Rowing Machine Quotes

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I could understand the moon leaning across a bar on skid row and asking for a drink, but I couldn't understand anything about myself, I was murdered, I was shit, I was a tentful of dogs, I was poppies mowed down by machine-gun fire I was a hotshot wasp in a web I was less and less and still reaching for something, and I thought of her corny remark a night or so ago: You have wounded eyes.
Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket.
Tori Amos (Piece by Piece)
Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room-the pool table, snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost's, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
She could surely rise to a dishwasher, but she prefers to use her children. She believes that a row of children chopping vegetables is a better thing than a machine.
Barbara Trapido (Brother of the More Famous Jack)
In clear-cutting, he said, you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls "weed trees," and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. You then dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed-away humus, inject the seedlings with growth-forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellants and raise a uniform crop of trees, all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height (not maturity; that takes too long) you send in a fleet of tree-harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, fertilize all over again, round and round and round again, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole.
Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang (Monkey Wrench Gang, #1))
Have you ever wondered why the keys on a typewriter are arranged in that particular order?” “No, I haven’t.” “We call it the QWERTY keyboard, because that’s the order of the letters on the first row of keys. I once wondered why it was like that, and I found the answer. The first machine was invented by Christopher Sholes, in 1873, to improve on calligraphy, but there was a problem: If a person typed very fast, the keys got stuck together and stopped the machine from working. Then Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard, a keyboard that would oblige typists to type more slowly. ” “I don’t believe it.” “But it’s true. It so happened that Remington—which made sewing machines as well as guns at the time—used the QWERTY keyboard for its first typewriters. That meant that more people were forced to learn that particular system, and more companies started to make those keyboards, until it became the only available model. To repeat: The keyboard on typewriters and computers was designed so that people would type more slowly, not more quickly, do you understand? If you changed the letters around, you wouldn’t find anyone to buy your product.” When she saw a keyboard for the first time, Mari had wondered why the letters weren’t in alphabetical order, but she had then promptly forgotten about it. She assumed it was simply the best layout for people to type quickly.
Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
I know you white girls are all touchy feely, but, could you not? I feel like I’m a felon on death row every time you touch me. It’s like, damn, can I get a last meal at least before getting hooked up to the electric machine?
Rebecca Espinoza (Binds (Binds, #1))
I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day.
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
Indeed, the embeddings, simple as they are—just a row of numbers for each word, based on predicting nearby missing words in a text—seemed to capture a staggering amount of real-world information.
Brian Christian (The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values)
Whether they are part of a home or home is a part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen–the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washing day, of wool drying in the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops. His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-back copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it. Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too–the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.
William Maxwell (So Long, See You Tomorrow)
Those barbaric contraptions at the gym intimidate me. I once sprained my wrist trying to change the amount of weight resistance on a rowing machine, and have you seen all the different strap, rope, and handle attachments for the cable machine? Half of them look like sex toys for horses.
R.S. Grey (Not So Nice Guy)
They were in a trench sliding through a forest of corn. Machine stood over the rows, black girders that arced in the sky like the proscenium above a stage. The thought occurred to Wayne that those machines were sprayers, full of poison. They would drench the corn in a lethal rain to keep it from being eaten by invasive species. Those exact words - "invasive species" - rang through his brain. Later the corn would be lightly washed and people would eat it.
Joe Hill (NOS4A2)
automated voices and the bells from the row of testing machines in the back. The walls were white cinder block, the floors speckled linoleum. At the front desk were four large black ladies. Leigh Anne handed all the documents over to one of them, who took one look at them and said in a slow drawl, “Uh-uh. This school
Michael Lewis (The Blind Side)
To begin with, there is the frightful debauchery of taste that has already been effected by a century of mechanisation. This is almost too obvious and too generally admitted to need pointing out. But as a single instance, take taste in its narrowest sense - the taste for decent food. In the highly mechanical countries, thanks to tinned food, cold storage, synthetic flavouring matters, etc., the palate it almost a dead organ. As you can see by looking at any greengrocer’s shop, what the majority of English people mean by an apple is a lump of highly-coloured cotton wool from America or Australia; they will devour these things, apparently with pleasure, and let the English apples rot under the trees. It is the shiny, standardized, machine-made look of the American apple that appeals to them; the superior taste of the English apple is something they simply do not notice. Or look at the factory-made, foil wrapped cheeses and ‘blended’ butter in an grocer’s; look at the hideous rows of tins which usurp more and more of the space in any food-shop, even a dairy; look at a sixpenny Swiss roll or a twopenny ice-cream; look at the filthy chemical by-product that people will pour down their throats under the name of beer. Wherever you look you will see some slick machine-made article triumphing over the old-fashioned article that still tastes of something other than sawdust. And what applies to food applies also to furniture, houses, clothes, books, amusements and everything else that makes up our environment. These are now millions of people, and they are increasing every year, to whom the blaring of a radio is not only a more acceptable but a more normal background to their thoughts than the lowing of cattle or the song of birds. The mechanisation of the world could never proceed very far while taste, even the taste-buds of the tongue, remained uncorrupted, because in that case most of the products of the machine would be simply unwanted. In a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned food, aspirins, gramophones, gas-pipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc. etc.; and on the other hand there would be a constant demand for the things the machine cannot produce. But meanwhile the machine is here, and its corrupting effects are almost irresistible. One inveighs against it, but one goes on using it. Even a bare-arse savage, given the change, will learn the vices of civilisation within a few months. Mechanisation leads to the decay of taste, the decay of taste leads to demand for machine-made articles and hence to more mechanisation, and so a vicious circle is established.
George Orwell (The Road to Wigan Pier)
Kane was stunned by the raw emotion of Ryland's words, of the depth of reverence in his voice. Ryland was a cold killing machine, who cared only about following his own path, about revenge, about his own brand of justice. He was a warrior who felt nothing, who saw no beauty, who had no depth to his soul other than death, pain and anger, and yet his sincerity about his mother was so evident that Kane could feel the other warrior's emotion. "Son of a bitch, Ryland," he said softly, staring at the warrior he thought he knew. "Who the hell are you?" Ryland's head snapped up. "Don't swear in her prescence, you bastard. She'a fucking angel, and deserves far more than a piece of scum like you or I could ever offer her. Don't ever forget it.
Stephanie Rowe (Darkness Reborn (Order of the Blade #5))
trompe l’oeil row of lockers marked the hallway down to the Social Room, a lounge designated for the seniors, where there was a microwave for making popcorn during free periods, and a Coke machine that cost only fifty cents instead of seventy-five like the ones in the cafeteria, and a chunky black cube of a jukebox left over from the seventies and now loaded with Sir Mix-a-Lot and Smashing Pumpkins and the Spice Girls.
Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere)
The town wakes early, like it does every day; small towns need a head start if they’re going to have any chance in the world. The rows of cars in the parking lot outside the factory are already covered with snow; people are standing in silent lines with their eyes half-open and their minds half-closed, waiting for their electronic punch cards to verify their existence to the clocking-in machine. They stamp the slush off their boots with autopilot eyes and answering-machine voices while they wait for their drug of choice—caffeine or nicotine or sugar—to kick in and render their bodies at least tolerably functional until the first break.
Fredrik Backman (Beartown (Beartown, #1))
And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians – dead! – slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds)
Instead of purchasing a bed, Norris said, the Department of Corrections found it cheaper to direct the prisoners in the machine and welding shops to build it, with each part of the bed assembled separately. Norris paused, shaking his head at the memory. “One of the guys on the welding crew, his brother was on death row.
Clint Smith (How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America)
Every individual who walks, runs, rides bikes, swims, rows, paddles, skis, shovels or hoes is setting up a line of defence against the mad onslaught of machines; if he is a parent, grandparent, teacher, youth mentor or exercise instructor who also manages to win a few other people over to his side, he is doing an even better job.
Pentti Linkola (Can Life Prevail?)
There’s not much here that tempts me though. I look for folks who appear to be having fun, but can’t find any. Row after row of sad faces hooked up to slot machines like arms connected to IV's, drugs pumping into their minds. Table after table of drained souls looking to leave scraps of happiness and dignity on the green felt of the blackjack table.
Neil M. Hanson (Pilgrim Wheels: Reflections of a Cyclist Crossing America)
Where is he?” Leo sat up, but his head felt like it was floating. They’d landed inside the compound. Something had happened on the way in—gunfire? “Seriously, Leo,” Jason said. “You could be hurt. You shouldn’t—” Leo pushed himself to his feet. Then he saw the wreckage. Festus must have dropped the big canary cages as he came over the fence, because they’d rolled in different directions and landed on their sides, perfectly undamaged. Festus hadn’t been so lucky. The dragon had disintegrated. His limbs were scattered across the lawn. His tail hung on the fence. The main section of his body had plowed a trench twenty feet wide and fifty feet long across the mansion’s yard before breaking apart. What remained of his hide was a charred, smoking pile of scraps. Only his neck and head were somewhat intact, resting across a row of frozen rosebushes like a pillow. “No,” Leo sobbed. He ran to the dragon’s head and stroked its snout. The dragon’s eyes flickered weakly. Oil leaked out of his ear. “You can’t go,” Leo pleaded. “You’re the best thing I ever fixed.” The dragon’s head whirred its gears, as if it were purring. Jason and Piper stood next to him, but Leo kept his eyes fixed on the dragon. He remembered what Hephaestus had said: That isn’t your fault, Leo. Nothing lasts forever, not even the best machines. His dad had been trying to warn him. “It’s not fair,” he said. The dragon clicked. Long creak. Two short clicks. Creak. Creak. Almost like a pattern…triggering an old memory in Leo’s mind. Leo realized Festus was trying to say something. He was using Morse code—just like Leo’s mom had taught him years ago. Leo
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
Almost all the most important people in the country took turns living there, or at least attending the spiritualist meetings, the cultural discussions, and the social gatherings. Among them was the Poet—years later considered the greatest of the century and translated into all the known languages on earth—on whose knees Alba often sat, little suspecting that one day she would walk behind his casket, with a bunch of bloody carnations in her hand, between two rows of machine guns. Clara
Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)
small towns need a head start if they’re going to have any chance in the world. The rows of cars in the parking lot outside the factory are already covered with snow; people are standing in silent lines with their eyes half-open and their minds half-closed, waiting for their electronic punch cards to verify their existence to the clocking-in machine. They stamp the slush off their boots with autopilot eyes and answering-machine voices while they wait for their drug of choice—caffeine or nicotine or sugar—to kick in and render their bodies at least tolerably functional until the first break.
Fredrik Backman (Beartown (Beartown, #1))
We were quiet for a while after that. I looked around the visiting area. I had spent so much time here over the last few decades. I had eaten a lot of key lime pie out of the vending machine. And I had come to respect and love this man who sat in front of me. He was tired too, and I was just one of many battles he was fighting. We both deserved a win. It was time. And if it wasn’t, then I would take my Thursday. I would eat my last meal, and I would thank Lester for being the best friend a guy could ever have, and I would tell Bryan Stevenson that he couldn’t save everyone and I knew he had done everything he could. I would have joy knowing that I lived as big a life as anyone ever could live in a five-by-seven cell.
Anthony Ray Hinton (The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row)
half-century before, at Stalin’s direct order, NKVD executioners slaughtered fifteen thousand Polish military officers and threw the bodies into rows of mass graves. The month-long operation in Kalinin, Katyn, and Starobelsk was part of Stalin’s attempt to begin the domination of Poland. The young officers had been among the best-educated men in Poland, and Stalin saw them as a potential danger, as enemies-in-advance. For decades after, Moscow put the blame for the killings on the Nazis, saying the Germans had carried out the massacres in 1941, not the NKVD in 1940. The Kremlin propaganda machine sustained the fiction in speeches, diplomatic negotiations, and textbooks, weaving it into the vast fabric of ideology and official history that sustained the regime and its empire.
David Remnick (Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (Pulitzer Prize Winner))
He took a trip ... up to ... Elliott's house, his mansion rather. Awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door and next door to that. A row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity. His very own son. His big, bald son. Who could believe it. The bigness, the baldness, the stupidity. In a house designed to bore the daylight out of visitors, no character at all, all blonde wood and fluorescent lighting and clean white machinery. Not to mention his brand new wife, number three, a clean white machine herself. Up from the cookie cutter and into Elliott's life, she might as well have jumped out of the microwave, her skin orange, her teeth pearly white. A trophy wife. But why the word "trophy"? Something to shoot on a safari.
Colum McCann (Thirteen Ways of Looking)
Death had brushed hard against him, and beneath the calculations of a public relations machine, he was struggling mightily within himself. Johnson’s New Deal friend Jim Rowe had sent him a recently published biography on Lincoln, which detailed the profound change Lincoln had undergone during a waiting time when he was out of politics. This was Johnson’s waiting time, a time of gathering strength and direction. When Lincoln had suffered his deep depression he had asked himself: What if I died now? What would I be remembered for? Coming back from “the brink of death,” Johnson asked himself a similar set of questions. He had laid the foundation of a substantial fortune, but what purpose did that serve? He had learned to manipulate the legislative machine of the Senate with a deftness and technical expertise without parallel in American history. But to what end did one accumulate such power? Regardless of one’s impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
They call me Mac. The name's unimportant. You can best identify me by the six chevrons, three up and three down, and by that row of hashmarks. Thirty years in the United States Marine Corps. I've sailed the Cape and the Horn aboard a battlewagon with a sea so choppy the bow was awash half the time under thirty-foot waves. I've stood Legation guard in Paris and London and Prague. I know every damned port of call and call house in the Mediterranean and the world that shines beneath the Southern Cross like the nomenclature of a rifle. I've sat behind a machine gun poked through the barbed wire that encircled the International Settlement when the world was supposed to have been at peace, and I've called Jap bluffs on the Yangtze Patrol a decade before Pearl Harbor. I know the beauty of the Northern Lights that cast their eerie glow on Iceland and I know the rivers and the jungles of Central America. There are few skylines that would fool me: Sugar Loaf, Diamond Head, the Tinokiri Hills or the palms of a Caribbean hellhole. Yes, I knew the slick brown hills of Korea just as the Marines knew them in 1871. Fighting in Korea is an old story for the Corps. Nothing sounds worse than an old salt blowing his bugle. Anyhow, that isn't my story.
Leon Uris (Battle Cry)
The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, The)
A more complex example is a cooking recipe. An algorithm for preparing vegetable soup may tell us: 1.​Heat half a cup of oil in a pot. 2.​Finely chop four onions. 3.​Fry the onion until golden. 4.​Cut three potatoes into chunks and add to the pot. 5.​Slice a cabbage into strips and add to the pot. And so forth. You can follow the same algorithm dozens of times, each time using slightly different vegetables, and therefore getting a slightly different soup. But the algorithm remains the same. A recipe by itself cannot make soup. You need a person to read the recipe and follow the prescribed set of steps. But you can build a machine that embodies this algorithm and follows it automatically. Then you just need to provide the machine with water, electricity and vegetables – and it will prepare the soup by itself. There aren’t many soup machines around, but you are probably familiar with beverage vending machines. Such machines usually have a slot for coins, an opening for cups, and rows of buttons. The first row has buttons for coffee, tea and cocoa. The second row is marked: no sugar, one spoon of sugar, two spoons of sugar. The third row indicates milk, soya milk, no milk. A man approaches the machine, inserts a coin into the slot and presses the buttons marked ‘tea’, ‘one sugar’ and ‘milk’. The machine kicks into action, following a precise set of steps. It drops a tea bag into a cup, pours boiling water, adds a spoonful of sugar and milk, and ding! A nice cup of tea emerges. This is an algorithm.17
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Fifty miles out of Prague, the halved carcass of a freshly killed hog hangs, still steaming in the cold, from what looks like a child’s swing set. It’s a wet, drizzling morning and your feet are sopping and you’ve been warming yourself against the chill by huddling around the small fire over which a pot of pig parts boils. The butcher’s family and friends are drinking slivovitz and beer, and though noon is still a few hours off, you’ve had quite a few of both. Someone calls you inside to the tiled workspace, where the butcher has mixed the pig’s blood with cooked onions and spices and crumbs of country bread, and he’s ready to fill the casings. Usually, they slip the casing over a metal tube, turn on the grinding machine, cram in the forcemeat or filling, and the sausages fill like magic. This guy does it differently. He chops everything by hand. A wet mesa of black filling covers his cutting board, barely retaining its shape—yet he grabs the casing in one hand, puts two fingers in one open end, makes the “V” sign, stretching it disturbingly, and reaches with the other—then buries both his hands in the mix. A whirlwind of movement as he squeezes with his right hand, using his palm like a funnel, somehow squirting the bloody, barely containable stuff straight into the opening. He does this again and again with breathtaking speed, mowing his way across the wooden table, like a thresher cutting a row through a cornfield, a long, plump, rapidly growing, glistening, fully filled length of sausage engorging to his left as he moves. It’s a dark, purplish color through the translucent membrane. An assistant pinches off links, pins them with broken bits of wooden skewer. In moments, they are done.
Anthony Bourdain (Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook)
I’m Sushi K and I’m here to say I like to rap in a different way Look out Number One in every city Sushi K rap has all most pretty My special talking of remarkable words Is not the stereotyped bucktooth nerd My hair is big as a galaxy Cause I attain greater technology [...] I like to rap about sweetened romance My fond ambition is of your pants So here is of special remarkable way Of this fellow raps named Sushi K The Nipponese talking phenomenon Like samurai sword his sharpened tongue Who raps the East Asia and the Pacific Prosperity Sphere, to be specific [...] Sarariman on subway listen For Sushi K like nuclear fission Fire-breathing lizard Gojiro He my always big-time hero His mutant rap burn down whole block Start investing now Sushi K stock It on Nikkei stock exchange Waxes; other rappers wane Best investment, make my day Corporation Sushi K [...] Coming to America now Rappers trying to start a row Say “Stay in Japan, please, listen! We can’t handle competition!” U.S. rappers booing and hissin’ Ask for rap protectionism They afraid of Sushi K Cause their audience go away He got chill financial backin’ Give those U.S. rappers a smackin’ Sushi K concert machine Fast efficient super clean Run like clockwork in a watch Kick old rappers in the crotch [...] He learn English total immersion English/Japanese be mergin’ Into super combination So can have fans in every nation Hong Kong they speak English, too Yearn of rappers just like you Anglophones who live down under Sooner later start to wonder When they get they own rap star Tired of rappers from afar [...] So I will get big radio traffic When you look at demographic Sushi K research statistic Make big future look ballistic Speed of Sushi K growth stock Put U.S. rappers into shock
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
As strangeness becomes the new normal, your past experiences, as well as the past experiences of the whole of humanity, will become less reliable guides. Humans as individuals and humankind as a whole will increasingly have to deal with things nobody ever encountered before, such as super-intelligent machines, engineered bodies, algorithms that can manipulate your emotions with uncanny precision, rapid man-made climate cataclysms and the need to change your profession every decade. What is the right thing to do when confronting a completely unprecedented situation? How should you act when you are flooded by enormous amounts of information and there is absolutely no way you can absorb and analyse it all? How to live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug, but a feature? To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and feel at home with the unknown. Unfortunately, teaching kids to embrace the unknown and to keep their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them an equation in physics or the causes of the First World War. You cannot learn resilience by reading a book or listening to a lecture. The teachers themselves usually lack the mental flexibility that the twenty-first century demands, for they themselves are the product of the old educational system. The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education. In the middle of town there is a large concrete building divided into many identical rooms, each room equipped with rows of desks and chairs. At the sound of a bell, you go to one of these rooms together with thirty other kids who were all born the same year as you. Every hour some grown-up walks in, and starts talking. They are all paid to do so by the government. One of them tells you about the shape of the earth, another tells you about the human past, and a third tells you about the human body. It is easy to laugh at this model, and almost everybody agrees that no matter its past achievements, it is now bankrupt. But so far we haven’t created a viable alternative. Certainly not a scaleable alternative that can be implemented in rural Mexico rather than just in upmarket California suburbs.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea! Ah, I see! This foam on top is kombu seaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse!" "Mm! I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue!" "The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last. Hm! Next looks to be bonito. ...!" What rich, powerful umami!" Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito! "And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other." "Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!" "Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods." "Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!" Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth! "Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?" "From the tomatoes." "Tomatoes? But I don't see any..." "They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and the jus. I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi." "WHAT THE HECK?!" "She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?" Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree! "And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly... ... resting on top of a Chinese spoon." That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth... ... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like- "Sea bream chazuke!
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 8 [Shokugeki no Souma 8] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #8))
His choice had to be swift as the wind. Should he take cover behind the row in front of him and toss the bit of metal in the snow (it'd be noticed but they wouldn't know who the culprit was) or keep it on him? For that strip of hacksaw he could get ten days in the cells, if they classed it as a knife. But a cobbler's knife was money, it was bread. A pity to throw it away. He slipped it into his left mitten. At that moment the next row was ordered to step forward and be searched. Now the last three men stood in full view-- Senka, Shukhov, and the man from the 32nd squad who had gone to look for the Moldavian. Because they were three and the guards facing them were five, Shukhov could try a ruse. He could choose which of the two guards on the right to present himself to. He decided against a young pink-faced one and plumped for an older man with a gray mustache. The older one, of course, was experienced and could find the blade easily if he wanted to, but because of his age he would be fed up with the job. It must stink in his nose now like burning sulfur. Meanwhile Shukhov had removed both mittens, the empty one and the one with the hacksaw, and held them in one hand (the empty one in front) together with the untied rope belt. He fully unbuttoned his jacket, lifted high the edges of his coat and jacket (never had he been so servile at the search but now he wanted to show he was innocent--Come on, frisk me!), and at the word of command stepped forward. The guard slapped Shukhov's sides and back, and the outside of his pants pocket. Nothing there. He kneaded the edges of coat and jacket. Nothing there either. He was about to pass him through when, for safety's sake, he crushed the mitten that Shukhov held out to him--the empty one. The guard crushed it in his band, and Shukhov felt as though pincers of iron were crushing everything inside him. One such squeeze on the other mitten and he'd be sunk--the cells on nine ounces of bread a day and hot stew one day in three. He imagined how weak he'd grow, how difficult he'd find it to get back to his present condition, neither fed nor starving. And an urgent prayer rose in his heart: "Oh Lord, save me! Don't let them send me to the cells." And while all this raced through his mind, the guard, after finishing with the right-hand mitten, stretched a hand out to deal with the other (he would have squeezed them at the same moment if Shukhov had held them in separate hands). Just then the guard heard his chief, who was in a hurry to get on, shout to the escort: "Come on, bring up the machine-works column." And instead of examining the other mitten the old guard waved Shukhov on. He was through. He ran off to catch up with the others. They had already formed fives in a sort of corridor between long beams, like horse stalls in a market, a sort of paddock for prisoners. He ran lightly; hardly feeling the ground. He didn't say a prayer of thanksgiving because he hadn't time, and anyway it would have been out of place. The escort now drew aside.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)
The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don’t know, yet. Go out and play. But don’t go near your father. He might whale you if you go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust–perplexed and figuring. The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don’t know, yet. Go out and play. But don’t go near your father. He might whale you if you go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust–perplexed and figuring. ... The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
We applaud your efforts to hit the gym. But if you don’t take a break from the same daily exercise regimen, you could be at risk of experiencing an overuse injury, like tendinitis or a rotator cuff tear. You don’t need to be a fitness newbie: Our colleague Keri Peterson, a New York City internist who’s been a regular exerciser for years, got tendinitis in her shoulder from using the elliptical machine every day for a few months. She recommends that patients never repeat the same routine two days in a row. So if you jog on the treadmill today, do yoga or strength training tomorrow.
Anonymous
a real brain and a three-row neural network are built with neurons, but have almost nothing else in common. During the summer of 1987,
Jeff Hawkins (On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines)
There are hundreds of millions of transistors in a computer and they are connected together in precise and complex ways. But we don’t understand how the computer works or why the transistors are connected the way they are. So one day we decide to connect just a few transistors together to see what happens. Lo and behold we find that as few as three transistors, when connected together in a certain way, become an amplifier. A small signal put into one end is magnified on the other end. (Amplifiers in radios and televisions are made using transistors in this fashion.) This is an important discovery, and overnight an industry springs up making transistor radios, televisions, and other electronic appliances using transistor amplifiers. This is all well and good, but it doesn’t tell us anything about how the computer works. Even though an amplifier and a computer are both made of transistors, they have almost nothing else in common. In the same way, a real brain and a three-row neural network are built with neurons, but have almost nothing else in common. During the summer
Jeff Hawkins (On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines)
He turned away from it all then, away from the rows of houses, the endless streets, the orb passers, killing machines and the factory and its god. As he walked, the world peeled slightly at its edges. The bright tip of something different shined through. Ralph could barely see whatever it was, but, somehow, it seemed like stuff from memory.
Cameron Pierce (The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade)
Weekly Layout Monday- Legs (Quad Dominant) and Calves A.1- Squat  6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 B.1- Leg press 3-4 sets of 10 C.1- Leg Extension 3-4 sets of 10-15 C.2- Standing Calf Raise 3-4 sets of 15-20       Tuesday- Chest/Shoulder A.1- Dumbbell Bench Press 6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 A.2- Leaning Lateral Raise 4 sets of 10-12 B.1- Incline Bench Press 6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 B.2- Upright Rows 3 sets of 15-20 C.1- Machine Flies 3 sets of 8-10   Thursday- Back/Hamstrings A.1- Deadlift 6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 A.2- Bent Over Row 3 sets of 8-10 B.1- Wide grip Pull-ups 3 sets of 10+ B.2- Cable Row 3 sets of 10-12 C.1- Leg Curl 3 sets of 6-8     Friday or Saturday- Arms    A.1- Dips with weight 6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 A.2- EZ- Bar Curl 6 sets total 7,5,3,7,5,3 B.1- Hammer Curl 3 Sets of 6-8 B.2- Reverse Curl 3 Sets of 6-8 C.1- Close Grip Bench Press 3 Sets of 10-12 C.2- Skull Crushers 3 Sets of 10-12 CONCLUSION
Alexx Leyva (Weight Training: Muscle by Science: Your Simple Guide to Building a Muscular and Powerful Body (Build Muscle, Get Stronger, Workout, Gain Mass, Build Size, Gym, Weight Lifting, Exercise, Fitness))
When Big Pete first arrived here at Salton’s death row, everyone said to me, “Yo, B! (my name’s Brian, but that ain’t so cool, so all my brothers calls me “B” instead) What’s it like being Big Pete’s cellie?  You scared he gonna kill you in your sleep?”  I just smiled and let them guess.  It gave me some respect with the other inmates that I was a brother sharing a cell with the big, white, killing machine—and was still alive every morning.  But they didn’t know Big Pete like I do.  And I’m sure gonna miss him when he’s gone.
Joshua Graham (The Accidental Hero)
An Olympic rowing career had left Porter Collins a bit inured to the pain of others, as he assumed they usually didn’t know what pain was. “No,
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
She and the guard walk along the side of an open courtyard, and in the middle of it Nella can see contraptions made of wooden planks, fastened with adjustable bolts. Another machine has a row of sharp spikes. The prisoners are quite literally here to be reformed.
Jessie Burton (The Miniaturist)
Simon’s version of exercise was riding women, not rowing machines. His
Dannika Dark (Risk (Mageri, #6; Mageriverse #6))
DAY 1 CHEST & CALVES Incline Barbell Bench Press – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 working sets Flat Barbell Bench Press – 3 working sets Optional: Dip (Chest Variation) – 3 working sets Calf Workout A If you can’t do dips, find out whether your gym has an assisted dip machine. If it doesn’t and you still want to do 3 more sets in your workout, you can do 3 sets of flat dumbbell presses. DAY 2 BACK & BUTT & ABS Barbell Deadlift – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Barbell Squat – 3 working sets Barbell Row – 3 working sets One-Arm Dumbbell Row – 3 working sets 3 to 6 ab circuits If you have lower-back issues, remember that you can swap the deadlift for a more lower-back-friendly variation like the sumo or hex deadlift, or you can drop it altogether and choose another “approved” exercise like the T-bar row. If you can’t do pull-ups or chin-ups, you can use a machine that assists you. If your gym doesn’t have one, you can do dumbbell rows instead. DAY 3 SHOULDERS & CALVES Seated or Standing Barbell Military Press – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Side Lateral Raise – 3 working sets Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise – 3 working sets Calf Workout B DAY 4 ARMS & ABS Barbell Curl – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Close-Grip Bench Press – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Alternating Dumbbell Curl – 3 working sets Seated Triceps Press – 3 working sets 3 to 6 ab circuits DAY 5 LEGS & BUTT Barbell Squat – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Leg Press – 3 working sets Romanian Deadlift – 3 working sets Hip Thrust – 3 working sets Calf Workout C If you’re going to lift 5 days per week, I recommend that you start with this routine for your first eight to ten weeks. It’s the first phase of the workouts you’ll find in the bonus report. In terms of which days to train on, most people like to lift Monday through Friday and take the weekends off, maybe doing some cardio on one or both of these days. This works well. Feel free to work your rest days however you want, though. Some people prefer to lift on the weekends and take off two days during the week. Work your cardio in as needed. You can lift and do cardio on the same days without an issue.
Michael Matthews (Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body)
To the men, darkness made no difference. The Space Beagle crouched on a vast plain of jagged metal. Every porthole shed light. Great searchlights poured added illumination on rows of engines that were tearing enormous holes into the all-iron world. At the beginning, the iron was fed into a single manufacturing machine, which turned out unstable iron torpedoes at the rate of one every minute, and immediately launched them into space. By dawn of the next morning, the manufacturing machine itself began to be manufactured, and additional robot feeders poured raw iron into each new unit. Soon, a hundred, then thousands of manufacturing machines were turning out those slim, dark torpedoes. In ever greater numbers they soared into the surrounding night, scattering their radioactive substance to every side. For thirty thousand years those torpedoes would shed their destroying atoms. They were designed to remain within the gravitational field of their galaxy, but never to fall on a planet or into a sun.
A.E. van Vogt (The Voyage of the Space Beagle)
Nitrogen can be a knight Monroe can be a man rowing Washington can be by a washing machine Armstrong can be by a strong arm The main idea behind word substitution is coming up with a picture (or series of linked pictures) that sounds similar enough to remind you of the original word.
Jim Kwik (Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
I’m Sushi K and I’m here to say I like to rap in a different way Look out Number One in every city Sushi K rap has all most pretty My special talking of remarkable words Is not the stereotyped bucktooth nerd My hair is big as a galaxy Cause I attain greater technology [...] I like to rap about sweetened romance My fond ambition is of your pants So here is of special remarkable way Of this fellow raps named Sushi K The Nipponese talking phenomenon Like samurai sword his sharpened tongue Who raps the East Asia and the Pacific Prosperity Sphere, to be specific [...] Sarariman on subway listen For Sushi K like nuclear fission Fire-breathing lizard Gojiro He my always big-time hero His mutant rap burn down whole block Start investing now Sushi K stock It on Nikkei stock exchange Waxes; other rappers wane Best investment, make my day Corporation Sushi K [...] Coming to America now Rappers trying to start a row Say “Stay in Japan, please, listen! We can’t handle competition!” U.S. rappers booing and hissin’ Ask for rap protectionism They afraid of Sushi K Cause their audience go away He got chill financial backin’ Give those U.S. rappers a smackin’ Sushi K concert machine Fast efficient super clean Run like clockwork in a watch Kick old rappers in the crotch
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
It took Doc longer to go places than other people. He didn’t drive fast and he stopped and ate hamburgers very often. Driving up to Lighthouse Avenue he waved at a dog that looked around and smiled at him. In Monterey before he even started, he felt hungry and stopped at Herman’s for a hamburger and beer. While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him. Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, “You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.” It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it. He finished his sandwich and paid Herman. He purposely didn’t look at the milk shake machines lined up so shiny against the back wall. If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police. A man with a beard
John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be. —Simon Newcomb (1906) The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. —Sir Ernest Rutherford (1933) Inside was a large, shadowy hall, in which bulked a row of tall, square blocks of apparatus. They were, obviously, televisor instruments. Each had a square screen, a microphone grating, and beneath that a panel of control switches, pointer dials, and other less identifiable instruments. Kenniston found and opened a service panel in the back of one. Brief examination of the tangled apparatus inside discouraged him badly. “They were televisor communication instruments, yes. But the principles on which they worked are baffling. They didn’t even use vacuum tubes—they’d apparently got beyond the vacuum tube.” —Edmond Hamilton, The City at World’s End (1951)
J. Storrs Hall (Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past)
The core idea of daily adaptation seems so obvious to me that it should not have to be stated. It goes against the grain for a competitive rower and rowing coach to advocate “moderate” rather than competitive rowing. Exercising every day seems extreme rather than moderate to many people. And rowing on a machine is not perceived as fun.
D.P. Ordway (Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better)
The plan I set forth here is simple: Start rowing today on an indoor rowing machine. Do it easily, without pushing. And then continue to do it moderately every day, to the extent you can.
D.P. Ordway (Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better)
The rowing motion involves sitting down and generating resistance based on how hard you choose to work. Since you control it, you stimulate your breathing to the degree that is right for you. Exercising in your comfort zone, you can do it every day. Using the monitor on the rowing machine, you can keep track of and record your improvements over time. Since rowing uses nearly the whole muscle mass of the body, it has the added benefit of stimulating heart and lungs more efficiently and completely than most other exercises. And since you row sitting down on a stable seat and without joint impact, it is safer and easier for many of us to undertake as beginners than most other forms of exercise. In short, it is one of the safest and most effective ways to stimulate your whole body each day to greater health.
D.P. Ordway (Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better)
The real problem is posed by those countrymen who are complete slaves to machines from a shockingly young age. All exceptions aside, it is impossible to make the average Finnish country dweller of over fifteen years of age ride a bicycle, ski or row — or even exercise in the fields. The spell of the car and its antecedent — the scooter — is unbelievable. A young man will travel a hundred metres to the sauna by car; as this involves backing the car, reversing and manoeuvring, opening and shutting garage doors, it is not a matter of saving time. In the case of farmers, moreover, the more technology advances — every sack of fertiliser now being lifted by a tractor, the spread and removal of manure being a mechanical feat — the more will their physical activities be limited to taking a few steps in the garden and climbing onto the benches of saunas. Lumberjacks have already been replaced by multi-tasking machines, while fishermen lever their trawl sacks with a winch, haul their nets with a lever, and gather their Baltic herrings with an aspirator from open fish traps.
Pentti Linkola (Can Life Prevail?)
Shopping Dana Gioia I enter the temple of my people but do not pray. I pass the altars of the gods but do not kneel Or offer sacrifices proper to the season. Strolling the hushed aisles of the department store, I see visions shining under glass, Divinities of leather, gold, and porcelain, Shrines of cut crystal, stainless steel, and silicon. But I wander the arcades of abundance, Empty of desire, no credit to my people, Envying the acolytes their passionate faith. Blessed are the acquisitive, For theirs is the kingdom of commerce. Redeem me, gods of the mall and marketplace. Mercury, protector of cell phones and fax machines, Venus, patroness of bath and bedroom chains, Tantalus, guardian of the food court. Beguile me with the aromas of coffee, musk, and cinnamon. Surround me with delicately colored soaps and moisturizing creams. Comfort me with posters of children with perfect smiles And pouting teenage models clad in lingerie. I am not made of stone. Show me satins, linen, crepe de chine, and silk, Heaped like cumuli in the morning sky, As if all caravans and argosies ended in this parking lot To fill these stockrooms and loading docks. Sing me the hymns of no cash down and the installment plan, Of custom fit, remote control, and priced to move. Whisper the blessing of Egyptian cotton, polyester, and cashmere. Tell me in what department my desire shall be found. Because I would buy happiness if I could find it, Spend all that I possessed or could borrow. But what can I bring you from these sad emporia? Where in this splendid clutter Shall I discover the one true thing? Nothing to carry, I should stroll easily Among the crowded countertops and eager cashiers, Bypassing the sullen lines and footsore customers, Spending only my time, discounting all I see. Instead I look for you among the pressing crowds, But they know nothing of you, turning away, Carrying their brightly packaged burdens. There is no angel among the vending stalls and signage. Where are you, my fugitive? Without you There is nothing but the getting and the spending Of things that have a price. Why else have I stalked the leased arcades Searching the kiosks and the cash machines? Where are you, my errant soul and innermost companion? Are you outside amid the potted palm trees, Bumming a cigarette or joking with the guards, Or are you wandering the parking lot Lost among the rows of Subarus and Audis? Or is it you I catch a sudden glimpse of Smiling behind the greasy window of the bus As it disappears into the evening rush?
Vaddhaka Linn (The Buddha on Wall Street: What's Wrong with Capitalism and What We Can Do about It)
One hour of strenuous rowing will burns around 800 calories!
Roy Palmer (The Complete Rowing Machine Workout Program)
Colby winks at me like a cartoon rabbit and I chuckle at the surprising gesture. “That good, huh?” Colby winks again, this time with even more panache. “Wow,” I say. “Even drugged up and breathing through a machine, you’re quite the charmer, Mr. Morgan.” His left arm is immobilized in a sling, so he releases my hand in order to brush some imaginary dirt off his left shoulder—a gesture I’m interpreting as his silly way of telling me, “I’ve got charm for days, babe.
Lauren Rowe (Hero (The Morgan Brothers, #1))
On good days, the builds were high quality, and we called those releases self-host, as in “safe to host on your computer.” Builds that were mediocre were called self-test, suggesting you install it only on a test computer (or a coworker's when the person wasn't looking). The worst builds were called self-toast, meaning you'd destroy whatever machine you had dared installed it on. Whenever we had three days in a row with self-toast builds, all new work stopped until we got the build quality up to a good level (a measure to prevent the project from digging a dangerously deep quality hole for itself).
Scott Berkun (The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work)
The refreshing air you breathe when you connect with an old soul, for the first time. It's a time machine back to your soul and re-ignites a spark of light.
Nikki Rowe
Somewhere deep within the bedrock, where the nation kept its radioactive waste and where only machines labored, there were now endless rows of echo spheres filled with concrete. If we had been able to linger there without being incinerated by the radiation, and if we had been able to put our ear to the spheres, we might have heard it—the nervous heartbeats of something in there, slumbering restlessly.
Simon Stålenhag (Things From the Flood)
I want to draw especial attention to the treatment of AI—artificial intelligence—in these narratives. Think of Ex Machina or Blade Runner. I spoke at TED two years in a row, and one year, there were back-to-back talks about whether or not AI was going to evolve out of control and “kill us all.” I realized that that scenario is just something I have never been afraid of. And at the same moment, I noticed that the people who are terrified of machine super-intelligence are almost exclusively white men. I don’t think anxiety about AI is really about AI at all. I think it’s certain white men’s displaced anxiety upon realizing that women and people of color have, and have always had, sentience, and are beginning to act on it on scales that they’re unprepared for. There’s a reason that AI is almost exclusively gendered as female, in fiction and in life. There’s a reason they’re almost exclusively in service positions, in fiction and in life. I’m not worried about how we’re going to treat AI some distant day, I’m worried about how we treat other humans, now, today, all over the world, far worse than anything that’s depicted in AI movies. It matters that still, the vast majority of science fiction narratives that appear in popular culture are imagined by, written by, directed by, and funded by white men who interpret the crumbling of their world as the crumbling of the world.
Monica Byrne (The Actual Star)
It is related that on the night of the disaster, right up to the time of the Titanic’s sinking, while the band grouped outside the gymnasium doors played with such supreme courage in face of the water which rose foot by foot before their eyes, the instructor was on duty inside, with passengers on the bicycles and the rowing-machines, still assisting and encouraging to the last. Along with the bandsmen it is fitting that his name, which I do not think has yet been put on record—it is McCawley —should have a place in the honorable list of those who did their duty faithfully to the ship and the line they served.
Jack Winocour (The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors (Dover Maritime))
They should have a slot game called Sucker. You get a row of five suckers and the machine kicks you in the nuts and swallows all the coins in your tray.
Nelson DeMille (The Lion (John Corey, #5))
I want to show you something,” he said, his voice dropping a little lower than usual and causing a shiver to run down my spine. “What?” I asked. “I said show, not tell. You have to come with me.” Curiosity nagged at me and the champagne urged me into recklessness. He’d promised to be nice after all, so why not? And even though I’d said I wanted to go back to the snooze fest party, I didn’t really. Given the choice, I’d just head back to the Academy. “You’d better not be about to whip your junk out again,” I warned. “Because I’ve seen way too much of you for my liking.” “Oh I think you liked it just fine,” he countered and the heat that flooded my cheeks at his tone stopped me from raising any further argument on the subject. He stepped a little closer to me and I fought against the impulse to lean in. “Come on then, don’t keep me in suspense,” I demanded though a little voice in the back of my head wondered if I meant something else by that statement. Darius’s mouth hooked up at one side and he inclined his head to yet another door on the other side of the room. I followed him as he led the way through the manor to a grand atrium before opening the door onto a dark stairwell which led down to what must have been an underground chamber. I eyed him warily but at this point I was pretty sure he’d have attacked me already if he was going to. Darius Acrux may have been a lot of things but it seemed he was a man of his word; he’d promised to be nice to me tonight and that was what he was delivering. I’d have to keep an eye on the time though, at midnight his Cinderella spell might come undone and he’d turn back into an asshole shaped pumpkin. Lights came on automaticaly as we descended and at the foot of the stairs, he opened another door and led me out into into an underground parking lot. I eyed the row of flashy sports cars in every make and model imaginable but he didn’t pause by them, instead leading me to the far end of the lot. A smile tugged at my lips as I spotted the lineup of super bikes. They were all top of the range, ultra-sleek, ultra-beautiful speed machines. My fingers tingled with the desire to touch them as the tempting allure of adrenaline called to me. “You said you could ride,” Darius said, offering me a genuine smile. “So I thought maybe you’d like to see my collection.” Damn, the way he said ‘my collection’ made me want to punch the entitlement right out of him but I didn’t miss the fire burning in his eyes as he looked at the bikes. That was a passion I knew well. He was a sucker for my kind of temptation too. “Have you done any modifications on them?” I asked, reaching out to brush my fingers along the saddle of the closest red beauty. “They’re top of the line,” he said dismissively like I didn’t know what I was looking at. “They don’t need any mods.” I snorted derisively. So he liked to ride the pretty speed machines but he didn’t know how to work on them. “Figures pretty boy wouldn’t know how to get his hands dirty,” I teased. “Maybe the kinds of bikes you’re used to riding need work to make them perform better but this kind of quality doesn’t require any extras. Besides, I could just pay someone to do it for me even if they did.” “Of course you could. That’s not really the point though.” And he was wrong about the kinds of bikes I was used to riding. I spotted four models amongst his collection which I’d ridden within the last six months. The others could easily be mine with a little bit of time and a tool or two. Not that I felt the need to tell him that. “You wanna take one for a ride?” he offered. “You can test your supposed skill against mine; there’s a circuit to the west of the estate.” My eyes widened at that offer. I’d missed riding since coming to the Academy and I hadn’t really thought I’d be able to get out again any time soon. ...
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
He boarded the Pan American Clipper, said hello as always to Captain Pete, walked past a row of slot machines, and found a seat on the top deck, away from the other passengers. He faced south, toward Ship Island, which was not visible.
John Grisham (The Boys from Biloxi)
Where HIIT intervals are very short, typically measured in seconds, VO2 max intervals are a bit longer, ranging from three to eight minutes—and a notch less intense. I do these workouts on my road bike, mounted to a stationary trainer, or on a rowing machine, but running on a treadmill (or a track) could also work. The tried-and-true formula for these intervals is to go four minutes at the maximum pace you can sustain for this amount of time—not an all-out sprint, but still a very hard effort.
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
I’d have a store with a row of vending machines in it. You’d push some buttons and out would come your Big Mac, shake, and fries, all prepared automatically. We could do that; I’m sure Jim Schindler could work it out. But we never will. McDonald’s is a people business, and the smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
Ray Kroc (Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's)
trying to get their stories filed without getting stuck here on OT.” A few of Sarah’s coworkers glanced up from their screens as she guided Dez and Sully through the newsroom, a couple of the women offering gleeful waves. Dez imagined Sully was a regular topic of conversation amongst some of the staff around here these days. Sarah led them into a large room filled with shelves and cabinets, then through to a row of microfiche machines and a lone computer. Dez eyed the microfiche
H.P. Bayne (The Hanged Man (The Braddock & Gray Case Files #6))
Of course not, I tell him. (How trippingly off the tongue that lie goes. It weighs less than a mustard seed.) I just bought that beer last weekend, he says. Well, maybe you’re drinking more than you know, I say. Which is laughable, as Warren is a fount of discipline, a completer of sit-ups, a runner of many miles. We have a rowing machine set up in his study, and at night he pulls against oars for an hour at a pop. He barely uses a whole pat of butter on a potato. He slices turkey thin enough to read through.
Mary Karr (Lit)
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling, for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted. Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now. I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories where the machines were made that would drive ever forward toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley; I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city. I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective. Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments of those who had died in pursuit of the objective and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective as if nobody ever had pursued it before. The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective. the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free to sell themselves to the highest bidder and to enter the best paying prisons in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies, which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects, which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress, to the completed sale, to the signature on the contract, which was to clear the way to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home would ever get there now, for every remembered place had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over. Every place had been displaced, every love unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant to make way for the passage of the crowd of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless with their many eyes opened toward the objective which they did not yet perceive in the far distance, having never known where they were going, having never known where they came from.
Wendell Berry (A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997)
Prince Philip’s study in his private quarters at Wood Farm, the house on the Sandringham Estate where he spent much of his retirement years, was as minimal and uncluttered as the boardroom of a ship. His was always the leanest operation of the Palace machine, deploying only two private secretaries, an equerry, and a librarian to execute several hundred royal engagements a year. Despite his peremptory manner, he was by far the most popular member of the family to work for—“very unassuming and knows that it is not always as easy to do something as it is to ask for it be done,” as one household servant put it. In 2008, he gave his Savile Row tailor (John Kent of Norton & Sons) a fifty-one-year-old pair of trousers to be altered.
Tina Brown (The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil)
A Jew suddenly finds himself by the entrance to a time machine, thrown back to Roman antiquity and placed inside a Roman galley, rowing with other slaves under a Roman soldier’s whip. The Jew turns to the slave next to him and asks, “How much are we supposed to tip the whipper?
Michael Krasny (Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means)
My dreams are disjointed. I try finding the beach and Luka, but I can’t. Instead, I end up back at the hospital. Not Pete’s, but Shady Wood, staring at rows upon rows of comatose bodies. I’m not sure if the machines are keeping them alive or keeping them from living. I want to unhook them. I want to set them free from this dark, oppressive place. But when I try, nothing is solid. It’s all vapor. When I wake up, I write everything down, then spend the rest of Sunday visiting Pete, yearning—no aching—for Luka. That night, my dreams are the same. Me, trying to get to Luka but ending up at Shady Wood instead. Me, trying to free those people. Me, failing at both. I’m happy and relieved when I wake up. It’s Monday morning, which means school. While my parents will go to many lengths to keep me from Luka, robbing me of my right to an education is not one of them. I pray that Luka’s parents are the same. Mom drives. As soon as she pulls up to the front entrance, I fling open the door and hurry toward the school, brushing off the looks and the whispers. As soon as I step inside the building, Luka is there. He grabs my face between his hands and kisses me. Full on the mouth. The shock of his lips on mine turns my kneecaps to putty. Luka is kissing me. He’s kissing me, right there in the locker bay in front of everyone. And I’m so stunned by it all, so caught off guard, that my body has morphed into a ragdoll. A really hot, tingly ragdoll. When he pulls away, my head spins. My lips throb in the best possible way. Several students gape. He takes my hand and pulls me out of the locker bay, right outside the bathrooms, a space that is relatively empty. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.” I blink like an idiot, unable to get past his greeting. He pushes his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t get to you in my dreams. I could hear you calling out for help. But I couldn’t get to you.” I point toward the locker bay, dumbstruck. “You-you just kissed me.” A grin pulls at his lips—the very lips that were on mine seconds earlier. And then he does it again. He cups the side of my face and kisses me. His fingers move up into my hair. His other hand moves to my waist, pulling me closer. I grab onto his shirt front to keep myself upright. Luka is good at this. Much, much too good. But the kiss ends as abruptly as it began. He groans and leans against the wall. My head spins. I’ve never been kissed by a boy before. I don’t really know how these things work, but I have to imagine groaning is not a good reaction. I must be bad at it.
K.E. Ganshert (The Gifting (Gifting #1))
Yeah, right,” Fry said skeptically. “My sons don’t even know what a washing machine is. They’ve worn the same clothes so many times in a row, the clothes could probably walk around on their own by now.
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School Secret Service)
Their condominium complex even has a name, Palm Desert Flower Estates—four words that she puts in a different wrong order every time—and it’s made of blindingly white stucco and has smooth, even sidewalks, streetlights, and mailboxes in a respectable row, with names all uniformly typed out by a little label machine. There’s even an office, with a manager and a full-time, smiling secretary, and a glittering turquoise pool in the back, with white plastic lounge chairs, always empty.
Maddie Dawson (The Opposite of Maybe)
All facts are not known to be composed but tight and young to a point. Death is nearing me, I feel that I see that, they want that. ME- watches the doors open to admit me in the rush upwards. The doors slide closed behind him. Then a muffled red laser-ROUND like an endless machine gun I hear a kid yells out. I walk and not look, as they tumble down in a lined-up row, all death no reason. Turns back to the screens. YOU- I gave you an order... you the order not to kill her I ran to the desk, of the hands that run the government, robotics departments. ‘Yes- we hear your cries out for help yet that rain the math that we can, or you don’t have.’ FREAK YOU! She has by the tie, I don’t see kill your life, that you don’t even understand, I think we can see more than enough looking over the wall screens, at the wastes. You killed my baby girl off- Kantilla! The Robot did not us, she was one point away from life, pushed back towards the door. The gun on my back- go or die. Killer robots, not of the laws, I never thought it possible. Shaking in its hand, I see as mothers cry. Happy for the clean-up as they say. Bodies burnt in a large firebox in the mid-city, see the black smoke for kilometers. Mass graves are wanted and have been in place now, it’s all the same no name to be remembered by, just a large hologram in the full finger, saying lines- as I love you, on your wrist is not life to me or having them here. I am desperate and unclear, and incompatible. She touches the WALL PANEL making her way back to her appearance in the high rise, without her young life. The doors slide open. The Robot, said I am sorry for your loss today, ‘Anything I can do,’ as she goes and weeps, ‘Yeah, FREAK OFF!
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh A Void She Cannot Feel)
Where HIIT intervals are very short, typically measured in seconds, VO2 max intervals are a bit longer, ranging from three to eight minutes—and a notch less intense. I do these workouts on my road bike, mounted to a stationary trainer, or on a rowing machine, but running on a treadmill (or a track) could also work. The tried-and-true formula for these intervals is to go four minutes at the maximum pace you can sustain for this amount of time—not an all-out sprint, but still a very hard effort. Then ride or jog four minutes easy, which should be enough time for your heart rate to come back down to below about one hundred beats per minute. Repeat this four to six times and cool down.
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
At the second one the head of the machine ripped the top row of glasses out of place like a toboggan shoe splintering a stretch of thin ice. Then the under floats tangled in the frame work, and Dave bore company with the others in a dive into a bed of geraniums.
Roy Rockwood (Dave Dashaway And His Giant Airship: Or a Marvellous Trip Across the Atlantic)
They" are farmers and ranchers, though generally not those from the front row of the church, that select few who remain in conventional agriculture. These are the ones who were trimmed off long ago, or at least by the industry's prescription, should have been. As we sit and talk, the topics are sometimes technical, often political or economic, and always, ultimately, philosophical. And personal. If we start with a discussion of soil microbiology or a comparison of turkey breeds, inevitably we end up in family, history, ecology, faith, beauty, morality, and the fate of the world to come. For them, all those things are linked. As they see it, agriculture is not an industry on the periphery of modern civilization. It is a fundamental act that determines whether we as a society will live or die. What binds these people is not a particular farming method, but rather the conviction that as humans, the contributions they make are essential. Conventional agriculture doesn't need people for much more than to run the machines and carry the debt, but these people refuse that lifeless role. To the work, they bring their intellects and their consciences, their histories and their concerns for the future. In quiet ways, in quiet places, they have set about correcting the damage that has come from believing agriculture could actually be reduced to numbers alone.
Lisa M. Hamilton (Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness)
The mile counter on the treadmill hit six miles and I surrendered. I turned off the machine and slumped into a hot, sweaty pile on the floor. “What’s wrong, Lace?” “I hate you, that’s what’s fucking wrong, you stupid douchebag!” He just started chuckling and continued to run for the next hour. I didn’t move from my spread eagle position on the ground. I didn’t care that people had to step over me to get to the rows of treadmills and other gym equipment. They could go fuck themselves if they had a problem with it
H.J. Bellus (Tripp (My Way, #2))
The very first hit factory was T.B. Harms, a Tin Pan Alley publishing company overseen by Max Dreyfus. With staff writers like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, T.B. Harms was the dominant publisher of popular music in the early twentieth century. Dreyfus called his writers “the boys” and installed pianos for them to compose on around the office on West Twenty-Eighth, the street that gave Tin Pan Alley its name, allegedly for the tinny-sounding pianos passersby heard from the upper-story windows of the row houses. The sheet-music sellers also employed piano players in their street-level stores, who would perform the Top 40 of the 1920s for browsing customers.
John Seabrook (The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory)
Did you get a VO2Max? They are a bit hard to come by, but tend to cost under $100. They can also be estimated using your two-kilometer rowing time on a Concept 2 rower. Though not as good, these machines are at least widely available, being found in most gyms. VO2Max measures your ability to huff and puff. It’s the maximum rate you can use oxygen. The higher the healthier, and it is a great exercise marker because many things must be operating well to get a good score. If your exercise is effective, your VO2Max will climb. This is a good way to monitor your overall progress.
Mike Nichols (Quantitative Medicine: Using Targeted Exercise and Diet to Reverse Aging and Chronic Disease)
The Hustler was the delta-winged B-58 supersonic bomber, operational in the 1960's and 70's. It was in its day the hottest flying machine in the sky.
Philip Rowe (B-58A Remembrances)
In the meantime, it is useful to end this chapter by pondering a paradox. On the one hand, as already noted, economics is replete with eulogies to freedom (particularly of the market). However, on the other hand, the type of freedom that economics textbooks talk about is compatible with the science fiction image of rows and rows of persons attached to a pleasure machine which bombards them with utility (or, to be more respectful to ordinal utility, which keeps them at the very top of their preferences ordering). Less apocalyptically, it is consistent with a society in which individuals’ ideals have been reduced to purchasing commodities in gigantic shopping complexes guided totally by cravings manufactured in elaborate marketing clinics. Perhaps the most helpful conclusion to draw from all this is that the economic textbook’s model of rational choice is the culmination of the logic unleashed on the world by the emergence and domination of market societies (see Chapter 1 again). One question is worth keeping in mind when immersed in that logic: is a happy slave (a slave of feudal masters or, today, of the advertisers) capable of being free (whatever that person’s utility level)? So, if freedom is more than just desire-fulfilment what does it mean to be free? No one has the definitive answer but here is a suggestion: individual freedom may be the capacity to act freely, not only in order to satisfy the preferences that are there already (the utility machine can do this admirably), but in order to create new and better preferences—in order to improve one’s self. We can do this only if we care about more than the indulgence of our current desires.
Yanis Varoufakis (Foundations of Economics)
Those buildings which have been allowed to stand near the beaches have been incorporated in the defenses. Many attractive villas are still deceptively innocent and peaceful in appearance, but only the exteriors remain the same. The interiors have been converted into steel-and-concrete emplacements, and they have been armed with guns of varying sizes. Many of the houses have not been fortified so elaborately, but have been turned into effective positions for smaller guns and machine guns by the filling-in of doors and windows with brick or concrete. Passages have been cut through continuous rows of fortified houses so that the occupying troops may pass from one to another without being exposed to observation and fire from the beach.
U.S. Department of War (German Coastal Defenses)