It was a far less scientific process back then.

There are many athletes out there who would covet an X Games gold over an Olympic gold. I've heard it come from athletes mouths - and I'm sure their agents are standing next to them smirking - but when you win an X Games medal, you are instantly afforded a reputation that perhaps you aren't afforded in the Olympics.

As far as I know, it is entirely unprecedented in the 17 years of the BRAC process for a former commander-in-chief to write to save a particular military base from closure.

Sie findet den Ausdruck als gemeinsame Verehrung eines Ideals, des Ideals objektiver Wahrheit, Klarheit und Genauigkeit. Sie besteht aus dem Glauben, daß Verehrtes erst in weiter, vielleicht unendlich weiter Zukunft erreichbar sei. Aus der Lobpreisung sich seinem Dienste aufzuopfern. Aus einem bestimmten Heroenkult und einer bestimmten Tradition. Dies wäre der Grundton der gemeinsamen Stimmung, in der sich das naturwissenschaftliche Denkkollektiv auslebt. Kein Eingeweihter wird behapten, das wissenschaftliche Denken sei gefühlsfrei.

The serious scientific public trusted him implicitly and consequently had no need to read him. If those people were to start getting critical, no further progress would be possible. They would spend a whole year over every page.

Because Control knew that belief in a scientific process only took you so far. The ziggurats of illogic erected by your average domestic terrorist as he or she bought the fertiliser or made a detonator took on their own teetering momentum and power. When those towers crashed to the earth, they still existed whole in the perpetrator’s mind, and everyone else’s too – just for different reasons.