The new infrastructure to launch and scale financial services in Latin America in weeks (and not in years!)

Pomelo

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XIII

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XII 

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XI - GASTRONOMIC AMERICA

Privacy and crypto cannot always be used in the same sentence in the blockchain field as most cryptocurrencies guarantee a minimum level of privacy, in fact they are pseudo-anonymous and therefore, it is always possible to trace back, with different techniques, to who is behind that particular crypto address and account, not to mention the centralized exchanges that can be exploited to get information about users and their accounts. This is true for most cryptocurrencies but it is also true that cryptocurrencies and tokens have been created that allow you to obscure all the weaknesses of the blockchain such as the transparency of transactions and the related address balances, effectively making these crypto and blockchain the "best" in terms of privacy. However, it is also true that these blockchains that have developed several years ago use a technology of the time that, although efficient, makes them inefficient from various points of view, such as speed and cost of transactions, in fact just as the bitcoin blockchain is slow underneath several aspects and limited in structure, even the first blockchains focused on privacy, such as Monero (XMR), have significant disadvantages. But all this will soon be just the past as in addition to other blockchains with various protocols and crypto being born, other solutions are also being born and were born to exploit the power of technologies that prevent transactions from being tracked, such as the solution already developed on Zcash (ZRC), the zk-SNARKS technology. So is this technology the best? From a technical point of view it is the best compromise between safety and speed, as the Monero technology for example could be better but has the disadvantage that it is quite slow and expensive and therefore in fact not good. So better to create a blockchain with zk-SNARKS like Zcash? Definitely not, as this blockchain already exists and with various integrations such as the possibility of making the so-called shield transactions private or not, and also the problem of creating a blockchain that allows only the transfer of value in a private and protected way, it would be really limiting, and there are several blockchains with this purpose and with different systems, here some. What would it take then? More than a blockchain with these characteristics, a protocol would be needed that allows not only to have these aforementioned characteristics, but which can also be integrated into the already developed environment and which can act as a component to be integrated in other areas, as in the case of finance decentralized (DeFi) where the various protocols can be integrated with each other without too many problems. With such a protocol a real revolution would open in the privacy sector as it would be possible to extend all the advantages of private transactions, with the various advantages of operating freely, therefore with DeFi itself, decentralized exchanges (DEX) and so on away, and the panorama is truly infinite for the applications that can be created. Are there any such protocols? As incredible as it is, to date there is only 1 project in the world that is able to do all this and with a development complexity that is strange but true, it was created by a great developer, Matthias Schönebeck. We are talking about ZEOS, the first token in the world to replicate an entire protocol through a smart contract, and in fact the properties of the zk-SNARKS technology and some of the Haven Protocol (XHV) blockchain, which allows you to make completely anonymous transactions with the related ZEOS, but exploiting all the power of the underlying blockchain which is that of EOS. What is ZEOS? In essence, ZEOS is nothing more than a smart contract that replicates the functions that we find on the Zcash and Haven Protocol blockchains, and since this smart contract is located on the EOS blockchain, consequently it exploits the advantages of this blockchain such as the system simple account, incredible transaction speed and also negligible cost of transactions. Practically with this smart contract, we have 3 blockchains in 1, and with all the various advantages of all 3, privacy, power and speed of transactions, something that could not be replicated on other blockchains as at a lower level just as they were conceived, therefore no Ethereum and none other than Cardano could succeed in this undertaking. Why is ZEOS so important? Here we are not talking about a simple peg (anchoring with another asset) to a privacy coin, but we are talking about a real smart contract in itself and which allows you to exploit the characteristics of those protocols in a completely autonomous and unrelated way same. But the most extraordinary thing about this protocol and smart contract, is that since we are dealing with a smart contract, it is possible to integrate it into any other protocol and decentralized application (dApp), and therefore all the potential we had is unlocked seen at the beginning, as for example a DEX, and consequently exchange any crypto in a completely anonymous way, even the BTC / EOS or BTC / USDT pair. At what point is this project? The project is further ahead than one might think as it has been going on for several months now and has also won a loan of over $ 20,000 from the crowdfunding platform Pomelo, and has recently released the first version of the wallet in testnet where anyone can try to make transactions with whomever they want in a completely anonymous form. Here we can see some screenshots of the wallet and the functioning of the protocol: So we are only at the beginning of a real revolution both for privacy at an international level and also for the EOS blockchain as thanks to its extraordinary technical capabilities, it will attract many more people and investments to exploit this type of protocol than not found nowhere else. For more details, here the video for Italians reader where I explain the protocol: https://youtu.be/yhfy_OpJJN4

ZEOS - Privacy on EOS

Having now reached the end of the year, just as for the various companies and projects, we sum up how the last year has passed between ups and downs, so also in the blockchain and crypto sector, we can see how they have evolved and transformed, reaching or failing goals. This time we will focus on the EOS blockchain, and we will go to fix the most salient moments that have occurred throughout 2021, both moments of celebration and pugnacious moments inside and outside the community, so grab your cup full of kombucha, and let's browse the album memories. : January 07, the website is updated Bullish.com 10, Daniel Larimer resigns as CTO from Block.one, news that shocked everyone in the community; 21, Block.one transfers over 20 million EOS from one of its accounts to the bullish account 25, ImmuneBytes launches the audit service for smart contracts on EOS 30, Daniel Larimer, in an interview with Amelia Tomasicchio (I prepared the questions), accuses Block.one of hindering development on EOS : February 2, the next EOSIO Hackathon “Beyond Blockchain” is announced, also sponsored by Google Cloud 4, the Greymass team, behind the famous Anchor Wallet, launches the possibility of creating EOS accounts and more 9, Brendan Blumer announces that Block.one has launched the EOS VC fund for India 24, the PowerUp Model arrives on the EOS blockchain, and from this moment on, all transactions have a cost to be processed (minimum about 0.0003 EOS) 25, Block.one and Lacchain join forces to expand the use of the blockchain in Latin American territories : March 1, the social media Voice announced the creation of NFTs for their articles 2, the "Beyond Blockchain" Hackathon opens 3, Daniel Larimer announces his new project, Clarion OS, intended as Layer 0 of the EOS blockchain 12, EOSFinex announces its next closure but opens its code to everyone 17, EOS Market Place explodes in Venezuela, demonstrating how EOS is a valid alternative to fiat and works in the real economy 18, Block.one's EOS VC fund rewards EOS Nation and EOS Asia with over $ 630,000 for creating a decentralized platform to encourage and reward the development of dApps on EOS (spoiler, it will be called Pomelo) 20, Brendan Blumer talks about ProFi (Programmable Finance) or a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) with KYC (Know Your Customer) 27, Daniel Larimer proposes a roadmap for EdenOS to be integrated into the EOS blockchain : April 1, Google Cloud strengthens its interest in this blockchain and mone it one of the best DLTs to carry out projects on 2, it is not an April Fool, but from today, MetaMask can be used as a wallet for EOS, all thanks to EOS Argentina; here is my guide 7, information emerges regarding Bullish and its hypothetical IPO (Initial Public Offering) 21, Block.one announces a proposal to reward those who vote by exploiting the inflation of the blockchain itself 25, the new CCID report arrives, which once again places EOS at the top of all other blockchains, surpassing Ethereum, which is in second place, and IOST, which is in third place 28, the "Beyond Blockchain" Hackathon, with over 1300 participants, ends, and the winners are, in order, DAO Bull, gGoods, Recoverable Online Wallets (ROW), Finfluencers : May 4, Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo announces the closure of Voice and its next reopening in 3 months, overturning the initial idea of ​​a decentralized social network to move to an NFT platform, then transforming Voice into an NFT marketplace 11, The price of EOS goes beyond $14 14, The " " smart contract hack takes place where over 1 million EOS and almost half a million USDT are stolen (spoiler, the hacker refuses 100 thousand dollars, and I decide to block the account and recover all funds thanks to the consensus with the BPs) flash.sx 25, the first election for Eden ends 30, Newdex announces its development of a new, more functional, and better DEX (Decentralized Exchange) with the integration of other blockchains and also the NDX token will be renamed to DEX and the supply resized with a 100: 1 ratio : June 1, third birthday for the EOS blockchain since its launch 2, more information arrives about the new Voice 3, EOS Nation announces the Pomelo platform, the first crowdfunding platform on EOS for EOS projects 11, Block.one closes a class action dispute by paying $ 27.5 million 15, EOSTarter, the first incubator on EOS for projects on EOS, led by Hernan Arber, also starts 23, The first confirmations of a merge between Bullish and Far Peak arrive : July 1, the first DAO in the world to be legally recognized in America, CryptoFed DAO, is based on the EOS blockchain 2, the first physical book connected to an NFT on the EOS blockchain arrives 7, Block.one invests over $ 7 million in Chintai to expand its business and project 9, Bullish's SPAC Merger is confirmed for over $ 9 billion 17, the second vote for Eden starts 26, Voice announces further details and the launch for mid-August 27, the closed Bullish pilot starts with more than half a million dollars at stake to incentivize the test : August 3, EOS Costa Rica launches the dashboard to check the statistics of the EOS blockchain and other EOSIO-based blockchains 5, Voice will use USDC stablecoin 6, the EOS Foundation is born, promoted by the former CEO of EOS Nation, Yves La Rose 8, Brendan Blumer celebrates his 35th birthday 11, I celebrate my birthday 19, The EOS mainnet arrives on MetaMask, here is all the info 25, EOS inflation goes from 1% to 3% as predicted by the EOS Foundation to use the funds to develop massively on EOS, thanks to the transfer of over 3 million EOS 26, Voice will use a private EOSIO blockchain initially with the possibility in the future to migrate NFTs to and from other blockchains such as EOS and Ethereum : September 6, Daniel Larimer announces the next official and on-chain election for Eden on October 9th 17, Google Cloud begins accepting votes for his BP on EOS October: 8, The EOS Network Foundation awards 6 projects with 100 thousand dollars each; the projects are EOS Go, ByWire News, AtomicAssets, Finney.World, Koreos, EOS Microloan 9, Eden's first on-chain election concludes, and the elect are Aaron Cox, Chris Barnes, Jesse Jaffe, John Williamson, Brandon Lovejoy, Randall Roland 16, THE EOS Network Foundation rewards 11 projects with a grant with 100 thousand dollars each, and these are: DefiBox, EOSDT, , Vigor Protocol, DeFis Network, Newdex, Organic Protocol, Pizza ProFi, DAPP Network, pNetwork, DAPP DAO Account SOVDEX.io 26, Pomelo will launch the first match with the EOS Network Foundation worth 500 thousand dollars 30, The opening of Pomelo is announced on 7 November : November 1, The combination of Bullish and Far Peak LLC is registered with the SEC, bringing in Bullish's CEO, Tom Farley, and as director Brendan Blumer 5, Guy Fawkes Night, recommended movie: V for Vendetta 7, Pomelo opens the platform to everyone, giving away 500 thousand dollars to be distributed with quadratic funding 8, Block.one announces to transfer a total of 45 million EOS to Helios (first tranche of 8 million EOS), VC led by Brock Pierce (spoiler, the community does not look favorably on the operation) 19, The working groups sponsored by the EOS Network Foundation arrive, the branches are: Core +, Audit +, Wallet +, API + 24, the anniversary of Hoken Tech : December 1, Pomelo's first season ends with over $ 130,000 raised, 76 projects, 1022 donors 6, Block.one tries to cater to the EOS community by offering 32 million EOS (spoiler, the community raises the middle finger) 8, the EOS community denies payment to Block.one of 67 million EOS (spoiler, the DAO era begins in the DAO) 10, eCurve, DeFi platform, is hacked by spider man (itsspiderman), and the PIZZA platform loses over $ 5 million in tokens (spoiler, spiderman requests a sum, BPs freeze accounts, PIZZA is slowly catching up funds) 14, Daniel Larimer has seen the movie “Inception” too many times, EOS will soon be a DAO of DAO 19, DefiBox launches the Gamebox platform to support projects that intend to develop games on the EOS blockchain 20, Daniel Larimer proposed a new update (hard forks) for EOS, called Mandel, that will be ready on May 19th, 2022 21, Bullish open to the public in over 40 Countries 25, the team of ZEOS, project to create a token dedicated to privacy using ZK-SNARK, launches the ZEOS token to all holders of the PEOS token An intense year full of progress never seen in a single year regarding this blockchain, and an incredible year awaits us both for the various progress of the various projects that have had funds from Pomelo, and for the next update of EOS, EOS 3.0. So we just have to say goodbye to the new year and fill our wallets with this asset as it could prove to be the best investment for 2022. For Italian readers, I also made a video with all the progress for this blockchain in 2021: https://youtu.be/cDgi1qnw_D8

2021 - One Year in EOS

The coming together of 27 corporations to form Libra project signifies a growing trend that we might witness more going forward: companies coming together to form their own enterprise blockchain solutions. A single corporation forming its own blockchain does not make much sense since there are easier ways of doing it with centralized databases. However, for collaboration within a specific industry, different tools are needed. For such endeavors, the key objectives for collaboration would be: Having a better grip on the industry they are in Allow participants to share data that would normally not share but within a permissioned system. Give consumers more choice, efficiency within one platform With better visibility of industry operations, more value could be generated for the partners in the arrangement. From a regulatory standpoint, consortiums would have more bargaining power in terms of how policies are formulated and implemented. Of-late there has been a lot of pressure on reducing centralization and move towards decentralization. In order to minimize regulatory pressure as well as score some PR points in the public eye, consortium blockchains will make sense. As to how and if they will succeed, that still remains to be seen. Governments already seem to be leaning towards ‘ ’ and are therefore showing the intention of supporting projects that say they are blockchain projects. blockchain not bitcoin Already we have seen corporations such as IBM, Walmart among others announce they will be introducing blockchain in one way or another. : The blockchain applications we are about to analyze are different from cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Most of the enterprise applications below employ some but not all aspects of blockchain but heavily reply on the broader concept of distributed ledger technology (DLT). Blockchain is a subset of DLT and DLT can be used in other ways. NOTE With consortiums and permissioned blockchains, it is possible that there will be major developments in that sector as they try to integrate some aspect of distributed ledger technology or cryptography and introduce new ways for corporations to collaborate in some areas of mutual interest. 1. Banking and payments Ripple The obvious and most useful application of consortium blockchains is in the banking and finance industry. Libra is one of them, bringing together 27 other companies to form a global payments network. Ripple has also been doing the same for a while now connecting global banks and payment providers to its . The benefits are straightforward: faster, low cost and access. The rationale behind Ripple is simple: payment and financial industry has not evolved to match the internet era. It still takes days for cross-border payments to clear. Its ambitious plan is to on-board every major bank and payment system to use its network as a settlement layer and build a better alternative to current RTGS (real-time global settlement). Ripplenet Network XRP, the currency is used to fuel the network and enable the execution of transactions. Currently, it says it has over 200 banks and payment partners working on the platform. 2.     Pharmaceuticals & food tracking In terms of food traceability, is the leading example. IBM has created an ecosystem of producers, manufacturers, retailers, suppliers, and others working together in food supply chain process with the aim of increasing safety, transparency. There are currently 50 brands across the IBM Food Trust network. IBM Food Trust source:@IBM Walmart is one of the leading participants. A player in the food ecosystem can apply to become a trusted provider in the Food Trust system through APIs for data upload and integration with your ERP system. Other corporations that are Albertsons companies (one of the largest food and drug retailers in the US) and Carrefour, the leading European grocery chain. Specifically, Carrefour says that consumers will be able to scan QR code with phone and get the products traceability information. have joined IBM FOOD Trust creates a digital ledger that tracks food from the farm to processing facilities, to distributors and grocery shelves. One of the rationales for this is to trace bacteria outbreaks quickly before they spread. The current tracing is paper-based and takes weeks. With blockchain, scanning product is easy and can trace back to the source with the precision of seconds instead of weeks, according to At the farm, the information is captured on a handheld system as well at the packing house. With a permissioned blockchain, different players come together as validators hence increasing transparency and efficiency. No one party can change the information without notifying the others. Traceability is also highly enhanced. Vice President of Food at Walmart. Main solutions in this area can be summed up as: Ø  Ensure traceability and hence food safety in terms of detecting bacteria such as e.coli Ø  Ensuring higher quality ingredients Ø  To enable compliance with different food standards Ø  Reducing food waste Ø  Providing transparency to consumers by showing products are authentic. (this is becoming key competitive point as customers now want more transparency in sourcing). Indeed as per , Carrefour is reporting increased sales. It has already launched tracking for 20 items such as chicken, eggs, oranges, pork, and cheese and will add 100 by end of 2019. “ ”. this article by Reuters Consumers can scan QR barcode on pomelo grapefruit with their phone and find out the date of harvest, location of cultivation, the owner of the plot, when it was packed, how long it took to transport to Europe and tips on how to prepare it Some of the challenges so far are:- -some farmers unwillingness to share so much information -tracking farm produce that comes from different farms Shipping is another area that corporates are bundling together to form blockchain consortiums. The most prevalent has been . IBM has brought together nearly half of the world’s cargo container shipments under one consortium in order to work together in improving the global shipping industry. It is built on Hyperledger Fabric. 3. Shipping Tradelens Maersk, CMA CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Company, MSC are among the big players that have joined. The case for blockchain in the shipping industry emanates from the need to digitize the paper-based and manual process and establish consensus rules for data management as it moves form one company to the next in the shipping chain. Furthermore, it is hard to track containers and auditing takes weeks with many touchpoints that are disjointed. Blockchain comes in to: Enable all participants in the process to follow the flow of shipments as it changes hands from one entity or country to another in real-time. Establish a governance model guiding the rules of engagement between different parties Permissioned data sharing with various players acting as nodes. This makes it more secure and reliable as no one party can change without notifying the others More visibility throughout the process making it easier to audit. Other companies that want to join can tap into the consortium’s APIs Here is a . Demo of how Tradelens works In conclusion, it seems most of the blockchain use case for industries is optimizing for shared databases to improve visibility, tracking, auditing in certain aspects of business operations. In banking finance it is to improve interoperability between banks and payment companies, in shipping, it is for improving visibility and tracking, the same case for food and most of the other supply chain based operations.  With big players such as IBM, Microsoft,  Walmart experimenting with aspects of shared databases in one way or another, it is only a matter of time before industry-wide applications become mainstream.

A Case for Consortium Blockchains and What's Happening in this space

Authors: (1) Maggie D. Bailey, Colorado School of Mines and National Renewable Energy Lab; (2) Douglas Nychka, Colorado School of Mines; (3) Manajit Sengupta, National Renewable Energy Lab; (4) Aron Habte, National Renewable Energy Lab; (5) Yu Xie, National Renewable Energy Lab; (6) Soutir Bandyopadhyay, Colorado School of Mines. Table of Links Abstract and Intro Data Bayesian Hierarchical Model (BHM) Solar Radiation Example Results Conclusion Appendix A: Simulation Study Appendix B: Regridding Coefficient Estimates References References Accadia, C., Mariani, S., Casaioli, M., Lavagnini, A., and Speranza, A.: Sensitivity of precipitation forecast skill scores to bilinear interpolation and a simple nearest-neighbor average method on high-resolution verification grids, Weather and forecasting, 18, 918–932, 2003. Berndt, C. and Haberlandt, U.: Spatial interpolation of climate variables in Northern Germany—Influence of temporal resolution and network density, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 15, 184–202, 2018. Chandler, R., Barnes, C., Brierley, C., and Alegre, R.: Regridding and interpolation of climate data for impacts modelling–some cautionary notes, Tech. rep., Copernicus Meetings, 2022. Cressie, N. and Wikle, C. K.: Statistics for Spatio-Temporal Data, 2011. Cressie, N. A.: Change of support and the modifiable areal unit problem, 1996. Diaconescu, E. P., Gachon, P., and Laprise, R.: On the remapping procedure of daily precipitation statistics and indices used in regional climate model evaluation, Journal of Hydrometeorology, 16, 2301–2310, 2015. Ensor, L. A. and Robeson, S. M.: Statistical characteristics of daily precipitation: comparisons of gridded and point datasets, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 47, 2468–2476, 2008. Finley, A. O., Banerjee, S., and Gelfand, A. E.: spBayes for large univariate and multivariate point-referenced spatio-temporal data models, arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.8192, 2013. Gelfand, A. E., Zhu, L., and Carlin, B. P.: On the change of support problem for spatio-temporal data, Biostatistics, 2, 31–45, 2001. Handcock, M. S. and Stein, M. L.: A Bayesian analysis of kriging, Technometrics, 35, 403–410, 1993. Harris, T., Li, B., and Sriver, R.: Multi-model Ensemble Analysis with Neural Network Gaussian Processes, arXiv [preprint] arXiv:2202.04152, 2022. Loghmari, I., Timoumi, Y., and Messadi, A.: Performance comparison of two global solar radiation models for spatial interpolation purposes, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 82, 837–844, 2018. McGinnis, S. and Mearns, L.: Building a climate service for North America based on the NA-CORDEX data archive, Climate Services, 22, 100 233, 2021. McGinnis, S., Mearns, L., and McDaniel, L.: Effects of Spatial Interpolation Algorithm Choice on Regional Climate Model Data Analysis, "Fall Meeting, American Geophysical Union, San Francisco", 2010. Phillips, D. L. and Marks, D. G.: Spatial uncertainty analysis: propagation of interpolation errors in spatially distributed models, Ecological Modelling, 91, 213–229, 1996. Rajulapati, C. R., Papalexiou, S. M., Clark, M. P., and Pomeroy, J. W.: The perils of regridding: examples using a global precipitation dataset, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 60, 1561–1573, 2021. Rauscher, S. A., Coppola, E., Piani, C., and Giorgi, F.: Resolution effects on regional climate model simulations of seasonal precipitation over Europe, Climate dynamics, 35, 685–711, 2010. Sengupta, M., Xie, Y., Lopez, A., Habte, A., Maclaurin, G., and Shelby, J.: The national solar radiation data base (NSRDB), Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 89, 51–60, 2018. Whittemore, A. S.: Errors-in-variables regression using Stein estimates, The American Statistician, 43, 226–228, 1989. This paper is under CC 4.0 license. available on arxiv

Regridding Uncertainty for Statistical Downscaling of Solar Radiation: References

Mark Twain's Speeches by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH here AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872 MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention—as usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord—and not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and—common drinks, what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of brotherhood? This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and glorious land, too—a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C. Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read. And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of them—voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, “Please state what figure you hold him at—and return the basket.” Now there couldn’t be anything friendlier than that. But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won’t mind a body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word of brag—and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us yet.* *At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
          but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
          blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
          harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
          did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
          would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
          sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
          sociable time.  It is known that in consequence of that remark
          forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb.  The
          depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
          banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
          that were there.  By that one thoughtless remark General
          Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
          More than one said that night: “And this is the sort of person
          that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Mark Twain (2004). Mark Twain's Speeches. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3188/pg3188-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

POMELO

pomelo.com

201-500 employees

Since 2021

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POMELO

pomelo.com

201-500 employees

Since 2021

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POMELO

EVERGREEN INDEX #8261

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