Unit 3: Selection Vocabulary 2

My daughter was making, that day in Chicago, an entirely unconscious, but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do.

When hardness surfaces in the very old we tend to transform it into “crustiness” or eccentricity, some tonic pepperiness to be indulged at a distance.

This is a woman who could describe the genesis of one of her most well-known paintings—the “Cow’s Skull: Red, White and Blue” owned by the Metropolitan—as an act of quite deliberate and derisive orneriness.

She called the act of rancor “The Shanty” and hung it in her next show.

At thirteen, in a Dominican convent, she was mortified when the sister corrected her drawing.

I am not sure when I first became aware of the Singularity. I’d have to say it was a progressive awakening.

Just as a black hole in space dramatically alters the patterns of matter and energy accelerating toward its event horizon, this impending Singularity in our future is increasingly transforming every institution and aspect of human life, from sexuality to spirituality.

Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.

I can understand why many observers do not readily embrace the obvious implications of what I have called the law of accelerating returns (the inherent acceleration of the rate of evolution, with technological evolution as a continuation of biological evolution).

Exponential growth is deceptive. It starts out almost imperceptibly and then explodes with unexpected fury—unexpected, that is, if one does not take care to follow its trajectory.

Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing—with wave lengths, just as sound and light have.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favorite brier.

The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him.

He did not recognize the animal that made the sound; he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam toward the sound.

"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.