Water Is For Washing
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Water Is For Washing
"Water is for Washing" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in '' Argosy'' (November 1947). It is based on the premise that an earthquake had catastrophically shattered the range of alluvial deposits separating the Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California, precipitating a tsunami moving north to transiently drown these lowlands. In his notes, Heinlein said that he had a dream in 1946 in which he conceived of the entire story. Plot Summary At the beginning of the story, Heinlein uses the character of a bartender in El Centro to establish the danger of the quake and inundation: Heinlein's perspective character is a traveling businessman who had picked up two chance-encountered children and a vagrant while driving frantically to higher ground, and the dramatic arc centers on the efforts of the men to survive and save the youngsters from drowning. Publication When the story was first published in Argosy, the editor removed th ...
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WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ...
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San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal). The fault divides into three segments, each with different characteristics and a different degree of earthquake risk. The slip rate along the fault ranges from /yr. It was formed by a transform boundary. The fault was identified in 1895 by Professor Andrew Lawson of University of California, Berkeley, UC Berkeley, who discovered the northern zone. It is often described as having been named after San Andreas Lake, a small body of water that was formed in a valley between the two plates. However, according to some of his reports from 1895 and 1908, Lawson actually named it after the surrounding San Andreas Valley. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Lawson concluded that the fault extende ...
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Works About Earthquakes
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works, a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 operating system * Mount Works, Victoria Land, Antarctica See also * The Works (other) * Work (other) Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** ...
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Short Stories By Robert A
Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as the Short Arts, entertainment, and media * Short film, a cinema format (also called film short or short subject) * Short story, prose generally readable in one sitting * ''The Short-Timers'', a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by Gustav Hasford, about military short-timers in Vietnam Brands and enterprises * Short Brothers, a British aerospace company * Short Brothers of Sunderland, former English shipbuilder Computing and technology * Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit * Short integer, a computer datatype Finance * Short (finance), stock-trading position * Short snorter, a banknote signed by fellow travelers, common during World War II Foodstuffs * Short pastry, one which is rich in butte ...
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1947 Short Stories
It was the first year of the Cold War, which would last until 1991, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Events January * January–February – Winter of 1946–47 in the United Kingdom: The worst snowfall in the country in the 20th century causes extensive disruption of travel. Given the low ratio of private vehicle ownership at the time, it is mainly remembered in terms of its effects on the railway network. * January 1 - The Canadian Citizenship Act comes into effect. * January 4 – First issue of weekly magazine ''Der Spiegel'' published in Hanover, Germany, edited by Rudolf Augstein. * January 10 – The United Nations adopts a resolution to take control of the free city of Trieste. * January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles; the mysterious case is never solved. * January 16 – Vincent Auriol is inaugurated as president of France. * January 19 – Ferry ...
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The Year Of The Jackpot
"The Year of the Jackpot" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published 1952, and collected in one of Heinlein's anthologies, ''The Menace from Earth''. In the story, a trend-following statistician finds romance and a disturbing conclusion. The story touches on recurrent Heinlein themes of survivalism and the prudishness of social mores of the time. Plot summary Potiphar Breen is a middle-aged bachelor with a settled, orderly life, and a rather unusual hobby. We meet him first at breakfast in a Los Angeles diner, where he orders his usual meal, takes notes of various apparently unrelated items in several newspapers, and carefully counts out his payment, adding an exactly calculated tip. He then walks out to a bus stop, where a young lady is removing all her clothes. A pair of passing transvestites try to provoke a beat cop into arresting her, but the cop refrains for fear that the publicity will simply inspire more kooks to disrobe. Br ...
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"—And He Built A Crooked House—"
'—And He Built a Crooked House—' is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in ''Astounding Science Fiction'' in February 1941. It was reprinted in the anthology '' Fantasia Mathematica'' (Clifton Fadiman, ed.) in 1958, and in the Heinlein collections ''The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag'' in 1959 and ''The Best of Robert Heinlein'' in 1973. The story is about a mathematically inclined architect named Quintus Teal who has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs by building a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract. The title is paraphrased from the nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man". Plot summary Quintus Teal, a "Graduate Architect" in the Los Angeles area, wants architects to be inspired by topology and the Picard–Vessiot theory. During a conversation with friend Homer Bailey he shows models made of toothpicks and clay, representing projections of a four-dimensional tesseract, the e ...
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University Of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz began with the intention to showcase progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate education, innovative teaching methods and contemporary architecture. The residential college system consists of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the Oxbridge collegiate university system. Among the Faculty is 1 Nobel Prize Laureate, 1 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recipient, 12 members from the United States National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, 28 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 40 members o ...
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The Menace From Earth (collection)
''The Menace From Earth'' is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was published by The Gnome Press in 1959 in an edition of 5,000 copies. Contents * "The Year of the Jackpot" (1952) * "By His Bootstraps" (1941) * " Columbus Was a Dope" (1947) * "The Menace from Earth" (1957) * " Sky Lift" (1953) * "Goldfish Bowl" (1942) * " Project Nightmare" (1953) * "Water Is for Washing" (1947) Reception Floyd C. Gale of ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' rated the collection 4.5 stars out of five. He said "The trouble with Heinlein is that once he explores a situation, not much is left to be said. His prototypes are up-to-the-minute masterworks", citing "By His Bootstraps" and the temporal paradox genre as an example. Dave Pringle reviewed ''The Menace from Earth'' for ''Imagine Imagine may refer to: * Imagination Music Albums * ''Imagine'' (Armin van Buuren album), 2008 * ''Imagine'' (Eva Cassidy album), 2002 * ''Imagine'' (Janice Vidal album ...
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Vagrancy (people)
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, waste picker, scavenging, petty theft, temporary work, or welfare, social security (where available). Historically, vagrancy in Western societies was associated with petty crime, begging and lawlessness, and punishable by law with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses. Both ''vagrant'' and ''vagabond'' ultimately derive from the Latin word ''Wikt:vagari, vagari'', meaning "to wander". The term ''vagabond'' is derived from Latin ''vagabundus''. In Middle English, ''vagabond'' originally denoted a person without a home or employment. Historical views Vagrants have been historically characterised as outsiders in settled, ordered communities: embodiments of Other (philosophy), otherness, objects of scorn or mistrust, or worthy ...
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Door-to-door
Door-to-door is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, evangelism or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often known as ''traveling salesmen'', or by the archaic name ''drummer'' (someone who "drums up" business), and the technique is also sometimes called ''direct sales''. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit. Historically, this was a major method of distributing goods outside large towns, with the salesmen, often self-employed known as pedlars or peddlers, also hawkers. With the huge growth of retail shops in the 19th century, it became less important, and the development of mail order and finally sales via the internet gradually reduc ...
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Salton Sea
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Over millions of years, the Colorado River has flowed into the Imperial Valley and deposited alluvium (soil), creating fertile farmland, building up the terrain, and constantly moving its main course and river delta. For thousands of years, the river has alternately flowed into the valley, or diverted around it, creating either a saline lake called Lake Cahuilla, or a dry desert basin, respectively. When the Colorado River flows into the valley, the lake level depends on river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. When the river diverts around the valley, the lake dries completely, as it did around 1580. Hundreds of archaeological sites have been found in this region, indicating possibly long-ter ...
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