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Quote by Primo Levi

“Alongside the liberating relief of the veteran who tells us his story, I now felt in the writing a complex, intense, and new pleasure, similar to that I felt as a student when penetrating the solemn order of differentials calculus. It was exalting to search and find, or create, the right word, that is, commensurate, concise, and strong; to dredge up events from my memory and describe them with the greatest rigor and the least clutter.”

Quote by Primo Levi

Work

The periodic table

This book provides an in-depth exploration of the periodic table, covering the history of its development, the characteristics of each element, and their applications in various fields such as chemistry, physics, and engineering. more

Author

Primo Levi
Primo Levi

Chemist and Italian Jewish author, known for his dual identity as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps and a chemist. His works profoundly reflect the moral dilemmas and psychological states of humans in extreme environments. more

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“I’d always said that if and when the aliens actually landed, it would be a letdown. I mean, after War of the Worlds, Close Encounters, and E.T., there was no way they could live up to the image in the public’s mind, good or bad. I’d also said that they would look nothing like the aliens of the movies, and that they would not have come to A) kill us, B) take over our planet and enslave us, C) save us from ourselves à la The Day the Earth Stood Still, or D) have sex with Earthwomen. I mean, I realize it’s hard to find someone nice, but would aliens really come thousands of light-years just to get a date? Plus, it seemed just as likely they’d be attracted to warthogs. Or yucca. Or air-conditioning units.”

“He could talk at length about the known invasive species, and why there were so many different ones: the weblike filaments choking the trees in New Orleans, the flame-colored poppies erupting on Mexico City rooftops, the green fins popping up in Florida beach sand like sharks coming ashore. Every shell that struck Earth, and some that hit the surface of the water, cracked and sent millions of seeds into the air or into the oceans.”

“Have they been carrying out abductions and experiments on humans and animals? “Emphatically No... Any species authorised to visit a planet must adhere to the six mandatory decrees imposed by the Guardians of Law and Natural Law: No contact, No impact, No interact, No extract, No transact, No artefact. To violate any of these prescripts is classed as an act of aggression against the Traits.”

“This is how you break down the wall: Start with two beings. They can be human if you like, but that's hardly a prerequisite. All that matters is that they know how to talk among themselves. Separate them. Let them see each other, let them speak. Perhaps a window between their cages. Perhaps an audio feed. Let them practice the art of conversation in their own chosen way. Hurt them. It may take a while to figure out how. Some may shrink from fire, others from toxic gas or liquid. Some creatures may be invulnerable to blowtorches and grenades, but shriek in terror at the threat of ultrasonic sound. You have to experiment; and when you discover just the right stimulus, the optimum balance between pain and injury, you must inflict it without the remorse. You leave them an escape hatch, of course. That's the very point of the exercise: give one of your subjects the means to end the pain, but give the other the information required to use it. To one you might present a single shape, while showing the other a whole selection. The pain will stop when the being with the menu chooses the item its partner has seen. So let the games begin. Watch your subjects squirm. If—when—they trip the off switch, you'll know at least some of the information they exchanged; and if you record everything that passed between them, you'll start to get some idea of how they exchanged it. When they solve one puzzle, give them a new one. Mix things up. Switch their roles. See how they do at circles versus squares. Try them out on factorials and Fibonnaccis. Continue until Rosetta Stone results. This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.”