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The Mississippi’s greatest contribution to the American mindset was to define us as a migratory people, radically departed from our European antecedents. In the Old World, stasis, hereditary property rights, and social caste defined
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The American dream
“My favorite “trick” is to stop writing at a point where I know that I can pick up easily the next day. I’ll stop in mid-paragraph, often in midsentence. It makes getting out of bed so much easier, because I know that all I’ll have to do to be productive is complete the sentence. And by then I’ll be seated at my desk, coffee and Oreo cookie at hand, the morning’s inertia overcome. There’s an added advantage: The human brain hates incomplete sentences. All night my mind will have secretly worked on the passage and likely mapped out the remainder of the page, even the chapter, while simultaneously sending me on a dinner date with Cate Blanchett.”
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“Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil. ... Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it... The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?”
― Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
― Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
Lynette’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lynette’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,669 books
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7 friends
109 books
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25 friends
393 books
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71 friends
97 books
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33 friends
30 books
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29 friends
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