Remote Area Quotes

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It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals. Even the officials in Venezuela's remote areas are better for they're also concerned with public peace. It gives them many headaches, but they seem to believe that bringing about a man's salvation is worth the effort. I find that magnificent.
Henri Charrière (Papillon)
Children whose families take them to museums and zoos, who visit historic sites, who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge without even studying. For the impoverished child lacking the travel portfolio of affluence, the best way to accumulate background knowledge is by either reading or being read to.
Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook)
Why do you keep saying incarnations like I’m some kind of god?” It wasn’t a great question, but the real questions were so big that Kylar didn’t even know how ask them. “You are worshipped in a few remote areas where your master wasn’t very careful about showing the full extent of his powers.” “What?!
Brent Weeks (Shadow's Edge (Night Angel, #2))
We need a barn or one of those storage areas for the Broken vehicles." "A garage?" He gave her a short nod. "A private, relatively remote location, with thick walls to dampen the sound and preferably a sturdy door I could bolt from the inside, keeping your grandmother, your brothers, and all other painfully annoying spectators out..." Rose began to laugh. A make-out bunker... "I'm glad you find our dilemma hilarious,
Ilona Andrews (On the Edge (The Edge, #1))
The problem is that bears are pretty smart and humans aren't: we'll move into a remote area and leave a bag of dog food on our front porch and then panic when we see a grizzly bear helping himself to a meal. p 41
Bruce W. Cameron
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were the shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so that they would never hurt anybody ever again.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon. In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo II astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story – or legend – describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
TB, malaria, diarrhoea, and dysentery affect many in Palamau. But the cure for almost all ills here is the saline drip. In remote areas, quacks mesmerise people with the drip. Even malaria patients are subjected to it. Many villagers believe that paani chadaana (infusion of water) is a mighty cure. So they borrow money to pay the doctor for the miracle.
Palagummi Sainath (Everybody loves a good drought)
The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature. If some of our great decorated trees had been grown in a remote forest area with lights that came on every evening as it grew dark, the whole world would come to look at them and marvel at the mystery of their great beauty.
Andy Rooney (Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit)
Bit by bit, I found myself relaxing into the conversation. Kitty had a natural talent for drawing people out of themselves, and it was easy to fall in with her, to feel comfortable in her presence. As Uncle Victor had once told me long ago, a conversation is like having a catch with someone. A good partner tosses the ball directly into your glove, making it almost impossible for you to miss it; when he is on the receiving end, he catches everything sent his way, even the most errant and incompetent throws. That’s what Kitty did. She kept lobbing the ball straight into the pocket of my glove, and when I threw the ball back to her, she hauled in everything that was even remotely in her area: jumping up to spear balls that soared above her head, diving nimbly to her left or right, charging in to make tumbling, shoestring catches. More than that, her skill was such that she always made me feel that I had made those bad throws on purpose, as if my only object had been to make the game more amusing. She made me seem better than I was, and that strengthened my confidence, which in turn helped to make my throws less difficult for her to handle. In other words, I started talking to her rather than to myself, and the pleasure of it was greater than anything I had experienced in a long time.
Paul Auster (Moon Palace)
I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By (Travis McGee, #1))
If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’. To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Oh, mansion shmansion. Did Gandhi's house have the largest outdoor trampoline in the tristate area? Did Jesus have a two-acre remote-controlled car track, with mountains to scale and a little village that lit up at night? Not in his Bible.
George Saunders (Tenth of December)
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so that they would never hurt anybody ever again.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Perhaps in some remote area of the labyrinth, statues of obsolete computers are coming into being as we speak!
Susanna Clarke
In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock….His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.” “I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.” The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.” Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together. “We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (仁者无敌:林肯的政治天才)
American planes full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires gathered them into cylindrical steel containers and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though German fighters came up again made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America where factories were operating night and day dismantling the cylinders separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
In the United States, though, convenience was everything; it still is. We were plugging anything we could into the internet, at a rate of 127 devices a second. We had bought into Silicon Valley’s promise of a frictionless society. There wasn’t a single area of our lives that wasn’t touched by the web. We could now control our entire lives, economy, and grid via a remote web control. And we had never paused to think that, along the way, we were creating the world’s largest attack surface.
Nicole Perlroth (This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race)
Background knowledge is one reason children who read the most bring the largest amount of information to the learning table and thus understand more of what the teacher or the textbook is teaching. Children whose families take them to museums and zoos, who visit historic sites, who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge without even studying.
Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook)
The hanging question isn’t why Berner and Carnegie were attacked and killed, but why wolf attacks on humans on this continent, and pretty much everywhere except remote areas of south-central Asia, are as rare as they are. Wolves are opportunistic, adaptable predators. Why not choose humans—comparatively slow, small, and weak compared to most wild prey—on a regular basis? Surely, if North American wolves saw humans as potential food, thousands should have died at their fangs. Instead, just two.
Nick Jans (A Wolf Called Romeo)
Gram, you should have been a romance writer." Creighton wasn't her soul mate. The man was probably just lonely, living in such a remote area. "You know, I might just give that a try. Just think, Effie Munro, erotic-romance author pens "hawt" stories from her beautiful Scottish estate.
Vonnie Davis (A Highlander's Obsession (Highlander's Beloved, #1))
Why should color, of all things, be at the center of so much crossfire? Perhaps because in meddling with such a deep and seemingly instinctive area of perception, culture camouflages itself as nature more successfully there than in any other area of language. There is nothing remotely abstract, theoretical, philosophical, hypothetical, or any other -cal, so it seems, about the difference between yellow and red or between green and blue.
Guy Deutscher (Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages)
To me, being a man means being kind, generous, and a good provider. The most important part of being a man is being strong. Having the self-confidence to handle any situation you face, whether you live in the city and face traffic, congestion, and crowds, or you live in remote areas with wild animals and inclement weather. And it’s a quiet self-confidence. A strong, self-confident man doesn’t announce his strength to the world. He leads by example. He’s the guy who steps up and takes charge when a challenge is faced, and then quietly fades into the background when the issue is resolved.
John Sowers (Heroic Path: In Search of the Masculine Heart)
While the world had been under kif guns, they had tidied up the house, cooked dinner, and started replanting the garden. Pyanfar lowered her ears at the thought, how little real the larger universe was to downworld hani, who had never thoroughly imagined what had almost happened to them; who heard about the terrible damage to the station as they might hear about some earthquake in a remote area of the globe, shaking their heads in sympathy and regretting it, but not personally touched—worried for their own kin, of course worried; and there would be hugging and sympathy at homecoming. But they set the world in order by replanting the garden and seeing Kohan fed. Gods look on them all.
C.J. Cherryh (The Pride of Chanur (Chanur #1))
The British Royal Navy’s Surgeon Captain Thomas L. Cleave had seen the same phenomenon in so many remote areas to which he traveled in the early 1900s that he called all chronic illnesses the “saccharine diseases,” because so many of these ailments arrived in concert with the introduction of refined carbohydrates—principally sugar and white flour.
Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet)
….unable to find a title for her last published novel, she wrote six lines which included her eventual title The Birds Fall Down. These lines were attributed to Conway Power (the name she generally appended to her poetry, even in her private notebooks), from a non-existent poem called ‘Guide to a Disturbed Planet.’ When the novel was published she had fun deflecting the enquiries of readers who wanted to know how to find the works of Conway Power. One was told a long story: Conway Power was a landowner in a remote area who had written thousands of poems and destroyed most of them. He had left some of them with her, given his property to a nephew, and gone abroad. ‘If I can trace the book (if there is a book) I’ll let you know.
Victoria Glendinning (Rebecca West : A Life)
Many women report just being awake and alert all day as a huge improvement in this area. They feel a tremendous difference in their ability to counteract “ the paralysis of will ” that leaves many bright women sitting for hours, remote in hand, aimlessly changing channels with a million intentions and good thoughts trapped inside their head not being translated to action.
Sari Solden (Women With Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, while the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet—or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
In 1975, after a serious booster malfunction partway through ascent, pyrotechnics automatically fired to blast the crew's capsule free of the rocket; as it fell back to Earth, its parachutes deployed properly, right on schedule. However, that Soyuz crash-landed in a hilly remote area and promptly began to roll down a snowy slope coming to a stop at the edge of a steep cliff only because the parachute snagged on some vegetation. The crew lived to tell the tale.
Chris Hadfield (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth)
Then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he, without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the holy “Om”, which roughly means “that what is perfect” or “the completion”. And in the moment when the sound of “Om” touched Siddhartha’s ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the foolishness of his actions. Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
I once had occasion to conduct an interview with a Soviet writer (Anatoli Kusnyetsov). (...) He made a remark which is one of the most extraordinary remarks anyone has ever made to me and has echoed in my mind more often than I can say. He said to me this: that if in this world you are confronted with absolute power, power unmitigated, unrestrained, extending to every area of human life - if you are confronted with power in those terms, you are driven to realise that the only possible response to it is not some alternative power arrangement, more humane, more enlightened. The only possible response to absolute power is the absolute love which our Lord brought into the world. (...) I can see, though we in the West have not experienced this absolute power, that there would be something futile and ridiculous even in the attempt to meet such tyranny with some alternative propaganda or ideology. As between Caesar at his most absolute and God at his most remote, there is only Christ. And that was what this man said.
Malcolm Muggeridge (The End of Christendom)
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult. To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.
Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
Can I cuddle up with you when you sleep?” Sma stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in the face. “What?” “Just for chumminess’ sake,” the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. “I’m not being rude; it’s a good bonding procedure.” Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the yellow and brown device closer to her face. “Listen, Xenophobe—” “Xeny.” “Xeny. You are a million-ton starship. A Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even—” “But I’m demilitarized!” “Even without your principle armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to—” “Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!” “So what’s all this shit for?” She shook the furry little remote drone, quite hard. Its teeth chattered. “It’s for a laugh!” it cried. “Sma, don’t you appreciate a joke?” “I don’t know. Do you appreciate being drop-kicked back to the accommodation area?” “Ooh! What’s your problem, lady? Have you got something against small furry animals, or what?” Look Ms. Sma, I know very well I’m a ship, and I do everything I’m asked to do—including taking you to this frankly rather fuzzily specified destination—and do it very efficiently, too. If there was the slightest sniff of any real action, and I had to start acting like a warship, this construct in your hands would go lifeless and limp immediately, and I’d battle as ferociously and decisively as I’ve been trained to. Meanwhile, like my human colleagues, I amuse myself harmlessly. If you really hate my current appearance, all right; I’ll change it; I’ll be an ordinary drone, or just a disembodied voice, or talk to you through Skaffen-Amtiskaw here, or through your personal terminal. The last thing I want is to offend a guest.” Sma pursed her lips. She patted the thing on its head and sighed. “Fair enough.” “I can keep this shape?” “By all means.” “Oh goody!” It squirmed with pleasure, then opened its big eyes wide and looked hopefully at her. “Cuddle?” “Cuddle.” Sma cuddled it, patted its back. She turned to see Skaffen-Amtiskaw lying dramatically on its back in midair, its aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in Extreme Distress.
Iain M. Banks (Use of Weapons (Culture, #3))
Edmond persuasively described a future where technology had become so inexpensive and ubiquitous that it erased the gap between the haves and the have-nots. A future where environmental technologies provided billions of people with drinking water, nutritious food, and access to clean energy. A future where diseases like Edmond’s cancer were eradicated, thanks to genomic medicine. A future where the awesome power of the Internet was finally harnessed for education, even in the most remote corners of the world. A future where assembly-line robotics would free workers from mind-numbing jobs so they could pursue more rewarding fields that would open up in areas not yet imagined. And, above all, a future in which breakthrough technologies began creating such an abundance of humankind’s critical resources that warring over them would no longer be necessary.
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe. I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By)
PJs use parachuting skills to raid into enemy territory to rescue and save lives; army rangers parachute onto the battle field to kill enemy soldiers and capture ground, while a Green Beret will infiltrate a remote, hostile area to teach the local populace how to fight and defend themselves against an enemy. Recon marines can sneak into enemy territory and learn all their secrets. SEALs are small direct-action-oriented teams that can infiltrate areas by sea air, or land to accomplish their objectives, such as capturing or destroying high value targets. Air force combat controllers call in airstrikes, help seize enemy airfields, and use their air traffic control skills to orchestrate everything from large-scale aerial invasions to small insertions of American planes and soldiers. All of these elite units consider themselves exclusive brotherhoods. Members of these outfits live at the most dangerous extreme of human experience and entrust their lives to each other. They focus on a common mission and share unique experiences of adventure and danger.
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
In 1969 my parents, my sister, my brother Jin-ming, and I were expelled from Chengdu one after another, and sent to distant parts of the Sichuan wilderness. We were among millions of urban dwellers to be exiled to the countryside. In this way, young people would not be roaming the cities with nothing to do, creating trouble out of sheer boredom, and adults like my parents would have a 'future." They were part of the old administration which had been replaced by Mao's Revolutionary Committees, and packing them off to the sticks to do hard labor was a convenient solution. According to Mao's rhetoric, we were sent to the countryside 'to be reformed." Mao advocated 'thought reform through labor' for everyone, but never explained the relationship between the two. Of course, no one asked for clarification. Merely to contemplate such a question was tantamount to treason. In reality, everyone in China knew that hard labor, particularly in the countryside, was always punishment. It was noticeable that none of Mao's henchmen, the members of the newly established Revolutionary Committees, army officers and very few of their children had to do it. The first of us to be expelled was my father. Just after New Year 1969 he was sent to Miyi County in the region of Xichang, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, an area so remote that it is China's satellite launch base today. It lies about 300 miles from Chengdu, four days' journey by truck, as there was no railway. In ancient times, the area was used for dumping exiles, because its mountains and waters were said to be permeated with a mysterious 'evil air." In today's terms, the 'evil air' was subtropical diseases.
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
wildred adj. feeling the haunting solitude of extremely remote places—a clearing in the forest, a windswept field of snow, a rest area in the middle of nowhere—which makes you feel like you’ve just intruded on a conversation that had nothing to do with you, where even the gravel beneath your feet and the trees overhead are holding themselves back to a pointed, inhospitable silence. From wild + dread. Pronounced “wil-drid.
John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
here is something that is impossible for anyone to believe. The human species has been in existence as Homo sapiens for (let us not quarrel about the exact total) at least one hundred and fifty thousand years. An instant in evolutionary time, this is nonetheless a vast history when contemplated by primates with brains and imaginations of the dimensions that we can boast. In order to subscribe to monotheistic religion, one must believe that humans were born, struggled, and expired during this time, often dying in childbirth or for want of elementary nurture, and with a life-expectancy of perhaps three decades at most. Add to these factors the turf wars between discrepant groups and tribes, alarming outbreaks of disease, which had no germ theory to explain let alone palliate them, and associated natural disasters and human tragedies. And yet, for all these millennia, heaven watched with indifference and then—and only in the last six thousand years at the very least—decided that it was time to intervene as well as redeem. And heaven would only intervene and redeem in remote areas of the Middle East, thus ensuring that many more generations would expire before the news could begin to spread! Let me send a voice to Sinai and cement a pact with just one tribe of dogged and greedy yokels. Let me lend a son to be torn to pieces because he is misunderstood. . . . Let me tell the angel Gabriel to prompt an illiterate and uncultured merchant into rhetorical flights. At last the darkness that I have imposed will lift! The willingness even to entertain such elaborately mad ideas involves much more than the suspension of disbelief, or the dumb credulity that greets magic tricks. It also involves ignoring or explaining away the many religious beliefs that antedated Moses.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. •  •  • When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.
H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds)
The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise of any of the known cultures, of a true civilization, of a comparatively advanced sort, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some respects, may well have been more advanced than the civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. In astronomy, nautical science, mapmaking and possibly ship-building, it was perhaps more advanced than any state of culture before the 18th Century of the Christian Era. It was in the 18th Century that we first developed a practical means of finding longitude. It was in the 18th Century that we first accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the 19th Century did we begin to send out ships for purposes of whaling or exploration into the Arctic or Antarctic Seas. The maps indicate that some ancient people may have done all these things.
Charles H. Hapgood (Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age)
Since irregular combatants don’t have the combat power to stand up to government forces in a direct fight, they tend to hide, and thus to rely on cover and concealment. The concealment and protection afforded by complex environments help them avoid detection by security forces, letting them move freely and fight only when and where they choose. For this reason, guerrillas, bandits, and pirates have always flourished in areas where cover was good and government presence was weak. For most of human history, this meant remote, forested, mountainous areas such as the Afghan mountains discussed in the preface. But with the unprecedented level of global urbanization, this pattern is changing, prompting a major shift in the character of conflict. In the future environment of overcrowded, undergoverned, urban, coastal areas—combined with increasingly excellent remote surveillance capabilities (including drones, satellites, and signals intelligence) in remote rural areas—the cover is going to be in the cities.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story – or legend – describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon. In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo II astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story –or legend –describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
They are quiet in this way, because quietness is so unattainable for us now. At the front there is no quietness and the curse of the front reaches so far that we never pass beyond it. Even in the remote depots and rest-areas the droning and the muffled noise of shelling is always in our ears. We are never so far off that it is no more to be heard. But these last few days it has been unbearable. Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow—a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires—but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
As regards the prohibition on the utterance of the fairy name by mortals, either that of the species as a whole, or of individuals, it his undoubtedly issued from sources exceedingly ancient. It is implicit in animistic belief that the name of a man or spirit is a vital part of the individual. In some remoter areas of the world a person's name is still regarded as being equally vital or important with his spirit or soul, and to know it and pronounce it presumes power over the person or spirit to whom it belongs. Supernatural beings in general are indeed exceedingly touchy upon the subject of their names being freely bandied about, and to this rule fairies are no exception. It is for this reason that the fays have bestowed upon them such alternative titles or sobriquets as 'the good neighbours,' or 'the wee folk.' 'We find,' says Wentz, 'that taboos of a religious and social character are as common in the living fairy-faith as exorcisms. The chief one is against naming the fairies.' 'Gin ye ca' me fairy / I'll wark ye muck Ie tarrie [trouble],' says an old Scottish rhyme which popular belief put into the mouths of the elves. 'The fairies,' remarks Robert Chambers, 'are said to have been exceedingly sensitive upon the subject of their popular appellations. They considered the term 'fairy' disreputable.
Lewis Spence (British Fairy Origins)
This is textbook Bad Idea. We're driving with a stranger, no one knows where we are, and we have no way of getting in touch with anyone. This is exactly how people become statistics." "Exactly?" I asked, thinking of all the bizarre twists and turns that had led us to this place. Ben ceded the point with a sideways shrug. "Maybe not exactly. But still..." He let it go, and the cab eventually stopped at the edge of a remote, forested area. Sage got out and paid. "Everybody out!" Ben looked at me, one eyebrow raised. He was leaving the choice to me. I gave his knee a quick squeeze before I opened the door and we piled out of the car. Sage waited for the cab to drive away, then ducked onto a forest path, clearly assuming we'd follow. The path through the thick foliage was stunning in the moonlight, and I automatically released my camera from its bag. "I wish you wouldn't," Sage said without turning around. "You know I'm not one for visitors." "I'll refrain from selling the pictures to Travel and Leisure, then," I said, already snapping away. "Besides, I need something to take my mind off my feet." My shoes were still on the beach, where I'd kicked them off to dance. "Hey, I offered to carry you," Sage offered. "No, thank you." I suppose I should have been able to move swiftly and silently without my shoes, but I only managed to stab myself on something with every other footfall, giving me a sideways, hopping gait. Every few minutes Sage would hold out his arms, offering to carry me again. I grimaced and denied him each time. After what felt like about ten miles, even the photos weren't distracting enough. "How much farther?" I asked. "We're here." There was nothing in front of us but more trees. "Wow," Ben said, and I followed his eyes upward to see that several of the tree trunks were actually stilts supporting a beautifully hidden wood-and-glass cabin, set high among the branches. I was immediately charmed. "You live in a tree house," I said. I aimed my camera the façade, answering Sage's objection before he even said it. "For me, not for Architectural Digest." "Thank you," Sage said.
Hilary Duff (Elixir (Elixir, #1))
now known to exist in substantial numbers in the rain forests of Zaire—the total population is estimated at perhaps thirty thousand—yet its existence wasn’t even suspected until the twentieth century. The large flightless New Zealand bird called the takahe had been presumed extinct for two hundred years before being found living in a rugged area of the country’s South Island. In 1995 a team of French and British scientists in Tibet, who were lost in a snowstorm in a remote valley, came across a breed of horse, called the Riwoche, that had previously been known only from prehistoric cave drawings. The valley’s inhabitants were astonished to learn that the horse was considered a rarity in the wider world.
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies we could manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation. If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-of-the-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure. For instance, you may take on a business project, work at it for several years, and then suddenly find yourself totally disinterested. You know that if you stayed with it for another few years you would reap much greater financial reward than if you left the project now. But the project no longer calls you. You no longer feel interested in the project. You have developed skills over the last few years working on the project, but it hasn’t yet come to fruition. You may wonder, now that you have the skills, should you stick with it and bring the project to fruition, even though the work feels empty to you? Well, maybe you should stick with it. Maybe you are bailing out too soon, afraid of success or failure, or just too lazy to persevere. This is one possibility. Ask your close men friends if they feel you are simply losing steam, wimping out, or afraid to bring your project to completion. If they feel you are bailing out too soon, stick with it. However, there is also the possibility that you have completed your karma in this area. It is possible that this was one layer of purpose, which you have now fulfilled, on the way to another layer of purpose, closer to your deepest purpose. Among the signs of fulfilling or completing a layer of purpose are these: 1. You suddenly have no interest whatsoever in a project or mission that, just previously, motivated you highly. 2. You feel surprisingly free of any regrets whatsoever, for starting the project or for ending it. 3. Even though you may not have the slightest idea of what you are going to do next, you feel clear, unconfused, and, especially, unburdened. 4. You feel an increase in energy at the prospect of ceasing your involvement with the project. 5. The project seems almost silly, like collecting shoelaces or wallpapering your house with gas station receipts. Sure, you could do it, but why would you want to? If you experience these signs, it is probably time to stop working on this project. You must end your involvement impeccably, however, making sure there are no loose ends and that you do not burden anybody’s life by stopping your involvement. This might take some time, but it is important that this layer of your purpose ends cleanly and does not create any new karma, or obligation, that will burden you or others in the future. The next layer of your unfolding purpose may make itself clear immediately. More often, however, it does not. After completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your life. You know that the old project is over for you, but you are not sure of what is next. At this point, you must wait for a vision. There is no way to rush this process. You may need to get an intermediary job to hold you over until the next layer of purpose makes itself clear. Or, perhaps you have enough money to simply wait. But in any case, it is important to open yourself to a vision of what is next. You stay open to a vision of your deeper purpose by not filling your time with distractions. Don’t watch TV or play computer games. Don’t go out drinking beer with your friends every night or start dating a bunch of women. Simply wait. You may wish to go on a retreat in a remote area and be by yourself. Whatever it is you decide to do, consciously keep yourself open and available to receiving a vision of what is next. It will come.
David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire)
It may be no more than an intriguing coincidence, but the area of Cro-Magnon’s cave paintings is also the area containing Europe’s oldest and most mysterious ethnic group, the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
Forced teaming is done in many contexts for many reasons, but when applied by a stranger to a woman in a vulnerable situation (such as alone in a remote or unpopulated area), it is always inappropriate. It is not about partnership or coincidence—it is about establishing rapport, and that may or may not be all right, depending on why someone seeks rapport. Generally speaking, rapport-building has a far better reputation than it deserves. It is perceived as admirable when in fact it is almost always done for self-serving reasons. Even though the reasons most people seek rapport aren’t sinister, such as pleasantly conversing with someone you’ve just met at a party, that doesn’t mean a woman must participate with every stranger who approaches her. Perhaps the most admirable reason to seek rapport would be to put someone at ease, but if that is a stranger’s entire intent, a far simpler way is to just leave the woman alone.
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
A survey of oceanic (i.e. remote) islands found that, as far back as records exist, they have been accumulating alien plants. In 1860 the average oceanic island had less than 1 introduced plant for every 10 natives. By 1940 the ratio was 1 alien for every 2 natives, and today the ratio is about 1:1. Despite all these new arrivals there have been very few extinctions among the original inhabitants, so the number of plant species on such islands has approximately doubled. Thus, although left to themselves remote islands tend to have rather few species (compared to similar continental areas at the same latitude), so many species have been introduced to Hawaii that it now has as many plants as a similar area of Mexico. Moreover, the evidence suggests that remote islands are by no means ‘full’ of plants, and that there is room for even more alien plants to establish, and thus for total plant diversity to increase: at the current rate the average oceanic island will have 3 aliens for every 2 natives by 2060. Do we have any idea how many different plant species might eventually be able to coexist on an island like Hawaii? No, we don’t. Or, to express that conclusion in a more general form, in a report from US ecologists Dov Sax and Steve Gaines: ‘we have a relatively poor understanding of the processes that ultimately limit how many species can inhabit any given place or area
Ken Thompson (Where Do Camels Belong?: Why Invasive Species Aren't All Bad)
In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story–or legend–describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo II astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story – or legend – describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon. In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story – or legend – describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals. One day as they were training, the astronauts came across an old Native American. The man asked them what they were doing there. They replied that they were part of a research expedition that would shortly travel to explore the moon. When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, and then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour. ‘What do you want?’ they asked. ‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people.’ ‘What’s the message?’ asked the astronauts. The man uttered something in his tribal language, and then asked the astronauts to repeat it again and again until they had memorised it correctly. ‘What does it mean?’ asked the astronauts. ‘Oh, I cannot tell you. It’s a secret that only our tribe and the moon spirits are allowed to know.’ When they returned to their base, the astronauts searched and searched until they found someone who could speak the tribal language, and asked him to translate the secret message. When they repeated what they had memorised, the translator started to laugh uproariously. When he calmed down, the astronauts asked him what it meant. The man explained that the sentence they had memorised so carefully said, ‘Don’t believe a single word these people are telling you. They have come to steal your lands.’ Empty Maps
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Two kinds of development help explain how a readiness built up to kill all Jews, including women and children. One is a series of “dress rehearsals” that served to lower inhibitions and provided trained personnel hardened for anything. First came the euthanasia of incurably ill and insane Germans, begun on the day when World War II began. Nazi eugenics theory had long provided a racial justification for getting rid of “inferior” persons. War provided a broader justification for reducing the drain of “useless mouths” on scarce resources. The “T-4” program killed more than seventy thousand people between September 1939 and 1941, when, in response to protests from the victims’ families and Catholic clergy, the matter was left to local authorities. Some of the experts trained in this program were subsequently transferred to the occupied east, where they applied their mass killing techniques to Jews. This time, there was less opposition. The second “dress rehearsal” was the work of the Einsatzgruppen, the intervention squads specially charged with executing the political and cultural elite of invaded countries. In the Polish campaign of September 1939 they helped wipe out the Polish intelligentsia and high civil service, evoking some opposition within the military command. In the Soviet campaign the Einsatzgruppen received the notorious “Commissar Order” to kill all Communist Party cadres as well as the Jewish leadership (seen as identical in Nazi eyes), along with Gypsies. This time the army raised no objections. The Einsatzgruppen subsequently played a major role, though they were far from alone, in the mass killings of Jewish women and children that began in some occupied areas in fall 1941. A third “dress rehearsal” was the intentional death of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. It was on six hundred of them that the Nazi occupation authorities first tested the mass killing potential of the commercial insecticide Zyklon-B at Auschwitz on September 3, 1941. Most Soviet prisoners of war, however, were simply worked or starved to death. The second category of developments that helped prepare a “willingness to murder” consisted of blockages, emergencies, and crises that made the Jews become a seemingly unbearable burden to the administrators of conquered territories. A major blockage was the failure to capture Moscow that choked off the anticipated expulsion of all the Jews of conquered eastern Europe far into the Soviet interior. A major emergency was shortages of food supplies for the German invasion force. German military planners had chosen to feed the invasion force with the resources of the invaded areas, in full knowledge that this meant starvation for local populations. When local supplies fell below expectations, the search for “useless mouths” began. In the twisted mentality of the Nazi administrators, Jews and Gypsies also posed a security threat to German forces. Another emergency was created by the arrival of trainloads of ethnic Germans awaiting resettlement, for whom space had to be made available. Faced with these accumulating problems, Nazi administrators developed a series of “intermediary solutions.” One was ghettos, but these proved to be incubators for disease (an obsession with the cleanly Nazis), and a drain on the budget. The attempt to make the ghettos work for German war production yielded little except another category of useless mouths: those incapable of work. Another “intermediary solution” was the stillborn plan, already mentioned, to settle European Jews en masse in some remote area such as Madagascar, East Africa, or the Russian hinterland. The failure of all the “intermediary solutions” helped open the way for a “final solution”: extermination.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
In 1924, riding a wave of anti-Asian sentiment, the US government halted almost all immigration from Asia. Within a few years, California, along with several other states, banned marriages between white people and those of Asian descent. With the onset of World War II, the FBI began the Custodial Detention Index—a list of “enemy aliens,” based on demographic data, who might prove a threat to national security, but also included American citizens—second- and third-generation Japanese Americans. This list was later used to facilitate the internment of Japanese Americans. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, which compelled Japanese immigrants over the age of fourteen to be registered and fingerprinted, and to take a loyalty oath to our government. Japanese Americans were subject to curfews, their bank accounts often frozen and insurance policies canceled. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked a US military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 2,400 Americans were killed. The following day, America declared war on Japan. On February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, permitting the US secretary of war and military commanders to “prescribe military areas” on American soil that allowed the exclusion of any and all persons. This paved the way for the forced internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, without trial or cause. The ten “relocation centers” were all in remote, virtually uninhabitable desert areas. Internees lived in horrible, unsanitary conditions that included forced labor. On December 17, 1944, FDR announced the end of Japanese American internment. But many internees had no home to return to, having lost their livelihoods and property. Each internee was given twenty-five dollars and a train ticket to the place they used to live. Not one Japanese American was found guilty of treason or acts of sedition during World War II.
Samira Ahmed (Internment)
The most productive nation in the world, yet unable to properly feed, clothe and shelter over a third of its population. Vast areas of valuable soil turning to waste land because of neglect, indifference, greed and vandalism. Torn some eighty years ago by the bloodiest civil war in the history of man and yet to this day unable to convince the defeated section of our country of the righteousness of our cause nor able, as liberators and emancipators of the slaves, to give them true freedom and equality, but instead enslaving and degrading our own white brothers. Yes, the industrial North defeated the aristocratic South—the fruits of that victory are now apparent. Wherever there is industry there is ugliness, misery, oppression, gloom and despair. The banks which grew rich by piously teaching us to save, in order to swindle us with our own money, now beg us not to bring our savings to them, threatening to wipe out even that ridiculous interest rate they now offer should we disregard their advice. Three-quarters of the world’s gold lies buried in Kentucky. Inventions which would throw millions more out of work, since by the queer irony of our system every potential boon to the human race is converted into an evil, lie idle on the shelves of the patent office or are bought up and destroyed by the powers that control our destiny. The land, thinly populated and producing in wasteful, haphazard way enormous surpluses of every kind, is deemed by its owners, a mere handful of men, unable to accommodate not only the starving millions of Europe but our own starving hordes. A country which makes itself ridiculous by sending out missionaries to the most remote parts of the globe, asking for pennies of the poor in order to maintain the Christian work of deluded devils who no more represent Christ than I do the Pope, and yet unable through its churches and missions at home to rescue the weak and defeated, the miserable and the oppressed. The hospitals, the insane asylums, the prisons filled to overflowing. Counties, some of them big as a European country, practically uninhabited, owned by an intangible corporation whose tentacles reach everywhere and whose responsibilities nobody can formulate or clarify. A man seated in a comfortable chair in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, a man surrounded by every luxury and yet paralyzed with fear and anxiety, controls the lives and destinies of thousands of men and women whom he has never seen, whom he never wishes to see and whose fate he is thoroughly uninterested in.
Henry Miller (The Air-Conditioned Nightmare)
With the news that he would soon be a daddy again, Steve seemed inspired to work even harder. Our zoo continued to get busier, and we had trouble coping with the large numbers. The biggest draw was the crocodiles. Crowds poured in for the croc shows, filling up all the grandstands. The place was packed. Steve came up with a monumental plan. He was a big fan of the Colosseum-type arenas of the Roman gladiator days. He sketched out his idea for me on a piece of paper. “Have a go at this, it’s a coliseum,” he declared, his eyes wide with excitement. He drew an oval, then a series of smaller ovals in back of it. “Then we have crocodile ponds where the crocs could live. Every day a different croc could come out for the show and swim through a canal system”--he sketched rapidly--“then come out in the main area.” “Canals,” I said. “Could you get them to come in on cue?” “Piece of cake!” he said. “And get this! We call it…the Crocoseum!” His enthusiasm was contagious. Never mind that nothing like this had ever been done before. Steve was determined to take the excitement and hype of the ancient Roman gladiators and combine it with the need to show people just how awesome crocs really were. But it was a huge project. There was nothing to compare it to, because nothing even remotely similar had ever been attempted anywhere in the world. I priced it out: The budget to build the arena would have to be somewhere north of eight million dollars, a huge expense. Wes, John, Frank, and I all knew we’d have to rely on Steve’s knowledge of crocodiles to make this work. Steve’s enthusiasm never waned. He was determined. This would become the biggest structure at the zoo. The arena would seat five thousand and have space beneath it for museums, shops, and a food court. The center of the arena would have land areas large enough for people to work around crocodiles safely and water areas large enough for crocs to be able to access them easily. “How is this going to work, Steve?” I asked, after soberly assessing the cost. What if we laid out more than eight million dollars and the crocodiles decided not to cooperate? “How are you going to convince a crocodile to come out exactly at showtime, try to kill and eat the keeper, and then go back home again?” I bit my tongue when I realized what was coming out of my mouth: advice on crocodiles directed at the world’s expert on croc behavior. Steve was right with his philosophy: Build it, and they will come. These were heady times. As the Crocoseum rose into the sky, my tummy got bigger and bigger with our new baby. It felt like I was expanding as rapidly as the new project. The Crocoseum debuted during an Animal Planet live feed, its premiere beamed all over the world. The design was a smashing success. Once again, Steve had confounded the doubters.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Steve was a warrior in every sense of the word, but battling wildlife perpetrators just wasn’t the same as old-fashioned combat. Because Steve’s knees continued to deteriorate, his surfing ability was severely compromised. Instead of giving up in despair, Steve sought another outlet for all his pent-up energy. Through our head of security, Dan Higgins, Steve discovered mixed martial arts (or MMA) fighting. Steve was a natural at sparring. His build was unbelievable, like a gorilla’s, with his thick chest, long arms, and outrageous strength for hugging things (like crocs). Once he grabbed hold of something, there was no getting away. He had a punch equivalent to the kick of a Clydesdale, he could just about lift somebody off the ground with an uppercut, and he took to grappling as a wonderful release. Steve never did anything by halves. I remember one time the guys were telling him that a good body shot could really wind someone. Steve suddenly said, “No one’s given me a good body shot. Try to drop me with a good one so I know what it feels like.” Steve opened up his arms and Dan just pile drove him. Steve said, in between gasps, “Thanks, mate. That was great, I get your point.” I would join in and spar or work the pads, or roll around until I was absolutely exhausted. Steve would go until he threw up. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some MMA athletes are able to seek that dark place, that point of total exhaustion--they can see it, stare at it, and sometimes get past it. Steve ran to it every day. He wasn’t afraid of it. He tried to get himself to that point of exhaustion so that maybe the next day he could get a little bit further. Soon we were recruiting the crew, anyone who had any experience grappling. Guys from the tiger department or construction were lining up to have a go, and Steve would go through the blokes one after another, grappling away. And all the while I loved it too. Here was something else that Steve and I could do together, and he was hilarious. Sometimes he would be cooking dinner, and I’d come into the kitchen and pat him on the bum with a flirtatious look. The next thing I knew he had me in underhooks and I was on the floor. We’d be rolling around, laughing, trying to grapple each other. It’s like the old adage when you’re watching a wildlife documentary: Are they fighting or mating? It seems odd that this no-holds-barred fighting really brought us closer, but we had so much fun with it. Steve finally built his own dojo on a raised concrete pad with a cage, shade cloth, fans, mats, bags, and all that great gear. Six days a week, he would start grappling at daylight, as soon as the guys would get into work. He had his own set of techniques and was a great brawler in his own right, having stood up for himself in some of the roughest, toughest, most remote outback areas. Steve wasn’t intimidated by anyone. Dan Higgins brought a bunch of guys over from the States, including Keith Jardine and other pros, and Steve couldn’t wait to tear into them. He held his own against some of the best MMA fighters in the world. I always thought that if he’d wanted to be a fighter as a profession, he would have been dangerous. All the guys heartily agreed.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
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Secondly, and very strangely, there are difficult things about you too. Of course, not in this area. Not in any area remotely connected to the sort of lapses that destroy your faith in humanity. But in some areas, quiet areas that you forget about as soon as you’ve travelled through them, you too are a deeply imperfect and questionable individual. Gently, you have – in your own way – betrayed. Nicely, you have been a coward. Modestly, you have forgotten your privileges. Unthinkingly, you have added salt to the wounds of others. We don’t need to know anything about you to know this as a certainty. We must forgive because – not right now, not over this, but one day, over something – we need to be forgiven. We would – in the past – regularly have looked up to the heavens for this forgiveness. We do that less and less. But that doesn’t attenuate the need for some moments when we limber up to utter that most implausible word ‘sorry’ – or indeed stretch our ethical imagination in order to pronounce those even more arduous and unnatural words, ‘I forgive you.
Alain de Botton
Mother spent a lot of her spare time choosing places to be buried in, but they were generally situated in the most remote areas, and one had vision of the funeral cortege dropping exhausted by the wayside long before it had reached the grave.
Gerald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1))
They didn’t know it at the time, but they would be stranded in this barren landscape for more than two months. Lost in a sea of white The plane was white. The area it had crashed in was a vast, remote, snow covered mountain wasteland. Its last position wasn’t known to any accuracy. Despite search parties from three countries flying over the region, the odds of them finding the survivors were very slim. The authorities had to assume the worst. Even if anyone had survived, the simple fact was that after so long in such an environment, they would have perished soon afterwards. The main search was called off after eight days. Survivors waiting to be rescued. The cruellest twist was that the survivors heard this news on a small transistor radio, which they had salvaged from the plane. Remarkably, though, one of the men managed to turn this disappointment into a source of hope:
Collins Maps (Extreme Survivors: 60 of the World’s Most Extreme Survival Stories)
Question #135 In a bedroom, both Jim and Janice were found dead.  There was water and some shattered glass on the floor in the room where they were found.  Looking around the room, you can only find a bed and a shelf.  The house - where the room is located - is situated in a very remote area near the railroad tracks. What caused the death of the two?
Linda Nguyen (Hard Riddles For Smart Kids: 400 difficult riddles and brain teasers for kids and family)
To paint the Border Patrol as a rescue operation is also to gloss over a pervasive culture of callousness and destruction: while I indeed worked alongside some deeply compassionate and honorable agents, I also witnessed coworkers scatter migrant groups in remote areas and destroy their water supplies without ever being held to account.
Francisco Cantú (The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border)
In ancient times, when the king would visit remote areas of his kingdom, a team would be sent ahead to smooth the road for his chariot. Holes would be filled in and bumps would be smoothed out. In the same way, when the Holy Spirit touches human hearts, it cuts down pride and the love of pleasure and power. It increases humility and self-sacrificing love. John’s mission was the same: to prepare the hearts of people for the coming King, so that they would be ready to accept Him.
Jerry D. Thomas (Messiah)
Giovanni, in love with her unabashed feminine strength and her reconciliation of love and revolution. I spent nearly every waking moment around Nikki, and I loved her dearly. But sibling relationships are often fraught with petty tortures. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But I had. At the time, I couldn’t understand my mother’s anger. I mean this wasn’t really a woman I was punching. This was Nikki. She could take it. Years would pass before I understood how that blow connected to my mom’s past. My mother came to the United States at the age of three. She was born in Lowe River in the tiny parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, hours away from the tourist traps that line the coast. Its swaths of deep brush and arable land made it great for farming but less appealing for honeymoons and hedonism. Lowe River was quiet, and remote, and it was home for my mother, her older brother Ralph, and my grandparents. My maternal great-grandfather Mas Fred, as he was known, would plant a coconut tree at his home in Mount Horeb, a neighboring area, for each of his kids and grandkids when they were born. My mom always bragged that hers was the tallest and strongest of the bunch. The land that Mas Fred and his wife, Miss Ros, tended had been cared for by our ancestors for generations. And it was home for my mom until her parents earned enough money to bring the family to the States to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of a theology degree from an American university. When my mom first landed in the Bronx, she was just a small child, but she was a survivor and learned quickly. She studied the other kids at school like an anthropologist, trying desperately to fit in. She started with the way she spoke. She diligently listened to the radio from the time she was old enough to turn it on and mimicked what she heard. She’d always pull back enough in her interactions with her classmates to give herself room to quietly observe them, so that when she got home she could practice imitating their accents, their idiosyncrasies, their style. Words like irie became cool. Constable became policeman. Easy-nuh became chill out. The melodic, swooping movement of her Jamaican patois was quickly replaced by the more stable cadences of American English. She jumped into the melting pot with both feet. Joy Thomas entered American University in Washington, D.C., in 1968, a year when she and her adopted homeland were both experiencing
Wes Moore (The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates)
Caves are cool in warm weather. Beware of bats, however. Bat urine will give you, as well as animals such as dogs, the rabies. Photograph supposedly shows an early man drawing on the walls of a cave. Such cave drawings are nearly all faked but are great tourist attractions. Cave drawings are invariably "discovered" in remote parts of a cave. If they were allegedly found in readily accessible areas of caves, they would be quickly declared to be fakes.
George Leonard Herter (How to Get out of the Rat Race and Live on $10 a Month)
Horseman is the haunting sequel to the 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and takes place two decades after the events that unfolded in the original. We are introduced to 14-year-old trans boy Bente “Ben” Van Brunt, who has been raised by his idiosyncratic grandparents - lively Brom “Bones” Van Brunt and prim Kristina Van Tassel - in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where gossip and rumour run rife and people are exceedingly closed-minded. He has lived with them on their farm ever since he was orphaned when his parents, Bendix and Fenna, died in suspicious and enigmatic circumstances. Ben and his only friend, Sander, head into the woodland one Autumn day to play a game known as Sleepy Hollow Boys, but they are both a little startled when they witness a group of men they recognise from the village discussing the headless, handless body of a local boy that has just been found. But this isn't the end; it is only the beginning. From that moment on, Ben feels an otherworldly presence following him wherever he ventures, and one day while scanning his grandfather’s fields he catches a fleeting glimpse of a weird creature seemingly sucking blood from a victim. An evil of an altogether different nature. But Ben knows this is not the elusive Horseman who has been the primary focus of folkloric tales in the area for many years because he can both feel and hear his presence. However, unlike others who fear the Headless Horseman, Ben can hear whispers in the woods at the end of a forbidden path, and he has visions of the Horseman who says he is there to protect him. Ben soon discovers connections between the recent murders and the death of his parents and realises he has been shaded from the truth about them his whole life. Thus begins a journey to unravel the mystery and establish his identity in the process. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable piece of horror fiction building on Irvings’ solid ground. Evoking such feelings as horror, terror, dread and claustrophobic oppressiveness, this tale invites you to immerse yourself in its sinister, creepy and disturbing narrative. The staggering beauty of the remote village location is juxtaposed with the darkness of the demons and devilish spirits that lurk there, and the village residents aren't exactly welcoming to outsiders or accepting of anyone different from their norm. What I love the most is that it is subtle and full of nuance, instead of the usual cheap thrills with which the genre is often pervaded, meaning the feeling of sheer panic creeps up on you when you least expect, and you come to the sudden realisation that the story has managed to get under your skin, into your psyche and even into your dreams (or should that be nightmares?) Published at a time when the nights are closing in and the light diminishes ever more rapidly, not to mention with Halloween around the corner, this is the perfect autumnal read for the spooky season full of both supernatural and real-world horrors. It begins innocuously enough to lull you into a false sense of security but soon becomes bleak and hauntingly atmospheric as well as frightening before descending into true nightmare-inducing territory. A chilling and eerie romp, and a story full of superstition, secrets, folklore and old wives’ tales and with messages about love, loss, belonging, family, grief, being unapologetically you and becoming more accepting and tolerant of those who are different. Highly recommended.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
Many of these caravanserais survive to the present day and have become tourist attractions in otherwise remote areas. Without the safe haven and supplies provided by these inns, the Silk Road could not have flourished as a main trade route.
Hourly History (Silk Road: A History from Beginning to End (History of China))
The first area you want to touch on after initial rapport is digging into their goals. Ask the questions, “What are you looking to accomplish?” “What are your goals?” “Where do you see yourself in the next one, five, ten years?” This allows your prospect to get excited and to a place of possibility. We all get excited about what could be. So build on this initially. Ask your prospect where they want to be. How much money they want to make. How much freedom they want to have! Figure out what their goals are first.
Chad Aleo (The Book on High Ticket Sales: The Ultimate Guide to Making Millions Through Remote Selling)
I wanted to get a look at the area near that forward magazine, but I wasn’t sure if that would be possible, because Lusitania was resting on her starboard side. The wreckage also had become a favorite place for local fishermen to set their nets, and some of the nets had broken off and gotten caught on the ship’s superstructure, forming a giant spider’s web that could endanger our manned mini-sub Delta, our newly developed Jason robot, and a smaller remote-controlled vehicle called Homer. The first step was to use Jason and its sophisticated sonars to make a 3-D model of the wreck. We could then superimpose the ship’s original engineering drawings onto that map to locate the forward magazine precisely. Fortunately, the angle of Lusitania’s hull made it possible for Homer to slip under the bow and determine that the forward magazine was completely intact. Whatever had caused the second explosion had not been stored there.
Robert D. Ballard (Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found the Titanic)
Moreover, the spread of cable and satellite television, beaming programmes like Baywatch and The Bold and the Beautiful in to millions of ordinary mofussil towns and villages, has made vast numbers of Indians aware for the first time of how the other half lives, inevitably generating resentment that others are enjoying a lifestyle that to them is totally inaccessible. An Inspector General of Police told me that towards the end of the 1980s, as satellite dishes and cable began to reach the remoter parts of his state, the crime in his area rose exponentially. The poor had become aware for the first time of what they were missing.
William Dalrymple (The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters)
Physicists study the vast number of stars, examining equations and mathematical odds, and say there must be something else out there like us. Biologists look down at our own planet, at all the specific things that occurred for evolution to work, and say, ‘not likely.’ It’s not a math equation, but if it were, the sheer odds of other sentient life even remotely like us are incalculable—even in the vastness of outer space.
Doug Brode (The Ship)
The ‘lost years’ of Jesus are no mystery: Between the ages of 12 and 30, according to these sources, he was receiving special training aboard a spacecraft or in a remote area of Earth selected by the space entities.
Mark Eastman (Alien Encounters)
The possibility of a seamless network of electrified robo-taxis, self-driving delivery vehicles, and public transit linked to smartphone applications might seem like science fiction, but the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 gave a flavor of what is to come. In China’s pandemic epicenter of Wuhan, unmanned, autonomous electric vehicles, monitored remotely from a computer screen in a different location, were used to deliver hospital supplies, to disinfect isolation areas, and to deliver meals to quarantined people.
Amy Myers Jaffe (Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security (Center on Global Energy Policy Series))
A large tomb had been found in a remote area of the forest. It was interesting that it wasn’t on any local maps, and the residents that lived closest to it seemed unaware of its existence. Alistair had pulled the information from Peter’s mind. Peter had heard talk of moving relics closer to Arariel. They were planning to clear Ophanium in the next few days, so we made sure to arrive first.
Amber V. Nicole (The Book of Azrael (Gods & Monsters, #1))
Shortly after, the Emperor took his new apprentice off to a remote area of the galaxy where construction of a new superweapon was just beginning—a gigantic space station with the power to destroy whole planets with a single laser blast.
Patricia C. Wrede (Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy)
The Role of Technology in Preventing and Solving Burglaries The world of crime and law enforcement has seen significant technological advancements in recent years. One area where technology has played a vital role is in preventing and solving burglaries. In this blog, we will explore the evolving role of technology in addressing burglary and the various ways it is employed by both law enforcement agencies and homeowners to combat this crime. 1. Home Security Systems One of the most visible and effective uses of technology in burglary prevention is home security systems. These systems often include surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and alarm systems. The ability to monitor and control these systems remotely through smartphone apps has given homeowners a valuable tool in protecting their property. 2. Smart Locks and Access Control Modern technology has given rise to smart locks and access control systems. Homeowners can now control and monitor access to their properties through smartphone apps. This technology allows for greater security and easier management of who enters your home, making it harder for burglars to gain unauthorized access. 3. Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Policing Law enforcement agencies are using artificial intelligence and data analysis to predict and prevent burglaries. By analyzing historical crime data, AI can identify patterns and hotspots, enabling police to allocate resources more effectively. Predictive policing can lead to faster response times and a more proactive approach to preventing burglaries. 4. Video Surveillance and Facial Recognition High-definition video surveillance and facial recognition technology have become powerful tools for both homeowners and law enforcement. Surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities can help identify and track potential suspects. This technology can aid in capturing clear images of burglars, making it easier to apprehend them. 5. Social Media and Digital Footprints Social media has become a valuable source of information for law enforcement. Burglars often inadvertently leave digital footprints, such as posts, photos, or location data, that can link them to crime scenes. Detectives can use these digital clues to build cases and identify suspects. 6. DNA Analysis and Forensics Advancements in DNA analysis and forensics have revolutionized the way burglary cases are investigated. DNA evidence can link suspects to crime scenes and help secure convictions. This technology has not only led to the solving of cold cases but also to the prevention of future crimes through the fear of leaving DNA evidence behind. 7. Community Apps and Reporting Many communities now use smartphone apps to report suspicious activities and communicate with neighbors. These apps have become effective in preventing burglaries through community engagement. They facilitate quick reporting of unusual incidents and can be a deterrent to potential burglars. Conclusion Technology has significantly improved the prevention and solving of burglaries. Homeowners now have access to advanced security systems, while law enforcement agencies use data analysis, surveillance, and forensics to track and apprehend suspects. The synergy between technology and law enforcement has made it increasingly challenging for burglars to operate undetected. As technology continues to advance, the fight against burglaries will only become more effective, ultimately making our communities safer.
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Much of his material appeared in an article in Psychiatry magazine, November, 1959: “The Culture, Psychiatry, and the Written Word.” Again, it is electric speed that has revealed the lines of force operating from Western technology in the remotest areas of bush, savannah, and desert. One example is the Bedouin with his battery radio on board the camel. Submerging natives with floods of concepts for which nothing has prepared them is the normal action of all our technology. But with electric media Western man himself experiences exactly the same inundation as the remote native.
Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man)
Much of his material appeared in an article in Psychiatry magazine, November, 1959: “The Culture, Psychiatry, and the Written Word.” Again, it is electric speed that has revealed the lines of force operating from Western technology in the remotest areas of bush, savannah, and desert. One example is the Bedouin with his battery radio on board the camel. Submerging natives with floods of concepts for which nothing has prepared them is the normal action of all our technology. But with electric media Western man himself experiences exactly the same inundation as the remote native. We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation. We are as numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture.
Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man)
Ramakrishna Paramhans Ward, PO mangal nagar, Katni, [M.P.] 2nd Floor, Above KBZ Pay Centre, between 65 & 66 street, Manawhari Road Mandalay, Myanmar Phone +95 9972107002 1. Study Organizations in Myanmar: A Growing Demand for survey companies in Myanmar is a Southeast Asian nation steeped in culture and history. Over the past ten years, it has undergone rapid economic growth and modernization. This development has made an expanding market for different administrations, including statistical surveying. Businesses in Myanmar benefit greatly from the assistance of survey firms in comprehending consumer behavior, market trends, and the landscape of competition. Among the main players in this field is AMT Statistical surveying, an organization known for its complete administrations and neighborhood skill. The Role of survey companies in Myanmar Businesses wishing to establish or expand their presence in this dynamic market must conduct market research in Myanmar. Myanmar, which has a population of over 54 million people, presents significant opportunities for businesses operating in a variety of industries, including tourism, finance, consumer goods, and telecommunications. However, the market also faces unique obstacles like a diverse ethnic landscape, varying degrees of economic development across regions, and a regulatory environment that is constantly shifting. By providing insights into consumer preferences, purchasing patterns, and market dynamics, survey companies assist businesses in navigating these complexities. To get accurate and relevant data, they use a variety of methods, such as observational studies, qualitative interviews, focus groups, and quantitative surveys. Driving Overview Organizations in Myanmar A few overview organizations work in Myanmar, each offering a scope of administrations custom-made to address the issues of various clients. AMT Market Research stands out among these due to its extensive experience and thorough comprehension of the local market. AMT Statistical surveying AMT Statistical surveying is a noticeable player in Myanmar's statistical surveying industry. Surveys of customers' satisfaction, market research, brand health monitoring, and other services are all offered by the business. AMT's group of experienced scientists and examiners influence their neighborhood information and skill to convey noteworthy bits of knowledge for organizations. AMT Statistical surveying uses a blend of customary and current information assortment techniques. Depending on the research objectives and target audience, they conduct in-person interviews, telephone surveys, and online surveys. Their methodology guarantees top notch information assortment, even in remote and difficult to-arrive at areas of Myanmar. Myanmar Advertising Exploration and Advancement (MMRD) Laid out in 1992, MMRD is one of the most established statistical surveying firms in Myanmar. The organization offers an extensive variety of examination administrations, including market passage studies, contender investigation, and financial investigations. MMRD has gained notoriety for its intensive and solid exploration, making it a confided in accomplice for both neighborhood and worldwide organizations. Boondocks Myanmar Exploration Boondocks Myanmar Exploration is one more outstanding player on the lookout. The organization represents considerable authority in giving experiences into Myanmar's advancing business sector scene. Their administrations incorporate area explicit exploration, purchaser conduct studies, and effect evaluations. Wilderness Myanmar Exploration is known for its inventive philosophies and capacity to adjust to the quickly changing economic situations. Understanding Myanmar Understanding Myanmar is a somewhat new participant in the statistical surveying industry however has rapidly earned respect for its excellent exploration and client-driven approach.
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He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. • • • When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed. • • •
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Solar Street Light Manufacturers in Bangalore- SunEase Sun based As urban areas take a stab at feasible turn of events, sun powered road lighting has become fundamental in metropolitan and provincial regions the same. In Bangalore, known as the tech center point of India, SunEase Sun based is driving the charge in assembling great sun powered streetlamps that add to energy reserve funds and natural preservation. Why Pick Sun powered Streetlamps? Sun powered streetlamps are an eco-accommodating, practical option in contrast to conventional road lighting. These frameworks convert daylight into energy during the day, putting away it in batteries to drive lights around evening time. By utilizing sun based fueled lighting, urban communities can decrease energy utilization and lower fossil fuel byproducts, while guaranteeing solid lighting for security and perceivability. About SunEase Sun oriented SunEase Sun oriented is one of the Solar Street Light Manufacturers in Bangalore . Known for its imaginative methodology and obligation to supportability, SunEase Sun powered conveys strong, energy-proficient road lighting arrangements. Whether for private networks, recreational areas, interstates, or modern buildings, SunEase Sun based gives altered answers for meet explicit prerequisites. Key Elements of SunEase Sun powered Streetlamps High Effectiveness and Long Battery Duration SunEase Sun oriented streetlamps utilize progressed sunlight based chargers and lithium-particle batteries to guarantee ideal energy stockpiling and dependable power. These high-productivity boards augment energy catch, even in low daylight conditions, guaranteeing that the lights stay endured the evening. Brilliant Control Frameworks The streetlamps from SunEase Sun powered highlight shrewd controls, considering mechanized splendor changes in view of time or surrounding light. This limits energy squander and broadens the functional existence of each light. Climate Safe Plan SunEase Sun oriented streetlamps are intended to endure Bangalore's fluctuated atmospheric conditions, from weighty downpours to extraordinary summer heat. The lights accompany a sturdy, climate safe packaging that safeguards inward parts, guaranteeing predictable execution consistently. Low Support Sun based streetlamps by SunEase Sun powered are low-upkeep, lessening functional costs over the long run. With great materials and trend setting innovation, these lights offer superb unwavering quality, requiring insignificant upkeep. Simple Establishment The sun based streetlamps from SunEase Sun oriented are intended for simple, bother free establishment. Since they don't need complex wiring, they can be introduced rapidly in practically any area, making them ideal for remote or off-lattice regions. Uses of SunEase Sun oriented Streetlamps Local locations and Lodging Social orders: Improve security and style with sun based road lighting in private zones. Recreational areas and Pathways: Give lighting to public spaces, empowering safe utilization into the evening. Modern and Business Edifices: Guarantee sufficiently bright conditions for security and functional proficiency. Provincial and Far off Regions: Sun oriented streetlamps offer a solid arrangement in regions without admittance to lattice power. Why Pick SunEase Sun powered for Your Lighting Needs? SunEase Sun powered stands apart among sun oriented streetlamp producers in Bangalore for its commitment to quality, solidness, and state of the art innovation. They focus on consumer loyalty and deal complete help, from item determination to after-deals administration. With an accomplished group and elevated expectations, SunEase Sun based guarantees each venture is customized to meet the client's interesting necessities.
Solar Street Light Manufacturers in Bangalore
How to Use the Biker Service for CNIC Applications In an effort to streamline the application process for CNICs (Computerized National Identity Cards) and make government services more accessible, the Biker Service has been introduced as a part of Pakistan’s initiative to modernize its registration systems. This service allows citizens to complete their CNIC applications from the comfort of their homes through mobile service officers who assist in the process. Here’s a guide on how to effectively use the Biker Service for your CNIC application. 1. What is the Biker Service? The Biker Service is an outreach program that sends mobile registration officers directly to applicants’ homes. This service is especially beneficial for individuals who face difficulties visiting local NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) centers due to health, age, or mobility issues. It provides doorstep assistance to ensure all parts of the CNIC application, including biometric verification and photo capture, are done seamlessly. 2. Key Benefits Convenience: Eliminates the need to visit physical centers. Time-Saving: Reduces waiting times associated with in-person visits. Accessibility: Helps those in remote or underserved areas complete their applications. Professional Assistance: Ensures the application is correctly filled and all necessary steps are completed. 3. Steps to Use the Biker Service for CNIC Applications Booking an Appointment: Contact NADRA’s helpline or visit their online service portal to schedule a biker appointment. Provide your personal details and address to confirm the visit. Prepare Required Documents: Ensure that you have all necessary documents ready, such as your old CNIC (if renewing), a copy of your birth certificate, or any relevant supporting paperwork for a new CNIC application. The Biker Visit: On the scheduled day, a NADRA officer on a motorcycle will arrive at your address. The officer will verify your identity, take your photograph, and collect your biometric data (fingerprints and thumb impressions) directly at your home. Completion and Confirmation: The mobile officer submits your application to the NADRA system. You will receive a receipt or application tracking number for follow-up. Payment and Fees: The cost of the Biker Service includes standard CNIC processing fees plus an additional convenience charge. Ensure you have the means to make a payment, whether via cash or through any payment method recommended during the booking. 4. Tracking Your Application Once your application is submitted, you can track its progress using NADRA’s online tracking system. Enter your application or tracking number to check the status and receive updates on when your CNIC will be ready for collection or delivery. Final Thoughts The Biker Service by NADRA is a major advancement in making government services more user-friendly and accessible to a broader population. It saves applicants from the hassle of traveling and long queues, making it especially useful for senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, and those living in remote areas. If you’re eligible and looking for a hassle-free way to apply for a CNIC, this service is a great option to consider.
Abdul Rehman
Top Reasons to Go to Vietnam There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam getaways will not have a single dull moment. Vietnam tours are another name of enjoyable and excitement. There are lots of tour operators that conduct interesting Vietnam tours and journeys through a number of Vietnam bundle trip. Holidaying in Vietnam is fantastic undoubtedly for sightseeing in Vietnam. The country is dotted with numerous well-known tourist websites in Vietnam. Amongst many places of interest in Vietnam astounding natural charm, tranquil villages, serene lakes, old pagodas, gorgeous lakes especially allure the travel freaks. Even the history fans like to discover the popular traveler destinations. Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Hoi An are significant cities of Vietnam that are frequented by visitors. Sightseeing tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historic, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Fantastic architecture of the citadels, royal tombs, temples and palaces is marvelous site. Dien Bien Phu, C? Loa citadel, Hoa Lo prison, Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and Ba Dinh square and Quang Tri are not to be missed out on while exploring in Vietnam. Things to do in Vietnam give a broad variety of options. Some locations like Hoi Chin Minh City and Hanoi are finest locations to have trendy clothes and actual antique pieces. People also like to have Vietnam War- Army watches and military clothes as momentums of the nation. Entertainment in Vietnam has numerous alternatives. Night life of Vietnam is pulsating and the celebration enthusiasts are thrilled by the revitalizing nightlife here. Vietnam tourist guide will assist you know more about nightlife in Vietnam. Pool, Nightclubs, bars, clubs are an usual website below. Even in the far-flung and remote mountainous areas like Sapa, Karaoke bars are popular amongst the different nightspots of Vietnam. There are numerous bars and clubs in Ho Chin Minh City, vietnam tours, the most popular ones among them being Apocalypse Now, Q Bar, Underground Bar and Grill and Carmen Bar. Nha Trang too offers a selection of choices with regards to bars and bars. With these options, you certainly wouldn't need to stress over things to do in Vietnam after dusk sets in. There's just no dearth of things to do in Vietnam and you can be rest assured that your Vietnam trips will not have a single dull moment. There are many trip operators that conduct remarkable Vietnam tours and moves through a number of vietnam holiday packages. Holidaying in Vietnam is terrific certainly for sightseeing in Vietnam. Touring tours in Vietnam take the travelers to various places of historical, spiritual significance and Vietnam Culture Trip. Vietnam traveler guide will help you know more about night life in Vietnam.
Vietnam
The US military had this huge generator they needed to get to an airfield site they were planning in the south. This was a remote area, and aside from a few pockets of US troops, it was completely under bandit control. There was no fuel available for miles around the landing spot, and none of the outfits we approached would touch it with a bargepole. They all kept saying, “We’ll never get out again, how can we take off from an unprepared airfield with no fuel?” ‘The job was priced at between sixty thousand and seventy thousand dollars, but one day there’s a phone call from these Russian guys. They said, “We’ll do it, but it’ll cost you two million dollars, in advance.” The Americans didn’t really have a choice by this stage, so they paid. And sure enough, right on time, this ex-Soviet air force crew flew in, with the generator, in this battered old Il-76, unloaded the generator, then sat down for a leisurely smoke. ‘Just as all the Americans were wondering how on earth they were going to fly out again, there’s a cloud of dust and up clatters this old minibus driven by some Afghan bloke – and these airmen just get in and drive off. The Yanks were all going, “Hey, how will you get the plane back?” And the crew just said, “We won’t. It’s an old one – we only bought it for this job, and we’re ditching it here.” Half a million dollars it cost them, and they held it together with string just long enough to land, then cleared off one and a half million dollars in profit and left it to rust. It’s still there.
Matt Potter (Outlaws Inc.)
The perfect paleo diet is one in which you avoid all grain, dairy, fruit, hybridized vegetables, and all meat other than wild game hunted from pristine, remote areas.
Willy Mammoth (Mastering the Real Paleo Diet: All You Can Eat Meat, and All You Can Handle Health and Leanness)
Somewhere Else Discouraging, or training a cat away from a certain area is impossible to achieve as a human. This is because it has to happen within two seconds with consistent intensity every single time they come within the forbidden perimeter If you’re at work, you can’t spray the cat with water when she jumps on the counter. Do yourself a favor and get a remote training device! You won’t need it for more than a few weeks. For instance, one such device is a compressed air canister with an electric eye. The cat jumps up on the counter, the can sprays a spurt of air. The cat jumps down. She won’t have to do this too many days in a row before she just decides that the counter is unfriendly. That being said, don’t forget my rule of thumb when discouraging a cat from doing something: Behind every “No” there needs to be a “Yes!” If your cats are insistent about the counter, use your cat mojo and figure out why it’s so important. Then, give them a perch right nearby that’s acceptable to you and achieves the important objective for them.
Jackson Galaxy (Cat Daddy: What the World's Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me about Life, Love, and Coming Clean)
Likewise, the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans give significantly less to charity as a fraction of income (1.4 percent) than the poorest 20 percent do (3.5 percent), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That may be partly because affluence insulates us from need, so that disadvantage becomes theoretical and remote rather than a person in front of us. Wealthy people who live in economically diverse areas are more generous than those who live in exclusively wealthy areas.
Anonymous
Our next test weekend was in a particularly hellish area of the Welsh mountains--remote, godforsaken, and full of even more boggy, ankle-twisting moon grass. The area became known affectionately by the other recruits as simply: “The asshole of the world.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
The taiga provides wonderful opportunities for truly long-distance expeditions into areas that are incredibly remote from civilisation. The spiritual reward of such journeys can prove to be transcendental,
Ray Mears (Out on the Land: Bushcraft Skills from the Northern Forest)