So this tangle of impossible resolutions and irresolutions: The desire to have fun, to make noise, and so to... Add to the already all-but-illegible scrub forest of graffiti on the shithouse wall. Someone is coming to get you: The mailman, or a butler enters with a letter on a tray Whose message is to change everything, but in the meantime ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of the brain consists of "wires"; a single unit may have thousands of connections with other units and with itself. That is n...ot the case in a standard computer, where a chip usually has less than six connections. Moreover, neurons are much, much slower than the switching elements of the computer. It seems likely that the brain can accomplish its complex feats of perception and thought by means of millions of connections acting in parallel. The connections as a whole define the information content of the system. In this way a vast amount of knowledge can be brought to bear on a decision all at once. The brain seems to be able to perform as many as two hundred trillion operations in a second; not serially, but simultaneously.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged fee...t and serve him for a horse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank... his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions--an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look Johnny, Spig just joined the Navy. I'm married to it. I run the mess hall. I swab the deck. I chip the rust. You're afraid th...at they'll kick Spig out of the Navy. I'm afraid that they won't.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A pragmatic race, the Japanese appear to have decided long ago that the only reason for drinking alcohol is to become intoxicated ...and therefore drink only when they wish to be drunk. So I went out into the night and the neon and let the crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He'd been numb a long time, years. All his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb at the cold sweating ce...nter of every drug deal. But now he'd found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It's the meat talking, ignore it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but... a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »