sexual innuendo and double entendre and the whole ball of wax." She sipped her Coke. The ball landed in my court with a thump.

He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.

He took the final drag of the cigarette, blew out the smoke, and threw the butt in the air. It cascaded over the gravel drive and landed, softly, in the bushes. The dry, arid desert bushes of Malibu. On a morning plagued by Santa Ana winds. In a land of scrub brush. In a town under constant threat of combustion. In an area of the country where a tiny spark could destroy acres. In a region that yearns to burn. And so, with the very best of intentions, Mick Riva walked away, having no idea he had just set fire to 28150 Cliffside Drive.

They trampled the world with their sick and twisted and crooked kind of love. The bastard didn’t think that anyone else’s love mattered at all. As if a father’s love knew everything, could see everything, could cure everything. And what would have happened if that man, Robert Lawson, had been allowed to keep his son? What would have fucking happened then? Men like him and Mando, they didn’t understand anything but their own imperfect hearts. That was their sickness—that they believed themselves to be the center of all light. That kind of light was a darkness of the land. A plague that was killing them all.

He saw the sickness of the world and of his own country, during the years after the great war; he saw hatred and suspicion become a kind of madness that swept across the land like a swift plague; he saw young men go again to war marching eagerly to a senseless doom, as if in the echo of a nightmare. STONER

Meanwhile, bank executives bristled—sometimes privately, but often in the press—at any suggestion that they had in any way screwed up, or should be subject to any constraints when it came to running their business. This last bit of chutzpah was most pronounced in the two savviest operators on Wall Street, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, both of whom insisted that their institutions had avoided the poor management decisions that plagued other banks and neither needed nor wanted government assistance. These claims were true only if you ignored the fact that the solvency of both outfits depended entirely on the ability of the Treasury and the Fed to keep the rest of the financial system afloat, as well as the fact that Goldman in particular had been one of the biggest peddlers of subprime-based derivatives—and had dumped them onto less sophisticated customers right before the bottom fell out.

I wanted to get away,' said she; 'everybody wants to plague and worry me about nothing. They'll be all right tomorrow. What's worrying them?' 'They are sacrificing to our Canadian God,' said Solly. 'We all believe that if we fret and abuse ourselves sufficiently, Providence will take pity and smile upon anything we attempt. A light heart, or a consciousness of desert, attracts ill luck. You have been away from your native land too long. You have forgotten our folkways. Listen to that gang over there; they are scanning the heavens and hoping aloud that it won't rain tomorrow. That is to placate the Mean Old Man in the Sky, and persuade him to be kind to us.

I am in the native land of hypocrite sir! These men and women of principles; I loathe them. I can scorn at a man disdainfully and forget him. Man is filth, sir! he is dutibound to be filthy. While I believe women are chaste, these principles they confine themselves to make them indelicate and hateful. A beautiful woman sir! Stupefying beauty should not be sole possession of one rodent. God created beauty or maybe he did not, but in it's most primitive state, it belonged to everyman before these principles; these God forsaken principles plagued us. Do you believe in God sir? Oh you do! I can tell that by your expression. Sir! God is not of principles, if he were, world would be just. And I belive, no; actually i know God isn't of principles because He will punish me for years for just one glass; this one glass of wine, you bought me, whereas I deserve far lesser punishment. It is empty sir! I can see the bottom of the glass and depth of my wretchedness in this glass. Perhaps another time sir! I am drunk now, and I don't want to squander this temporal leave.

And by living this way, she does more harm in this land than the plague, because her affability and beauty attract the hearts of those who try to woo her and love her, but her disdain and reproaches drive them to despair so that they don’t know what to say about her except to call her cruel and ungrateful and other names that plainly show the nature of her disposition.

If all who have the means run each time this disease appears, then the seeds of the Plague will go with them and be sown far and wide throughout the land until the clean places are infected and the contagion is magnified a thousandfold. If God saw fit to send this scourge, I believe it would be His will that one face it where one was, with courage, and thus contain its evil.

The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidently a quotation. "That's it—foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of its wild vegetation. And then he passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again, sweeping his handiwork away—the weeds and the forest inundated his fields, the beasts of prey swept over his flocks, and now there are wolves on the Cliff House beach." He was appalled by the thought. "Where four million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day, and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because of the Scarlet Death—

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night…’ In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented…It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty…“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends…not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

By erecting thirty thousand dams of significant size across the American West, they dewatered countless rivers, wiped out millions of acres of riparian habitat, shut off many thousands of river miles of salmon habitat, silted over spawning beds, poisoned return flows with agricultural chemicals, set the plague of livestock loose on the arid land--in a nutshell they made it close to impossible for numerous native species to survive.

But when the time comes to judge, to un­der­stand a be­trayal which will spread like fame across the Web, which will end worlds, I ask you not to think of me—my name was not even writ on wa­ter as your lost poet’s soul said—but to think of Old Earth dy­ing for no rea­son, to think of the dol­phins, their gray flesh dry­ing and rot­ting in the sun, to see—as I have seen—the motile isles with no place to wan­der, their feed­ing grounds de­stroyed, the Equa­to­r­ial Shal­lows scabbed with drilling plat­forms, the is­lands them­selves bur­dened with shout­ing, tram­mel­ing tourists smelling of UV lo­tion and cannabis. Or bet­ter yet, think of none of that. Stand as I did af­ter throw­ing the switch, a mur­derer, a be­trayer, but still proud, feet firmly planted on Hy­pe­r­ion’s shift­ing sand, head held high, fist raised against the sky, cry­ing “A plague on both your houses!

It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the wise man of the family of Sakya. He possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached Nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew neither exercises nor self-castigation.

Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. Moreover, most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds for disease. Foragers roamed the land in small bands that could not sustain epidemics.

Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. Moreover, most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds for disease. Foragers roamed the land in small bands that could not sustain epidemics. The

They were Diegueños. They were armed with short bows and they drew about the travelers and knelt and gave them water out of a gourd. They’d seen such pilgrims before and with sufferings more terrible. They eked a desperate living from that land and they knew that nothing excepting some savage pursuit could drive men to such plight and they watched each day for that thing to gather itself out of its terrible incubation in the house of the sun and muster along the edge of the eastern world and whether it be armies or plague or pestilence or something altogether unspeakable they waited with a strange equanimity.

Out in the lost world were hundreds of soldiers who had been sent abroad before the end of it all and could not be brought home. In the wilds of Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Iraq, they were making their way. At bases in Europe, they were holding their ground against the locals only by firepower. When that ran out, they would be taken. Peace corps kids in Africa realized they could not swim home, would never see home again. Tourists all over Asia, the Caribbean, stranded in airports, forgotten in consulates, lived long enough to face the terror of permanence in strange lands. Cruise ships drifted full of plague dead, a few unlucky souls left alive on some.

Aside from its cartridge, pipette, and temperature issues, many of the other technical snafus that plagued the miniLab could be chalked up to the fact that it remained at a very early prototype stage. Less than three years was not a lot of time to design and perfect a complex medical device. These problems ranged from the robots’ arms landing in the wrong places, causing pipettes to break, to the spectrophotometers being badly misaligned. At one point, the blood-spinning centrifuge in one of the miniLabs blew up. These were all things that could be fixed, but it would take time. The company was still several years away from having a viable product that could be used on patients.

The greed manifests us in many shapes, The high rise building, a big house , deforestation, no land to grow and no land to feed our own, Our very own People ! The money was deadly than any plague, People bought and sold people like a commodity ! and then , They divided us , according to our flawed faith..... The stench of ignorance fills the air, nestling at the base of our cortex . I refuse to be conquered ! The agenda was all clear from the start, Prospect of the land; they would rather see us disappear, Sold for seventy five lac a 100 years back‎, It's seventy five million wounds and every day to cry !! We are a " numb nation " We are a " slave nation " & I refuse to be conquered !!!

Greece’s economic problems weren’t new. For decades, the country had been plagued by low productivity, a bloated and inefficient public sector, massive tax avoidance, and unsustainable pension obligations. Despite that, throughout the 2000s, international capital markets had been happy to finance Greece’s steadily escalating deficits, much the same way that they’d been happy to finance a heap of subprime mortgages across the United States. In the wake of the Wall Street crisis, the mood grew less generous. When a new Greek government announced that its latest budget deficit far exceeded previous estimates, European bank stocks plunged and international lenders balked at lending Greece more money. The country suddenly teetered on the brink of default.

Yes, they had suffered together, in body no less than in soul, from a cruel leisure, exile without redress, thirst that was never slaked. Among the heaps of corpses, the clanging bells of ambulances, the warnings of what goes by the name of fate, among unremitting waves of fear and agonized revolt, the horror that such things could be, always a great voice had been ringing in the ears of these forlorn, panicked people, a voice calling them back to the land of their desire, a homeland. It lay outside the walls of the stifled, strangled town, in the fragrant brushwood of the hills, in the waves of the sea, under free skies, and in the custody of love. And it was to this, their lost home, toward happiness, they longed to return, turning their backs disgustedly on all else.

In country after country where local moneys were abolished in favor of interest-bearing central currency, people fell into poverty, health declined, and society deteriorated12 by all measures. Even the plague can be traced to the collapse of the marketplace of the late Middle Ages and the shift toward extractive currencies and urban wage labor. The new scheme instead favored bigger players, such as chartered monopolies, which had better access to capital than regular little businesses and more means of paying back the interest. When monarchs and their favored merchants founded the first corporations, the idea that they would be obligated to grow didn’t look like such a problem. They had their nations’ governments and armies on their side—usually as direct investors in their projects. For the Dutch East India Company to grow was as simple as sending a few warships to a new region of the world, taking the land, and enslaving its people. If this sounds a bit like the borrowing advantages enjoyed today by companies like Walmart and Amazon, that’s because it’s essentially the same money system in operation, favoring the same sorts of players. Yet however powerful the favored corporations may appear, they are really just the engines through which the larger money system extracts value from everyone’s economic activity. Even megacorporations are like competing apps on a universally accepted, barely acknowledged smartphone operating system. Their own survival is utterly dependent on their ability to grow capital for their debtors and investors.

All these rich people with their private-jet escape routes to New Zealand—maybe it’s the operational manager in me, but all I can think about are apocalypse logistics: What zombie pilot is going to fly all those planes, and which zombie air-traffic controller is going to help land them? And who is going to do all the ongoing work of cooking and cleaning and shopping? Is the New Zealand infrastructure prepared for this? And why would people in New Zealand allow planes full of potential plague-germ carriers onto their island, no matter how much money they have? Would money have value in the new postapocalyptic economy—or would toilet paper be worth even more? Do the pilot and crew who flew you to New Zealand get saved, or do they get barred at the security gate of the bunker?

The consequences enveloped the entire globe. During 1890 a strong La Niña ocean temperature anomaly developed, followed by two El Niño years, which warmed Pacific waters and upended normal weather patterns—causing floods in some places, drought in others. In India, monsoons failed, leading to widespread cattle deaths, locust plagues, and grain riots.172 In Russia, peasants had been pressured to clear huge areas for wheat, with the grain exported as a cash crop; overseers had walked away rich. But by 1891 and 1892, the land was exhausted. Drought, bad harvests, and bitter winters led vast numbers of peasants to burn the thatched roofs of their homes for fuel and eat “famine bread” made out of weeds. Typhus swept in to finish off the emaciated. Worldwide, millions died. It was, as one scholar put it, a “fin de siècle apocalypse.”173 Weather patterns in the

The failure of the Crusades intensified anti-Jewish persecutions in Europe. Banned from owning land or joining trading companies, forced to wear special clothing, Jews were often involved in moneylending, supposedly taboo for Christians. Kings borrowed money from them, and so protected them, but whenever society was strained, by recession or plague, they were attacked. In 1144, after a boy was murdered in Norwich, England, Jews were accused of killing Christian children to make Passover matzoh, unleashing the ‘blood libel’ which in various forms – but always featuring a conspiracy of Jews to harm non-Jews – reverberates down to the twenty-first century. It spread: in 1171, it hit Blois, France, where thirty-three Jews (seventeen women) were burned alive. In the failed state of England, where Henry III struggled to maintain royal power in the face of endemic noble revolt, both king and rebels borrowed from a wealthy banker, David of Oxford. After David’s death, his widow Licoricia of Winchester, the richest non-noble in England, lent to both sides, partly funding the building of Westminster Abbey. But her murder in 1277 showed the perils of being a prominent Jew. In 1290, Henry’s son Edward I expelled the Jews from England. Yet in 1264 Bolesław, duke of Poland, had granted the Statute of Kalisz which gave Jews the right to trade and worship freely and banned the blood libel, legislating against Christian conspiracy theories and denunciations: ‘Accusing Jews of drinking Christian blood is expressly prohibited,’ declared the Statute. ‘If, despite this, a Jew should be accused of murdering a Christian child, such charge must be sustained by testimony of three Christians and three Jews.’ Poland would be a Jewish sanctuary for many centuries.

Did you ever read about bubonic plague in medieval Europe?” I asked. She nodded. She reads a lot the way I do, reads all kinds of things. “A lot of the continent was depopulated,” she said. “Some survivors thought the world was coming to an end.” “Yes, but once they realized it wasn’t, they also realized there was a lot of vacant land available for the taking, and if they had a trade, they realized they could demand better pay for their work. A lot of things changed for the survivors.” “What’s your point?” “The changes.” I thought for a moment. “They were slow changes compared to anything that might happen here, but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.” “So?” “Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take.

Descendants of people enslaved at the Whitney still live in the areas surrounding the former plantation. A few now work at the Whitney—ranging from a director-level position to tour guides to the front desk. But much of the community still suffers from the intergenerational poverty that plagues many formerly enslaved communities more than a century and a half after emancipation. Poverty is common in Wallace, Louisiana, the area encompassing the Whitney, where over 90 percent of the population is Black. Wallace is also one of a series of majority-Black communities lining the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that—as a result of their proximity to petrochemical plants—form what is known as Cancer Alley. Neighborhoods here have some of the highest cancer risks in the country, and chemical emissions from these plants are linked to cardiovascular, respiratory, and developmental ailments. Civil rights leader Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II put it this way when describing the landscape of factories and refineries along the Mississippi River: “The same land that held people captive through slavery is now holding people captive through this environmental injustice and devastation.

It seems that leishmaniasis, a disease that has troubled the human race since time immemorial, has in the twenty-first century come into its own. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, told our team bluntly that, by going into the jungle and getting leishmaniasis, “You got a really cold jolt of what it’s like for the bottom billion people on earth.” We were, he said, confronted in a very dramatic way with what many people have to live with their entire lives. If there’s a silver lining to our ordeal, he told us, “it’s that you’ll now be telling your story, calling attention to what is a very prevalent, very serious disease.” If leish continues to spread as predicted in the United States, by the end of the century it may no longer be confined to the “bottom billion” in faraway lands. It will be in our own backyards. Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. The big ones now entering our country include Zika, West Nile virus, chikungunya, and dengue fever. Even diseases like cholera, Ebola, Lyme, babesiosis, and bubonic plague will potentially infect more people as global warming accelerates.

ADVENTURERS AVAUNT! There is no greater plague upon the lands than the chartered adventurer. Crown-sanctioned mischief makers, brigands whose thefts, casual murders, rapine and pillage are excused where the same things done by a cobbler or a milkmaid would be answered with severings of hands or other appendages, plus brandings—or all of those and hanging or death by drawing between four horses. Yet there is no more necessary plague. Adventurers make even kings think twice about cruelly oppressing all who pass within reach, teach prudence to high priests and even rogue wizards, and are almost the only curb upon the numbers of dragons and other large and monstrous beasts. On the whole, I think the balance comes out about even. What makes us keep adventuring charters instead of burning them along with their bearers is the entertainment adventurers afford the populace. In hamlets and at waymoots, after one’s grumbled about the weather, taxes, the latest rumors of war and orc raids, and the all-too-paltry gossip about the indiscretions of royalty and nobility, there’s little else to talk about but the foolish escapades of adventurers. Thundaerlel Maurlatrimm Four Decades of Innkeeping published in the Year of the Highmantle

Most people, who choose or are coerced into only identifying with “positive” feelings, usually wind up in an emotionally lifeless middle ground – bland, deadened, and dissociated in an unemotional “no-man’s-land.” Moreover, when a person tries to hold onto a preferred feeling for longer than its actual tenure, she often appears as unnatural and phony as ersatz grass or plastic flowers. If instead, she learns to surrender willingly to the normal human experience that good feelings always ebb and flow, she will eventually be graced with a growing ability to renew herself in the vital waters of emotional flexibility. The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states. Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger, depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences. How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments. Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest. Perhaps never before has humankind been so alienated from so many of its normal feeling states, as it is in the twenty-first century. Never before have so many human beings been so emotionally deadened and impoverished. The disease of emotional emaciation is epidemic. Its effects on health are often euphemistically labeled as stress, and like the emotions, stress is often treated like some unwanted waste that must be removed.

On reading a translated copy of the covenant, Philip V was horrified. The Muslim ruler of Jerusalem, through his emissary, the viceroy of Islamic Granada, was extending to the Jewish people the hand of eternal peace and friendship. The gesture was occasioned by the recent discovery of the lost ark of the Old Testament and the stone tablets upon which God had etched the Law with His finger. Both were found in perfect condition in a ditch in the Sinai Desert and had awoken in the Muslims, who discovered them, a desire to be circumcised, convert to Judaism, and return the Holy Land to the Jews. However, since this would leave millions of Palestinian Muslims homeless, the King of Jerusalem wanted the Jews to give him France in return. The guilty homeowner Bananias told French authorities that after the Muslim offer, the Jews of France concocted the well-poisoning plot and hired the lepers to carry it out. After reading the translation and several corroborating documents, including a highly incriminating letter from the Muslim King of Tunisia, Philip ordered all Jews in France arrested for “complicity . . . to bring about the death of the people and the subjects of the kingdom.” Two years later, any Jewish survivors of the royal terror were exiled from the country.   The

Twas brillig, and a mortal's tones Did stretch a day beyond the braced; A princess slain, dead to her bones, A word distraught, a knight disgraced. Portentia, Queen of Wonderland, A crown of grief upon her soul, Vowed to repay the world of man, With mother's tears and pain untold. Addison, keeper of the realm, Now plagued with guilt from duties failed, Swears to uphold his Lady's whelms, Unyielding faith, but conscience veiled. And so, they two a war will wage, The Black Queen and her trusted Knight, For all to know a mother's rage And all to feel her daughter's plight, While sibling girls of white and red align against their mother's will. They share her pain, their sister dead, But they would not innocents kill. The Queen's defeat is at their hands. They strip her of her powers black, then bind her to the Nightmares' lands and split her crown and all it lacks. Behold the Heart! Behold the Eye! For here the Black Queen's power sleeps. Leave them to rest, and by and by The world will mend the broken deep. For if these artifacts awake, Surely then, too, the Queen shall rise. And all will suffer in her wake Beneath the blood-soaked screaming skies. Beware the Heart! Beware the Eye! Beware the Blade so Black! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

more than anything.” He turned to Jean Louise. “Seven-thirty tonight and no Landing. We’ll go to the show.” “Okay. Where’re you all going?” “Courthouse. Meeting.” “On Sunday?” “Yep.” “That’s right, I keep forgetting all the politicking’s done on Sunday in these parts.” Atticus called for Henry to come on. “Bye, baby,” he said. Jean Louise followed him into the livingroom. When the front door slammed behind her father and Henry, she went to her father’s chair to tidy up the papers he had left on the floor beside it. She picked them up, arranged them in sectional order, and put them on the sofa in a neat pile. She crossed the room again to straighten the stack of books on his lamp table, and was doing so when a pamphlet the size of a business envelope caught her eye. On its cover was a drawing of an anthropophagous Negro; above the drawing was printed The Black Plague. Its author was somebody with several academic degrees after his name. She opened the pamphlet, sat down in her father’s chair, and began reading. When she had finished, she took the pamphlet by one of its corners, held it like she would hold a dead rat by the tail, and walked into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet in front of her aunt. “What is this thing?” she said. Alexandra looked over her glasses at it. “Something of your father’s.” Jean Louise stepped on the garbage can trigger and threw the pamphlet in. “Don’t do that,” said Alexandra. “They’re hard to come by these days.” Jean Louise opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “Aunty, have you read that thing? Do you know what’s in it?” “Certainly.” If Alexandra had uttered an obscenity in her face, Jean Louise would have been less surprised. “You—Aunty, do you know the stuff in that thing makes Dr. Goebbels look like a naive little country boy?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jean Louise. There are a lot of truths in that book.” “Yes indeedy,” said Jean Louise wryly. “I especially liked the part where the Negroes, bless their hearts, couldn’t help being inferior to the white race because their skulls are thicker and their brain-pans shallower—whatever that means—so we must all be very kind to them and not let them do anything to hurt themselves and keep them in their places. Good God, Aunty—” Alexandra was ramrod straight. “Well?” she said. Jean Louise said, “It’s just that I never knew you went in for salacious reading material, Aunty.” Her aunt was silent, and Jean Louise continued: “I was real impressed with the parable where since the dawn of history the rulers of the world have always been white, except Genghis Khan or somebody—the author was real fair about that—and he made a killin’ point about even the Pharaohs were white and their subjects were either black or Jews—” “That’s true, isn’t it?” “Sure, but what’s that got to do with the case?” When Jean Louise felt apprehensive, expectant, or on edge, especially when confronting her aunt, her brain clicked to the meter of Gilbertian tomfoolery. Three sprightly figures

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.” In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

When you lived in the human world, you had legends of the dread beasts and faeries who would slaughter you if they ever breached the wall, didn’t you? Things that slithered through open windows to drink the blood of children? Things that were so wicked, so cruel there was no hope against their evil?” The hair on her neck rose. “Yes.” Those stories had always unnerved and petrified her. “They were based on truth. Based on ancient, near-primordial beings who existed here before the High Fae split into courts, before the High Lords. Some call them the First Gods. They were beings with almost no physical form, but a keen, vicious intelligence. Humans and Fae alike were their prey. Most were hunted and driven into hiding or imprisonment ages ago. But some remained, lurking in forgotten corners of the land.” He swallowed another mouthful. “When I was nearing three hundred years old, one of them appeared again, crawling out of the roots of a mountain. Before he went into the Prison and confinement weakened him, Lanthys could turn into wind and rip the air from your lungs, or turn into rain and drown you on dry land; he could peel your skin from your body with a few movements. He never revealed his true form, but when I faced him, he chose to appear as swirling mist. He fathered a race of faeries that still plague us, who thrived under Amarantha’s reign—the Bogge. But the Bogge are lesser, mere shadows compared to Lanthys. If there is such a thing as evil incarnate, it is him. He has no mercy, no sense of right or wrong. There is him, and there is everyone else, and we are all his prey. His methods of killing are creative and slow. He feasts on fear and pain as much as the flesh itself.” Her blood chilled. “How did you trap such a thing?” Cassian tapped a spot on his neck where a scar slashed beneath his ear. “I quickly learned I could never beat him in combat or magic. Still have the scar here to prove it.” Cassian smiled faintly. “So I used his arrogance against him. Flattered and taunted him into trapping himself in a mirror bound with ash wood. I bet him the mirror would contain him—and Lanthys bet wrong. He got out of the mirror, of course, but by that time, I’d dumped his miserable self into the Prison.

The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet. Farmers tend to eat a very limited and unbalanced diet. Especially in premodern times, most of the calories feeding an agricultural population came from a single crop – such as wheat, potatoes or rice – that lacks some of the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional materials humans need. The typical peasant in traditional China ate rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If she was lucky, she could expect to eat the same on the following day. By contrast, ancient foragers regularly ate dozens of different foodstuffs. The peasant’s ancient ancestor, the forager, may have eaten berries and mushrooms for breakfast; fruits, snails and turtle for lunch; and rabbit steak with wild onions for dinner. Tomorrow’s menu might have been completely different. This variety ensured that the ancient foragers received all the necessary nutrients. Furthermore, by not being dependent on any single kind of food, they were less liable to suffer when one particular food source failed. Agricultural societies are ravaged by famine when drought, fire or earthquake devastates the annual rice or potato crop. Forager societies were hardly immune to natural disasters, and suffered from periods of want and hunger, but they were usually able to deal with such calamities more easily. If they lost some of their staple foodstuffs, they could gather or hunt other species, or move to a less affected area. Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. Moreover, most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds for disease. Foragers roamed the land in small bands that could not sustain epidemics. The wholesome and varied diet, the relatively short working week, and the rarity of infectious diseases have led many experts to define pre-agricultural forager societies as ‘the original affluent societies’.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why if all politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excused the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered by private central bank. I exclude all of the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislators’ responsibility to determine how he votes. Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes. Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words ? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other ? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal ? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon ? Heard ? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away ? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it ? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Tow-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted for after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had give them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked by devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in ther blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuse and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.

There were actual land sites all over the planet that should be very badly contaminated by lipofuscin, because their soil has been seeded with the stuff for generations. I speak, of course, of graveyards. Think about it: hundreds of bodies put into the ground—sometimes en masse, as happened throughout Europe during the horrors of the Plague, and more recently following acts of genocide in Rwanda and elsewhere. These soils should be chockablock with aggregates from their inhabitants’ decaying bodies. Yet, to my knowledge, there was no accumulation of lipofuscin in cemeteries—and if there were, we certainly ought to be aware of it, because lipofuscin is fluorescent. Months later, when I was discussing the issue with fellow Cambridge scientist John Archer, he would put the disconnect succinctly: “Why don’t graveyards glow in the dark?

The Lord warned the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah well before Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion that they should flee from Jerusalem and not try to remain as residents. Jeremiah warned Jewish residents that the Lord had told him Jerusalem and the cities of Judah would become a “desolation without an inhabitant.” (Jeremiah 34:22) Those who heeded His words were safely secured in Babylonian captivity for seventy years. “This is what the LORD says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life; he will live.’” (Jeremiah 38:2) “Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands. I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land.” (Jeremiah 42:11-12)

The first plague-spot is the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and the selfish withdrawal of its possessors from the life of the community. In an agricultural society like that of Judah, that clotting of wealth took the shape of 'land-grabbing,' and of evicting the small proprietors. We see it in more virulent forms in our great commercial centres, where the big men often become big by crushing out the little ones, and denude themselves of responsibility to the community in proportion as they clothe themselves with wealth. Wherever wealth is thus congested, and its obligations ignored by selfish indulgence, the seeds are sown which will spring up one day in 'anarchism.' A man need not be a prophet to have it whispered in his ear, as Isaiah had, that the end of selfish capitalism is a convulsion in which 'many houses shall be desolate,' and many fields barren.

There were temporary and local reprieves: plagues, climate fluctuations, or warfare intermittently culled the population and freed up land, enabling survivors to improve their nutritional intake—and to bring up more children, until the ranks were replenished and the Malthusian condition reinstituted. Also, thanks to social inequality, a thin elite stratum could enjoy consistently above-subsistence income (at the expense of somewhat lowering the total size of the population that could be sustained). A sad and dissonant thought: that in this Malthusian condition, the normal state of affairs during most of our tenure on this planet, it was droughts, pestilence, massacres, and inequality—in common estimation the worst foes of human welfare—that may have been the greatest humanitarians: they alone enabling the average level of well-being to occasionally bop up slightly above that of life at the very margin of subsistence.

The figure leaned forward and saw the visage of his quarry for the first time. With a wave of his hand, the powerful Dark Paladin destroyed the darkling. The pitiful creature cried out as its young existence was extinguished, but the man barely noticed. All that mattered was that he was one step closer to his prey. The captain of the plague squad left the charred shell of the warehouse and slowly spoke the name of his quarry aloud, as if tasting it.

The phantom pains of the wolf attack still plagued him somewhat, but they had lost much of their power. They were only illusions. They would not deter him. What was real was the air in his lungs, the power in his limbs and the strength of his will. Backlit by the sun shining down into the glade, Richter took a step forward to go and finish what he had started. It was in that moment of true purpose that he looked down and realized he was completely naked. “Universe, you’re a dick.

In October of 1991, on the day I met Steve, it was only by chance that I stopped at his wildlife park at all. I had been sleeping in the backseat of a car on the way back from a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house. Up front, Lori’s friend knew I was interested in zoos. When he saw a sign for this one, he debated with himself whether he should wake me. Even when he did, I wasn’t sure if this reptile park was going to be much more than a few snakes in little glass tanks. So it was only by chance that I was on that highway at all, and only chance that I stopped. And it was only by chance that Steve conducted the croc show that day. Some days, Wes did the show. Chance. Fate. Destiny. These were words I lived by. I believed my life had been shaped for a special purpose. But with Steve’s death my faith was tested. Was it pure chance that Steve, a man who cheated mortality almost every single day of his adult life, died in such a bizarre accident? During the decade and a half that I knew him, I don’t think a week went by when he didn’t get a bite, blow, or injury of some kind. His knee and shoulder plagued him from years of jumping crocs. As Steve erected a fence at our Brigalow Belt conservation property, a big fence-post driver he was using slipped and landed directly on his head, compressing the fifth disk in his neck. Even injured, he still managed to push on--at the zoo, filming, and doing heavy construction. He went at work like a bull at a gate. He climbed trees with orangutans. He traversed the most remote deserts and the most impossible mountains. He packed his life chock-a-block full with risks of all kinds. “I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute,” Steve said. “I’m just fine with that.” One crowded hour of glorious life is worth more than an age without a name. I had no regrets for Steve’s glorious life, and I know he couldn’t have lived any other way.

My visions aren’t 100% clear. They are always hazy, short and missing details.”   “Hm… okay, what is the next step after meeting this old adversary?”   “The next step requires you to travel to a far away land.”   “You mean like the Nether?”   “Something like that.”   “Hm…” Something like the Nether? If it’s not the Nether, then where else could it be? I thought in my head. “Okay… what’s after that?”   “I don’t know.”   “Huh? What do you mean?”   “My vision ended there.”   “What?”   “Perhaps the next steps will reveal themselves to you as you progress along the way.”   “Err…”   “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”   “It’s okay. I got some good information out of you. Ultimately, I’ll have to fight a powerful dragon to end this monster plague.”   The Sage nodded. “That is correct.

Um… I guess? I just want to get rid of the monsters in this world.”   The Sage nodded. “Yes, it's just like I’ve seen in my vision.”   “What did you see exactly?”   “I saw a young boy on a quest to cure these lands of the monster plague.”   “Hm… that sounds like me. Did you see anything else?”   “I saw that you would visit me to ask for advice on how to stop the plague.”   “Oh, I see. So, how do I stop it?   The Sage nodded. “Your quest shall not be an easy one. There are others that came before you that have tried, but they all have failed.”   “Oh…”   “But I see potential in you, young one. You are strong and you have many strong allies. Perhaps, there is a chance you may succeed.”   I nodded. “I’m willing to take that chance.”   “The path you have chosen for yourself is full of dangerous trials. But if you work together with your friends and push on, you can get through them all.”    “I see. So, what do I have to do?”   The Sage nodded again. “In the glimpse of your future, I saw a great

It was responsible for the interlopers who plagued their lands. It

Eyllwe, she’d heard, had taken the brunt of it. Though their king had yielded his power to the King of Adarlan, Eyllwe soldiers still could be found fighting in the rebel groups that plagued Adarlan’s forces. But the land itself was too vital for Adarlan to abandon. Eyllwe boasted two of the most prosperous cities on the continent; its territory—rich in farmland, waterways, and forests—was a crucial vein in trade routes. Now, it seemed, Adarlan had decided that it might make money off its people, too.

The Importance of Israel's Past (1–8) I Will Teach You (1–3) Truths in parables (1–2a) Things hidden from old (2–3) You Will Teach Others (4–8) The wonders of God (4) The word of God (5–8) The Insurrection of Israel's Past (9–16) They Rebelled Against God (9–11) They forsook his word (9) They forgot his works (10–11) God Rescued Them (12–16) God did wonderful things (12) God divided the sea (13) God directed them through the sea (14) God divided the rock (15–16) The Ingratitude of Israel's Past(17–31) They Defied God (17–19) They sinned against him (17) They tested him (18) They spoke against him (19) God Delivered Them (20a) He struck the rock (20a) He served them water (20b) They Disbelieved God (20b) They doubted he would give them bread (20b) They doubted he would give them meat (20b) God Disciplined Them (21) He was wrathful toward them (21a) He was angry with them (21b) They Denied God (22) They did not believe him (22a) They did not trust him (22b) God Delighted Them (23–31) God commanded the clouds (23) God rained down manna (24) God fed them abundantly (25–29) God disciplined them (30–31) The Insincerity of Israel's Past (32–39) They Rejected God (32–37) They sinned against God (32–33) They sought God (34) They remembered God (35) They lied to God (36) They left God (37) God Remained Faithful (38–39) He forgave them (38) He remembered them (39) The Insubordination of Israel's Past (40–55) They Rebelled Against God (40–42) They turned from God (40) They tempted God (41) They forgot God (42) God Rescued Them (43–55) He performed signs (43) He sent plagues (44–51) He led them (52–53) He directed them into the land (54) He drove out the nations (55a) He divided up the land (55b) The Idolatry of Israel's Past (56–72) They Rebelled Against God (56–58) They tested him (56) They turned back from him (57) They provoked him (58) God Disciplined Them (59–61) He abhorred them (59) He abandoned them (60–64) God Favored Them (65–72) He fought for them (65–66) He chose Judah (67–68) He constructed the temple (69) He chose David (70–72)

I can fly anything,” David said. Landing had sometimes been an issue, but he didn’t mention that. There was no need to worry them.

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And

No amount of any occasional incredulity that I displayed throughout the trip could erase the fact that the Holy Family’s journey across the ancient land of Egypt and up the Nile was, by its very nature, a sacred event. It has no linearity, no timeliness, and no reality other than as the fulfillment of prophecy. But this is enough, surely. More than history, more than hagiography, the Holy Family’s travails are the stuff of humankind’s need for certainty in the face of those ever-shifting values that plague our daily lives. Fear of soldiers, fear of robbers, fear of a mad king bent upon massacre, these are but symbols of the abyss that we, too, find ourselves in and long to escape.

An English traveler, James H. Juke, was aghast that a day’s sail could take him from a well-fed nation to an island of the wretched and dying. He saw Irish trying to exist on sand eels, turnip tops and seaweed—“a diet which no one in England would consider fit for the meanest animal which he kept.” The potato blight had not spared England, nor Holland, parts of France and Germany. Their crops also failed. But only in Ireland were people dying en masse. The cause had been planted in the land—not the potato, but English rule that had driven a majority of Irish from ground their ancestors had owned. “The terrifying exactitude of memory,” in Tocqueville’s phrase. Famines had come before, epochs of hunger that killed upwards of 70,000 in the worst case. But this starvation reached across the island—it was now the Great Hunger, an Gorta Mór, with a fatal toll ten times that of the Great Plague of London in 1665. And here was the tragedy: there was plenty of food in Ireland while the people starved. Irish rains produced a prodigious amount of Irish grains. Almost three fourths of the country’s cultivable land was in corn, wheat, oats and barley. The food came from Irish land and Irish labor. But it didn’t go into Irish mouths. About 1.5 billion pounds of grain and other foodstuffs were exported. The natives were hired hands and witnesses to these money crops, grown by Anglo landlords. Same with cattle, sheep and hogs raised within eyesight of the hollow-bellied. Famine-ravaged Ireland exported more beef than any other part of the British Empire.

Pharaoh and the Persian Bazaar The truth is, why Moses needed to ask for just a three-day work holiday is really part of a larger question: Why did Moses need to ask Pharaoh for anything at all? Over the course of the Exodus, Moses bargains with Pharaoh repeatedly, seeking his consent to let the slaves go. Moses exhibits extraordinary patience as the Egyptian king gives in partially, retracts his consent, and then gives in just a little more next time. For example: a plague occurs in which wild animals are unleashed into Egyptian homes and marketplaces. Pharaoh tells Moses that he will allow the Hebrews to worship for three days, but could they please do it right here, in the Land of Egypt, rather than out there in the desert? (Exodus 8:21) Moses refuses, on grounds that the Egyptians wouldn’t react kindly to Israel slaughtering these animals, since the Egyptians hold them sacred (Exodus 8:22). Pharaoh concedes the point and says that Israel can leave the country for three days—but then he adds, almost hopelessly: Just make sure you don’t go too far away! (Exodus 8:24) It all seems faintly ridiculous, the squabbling back and forth. One wonders: Isn’t all this a little beneath Moses’s dignity? Isn’t it beneath God’s? God doesn’t need to bargain with Pharaoh. God doesn’t even need Pharaoh to say yes at all! The Master of the Universe is perfectly capable of delivering His people to the Promised Land, whether Pharaoh agrees to the plan or not. So why go through all of this?

Endeavors focused on AIDS, though crucial, must be linked to efforts to empower poor women. The much-abused term “empower” is not meant vaguely here; empowerment is not a matter of self-esteem or even of parliamentary representation. Those choosing to make common cause with poor women must help them gain control over their own lives. Control of lives is related to control of land, systems of production, and the formal political and legal structures in which lives are enmeshed. In each of these arenas, poor people overall are already laboring at a vast disadvantage; the voices of poor women in particular are almost unheard.

The Black Death, or plague, had wreaked havoc in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Economic depression followed the decline of population, abandonment of fertile land, and curtailing of trade. But by the mid-fifteenth century, economic expansion was once again the order of the day.

which Varo distinguished unto Incognit and fabulous, preceding the historical, and we should shortly have as wretched narratives of the first persons and actions in this land, as Justin gives of the Jews, when he makes Moses the son of their Joseph, and the sixth of their kings, or when he makes them expelled from Egypt, because the gods would not otherwise allay a plague that raged there; or such as are given by Pliny, when he makes Moses a magician; or Strabo, that makes him an Egyptian priest; if no speedy care be taken to preserve the memorables of our first settlement;

As the Chinese translation of the name Sukhāvatī suggests, it is a land of supreme joy. The Sanskrit is of similar meaning: “that which possesses ease and comfort.” Sukhāvatī is not subject to the sufferings that plague this world and, furthermore, it is a land of surpassed beauty. It is described as having seven tiers of balustrades, seven rows of nets, and seven rows of trees, all adorned with four jewels (gold, silver, lapsis lazuli, and crystal). There is a lake of the seven jewels (gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, a kind of big shell [tridacna gigas], coral, and agate), filled with water having the eight virtues. The bottom of the lake is gold sand. On the four sides of the lake are stairs (galleries) made of the four jewels. Above are towers and palaces also adorned with the seven jewels. Above are towers and palaces also adorned with the seven jewels. In the lake bloom lotus flowers as large as chariot wheels. The blue lotus flowers emit a blue light, and the yellow, red, and white lotus flowers emit light of corresponding colors. They all give forth a sweet fragrance. The delightful sound of heavenly music can be hard, and in the morning, at noon, and in the evening mandārava flowers fall from the sky and gently pile up on the golden ground. Every morning the inhabitants of the Pure Land gather these flowers with the hems of their robes and make offerings of them to myriads of buddhas in other lands. At mealtime they return to their own land, where they take their meal and stroll around. There are many kinds of birds—swans, peacocks, parrots, sharikas, kalaviṅkas, and jīvaṃjīvakas, which sing with beautiful voices, proclaiming the teachings of the Buddha. When living beings hear this song, they think about the Buddha, Dharma (“law,” or his teachings), and Saṅgha (“community of believers”). When the gentle breezes blow, the rows of four-jeweled trees and jeweled nets give forth a gentle music, like a beautiful symphony. In this land dwell Amitābha Buddha and his two attendants, the bodhisattvas Avalokitśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. At their feet are those virtuous beings who have been reborn in that land because of their ardent faith. All, however, are male; women of deep faith are reborn here with male bodies. The female sex, considered inferior and unfortunate, has no place in Sukhāvatī. All people, says Śākyamuni, should ardently wish for rebirth in that land and become the companions of the most virtuous of all beings. People cannot hope for rebirth there just by performing a few good deeds, however. If living beings meditate eagerly upon the name of Amitābha for even one day with an undisturbed mind, Amitābha and his holy retinue will appear before them to receive them at the end of Life. They will enter the Pure Land with unperturbed hearts.

As though to prove her point, she pushes to her feet, standing in the deserted walkway. But just as she's reaching for the grab rail, the car jolts again. Her hand flails through the air, missing the bar, and she topples forward, body hurtling toward me. I reach out, but before I can catch her, she slams into me. Her shoulder bangs against my sternum as she tumbles onto my lap. I let out a grunt, wincing as her hand lands right on my crotch. "Oh, my God." Ada snatches her hand away, scrambling backward off me as I bend forward, breathing through the pain that radiates through my gut. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Ewww!" she squeals. "Ew?" I turn to her, incredulous, balls aching like they've got a goddamn migraine. "You just smashed my junk, and all you can say is ew? You know, a normal person would apologize after almost dismembering someone." Ada doesn't bother looking at me, let alone apologizing as she unzips her camera bag and starts frantically digging through it. "What are you doing?" I ask. "Looking for hand sanitizer obviously." She pulls out a miniature bottle of Purell and squeezes an absurd amount into the palm of her hand. "You're ridiculous. You do realize that, right?" I can't count the number of times girls have attempted to cop a feel since Cipher aired. And here she is, acting like she contracted the bubonic plague by accidentally touching me.

They closed their eyes to the external world which can always offer an escape from anything, stubbornly nurturing their all-too-real fantasies and pursuing with all their strength the images of a land in which a certain light, two or three hills, a favourite tree and the faces of women composed a climate that nothing could replace.

She’s a country forged in pain and glory, her soil is tainted with the blood of those who fought and died for her. She’s the conqueror of the old world and the streets of this here London Town weave spells around those from foreign lands. She’s opportunity and history and culture. She’s beauty and fucking grace, darlin’, and she’ll leave her mark on you forever now, because you’ve already placed your feet upon her pavements, and once you walk in the footsteps of the people who’ve lived here, it’ll alter you in ways you can’t even imagine yet. This city was a kingdom of brutality, from the cutthroat royals who publicly executed countless unfortunate sods at Tower Hill, to louts like Jack the Ripper who spilled the guts of his victims all over Whitechapel - the very place you find yourself in right now. This city’s been burned to the ground, bombed by the Luftwaffe, and still she stands. It’s survived plagues and winters cold enough to freeze your heart in your very chest. It ain’t easy to leave a mark on this place, but it sure leaves a mark on you. And you’re marked Anya Volkov, it’s already too late for you.

I had been trying to land a paying stand-up gig in Los Angeles when the Arctic plague arrived in America, infecting the children and the weak. For almost two years I paid the bills as a sanitation worker, cleaning abandoned offices and shuttered schools, while at night I tried to fill dive bars with laughter in exchange for drinks.

Our main problem over the past few days and weeks,’ he said, ‘has lain in trying to connect the various phenomena. In fact, there wasn’t any obvious connection until a jelly-like substance started to crop up. Sometimes it appeared in small quantities, sometimes in larger amounts, but always with the distinguishing characteristic that it disintegrated rapidly on contact with air. Unfortunately the discovery of the jelly only added to the mystery, given its presence in crustaceans, mussels and whales - three types of organism that could hardly be more different. Of course, it might have been some kind of fungus, a jellified version of rabies, an infectious disease like BSE or swine fever. But, if so, why would ships be disappearing or crabs transporting killer algae? There was no sign of the jelly on the worms that infested the slope. They were carrying a different kind of cargo - bacteria that break down hydrates and cause methane gas to rise. Hence the landslide and the tsunami. And what about the mutated species that have been emerging all over the world? Even fish have been behaving oddly. None of it adds up. In that respect, Jack Vanderbilt was right to discern an intelligent mind behind the chaos. But he overestimated our ability - no scientist knows anything like enough about marine ecology to be capable of manipulating it to that extent. People are fond of saying that we know more about space than we do about the oceans. It’s perfectly true, but there’s a simple reason why: we can’t see or move as well in the water as we can in outer space. The Hubble telescope peers effortlessly into different galaxies, but the world’s strongest floodlight only illuminates a dozen square metres of seabed. An astronaut in a spacesuit can move with almost total freedom, but even the most sophisticated divesuit won’t stop you being crushed to death beyond a certain depth. AUVs and ROVs are only operational if the conditions are right. We don’t have the physical constitution or the technology to deposit billions of worms on underwater hydrates, let alone the requisite knowledge to engineer them for a habitat that we barely understand. Besides, there are all the other phenomena: deep-sea cables being destroyed at the bottom of the ocean by forces other than the underwater slide; plagues of jellyfish and mussels rising from the abyssal plains. The simplest explanation would be to see these developments as part of a plan, but such a plan could only be the work of a species that knows the ocean as intimately as we do the land - a species that lives in the depths and plays the dominant role in that particular universe.