“
In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
Have you ever watched the jet cars race on the boulevard?...I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly...If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He'd say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
“
Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
This is my driver,’ Nico said. ‘Jules-Albert finished first in the Paris–Rouen motorcar race back in 1895, but he wasn’t awarded the prize because his steam car used a stoker.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
“
If you're not a race driver, stay the hell home. Don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Get the hell out of the race car if you've got feathers on your legs or butt. Put a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat that candy ass.
”
”
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“
Just being a mediocre driver has never been my ambition. That's not my style
”
”
Michael Schumacher
“
You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that's designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I race to win.
”
”
Ayrton Senna
“
This is something I'd heard him say before: getting angry at another driver for a driving incident is pointless. You need to watch the drivers around you, understand their skill, confidence and aggression levels, and drive with them accordingly. Know who is driving next to you. Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
Faster is fatal, slower is safe.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
So, why the traffic stop when the officer admits that the driver did nothing wrong? To this impartial observer, those facts suggest Mr. Hayes was pulled over for driving while black and the shooting was the worst result of a bad stop.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
The bottom line is the driver was twenty to twenty-five years older than the robbery suspect. Both husband and wife were college- educated, middle-class American citizens, like you and me.”
“Except that they were black, and we are not,” Jennifer states the obvious.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
I haven't met that many women, human or angelic, who actually like to drive. In my experience they seem to be much more pragmatic about the whole thing than we are. For most males, driving is an extension of their masculinity; they have little fantasy scenarios going all the time - races, chases, and dramatic combat with other drivers. Females, on the other hand, generally seem to view driving as something you do to get somewhere. I know, crazy.
”
”
Tad Williams (The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar, #1))
“
A racist cop pulls over a black driver for little reason other than the fact that the driver is black and a recent robbery was committed by a couple of young black guys in a white community. The cop quickly realizes the driver is not one of the robbery suspects. He sees a man with a wife and two small children. They are not a couple of young punks. Still,he persists. Why?
“He asks to see the driver’s license and registration. While locating the appropriate documents, the black driver respectfully volunteers that he is legally carrying a handgun. The cop panics—is it the image of a black man with a gun? He barks out conflicting orders and then shoots the man
to death, in front of his family. Why? “Is it because the cop is an insensitive racist? Maybe he wasn’t trained or taught any better? Perhaps he lived a completely different life in a completely different world than that of the black man. In this cop’s world, were all black men potential criminals, people to be watched, people to be feared?
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal--a commitment to excellence--that will enable you to attain the success you seek.
--Mario Andretti
”
”
Mario Andretti (Race to Win: How to Become a Complete Champion Driver: How to Become a Champion Race Car Driver)
“
Marcus tries to stay calm for the sake of his family.
“I’m not asking. Step out of the damned car!” The officer is becoming unglued.
“I’m getting out, damn you, but, here, let me just show you my—”
“Don’t reach. Stop!”
“I’m getting what you asked for, just going to show you my—”
“Put your hands where I can see them!” The officer snarls.
“Jesus H. Christ, officer. I’m not—”
Thunderous shots ring out, and Marcus slumps away from the dash, back toward the driver’s seat.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
The things she wanted the baby to know seemed small, so small. How it felt to go to a grocery store on vacation; to wake at three a.m. and run your whole life through your fingertips; first library card; new lipstick; a toe going numb for two months because you wore borrowed shoes to a friend’s wedding; Thursday; October; “She’s Like the Wind” in a dentist’s office; driver’s license picture where you look like a killer; getting your bathing suit back on after you go to the bathroom; touching a cymbal for sound and then touching it again for silence; playing house in the refrigerator box; letting a match burn down to the fingerprints; one hand in the Scrabble bag and then I I I O U E A; eyes racing to the end of Villette (skip the parts about the crétin, sweetheart); hamburger wrappers on a road trip; the twist of a heavy red apple in an orchard; word on the tip of the tongue; the portal, but just for a minute.
”
”
Patricia Lockwood (No One Is Talking About This)
“
If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” —Mario Andretti, race-car driver
”
”
Tom Peters (The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness)
“
Long afterwards I realized why some men, racing drivers and their like, become addicted to speed. There are those of us who never see death ahead, but eternally behind: in any moment that stops and thinks.
”
”
John Fowles (The Magus)
“
The law-abiding black citizen who is passed up by a taxi, refused pizza delivery, or stopped by the police can rightfully feel a sense of injustice and resentment. But the bulk of those feelings should be directed at those who have made race synonymous with higher rates of criminal activity rather than the taxi driver or pizza deliverer who is trying to earn a living and avoid being a crime victim.
”
”
Walter E. Williams (Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 599))
“
Outside, the illuminated billboards of New Jersey zipped by: ads for auto dealerships where you could buy an impractical race car; injury lawyers you could employ to blame the other drivers once you crashed that race car; casinos where you could gamble away the money you won from the injury lawsuits. The great circle of life.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
“
Fifteen minutes, a myriad of cups, kleenexes and freshly-vacuumed floor mats and seat cushions later, Kay had the interior of the limousine looking ship-shape. Inching backward out of the car on her knees, she caught a glimpse of one last bit of trash she’d missed hiding under the driver’s seat. Lowering her chest to the floor, she stretched her arm under the seat as far as it would go. She grabbed the item and pulled it out and raised herself up from her crouched position. She took one look at the used condom swinging from her fingers, screamed and flung it across the top of the front seat, where it stuck to the air conditioner vents on the dash. She knelt there staring at the thin latex mess, a million scenarios racing through her mind.
”
”
Delora Dennis (Same Old Truths (The Reluctant Avenger, #2))
“
What I have always liked best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he'd done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember. Which is why drivers compulsively record their every move, their every race, with cockpit cameras, in-car video, data mapping; a driver cannot be a witness to his own greatness. This is what Danny says. He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. The great champion Julian Sabella Rosa has said: “When I am racing, my mind and my body are working so quickly and so well together, I must be sure not to think, or else I will definitely make a mistake.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
All billionaire kids have bodyguards--at least that's what Max's dad had told him. But none were more qualified than Logan, who was a martial arts expert (with more black belts than one could count on tne fingers), a stunyt man (who had credits in no less than a dozen blockbuster action movies), a champion race-car driver (with a choice collection of exotic sports cars), and who could make a seriously mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
”
”
Derek Benz
“
Racers are often called selfish and egotistical. I myself have called race car drivers selfish; I was wrong. To be a champion, you must have no ego at all. You must not exist as a separate entity.
You must give yourself over to the race. You are nothing if not for your team, your car, your shoes, your tires. Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
Strauss! Oh yes, he was so-so. He wrote pretty music- The Blue Danube and Tales from the Vienna Woods. But what is that compared to Mozart?'
Suddenly, Bess and George spotted Nancy coming towards them. 'Nancy!' the cousins chimed simultaneously and raced toward her.
'I see our bus driver is still at it.' Nancy grinned.
'All the way from Salzburg." George groaned.
'Did he run off the road again?'
'Not once but many times,' Bess said. 'It was awful. Once he got so angry because someone compared Beethoven to Mozart that he actually stopped the bus, ran outside, and shouted into the valley, Beethoven is a bore. Mozart is sublime. Over and over. The professor had to go out and drag him back to the bus.
”
”
Carolyn Keene (Captive Witness (Nancy Drew, #64))
“
Many great people had been considered to be boring, like Nigel Mansell, but anyone who had read the racing driver’s autobiography, "Clutch Down, Dick Out", would know that perception was way off the mark.
”
”
Mark Jackman (There's Something About Dying (Old Liston Tales #2))
“
If Edgar sounded overeager, even rushed, the race was with his own temperament. He placed a premium on savvy. Yet since you could only obtain new information by admitting you didn’t know it already, savvy required an apprenticeship as a naive twit. You had to ask crude, obvious questions…you had to sit still while worldly-wise warhorses…fired withering glances as if you were born yesterday.
Well, Edgar was born yesterday for the moment, although his tolerance for being treated liked a simpleton was in short supply. He’d needed to rattle off a multitude of stupid questions before he embraced his next incarnation as an insider. The trouble was that savvy coated your brain in plastic like a driver’s license: nothing more could get in. Hence the point at which you decided you knew everything was exactly the point at which you became an ignorant dipshit.
”
”
Lionel Shriver (The New Republic)
“
You can accelerate your training if you know how to train properly, but you still don’t need to be that special. I don’t think I’m that special of a programmer or a businessperson or a race car driver. I just know how to train.
”
”
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
“
How lucky, I thought, were people who had known from earliest childhood what they wanted to do. All the children in my grammar school, who said they wanted to be doctors, had grown up to become doctors. This was also the case apparently with firemen, veterinarians, songwriters, and race car drivers.
I had opted for a kind of pure experience, which, as Doo-Wah had pointed out, is not usually something you get paid for. I did not want to write a book about it. I did not want to write so much as an article. I wanted to be left alone with my experience and go on to the next thing, whatever that was.
”
”
Laurie Colwin (Goodbye Without Leaving)
“
Perhaps the story of the human race is best understood as a journey through particularly hazardous terrain, in the dark, in a not very well-serviced vehicle, with a succession of drivers of varying competence, in assorted states of inebreiation
”
”
Cyril Aydon
“
By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win.
”
”
Ayrton Senna
“
Disasterology
The Badger is the thirteenth astrological sign.
My sign. The one the other signs evicted: unanimously.
So what? ! Think I want to read about my future
in the newspaper next to the comics?
My third grade teacher told me I had no future.
I run through snow and turn around
just to make sure I’ve got a past.
My life’s a chandelier dropped from an airplane.
I graduated first in my class from alibi school.
There ought to be a healthy family cage at the zoo,
or an open field, where I can lose my mother
as many times as I need.
When I get bored, I call the cops, tell them
there’s a pervert peeking in my window!
then I slip on a flimsy nightgown, go outside,
press my face against the glass and wait…
This makes me proud to be an American
where drunk drivers ought to wear necklaces
made from the spines of children they’ve run over.
I remember my face being invented
through a windshield.
All the wounds stitched with horsehair
So the scars galloped across my forehead.
I remember the hymns cherubs sang
in my bloodstream. The way even my shadow ached
when the chubby infants stopped.
I remember wishing I could be boiled like water
and made pure again. Desire
so real it could be outlined in chalk.
My eyes were the color of palm trees
in a hurricane. I’d wake up
and my id would start the day without me.
Somewhere a junkie fixes the hole in his arm
and a racing car zips around my halo.
A good God is hard to find.
Each morning I look in the mirror
and say promise me something
don’t do the things I’ve done.
”
”
Jeffrey McDaniel
“
Boxing has always been a primarily urban pastime (whereas the defining suburban sport is auto-racing, in which the machine and its anonymous mechanics hold far greater importance than the driver). When white Americans left the cities, they left boxing as well.
”
”
A.J. Liebling (The Sweet Science)
“
A racist cop pulls over a black driver for little reason other than the fact that the driver is black and a recent robbery was committed by a couple of young black guys in a white community. The cop quickly realizes the driver is not one of the robbery suspects. He sees a man with a wife and two small children. They are not a couple of young punks. Still,he persists. Why?
“He asks to see the driver’s license and registration. While locating the appropriate documents, the black driver respectfully volunteers that he is legally carrying a handgun. The cop panics—is it the image of a black man with a gun? He barks out conflicting orders and then shoots the man to death, in front of his family. Why? “Is it because the cop is an insensitive racist? Maybe he wasn’t trained or taught any better? Perhaps he lived a completely different life in a completely different world than that of the black man. In this cop’s world, were all black men potential criminals, people to be watched, people to be feared?
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
Formula One drivers were like gods to me, growing up.
”
”
Jenson Button (Life to the Limit: My Autobiography)
“
The driver seems to have no regard for traffic lights, or other cars, or pedestrians, or roads, or even life itself.
”
”
Karina Halle (Racing the Sun)
“
The moment a team member relaxes is the moment their opponent in the next garage or the next driver on the track is pushing harder.
”
”
Jade Gurss (Beast: The Top Secret Ilmor-Penske Race Car That Shocked the World at the 1994 Indy 500)
“
I believe the signs we are seeing today most certainly point to the rapture of the church. These are indeed end times. I believe that one day very soon, Jesus Christ Himself will come in the clouds and millions of people will see their battles end...
I believe that followers of Christ from all around the world, of every race, creed, color, age, economic standing, and religious affiliation will vanish in a single moment of time ... gone. The Word of God describes it as a 'twinkling of an eye.' In an instant, there will be boardrooms without directors, classrooms without teachers, hospitals without doctors and nurses, cars without drivers, airplanes without pilots, and loved ones disappearing mid-sentance and mid-morning coffee. I am sure that complete chaos won't even begin to describe it. I imagine a worldwide crescendo of screaming voices.
When the dust clears, everone left on earth will know emptiness beyond description and a greater sense of evil than has ever been thought to exist. It will be the condition of things. Overwhelming sadness, confusion, loss, and insecurity will be worldwide. It will happen at that time, even as it did on that September morning.
”
”
Leslie Haskin (Between Heaven and Ground Zero: One Woman's Struggle for Survival and Faith in the Ashes of 9/11)
“
A racing game doesn’t need a fictional driver with a predetermined back story; it needs that unique combination of emotional and psychological hooks that make you believe, however fleetingly, that you yourself are the driver.
”
”
Sid Meier (Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games)
“
I’ve noticed that ‘news’ is not what’s happened. It’s what’s happened on camera. If a herd of tigers runs amok in a remote Indian village, it’s not news. If a gang of wide-eyed rebels slaughters the inhabitants of a faraway African village, it’s not news. But if it’s a bit windy in America, it is news. Because in America everything that happens is recorded. I find myself wondering if last week’s Israeli raid on a Turkish ship in a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza would have had the coverage it did if the battle hadn’t been captured on film. And likewise the racing driver who broke a leg after crashing in the Indy 500. It only became a big deal because we could watch the accident from several angles in slow motion.
”
”
Jeremy Clarkson (Is It Really Too Much To Ask? (World According to Clarkson, #5))
“
In racing, they say your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
In the early months of World War II, San Francisco's Fill-more district, or the Western Addition, experienced a visible revolution. On the surface it appeared to be totally peaceful and almost a refutation of the term “revolution.” The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietly became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor and Smoke Shop. Yashigira's Hardware metamorphosed into La Salon de Beauté owned by Miss Clorinda Jackson. The Japanese shops which sold products to Nisei customers were taken over by enterprising Negro businessmen, and in less than a year became permanent homes away from home for the newly arrived Southern Blacks. Where the odors of tempura, raw fish and cha had dominated, the aroma of chitlings, greens and ham hocks now prevailed. The Asian population dwindled before my eyes. I was unable to tell the Japanese from the Chinese and as yet found no real difference in the national origin of such sounds as Ching and Chan or Moto and Kano. As the Japanese disappeared, soundlessly and without protest, the Negroes entered with their loud jukeboxes, their just-released animosities and the relief of escape from Southern bonds. The Japanese area became San Francisco's Harlem in a matter of months. A person unaware of all the factors that make up oppression might have expected sympathy or even support from the Negro newcomers for the dislodged Japanese. Especially in view of the fact that they (the Blacks) had themselves undergone concentration-camp living for centuries in slavery's plantations and later in sharecroppers' cabins. But the sensations of common relationship were missing. The Black newcomer had been recruited on the desiccated farm lands of Georgia and Mississippi by war-plant labor scouts. The chance to live in two-or three-story apartment buildings (which became instant slums), and to earn two-and even three-figured weekly checks, was blinding. For the first time he could think of himself as a Boss, a Spender. He was able to pay other people to work for him, i.e. the dry cleaners, taxi drivers, waitresses, etc. The shipyards and ammunition plants brought to booming life by the war let him know that he was needed and even appreciated. A completely alien yet very pleasant position for him to experience. Who could expect this man to share his new and dizzying importance with concern for a race that he had never known to exist? Another reason for his indifference to the Japanese removal was more subtle but was more profoundly felt. The Japanese were not whitefolks. Their eyes, language and customs belied the white skin and proved to their dark successors that since they didn't have to be feared, neither did they have to be considered. All this was decided unconsciously.
”
”
Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1))
“
It was getting late, but sleep was the furthest thing from my racing mind. Apparently that was not the case for Mr. Sugar Buns. He lay back, closed his eyes, and threw an arm over his forehead, his favorite sleeping position.
I could hardly have that. So, I crawled on top of him and started chest compressions. It seemed like the right thing to do.
"What are you doing?" he asked without removing his arm.
"Giving you CPR." I pressed into his chest, trying not to lose count. Wearing a red-and-black football jersey and boxers that read, DRIVERS WANTED. SEE INSIDE FOR DETAILS, I'd straddled him and now worked furiously to save his life, my focus like that of a seasoned trauma nurse. Or a seasoned pot roast. It was hard to say.
"I'm not sure I'm in the market," he said, his voice smooth and filled with a humor I found appalling. He clearly didn't appreciate my dedication.
"Damn it, man! I'm trying to save your life! Don't interrupt."
A sensuous grin slid across his face. He tucked his arms behind his head while I worked. I finished my count, leaned down, put my lips on his, and blew. He laughed softly, the sound rumbling from his chest, deep and sexy, as he took my breath into his lungs. That part down, I went back to counting chest compressions.
"Don't you die on me!"
And praying.
After another round, he asked, "Am I going to make it?"
"It's touch-and-go. I'm going to have to bring out the defibrillator."
"We have a defibrillator?" he asked, quirking a brow, clearly impressed.
I reached for my phone. "I have an app. Hold on." As I punched buttons, I realized a major flaw in my plan. I needed a second phone. I could hardly shock him with only one paddle. I reached over and grabbed his phone as well. Started punching buttons. Rolled my eyes. "You don't have the app," I said from between clenched teeth.
"I had no idea smartphones were so versatile."
"I'll just have to download it. It'll just take a sec."
"Do I have that long?"
Humor sparkled in his eyes as he waited for me to find the app. I'd forgotten the name of it, so I had to go back to my phone, then back to his, then do a search, then download, then install it, all while my patient lay dying. Did no one understand that seconds counted?
"Got it!" I said at last. I pressed one phone to his chest and one to the side of his rib cage like they did in the movies, and yelled, "Clear!"
Granted, I didn't get off him or anything as the electrical charge riddled his body, slammed his heart into action, and probably scorched his skin. Or that was my hope, anyway.
He handled it well. One corner of his mouth twitched, but that was about it. He was such a trouper.
After two more jolts of electricity--it had to be done--I leaned forward and pressed my fingertips to his throat.
"Well?" he asked after a tense moment.
I released a ragged sigh of relief,and my shoulders fell forward in exhaustion. "You're going to be okay, Mr. Farrow."
Without warning, my patient pulled me into his arms and rolled me over, pinning me to the bed with his considerable weight and burying his face in my hair.
It was a miracle!
”
”
Darynda Jones (The Curse of Tenth Grave (Charley Davidson, #10))
“
She clicked open the door and glided into the back seat like a summer breeze through an open window on the highway. "Where are you heading?", His Southern twang reminded her of home, but her eyes showed him no familiarity. She stared at him, void of expression, her thoughts racing. "Miss?", he persisted. "Anywhere. Please. Just drive.", she replied tersely, not sure if she even wanted her mind to join her in the back seat. The driver stared into her eyes and somehow understood, he started the engine and on they went. Two strangers, a blur of yellow, in pursuit of nowhere.
”
”
R.J. Arkhipov
“
But we must not do this often, in case the mind acquires a bad habit; yet at times it must be stimulated to rejoice without restraint and austere soberness must be banished for a while. For whether we agree with the Greek poet that ‘Sometimes it is sweet to be mad,’ or with Plato that ‘A man sound in mind knocks in vain at the doors of poetry,’ or with Aristotle that ‘No great intellect has been without a touch of madness,’ only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others. When it has scorned everyday and commonplace thoughts and risen aloft on the wings of divine inspiration, only then does it sound a note nobler than mortal voice could utter. As long as it remains in its senses it cannot reach any lofty and difficult height: it must desert the usual track and race away, champing the bit and hurrying its driver in its course to a height it would have feared to scale by itself.
”
”
Seneca (On The Shortness Of Life)
“
Over time it became clear that the humans couldn’t compete. PEOPLE FORGET THAT JOHN HENRY DIED IN THE END, read a sign on the wall of the P13N office, a reference to the folktale of the steel driver who raced to dig a hole in competition with a steam-powered drilling machine; he won the contest but died immediately afterward.
”
”
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
“
I might have been just half an Asian, but in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren’t. Funnily enough, I had never felt inferior because of my race during my foreign student days. I was foreign by definition and therefore was treated as a guest. But now, even though I was a card-carrying American with a driver’s license, Social Security card, and resident alien permit, Violet still considered me as foreign, and this misrecognition punctured the smooth skin of my self-confidence. Was I just being paranoid, that all-American characteristic? Maybe Violet was stricken with colorblindness, the willful inability to distinguish between white and any other color, the only infirmity Americans wished for themselves.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
“
Another significant factor in the problem that blacks faced in getting over-the-road truck driving positions was the refusal of white truck drivers to ride with them. In 1966, The Wall Street Journal reported that one Teamster official asked, “Would you like to climb in a bunk bed that a nigger just got out of?” Another said, “To my knowledge no law has been written yet that says a white man has to bed down with Negroes.”[102] Teamster officials protected union men who were discharged by a company for refusing to ride with a black driver.[103] Seniority rules, the refusal of white drivers to ride with black drivers, and the Teamsters’ highly discriminatory job-referral practices contributed to reducing black opportunities for jobs in the trucking industry.[104]
”
”
Walter E. Williams (Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 599))
“
Although JB hadn’t been around to overhear that night’s exchange with the taxicab driver, Malcolm’s guilt and self-hatred over it moved race to the top of tonight’s list. Race had always been a challenge for Malcolm, but their sophomore year, he had hit upon what he considered a brilliant cop-out: he wasn’t black; he was post-black. (Postmodernism had entered Malcolm’s frame of consciousness much later than everyone else’s, as he tried to avoid taking literature classes in a sort of passive rebellion against his mother.) Unfortunately, no one was convinced by this explanation, least of all JB, whom Malcolm had begun to think of as not so much black but pre-black, as if blackness, like nirvana, was an idealized state that he was constantly striving to erupt into. And
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
Fans of mainframe computers boasted of the benefits of handling many jobs in large batches. But the mainframe was as efficient as mass transit—wonderful as long as everyone wanted to travel to the same place at the same time. The PC was like an automobile; it would go anywhere its driver wanted. Instead of organizing work around the mainframe’s schedule, a person with a PC could do computing anytime. The
”
”
G. Pascal Zachary (Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft)
“
Yes, I have seen a great many things in this world. I attend the greatest disasters and work for the greatest villains. But then there are other moments. There’s a multitude of stories (a mere handful, as I have previously suggested) that I allow to distract me as I work, just as the colors do. I pick them up in the unluckiest, unlikeliest places and I make sure to remember them as I go about my work. The Book Thief is one such story. When I traveled to Sydney and took Liesel away, I was finally able to do something I’d been waiting on for a long time. I put her down and we walked along Anzac Avenue, near the soccer field, and I pulled a dusty black book from my pocket. The old woman was astonished. She took it in her hand and said, “Is this really it?” I nodded. With great trepidation, she opened The Book Thief and turned the pages. “I can’t believe …” Even though the text had faded, she was able to read her words. The fingers of her soul touched the story that was written so long ago in her Himmel Street basement. She sat down on the curb, and I joined her. “Did you read it?” she asked, but she did not look at me. Her eyes were fixed to the words. I nodded. “Many times.” “Could you understand it?” And at that point, there was a great pause. A few cars drove by, each way. Their drivers were Hitlers and Hubermanns, and Maxes, killers, Dillers, and Steiners …. I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race—that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. None of those things, however, came out of my mouth. All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you. A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR I am haunted by humans.
”
”
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
“
The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then that prodigious, incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless forms of Nancy and the Faun. My heart leapt at beholding this mighty figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.
I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue, like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and command. I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain. As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races--how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the toil of our will.
”
”
Jack London (The Mutiny of the Elsinore)
“
why do we talk about police brutality like it is about race? At its core, police brutality is about power and corruption. Police brutality is about the intersection of fear and guns. Police brutality is about accountability. And the power and corruption that enable police brutality put all citizens, of every race, at risk. But it does not put us at risk equally, and the numbers bear that out. My fear, as a black driver, is real. The fact is that black drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers1, between 1.5 and 5 times more likely to be searched (while shown to be less likely than whites to turn up contraband in these searches),2 and more likely to be ticketed3 and arrested4 in those stops. This increase in stops, searches, and arrests also leads to a 3.5–4 times higher probability that black people will be killed by cops (this increase is the same for Native Americans interacting with police, a shamefully underreported statistic). Even when we aren’t arrested or killed, we are still more likely to be abused and dehumanized in our stops. A 2016 review of a thirteen-month period showed that Oakland police handcuffed 1,466 black people in nonarrest traffic stops, and only 72 white people5, and a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that blacks were almost 4 times more likely to be subject to force from police—including force by hand (such as hitting and choking), pepper spray, tazer, and gun—than white people.6
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race)
“
Robert crossed Pulteney Bridge with a light step. He grinned at the boy raking odiferous horse manure to the curb and tipped him well for his service. He nodded—with a grin—to the puzzled driver of a hack heading into the city. And he bowed—with a grin—as he stepped aside to allow the weary-looking woman with two toddlers to pass.
None to see him would realize that Robert had fallen under the hooves of a racing carriage and risen from the other side unscathed—metaphorically speaking, of course.
”
”
Cindy Anstey (Duels & Deception)
“
For even now the drums were in our blood, we sat forward almost hearing them across the bay, and the van raced on through the streets so that the driver could hustle back for another load of pleasure-seekers, so bent on pleasure they were driving right through Happiness, it seemed, a quieter brand of existence that flourished under these green elms. We kept driving right through all the dappled domesticity, like prisoners, indeed, being moved from jail to jail imprisoned in our own sophistication.
”
”
Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance)
“
Hominy got out of the car to untangle the snarl. Waving his arms like the crazy man he was, he separated the cars by color, not that of the respective paint jobs, but by the hue of the motorists. "If you black, get back! White, to the right. Brown, go around. Yellow, follow the sites and let it mellow. Red, full speed ahead! Mulattos, full throttle!" If he couldn't categorize by sight, he asked the drivers what color they were. "Chicano? What color is that? You just can't make up a race, motherfucker. Puto? I got your puto right here pendejo!
”
”
Paul Beatty (The Sellout)
“
He’s rumored to have more bravery than sense.”
“Then he and Gabe make a good pair,” Oliver growled.
“Lay off of him, will you?” Jarret told Oliver. Closest to being a blend of their parents, he had black hair but blue-green eyes and no trace of Oliver’s Italian features. “You’ve been ragging him ever since that stupid carriage race. He was drunk. It’s a state you ought to be familiar with.”
Oliver whirled on Jarret. “Yes, but you were not drunk, yet you let him-“
“Don’t blame Jarret,” Gabe put in. “Chetwin challenged me to it. He would have branded me a coward if I’d refused.”
“Better a coward than dead.” Oliver had no tolerance for such idiocy. Nothing was worth risking one’s life for-not a woman, not honor, and certainly not reputation. A pity that he hadn’t yet impressed that upon his idiot brothers.
Gabe, of all people, ought to know better. The course he’d run was the most dangerous in London. Two large boulders flanked the path so closely that only one rig could pass between them, forcing a driver to fall back at the last minute to avoid being dashed on the rocks. Many was the time drivers pulled out too late.
The sporting set called it “threading the needle.” Oliver called it madness.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (The Truth About Lord Stoneville (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #1))
“
Luc, however, was not following them. Instead he raced back to the corner where he had left his sister. Reaching the spot, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out—leaving the engine running—and ran over to Monique, who was still weeping and shivering against a brick wall. With no time to be gentle, he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to the truck, and then, opening the passenger-side door, he pushed her inside and slammed the door shut. Back in the driver’s seat, he slammed his own door and hit the gas. “Hold on!” he yelled to the people in the back, then turned to Monique and ordered her to do the same.
”
”
Joel C. Rosenberg (The Auschwitz Escape)
“
In Dream Street there are many theatrical hotels, and rooming houses, and restaurants, and speaks, including Good Time Charley's Gingham Shoppe, and in the summer time the characters I mention sit on the stoops or lean against the railings along Dream Street, and the gab you hear sometimes sounds very dreamy indeed. In fact, it sometimes sounds very pipe-dreamy. Many actors, male and female, and especially vaudeville actors, live in the hotels and rooming houses, and vaudeville actors, both male and female, are great hands for sitting around dreaming out loud about how they will practically assassinate the public in the Palace if ever they get a chance. Furthermore, in Dream Street are always many hand-bookies and horse players, who sit on the church steps on the cool side of Dream Street in the summer and dream about big killings on the races, and there are also nearly always many fight managers, and sometimes fighters, hanging out in front of the restaurants, picking their teeth and dreaming about winning championships of the world, although up to this time no champion of the world has yet come out of Dream Street. In this street you see burlesque dolls, and hoofers, and guys who write songs, and saxophone players, and newsboys, and newspaper scribes, and taxi drivers, and blind guys, and midgets, and blondes with Pomeranian pooches, or maybe French poodles, and guys with whiskers, and night-club entertainers, and I do not know what all else. And all of these characters are interesting to look at, and some of them are very interesting to talk to, although if you listen to several I know long enough, you may get the idea that they are somewhat daffy, especially the horse players.
”
”
Damon Runyon (The Short Stories of Damon Runyon - Volume I - The Bloodhounds of Broadway)
“
In heist movies, there's always a montage of scenes where the caper crew rehearses for the big day. The greaser person practices maneuvering through a mock laser beam field made up of string. The driver races through obstacle courses, back alleys, and dark city streets. The hacker pounds on her keyboard, staring at screens full of code. The gadget person demonstrates all their clever toys. The key master practices opening a safe. The muscle finds a few security guards to knock unconscious and wrestles guard dogs to the ground. The inside person seduces or befriends the target and gets them to spill their secrets. And the leader organizes it all with the help of her second-in-command.
At least, that's the way it works in the movies. In real life, with a bunch of newbs who are scraping by with low-paying jobs, inflexible hours, difficult bosses, and a bunch of side gigs to make ends meet, just organizing a rehearsal heist was one hell of a task.
”
”
Sara Desai (To Have and to Heist)
“
After the plates are removed by the silent and swift waiting staff, General Çiller leans forward and says across the table to Güney, ‘What’s this I’m reading in Hürriyet about Strasbourg breaking up the nation?’
‘It’s not breaking up the nation. It’s a French motion to implement European Regional Directive 8182 which calls for a Kurdish Regional Parliament.’
‘And that’s not breaking up the nation?’ General Çiller throws up his hands in exasperation. He’s a big, square man, the model of the military, but he moves freely and lightly ‘The French prancing all over the legacy of Atatürk? What do you think, Mr Sarioğlu?’
The trap could not be any more obvious but Ayşe sees Adnan straighten his tie, the code for, Trust me, I know what I’m doing,
‘What I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.’
Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye.
‘Atatürk was father of the nation, unquestionably. No Atatürk, no Turkey. But, at some point every child has to leave his father. You have to stand on your own two feet and find out if you’re a man. We’re like kids that go on about how great their dads are; my dad’s the strongest, the best wrestler, the fastest driver, the biggest moustache. And when someone squares up to us, or calls us a name or even looks at us squinty, we run back shouting ‘I’ll get my dad, I’ll get my dad!’ At some point; we have to grow up. If you’ll pardon the expression, the balls have to drop. We talk the talk mighty fine: great nation, proud people, global union of the noble Turkic races, all that stuff. There’s no one like us for talking ourselves up. And then the EU says, All right, prove it. The door’s open, in you come; sit down, be one of us. Move out of the family home; move in with the other guys. Step out from the shadow of the Father of the Nation.
‘And do you know what the European Union shows us about ourselves? We’re all those things we say we are. They weren’t lies, they weren’t boasts. We’re good. We’re big. We’re a powerhouse. We’ve got an economy that goes all the way to the South China Sea. We’ve got energy and ideas and talent - look at the stuff that’s coming out of those tin-shed business parks in the nano sector and the synthetic biology start-ups. Turkish. All Turkish. That’s the legacy of Atatürk. It doesn’t matter if the Kurds have their own Parliament or the French make everyone stand in Taksim Square and apologize to the Armenians. We’re the legacy of Atatürk. Turkey is the people. Atatürk’s done his job. He can crumble into dust now. The kid’s come right. The kid’s come very right. That’s why I believe the EU’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us because it’s finally taught us how to be Turks.’
General Çiller beats a fist on the table, sending the cutlery leaping.
‘By God, by God; that’s a bold thing to say but you’re exactly right.
”
”
Ian McDonald (The Dervish House)
“
The fact is that black drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers1, between 1.5 and 5 times more likely to be searched (while shown to be less likely than whites to turn up contraband in these searches),2 and more likely to be ticketed3 and arrested4 in those stops. This increase in stops, searches, and arrests also leads to a 3.5–4 times higher probability that black people will be killed by cops (this increase is the same for Native Americans interacting with police, a shamefully underreported statistic). Even when we aren’t arrested or killed, we are still more likely to be abused and dehumanized in our stops. A 2016 review of a thirteen-month period showed that Oakland police handcuffed 1,466 black people in nonarrest traffic stops, and only 72 white people5, and a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that blacks were almost 4 times more likely to be subject to force from police—including force by hand (such as hitting and choking), pepper spray, tazer, and gun—than white people.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race)
“
We talked about the speed trials, which were starting today. I said I was running in them, but not that it was about art. It wasn’t a lie. I was a Nevada girl and a motorcycle rider. I had always been interested in land speed records. I was bringing to that a New York deliberateness, abstract ideas about traces and speed, which wasn’t something Stretch needed to know about. It would make me seem like a tourist. Stretch said the motel owner’s son had a Corvette running but that he could not so much as check the oil or tire pressure, that mechanics worked on it and a driver raced it for him. “I have to fill out his racing form because he doesn’t know what ‘displacement’ means.” He laughed and then went quiet. “I never met a girl who rides Italian motorcycles,” he said. “It’s like you aren’t real.” He looked at my helmet, gloves, my motorcycle key, on his bureau. The room seemed to hold its breath, the motel curtain sucked against the glass by the draft of a partly opened window, a strip of sun wavering underneath the curtain’s hem, the light-blocking fabric holding back the outside world.
”
”
Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers)
“
per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number
”
”
Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri, #1))
“
As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop.
My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair.
Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.
”
”
Frank H. Wu (Yellow)
“
I remember standing against the bar in Budapest’s airport with a couple of workmates, some chaps from McLaren too, waiting for our homeward flight to be called after the ’92 race weekend. The chap behind the counter was doing the exact same thing: halving and squeezing oranges. Funny how these things spark memories. It was an exceedingly hot afternoon that day, and I remember seeing James Hunt walk through the door with Murray Walker. We were waiting for the same flight, a charter to London; I think pretty much the whole of the paddock’s British contingent was on it. Murray looked perfectly normal . . . like Murray really . . . open-necked shirt, briefcase, what have you; but James was wearing nothing but a pair of red shorts. He carried a ticket, a passport and a packet of cigarettes. That was it. There wasn’t even a pair of flip-flops to spoil the perfect minimalist look.
The thing that really made the event stick in my mind, though, was that James was absolutely at ease with himself, perfectly comfortable. This was real for him, no stunt or affectation designed to impress or shock, this was genuine: James Hunt, former world champion driver, current commentator for the BBC; work done for the day . . . going home. Take me, leave me; do what you bloody well want, just don’t give me a hard time about your own petty hang-ups. He became a hero of mine that day. Sadly, his heart gave out the following summer and that was that. He was only forty-five. Mind you, he’d certainly packed a lot of living into those years.
”
”
Steve Matchett (The Chariot Makers: Assembling the Perfect Formula 1 Car)
“
A FAIR IMPRESSION of the pace of Roosevelt’s candidacy for Mayor may be gained by following him through one night of his campaign—Friday, 29 October.44 At 8:00 P.M., having snatched a hasty dinner near headquarters, he takes a hansom to the Grand Opera House, on Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue, for the first of five scheduled addresses in various parts of the city. His audience is worshipful, shabby, and exclusively black. (One of the more interesting features of the campaign has been Roosevelt’s evident appeal to, and fondness for, the black voter.) He begins by admitting that his campaign planners had not allowed for “this magnificent meeting” of colored citizens. “For the first time, therefore, since the opening of the campaign I have begun to take matters a little in my own hands!” Laughter and applause. “I like to speak to an audience of colored people,” Roosevelt says simply, “for that is only another way of saying that I am speaking to an audience of Republicans.” More applause. He reminds his listeners that he has “always stood up for the colored race,” and tells them about the time he put a black man in the chair of the Chicago Convention. Apologizing for his tight schedule, he winds up rapidly, and dashes out of the hall to a standing ovation.45 A carriage is waiting outside; the driver plies his whip; by 8:30 Roosevelt is at Concordia Hall, on Twenty-eighth Street and Avenue A. Here he shouts at a thousand well-scrubbed immigrants, “Do you want a radical reformer?” “YES WE DO!” comes the reply.46
”
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Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt)
“
On the other hand, white women face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to join power; our racial "otherness" is a visible reality that makes that quite clear. For white women there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools.
Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and
with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living — in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us.
”
”
Audre Lorde
“
Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.
Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.
[M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.
The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.
“[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground.
[V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.
[W]all screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible.
[T]he world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!
There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect.
Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.
The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction…. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary “Fortran".
[M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
[T]he most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! in our a society of enforced leisure.
”
”
Isaac Asimov
“
what was good for survival and reproduction in the African savannah a million years ago does not necessarily make for responsible behavior on twenty-first-century motorways. Distracted, angry, and anxious human drivers kill more than a million people in traffic accidents every year. We can send all our philosophers, prophets, and priests to preach ethics to these drivers, but on the road, mammalian emotions and savannah instincts will still take over. Consequently, seminarians in a rush will ignore people in distress, and drivers in a crisis will run over hapless pedestrians. This disjunction between the seminary and the road is one of the biggest practical problems in ethics. Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls can sit in some cozy university hall and discuss theoretical ethical problems for days—but would their conclusions actually be implemented by stressed-out drivers caught in a split-second emergency? Perhaps Michael Schumacher—the Formula One champion who is sometimes hailed as the best driver in history—had the ability to think about philosophy while racing a car, but most of us aren’t Schumacher. Computer algorithms, however, have not been shaped by natural selection, and they have neither emotions nor gut instincts. Therefore in moments of crisis they could follow ethical guidelines much better than humans—provided we find a way to code ethics in precise numbers and statistics. If we could teach Kant, Mill, and Rawls to write code, they would be able to program the self-driving car in their cozy laboratory and be certain that the car would follow their commandments on the highway. In effect, every car would be driven by Michael Schumacher and Immanuel Kant rolled into one.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
Statistical discrimination explains why the police in the United States justify stopping black drivers more often. And how the Hindu majoritarian government of the state of Uttar Pradesh recently explained why so many of the people “accidentally” killed by the state police (in what are called “encounter deaths”) are Muslim. There are more blacks and Muslims among criminals. In other words, what looks like naked racism does not have to be that; it can be the result of targeting some characteristic (drug dealing, criminality) that happens to be correlated with race or religion. So statistical discrimination, rather than old-fashioned prejudice—what economists call taste-based discrimination—may be the cause. The end result is the same if you are black or Muslim, though. A recent study on the impact of “ban the box” (BTB) policies on the rate of unemployment of young black men provides a compelling demonstration of statistical discrimination. BTB policies restrict employers from using application forms where there is a box that needs to be checked if you have a criminal conviction. Twenty-three states have adopted these policies in the hope of raising employment among young black men, who are much more likely to have a conviction than others and whose unemployment rate is double the national average.31 To test the effect of these policies, two researchers sent fifteen thousand fictitious online job applications to employers in New Jersey and New York City, just before and right after the states of New York and New Jersey implemented the BTB policy.32 They manipulated the perception of race by using typically white or typically African American first names on the résumés. Whenever a job posting required indicating whether or not the applicant had a prior felony conviction, they also randomized whether he or she had one. They found, as many others before them, clear discrimination against blacks in general: white “applicants” received about 23 percent more callbacks than black applicants with the same résumé. Unsurprisingly, among employers who asked about criminal convictions before the ban, there was a very large effect of having a felony conviction: applicants without a felony conviction were 62 percent more likely to be called back than those with a conviction but an otherwise identical résumé, an effect similar for whites and blacks. The most surprising finding, however, was that the BTB policy substantially increased racial disparities in callbacks. White applicants to BTB-affected employers received 7 percent more callbacks than similar black applicants before BTB. After BTB, this gap grew to 43 percent. The reason was that without the actual information about convictions, the employers assumed all black applicants were more likely to have a conviction. In other words, the BTB policy led employers to rely on race to predict criminality, which is of course statistical discrimination.
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Abhijit V. Banerjee (Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems)
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So the Formula One driver has a dual status: he is both an automatic terminal of the most refined technical machinery, a technical operator, and he is the symbolic operator of crowd passions and the risk of death. The paradox is the same for the motor companies, caught as they are between investment and potlatch. Is all this a calculated — and hence rational — investment (marketing and advertising)? Have we here a mighty commercial operation, or is the company spending inordinate sums, far beyond what is commercially viable, to assuage a passion for prestige and charisma (there is also a manufacturers' world championship)? In this confrontation between manufacturers, isn't there an excessive upping of the stakes, a dizzying passion, a delirium? This is certainly the aspect which appeals, in the first instance, to the millions of viewers. In the end, the average TV viewer has doubtless never been aware that McLaren is a flagship for Honda. And I am not sure he or she is tempted to play the Formula One driver in ordinary life. The impact of Formula One lies, then, in the exceptional and mythic character of the event of the race and the figure of the driver, and not in the technical or commercial spin-offs. It is not clear why speed would be both severely limited and morally condemned in the public domain and, at the same time, celebrated in Formula One as never before, unless there is an effect of sublime compensation going on here. Formula One certainly serves to popularize the cult of the car and its use, but it does much more to maintain the passion for absolute difference — a fundamental illusion for all, and one which justifies all the excesses.
In the end, however, hasn't it gone about as far as it can? Isn't it close to a final state, a final perfection, in which all the cars and drivers, given the colossal resources deployed, would, in a repetitive scenario, achieve the same maximum performance and produce the same pattern in each race? If Formula One were merely a rational, industrial performance, a test-bed for technical possibilities, we should have to predict that it would simply burn itself out. On the other hand, if Formula One is a spectacle, a collective, passionate (thoug h perfectly artificial) event, embracing the multiple screens of technological research, the living prosthesis of the driver, and the television screens into which the viewers project themselves, then it certainly has a very fine future.
In a word, Formula One is a monster. Such a concentration of technology, money, ambition and prestige is a monster (as is the world of haute couture, which is equally abstract, and as far removed from real clothing as Formula One is from road traffic). Now, monsters are doomed to disappear, and we are afraid they might be disappearing. But we are not keen, either, to see them survive in a domesticated, routinized form. In an era of daily insignificance — including the insignificance of the car and all its constraints — we want at least to save the passion of a pure event, and exceptional beings who are permitted to do absolutely anything.
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Jean Baudrillard (Screened Out)
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Elvis was pretty slick. Nonetheless, I knew that he was cheating. His four-of-a-kind would beat my full house. I had two choices. I could fold my hand and lose all the money I’d contributed to the pot, or I could match Elvis’s bet and continue to play. If a gambler thought he was in an honest game, he would probably match the bet thinking his full house was a sure winner. The con artist would bet large amounts of money on the remaining cards, knowing he had a winning hand. I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips, as if struggling to decide whether to wager five hundred pesos or fold my hand and call it quits. I knew there were five men between me and the door and watched them from the corner of my eye. Even if I folded and accepted my losses, I knew they would not let me leave without taking all my cash. They had strength in numbers and would strong arm me if they could. The men stared, intently watching my next move. I set down my beer and took five one hundred peso notes from my wallet. The men at the bar relaxed. My adrenaline surged, pumping through my brain, sharpening my focus as I prepared for action. I moved as if to place my bet on the table, but instead my hand bumped my beer bottle, spilling it onto Elvis’ lap. Elvis reacted instinctively to the cold beer, pushing back from the table and rising to his feet. I jumped up from my chair making a loud show of apologizing, and in the ensuing pandemonium I snatched all the money off the table and bolted for the door! My tactics took everyone by complete surprise. I had a small head start, but the Filipinos recovered quickly and scrambled to cut off my escape. I dashed to the door and barely made it to the exit ahead of the Filipinos. The thugs were nearly upon me when I suddenly wheeled round and kicked the nearest man square in the chest. My kick cracked ribs and launched the shocked Filipino through the air into the other men, tumbling them to the ground. For the moment, my assailants were a jumble of tangled bodies on the floor. I darted out the door and raced down the busy sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. I looked back and saw the furious Filipinos swarming out of the bar. Running full tilt, I grabbed onto the rail of a passing Jeepney and swung myself into the vehicle. The wide-eyed passengers shrunk back, trying to keep their distance from the crazy American. I yelled to the driver, “Step on the gas!” and thrust a hundred peso note into his hand. I looked back and saw all six of Johnny’s henchmen piling onto one tricycle. The jeepney driver realized we were being pursued and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The jeepney surged into traffic and accelerated away from the tricycle. The tricycle was only designed for one driver and two passengers. With six bodies hanging on, the overloaded motorcycle was slow and unstable. The motorcycle driver held the throttle wide open and the tricycle rocked side to side, almost tipping over, as the frustrated riders yelled curses and flailed their arms futilely. My jeepney continued to speed through the city, pulling away from our pursuers. Finally, I could no longer see the tricycle behind us. When I was sure I had escaped, I thanked the driver and got off at the next stop. I hired a tricycle of my own and carefully made my way back to my neighborhood, keeping careful watch for Johnny and his friends. I knew that Johnny was in a frustrated rage. Not only had I foiled his plans, I had also made off with a thousand pesos of his cash. Even though I had great fun and came out of my escapade in good shape, my escape was risky and could’ve had a very different outcome. I feel a disclaimer is appropriate for those people who think it is fun to con street hustlers, “Kids. Don’t try this at home.
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William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
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A tightrope walker uncertain if he could make it to the other side probably would not. A race car driver wondering if he was taking a turn too fast was likely to lose control. If a man feared death, whether his own or the taking of another's, death would surely come calling.
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Roy L. Pickering Jr. (Patches of Grey)
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Kalinske then described what made the videogame industry unique, what made it superbly unpredictable, and what tomorrow might or might not bring. But along this wild roller-coaster ride, there was one thing that would not change. “Suspension of disbelief. It’s always been the fundamental component of diversion, whether that diversion is books, movies, or the theater. Advances in gaming mean we will come to supply that component more effectively than any other medium. The interactive entertainment business is going to allow the Walter Mitty in all of us to finally realize our dreams. We are going to become great football players, race car drivers, or aviators. We are going to move into and occupy new worlds that were formerly only available to us in dreams.
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Blake J. Harris (Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation)
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Each day, Internet users share more than 1.8 billion photos, according to a report by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. For advertisers, the social media posts that include those photos are more valuable than those with just text because pictures reveal how consumers act "in the wild." "You have a window into their world," said Duncan Alney, CEO of Firebelly Marketing in Indianapolis, which uses Ditto Labs' service. Alney, whose firm represents a beer company, learned from Ditto that people drink beer not just with pub grub but also with healthier snacks like hummus. And that consumers who favor mainstream beers also consume craft brews. Other companies use it to interact with fans. Nissan North America found a photo on Twitter of a baby peeking out from behind a cardboard cutout of a Nissan race car driver. Nissan got the Twitter user's permission and reposted the photo on the company's account, garnering 17 retweets and 37 favorites. The original photo was not tagged with "Nissan," so without Ditto the company never would have found it, said Rob Robinson, a senior specialist in social communications at the automaker.
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Anonymous
“
The car takes off, but that one little peck isn’t enough for me. I lunge at him, needing more. He doesn't stop me as I unbuckle and straddle him. Hey kids, don’t try this at home. “I didn’t let you kiss me because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop,” he says. His eyes meet mine and it’s like he doesn’t even need to look at the road to drive like a race car driver.
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Alexa Riley (Til Death Do Us Trope (Tropes #1))
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The Germans, anyway a hysterical race, are now almost maddened by overwork—particularly in the management class. They spend their days in their offices and then roar off down the autobahns. They fall asleep at eighty miles an hour, and their cars tear across the middle section, head-on into cars in the opposite lane, or dive off the shoulders of the roads into the trees. To prevent this, the drivers munch Pervitin or Preludin to keep themselves awake, thus submerging their exhaustion and heightening their tension. Heart disease, accelerated by over-eating food cooked in the universal cheap frying-fat, carries them off in their early fifties,
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Ian Fleming (Thrilling Cities)
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The tunnel was massive. Its grey concrete walls were illuminated by orange
bursts of light that flashed overhead. The roar of the GTR and the high-pitched
whine of the turbo-charged Acura merged in an unholy mechanical scream. As they
shot past the traffic at the entrance, the cars behind them slowed to a crawl. For a
brief second, they were alone in the tunnel, like two shiny bullets racing down the
barrel of a gun.
Here on the smooth straightaway of the tunnel, Caine’s powerful GTR had the
advantage. He closed the gap, pulling up next to the Acura. He saw the driver
glance over at him, his brow furrowed in determination. Caine turned his eyes back
to the road. A sea of blinking red tail lights filled his view: they had caught up with
the tunnel traffic.
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Andrew Warren (Tokyo Black (Thomas Caine #1))
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Fuck.” I unzip my jeans and pull out my dick. Spitting on my hand, I slowly start to stroke it, imagining I have one hand in her hair that’s shoving her mouth on my cock. She steps in what I know is her shower, and I see water spraying onto her body. Closing my eyes, I pick up the pace with my hand and see her on her knees inside the shower. Her pretty blue eyes look up at me while her parted lips just beg to be fucked. “Whatever my girl wants,” I pant, my hips bucking in the driver’s seat. I wrap my hands into her wet, dark hair and slide my cock inside her hot, wet mouth and begin to fuck it. “Blake.” I moan, my hand picking up the pace as I imagine her pretty blue eyes crying while I fuck that pretty face. My balls tighten, and my breath quickens seconds before I come in my hand. “Fuck,” I hiss, reaching up, I remove my shirt and use it to clean up my mess. Looking up at her window, I see the light to her bathroom turn off, then the one to her bedroom. Taking a deep breath, I lean my head against the headrest, trying to calm my racing heart. “Soon, Blake. Soon.” I won’t have to use my hand or imagination. I’ll have her mouth, pussy, and ass to use. I will fucking own her. JUNIOR YEAR I exit the room and start walking down the hallway to my bedroom. Shoving the door open, I slam it shut to find Matt sitting on the side of my bed. “Get the fuck out.” I walk past him toward my adjoining bathroom. He jumps to his feet. “What in the fuck did you tell Lincoln?” Spinning around, I shove his chest. “I didn’t say shit!” He stumbles back and then shakes his head, giving a rough laugh. “You should have my back.” “And you should have known not to fucking touch her,” I shout back. “If you would have let me fuck her …” “You mean rape her?” I correct him. “Fuck, Matt! What in the hell were you thinking?” Abstinence is part of our oath, until our senior year when we are granted a chosen. If I had told Lincoln that he was going to rape the woman, he’d for sure be stripped of his Lord title. Matt
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Shantel Tessier (The Ritual (L.O.R.D.S., #1))
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The camel driver, though, seemed not to be very concerned with the threat of war. “I’m alive,” he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. “When I’m eating, that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other. “Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
People have asked me about the loneliness out on the race. But the race is when you finally have some social contact after a long winter of training alone on mostly empty trails. On the race you meet people at checkpoints, and you mix it up with other drivers, people from all walks of life who are bound together once a year by their miseries on the Iditarod Trail.
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Libby Riddles (Race Across Alaska: First Woman to Win the Iditarod Tells Her Story)
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I think about Scarlett Force then, that race car driver from a few years back, the one with the three boyfriends. She was caught once, having an orgy in the girls’ locker room with them.
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C.M. Stunich (Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys, #4))
“
was running out of valuable athletic clichés. Would beach volleyball say much about proposals for federal health care reform? Could I use mumblety-peg comparisons to explain the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations? Golf, however, is ideal for these purposes. “Christian fundamentalists put a wicked slice in the Republican party platform.” “Somebody should replace the divot on the back of Al Gore’s head.” “Let’s go hit Congress with a stick.” I also wanted a sport with a lot of equipment. All truly American sports are equipment intensive. Basketball was strictly for hoop-over-the-barn-door Hoosiers and Jersey City Y’s until two-hundred-dollar gym shoes were invented. And synchronized swimming will never make it to network prime time because how often do you need new nose plugs? I’m an altruistic guy, in my own Reaganomics way. Sports gear purchases are about all that’s keeping the fragile U.S. economy alive, and you’d have to get into America’s Cup yachting or cross-country airplane racing to find a sport that needs more gear than golf. I’ve bought the shoes, hats, socks, pants, shirts, umbrellas, windbreakers, and plus fours—all in colors that Nirvana fans wouldn’t dye their hair. Then there are the drivers, irons, putters, and the special clubs: parking-lot wedge, back-of-the-tree mashie, nearby highway niblick. MasterCard has installed a plaque on the wall of its headquarters to commemorate my taking up golf.
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P.J. O'Rourke (Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader)
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A man is only as good as his dogs when he is on the trails of Alaska…and a dog is only as good as his feet,” a well-traveled dog driver once said.
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Gay Salisbury (The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic)
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Of all their tribalisms, Americans are most uncomfortable with race. If you are having a conversation with an American, and you want to discuss something racial that you find interesting, and the American says, “Oh, it’s simplistic to say it’s race, racism is so complex,” it means they just want you to shut up already. Because of course racism is complex. Many abolitionists wanted to free the slaves but didn’t want black people living nearby. Lots of folk today don’t mind a black nanny or black limo driver. But they sure as hell mind a black boss. What is simplistic is saying “It’s so complex.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
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The bandwidth of the interstate highway was inadequate to the volume of data moving on it, the data being traffic, but behind the wheel of the Pontiac GTO, Kenny Deetle slalomed through real space with the same bravado with which he raced through cyberspace. He never used the horn, though other drivers hammered theirs to express outrage at the panache with which he weaved sharply from lane to lane, treating their vehicles as a downhill racer would treat the poles that marked the course of a ski run. They thought his maneuvers were reckless, but Kenny knew them to be the consequence of exquisite calculation—or at least strongly believed that they were, which was nearly the same thing in a quantum universe where the Uncertainty Principle held, in part, that nothing was anywhere until it was observed, or something like that.
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Dean Koontz (The Big Dark Sky)
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...if the importance of being physically well prepared is obvious, mental preparation may seem less decisive. But that is not so, because before being a racing driver, you have to become a man. If that does not happen, it does not matter how much talent you might have, you will never reach the top, because for one reason or another the results will seem to elude you.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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To get to the top of motor racing, to drive a Formula 1 car in one of the leading teams, you have to have certain qualities in the right proportion. One of them has always been much admired, and is now more important than ever: consistency. What matters is not a single outstanding move but your performance across the full duration of a race, a racing season, and indeed your career...Clearly consistency is not simply a natural talent within a driver, but the outcome of a long and tough physical programme which will allow us to give our best at all times and reach the end of a race - even the toughest - as fresh as we were to start.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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Broadly speaking any kind of mental training which aims to increase a driver's effectiveness at the wheel of a racing car must start from the assumption that victory is a consequence of the work done. With this attitude, victory ceases to be the main objective and is replaced by the quest for perfection in the various factors which contribute to victory, such as fitness training, setting up the car, managing a set of tyres properly, knowledge of the race tracks and so on, always focusing on smaller and smaller things...For a driver, getting into the car must be like going to the office for a top manager: it is his everyday job.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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There are drivers who have successfully made tactics the key to their approach and exploited them to the full. A mature driver must have an understanding of race tactics, he cannot always follow his nose.
This is something that requires experience and the tempering of your aggression: A driver who sees the race like a chess game is easy to spot as he stops getting involved in accidents and aims for points and not just wins.
This kind of driving is very effective over a season when aiming for the world title. Choosing the best set-up (a less fast car, but one that will be reliable) or the right time to stop for tyres, and knowing when to relinquish a position when the race situation calls for it are all part of this.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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The dialogue with the pits is very important for a driver who uses his head, and this is why, when choosing a team, you have to give careful consideration to its management.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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During the formation lap - and this is something you learn quickly in the lower formulaes - the driver must also leave his mark on his opponents, let everyone know he is not there to be pushed around, that he will finish as high as he possibly can. A squeeze on a bend, a hint of overtaking, a braking maneuver extended to within a few centimetres of the gearbox of the car in front demonstrate your intentions and ambitions: these feints and thrusts are a sort of declaration of war.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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Here are some rules: never let an opponent know where you are faster than him (or where he is slower) so that you do not lose the element of surprise, allowing your rival to take defensive action. You must act decisively, without the slightest hesitation: once a decision has been taken, it has to be carried through. Don't fall into the rhythm of the driver you are chasing, but keep your own. Have the strength of purpose to run an independent race, in the firm belief that the 'study phase' will be short-lived. Use your intuition and imagination, because the one thing that is not legislated in motor racing is overtaking.
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Ayrton Senna (Ayrton Senna's Principles of Race Driving)
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the goal can’t be satisfied; the success addict is never “successful enough.” The high only lasts a day or two, and then it’s on to the next success hit. “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy,” wrote Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former famous Formula 1 race car driver. “For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success.”[
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Arthur C. Brooks (From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
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The ability to deal with synchronic variation is an essential part of our knowledge of language. We can cope not only with ‘Thursday’ and ‘Fursday’, but also with ‘eether’ and ‘eyether’, ‘dreamed’ and ‘dreamt’, ‘shedule’ and ‘skedule’, ‘am I not?’ and ‘aren’t I?’ and thousands of other variations in sounds, meanings and structures. When it comes to language, we are all incredibly good drivers – all of us have been trained to race in the streets of Naples, and this is why we don’t crash head-on into one another all the time.
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Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention)
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How hard can it be to follow five black SUVs?” Serge leaned over the steering wheel. “Except we’re in Miami.” “So?” “Miami drivers are a breed unto their own. Always distracted.” He uncapped a coffee thermos and chugged. “Quick on the gas and the horn. No separation between vehicles, every lane change a new adventure. The worst of both worlds: They race around as if they are really good, but they’re really bad, like if you taught a driver’s-ed class with NASCAR films.” He watched the first few droplets hit the windshield. “Oh, and worst of all, most of them have never seen snow.” “But it’s not snow,” said Felicia. “It’s rain. And just a tiny shower.” “That’s right.” Serge hit the wipers and took another slug from the thermos. “Rain is the last thing you want when you’re chasing someone in Miami. They drive shitty enough as it is, but on top of that, snow is a foreign concept, which means they never got the crash course in traction judgment for when pavement slickness turns less than ideal. And because of the land-sea temperature differential, Florida has regular afternoon rain showers. Nothing big, over in a jiff. But minutes later, all major intersections in Miami-Dade are clogged with debris from spectacular smash-ups. In Northern states, snow teaches drivers real fast about the Newtonian physics of large moving objects. I haven’t seen snow either, but I drink coffee, so the calculus of tire-grip ratio is intuitive to my body. It feels like mild electricity. Sometimes it’s pleasant, but mostly I’m ambivalent. Then you’re chasing someone in the rain through Miami, and your pursuit becomes this harrowing slalom through wrecked traffic like a disaster movie where everyone’s fleeing the city from an alien invasion, or a ridiculous change in weather that the scientist played by Dennis Quaid warned about but nobody paid attention.” Serge held the mouth of the thermos to his mouth. “Empty. Fuck it—
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Tim Dorsey (Pineapple Grenade (Serge Storms #15))
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1967 In The Batmobile Andy and I packed into P’s 1966 Batmobile with me sitting on my Valet’s lap. The vehicle sped away as soon as we were buckled in. The prince zoomed down the deserted Abu Dhabi streets, running red lights in the city owned by his family. I broke out in a cold sweat as the speedometer leapt to 120 miles and continued to rise. Andy’s perspiring hands held me tightly while I leaned against his muscular chest for assurance. I could also feel my protector’s heart racing against my back as he pleaded despondently for P to slow, to no avail. The Arab was convinced that his Batmobile was “everything-proof” and that no harm would come to us even if we crashed into a sand dune. Off we flew at 2.00 A.M., towards Abu Dhabi airport. Andy and I had no idea where we were heading. All we had was blind trust that the reckless driver would get us there in one piece.
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Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
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What is an operating system, really? What did Cutler’s team wish to create? Picture a wealthy English household in the early 1900s. Think of a computer—the hardware—as a big house, the family’s residence. The house consists of plumbing and lighting, bricks and mortar, windows and doors—all manner of physical things and processes. Next, imagine computer software as the people in the house. The household staff, living downstairs, provide a whole range of services at once. The butler stands by the door, the driver washes the car, the housekeeper presses the linen, the cook provides meals and bakes cakes, the gardener rakes the leaves from the lawn. And this activity, which seemingly happens of its own accord, is coordinated by the head of the household staff. Such is the life of the downstairs dwellers, who in a certain sense exist in the background. Then consider the people upstairs. They are the whole reason for the toil of the people downstairs. The husband desires a driver not simply for peace of mind but because he wishes to travel. The wife employs a cook, so her family can eat well. The children benefit from the work of the gardener, who clears the yard of debris, enabling them to play outdoors safely. The picture of the family upstairs and their faithful downstairs servants neatly illustrates the great divide in the world of software. The people upstairs are the applications: the word-processing, electronic ledger, database, publishing and numerous other programs that satisfy human needs and wants. The people downstairs collectively perform the functions of an operating system. Theirs is a realm of services, some automatic, some requiring a special request. These services lay the basis for the good stuff of life. Cutler
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G. Pascal Zachary (Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft)
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I love the wheels, I mean steering wheel.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)