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I Can't Fix The World. If You Want To Make A Difference In Life, You Have To Direct Your Energies In A Focused Way.
-Bill Bryson
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I Can't Fix The

Bill Bryson
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I Can't Fix The World. If You Want To Make A Difference In Life, You Have To Direct Your Energies In A Focused Way.

Understanding the Quote: "i can't fix the world. if you want to make a difference..."

This quote by Bill Bryson reflects deeply on the theme of differences. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Differences, Making A Difference, Energy, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Bill Bryson interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is celebrated for insightful thoughts on differences and making a difference. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Differences
Making A Difference
Energy
More From Bill Bryson
After Years Of Patient Study (and With Cricket There Can Be No Other Kind), I Have Decided That There Is Nothing Wrong With The Game That The Introduction Of Golf Carts Wouldn't Fix In A Hurry.
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I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
There Is No Such Thing, Incidentally, As One Kudo.
Most Big Companies Don't Like You Very Much, Except Hotels, Airlines And Microsoft, Which Don't Like You At All.
America
Microsoft
World
We Used To Build Civilizations. Now We Build Shopping Malls.
Badass
Bad Ass
Civilization
I'm Not Funny In Person. I Mean I'm Really Not. I'm One Of Those People Who Always Screw Up Anecdotes.
Mean
People
Anecdotes
Physics Is Really Nothing More Than A Search For Ultimate Simplicity, But So Far All We Have Is A Kind Of Elegant Messiness.
Simplicity
Kind
Physics
In My Day, The Principal Concerns Of University Students Were Sex, Smoking Dope, Rioting And Learning. Learning Was Something You Did Only When The First Three Weren't Available.
Sex
Dope
University Students
America Is A Very Seductive Place In Terms Of Lifestyle And Comfort, But It Wasn't For Me.
America
Seductive
Comfort
But What Is Life To A Lichen ? Yet Its Impulse To Exist, To Be, Is Every Bit As Strong As Ours Arguably Even Stronger. If I Were Told That I Had To Spend Decades Being A Furry Growth On A Rock In The Woods, I Believe I Would Lose The Will To Go On.
Strong
Believe
Rocks
We Forget Just How Painfully Dim The World Was Before Electricity. A Candle, A Good Candle, Provides Barely A Hundredth Of The Illumination Of A Single 100 Watt Light Bulb.
Light
Illumination
World
You May Find That Your Parents Are The Most Delightful People, But You Don't Want To Live With Them.
People
Parent
May
Most Of The Time I Am Sunk In Thought, But At Some Point On Each Walk There Comes A Moment When I Look Up And Notice, With A Kind Of First-time Astonishment, The Amazing Complex Delicacy Of The Words, The Casual Ease With Which Elemental Things Come Together To Form A Composition That Is—whatever The Season, Wherever I Put My Besotted Gaze—perfect.
Perfect
Together
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It Is A Slightly Arresting Notion That If You Were To Pick Yourself Apart With Tweezers, One Atom At A Time, You Would Produce A Mound Of Fine Atomic Dust, None Of Which Had Ever Been Alive But All Of Which Had Once Been You.
Life
Science
Dust
Perhaps It's My Natural Pessimism, But It Seems That An Awfully Large Part Of Travel These Days Is To See Things While You Still Can.
Travel
Memorable
Pessimism
In The Countryside, Litter Doesn't Have A Friend. It Doesn't Have Anybody Who's Saying, 'wait A Minute, This Is Really Starting To Get Out Of Control.'
Waiting
Starting
Minutes
Before, Prior To. There Is No Difference Between These Two Except Length And A Certain Affectedness On The Part Of 'prior To.' To Paraphrase Bernstein, If You Would Use 'posterior To' Instead Of 'after,' Then By All Means Use 'prior To' Instead Of 'before.
Mean
Two
Differences
There Are Three Stages In Scientific Discovery. First, People Deny That It Is True, Then They Deny That It Is Important; Finally They Credit The Wrong Person.
Discovery
People
Important
Four Times I Was Honked At For Having The Temerity To Proceed Through Town Without The Benefit Of Metal.
Journey
Hiking
Benefits
A Significant Fraction Of Thru-hikers Reach Katahdin, Then Turn Around And Start Back To Georgia. They Just Can't Stop Walking, Which Kind Of Makes You Wonder.
Georgia
Kind
Wonder
If You Can Imagine A Man Having A Vasectomy Without Anesthetic To The Sound Of Frantic Sitar-playing, You Will Have Some Idea Of What Popular Turkish Music Is Like.
Men
Ideas
Sound
A World Without Newspapers Or A World Where The Newspapers Are Purely Electronic And You Read Them On A Screen Is Not A Very Appealing World.
World
Newspapers
Screens
The Tearoom Lady Called Me Love. All The Shop Ladies Called Me Love And Most Of The Men Called Me Mate. I Hadn't Been Here Twelve Hours And Already They Loved Me.
Men
Twelve
Hours
Not Writing The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again Is To Me The Real Pleasure Of What I Do.
Real
Book
Writing
Energy Is Liberated Matter, Matter Is Energy Waiting To Happen.
Waiting
Energy
Matter
When I Awoke It Was Daylight. The Inside Of My Tent Was Coated In A Curious Flaky Rime, Which I Realized After A Moment Was All Of My Nighttime Snores, Condensed And Frozen And Pasted To The Fabric, As If Into A Scrapbook Of Respiratory Memories.
Memories
Fabric
Frozen
Absolute Brain Size Does Not Tell You Everything Or Possibly Sometimes Even Much. Elephants And Whales Both Have Brains Larger Than Ours, But You Wouldn't Have Much Trouble Outwitting Them In Contract Negotiations.
Whales
Elephants
Brain
There'd Never Been A More Advantageous Time To Be A Criminal In America Than During The 13 Years Of Prohibition. At A Stroke, The American Government Closed Down The Fifth Largest Industry In The United States - Alcohol Production - And Just Handed It To Criminals - A Pretty Remarkable Thing To Do.
Government
Years
America
A Third...candidate For Shakespearean Authorship Was Christopher Marlowe. He Was The Right Age (just Two Months Older Than Shakespeare), Had The Requisite Talent, And Would Certainly Have Had Ample Leisure After 1593, Assuming He Wasn't Too Dead To Work.
Two
Age
Leisure
This Was 1990, The Year That Communism Died In Europe And It Seemed Strange To Me That In All The Words That Were Written About The Fall Of The Iron Curtain, Nobody Anywhere Lamented That It Was The End Of A Noble Experiment. I Know That Communism Never Worked And I Would Have Disliked Living Under It Myself But None The Less It Seems That There Was A Kind Of Sadness In The Thought That The Only Economic System That Appeared To Work Was One Based On Self Interest And Greed.
Fall
Sadness
Self
There Are Only Three Things That Can Kill A Farmer: Lightning, Rolling Over In A Tractor, And Old Age.
Age
Lightning
Rolling Along
Everywhere Throughout New England You Find Old, Tumbledown Field Walls, Often In The Middle Of The Deepest, Most Settled- Looking Woods- A Reminder Of Just How Swiftly Nature Reclaims The Land In America.
Wall
Land
America
The People Are Immensely Likable— Cheerful, Extrovert, Quick-witted, And Unfailingly Obliging. Their Cities Are Safe And Clean And Nearly Always Built On Water. They Have A Society That Is Prosperous, Well Ordered, And Instinctively Egalitarian. The Food Is Excellent. The Beer Is Cold. The Sun Nearly Always Shines. There Is Coffee On Every Corner. Life Doesn't Get Much Better Than This.
Coffee
Beer
Cities
I Refer Of Course To The Soaring Wonder Of The Age Known As The Eiffel Tower. Never In History Has A Structure Been More Technologically Advanced, Materially Obsolescent, And Gloriously Pointless All At The Same Time.
Age
Towers
Wonder
For A Long Time, I'd Been Vaguely Fascinated By The Idea That Charles Lindbergh Flew The Atlantic And Babe Ruth Hit 60 Home Runs In The Same Summer.
Summer
Running
Home
For Anyone Of A Rational Disposition, Fashion Is Often Nearly Impossible To Fathom. Throughout Many Periods Of History – Perhaps Most – It Can Seem As If The Whole Impulse Of Fashion Has Been To Look Maximally Ridiculous. If One Could Be Maximally Uncomfortable As Well, The Triumph Was All The Greater.
Fashion
Triumph
Looks
It Is Always Quietly Thrilling To Find Yourself Looking At A World You Know Well But Have Never Seen From Such An Angle Before.
Finding Yourself
World
Angle
And I Find Chopsticks Frankly Distressing. Am I Alone In Thinking It Odd That A People Ingenious Enough To Invent Paper, Gunpowder, Kites And Any Number Of Other Useful Objects, And Who Have A Noble History Extending Back 3,000 Years Haven't Yet Worked Out That A Pair Of Knitting Needles Is No Way To Capture Food?
Food
Thinking
Knitting Needles
The Number Of People On Whose Cooperative Efforts Your Eventual Existence Depends Has Risen To Approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, Which Is Several Thousand Times The Total Number Of People Who Have Ever Lived.
Numbers
People
Effort
"croissant": However You Choose To Pronounce It At Home, It Is Perhaps Worth Nothing That Outside The United States, The Closer You Can Come To Saying "kwass-ohn," The Sooner You Can Expect To Be Presented With One.
Home
United States
Croissants
Tune Your Television To Any Channel It Doesn't Receive And About 1 Percent Of The Dancing Static You See Is Accounted For By This Ancient Remnant Of The Big Bang. The Next Time You Complain That There Is Nothing On, Remember That You Can Always Watch The Birth Of The Universe.
Dancing
Tunes
Watches
Book Tours Are Really Kind Of Fun. You Get To Stay In Nice Hotels, You Are Driven Everywhere In Big Silver Cars, You Are Treated As If You Are Much More Important Than You Are, You Can Eat Steak Three Times A Day At Someone Else's Expense, And You Get To Talk Endlessly About Yourself For Weeks At A Stretch.
Fun
Nice
Book
To My Surprise, I Felt A Certain Springy Keenness. I Was Ready To Hike. I Had Waited Months For This Day, After All, Even If It Had Been Mostly With Foreboding. I Wanted To See What Was Out There. All Over America Today People Would Be Dragging Themselves To Work, Stuck In Traffic Jams, Wreathed In Exhaust Smoke. I Was Going For A Walk In The Woods. I Was More Than Ready For This.
America
People
Would Be
You Can Always Tell A Midwestern Couple In Europe Because They Will Be Standing On A Traffic Island In The Middle Of A Busy Intersection Looking At A Windblown Map And Arguing Over Which Way Is West. European Cities, With Their Wandering Streets And Undisciplined Alleys, Drive Midwesterners Practically Insane.
Couple
Cities
Islands
Those Who Sniff Decay In Every Shift Of Sense Or Alteration Of Usage Do The Language No Service. Too Often For Such People The Notion Of Good English Has Less To Do With Expressing Ideas Clearly Than With Making Words Conform To Some Arbitrary Pattern.
Writing
Ideas
People
Most Of What Has Lived On Earth Has Left Behind No Record At All.
Records
Earth
Left Behind
From An Evolutionary Point Of View, Sex Is Really Just A Reward Mechanism To Encourage Us To Pass On Our Genetic Material.
Sex
Views
Rewards
Because We Humans Are Big And Clever Enough To Produce And Utilize Antibiotics And Disinfectants, It Is Easy To Convince Ourselves That We Have Banished Bacteria To The Fringes Of Existence. Don't You Believe It. Bacteria May Not Build Cities Or Have Interesting Social Lives, But They Will Be Here When The Sun Explodes. This Is Their Planet, And We Are On It Only Because They Allow Us To Be.
Clever
Believe
Cities
I Turned To My Own Bunk And Examined It With A Kind Of Appalled Fascination. If The Mattress Stains Were Anything To Go By, A Previous User Had Not So Much Suffered From Incontinence As Rejoiced In It. He Had Evidently Included The Pillow In His Celebrations.
Travel
Fascination
Bunk
More Than 300 Million People In The World Speak English And The Rest, It Sometimes Seems, Try To.
Speak English
People
Trying
The Food Is Excellent. The Beer Is Cold. The Sun Nearly Always Shines. There Is Coffee On Every Corner. Life Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This.
Travel
Coffee
Beer
Columbus Real Achievement Was Managing To Cross The Ocean Successfully In Both Directions. Though An Accomplished Enough Mariner, He Was Not Terribly Good At A Great Deal Else, Especially Geography, The Skill That Would Seem Most Vital In An Explorer.
Real
Ocean
Discovery
America Is A Great Disappointment To Me. As I Said In One Of My Books, Other Societies Create Civilisations; We Build Shopping Malls.
Disappointment
Book
Shopping
Our Instinct May Be To See The Impossibility Of Tracking Everything Down As Frustrating, Dispiriting, Perhaps Even Appalling, But It Can Just As Well Be Viewed As Almost Unbearably Exciting. We Live On A Planet That Has A More Or Less Infinite Capacity To Surprise. What Reasoning Person Could Possibly Want It Any Other Way?
May
Want
Way
To My Mind, The Greatest Reward And Luxury Of Travel Is To Be Able To Experience Everyday Things As If For The First Time, To Be In A Position In Which Almost Nothing Is So Familiar It Is Taken For Granted.
Life
Summer
Travel
I Understand Cricket - What's Going On, The Scoring - But I Can't Understand Why.
Cricket
I Can
No One Knows, Incidentally, Why Australia's Spiders Are So Extravagantly Toxic; Capturing Small Insects And Injecting Them With Enough Poison To Drop A Horse Would Appear To Be The Most Literal Case Of Overkill. Still, It Does Mean That Everyone Gives Them Lots Of Space.
Horse
Mean
Australia
When I Was Growing Up I Used To Think That The Best Thing About Coming From Des Moines Was That It Meant You Didn't Come From Anywhere Else In Iowa. By Iowa Standards, Des Moines Is A Mecca Of Cosmopolitanism, A Dynamic Hub Of Wealth And Education, Where People Wear Three-piece Suits And Dark Socks, Often Simultaneously.
Growing Up
Dark
Thinking
If This Book Has A Lesson, It Is That We Are Awfully Lucky To Be Here-and By 'we' I Mean Every Living Thing. To Attain Any Kind Of Life In This Universe Of Ours Appears To Be Quite An Achievement. As Humans We Are Doubly Lucky, Of Course: We Enjoy Not Only The Privilege Of Existence But Also The Singular Ability To Appreciate It And Even, In A Multitude Of Ways, To Make It Better. It Is A Talent We Have Only Barely Begun To Grasp.
Book
Mean
Appreciate
At The Foot Of The Mountain, The Park Ended And Suddenly All Was Squalor Again. I Was Once More Struck By This Strange Compartmentalization That Goes On In America -- A Belief That No Commercial Activities Must Be Allowed Inside The Park, But Permitting Unrestrained Development Outside, Even Though The Landscape There May Be Just As Outstanding. America Has Never Quite Grasped That You Can Live In A Place Without Making It Ugly, That Beauty Doesn't Have To Be Confined Behind Fences, As If A National Park Were A Sort Of Zoo For Nature.
Zoos
Feet
America
Yes, U.s. Travelers Dress Better. The British Are Always So Conspicuous In Hot Climates. They Don't Seem To Wear Shorts. American Men Seem To Be Comfortable Wearing Hot-weather Clothing.
Men
Weather
Climate
The Universe Is Not Only Queerer Than We Suppose; It Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose
Funny
Knowledge
Science
There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't Be Able To Split An Infinitive, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Coffee
Air
Splits
Think Of A Single Problem Confronting The World Today. Disease, Poverty, Global Warming... If The Problem Is Going To Be Solved, It Is Science That Is Going To Solve It. Scientists Tend To Be Unappreciated In The World At Large, But You Can Hardly Overstate The Importance Of The Work They Do. If Anyone Ever Cures Cancer, It Will Be A Guy With A Science Degree. Or A Woman With A Science Degree.
Cancer
Science
Thinking
It's Hard Not To Be Kind Of Pessimistic About Human Beings Generally, Because We Do Tend To Mess Things Up. If You Just Look At The History Of Extinctions, We've Killed Off An Awful Lot Of Animals - And I Don't Think We're Doing A Very Good Job Of Looking After The Planet.
Jobs
Animal
Thinking
Isn´t It Strange How Wealth Is Always Wasted On The Rich?
Strange
Wealth
Rich
I Had Spent The Whole Of My Savings ... On A Suit For The Wedding - A Remarkable Piece Of Apparel With Lapels That Had Been Modelled On The Tail Fins Of A 1957 Coupe De Ville And Trousers So Copiously Flared That When I Walked You Didn't See My Legs Move.
Fashion
Moving
Pieces
The Human Diet Consists Of Just Nine Plants: Corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye And Oats.
Oats
Corn
Nine
I'm Not A Natural Story-teller. Put A Keyboard In Front Of Me And I'm Fine, But Stand Me Up In Front Of An Audience And I'm Actually Quite Shy And Reserved.
Shy
Stories
Keyboards
Taxonomy Is Described Sometimes As A Science And Sometimes As An Art, But Really It’s A Battleground.
Art
Taxonomy
Sometimes
Every Twenty Minutes On The Appalachian Trail, Katz And I Walked Farther Than The Average American Walks In A Week. For 93 Percent Of All Trips Outside The Home, For Whatever Distance Or Whatever Purpose, Americans Now Get In A Car. On Average The Total Walking Of An American These Days - That's Walking Of All Types: From Car To Office, From Office To Car, Around The Supermarket And Shopping Malls - Adds Up To 1.4 Miles A Week, Barely 350 Yards A Day.
Distance
Home
Average
Eating In Sweden Is Really Just A Series Of Heartbreaks.
Sweden
Eating
Series
All The Things That Are Part Of Your Heritage Make You British - That Makes This Country What It Is. It's Part Of Your History. And Here, Unlike America, It's Still Living History.
Country
America
Heritage
When You Consider It From A Human Perspective, And Clearly It Would Be Difficult For Us To Do Otherwise, Life Is An Odd Thing. It Couldn't Wait To Get Going, But Then, Having Gotten Going, It Seemed In Very Little Hurry To Move On.
Moving
Perspective
Waiting
In The Morning I Awoke Early And Experienced That Sinking Sensation That Overcomes You When You First Open Your Eyes And Realize That Instead Of A Normal Day Ahead Of You, With Its Scatterings Of Simple Gratifications, You Are Going To Have A Day Without Even The Tiniest Of Pleasures; You Are Going To Drive Across Ohio.
Morning
Eye
Simple
I'm Quite Certain That If The Rest Of The World Vanished Overnight And The Development Of Cricket Were Left In Australian Hands, Within A Generation, The Players Would Be Wearing Shorts And Using The Bats To Hit Each Other, And The Thing Is, It'd Be A Much Better Game For It.
Player
Hands
Games
The Whole Of The Global Economy Is Based On Supplying The Cravings Of Two Per Cent Of The World's Population.
Two
Population
World
There Is The Odd Exception, Like Albert Einstein, But As A Breed, Scientists Tend Not Be Very Good At Presenting Themselves.
Odd
Scientist
Very Good
The Remarkable Position In Which We Find Ourselves Is That We Don't Actually Know What We Actually Know.
Remarkable
Position
Knows
I Don't Want To Go And Start Trying To Make Jokes In Places Like India, Tanzania Or Iraq. Afghanistan Is Not A Funny Place.
Iraq
Trying
India
It Was An Odd Situation. For A Century And A Half, Men Got Rid Of Their Own Hair, Which Was Perfectly Comfortable, And Instead Covered Their Heads With Something Foreign And Uncomfortable. Very Often It Was Actually Their Own Hair Made Into A Wig. People Who Couldn't Afford Wigs Tried To Make Their Hair Look Like A Wig.
Men
Hair
People
Protons Give An Atom Its Identity, Electrons Its Personality.
Giving
Personality
Identity
Human Beings Would Split The Atom And Invent Television, Nylon, And Instant Coffee Before They Could Figure Out The Age Of Their Own Planet.
Coffee
Age
Nylon
People Don't Talk Like This, Theytalklikethis. Syllables, Words, Sentences Run Together Like A Watercolour Left In The Rain. To Understand What Anyone Is Saying To Us We Must Separate These Noises Into Words And The Words Into Sentences So That We Might In Our Turn Issue A Stream Of Mixed Sounds In Response.
Running
Rain
Issues
Strange As It May Seem, Wrote Richard Feynman, We Understand The Distribution Of Matter In The Interior Of The Sun Far Better Than We Understand The Interior Of The Earth.
Richard Feynman
Earth
May
The Upshot Of All This Is That We Live In A Universe Whose Age We Can't Quite Compute, Surrounded By Stars Whose Distances We Don't Altogether Know, Filled With Matter We Can't Identify, Operating In Conformance With Physical Laws Whose Properties We Don’t Truly Understand.
Stars
Distance
Law
Every Dog On The Face Of The Earth Wants Me Dead.
Dog
Earth
Want
English Grammar Is So Complex And Confusing For The One Very Simple Reason That Its Rules And Terminology Are Based On Latin, A Language With Which It Has Precious Little In Common.
Latin
Simple
English Grammar
I Love Everything About Motels. I Can't Help Myself. I Still Get Excited Every Time I Slip A Key Into A Motel Room Door And Fling It Open.
Keys
Doors
Rooms
Woods Are Not Like Other Spaces. To Begin With, They Are Cubic. Their Trees Surround You, Loom Over You, Press In From All Sides. Woods Choke Off Views & Leave You Muddled & Without Bearings. They Make You Feel Small & Confused & Vulnerable, Like A Small Child Lost In A Crowd Of Strange Legs. Stand In A Desert Or Prairie & You Know You Are In A Big Space. Stand In The Woods And You Only Sense It. They Are Vast, Featureless Nowhere. And They Are Alive.
Children
Confused
Views
Finally, This Being America, There Is The Constant Possibility Of Murder.
America
Murder
Possibility
If You Go Out On The Appalachian Trail, You Have To Bring So Much More Equipment - A Tent, Sleeping Bag - But If You Go Hiking In England, Or Europe, Generally, Towns And Villages Are Near Enough Together At The End Of The Day You Can Always Go To A Nice Little Inn And Have A Hot Bath And Something To Drink.
Nice
Sleep
Europe
As James Surowiecki Noted In A New Yorker Article, Given A Choice Between Developing Antibiotics That People Will Take Every Day For Two Weeks And Antidepressants That People Will Take Every Day For Ever, Drug Companies Not Surprisingly Opt For The Latter. Although A Few Antibiotics Have Been Toughened Up A Bit, The Pharmaceutical Industry Hasn't Given Us An Entirely New Antibiotic Since The 1970s.
Two
People
Choices
In Terms Of Adaptability, Humans Are Pretty Amazingly Useless.
Useless
Adaptability
Term
You May Not Feel Outstandingly Robust, But If You Are An Average-sized Adult You Will Contain Within Your Modest Frame No Less Than 7 X 10^18 Joules Of Potential Energy—enough To Explode With The Force Of Thirty Very Large Hydrogen Bombs, Assuming You Knew How To Liberate It And Really Wished To Make A Point.
Average
Hydrogen Bomb
Energy
We Are So Used To The Notion Of Our Own Inevitability As Life's Dominant Species That It Is Hard To Grasp That We Are Here Only Because Of Timely Extraterrestrial Bangs And Other Random Flukes. The One Thing We Have In Common With All Other Living Things Is That For Nearly Four Billions Years Our Ancestors Have Managed To Slip Through A Series Of Closing Doors Every Time We Needed Them To.
Doors
Years
Four
My Mother Only Ever Said Two Things. She Said,'i Don't Know, Dear.'and She Said,'can I Get You A Sandwich, Honey?
Mother
Two
Sandwiches
Where I Grew Up, In Des Moines, Iowa, There Is Hardly Any Downtown Economic Activity Now. Everybody Shops In Malls - You Don't Find A Sense Of Community In Malls.
Iowa
Community
Downtown
Out Of The Thirty Thousand Types Of Edible Plants Thought To Exist On Earth, Just Eleven—corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye, And Oats—account For 93 Percent Of All That Humans Eat, And Every One Of Them Was First Cultivated By Our Neolithic Ancestors.
Oats
Wheat
Potatoes
Have You Ever Seen Glenn Beck In Operation? It Is The Most Terrifying Thing. It's So Bad That You Think He's Going To Announce In A Minute That It's All A Great Con. He Makes Sarah Palin Look Reasonable And Steady.
Thinking
Looks
Minutes
Entirely Incidentally, A Little-known Fact About Shakespeare Is That His Father Moved To Stratford-upon-avon From A Nearby Village Shortly Before His Son's Birth. Had He Not Done So, The Bard Of Avon Would Instead Be Known As The Rather Less Ringing Bard Of Snitterfield.
Father
Son
Done
South Dakota... Is Like The World's First Drive-through Sensory Deprivation Chamber.
World
Firsts
Deprivation
Romans Park Their Cars The Way I Would Park If I Had Just Spilled A Beaker Of Hydrochloric Acid On My Lap.
Car
Lap
Way
English Grammar Is So Complex And Confusing For The One Very Simple Reason That Its Rules And Terminology Are Based On Latin - A Language With Which It Has Precious Little In Common. In Latin, To Take One Example, It Is Not Possible To Split An Infinitive. So In English, The Early Authorities Decided, It Should Not Be Possible To Split An Infinitive Either. But There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Latin
Coffee
Writing
There Are Things You Just Can't Do In Life. You Can't Beat The Phone Company, You Can't Make A Waiter See You Until He's Ready To See You, And You Can't Go Home Again.
Home
Phones
House
If A Potato Can Produce Vitamin C, Why Can't We? Within The Animal Kingdom Only Humans And Guinea Pigs Are Unable To Synthesize Vitamin C In Their Own Bodies. Why Us And Guinea Pigs? No Point Asking. Nobody Knows.
Animal
Pigs
Asking
The Real Problem You Get With Humour Is That You Only Have So Many Kinds Of Jokes Within You, And You Mine That Vein A Lot. This Isn't Just Common To Me; It's Anybody Who's Funny.
Real
Veins
Common
A Sign In The Yard Of A Church Next Door Said Christ Is The Answer. (the Question, Of Course, Is: What Do You Say When You Strike Your Thumb With A Hammer?)
Doors
Church
Yards
Consider The Lichen. Lichens Are Just About The Hardiest Visible Organisms On Earth, But The Least Ambitious.
Ambitious
Earth
Visible
Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are Where History Ends Up.
House
Ends
Refuge
What Is It About Maps? I Could Look At Them All Day, Earnestly Studying The Names Of Towns And Villages I Have Never Heard Of And Will Never Visit.
Travel
Names
Looks
Geologists Are Never At A Loss For Paperweights.
Loss
Geologist
My First Rule Of Travel Is Never To Go To A Place That Sounds Like A Medical Condition And Critz Is Clearly An Incurable Disease Involving Flaking Skin.
Travel
Judging
Skins
And Before Long There Will Be No More Milk In Bottles Delivered To The Doorstep Or Sleepy Rural Pubs, And The Countryside Will Be Mostly Shopping Centers And Theme Parks. Forgive Me. I Don't Mean To Get Upset. But You Are Taking My World Away From Me, Piece By Little Piece, And Sometimes It Just Pisses Me Off. Sorry.
Sorry
Mean
Shopping
There Is More Difference Between A Zebra And A Horse, Or Between A Dolphin And A Porpoise, Than There Is Between You And The Furry Creatures Your Distant Ancestors Left Behind When They Set Out To Take Over The World.
Horse
Zebras
Differences
I Always Wanted To Do A Baseball Book; I Love Baseball. The Problem Is That A Very Large Part Of My Following Is In Non-baseball Playing Countries.
Baseball
Country
Book
When You Sit In A Chair, You Are Not Actually Sitting There, But Levitating Above It At A Height Of One Angstrom (a Hundred Millionth Of A Centimetre), Your Electrons And Its Electrons Implacably Opposed To Any Closer Intimacy.
Sitting
Height
Intimacy
As A Rule Of Thumb, I Would Submit That If You Need To Call Your Floss Provider, For Any Reason, You Are Probably Not Ready For This Level Of Oral Hygiene.
Hygiene
Needs
Thumbs
An Awful Lot Of England Is Slowly Eroding, In Ways That I Find Really Distressing, And An Awful Lot Of It Is The Hedgerows... We're Reaching The Point Where A Lot Of The English Countryside Looks Just Like Iowa - Just Kind Of Open Space.
Iowa
Space
Looks
I Mused For A Few Moments On The Question Of Which Was Worse, To Lead A Life So Boring That You Are Easily Enchanted, Or A Life So Full Of Stimulus That You Are Easily Bored.
Bored
Boring
Moments
A Cough So Robust That I Tapped Into Two New Seams Of Phlegm.
Health
Two
Robust
Coming Back To Your Native Land After An Absence Of Many Years Is A Surprisingly Unsettling Business, A Little Like Waking From A Long Coma. Time, You Discover, Has Wrought Changes That Leave You Feeling Mildly Foolish And Out Of Touch.
Years
Land
Long
To Me, The Greatest Invention Of My Lifetime Is The Laptop Computer And The Fact That I Can Be Working On A Book And Be In An Airport Lounge, In A Hotel Room, And Continue Working; I Fire Up My Laptop, And I'm In Exactly The Same Place I Was When I Left Home - That, To Me, Is A Miracle.
Book
Home
Fire
The First Book I Did - The First Successful Book - Was A Kind Of A Travel Book, And Publishers In Britain Encouraged Me To Do More.
Book
Successful
Firsts
I Really Enjoy Going To A Library And Spending The Day Doing Research - To Me That Is The Most Pleasurable Part Of Writing The Science Book.
Book
Writing
Library
Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
Luck
Together
Sound
Nearly A Quarter Of American Men Were In The Armed Forces. The Rest Were In School, In Prison, Or Were George W. Bush.
School
Men
Prison
I Love The Feeling Of Being Anonymous In A City I've Never Been Before.
Travel
Cities
Feelings
So, If People Didn’t Settle Down To Take Up Farming, Why Then Did They Embark On This Entirely New Way Of Living? We Have No Idea – Or Actually, We Have Lots Of Ideas, But We Don’t Know If Any Of Them Are Right. According To Felipe Fernández-armesto, At Least Thirty-eight Theories Have Been Put Forward To Explain Why People Took To Living In Communities: That They Were Driven To It By Climatic Change, Or By A Wish To Stay Near Their Dead, Or By A Powerful Desire To Brew And Drink Beer, Which Could Only Be Indulged By Staying In One Place.
Powerful
Beer
Eight
Life Just Wants To Be; But It Doesn't Want To Be Much.
Want
Germans Are Flummoxed By Humor, The Swiss Have No Concept Of Fun, The Spanish Think There Is Nothing At All Ridiculous About Eating Dinner At Midnight, And The Italians Should Never, Ever Have Been Let In On The Invention Of The Motor Car.
Inspirational
Sarcastic
Fun
In Three Minutes, 98 Percent Of All The Matter There Is Or Will Ever Be Has Been Produced. We Have A Universe
Three
Matter
Minutes
...and It Occurred To Me, With The Forcefulness Of A Thought Experienced In 360 Degrees, That That's Really What History Mostly Is: Masses Of People Doing Ordinary Things.
People
Ordinary
Degrees
I Do Find London Exciting. Much As I Hate To Agree With That Tedious Old Git Samuel Johnson, And Despite The Pompous Imbecility Of His Famous Remark About When A Man Is Tired Of London He Is Tired Of Life...i Can't Dispute It.
Hate
Tired
Men
Your Pillow Alone May Be Home To 40 Million Bed Mites. (to Them Your Head Is Just One Large Oily Bon-bon). And Don't Think A Clean Pillow-case Will Make A Difference... Indeed, If Your Pillow Is Six Years Old--which Is Apparently About The Average Age For A Pillow--it Has Been Estimated That One-tenth Of Its Weight Will Be Made Up Of Sloughed Skin, Living Mites, Dead Mites And Mite Dung.
Home
Thinking
Average
Most Scientists Are Without Exception Adorably Quirky, And One Of The Ways Of Making It More Accessible Was To Try To Get Readers Interested In The Person.
Quirky
Trying
Way
There Is Always A Little More Toothpaste In The Tube. Think About It.
Thinking
Littles
Toothpaste
By The Time I Had Finished My Coffee And Returned To The Streets, The Rain Had Temporarily Abated, But The Streets Were Full Of Vast Puddles Where The Drains Where Unable To Cope With The Volume Of Water. Correct Me If I'm Wrong, But You Would Think That If One Nation Ought By Now To Have Mastered The Science Of Drainage, Britain Would Be It.
Rain
Coffee
Thinking
The Average Southerner Has The Speech Patterns Of Someone Slipping In And Out Of Consciousness. I Can Change My Shoes And Socks Faster Than Most People In Mississippi Can Speak A Sentence.
Average
Shoes
People
It Is Not True That The English Invented Cricket As A Way Of Making All Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting And Lively; That Was Merely An Unintended Side Effect... It Is The Only Sport That Incorporates Meal Breaks. It Is The Only Sport That Shares Its Name With An Insect. It Is The Only Sport In Which Spectators Burn As Many Calories As Players - More If They Are Moderately Restless.
Sports
Player
Names
I Still Enjoy Traveling A Lot. I Mean, It Amazes Me That I Still Get Excited In Hotel Rooms Just To See What Kind Of Shampoo They've Left Me.
Mean
Rooms
Kind
Science Has Been Quite Embattled. It's The Most Important Thing There Is. An Arts Graduate Is Not Going To Fix Global Warming. They May Do Other Valuable Things, But They Are Not Going To Fix The Planet Or Cure Cancer Or Get Rid Of Malaria.
Art
Cancer
Important
It Was An Especially Wonderful Time To Be A Noisy Moron.
Wonderful
Moron
Noisy
There Is Something About The Momentum Of Travel That Makes You Want To Just Keep Moving, To Never Stop.
Moving
Momentum
Want
Of All The Things I Am Not Very Good At, Living In The Real World Is Perhaps The Most Outstanding.
Real
World
Good Advice
I Could Spend My Life Arriving Each Evening In A New City.
Travel
Cities
Arriving
As The Saying Goes, It Takes All Kinds To Make The World Go Around, Though Perhaps Some Shouldn't Go Quite So Far Around It As Others.
Life
World
Kind
99.99 Percent Of All Species That Have Ever Lived Are No Longer With Us.
Species
Percent
I Sat On A Toilet Watching The Water Run Thinking What An Odd Thing Tourism Is. You Fly Off To A Strange Land, Eagerly Abandoning All The Comforts Of Home And Then Expend Vast Quantities Of Time And Money In A Largely Futile Effort To Recapture The Comforts You Wouldn’t Have Lost If You Hadn’t Left Home In The First Place.
Running
Travel
Home
Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.
Fun
Life Is
Hell
I Ordered A Coffee And A Little Something To Eat And Savored The Warmth And Dryness. Somewhere In The Background Nat King Cole Sang A Perky Tune. I Watched The Rain Beat Down On The Road Outside And Told Myself That One Day This Would Be Twenty Years Ago.
Kings
Rain
Coffee
Every Atom You Possess Has Almost Certainly Passed Through Several Stars And Been Part Of Millions Of Organisms On Its Way To Becoming You. We Are Each So Atomically Numberous And So Vigorously Recycled At Death That A Significant Number Of Our Atoms-up To A Billion For Each Of Us, It Has Been Suggested-probably Once Belonged To Shakespeare. A Billion More Each Came From Buddha And Genghis Khan And Beethoven, And Any Other Historical Figure You Care To Name.
Stars
Names
Numbers
I Often Feel I'm A Disappointment To People Because They Expect Me To Be The Guy In The Books. When I Sit Next To Someone At A Dinner Party I Can See They Expect Me To Be Quick And Witty, And I'm Not At All.
Witty
Disappointment
Party
When You Tell An Iowan A Joke, You Can See A Kind Of Race Going On Between His Brain And His Expression.
Funny
Humor
Race
The Great Failure In Education, Much Of The Time, Is The Lack Of Excitement And Stimulus
Excitement
Stimulus
Black Bears Rarely Attack. But Here's The Thing. Sometimes They Do. All Bears Are Agile, Cunning And Immensely Strong, And They Are Always Hungry. If They Want To Kill You And Eat You, They Can, And Pretty Much Whenever They Want. That Doesn't Happen Often, But - And Here Is The Absolutely Salient Point - Once Would Be Enough.
Strong
Black
Would Be
You Can Be A Scientist And Believe In God: The Two Can Go Hand In Hand.
Believe
Hands
Two
I Wanted To Quit And To Do This Forever, Sleep In A Bed And In A Tent, See What Was Over The Next Hill And Never See A Hill Again. All Of This All At Once, Every Moment, On The Trail Or Off.
Sleep
Forever
Bed
Roads Get Wider And Busier And Less Friendly To Pedestrians. And All Of The Development Based Around Cars, Like Big Sprawling Shopping Malls. Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
Shopping
Car
Friendly
I Think It's Only Right That Crazy People Should Have Their Own City, But I Cannot For The Life Of Me See Why A Sane Person Would Want To Go There.
Crazy
Thinking
Should Have
Everything That Has Ever Lived, Plant Or Animal, Dates Its Beginning From The Same Primordial Twitch. At Some Point In An Unimaginably Distant Past, Some Little Bag Of Chemicals Fidgeted To Life. It Absorbed Some Nutrients, Gently Pulsed, Had A Brief Existence. This Much May Have Happened Many Times Before. But This Ancestral Packet Did Something Additional And Extraordinary. It Cleaved Itself And Produced An Heir. A Tiny Bundle Of Genetic Material Passed From One Living Entity To Another, And Has Never Stopped Moving Since. It Was The Moment Of Creation For Us All.
Moving
Animal
Past
It Isn't Easy To Become A Fossil. ... Only About One Bone In A Billion, It Is Thought, Becomes Fossilized. If That Is So, It Means That The Complete Fossil Legacy Of All The Americans Alive Today - That's 270 Million People With 206 Bones Each - Will Only Be About 50 Bones, One-quarter Of A Complete Skeleton. That's Not To Say, Of Course, That Any Of These Bones Will Ever Actually Be Found.
Mean
Science
Skeletons
It Is Not As If Farming Brought A Great Improvement In Living Standards Either. A Typical Hunter-gatherer Enjoyed A More Varied Diet And Consumed More Protein And Calories Than Settled People, And Took In Five Times As Much Viatmin C As The Average Person Today.
Average
People
Typical
In France, A Chemist Named Pilatre De Rozier Tested The Flammability Of Hydrogen By Gulping A Mouthful And Blowing Across An Open Flame, Proving At A Stroke That Hydrogen Is Indeed Explosively Combustible And That Eyebrows Are Not Necessarily A Permanent Feature Of One's Face.
Science
Flames
Eyebrows
I Wish I Could Adjust My Voice, But It's Just What's Happened To Me. It's Because I've Lived Abroad For A Long Time, And My Wife Is English And My Kids All Have English Accents, And Every Voice I Hear Is English. I've Never Intentionally Changed My Accent At All.
Kids
Voice
Long
Beulah Has A Husband?' I Know. It's A Miracle. There Can't Be More Than Two People On The Planet Who'd Be Willing To Sleep With Her, And Here We Are Both In The Same Town.
Husband
Sleep
Two
My First Rule Of Consumerism Is Never To Buy Anything You Can't Make Your Children Carry.
Children
Firsts
Consumerism
To An American The Whole Purpose Of Living, The One Constant Confirmation Of Continued Existence, Is To Cram As Much As Sensual Pleasure As Possible Into One's Mouth More Or Less Continuously. Gratification, Instant And Lavish, Is A Birthright
Sensual
Purpose
Mouths
When The Poet Paul Valery Once Asked Albert Einstein If He Kept A Notebook To Record His Ideas, Einstein Looked At Him With Mild But Genuine Surprise. "oh, That's Not Necessary," He Replied . "it's So Seldom I Have One.
Notebook
Ideas
Records
It Is Unthinkable To Have A British Countryside That Doesn't Have Actual Functioning Farmers Riding Tractors, Cows In Fields, Things Like That.
Riding
Cows
Fields
Cheapness Is A Great Virtue.
Virtue
Cheapness
To My Mind, The Only Possible Pet Is A Cow. Cows Love You. They Will Listen To Your Problems And Never Ask A Thing In Return. They Will Be Your Friends Forever. And When You Get Tired Of Them, You Can Kill And Eat Them. Perfect.
Love You
Tired
Perfect
Boston's Freeway System Is Insane. It Was Clearly Designed By A Person Who Had Spent His Childhood Crashing Toy Trains.
Boston
Childhood
Insane
Clearly, Some Time Ago Makers And Consumers Of American Junk Food Passed Jointly Through Some Kind Of Sensibility Barrier In The Endless Quest For New Taste Sensations. Now They Are A Little Like Those Desperate Junkies Who Have Tried Every Known Drug And Are Finally Reduced To Mainlining Toilet Bowl Cleanser In An Effort To Get Still Higher.
Food
Effort
Drug
If You Drive To, Say, Shenandoah National Park, Or The Great Smoky Mountains, You'll Get Some Appreciation For The Scale And Beauty Of The Outdoors. When You Walk Into It, Then You See It In A Completely Different Way. You Discover It In A Much Slower, More Majestic Sort Of Way.
Gratitude
Appreciation
Mountain
Physicists Are Atoms' Way Of Thinking About Atoms.
Thinking
Atoms
Way
Every Kid I Knew Had A Father With A Little Stash Of Men's Magazines Which The Father Thought Was Secret And Which The Kid Knew All About.
Father
Kids
Men
I Was Heading To Nebraska. Now There's A Sentence You Don't Want To Say Too Often If You Can Possibly Help It.
Nebraska
Want
Helping
I Had Always Thought That Once You Grew Up You Could Do Anything You Wanted - Stay Up All Night Or Eat Ice-cream Straight Out Of The Container.
Night
Ice Cream
Childhood
England Was Full Of Words I'd Never Heard Before - Streaky Bacon, Short Back And Sides, Belisha Beacon, Serviettes, High Tea, Ice-cream Cornet.
Ice Cream
Tea
Sides
That's The Trouble With Losing Your Mind; By The Time It's Gone, It's Too Late To Get It Back.
Mind
Too Late
Gone
I Can Wear A Baseball Cap; I Am Entitled To Wear A Baseball Cap. I Am Genetically Pre-disposed To Wear A Baseball Cap, Whereas Most English People Look Wrong In A Baseball Cap.
Baseball
People
Looks
Being A Pessimist Is Just Such A Gloomy Way Of Looking At Things, So I Have To Hope For The Best - Life Wouldn't Be Worth Living If We Didn't Have Hope. And I Also Do Think That Human Beings Often Do Do Wonderful, Correct, Brilliant Things. So, On Balance, I'd Like To Be Optimistic About The Future.
Optimistic
Thinking
Balance
Why Is It, I Wondered, That Old People Are Always So Self-centered And Excitable? But I Just Smiled Benignly And Stood Back, Comforted By The Thought That Soon They Would Be Dead.
Self
People
Would Be
As My Father Always Used To Tell Me, 'you See, Son, There's Always Someone In The World Worse Off Than You.' And I Always Used To Think, 'so?
Father
Son
Thinking
I Have A Small Tattered Clipping That I Sometimes Carry With Meand Pull Out For Purposes Of Privateamusement. It's A Weather Forecast From Thewestern Daily Mail And It Says, In Toto: 'outlook: Dry And Warm, But Cooler With Some Rain.
Rain
Weather
Mail
I Can't Fix The World. If You Want To Make A Difference In Life, You Have To Direct Your Energies In A Focused Way.
Differences
Making A Difference
Energy
I See Litter As Part Of A Long Continuum Of Anti-social Behaviour.
Long
Behaviour
Social
I Just Use My Life Story As A Kind Of Device On Which To Hang Comic Observations. It's Not My Interest Or Instinct To Tell The World Anything Pertinent About Myself Or My Family.
Stories
Use
World
Britain Still Has The Most Reliably Beautiful Countryside Of Anywhere In The World. I Would Hate To Be Part Of The Generation That Allowed That To Be Lost.
Beautiful
Hate
Generations
In A Funny Way, Nothing Makes You Feel More Like A Native Of Your Own Country Than To Live Where Nearly Everyone Is Not.
Country
Way
Feels
Distance Changes Utterly When You Take The World On Foot. A Mile Becomes A Long Way, Two Miles Literally Considerable, Ten Miles Whopping, Fifty Miles At The Very Limits Of Conception. The World, You Realize, Is Enormous In A Way That Only You And A Small Community Of Fellow Hikers Know. Planetary Scale Is Your Little Secret.
Distance
Two
Feet
Still, I Never Really Mind Bad Service In A Restaurant. It Makes Me Feel Better About Not Leaving A Tip.
Feel Better
Leaving
Mind
Des Moines Is Like Your Typical American City; It's Just These Concentric Circles Of Malls, Built Outward From The City.
Cities
Circles
Typical
Because Time Moves More Slowly In Kid World ... It Goes On For Decades ... It Is Adult Life That Is Over In A Twinkling.
Moving
Kids
Adults
What This Means In Practice Is That If You Are Not A Born Worrier You Have Nothing To Worry About (though Of Course You Wouldn't Be Worrying Anyway), Whereas If You Are A Worrier By Nature There Is Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About It, So You May As Well Stop Worrying, Except Of Course You Can't.
Mean
Practice
Worry
I Had To Drive To Minneapolis Once, And Went On A Back Road Just To See The Country. But There Was Nothing To See. It's Just Flat And Hot, And Full Of Corn And Soybeans And Hogs. Every Once In A While You Come Across A Farm Or Some Dead Little Town Where The Liveliest Thing Is The Flies.
Country
Soybeans
Littles
The English Invented Cricket To Make Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting.
Interesting
Looks
Cricket
When The Duke [w.j.c. Scott-bentinck] Died, His Heirs Found All Of The Aboveground Rooms Devoid Of Furnishings Except For One Chamber In The Middle Of Which Sat The Duke's Commode. The Main Hall Was Mysteriously Floor Less. Most Of The Rooms Were Painted Pink. The One Upstairs Room In Which The Duke Had Resided Was Packed To The Ceiling With Hundreds Of Green Boxes, Each Of Which Contained A Single Dark Brown Wig. This Was, In Short, A Man Worth Getting To Know.
Dark
Men
Dukes
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