“What do my eyeballs see? Ah—the blue sky. Long-fellow!” He swayed and blinked. He rubbed his eyes. “Together with windows—have you ever dug windows? Now let’s talk about windows. I have seen some really crazy windows that made faces at me, and some of them had shades drawn and so they winked.” Out of his seabag he fished a copy of Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris and, adjusting the front of his T-shirt, began reading on the street corner with a pedantic air. “Now really, Sal, let’s dig everything as we go along …” He forgot about that in an instant and looked around blankly. I was glad I had come, he needed me now.

“Why did Camille throw you out? What are you going to do?”

“Eh?” he said. “Eh? Eh?” We racked our brains for where to go and what to do. I realized it was up to me. Poor, poor Dean—the devil himself had never fallen further; in idiocy, with infected thumb, surrounded by battered suitcases of his motherless feverish life across America and back numberless times, an undone bird. “Let’s walk to New York,” he said, “and as we do so let’s take stock of everything along the way—yass.” I took out my money and counted it; I showed it to him.

“I have here,” I said, “the sum of eighty-three dollars and change, and if you come with me let’s go to New York—and after that let’s go to Italy.”

Excerpted from On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Published by Penguin Books, New York, 2003.

Another surprise to Chicago was a flood. That the Chicago River, or either of its branches, should get up a current sufficient to cause any alarm to the citizens was a surprise to the people then as it would be to-day. It was never expected, but it came one morning in March, 1849. There had been two or three days’ heavy rain following the heavy snowstorms, and one morning the citizens were aroused from their slumbers by reports that the ice in the Desplaines River had broken up and dammed up the waters so as to turn them into Mud Lake, and from this thence into the South Branch. This pressure of water broke up the ice in the South Branch, and floating down it became gorged in the main channel. Shipping in the river was in great peril. Then came the flood. The breaking up of the ice was like the booming of artillery, the waters came sweeping down with the power of a mountain torrent, vessels broke from their moorings and went with the flood, and a number were precipitated against Randolph street bridge with such force as to carry it away and send it down the river. On went the great mass of ice and vessels against the iron bridge at Clark street, and that too was carried down stream. All Chicago attended this wild scene, and such excitement had not been since the city began its eventful career.

Excerpted from Chicago’s First Half Century, 1833-1883. Published by The Inter-Ocean Publishing Company, Chicago, 1883.

New York is threaded with waterways. Most are dirty, but they are still full of crab, lobster and sturgeon, goldfish and striped bass, bluefish and white perch and even pompano. Ignoring the unprepossessing look (and smell) of the city’s rivers and ponds, New Yorkers are fishing all over the place: They cast from the bulkheads into the East River; they dot the jetties at the Rockaways; they trap blue crabs in the Hackensack Meadowlands (just ten minutes from Times Square). Correctly dressed flycasters quietly pursue huge brown trout in Kensico Reservoir. Warm-water anglers fish the New York and Croton reservoirs. Water and fish everywhere. And the season is starting afresh.

This month, as the waters warm, fish begin to stir, either out of the harbor muds to feed, or inshore to spawn. Winter flounder fishing traditionally begins on St. Patrick’s Day. Jamaica Bay is a good spot, from the Carnasie Pier or from the bridges that cross the bay, or from rented rowboats. Winter flounder are crowd pleasers—easy to catch and not terribly choosy about how they are approached.

Excerpted from ‘The Fish Around Us’ by D.W. Bennett. Appearing in New York magazine, April 10, 1978.

After nearly 20 years and millions of quarters, someone has attained the unthinkable: a perfect score on Pac-Man.

The world record was set by 33-year-old Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, during a US-Canada clash over the Fourth of July weekend. Mitchell took more than six hours to complete the game at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire.

To achieve the game’s maximum score of 3,333,360 points, Mitchell navigated 256 boards (or screens), eating every single dot, blinking energizer blob, flashing blue ghost, and point-loaded fruit, without losing a single life.

“It was tremendously monotonous,” said Mitchell, a father of three and president of Rickey’s World Famous Sauces, a manufacturer of Louisiana hot sauces.

Excerpted from ‘Gobbling Up a Pac-Man Record‘ by Leander Kahney. Published in Wired on July 8, 1999.

In the eighteenth century weddings were accompanied by much revelry and extravagance. Gloves, rings, and scarves, as at funerals, were given away in such profusion as to call for legislation to check the abuse. Unstinted feasting and drinking were the order of the day. “Sack-posset” appears to have been the favorite wedding beverage. “All the friends were entertained at the bride’s home with a collation or supper, and afterward a dance; while in the country they were the most important social events. The banns were proclaimed in church, and all the neighbors were invited from the pulpit to attend the ceremony. On the day of the wedding muskets were fired, a procession was formed, and marched to the bride’s house, where the marriage took place; and then came a dinner, a dances, and great merrymaking. Usually these wedding feasts lasted through the day and evening, but they were sometimes kept up for two or three days. On one occasion at New London there was a great wedding dance on the day after the marriage, when ninety-two ladies and gentlemen assembled and proceeded to dance ninety-two jigs, fifty-two contra dances, forty-five minuets, and seventeen hornpipes. This was probably an extreme case; but all over New England weddings were great occasions, and were celebrated with much pomp and rejoicing.”

Excerpted from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Chiefly in England and the United States with an Introductory Analysis of the Legislature and the Theories of Primitive Marriage and the Family, volume two, by George Elliott Howard. Published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1904.

We learned again that this America, which Abraham Lincoln called the last best hope of man on Earth, was built on heroism and noble sacrifice. It was built by … voyagers, who answered a call beyond duty, who gave more than was expected or required, and who gave it with little thought to worldly reward.

We think back to the pioneers of an earlier century, and the sturdy souls who took their families and the belongings and set out into the frontier of the American West. Often, they met with terrible hardship. Along the Oregon Trail you can still see the grave markers of those who fell on the way. But grief only steeled them to the journey ahead.

Today, the frontier is space and the boundaries of human knowledge. Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on immense reservoirs of courage, character and fortitude.

Excerpted from President Ronald Reagan’s eulogy of the seven Challenger astronauts, delivered in Houston on January 31, 1986.

It was a calm, still evening. The broad bosom of the Thames was scarcely ruffled by the little breeze that stirred the drooping sails of some of the river craft. Over the city and over the forest of masts, the round full moon was rising. Touching on the dome of St. Paul’s, it glances down over roofs and under bridges till it lay a broad path of light on the sleeping river. The gas lamps flickered and looked pale before its light, and many a weary pedestrian, hurrying across the crowded bridges which span the river, paused a moment to gaze at the full-orbed globe which even to weary eyes was a wondrous revelation of beauty.

It was dark under the bridges, and the water lapping against the piers had something mournful in its sound. One of the slow river-barges was just passing into shadow.

Excerpted from ‘Poppets’ by Amalie La Forge. Published in St. Nicholas: Scribner’s Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys, volume IV, conducted by Mary Mapes Dodge. Scribner & Co., New York, 1877.

Ammon (or Hammon; Egyptian Amun, the hidden or veiled one). A god native to Libya and Upper Egypt. He was represented sometimes in the shape of a ram with enormous curving horns, sometimes in that of a ram-headed man, sometimes as a perfect man standing up or sitting on a throne. On his head was the royal emblems, with two high feathers standing up, the symbols of sovereignty over the upper and under worlds; in his hands were the sceptre and the sign of life. In works of art his figure is colored blue … His chief temple, with a far-famed oracle, stood in an oasis of the Libyan desert, twelve days’ journey from Memphis. Between this oracle and that of Zeus at Dodona a connexion is said to have existed from very ancient times, so that the Greeks early identified the Egyptian god with their own Zeus, as the Romans did afterward with their Jupiter; and his worship found an entrance as several places in Greece, at Sparta, Thebes, and also Athens … When the oracle was consulted by visitors, the god’s symbol, made of emerald and other stones, was carried round by women and girls, to the sound of hymns, on a golden ship hung round with votive cups of silver. His replies were given in tremulous shocks communicated to the bearers, which were interpreted by a priest.

Excerpted from A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: Mythology, Religion, Literature & Art. Translated from German by Oskar Seyffert, revised and edited by Henry Nettleship and J.E. Sandys. Published by Macmillan and Company, New York, 1895.

As a summer resident the Red-winged Blackbird is a familiar sight in low meadows and along roadsides. At a little distance he appears only to be a plain, black bird, but as he extends his wings his brilliant epaulets come into prominence. The plumage of the female, though inconspicuous, is singularly beautiful when seen at close range. It looks like a fabric of which the warp is black and the woof a twisted thread of brown and yellow. The Red-wings are essentially early birds, often returning in spring when their marshy haunts are still frozen over. Their vocalization is suggestive of cool, moist ground and hidden springs; it continues until late July, and is briefly renewed in October. The deep nest is half hung, half twined between the stems of marsh-growing plants, and often holds two broods of a season; the boggy location chosen serves to protect it quite thoroughly from human invaders.

The Blackbird’s clear notes are associated with those of the Meadowlark, as they are both early singers and are found in similar places. They are useful birds to the agriculturalist, as they are great destroyers of cutworms. They are sometimes polygamous, though as frequently found in pairs; being very gregarious birds, many nests are found in the same locality.

Excerpted from Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds, by Mabel Osgood Wright. Published by the Macmillan Company, New York, 1900.

In short, the knowledge of “citizens” is symptomatic and therefore different from that of the police, at least when this knowledge functions strategically and doesn’t complete more superficial operations for appearances sake or to reassure people (such as patrolling or checking IDs in area considered high-risk). Thus, the typical citizens’ protest against police indifference is born, as well as a certain attitude of distance or irritation on the part of some police agents towards citizens:

In my opinion, an Italian who hires an extracommunitari is two-faced. On the one had, he could say, “I feel sorry for these poor people. Rather than seeing them out selling roses on street corners, I’ll give the something for taking care of my yard.” On the other hand, if you give someone a job illegally, then you, as an “employer” don’t pay any taxes, you don’t help pay for their health care, you don’t help pay for any assistance this worker would need if some work accident or anything like that happened.”

Excerpted from Non-Persons: The Exclusions of Migrants in a Global Society by Alessandro Dal Lago. Tranlsated by Marie Orton. Published by IPOC di Pietro Condemi, Italy, 2009.

The allegories of the map discussed so far – positionality, movement and practices – set out the modalities through which subjects come to place themselves in the power-ridden, discursively-constituted, practically-limited, materially-bounded identities. The subject assumes, in both senses of the word, an identity on the basis of commonality with others and yet that subject, in both senses of the word, assumes that they are an individual: unique, sovereign. The formation of the subject also takes place, and fails, within the fields of encounters with others – but this field is striated with simultaneous, different power relations. Some anecdotes will help illuminate these rather dense introductory remarks: each will be set within a context which sheds light on the question of mapping subjectivity in the spaces and between the conflictual and incoherent self and the incommensurable and indissoluble other. There are five case stories.

[The first case story.] A man is sitting on a park bench, he is alone. Nothing stands in the way of the man’s presumption that the park is there for him to look at. His eye can roam over the landscape without challenge, nothing disturbs his power to look at whatever pleases him. The man is at the centre of his world – he owns what he sees and, in this scene, his is also self-possessed because nothing disturbs his thoughts. This ‘megalomania’ is shattered, however, by the intrusion of another into the park. The lord and master of all he surveys has suddenly become off-centered, the lines of power have become reoriented: the man no longer controls the scene, lines of power converge on the intersubjectivity between the two people and between them and the scene of the encounter.

Excerpted from Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, written and edited by Steve Pile and N. J. Thrift. Published by Routledge, London, 1995.

Team A listed their goal in communication as the simultaneous fulfillment of three objectives: (1) to provide a gestalt message (the whole message is greater than the sum of the parts/components), (2) to use a systems approach, and (3) to incorporate redundancy in the markers.

For the gestalt message, the purpose is to convey a message not just with words and pictures, but through the very vehicles of conveying the messages, and the messages themselves. That is, the marker materials, their construction, and their arrangement are such that future generations coming m upon the markers will understand the message that this place is not one where people would want to spend a lot of time. With the gestalt message, the emphasis is on communicating through the entire marker system.

The systems approach to designing and constructing markers is that the m various marker components are linked to each other and supplement the information (or fill in any gaps) from other marker components. Messages are provided in different levels of complexity, in different formats, and convey different aspects of the entire message.

The redundancy within the marker components provides enough individual markers of any one type (material or message or arrangement) so that if some are vandalized or degraded over time, there are sufficient numbers remaining to communicate the required message. The size and construction of the markers can also provide redundancy in that the form of the communication is overdone so that it can still communicate after degradation or defacement. With earthen berms (discussed later in this section), the size called for would allow the marker to withstand considerable erosion and still remain recognizable as a human construction marking an area.

Excerpted from ‘Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’ by Kathleen M. Trauth, Stephen C. Hora and Robert V. Guzowski. Published by Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the United States Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC04-94AL8500.

We are not born knowing how to communicate; it is something we learn just as we learn to tie our shoes (or wear them). Clearly, if we do not come with the knowledge “built in,” is knowledge we must “pick up” elsewhere. We can speak of children being “inducted” into the use of appropriate symbols for our culture, much as we speak of adults being inducted into an army (Frank, 1966, p. 7). Since children learn communication, this implies that it would be possible to observe children as they learn what is involved in communication, as in fact social scientists can and do. Only through learning how to communicate appropriate [sic] do we join other humans and become a society. “Communicative competence is not just another useful skill, like shoemaking; it is one’s ticket of admission to human and social life” (Thayer, 1982, p. x). Our primary job as children is to learn to understand and display the appropriate communicative system for the group of people into which we are born. Thus:

a child must learn to transform the world of actual things and events, of signals and signs, into a symbolic world of meanings and purposive striving in accordance with the symbolic patterns which have been devised to make human living more orderly and goal-seeking. (Frank, 1966, p. 7).

Excerpted from Communication in Everyday Life: A Social Interpretation, by Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz. Published 1989 by Ablex Publishing Corporation, Westport, Connecticut.

Like any other tourist, he made his way east on Marlbourough Street and down Frederic Street and then walked along Shirley Street until he reached the Public Library. He had already heard about this curious place, but it was nothing like what he imagined. Like everything else in Nassau, it was tinier…and touched with the taint of…seediness. It was a circular building, no more than twenty feet in diameter, best Peepgass could judge, with seven or eight open cubicles along the circumference. In the cubicles were shelves of books along two sides and a window on the third. In the center of the circle was a small wooden enclosure where a rather bored brown-skinned librarian sat. From her post she could see into every cubicle, although she seemed to have no particular interest in doing so. The building, which was now close to 200 years old, had originally been built as the town jail. What were now library cubicles had originally been cells with barred windows and doors; and where now sat a librarian who could see into every cubicle had been a warden who could see into every cell. All at once it occurred to Peepgass—and probably no one else in Nassau that day—that 200 years ago, at the turn of the century, the particular prison had been the very latest in modern penology. All at once he froze, staring fixedly at this odd little room, and his spirits plummeted. Modern penology…he’d learn about modern penology, all right at the turn of this century, if he took a misstep in this little…overseas venture…But damn it, Peepgass, are you going to remain a wimp, a dork, a staff nerd until it’s too late to do anything about it? Are you going to keep your red dog chained up until PlannersBanc gives you a Steuben glass phoenix—which was already known, intramurally, as “getting the bird”—the bank was far too cheap to give retiring drudges something made of precious metal, such as a gold watch, anymore—are you going to wait until Lomprey or some other hunchback gives you the bird and waves bye-bye? That—your own willing self-imprisonment—would be a fate far worse than actual incarceration, is it not so?

Excerpted from A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. Published by Random House, 1998, New York.