“
R is a velocity of measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being, and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly as almost infinite variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility, this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers, and even death.
”
”
Douglas Adams
“
I’m surprised there isn’t a jet airplane designed in the shape of a brick. Some people (aeronautical engineers) might say that’s because bricks aren’t aerodynamic. Yeah, right. I’d like to see someone make that claim as they watch a brick flying towards their face at a high velocity.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (A brick and a blanket walk into a bar)
“
People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they’ve woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I’ll be talking, and will be interested in what I’m saying, but then someone—I’m convinced this what happens—someone—and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person—for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.
”
”
Dave Eggers
“
Did you really say y'all to me? Did i actually make a political statement to which your non sequitur reply was, 'Are y'all vegetarians?
”
”
Blanche McCrary Boyd (Terminal Velocity (Ellen Burns #2))
“
A few years after I gave some lectures for the freshmen at Caltech (which were published as the Feynman Lectures on Physics), I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-women because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the women look stupid.
The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, "Look how pretty the stars shine!" To which he replied, "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine." He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery.
The letter claimed that I was saying a women is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions.
I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: "Don't bug me, Man!
”
”
Richard P. Feynman
“
When I was younger, I often thought I should travel more and farther, spend more time in foreign countries, that I should be in a constant state of velocity so that I could get out of there and truly live, but with time I have come to understand that everything I was looking for was right here, inside of me, inside the things that surround me, in the money bobs that turned into my actual jobs, in the constancy of the everyday, in the eyes of the people I meet when I allow my gaze to linger. I'm writing again after the fever, as if an old, welcome wound has opened and started to bleed, and I guess it's an incomplete puzzle, these pictures of others and whoever they end up portraying. . . . 'Soon it will be too late,' [Sally] says, and hands me the thermos. 'And that's why we have to exert ourselves to the utmost.
”
”
Ia Genberg (Detaljerna)
“
So you have put yourself through all of this just so that you can cheat in an exam,’ Wing said with a slight smile. ‘An exam, I might add, that you would almost certainly have passed with flying colours anyway.’
‘Well, it’s the principle of the thing,’ Otto replied with a grin.
‘I am not sure that I approve,’ Wing said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Cheats never prosper.’
‘You know, sometimes I really think that you might not be cut out for this place,’ Otto said. ‘I take it then that you won’t be needing a copy?’
‘Well,’ Wing replied, ‘I perhaps wouldn’t go so far as to say that –
”
”
Mark Walden (Escape Velocity (H.I.V.E., #3))
“
The first thing that went wrong, according to Fat, had to do with the radio. Listening to it one night- he had not been able to sleep for a long time- he heard the radio saying hideous words, sentences which it could not be saying. Beth, being asleep, missed that. So that could have been Fat's mind breaking down; by then his psyche was disintegrating at a terrible velocity.
Mental illness is not funny.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
“
I don’t know,” he says. “I guess so. In space, everything has its relative position. Space is an entity, right, but also limitless. It’s less dense the farther out you go, but you can always keep going. There’s no definitive border between the start and the end. We’ll never fully understand or know it. We can’t.” “You don’t think?” “Dark matter makes up the majority of all matter, and it’s still a mystery.” “Dark matter?” “It’s invisible. It’s all the extra mass we can’t see that makes the formation of galaxies and the rotational velocities of stars around galaxies mathematically possible.” “I’m glad we don’t know everything.
”
”
Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things)
“
A police officer pulls over Werner Heisenberg for speeding. “Do you know how fast you were going?” asks the cop. “No,” Heisenberg replies, “but I know exactly where I am!” I think we can all agree that physics jokes are the funniest jokes there are. They are less good at accurately conveying physics. This particular chestnut rests on familiarity with the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle, often explained as saying that we cannot simultaneously know both the position and the velocity of any object. But the reality is deeper than that.
”
”
Sean Carroll (Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime)
“
R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
“
And then one morning the soldiers grew suddenly still as the heavy latches were lifted and turned. Just before the doors slid apart, a man from Pisa took the opportunity to say, "The air is thin. We're in the mountains." Alessandro straightened his back and raised his head. The mountains, unpredictable in their power, were the heart of his recollection, and he knew that the Pisano was right. He had known it all along from the way the train took the many grades, from the metallic thunder of bridges over which they had run in the middle of the night, and from the white sound of streams falling and flowing in velocities that could have been imparted only by awesome mountainsides.
”
”
Mark Helprin (A Soldier of the Great War)
“
Blue Planet Phenomenon.
she’s from the pink planet called Constellation
he’s from the dark planet beyond
under a constant monitor
no love a interplanetary phenomenon
he’s an interstellar
she’s studying astronomy
what they have seen sets in motion their biology
they will meet on the blue planet
they should know better
it’s death if they get together
interplanetary love is forbidden
their passion keep it hidden
they should know better
but they must be together
to the blue planet
love velocity interstellar
crossing Earth’s longitudes
hiding their love in the new years eve multitudes
they should know better
their love still not allowed
under another planets blanketing cloud
Planet Earth in unified love
new years eve blue planet phenomenon
she will fall pregnant
their baby conceived at a time of human unity
their unborn baby and united humanity
become one in harmony
interstellar before they’re discovered
too late their love uncovered
they should know better
it’s death for forbidden love together
trial on dark planet
they will all die today
“kill them now”
judgment say
they plea for their unborn baby’s mercy
a reprieve
child leniency
only for their baby clemency
“bring on the birth” authorities say
a unpredicted baby delivery
conceived in a time of human unity
a love descendant of humanity
interstellar love racing
interplanetary embracing
human love emanating
from their newborn baby
blanketing pink planet with love
blanketing dark planet with love
two planets authority depleting
two planets a love meeting
now love not forbidden
love never to be hidden
interstellar love plea
she and he with their baby to go free
By R.M.Romarney.
”
”
R.M. Romarney
“
R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. It
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
“
is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
“
Never in the history of humanity have we vomited more words in more places with more velocity.
”
”
Jim Vandehei (Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less)
“
People ask me if it's like that television show The West Wing," says Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's second chief. "But that doesn't begin to capture the velocity. In an average day you would deal with Bosnia, Northern Ireland, the budget, taxation, the environment-and then you'd have lunch! And then on Friday you would say, 'Thank God-only two more working days until Monday.
”
”
Chris Whipple (The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency)
“
Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life.
There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there's someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean, of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word 'hunt' I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means 'man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pickup truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding above all with plaid'.
”
”
Stephen Fry (Stephen Fry in America)
“
Our house was a collection of silences, each room a mute, empty frame, each of us three oscillating bodies (Mom, Dad, me) moving around in our own curved functions, from space to space, not making any noise, just waiting, waiting to wait, trying, for some reason, not to disrupt the field of silence, not to perturb the delicate equilibrium of the system. We wandered from room to room, just missing one another, on paths neither chosen by us nor random, but determined by our own particular characteristics, our own properties, unable to deviate, to break from our orbital loops, unable to do something as simple as walking into the next room where our beloved, our father, our mother, our child, our wife, our husband, was sitting, silent, waiting but not realizing it, waiting for someone to say something, anything, wanting to do it, yearning to do it, physically unable to bring ourselves to change our velocities.
”
”
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
“
Wondering which half of your ad spend is wasted? Velocity says: ‘Wrong question. Try again.’ Instead of just interrupting people, serve them and make them feel something. Sorry, but that takes longer than thirty seconds. Make meaningful connections.
”
”
Ajaz Ahmed (Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital)
“
The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.
Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless. I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins.
”
”
Alistair MacLean (When Eight Bells Toll)
“
An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Currency is the email of blockchains. Payments are the fundamental infrastructure that will enable density of adoption. It’s very, very enticing to say, "This is about more than money!" It absolutely is, in the long term. The vision of this technology is far beyond money, but you can’t build that unless you first build the money part. That’s what creates the security. That’s what creates the velocity, the liquidity, the infrastructure. That’s what funds the entire ecosystem. In the end, when we do deliver these services to people, it won’t be so they can open a bank account. This isn’t about banking the unbanked; it’s about unbanking all of us.
”
”
Andreas M. Antonopoulos (The Internet of Money Volume Two)
“
Let me say only that these vehicles float a few inches off the ground. No animals draw them. No steam or chemical fuels them. Should something, a pet or child perhaps, pass underneath, it will temporarily cease to exist, then resume on the other side, with no interruption of velocity or awareness. No one thinks of this as death.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3))
“
So, you admit you’re an animal killer.”
She gaped. Did he just say that? Did he actually . . .
“Go for it, Addie!” Tay yelled.
She glanced up. There was the ball plummeting at a fierce velocity, triggering a burst of adrenaline. And there was Kris, the words still on his lips.
Her fingers rolled into a fist. She threw her arm back and made contact, executing a follow-through to ensure that the sucker landed—smack!—square in the face.
“Whoa!” Ed yelled as Kris went backward, hands over his nose, from which streamed a line of bright-red blood.
“Awesome!” Tay slapped her on the back. “You knocked him out cold. We won!”
Addie lifted the net and went over to where Kris was sitting in the mud, blood on his shirt. “Is that enough closure for you?” he asked, wiping blood off his chin.
She breathed heavily, trying to think what she thought, and was delighted to realize that, actually, it had helped to knock the stuffing out of him.
“Yeah. That’ll work. See you tomorrow, at noon.” She turned and marched off. “I’m going back to the lab.
”
”
Sarah Strohmeyer (This Is My Brain on Boys)
“
That’s the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can’t study anything without changing it.” Since Galileo, scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world. That was implicit in every aspect of their behavior, even the way they wrote scientific papers, saying things like “It was observed …” As if nobody had observed it. For three hundred years, that impersonal quality was the hallmark of science. Science was objective, and the observer had no influence on the results he or she described. This objectivity made science different from the humanities, or from religion—fields where the observer’s point of view was integral, where the observer was inextricably mixed up in the results observed. But in the twentieth century, that difference had vanished. Scientific objectivity was gone, even at the most fundamental levels. Physicists now knew you couldn’t even measure a single subatomic particle without affecting it totally. If you stuck your instruments in to measure a particle’s position, you changed its velocity. If you measured its velocity, you changed its position. That basic truth became the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed. In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
She wanted to lunge for him then. In that moment Sheila wanted to charge her whole self into his body, pull out a tibia or a femur and squeeze its proteins to dust. She felt like she had more strength concentrated in every muscle than she'd ever had in her life, and her joints were shifting around inside of her , her cells were multiplying, like the real living organism she supposed she had been all long, but also - and this was the strange thing - she felt helpless, she felt drained of every available energy, like all of this velocity building in her was a product of what he had given her and what she had done with it. She remembered Mr. Zorn, her sophomore-year physics teacher, stepping back from the chalkboard in admiration of an equation he had just written, saying how beautiful it was, how perfectly and essentially balanced, and Sheila had rolled her eyes sitting at her desk at how pathetic this had sounded, how devoid of beauty Mr. Zorn's life must have truly been for him to even think to say something so insane, but now she felt the weight of this truth sting in her somewhere. She and Peter had built this, they had built it together - that's where the velocity came from, that's where the force of the thing came from - and to remove one of the variables from the equation was to leave it unbalanced, and she was not going to let this happen.
”
”
Sarah Bruni (The Night Gwen Stacy Died)
“
The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, the coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectrelike symbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen’s mind. He had heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. Oh, the grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient consciousness through which souls of mathematicians might wander, projecting long slender fabrics from plane to plane of ever rarer and paler twilight, radiating swift eddies to the last verges of a universe ever vaster, farther and more impalpable.
”
”
James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
“
Many of the important principles in twentieth century physics are expressed as limitations on what we can know. Einstein's principle of relativity (which was an extension of a principle of Galileo's) says that we cannot do any experiment that would distinguish being at rest from moving at a constant velocity. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that we cannot know both the position and momentum of a particle to arbitrary accuracy. This new limitation tells us there is an absolute bound to the information available to us about what is contained on the other side of a horizon. It is known as Bekenstein's bound, as it was discussed in papers Jacob Bekenstein wrote in the 1970s shortly after he discovered the entropy of black holes.
”
”
Lee Smolin (Three Roads To Quantum Gravity)
“
The time capsule is a characteristically twentieth-century invention: a tragicomic time machine. It lacks an engine, goes nowhere, sits and waits. It sends our cultural bits and bobs traveling into the future at snail's pace. At our pace, that is. They travel through time in parallel with the rest of us, at our standard velocity of one second per second, one day per day... Builders of time capsules are projecting something forward into the future, but it's mainly their own imaginations. Like people who buy lottery tickets for the momentary dreams of riches, they get to dream of a time to come when, though long dead, they will be the cynosure of all eyes... Clear the airwaves: Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, Oglethorpe University, AD 1936, has something to say.
”
”
James Gleick (Time Travel: A History)
“
Where Western tales begin by shifting us to another time – ‘Once upon a time’ they say, meaning elsewhen, meaning then rather than now – Russian skazki make an adjustment of place. ‘In a certain land’, they start; or, ‘In the three-times-ninth kingdom …’ Meaning elsewhere, meaning there rather than here. Yet these elsewheres are always recognisable as home. In the distance will always be a woodwalled town where the churches have onion domes. The ruler will always be a Tsar, Ivan or Vladimir. The earth is always black. The sky is always wide. It’s Russia, always Russia, the dear dreadful enormous territory at the edge of Europe which is as large as all Europe put together. And, also, it isn’t. It is story Russia, not real Russia; a place never quite in perfect overlap with the daylight country of the same name. It is as near to it as a wish is to reality, and as far away too. For the tales supplied what the real country lacked, when villagers were telling them, and Afanaseyev was writing them down. Real Russia’s fields grew scraggy crops of buckwheat and rye. Story Russia had magic tablecloths serving feasts without end. Real Russia’s roads were mud and ruts. Story Russia abounded in tools of joyful velocity: flying carpets, genies of the rushing air, horses that scarcely bent the grass they galloped on. Real Russia fixed its people in sluggish social immobility. Story Russia sent its lively boys to seek the Firebird or to woo the Swan Maiden. The stories dreamed away reality’s defects. They made promises good enough to last for one evening of firelight; promises which the teller and the hearers knew could only be delivered in some Russian otherwhere. They could come true only in the version of home where the broke-backed trestle over the stream at the village’s end became ‘a bridge of white hazelwood with oaken planks, spread with purple cloths and nailed with copper nails’. Only in the wish country, the dream country. Only in the twenty-seventh kingdom.
”
”
Francis Spufford (Red Plenty)
“
Yes, my friends, your hunger for history is still pretty segregated. Your knowledge of America often ends at the color line. You end up erasing the black story as the American story, black history as American history. You certainly have an insatiable thirst for history, but only if that history justifies whiteness. Most black folk can’t help but notice what many whites rarely wish, or are compelled, to see: you embrace history as your faithful flame when she kisses you, and yet you spurn her as a cheating mate when she nods or winks at others. You love history when it’s yet another book about, say, the Founding Fathers. No amount of minutia is too tedious. No new fact is too obscure to report. The curiosity about presidents is nearly inexhaustible. History is a friend to white America when it celebrates the glories of American exceptionalism, the beauty of American invention, the genius of the American soul. History is unrestrained bliss when it sings Walt Whitman’s body electric or touts the lyrical vision of the Transcendentalists. History that swings at the plate with Babe Ruth or slides into home with Joe DiMaggio is the American pastime at its best. History hovers low in solemn regard for the men who gave up the ghost at Appomattox and speaks with quiet reverence for the Confederate flags that gleefully waved to secession. Of course all of you don’t sing from the same hymnal. But American history, the collective force of white identity that picks up velocity across the centuries, mouths every note.
”
”
Michael Eric Dyson (Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America)
“
Blue Planet Phenomenon.
she’s from the pink planet called Constellation
he’s from the dark planet beyond
under a constant monitor
no love a interplanetary phenomenon
he’s an interstellar
she’s studying astronomy
what they have seen sets in motion their biology
they will meet on the blue planet
they should know better
it’s death if they get together
interplanetary love is forbidden
their passion keep it hidden
they should know better
but they must be together
to the blue planet
love velocity interstellar
crossing Earth’s longitudes
hiding their love in the new years eve multitudes
they should know better
their love still not allowed
under another planets blanketing cloud
Planet Earth in unified love
new years eve blue planet phenomenon
she will fall pregnant
their baby conceived at a time of human unity
their unborn baby and united humanity
become one in harmony
interstellar before they’re discovered
too late their love uncovered
they should know better
it’s death for forbidden love together
trial on dark planet
they will all die today
“kill them now”
judgment say
they plea for their unborn baby’s mercy
a reprieve
child leniency
only for their baby clemency
“bring on the birth” authorities say
a unpredicted baby delivery
conceived in a time of human unity
a love descendant of humanity
interstellar love racing
interplanetary embracing
human love emanating
from their newborn baby
blanketing pink planet with love
blanketing dark planet with love
two planets authority depleting
two planets a love meeting
now love not forbidden
love never to be hidden
interstellar love plea
she and he with their baby to go free
By R.M. Romarney.
”
”
R.M. Romarney
“
In about 1951, a quality approach called Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) came on the Japanese scene. Its focus is on maintenance rather than on production. One of the major pillars of TPM is the set of so-called 5S principles. 5S is a set of disciplines—and here I use the term “discipline” instructively. These 5S principles are in fact at the foundations of Lean—another buzzword on the Western scene, and an increasingly prominent buzzword in software circles. These principles are not an option. As Uncle Bob relates in his front matter, good software practice requires such discipline: focus, presence of mind, and thinking. It is not always just about doing, about pushing the factory equipment to produce at the optimal velocity. The 5S philosophy comprises these concepts: • Seiri, or organization (think “sort” in English). Knowing where things are—using approaches such as suitable naming—is crucial. You think naming identifiers isn’t important? Read on in the following chapters. • Seiton, or tidiness (think “systematize” in English). There is an old American saying: A place for everything, and everything in its place. A piece of code should be where you expect to find it—and, if not, you should re-factor to get it there. • Seiso, or cleaning (think “shine” in English): Keep the workplace free of hanging wires, grease, scraps, and waste. What do the authors here say about littering your code with comments and commented-out code lines that capture history or wishes for the future? Get rid of them. • Seiketsu, or standardization: The group agrees about how to keep the workplace clean. Do you think this book says anything about having a consistent coding style and set of practices within the group? Where do those standards come from? Read on. • Shutsuke, or discipline (self-discipline). This means having the discipline to follow the practices and to frequently reflect on one’s work and be willing to change.
”
”
Robert C. Martin (Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin Series))
“
The Marquis de V... - whose falsetto voice and little watery eyes I have always detested - was saying to me with a wicked smile: 'Then again, the master gymnast might break his neck at any moment. What he is doing now is very dangerous, my dear, and the pleasure you take in his performance is the little frisson that danger affords you. Wouldn't it be thrilling, if his sweaty hand failed to grip the bar? The velocity acquired by his rotation about the bar would break his spine quite cleanly, and perhaps a little of the cervical matter might spurt out as far as this! It would be most sensational, and you would have a rare emotion to add to the field of your experience - for you collect emotions, don't you? What a pretty stew of terrors that man in tights stirs up in us!
'Admit that you almost wish that he will fall! Me too. Many others in the auditorium are in the same state of attention and anguish. That is the horrible instinct of a crowd confronted with a spectacle which awakens in it the ideas of lust and death. Those two agreeable companions always travel together! Take it from me that at the very same moment - see, the man is now holding on to the bar by his fingertips alone - at the very same moment, a good number of the women in these boxes are ardently lusting after that man, not so much for his beauty as for the danger he courts.'
The voice subtly changed its tone, suddenly becoming more interested. 'You have singularly pale eyes this evening, my dear Freneuse. You ought to give up bromides and take valerian instead. You have a charming and curious soul, but you must take command of its changes. You are too ardently and too obviously covetous, this evening, of the death - or at least the fall - of that man.'
I did not reply. The Marquis de V... was quite right. The madness of murder had taken hold of me again; the spectacle had me in its hallucinatory grip. Straitened by a penetrating and delirious anguish, I yearned for that man to fall.
There are appalling depths of cruelty within me.
”
”
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur de Phocas)
“
So what was this reincarnated ether, and what did it mean for Mach’s principle and for the question raised by Newton’s bucket?* Einstein had initially enthused that general relativity explained rotation as being simply a motion relative to other objects in space, just as Mach had argued. In other words, if you were inside a bucket that was dangling in empty space, with no other objects in the universe, there would be no way to tell if you were spinning or not. Einstein even wrote to Mach saying he should be pleased that his principle was supported by general relativity. Einstein had asserted this claim in a letter to Schwarzschild, the brilliant young scientist who had written to him from Germany’s Russian front during the war about the cosmological implications of general relativity. “Inertia is simply an interaction between masses, not an effect in which ‘space’ of itself is involved, separate from the observed mass,” Einstein had declared.23 But Schwarzschild disagreed with that assessment. And now, four years later, Einstein had changed his mind. In his Leiden speech, unlike in his 1916 interpretation of general relativity, Einstein accepted that his gravitational field theory implied that empty space had physical qualities. The mechanical behavior of an object hovering in empty space, like Newton’s bucket, “depends not only on relative velocities but also on its state of rotation.” And that meant “space is endowed with physical qualities.” As he admitted outright, this meant that he was now abandoning Mach’s principle. Among other things, Mach’s idea that inertia is caused by the presence of all of the distant bodies in the universe implied that these bodies could instantly have an effect on an object, even though they were far apart. Einstein’s theory of relativity did not accept instant actions at a distance. Even gravity did not exert its force instantly, but only through changes in the gravitational field that obeyed the speed limit of light. “Inertial resistance to acceleration in relation to distant masses supposes action at a distance,” Einstein lectured. “Because the modern physicist does not accept such a thing as action at a distance, he comes back to the ether, which has to serve as medium for the effects of inertia.”24 It is an issue that still causes dispute, but Einstein seemed to believe, at least when he gave his Leiden lecture, that according to general relativity as he now saw it, the water in Newton’s bucket would be pushed up the walls even if it were spinning in a universe devoid of any other objects. “In contradiction to what Mach would have predicted,” Brian Greene writes, “even in an otherwise empty universe, you will feel pressed against the inner wall of the spinning bucket… In general relativity, empty spacetime provides a benchmark for accelerated motion.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
“
consider the fate of the space shuttle’s external tanks (ETs). Dwarfing the vehicle itself, the ET was the largest and most prominent feature of the space shuttle as it stood on the pad. It remained attached to the shuttle—or perhaps it makes as much sense to say that the shuttle remained attached to it—long after the two strap-on boosters had fallen away. The ET and the shuttle remained connected all the way out of the atmosphere and into space. Only after the system had attained orbital velocity was the tank jettisoned and allowed to fall into the atmosphere, where it was destroyed on reentry. At a modest marginal cost, the ETs could have been kept in orbit indefinitely. The mass of the ET at separation, including residual propellants, was about twice that of the largest possible shuttle payload. Not destroying them would have roughly tripled the total mass launched into orbit by the shuttle. ETs could have been connected to build units that would have humbled today’s International Space Station. The residual oxygen and hydrogen sloshing around in them could have been combined to generate electricity and produce tons of water, a commodity that is vastly expensive and desirable in space. But in spite of hard work and passionate advocacy by space experts who wished to see the tanks put to use, NASA—for reasons both technical and political—sent each of them to fiery destruction in the atmosphere.
”
”
Anonymous
“
he was reveling in the possibilities inherent in selling a car that behaved like a fighter jet. “Yeah, it’s mad,” he continued, with a dimpled grin. And then he added, “In the option selection, you’ll be able to choose three settings: Normal, Sport, and Insane.” A ripple of laughter washed over the crowd. Then, as if to reassure himself as much as everyone else: “It will actually say ‘Insane.’” He hunched his shoulders forward and laughed. Videos posted by people who had experienced “Insane Mode” during test rides at the event appeared on YouTube the next day. Invariably, the accompanying commentary was littered with expletives and other delighted expressions of shock as the car’s spine-straightening acceleration took effect. In the weeks and months that followed, more reaction videos appeared and spread, with one especially spicy compilation coming to accrue more than ten million views. Insane Mode could be seen as more than just a product feature, more than just a marketing gimmick. It would be the mind-set required to fend off the short-sellers of Tesla’s stock, traditional automakers, political opponents, and an increasingly nervous oil industry. It represented the intensity of fervor needed to win the public over to electric cars. And it was a statement about the velocity of innovation required to transition the world to sustainable energy before the planet’s climate changes beyond repair. Even as a feature for a luxury motor vehicle, though, Insane Mode was audacious in both intent and implication.
”
”
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
“
What does it mean to add together lots of different waves with different wavelengths in this way? Well, each wave corresponds to a particular momentum—a different velocity for the (single) bunny moving through the yard. When we add them all together, what we’re doing is saying that there’s a chance of finding the bunny in each of those different states
”
”
Chad Orzel (How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog)
“
Everything in the universe is subject to the uncertainty principle, and has an uncertain position and velocity.” “That can’t be right. I mean, I can see my bone right over there, and it has a definite position, and a velocity of zero.” “Ah, but the quantum uncertainty associated with your bone is dwarfed by the practical uncertainty involved in measuring it. If you look at it really carefully, you might be able to specify its position to within a millimeter or so—” “I always look at my bone carefully.” “—and with heroic effort, you might bring that down to a hundred nanometers. In that case, the velocity uncertainty of your hundred-gram bone would be only 10-27 m/s. So, the velocity would be zero, plus or minus 10-27 m/s.” “That’s pretty slow.” “Yeah, you could say that. At that speed, it would take the age of the universe to cross the thickness of a single atom.” “Okay, that’s really slow.” “We don’t see quantum uncertainty associated with everyday objects because they’re just too big. We only see uncertainty directly when we look at very small particles confined to very small spaces.” “Like electrons near atoms!
”
”
Chad Orzel (How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog)
“
Before Jack could say anything, he was bowled sideways by a small female moving with great velocity.
“Jack! Jack, Jack, Jack!” His sister Lizzy flung herself at him, momentarily stunning him. Or maybe that was just the large wooden object she was holding banging into the side of his head.
Jack gave his sister a quick, reflexive squeeze before turning to glare at his father. “You brought Lizzy?”
“How could I miss the return of my favorite brother?” said Lizzy, smiling winningly at him, and Jack realized, dizzily, that she wasn’t the little girl he remembered. The wild red-brown curls were the same, but the missing front teeth had grown in and the rest of her had grown up.
He wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for any of this. In his head, Lizzy was still perpetually six years old.
She’s rejected offers from three viscounts and the heir to a marquisate.
Jane had told him, hadn’t she? But Jack hadn’t believed it. It had been a story about someone else, not his Lizzy.
“Lizzy is in training,” said his stepmother grandly.
“For what?” demanded Jack. He noticed for the first time that the object in her hand appeared to be . . . “And why is she holding a crossbow?”
“Because I’m too small for a longbow,” said Lizzy patiently. “Don’t look so alarmed. I haven’t hit anyone by accident in months.”
“Hasn’t hit anyone on purpose either,” murmured Miles to Lady Henrietta.
Lizzy narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that a challenge?”
“No!” said everyone in unison.
”
”
Lauren Willig (The Lure of the Moonflower (Pink Carnation, #12))
“
How can you trust a God Who took away your parents?” Her gaze fell. “This life isn’t perfect, and there are things that happen, bad things, set into motion by people who make really bad choices. God does not alter the physical laws of this world. If velocity says a car traveling at this speed hits another at that speed, there are consequences to that impact. God allows the laws here to work so that we can live our lives. Otherwise, if the law of gravity worked sometimes and not others, we couldn’t even walk out of our house because we might float off the planet.” She paused and then shook her head. “But there’s more to it than that. God can take anything, anything and use it to teach us, to strengthen us, to guide us—if we let Him.
”
”
Staci Stallings (Deep in the Heart)
“
Lincoln reached over his shoulder and neatly snagged a laptop off his desk. “Got her computer. I haven’t found anything yet. Most of her work is password-protected, and she used rotating binary generator accounts to give random pass codes. Based on the Bernoulli equation.” Taylor shook her head. “Huh?” “Bernoulli’s principle? Increases in velocity, decreases in pressure create lift. Commonly taught as why airplanes fly, though it would have to be a perfect world for that particular equation to work. It’s just easy to explain. The binary generator uses the velocity equation from Bernoulli to—” Taylor started laughing. Despite the urbane exterior, Lincoln was a computer genius, a regular geek at heart. “What you’re saying is this is pretty sophisticated stuff for a reporter?” “For anyone, actually. There’s something in here she doesn’t want anyone to read, that’s for sure.
”
”
J.T. Ellison (14 (Taylor Jackson, #2))
“
It’s not an academic question any more to ask what’s going to happen to a cloud. People very much want to know—and that means there’s money available for it. That problem is very much within the realm of physics and it’s a problem very much of the same caliber. You’re looking at something complicated, and the present way of solving it is to try to look at as many points as you can, enough stuff to say where the cloud is, where the warm air is, what its velocity is, and so forth. Then you stick it into the biggest machine you can afford and you try to get an estimate of what it’s going to do next. But this is not very realistic.
”
”
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
“
Some are little more than open platforms that glide on a cushion of resonant potential—ah, but you would not understand this. Let me say only that these vehicles float a few inches off the ground. No animals draw them. No steam or chemical fuels them. Should something, a pet or child perhaps, pass underneath, it will temporarily cease to exist, then resume on the other side, with no interruption of velocity or awareness. No one thinks of this as death.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3))
“
Do we need to go back to the very beginning? I say hi, you say hi, I might play a few little games and then finally you learn the truth.
”
”
A.B. Bloom (Velocity (The Gravity Series, #2))
“
physicist Werner Heisenberg, whose famed uncertainty principle says that you can know the position of an electron as it orbits the nuclear heart of an atom, or you can know its velocity, but that you can’t know both at once.
”
”
Natalie Angier (The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science)
“
Two forms of the quantity theory were available when Keynes started work as an economist – Irving Fisher’s ‘transactions’ version, and the Cambridge ‘cash balances’ approach, developed by Alfred Marshall, who taught Keynes his economics. Keynes used both in his pre-1914 lectures, saying they come to ‘practically the same thing’. Fisher’s equation of exchange, MV = PT, states that, in any period, the quantity of money (M) times its velocity of circulation – the average number of times per period which a pound or dollar is spent (V) – equals the average price of each transaction (P) multiplied by the total number of transactions (T). All this means is that the value of what is spent is equal to the value of what is bought, hardly a surprising conclusion. Three further propositions are needed to convert the equation of exchange into a theory of the price level. First, causation runs from money to prices. Secondly, the velocity of circulation is determined independently of the money supply by the community’s level of income and payments habits. These change only slowly. Thirdly, the volume of transactions is determined independently of the quantity of money by ‘real’ forces.
”
”
Robert Skidelsky (Keynes: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
“
Approaching target area," they heard the pilot say, "Ninety klicks to go, drop-off in one minute thirty-five seconds." However, there was nothing to be heard but the wind rattling against the plane traveling at high velocity across the stormy sky. The voice spoke directly into their heads. "OK, people, get ready," another disembodied voice said. To everyone in each of the three stealth combat aircraft, this voice was almost as familiar as their own. It belonged to Metatron, the commander. "Our scouting drones report no movement whatsoever and minimal security measures. Everyone is sound asleep. They have no idea what's coming at them. Exactly how we like it," he paused for a moment before continuing, and the condescending tone in his voice indicated that he would enjoy the things to come, "Stick to the routine, and this will be a walk in the park. I won't tolerate any casualties today." Nephilim prepared herself, running a final status check on her systems. Her neon-blue eyes were the shape of almonds. When she closed them for a moment, her delicate, pale face appeared to be that of a young woman in her early twenties. Anyone who assumed this, however, couldn't be more wrong. A second later, she was content. All systems were operating within specified parameters. She was ready. Opening her eyes again, she caught a look from Adriel sitting opposite to her. A slight grin flashed over his lips. His deep black skin contrasted with his unnaturally blue eyes, and they outright glowed in the half-dark. He, too, was prepared and agreed with the commander's words. This shouldn't be much more than routine.
”
”
Anna Mocikat (Behind Blue Eyes (Behind Blue Eyes, #1))
“
We can see this with technologies like the Kalman filter, which was used for steering the spaceship used in the moon landing. You can see the full technical details here, but roughly speaking the Kalman filter uses past measurements x[t−1],x[t−2],x[t−3] to inform the estimate of a system’s current state x[t], the action that should be taken u[t], and the corresponding prediction of the future state x[t+1] should that action be taken. For example, it uses past velocity, direction headings, fuel levels, and the like to recommend how a space shuttle should be steered at the current timestep. Crucially, if the microhistory is not accurate enough, if the confidence intervals around each measurement are too wide, or if (say) the velocity estimate is wrong altogether, then the Kalman Filter does not work and Apollo doesn’t happen.
”
”
Balaji S. Srinivasan (The Network State: How To Start a New Country)
“
Longevity escape velocity(LEV) is a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy (not LE at birth) is extended longer than the time that is passing.
For example, in a given year in which LEV would be maintained, technological advances would increase people's remaining life expectancy more than the year that just went by.
From Aubrey De Grey, the founder of LEV foundation himself: "My current estimate is that we will reach LEV, which is tantamount to defeating aging completely, within 12–15 years with 50% probability."
"David Sinclair and I both made important contributions to the field 20-25 years ago, which gave us the option to get the media interested in us, and we chose to exercise that option because, and this may shock you, we are not scientists first and foremost, but humanitarians. We view the quest to understand aging better as a means to an end, namely to postpone the ILL-HEALTH of old age as much as possible, thereby saving lives and alleviating suffering on a totally unprecedented scale.
When you ask how well respected David is as a scientist, you're actually (unintentionally, to be sure) asking a rather loaded question. Like me, he has chosen to sacrifice some of the respect he could have had, simply in order to save more lives."
"I've often been asked what the life expectancy will be in the year 3000. My answer is there very (and I mean VERY) probably won’t be one. Obviously there won’t be one if the human race has ceased to exist, which quite a few people think is quite likely, but discounting that, in addressing the question we need to start by understanding what the term “life expectancy” actually means when it is applied to humans. My full answer to this here: quora .com/What-will-be-the-life-expectancy-in-the-year-3000
So the question now is “how would it work in practice?" Say you are 60 years old at the time of the first intervention and that this early and fundamentally imperfect treatment repairs 75% of the accumulated damage and winds the clock back by 25 years. Then 10 years later you would reach the chronological age of 70 but would be biologically only 45 years old and look and feel like a 45 year old. We now come to the vital key to the whole theory which is this, let's say 20 years after the first treatment, when you are chronologically 80 but biologically 55 years old, both your doctor and yourself will realize that the damage that was not repaired in the first treatment combined with the further damage accumulated over the 20 years since is again posing a health risk. At this point it is time for another intervention. It is now that the progress in medicine comes into play because, by the time 20 years has gone by, anti-aging medicine will have progressed significantly and, whilst the first treatment bought you an extra 25 or 30 years by repairing a fair amount of the damage accumulated over your first 60 years, it did not repair it all. 20 years later medical progress will mean that the latest treatment can not only repair all of the damage corrected by the first intervention but also some of the damage that was not able to be repaired 20 years earlier so in essence you are now chronologically 80 (but biologically in your 50s). This means that, whilst you will have aged 20 years chronologically you will be biologically younger after the second intervention than you were after the first.
This is the essence of ADGs theory and pretty much any other theory based on rejuvenation and damage repair, essentially, it's a shortcut to radical life extension. It is not a cure but it acknowledges that it does not need to be because it simply buys time and leads to a situation where regular interventions at say 15/20 year intervals with increasing effective treatments could extend life virtually indefinitely.
Will it happen? At this point, there is no doubt that it will happen eventually. It's not a question of if but when.
”
”
Aubrey de Grey (Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime)
“
The ultimate immaterial Source causes the first vibration, causing the motion, velocity, and gravitation of the “material” world that operates as the “program” of the Ultimate Source. This program does not mean that there is no free will. Without motion, there would be no gravitation, regardless of mass. Max Planck wrote: “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” He also said: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derived from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” We should combine this with what Erwin Schrodinger had to say about the same subject: “Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be counted for in physical terms, for consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. Quantum physics reveals a basic oneness of the universe. Multiplicity is only apparent; in truth, there is only one mind.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
Already uneasy over the foundations of their subject, mathematicians got a solid dose of ridicule from a clergyman, Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). Bishop Berkeley, in his caustic essay 'The Analyst, or a Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician,' derided those mathematicians who were ever ready to criticize theology as being based upon unsubstantiated faith, yet who embraced the calculus in spite of its foundational weaknesses. Berkeley could not resist letting them have it:
'All these points [of mathematics], I say, are supposed and believed by certain rigorous exactors of evidence in religion, men who pretend to believe no further than they can see... But he who can digest a second or third fluxion, a second or third differential, need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.'
As if that were not devastating enough, Berkeley added the wonderfully barbed comment:
'And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, not yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...?'
Sadly, the foundations of the calculus had come to this - to 'ghosts of departed quantities.' One imagines hundreds of mathematicians squirming restlessly under this sarcastic phrase.
Gradually the mathematical community had to address this vexing problem. Throughout much of the eighteenth century, they had simply been having too much success - and too much fun - in exploiting the calculus to stop and examine its underlying principles. But growing internal concerns, along with Berkeley's external sniping, left them little choice. The matter had to be resolved.
Thus we find a string of gifted mathematicians working on the foundational questions. The process of refining the idea of 'limit' was an excruciating one, for the concept is inherently quite deep, requiring a precision of thought and an appreciation of the nature of the real number system that is by no means easy to come by. Gradually, though, mathematicians chipped away at this idea. By 1821, the Frenchman Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) had proposed this definition:
'When the values successively attributed to a particular variable approach indefinitely a fixed value, so as to end by differing from it by as little as one wishes, this latter is called the limit of all the others.
”
”
William Dunham (Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics)
“
In short: by imagining a space-filling fluid, and allowing for its possible effects, we are able to consider a wide variety of transformed images as representations of the same scene, viewed through different states of the fluid.
In a similar way, by introducing just the right kind of material into space-time, Einstein was able to allow the distortions of physical law, which are introduced by Galilean transformations that vary in space and time, to be accomplished as modifications of a new material. That material is called the metric field or, as I prefer to say, metric fluid. The expanded system, containing the original world plus a hypothetical new material, obeys laws that remain the same even when we make variable changes in velocity, though the state of the metric fluid changes. In other words, the equations for the expanded system can support our huge, "outrageous" local symmetry.
We might expect that systems of equations that support such an enormous amount of symmetry are very special, and hard to come by. The new material must have just the right properties. Equations with such enormous symmetry are the analogue of the Platonic solids-or, better, the spheres-among equations!
”
”
Frank Wilczek (A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design)
“
Brennan’s contribution to The Wedding Night (March 8, 1935), starring Gary Cooper and Anna Sten—the Russian beauty Samuel Goldwyn was promoting as the next European import to rival Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich—was of a different order. The anxious producer, worried about Sten’s accent (even though she was playing a Polish American), began to take notice of Brennan in a seemingly forgettable role he nevertheless freshened with his rapid-fire delivery. Brennan is Bill Jenkins, a cackling Connecticut cab driver, spitting tobacco juice (actually licorice) and showing the tobacco fields to Tony Barrett (Gary Cooper), an alcoholic writer modeled on F. Scott Fitzgerald and trying to dry out in a country hideaway. Goldwyn had been much impressed with the velocity of dialogue in It Happened One Night (February 23, 1934) and wanted his actors to perform at the same screwball speed. Brennan manages this feat more deftly than the picture’s ostensible stars, although Cooper perks up when doing scenes with Brennan. Unfortunately Sten did not the have the same opportunity. “I never even met Anna Sten,” Brennan told biographer Carol Easton. When Jenkins drives up to deliver a telegram to Barrett, walking along the road, neither the writer nor Jenkins has a pencil to use to reply to Barrett’s wife, who wants him to return to the city. So Barrett simply gives a verbal response: “My work won’t let me. Love Tony.” Jenkins repeats the message twice to fix it in his mind, but as soon as he drives off the message gets garbled: “My love won’t work me.” He tries again: “My work won’t love me.” Not satisfied, he begins again: “My work won’t love me.” In frustration, he spits, and says, “Gosh, I’m losin’ my memory.” His role is inconsequential, and yet so necessary to the local color that director King Vidor works Brennan into a scene whenever he can. Brennan would have made his character even more authentic if Goldwyn had not complied with a request from the Breen Office, the enforcers of the Production Code, that Brennan’s use of “damn” and “hell” be cut from the film.
”
”
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
“
With polite obstinacy he spurns vendors who offer “authentic relics” made of baked manure. “No gracias,” he says, waving a bony finger. Not lost but found in the silent majesty of this crypt of a civilization he spends his days in pursuit of phantoms, guided by a phantom map and at the behest of connections linked by the unrelenting velocity of phantom logic. But his joy is real. Amid dark stains of misery, smeared within a pastiche of solemnity, hilarity, and tedium, the newfound purpose adds a streak of gold to the collage of his life. And like all men he mistakes the fleeting nuance for the color of the underlying canvas.
”
”
Petronius Jablonski (Schrodinger's Dachshund: A Novel of Espionage, Astounding Science, and Wiener Dogs)
“
The usual place to stand is in the existing set of constraints, issues, and opportunities that confront the organization…. Using this approach, managers typically conduct a financial and organizational analysis, identify what opportunities and threats exist, what strengths and weaknesses the organization has, and then formulate a strategy that is intended to exploit the opportunities and minimize or eliminate the threats…. The boat is patched but it is still the same boat and most likely will only continue on the old course at about the same velocity or a little faster…. Our recommended approach is to stand in a future that is not directly derived from present conditions and circumstances…. Although the future is informed by the past, it is as “past-free” as possible…. When I say the future is “past-free,” I mean that the future should not be an extrapolation, extension, or modification of the past.
”
”
Jeffrey Pfeffer (The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action)
“
Among these have been an unhealthy number of near-death moments, many of which I look back on now and wince. But I guess our training in life never really ends--and experience is always the best tutor of all.
Then there are the most bizarre: like jet-skiing around Britain in aid of the UK lifeboats. Day after day, hour after hour, pounding the seas like little ants battling around the wild coast of Scotland and Irish Sea. (I developed a weird bulging muscle in my forearm that popped out and has stayed with me ever since after that one!)
Or hosting the highest open-air dinner party, suspended under a high-altitude hot-air balloon, in support of the Duke of Edinburgh’s kids awards scheme.
That mission also became a little hairy, rappelling down to this tiny metal table suspended fifty feet underneath the basket in minus forty degrees, some twenty-five thousand feet over the UK.
Dressed in full naval mess kit, as required by the Guinness Book of World Records--along with having to eat three courses and toast the Queen, and breathing from small supplementary oxygen canisters--we almost tipped the table over in the early dawn, stratosphere dark. Everything froze, of course, but finally we achieved the mission and skydived off to earth--followed by plates of potatoes and duck à l-orange falling at terminal velocity.
Or the time Charlie Mackesy and I rowed the Thames naked in a bathtub to raise funds for a friend’s new prosthetic legs. The list goes on and on, and I am proud to say, it continues. But I will tell all those stories properly some other place, some other time.
They vary from the tough to the ridiculous, the dangerous to the embarrassing. But in this book I wanted to show my roots: the early, bigger missions that shaped me, and the even earlier, smaller moments that steered me.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
For our story, the most important proposed expansion of the equations of physics is supersymmetry, often fondly called SUSY. Supersymmetry, as the name suggests, proposes that we should use equations with larger symmetry.
SUSY's new symmetry is related to the boost symmetry of special relativity. As you may recall, boost symmetry says that the basic equations don't change when you impart a common, constant velocity to all the components of the system you're describing. (Dirac had to modify Schrodinger's equation to give it that property.) Supersymmetry likewise says that the equations don't change when you impart a common motion to all the components of the system you're describing. But it's a very different kind of motion from what's involved in boost symmetry. Instead of motion through ordinary space with a constant velocity, supersymmetry involves motion into new dimensions!
Before you get carried away with visions of spirit worlds and wormholes through hyperspace, let me hasten to add that the new dimensions have a very different character from the familiar dimensions of space and time. They're quantum dimensions.
What happens to a body when it moves in the quantum dimensions isn't that it gets displace-there's no notion of distance out there-instead, its spin changes. The "superboosts" turn particles with a given amount of intrinsic spin into particles with a different amount of spin. Because the equations are supposed to stay the same, supersymmetry relates properties of particles with different spin. SUSY allows us to see them as the same particle, moving in different ways through the quantum dimensions of superspace.
You can visualize the quantum dimensions as new layers of the Grid. When a particle hops into these layers its spin changes, and so does its mass. Its charges-electric, color, and weak-stay the same.
SUSY might allow us to complete the work of unifying the Core. Unification of the different charges, using the symmetry SO(10), united all the gauge bosons into a common cluster, and all the quarks and leptons into a common cluster. But no ordinary symmetry is capable of joining those two clusters, for they describe particles with different spins. Sypersymmetry is the best idea we have for connecting them.
”
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Frank Wilczek (The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces)
“
In modern physics, symmetry has proved a fruitful guide to predicting new forms of matter and formulating new, more comprehensive laws. For example, the theory of special relativity can be considered a postulate of symmetry. It says that the equations of physics should look the same if we transform all the entities in those equations by adding a common, constant "boost" to their velocities. That boost takes one world into another, distinct world moving with a constant velocity relative to the first. Special relativity says that that distinction makes no difference-the same equations describe behavior in both worlds.
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Frank Wilczek (The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces)
“
To illustrate this relation, think of a game of table tennis. As the ball hits the table, it will bounce up and down. When we restrain the upward bounce by holding the paddle parallel to the table at a small height, the ball will bounce up and down at a faster rate between paddle and table. If the paddle, the table, and the ball were perfectly elastic, the ball would not lose any energy in the process. The closer to the table we hold the paddle, the more precisely we fix the location of the ball-but at the expense of having it move faster and faster. If we removed both paddle and table in one instant, we would not be able to predict the direction in which the ball moves-up or down. We simply don't know in which direction the very rapidly bouncing ball was moving at the very instant of removal. Consequently, we might say that this process just prior to the removal of table and paddle fixes the location while failing to give us any good information on the velocity; it makes the velocity uncertain. What distinguishes this macroscopic process from the quantum mechanical uncertainty relation is that in principle we can calculate the velocity of the ball at every instant from the initial conditions (how the bounce started) and the boundary conditions (the relative positions of table and paddle). In principle, macroscopic motion is free of uncertainties.
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Henning Genz (Nothingness: The Science Of Empty Space)
“
Small regions of empty space will see large energies appear in the form of these fluctuations. they may be energetic electromagnetic waves. They may even appear as particle-antiparticle pairs-supposing, of course, that the energy of the fluctuation rises above the rest mass of these particles. There is no a priori carrier for the fluctuating energy in empty space, in contrast, to say, the crystal. Rather, the appearance of such a carrier is another consequence of the energy fluctuations implied by the uncertainty relation.
Their short-lived existence keeps us from noticing such fluctuations in our everyday existence. The shorter their lifetime, the larger they get-this is another formulation of the uncertainty principle: It relates energy to time in the same way that it relates location to velocity. Lifetime, range, and magnitude of an energy fluctuation in a vacuum are always related such that the energy uncertainty includes the smallest possible energy value. It is large for short lifetimes and small volumes, smaller when the lifetimes are longer and the volumes larger. Energy fluctuations cannot be larger than what is needed to have them reach the zero level by means of the uncertainty relation; conversely, there must be fluctuations within this range. The principle mandates the existence of energetic fluctuations of short lifetimes as well as that of lower-energy ones with longer lifetimes. Electromagnetic excitation of the vacuum, such as light, may have very little energy; that makes these fluctuations carriers of long-lived energy fluctuations. Once the energy is, by dint of Einstein's mass-energy relation, sufficient to create electron-positron pairs, virtual particles may, and must, appear for very brief times as part of the energy fluctuation. Since the fluctuations, like every process in nature, don't change the total electric charge, electrons and positrons can be created (and destroyed!) only in pairs.
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Henning Genz (Nothingness: The Science Of Empty Space)
“
The stakes of pitting disinhibition and freedom against inhibition and beauty extend far beyond the world of art. As I write, the alt-ring is waging what Wendy Brown has described as “a brilliant… campaign” to associate “anti-egalitarian, anti-immigrant, and anti-responsibility, sentiments with freedom and fun,” while casting “left and liberal commitments as repressive, regulatory, grim, and policing.” This campaign seduces its would-be converts with the promise of release from responsibilities of all kinds, be it “for the self, for others, for the world, for a social compact with others, for a social compact with the future, in the name of a certain kind of political and social disinhibition”. Brown’s warning – which has deepened in urgency over the time I've spent writing this book – is that the fusion of this libidinal “freedom and fun” with a “new authoritarian statism” has formidable velocity and power, with their particular capacity to appeal to “the young, the immature, the reckless and the wounded.” This fusion, Brown says, lands us in “deeper trouble than we knew,” and requires that we “think really hard about what strategies would most successfully counter” it.
(quote from a March 2017b talk titled “Populism, Authoritarianism, and Making Fascism Fun Again”, Brown gave at the UCSD International Institute.
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Maggie Nelson (On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint)
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And while I say so much about the Holy Ghost today, I withdraw everything that doesn’t put Jesus in the ordered place He belongs, for when I speak about the Holy Ghost it is always with reference to revelations of Jesus. The Holy Ghost is only the revealer of the mighty Christ who has all for us that we may never know any weakness but all limitations are gone. You are now in a place where God has taken the ideal and moved you on with His own velocity, which has a speed beyond all human mind and thought. Glory to God!
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Smith Wigglesworth (Smith Wigglesworth on Manifesting the Power of God: Walking in God's Anointing Every Day of the Year)
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P1 - Longevity escape velocity(LEV) is a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy (not LE at birth) is extended longer than the time that is passing.
For example, in a given year in which LEV would be maintained, technological advances would increase people's remaining life expectancy more than the year that just went by.
From Aubrey De Grey, the founder of LEV foundation himself: "My current estimate is that we will reach LEV, which is tantamount to defeating aging completely, within 12–15 years with 50% probability."
"David Sinclair and I both made important contributions to the field 20-25 years ago, which gave us the option to get the media interested in us, and we chose to exercise that option because, and this may shock you, we are not scientists first and foremost, but humanitarians. We view the quest to understand aging better as a means to an end, namely to postpone the ILL-HEALTH of old age as much as possible, thereby saving lives and alleviating suffering on a totally unprecedented scale.
When you ask how well respected David is as a scientist, you're actually (unintentionally, to be sure) asking a rather loaded question. Like me, he has chosen to sacrifice some of the respect he could have had, simply in order to save more lives."
"I've often been asked what the life expectancy will be in the year 3000. My answer is there very (and I mean VERY) probably won’t be one. Obviously there won’t be one if the human race has ceased to exist, which quite a few people think is quite likely, but discounting that, in addressing the question we need to start by understanding what the term “life expectancy” actually means when it is applied to humans. My full answer to this here: quora .com/What-will-be-the-life-expectancy-in-the-year-3000
So the question now is “how would it work in practice?" Say you are 60 years old at the time of the first intervention and that this early and fundamentally imperfect treatment repairs 75% of the accumulated damage and winds the clock back by 25 years. Then 10 years later you would reach the chronological age of 70 but would be biologically only 45 years old and look and feel like a 45 year old. We now come to the vital key to the whole theory which is this, let's say 20 years after the first treatment, when you are chronologically 80 but biologically 55 years old, both your doctor and yourself will realize that the damage that was not repaired in the first treatment combined with the further damage accumulated over the 20 years since is again posing a health risk. At this point it is time for another intervention. It is now that the progress in medicine comes into play because, by the time 20 years has gone by, anti-aging medicine will have progressed significantly and, whilst the first treatment bought you an extra 25 or 30 years by repairing a fair amount of the damage accumulated over your first 60 years, it did not repair it all. 20 years later medical progress will mean that the latest treatment can not only repair all of the damage corrected by the first intervention but also some of the damage that was not able to be repaired 20 years earlier so in essence you are now chronologically 80 (but biologically in your 50s). This means that, whilst you will have aged 20 years chronologically you will be biologically younger after the second intervention than you were after the first.
This is the essence of ADGs theory and pretty much any other theory based on rejuvenation and damage repair, essentially, it's a shortcut to radical life extension. It is not a cure but it acknowledges that it does not need to be because it simply buys time and leads to a situation where regular interventions at say 15/20 year intervals with increasing effective treatments could extend life virtually indefinitely.
Will it happen? At this point, there is no doubt that it will happen eventually. It's not a question of if but when.
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Aubrey de Grey (Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime)
“
Longevity escape velocity(LEV) is a hypothetical situation in which one's remaining life expectancy (not LE at birth) is extended longer than the time that is passing.
For example, in a given year in which LEV would be maintained, technological advances would increase people's remaining life expectancy more than the year that just went by.
From Aubrey De Grey, the founder of LEV foundation himself: "My current estimate is that we will reach LEV, which is tantamount to defeating aging completely, within 12–15 years with 50% probability."
"David Sinclair and I both made important contributions to the field 20-25 years ago, which gave us the option to get the media interested in us, and we chose to exercise that option because, and this may shock you, we are not scientists first and foremost, but humanitarians. We view the quest to understand aging better as a means to an end, namely to postpone the ILL-HEALTH of old age as much as possible, thereby saving lives and alleviating suffering on a totally unprecedented scale.
When you ask how well respected David is as a scientist, you're actually (unintentionally, to be sure) asking a rather loaded question. Like me, he has chosen to sacrifice some of the respect he could have had, simply in order to save more lives."
"I've often been asked what the life expectancy will be in the year 3000. My answer is there very (and I mean VERY) probably won’t be one. Obviously there won’t be one if the human race has ceased to exist, which quite a few people think is quite likely, but discounting that, in addressing the question we need to start by understanding what the term “life expectancy” actually means when it is applied to humans. My full answer to this here: quora .com/What-will-be-the-life-expectancy-in-the-year-3000
So the question now is “how would it work in practice?" Say you are 60 years old at the time of the first intervention and that this early and fundamentally imperfect treatment repairs 75% of the accumulated damage and winds the clock back by 25 years. Then 10 years later you would reach the chronological age of 70 but would be biologically only 45 years old and look and feel like a 45 year old. We now come to the vital key to the whole theory which is this, let's say 20 years after the first treatment, when you are chronologically 80 but biologically 55 years old, both your doctor and yourself will realize that the damage that was not repaired in the first treatment combined with the further damage accumulated over the 20 years since is again posing a health risk. At this point it is time for another intervention. It is now that the progress in medicine comes into play because, by the time 20 years has gone by, anti-aging medicine will have progressed significantly and, whilst the first treatment bought you an extra 25 or 30 years by repairing a fair amount of the damage accumulated over your first 60 years, it did not repair it all. 20 years later medical progress will mean that the latest treatment can not only repair all of the damage corrected by the first intervention but also some of the damage that was not able to be repaired 20 years earlier so in essence you are now chronologically 80 (but biologically in your 50s). This means that, whilst you will have aged 20 years chronologically you will be biologically younger after the second intervention than you were after the first.
This is the essence of ADGs theory and pretty much any other theory based on rejuvenation and damage repair, essentially, it's a shortcut to radical life extension. It is not a cure but it acknowledges that it does not need to be because it simply buys time and leads to a situation where regular interventions at say 15/20 year intervals with increasing effective treatments could extend life virtually indefinitely.
Will it happen? At this point, there is no doubt that it will happen eventually.
”
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Aubrey de Grey
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nonlinear force—like, say, the terminal velocity of rectitude or the angular acceleration of dumb luck.
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Kevin Fedarko (The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon)
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Why Do the Silent Winds Howl?
by Maisie Aletha Smikle
Winds gallop In velocity
Velocity you can detect
Velocity which other than the object being moved by the force of the air
You cannot see neither can you touch
Knots faster than the speed of light
Churn in unified force
To push everything except
Mountains and lands out of sight
The silent air of the wind moves
Forcing and gushing through holes and crevices
And hastens to vacuum plateaus
Plains valleys meadows and sandy deserts
Taking chattels fossils
Structures and trees
Anything its forces can carry
Upon the wind arrival and contact with land and objects
Nature sends off a howl or whistle
Bringing all species to full attention
As the silent wind moves
With forces stronger than a million battalion
No force can withstand such a force
Neither air force space force
Land force sea force or nuclear force
All forces flee from the forces of this force
Nature whistles Nature howls Nature pleads
Stay away species stay away
Else you'll be carried like fossils and pieces of species by the silent wind
That says neither hello nor goodbye
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Maisie Aletha Smikle
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In answer to an inquiry Wilbur sent to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington about prevailing winds around the country, they were provided extensive records of monthly wind velocities at more than a hundred Weather Bureau stations, enough for them to take particular interest in a remote spot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, some seven hundred miles from Dayton. Until then, the farthest the brothers had been from home was a trip to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. And though they had “roughed it” some on a few camping trips, it had been nothing like what could be expected on the North Carolina coast. To be certain Kitty Hawk was the right choice, Wilbur wrote to the head of the Weather Bureau station there, who answered reassuringly about steady winds and sand beaches. As could be plainly seen by looking at a map, Kitty Hawk also offered all the isolation one might wish for to carry on experimental work in privacy. Still further encouragement came when, on August 18, 1900, the former postmaster at Kitty Hawk, William J. Tate, sent a letter saying: Mr. J. J. Dosher of the Weather Bureau here has asked me to answer your letter to him, relative to the fitness of Kitty Hawk as a place to practice or experiment with a flying machine, etc. In answering I would say that you would find here nearly any type of ground you could wish; you could, for instance, get a stretch of sandy land one mile by five with a bare hill in center 80 feet high, not a tree or bush anywhere to break the evenness of the wind current. This in my opinion would be a fine place; our winds are always steady, generally from 10 to 20 miles velocity per hour. You can reach here from Elizabeth City, N.C. (35 miles from here) by boat . . . from Manteo 12 miles from here by mail boat every Mon., Wed., & Friday. We have telegraph communication & daily mails. Climate healthy, you could find good place to pitch tent & get board in private family provided there were not too many in your party; would advise you to come anytime from September 15 to October 15. Don’t wait until November. The autumn generally gets a little rough by November. If you decide to try your machine here and come, I will take pleasure in doing all I can for your convenience and success and pleasure, and I assure you you will find a hospitable people when you come among us. That decided the matter. Kitty Hawk it would be.
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David McCullough (The Wright Brothers)
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Instead, each bird is interacting with up to seven close neighbors, making individual movement decisions based on maintaining velocity and distance from fellow flock members and copying how sharply a neighbor turns, so that a group of, say, four hundred birds can veer in another direction in a little over half a second. What emerges is almost instantaneous ripples of movement in what appears to be one living curtain of bird.
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Jennifer Ackerman (The Genius of Birds)
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regime with their catalogs of monthly debt payments and subscription fees, all to support what was now the only true political order of our time, a corporate regime that offered no representation, no vote, no participation in either the velocity of its appetites or the bearing of its destructive course. If you weren’t part of the System, you were just grist for its gullet; your life and the lives of those like you were mixed and milled into portfolios of fixed monthly payments—for everything from cars and college tuition to streaming services and same-day delivery—payments that accrued only to the benefit of the ever-increasing mountains of money that were our real masters. People felt all this without knowing it, Riaz would say, and the effectiveness with which the truth was
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Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies)
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There was a space in the conversation here where Salima would say something positive. Everyone in the room wanted her to say something positive. The conversation had a shape, or maybe a direction, and she could pat it on the back, give it a little push in that direction, and the next stop would be something glad from Paul or Wye or the white guy, and then back to her, push and push and push, until it had picked up enough velocity that no one could stop it.
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Cory Doctorow (Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment)
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Love is like the cool breeze that comes through the window after a night of heavy rain and gently caresses your cheeks like the palm of a caring mother and when it does, you don't sit down to analyze the velocity of the wind, you just close your eyes and become vulnerable to every whiff of it and let it be absorbed by every follicle on your skin.
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Abhijit Naskar (Revolution Indomable)
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Now we’re saying something deeper and more direct. The wave function isn’t a bookkeeping device; it’s an exact representation of the quantum system, just as a set of positions and velocities would be a representation of a classical system. The world is a wave function, nothing more nor less. We can use the phrase “quantum state” as a synonym for “wave function,” in direct parallel with calling a set of positions and velocities a “classical state.
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Sean Carroll (Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime)