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Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.
--
Chapter 8 “A Matter of Vitamins” (p. 80)

 

Jack Vance

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The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it?

 

Robert M. Pirsig

 

If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.

 

Charles Fort

 

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.

 

Bill Bryson

 

While information is the oxygen of the modern age, disinformation is the carbon monoxide that can poison generations.

 

Newton Lee

 

The bronze to Sean Hannity of Fixed News. On the Rupert Murdoch Network talking about those carbon off-sets you purchase to off-set your carbon footprint, “those off-sets, that is the biggest hoax in the world. You know what it's like. You go cheat on your wife and then say, 'Honey, don't worry, I bought an off-set.' Good luck.” This is the second time Hannity has dismissed off-sets and going green and climate change, apparently utterly unaware that his boss pledged to make News Corp carbon neutral by 2010: “While we reduce our own carbon footprints, some emissions will be unavoidable. As a last resort, we will off-set these emissions. The carbon off-set is a financial tool to support projects that prevent carbon from being released in the atmosphere. Done right, they will widen the implementation of carbon saving technologies and give an incentive to create new solutions.” Murdoch has also boasted that the telecast of the most recent Emmys was carbon neutral...

 

Sean Hannity