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121 " The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money.""I hadn't known that," I said. "I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there.""There might as well be," Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. "
― Neal Stephenson , Anathem
122 " Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bomc,' I said. 'We have a protractor.'Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string. "
123 " Jad said, "The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters."Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little. "
124 " Cord followed up with, “I like it here, but it’s beginning to feel creepy. Does anyone else think it’s creepy?”“You’re talking to a bunch of guys,” Yul said. “No one here is going to validate your feelings.” She tossed sand at him. "
125 " People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. "
126 " Get where?” Yul demanded. "
127 " The greatest difficulty for ones such as you shall be, not completion of the given tasks, but instead the humiliation and uncertainty that arise from not being able to know the entire plan. These emotions can hamper you. You must simply decide, now, either to proceed with the awareness that the entire plan might never be revealed to you—and, were it revealed, might have obvious defects—or to turn away and allow some other person to occupy the space suit that has been allotted to you. "
128 " Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. "
129 " Ideas like that are evil,” I said, “because some creepy-crawly part of your brain wants to believe in them even while your logical mind is blasting them to pieces. "
130 " The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: "
131 " our Unarians reviewed summaries of the Sæcular news of the year just ended. Then, once every ten years, just before Decennial Apert, they reviewed the previous ten annual summaries and compiled a decennial summary, which became part of our library delivery. The only criterion for a news item to make it into a summary was that it still had to seem interesting. This filtered out essentially all of the news that made up the Sæcular world’s daily papers and casts. "
132 " After thanking everyone from God on down and then back up to God again, and then, as a precaution, tacking on a blanket thank-you for any persons or supernatural beings he had left out, he began: "
133 " Well,” I’d said finally, “I guess I have to invoke the Steelyard. In the absence of a good argument to the contrary, I have to choose the simplest answer. And the simplest answer is that time runs independently in Universe A and Universe B.” “Because they are separate causal domains. "
134 " you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. "
135 " This was Orolo’s idea of an answer: “What does it mean that you worry so much?” I sighed. “Describe worrying,” he went on. “What!?” “Pretend I’m someone who has never worried. I’m mystified. I don’t get it. Tell me how to worry.” “Well…I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future.” “But I do that all the time. And yet I don’t worry.” “It is a sequence of events with a bad end.” “So, you’re worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?” “No,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “I don’t get it,” Orolo claimed, deadpan. “That is a sequence of events with a bad end.” “But it’s nonsensical. There are no nerve-gas-farting pink dragons.” “Fine,” he said, “a blue one, then. "
136 " Bulshytt: Speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said. "
137 " I created opportunities, in case we might need them. "
138 " boredom is a mask that frustration wears). "
139 " hadn’t known that,” I said. “I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.” “There might as well be,” Arsibalt said, “but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. "
140 " They are running a secure operating system you’ve never heard of,” he explained. “It’s called Shiny Hat.” “Shiny Hat.” “Yes. The most clinically paranoid operating system in the world. Since you have an overdeveloped sense of irony, Stokes, you might like to know that we acquired it from hackers who were specifically worried about being eavesdropped on by shadowy government entities. Now they work for us. "