“
How do you feel about helicopters?"
There was a long pause. "How do you mean? Ethically?"
"As a mode of transportation."
"Faster than camels, but less sustainable.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
“
The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it. And that soul, found and proven, is a woman. A hand sustains you, it is hers; lips lightly touch your forehead, they are her lips; you hear breathing near you, it is she. To have her wholly, from her devotion to her pity, never to be left alone, to have that sweet shyness as, to lean on that unbending reed, to touch, Providence with your hands and be able to grasp it in your arms; God made palpable, what transport! The heart, that dark celestial flower, bursts into a mysterious bloom. You would not give up that shade for all the light in the world! The angel soul is there, forever there; if she goes away, it is only to return; she fades away in a dream and reappears in reality. You feel an approaching warmth, she is there. You overflow with serenity, gaiety, and ecstasy; you are radiant in your darkness. And the thousand little cares! The trifles that are enormous in this void. The most ineffable accents of the womanly voice used to comfort you, and replacing for you the vanished universe! You are caressed through the soul. You see nothing but you feel yourself adored. It is paradise of darkness.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
…Magic is often a tricky thing. Often it is explainable. People fly through the air in planes and live underwater in submarines. Plants grow within weeks and cities operate and sustain millions of people. A person can talk to practically anyone almost anywhere around the world instantly. People’s images are transported by photo in the time it takes to press a button. Dinosaurs seem real, huge apes exist, and other worlds are a movie ticket away.
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Obert Skye
“
When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver. But I did not fall. From nape to heel I discovered myself bound to earth. I felt a sort of appeasement in surrendering to it my weight. Gravitation had become as sovereign as love. The earth, I felt, was supporting my back, sustaining me, lifting me up, transporting me through the immense void of night.
”
”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wind, Sand and Stars)
“
If food was no longer obliged to make intercontinental journeys, but stayed part of a system in which it can be consumed over short distances, we would save a lot of energy and carbon dioxide emissions. And just think of what we would save in ecological terms without long-distance transportation, refrigeration, and packaging--which ends up on the garbage dump anyway--and storage, which steals time, space, and vast portions of nature and beauty.
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Carlo Petrini (Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities)
“
Transportation systems are a major area of opportunity for cities seeking to issue sustainability bonds.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
Cities are sustained by similar network systems such as roads, railways, and electrical lines that transport people, energy, and resources and whose flow is therefore a manifestation of the metabolism of the city.
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”
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
“
If you didn’t already know this, the sun is going to die. When I think about the future, I don’t think about inescapable ends. But even if we solve global warming and destroy nuclear bombs and control population, ultimately the human race will annihilate itself if we stay here. Eventually, inevitably, we will no longer be able to live on Earth: we have a giant fireball clock ticking down twilight by twilight. In many ways, I think mortality is more manageable when we consider our eternal components, our genetics and otherwise that carry on after us. Still, soon enough, the books we write and the plants we grow will freeze up and rot in the darkness. But maybe there’s hope. What the universe really boils down to is whether a planet evolves a life-form intelligent enough to create technology capable of transporting and sustaining that life-form off the planet before the sun in that planet’s solar system explodes. I have a limited set of comparative data points, but I’d estimate that we’re actually doing okay at this point. We already have (intelligent) life, technology, and (primitive) space travel. And we still have some time before our sun runs out of hydrogen and goes nuclear. Yet none of that matters unless we can develop a sustainable means of living and traveling in space. Maybe we can. What I’ve concluded is that if we do reach this point, we have crossed a remarkable threshold—and will emerge into the (rare?) evolutionary status of having outlived the very life source that created us. It’s natural selection on a Universal scale. “The Origin of the Aliens,” one could say; a survival of the fittest planets. Planets capable of evolving life intelligent enough to leave before the lights go out. I suppose that without a God, NASA is my anti-nihilism. Alone and on my laptop, these ideas can humble me into apathy.
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”
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
“
[T]he whole human population of the world cannot live on imported food. Some people some where are going to have to grow the food. And where ever food is grown the growing of it will raise the same two questions: How do you preserve the land in use? And how do you preserve the people who use the land?
The farther the food is transported, the harder it will be to answer those questions correctly.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Another Turn of the Crank: Essays)
“
The age of centralized, command-and-control, extraction-resource-based energy sources (oil, gas, coal and nuclear) will not end because we run out of petroleum, natural gas, coal, or uranium. It will end because these energy sources, the business models they employ, and the products that sustain them will be disrupted by superior technologies, product architectures, and business models. Compelling new technologies such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy industry as we know it.
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Tony Seba (Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030)
“
Suppose a single modern battleship got transported back to Columbus’ time. In a matter of seconds it could make driftwood out of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria and then sink the navies of every great world power of the time without sustaining a scratch. Five modern freighters could have taken onboard all the cargo borne by the whole world’s merchant fleets.5 A modern computer could easily store every word and number in all the codex books and scrolls in every single medieval library with room to spare. Any large bank today holds more money than all the world’s premodern kingdoms put together.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Suppose a single modern battleship got transported back to Columbus’ time. In a matter of seconds it could make driftwood out of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria and then sink the navies of every great world power of the time without sustaining a scratch. Five modern freighters could have taken onboard all the cargo borne by the whole world’s merchant fleets.5 A modern computer could easily store every word and number in all the codex books and scrolls in every single medieval library with room to spare. Any large bank today holds more money than all the world’s premodern kingdoms put together.6
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Headquarters phoned through about the horses, Herr Hauptmann,’ said the man in white. ‘And they say I am to keep them for the stretcher cases. I know your views on the matter Hauptmann, but I’m afraid you cannot have them. We need them here desperately, and the way things are going I fear we will need more. That was just the first attack – there will be more to come. We expect a sustained offensive – it will be a long battle. We are the same on both sides, once we start something we seem to have to prove a point and that takes time and lives. We’ll need all the ambulance transport we can get, motorised or horse.
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”
Michael Morpurgo (War Horse (War Horse, #1))
“
The largest sources of CO2 from animal agriculture come not from the animals themselves (through respiration and waste), but from the inputs and land-use changes necessary to maintain and feed them, including: burning fossil fuels to produce fertilisers used in feed production; maintaining intensive animal production facilities; growing the associated animal feed; transporting the animal feed; and processing and transporting the animal products. Furthermore, clearing land to graze livestock and grow feed is the largest single cause of deforestation and among the major causes of land degradation and desertification.
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Jason Hannan (Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial)
“
If you ever hear the words conventional and wisdom conjoined, reject them. Because if it is conventional, it isn’t wisdom. And if it’s wisdom, it isn’t conventional. —Herb Kelleher How has Southwest been able to attain uncommon results in the worst industry in capitalism? The company has succeeded by being unconventional. Herb likes to tell the story of how a Washington think tank told the company that it would not be able to survive without six of the “keys to success” that other carriers have used. Southwest followed none of those keys to success. At every point of Southwest’s history, the company has successfully challenged industry norms. Southwest differed from the competition because of its low-cost fares. In the 1970s, before deregulation, flying was expensive, because the government controlled the prices. Rollin King and Herb Kelleher’s idea was to provide lower fares and enable a greater number of Americans to fly. Southwest would not be competing with other airlines but with other forms of transportation.
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Sean Iddings (Intelligent Fanatics: How Great Leaders Build Sustainable Businesses)
“
Urban planning is a scientific, aesthetic and orderly disposition of Land, Resources, Facilities and Services with a view of securing the Physical, Economic and Social Efficiency, Health and well-being of Urban Communities. As over the years the urban population of India has been increasing rapidly, this fast tread urbanization is pressurizing the existing infrastructure leading to a competition over scare resources in the cities.
The objective of our organization is to develop effective ideas and inventions so that we could integrate in the development of competitive, compact, sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities in terms of land-use, environment, transportation and services to improve physical, social and economic environment of the cities.
Focus Areas:-
Built Environment
Utilities
Public Realm
Urban planning and Redevelopment
Urban Transport and Mobility
Smart City
AMRUT
Solid Waste Management
Master Plans
Community Based Planning
Architecture and Urban Design
Institutional Capacity Building
Geographic Information System
Riverfront Development
Local Area Planning
ICT
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Citiyano De Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
“
Most people can swim a narrow river. Water is an alien element, but with labor we can force ourselves through it. A good swimmer can cross a wide river, a lake, even the English Channel; no one, as far as we know, has ever swum the Atlantic Ocean, or is likely to do so. Even a champion swimmer, if he had business which required to spend alternate weeks in Paris and London, would not make the trip regularly by swimming the English Channel. Although we can force ourselves through water by skill and main strength, for all practical purposes our ability to traverse water is only as good as our ships or our airplanes. And so with the activities of our brains. Thinking is probably as foreign to human nature as is water; it is an unnatural element into which we throw ourselves with hesitation, and in which we flounder once we are there. We have learned, during the millenniums, to do rather well with thinking, but only if we buoy ourselves up with words. Some thinking of a simple sort we can do without words, but difficult and sustained thinking, presumably, is completely impossible without their aid, as traversing the Atlantic Ocean is presumably impossible without instruments or submarine transportation.
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Charlton Grant Laird
“
Karmic Cause and Effect It is very important to contemplate the connection between our mental states and our actions. Our karmic patterns are formed and sustained by the intentional actions of the “three gates” of body, speech, and mind—everything we do, say, or think with volitional intention. Our actions and reactions form the cause and effect of action (Skt. karma; Tib. las) that in turn determines the kinds of experiences we have. As such, our mind has the potential to transport us to elevated states of existence or to plunge us into demeaning states of confusion and anguish. Our actions are not like footprints left on water; they leave imprints in our minds, the consequences of which will invariably manifest unless we can somehow nullify them. As the thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–97) states: In the empty dwelling place of confusion, Desire is unchanging, marked on the mind Like an etching on rock.13 The thoughts and emotions we experience and the attitudes and beliefs we hold all help to mold our character and dispositions and the kind of people we become. Conditioned existence is characterized by delusions, defilements, confusions, and disturbances of all kinds. We have to ask ourselves why we experience so much pain, while our pleasures are so ephemeral and transient. The answer is that these are the karmic fruits of our negative actions (Skt. papa-karma; Tib. sdig pa’i las). Jamgön Kongtrül says: The result of wholesome action is happiness; the result of unwholesome action is suffering, and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable: when you plant buckwheat, you get buckwheat; when you plant barley, you get barley.14 This cycle of cause and effect continues relentlessly, unless we embark on a virtuous spiritual path and learn to reverse this process by performing wholesome actions (Skt. kusala-karma; Tib. dge ba’i las). It is our intentions that determine whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome, and therefore it is our intentions that will dictate the quality of our future experiences. We have to think of karmic cause and effect in the following terms: “My current suffering is due to the negative actions, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions I performed in the past, and whatever I think, say, and do now will determine what I experience and become in the future. So from now on, I will contemplate the truth of karma, and pursue my spiritual practices with enthusiasm and positive intentions.
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Traleg Kyabgon (The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion through Training the Mind)
“
But epidemic diseases are an ineluctable part of the human condition, and modernity, with its vast population, teeming cities, and rapid means of transport between them, guarantees that the infectious diseases that afflict one country have the potential to affect all. The public health disaster of West Africa was founded on the failure to make decisions regarding health from the perspective of the sustainable welfare of the human species as a whole rather than the unsustainable interests of individual nations. To survive the challenge of epidemic disease, humanity must adopt an internationalist perspective that acknowledges our inescapable interconnectedness.
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Frank M. Snowden III (Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present)
“
We began to realize that our lives are interwoven with and sustained by ordinary people valiantly shaping the decisive events of our shared history: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caretakers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests and religious. … They understood that no one is saved alone.
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Pope Francis (Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship)
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He knew that armies were being transported from the Mediterranean to the Far East and that the invasion was set for November. Patton had told him that they were reckoning upon a million casualties, more than the British, French, and Americans had sustained in all the European fighting. A terrible prospect indeed, and one that weighed upon the consciences of two idealists dreaming peace on earth and good will toward men.
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Upton Sinclair (O Shepherd, Speak! (The Lanny Budd Novels #10))
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Deep learning can detect cracks in water pipes, manage traffic flow, model fusion reactions for a new source of clean energy, optimize shipping routes, and aid in the design of more sustainable and versatile building materials. It’s being used to drive cars, trucks, and tractors, potentially creating a safer and more efficient transportation infrastructure. It’s used in electrical grids and water systems to efficiently manage scarce resources at a time of growing stress.
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Mustafa Suleyman (The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future)
“
I can picture purchasing a product, such as a vehicle, a bicycle, or even grocery items, and seeing the emissions to produce the item and transport it to its location on its product tag, or by scanning its bar code. Items with top quartile emissions or high ESG performance for the category may have a different color-coded tag. The price tag will become a product tag and information about the item and the producer would be available in its online description,
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Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
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As the Guardian's George Monbiot puts it, our planet's resources can provide us with "private sufficiency and public luxury," in the forms of "wonderful parks and playgrounds, public sports centres and swimming pools, galleries, allotments and public transport networks." The earth cannot, however, sustain the impossible dream of private luxury for all.
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Naomi Klein (On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal)
“
Several years after Typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines, international development organizations remained to help in the recovery and rehabilitation process.
In my mind, it was difficult to talk about sustainable development when students had to risk their lives just to go to school, when farmers and fishers had to take whatever the middlemen were willing to give because transportation of their produce proved too difficult.
A number of municipalities could only be accessed through boats. Whenever it rained, families would have to make a decision whether to risk their lives or lose their income.
It was at this point that I realized that if we were to achieve real and inclusive economic growth, then a good infrastructure network was necessary. I would have never thought that in a matter of years I would join the Build, Build, Build team.” - Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo , Night Owl: A Nationbuilder’s Manual 2nd Edition (p. 10, Why do I support Build, Build, Build? )
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Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo
“
If you have the chance to examine the cross-section of a tree, you will notice a central core, darker than the sapwood surrounding it. Called heartwood this supporting pillar no longer participates in the life process of a tree, transporting and storing water and nutrients. Although dead, heartwood will not decay or lose its sturdiness while the outer, living rings of newer growth sustain it. In the perfect ecology of a tree, the dead become the heart of the living, and the living nourish the enduring essence of the dead. So it is with our lives, where life and death cannot exist separately from each other.
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Barbara Becker
“
Colonial regimes, particularly late colonial regimes, have often been sites of extensive experiments in social engineering.34 An ideology of “welfare colonialism” combined with the authoritarian power inherent in colonial rule have encouraged ambitious schemes to remake native societies. If one were required to pinpoint the “birth” of twentieth-century high modernism, specifying a particular time, place, and individual—in what is admittedly a rather arbitrary exercise, given high modernism’s many intellectual wellsprings—a strong case can be made for German mobilization during World War I and the figure most closely associated with it, Walther Rathenau. German economic mobilization was the technocratic wonder of the war. That Germany kept its armies in the field and adequately supplied long after most observers had predicted its collapse was largely due to Rathenau’s planning.35 An industrial engineer and head of the great electrical firm A.E.G (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), which had been founded by his father, Rathenau was placed in charge of the Office of War Raw Materials (Kriegsrohstoffabteilung).36 He realized that the planned rationing of raw materials and transport was the key to sustaining the war effort. Inventing a planned economy step by step, as it were, Germany achieved feats—in industrial production, munitions and armament supply, transportation and traffic control, price controls, and civilian rationing—that had never before been attempted.
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James C. Scott (Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Veritas Paperbacks))
“
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]
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Charles Morris (Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries)
“
My soul is ripped from its vessel, no longer sustainable when it’s been completely decimated in this moment. I’m consumed by the euphoria transporting me back into the middle of that ocean, where a much greater force seized control over me. This time, I don’t know if I’ll ever resurface. I don’t know if I want to.
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H.D. Carlton (Does It Hurt?)
“
Every time you light a candle, you call back to those earliest days—perhaps this is why we are still transfixed by a fire when we’re near one. Staring into the embers and watching the flames flit about, we’re transported to those earliest days of comfort, food, and community sustained by fire. We cross the hedge into an early version of who we are as a species and discover that we’re not all that different, in spite of the passage of millennia.
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Nathan M. Hall (Path of the Moonlit Hedge: Discovering the Magick of Animistic Witchcraft)
“
They used my name and permit to grow the weed and earn money to repay their debts and compensate their investors. To keep my girlfriend. To take her.
I am uncertain if any of them have ever spent a minute in jail for any of these activities.
Adam proudly showcases his new motorcycles on Instagram, posing on a hill above Barcelona. He also displays his brand new electric camper van, which they use to travel and transport drugs across Europe and Iberia, as well as his gigantic marijuana cultivation located in Portugal. People like Ruan and Martina admire his public images.
I came across a picture of Ruan and Martina together in Berlin, where their mother Fernanda visited them.
Martina became member of the Evil Eye Cult, and the custom made mafia group in Spain, which used her as a pawn in their porn and drug-related activities. She now operates as their representative in Berlin.
Martina and I have lost the ability to genuinely smile. Her social media posts only show disinterest or a malicious demeanor. ‘A boot stomping on a human face.’
In a picture with her brother and mother, she puts on a forced fake “good vibe” and “happy” smile, revealing her flawless teeth and the subtle lines of aging. With each passing day, she bears a greater resemblance to her rich and so happy mother, the bad person.
As far as I know, none of these individuals have faced consequences for their actions, such as having their teeth broken. As I had. Innocently. Taking care of business and their lives. With love.
I find this to be incredibly unjust. In the 21st century. In Europe. On planet Earth.
By non-EU criminals. “Matando – ganando” – “killing and gaining” like there were no Laws at all.
Nowadays, you can observe Sabrina flaunting her fake lips and altered face, just like Martina her enhanced breasts.
Guess who was paying for it?
It seems that both girls now sustain themselves through their bodies and drug involvement, to this day, influencing criminals to gain friends in harming Tomas and having a lavish lifestyle filled with fun and mischief. Making a living. Enjoying Spain. Enjoying Life. My money. My tears.
This is the situation as it stands.
I was wondering what Salvador Dali was trying to tell me. I stood in front of the Lincoln portrait for a long time, but I couldn't grasp the point or the moral behind it.
I can listen to Abraham Lincoln and ‘trust people. To see. If I can trust them.’
But he ultimately suffered a tragic fate, with his life being taken. (Got his head popped.)
I believe there may have also been a female or two involved in that situation, too, possibly leading to his guards being let down.
While he was watching: Acting performances, he was facing a: Stage.
Theater.
It is disheartening, considering he was a good person. Like Jesus, John Lennon and so on.
Shows a pattern Machiavelli was talking about.
Some individuals are too bright for those in darkness; they feel compelled to suppress those brighter minds simply because they think and act differently. Popping their heads.
Reptilian lower brain-based culture, the concept of the Evil Eye, Homo erectus. He couldn't even stand up properly when I was shouting at him, urging him to stand up from the stairs. ‘Homo seditus reptilis.’
But what else was there in the Lincoln image that I didn't see? What was Dali trying to convey or express or tell me?
Besides the fact that the woman is in his mind, on his mind, in the image, exactly, his head got popped open. Perhaps because he was focusing on a woman, trusting her for a split second, or turning his head away for a moment.
”
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Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
During NASA’s first fifty years the agency’s accomplishments were admired globally. Democratic and Republican leaders were generally bipartisan on the future of American spaceflight. The blueprint for the twenty-first century called for sustaining the International Space Station and its fifteen-nation partnership until at least 2020, and for building the space shuttle’s heavy-lift rocket and deep spacecraft successor to enable astronauts to fly beyond the friendly confines of low earth orbit for the first time since Apollo. That deep space ship would fly them again around the moon, then farther out to our solar system’s LaGrange points, and then deeper into space for rendezvous with asteroids and comets, learning how to deal with radiation and other deep space hazards before reaching for Mars or landings on Saturn’s moons. It was the clearest, most reasonable and best cost-achievable goal that NASA had been given since President John F. Kennedy’s historic decision to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Then Barack Obama was elected president. The promising new chief executive gave NASA short shrift, turning the agency’s future over to middle-level bureaucrats with no dreams or vision, bent on slashing existing human spaceflight plans that had their genesis in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush White Houses. From the starting gate, Mr. Obama’s uncaring space team rolled the dice. First they set up a presidential commission designed to find without question we couldn’t afford the already-established spaceflight plans. Thirty to sixty thousand highly skilled jobs went on the chopping block with space towns coast to coast facing 12 percent unemployment. $9.4 billion already spent on heavy-lift rockets and deep space ships was unashamedly flushed down America’s toilet. The fifty-year dream of new frontiers was replaced with the shortsighted obligations of party politics. As 2011 dawned, NASA, one of America’s great science agencies, was effectively defunct. While Congress has so far prohibited the total cancellation of the space agency’s plans to once again fly astronauts beyond low earth orbit, Obama space operatives have systematically used bureaucratic tricks to slow roll them to a crawl. Congress holds the purse strings and spent most of 2010 saying, “Wait just a minute.” Thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economic spectrum have been lost while hundreds of billions in “stimulus” have been spent. As of this writing only Congress can stop the NASA killing. Florida’s senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, a former spaceflyer himself, is leading the fight to keep Obama space advisors from walking away from fifty years of national investment, from throwing the final spade of dirt on the memory of some of America’s most admired heroes. Congressional committees have heard from expert after expert that Mr. Obama’s proposal would be devastating. Placing America’s future in space in the hands of the Russians and inexperienced commercial operatives is foolhardy. Space legend John Glenn, a retired Democratic Senator from Ohio, told president Obama that “Retiring the space shuttles before the country has another space ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President’s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen?
”
”
Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)
“
What sort of exploring?” Shielding his eyes, Adam lifted his eyes to the sky. He thought he could hear Gansey coming. “Mountains. How do you feel about helicopters?” There was a long pause. “How do you mean? Ethically?” “As a mode of transportation.” “Faster than camels, but less sustainable. Is there going to be a helicopter in your future today?” “Yeah. Gansey wants to look for the ley line, and they’re usually easier to spot from the air.” “And of course he just … got a helicopter.” “He’s Gansey.” There was another long pause. It was a thinking pause, Adam thought, so he didn’t interrupt it. Finally, Blue said, “Okay, I’ll come. Is this a … What is this?” Adam replied truthfully, “I have no idea.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1))
“
The point is that the overwhelming energy cost associated with food is not in the food itself (the 2,000 food calories a day per person) but in its production, transportation, distribution, and marketing through the supply chain from farms to stores to your house and ultimately to your mouth.
”
”
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
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down all the current stressors in your life and one step you could take to alleviate each one. Accepting that a difficult situation is real and clearly identifying the root problem is an important step. Proper diagnosis is half the cure. • Simplify your life. Eliminate and concentrate. Focus on the vital few things that contribute the most to your overall life satisfaction. Taking on too much or spreading yourself too thin inevitably leads to a sense of overload. 4. Combine aerobic, strength, and flexibility exercises. If you want maximum levels of energy, take responsibility for becoming a mini-expert on exercise and fitness. Subscribe to the most credible health and exercise magazines, add informative fitness sites to your Web favorites, and build your own library with the latest books, DVDs, and other resources related to energy and wellness. Aerobic exercise The most important component of effective exercise is aerobic exercise. Aerobics, or cardiovascular endurance, refers to the sustained ability of the heart, lungs, and blood to perform optimally. Through consistent aerobic conditioning, your body improves the way it takes in, transports, and uses oxygen. This means your heart and lungs will be stronger and more efficient at performing their functions. Proper aerobic exercise causes your body to burn fat, while anaerobic exercise causes the body to burn glycogen and store fat. Many people unknowingly exercise anaerobically when they intend to exercise aerobically. This results in, among other things, a frustrating retention of fat. The intensity of your exercise is what makes it anaerobic or aerobic. Consistent and proper aerobic exercise has the following benefits: • improves quality of sleep • relieves stress and anxiety • burns excess fat • suppresses appetite • enhances attitude and mood • stabilizes chemical balance • heightens self-esteem Each of the above benefits either directly or indirectly leads to high levels of both mental and physical energy. Here are some tips for maximizing the
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Tommy Newberry (Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices; Change Your Life)
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Life expectancy rose only modestly between the Neolithic era of 8500 to 3500 BC and the Victorian era of 1850 to 1900.13 An American born in the late nineteenth century had an average life expectancy of around forty-five years, with a large share never making it past their first birthdays.14 Then something remarkable happened. In countries on the frontier of economic development, human health began to improve rapidly, education levels shot up, and standards of living began to grow and grow. Within a century, life expectancies had increased by two-thirds, average years of schooling had gone from single to double digits, and the productivity of workers and the pay they took home had doubled and doubled and then doubled again. With the United States leading the way, the rich world crossed a Great Divide—a divide separating centuries of slow growth, poor health, and anemic technical progress from one of hitherto undreamed-of material comfort and seemingly limitless economic potential. For the first time, rich countries experienced economic development that was both broad and deep, reaching all major segments of society and producing not just greater material comfort but also fundamental transformations in the health and life horizons of those it touched. As the French economist Thomas Piketty points out in his magisterial study of inequality, “It was not until the twentieth century that economic growth became a tangible, unmistakable reality for everyone.”15 The mixed economy was at the heart of this success—in the United States no less than in other Western nations. Capitalism played an essential role. But capitalism was not the new entrant on the economic stage. Effective governance was. Public health measures made cities engines of innovation rather than incubators of illness.16 The meteoric expansion of public education increased not only individual opportunity but also the economic potential of entire societies. Investments in science, higher education, and defense spearheaded breakthroughs in medicine, transportation, infrastructure, and technology. Overarching rules and institutions tamed and transformed unstable financial markets and turned boom-bust cycles into more manageable ups and downs. Protections against excessive insecurity and abject destitution encouraged the forward-looking investments and social integration that sustained growth required. At every level of society, the gains in health, education, income, and capacity were breathtaking. The mixed economy was a spectacularly positive-sum bargain: It redistributed power and resources, but as its impacts broadened and diffused, virtually everyone was made massively better off.
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Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
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An NDP government will establish, in law, clear criteria for resource extraction and transportation based on the principles of sustainable development, which include internalizing all pollution costs and putting a price on carbon. In our day and age there is no longer any way around it. Any new energy project requires a thorough, credible environmental assessment process, based on criteria of sustainable development and social acceptability. We don’t have one in Canada, because the Conservatives have gutted all the relevant existing legislation and reduced the staff responsible for enforcing it.
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Tom Mulcair (Strength of Conviction)
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Good transportation as well as good roads are necessary to promote sustainable tourism.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Plenty of people advocate for sustainability systems like bike infrastructure without considering the racism and wealth inequality embedded in how we plan and use urban space.
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Adonia E. Lugo (Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance)
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the creation of economic value is a collective process. Businesses do not create wealth on their own. No business today can operate without the fundamental services provided by the state: schools and higher education institutions, health and social care services, housing provision, social security, policing and defence, the core infrastructures of transport, energy, water and waste systems. These services, the level of resources allocated to them and the type of investments made in them, are crucial to the productivity of private enterprises. The private sector does not ‘create wealth’ while taxpayer-funded public services ‘consume’ it. The state does not simply ‘regulate’ private economic activity. Rather, economic output is co-produced by the interaction of public and private actors—and both are shaped by, and in turn help to shape, wider social and environmental conditions.
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Michael Jacobs (Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series))
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Several years after Typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines, international development organizations remained to help in the recovery and rehabilitation process.
In my mind, it was difficult to talk about sustainable development when students had to risk their lives just to go to school, when farmers and fishers had to take whatever the middlemen were willing to give because transportation of their produce proved too difficult.
A number of municipalities could only be accessed through boats. Whenever it rained, families would have to make a decision whether to risk their lives or lose their income.
It was at this point that I realized that if we were to achieve real and inclusive economic growth, then a good infrastructure network was necessary. I would have never thought that in a matter of years I would join President Rodrigo Duterte's Build, Build, Build team.
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Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo , Night Owl: A Nationbuilder’s Manual
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Ecuador’s 2008 constitution also includes extremely detailed provisions about the environmental laws, policies, and programs needed to fulfill these ambitious goals. For example, the constitution prohibits genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from being used in agriculture, clarifies that access to safe drinking water is a fundamental human right, and emphasizes the importance of sustainable modes of transportation, going so far as to mandate that bicycle lanes be given priority in urban areas.
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David R. Boyd (The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World)
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Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.” *If you have a body, you are an athlete. Unilever: “Make sustainable living commonplace.” Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport.” Whole Foods: “To nourish people and the planet.” Zappos: “Delivering Happiness.” ING Financial Group: “Empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business.” U.S. Humane Society: “Celebrating animals, confronting cruelty.” NPR: “To create a more informed public—one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.” TED: “Spread Ideas.
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John Mackey (Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business)
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Evidence for climate change has been available for some time, so why has this 'urgent global response' (in Stern's words) not occurred? The IPCC (2015) have argued that we could limit the effects of climate change by changing our individual and collective behaviour. We could fly less, eat less meat, use public transport, cycle or walk, recycle, choose more low carbon products, have shorter showers, waste less food or reduce home energy use. There has been some significant change but nothing like the 'global response' required to ameliorate the further deleterious effects of climate change.
We are reminded here of a somewhat depressing statistic reported by a leading multinational, Unilever, in their 'sustainable Living Plan.' In 2013, they outlined how they were going to halve the greenhouse gas impact of their products across the life cycle by 2020. To achieve this goal, they reduced greenhouse gas emissions from their manufacturing chain. They opted for more environmentally friendly sourcing of raw materials, doubled their use of renewable energy and produced concentrated liquids and powders. They reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transport and greenhouse gas emissions from refrigeration. They also restricted employee travel. The result of all these initiatives was that their 'greenhouse gas footprint impact per consumer...
increased
by around 5% since 2010.' They concluded, 'We have made good progress in those areas under our control but ... the big challenges are those areas not under direct control like...
consumer behaviour
' (2013:16; emphasis added). It seems that consumers are not 'getting the message.' They are not opting for the low carbon alternatives in the way envisaged; they are not changing the length of their showers (to reduce energy and water consumption); they are not breaking their high-carbon habits. The question is why?
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Geoffrey Beattie (The Psychology of Climate Change (The Psychology of Everything))
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In externalising the social and environmental cost of shipping to the high seas, the shipping industry mirrors the collective action problem that is the climate change to which it contributes. Every country wants to connect its economy across the oceans, but few feel responsible for the social and environmental impacts of shipping, or indeed climate change.
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Christiaan De Beukelaer (Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping)
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The Victory Bike battle on the home front marked the first policy attempt to privilege one mode of transport over another on the basis of sustainability and efficiency.
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James Longhurst (Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road)
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Several studies have reported the need for the production of sustainable and low-cost transport fuel due to the shortcomings related to the usage of biodiesel such as high kinematic viscosity, and corrosiveness
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Mohammad Aslam (Green Diesel: An Alternative to Biodiesel and Petrodiesel (Advances in Sustainability Science and Technology))
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You buy a car for transport, not to live at the gas station. Likewise, you earn money to access essentials, not to live at the shopping mall.
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Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
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The Flexible Industrial Packaging Market encompasses a wide array of packaging solutions made from flexible materials such as films, foils, and laminates. These packaging solutions are designed to transport, store, and protect industrial goods, ranging from bulk chemicals and construction materials to food ingredients and pharmaceuticals. Key product types include flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs), form-fill-seal bags, sacks, and liners.
Several factors drive the demand for flexible industrial packaging. Its lightweight nature compared to rigid packaging options like drums or IBCs can lead to reduced transportation costs and lower fuel consumption. The ability to customize the size and shape of flexible packaging to specific product requirements also offers advantages in terms of space utilization and handling efficiency. Furthermore, advancements in material science have led to the development of high-performance flexible packaging that offers excellent barrier properties, protecting goods from moisture, oxygen, and contamination.
The growth of various industrial sectors, including chemicals, agriculture, food processing, and construction, directly influences the demand for flexible industrial packaging. The increasing globalization of trade and the need for efficient and cost-effective logistics further contribute to market expansion. Sustainability considerations are also playing an increasingly important role, with a growing focus on developing recyclable and biodegradable flexible packaging solutions to minimize environmental impact and meet evolving regulatory requirements.
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MrFrank Bates