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Neal Stephenson
American science fiction writer
Neal Town Stephenson (born 31 October 1959) is an American writer, known primarily for his science fiction works in the postcyberpunk and chemical generation genres with a penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, currency, and the history of science.
- See also:
- Snow Crash (1992)
- The Diamond Age (1995)
- Cryptonomicon (1999)
- The Baroque Cycle (2003 - 2004)
- The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different.
- For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
- I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.
- Neal Stephenson coins the term "text literacy" during interview for the article "Pushing the Edge With 'Diamond Age' Nano-Machines," Associated Press, May 10, 1995
- Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ("trilogy"). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word "trilogy" on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone's going to call it a trilogy anyway.
- Baroque Cycle entry in now-defunct MetaWeb
- So I'm well aware that there are certain people frustrated with the endings of my books. I can remember at the time I was writing it, I told a friend of mine that the climax of Snow Crash was now longer than Moby-Dick: There's a helicopter that gets brought down; there's a private jet that blows up; some people die; there's confrontation and a girl goes home with her mom — so it seems like a good ending to me. [audience laughter]
Once you write a book or two with controversial endings — and that meme gets going, of "Stephenson can't write endings" — then that gets slapped on everything that you do no matter how elaborate the ending is. I think Anathem does OK on that score. I'm sure that I'll be hearing from some of the "Stephenson can't write endings" people, but I think that it has a decent enough ending.
- Response to audience question at a Authors@google appearance, Google headquarters, Mountain View, CA., September 12, 2008
- As far as culture and politics are concerned, the important theme is long-attention-span vs. short-attention-span thinking. I'm sure that your readers can think of any number of ways in which having a longer attention span can be useful. But I'll name one. Bankers with long attention spans don't lend money to people who can't pay it back. If we had more bankers who adopted a long-term view of their responsibilities, we might not be in the middle of a financial crisis that is blowing away 150-year-old investment banks.
- Any strategy that involves crossing a valley—accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance—will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.
- "Innovation Starvation," World Policy Journal, Fall 2011
- I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn't violate the laws of physics, and that means that you're limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it's all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?
- About Seveneves, "Here's How Space Megastructures Will Look, According to Neal Stephenson" in Gizmodo, interviewed by Annalee Newitz, May 20, 2015 (pre-Zero)
The Big U (1984)Edit
- Now, at the little southern black college where I went to school, we had no megadorms. We were cool at the right times and academic at the right times .... Boston University, where I did my Master's … most students had no time for sonic war, and the rest vented their humors in the city, not in the dorms. Ohio State was nicely spread out, and I lived in an apartment complex where noisy shit-for-brains undergrads were even less welcome than tweedy black bachelors.
- Dr. Bud Redfield; "The Go Big Red Fan" (prologue)
- This is a history, in that it intends to describe what happened and suggest why. … I may have fooled around with a few facts. But I served as witness until as close to the end as anyone could have … and so there is not so much art in this as to make it irrelevant.
- Early schema for author's now-familiar approach to historic events and persons; "The Go Big Red Fan" (prologue)
- What you are about to read is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest.
- "The Go Big Red Fan" (prologue)
- What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it.... The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.
- Sarah
Zodiac (1988)Edit
- "Sangamon's Principle," I said. "The simpler the molecule, the better the drug. So the best drug is oxygen. Only two atoms. The second-best, nitrous oxide—a mere three atoms. The third-best, ethanol—nine. Past that, you're talking lots of atoms."
"Atoms are like people. Get lots of them together, never know what they'll do."
- Chapter 1
- One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.
- Chapter 1
- And I hadn't even told him the truth. Actually, the shit coming out of Basco's pipes was a hundred thousand times more concentrated than was legally allowed. … That kind of thing goes on all the time. But no matter how many diplomas are tacked to your wall, give people a figure like that and they'll pass you off as a flake. You can't get most people to believe how wildly the eco-laws get broken, but if I say "More than twice the legal limit," they get comfortably outraged.
- Chapter 2
- The corporations have already planted their own bombs. All we have to do is light the fuses.
- If you look at the bottom of a Zodiac, it's not just flat. It's got a hint of a keel on it for maneuverability. Not a proper hull though.
Hull design is an advanced science. In the days of sail it was as important to national security as aerodynamics are today. A hull was a necessary evil: all that ship down under the water gave you lots of drag, but without it the rest of the ship wouldn't float.
Then we invented outboard motors and all that science was made irrelevant by raw power. You could turn a bathtub into a high performance speedboat by bolting a big enough motor on it. When the throttle is high, the impact of the water against the bottom of the hull lifts it right up out of the water. It skims like a skipping rock and who gives a fuck about hydrodynamics. When you throttle it down, the vessel sinks into the water again and wallows like a hog.
- Chapter 4
- It's the ultimate Boston transportation. On land…all those slow cars get in the way. There's public transit – the T — but if you're in good shape, it's usually faster to walk. Bicycles aren't bad. But on water, nothing stops you and there isn't anything important in Boston that isn't within two blocks of being wet. The harbor and the city are interlocked like wrestling squid, tentacles of water and land snaking off everywhere, slashed with bridges or canals.
- Chapter 4
- In four years of work, I've idled my Zodiac down every one of its thousands of inlets, looked at every inch of its fractal coastline and found every single goddamned pipe that empties into it. Some of the pipes are big enough to park a car in and some are the size of your finger, but all of them have told their story to my gas chromatograph. And often it's the littlest pipes that cause the most damage. When I see a big huge pipe coming right out of a factory, I'm betting the pumpers have at least read the EPA regs. But when I find a tiny one, hidden below the waterline, sprouting from a mile-wide industrial carnival, I put on gloves before taking my sample.
And sometimes the gloves melt.
- Chapter 4
- My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you've already blown it.
- Chapter 5 (Taylor on riding a bike at night)
- Jim and his crew of a dozen or so specialize in loud, sloppy publicity seeking…. Myself, I like the stiletto-in-the-night approach. That's partly because I'm younger, a post-Sixties type, and partly because my thing is toxics, not nukes or mammals. … there are all kinds of direct, simple ways to go after toxic criminals.
You just plug the pipes.
- Chapter 6
- Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners. … If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything.... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another.
- Chapter 8
- Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.
- Chapter 8
- I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.
- Chapter 9
- Talking to cancer victims never makes me feel righteous, never vindicated. It makes me slightly ill and for some reason, guilty. If people like me would just keep our mouths shut, people like him would never suspect why they got cancer. They'd chalk it up to God or probability. They wouldn't die with hearts full of venom.
It is a strange world that Industry has made. Kind of a seething toxic harbor, opening out on a blue unspoiled ocean. Most people are swimming in it, and I get to float around on the surface, on my Zodiac, announcing that they're in trouble. What I really want to do is make a difference. But I'm not sure I have, yet.
- Chapter 11
- "It might interest you to know that our state is tired of being used as a chemical toilet so that people in Utah can have plastic lawn furniture."
"I can't believe an assistant attorney general came right out and said that."
"Well, I wouldn't say it in public."
- "Cohen," the assistant attorney general of an unnamed East Coast state meeting covertly with Sangamon Taylor near the Jersey Shore. Chapter 11
- The intern had also discovered a vague little article from the late Sixties saying that Basco had put some "junk machinery" on the floor of the Harbor, giving the usual feeble excuse.
"They claim that this junk was going to become a habitat for marine life. You don't buy that?"
Bless her, she did know how to blow my lid. "Rebecca, goddamnit, since the beginning of time, every corporation that has ever thrown any of its shit into the ocean has claimed that it was going to become a habitat for marine life. It's the goddamn ocean, Rebecca. That's where all the marine life is. Of course it's going to become a habitat for marine life."
- Chapter 21
- He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.
- Chapter 22
- There was a white man sitting at the kitchen table, warming his hands by wrapping them around a hot cup of tea. He had kind of an oblong face, curly red hair piled on top, a close-cropped but dense red beard, shocking blue eyes that always looked wide open. He face was ruddy with the outdoors, and the way he was sitting there with that tea, he looked so calm, so centered, almost like he was in meditation. When I came in, he looked at me and smiled just a trace, without showing his teeth…"
- The legendary S.T. finally meets the legendary Hank Boone (proto-Enoch Root character), end of chapter 24
- He was a peculiar guy. I'd never met him, just seen his picture and heard tell of him from the veterans of GEE's early days… And I'd seen him on film… sitting right underneath a five-ton container of radioactive waste, getting thrown into the sea when it was dropped on his Zodiac… And he was like that even when he wasn't working — a drunk, a bar fighter. But the guy I was looking at was totally different. Shit, he was drinking herb tea. He talked in a slow, lilting baritone murmur, he paused in the middle of sentences to make sure the grammar was right, to pick just the right word. But it wasn't a wimpy Boone I was looking at. I had to remember the action he'd just pulled off, on short notice, on my behalf….
Boone turned and looked at me with his invisible smile again.
- Further description of the mysterious Hank Boone, beginning of chapter 25
"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)Edit
- "Mother Earth Mother Board : In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth"
- Everything that has occurred in Silicon Valley in the last couple of decades also occurred in the 1850s. Anyone who thinks that wild-ass high tech venture capitalism is a late-20th-century California phenomenon needs to read about the maniacs who built the first transatlantic cable projects. The only things that have changed since then are that the stakes have gotten smaller, the process more bureaucratized, and the personalities less interesting.
- Both Penang and the Internet were established basically for strategic military reasons. In both cases, what was built by the military was merely a kernel for a much vaster phenomenon that came along later. This kernel was really nothing more than a protocol, a set of rules. If you wanted to follow those rules, you could participate, otherwise you were free to go elsewhere. Because the protocol laid down a standard way for people to interact, which was clearly set out and could be understood by anyone, it attracted smart, adaptable, ambitious people from all over the place, and at a certain point it flew completely out of control and turned into something that no one had ever envisioned: something thriving, colorful, wildly diverse, essentially peaceful, and plagued only by the congestion of its own success.
- Both of them have seen many young Western men arrive here on business missions and completely lose control of their sphincters and become impediments to any kind of organized activity. Daily hired Wall because, like Daily, he is a stable family man who has his act together…and they seem to be making excellent progress toward their goal, which is to run two really expensive wires across the Malay Peninsula. They tend to be absolutely straight shooters…. Their openness would probably be career suicide in the atmosphere of Byzantine court-eunuch intrigue that is public life in the United States today. On the other hand, if I had an unlimited amount of money and woke up tomorrow morning with a burning desire to see a 2,000-hole golf course erected on the surface of Mars, I would probably call men like Daily and Wall, do a handshake deal with them, send them a blank check, and not worry about it.
- The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)Edit
- Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity — it is, in a word, bourgeois — and so it attracts all of the same gripes.
- "Class Struggle on the Desktop"
- It is a bit unsettling, at first, to think of Apple as a control freak, because it is completely at odds with their corporate image. Weren't these the guys who aired the famous Super Bowl ads showing suited, blindfolded executives marching like lemmings off a cliff? Isn't this the company that even now runs ads picturing the Dalai Lama (except in Hong Kong) and Einstein and other offbeat rebels?
It is indeed the same company, and the fact that they have been able to plant this image of themselves as creative and rebellious free-thinkers in the minds of so many intelligent and media-hardened skeptics really gives one pause. It is testimony to the insidious power of expensive slick ad campaigns and, perhaps, to a certain amount of wishful thinking in the minds of people who fall for them. It also raises the question of why Microsoft is so bad at PR, when the history of Apple demonstrates that, by writing large checks to good ad agencies, you can plant a corporate image in the minds of intelligent people that is completely at odds with reality.
- "Class Struggle on the Desktop"
- In your high school geology class you probably were taught that all life on earth exists in a paper-thin shell called the biosphere, which is trapped between thousands of miles of dead rock underfoot, and cold dead radioactive empty space above. Companies that sell OSes exist in a sort of technosphere. Underneath is technology that has already become free. Above is technology that has yet to be developed, or that is too crazy and speculative to be productized just yet. Like the Earth's biosphere, the technosphere is very thin compared to what is above and what is below.
- "The Technosphere"
- These changes in identity and location can easily become nested inside each other, many layers deep, even if you aren't doing anything nefarious. Once you have forgotten who and where you are, the whoami command is indispensible.
- "The Oral Tradition"
- Windows 95 and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic.
- "The Oral Tradition"
- I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text.
- "OS Shock"
Anathem (2008)Edit
- The novel is written in first person, the narrator is named Erasmas or "Raz."
- IF YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED to reading works of speculative fiction and enjoy puzzling things out on your own, skip this Note. Otherwise, know that the scene in which this book is set is not Earth, but a planet called Arbre that is similar to Earth in many ways.
- Note to the Reader
- "Do your neighbors burn one another alive?" was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
"Do your shamans walk around on stilts?" Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness, was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully, "You might call them pastors or witch doctors."
"When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?"
"Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some sort of afterlife?"
- Part 1, Provener; The questionnaire, in use for 1,100 years, is used once every ten years to determine if civilization outside the monastic compound is beginning to regress.
- "Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways."
- Part 2, Apert; Orolo to Raz
- "They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right."
- Part 2, Apert
- "Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible...so that when she teaches you how it's really done, it'll seem that much easier....Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop." This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn't heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago, I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse.
- Part 4, "Anathem"
- "Describe worrying," he went on.
"Pretend I'm someone who has never worried. I'm mystified. It don't get it. Tell me how to worry."
"Well...I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future."
"But I do that all the time. And yet I don't worry."
"It is a sequence of events with a bad end."
"So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?"
- Orolo and Erasmas, Part 4, "Anathem"
- There's no way to get from the point in Hemn space where we are now, to one that includes pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, following any plausible action principle. Which is really just a technical term for there being a coherent story joining one moment to the next. If you simply throw action principles out the window, you're granting the world the freedom to wander anywhere in Hemn space, to any outcome, without constraint. It becomes pretty meaningless. The mind...knows that there is an action principle that governs how the world evolves from one moment to the next—that restricts our world's path to points that tell an internally consistent story. So it focuses its worrying on outcomes that are more plausible...
- Orolo and Erasmas, Part 4, "Anathem"
- "I guess that people like to think they are not only living but propagating their way of life."
"That's right. People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. But there's more than one way to get it."
- Orolo and Raz, Part 4, "Anathem"
- "Give me an adventure. I'm not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I'm old."
"I can't predict the future," I said, "but based on what little I know so far, I'm afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing."
"Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial."
- Cord and Erasmas, Part 6, "Peregrin"
- "Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?"
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
"Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string."
"That'd be great."
- Cord and Erasmas, Part 6, "Peregrin"
- The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be, it was how you got a productive economy.
But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power, but of story. If their employees came home with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing.
The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story...had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure?
- Erasmas theorizing why others are joining his journey, Part 7, "Feral"
- "He told us that a lone avout was being pursued by a mob. We saw it as an emergence."
- Vale leader explains to Raz how they came to rescue him, Part 7, "Feral"
- "Quantum interference—the crosstalk among similar quantum states—knits the different versions of your brain together."
"You're saying that my consciousness extends across multiple cosmi," I said. "That's a pretty wild statement."
"I'm saying all things do," Orolo said. "That comes with the polycosmic interpretation. The only thing exceptional about the brain is that it has found a way to use this."
- Part 8, "Orithena"
- Neither of us said a word as we picked our way down the path for the next quarter of an hour, and the sky receded to a deep violet. I had the illusion that, as it got darker, it moved away from us, expanding like a bubble, rushing away at a million light-years an hour, and as it whooshed past stars, we began to see them.
- Part 8, "Orithena"
- Tris was pudgy and not especially good looking, but she had the personality of a beautiful girl because she'd been raised in a math.
- Part 10, "Messal." (A "math" is a co-ed academic/research monastery. Most of the novel takes place in maths.)
- "I can hardly believe we are talking about a possibility so inconceivable as that other universes exist—and that the Geometers originate there!"
In this, Zh'vaern seemed to speak for the entire table.
Except for Jad. "The words fail. There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes—that is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers came from other Narratives—until they came here, and joined ours."
Having dropped this bomb, Fraa Jad excused himself, and went to the toilet.
"What on earth is he going on about?" Fraa Lodoghir demanded. "It sounded like literary criticism!"
- Part 10, "Messal"
- Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.
- Part 11, "Advent." Fraa Jad, on his polycosmic approach to problem-solving.
- Much pruning had taken place in recent weeks. I am now absent in many versions of the cosmos where you are present.
- Jad to Raz, Part 11, "Advent"
- Yul had simply launched himself at the guy from some distance away, and body-checked him at full speed, stopping on a dime in midair as he transferred all of his energy into the target.
"Conservation of momentum," he announced, "it's not just a good idea—it's the law!"
- Yulassetar Crade removes a TV reporter in zero gravity, Part 12, "Requiem"
- But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.
- Final sentence of the novel, possibly addressing criticism of the author's previous endings, Part 13, "Reconstitution"
- bulshytt … Technical and clinical term denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said. …
It is inherent in the mentality of extramuros bulshytt-talkers that they are more prone than anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is pointed out to them. … One is forced either to use this "offensive" word and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself.... The latter quality probably explains the uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt.
- Definition of "bulshytt," The Dictionary, 4th edition, A.R. 3000
- The expression can be traced to the Third Centennial Apert, when the gates of several Hundreder maths opened to reveal startling outcomes, e.g.: at Saunt Rambalf's, a mass suicide that had taken place only moments earlier. At Saunt Terramore's, nothing at all — not even human remains. At Saunt Byadin's, a previously unheard-of religious sect.... At Saunt Lesper's, no humans, but a previously undiscovered species of tree-dwelling higher primates.
- From the definition of "to go Hundred," The Dictionary, 4th edition, A.R. 3000 (Anathem's glossary)
Reamde (2011)Edit
Part I: Nine DragonsEdit
- He kept flinching. The low sun shone in the face of a two-hundred-foot-tall wind turbine in the field across the crick, and its blades cast long scything shadows over them. … The sun above blinking on and off with each cut of a blade. … Something about their being in motion, in a place where everything else was almost pathologically still, seized the attention; they always seemed to be jumping out at you from behind corners.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- Though Richard's Wikipedia entry had been quiet lately, in the past it had been turbulent with edit wars between mysterious people, known only by their IP addresses, who seemed to want to emphasize aspects of his life that now struck him as, while technically true, completely beside the point. Fortunately this had all happened after Dad had become too infirm to manipulate a mouse, but it didn't stop younger Forthrasts.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- The young woman had turned toward him and thrust her pink gloves up in the air in a gesture that, from a man, meant "Touchdown!" and, from a woman, "I will hug you now!"
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- He could only conjecture what style pheromones Zula was throwing off to her peers, but to him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- But he was a quick study. An autodidact. Anything that was technical, that was logical, that ran according to rules, Peter could figure out. And knew it. Didn't bother to ask for help. So much quicker to work it out on his own than suffer through someone's well-meaning efforts to educate him—and to forge an emotional connection with him in so doing. There was something, somewhere, that he could do better than most people.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- Richard's ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn't enjoy that last cigarette.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- The girl in the passenger seat said she had never before been in "a car like this," meaning, apparently, a sedan. Richard felt far beyond merely old.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- The Walmart was like a starship that had landed in the soybean fields. … They went inside. The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- As a fantasy writer, he was not highly regarded ("one cannot call him profoundly mediocre without venturing so far out on the critical limb as to bend it to the ground," "so derivative that the reader loses track of who he's ripping off," "to say he is tin-eared would render a disservice to a blameless citizen of the periodic table of the elements").
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- Gold, he learned, was considered to be a reliable store of value because extracting it from the ground required a certain amount of effort that tended to remain stable over time. When new, easy-to-mine gold deposits were found, or new mining technologies developed, the value of gold tended to fall. It didn't take a huge amount of acumen, then, to understand that the value of virtual gold in the game world could be made stable in a directly analogous way: namely, by forcing players to expend a certain amount of time and effort to extract a certain amount of virtual gold…
- Economics of gold farming, Thanksgiving (prologue)
- The opening screen of T'Rain was a frank rip-off of what you saw when you booted up Google Earth. Richard felt no guilt about this, since he had heard that Google Earth, in turn, was based on an idea from some old science-fiction novel.
- Thanksgiving (prologue)
- "Ha ha noob, you are pwned by troll. I have encrypt all your file. Leave 1000 GP at below coordinates and I give you key"
- The REAMDE virus' accompanying message, Day 1
- "This isn't the first. People have been making malware that does this for a few years now. There's a word for it: 'ransomware.'"
- Day 1
- Richard resumed reading the T'Rain Gazette, a daily newspaper (electronic format, of course)... which summarized what had been going on all over T'Rain during the preceding twenty-four hours:
Notable achievements, wars, duels, sackings, mortality statistics, plagues, famines...untoward spikes in commodity prices.
- Day 1
- The "Meat" were there because of REAMDE, which had been present at background levels for several weeks now but that recently had pinballed through the elbow in its exponential growth curve and for about twelve hours had looked as though it might completely take over all computing power in the Universe, until its own size and rapid growth had caused it to run afoul of the sorts of real-world friction that always befell seemingly exponential phenomena and bent those hockey-stick graphs over into lazy S plots.
- Day 1
- "I don't think you are actually retired," Corvallis pointed out mildly.…
"It's a selective retirement," Richard explained, "a retirement from boring shit."
"I think that's called a promotion."
- Day 1
- Sokolov put the odds at 100 percent that Peter would, sooner or later, do something stupid and cause enormous trouble. Peter would do this because he believed he was clever and because he thought only of himself. It would be safer to take him out and shoot him now, but disposing of the body would be difficult and the shock of it would probably disturb the equilibrium of Zula.
- Day 2
- Waging war on his enemies had been Sokolov's habit and his profession for a long time, but being chivalrous to everyone else was simply a basic tenet of having your shit together as a human and as a man.
- Day 2
- Now he was far from bored but feeling many of the same stresses that had caused him to retire from active duty in the first place. Was it possible to find a station in life with just the right level of interest? Was it possible to be normal without being someone's dupe?
- Sokolov, Day 2
- This was always the hard part. If you knew what was normal to the enemy, then everything became easy: you could lull them to sleep by feeding them normal, and you could scare the hell out of them by suddenly taking normal away. But normal to Afghans and Chechens was so different from normal to Russians that it took a bit of work for a man like Sokolov to establish what it was.
- Day 2
- Don Donald was clearly accustomed to addressing people whose only way of responding was to nod worshipfully and take notes. He did not, in other words, leave a lot of breaks in his testimony to allow for discussion. For the moment, that was fine, since it made it easier for Richard to drink.
- Day 2
- "There is nearly always a chthonic link. The object-imbued-with-numinous-power tends to be of mineral origin: gold, perhaps mined from a special vein, or a jewel of extraordinary rarity, or a sword forged from a shooting star. I am merely describing pulp. But the vast popularity…attests to the power of these motifs to seize the reader's attention, down at the level of the reptilian brain, even as the cerebrum is getting sick."
- Donald Cameron, flashback to development of T'Rain, Day 2
- Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov's experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him.
- Day 2
- "Why do they believe that?"
"Because we are hackers," Csongor said, "and they have seen movies."
- Day 4
- In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.
- Day 4
- …he had found an image of one of the big Western-style business hotels along the waterfront: one of those places where it was possible to be a white person without attracting one's own personal Stonehenge of cataleptic, openmouthed gapers.
- Xiamen, Day 4
- Hungary, severed from half of the population and most of the natural resources that it had once claimed, had now to practice a sort of economic acupuncture, striving to know the magic nodes in the global energy flow where a pinprick could alter the workings of a major organ. Mathematics was one of the few disciplines where it was possible to exert that degree of leverage, and so the Hungarians had become phenomenally good at teaching it to their children.
- Day 4
- That, as far as she could tell, was the purpose of the religion she had been brought up in: It made people feel better when really horrible things happened, and it offered a repertoire of ceremonies that were used to add a touch of class to such goings-on as shacking up with someone and throwing dirt on a corpse.
- Day 4
Part II: American FallsEdit
- But Richard had already gone the cop route and found it not nearly as productive as driving around with a sledgehammer and retaining the services of men with oxyacetylene torches.
- Day 6
- One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn't afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.
- Day 8
- "Welcome to the GWOJ."
"Global War on Jones."
- Day 15
- This was part of Corporation 9592's strategy; they had hired psychologists, invested millions in a project to sabotage movies—yes, the entire medium of cinema—to get their customers/players/addicts into a state of mind where they simply could not focus on a two-hour-long chunk of filmed entertainment without alarm bells going off in their medullas telling them that they needed to log on to T'Rain and see what they were missing.
- Day 15
- "Is this a real blue-collar bar or a simulacrum thereof?"
"Both. It started out as a pure simulacrum, a few years ago, before the economy crashed, when it was hip for twentysomethings to move down here and dress in Carhartts and Utilikilts. But they did such a good job of it that actual blue-collar people began to show up. And then the economy did crash, and the hip people discovered that they were, in actual point of fact, blue collar, and probably always would be. So you've got guys here who run lathes. But they have colored Mohawks and college degrees, and they program the lathes in computer languages. I was trying to come up with a name for them. Cerulean-collar workers, maybe."
"Do a lot of people stop by here on their way to the private jet terminal?"
"You'd be surprised."
- Day 17, Seattle
- There was a common saying in the biz/tech world that "A's hire A's, and B's hire C's," the point being that as long as you continued to recruit only the very best people, they would attract others, but as soon as you let your standards slip, the second-raters would begin to sign up third-raters to act as their minions and advance their agendas.
- Day 18 (This saying was popularized by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his "Rumsfeld's Rules" document, dating back to his tenure on the Ford Administration transition team.)
- She…cast an eye over the contents of his cart, wondering whether this was totally random stuff…to perfect his Walmart shopper disguise: 5.56-millimeter cartridges, a water purification device, jerky, bug repellent, a camouflage hat. Freeze-dried meals. A roll of black plastic sheeting. Parachute cord. Batteries. A folding bucksaw. Camouflage binoculars.…
It turned out that Sokolov really did want to buy all that stuff. Not because he envisioned any particular use for it. He just believed in stocking up on such things, on general principles, whenever an opportunity presented itself.
He would fit in well here.
- Day 20, Northern Idaho
- This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn't have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn't necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn't need to get involved.
- Day 20
- By this point he had seen enough of them to know that they were cooler under pressure, and better to be within a tight spot, than 999 out of 1,000 women. But their presence obliged him to divert a significant fraction of his attention into being considerate of their needs, responding to their inquiries, and keeping them alive.
- Day 21
Seveneves (2015)Edit
The novel's story follows large scale efforts to preserve human society in the wake of near-future apocalyptic events on Earth after the unexplained disintegration of the Moon.
Part OneEdit
- The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.
An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon's equator. He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike. He pulled out his phone and blogged the event.
- Opening paragraphs of the novel; "The Age of the One Moon"
- When Doob came to his senses, he was aware that a large number of telephones were singing their little electronic songs.
Including his.
The birth cry of a new age.
- "The Age of the One Moon"
- The moon had broken up into seven large pieces, which inevitably became known as the Seven Sisters, and an uncountable number of smaller ones. Gradually the big ones acquired names. Doc Dubois was responsible for many of these. He gave them descriptive names that wouldn't scare people. It wouldn't do to call them Nemesis or Thor or Grond. So instead it was Potatohead, Mr. Spinny, Acorn, Peach Pit, Scoop, Big Boy, and Kidney Bean.
- "The Seven Sisters"; Book reviewers commonly compared the character DuBois Jerome Xavier Harris, Ph.D. (aka Doc Dubois or Doob) to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- Any event largely organized by elementary school teachers was likely to come off extremely well from a logistical and crowd-control standpoint.
- "The Seven Sisters"
- So in order to accommodate the Pioneers who would begin arriving in a few weeks, the Arkitects sent up Scouts. The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit.
All of them were Russian.
- "Scouts"
- "We live in strange times. I'm fertile right now. I can tell. No more condoms for you, tiger."... [Doob] was already thinking about the videos he was going to make to teach his baby about calculus when he climaxed.
- "Scouts"
- Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time.
This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program.
But if you bought into the idea that boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something that every parent who had ever raised a boy had to take seriously—then it was difficult to envision a lot of them spending their lives in tin cans.
- "Scouts"
- [Luisa] knew how to use her own ignorance as an icebreaker in conversations. Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger's end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.
- "Pioneers and Prospectors"
- The launch vehicle, a fantailed Soyuz-FG, had been towed horizontally across the steppe on a special train, complete with smoke-belching locomotive, to the launch pad….The contrast with the NASA way of doing things was stark.... Doob's youngest son was distracted by the sight of stray dogs copulating a hundred meters away from ground zero. The launch bunker, shockingly close to the pad, had a little vegetable patch where the technicians were growing cucumbers and tomatoes.
- "Pioneers and Prospectors"
- Three days before launch, the hedge fund man had been nipped by a stray dog while rehearsing a launch pad escape sequence, and everything had been thrown into disarray as the dog was chased across the steppe by militiamen in wheeled vehicles, locals on horseback, and a helicopter gunship. After they had run it to ground they had shipped it off to a veterinary lab to be checked for rabies.
- "Pioneers and Prospectors"
- It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They'd never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. ... Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning's sake—which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents: hiking in the mountains, doing art projects about the Cloud Ark, talking with psychologists about death, reading favorite books. In one sense Amelia and her colleagues had never been more needed, never had such an opportunity to show their quality.
- "The Casting of Lots"
- Passing through the utility section [Ivy] considered getting herself a cup of coffee. Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee anyway and stepped into the Farm.
- "Hard Rain"
Part TwoEdit
- Luisa chuckled. "I hear you, sugar. I'm not gonna say you're wrong. But I have to warn you that this is the word—'politics'—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization."
- "Day 700"
- [Doc Dubois] had been focusing all of his attention in the other direction, on Peach Pit and its iron-rich "children," PP1, PP2, and PP3, nailing down their exact orbital parameters, taking high-res photographs.
PP3 was especially interesting. It was a congealed glob of mostly iron, similar in composition to Amalthea. It was some fifty kilometers in diameter. And it had a deep cleft on one side, comparable in size to the Grand Canyon, apparently formed by a collision that had rent its outer skin while it was partly congealed. Doob had begun calling PP3 Cleft.
- "Day 700"
- "We need brains, is the bottom line," Ivy said. "We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds."
- "Cleft"
- "I have done research on it," Aïda said. "Some say that bipolarity is a useful adaptation. When things are bad, you become depressed, retreat, conserve energy. When things are good, you spring into action with great energy."
"And your point is ..."
"Will you treat this condition in my offspring against my will? What if I want to have a lot of little bipolar kids?"
- "Cleft"
- [Dinah] nodded across the table at Tekla. "Hell, look at her! How many times has she saved our asses by being aggressive?"
Tekla nodded. "Yes. Dinah saved me by taking aggressive action against rules of space station. Problem is not aggression. It is lack of discipline. A person can be aggressive"—she nodded at Dinah—"and still be constructive in society if she controls her passions." And she threw a significant glare at Aïda, who let out a little snort and looked away.
- "Cleft*
Part ThreeEdit
- Kath Two was Survey. Whether or not this made her military was a topic of almost theological complexity.
- "Five Thousand Years Later"
- Eve Moira had been a child of London, fascinated by the natural world, but drawn to the city. So, Kath Two looked to the bright lights of the big city.
Here, that meant gazing up into the sky.
- "Five Thousand Years Later"
- In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they'd been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched.
- "Five Thousand Years Later"
- The mere suggestion that it might be possible to look at a thing from more than one point of view was infuriating to these people.
- "Five Thousand Years Later"; referring to the Diggers
- "If you show her too much favor she will be punished. If you touch her, we're all dead," Ty said.
"Why?" Einstein asked.
"Because this is one of those cultures that is psychotic about female reproductive organs."
- "Five Thousand Years Later"
- Very old money was behind the Crow's Nest. And enough of it that its Owners didn't mind losing some every month to keep the place going. It was a kind of eleemosynary institution, created to serve not culture and not dukh, but a thing called the Purpose. And if Ty kept working there for another few decades, perhaps one of the Owners would sit him down one day in the Bolt Hole and deign to tell him what exactly the Purpose was.
- "Five Thousand Years Later"
- "People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters," Ty said.
"So it is like believing in God."
"Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty."
- Epilogue
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (2019)Edit
- Agreement got by compulsion or trickery is not agreement, but a thing akin to slavery. Free minds are the only company worth having.
- Chapter 43
External linksEdit
- Neal Stephenson's official website
- Word Spy entry crediting Stephenson as coiner of "text literacy"
- Word Spy entry crediting Stephenson as coiner of "Anglosphere"
Nonfiction articles by Neal Stephenson, published onlineEdit
- "Communication Prosthetics: Threat, or Menace?". Whole Earth Catalog, Summer 1991.
- ""Smiley's people". The New Republic, 1993.
- "In the Kingdom of Mao Bell". 1994, Wired. subtitle: "A billion Chinese are using new technology to create the fastest growing economy on the planet. But while the information wants to be free, do they?"
- "Mother Earth Mother Board". 1996. In which the Hacker Tourist ventures forth across three continents, telling the story of the business and technology of undersea fiber-optic cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
- "Global Neighborhood Watch". Wired, 1998. Stopping street crime in the global village.
- In the Beginning...was the Command Line. Perennial. 1999. ISBN 0-380-81593-1 (originally published online).
- "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out". Op-Ed piece on Star Wars, in the New York Times, June 17, 2005.
- "It's All Geek To Me". New York Times, March 18, 2007.
Short fiction by Neal Stephenson, published onlineEdit
- "Spew" Wired, 1994. (subtitle: "Are you on the trail of the next unexploited market niche - or just on a nookie hunt?")
- "The Great Simoleon Caper", TIME, 1995
- "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip", Forbes, 1997.


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
fiddeling around with one of them "space games".
(Cant be that hard to make one)
Dropping in some post-processing effects (AA,Bloom,Ambient Occlusion), and a better planet surface:
Making the "sky-box" was easy, its basically just a little java program making a texture with a lot of random dots
Runs ok in the browser, but I have to cut back on the detail a bit still...
Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:49 am
Re: Images!
Last edited by Damocles on Mon Jan 01, 2018 7:10 am, edited 2 times in total.


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If I have a graph of a reasonable size (e.g. ~100 nodes, ~40 edges coming out of each node) and I want to represent it in R^3 (i.e. map each node to a point in R^3 and draw a straight line between any two nodes which are connected in the original graph) in a way which would make it easy to understand its structure, what do you think would make a good drawing criterion?
I know this question is ill-posed; it's not objective. The idea behind it is easier to understand with an extreme case. Suppose you have a connected graph in which each node connects to two and only two other nodes, except for two nodes which only connect to one other node. It's not difficult to see that this graph, when drawn in R^3, can be drawn as a straight line (with nodes sprinkled over the line). Nevertheless, it is possible to draw it in a way which makes it almost impossible to see its very simple structure, e.g. by "twisting" it as much as possible around some fixed point in R^3. So, for this simple case, it's clear that a simple 3D representation is that of a straight line. However, it is not clear what this simplicity property is in the general case.
So, the question is: how would you define this simplicity property?
I'm happy with any kind of answer, be it a definition of "simplicity" computable for graphs, or a greedy approximated algorithm which transforms graphs and that converges to "simpler" 3D representations.
In the mean time I've put force-based graph drawing ideas into practice and wrote a computer program to simulate how imposing an electrical repulsive force between nodes (Coulomb's Law) and a spring-like behaviour on edges (Hooke's law) would turn out. I've posted the video on youtube. The video starts by randomly generating a graph of 100 nodes each with approximately 1-2 outgoing edges, placing the nodes randomly in 3D space. Then all the forces I mentioned are put into place and the system is left to move around subject to those forces. In the beginning, the graph is a mess and it's very difficult to see the structure. Closer to the end, it is clear that the graph is almost linear. I've also experience with larger-sized graphs but sometimes the geometry of the graph is just a mess and no matter how you plot it, you won't be able to visualise anything. And here is an even more extreme example with 500 nodes.


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Due to unprecedented demand, we have taken the difficult decision to suspend new pre-orders for plants that are not currently in stock. Existing orders for these plants will be fulfilled, please see below for further delivery information.Click here to see our live plants delivery update
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A floribunda with medium sized, orange-yellow flowers and a medium scent. Irish Eyes' has been awarded the Award of Garden Merit given by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which helps gardeners make informed choices about plants.
RHS Award of Garden Merit
The Award of Garden Merit or AGM is an award made to garden plants by the British Royal Horticultural Society after a period of assessment by the appropriate committees of the Society. Awards are made annually after plant trials (which may last for one or more years, depending on the type of plant being trialled) at RHS Garden, Wisley and other RHS gardens, or after observation of plants in specialist collections. This is intended to judge the plants' performance for conditions in the UK.
These roses are in a dormant state ready for immediate planting. The roots have been dipped in a water retaining gel and are enclosed in a plastic bag to keep them moist. The shoots have been cut back to prevent your rose plant rocking in the wind after planting. A further pruning will be required in early spring. Each plant comes with full planting and care instructions.


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Detailed needlework that's durable and withstands repeat washing. High-quality look and feel.
Decoration Care Instructions: Do not iron on decorated areas.
Please review item for specific product care instructions.
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Friday's CIF-SS Quarterfinal results
Southwest Division
Charter Oak 40, West Covina 21 — It was only 27-21 Charter Oak going into the fourth quarter when Kanaan Snowden put it away, scoring two of his three touchdowns in a four-minute span. Chargers will host Trabuco Hills next Friday.
Trabuco Hills 55, Wilson 6 — No more lifelines left for the Cats. But it was a great run and Happy Gilmore is back next season.
South Hills 41, Foothill 17 — This is the kind of statement win the Huskies needed. That's a thorough vicotry over one of the division's best teams. It's on to ElDo.
El Dorado 27, El Toro 9 — Hmm, not exactly blowing away the competition are they?
Southeast Division
California 34, South El Monte 21 — At the end of the night, Cal's rushing attack just too much.
Inland Division
Corona Centennial 49, Glendora 7 — Centennial the real deal, ending one of best Tartans runs in over a decade.
CIF-SS Southwest Division semifinals
No. 3 Trabuco Hills (11-1) at Charter Oark (10-1-1), 7:30 p.m.
No. 4 South Hills (10-2) at El Dorado (11-1), 7:30 p.m.
Click here for quarter-by-quarter updates of tonight's games


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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Dec. 17, 2013) – When reviewing her 2013 season, it's easy to forget that April Ross won an Olympic silver medal a little more than a year ago.
|April Ross reaches for the ball.
Instead of taking a year to rest on her laurels and coast a little in 2013, Ross (Costa Mesa, Calif.) competed in 13 FIVB events (Grand Slams and Opens as well as the World Cup Final) and seven AVP Tour events as well as the World Series of Beach Volleyball in Long Beach, Calif., and the Hilton HHonors Beach Volleyball Challenge in Hawaii.
She also started a successful blog, signed a sponsorship with Mizuno and worked to raise money and awareness for a variety of causes.
She did all this while transitioning from her longtime partner Jennifer Kessy (San Luis Obispo, Calif.), with whom she won that Olympic silver medal, to her new teammate, Kerri Walsh Jennings (Saratoga, Calif.), whom you may have heard of.
All kidding aside, Ross, 31, did more than enough to be voted USA Volleyball's 2013 Female Beach Athlete of the Year.
"My mindset is the same as it's always been; get better and win tournaments," Ross said. "Every tournament I go to, I want to win. It's always the same. But every year I've gotten more and more focused. I think that will continue."
Ross finished on the podium 12 times in 2013, including two FIVB Grand Slam gold medals (with Walsh Jennings), an FIVB Grand Slam silver (with Kessy) and seven AVP medals (with both Kessy and Walsh Jennings).
But it's a medal she didn't win that Ross points to as a highlight of her season. Although she had been hoping to compete at the 2013 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship with Kessy, Kessy had to withdraw due to injury. Ross competed with Whitney Pavlik for the first time and finished fourth.
"Doing as well as we did at the world championship as a team thrown together at the last minute was a highlight," Ross said. "I wish we had taken a medal, but to play until the last day was awesome."
Ross's season was not without challenges, the greatest one being the transition from Kessy to Walsh Jennings. Although Ross, Kessy and Walsh Jennings had all discussed how and when the partner change would happen, onlookers began speculating almost immediately after the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
"It was a challenge to manage everything as far as the media misconception on when it was going to happen and why it was happening," Ross said. "I wanted everyone to know that Jen was involved and Kerri was involved. It wasn't like I was dumping Jen and going to Kerri in a bad way."
Along the way Ross was supported by her husband, beach volleyball player Brad Keenan, and also got some sage advice from coach Tyler Hildebrand.
"I liked what he had to say and his positive attitude," she said. "He said some things that increased my confidence in myself. It came at a really good time."
Now that the change has been made, Ross said things are "really exciting. Everything is new. Playing with her pushes me to get better. She gets me fired up for every practice and every match."
And while the partnership with Walsh Jennings has put Ross "a little more in the spotlight," she is also fine with letting the three-time Olympic gold medalist be the center of attention.
"If we're at a tournament and a ton of people line up outside our box for autographs, I can sneak away and nobody notices," Ross said.
But perhaps not for long.


text: We have currently a debate to what extend we should provide support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, which includes a programmable graphics pipeline, wihin the Vincent project. The discussion revolves around the fact that the new spec. has higher requirements on the internal processing precision, which might be prohibitive for current embedded processors. Approaches discussed center around an implementation with reduced precision requirements, or an implementation only for CPUs with FPU (desktop?). http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1332844&forum_id=300094


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Home » Explore » Broad Gauge Railway - Broad Gauge Railway
One of the last Broad Gauge trains to pass through Didcot Station, in 1892
Brunel originally built the Great Western Railway to his unique broad gauge of 7 feet between the rails as he thought this would give extra speed and comfort.
But as the railway network expanded the Great Western had increasing problems with transshipping goods onto the standard gauge, or 'narrow gauge' as they called it, of the other railways and its broad gauge was finally abandoned in 1892.
However, at Didcot Railway Centre the Great Western Society has recreated a section of broad gauge railway using materials recovered from a disused railway near Burlescombe in Devon together with the relocated Didcot Transfer Shed built in the 1850s to trans-ship goods between broad and standard gauge trains.
Much of the recreated railway is laid as mixed gauge track, capable of carrying both broad and standard gauge trains. A quick look at the resultant complexity of pointwork shows the considerable increase in material and maintenance costs that such a layout involves.
In addition to the track and the Transfer Shed there are many other features reminiscent of the Great Western Railway's 'broad gauge' era in this part of the centre - Look out for the characteristic disc and crossbar signal and the Railway Policeman's Hut.
'Fire Fly' is a faithful replica of the original 'Firefly' locomotive designed by Daniel Gooch in 1840 to run on Brunel's broad gauge Great Western Railway between Bristol and London.
The replica was conceived by the members of the Firefly Trust and they have assembled it at Didcot Railway Centre where it now operates.
'Fire Fly' has operated the broad gauge railway together with replicas of a third class coach, open to the elements, and a second class coach, which at least has a roof! Both were originally built by the National Railway Museum for the 150th anniversary of the Great Western Railway in 1985 and have been extensively rebuilt by the Great Western Society. 'Fire Fly' is currently out of service, awaiting a boiler overhaul.
The original 'Firefly' was the first locomotive designed by Daniel Gooch, first locomotive superintendent of the Great Western Railway, and was one of a class of sixty two; built in May 1840 it ran until 1870. Gooch took advantage of the broad gauge; his locomotives travelled at much faster speeds than those made previously. In all he designed 340 locomotives.
The Firefly class handled the principal trains from London to Bristol when they were new and were capable of hauling trains weighing 80 tons at speeds up to 60 miles per hour; one of the class hauled the first royal train, taking Queen Victoria from Slough to London, in 1842. The wheel arrangement is 2-2-2, the single driving wheel being 7 feet diameter, and the weight 24 tons 4 cwt.
The Firefly Trust's achievements were recognised by the Heritage Railway Association by the award of the 2005 John Coiley Memorial Prize for locomotives. In 2013 the locomotive was given to the Great Western Society who are now its custodians.
Adjacent to the broad gauge running line is a display on Brunel's ill-fated attempt at 'atmospheric' propulsion. The three 22" diameter cast iron pipes are a relic of I K Brunel's flirtation with atmospheric traction on the South Devon Railway. The tubes were discovered, by the Great Western Society, being used for drainage at Goodrington in Devon and are displayed on broad gauge baulk road at the 1 in 36 gradient of Dainton Bank, the steepest part of the line for which they were intended.
The South Devon Railway was persuaded by Brunel to adopt Clegg & Samuda's system of atmospheric traction. This consisted of stationary pumping engines creating a partial vacuum in large slotted cast iron pipes laid between the rails. The pipe was sealed by airtight valves at each end and a metal strip hinged by leather along the length of the slot. The partial vacuum allowed a piston attached to a carriage to be propelled by the greater pressure of the atmosphere behind. This system was intended to be capable of operating trains on much steeper gradients and sharper curves than locomotives could manage.
The largely flat section of the Railway between Exeter and Newton (Abbot), including the scenic seawall section, was duly built with 15" pipes for atmospheric operation, experimental services beginning in September 1847 and full atmospheric operation commencing in February 1848.
The 22" pipes, such as those on display, were intended for the steeply graded section between Newton and Totnes where the larger diameter was needed for greater tractive effort. However as this section was being built the system's failings were becoming evident. The leather hinges were inadequate and air leaked into the pipes overworking the undersized pumps. The 1848 accounts show that atmospheric working cost 3s1d (15.5p) a mile compared to 1s4d (7p) for locomotive working.
Atmospheric working between Exeter and Newton was discontinued from 10 September 1848 (after only 7 months). The Newton to Totnes section was never opened for atmospheric traction, though an engine house was built at Dainton, and pipes were laid from Newton as far as Dart Bridge in Totnes.
The steep grades and sharp curves of this part of the line have remained, as a legacy of Brunel's 'Atmospheric Caper', to provide a challenge to Great Western locomotives and their successors as they struggle to lift their heavy trains over the South Devon banks.
This is displayed near to the Railway Centre entrance. It was originally installed within Devonport Dockyard and is thought to have been manufactured for the Cornwall Railway circa 1868 when they were contracted to carry out some work at the dockyard involving laying a short loop on the east side of the North Basin in North Yard, to include a 13 feet diameter Heanett & Spinks turntable. It may be that this is the example preserved here, though by the time it was recognized as historically important (in 1992) it was located on the east side of No. 3 basin in South Yard, apparently having been moved there at some time after the Second World War.
There had been a scheme to preserve the turntable at Devonport as part of a proposed museum, but with this proving impractical the turntable was purchased by the Bristol Group of the Great Western Society in 2008.
These small turntables are often known as 'wagon turntables', though they are easily traversed by a small locomotive, and can even be used to turn one provided the wheelbase is short enough. Unlike the larger turntables which were used to turn locomotives at the end of their journey so that they were facing in the correct direction for their return, these turntables were mainly used to provide access to awkward locations. In dock areas this allowed access for single wagons into buildings and onto jetties and quays, and they were also much used inside goods warehouses and industrial premises. However they were also heavily used at major stations in the early days of railways, where they would allow for individual coaches and wagons carrying the road carriages of the wealthy to be easily attached to trains.
Such turntables were operated by manpower, generally by the simple mechanism of pushing against whatever it was standing on the turntable ready to be turned. In many cases the spur lines running from these turntables were quite short and any movement of vehicles to and from the turntables would also be by manual operation, although sometimes horses, or even systems of ropes and powered capstans might be used on larger or more heavily used installations.
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(Senior) Consultant HR Technology - Deloitte
At Deloitte Consulting's Human Capital practice, the worlds of business, people, and technology intersect to transform the way our clients work. We are a leading and trusted advisor and implementation partner, working with companies and governments around the world. For three decades now, our teams have focused exclusively on HR and are continuously investigating and steering the future of HR.
Our HR Technology consultants are committed to helping our clients both in defining their HR Technology strategy and architecture, as well as in maximizing the potential value of this strategy and architecture in an increasingly complex and unpredictable HR Technology market. We support our clients from business case, over vendor selection, to actual implementation of the technology and support. Through this broad experience, we gained insights in the latest developments and trends, and know how clients can take advantages from them. We demonstrate to our clients how they can future-proof their systems.
Regardless of the actual HR systems and/or HR modules, we believe the success of any HR technology extends beyond a flawless implementation. We focus on a true integration of technology in the HR organization of the client. Throughout the HR Technology project, we rethink the existing HR processes, the HR experience of employees and managers, as well as the necessary change required to fully adopt the new system(s). We build the necessary capabilities, to deliver a lasting, impactful, and positive transformation at our clients.
You will act as a trusted advisor to our clients in the strategy and/or implementation of HR technologies - improving the value from the HR Technology and positioning HR as an impactful player in the business;
You will shape and execute HR technology solutions, including the (re)alignment of the HR strategy with the solution of choice, (re)designing the process, configuration and integration of the solution in legacy systems and processes, innovative communications, and workshop facilitation;
You will work closely together with your project team, stakeholders at the client, and technology providers to ensure a qualitative project delivery;
You will continuously develop your knowledge and insights on the use of enabling HR technologies, integration of these technologies in the architecture of the client, the desired employee experience, as well as general HR-trends.
Your Profile
3 to 7 years of relevant experience, including client-facing consulting experience;
(Functional) expertise in one or multiple HR Technology solutions, such as Workday, SAP HCM/Successfactors, Oracle Cloud HCM/Taleo, or other…
Outstanding ability to translate Business Objectives to functional and technical requirements;
An excellent communicator, a charismatic relationship builder, and a strong team player;
Intellectual curiosity combined with excellent analytical skills;
You thrive in an international environment and are open to travel where needed;
University degree with a background in engineering, IT, HR, economics or equivalent. A post-graduate degree is an asset;
Fluent in English + Dutch and/or French. Additional languages are a plus.
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A challenging and innovating environment where personal development and growth opportunities are limitless;
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A large diversity in project engagements;
A team of more than 140 passionate, enthusiastic and entrepreneurial colleagues;
Our business activities are centralized in Deloitte's Gateway office based in Brussels (Zaventem). Projects could be both nationally (BE) or internationally (EU) based.


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- Why West is Silent in Myanmar / Burmese GENOCIDES? Let us STOP this GENOCIDE. —- MD Rabbi Alam
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- Is Senator Rand Paul (R – KY) getting a Step Closer to get my VOTE in 2016? Asking Senate to Declassify 28 Pages of 800 Pages 9/11 Commission Reports. If so I have a Chance to Prove that "Muslim DID NOT DO 9/11, It was the Saudi Arabia & the Counter Government Financed Inside Job"
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Honoring an American Hero who served in the line of Duty — Happy Memorial Day – 2015: MD Rabbi Alam
Honoring an American Hero who served in the line of Duty — Happy Memorial Day – 2015: MD Rabbi Alam I learned the meaning of Memorial Day from my own service to this country. I learn about the values of … Continue reading
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This small waterfront park features a statue of Queen Wilhelmina, the leader of the Netherlands during the first half of the twentieth century.
The Aruban Historical museum was established by the CCA - Cultureel Centrum van Aruba - (Cultural Center Aruba Foundation) in 1983 when the restoration of the Fort Zoutman Willem III Tower was completed.
On the 16th of march 1992 the "Fundacion Museo Arubano" was founded which since then has been administrating the Aruba Historical museum.
Open daily from 10-am-sunset. Fast Rental karts for everyone! Come experience the thrill of outdoor karting in Aruba! If you're looking for excitement and adventure under the Aruban sun, forget sunbathing, come on over to Bushiri Karting Speedway and experience real 9 horsepower, 45 mph highspeed performance karts!
Bushiri Karting Speedway is the only outdoor karting track in Aruba where you can experience extremely fast, action packed kart racing with high speed passing zonesand hairpin turns, it will definitely make your vacation an unfogettable one!We can cater to special events--birtday parties, or corporate events, you name, just remember to save the date and come enjoy with your whole family, friens and colleagues! Each Arrive and drive session lasts for 8 minutes and may include as many as 12 drivers.
Experience beautiful composed, orchestrated and arranged music with wonderful romantic lyrics sung by Fred de Jong. Live entertainment featuring songs like: "Fly Me To The Moon", "My Way", "I've Got You Under My Skin", "Luck Be A Lady", "Come Rain, Or Shine", "Girl From Ipanema", "I've Got The World On A String", "One For My Baby", "Night And Day", "You Make Me Feel So Young", "Softly As I Leave You", For Once In My Life", "It Had To Be You", "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry", "Witchcraft", "The Way You Look To Night", "It Was A Very Good Year", "New York - New York", "The Lady Is A Tramp" and many more...
Fred de Jong's Aruba Sinatra Shows are available for all types of occasions, ceremonies & celebrations including: Private Parties; Corporate Functions; Weddings; Birthdays; Funerals; Themed Parties; Hotels; Restaurants; Theaters; Cruises; TV and Advertising etc...
The National Archaeological Museum Aruba celebrates more than 5000 years of Amerindian culture. The Museum's mandate is to educate,
motivate and inspire visitors to act – learning, preserving, and respecting this unique Aruban heritage. In 2009 the Museum moved into one of the island's most significant historic landmarks, beautifully restored and expanded to include a series of professional facilities such as collections storage, auditorium, cafeteria, and temporary and permanent exhibition galleries.
The Museum has a collection of over 10,000 Amerindian artifacts spanning the Pre-Ceramic, Ceramic, and Historic Cultural Periods, and is comprised of a variety of media such as pottery, shell, stone, bone, and glass. The collections include a large number of artifacts that express Amerindian and spiritual life as well as a large communication network that connected Aruba to Europe, Mexico and central South America.The Museum's archaeological staff research
the collections, lead excavations and preserve key heritage sites including the amazing cave paintings located in Arikok National Park.
If you are looking to explore Aruba's north coast, countryside and seascapes, sign up for our famous off-road sightseeing tours today.
Choose between our half- or full-day, caravan-style jeep tours, with convenient departure times that fit your schedule. You even have the opportunity to drive our state-of-the-art 4×4 Land Rover Defender. If you want to experience adventure behind the wheel, simply bring your driver's license. If you would rather sit back and enjoy the ride, no problem, will be provided your own driver.
All tours include swimming at the best snorkeling spots in Aruba. At the beach, your tour guide provides a personal briefing and instructions. When requested, guides will also gladly snorkel with you and point out the underwater highlights.
ABC Tours is Aruba's leading jeep tour company with impeccable credentials. We are a small, family-owned company that only specializes in Land Rover off-road adventures, which means that we really focus on making your trip a lasting, memorable experience.
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Business Insurance:: ISO 31000 should we believe the hype?
Thursday, 6 June, 2013 Leave a comment
"…risk managers should use standards such as ISO 31000, "because standards, no matter what kind or which ones, support key tools and processes.""Standards allow you to proactively address risks with some discipline," he said. "Standards also relate well to the whole idea of focusing on outcomes."
Surely the focus should be upon being proactive and 'managing' emergent risks, NOT outcomes!?
Where, I suspect, NASA have a distinct (informational) advantage is that the multi-scalar interactions among components, processes, networks of sub-systems and systems are each rigorously tested at every point in assembly and operation…


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You reckon there's a thread on a Huddersfield board musing/wondering/accusing/blaiming/whatevering about Andrew Hughes' role?I don't to be honest.
How did we get onto the subject of Andrew Hughes ?
he's the first team coach of huddersfield, Like Ferguson is ours.andrew Jones has a head coach above him in the pecking order though. Craig Shakespeare seems to be ours (but i think he doesn't haev the title of "head").It's only because people have thie weird little antagonism towards Ferguson that they look for reasons to doubt him.He is a first team coach. There's no reason to believe he does more or less than all of the other first team coaches across the land.
I think people are so desperate to pin the tail on a donkey that they're searching high and low for a scapegoat, as if he's somehow responsible for diabolical recruitment or negative tactics or a totally unbalanced system.
Duncan is part of a coaching team...probably consisting of at least 4 of them......he will have a role to play but his role obviously doesn't consist of "tactical input" on match day....I would say it'd be more about monitoring and assessing progress/non progress of players on a day to day to basis...with some input on coaching sessions during the week.....his verbal input will come throughout the week in the form of feedback on his observations....I would also assume his feedback will influence player selections........the big question should be...."is his feedback taken any notice of?"......
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Most of the time finishing drywall joints isn't one of those jobs that has people jumping up and down with excitement. Even with a decent amount of drywall experience under my belt, when faced with the 2000 square feet of unfinished drywall in my current house, all I could picture was a lot of sanding in my future. Like, for all of eternity. Luckily I had a great mentor to teach me some of the tricks of the trade, and in no time my joints required very little sanding for a perfectly smooth wall.
Before you can finish drywall joints you need to have actual wallboard in place. You can learn how to install drywall here. The thing to keep in mind is that a sheet of drywall has slightly beveled ends which make finishing joints much easier. When hanging the boards it will be tempting to use small scraps to finish things off, but you'll be hurting yourself in the long run. Always try to use the factory edges to create your joints.
Now, let's talk mud.
Now, I never turn down a good excuse to add to my tool collection, but this is one instance where having the right tools will mean the difference between a good drywall joint and losing your sanity over a sanding block.
TOOLS AND MATERIALS Available on Amazon
- Mud pan
- 6' drywall knife
- 10' drywall knife
- Drywall tape
- Lightweight joint compound
- Sanding block
Now, let's talk mud.
Step 1: Mixing Joint Compound
Joint compound comes in two forms: ready-mixed and powder. You can use either, but I prefer the ready-mixed variety for convenience. You will need to stir the compound to loosen it up and make it easier to work with. You can do this with a mixer attachment to the drill or use the drywall knife (and some elbow grease). A little bit of water at the ready will also help get the mud to an easy-to-work-with consistency, loose enough to spread on the wall without running.
Step 2: Taping The Joints
You can use paper or mesh tape to finish the joints. Mesh tape is usually self adhesive and can go right on the joints. For paper, you will need to apply a thin coat of mud to the joint, apply the tape, and press into place with the drywall knife. It's a good idea to let paper tape dry overnight before finishing off the seam. Mesh tape can be finished immediately after installing.
Step 3: The Three Swipe Method
I've always been pretty conservative with how much mud I put on the seam, because like everyone else in the universe, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life sanding it down. However, getting enough joint compound on the wall is key. This is how much should go on the seam to start.
I know, I know, even seeing that much mud on a seam in a picture gives me sanding anxiety too. However, the three swipe method is all about putting a lot of mud on to start and then taking away the extra.
First, "feather" the top edge of mud by holding just the top edge of the knife tight to the wall and drawing it smoothly across the seam (Swipe 1).
Then do the same to the bottom with the bottom edge of the knife (Swipe 2).
Finish it off by going over the whole joint with one smooth stroke while keeping the knife flat to the wall (Swipe 3).
The beveled edge of the drywall retains more mud in the middle of the seam than on the top or bottom. Between swipes, be sure to wipe both sides of the knife on the pan. Dried clumps of drywall are your enemy at this point.
Once the first coat is dry you'll need to repeat the process, making the finished coverage about 12' wide. You can use a sanding block to smooth away any imperfections between coats and after the final coat.
As with anything, experimentation and practice will help you perfect the technique of finishing drywall joints. But, follow my three-swipe method and you too can have smooth joints without losing your sanity to sanding.


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What do the fastest up-and-coming distance triathletes, Olympians, and discerning amateur cyclists have in common? They have discovered that their Max Lelli bicycles are helping to propel them to top results in races worldwide.
Max Lelli USA is pleased to announce the launch of its new website, www.maxlellibikes.com. The parent company of Max Lelli USA, Liger LLC, was incorporated in 2007 in order to distribute Max Lelli bicycles in the U.S. With the launch of the new site, Max Lelli offers most bikes with six possible kit options, with a choice of Shimano or SRAM components. Moreover, the purchase of frames and forks alone will be available. The Brigante and the Tiburzi Basic complete bikes will now be offered at promotional discounted prices. The site also offers information on the complete lineup of carbon fiber road racing bikes, time trial bikes, hardtail mountain bikes, and a wind tunnel tested triathlon bike made by Max Lelli Bicycles.
Max Lelli's products are designed using Max's experience as a professional cyclist and Italian flair for style, and constructed to maximize performance at the most competitive price possible. Using the latest carbon fiber technology and sensible geometry and topping that with visually striking graphics, Max Lelli Bicycles strives to offer the discerning bike buyer a product that is top-of-the-line technically as well as unusual and eye-catching.
Max Lelli bicycles are used by a cadre of highly ranked professional endurance athletes, most specializing in half- to full Ironman triathlons. Alessandro Degasperi burst on the scene with his win at 70.3 Wiesbaden in Germany in 2008. Alberto Casadei, only 24 years old and racing since age 13, is the multi-time Italian champion in the double Olympic distance and was second at Timberman 70.3 this past year.
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