Points And Miles Quotes & Sayings

The telescope, in enabling us to look far out into space, also allows us to look back in time. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. When we look up into the daylight sky, we are not seeing the sun as it currently is but as it was about eight minutes ago, since it takes that long for the light radiating from this familiar star to travel 93 million miles to Earth. Similarly, when the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) receives light waves from the depths of the universe, those waves will have originated from points as far as 76 sextillion (76,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away. It will have taken those waves some 13 billion years to arrive on earth, meaning they left their source about a million years after the big bang, and roughly nine to ten years before Earth even formed. — Richard Kurin

Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr. Tubulari's pentathlon, his "winterthon." "The first event," Dan Needham said, "is something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood - points off, if you break your ax. Then you have to run ten miles in deep snow, or snowshoe for thirty. Then you chop a hole in the ice, and - carrying your ax - swim a mile under a frozen lake, chopping your way out at the opposite shore. Then you build an igloo - to get warm. Then comes the dogsledding. You have to mush a team of dogs - from Anchorage to Chicago. Then you build another igloo - to rest." "THAT'S SIX EVENTS," Owen said. "A PENTATHLON IS ONLY FIVE." "So forget the second igloo," Dan Needham said. "I WONDER WHAT MISTER TUBULARI DOES FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE," Owen said. "Carrot juice," Dan said, fixing himself another whiskey. "Mister Tubulari makes his own carrot juice. — John Irving

I was going back and reading Marconi's last book again, and there's this part that
always gets me. He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is
statistically, like, zero percent. You've got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty
space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet
long in front of our eyes. So he says we don't really live in the universe at all, we live inside our
brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our
imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or
cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere
else. — David Wong

Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth's hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries. — James E. Lovelock

If I remember rightly, you on one occasion defined my limits in a very precise fashion."
"Yes," [Watson] answered, laughing. "It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mudstains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The Bible is not a set of instructions that can give us simple answers," wrote Webber, "nor a text with which to prove points ... . The guidance the Bible gives was provided for a society very different from ours ... and any set of words is open to different interpretations. — Sara Miles

The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy. — Willard Van Orman Quine

For too long we have tried to consume our
way to prosperity. Look at the cost: polluted
lands and oceans, climate change, growing
scarcity of resources from food to land to fresh
water, rampant inequality. We need to invent a
new model; a model that offers growth and social inclusion ... that is more respectful of the
planet's finite resources. Nature has been kind
to human beings, but we have not been kind to
nature. — Ban Ki-moon

Everything in physiology follows the rule that too much can be as bad as too little. There are optimal points of allostatic balance. For example, while a moderate amount of exercise generally increases bone mass, thirty-year-old athletes who run 40 to 50 miles a week can wind up with decalcified bones, decreased bone mass, increased risk of stress fractures and scoliosis (sideways curvature of the spine) - their skeletons look like those of seventy-year-olds. To put exercise in perspective, imagine this: sit with a group of hunter-gatherers from the African grasslands and explain to them that in our world we have so much food and so much free time that some of us run 26 miles in a day, simply for the sheer pleasure of it. They are likely to say, "Are you crazy? That's stressful." Throughout hominid history, if you're running 26 miles in a day, you're either very intent on eating someone or someone's very intent on eating you. — Robert M. Sapolsky

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead. — Ambrose Bierce

Bikers, in general, have just been so attractive to people. Photographers would follow them because there's this weird warrior gravitas that comes with it. The bikes are loud, they have tattoos, they have artwork that they all wear on their jackets. — Ryan Hurst

Hawai'i is the most isolated population center on Earth, with the nearest points being between Hilo on the Big Island and San Francisco in CA 2,315 miles away. — John Richard Stephens

The moment an individual can accept and forgive him or herself, even a little, is the moment in which he or she becomes to some degree lovable. — Eugene Kennedy

From The Self-Mover's Bible; The Longest Distance between Two Points is a Shortcut

Most of us look at a map and instinctively plot a trip based on the shortest distance or as the crow flies. The difference here is that you aren't flying a crow you're driving a truck. Unless you are personally familiar with the alternative route your quickest and safest route is the Interstate. 500 miles of smooth sailing on a six-lane highway takes less time to drive than 400 miles on winding two-lane country roads. The Interstate was made for trucks. — Jerry G. West

It's all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation ... is easy, is quick. There's also a universe, apparently. But I cannot bear to see the stars, even though I know they're there all right, and I do see them, because Tod looks upward at night, as everybody does, and coos and points. The Plough. Sirius, the dog. The stars, to me, are like pins and needles, are like the routemap of a nightmare. Don't join the dots. ... Of the stars, one alone can I contemplate without pain. And that's a planet. The planet they call the evening star, the morning star. Intense Venus. — Martin Amis

How do you even know I'm someone you'll want to remember? We've only seen each other once before.'
(Amber)
'Have you ever looked at a painting and known you had something in common with it? Have you ever seen something so beautiful you feel like crying? When I see you, I feel that way. I feel like the deepest part of me understands something vital about you.'
(Virgil Daly) — Christina Westover

The pain in my lungs swells up and blossoms until it feels like it's everywhere, tearing through all my cells and muscles at once. The cramp in my leg makes me wince every time my heel hits the pavement. It's always like this on miles two and three, like all the stress and anxiety and irritation and fear get transformed into little needling points of physical pain, and you can't breathe or imagine going farther or think anything but: I can't. I can't. I can't. — Lauren Oliver

You may not realize this, brother, but Izzy is loyal to me. So don't make me unleash her on you."
"And now you're making fun of me," Izzy complained.
"No. It's a serious threat," Celyn admitted. "Used by many in the family. Especially Briec. He loves threatening those who annoy him - "
"Which is everyone," Brannie stated while grabbing the last loaf of bread and tearing it into three pieces.
" - with his beautiful eldest daughter who will rip the scales from your back and tear the still-beating heart from your chest before spitting on your corpse."
Izzy put her hand to her chest, her voice trembling as she fought tears. "That is the sweetest thing I've ever heard. — G.A. Aiken

Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on the package, you were golden. Those words on the package promise ease from metropolitan care, modern worries. And out here, if you opened things up, underneath the cellophane, what did you find inside? That fruit has splendid packaging, it has solid consumer awareness and is an animal favorite. Its seeds will be deposited in spoor miles away and its market dominance will increase. Splendid and beautiful petals are great advertising
the insects buzz and hop from all points every weekend to hit this flower-bed mall. Natural selection was market forces. In business, in the woods: what is necessary to the world will last. — Colson Whitehead

They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting. — Jerome K. Jerome

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals. — Friedrich Nietzsche