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Full thirty times has Phoebus' cart gone round Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbèd ground, And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been, Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
The Fool is the number 0, which, unlike the other numbers we will be looking at, is an absence rather than a quantity. One and two, for example, represent quantities—if you ask how many chairs are in a room, one or two could be an appropriate answer. If no chairs are in the room, however, you might say there are zero…
Since mere observation cannot provide the solution to a problem, no matter how accurately it is conducted the necessary next step is inference the process which leads from the present to the future, from the known to the unknown. Every inference is a sort of adventure. Another difference between the scientific method…
Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves…
...the function of negative knowledge is not unlike the uses of space-the empty page upon which words can be written, the empty jar into which liquid can be poured, the empty window through which light can be admitted, and the empty pipe through which water can Bow. Obviously the value of emptiness lies in the…
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have about an equal amount of money and prestige, and yet one may be miserable and the other…
心神不宁 (xīn shén bù níng): “to feel bad about nothing” 损人利己 (sǔn rén lì jǐ): “to seek benefit at the expense of others” 幸灾乐祸 (xìng zāi lè huò): “to enjoy others’ misfortunes” 力不从心 (Lì bù cóng xīn): “the qualities aren’t at the level of the aspirations” 亦步亦趋 (yì bù yì qū): “to blindly imitate someone” 桃李满天下 (táolǐ mǎn…
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself…
A Muslim woman with her burqa on fire: like. A policeman using a baton to beat a masked antifa protester: like. Hillary Clinton looking gaunt and pale: like. A military helicopter armed with machine guns and headed toward the caravan of immigrants: like. She had spent a few hours scrolling one afternoon when she heard…
Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let…
Civilisation, like life itself, has always been about capturing energy. That is to say, just as a successful species is one that converts the sun’s energy into offspring more rapidly than another species, so the same is true of a nation. Progressively, as the aeons passed, life as a whole has grown gradually more and…
After a while I noticed that the sun and all the stars in his neighborhood were ruddy. Those at the opposite pole of the heaven were of an icy blue. The explanation of this strange phenomenon flashed upon me. I was still traveling, and traveling so fast that light itself was not wholly indifferent to my passage. The…
On certain small planets, drenched with light and heat from a near or a great sun, evolution took a very different course from that with which we are familiar. The vegetable and animal functions were not separated into distinct organic types. Every organism was at once animal and vegetable. Many species, of course…
The trick of magnifying a normal creature to menacing size is all too common. The giant amoeba is a familar example; monster insects (or whole populations of them) even more so. It might pay an author with this particular urge to ask himself why we don't actually have such creatures around. There is likely to be a…
It was possible now to look back into time and read off a complete DNA sequence from any moment in an individual’s life. And it was possible to download a copy of that person’s mind and, by putting the two together, regenerated body and downloaded mind, to restore her … We live on Mars, the moons of the outer planets…
We can imagine that progress in human information-processing will face some usual social difficulties. Your angry “Klingon” relatives may find unexpected allies among “proboscically enhanced” (aka long-nosed) people protesting against using their alternative standard of beauty as a negative stereotype. The girl next…
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother? Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human…
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements…
Six years ago, in the distant Trisolaran stellar system, Trisolaris accelerated two hydrogen nuclei to near the speed of light and shot them toward the solar system. These two hydrogen nuclei, or protons, arrived at the solar system two years ago, then reached the Earth.
Culture is the things you do that you don’t notice. In Italy they have a pasta aisle. In America we have ready made cereal isle, Soft drink aisle. Culture of discovery doesn't last forever Backup mic display Bad seats people Periodic table flags Top countries of element discovery, noble gases Scientists on currency…