0 Expectations Quotes

Farewell! O Gandalf! May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected!

He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.

What?" he demanded. "Did you just...clean a dish?" Dee backed away slowly, blinking. She glanced at Daemon. "The world is going to end. And I’m still a vir—" "No!" both the brothers yelled in unison. Daemon looked like he was actually going to vomit. "Jesus, don’t ever finish that statement. Actually, don’t ever change that. Thank you." Her mouth dropped open."You expect me to never have—" "This isn’t a conversation I want to start my morning with." Dawson grabbed his book bag off the kitchen table. "I’m so leaving for school before this gets more detailed." "And why aren’t you dressed yet?" Dee demanded, her full attention concentrated on Daemon. "You’re going to be late." "I’m always late." "Punctuality makes perfect.

Happiness (t) = w0+ w1  γt−jCRj+ w2  γt−jEVj+ w3  γt−jRPEj Which all boils down to: Happiness equals reality minus expectations.

You’ve gotten under my skin,” he said. I wasn’t expecting that. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shed you.

You've a right to believe that we're governed by Nature and the hidden Force within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.

Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.

Not bad in short, though the last one [understanding the language of animals], isn't half as useful as you might expect, since when all's said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: a) the endless hunt for food, b) finding a warm bush to sleep in the evening, and c) the sporadic satisfication of certain glands. (Many would argue that the language of human kind boils down to this too)

Life is a good deal more comfortable if one doesn't expect it to be fair.

Do you already know that your existence--who and how you are--is in and of itself a contribution to the people and place around you? Not after or because you do some particular thing, but simply the miracle of your life. And that the people around you, and the place(s), have contributions as well? Do you understand that your quality of life and your survival are tied to how authentic and generous the connections are between you and the people and place you live with and in? Are you actively practicing generosity and vulnerability in order to make the connections between you and others clear, open, available, durable? Generosity here means giving of what you have without strings or expectations attached. Vulnerability means showing your needs.

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

Chaos is only chaos to the people who aren’t expecting it.

Never hit a man with a closed fist," he told her. He could feel her pulse. "Why? Because it gives you an excuse to manhandle me?" He let go. "Slap his face instead." "Ha." "It will make him take you less seriously, and then he won't be expecting it when you knee him in the groin.

Love is a superpower, It’s one we all have, but it’s not a superpower you’ll always be able to control. It’ll get harder when you get older too. Don’t be scared if you find yourself loving someone you’re not expecting to. If it’s right, it’s right.

You can’t let the thought of what other people expect be your compass, Ava.

The Eleven king looked sternly upon Thorin, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Thorin would only say that he was starving. "Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?" asked the king. "We did not attack them," answered Thorin, "we came to beg because we were starving." "Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?" "I don't know, but I expect that they're all starving in the forest." "What were you doing in the forest?" "Looking for food and drink, because we were starving." "And what brought you into the forest at all?" asked the king angrily. At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word.

They made for his noise far quicker than he had expected. They were frightfully angry. Quite apart from the stones no spider has ever like being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course, is insulting to anybody.

Death came for every man eventually, and seldom where or when he expected.

And remember, sometimes our dreams appear where and when we least expect it. Sometimes, just sometimes, you can even find them waiting in your own bed when you open your eyes. (Esther)

I spent my day as I normally spend my days: threatening suppliers, bullying those who are not in line with my expectations, and generally creating havoc in the lives of others. The square across the street is empty of all but the pigeons. I find myself resenting them.

Sometimes, when we least expect it, we catch a glimpse of someone, a face, perhaps only a smile, and our heart latches on and will not let go. It may not be love at first, but soon and for always.

Was there any reason in the world to expect a deep-sea predator with that many teeth to be friendly?

You can’t let the thought of what other people expect be your compass,

Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a “lean startup” that can “adapt” and “evolve” to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a “minimum viable product,” and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. You could build the best version of an app that lets people order toilet paper from their iPhone. But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1. A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

I won't marry you." "Of course you will," he said. "Why wouldn't you? You followed me around like a puppy dog all those years ago, which was pure misery, because I wanted nothing more than to toss you down in the straw and despoil you, and you were too damned young. Back then I had scruples. Fortunantly, nowadays I have none." "Then why do you want to marry me?" She said, shoving her hair away from her face. "I have no idea." He said idly. "I expect I love you. Nothing else could account for such bizarre behavior on my part. I expect the captain of the packet ship can perform a ceremony. Are you ready?" She didn't move. She couldn't marry him, and she needed shoes, and she wasn't sure which was the most important to argue about.

if you went through life expecting gratitude for the help you provided, you might end up leading a miserable life.

No matter what I do, I really do love you Celaena." The word hit her like a stone to the head. He'd never said that word to her before. Ever. A long silence fell between them. Arobynn's neck shifted as he swallowed. "I do the things that I do because I'm sacred ... and because I don't know how to express what I feel." He said it so quietly that she barely heard it. "I did all of those things because I was angry with you for picking Sam." Arobynn's carefully cultivated mask fell, and the wound she'd given him flickered in those magnificent eyes. "Stay with me," he whispered. "Stay in Rifthold." She swallowed, and found it particularly hard to do so. "I'm going." "No," he said softly. "Don't go." No. That was what she'd said to him that night he'd beaten her, in the moment before he'd struck her, when she thought he was going to hurt Sam instead. And then he'd beaten her so badly she'd been knocked unconscious. Then he'd beaten Sam, too. Don't. That was what Ansel had said to her in the desert when Celaena had pressed the sword into the back of her neck, when the agony of Ansel's betrayal had been almost enough to make Celaena kill the girl she'd called a friend. But that betrayal had paled in comparison to what Arobynn had done to her when he'd tricked her into killing Doneval, a man who could have freed countless slaves. He was using word as chains to bind her again. He'd had so many chances over the year to tell her that he loved her--he'd known how much she craved those words. But he hadn't spoken them until he needed to use them as weapons. And now that she had Sam, Sam who said those words without expecting anything in return, Sam who loved her for reasons she still didn't understand... Celaena tilted her head to the side, the only warning she gave that she was still ready to attack him. "Get out of my house.

Just so you know,” she said, speaking to all of them but still watching Sam, “I’m going to retrieve Ben’s body.” A muscle feathered in Sam’s jaw, though he wisely kept his eyes averted. “But don’t expect me to extend the same courtesy to the rest of you when your time comes.

I know, 0 Caesar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience, that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades, and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother; that thou didst burn Eome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man; from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a Domitius on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music, thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die. Eome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling. Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by the — Arbiter Elegantiae.

Make no mistake," Enrico says finally. "I never would have accepted your application were it not for the King's order. I expect you will be expelled within the month." His forthrightness makes me bold. "I expect you will be surprised, my lord.

They seemed to fall forever. Geryon retained an iron-edged grip on the trembling Kadence, her hair whipping around them like angry silk ribbons. She didn't scream something he'd expected, but she did turn and wind her legs around him, something he had not.

If you expect to never make a mistake with the people you love, you’ll only disappoint yourself. Over and over.

By now I'm done expecting a laugh from this girl, but she suprises me, letting out a little giggle that reminds me of a rainbow escaping from a mud puddle.

Like young fern shoots my child's fingers curled. I did not expect, in the fifth month, frost.

The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers. All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons.

You two still establishing a pecking order?” “Oh, it’s clear who’s at the top,” Jayan said. “The lesser hordes need to sort out their own hierarchy. Are you enjoying being the prize they’re fighting over?” “Me?” “Yes, you. I’m afraid female magicians have quite a reputation. My young, naïve subordinates are trying to work out if any of them stands a chance with you.” “A chance?” She turned and began picking fruit again. “Am I to expect a marriage proposal, or something much shallower?” “Definitely shallower,” he said.

Nothing is truly free. Every gift has a price, paid for by someone in coin, favors, expectations or goods. Things get a little sticky when Life shows up wanting to collect on something you thought was free. Always ask the price.

OKRs are big, not incremental—we don’t expect to hit all of them. (If we do, we’re not setting them aggressively enough.) We grade them with a color scale to measure how well we did: 0.0–0.3 is red 0.4–0.6 is yellow 0.7–1.0 is green

The term epic fantasy conjures an expectation of vast continents, kingdoms and armies, the rise and fall of nations. But there is also an epic scale to be found in a single life. In the seasons of a marriage. In seeing one’s children grow into adulthood. In passing hopes and dreams, as well as burdens and sorrows from one generation down to another.

In that seminar I attended at eighteen, the speaker asked, “What percentage of shared responsibility do you have in making a relationship work?” I was a teenager, so wise in the ways of true love. Of course I had all the answers. “Fifty/fifty!” I blurted out. It was so obvious; both people must be willing to share the responsibility evenly or someone’s getting ripped off. “Fifty-one/forty-nine,” yelled someone else, arguing that you’d have to be willing to do more than the other person. Aren’t relationships built on self-sacrifice and generosity? “Eighty/twenty,” yelled another. The instructor turned to the easel and wrote 100/0 on the paper in big black letters. “You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return,” he said. “Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.” Whoa. This wasn’t what I was expecting! But I quickly understood how this concept could transform every area of my life. If I always took 100 percent responsibility for everything I experienced—completely owning all of my choices and all the ways I responded to whatever happened to me—I held the power. Everything was up to me. I was responsible for everything I did, didn’t do, or how I responded to what was done to me.

Where's my Italian lace? Where's my bouffant sleeves? Where's my goddamn hoop skirt?" The same place as your goddamned morals, you worthless tramp. "It's been modernized, Brenda," Agnes said. "When you pass something on to someone else, you have to expect changes. You don't get it back.

May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected!

Unlike Android or mobile applications, the expected upswing in ERP adoption is measured in years and not months.

Embrace high expectations from “demanding” parents if what they are demanding is your positive growth and learning.

did not fear either the darkness of the night or the darkness under the sun that can sometimes crowd in upon us when we least expect it.

I have a 100 percent success rate on making it through the day. I don’t expect today to be any different.” She

This reaping day, like most, was shaping up to be a scorcher. But what else could you expect on July 4th?

A Capitol-born citizen would have expected a building to be renamed for them. Sejanus’s father had only requested an education for his son.

how the hell did he expect me to just sit here while he married me off to this walking dog turd beside me?

my overly idealistic mind jumped to romanticized conclusions even when faced with realistic expectations, good judgment, and logic.

If you want to succeed at Level 4, you need to become an investor in people. This means adding value but also expecting to see a return on your investment—not in personal gain but in impact.

I never expected to love him so much. In the Priory, we are not supposed to cleave too close to our own flesh. We all belong to the Mother, she said. Yet as soon as he was born, he had my heart.

Do you think he would have wanted you to commit suttee?” “What is that?” “A Hindu practice in which a widow is expected to throw herself on her husband’s burning funeral pyre. Her suicide is considered as proof of her devotion to him.” “What if the wife dies first? Does the husband do the same thing?” Shaw threw her a mildly taunting grin. “No, he re-marries.” “I should have known,” Livia said. “Men always manage to arrange things for their own benefit.

They’re like Generation X on steroids. They walk in with high expectations for themselves, their employer, their boss. If you thought you saw a clash when Generation X came into the workplace—that was the fake punch. The haymaker is coming now.

When thinking about risk from transport, you can think directly in terms of minutes of life lost per hour of travel. Each time you travel, you face a slight risk of getting into a fatal accident, but the chance of getting into a fatal accident varies dramatically depending on the mode of transport. For example, the risk of a fatal car crash while driving for an hour is about one in ten million (so 0.1 micromorts). For a twenty-year-old, that’s a one-in-ten-million chance of losing sixty years. The expected life lost from driving for one hour is therefore three minutes. Looking at expected minutes lost shows just how great a discrepancy there is between risks from different sorts of transport. Whereas an hour on a train costs you only twenty expected seconds of life, an hour on a motorbike costs you an expected three hours and forty-five minutes. In addition to giving us a way to compare the risks of different activities, the concept of expected value helps us choose which risks are worth taking. Would you be willing to spend an hour on a motorbike if it was perfectly safe but caused you to be unconscious later for three hours and forty-five minutes? If your answer is no, but you’re otherwise happy to ride motorbikes in your day-to-day life, you’re probably not fully appreciating the risk of death.

I used to wonder what kinds of idiots are fighting this Silver war, if they insist on containing the battlegrounds to the forsaken Choke. The northern border is long and winding, cutting along the river, mostly forested on both sides, always defended but never attacked. Of course, in the winter, it’s a brutal land of cold and snow, but what about the late spring and summer? Now? If Norta and the Lakelands hadn’t been fighting for a century, I would expect an assault on the city at any moment. But there’s nothing at all, and never will be. Because the war is not a war at all. It is an extermination.

I honestly didn't know how I'd arrived at this place, this time, this moment. I was a person I didn't recognize, but I had a faint sense of knowing from a long time ago. I was someone from my past when trust was freely given, and my overly idealistic mind jumped to romanticized conclusions even when faced with realistic expectations, good judgement, and logic.

In retaining employees and keeping them engaged, we’ll cover the five activities of great (vs. good) managers: • Help people play to their strengths. • Don’t demotivate; dehassle. • Set clear expectations and give employees a clear line of sight. • Give recognition and show appreciation. • Hire fewer people, but pay them more (frontline employees, not top leaders!).

The instructor turned to the easel and wrote 100/0 on the paper in big black letters. “You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return,” he said. “Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don’t have a partner. They were right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent—84 percent of whom are women. I

There was someone in his little attic room. Geralt knew it before he even reached the door, sensing it through the barely perceptible vibration of his medallion. He blew out the oil lamp which had lit his path up the stairs, pulled the dagger from his boot, slipped it into the back of his belt and pressed the door handle. The room was dark. But not for a witcher. He was deliberately slow in crossing the threshold; he closed the door behind him carefully. The next second he dived at the person sitting on his bed, crushed them into the linen, forced his forearm under their chin and reached for his dagger. He didn't pull it out. Something wasn't right. “Not a bad start,” she said in a muffled voice, lying motionless beneath him. “I expected something like this, but I didn't think we'd both be in bed so quickly. Take your hand from my throat please.” “It's

0.8-standard-deviation increase in the average sprinting ability in West Africans would be expected to lead to a hundredfold enrichment in the proportion of people above the 99.9999999th percentile point in Europeans. But an alternative explanation that would predict the same magnitude of effect is that there is simply more variation in sprinting ability in people of West African ancestry—with more people of both very high and very low abilities.

Will you regret letting him kiss you if you compare his kiss to your husband’s your whole life? Or was it more than a kiss? That is why the church expects purity. It isn’t because they don’t understand temptation, or even that they don’t understand how wonderful a budding relationship can be. Including the stolen kisses. No. They understand all too well how good it feels and how seductive desire can be. The Lord expects you to remain pure for other reasons. Your body is a temple and should be for you and your husband only.

The red glow of the robot's eyes held him. "Do you expect me," said cutie slowly, "to believe any such complicated, implausible, hypothesis as you have just outlined? What do you take me for?" Powell sputtered apple fragments onto the table and turned red. "Why damn you, it wasn't a hypothesis. Those were facts." Cutie sounded grim, "Globes of energy millions of miles across! Worlds with three billion humans on them! Infinite emptiness! Sorry, Powell, but I don't believe it. I'll puzzle this thing out for myself. Good-by.

As I said, your view on religion is known to me, it’s never particularly bothered me and, no doubt, it won’t bother me in the future. I’m not a fanatic. You’ve a right to believe that we’re governed by Nature and the Force hidden within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.

How are you feeling?” “Sore.” “About your commendation. You could be betrothed.” “I could have been betrothed since my birthday.” Glorian looked at her. “Did you feel different?” Helisent considered. A small ruby hung from her circlet, sparkling in the middle of her brow. “No,” she admitted. “Every year I expect to suddenly feel the way Florell and Sabran look, as if I could say anything and be convinced I was right, and not be terrified that someone will peck holes in my words. As if I’ve…set, or been kilned into shape. Still, I never do.” Glorian sighed. “I hoped you wouldn’t say that.” “Sorry.

Epidemiologists-scientists who study the spread of disease-use a special number to describe how contagious a virus is. It's called the basic reproduction number, or R0 for short. It's complicated to calculate but simple to understand-it counts how many people one sick person is expected to infect over the course of his or her illness. If I'm sick with a cold and I make two other people sick, the R0 of my virus is 2. Colds and seasonal flus typically have R0 values of around 1.5 to 2. The 1918 flu pandemic R0 was estimated to be 2 to 3, while diseases like polio and small pox have R0 values of around 5 to 7.

OKRs have two variants, and it is important to differentiate between them: Commitments are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and we will be willing to adjust schedules and resources to ensure that they are delivered. The expected score for a committed OKR is 1.0; a score of less than 1.0 requires explanation for the miss, as it shows errors in planning and/or execution. By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR. Aspirational OKRs have an expected average score of 0.7, with high variance.

You know," he said casually, "I'm not going to let you get away from me again without telling me who you are." "I prefer to remain mysterious." "Why?" She told him the truth. "Because I did something scandalous in the past, and now it is horribly awkward for me to come out in society." "What kind of scandal?" His sardonic tone made it clear that he expected her transgression to be a minor one. "You went somewhere unchaperoned, I suppose. Or you let someone steal a kiss from you in public." She shook her head with a wry smile. "Clearly you have no idea of how badly behaved we young ladies can be." "I would love for you to enlighten me.

The only question that got any traction was when he asked Martin what he did. Martin tersely replied that he was a wizard and was met with a blank stare. “You know, a wizard,” Martin said. “I do magic.” Martin had expected that this would at least impress Ampyx. Martin was wrong. “Why?” Ampyx asked. “Why what? Why do I do magic?” “Yes, why do you do magic?” Ampyx asked, as if it were the most obvious question in the world. Martin looked at Phillip, who shrugged. Finally, Martin answered, “Why wouldn’t I do magic? Wouldn’t you do magic if you could?” “Never,” Ampyx said. “Well, why not?” Ampyx scrunched his face and said, “Magic . . . it is . . . woman’s work.

The day of her commendation. Glorian Hraustr Berethnet stared in expectation at her canopy, waiting for maturity to shine on her from Halgalant. She had prayed for a sense that she was ready for her life. She had wanted the Saint to whisper to her, acknowledge her as his descendant. She had hoped she would finally long for her betrothal to a complete stranger, and her belly to puff with the next heir to Inys. In short, she had prayed, hoped, and expected to feel less of an imposter. Instead, she was drained from another painful night, she still had no interest in consorts, and the only puff she fancied in her belly was the sort that came from a good helping of blackberry pie.

About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf. Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb. Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you. Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject.

At the other extreme, the consumption tax rate should be very, very high for any products that impose massive negative externalities. Consider handgun ammunition. Currently, one can buy five hundred rounds of 9 mm ammunition for about $110 from online U.S. retailers—about twenty-two cents each. But each round of ammunition has a slight chance of falling into the wrong hands and killing someone. How slight? About 10 billion rounds are sold per year in the United States. There are about thirty thousand gun-related deaths in the United States per year (including suicides, homicides, and accidents). Assuming the typical gun death involves one round of ammo, the chance that any given round will end up killing someone is about thirty thousand divided by 10 billion, or three per million. Now, a person’s life is generally reckoned to be worth about $3 million, according to the usual cost-benefit-risk analyses by highway engineers, airlines, and hospitals. If each bullet has a three per million chance of negating a $3 million life, then that bullet imposes an expected average cost on society of $9. That’s about forty times its conventional retail cost of $0.22, so, by my reasoning, it should be subject to a consumption tax rate of 4,000 percent. This is obviously a rough calculation; it ignores the injury costs of nonlethal shootings (which would increase the tax) and the crime-deterrence effects, if any, of citizens having ammo (which would decrease the tax).

What do you typically like to do on a first date with a woman?" "That answer depends on the woman, since you're not all the same. Some women actually would enjoy beer and pool on a Friday night"---he stopped to give her a raised brow to emphasize his statement---"while others would want to have dinner at a nice restaurant. Some might want to hang out at home, order pizza and watch a movie just so we could talk and get to know each other. Another woman might be more interested in going to see a basketball game. Or maybe go to a museum." "And you'd be interested in doing any of those things." He shrugged. "I'm interested in doing a lot of different things. I'm not just a rancher. I like to get out of my element and learn something new." She stared at him. Dammit. She loved that answer. He really thought about what a woman might want to do. And he was open to new experiences. A lot of guys just did their own thing, expecting the woman to fall in line. "That's...very nice.

The levels of approval depend on the country and region: Swedes approve of spanking far less than do Americans or Kiwis, and Americans themselves are diverse, as we would expect from the southern culture of honor.178 In a 2005 survey, spanking approval rates ranged from around 55 percent in northern blue states (those that tend to vote for Democrats), like Massachusetts and Vermont, to more than 85 percent in southern red states (those that tend to vote for Republicans), like Alabama and Arkansas.179 Across the fifty states, the rate of approval of spanking tracks the homicide rate (the two measures show a correlation of 0.52 on a scale from -1 to 1), which could mean that spanked children grow up to be killers, but more likely that subcultures that encourage the spanking of children also encourage the violent defense of honor among adults.180 But every region showed a decline, so that by 2006 the southern states disapproved of spanking in the same proportion that the north-central and mid-Atlantic states did in 1986.181

Virtually every version of CBT for anxiety disorders involves working through what’s called an exposure hierarchy. The concept is simple. You make a list of all the situations and behaviors you avoid due to anxiety. You then assign a number to each item on your list based on how anxiety provoking you expect doing the avoided behavior would be. Use numbers from 0 (= not anxiety provoking at all) to 100 (= you would fear having an instant panic attack). For example, attempting to talk to a famous person in your field at a conference might be an 80 on the 0-100 scale. Sort your list in order, from least to most anxiety provoking. Aim to construct a list that has several avoided actions in each 10-point range. For example, several that fall between 20 and 30, between 30 and 40, and so on, on your anxiety scale. That way, you won’t have any jumps that are too big. Omit things that are anxiety-provoking but wouldn’t actually benefit you (such as eating a fried insect). Make a plan for how you can work through your hierarchy, starting at the bottom of the list. Where possible, repeat an avoided behavior several times before you move up to the next level. For example, if one of your items is talking to a colleague you find intimidating, do this several times (with the same or different colleagues) before moving on. When you start doing things you’d usually avoid that are low on your hierarchy, you’ll gain the confidence you need to do the things that are higher up on your list. It’s important you don’t use what are called safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are things people do as an anxiety crutch—for example, wearing their lucky undies when they approach that famous person or excessively rehearsing what they plan to say. There is a general consensus within psychology that exposure techniques like the one just described are among the most effective ways to reduce problems with anxiety. In clinical settings, people who do exposures get the most out of treatment. Some studies have even shown that just doing exposure can be as effective as therapies that also include extensive work on thoughts. If you want to turbocharge your results, try exposure. If you find it too difficult to do alone, consider working with a therapist.

Between 1995 and 1997 the California-based healthcare network Kaiser Permanente gave more than 17,000 patients a questionnaire to assess the level of trauma in their childhoods. Questions included whether the patients' parents had been mentally or physically abusive or neglectful and whether their parents were divorced or had abused substances. This was called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. After taking the questionnaire, patients were given an ACE score on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score, the more trauma a person experienced in childhood. The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn't go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema. They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide. Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals surging through our bodies like cortisol and adrenaline are healthy in moderation—you wouldn't be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they've finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who have suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres. In the end, these studies claimed that having an ACE score of 6 or higher takes twenty years off your life expectancy. The average life expectancy for someone with 6 or more ACEs is sixty years old.

Finally, he thought, If we’re going to talk, let’s really talk. “There are those who say that because nothing we do seems to change the future, it means that whatever we do now has to be what we did in the past. Essentially, they say that all of our decisions were made for us, and that all we can do is play our parts. They tell us that any effort we make to change the course of history, or our own destiny, is futile, and ultimately results in us becoming the very thing we struggled to keep from becoming.” Brit peered at him over the rim of her glass, pulled the drink down from her mouth without actually taking a drink, then asked Phillip, “That’s what they say. What do you say?” Phillip smiled. “Usually, something loud and insulting. I am my own man. I make my own decisions. If the universe expects me to do anything different, it should prepare for a fight. I reject the idea that just because we can see the future that we’re doomed to create it. I say free will and imagination are deeply linked, and if you don’t believe you have one it just means that you lack the other.” Phillip realized he was raising his voice. He took a deep breath. “I get a little crazy when this topic comes up,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop now.” “No,” Brit said, “please, go on.

It was the same as I remembered it,” she whispered, sounding defeated and puzzled and shattered. It was better than he remembered. Stronger, wilder…And the only reason she didn’t know it was because he hadn’t succumbed to temptation yet and kissed her once more. He had just rejected that idea as complete insanity when a male voice suddenly erupted behind them: “Good God! What’s going on here!” Elizabeth jerked free in mindless panic, her gaze flying to a middle-aged elderly man wearing a clerical collar who was dashing across the yard. Ian put a steadying hand on her waist, and she stood there rigid with shock. “I heart shooting-“ The gray-haired man gasped, sagging against a nearby tree, his hand over his heart, his chest heaving. “I heard it all the way up the valley, and I thought0” He broke off, his alert gaze moving from Elizabeth’s flushed face and tousled hair to Ian’s hand at her waist. “You thought what?” Ian asked in a voice that struck Elizabeth as being amazingly calm, considering they’d just been caught in a lustful embrace by nothing less daunting than a Scottish vicar. The thought had scarcely crossed her battered mind when the man’s expression hardened with understanding. “I thought,” he said ironically, straightening from the tree and coming forward, brushing pieces of bark from his black sleeve, “that you were trying to kill each other. Which,” he continued more mildly as he stopped in front of Elizabeth, “Miss Throckmorton-Jones seemed to think was a distinct possibility when she dispatched me here.” “Lucinda?” Elizabeth gasped, feeling as if the world was turning upside down. “Lucinda sent you here?” “Indeed,” said the vicar, bending a reproachful glance on Ian’s hand, which was resting on Elizabeth’s waist. Mortified to the very depths of her being by the realization she’d remained standing in this near-embrace, Elizabeth hastily shoved Ian’s hand away and stepped sideways. She braced herself for a richly deserved, thundering tirade on the sinfulness of their behavior, but the vicar continued to regard Ian with his bushy gray eyebrows lifted, waiting. Feeling as if she were going to break from the strain of the silence, Elizabeth cast a pleading look at Ian and found him regarding the vicar not with shame or apology, but with irritated amusement. “Well?” demanded the vicar at last, looking at Ian. “What do you have to say to me?” “Good afternoon?” Ian suggested drolly. And then he added, “I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow, Uncle.” “Obviously,” retorted the vicar with unconcealed irony. “Uncle!” blurted Elizabeth, gaping incredulously at Ian Thornton, who’d been flagrantly defying rules of morality with his passionate kisses and seeking hands from the first night she met him. As if the vicar read her thoughts, he looked at her, his brown eyes amused. “Amazing, is it not, my dear? It quite convinces me that God has a sense of humor.

For a team facing a 12-run deficit, the game is all but over. Almost always. Three times in major league history, though, a club has come from down by a dozen to win. The Chicago White Sox were the first in 1911; fourteen years later, the Philadelphia Athletics duplicated the feat. Then seventy-six years would pass before it happened again. Enter the 2001 Cleveland Indians, battling for their sixth playoff spot in seven years. Hosting the red-hot Seattle Mariners, who would win a major league record 116 games that season, the Tribe found themselves trailing 12–0 after just three innings. In the middle of the seventh, Seattle led 14–2—at which point the Indians began their historic comeback. Scoring three in the seventh, four in the eighth, and five in the ninth, Cleveland forced extra innings. In the bottom of the eleventh, utility man Jolbert Cabrera slapped a broken-bat single to score Kenny Lofton for one of the more remarkable wins in the annals of baseball. On August 6, 2001, not even a 12-run deficit could stop the Cleveland Indians. Those of us who follow Jesus Christ can expect even greater victories. “I am convinced,” the apostle Paul wrote, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39). If you’re deep in the hole today, take heart. As God’s child, you’re always still in the game. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. HEBREWS

I take her to the rocks that Zeke, Shauna, and I go to sometimes, late at night. Tris and I sit on a flat stone suspended over the water, and the spray soaks my shoes, but it’s not so cold that I mind. Like all initiates, she’s too focused on the aptitude test, and I’m struggling with talking to her about it. I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding. “These are things I don’t tell people, you know. Not even my friends.” I watch the dark, murky water and the things it carries--pieces of trash, discarded clothing, floating bottles like small boats setting out on a journey. “My result was as expected. Abnegation.” “Oh.” She frowns. “But you chose Dauntless anyway?” “Out of necessity.” “Why did you have to leave?” I look away, not sure I can give voice to my reasons, because admitting them makes me a faction traitor, makes me feel like a coward. “You had to get away from your dad,” she says. “Is that why you don’t want to be a Dauntless leader? Because if you were, you might have to see him again?” I shrug. “That, and I’ve always felt that I don’t quite belong among the Dauntless. Not the way they are now, anyway.” It’s not quite the truth. I’m not sure this is the moment to tell her what I know about Max and Jeanine and the attack--selfishly, I want to keep this moment to myself, just for a little while. “But…you’re incredible,” she says. I raise my eyebrows at her. She seems embarrassed. “I mean, by Dauntless standards. Four fears is unheard of. How could you not belong here?

To appreciate the asymmetry between the possibility effect and the certainty effect, imagine first that you have a 1% chance to win $1 million. You will know the outcome tomorrow. Now, imagine that you are almost certain to win $1 million, but there is a 1% chance that you will not. Again, you will learn the outcome tomorrow. The anxiety of the second situation appears to be more salient than the hope in the first. The certainty effect is also more striking than the possibility effect if the outcome is a surgical disaster rather than a financial gain. Compare the intensity with which you focus on the faint sliver of hope in an operation that is almost certain to be fatal, compared to the fear of a 1% risk. The combination of the certainty effect and possibility effects at the two ends of the probability scale is inevitably accompanied by inadequate sensitivity to intermediate probabilities. You can see that the range of probabilities between 5% and 95% is associated with a much smaller range of decision weights (from 13.2 to 79.3), about two-thirds as much as rationally expected. Neuroscientists have confirmed these observations, finding regions of the brain that respond to changes in the probability of winning a prize. The brain’s response to variations of probabilities is strikingly similar to the decision weights estimated from choices. Probabilities that are extremely low or high (below 1% or above 99%) are a special case. It is difficult to assign a unique decision weight to very rare events, because they are sometimes ignored altogether, effectively assigned a decision weight of zero. On the other hand, when you do not ignore the very rare events, you will certainly overweight them. Most of us spend very little time worrying about nuclear meltdowns or fantasizing about large inheritances from unknown relatives. However, when an unlikely event becomes the focus of attention, we will assign it much more weight than its probability deserves. Furthermore, people are almost completely insensitive to variations of risk among small probabilities. A cancer risk of 0.001% is not easily distinguished from a risk of 0.00001%, although the former would translate to 3,000 cancers for the population of the United States, and the latter to 30.

Tell me, Princess Olivia... why do you have to stay in your tower?" The soft entreaty made Livia feel as if she were melting inside. She laughed unsteadily, wishing for a moment that she dared to trust him. But the habit of independence was too strong. Shaking her head, Livia approached him, expecting him to back away from the doorway. He retreated half a step, his hands still grasping the edges of the doorway, so that she couldn't help but walk into an open-armed embrace. The bonnet ribbons slipped from her fingers. "Mr. Shaw-" she began, making the mistake of looking up at him. "Gideon," he whispered. "I want to know your secrets, Olivia." A bitter half smile touched her lips. "You'll hear them sooner or later from other people." "I want to hear them from you." As Livia began to retreat into the glasshouse, Shaw deftly caught the little cloth belt of her walking dress. His long fingers hooked beneath the reinforced fabric. Unable to back away from him, Livia clamped her hand over his, while a hectic blush flooded her face. She knew that he was toying with her, and that she once might have been able to manage this situation with relative ease. But not now. When she spoke, her voice was husky. "I can't do this, Mr. Shaw." To her amazement, he seemed to understand exactly what she meant. "You don't have to do anything," he said softly. "Just let me come closer... and stay right there..." His head bent, and he found her mouth easily. The coaxing pressure of his lips made Livia sway dizzily, and he caught her firmly against him. She was being kissed by Gideon Shaw, the self-indulgent, debauched scoundrel her brother had warned her about. And oh, he was good at it. She had thought nothing would ever be as pleasurable as Amberley's kisses... but this man's mouth was warm and patient, and there was something wickedly erotic about his complete lack of urgency. He teased her gently, nudging her lips apart, the tip of his tongue barely brushing hers before it withdrew. Wanting more of those silken strokes, Livia began to strain against him, her breath quickening. He nurtured her excitement with such subtle skill that she was utterly helpless to defend against it. To her astonishment, she found herself winding her arms around his neck and pressing her breasts against the hard plane of his chest. His hand slid behind her neck, tilting her head back to expose her throat more fully. Still gentle and controlled, he kissed the fragile skin, working his way down to the hollow at the base of her throat. She felt his tongue swirl in the warm depression, and a moan of pleasure escaped her. Shaw lifted his head to nuzzle the side of her cheek, while his hand smoothed over her back. Their breaths mingled in swift puffs of heat, his hard chest moving against hers in an erratic rhythm.

there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of human- ity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, o en a most un- seemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Show- er upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneco- nomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so neces- sary— that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the cal- endar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not nd means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive su erings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction be- tween him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all be- forehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of rea- 0 Notes from the Underground son and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by can- nibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come o , and that desire still de- pends on something we don’t know?

Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal ____ A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? ____ B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? ____ C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? ____ D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow.

As the normal range for both men and women begins at 0 IU/L, there really isn’t a problem with low levels of this enzyme. In fact, low levels are expected in a healthy person.

Here an omnipotent superintelligent AI keeps some humans around, who feel treated like zoo animals and occasionally lament their fate. Why would the zookeeper AI keep humans around? The cost of the zoo to the AI will be minimal in the grand scheme of things, and it may want to retain at least a minimal breeding population for much the same reason that we keep endangered pandas in zoos and vintage computers in museums: as an entertaining curiosity. Note that today’s zoos are designed to maximize human rather than panda happiness, so we should expect human life in the zookeeper-AI scenario to be less fulfilling than it could be.

Specifically, they argue that digital technology drives inequality in three different ways. First, by replacing old jobs with ones requiring more skills, technology has rewarded the educated: since the mid-1970s, salaries rose about 25% for those with graduate degrees while the average high school dropout took a 30% pay cut.45 Second, they claim that since the year 2000, an ever-larger share of corporate income has gone to those who own the companies as opposed to those who work there—and that as long as automation continues, we should expect those who own the machines to take a growing fraction of the pie. This edge of capital over labor may be particularly important for the growing digital economy, which tech visionary Nicholas Negroponte defines as moving bits, not atoms. Now that everything from books to movies and tax preparation tools has gone digital, additional copies can be sold worldwide at essentially zero cost, without hiring additional employees. This allows most of the revenue to go to investors rather than workers, and helps explain why, even though the combined revenues of Detroit’s “Big 3” (GM, Ford and Chrysler) in 1990 were almost identical to those of Silicon Valley’s “Big 3” (Google, Apple, Facebook) in 2014, the latter had nine times fewer employees and were worth thirty times more on the stock market.47 Figure 3.5: How the economy has grown average income over the past century, and what fraction of this income has gone to different groups. Before the 1970s, rich and poor are seen to all be getting better off in lockstep, after which most of the gains have gone to the top 1% while the bottom 90% have on average gained close to nothing.46 The amounts have been inflation-corrected to year-2017 dollars. Third, Erik and collaborators argue that the digital economy often benefits superstars over everyone else.

Selection on one of two genetically correlated characters will lead to a change in the unselected character, a phenomenon called 'correlated selection response.' This means that selection on one character may lead to a loss of adaptation at a genetically correlated character. If these two characters often experience directional selection independently of each other, then a decrease in correlation will be beneficial. This seems to be a reasonably intuitive idea, although it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to model this process. One of the first successful attempts to simulate the evolution of variational modularity was the study by Kashtan and Alon (2005) in which they used logical circuits as model of the genotype. A logical circuit consists of elements that take two or more inputs and transform them into one output according to some rule. The inputs and outputs are binary, either 0 or 1 as in a digital computer, and the rule can be a logical (Boolean) function. A genome then consists of a number of these logical elements and the connections among them. Mutations change the connections among the elements and selection among mutant genotypes proceeds according to a given goal. The goal for the network is to produce a certain output for each possible input configuration. For example, their circuit had four inputs: x,y,z, and w. The network was selected to calculate the following logical function: G1 = ((x XOR y) AND (z XOR w)). When the authors selected for this goal, the network evolved many different possible solutions (i.e. networks that could calculate the function G1). In this experiment, the evolved networks were almost always non-modular. In another experiment, the authors periodically changed the goal function from G1 to G2 = ((x XOR y) or (z XOR w)). In this case, the networks always evolved modularity, in the sense that there were sub-circuits dedicated to calculating the functions shared between G1 and G2, (x XOR y) and (z XOR w), and another part that represented the variable part if the function: either the AND or the OR function connecting (x XOR y) and (z XOR w). Hence, if the fitness function was modular, that is, if there were aspects that remained the same and others that changed, then the system evolved different parts that represented the constant and the variable parts of the environment. This example was intriguing because it overcame some of the difficulties of earlier attempts to simulate the evolution of variational modularity, although it did use a fairly non-standard model of a genotype-phenotype map: logical circuits. In a second example, Kashtan and Alon (2005) used a neural network model with similar results. Hence, the questions arise, how generic are these results? And can one expect that similar processes occur in real life?

How can we expect our employees to be extraordinary and differentiate the company if we use the same hiring and onboarding methods as competitors?

Robert—who knew quite well that he had the empathic sensitivity of a whelk—did not expect to have any such difficulties himself.

I try to crane my neck to see the top of the building from the ground, but all I can see is sky. “Bet you it’s one of my Dauntless-borns,” she says. “It’s always a Dauntless-born. No bet.” They have an unfair advantage, the Dauntless-born. They usually know what’s at the bottom of the jump, though we try to keep it from them as much as possible--the only time we use this entrance to headquarters is on Choosing Day, but the Dauntless are curious, they explore the compound when they think no one is watching. They also grow up cultivating in themselves the desire to make bold moves, to take drastic action, to commit themselves fully to whatever they decide to do. It would take a strange kind of transfer to know how to do that without having been taught. Then I see her. Not a black streak like I was expecting, but gray, tumbling through the air. I hear a snap of the net pulling taught around the metal supporters, and it shifts to cradle her. For a second I stare, amazed, at the familiar clothing that she wears. Then I put my hand out, into the net, so she can reach it. She wraps her fingers around mine, and I pull her across. As she tumbles over the side, I grab her arms to steady her. She’s small, and thin--fragile-looking, like the impact with the net should have shattered her. Her eyes are wide and bright blue. “Thank you,” she says. She may look fragile, but her voice is steady. “Can’t believe it,” Lauren says, with more Dauntless swagger than usual. “A Stiff, the first to jump? Unheard of.” She’s right. It is unheard of. It’s unheard of for a Stiff to join Dauntless, even. There were no Abnegation transfers last year. And before that, for a long time, there was only me.

Why were you there?” “I was coming back from the control room. I heard a scream.” “What did you do to them?” “I deposited Drew at the infirmary a half hour ago. Peter and Al ran. Drew claimed they were just trying to scare you. At least, I think that’s what he was trying to say.” “He’s in bad shape?” “He’ll live. In what condition, I can’t say,” I spit. I shouldn’t let her see this side of me, the side that derives savage pleasure from Drew’s pain. I shouldn’t have this side. She reaches for my arm, squeezes it. “Good,” she says. I look down at her. She has that side, too, she must have it. I saw the way she looked when she beat Molly, like she was going to keep going whether her opponent was unconscious or not. Maybe she and I are the same. Her face contorts, twists, and she starts to cry. Most of the time, when someone has cried in front of me, I’ve felt squeezed, like I needed to escape their company in order to breathe. I don’t feel that way with her. I don’t worry, with her, that she expects too much from me, or that she needs anything from me at all. I sink down to the floor so we’re on the same plane, and watch her carefully for a moment. Then I touch my hand to her cheek, careful not to press against any of her still-forming bruises. I run my thumb over her cheekbone. Her skin is warm. I don’t have the right word for how she looks, but even now, with parts of her face swollen and discolored, there’s something striking about her, something I haven’t seen before. In that moment I’m able to accept the inevitability of how I feel, though not with joy. I need to talk to someone. I need to trust someone. And for whatever reason, I know, I know it’s her. I’ll have to start by telling her my name.

This would never have happened in Abnegation! None of it! Never. This place warped him and ruined him, and I don’t care if saying that makes me a Stiff, I don’t care, I don’t care!” My paranoia is so deeply ingrained, I look automatically at the camera buried in the wall above the drinking fountain, disguised by the blue lamp fixed there. The people in the control room can see us, and if we’re unlucky, they could choose this moment to hear us, too. I can see it now, Eric calling Tris a faction traitor, Tris’s body on the pavement near the railroad tracks… “Careful, Tris,” I say. “Is that all you can say?” She frowns at me. “That I should be careful? That’s it?” I understand that my response wasn’t exactly what she was expecting, but for someone who just railed against Dauntless recklessness, she’s definitely acting like one of them. “You’re as bad as the Candor, you know that?” I say. The Candor are always running their mouths, never thinking about the consequences. I pull her away from the drinking fountain, and then I’m close to her face and I can see her dead eyes floating in the water of the underground river and I can’t stand it, not when she was just attacked and who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t heard her scream. “I’m not going to say this again, so listen carefully.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “They are watching you. You, in particular.” I remember Eric’s eyes on her after the knife throwing. His questions about her deleted simulation data. I claimed water damage. He thought it was interesting that the water damage occurred not five minutes after Tris’s simulation ended. Interesting. “Let go of me,” she says. I do, immediately. I don’t like hearing her voice that way. “Are they watching you, too?” Always have been, always will be.

Over time, however, the Christendom shift involved150: • The adoption of Christianity as the official religion of city, state, or empire. • Movement of the church from the margins to the center of society. • The creation and progressive development of a Christian culture or civilization. • The assumption that all citizens (except Jews) were Christian by birth. • The development of a “sacral society,” corpus Christianum, where there was no freedom of religion and political power was divinely authenticated. • The definition of “orthodoxy” as the belief all shared, determined by powerful church leaders with state support. • Imposition, by legislation and custom, of a supposedly Christian morality on the entire society (though normally Old Testament morality was applied). • Infant baptism as the symbol of obligatory incorporation into Christian society. • The defense of Christianity by legal sanctions to restrain heresy, immorality, and schism. • A hierarchical ecclesiastical system, based on a diocesan and parish arrangement, analogous to the state hierarchy and buttressed by state support. • A generic distinction between clergy and laity, and relegation of laity to a largely passive role. • Two-tier ethics, with higher standards of discipleship (“ evangelical counsels”) expected of clergy and those in religious orders. • Sunday as an official holiday and obligatory church attendance, with penalties for noncompliance. • The requirement of oaths of allegiance and oaths in law courts to encourage truth-telling. • The construction of massive and ornate church buildings and the formation of huge congregations. • Increased wealth for the church and obligatory tithes to fund the system. • Division of the globe into “Christendom” and “heathendom” and wars waged in the name of Christ and the church. • Use of political and military force to impose Christianity, regardless of personal conviction. • Reliance on the Old Testament, rather than the New, to justify these changes.

Instead of making a change and expecting others to just accept it, take time to explain the why behind the decision, including alternatives, and why the final choice made the most sense. If you can ask for ideas and input ahead of time, it’s even better. Finally, acknowledge how the decision will affect everyone.

Establish a Variety of Sleep Associations: If you are getting Baby to sleep in one particular way, that is the way she will expect to go to sleep all the time. By mixing up sleep associations, it will be easier to help her fall asleep no matter where she is. For example, start off rocking and then nurse, or vice versa (One of my little guys liked us to roll him back and forth in his bassinet, but that wasn't so easy to do, say, in the middle of the mall. We had to learn to mix things up). Also, parents should switch off putting her to sleep so that she doesn't demand that one be on duty all the time.

Establish a Variety of Sleep Associations: If you are getting Baby to sleep in one particular way, that is the way she will expect to go to sleep all the time. By mixing up sleep associations, it will be easier to help her fall asleep no matter where she is.

Hedge and private equity funds do not care about the market and are not judged by the market. Their clients have very high expectations; they want their investments to grow in value every year without fail.

Consistent with research on generation effects (e.g., deWinstanley, Bjork, & Bjork, 1996; Hirshman & Bjork, 1988; Slamecka & Graf, 1978), there was a very large advantage in later recall—more than two to one—when an item was constructed, rather than simply read. Of special interest, though, are the conditions when an item was studied intact and then, after either 0 or 20 intervening trials on other pairs, either studied again intact or constructed. A repetition after 20 intervening trials had the effects one would expect: a clear benefit of repetition on later cued recall and a substantially greater benefit when the response member had to be constructed rather than simply read. However, when the repetition was essentially immediate, final cued recall profited very little from either an additional study or construct trial. In particular, studying the item intact on one trial and then having to construct it on the next trial produced poorer final recall (42%) than did having only a single construct trial (57%).