'But are all these quite necessary troubles?' asked Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas connected with a marriage.
'Oh, of course,' he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. 'There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding arranged?'
'Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have given me
of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely inten
s of memory, and the various other symptoms of the hypnotic state as we know it. It was thought that magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent, and that it might be used by physicians, though others should not be allowed to practice it. In 1837 another commission made a decidedly unfavorable report.
Soon after this Burdin, a member of the Academy, offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who would read the number of a bank-note or the like with his eyes bandaged (under certain fixed conditions), but it was never awarded, though many claimed it, and there has been considerable evidence that persons in the hypnotic state have (sometimes) remarkable clairvoyant powers.
Soon after this, magnetism fell into very low repute throughout France and Germany, and scientific men became loath to have their names connected with the study of it in any way. The study had not yet been seriously taken up in England, and two physicians who gave some attention to it suffered decidedly in profe
this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.
'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.'
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad - yet. Say, Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'
'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'
He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gis
estimates, and changes the relative sizes of many ofthe world's economies.
Concise descriptions of the major religions mentioned in the Factbookhave been added to the Notes and Definitions. France 's redesignationof some of its overseas possessions caused the five former Indian Oceanisland possessions making up Iles Eparses to be incorporated into theFrench Southern and Antarctic Lands, while two new Caribbean entities,St. Barthelemy and St. Martin, were created.
Revision of some individual country maps, first introduced in the 2001edition, is continued in this edition. The revised maps includeelevation extremes and a partial geographic grid. Several regional mapshave also been updated to reflect boundary changes and place namespelling changes.
Abbreviations: This information is included in Appendix A:Abbreviations, which includes all abbreviations and acronyms used inthe Factbook, with their expansions.
Acronyms: An acronym is an abbreviation coined from the initial letterof each
dingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
III.
Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house - a spacious, peak-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter.
y dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?-- and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of yours, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. I
true Dimension,although I cannot point out to you its direction, nor can youpossibly measure it.' What would you say to such a visitor?Would not you have him locked up? Well, that is my fate:and it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Squarefor preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelandersto lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth. Alas, how stronga family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanityin all Dimensions! Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes --we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slavesof our respective Dimensional prejudices, as one of yourSpaceland poets has said --
'One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin'."
[Note: The Author desires me to add, that the misconception of someof his critics on this matter has induced him to insert in hisdialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearingon the point in question, and which he had previously omittedas being tedious and unnecessary.]
On this point th
h easier than a baby, you see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to sh
similar. I want yours. I want theone you have, even if I already have one or many.
3. Lust: I have to have it.
4. Anger: I will hurt you to insure that I have it, andand to insure that you do not have one.
5. Envy: I hate that you have one.
6. Greed: There is no end to how much I want, or to howlittle I want you to have in comparison.
7. Sloth: I am opposed to you moving up the ladder: itmeans that I will have to move up the ladder, to keepmy position of lordship over you. If I have twice asmuch as you do, and you gain a rung, that means I canonly regain my previous lordship by moving up two; itis far easier to knock you back a rung, or to preventyou from climbing at all.
Destruction is easier than construction.
This becomes even more obvious for the person who hasa goal of being 10 or 100 times further up the ladderof success. . .given the old, and hopefully obsolete,or soon to be obsolete, definitions of
'But are all these quite necessary troubles?' asked Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas connected with a marriage.
'Oh, of course,' he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. 'There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding arranged?'
'Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have given me
of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely inten
s of memory, and the various other symptoms of the hypnotic state as we know it. It was thought that magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent, and that it might be used by physicians, though others should not be allowed to practice it. In 1837 another commission made a decidedly unfavorable report.
Soon after this Burdin, a member of the Academy, offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who would read the number of a bank-note or the like with his eyes bandaged (under certain fixed conditions), but it was never awarded, though many claimed it, and there has been considerable evidence that persons in the hypnotic state have (sometimes) remarkable clairvoyant powers.
Soon after this, magnetism fell into very low repute throughout France and Germany, and scientific men became loath to have their names connected with the study of it in any way. The study had not yet been seriously taken up in England, and two physicians who gave some attention to it suffered decidedly in profe
this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.
'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.'
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad - yet. Say, Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'
'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'
He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gis
estimates, and changes the relative sizes of many ofthe world's economies.
Concise descriptions of the major religions mentioned in the Factbookhave been added to the Notes and Definitions. France 's redesignationof some of its overseas possessions caused the five former Indian Oceanisland possessions making up Iles Eparses to be incorporated into theFrench Southern and Antarctic Lands, while two new Caribbean entities,St. Barthelemy and St. Martin, were created.
Revision of some individual country maps, first introduced in the 2001edition, is continued in this edition. The revised maps includeelevation extremes and a partial geographic grid. Several regional mapshave also been updated to reflect boundary changes and place namespelling changes.
Abbreviations: This information is included in Appendix A:Abbreviations, which includes all abbreviations and acronyms used inthe Factbook, with their expansions.
Acronyms: An acronym is an abbreviation coined from the initial letterof each
dingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
III.
Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house - a spacious, peak-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter.
y dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?-- and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of yours, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. I
true Dimension,although I cannot point out to you its direction, nor can youpossibly measure it.' What would you say to such a visitor?Would not you have him locked up? Well, that is my fate:and it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Squarefor preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelandersto lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth. Alas, how stronga family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanityin all Dimensions! Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes --we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slavesof our respective Dimensional prejudices, as one of yourSpaceland poets has said --
'One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin'."
[Note: The Author desires me to add, that the misconception of someof his critics on this matter has induced him to insert in hisdialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearingon the point in question, and which he had previously omittedas being tedious and unnecessary.]
On this point th
h easier than a baby, you see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to sh
similar. I want yours. I want theone you have, even if I already have one or many.
3. Lust: I have to have it.
4. Anger: I will hurt you to insure that I have it, andand to insure that you do not have one.
5. Envy: I hate that you have one.
6. Greed: There is no end to how much I want, or to howlittle I want you to have in comparison.
7. Sloth: I am opposed to you moving up the ladder: itmeans that I will have to move up the ladder, to keepmy position of lordship over you. If I have twice asmuch as you do, and you gain a rung, that means I canonly regain my previous lordship by moving up two; itis far easier to knock you back a rung, or to preventyou from climbing at all.
Destruction is easier than construction.
This becomes even more obvious for the person who hasa goal of being 10 or 100 times further up the ladderof success. . .given the old, and hopefully obsolete,or soon to be obsolete, definitions of