Tour Guide Quotes

But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for...or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place.

Apparently, Simon’s dad asked the tour guide at Duke to “please elaborate on the campus gay scene.” “I wanted to fucking die,” Simon told me.

Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice

If I'm going to be your bloomin' tour guide, I'm gong to do it right." He held out his hand."Do you think I'd take you somewhere dangerous?" "You bite people for a living." "Don't be a chicken." "If you push me over the edge, my parents will be seriously ticked." He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. "They'll probably send me a thank-you note.

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.

Obviously the whole Wayward thing hasn't been explained to you properly. You don't have any superpowers. You can't leap over tall buildings in a single bound or fight Dark Casters with your magic cat. Basically, you're a glorified tour guide who's no better equipped to face a bunch of Dark Casters than Mary P. over here -Ridley

I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.

There was nothing dignified about peeing behind a tree with your super-cute wilderness tour guide lurking nearby.

Slender Youth. A tour companion who may be either a lost prince or a girl/princess in disguise. In the latter case it is tactful to pretend you think she is a boy. She/he will be ignorant, hasty and shy, and will need hauling out of trouble quite a lot. But she/he will grow up in the course of the Tour. In fact she/he will be the only Companion who will change in any way. Quite often, she/he will soon exhibit a very useful talent for magic and end up by hauling everyone else out of trouble. But this will not be until midway through your second brochure.

A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING: To your left, perhaps your right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please - try not to look away.

Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.

I’m surprised Thorne hasn’t asked if he can start leading guided tours down here. I bet you could charge a hefty admission fee.” Cinder snorted. “Please don’t plant that idea in his head.

You talked over the tour guide who pointed to houses and windows. Showing us where people had lived and died and other people now stayed in their place. Just like a broken heart." - Adieu

The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: 'This is not who we are.' But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are.

Okay, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to be your tour guide." "I'm not doing acid with you, Miles," I say. "Good to know," he replies, "but not the kind of tour guide I'm talking about.

Female Mercenary. This will be a companion on your Tour. She is usually tall, thin and wiry, silent, and neurotic. Sex scares her. This is because she either came from a nunnery or was raped as a child. Or both. Somehow this inspired her to become a mercenary and she is very good at her job. You can rely on her absolutely in a fight. She can usually kill two people at once while guarding your back in between. The rest of the time, she will irritate you with lots of punctilious weapons cleaning and a perpetual insistence that a proper watch be kept. Mostly, she will have no magic talents, but sometimes, in an emergency, she will come up with a gift or vision. You will end up grudgingly admiring her.

We don't know what we'd do. Nobody knows what accident of fate or DNA or character will determine how we act when the shit hits the fan.

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy -- it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head.

Small Man can be a very funny or a very tiresome Tour Companion, depending on how this kind of thing grabs you. He gambles, he drinks too much and he always runs away. Since the Rules allow him to make Jokes, he will excuse his behaviour in a variety of comical ways. Physically he is stunted and not at all handsome, although he usually dresses flamboyantly. He tends to wear hats with feathers in. You will discover he is very vain. But, if you can avoid smacking him, you will come to tolerate if not love him. He will contrive, in some cowardly way, to play a major part in saving the world.

There are a lot of advantages to being with someone of your own race. The cultural shorthand makes it a lot easier. You don’t have to constantly explain everything or act like a smiling tour guide for Asian American culture or deal with dietary differences.

the only people who should have their head examined are those who never ask questions.

Life is a journey without reliable tour guides. You made plans and then you got distracted and took detours that proved to be dull, disastrous, or wonderful, or a combination of all three. – Josie Navarre (heroine)

The most important lesson that came out of Vietnam for me was that Marines take care of Marines.

When will you desist playing tour guide?” he asked. “I should think never. It is the greatest aspiration of my life to give historic tours,” Cinderella lied

Every one of us sometimes needs a tour guide to remind us how big and deep life is meant to be.

Even a poor tour guide is entitled to some happiness.

Dinner is almost ready, and I feel like the world's most unnecessary tour guide as I show them around the living room. But when I see Arthur studying every picture hanging from the wall, I remember that home isn't about how big the space is but how we fill it.

What baseball managers did do, on occasion, beginning in the early 1980s, was hire some guy who knew how to switch on the computer. But they did this less with honest curiosity than in the spirit of a beleaguered visitor to Morocco hiring a tour guide: pay off one so that the seventy-five others will stop trying to trade you their camels for your wife. Which one you pay off is largely irrelevant.

Literature is the great garden that is always there and is open to everyone 24 hours a day. Who tends it? The old tour guides and sylviculturists, the wardens, the fuming parkies in their sweat-soaked serge: these have died off. If you do see an official, a professional, these days, then he's likely to be a scowl in a labcoat, come to flatten a forest or decapitate a peak. The public wanders, with its oohs and ahs, its groans and jeers, its million opinions. The wanderers feed the animals, they walk on the grass, they step in the flowerbeds. But the garden never suffers. It is, of course, Eden; it is unfallen and needs no care.

On the third play he dropped back to pass, and it was unadulterated chaos: The pocket was immediately collapsing, people were yelling, everything was happening at the same time, and it felt like he was trying to defuse a pipe bomb while learning to speak Cantonese." "He believed it was his destiny to kill faceless foreigners for complex reasons that were beyond his control, and to deeply question the meaning of those murders, and to kill despite those questions, and to eventually understand the meaning of his own life through the battlefield executions of total strangers." "Teaching history to eighth graders is like being a tour guide for people who hate their vacation." "There is no feeling that can match the emotive intensity of an attraction devoid of explanation.

Victory is for the fucking brave, not the timid and excuse-riddled weak.

Determination: You can’t manufacture that shit, it’s gotta come from the heart. A lion doesn’t choose to be a lion, that’s just what he is. He knows what’s expected of him, and he gets it fuckin’ done.

Nowadays,” my tour guide says, “it is a man’s world here in China. But 6000 years ago, it was a woman’s world. Man and woman don’t need to get married. Man can just visit the woman’s house at night. When you have a baby, it doesn’t matter who the father is.

The day gets about one second longer every 67,000 years.

As the nineteenth-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau put it, “All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

tour guide tells them that after the Taj was completed, each of the builders, twenty-two thousand men, had his thumbs cut off so that the structure could never be built again.

People who have intended and loved what is evil in the world intend and love what is evil in the other life, and then they no longer allow themselves to be led away from it. This is why people who are absorbed in evil are connected to hell and actually are there in spirit; and after death they crave above all to be where their evil is. So after death, it is we, not the Lord, who cast ourselves into hell.

Even today, the memory of Ribbon Creek influences the way new recruits are handled—not with kid gloves, but with respect for their safety and dignity. This too is part of the Marine ethos: to take care of their brother and sister Marines.

For over 220 years, Marines have served at the end of America’s operational reach—on freedom’s far frontiers. These Marines are the backbone of the ARG/MEU (SOC) team, our regional commanders’ force of choice for both forward presence and crisis response.

Hence, once the director calls cut on a take, May will often roar, ‘Get me pussy,’ and Munn will appear with the furiously mewing orb of animals. This is not to be mistaken for anything else. He’s not Donald Trump.

I am, as it were, an eye that the cosmos uses to look at itself.

Eventually we hope to drive among the animals—just as they do in African game parks—but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour.

Marine.” Say the word to any American, and you can count on a strong reaction.

—things that seem hopelessly random and unpredictable when viewed in isolation often turn out to be lawful and predictable when viewed in aggregate.

WHAT IS NOW PROVED WAS ONCE ONLY IMAGIND —WILLIAM BLAKE

Let me begin with a heartfelt confession. I admit it. I am a biblioholic, one who loves books and whose life would seem incomplete without them. I am an addict, with a compulsive need to stop by nearly any bookstore I pass in order to get my fix. Books are an essential part of my life, the place where I have spent many unforgettable moments. For me, reading is one of the most enjoyable ways to pass a rainy afternoon or a leisurely summer day. I crave the knowledge and insights that truly great books bring into my life and can spend transported hours scouring used book stores for volumes which "I simply must have". I love the smell and feel of well-loved books and the look of a bookcase full of books waiting to be taken down and read.

For the Marines, it validated their claim of “first to fight.” They were the first Allied ground force to take the offensive against Axis forces in World War II, a point they still take pride in today.

Asteroids are craggy chunks of rock. Comets are balls of dirt, ice, and frozen gases. And meteors are, quite simply, whatever falls through and burns up in Earth’s atmosphere from outer space. Asteroids

This is perhaps why Dante chooses the poet Virgil to be his guide in the Inferno; in visiting a strange location, it's always best to go with someone who's been there before, and – most important of all on a sightseeing tour of Hell – who might also know how to get you out again.

There was no tour guide on hand to tell her that in Kashmir nightmares were promiscuous. They were unfaithful to their owners, they cartwheeled wantonly into other people’s dreams, they acknowledged no precincts, they were the greatest ambush artists of all. No fortification, no fence-building could keep them in check. In Kashmir the only thing to do with nightmares was to embrace them like old friends and manage them like old enemies.

Those of us who teach math should try to turn this bug into a feature. We should be up front about the fact that word problems force us to make simplifying assumptions. That’s a valuable skill—it’s called mathematical modeling.

complex system: a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution.

(Actually, languages can be very tricky in this respect. The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive but none in which a double positive makes a negative—to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, “Yeah, yeah.

Listening to it now is like a personally guided tour through my past.

In the current Christian-based Gregorian calendar the year 1 B.C. was followed by the year A.D. 1—there was no year zero. Century reckoning is therefore shifted by one year. Before

No day before October 10, 1582, actually occurred on the Gregorian calendar for that was when the calendar was implemented officially.

Whew, this might be getting a bit confusing. I hope you are following me so far. This is the point in every Theory of Computation course at which students either throw up their hands and say "I can't get my mind around this stuff!" or clap their hands and say "I love this stuff!" Needless to say, I was the second kind of student, even though I shared the confusion of the first.

let’s begin with the word “vector.” It comes from the Latin root vehere, “to carry,” which also gives us words like “vehicle” and “conveyor belt.” To an epidemiologist, a vector is the carrier of a pathogen, like the mosquito that conveys malaria to your bloodstream. To a mathematician, a vector (at least in its simplest form) is a step that carries you from one place to another.

BRIDGES. The Rule is that, when being pursued by the forces of Darkness, you are going to need to cross a Bridge, and there will be no Bridge. While the Tour is waiting to find a way across, the forces of the Dark have time to catch up. Even if there is supposed to be a Bridge on the route, you are likely to arrive to find it broken — whereupon the forces of the Dark gain steadily again. The only Bridges sure to be still in place are ANCIENT ENGINEERING PROJECTS, and they will be huge, with, as soon as you get to the middle, a tendency to develop a small but impassible gap right at the apex.

Typically, the last minute is also when you finally get around to doing all the little things you’ve been meaning to do for months: shooting a video tour of the ISS to show friends and family back home, taking photos of crewmates in bizarre, only-in-space poses and, just because you can, peeing upside down.

He looks back down to find that his brother is no longer there. He is no longer there to stop him from ridiculing Merle Hodge or making some smart-ass remark about woodpeckers. He doesn’t stop him when he thinks about asking the tour guide an unanswerable question or when he considers pretending to see a large bird off in the distance. He isn’t there anymore to supply Cullen Witter with endless chances to do better.

They ended up at the Old Corner Bookstore, which Brian had read about in a tour guide to Boston. "Longfellow and Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes used to read here. Let's go in." Brian nudged the girls until they obeyed. It was a regular bookstore, less history-minded than Brian had expected. In fact, the local history shelves were quite mangeable. I'll buy one book, he thought. This will get me launched in actual reading. Out of the zillions of choices, I'll find one here. Brian picked out Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. It was thick and somehow exciting, with its chapter headings and scholarly notes and bibliography.

The exact orbit of Earth is controlled by the Sun’s mass and the mass of all remaining planets. An object’s mass and its distance is all we need to know to completely determine the effects of its gravity on Earth.

Resting on what's considered great has always been a recipe for decline. I remember touring Rome with a guide who pointed out one marvelous achievement after another of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Augustus was said to have inherited a city of brick and left a city of marble, with twelve entrances on twelve hills. He built nearly a thousand glorious new structures - bridges, buildings, monuments, and aqueducts. As we marveled at the remnants of Augustus's grand designs, our guide exclaimed with pride that this era marked the pinnacle of Rome's greatness. What came next?' I asked. After an awkward silence, the guide said, 'Slow ruin.

Suppose a hole were dug from one side of Earth, through the center, and out the other side. What would happen to a man if he jumped into the hole? When he got to the middle of the Earth would he keep falling or would he stop? DEBBIE CANDLER RED BUD, ILLINOIS He would be vaporized by the 11,000° Fahrenheit temperature of the pressurized molten iron core. Ignoring this complication, he would gain speed continuously from the moment he jumped into the hole until he reached the center of Earth where the force of gravity is zero. But he will be traveling so fast that he will overshoot the center and slow down continuously until he reached zero velocity at the exact moment he emerges on the other side. Unless somebody grabs him, he will fall back down the hole and repeat his journey indefinitely. A one-way trip through Earth would take about forty-five minutes.

You will come to understand how they work, their dedication and the personal sacrifices they make. For these are truly the people who stand guard on the walls of freedom, while the rest of us sleep safely in our homes.

A lot is riding on each individual docent. Here is the docent definition: a docent is a tour guide; a docent is a person who can cause a museum visitor to look more closely at art; a docent is a person who bring art works to life by selectively suggesting ways to look at an art piece, thereby bringing a new awareness to a museum visitor; a docent is a gate keeper; a docent is a person who volunteers hours of time equity for the recompense of a smile.

...right," I say, clicking my pen. "I'd rather die than do a skit about Inferno, so there's that." "You know it?" he asks. "What?" "Like, have you read it?" Matt has a quiet, husky voice. He rushes through words as if he's not allowed to be talking. "Just excerpts, but I know the plot," I say. "Basically, Virgil gives Dante this guided tour of the nine circles of hell, and Dante wanders around judging people and fainting a ton. Which is kinda like, it seems sorta dangerous to drop unconscious in hell of all places, but I guess my experience there is limited, so.

Lacing their fingers together, Kai lifted the back of her hand to his mouth. "Was there any reason in particular you wanted to show me this?" "I'm not sure. I figured you know all about my biological family and the world I was born into, and you've of course had the great pleasure of meeting my adoptive family on numerous occasions, so this was the last piece of the puzzle." She waved her free arm around the room. "The missing link to my past." Kai looked around one more time. "It's pretty creepy, actually." "I know." After another moment of reverent silence, Kai said, "I'm surprised Thorne hasn't asked if he can start leading guided tours down here. I bet you could charge a hefty admission fee." Cinder snorted. "Please don't plant that idea in his head." "Scarlet would never allow it anyway.

There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit’s personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps’ secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos.

This statement is not provable.” Think about it for a minute. It’s a strange statement, since it talks about itself—in fact, it asserts that it is not provable. Let’s call this statement “Statement A.” Now, suppose Statement A could indeed be proved. But then it would be false (since it states that it cannot be proved). That would mean a false statement could be proved—arithmetic would be inconsistent. Okay, let’s assume the opposite, that Statement A cannot be proved. That would mean that Statement A is true (because it asserts that it cannot be proved), but then there is a true statement that cannot be proved—arithmetic would be incomplete. Ergo, arithmetic is either inconsistent or incomplete.

Imagine you are a member of a tour visiting Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even bother to look — it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a look, mostly take pictures, remark on serious erosion by acid rain. You are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions — good weather, good hotel room, good food, good guide — be a bore? Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in downtown Athens, binoculars propped up on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way. Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches the portico. Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon? Explain.

Before I left [Monticello], I wanted to understand how much of David's role as a former military officer -- responsible for protecting and promoting this country's foreign policy agenda at home and abroad -- was something that felt, if at all, in tension with his role [as a tour guide] now. 'I was born in the United States of America. I served the country for thirty years, so I actually believe in the idea of America,' he said, straightening up in his chair. 'Are we exceptional? No. Have we had unique advantages based on geography, based on a whole host of factors? Yes. Did a group of people come together in 1776 and conceive of an idea that was pretty radical in its time and then create a system of government, through the Constitution and its amendments, that was pretty radical and pretty novel? Yeah. Have other countries found their own way? Sure. So I believe in the idea of America. I don't believe that this country was perfect. I don't believe it is perfect. I don't believe it's going to be perfect. I believe that the journey to make this a better place is worth the effort and that the United States, if you conceive it not so much as a place to be in but an idea to believe in, it worth fighting for.

The guided tour "I am a guide to the labyrinth" city is inside of body made manifest meat organs & electrical power plants The place where, walking down death-row ("You look like you're"), maps - AMERICUS - a river-vein we ride along. give form to the passing world Freeways are a drama, a new art form. Signs. Houses. Faces. Loud gabble of Blacks at a bus-stop.

In the early part of the ninth century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician working in Baghdad, wrote a seminal textbook in which he highlighted the usefulness of restoring a quantity being subtracted (like 2, above) by adding it to the other side of an equation. He called this process al-jabr (Arabic for “restoring”), which later morphed into “algebra.” Then, long after his death, he hit the etymological jackpot again. His own name, al-Khwarizmi, lives on today in the word “algorithm.

For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.

Around them the stubbled land was marked off by plaques and signs that explained to visitors what had happened here on a long-ago July day not unlike this one. But Peter already knew all they said and more. He looked around at the people with their noses tucked in brochures and guidebooks, and those trailing, sheeplike, after tour guides and park employees. He was used to feeling somewhat out of place most everywhere he went--at school or the barbershop, even at home, but here, where he knew everything, all the names and dates and facts, he somehow seemed to fit, and the knowledge of this welled up inside him. It was like he'd been born a blue flower in a field full of red ones and had only now been plunked down in a meadow so blue it might as well have been the ocean.

The Lover Reconsiders Wait... You. Come hither come closer come here, shrug and wriggle your way out of those clothes, shed them like baby teeth, like snakeskin, like feathers from the molt of a phoenix come here let me hold you let my arms draw you closer come hither let me be suffused with your scent come here now. I want to kiss you, I want to kiss you, I want to kiss my way down your body and back up again give me your guided tour, teach me of your landmarks those hips of yours are strangers to my touch but I mean to make their acquaintance so yes there here I want to kiss you I want to learn what you whisper when you kiss with your heart’s shutters open I want to nip at your lower lip I want the rush of blood to make that mouth tingle I want to talk in quiet tones to all of you come hither come closer come here Now, bolt the door, now, unplug the phone, now warn the neighbors to ignore the racket I do not want fifteen minutes of your time I want the whole fucking night. Now let me see the smile you save for special occasions Now don’t pick a favorite position pick five Now I want to bathe myself in you Now now now like the Ganges, like the Red Sea, like the Amazon I want to follow you down to your ocean Now I want to savor you, lover, come to me make time and I will make you breakfast I want to become overfamiliar with your tastes come hither come closer come here come now you.

From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, We will fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea. First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean, We are proud to claim the title of United States Marines. —Marine Corps Hymn

If you’ll all just follow me over to our top sector here, I’ll start your guided tour.” Ellis got up, then followed Riley and Heather, who was dragging her feet, as they fell in behind Deb. “Are there going to be snacks?” he asked. “I do my best work with snacks.

In one case, a group of innocent American tourists was taken on a tour bus through a country the members later described as “either France or Sweden” and subjected to three days of looking at old, dirty buildings in cities where it was not possible to get a cheeseburger.

Merciless—to me Merciless means to be relentless in your pursuit, whether it’s for the love of your wife and kids, or for your passions and goals. You never give up on what’s important to you. If you want your band to be successful, or if you want to open the best fucking ham sandwich deli in town, you need to be Merciless in that quest. Just make sure you don’t go in heavy with the mustard—words of wisdom from the Sandwich Tao of Oz.

They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard to capture the British frigate Serapis during their famous sea fight.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

In Isaac Newton’s lifetime, no more than a few thousand people had any idea what he looked like, though he was one of England’s most famous men, yet now millions of people have quite a clear idea—based on replicas of copies of rather poorly painted portraits. Even more pervasive and indelible are the smile of Mona Lisa, The Scream of Edvard Munch, and the silhouettes of various fictional extraterrestrials. These are memes, living a life of their own, independent of any physical reality. “This may not be what George Washington looked like then,” a tour guide was overheard saying of the Gilbert Stuart painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “but this is what he looks like now.” Exactly.

The word corruption does not arouse the moral revulsion that it should. We think of it as more a nuisance than a great evil. But corruption kills societies every bit as much as murder kills an individual. Moreover there is no hope for any society in which corruption is endemic. One final thought: Here in Cameroon, as elsewhere in Africa, the knowledgeable guides who lead tours of the slave centers note that Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade, and that without them, the slave trade could not have existed. If only this fact were taught as readily in American universities as it is here in Africa — not in order to minimize white complicity, but because universities should teach truth. Flawed human nature has no color.

On canvas with paint In the Artist’s school It’s red that is hot And blue that is cool. But in science we show As the heat gets higher That a star will glow red Like the coals of a fire. Raise the heat some more And what is in sight? It’s no longer red It has turned bright white. Yet the hottest of all, Merlin says unto you, Is neither white nor red When the star has turned blue.

The more we make the more we (think we) need, and the more we (think we) need means the more we must work and the more we must work means the more time we spend away from the home we're killing ourselves to pay for but it's a home we're never in except maybe on the weekends and then we're so exhausted we don't want to be bothered with the family we say we're providing a better life.

Oh, of course I stumble. There are times when I’m confidently skipping along and then I trip over my own poorly-placed steps and fall face first into the thickets. But I think there’s a sort of beauty in falling. Each time I fall, I’m reminded that I’m still human, that I’m still learning, that there will always be more lessons, growth, and discovery up ahead. So, although I have times when I’m weak, when I’m critical of myself, or I lose hope, I wouldn’t give them up for the world. I cherish them – because it’s the risk of falling that makes life a grand adventure rather than just a guided tour.

Eventually they climb sixteen steps into the Gallery of Mineralogy. The guide shows them a gate from Brazil and violet amethysts and a meteorite on a pedestal that he claims is as ancient as the solar system itself. Then he leads them single file down two twisting staircases and along several corridors and stops outside an iron door with a single keyhole. “End of tour,” he says. A girl says, “But what’s through there?” “Behind this door is another locked door, slightly smaller.” “And what’s behind that?” “A third locked door, smaller yet.” “What’s behind that?” “A fourth door, and a fifth, on and on until you reach a thirteenth, a little locked door no bigger than a shoe.” The children lean forward. “And then?” “Behind the thirteenth door”—the guide flourishes one of his impossibly wrinkled hands—“is the Sea of Flames.” Puzzlement. Fidgeting. “Come now. You’ve never heard of the Sea of Flames?” The children shake their heads. Marie-Laure squints up at the naked bulbs strung in three-yard intervals along the ceiling; each sets a rainbow-colored halo rotating in her vision. The guide hangs his cane on his wrist and rubs his hands together. “It’s a long story. Do you want to hear a long story?” They nod. He clears his throat. “Centuries ago, in the place we now call Borneo, a prince plucked a blue stone from a dry riverbed because he thought it was pretty. But on the way back to his palace, the prince was attacked by men on horseback and stabbed in the heart.” “Stabbed in the heart?” “Is this true?” A boy says, “Hush.” “The thieves stole his rings, his horse, everything. But because the little blue stone was clenched in his fist, they did not discover it. And the dying prince managed to crawl home. Then he fell unconscious for ten days. On the tenth day, to the amazement of his nurses, he sat up, opened his hand, and there was the stone. “The sultan’s doctors said it was a miracle, that the prince never should have survived such a violent wound. The nurses said the stone must have healing powers. The sultan’s jewelers said something else: they said the stone was the largest raw diamond anyone had ever seen. Their most gifted stonecutter spent eighty days faceting it, and when he was done, it was a brilliant blue, the blue of tropical seas, but it had a touch of red at its center, like flames inside a drop of water. The sultan had the diamond fitted into a crown for the prince, and it was said that when the young prince sat on his throne and the sun hit him just so, he became so dazzling that visitors could not distinguish his figure from light itself.” “Are you sure this is true?” asks a girl. “Hush,” says the boy. “The stone came to be known as the Sea of Flames. Some believed the prince was a deity, that as long as he kept the stone, he could not be killed. But something strange began to happen: the longer the prince wore his crown, the worse his luck became. In a month, he lost a brother to drowning and a second brother to snakebite. Within six months, his father died of disease. To make matters even worse, the sultan’s scouts announced that a great army was gathering in the east. "The prince called together his father’s advisers. All said he should prepare for war, all but one, a priest, who said he’d had a dream. In the dream the Goddess of the Earth told him she’d made the Sea of Flames as a gift for her lover, the God of the Sea, and was sending the jewel to him through the river. But when the river dried up, and the prince plucked it out, the goddess became enraged. She cursed the stone and whoever kept it.

We Close In Fifteen Minutes by Stewart Stafford Found myself the only taker, Of a minefield guided tour, Through no man's land life, Every exit is now invisible. Stardom magnified my flaws, A broken man lost in a maze, A deadly structure's hostage, A hermit in denial's labyrinth. Glimpse dwindling fragments, In the looking glass of hubris, Flounder in glossy quicksand, The solutions devoured whole. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Some thoughts on heaven? I have this theory that heaven is different for everyone. It has to be, or it wouldn’t be heaven. My grandmother’s heaven? In her heaven she doesn’t have to share the remote with anyone, and it is Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on all the time, with nary a rerun ever, and the old lady always wins the big money and a trip to Europe to tour a castle or somewhere warm but not too hot with nice churches. In her heaven your knees don’t hurt and your back doesn’t hurt and you get to be whatever age was your favourite age to be and you still have all your teeth and there are bingo games right after dinner and raspberry hard candies and no one ever has to do the dishes. In my gran’s heaven, you can still have yourself a proper smoke in the living room and it doesn’t ruin the new paint job and the lawn never gets too long and the foxes don’t chase the birds off the birdfeeder. In her heaven, a nice bit of cheese won’t give you the bad stomach and real men don’t beat their wives or fuck their children, and every day is payday, and the Friday of a long weekend. Floors wax themselves, but you still get to hang the laundry, but only if you feel like it.

The Roman general wanted to spare Archimedes, because he was so valuable—sort of like the Einstein of the ancient world—but some stupid Roman soldier killed him.” “There you go again,” Hazel muttered. “Stupid and Roman don’t always go together, Leo.” Frank grunted agreement. “How do you know all this, anyway?” he demanded. “Is there a Spanish tour guide around here?” “No, man,” Leo said. “You can’t be a demigod who’s into building stuff and not know about Archimedes. The guy was seriously elite. He calculated the value of pi. He did all this math stuff we still use for engineering. He invented a hydraulic screw that could move water through pipes.” Hazel scowled. “A hydraulic screw. Excuse me for not knowing about that awesome achievement.” “He also built a death ray made of mirrors that could burn enemy ships,” Leo said. “Is that awesome enough for you?” “I saw something about that on TV,” Frank admitted. “They proved it didn’t work.” “Ah, that’s just because modern mortals don’t know how to use Celestial bronze,” Leo said. “That’s the key. Archimedes also invented a massive claw that could swing on a crane and pluck enemy ships out of the water.” “Okay, that’s cool,” Frank admitted. “I love grabber-arm games.” “Well, there you go,” Leo said. “Anyway, all his inventions weren’t enough. The Romans destroyed his city. Archimedes was killed.

The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself: a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies; a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure; a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation; a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself; a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:3).

Dear Merlin, How empty is empty space? ARTHUR LEVY HOUSTON, TEXAS When a rabbit disappears into “thin air” at a magic show nobody tells you the thin air already contains over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten quintillion) atoms per cubic centimeter. The very best laboratory vacuum chambers have as few as 10,000 atoms per cubic centimeter. Interplanetary space gets down to about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter while interstellar space is as low as 0.5 atoms per cubic centimeter. The award for nothingness, however, must be given to intergalactic space. There it is difficult to find more than 0.0000001 atoms per cubic centimeter. It has been postulated that outside the universe, where there is no space, there is no nothing. We might call this hypothetical region (where we are certain to find multitudes of rabbits) nothing-nothing

Back inside, I’m shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs. The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I’m taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, “What’s that odor?” To which the guide replied, “Perhaps it’s the odor of crushed selfishness.” Valesky grins. “How about that for a utopian answer?” To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro.

To make way for more resorts with spectacular views, developers destroy native habitats and ignore local concerns. Preservationists decry the growing propensity to bulldoze old hotels and buildings in favor of constructing new resorts, water holes and entertainment spots that look identical whether in Singapore, Dubai or Johannesburg; a world where diversity is replaced with homogeneity. Another catastrophe for countries betting on tourism has come from wealthy vacationers who fall in love with a country and buy so many second houses that locals can no longer afford to live in their own towns and villages. Among the more thoughtful questions is how mass tourism has changed cultures. African children told anthropologists that they want to grow up to be tourists so they could spend the day doing nothing but eating. The tourists who do not speak the local language and rely on guides to tell them what they are seeing and what to think marvel at countries like China with its new wealth and appearance of democracy. Environmentalists wonder how long the globe can continue to support 1 billion people racing around the world for a long weekend on a beach or a ten-day tour of an African game park.

A Safety Travel with Sinclair James International Traveling to somewhere completely foreign to you may be challenging but that is what travelers always look for. It can be a good opportunity to find something new and discover new places, meet new people and try a different culture. However, it can involve a lot of risk as well. You may be surprised to find yourself naked and penniless on the side of the road trying to figure out what you did wrong. These kinds of situations come rarely when you are careful and cautious enough but it is not impossible. Sinclair James International Travel and Tours, your Australian based traveling guide can help you travel safely through the following tips: 1. Pack all Security Items In case of emergencies, you should have all the safety tools and security items with you. Carry a card with your name and number with you and don’t forget to scribble down the numbers of local police station, fire department, list of hospitals and other necessary numbers that you may need. Place them in each compartment and on your pockets. If ever you find yourself being a victim of pick pocketing in Manila, Philippines or being driven around in circles in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, you will definitely find these numbers very helpful. It is also advisable to put your name and an emergency number in case you are in trouble and may need someone else to call. 2. Protect your Passport Passports nowadays have RFID which can be scanned from a distance. We have heard some complaints from fellow travelers of being victims of scams which involves stealing of information through passports. An RFID blocking case in a wallet may come in handy to prevent hackers from stealing your information. 3. Beware of Taxis When you exit the airport, taxis may all look the same but some of them can be hiding a defective scam to rob tourists during their drive. It is better to ask an official before taking a taxi as many unmarked ones claim that they are legitimate. Also, if the fare isn’t flat rate, be sure you know the possible routes. Some drivers will know better and will take good care of you, but others will take longer routes to increase the fare. If you know your options, you can suggest a different route to avoid paying too much. 4. Be aware of your Rights Laws change from state to state, and certainly from country to country, but ignorance to them will get you nowhere. In fact, in many cases you can get yourself out of trouble by knowing the laws that will affect you. When traveling to other countries, make sure to review the laws and policies that can affect your activities. There are a lot of misconceptions and knowing these could save you a headache. Sinclair James International

Eliot's own reflections on the primitive mind as a model for nondualistic thinking and on the nature and consequences of different modes of consciousness were informed by an excellent education in the social sciences and philosophy. As a prelude to our guided tour of the text of The Waste Land, we now turn to a brief survey of some of his intellectual preoccupations in the decade before he wrote it, preoccupations which in our view are enormously helpful in understanding the form of the poem. Eliot entered Harvard as a freshman in 1906 and finished his doctoral dissertation in 1916, with one of the academic years spent at the Sorbonne and one at Oxford. At Harvard and Oxford, he had as teachers some of modern philosophy's most distinguished individuals, including George Santayana, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim; and while at the Sorbonne, he attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, a philosophic star in Paris in 1910-11. Under the supervision of Royce, Eliot wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of F. H. Bradley, a major voice in the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century crisis in philosophy. Eliot extended this period of concentration on philosophical problems by devoting much of his time between 1915 and the early twenties to book reviewing. His education and early book reviewing occurred during the period of epistemological disorientation described in our first chapter, the period of "betweenness" described by Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, the period of the revolt against dualism described by Lovejoy. 2 Eliot's personal awareness of the contemporary epistemological crisis was intensified by the fact that while he was writing his dissertation on Bradley he and his new wife were actually living with Bertrand Russell. Russell as the representative of neorealism and Bradley as the representative of neoidealism were perhaps the leading expositors of opposite responses to the crisis discussed in our first chapter. Eliot's situation was extraordinary. He was a close student of both Bradley and Russell; he had studied with Bradley's friend and disciple Harold Joachim and with Russell himself. And in 1915-16, while writing a dissertation explaining and in general defending Bradley against Russell, Eliot found himself face to face with Russell across the breakfast table. Moreover, as the husband of a fragile wife to whom both men (each in his own way) were devoted, Eliot must have found life to be a kaleidoscope of brilliant and fluctuating patterns.