January
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 22 | Loc. 346-48 | Added on Monday, January 09, 2017, 10:41 PM
A.D. 435. This year the Goths sacked the city of Rome; and never since have the Romans reigned in Britain. This was about eleven hundred and ten winters after it was built. They reigned altogether in Britain four hundred and seventy winters since Gaius Julius first sought that land. A.D. 443. This year sent the Britons over sea to Rome,
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 23 | Loc. 355-60 | Added on Monday, January 09, 2017, 10:42 PM
Then came the men from three powers of Germany; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the men of Kent, the Wightwarians (that is, the tribe that now dwelleth in the Isle of Wight), and that kindred in Wessex that men yet call the kindred of the Jutes. From the Old Saxons came the people of Essex and Sussex and Wessex. From Anglia, which has ever since remained waste between the Jutes and the Saxons, came the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, and all of those north of the Humber. Their leaders were two brothers, Hengest and Horsa; who were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils was the son of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden. From this Woden arose all our royal kindred, and that of the Southumbrians also.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 25 | Loc. 388-90 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:52 PM
Then succeeded Alfred, their brother, to the government. And then had elapsed of his age three and twenty winters, and three hundred and ninety-six winters from the time when his kindred first gained the land of Wessex from the Welsh.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 26 | Loc. 406-8 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:54 PM
A.D. 547. This year Ida began his reign; from whom first arose the royal kindred of the Northumbrians. Ida was the son of Eoppa, Eoppa of Esa, Esa of Ingwy, Ingwy of Angenwit, Angenwit of Alloc, Alloc of Bennoc, Bennoc of Brand, Brand of Balday,
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 411-13 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:54 PM
In this year Ethelbert, the son of Ermenric, was born, who on the two and thirtieth year of his reign received the rite of baptism, the first of all the kings in Britain.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 414-16 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:54 PM
Ella was the son of Iff, Iff of Usfrey, Usfrey of Wilgis, Wilgis of Westerfalcon, Westerfalcon of Seafowl, Seafowl of Sebbald, Sebbald of Sigeat, Sigeat of Swaddy, Swaddy of Seagirt, Seagar of Waddy, Waddy of Woden, Woden of Frithowulf.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 28 | Loc. 433-34 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:56 PM
A.D. 596. This year Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Britain with very many monks, to preach the word of God to the English people.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 437-38 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:56 PM
A.D. 601. This year Pope Gregory sent the pall to Archbishop Augustine in Britain, with very many learned doctors to assist him; and Bishop Paulinus converted Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, to baptism.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 439-41 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:56 PM
A.D. 603. This year Aeden, king of the Scots, fought with the Dalreathians, and with Ethelfrith, king of the Northumbrians, at Theakstone; where he lost almost all his army. Theobald also, brother of Ethelfrith, with his whole armament, was slain. None of the Scottish kings durst afterwards bring an army against this nation.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Bookmark on Page 42 | Loc. 633 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:01 PM
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 632-37 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:01 PM
"I Theodorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, am witness to this charter of Medhamsted; and I ratify it with my hand, and I excommunicate all that break anything thereof; and I bless all that hold it." (+) "I Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, am witness to this charter; and I ratify this same curse." (+) "I Saxulf, who was first abbot, and now am bishop, I give my curse, and that of all my successors, to those who break this."—"I Ostritha, Ethelred's queen, confirm it."—"I Adrian, legate, ratify it."—"I Putta, Bishop of Rochester, subscribe it."—"I Waldhere, Bishop of London, confirm it."—"I Cuthbald, abbot, ratify it; so that, whoso breaketh it, have he the cursing of all bishops and of all christian folk. Amen."
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 639-41 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:01 PM
A.D. 678. This year appeared the comet-star in August, and shone every morning, during three months, like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead, Bosa over the Deirians, and Eata over the Bernicians.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 43 | Loc. 655-56 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:01 PM
This year there was in Britain a bloody rain, and milk and butter were turned to blood.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 54 | Loc. 800-801 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:05 PM
A.D. 784. This year Cyneard slew King Cynewulf, and was slain himself, and eighty-four men with him.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 54 | Loc. 806-8 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:05 PM
A.D. 787. This year King Bertric took Edburga the daughter of Offa to wife. And in his days came first three ships of the Northmen from the land of robbers. The reve (30) then rode thereto, and would drive them to the king's town; for he knew not what they were; and there was he slain. These were the first ships of the Danish men that sought the land of the English nation.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 55 | Loc. 818-22 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:05 PM
A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. Siga died on the eighth day before the calends of March.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 57 | Loc. 843-44 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:06 PM
A.D. 797. This year the Romans cut out the tongue of Pope Leo, put out his eyes, and drove him from his see; but soon after, by the assistance of God, he could see and speak, and became pope as he was before.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 67 | Loc. 993-97 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:08 PM
A.D. 877. This year came the Danish army into Exeter from Wareham; whilst the navy sailed west about, until they met with a great mist at sea, and there perished one hundred and twenty ships at Swanwich. (36) Meanwhile King Alfred with his army rode after the cavalry as far as Exeter; but he could not overtake them before their arrival in the fortress, where they could not be come at. There they gave him as many hostages as he required, swearing with solemn oaths to observe the strictest amity. In the harvest the army entered Mercia; some of which they divided among them, and some they gave to Ceolwulf.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 71 | Loc. 1052-59 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:12 PM
A.D. 891. This year went the army eastward; and King Arnulf fought with the land-force, ere the ships arrived, in conjunction with the eastern Franks, and Saxons, and Bavarians, and put them to flight. And three Scots came to King Alfred in a boat without any oars from Ireland; whence they stole away, because they would live in a state of pilgrimage, for the love of God, they recked not where. The boat in which they came was made of two hides and a half; and they took with them provisions for seven nights; and within seven nights they came to land in Cornwall, and soon after went to King Alfred. They were thus named: Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmun. And Swinney, the best teacher that was among the Scots, departed this life. And the same year after Easter, about the gang-days or before, appeared the star that men in book-Latin call "cometa": some men say that in English it may be termed "hairy star"; for that there standeth off from it a long gleam of light, whilom on one side, whilom on each.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 76 | Loc. 1126-37 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:15 PM
This same year the plunderers in East-Anglia and Northumbria greatly harassed the land of the West-Saxons by piracies on the southern coast, but most of all by the esks which they built many years before. Then King Alfred gave orders for building long ships against the esks, which were full-nigh twice as long as the others. Some had sixty oars, some more; and they were both swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were not shaped either after the Frisian or the Danish model, but so as he himself thought that they might be most serviceable. Then, at a certain turn of this same year, came six of their ships to the Isle of Wight; and going into Devonshire, they did much mischief both there and everywhere on the seacoast. Then commanded the king his men to go out against them with nine of the new ships, and prevent their escape by the mouth of the river to the outer sea. Then came they out against them with three ships, and three others were standing upwards above the mouth on dry land: for the men were gone off upon shore. Of the first three ships they took two at the mouth outwards, and slew the men; the third veered off, but all the men were slain except five; and they too were severely wounded. Then came onward those who manned the other ships, which were also very uneasily situated. Three were stationed on that side of the deep where the Danish ships were aground, whilst the others were all on the opposite side; so that none of them could join the rest; for the water had ebbed many furlongs from them. Then went the Danes from their three ships to those other three that were on their side, be-ebbed; and there they then fought.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 77 | Loc. 1143-45 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:15 PM
A.D. 901. This year died ALFRED, the son of Ethelwulf, six nights before the mass of All Saints. He was king over all the English nation, except that part that was under the power of the Danes. He held the government one year and a half less than thirty winters; and then Edward his son took to the government.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 84 | Loc. 1252-53 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:18 PM
A.D. 922. This year, betwixt gang-days and midsummer, went King Edward with his army to Stamford, and ordered the town to be fortified on the south side of the river. And all the people that belonged to the northern town submitted to him, and sought him for their lord.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 84 | Loc. 1260-64 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:18 PM
A.D. 924. This year, before midsummer, went King Edward with an army to Nottingham; and ordered the town to be repaired on the south side of the river, opposite the other, and the bridge over the Trent betwixt the two towns. Thence he went to Bakewell in Peakland; and ordered a fort to be built as near as possible to it, and manned. And the King of Scotland, with all his people, chose him as father and lord; as did Reynold, and the son of Eadulf, and all that dwell in Northumbria, both English and Danish, both Northmen and others; also the king of the Strathclydwallians, and all his people.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 85 | Loc. 1264-66 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:18 PM
((A.D. 924. This year Edward was chosen for father and for lord by the king of the Scots, and by the Scots, and King Reginald, and by all the North-humbrians, and also the king of the Strath-clyde Britons, and by all the Strath-clyde Britons.))
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 86 | Loc. 1278 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:19 PM
A.D. 928. William took to Normandy, and held it fifteen years.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 86 | Loc. 1285-91 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:19 PM
A.D. 938. Here Athelstan king, of earls the lord, rewarder of heroes, and his brother eke, Edmund atheling, elder of ancient race, slew in the fight, with the edge of their swords, the foe at Brumby! The sons of Edward their board-walls clove, and hewed their banners, with the wrecks of their hammers. So were they taught by kindred zeal, that they at camp oft 'gainst any robber their land should defend, their hoards and homes. Pursuing fell the Scottish clans; the men of the fleet in numbers fell; 'midst the din of the field the warrior swate. Since the sun was up in morning-tide, gigantic light! glad over grounds, God's candle bright, eternal Lord!— 'till the noble creature sat in the western main: there lay many of the Northern heroes under a shower of arrows, shot over shields; and Scotland's boast, a Scythian race, the mighty seed of Mars!
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 87 | Loc. 1291-96 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:20 PM
With chosen troops, throughout the day, the West-Saxons fierce press'd on the loathed bands; hew'd down the fugitives, and scatter'd the rear, with strong mill-sharpen'd blades, The Mercians too the hard hand-play spared not to any of those that with Anlaf over the briny deep in the ship's bosom sought this land for the hardy fight. Five kings lay on the field of battle, in bloom of youth, pierced with swords. So seven eke of the earls of Anlaf; and of the ship's-crew unnumber'd crowds. There was dispersed the little band of hardy Scots, the dread of northern hordes; urged to the noisy deep by unrelenting fate! The king of the fleet with his slender craft escaped with his life on the felon flood;— and so too Constantine, the valiant chief, returned to the north in hasty flight.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 87 | Loc. 1303-6 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:20 PM
No slaughter yet was greater made e'er in this island, of people slain, before this same, with the edge of the sword; as the books inform us of the old historians; since hither came from the eastern shores the Angles and Saxons, over the broad sea, and Britain sought,— fierce battle-smiths, o'ercame the Welsh, most valiant earls, and gained the land.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 109 | Loc. 1636-39 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:25 PM
A.D. 1011. This year sent the king and his council to the army, and desired peace; promising them both tribute and provisions, on condition that they ceased from plunder. They had now overrun East-Anglia [1], and Essex [2], and Middlesex [3], and Oxfordshire [4], and Cambridgeshire [5], and Hertfordshire [6], and Buckinghamshire [7], and Bedfordshire [8], and half of Huntingdonshire [9], and much of Northamptonshire [10]; and, to the south of the Thames, all Kent, and Sussex, and Hastings, and Surrey, and Berkshire, and Hampshire, and much of Wiltshire.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 110 | Loc. 1653-58 | Added on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 11:26 PM
Then on the Saturday was the army much stirred against the bishop; because he would not promise them any fee, and forbade that any man should give anything for him. They were also much drunken; for there was wine brought them from the south. Then took they the bishop, and led him to their hustings, on the eve of the Sunday after Easter, which was the thirteenth before the calends of May; and there they then shamefully killed him. They overwhelmed him with bones and horns of oxen; and one of them smote him with an axe-iron on the head; so that he sunk downwards with the blow; and his holy blood fell on the earth, whilst his sacred soul was sent to the realm of God. The corpse in the morning was carried to London; and the bishops, Ednoth and Elfhun, and the citizens, received him with all honour, and buried him in St. Paul's minster; where God now showeth this holy martyr's miracles.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 124 | Loc. 1863-66 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:53 PM
This year also ordered Hardacnute to lay waste all Worcestershire, on account of the two servants of his household, who exacted the heavy tribute. That people slew them in the town within the minster. Early in this same year came Edward, the son of King Ethelred, hither to land, from Weal-land to Madron. He was the brother of King Hardacnute, and had been driven from this land for many years: but he was nevertheless sworn as king, and abode in his brother's court while he lived.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 124 | Loc. 1870-73 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:54 PM
And before he was buried, all people chose Edward for king at London: may he hold it the while that God shall grant it to him! And all that year was a very heavy time, in many things and divers, as well in respect to ill seasons as to the fruits of the earth. And so much cattle perished in the year as no man before remembered, as well through various diseases as through tempests.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 124 | Loc. 1874-76 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:54 PM
A.D. 1042. This year died King Hardacnute at Lambeth, as he stood drinking: he fell suddenly to the earth with a tremendous struggle; but those who were nigh at hand took him up; and he spoke not a word afterwards, but expired on the sixth day before the ides of June.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 125 | Loc. 1883-88 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:55 PM
And this year, fourteen nights before the mass of St. Andrew, it was advised the king, that he and Earl Leofric and Earl Godwin and Earl Siward with their retinue, should ride from Gloucester to Winchester unawares upon the lady; and they deprived her of all the treasures that she had; which were immense; because she was formerly very hard upon the king her son, and did less for him than he wished before he was king, and also since: but they suffered her to remain there afterwards. And soon after this the king determined to invest all the land that his mother had in her hands, and took from her all that she had in gold and in silver and in numberless things; because she formerly held it too fast against him.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 126 | Loc. 1899-1900 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:56 PM
This year there was very great hunger over all England, and corn so dear as no man remembered before; so that the sester of wheat rose to sixty pence, and even further.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 127 | Loc. 1917 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:56 PM
This year died Elfwine, Bishop of Winchester, on the fourth day before the calends of September;
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 127 | Loc. 1919-21 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:57 PM
Sweyne also sent hither, and requested the aid of fifty ships against Magnus, king of the Norwegians; but it was thought unwise by all the people, and it was prevented, because that Magnus had a large navy: and he drove Sweyne out, and with much slaughter won the land.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 128 | Loc. 1927-30 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 03:57 PM
((A.D. 1046. This year died Brithwin, bishop in Wiltshire, and Herman was appointed to his see. In that year King Edward gathered a large ship-force at Sandwich, on account of the threatening of Magnus in Norway: but his and Sweyn's contention in Denmark hindered his coming here. This year died Athelstan, Abbot of Abingdon, and Sparhawk, monk of St. Edmund's-bury, succeeded him. And in this same year died bishop Siward, and Archbishop Eadsine again obtained the whole bishopric.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 131 | Loc. 1971-73 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:00 PM
The same year Bishop Siward resigned his bishopric from infirmity, and retired to Abingdon; upon which Archbishop Edsy resumed the bishopric; and he died within eight weeks of this, on the tenth day before the calends of November.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Bookmark on Page 138 | Loc. 2089 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:15 PM
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 137 | Loc. 2084-91 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:15 PM
A.D. 1051. This year came Archbishop Robert hither over sea with his pall from Rome, one day before St. Peter's eve: and he took his archiepiscopal seat at Christ-church on St. Peter's day, and soon after this went to the king. Then came Abbot Sparhawk to him with the king's writ and seal, to the intent that he should consecrate him Bishop o[oe] London; but the archbishop refused, saying that the pope had forbidden him. Then went the abbot to the archbishop again for the same purpose, and there demanded episcopal consecration; but the archbishop obstinately refused, repeating that the pope had forbidden him. Then went the abbot to London, and sat at the bishopric which the king had before given him, with his full leave, all the summer and the autumn. Then during the same year came Eustace, who had the sister of King Edward to wife, from beyond sea, soon after the bishop, and went to the king; and having spoken with him whatever he chose, he then went homeward.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 138 | Loc. 2091-99 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:16 PM
When he came to Canterbury eastward, there took he a repast, and his men; whence he proceeded to Dover. When he was about a mile or more on this side Dover, he put on his breast-plate; and so did all his companions: and they proceeded to Dover. When they came thither, they resolved to quarter themselves wherever they lived. Then came one of his men, and would lodge at the house of a master of a family against his will; but having wounded the master of the house, he was slain by the other. Then was Eustace quickly upon his horse, and his companions upon theirs; and having gone to the master of the family, they slew him on his own hearth; then going up to the boroughward, they slew both within and without more than twenty men. The townsmen slew nineteen men on the other side, and wounded more, but they knew not how many. Eustace escaped with a few men, and went again to the king, telling him partially how they had fared. The king was very wroth with the townsmen, and sent off Earl Godwin, bidding him go into Kent with hostility to Dover. For Eustace had told the king that the guilt of the townsmen was greater than his. But it was not so: and the earl would not consent to the expedition, because he was loth to destroy his own people.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 138 | Loc. 2099-2113 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:16 PM
Then sent the king after all his council, and bade them come to Gloucester nigh the after-mass of St. Mary. Meanwhile Godwin took it much to heart, that in his earldom such a thing should happen. Whereupon be began to gather forces over all his earldom, and Earl Sweyne, his son, over his; and Harold, his other son, over his earldom: and they assembled all in Gloucestershire, at Langtree, a large and innumerable army, all ready for battle against the king; unless Eustace and his men were delivered to them handcuffed, and also the Frenchmen that were in the castle. This was done seven nights before the latter mass of St. Mary, when King Edward was sitting at Gloucester. Whereupon he sent after Earl Leofric, and north after Earl Siward, and summoned their retinues. At first they came to him with moderate aid; but when they found how it was in the south, then sent they north over all their earldom, and ordered a large force to the help of their lord. So did Ralph also over his earldom. Then came they all to Gloucester to the aid of the king, though it was late. So unanimous were they all in defence of the king, that they would seek Godwin's army if the king desired it. But some prevented that; because it was very unwise that they should come together; for in the two armies was there almost all that was noblest in England. They therefore prevented this, that they might not leave the land at the mercy of our foes, whilst engaged in a destructive conflict betwixt ourselves. Then it was advised that they should exchange hostages between them. And they issued proclamations throughout to London, whither all the people were summoned over all this north end in Siward's earldom, and in Leofric's, and also elsewhere; and Earl Godwin was to come thither with his sons to a conference; They came as far as Southwark, and very many with them from Wessex; but his army continually diminished more and more; for they bound over to the king all the thanes that belonged to Earl Harold his son, and outlawed Earl Sweyne his other son.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 139 | Loc. 2113-23 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:17 PM
When therefore it could not serve his purpose to come to a conference against the king and against the army that was with him, he went in the night away. In the morning the king held a council, and proclaimed him an outlaw, with his whole army; himself and his wife, and all his three sons—Sweyne and Tosty and Grith. And he went south to Thorney, (67) with his wife, and Sweyne his son, and Tosty and his wife, a cousin of Baldwin of Bruges, and his son Grith. Earl Harold with Leofwine went to Bristol in the ship that Earl Sweyne had before prepared and provisioned for himself; and the king sent Bishop Aldred from London with his retinue, with orders to overtake him ere he came to ship. But they either could not or would not: and he then went out from the mouth of the Avon; but he encountered such adverse weather, that he got off with difficulty, and suffered great loss. He then went forth to Ireland, as soon as the weather permitted. In the meantime the Welshmen had wrought a castle in Herefordshire, in the territory of Earl Sweyne, and brought as much injury and disgrace on the king's men thereabout as they could. Then came Earl Godwin, and Earl Sweyne, and Earl Harold, together at Beverstone, and many men with them; to the intent that they might go to their natural lord, and to all the peers that were assembled with him; to have the king's counsel and assistance, and that of all the peers, how they might avenge the insult offered to the king, and to all the nation.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 140 | Loc. 2123-28 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:17 PM
But the Welshmen were before with the king, and bewrayed the earls, so that they were not permitted to come within the sight of his eyes; for they declared that they intended to come thither to betray the king. There was now assembled before the king (68) Earl Siward, and Earl Leofric, and much people with them from the north: and it was told Earl Godwin and his sons, that the king and the men who were with him would take counsel against them; but they prepared themselves firmly to resist, though they were loth to proceed against their natural lord. Then advised the peers on either side, that they should abstain from all hostility: and the king gave God's peace and his full friendship to each party.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 140 | Loc. 2128-38 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:18 PM
Then advised the king and his council, that there should be a second time a general assembly of all the nobles in London, at the autumnal equinox: and the king ordered out an army both south and north of the Thames, the best that ever was. Then was Earl Sweyne proclaimed an outlaw; and Earl Godwin and Earl Harold were summoned to the council as early as they could come. When they came thither and were cited to the council, then required they security and hostages, that they might come into the council and go out without treachery. The king then demanded all the thanes that the earls had; and they put them all into his hands. Then sent the king again to them, and commanded them to come with twelve men to the king's council. Then desired the earl again security and hostages, that he might answer singly to each of the things that were laid to his charge. But the hostages were refused; and a truce of five nights was allowed him to depart from the land. Then went Earl Godwin and Earl Sweyne to Bosham, and drew out their ships, and went beyond sea, seeking the protection of Baldwin; and there they abode all the winter. Earl Harold went westward to Ireland, and was there all the winter on the king's security. It was from Thorney (69) that Godwin and those that were with him went to Bruges, to Baldwin's land, in one ship, with as much treasure as they could lodge therein for each man. Wonderful would it have been thought by every man that was then in England, if any person had said before this that it would end thus!
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 145 | Loc. 2209-12 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 04:26 PM
((A.D. 1052. This year died Alfric, Archbishop of York, a very pious man, and wise. And in the same year King Edward abolished the tribute, which King Ethelred had before imposed: that was in the nine-and-thirtieth year after he had begun it. That tax distressed all the English nation during so long a time, as it has been written; that was ever before other taxes which were variously paid, and wherewith the people were manifestly distressed.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 149 | Loc. 2287-90 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 11:53 PM
On the day after Easter sat he with the king at table; when he suddenly sunk beneath against the foot-rail, deprived of speech and of all his strength. He was brought into the king's chamber; and they supposed that it would pass over: but it was not so. He continued thus speechless and helpless till the Thursday; when he resigned his life, on the seventeenth before the calends of May; and he was buried at Winchester in the old minster.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 150 | Loc. 2302-10 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 11:58 PM
A.D. 1054. This year died Leo the holy pope, at Rome: and Victor was chosen pope in his stead. And in this year was so great loss of cattle as was not remembered for many winters before. This year went Earl Siward with a large army against Scotland, consisting both of marines and landforces; and engaging with the Scots, he put to flight the King Macbeth; slew all the best in the land; and led thence much spoil, such as no man before obtained. Many fell also on his side, both Danish and English; even his own son, Osborn, and his sister's son, Sihward: and many of his house-carls, and also of the king's, were there slain that day, which was that of the Seven Sleepers. This same year went Bishop Aldred south over sea into Saxony, to Cologne, on the king's errand; where he was entertained with great respect by the emperor, abode there well-nigh a year, and received presents not only from the court, but from the Bishop of Cologne and the emperor. He commissioned Bishop Leofwine to consecrate the minster at Evesham; and it was consecrated in the same year, on the sixth before the ides of October. This year also died Osgod Clapa suddenly in his bed, as he lay at rest.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 151 | Loc. 2310-17 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 11:58 PM
((A.D. 1054. This year went Siward the earl with a great army into Scotland, both with a ship-force and with a landforce, and fought against the Scots, and put to flight King Macbeth, and slew all who were the chief men in the land, and led thence much booty, such as no man before had obtained. But his son Osborn, and his sister's son Siward, and some of his house-carls, and also of the king's, were there slain, on the day of the Seven Sleepers. The same year went Bishop Aldred to Cologne, over sea, on the king's errand; and he was there received with much worship by the emperor [Henry III], and there he dwelt well nigh a year; and either gave him entertainment, both the Bishop of Cologne and the emperor. And he gave leave to Bishop Leofwine [Of Lichfield] to consecrate the minster at Evesham on the sixth before the ides of October. In this year died Osgod suddenly in his bed. And this year died St. Leo the pope; and Victor was chosen pope in his stead.))
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 151 | Loc. 2317-19 | Added on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 11:58 PM
A.D. 1055. This year died Earl Siward at York; and his body lies within the minster at Galmanho, (76) which he had himself ordered to be built and consecrated, in the name of God and St. Olave, to the honour of God and to all his saints.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 152 | Loc. 2334-41 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:00 AM
((A.D. 1055. In this year died Siward the earl at York, and he lies at Galmanho, in the minster which himself caused to be built, and consecrated in God's and Olave's name. And Tosty succeeded to the earldom which he had held. And Archbishop Kynsey [Of York], fetched his pall from Pope Victor. And soon thereafter was outlawed Elgar the earl, son of Leofric the earl, well-nigh without guilt. But he went to Ireland and to Wales, and procured himself there a great force, and so went to Hereford: but there came against him Ralph the earl, with a large army, and with a slight conflict he put them to flight, and much people slew in the flight: and they went then into Hereford-port, and that they ravaged, and burned the great minster which Bishop Athelstan had built, and slew the priests within the minster, and many in addition thereto, and took all the treasures therein, and carried them away with them. And when they had done the utmost evil, this counsel was counselled: that Elgar the earl should be inlawed, and be given his earldom, and all that had been taken from him. This ravaging happened on the 9th before the Kalends of November.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 153 | Loc. 2348-54 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:01 AM
The worthy Bishop Athelstan died on the fourth before the ides of February; and his body lies at Hereford. To him succeeded Leofgar, who was Earl Harold's mass-priest. He wore his knapsack in his priesthood, until he was a bishop. He abandoned his chrism and his rood—his ghostly weapons—and took to his spear and to his sword, after his bishophood; and so marched to the field against Griffin the Welsh king. (79) But he was there slain, and his priests with him, and Elnoth the sheriff, and many other good men with them; and the rest fled. This was eight nights before midsummer. Difficult is it to relate all the vexation and the journeying, the marching and the fatigue, the fall of men, and of horses also, which the whole army of the English suffered, until Earl Leofric, and Earl Harold, and Bishop Eldred, came together and made peace between them; so that Griffin swore oaths, that he would be a firm and faithful viceroy to King Edward.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 155 | Loc. 2371-74 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:03 AM
In the same year died Pope Stephen; and Benedict was appointed pope. He sent hither the pall to Bishop Stigand; who as archbishop consecrated Egelric a monk at Christ church, Bishop of Sussex; and Abbot Siward Bishop of Rochester. ((A.D. 1058. This year died Pope Stephen, and Benedict was consecrated pope: the same sent hither to land a pall to Archbishop Stigand.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 155 | Loc. 2375-76 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:03 AM
A.D. 1059. This year was Nicholas chosen pope, who had been Bishop of Florence; and Benedict was expelled, who was pope before.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 156 | Loc. 2398-2405 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:05 AM
A.D. 1065. This year, before Lammas, ordered Earl Harold his men to build at Portskeweth in Wales. But when he had begun, and collected many materials, and thought to have King Edward there for the purpose of hunting, even when it was all ready, came Caradoc, son of Griffin, with all the gang that he could get, and slew almost all that were building there; and they seized the materials that were there got ready. Wist we not who first advised the wicked deed. This was done on the mass-day of St. Bartholomew. Soon after this all the thanes in Yorkshire and in Northumberland gathered themselves together at York, and outlawed their Earl Tosty; slaying all the men of his clan that they could reach, both Danish and English; and took all his weapons in York, with gold and silver, and all his money that they could anywhere there find. They then sent after Morkar, son of Earl Elgar, and chose him for their earl.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 158 | Loc. 2430-34 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:07 AM
A.D. 1066. This year came King Harold from York to Westminster, on the Easter succeeding the midwinter when the king (Edward) died. Easter was then on the sixteenth day before the calends of May. Then was over all England such a token seen as no man ever saw before. Some men said that it was the comet-star, which others denominate the long-hair'd star. It appeared first on the eve called "Litania major", that is, on the eighth before the calends off May; and so shone all the week. Soon after this came in Earl Tosty from beyond sea into the Isle of Wight, with as large a fleet as he could get; and he was there supplied with money and provisions.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 160 | Loc. 2459-67 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:09 AM
There was slain Harald the Fair-hair'd, King of Norway, and Earl Tosty, and a multitude of people with them, both of Normans and English; (91) and the Normans that were left fled from the English, who slew them hotly behind; until some came to their ships, some were drowned, some burned to death, and thus variously destroyed; so that there was little left: and the English gained possession of the field. But there was one of the Norwegians who withstood the English folk, so that they could not pass over the bridge, nor complete the victory. An Englishman aimed at him with a javelin, but it availed nothing. Then came another under the bridge, who pierced him terribly inwards under the coat of mail. And Harold, king of the English, then came over the bridge, followed by his army; and there they made a great slaughter, both of the Norwegians and of the Flemings. But Harold let the king's son, Edmund, go home to Norway with all the ships. He also gave quarter to Olave, the Norwegian king's son, and to their bishop, and to the earl of the Orkneys, and to all those that were left in the ships; who then went up to our king, and took oaths that they would ever maintain faith and friendship unto this land. Whereupon the King let them go home with twenty-four ships. These two general battles were fought within five nights.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 161 | Loc. 2471-74 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:10 AM
There was slain King Harold, and Leofwin his brother, and Earl Girth his brother, with many good men: and the Frenchmen gained the field of battle, as God granted them for the sins of the nation. Archbishop Aldred and the corporation of London were then desirous of having child Edgar to king, as he was quite natural to them; and Edwin and Morkar promised them that they would fight with them.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 165 | Loc. 2549-56 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:13 AM
This summer the child Edgar departed, with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters, Margaret and Christina, and Merle-Sweyne, and many good men with them; and came to Scotland under the protection of King Malcolm, who entertained them all. Then began King Malcolm to yearn after the child's sister, Margaret, to wife; but he and all his men long refused; and she also herself was averse, and said that she would neither have him nor any one else, if the Supreme Power would grant, that she in her maidenhood might please the mighty Lord with a carnal heart, in this short life, in pure continence. The king, however, earnestly urged her brother, until he answered Yea. And indeed he durst not otherwise; for they were come into his kingdom. So that then it was fulfilled, as God had long ere foreshowed; and else it could not be; as he himself saith in his gospel: that "not even a sparrow on the ground may fall, without his foreshowing."
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 166 | Loc. 2558-63 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:14 AM
The king therefore received her, though it was against her will, and was pleased with her manners, and thanked God, who in his might had given him such a match. He wisely bethought himself, as he was a prudent man, and turned himself to God, and renounced all impurity; accordingly, as the apostle Paul, the teacher of all the gentries, saith: "Salvabitur vir infidelis per mulierem fidelem; sic et mulier infidelis per virum fidelem," etc.: that is in our language, "Full oft the unbelieving husband is sanctified and healed through the believing wife, and so belike the wife through the believing husband." This queen aforesaid performed afterwards many useful deeds in this land to the glory of God, and also in her royal estate she well conducted herself, as her nature was. Of a faithful and noble kin was she sprung.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 174 | Loc. 2687-92 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:19 AM
This year, therefore, Robert fought with his father, without Normandy, by a castle called Gerberoy; and wounded him in the hand; and his horse, that he sat upon, was killed under him; and he that brought him another was killed there right with a dart. That was Tookie Wiggodson. Many were there slain, and also taken. His son William too was there wounded; but Robert returned to Flanders. We will not here, however, record any more injury that he did his father. This year came King Malcolm from Scotland into England, betwixt the two festivals of St. Mary, with a large army, which plundered Northumberland till it came to the Tine, and slew many hundreds of men, and carried home much coin, and treasure, and men in captivity.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 174 | Loc. 2697-2707 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:20 AM
One day the abbot went into the chapter-house, and spoke against the monks, and attempted to mislead them; (101) and sent after some laymen, and they came full-armed into the chapter-house upon the monks. Then were the monks very much afraid (102) of them, and wist not what they were to do, but they shot forward, and some ran into the church, and locked the doors after them. But they followed them into the minster, and resolved to drag them out, so that they durst not go out. A rueful thing happened on that day. The Frenchmen broke into the choir, and hurled their weapons toward the altar, where the monks were; and some of the knights went upon the upper floor, (103) and shot their arrows downward incessantly toward the sanctuary; so that on the crucifix that stood above the altar they stuck many arrows. And the wretched monks lay about the altar, and some crept under, and earnestly called upon God, imploring his mercy, since they could not obtain any at the hands of men. What can we say, but that they continued to shoot their arrows; whilst the others broke down the doors, and came in, and slew (104) some of the monks to death, and wounded many therein; so that the blood came from the altar upon the steps, and from the steps on the floor. Three there were slain to death, and eighteen wounded. And in this same year departed Matilda, queen of King William, on the day after All-Hallow-mass.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 175 | Loc. 2713-19 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:21 AM
But the king left the army to shift for themselves through all this land amongst his subjects, who fed them, each according to his quota of land. Men suffered much distress this year; and the king caused the land to be laid waste about the sea coast; that, if his foes came up, they might not have anything on which they could very readily seize. But when the king understood of a truth that his foes were impeded, and could not further their expedition, (107) then let he some of the army go to their own land; but some he held in this land over the winter. Then, at the midwinter, was the king in Glocester with his council, and held there his court five days. And afterwards the archbishop and clergy had a synod three days. There was Mauritius chosen Bishop of London, William of Norfolk, and Robert of Cheshire. These were all the king's clerks. After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 176 | Loc. 2719-26 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:21 AM
Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out "How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire." Also he commissioned them to record in writing, "How much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and his abbots, and his earls;" and though I may be prolix and tedious, "What, or how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock, and how much money it were worth." So very narrowly, indeed, did he commission them to trace it out, that there was not one single hide, nor a yard (108) of land, nay, moreover (it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do it), not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set down in his writ. And all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him. (109)
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 177 | Loc. 2736-53 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:22 AM
A.D. 1087. After the birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ, one thousand and eighty-seven winters; in the one and twentieth year after William began to govern and direct England, as God granted him, was a very heavy and pestilent season in this land. Such a sickness came on men, that full nigh every other man was in the worst disorder, that is, in the diarrhoea; and that so dreadfully, that many men died in the disorder. Afterwards came, through the badness of the weather as we before mentioned, so great a famine over all England, that many hundreds of men died a miserable death through hunger. Alas! how wretched and how rueful a time was there! When the poor wretches lay full nigh driven to death prematurely, and afterwards came sharp hunger, and dispatched them withall! Who will not be penetrated with grief at such a season? or who is so hardhearted as not to weep at such misfortune? Yet such things happen for folks' sins, that they will not love God and righteousness. So it was in those days, that little righteousness was in this land with any men but with the monks alone, wherever they fared well. The king and the head men loved much, and overmuch, covetousness in gold and in silver; and recked not how sinfully it was got, provided it came to them. The king let his land at as high a rate as he possibly could; then came some other person, and bade more than the former one gave, and the king let it to the men that bade him more. Then came the third, and bade yet more; and the king let it to hand to the men that bade him most of all: and he recked not how very sinfully the stewards got it of wretched men, nor how many unlawful deeds they did; but the more men spake about right law, the more unlawfully they acted. They erected unjust tolls, and many other unjust things they did, that are difficult to reckon. Also in the same year, before harvest, the holy minster of St. Paul, the episcopal see in London, was completely burned, with many other minsters, and the greatest part, and the richest of the whole city. So also, about the same time, full nigh each head-port in all England was entirely burned. Alas! rueful and woeful was the fate of the year that brought forth so many misfortunes. In the same year also, before the Assumption of St. Mary, King William went from Normandy into France with an army, and made war upon his own lord Philip, the king, and slew many of his men, and burned the town of Mante, and all the holy minsters that were in the town; and two holy men that served God, leading the life of anachorets, were burned therein. This being thus done, King William returned to Normandy.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 178 | Loc. 2753-56 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:22 AM
Rueful was the thing he did; but a more rueful him befel. How more rueful? He fell sick, and it dreadfully ailed him. What shall I say? Sharp death, that passes by neither rich men nor poor, seized him also. He died in Normandy, on the next day after the Nativity of St. Mary, and he was buried at Caen in St. Stephen's minster, which he had formerly reared, and afterwards endowed with manifold gifts.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 179 | Loc. 2781-86 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:24 AM
As he forbade men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed by the hares, that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern, that he recked not the hatred of them all; for they must follow withal the king's will, if they would live, or have land, or possessions, or even his peace. Alas! that any man should presume so to puff himself up, and boast o'er all men. May the Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins! These things have we written concerning him, both good and evil; that men may choose the good after their goodness, and flee from the evil withal, and go in the way that leadeth us to the kingdom of heaven.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 180 | Loc. 2786-89 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 12:24 AM
Many things may we write that were done in this same year. So it was in Denmark, that the Danes, a nation that was formerly accounted the truest of all, were turned aside to the greatest untruth, and to the greatest treachery that ever could be. They chose and bowed to King Cnute, and swore him oaths, and afterwards dastardly slew him in a church.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 183 | Loc. 2848-51 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:22 PM
A.D. 1091. In this year the King William held his court at Christmas in Westminster, and thereafter at Candlemas he went, for the annoyance of his brother, out of England into Normandy. Whilst he was there, their reconciliation took place, on the condition, that the earl put into his hands Feschamp, and the earldom of Ou, and Cherbourg; and in addition to this, that the king's men should be secure in the castles that they had won against the will of the earl.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 184 | Loc. 2859-63 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:24 PM
When the King William in Normandy heard this, then prepared he his departure, and came to England, and his brother, the Earl Robert, with him; and he soon issued an order to collect a force both naval and military; but the naval force, ere it could come to Scotland, perished almost miserably, a few days before St. Michael's mass. And the king and his brother proceeded with the land-force; but when the King Malcolm heard that they were resolved to seek him with an army, he went with his force out of Scotland into Lothaine in England, and there abode.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 185 | Loc. 2871-76 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:32 PM
A.D. 1093. In this year, during Lent, was the King William at Glocester so sick, that he was by all reported dead. And in his illness he made many good promises to lead his own life aright; to grant peace and protection to the churches of God, and never more again with fee to sell; to have none but righteous laws amongst his people. The archbishopric of Canterbury, that before remained in his own hand, he transferred to Anselm, who was before Abbot of Bec; to Robert his chancellor the bishopric of Lincoln; and to many minsters he gave land; but that he afterwards took away, when he was better, and annulled all the good laws that he promised us before. Then after this sent the King of Scotland, and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty that was promised him.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 185 | Loc. 2877-79 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:32 PM
the men returned, that brought him with great dignity to the king. But when he came to the king, he could not be considered worthy either of our king's speech, or of the conditions that were formerly promised him. For this reason therefore they parted with great dissatisfaction, and the King Malcolm returned to Scotland.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 185 | Loc. 2879-83 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:33 PM
And soon after he came home, he gathered his army, and came harrowing into England with more hostility than behoved him; and Robert, the Earl of Northumberland, surrounded him unawares with his men, and slew him. Morel of Barnborough slew him, who was the earl's steward, and a baptismal friend (115) of King Malcolm. With him was also slain Edward his son; who after him should have been king, if he had lived. When the good Queen Margaret heard this—her most beloved lord and son thus betrayed she was in her mind almost distracted to death.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 186 | Loc. 2883-84 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:33 PM
And the Scots then chose (116) Dufenal to king, Malcolm's brother, and drove out all the English that formerly were with the King Malcolm.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 186 | Loc. 2884-87 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:33 PM
When Duncan, King Malcolm's son, heard all that had thus taken place (he was then in the King William's court, because his father had given him as a hostage to our king's father, and so he lived here afterwards), he came to the king, and did such fealty as the king required at his hands; and so with his permission went to Scotland, with all the support that he could get of English and French, and deprived his uncle Dufenal of the kingdom, and was received as king.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Unknown)
- Highlight on Page 186 | Loc. 2887-89 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 09:34 PM
But the Scots afterwards gathered some force together, and slew full nigh all his men; and he himself with a few made his escape. (117) Afterwards they were reconciled, on the condition that he never again brought into the land English or French.
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 1 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:48 AM
Theessentialelementsofthecontrolproblemare •Adesiredoutputofthesystem. •Asetofadmissibleinputsor“controls.” •Aperformanceorcostfunctionalwhichmeasurestheeffectivenessofagiven“controlaction.”
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 2 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:49 AM
Whenacostfunctionalhasbeendecidedupon, theengineerformulateshis/hercontrolproblemasfollows:
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 2 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:50 AM
Optimal controldealswiththeproblemoffindingacontrollawforagiven systemsuchthatacertainoptimalitycriterionisachieved.Anoptimalcontrolisasetofdifferentialequationsdescribingthepaths ofthecontrolvariablesthatminimizethecostfunctional
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:50 AM
TheLegendrepolynomials(LPs)originatedfromdetermining theforceofattractionexertedbysolidsofrevolution[5],andtheir orthogonalpropertieswereestablishedbyAdrianMarieLegendre during1784–1790
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1 Introduction
- Note on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:52 AM
different kindsof orthogonal functions
legendre polynmials
piecewise bass functions
block pulse functions
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:53 AM
Probably,ChenandHsiao,1975,were thefirstwhoappliedaclassofpiecewiseconstantOFs,i.e.Walsh functions(WFs),obtainedanumericalsolutionofthematrixRiccatiequation[6]andfoundthetime-varyinggain.Thenmanyresearchersstartedinvestigatingtheproblemsofidentification,analysisandcontrolusingdifferentclassesofOFs.
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1 Introduction
- Bookmark on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:53 AM
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1 Introduction
- Note on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:54 AM
different kindsof orthogonal functions
legendre polynmials
piecewise base functions
walsh functions
block pulse functions
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 4 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:54 AM
ThekeyfeatureofOFsisthatitconvertsdifferentialorintegralequationsintoalgebraicequationsin thesenseofleastsquares.Sothisapproachbecamequitepopular computationallyasthedynamicalequationsofasystemcanbe convertedintoasetofalgebraicequationswhosesolutionleadsto thesolutionoftheproblem
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1 Introduction
- Note on Page 3 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:55 AM
different kindsof orthogonal functions
legendre polynmials
piecewise base functions
walsh functions
block pulse functions
chebyshev polyonmials
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 5 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:57 AM
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 5 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:58 AM
Theproblemofoptimalcontrolincorporatingobservershas beensuccessfullystudiedviadifferentclassesofOFs,namelyBPFs [19],SLPs[30,47],shiftedJacobipolynomials(SJPs)[33],general orthogonalpolynomials(GOPs)[41],sine-cosinefunctions(SCFs) [44,47],SCP1s[25,47],shiftedChebyshevpolynomialsofthesecondkind(SCP2s)[47]andsingle-termWalshseries[52].Theapproachfollowedin[25,30,33,41,44,47]isnonrecursive,whileitis recursivein[19,52],makingtheapproachin[25,30,33,41,44,47] computationallynotattractive
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1 Introduction
- Bookmark on Page 5 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 10:59 AM
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 6 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 11:02 AM
Ingeneral,aninterconnection ofstatevariablesubsystemsisconvenientlydescribedasasingularsystem.Thesingularsystemiscalledgeneralizedstate-space system,implicitsystem,semi-statesystem,ordescriptorsystem. Optimalcontrolofsingularsystemshasbeendiscussedin[15] and[18
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 6 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 11:17 AM
Thesingle-termWalshseriesmethod[56]hasbeenapplied tostudytheoptimalcontrolproblemofsingularsystems.In[62] SLPswereusedtosolvethesameproblem.However,thisapproach isnonrecursiveinnature.TheHaarwaveletapproach[68]hasbeen presentedtostudytheoptimalcontrolproblemoflinearsingularly perturbedsystems.Intherecenttimes,SCFs[71],SCP1s[74]and Legendrewavelets
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1 Introduction
- Highlight on Page 7 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 11:18 AM
Afewpracticalexamples[46]arecontrollingthe speedofasteamenginerunninganelectricpowergeneratorunder varyingloadconditions,andcontrolofroomtemperature,acold rollingmill,spaceship,hydraulicsystem,etc. Downloaded by [University of Washington] at 20:12 26 January 2017 Asitappearsfromtheliterature,extensiveworkwasdoneon theproblemofoptimalcontroloflinearcontinuous-timedynamical systemscontainingtimedelays
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Highlight on Page 13 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 03:52 PM
TheOFapproachbecamequitepopularnumericallyandcomputationallyasitconvertscalculus(differentialorintegral)into algebrainthesenseofleastsquares,i.e.dynamicalequationsof asystemcanbeconvertedintoasetofalgebraicequationswhose solutionsimplyleadstothesolutionofdynamicalequations
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 14 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 07:57 PM
state estimation ad optimal control utilizes bpf block pulse funcs and lp legendre polynomial
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 13 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 07:59 PM
square integrable... different from continuous... if so how
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Highlight on Page 14 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:00 PM
anm−dimensionalblock-pulsespectrumoff(t),and
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 14 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:01 PM
what is block pulse spectrum...
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 14 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:03 PM
of course. your fi vaues are not just samples. they are averages over the time period.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 15 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:05 PM
i undrsand in theory wy you want to cover integration of B. but why by itself... is that something you ever realy have to do...
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 16 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:07 PM
if you approx integral of B as H B then does that mean you can approx integral of B f as H B f or something similar...
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 16 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:09 PM
is C just any old matrix... and then we eventually replace it with B... seems not valid to me.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 08:11 PM
ooookay. still not clear what C is. or g. or G.
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February
2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Highlight on Page 16 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 12:21 PM
theoperationalmatrixofforwardintegration[8]ofBPF
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 16 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 12:22 PM
to integrate bpfs in time use forward integration matrix
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 16 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 12:51 PM
maybe c and f are multivariate here... size is n x n and n x one. not m x m or m x one.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 16 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 12:53 PM
maybe c and f are multivariate here... size is n x n and n x one. not m x m or m x one.
f is an m dimensional block pulse spectrum.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 12:59 PM
ooookay. still not clear what C is. or g. or G.
looks like...
c and f are multivariate. i think.
tha turns continuous multivariate linear sytem into something w r t discrete fi and ci and gi.
however. i dont qite know where n x n went. is fi and is ci theoriginal size...... in oter wrds. gi eqals matrix ci times vector fi. i indexes number of bpfs. c and f areof size n x n and n x one fr each i.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 01:03 PM
aalogy with prior section. full vector f equals fi times Bti. here we sa the same thing.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 01:04 PM
aalogy with prior section. full vector f equals fi times Bti. fi are window time averages. here we see analogous thing.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 01:07 PM
treating f as multivariate. precisely wat we are doing.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 17 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 07:54 PM
nothing novel here really... just saing we can define zeta as the pre time zero vaue... ad that before time zero f is seta. for time offset case f eqals zeta when t minus tau less than t zero.
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Highlight on Page 22 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 08:24 PM
operationalmatrixofforwardintegration[26]ofSLPs
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2 Orthogonal Functions and Their Properties
- Note on Page 22 | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 08:26 PM
oka. got it. legendre polynomials. they are scaled. the are related to legendre polynomial spectrum f. but not exactly surewat this f hs to do wit our function f. mainly bc f is definedin terms of ntegral of f times legendre polynomials over all times
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3 State Estimation
- Highlight on Page 38 | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2017, 11:28 AM
June
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 131-33 | Added on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, 04:51 PM
Mechanically, all of this was handled in a fashion that was perfectly clear, simple, and logical. Lawrence had supposed that the machine must be at least as complicated as the most intricate fugue that could be played on it. Now he had learned that a machine, simple in its design, could produce results of infinite complexity.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 253-60 | Added on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, 05:01 PM
"Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You—Rudy—and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us—it’s not that we’re smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he’s a farmer who didn’t get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way." "All right, Alan." "Won’t take a minute if you will just stop interrupting."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 1030-37 | Added on Thursday, June 22, 2017, 03:36 AM
The artist who had designed the poster then confessed that he had simply copied it from a book and had made no effort whatsoever to obtain permission—the entire concept of getting permission to use other people’s work was faulty, since all art was derivative of other art. High-powered trial lawyers converged, like dive bombers, on the small town in Kentucky where the aggrieved veteran was up on the roof of a black church with a mouthful of nails, hammering down slabs of A/D exterior plywood and mumbling "no comment" to a horde of reporters down on the lawn. After a series of conferences in a room at the town’s Holiday Inn, the veteran emerged, accompanied by one of the five most famous lawyers on the face of the planet, and announced that he was filing a civil suit against the Three Siblings that would, if it succeeded, turn them and their entire community into a flat, smoking abrasion in the earth’s crust. He promised to split the proceeds between the black churches and various disabled veterans’ and breast cancer research groups.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 1058-62 | Added on Thursday, June 22, 2017, 03:39 AM
The whole city is a cauldron of internal combustion. Manila seems to have more pistons and exhaust pipes than the rest of the world combined. Even at two in the morning the hotel’s seemingly unshakable mass hums and rattles from the seismic energy pouring from all of those motors. The noise detonates car alarms down in the hotel’s lot. The noise of one alarm triggers others, and so on. It is not the noise that keeps Randy awake so much as the insane stupidity of this chain reaction. It is an object lesson: the kind of nightmarish, snowballing technological fuck-up that keeps hackers awake at night even when they can’t hear the results.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 1121-24 | Added on Thursday, June 22, 2017, 03:43 AM
—Avi has a planning horizon that extends over a period of at least a century. Randy paces around his room while his computer soars through number space. The shipping containers on the backs of those trucks bear exactly the same logos as the ones that used to fill the streets of South Seattle when a ship was unloading. To Randy this is oddly satisfying, as if by making this crazy lunge across the Pacific, he has brought some kind of antipodal symmetry to his life.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 1124-27 | Added on Thursday, June 22, 2017, 03:43 AM
He has gone from the place where things are consumed to where they are produced, from a land where onanism has been enshrined at the highest levels of the society to one where cars have "NO to contraception!" stickers in their windows. It feels bizarrely right. He has not felt this way since Avi and he founded their first doomed business venture twelve years ago.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 2262-68 | Added on Saturday, June 24, 2017, 06:52 PM
He stares out the windows for hours, watching America go by, and sees that all of it is beautiful and clean. There might be wildness, there might be deep forest, there might even be grizzly bears and mountain lions, but it is cleanly sorted out, and the rules (don’t mess with bear cubs, hang your food from a tree limb at night) are well-known, and published in the Boy Scout Manual. In those Pacific islands there is too much that is alive, and all of it is in a continual process of eating and being eaten by something else, and once you set foot in the place, you’re buying into the deal. Just sitting in that train for a couple of days, his feet in clean white cotton socks, not being eaten alive by anything, goes a long way towards clearing his head up. Only once, or possibly two or three times, does he really feel the need to lock himself in the can and squirt morphine into his arm.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 2315-23 | Added on Saturday, June 24, 2017, 06:57 PM
he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I’m not going to bother you with any of the details—and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer’s shoulders by the subordinate’s unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncoms reduce green lieutenants to quivering blobs simply by standing before them and agreeing, cheerfully, to carry out their orders.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 2947-49 | Added on Sunday, June 25, 2017, 07:19 AM
He has a bristly mustache, trimmed very short, of silver and auburn whiskers. He is a cheerful sort, at least in the presence of higher ranks, and smiles frequently. His teeth splay out radially from the gumline so that each mandible has the appearance of a coffee can in which a small grenade has been detonated.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3595-98 | Added on Sunday, June 25, 2017, 05:01 PM
Enoch Root has wedged himself into the back of the fuselage, where it gets narrow, and is perusing two books at once. It strikes Shaftoe as typical—he supposes that the books say completely different things and that the chaplain is deriving great pleasure from pitting them against each other, like those guys who have a chessboard on a turntable so that they can play against themselves. He supposes that when you live in a shack on a mountain with a bunch of natives who don’t speak any of your half-dozen or so languages, you have to learn to have arguments with yourself.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 3748-51 | Added on Sunday, June 25, 2017, 05:15 PM
"Well they evacuated me to Brisbane where I started making a stink about codes. That’s the only way they could have found me—obviously our codes had been broken. And after I’d made enough of a stink, someone apparently said, ‘You’re British, you’re a priest, you’re a medical doctor, you can handle a rifle, you know Morse code, and most importantly of all, you’re a fucking pain in the ass—so off you go!’ And next thing I know, I’m in that meat locker in Algiers."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4194-97 | Added on Monday, June 26, 2017, 05:15 AM
At first he mistakes Qwghlm House for the world’s tiniest and most poorly located department store. It has a bow window that looms over the sidewalk like the thrusting ram of a trireme, embarnacled with Victorian foofawfery, and housing a humble display: a headless mannequin dressed in something that appears to have been spun from steel wool (perhaps a tribute to wartime austerity?); a heap of sallow dirt with a shovel in it; and another mannequin (a recent addition shoehorned into one corner) dressed in a Royal Navy uniform and holding a wooden cutout of a rifle.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4234-38 | Added on Monday, June 26, 2017, 05:19 AM
This operation is repeated a few times with doors that are successively lighter but more richly decorated. The first room, it becomes clear, was actually a preäntepenultimate room, so it is a while before they can be said to be definitely inside Qwghlm House. By that time they seem to be deep in the center of the block, and Waterhouse half expects to see an underground train screech by. Instead he finds himself in a windowless paneled room with a crystal chandelier that is painfully bright but does not seem to actually illuminate anything.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4617-20 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 01:47 PM
But this Detachment 2702 thing is a whole different outfit. Even the grunts are carrying trench brooms! And if that didn’t get their attention, the cyanide capsules sure did. And the lecture from Chattan on the correct way to blow your own head off ("you would be astonished at how many otherwise competent chaps botch this apparently simple procedure").
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4658-63 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 01:49 PM
"Sarge! We’re here!" says Private Flanagan. Before he even wakes up, Bobby Shaftoe notices that Flanagan is speaking in a normal voice and does not sound scared or excited. Wherever "here" is, it’s not someplace dangerous. They are not under attack. Shaftoe opens his eyes just as the tarp is being peeled back from the open top of the truck. He stares straight up into a blue Italian sky torn around the edges by the scrabbling branches of desperate trees. "Shit!" he says. "What’s wrong, Sarge?" "I just always say that when I wake up," Shaftoe says.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4716-22 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 01:53 PM
"To help those who were in need." "Oh, yeah." "I also learned some Italian along the way. There’s a lot of it going around in the Church." "Fuck me," Shaftoe exclaims. "But my Italian is heavily informed by the Latin that my father insisted that I learn. So I would probably sound rather old-fashioned to the locals. In fact, I would probably sound like a seventeenth-century alchemist or something." "Could you sound like a priest? They’d eat that up." "If worse comes to worst," Root allows, "I will try hitting them with some God talk and we’ll see what happens."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4764 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 01:56 PM
ostentatiously.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 4769-71 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 01:57 PM
"My husband and I operate a small bed and breakfast," Mrs. Qrtt says. "We should be honored to have an Asdic man stay with us." Asdic is simply the British acronym for what Yanks refer to as sonar, but every time the word is mentioned in the presence of Alan, he gets a naughty look on his face and goes on an unstoppable punning tear.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5024-28 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 04:15 PM
He reads another message simply because of the return address: From: root@pallas.eruditorum.org On a UNIX machine, "root" is the name of the most godlike of all users, the one who can read, erase, or edit any file, who can run any program, who can sign up new users and terminate existing ones. So receiving a message from someone who has the account name "root" is like getting a letter from someone who has the title "President" or "General" on his letterhead. Randy’s been root on a few different systems, some of which were worth tens of millions of dollars, and professional courtesy demands he at least read this message.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5242-47 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:08 PM
It’s not a very good idea. But they have been getting bombed a lot. Even if the shrapnel misses you, the bomb’s shock wave is like a stone wall moving at seven hundred miles an hour. Unlike a stone wall, it passes through your body, like a burst of light through a glass figurine. On its way through your flesh, it rearranges every part of you down to the mitochondrial level, disrupting every process in every cell, including whatever enables your brain to keep track of time and experience the world. A few of these detonations are enough to break the thread of consciousness into a snarl of tangled and chopped filaments. These men are not as human as they were when they left home; they cannot be expected to think clearly or to do things for good reasons.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5411-16 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:20 PM
The photographer comes in, trailed by assistants who are burdened with miles of film. All he knows is that each page must be photographed perfectly. The malarial reek practically flattens him the moment he walks in the door, but when he recovers, his eyes scan the garage. All he can see, stretching as if to infinity, are pages dripping and curling, turning white as they dry, casting their grids of information into sharp relief, like the reticules of so many bomb sights, the graven crosshairs of so many periscopes, plunging through cloud and fog to focus, distinctly on the abdomens of Nipponese troopships, pregnant with North Borneo fuel, alive with burning steam.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5501-7 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:25 PM
’’They’re going to begin searching this area tomorrow." "Well, then let’s get the fuck out of here," Shaftoe said. "Colonel Chattan orders you to wait," Benjamin said, "until you know that the Germans know that we are here." "But I do know that the Germans know that we are here," Shaftoe said, "you just told me." "No, no no no no," Benjamin said, "wait until you would know that the Germans knew even if you didn’t know from being told by Colonel Chattan over the radio." "Are you fucking with me?" "Orders," Benjamin said, and handed Shaftoe the deciphered message as proof.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5528-40 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:28 PM
Corporal Benjamin hesitated, one hand poised above his radio key. "Sarge, are you sure they know we’re here?" Everyone turned to see how Shaftoe would respond to this mild challenge. He had been slowly gathering a reputation as a man who needed watching. Shaftoe turned on his heel and strolled out into the middle of a clearing a few yards away. Behind him, he could hear the other men of Detachment 2702 jockeying for position in the doorway, trying to get a clear view of him. The Henschel was coming back for another pass, now so close to the ground that you could probably throw a rock through its windshield. Shaftoe unslung his tommy gun, pulled back the bolt, cradled it, swung it up and around, and opened fire. Now some might complain that the trench broom lacked penetrating power, but he was positive he could see pieces of crap flying out of the Henschel’s motor. The Henschel went out of control almost immediately. It banked until its wings were vertical, veered, banked some more until it was upside down, shed what little altitude it had to begin with, and made an upside-down pancake landing in the olive trees no more than a hundred yards distant. It did not immediately burst into flame: something of a letdown there. There was perfect silence from the other men. The only sound was the beepity-beep of Corporal Benjamin, his question now answered, sending out his little message. Shaftoe was able to follow the Morse code for once—this message was going out plaintext. "WE ARE DISCOVERED STOP EXECUTING PLAN TORUS."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5559-61 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:30 PM
The Germans at the second intersection had no idea what was going on. This was obviously the result of some kind of internal Wehrmacht communications fuckup, clearly recognizable as such even across cultural and linguistic boundaries. Detachment 2702 were able to simply open fire from underneath the tarp and tear them to pieces, or at least drive them into hiding.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5569-81 | Added on Friday, June 30, 2017, 11:31 PM
But even with the biggest power saw in the shop, Bobby Shaftoe always got the sense that he was imposing some kind of stress on the machine. It would slow down when the blade contacted the material, it would vibrate, it would heat up, and if you pushed the material through too fast it would threaten to jam. But then one summer he worked in a mill where they had a bandsaw. The bandsaw, its supply of blades, its spare parts, maintenance supplies, special tools and manuals occupied a whole room. It was the only tool he had ever seen with infrastructure. It was the size of a car. The two wheels that drove the blade were giant eight-spoked things that looked to have been salvaged from steam locomotives. Its blades had to be manufactured from long rolls of blade-stuff by unreeling about half a mile of toothed ribbon, cutting it off, and carefully welding the cut ends together into a loop. When you hit the power switch, nothing would happen for a little while except that a subsonic vibration would slowly rise up out of the earth, as if a freight train were approaching from far away, and finally the blade would begin to move, building speed slowly but inexorably until the teeth disappeared and it became a bolt of pure hellish energy stretched taut between the table and the machinery above it. Anecdotes about accidents involving the bandsaw were told in hushed voices and not usually commingled with other industrial-accident anecdotes. Anyway, the most noteworthy thing about the bandsaw was that you could cut anything with it and not only did it do the job quickly and coolly but it didn’t seem to notice that it was doing anything. It wasn’t even aware that a human being was sliding a great big chunk of stuff through it. It never slowed down. Never heated up.
July
Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 5838-47 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 12:01 AM
"How could a court subpoena a document if, from their reference frame, it had never existed?" "Are you talking about encrypting it?" Eb looks slightly pained by Randy’s simple-mindedness. "We are already doing that. But someone could still prove that a document, of a certain size, had been sent out at a certain time, to a certain mailbox." "Traffic analysis." "Yes. But what if one jams it? Why couldn’t I fill my hard drive with random bytes, so that individual files would not be discernible? Their very existence would be hidden in the noise, like a striped tiger in tall grass. And we could continually stream random noise back and forth to each other." "That would be expensive." Eberhard waves his hand dismissively. "Bandwidth is cheap." "That is more an article of faith than a statement of fact," Randy says, "but it might be true in the future." "But the rest of our lives will happen in the future, Randy, so we might as well get with the program now."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6038-41 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 02:32 AM
a cabin, or maybe (at about four by six feet) a corner of a cabin. There’s a bed, a little fold-out table, and cabinets made of actual wood. These in combination with the photographs of family and friends give it a cozy, domestic flavor which is, however, completely ruined by the framed picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall. Waterhouse finds this to be in shockingly poor taste until he remembers it’s a German boat.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6282-85 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 07:44 PM
"I was joking," Randy explains. "If the Dentist analyzes the recording, he’ll find nothing but stress in my voice." Avi and John laugh sympathetically. But Eb is crestfallen. "Oh," Eb says. "I was thinking that we could absolutely jam his device if we so wanted." "A tape recorder doesn’t use radio," John says. "How could we jam it?" "Van Eck phreaking," Eb says.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6400-6409 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 07:54 PM
Still, it looks like an interesting exercise. Now that the rest of Detachment 2702 has arrived, making further trysts with Margaret impractical, Waterhouse has nothing to look forward to. Trying to crack the code used on these sheets will be a perfect puzzle to fill the gaping void that opened up as soon as Waterhouse broke the combination of the safe. He steals some paper of his own, sits down at the desk, and busies himself for an hour or two copying out the ciphertext from the skipper’s pages, double- and triple-checking each code group to make sure he’s got an accurate copy. On the one hand, this is a pain in the ass. On the other, it gives him a chance to go through the ciphertext by hand, at the very lowest level, which might be useful later. The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first. If they do contain patterns, he does not see them just now, in any rational way. But there may be some subrational part of his mind that can go to work, now that the letters have passed before his eyes and through his pencil, and that may suddenly present him with a gift-wrapped clue—or even a full solution—a few weeks from now while he is shaving or antenna-twiddling.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6358-62 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 07:56 PM
When the tumblers move, it sounds like Waterhouse is shooting the main bolt on the Gate of Hell. It takes him a little while, and a few more false starts, to get his bearings; he doesn’t know how many numbers are in the combination, or which way he should turn the dial to begin with. But with experimentation, some patterns begin to show through, and eventually he works out the following combination: 23 right—37 left—7 right—31 left—13 right and then there’s a really meaty click and he knows in his marrow that he can take off the headphones.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6453-57 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 07:57 PM
As soon as the door wafts shut behind the grand wazir’s ass, Avi says, "I smell a con job." "A con job?" Randy scoffs. "What, you think this is a rear-screen projection? You think this table is made of Formica?" "It’s all real," Avi admits sourly. "But whenever someone gives you the treatment like this, it’s because they’re trying to impress you." "I’m impressed," Randy says. "I admit it. I’m impressed." "That’s just a euphemism for, ‘I’m about to do something moronic,’" Avi says.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6499-6503 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:00 PM
Harvard Li has clearly been thinking very hard about how to put money where guys like Microsoft can’t get it. There are many time-honored ways: the Swiss bank account, the false-front corporation, the big real estate project in deepest, darkest China, bars of gold in a vault somewhere. Those tricks might work with the average government, but Microsoft is ten times smarter, a hundred times more aggressive, and bound by no particular rules. It gives Randy a little frisson just to imagine Harvard Li’s situation: being chased across the planet by Microsoft’s state-of-the-art hellhounds.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6503-5 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:00 PM
Harvard Li needs electronic cash. Not the lame stuff that people use to buy t-shirts on the Web without giving away their credit card numbers. He needs the full-on badass kind, based on hard crypto, rooted in an offshore data haven, and he needs it bad. So nothing’s more logical than that he is sending lots of e-mail to John Cantrell.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6510-13 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:01 PM
"In a way," Tom says, "these guys are tons smarter than us, because they’ve never had a currency they could depend on." He and Randy look over at John Cantrell, who has crossed his arms over his chest and is unloading a disquisition on the Euler totient function while Harvard Li nods intently and his nerd-de-camp frantically scrawls notes on a legal pad. Avi stands far to one side, staring at the Old Palace, as in his mind the ramifications of this bloom and sprawl and twine about each other like a tropical garden run riot.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6527-32 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:02 PM
"I’m not planning on using the phone," Li says, "we can exchange them on floppies." John knocks on wood. "Doesn’t matter. Have one of your staff look into the subject of Van Eck phreaking. That’s with a ‘p-h,’ not an ‘f,’ " he says to the aide who’s writing it down. Then, sensing Li’s need for an executive summary, he says, "They can read the internal state of your computer by listening to the faint radio emissions coming out of the chips." "Ahhhhh," Li says, and exchanges hugely significant looks with his technical aides, as if this explains something that has been puzzling the shit out of them.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6543-48 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:04 PM
Suddenly everyone is sitting down. Randy pulls his chair back and falls into it. The leathery depths swallow his ass like a catcher’s mitt accepting a baseball. He’s about to pull his laptop out of its bag, but in this setting, both the nylon bag and the plastic computer have a strip-mall tawdriness. Besides, he has to resist this sophomoric tendency to take notes all the time. Avi himself said that nothing was going to happen at this meeting; all the important stuff is going to be subtextual. Besides, there is the matter of Van Eck phreaking, which Cantrell probably mentioned just to make Harvard Li paranoid, but which has Randy a bit rattled too. He opts for a pad of graph paper—the engineer’s answer to the legal pad—and a fine-point disposable pen.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6550-59 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:04 PM
The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy. And yet, despite all of this, not one of these bodies makes a single sound at any time during the sultan’s speech. It is a marvel that can only be explained by the power of brain over body, and, in turn, by the power of cultural conditioning over the brain.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6564-73 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:06 PM
Hence nothing is more natural than that the present-day Kinakutans should run big fat optical fiber cables in every direction, patch into every major national telco within reach, and become a sort of digital bazaar. All of the guests nod soberly at the sultan’s insight, his masterful ability to meld the ancient ways of his country with modern technology. But this is nothing more than a superficial analogy, the sultan confesses. Everyone nods somewhat more vigorously than they did before: indeed, everything that the sultan was just saying was, in fact, horseshit. Several people jot down notes, lest they lose the Sultan’s thread. After all, the sultan says, physical location no longer matters in a digitized, networked world. Cyberspace knows no boundaries. Everyone nods vigorously except for, on the one hand, John Cantrell, and, on the other, the grizzled Chinese guys. But hey, the sultan continues, that’s just dizzy-headed cyber-cheerleading! What bullshit! Of course locations and boundaries matter!
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6577-84 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:06 PM
The sultan is whipping some graphics on them: a map of the world in one of those politically correct projections that makes America and Europe look like icebound reefs in the high Arctic. A pattern of straight lines is superimposed on the map, each joining two major cities. The web of lines gets denser and denser as the sultan talks, nearly obscuring the land masses, and the oceans as well. This, the sultan explains, is the conventional understanding of the Internet: a decentralized web connecting each place with all the other places, with no bottlenecks or, if you will, choke-points. But it’s more bullshit! A new graphic comes up: same map, different pattern of lines. Now we have webs within countries, sometimes within continents. But between countries, and especially between continents, there are only a few lines. It’s not weblike at all. Randy looks at Cantrell, who’s nodding slyly.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6587-95 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:07 PM
Clearly, then, any Internet application that wants to stand free of governmental interference is undermined, from the very beginning, by a fundamental structure problem." . . . free of governmental interference. Randy can’t believe he’s hearing this. If the sultan was a scruffy hacker talking to a room full of crypto anarchists, that’d be one thing. But the sultan is a government, for god’s sake, and the room is full of card-carrying Establishment types. Like those Chinese buzz-cuts! Who the hell are they? Don’t try to tell Randy those guys aren’t part of the Chinese government, in some sense. "Bottlenecks are only one of the structural barriers to the creation of a free, sovereign, location-independent cyberspace," the sultan continues blithely. Sovereign!? "Another is the heterogeneous patchwork of laws, and indeed of legal systems, that address privacy, free speech, and telecoms policy."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6630-32 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:09 PM
Those Chinese guys across the table look like the Maoist Mt. Rushmore; it is impossible to imagine that any of them has ever smiled in his life. They are getting a live translation of the proceedings through ear pieces, connected through the mysterious table to a boiler room full of interpreters.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6695-6702 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:16 PM
The Americans have invented a totally new bombing tactic in the middle of a war and implemented it flawlessly. His mind staggers like a drunk in the aisle of a careening train. They saw that they were wrong, they admitted their mistake, they came up with a new idea. The new idea was accepted and embraced all the way up the chain of command. Now they are using it to kill their enemies. No warrior with any concept of honor would have been so craven. So flexible. What a loss of face it must have been for the officers who had trained their men to bomb from high altitudes. What has become of those men? They must have all killed themselves, or perhaps been thrown into prison. The American Marines in Shanghai weren’t proper warriors either. Constantly changing their ways. Like Shaftoe. Shaftoe tried to fight Nipponese soldiers in the street and failed. Having failed, he decided to learn new tactics—from Goto Dengo. "The Americans are not warriors," everyone kept saying. "Businessmen perhaps. Not warriors."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6806-16 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:34 PM
Magnificent isn’t the word you would normally use to describe Tom Howard; he’s burly and surly, completely lacking in social graces, and doesn’t apologize for it. Most of the time he sits silently, wearing an expression of sphinxlike boredom, and so it’s easy to forget how good he is. But during this particular half hour of Tom Howard’s life, it is of the essence that he be magnificent. He is going blade-to-blade with the Seven Samurai here: the nerdiest high-octane Ph.D.s and the scariest private-security dicks that Asia can produce. One-by-one they come after him and he cuts their heads off and stacks them on the table like cannon-balls. Several times he has to stop and think for sixty seconds before delivering the deathblow. Once he has to ask Eberhard Föhr to make some calculations on his laptop. Occasionally he has to call on the cryptographic expertise of John Cantrell, or to look over at Randy for a nod or shake of the head. But eventually, he shuts the hecklers up. Beryl wears a not very convincing smile throughout the entire thing. Avi just grips the arms of his chair, his knuckles going from blue to white to pink to a normal healthy glow over the course of the final five minutes, when it’s clear that the Samurai are withdrawing in disarray. It makes Randy want to empty a six-shooter into the ceiling and holler, "Yeeehaaw!" at the top of his lungs.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 6949-55 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:43 PM
Isoroku Yamamoto spent a lot of time playing poker with Yanks during his years in the States, smoking like a chimney to deaden the scent of their appalling aftershave. The Yanks are laughably rude and uncultured, of course; this hardly constitutes a sharp observation. Yamamoto, by contrast, attained some genuine insight as a side-effect of being robbed blind by Yanks at the poker table, realizing that the big freckled louts could be dreadfully cunning. Crude and stupid would be okay—perfectly understandable, in fact. But crude and clever is intolerable; this is what makes those redheaded ape-men extra double super loathsome. Yamamoto is still trying to drill the notion into the heads of his partners in the big Nipponese scheme to conquer everything between Karachi and Denver. He wishes that they would get the message.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7100-7106 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:54 PM
Waterhouse thinks that really the RCA Radio Tube Manual is like a ball and chain holding Alan back. If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7148-57 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:57 PM
"So what do you suppose is the rationale for this new scheme?" asks Alan, clearly enjoying himself a great deal. "The problem with one-time pads is that you have to make two copies of each pad and get them to the sender and the recipient. I mean, suppose you’re in Berlin and you want to send a message to someone in the Far East! This U-boat that we found had cargo on board—gold and other stuff—from Japan! Can you imagine how cumbersome this must be for the Axis?" "Ahh," Alan says. He gets it now. But Waterhouse finishes the explanation anyway: "Suppose that you came up with a mathematical algorithm for generating very large numbers that were random, or at least random-looking." "Pseudo-random." "Yeah. You’d have to keep the algorithm secret, of course. But if you could get it—the algorithm, that is—around the world to your intended recipient, then they could, from that day forward, do the calculation themselves and figure out the one-time pad for that particular day, or whatever."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7181-85 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 08:59 PM
The Americans responsible for this appalling gaffe are now trying to cover their asses by spreading a story that native islander spies caught wind of Yamamoto’s trip and radioed the news to Guadalcanal, whence the fatal P-38s were dispatched. But the P-38s were operating at the extreme limit of their fuel range and would have had to be sent out at precisely the correct time in order to make it back to Guadalcanal, so the Japanese would have to have their heads several feet up their asses to fall for that. Winston Churchill is pissed off in the extreme, and these meetings represent a prolonged bureaucratic hissy fit intended to produce some meaningful and enduring policy shift.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7248-55 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 09:03 PM
He also installed Finux, a free UNIX operating system created by Finns, almost as a way of proclaiming to the rest of the world "this is how weird we are," and distributed throughout the world on the Net. Of course Finux was fantastically powerful and flexible and enabled you, among other things, to control the machine’s video circuitry to the Nth degree and choose many different scanning frequencies and pixel clocks, if you were into that kind of thing. Pekka most definitely was into it, and so like a lot of Finux maniacs he set his machine up so that it could display, if he chose, a whole lot of tiny little pixels (which displayed a lot of information but was hard on the eyes) or, alternatively, fewer and larger pixels (which he tended to use after he had been hacking for twenty-four hours straight and lost ocular muscle tone), or various settings in-between. Every time he changed from one setting to another, the monitor screen would go black for a second and there would be an audible clunk from inside of it as the resonating crystals inside locked in on a different range of frequencies.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7280-87 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 09:06 PM
If you lay a sheet of white paper on an old gravestone, and sweep the tip of a pencil across it, you get one horizontal line, dark in some places and faint in others, and not very meaningful. If you move downwards on the page by a small distance, a single pencil-line-width, and repeat, an image begins to emerge. The process of working your way down the page in a series of horizontal sweeps is what a nerd would call raster-scanning, or just rastering. With a conventional video monitor—a cathode-ray tube—the electron beam physically rasters down the glass something like sixty to eighty times a second. In the case of a laptop screen like Randy’s, there is no physical scanning; the individual pixels are turned on or off directly. But still a scanning process is taking place; what’s being scanned and made manifest on the screen is a region of the computer’s memory called the screen buffer. The contents of the screen buffer have to be slapped up onto the screen sixty to eighty times every second or else (1) the screen flickers and (2) the images move jerkily.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7287-94 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 09:06 PM
The way that the computer talks to you is not by controlling the screen directly but rather by manipulating the bits contained in that buffer, secure in the knowledge that other subsystems inside the machine handle the drudge work of pipelining that information onto the actual, physical screen. Sixty to eighty times a second, the video system says shit! time to refresh the screen again, and goes to the beginning of the screen buffer—which is just a particular hunk of memory, remember—and it reads the first few bytes, which dictate what color the pixel in the upper left-hand corner of the screen is supposed to be. This information is sent on down the line to whatever is actually refreshing the screen, whether it’s a scanning electron beam or some laptop-style system for directly controlling the pixels. Then the next few bytes are read, typically for the pixel just to the right of that first one, and so on all the way to the right edge of the screen. That draws the first line of the grave-rubbing.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7302-8 | Added on Saturday, July 01, 2017, 09:07 PM
These issues all stem from inherent physical limitations of sweeping electron beams through space in a cathode-ray tube, and basically disappear in the case of a laptop screen like the one Tom Howard has set up a few inches in front of Pekka, on the other side of that wall. But the video timing of a laptop screen is still patterned after that of a cathode-ray tube screen anyway. (This is simply because the old technology is universally understood by those who need to understand it, and it works well, and all kinds of electronic and software technology has been built and tested to work within that framework, and why mess with success, especially when your profit margins are so small that they can only be detected by using techniques from quantum mechanics, and any glitches vis-à-vis compatibility with old stuff will send your company straight into the toilet.)
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7736-39 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 08:17 AM
"So what’s the point?" Shaftoe asks. He asks this because he is expecting Root to give him an order, which is usually what men of the talkative sort end up doing after jabbering on for a while. But no order seems to be forthcoming, because that’s not Root’s agenda. Root just felt like talking about words. The SAS blokes refer to this kind of activity as wanking.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7739-45 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 08:17 AM
Shaftoe has had little direct contact with that Waterhouse fellow during their stay on Qwghlm, but he has noticed that men who have just finished talking to Waterhouse tend to walk away shaking their heads—and not in the slow way of a man saying "no," but in the sudden convulsive way of a dog who has a horsefly in his middle ear. Waterhouse never gives direct orders, so men of the first category don’t know what to make of him. But apparently men of the second category fare no better; such men usually talk like they have an agenda in their heads and they are checking off boxes as they go, but Waterhouse’s conversation doesn’t go anywhere in particular. He speaks, not as a way of telling you a bunch of stuff he’s already figured out, but as a way of making up a bunch of new shit as he goes along. And he always seems to be hoping that you’ll join in. Which no one ever does, except for Enoch Root.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 7891-94 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 08:29 AM
The only member of Epiphyte Corp. who does not at least crack a smile is John Cantrell, who has been looking distant and tense ever since yesterday. ("It’s one thing to write a dissertation about mathematical techniques in cryptography," he said, on the way up here, when someone asked him what was bothering him. "And another to gamble billions of dollars’ worth of Other People’s Money on it."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 8037-41 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 08:41 AM
But a small and valuable company in the business world is like a bright and beautiful bird sitting on a branch in a jungle, singing a happy song that can be heard from a mile away. It attracts pythons." Avi pauses for a moment. "Usually, the grace period is longer. You get valuable, but then you have some time—weeks or months—to establish a defensive position, before the python manages to slither up the trunk. This time, we happened to get valuable while we were perched virtually on top of the python. Now we’re not valuable any more."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 8298-8313 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 09:01 AM
Randy says, "You asked me earlier what is the highest and best purpose to which we could dedicate our lives. And the obvious answer is ‘to prevent future Holocausts.’" Avi laughs darkly. "I’m glad it’s obvious to you, my friend. I was beginning to think I was the only one." "What!? Get over yourself, Avi. People are commemorating the Holocaust all the time." "Commemorating the Holocaust is not, not not not not not, the same thing as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the commemorationists are just whiners. They think that if everyone feels bad about past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one will want to commit genocide in the future." "I take it you do not share this view, Avi?" "Look at Bosnia!" Avi scoffs. "Human nature doesn’t change, Randy. Education is hopeless. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or Nazis just like that." He snaps his fingers. "So what hope is there?" "Instead of trying to educate the potential perpetrators of holocausts, we try to educate the potential victims. They will at least pay some fucking attention." "Educate them in what way?" Avi closes his eyes and shakes his head. "Oh, shit, Randy, I could go on for hours—I have drawn up a whole curriculum." "Okay, we’ll get into that later." "Definitely later. For now, the key point is that the Crypt is all-important. I can take all of my ideas and put them into a single pod of information, but almost every government in the world would prevent distribution to its citizens. It is essential to build the Crypt so that the HEAP can be freely distributed throughout the world."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 8373-79 | Added on Sunday, July 02, 2017, 09:05 AM
"He is the kind of guy who does deals on a handshake. On personal honor," Randy says. "Once he had made the proposition, he would never withdraw it." "The problem with those honorable men," Avi says, "is that they expect everyone else to be honorable in the same way." "It is true." "So he believes, now, that we are accomplices in this plan to hide the existence of this sunken treasure from the Dentist and the Bolobolos," Avi says. "Unless we come clean to them right away." "In which case we are betraying Doug Shaftoe," Avi says. "Cravenly backstabbing the ex-SEAL who served six years of combat duty in Vietnam, and who has scary and well-connected friends all over the world," Randy adds.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 8752-55 | Added on Monday, July 03, 2017, 01:05 AM
"And you still have a copy of this chart with you?" Bischoff asks skeptically. "Nah," Shaftoe says, with a flip coolness that in a less charismatic man would be infuriating. "But the lieutenant remembers it. He’s really good at remembering numbers. Aren’t you, sir?" Enoch shrugs modestly. "Where I grew up, memorizing the digits of pi was the closest thing we had to entertainment."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 8823-25 | Added on Monday, July 03, 2017, 01:12 AM
It would be an idyllic tropical paradise if not for the malaria, the insects, the constant diarrhea and resulting hemorrhoids, and the fact that the people are dirty and smell bad and eat each other and use human heads for decoration.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 9012-17 | Added on Monday, July 03, 2017, 01:24 AM
"You’ll notice there’s no umbilical," Doug says. "Normally that is mandatory for an ROV. You need the umbilical for three reasons." Randy grins, because he knows that Doug Shaftoe is about to enumerate the three reasons. Randy has spent almost no time around military people, but he is finding that he gets along with them surprisingly well. His favorite thing about them is their compulsive need to educate everyone around them, all the time. Randy does not need to know anything about the ROV, but Doug Shaftoe is going to give him a short course anyway. Randy supposes that when you are in a war, practical knowledge is a good thing to spread around.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 9055-62 | Added on Monday, July 03, 2017, 01:28 AM
Amy jams the kris back into its sheath, smiles sweetly at Randy, and plugs her face back into the rig. Randy is speechless for a while. The question of whether or not she is a lesbian is rapidly becoming more than purely academic. He performs a quick mental review of all of the lesbians he has known. Usually they are mid-level, nine-to-five city dwellers with sensible haircuts. In other words, they are just like most of the other people Randy knows. Amy is too flagrantly exotic, too much like a horny film director’s idea of what a lesbian would be. So maybe there is some hope here. "If you’re gonna stare at my daughter that way," Doug Shaftoe says, "you’d better start boning up on your ballroom dancing." "Is he starin’ at me? I can never tell when I have my face stuck in this thing," Amy says. "He was in love with his watch. Now he has no object for his affections," Doug says. "So, hold on to your hats!"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 9153-61 | Added on Monday, July 03, 2017, 01:33 AM
After a minute or so, he goes out to join Doug, who is ritualistically lighting up a cigar. "This is a good time to smoke," he mumbles. "Want one?" "Sure. Thanks." Randy pulls out a folding multipurpose tool and cuts the end from the cigar, a pretty impressive-looking Cuban number. "Why do you say it’s a good time to smoke?" "To fix it in your memory. To mark it." Doug tears his gaze from the horizon and looks at Randy searchingly, almost beseeching him to understand. "This is one of the most important moments in your life. Nothing will ever be the same. We might get rich. We might get killed. We might just have an adventure, or learn something. But we have been changed. We are standing close to the Heraclitean fire, feeling its heat on our faces." He produces a flaring safety match from his cupped palms like a magician, and holds it up before Randy’s eyes, and Randy puffs the cigar alive, staring into the flame. "Well, here’s to it," Randy says. "And here’s to whoever got out," replies Doug.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10120-24 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:43 PM
But now he knows how Alan must have felt after they turned decryption into a mechanical process, industrializing Bletchley Park. He must have felt that the battle was won, and with it the war. The rest might seem like glorious conquest to people like the General, but to Turing, and now to Waterhouse, it just looks like tedious mopping-up. It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it’s all can openers.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10146-54 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:45 PM
Mary is a tiny, white-skinned, red-headed person who is often seized by little fits of self-consciousness. When this happens she averts her eyes from his and swallows, and when she swallows there is a certain cord in her white neck, rounding the concavity from shoulder to ear, that stands out for a moment. It draws attention both to her vulnerability and to the white flesh of her neck, which is not white in a pallid sick way but in another way that Waterhouse could never have understood until recently: viz., from his little stint in New Guinea, where everything is either dead and decaying, or bright and threatening, or unobtrusive and invisible, Waterhouse knows that anything this tender and translucent is too vulnerable and tempting to hold its own in a world of violently competing destroyers, that it can only be sustained for a moment (let alone years) by the life force within. In the South Pacific where the forces of Death are so powerful, it leaves him vaguely intimidated. Her skin, as unmarked as clear water, is an extravagant display of vibrant animal power. He wants his tongue on it. The whole curve of her neck, from collarbone to earlobe, would make a perfect cradle for his face.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10206-9 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:50 PM
Shaftoe is gripped with a sort of giddy queasiness that, he knows, is the most pleasant thing he will feel here. "Morphine takes away the body’s ability to experience pleasure," says the booming voice of Enoch Root, his wry, annoying Virgil, who for purposes of this nightmare has adopted the voice and physical shape of Moe, the mean, dark-haired Stooge. "It may be some time before you feel physically well."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10218-23 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:53 PM
Everything has been reorganized, General MacArthur is still very high in the tree, walking a brace of giant lizards on steel leashes, but now the hierarchy is filled with grinning Arabs holding up lumps of hashish, frozen butchers, dead or doomed lieutenants, and that fucking weirdo, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, dressed in a black, hooded robe, heading up a whole legion of pencil-necked Signals geeks, also in robes, holding bizarrely shaped antennas above their heads, wading through a blizzard of dollar bills printed on old Chinese newspapers. Their eyes glow, flashing on and off in Morse code. "What are they saying?" Bobby says. "Please, stop screaming," says Enoch Root. "Just for a little while."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10239-42 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:54 PM
Root is sitting on the opposite bunk with the cigar box on his lap. He holds up his hand in a V for Victory, then levels it at Shaftoe’s face and pokes him in the eyes. "I cannot help you with your inability to find physical comfort—it is a problem of body chemistry," he says. "It poses interesting theological questions. It reminds us that all the pleasures of the world are an illusion projected into our souls by our bodies."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10254-56 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:56 PM
All of these names sound alike to Shaftoe, but Root says, "A Russian?" Shaftoe is really coming around now, reemerging into the World. He sits up straight, and his body feels stiff, like it hasn’t moved in a long time. He is about to apologize for the way he has been behaving, but since no one is looking at him funny, Shaftoe sees no reason to fill them in on what he’s been doing these last few minutes.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10279-81 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 06:57 PM
When he gets back, von Hacklheber is just winding up. "It all came down to a problem of sifting through large amounts of raw data—lengthy and tedious work." Shaftoe cringes, wondering what something would have to be like in order to qualify as lengthy and tedious to this joker.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10327-35 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 07:01 PM
He throws a dressing gown over his pajamas, steps into slippers, and opens the door of his flat to reveal, predictably, a small, prematurely withered man backed up by a couple of classic Gestapo killers in long black leather coats. "May I proffer an observation?" says Rudy von Hacklheber. "But of course, Herr Doktor Professor. As long as it is not a state secret, of course." "In the old days—the early days—when no one knew what the Gestapo was, and no one was afraid of it, this four in the morning business was clever. A fine way to exploit man’s primal fear of the darkness. But now it is 1942, almost 1943, and everyone is afraid of the Gestapo. Everyone. More than they are of the dark. So, why don’t you work during the daytime? You are stuck in a rut." The bottom half of the withered man’s face laughs. The top half doesn’t change. "I will pass your suggestion up the chain of command," he says. "But, Herr Doktor, we are not here to instill fear. We have come at this inconvenient time because of the train schedules."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10471-74 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 07:11 PM
"Certain materials I use in my research. They had been scattered among many libraries, all over Europe. Göring brought them all together for me—it makes men like him feel powerful, to do these little favors for their slaves. I departed from Berlin last week, on the pretext of going to Hannover, to do my Leibniz research. Instead I made my way to Sweden through channels that were quite involved—"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10489-94 | Added on Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 07:12 PM
"Enoch the Red, your organization can get us to Manila," von Hacklheber says. Shaftoe snorts. "Don’t you think the Catholic Church has its hands sort of full right now?" "I’m not talking about the Church," Rudy says. "I’m talking about Societas Eruditorum." Root freezes. "Congratulations there, Rudy!" Shaftoe says. "You surprised the padre. I didn’t think it could be done. Now would you mind telling us what the fuck you’re talking about?"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10827-29 | Added on Saturday, July 08, 2017, 09:02 PM
Progress halted for several minutes while they marveled at the pens' handy clicking mechanisms and doodled on the palms of their hands. The American t-shirts were, in other words, not worn as Americans wear them but in the same spirit that the Queen of England wore the exotic Koh-I-Noor Diamond on her crown. Not for the first time I was overtaken by a strong not-exactly-in-Kansas feeling.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 10904-7 | Added on Saturday, July 08, 2017, 09:06 PM
That certain people have a lot of money that they badly want to spend. And that if we can give them a way to spend it, through the Crypt, that these people will be very happy, and conversely that if we screw up they will be very sad, and that whether they are happy or sad they will be eager to share these emotions with us, the shareholders and management team of Epiphyte Corp.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 11119-24 | Added on Monday, July 24, 2017, 07:16 AM
Shaftoe consults the instructions. It does not matter that these are printed in Russian, because they are made for illiterates anyway. A series of parabolas is plotted out, the mortar supporting one leg and exploding Germans supporting the opposite. Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison. Shaftoe scans the terrain, picks out his killing zone, then climbs up and paces off the distance, assuming one meter per pace.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 11127-31 | Added on Monday, July 24, 2017, 07:16 AM
"How many engines?" "Probably two." Root turns out to be right on the money. Two large black Mercedes issue from the forest, like bad ideas emerging from the dim mind of a green lieutenant. Their headlights are not illuminated. Each stops and then sits there for a moment, then the doors open quietly, Germans climb out and stand up. Several of them are wearing long black leather coats. Several are carrying those keen submachine guns that are the trademark of German infantry, and the envy of Yanks and Tommies, who must go burdened with primeval hunting rifles.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 11428-30 | Added on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 05:34 AM
"Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum," he is saying. "It is Latin. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." "Jew? I thought Jesus was Christian," said Goto Dengo. The man in the black robe just stares at him. Goto Dengo tries again: "I didn’t know Jews spoke Latin."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12070-72 | Added on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 12:30 PM
They were a bit quieter than many others, they took up less space in the room, but then that was normal for people trying to raise three kids, and so they passed.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12232-34 | Added on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 12:43 PM
He is a little unnerved by how rapidly Waterhouse is coming up to speed. But one of the responsibilities of leadership is to mask one’s own fears, to project confidence at all times. Comstock grins and says, "You sound awfully sure of yourself, Waterhouse! I wonder if you can get me to feel that same level of confidence."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12566-80 | Added on Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 01:27 PM
"What’s an electronic banknote look like, Randy?" "Like any other digital thing: a bunch of bits." "Doesn’t that make it kind of easy to counterfeit?" "Not if you have good crypto," Randy says. "Which we do." "How did you get it?" "By hanging out with maniacs." "What kind of maniacs?" "Maniacs who think that having good crypto is of near-apocalyptic importance." "How’d they get around to thinking any such thing?" "By reading about people like Yamamoto who died because they had bad crypto, and then projecting that kind of thing into the future." "Do you agree with them?" Amy asks. It might be one of those pivotal-moment-in-the-relationship questions. "At two in the morning, when I’m lying awake in bed, I do," Randy says. "In the light of day, it all seems like paranoia." He glances over at Amy, who’s looking at him appraisingly, because he hasn’t actually answered the question yet. He’s got to pick one thing or the other. "Better safe than sorry, I guess. Having good crypto can’t hurt, and it might help." "And it might make you a lot of money along the way," Amy reminds him. Randy laughs. "At this point, it’s not even about trying to make money," he says. "I just don’t want to be totally humiliated." Amy smiles cryptically. "What?" Randy demands. "You sounded just like a Shaftoe when you said that," Amy says.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12819-24 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:49 PM
It flowed across the blasted volcanic scab land of central Washington in (Randy supposed) a more or less continuous laminar sheet that, when it hit the rolling Palouse country, ramified into a vast system of floods, rivers and rivulets diverging around the bald swelling hills and recombining in the sere declivities. But it never recombined exactly the way it was before. The hills had thrown entropy into the system. Like a handful of nickels in a batch of bread dough this could be kneaded from place to place but never removed. The entropy manifested itself as swirls and violent gusts and ephemeral vortices. All of these things were clearly visible, because all summer the air was full of dust or smoke, and all winter it was full of windblown snow.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12837-40 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:51 PM
Other times, like if you tried to catch one in your hands, it would vanish—but then you’d look up and see another one just like it twenty feet away, running away from you. The whole concept of matter spontaneously organizing itself into grotesquely improbable and yet indisputably self perpetuating and fairly robust systems sort of gave Randy the willies later on, when he began to learn about physics.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12840-50 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:52 PM
There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12854-58 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:53 PM
From the wind’s frame of reference, it (the wind) is stationary and the hills and valleys are moving things that crumple the horizon and then rush towards it and then interfere with it and go away, leaving the wind to sort out consequences later on down the line. And some of the consequences are dust or ice devils. If there was more stuff in the way, like expansive cities filled with buildings, or forests filled with leaves and branches, then that would be the end of the story; the wind would become completely deranged and cease to exist as a unitary thing, and all of the aerodynamic action would be at the incomprehensible scale of micro-vortices around pine needles and car antennas.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12878-82 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:55 PM
The portrait is securely bolted to the cinderblock wall of the lobby and imprisoned under a half-inch-thick slab of Plexiglas that must be replaced every couple of years, as it fogs from repeated scrubbings and petty vandalizations. Seen through this milky cataract, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is grimly resplendent in full doctoral robes. He has one foot up on something, his elbow planted on the elevated knee, and has tucked his robes back behind the other arm and planted his fist on his hip. It is meant to be a sort of dynamic posture, but to Randy, who at the age of five was present for its unveiling, it has a kind of incredulous what-the-hell-are-those-little-people-doing-down-there
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 12912-18 | Added on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 01:58 PM
"The question reduces," Uncle Red says, "to a mathematical one: how do you divide up an inhomogeneous set of n objects among m people (or couples actually); i.e., how do you partition the set into m subsets (S1,S2, . . . ,Sm) such that the value of each subset is as close as possible to being equal?" "It doesn’t seem that hard," Aunt Nina begins weakly. She is a professor of Qwghlmian linguistics. "It is actually shockingly difficult," Randy says. "It is closely akin to the Knapsack Problem, which is so difficult to solve that it has been used as the basis for cryptographic systems."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13225-26 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10:08 AM
Farming might have been an adequate sort of booby prize for one or at most two of their sons, sort of a fallback for any offspring who happened to suffer major head injuries or fall into chronic alcoholism.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13234-40 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10:10 AM
It had been a standing joke among her male offspring that Mom could walk unescorted into any biker bar in the world and simply by her bearing and appearance cause all ongoing fistfights to be instantly suspended, all grubby elbows to be removed from the bar, postures to straighten, salty language to be choked off. The bikers would climb over one another’s backs to take her coat, pull her chair back, address her as ma’am, etc. Though it had never been performed, this biker bar scene was like a whole sort of virtual or notional comedy sketch that was a famous moment in entertainment for the Waterhouse family, like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or Belushi doing his samurai bit on Saturday Night Live. It was up there on their mental videocassette shelves right next to their imaginary newsreels and B-movies of what the Patriarch had done in the war.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13246-55 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10:11 AM
Whenever any of her offspring came to visit, someone would discreetly slip out to the garage to yank the dipstick, which would always be mysteriously topped up with clear amber-colored 10W40. It eventually turned out that her late husband had summoned the entire living male lineage of the Patterson family—four generations of them—into his hospital room and gathered them around his deathbed and wrought some kind of unspecified pact with them along the general lines of that, if at any point in the future, the tire pressure in the Lincoln dropped below spec or the maintenance in any other way lapsed, all of the Pattersons would not merely sacrifice their immortal souls, but literally be pulled out of meetings or lavatories and dragged off to hell on the spot, like Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. He knew that his wife had only the vaguest idea of what a tire was, other than something that from time to time a man would heroically jump out of the car and change while she sat inside the car admiring him. The world of physical objects seemed to have been made solely for the purpose of giving the men around Grandma something to do with their hands; and not, mind you, for any practical reason, but purely so that Grandma could twiddle those men’s emotional knobs by reacting to how well or poorly they did it.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13257-59 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10:11 AM
The ability of the Lincoln to run flawlessly for a quarter of a century without maintenance—without even putting gasoline in the tank—had only confirmed Grandmother’s opinions about the amusing superfluity of male pursuits.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13267-69 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10:13 AM
Randy’s father dumps the contents out on a ping-pong table that inexplicably sits in the center of the rec room at Grandma’s managed care facility, whose residents are about as likely to play ping-pong as they are to get their nipples pierced.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13313-16 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 04:05 PM
"How about this guy we’re going to see in Seattle? He’s a computer guy too? Ooh, you’re getting this look on your face like ‘Amy just said something so stupid it caused me physical pain.’ Is this a common facial expression among the men of your family? Do you think it is the expression that your grandfather wore when your grandmother came home and announced that she had backed the Lincoln Continental into a fire hydrant?"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13750-53 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 04:32 PM
Randy’s body has now finally had time to deploy a full-on fight-or-flight reaction—part of his genetic legacy as a stupendous badass. This must have been very useful when saber-toothed tigers tried to claw their way into his ancestors’ caves but is doing him absolutely no good in these circumstances. "On behalf of whom?" "Oh, come on, Randy. There aren’t that many candidates."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13883-86 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 05:24 PM
"But I don’t think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It’s because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives." "And that’s kind of where you are right now?" "It’s exactly where I am."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 13897-902 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 05:25 PM
But for god’s sake, I’m not even sure she’s heterosexual. It’d be madness to put a lesbian in charge of my ejaculatory functions." "If she were a lesbian—exclusively—she’d have had the basic decency to tell you by now," Avi says. "My feeling about Amy is that she steers by her gut feelings, and her gut feeling is that you just don’t have the level of passion that a woman like her probably would like to see as a prerequisite for getting involved." "Whereas, if I stopped masturbating, I would become such a deranged maniac that she could trust me." "Exactly. That’s exactly how women think," Avi says.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14064-70 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 05:38 PM
Many soldiers ride atop the trucks. When the sun rises, Goto Dengo savors the novel and curious sight of fresh, healthy, well-fed Nipponese men. They are armed with light and heavy machine guns. They look like Nipponese soldiers did way back in 1937, when they were rolling across northern China. It gives Goto Dengo a strange feeling of nostalgia to remember a day when a terrible defeat was not imminent, when they were not going to lose everything horribly. A lump actually gathers in his throat, and his nose begins to run. Then he snaps out of it, realizing that the big day has finally arrived. The part of him that is still a loyal soldier of the emperor has a duty to see that the vital war materiel, which has just arrived, is stored away in the big vault of Golgotha. The part of him that isn’t a loyal soldier anymore still has a lot to accomplish.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14263-68 | Added on Thursday, July 27, 2017, 05:55 PM
He has, in other words, just slapped big greasy fingerprints all over a weapon that the police are moments away from seizing as evidence. If Tombstone is shut down and grabbed by the cops before Randy can erase those traces, they will know he has logged on at the very moment that Tombstone was confiscated, and will put him in prison for tampering with evidence. He very much wishes that Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe could somehow be made aware of what a ballsy thing he is doing here. But then Doug has probably done all kinds of ballsy things of which Randy will never be aware, and Randy respects him anyway because of his bearing. Maybe the way to get that kind of bearing is to go around doing ballsy things in secret that somehow percolate up to the surface of your personality.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14548-52 | Added on Friday, July 28, 2017, 04:16 AM
Anyway, if you do a Web search on Ordo, you’ll see this nonsense had absolutely nothing to do with us. Nothing." "That’s funny, because Comstock is denying that it’s a crackdown on Ordo," Doug says. When speaking of official U.S. government denials, Vietnam combat veterans like Doug are capable of summoning up a drawling irony that is about as subtle as having automotive jumper cables connected directly to your fillings, but much funnier. Vodka climbs about halfway up Randy’s nose before he controls it. "They say that it’s just a little old civil suit," Doug says, now using a petal-soft, wounded innocent tone.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14582-89 | Added on Friday, July 28, 2017, 04:19 AM
"What should I call you—Root? Pontifex?" "Pontifex is a nice word." "It’s true," Randy says. "I checked it out, looking for clues in the etymology—it’s an old Latin word meaning ‘priest.’ " "Catholics call the Pope ‘Pontifex Maximus,’ or pontiff for short," says Pontifex agreeably, "but the word was also used by pagans to denote their priests, and Jews their rabbis—it is ever so ecumenical." "But the literal meaning of the word is ‘bridge builder,’ and so it’s a good name for a cryptosystem," Randy says. "Or, I hope, for me," Pontifex says drily. "I am glad you feel that way, Randy. Many people would think of a cryptosystem as a wall, rather than a bridge." "Well, gosh. It’s nice to telephonically meet you, Pontifex."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14652-58 | Added on Friday, July 28, 2017, 04:25 AM
"First a disclaimer: I’ve been out of circulation for a while. Have not picked up the postmodern unwillingness to make value judgments." "Okay, I am bracing myself." "My advice: do try to build the best Crypt you possibly can. Your clients—some of them, anyway—are, for all practical purposes, aborigines. They will either make you rich or kill you, like something straight out of a Joseph Campbell footnote." "So you’re talking about your basic Colombian drug lord types, here?" "Yes, I am, but I’m also referring to certain white men in suits. It only takes a single generation to revert to savagery."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14863-69 | Added on Saturday, July 29, 2017, 05:45 AM
"What do you mean?" This is Randy in unaccustomed sounding-board mode, psychotherapeutically prompting Cantrell for his feelings. It must have been a weird day for John Cantrell, and no doubt there are some feelings that need to be addressed. "Holding one of those things in your hands, cleaning the barrel and shoving the rounds into clips, really brings you face-to-face with what a desperate, last-ditch measure they really are. I mean, if it gets to the point where we are shooting at people and vice versa, then we have completely screwed up. So in the end, they only strengthened my interest in making sure we could do without them." "And hence the Crypt?" Randy asks. "My involvement in the Crypt is arguably a direct result of a few very bad dreams that I had about guns."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 14877-82 | Added on Saturday, July 29, 2017, 05:47 AM
"They were probably happy to get out of there, and to go sit in a dark cool room and drink beer afterwards. Certainly a lot of them have been sending me e-mail about the Crypt since then." "As an alternative to violent resistance to the United States Government, I assume and hope you mean." "Exactly. Sure. I mean, that’s what the Crypt is becoming. Right?" The question sounds a little querulous to Randy. "Right," he says. He wonders why he feels so much more settled about this stuff than John Cantrell does, and then recalls that he has nothing left to lose.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15195-96 | Added on Saturday, July 29, 2017, 06:15 AM
He pinches his nose shut, presses his lips together, and begins to blow air into his Eustachian tubes, equalizing the pressure. The others follow his lead.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15790-93 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 02:43 PM
Intuition, like a flash of lightning, lasts only for a second. It generally comes when one is tormented by a difficult decipherment and when one reviews in his mind the fruitless experiments already tried. Suddenly the light breaks through and one finds after a few minutes what previous days of labor were unable to reveal.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15793-97 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 02:43 PM
Randy has this very strong feeling that Amy doesn’t read bodice-ripper novels. She goes the other way. She can’t tolerate surrendering to any one. Which makes it hard for her to function in polite society; she could not have been happy sitting at home during her senior year of high school, waiting for a boy to invite her to the prom. This feature of her personality is extremely prone to misinterpretation, so she bailed out. She would rather be lonely, and true to herself, and in control, in an out-of-the-way part of the world, with her music-by-intelligent-female-singer-songwriters to keep her company, than misinterpreted and hassled in America.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15798-809 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 06:00 PM
"I love you," he says. Amy looks away and heaves a big sigh like, At last we’re getting somewhere. Randy continues, "I’ve been infatuated with you ever since we met." Now she’s back to looking at him expectantly. "And the reason I’ve been slow to, uh, to actually show it, or do anything about it, is first of all because I wasn’t sure whether or not you were a lesbian." Amy scoffs and rolls her eyes. ". . . and later just because of my own reticence. Which is unfortunately part of me too, just like this part." He glances down just for a microsecond. She’s shaking her head at him in amazement. "The fact that the scientific investigator works fifty percent of his time by nonrational means is quite insufficiently recognized," Randy says. Amy sits down on his side of the table, jacknifes, spins around neatly on her ass, and comes to light on the other side. "I’ll think about what you said," she says. "Hang in there, sport." "Smooth sailing, Amy." Amy gives him a little smile over her shoulder, then walks straight to the exit, turning around once in the doorway to make sure he’s still looking at her. He is. Which, he feels quite confident, is the right answer.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15822-25 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 06:08 PM
Maybe half of the Nips are killed or wounded by this barrage, but they are fighting at such close quarters that two of Shaftoe’s Huks are hit as well. Shaftoe is trying to drag one of them out of danger when he looks down and sees that he is stomping across a mess of shattered white crockery that is marked with the name of a hotel—the same hotel where he slow-danced with Glory on the night that the war started.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15899-905 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 06:12 PM
"Hey! Tell me something I didn’t fucking already know!" Shaftoe says. "Even winning battles isn’t important to you. Is it?" Goto Dengo looks the other way, shamefaced. "Haven’t you guys figured out yet that banzai charges DON’T FUCKING WORK?" "All of the people who learned that were killed in banzai charges," Goto Dengo says. As if on cue, the Nips in the left field dugout begin screaming "Banzai!" and charge, as one, out onto the field. Shaftoe puts his eye up to a bullet hole in the wall and watches them stumbling across the infield with fixed bayonets.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 15968-77 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 06:16 PM
Finally MacArthur unhands the stiff body of Goto Dengo, steps back dramatically, and presents him to his staff. "Meet Goto-san," he announces. "You have all heard the expression, ‘the only good Nip is a dead Nip’? Well, this young fellow is a counterexample, and as we learned in mathematics, it only takes one counterexample to disprove the theorem." His staff observe cautious silence. "It seems only fitting that we take this young fellow to the Church of St. Agustin, over yonder in Intramuros, to carry out the sacrament of baptism," The General says. One of the aides steps forward, hunched over in that he’s expecting to get a slug between the shoulder blades any minute. "Sir, it is my duty to remind you that Intramuros is still controlled by the enemy." "Then it is high time we made our presence felt!" MacArthur says. "Shaftoe will get us there. Shaftoe and these fine Filipino gentlemen." The General throws one arm around Goto Dengo’s neck in a highly affectionate, companionable way, and begins strolling with him towards the nearest gate. "I would like you to know, young man, that when I set up my headquarters in Tokyo—which, God willing, should be within a year—I want you there bright and early the first day!"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16112-19 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 07:09 PM
Randy had to bite his tongue not to start asking all kinds of questions about just what "brilliant" meant in an oral-surgery context—questions that were motivated solely by curiosity but that the dentist would be likely to take the wrong way. Among coders it was pretty obvious who was brilliant and who wasn’t, but how could you tell a brilliant oral surgeon apart from a merely excellent one? It gets you into deep epistemological shit. Each set of wisdom teeth could only be extracted once. You couldn’t have a hundred oral surgeons extract the same set of wisdom teeth and then compare the results scientifically. And yet it was obvious from watching the look on this dentist’s face that this one particular oral surgeon, this new guy, was brilliant. So later Randy sidled up to this dentist and allowed as how he might have a challenge—he might personally embody a challenge—that would put this ineffable quality of oral-surgery brilliance to some good use, and could he have the guy’s name please.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16544-46 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:11 PM
"It says ignoti et quasi occulti, which means ‘unknown and partly hidden’ or words to that effect," says Enoch Root. "It is the motto of a society to which I belong. You must know that the word ‘occult’ does not intrinsically have anything to do with Satanic rituals and drinking blood and all of that. It—"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16559-64 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:12 PM
"Some complain that e-mail is impersonal—that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16573-81 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:15 PM
"If you think of the Greek gods as real supernatural beings who lived on Mount Olympus, no. But if you think of them as being in the same class of entities as the Root Rep, which is to say, patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world, then yes. Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people. Why? Because, in the same way as you might one day encounter another person with his own Root Rep so, if you were to have a conversation with an ancient Greek person, and he started talking about Zeus, you might—once you got over your initial feelings of superiority—discover that you had some mental representations inside your own mind that, though you didn’t name them Zeus and didn’t think of them as a big hairy thunderbolt-hurling son of a Titan, nonetheless had been generated as a result of interactions with entities in the outside world that are the same as the ones that cause the Zeus Representation to appear in the Greek’s mind. And here we could talk about the Plato’s Cave thing for a while—the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors—it slices! it dices!"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16584-88 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:15 PM
"—so that given a shadow projected on your wall is going to adopt a different shape from the same shadow projected on his wall, where the different wall-shapes here correspond to let’s say your modern scientific worldview versus his ancient pagan worldview." "Yeah. That Plato’s Cave metaphor." At this very moment some wag of a prison guard, out in the corridor, throws a switch and shuts off all of the lights. The only illumination now is from the screensaver on Randy’s laptop, which is running animations of colliding galaxies.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16589-91 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:15 PM
"I think we can stipulate that the wall in front of you, Randy, is considerably flatter and smoother, i.e., it generally gives you a much more accurate shadow than his wall, and yet it’s clear that he’s still capable of seeing the same shadows and probably drawing some useful conclusions about the shapes of the things that cast them."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16601-10 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:17 PM
We start out with Chaos, which is where all theogonies start, and which I like to think of as a sea of white noise—totally random broadband static. And for reasons that we don’t really understand, certain polarities begin to coalesce from this—Day, Night, Darkness, Light, Earth, Sea. Personally, I like to think of these as crystals—not in the hippy-dippy Californian sense, but in the hardass technical sense of resonators, that received certain channels buried in the static of Chaos. At some point, out of certain incestuous couplings among such entities, you get Titans. And it’s arguably kind of interesting to note that the Titans provide really the full complement of basic gods—you’ve got the sun god, Hyperion, and an ocean god, Oceanus, and so on. But they all get overthrown in a power struggle called the Titanomachia and replaced with new gods like Apollo and Poseidon, who end up filling the same slots in the organizational chart, as it were. Which is kind of interesting in that it seems to tie in with what I was saying about the same entities or patterns persisting through time, but casting slightly different shaped shadows for different people. Anyway, so now we have the Gods of Olympus as we normally think of them: Zeus, Hera, and so on. "A couple of basic observations about these: first,
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16726-30 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:40 PM
Randy is mounting a known-ciphertext attack: the hardest kind. He has the ciphertext (the Arethusa intercepts) and nothing else. He doesn’t even know the algorithm that was used to encrypt them. In modern cryptanalysis, this is unusual; normally the algorithms are public knowledge. That is because algorithms that have been openly discussed and attacked within the academic community tend to be much stronger than ones that have been kept secret. People who rely on keeping their algorithms secret are ruined as soon as that secret gets out. But Arethusa dates from World War II, when people were much less canny about such things.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16732-37 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:41 PM
There is a compromise between the two extremes of, on the one hand, not knowing any of the plaintext at all, and, on the other, knowing all of it. In the Cryptonomicon that falls under the heading of cribs. A crib is an educated guess as to what words or phrases might be present in the message. For example if you were decrypting German messages from World War II, you might guess that the plaintext included the phrase "HEIL HITLER" or "SIEG HEIL." You might pick out a sequence of ten characters at random and say, "Let’s assume that this represented HEIL HITLER. If that is the case, then what would it imply about the remainder of the message?"
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16751-53 | Added on Monday, July 31, 2017, 08:43 PM
And sure enough, Randy learns from the Cryptonomicon that Azure was an oddball system used by both the Nipponese and the Germans that employed a mathematical algorithm to generate a different one-time pad every day. This is awfully vague, but it helps Randy rule out a lot. He knows for example that Arethusa isn’t a rotor system like Enigma.
August
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16893-903 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 03:28 AM
"I know that all the bright lights fled Germany in the thirties—Einstein, Born—" "And Schrödinger, and von Neumann, and others—but do you know why they fled?" "Well, because they didn’t like the Nazis, of course!" "But do you know specifically why the Nazis didn’t like them?" "A lot of them were Jews." "It goes deeper than mere anti-Semitism. Hilbert, Russell, Whitehead, Gödel, all of them were engaged in a monumental act of tearing mathematics down and beginning from scratch. But the Nazis believed that mathematics was a heroic science whose purpose was to reduce chaos to order—just as National Socialism was supposed to do in the political sphere." "Okay," Randy says, "but what the Nazis didn’t understand was that if you tore it down and rebuilt it, it was even more heroic than before." "Indeed. It led to a renaissance," Root says, "like in the seventeenth century, when the Puritans tore everything to rubble and then slowly built it back up from scratch. Over and over again we see the pattern of the Titanomachia repeated—the old gods are thrown down, chaos returns, but out of the chaos, the same patterns reemerge."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16904-7 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 03:29 AM
"Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists’ uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn’t work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16907-11 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 03:29 AM
"Sounds teleological, Enoch. Free countries get better science, hence superior military power, hence get to defend their freedoms. You’re proclaiming a sort of Manifest Destiny here." "Well, someone’s got to do it." "Aren’t we beyond that sort of thing now?" "I know you’re just saying that to infuriate me. Sometimes, Randy, Ares gets chained up in a barrel for a few years, but he never goes away. The next time he emerges, Randy, the conflict is going to revolve around bio-, micro-, and nanotechnology.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16916-25 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 03:32 AM
Root, not surprisingly, has an answer: the gold was stolen from all of Asia by the Nipponese, who intended to use it as backing for a currency that would become the legal tender of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and that while it goes without saying that those particular Nips were among the most egregious buttheads in planetary history, some aspects of their plan weren’t such a shitty idea. That to the extent life still sucks for many Asians, things would get a lot better, for a lot of people, if the continent’s economy could get jerked into the twenty-first, or at least the twentieth, century and hopefully stay there for a while instead of collapsing whenever some dictator’s-nephew-in-charge-of-a-central-bank loses control of his sphincters and wipes out a major currency. So maybe stabilizing the currency situation would be a good thing to accomplish with a shitload of gold, and that’s the only moral thing to do with it anyway considering whom it was stolen from—you can’t just go out and spend it. Randy finds this answer appropriately sophisticated and Jesuitical and eerily in sync with what Avi has written into the latest edition of the Epiphyte(2) Business Plan.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 16982-86 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 03:38 AM
Seattle’s full of guys like this who flipped a coin when they graduated from college (heads Prague, tails Seattle) and just showed up with this expectation that because they were young and smart they’d find a job and begin making money, and then appallingly enough did exactly that. Randy can’t figure out what the world must look like to a guy like this. He has a hard time getting rid of the guy, who shares the common assumption (increasingly annoying) that just because Randy’s in jail, he doesn’t have a life, has nothing better to do than interface with visitors.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17164-72 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 01:01 PM
For weeks it comes in bits and pieces, and then one evening, some switch turns on in Lawrence Waterhouse’s mind, and he knows, in some preconscious way, that he’s about to get it. He works for twenty-four hours. By that point he has come up with a lot of evidence to support, and none to contradict, the hypothesis that this calculation is a variant of a zeta function. He naps for six hours, gets up, and works for another thirty. By that point he’s figured out that it definitely is some kind of zeta function, and he’s managed to figure out several of its constants and terms. He almost has it now. He sleeps for twelve hours, gets up and walks around Manila to clear his head, goes back to work, and hammers away at it for thirty-six hours. This is the fun part, when big slabs of the puzzle, painstakingly assembled from fragments, suddenly begin to lock together, and the whole thing begins to make sense. It all comes down to an equation written down on one sheet of paper. Just looking at it makes him feel weirdly nostalgic, because it’s the same type of equation he used to work with back at Princeton with Alan and Rudy.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17182-90 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 01:02 PM
(4) The room is referred to as the Basement, even though it’s only part of the basement. When "the Basement" is written down, it is capitalized. When someone (let’s say Lieutenant Colonel Earl Comstock) is going to verbalize this, he will come to a complete stop in mid-sentence, so that all of the preceding words kind of pile into each other like cars in a colliding train. He will, in fact, bracket "the Basement" between a pair of full one-second-long caesuras. During the first of these, he will raise his eyebrows and purse his lips simultaneously, altering the entire aspect ratio of his face so that it becomes strikingly elongated in the vertical dimension, and his eyes will dart sideways in case any Nipponese spies somehow managed to escape the recent apocalypse and found a place to lurk around the fringes of his peripheral vision. Then he will say "the" and then he will say "Basement," drawing out the s and primly articulating the t. And then will come another caesura during which he will incline his head towards the listener and fix him with a sober, appraising look, seeming to demand some kind of verbal or gestural acknowledgment from the listener that something appallingly significant has just passed between them. And then he will continue with whatever he was saying.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17193-99 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 01:03 PM
Lieutenant Colonel Earl Comstock tried to enter the Basement to inspect it. But owing to a clerical error, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Comstock’s name was not on the list, and so a difference of opinion ensued that culminated with one of the Marines drawing his Colt .45 and taking the safety off and chambering a round, pressing the barrel of the weapon directly into the center of Comstock’s right thigh, and then reminiscing about some of the spectacular femur-bursting wounds he had personally witnessed on places like Tarawa and in general trying to help Comstock visualize just what his life would be like, both short- and long-term, if a large piece of lead were to pass through the middle of said major bone. To everyone’s surprise, Comstock was delighted with this encounter, almost enchanted, and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Of course, now his name’s on the list.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17291-301 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 04:16 PM
He could very easily take care of the Hunk of Burning Love problem now that he has privacy, but astonishes himself by electing not to. This may be perverse; he’s not sure. The last month and a half of total celibacy, relieved only by nocturnal emissions at roughly two-week intervals, has definitely got him in a mental space he has never been to before, or come near, or even heard about. When he was in jail he had to develop a fierce mental discipline in order not to be distracted by thoughts of sex. He got alarmingly good at it after a while. It’s a highly unnatural approach to the mind/body problem, pretty much the antithesis of every sixties and seventies-tinged philosophy that he ever imbibed from his Baby Boomer elders. It is the kind of thing he associates with scary hardasses: Spartans, Victorians, and mid-twentieth-century American military heroes. It has turned Randy into something of a hardass in his approach to hacking, and meanwhile, he suspects, it has got him into a much more intense and passionate head space than he’s ever known when it comes to matters of the heart. He won’t really know that until he comes face to face with Amy, which looks like it’s going to be a while, since he’s just been kicked out of the country where she lives and works. Just as an experiment, he decides he’s going to keep his hands off of himself for now. If it makes him a little tense and volatile compared to his pathologically mellow West Coast self, then so be it.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17305-8 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 04:18 PM
He’s scarcely recognizable. Before the beginning of this the Third Business Foray he kind of assumed that, going into his mid-thirties, he had figured out who he was, and that he’d keep being the way he was forever, except with a gradually decaying body and gradually increasing net worth. He didn’t imagine it was possible to change so much, and he wonders where it’s going to end. But this is nothing more than an anomalous moment of reflection. He shakes it off and gets back to his life.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17680-84 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:36 PM
This building is of the sheer-walls-of-solid-glass school of architecture and so the windows go floor-to-ceiling, providing, through a bead curtain of raindrops, a view of nighttime Tokyo that stretches over the horizon. Menus are handed out, printed in French only. Randy and Avi get the girl menus, with no prices. Goto Dengo gets the wine list, and pores over it for a good ten minutes before grudgingly selecting a white from California and a red from Burgundy. Meanwhile, Furudenendu is leading them in exceedingly pleasant small talk about the Crypt.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17693-97 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:38 PM
The sommelier comes around with the wines and Goto Dengo interrogates him in a mixture of Nipponese and French for a while, until a film of sweat has broken out on the sommelier’s brow. He samples the wines very carefully. The tension is explosive as he swirls them around in his mouth, staring off into the distance. The sommelier seems genuinely startled, not to mention relieved, when he accepts both of them. The subtext here would seem to be that hosting a really first-class dinner is a not insignificant management challenge, and that Goto Dengo should not be bothered with social chatter while he is coping with these responsibilities.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17713-19 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:41 PM
Dinner arrives; and so everyone has to eat for a bit, and to thank Goto-sama for his excellent recommendation. Avi gets a bit reckless and asks the old man if he might regale them with some reminiscences about Douglas MacArthur. He grins, as if some secret has been ferreted out of him, and says, "I met the General in the Philippines." Just like that, he’s jujitsued the topic of conversation around to what everyone actually wants to talk about. Randy’s pulse and respiration ratchet up by a good twenty-five percent and all of his senses become more acute, almost as if his ears have popped again, and he loses his appetite. Everyone else seems to be sitting up a bit straighter too, shifting in their chairs slightly. "Did you spend much time in that country?" Avi asks.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17794-804 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:51 PM
"You are going to take the gold out and dump it into the ocean, then?" "No," Avi says, with a nervous chuckle. Goto Dengo raises his eyebrows. "Oh. So, you wish to become rich as part of the bargain?" At this point Avi does something that Randy’s never seen him do, or even come close to doing, before: he gets pissed off. He doesn’t flip the table over, or raise his voice. But his face turns red, the muscles of his head bulge as he clenches his teeth together, and he breathes heavily through his nose for a while. The Gotos both seem to be rather impressed by this, and so no one says anything for a long time, giving Avi a chance to regain his cool. It seems as though Avi can’t bring words forth, and so finally he takes his wallet out of his pocket and flips through it until he’s found a black-and-white photograph, which he pulls from its transparent sleeve and hands across to Goto Dengo. It’s a family portrait: father, mother, four kids, all with a mid-twentieth century, Middle-European look about them. "My great-uncle," Avi says, "and his family. Warsaw, 1937. His teeth are down in that hole. You buried my uncle’s teeth!" Goto Dengo looks up into Avi’s eyes, neither angry nor defensive. Just sad. And this seems to have an effect on Avi, who softens, exhales finally, breaks eye contact.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17810-12 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:51 PM
The tension has been broken. Everyone’s relaxed, not to say exhausted. "General Wing is very close to finding Golgotha," Randy says, after a decent interval has ticked by. "It’s him or us." "It’s us, then," says Goto Dengo.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17849-52 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:55 PM
"This is Jesus Christ who taketh away the sins of the world," Goto Dengo says. "Enoch Root, no one knows the sins of the world better than me. I have swum in those sins, drowned in them, burned in them, dug in them. I was like a man swimming down a long cave filled with black cold water. Looking up, I saw a light above me, and swam towards it. I only wanted to find the surface, to breathe air again. Still immersed in the sins of the world, at least I could breathe. This is what I am now."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17863-68 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:57 PM
"The world is bleeding. It needs medicine and bandages. These cost money." "But before this war, all of this gold was out here, in the sunlight. In the world. Yet look what happened." Goto Dengo shudders. "Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By school children doing their lessons, improving their minds. Tell those men that if they want wealth, they should come to Nippon with me after the war. We will start businesses and build buildings." "Spoken like a true Nipponese," Enoch says bitterly. "You never change."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17883-90 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 07:58 PM
"My condition is that if that gold ever comes out of the ground, it should be used so that we do not have any more wars like this one." "And how should we accomplish such a thing, Goto Dengo?" Goto Dengo sighs. "You put a big weight on my shoulders!" "No. I did not put the weight on your shoulders. It has always been there." Enoch Root stares mercilessly into Goto Dengo’s tormented face. "Jesus takes away the sins of the world, but the world remains: a physical reality on which we are doomed to live until death takes us away from it. You have confessed, and you have been forgiven, and so the greater part of your burden has been taken away by grace. But the gold is still there, in a hole in the ground. Did you think that the gold all turned into dirt when you swallowed the bread and the wine? That is not what we mean by transubstantiation." Enoch Root turns his back and walks away, leaving Goto Dengo alone in the bright avenues of the city of the dead.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 17927-31 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 08:02 PM
John Wayne is patrolling the surf with a cigarette and a pump shotgun. Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe rates the probability of frogman attack rather low because the gold in the pamboat is only worth two and half million dollars, an amount that hardly rates anything as elaborate, and expensive, as a seaborne assault. John Wayne needs to be there in case someone gets the mistaken impression that they’ve somehow managed to pack ten or twenty times that much gold into the pamboat. This seems improbable from a hydrodynamics standpoint. But Doug says that overestimating the intelligence of the enemy is, if anything, more dangerous than underestimating it.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 18059-60 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 08:21 PM
He arouses violent controversy among a loose flock of chickens that is straggling across his path, none of whom can seem to figure out how to get out of his way; they’re scared of him, but not mentally organized enough to translate that fear into a coherent plan of action.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 18560-66 | Added on Tuesday, August 01, 2017, 10:13 PM
"Yes. Secretary of State Stimson did away with it, he said ‘Gentlemen do not read one another’s mail.’" Comstock laughs out loud at this. He laughs for a long time. "Ahh, the world has changed, hasn’t it, Waterhouse? Without reading Hitler’s and Tojo’s mail, where would we be now?" "We would be in a heck of a fix," Waterhouse concedes. "You have seen Bletchley Park. You have seen Central Bureau in Brisbane. Those places are nothing less than factories. Mail-reading on an industrial scale." Comstock’s eyes glitter at the idea, he is staring through the walls of the building now like Superman with his X-ray vision. "It is the way of the future, Lawrence. War will never be the same. Hitler is gone. The Third Reich is history. Nippon is soon to fall. But this only sets the stage for the struggle with Communism.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 19002-9 | Added on Thursday, August 03, 2017, 02:51 AM
2. Use a bridge ordering. A description of a set of bridge hands that you might see in a newspaper or a bridge book is about a 95-bit key. If the communicants can agree on a way to convert that to a deck ordering and a way to set the jokers (perhaps after the first two cards that are mentioned in the discussion of the game), this can work. Be warned: the secret police can find your bridge column and copy down the order. You can try setting up some repeatable convention for which bridge column to use; for example, "use the bridge column in your home town newspaper for the day on which you encrypt the message," or something like that. Or use a list of keywords to search the New York Times website, and use the bridge column for the day of the article that comes up when you search on those words. If the keywords are found or intercepted, they look like a passphrase. And pick your own convention; remember that the secret police read Neal Stephenson’s books, too.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 19085-91 | Added on Thursday, August 03, 2017, 02:57 AM
*Baudot code is what teletypes use. Each of the 32 characters in the teletype alphabet has a unique number assigned to it. This number can be represented as a five-digit binary number, that is, five ones or zeroes, or (more useful) five holes, or absences of holes, across a strip of paper tape. Such numbers can also be represented as patterns of electrical voltages, which can be sent down a wire, or over the radio waves, and printed out at the other end. Lately, the Germans have been using encrypted Baudot-code messages for communications between high-level command posts; e.g., between Berlin and the various Army group headquarters. At Bletchley Park, this category of encryption schemes is called Fish, and the Colossus machine is being built specifically to break it.
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 19105-8 | Added on Thursday, August 03, 2017, 02:58 AM
"There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily."
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Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Highlight Loc. 19105-9 | Added on Thursday, August 03, 2017, 02:58 AM
"There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily." —Alan Turing
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 101-7 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 01:44 AM
Two aphorisms detachable from the novel may suggest something of the complex nature of this freedom and how it may have struck the novel’s first readers. One is the much-quoted ’Manuscripts don’t burn‘, which seems to express an absolute trust in the triumph of poetry, imagination, the free word, over terror and oppression, and could thus become a watchword of the intelligentsia. The publication of The Master and Margarita was taken as a proof of the assertion. In fact, during a moment of fear early in his work on the novel, Bulgakov did burn what he had written. And yet, as we see, it refused to stay burned. This moment of fear, however, brings me to the second aphorism — ’Cowardice is the most terrible of vices’ — which is repeated with slight variations several times in the novel.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 169-76 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:01 AM
It differs little from the final version. In it, however, the master is told explicitly and directly: The house on Sadovaya and the horrible Bosoy will vanish from your memory, but with them will go Ha-Nozri and the forgiven hegemon. These things are not for your spirit. You will never raise yourself higher, you will not see Yeshua, you will never leave your refuge. In an earlier note, Bulgakov had written even more tellingly: ‘You will not hear the liturgy. But you will listen to the romantics ...’ These words, which do not appear in the definitive text, tell us how painfully Bulgakov weighed the question of cowardice and guilt in considering the fate of his hero, and how we should understand the ending of the final version. They also indicate a thematic link between Pilate, the master, and the author himself, connecting the historical and contemporary parts of the novel.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 183-91 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:02 AM
In the typescript, the fate of the master, announced to Woland by Matthew Levi, speaking for Yeshua, is not to follow Pilate but to go to his ‘eternal refuge’ with Margarita, in a rather German-Romantic setting, with Schubert’s music and blossoming cherry trees. Asked by Woland, ’But why don’t you take him with you into the light?‘ Levi replies in a sorrowful voice, ’He does not deserve the light, he deserves peace.‘ Bulgakov, still pondering the problem of the master’s guilt (and his own, for what he considered various compromises, including his work on a play about Stalin’s youth), went back to his notes and revisions from 1936, but lightened their severity with an enigmatic irony. This was to be the definitive resolution. Clearly, the master is not to be seen as a heroic martyr for art or a ’Christ-figure‘. Bulgakov’s gentle irony is a warning against the mistake, more common in our time than we might think, of equating artistic mastery with a sort of saintliness, or, in Kierkegaard’s terms, of confusing the aesthetic with the ethical.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 200-207 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:04 AM
The Master and Margarita as a whole is a consistently free verbal construction which, true to its own premises, can re-create ancient Jerusalem in the smallest physical detail, but can also alter the specifics of the New Testament and play variations on its principal figures, can combine the realities of Moscow life with witchcraft, vampirism, the tearing off and replacing of heads, can describe for several pages the sensation of flight on a broomstick or the gathering of the infamous dead at Satan’s annual spring ball, can combine the most acute sense of the fragility of human life with confidence in its indestructibility. Bulgakov underscores the continuity of this verbal world by having certain phrases — ’Oh, gods, my gods‘, ’Bring me poison‘, ’Even by moonlight I have no peace’ - migrate from one character to another, or to the narrator. A more conspicuous case is the Pilate story itself, successive parts of which are told by Woland, dreamed by the poet Homeless, written by the master, and read by Margarita, while the whole preserves its stylistic unity.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 213-19 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:05 AM
It is not by chance that his stage adaptations of the comic masterpieces of Gogol and Cervantes coincided with the writing of The Master and Margarita. Behind such specific ‘influences’ stands the age-old tradition of folk humour with its carnivalized world-view, its reversals and dethronings, its relativizing of worldly absolutes — a tradition that was the subject of a monumental study by Bulgakov’s countryman and contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, which in its way was as much an explosion of Soviet reality as Bulgakov’s novel, appeared in 1965, a year before The Master and Margarita. The coincidence was not lost on Russian readers. Commenting on it, Bulgakov’s wife noted that, while there had never been any direct link between the two men, they were both responding to the same historical situation from the same cultural basis.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 220-23 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:06 AM
Many observations from Bakhtin’s study seem to be aimed directly at Bulgakov’s intentions, none more so than his comment on Rabelais’s travesty of the ‘hidden meaning’, the ‘secret’, the ‘terrifying mysteries’ of religion, politics and economics: ’Laughter must liberate the gay truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by the seriousness of fear, suffering, and violence.‘
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 226-28 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:08 AM
In his novel ... he uses the popular-festive system of images with its charter of freedoms consecrated by many centuries; and he uses it to inflict a severe punishment upon his foe, the Gothic age ... In this setting of consecrated rights Rabelais attacks the fundamental dogmas and sacraments, the holy of holies of medieval ideology.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 229-32 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:08 AM
For thousands of years the people have used these festive comic images to express their criticism, their deep distrust of official truth, and their highest hopes and aspirations. Freedom was not so much an exterior right as it was the inner content of these images. It was the thousand-year-old language of fearlessness, a language with no reservations and omissions, about the world and about power.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 233-37 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:10 AM
The novel’s form excludes psychological analysis and historical commentary. Hence the quickness and pungency of Bulgakov’s writing. At the same time, it allows Bulgakov to exploit all the theatricality of its great scenes - storms, flight, the attack of vampires, all the antics of the demons Koroviev and Behemoth, the seance in the Variety theatre, the ball at Satan‘s, but also the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, the crucifixion as witnessed by Matthew Levi, the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 238-40 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:10 AM
his premises are made clear in the very first pages of the novel, in the dialogue between Woland and the atheist Berlioz. By the deepest irony of all, the ‘prince of this world’ stands as guarantor of the ’other’ world. It exists, since he exists. But he says nothing directly about it.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 241-52 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:11 AM
Of this language Kafka wrote, in his parable ’On Parables‘: Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: ‘Go over,’ he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if it was worth the trouble; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something, too, that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the least. All these parables really set out to say simply that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter. Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables, you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You win. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality. In parable you lose. A similar dialogue lies at the heart of Bulgakov’s novel. In it there are those who belong to parable and those who belong to reality. There are those who go over and those who do not. There are those who win in parable and become parables themselves, and there are those who win in reality. But this reality belongs to Woland.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 261-62 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:12 AM
‘He is of a rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight. Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 266-68 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:13 AM
Once terror is identified with the world, it becomes invisible. Bulgakov’s portrayal of Moscow under Stalin’s terror is remarkable precisely for its weightless, circus-like theatricality and lack of pathos. It is a substanceless reality, an empty suit writing at a desk.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 270-75 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:15 AM
Berlioz, the comparatist, is the spokesman for this ‘normal’ state of affairs, which is what makes his conversation with Woland so interesting. In it he is confronted with another reality which he cannot recognize. He becomes ’unexpectedly mortal‘. In the story of Pilate, however, a moment of recognition does come. It occurs during Pilate’s conversation with Yeshua, when he sees the wandering philosopher’s head float off and in its place the toothless head of the aged Tiberius Caesar. This is the pivotal moment of the novel. Pilate breaks off his dialogue with Yeshua, he does not ’go over‘, and afterwards must sit like a stone for two thousand years waiting to continue their conversation.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 319-21 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:18 AM
‘... who are you, then?’ ‘I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.’ Goethe, Faust
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 370-73 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:22 AM
Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich also informed the poet, among other things, that the passage in the fifteenth book of Tacitus’s famous Annals,8 the forty-fourth chapter, where mention is made of the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 377-82 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:23 AM
Berlioz’s high tenor rang out in the deserted walk, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated man can go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris,9 a benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Tammuz,10 and about Marduk,11 and even about a lesser known, terrible god, Vitzliputzli,12 once greatly venerated by the Aztecs in Mexico.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 388-92 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:24 AM
First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head.13 He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left — for some reason — green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.14
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 399-405 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:25 AM
‘For instance, Ivan,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘you portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that a whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis,15 the Phrygian Attis,16 the Persian Mithras.17 And, to put it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included, and what’s necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth or, suppose, the coming of the Magi,18 you portray the absurd rumours of their coming. Otherwise it follows from your story that he really was born! ...’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 412-13 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:26 AM
It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him — that is, not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 421-30 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:27 AM
and, casting a thievish glance around and muffling his low voice for some reason, he said: ‘Forgive my importunity, but, as I understand, along with everything else, you also do not believe in God?’ He made frightened eyes and added: ‘I swear I won’t tell anyone!’ ‘No, we don’t believe in God,’ Berlioz replied, smiling slightly at the foreign tourist’s fright, ‘but we can speak of it quite freely.’ The foreigner sat back on the bench and asked, even with a slight shriek of curiosity: ‘You are — atheists?!’ ‘Yes, we’re atheists,’ Berlioz smilingly replied, and Homeless thought, getting angry: ‘Latched on to us, the foreign goose!’ ‘Oh, how lovely!’ the astonishing foreigner cried out and began swivelling his head, looking from one writer to the other. ‘In our country atheism does not surprise anyone,’ Berlioz said with diplomatic politeness. ‘The majority of our population consciously and long ago ceased believing in the fairy tales about God.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 439-40 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:27 AM
‘Alas!’ Berlioz said with regret. ‘Not one of these proofs is worth anything, and mankind shelved them long ago. You must agree that in the realm of reason there can be no proof of God’s existence.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 463-70 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:31 AM
‘And in fact,’ here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ‘imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ... hem ... hem ... lung cancer ...’ — here the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure — ‘yes, cancer’ — narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word — ’and so your governing is over! ‘You are no longer interested in anyone’s fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 638-46 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:43 AM
‘No, no, Hegemon,’ the arrested man said, straining all over in his wish to convince, ‘there’s one with a goatskin parchment who follows me, follows me and keeps writing all the time. But once I peeked into this parchment and was horrified. I said decidedly nothing of what’s written there. I implored him: “Burn your parchment, I beg you!” But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.’ ‘Who is that?’ Pilate asked squeamishly and touched his temple with his hand. ‘Matthew Levi,’13 the prisoner explained willingly. ‘He used to be a tax collector, and I first met him on the road in Bethphage,14 where a fig grove juts out at an angle, and I got to talking with him. He treated me hostilely at first and even insulted me — that is, thought he insulted me - by calling me a dog.’ Here the prisoner smiled. ‘I personally see nothing bad about this animal, that I should be offended by this word ...’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 660-69 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:45 AM
‘Matthew Levi?’ the sick man asked in a hoarse voice and dosed his eyes. ‘Yes, Matthew Levi,’ the high, tormenting voice came to him. ‘And what was it in any case that you said about the temple to the crowd in the bazaar?’ The responding voice seemed to stab at Pilate’s temple, was inexpressibly painful, and this voice was saying: ‘I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall and a new temple of truth would be built. I said it that way so as to make it more understandable.’ ‘And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?’15 And here the procurator thought: ‘Oh, my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary at a trial ... my reason no longer serves me ...’ And again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. ‘Poison, bring me poison ...’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 722-27 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:49 AM
‘I do not know these good people,’ the prisoner replied. ‘Truly?’ ‘Truly.’ ‘And now tell me, why is it that you use the words “good people” all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?’ ‘Everyone,’ the prisoner replied. ‘There are no evil people in the world.’ ‘The first I hear of it,’ Pilate said, grinning. ‘But perhaps I know too little of life! ... You needn’t record any more,’ he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 763-68 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:52 AM
‘Listen, Ha-Nozri,’ the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator’s face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed, ‘did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you? ... Yes ... or ... no?’ Pilate drew the word ‘no’ out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instil in the prisoner. ‘To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,’ the prisoner observed. ‘I have no need to know,’ Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, ‘whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 781-85 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:53 AM
‘Among other things,’ the prisoner recounted, ‘I said that all authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any authority.’ ‘Go on!’ ‘I didn’t go on,’ said the prisoner. ‘Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 818-21 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 02:56 AM
A moment later Mark Ratslayer stood before the procurator. The procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the head of the secret service, along with the procurator’s directive that Yeshua Ha-Nozri was to be separated from the other condemned men, and also that the soldiers of the secret service were to be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to talk with Yeshua about anything at all or to answer any of his questions.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 906-10 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 03:04 AM
Remember how on account of you I had to remove the shields with the emperor’s insignia from the walls, had to transfer troops, had, as you see, to come in person to look into what goes on with you here! Remember my words: it is not just one cohort that you will see here in Yershalaim, High Priest - no! The whole Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arabian cavalry will arrive, and then you will hear bitter weeping and wailing! You will remember Bar-Rabban then, whom you saved, and you will regret having sent to his death a philosopher with his peaceful preaching!’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 978-81 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 03:10 AM
He knew that behind his back the platform was being showered with bronze coins, dates, that people in the howling mob were climbing on shoulders, crushing each other, to see the miracle with their own eyes - how a man already in the grip of death escaped that grip! How the legionaries take the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain in his arms, dislocated during his interrogation; how he, wincing and groaning, nevertheless smiles a senseless, crazed smile.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1017-23 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 04:53 AM
‘Oh, yes! That there is one who can!’ the professor, beginning to speak in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer. They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared: ‘The thing is ...’ here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke in a whisper, ‘that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you - not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh ...’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1032-38 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 04:54 AM
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Berlioz said excitedly, ‘incidentally it’s all possible ... even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so forth ... Did you come alone or with your wife?’ ‘Alone, alone, I’m always alone,’ the professor replied bitterly. ‘And where are your things, Professor?’ Berlioz asked insinuatingly. ‘At the Metropol?1 Where are you staying?’ ‘I? ... Nowhere,’ the half-witted German answered, his green eye wandering in wild anguish over the Patriarch’s Ponds. ‘How’s that? But ... where are you going to live?’ ‘In your apartment,’ the madman suddenly said brashly, and winked.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1065-68 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 04:57 AM
Here, just at the exit to Bronnaya, there rose from a bench to meet the editor exactly the same citizen who in the sunlight earlier had formed himself out of the thick swelter. Only now he was no longer made of air, but ordinary, fleshly, and Berlioz clearly distinguished in the beginning twilight that he had a little moustache like chicken feathers, tiny eyes, ironic and half drunk, and checkered trousers pulled up so high that his dirty white socks showed.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1098-1105 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 05:26 PM
‘... Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It’s her work ... She bought sunflower oil at the grocery, and went and broke the whole litre-bottle on the turnstile! Messed her skirt all up, and swore and swore! ... And he, poor man, must have slipped and - right on to the rails ...’ Of all that the woman shouted, one word lodged itself in Ivan Nikolaevich’s upset brain: ‘Annushka’... ‘Annushka ... Annushka?’ the poet muttered, looking around anxiously. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute ...’ The word ‘Annushka’ got strung together with the words ’sunflower oil‘, and then for some reason with ’Pontius Pilate‘. The poet dismissed Pilate and began linking up the chain that started from the word ’Annushka‘. And this chain got very quickly linked up and led at once to the mad professor.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1194-1202 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 05:34 PM
In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre.3 Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant, bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water. It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However, he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank. When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the latter, but also the former — that is, the bearded fellow himself — had been stolen.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1337-41 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 05:54 PM
And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1408-18 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 05:59 PM
All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a conversation was going on in the coat room between the commander of the brig and the doorman. ‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate inquired coldly. ‘But, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman replied, cowering, ‘how could I not let him in, if he’s a member of Massolit?’ ‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate repeated. ‘Pardon me, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman said, turning purple, ‘but what could I do? I understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda ...’ ‘Ladies have nothing to do with it, it makes no difference to the ladies,’ the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes, ‘but it does to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the streets of Moscow only in this one case, that he’s accompanied by the police, and only to one place — the police station! And you, if you’re a doorman, ought to know that on seeing such a man, you must, without a moment’s delay, start blowing your whistle. Do you hear? Do you hear what’s going on on the veranda?’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1521-27 | Added on Saturday, August 05, 2017, 06:06 PM
‘Ah, so?!’ Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look. ‘Well, then ... Goodbye!’ And he rushed head first into the window-blind. The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted: ‘So that’s the sort of windows you’ve got here! Let me go! Let me go! ...’ A syringe flashed in the doctor’s hand, with a single movement the woman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm with unwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands of the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck the needle into Ivan’s arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and then lowered him on to the couch.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1913-18 | Added on Monday, August 07, 2017, 08:17 PM
Here something strange happened with Ivan Nikolaevich. His will seemed to crack, and he felt himself weak, in need of advice. ‘What am I to do, then?’ he asked, timidly this time. ‘Well, how very nice!’ Stravinsky replied. ‘A most reasonable question. Now I am going to tell you what actually happened to you. Yesterday someone frightened you badly and upset you with a story about Pontius Pilate and other things. And so you, a very nervous and high-strung man, started going around the city, telling about Pontius Pilate. It’s quite natural that you’re taken for a madman. Your salvation now lies in just one thing - complete peace. And you absolutely must remain here.’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 1925-32 | Added on Monday, August 07, 2017, 08:18 PM
‘Well, all right. Only don’t strain your head. If it doesn’t come out today, it will tomorrow.’ ‘Hell escape.’ ‘Oh, no,’ Stravinsky objected confidently, ‘he won’t escape anywhere, I guarantee that. And remember that here with us you’ll be helped in all possible ways, and without us nothing will come of it. Do you hear me?’ Stravinsky suddenly asked meaningly and took Ivan Nikolaevich by both hands. Holding them in his own, he repeated for a long time, his eyes fixed on Ivan’s: ‘You’ll be helped here ... do you hear me? ... You’ll be helped here ... you’ll get relief ... it’s quiet here, all peaceful ... you’ll be helped here ...’ Ivan Nikolaevich unexpectedly yawned, and the expression on his face softened. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said quietly.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 2325-35 | Added on Tuesday, August 08, 2017, 02:10 AM
Ivan worked assiduously, crossing out what he had written, putting in new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing on its hind legs. But the drawings did not help, and the further it went, the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet’s statement became. By the time the frightening cloud with smoking edges appeared from far off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was strengthless, that he would never be able to manage with the statement, and he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly. The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the storm, became alarmed on seeing him weeping, closed the blinds so that the lightning would not frighten the patient, picked up the pages from the floor, and ran with them for the doctor. He came, gave Ivan an injection in the arm, and assured him that he would not weep any more, that everything would pass now, everything would change, everything would be forgotten. The doctor proved right. Soon the woods across the river became as before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its former perfect blue, and the river grew calm. Anguish had begun to leave Ivan right after the injection, and now the poet lay calmly and looked at the rainbow that stretched across the sky.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 2772-76 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 12:29 AM
‘Go on?’ repeated the visitor. ‘Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.’ He suddenly wiped an unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: ‘Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man ... as I was, too, then ... with that, what’s her...’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 2837-38 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 12:35 AM
The story of Ivan’s guest was becoming more confused, more filled with all sorts of reticences.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 2872-86 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 12:39 AM
“This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep without turning on the light. I was awakened by the feeling that the octopus was there. Groping in the dark, I barely managed to turn on the light. My pocket watch showed two o‘clock in the morning. I was falling ill when I went to bed, and I woke up sick. It suddenly seemed to me that the autumn darkness would push through the glass and pour into the room, and I would drown in it as in ink. I got up a man no longer in control of himself. I cried out, the thought came to me of running to someone, even if it was my landlord upstairs. I struggled with myself like a madman. I had strength enough to get to the stove and start a fire in it. When the wood began to crackle and the stove door rattled, I seemed to feel slightly better. I dashed to the front room, turned on the light there, found a bottle of white wine, uncorked it and began drinking from the bottle. This blunted the fear somewhat — at least enough to keep me from running to the landlord — and I went back to the stove. I opened the little door, so that the heat began to burn my face and hands, and whispered: ‘“Guess that trouble has befallen me ... Come, come, come! ...” ‘But no one came. The fire roared in the stove, rain lashed at the windows. Then the final thing happened. I took the heavy manuscript of the novel and the draft notebooks from the desk drawer and started burning them. This was terribly hard to do, because written-on paper burns reluctantly. Breaking my fingernails, I tore up the notebooks, stuck them vertically between the logs, and ruffled the pages with the poker. At times the ashes got the best of me, choking the flames, but I struggled with them, and the novel, though stubbornly resisting, was nevertheless perishing. Familiar words flashed before me, the yellow climbed steadily up the pages, but the words still showed through it. They would vanish only when the paper turned black, and I finished them off with the poker.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3037-42 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 10:11 PM
As soon as the findirector became firmly convinced that the administrator was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting from the legs, and twice again the findirector fancied that a putrid malarial dankness was wafting across the floor. Never for a moment taking his eyes off the administrator — who squirmed somehow strangely in his armchair, trying not to get out of the blue shade of the desk lamp, and screening himself with a newspaper in some remarkable fashion from the bothersome light - the findirector was thinking of only one thing: what did it all mean? Why was he being lied to so brazenly, in the silent and deserted building, by the administrator who was so late in coming back to him? And the awareness of danger, an unknown but menacing danger, began to gnaw at Rimsky’s soul.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3259-67 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 10:28 PM
‘I’ll turn it over,’ Kanavkin said quietly. ‘How much?’ ‘A thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces.’ ‘Bravo! That’s all, then?’ The programme announcer stared straight into Kanavkin’s eyes, and it even seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that those eyes sent out rays that penetrated Kanavkin like X-rays. The house stopped breathing. ‘I believe you!’ the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguished his gaze. ‘I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don’t even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but — alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it’s all over! They see it, and you’re caught!’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3276-79 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 10:30 PM
‘Money,’ the artiste went on, ‘must be kept in the state bank, in special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt’s cellar, where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for shame! You’re a grown-up!’ Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at the lapel of his jacket with his finger.
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3288-92 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 10:31 PM
‘Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she hides hers?’ the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned somehow wistfully. ‘I believe you, I believe you,’ the artiste responded with a sigh. ‘Not just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn’t tell the devil himself! Well, so, we’ll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3462-64 | Added on Wednesday, August 09, 2017, 10:57 PM
‘I was mistaken!’ Levi cried in a completely hoarse voice. ‘You are a god of evil! Or are your eyes completely clouded by smoke from the temple censers, and have your ears ceased to hear anything but the trumpeting noises of the priests? You are not an almighty god! You are a black god! I curse you, god of robbers, their soul and their protector!’
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The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Highlight Loc. 3766-73 | Added on Thursday, August 10, 2017, 02:52 AM
Maximilian Andreevich was considered one of the most intelligent men in Kiev, and deservedly so. But even the most intelligent man might have been nonplussed by such a telegram. If someone sends a telegram saying he has been run over, it is clear that he has not died of it. But then, what was this about a funeral? Or was he in a bad way and foreseeing death? That was possible, but such precision was in the highest degree strange: how could he know he would be buried on Friday at three pm? An astonishing telegram! However, intelligence is granted to intelligent people so as to sort out entangled affairs. Very simple. A mistake had been made, and the message had been distorted. The word ‘have’ had undoubtedly come there from some other telegram in place of the word Berlioz’, which got moved and wound up at the end of the telegram. With such an emendation, the meaning of the telegram became clear; though, of course, tragic.
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