“
Now that number was gone, covered up by the jet-black image of a chess piece. Neil's knowledge of chess was hazy at best, but he knew for sure that wasn't a king. "You did it," Neil said, too stunned to manage anything else. "Let Riko be King," Kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. "Most coveted, most protected. He'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me?" Kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. "I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board." "Queen," Andrew said somewhere behind Neil.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
“
Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
”
”
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
“
It's after school, after my double detentions for gym and chemistry, and I'm at Knead, about to begin working on a new piece. I wedge the clay out against my board, enjoying the therapeutic quality of each smack, prod, and punch.
As the clay oozes between my fingers and pastes against my skin, images of all sorts begin to pop into my head. I try my best to push them away,to focus instead on the cold and clammy sensation of the mound and the way it helps me relax. But after only a few short minutes of solitude, I hear someone storm their way up the back stairwell. At first I think it's Spencer, but then I hear the voice:
"I'm coming up the stairs," Adam bellows. "I'm approaching the studio area, about to pass by the sink."
I turn to look, noticing he's standing only a few feet behind me now.
"I hope I didn't startle you this time," he says.
"Ha-ha." I hold back my smile.
"I would have called your cell to tell you I was coming up, but you never gave me your number."
"I'm fine," I assure him, unable to stifle a giggle.
”
”
Laurie Faria Stolarz (Deadly Little Lies (Touch, #2))
“
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
“
We have all heard such stories of expert intuition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announces “White mates in three” without stopping, or the physician who makes a complex diagnosis after a single glance at a patient. Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of the car in the next lane is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced firefighter or physician—only more common. The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
I hurried out of the lobby and turned the corner into the English hall, so I didn’t see the guy in front of me until it was too late.
“Oh!” I exclaimed as we bumped shoulders. “Sorry!”
Then I realized who I’d bumped into, and I immediately regretted my apologetic tone. If I’d known it was David Stark, I would have tried to hit him harder, or maybe stepped on his foot with the spiky heel of my new shoes for good measure.
I did my best to smile at him, though, even as I realized my stomach was jumping all over the place. He must have scared me more than I’d thought.
David scowled at me over the rims of his ridiculous hipster glasses, the kind with the thick black rims. I hate those. I mean, it’s the 21st century. There are fashionable options for eyewear.
“Watch where you’re going,” he said. Then his lips twisted in a smirk. “Or could you not see through all that mascara?”
I would’ve loved nothing more than the tell him to kiss my ass, but one of the responsibilities of being a student leader at The Grove is being polite to everyone, even if he is a douchebag who wrote not one, but three incredibly unflattering articles in the school paper about what a crap job you’re doing as SGA president.
And you especially needed to be polite to said douchebag when he happened to be the nephew of Saylor Stark, President of the Pine Grove Junior League, head of the Pine Grove Betterment Society, Chairwoman of the Grove Academy School Board, and, most importantly, Founder and Organizer of Pine Grove’s Annual Cotillion.
So I forced myself to smile even bigger at David and said, “Nope, just in a hurry. Are you, uh… are you here for the dance?”
He snorted. “Um, no. I’d rather slam my testicles in a locker door. I have some work to do on the paper.
”
”
Rachel Hawkins (Rebel Belle (Rebel Belle, #1))
“
There are two missions we are obligated to carry out during our life journey. The first, is to seek Truth throughout our lifetime. The second, is simply to be good. Engrave it in your mind that life is just one big board game where you have to make it from start to finish by being good. That is all you have to do. The hardest part, is dealing with all the obstacles that prevent smooth sailing. The trick is, to always strive to be the right person in all situations – regardless of personal cost to you. Your aim is to make sure the right book on your shoulder weighs more that the bad book on the left. The scales are real. Regardless of your chosen faith, there is a measurement system to be found in all of the world's religions. After all, does it make sense for all souls, good or bad, to end up in the same place? Of course not. To really secure the very best setting in the afterlife, the vibrations of your good deeds must surpass your death.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
There were nights when I left the sessions physically and emotionally drained after hearing the anguish pour out like blood from a gaping wound. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different – psychotherapy is one of the most taxing endeavors known to mankind; I’ve done all sorts of work, from picking carrots in the scorching sun to sitting on national committees in paneled board rooms, and there’s nothing that compares to confronting human misery hour after hour and bearing the responsibility for easing that misery using only one’s mind and mouth. At its best it’s tremendously uplifting as you watch the patient open up, breathe, let go of the pain. At its worst is like surfing in a cesspool struggling for balance while being slapped with wave after putrid wave.
”
”
Jonathan Kellerman (When the Bough Breaks (Alex Delaware, #1))
“
My best friend, Benjamin Shield, taught me this valuable lesson. Often our inner struggles come from our tendency to jump on board someone else’s problem; someone throws you a concern and you assume you must catch it, and respond.
”
”
Richard Carlson (Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff)
“
Negotiation is a fundamental skill for board members. Whether it's negotiating with management over strategic direction, with investors over funding terms, or with stakeholders over environmental impact, the ability to negotiate effectively is essential for achieving the best possible outcomes for all parties involved.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
“
Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private--though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.
”
”
Mark Twain (On Masturbation)
“
You may not see every single piece of the puzzle that creates your life — you may not see every move the grand chess player makes — but know, He is in complete control of the game board. Sometimes certain pieces are moved or knocked over to make room for new ones. Other times, things happen because of the world we live in. But everything, in the end, will always turn out for good. It’s a nice promise, isn’t it? To know that there’s a reason for it all? A reason for your cancer — maybe by having cancer you’ve saved the lives of three of your best friends. Had you not been sick, would you have met them? Had you not been sick, would you have found the love of your life? Maybe it’s not in the perfection of life that things make sense, but in the chaos.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Ruin (Ruin, #1))
“
Having an aura cleanse was the best thing I ever did. It gets rid of all that debris of other peoples energy that might be clinging onto you. You gotta get rid of that stuff.
”
”
Lisa Newton (Cosmic Ordering With Vision Boards)
“
She shook her head. "You're insane."
"We're human, Cass. That's all. We're all kids playing grown-up. We do the best we can."
[Lucas to Cassandra]
”
”
Joey W. Hill (Unlaced (Knights of the Board Room, #2))
“
Why are you telling me all this, Vivienne?” Tears were threatening to spill down my cheeks. “Remember the night when you arrived? When you were in the dungeon? I told you that you were nothing but a pawn.” I could still remember her exact words and how frightened she made me feel: "Understand, girl, that you are nothing here. You’re nothing but a pawn, a piece used to make the board move. Your best chance at survival and proving your significance is to win Derek’s affections. Considering everything I know about my brother, I’m not sure that’s even possible." I smiled bitterly. “How could I forget?” “I was wrong.” Vivienne, in all her grace and beauty, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re not a pawn, Sofia. You’re the queen.
”
”
Bella Forrest (A Shade of Blood (A Shade of Vampire, #2))
“
That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors all had in common was their subversiveness. Some, like Gorky or Gold, were overtly subversive in their political aims; others, like Fitzgerald and Mark Twain, were in my opinion more subversive, if less obviously so. I told them we would come back to this term, because my understanding of it was somewhat different from its usual definition. I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.” I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.
”
”
Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)
“
To those you care for, a nurse is a person of many faces: You are a warrior against death and suffering, a technician of the highest degree; you are a mother, a sister, a best friend, a psychiatrist; you are a teacher, a magician, a sounding board, a secretary, a fortuneteller, a politician, but most of all, you are a loving human being who has chosen to give that love in one of the best ways you can.
”
”
Echo Heron (INTENSIVE CARE)
“
Reasons Why I Loved Being With Jen
I love what a good friend you are. You’re really engaged with the lives of the people you love. You organize lovely experiences for them. You make an effort with them, you’re patient with them, even when they’re sidetracked by their children and can’t prioritize you in the way you prioritize them.
You’ve got a generous heart and it extends to people you’ve never even met, whereas I think that everyone is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but really I was jealous that you always thought the best of people.
You are a bit too anxious about being seen to be a good person and you definitely go a bit overboard with your left-wing politics to prove a point to everyone. But I know you really do care. I know you’d sign petitions and help people in need and volunteer at the homeless shelter at Christmas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us.
I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy.
I love that you’re always trying to improve yourself. Whether it’s running marathons or setting yourself challenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to therapy every week. You work hard to become a better version of yourself. I think I probably didn’t make my admiration for this known and instead it came off as irritation, which I don’t really feel at all.
I love how dedicated you are to your family, even when they’re annoying you. Your loyalty to them wound me up sometimes, but it’s only because I wish I came from a big family.
I love that you always know what to say in conversation. You ask the right questions and you know exactly when to talk and when to listen. Everyone loves talking to you because you make everyone feel important.
I love your style. I know you think I probably never noticed what you were wearing or how you did your hair, but I loved seeing how you get ready, sitting in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom while you did your make-up, even though there was a mirror on the dressing table.
I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in November and that you’d pick up spiders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not.
I love how free you are. You’re a very free person, and I never gave you the satisfaction of saying it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you because of your boring, high-pressure job and your stuffy upbringing, but I know what an adventurer you are underneath all that.
I love that you got drunk at Jackson’s christening and you always wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never complained about getting up early to go to work with a hangover. Other than Avi, you are the person I’ve had the most fun with in my life.
And even though I gave you a hard time for always trying to for always trying to impress your dad, I actually found it very adorable because it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to anywhere in history, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beautiful and clever and funny you are. That you are spectacular even without all your sports trophies and music certificates and incredible grades and Oxford acceptance.
I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked myself, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of myself, either. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental.
I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
I’ve got a ouija board,” Margaret volunteered. “Y’all want to talk to Satan?
”
”
Grady Hendrix (My Best Friend's Exorcism)
“
Yeah!” Iggy said, laughing. “We can all charge her at once! Like she turns to do something on the board, and we all go right then. Bbrrrrrrmmmm!” “She’d freak!” said Owen enthusiastically.
”
”
Annie Barrows (The Best of Iggy (Iggy, #1))
“
327 men on board, and 186 men, some of them close friends, died that day. I was one of the 141 that made it out alive. I’ll bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you this—you’re probably thinking I’m drifting again—so I might as well get to it. On the raft, with this big battle raging all around us, I realized that I wasn’t afraid anymore. All of a sudden, I knew I’d be okay because I knew that Clara and I weren’t done yet, and this feeling of peace just came over me. You can call it shell shock if you want, but I know what I know, and right there, under an exploding sky filled with gun smoke, I remembered
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Best of Me)
“
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it.
Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem.
It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face.
I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now.
I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
Hazel sometimes had a fantasy daydream at school where the teacher walked into the classroom and yelled,
ISN’T EVERYTHING HORRIBLE? DOESN’T THE PAIN OF THE WORLD OUTWEIGH THE JOY BY TRILLIONS? WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUSH ALL OF THE DESKS INTO THE CENTER OF THE ROOM AND BURN THEM IN A GIANT BONFIRE? THEN WE CAN RUN AROUND SCREAMING AND WEEPING AMIDST THE SMOKE IN A TRUTHFUL PARADE OF OUR HUMAN CONDITION. SINCE YOU ARE SMALL STATURED, CHILDREN, IT MIGHT HELP OTHERS TO FEEL THE FULL BRUNT OF YOUR AGITATION IF YOU WAVE STICKS AND SHRUBBERY OVER YOUR HEADS ALL THE WHILE. WE DON’T WANT TO KILL ANYTHING WE DON’T HAVE TO KILL; EVERYTHING LIVING THAT WE’VE EVER SEEN OR KNOWN WILL DIE WITHOUT OUR INTERVENTION, OURSELVES INCLUDED; THIS IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL LEAD BLANKET THAT EVEN OUR MOST PERVASIVE MOMENTS OF COMFORT CANNOT CRAWL OUT FROM UNDER AND ONE UNEXTINGUISHABLE SOURCE OF DESPAIR, SO WE WON’T BE PERFORMING ANY RITUALISTIC SACRIFICES; THAT’S NOT THE DIRECTION WE WILL GO IN JUST YET; HOWEVER, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL LAWRENCE IS ON THE PROWL FOR A ROAD CARCASS WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE AS A REPRESENTATIVE PROP BECAUSE NOWHERE IN OUR AUTUMN-THEMED POSTER BOARD DéCOR IS MORBIDITY OR DECAY SYMBOLIZED. OUR SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS CANNOT AGREE ON HOW BEST TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF HUMAN CRUELTY. IN OUR SOCIETY SOME OF YOU ARE FAR SAFER AND MORE ADVANTAGED THAN OTHERS; AT HOME SOME OF YOU ARE FAR MORE LOVED; SOME OF YOU WILL FIND THAT CONCEPTS LIKE FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE WILL BE THIN, FLICKERING HOLOGRAMS ON THE PERIPHERY OF YOUR LIVES. OH, LOOK, CHILDREN—I SEE MR. LAWRENCE IN THE DISTANCE DRAGGING A PORTION OF A HIGHWAY-SLAUGHTERED DEER. LET’S GO HELP HIM LUG IT INSIDE AND BE REMINDED THAT WE TOO INHABIT BODIES MADE OF MEAT-WRAPPED BONES; LET’S MEDITATE ON THIS CORPOREAL TERROR.
Whenever her mother had asked, Hazel always told her, School is great.
”
”
Alissa Nutting (Made for Love)
“
Much of Chinese society still expected its women to hold themselves in a sedate manner, lower their eyelids in response to men's stares, and restrict their smile to a faint curve of the lips which did not expose their teeth. They were not meant to use hand gestures at all. If they contravened any of these canons of behavior they would be considered 'flirtatious." Under Mao, flirting with./bre/gners was an unspeakable crime.
I was furious at the innuendo against me. It had been my Communist parents who had given me a liberal upbringing.
They had regarded the restrictions on women as precisely the sort of thing a Communist revolution should put an end to. But now oppression of women joined hands with political repression, and served resentment and petty jealousy.
One day, a Pakistani ship arrived. The Pakistani military attache came down from Peking. Long ordered us all to spring-clean the club from top to bottom, and laid on a banquet, for which he asked me to be his interpreter, which made some of the other students extremely envious. A few days later the Pakistanis gave a farewell dinner on their ship, and I was invited. The military attache had been to Sichuan, and they had prepared a special Sichuan dish for me. Long was delighted by the invitation, as was I. But despite a personal appeal from the captain and even a threat from Long to bar future students, my teachers said that no one was allowed on board a foreign ship.
"Who would take the responsibility if someone sailed away on the ship?" they asked. I was told to say I was busy that evening.
As far as I knew, I was turning down the only chance I would ever have of a trip out to sea, a foreign meal, a proper conversation in English, and an experience of the outside world.
Even so, I could not silence the whispers. Ming asked pointedly, "Why do foreigners like her so much?" as though there was something suspicious in that. The report filed on me at the end of the trip said my behavior was 'politically dubious."
In this lovely port, with its sunshine, sea breezes, and coconut trees, every occasion that should have been joyous was turned into misery. I had a good friend in the group who tried to cheer me up by putting my distress into perspective. Of course, what I encountered was no more than minor unpleasantness compared with what victims of jealousy suffered in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. But the thought that this was what my life at its best would be like depressed me even more.
This friend was the son of a colleague of my father's.
The other students from cities were also friendly to me. It was easy to distinguish them from the students of peasant backgrounds, who provided most of the student officials.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
Wedding Superstitions
The Bridal Gown
White - You have chosen right.
Grey - You'll go far away.
Black - You'll wish yourself back.
Red - You'll wish yourself dead.
Green - Ashamed to be seen.
Blue - You'll always be true.
Pearl - You'll live in a whirl.
Peach - A love out of reach.
Yellow - Ashamed of your fellow.
Pink - Your Spirits will sink.
The Wedding Day
Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday best of all,
Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses,
Saturday for no luck at all.
The Wedding Month
Marry in May, and you'll rue the day,
Marry in Lent, you'll live to repent.
Married when the year is new,
He'll be loving, kind and true.
When February birds do mate,
You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow,
Joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can,
Joy for maiden and the man.
Marry in the month of May,
And you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when the June roses grow,
Over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed,
Must labour for their daily bread.
Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change is sure to see.
Marry in September's shine,
Your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry,
Love will come, but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November,
Only joys will come, remember,
When December's snows fall fast,
Marry and true love will last.
Married in January's roar and rime,
Widowed you'll be before your prime.
Married in February's sleepy weather,
Life you'll tread in time together.
Married when March winds shrill and roar,
Your home will lie on a distant shore.
Married 'neath April's changeful skies,
A checkered path before you lies.
Married when bees o'er May blossoms flit,
Strangers around your board will sit.
Married in month of roses June,
Life will be one long honeymoon.
Married in July with flowers ablaze,
Bitter-sweet memories in after days.
Married in August's heat and drowse,
Lover and friend in your chosen spouse.
Married in September's golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.
Married when leaves in October thin,
Toil and hardships for you begin.
Married in veils of November mist,
Fortune your wedding ring has kissed.
Married in days of December's cheer,
Love's star shines brighter from year to year
”
”
New Zealand Proverb
“
Dr. Chanter, in his brilliant History of Human Thought in the Twentieth Century, has made the suggestion that only a very small proportion of people are capable of acquiring new ideas of political or social behaviour after they are twenty-five years old. On the other hand, few people become directive in these matters until they are between forty and fifty. Then they prevail for twenty years or more. The conduct of public affairs therefore is necessarily twenty years or more behind the living thought of the times. This is what Dr. Chanter calls the "delayed
realisation of ideas".
In the less hurried past this had not been of any great importance, but in the violent crises of the Revolutionary Period it became a primary fact. It is evident now that whatever the emergency, however obvious the new problem before our species in the nineteen-twenties, it was necessary for the whole generation that had learned nothing and could learn nothing from the Great War and its sequelae, to die out before any rational handling of world affairs could even begin. The cream of the youth of the war years had been killed; a stratum of men already middle-aged remained in control, whose ideas had already set before the Great War. It was, says Chanter, an inescapable phase. The world of the Frightened Thirties and the Brigand Forties was under the dominion of a generation of unteachable, obstinately obstructive men, blinded men, miseducating, misleading the baffled younger people for completely superseded ends. If they could have had their way, they would have blinded the whole world for ever. But the blinding was inadequate, and by the Fifties all this generation and its teachings and traditions were passing away, like a smoke-screen blown aside.
Before a few years had passed it was already incredible that in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century the whole political life of the world was still running upon the idea of competitive sovereign empires and states. Men of quite outstanding intelligence were still planning and scheming for the "hegemony" of Britain or France or Germany or Japan; they were still moving their armies and navies and air forces and making their combinations and alliances upon the dissolving chess-board of terrestrial reality. Nothing happened as they had planned it; nothing worked out as they desired; but still with a stupefying inertia they persisted. They launched armies, they starved and massacred populations. They were like a veterinary surgeon who suddenly finds he is operating upon a human being, and with a sort of blind helplessness cuts and slashes more and more desperately, according to the best equestrian rules. The history of European diplomacy between 1914 and 1944 seems now so consistent a record of incredible insincerity that it stuns the modern mind. At the time it seemed rational behaviour. It did not seem insincere. The biographical material of the period -- and these governing-class people kept themselves in countenance very largely by writing and reading each other's biographies -- the collected letters, the collected speeches, the sapient observations of the leading figures make tedious reading, but they enable the intelligent student to realise the persistence of small-society values in that swiftly expanding scene.
Those values had to die out. There was no other way of escaping from them, and so, slowly and horribly, that phase of the moribund sovereign states concluded.
”
”
H.G. Wells (The Holy Terror)
“
His ironing seemed highly rational, with a constant speed that allowed him to get the best results, with the least effort; all the economy and elegance of his mathematical proofs performed right there on the ironing board. The Professor was definitely the best man for this job, we had to admit, since the tablecloth was made of delicate lace.
”
”
Yōko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor)
“
As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways.
Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over.
”
”
Zilpha Keatley Snyder (Black and Blue Magic)
“
I do not believe in the power of brand names or in emulating
any of the brand name investors out there. It is a fact that all—if
not at least most—of the biggest names in American finance and
industry out there today have proven after the 2008 crisis to be some
of the most incompetent people there are. Starting with the untouchable
Goldman Sachs, who was bailed out by over $5 billion from
Warren Buffett, to AIG and Citibank, who were bailed out by the
hundreds of billions of dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program
(TARP), having a name and a history does not make you the brightest
and the best. All it takes is one nincompoop with a huge ego or a
board of directors who think they are smarter than everyone else to
destroy what has taken generations to build.
”
”
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
“
CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim his kingdom. And yet when the cup of power neared his lips, he became strangely hesitant, reluctant, perhaps coy. He returned to Apple officially in January 1997 as a part-time advisor, as he had told Amelio he would. He began to assert himself in some personnel areas, especially in protecting his people who had made the transition from NeXT. But in most other ways he was unusually passive. The decision not to ask him to join the board offended him, and he felt demeaned
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Hitler’s style of leadership functioned precisely because of the readiness of all his subordinates to accept his unique standing in the party, and their belief that such eccentricities of behaviour had simply to be taken on board in someone they saw as a political genius. ‘He always needs people who can translate his ideologies into reality so that they can be implemented,’ Pfeffer is reported as stating. Hitler’s way was, in fact, not to hand out streams of orders to shape important political decisions. Where possible, he avoided decisions. Rather, he laid out – often in his diffuse and opinionated fashion – his ideas at length and repeatedly. These provided the general guidelines and direction for policy-making. Others had to interpret from his comments how they thought he wanted them to act and ‘work towards’ his distant objectives. ‘If they could all work in this way,’ Hitler was reported as stating from time to time, ‘if they could all strive with firm, conscious tenacity towards a common, distant goal, then the ultimate goal must one day be achieved. That mistakes will be made is human. It is a pity. But that will be overcome if a common goal is constantly adopted as a guideline.’ This instinctive way of operating, embedded in Hitler’s social-Darwinist approach, not only unleashed ferocious competition among those in the party – later in the state – trying to reach the ‘correct’ interpretation of Hitler’s intentions. It also meant that Hitler, the unchallenged fount of ideological orthodoxy by this time, could always side with those who had come out on top in the relentless struggle going on below him, with those who had best proven that they were following the ‘right guidelines’. And since only Hitler could determine this, his power position was massively enhanced.
”
”
Ian Kershaw (Hitler)
“
There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of progress.
One class lives to the utility of the symbol, as the majority of men do, regarding health and wealth as the chief good. Another class live about this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist and the sensual school in philosophy. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified and these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third spiritual perception.
I see in society the neophytes of all these classes, the class especially of young men who in their best knowledge of the sign have a misgiving that there is yet an unattained substance and they grope and sigh and aspire long in dissatisfaction, the sand-blind adorers of the symbol meantime chirping and scoffing and trampling them down. I see moreover that the perfect man - one to a millennium - if so many, traverses the whole scale and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty; and lastly wears it lightly as a robe which he can easily throw off, for he sees the reality and divine splendor of the inmost nature bursting through each chink and cranny.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II: 1836-1838)
“
Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident.
I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?”
He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.”
But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.”
Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck.
I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?”
Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.”
Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?”
“Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people.
“Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?”
No one answered.
But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.”
Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left.
After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?”
There was a vacant silence.
“Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?”
When no one answered, he answered his own question.
“The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!”
As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me.
Who is cuter?
A. Professor Bliss
B. Brett Steyers
C. Dante Berlin
D. The mummy
I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.
”
”
Yvonne Woon (Dead Beautiful (Dead Beautiful, #1))
“
New Rule: Conservatives have to stop rolling their eyes every time they hear the word "France." Like just calling something French is the ultimate argument winner. As if to say, "What can you say about a country that was too stupid to get on board with our wonderfully conceived and brilliantly executed war in Iraq?" And yet an American politician could not survive if he uttered the simple, true statement: "France has a better health-care system than we do, and we should steal it." Because here, simply dismissing an idea as French passes for an argument. John Kerry? Couldn't vote for him--he looked French. Yeah, as a opposed to the other guy, who just looked stupid.
Last week, France had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote. Eighty-five percent turned out. You couldn't get eighty-five percent of Americans to get off the couch if there was an election between tits and bigger tits and they were giving out free samples.
Maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem cell research, or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it's not a drawback. The electorate doesn't vote for the guy they want to have a croissant with. Nor do they care about private lives. In the current race, Madame Royal has four kids, but she never got married. And she's a socialist. In America, if a Democrat even thinks you're calling him "liberal," he grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill something.
Royal's opponent is married, but they live apart and lead separate lives. And the people are okay with that, for the same reason they're okay with nude beaches: because they're not a nation of six-year-olds who scream and giggle if they see pee-pee parts. They have weird ideas about privacy. They think it should be private. In France, even mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters, "I'm no good at multitasking."
Like any country, France has its faults, like all that ridiculous accordion music--but their health care is the best in the industrialized world, as is their poverty rate. And they're completely independent of Mid-East oil. And they're the greenest country. And they're not fat. They have public intellectuals in France. We have Dr. Phil. They invented sex during the day, lingerie, and the tongue. Can't we admit we could learn something from them?
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
I declare it’s marked out just like a large chess-board!” Alice said at last. “There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are!” she added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. “It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.
”
”
Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking-Glass)
“
That is, “Yes” is nothing without “How.” Asking “How,” knowing “How,” and defining “How” are all part of the effective negotiator’s arsenal. He would be unarmed without them. ■ Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■ Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■ Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■ Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■ Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■ A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■ Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.
”
”
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
“
The best story?” “Think about it. A supposedly deranged woman, working alone, creating a virus to infect the world and accomplish her own delusional goals? It’s a lot less scary than the alternatives: an organized conspiracy or the worst possibility—a natural occurrence, something that could happen anywhere, anytime. All the alternatives are ongoing threats. The world doesn’t need an ongoing threat. They need a crazy lone gunman, presumed dead. Or better yet, captured and punished. The world is a desperate place; catching and killing a villain puts a win on the board and gives everyone a little more hope that we might get through this.” “What about the truth?
”
”
A.G. Riddle (The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery, #2))
“
They were still quite near the ship; she saw its green side towering high above them, and people looking at her from the deck. Then, as one might have expected, Eustace clutched at her in a panic and down they both went.
When they came up again she saw a white figure diving off the ship’s side. Edmund was close beside her now, treading water, and had caught the arms of the howling Eustace. Then someone else, whose face was vaguely familiar, slipped an arm under her from the other side. There was a lot of shouting going on from the ship, heads crowding together above the bulwarks, ropes being thrown. Edmund and the stranger were fastening ropes round her. After that followed what seemed a very long delay during which her face got blue and her teeth began chattering. In reality the delay was not very long; they were waiting till the moment when she could be got on board the ship without being dashed against its side. Even with all their best endeavors she had a bruised knee when she finally stood, dripping and shivering, on the deck. After her Edmund was heaved up, and then the miserable Eustace. Last of all came the stranger--a golden-headed boy some years older than herself.
“Ca--Ca--Caspian!” gasped Lucy as soon as she had breath enough. For Caspian it was; Caspian, the boy king of Narnia whom they had helped to set on the throne during their last visit. Immediately Edmund recognized him too. All three shook hands and clapped one another on the back with great delight.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3))
“
In their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell analyzed a variety of data sources to describe how religious and nonreligious Americans differ. Common sense would tell you that the more time and money people give to their religious groups, the less they have left over for everything else. But common sense turns out to be wrong. Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board.58 Of course religious people give a lot to religious charities, but they also give as much as or more than secular folk to secular charities such as the American Cancer Society.59 They spend a lot of time in service to their churches and synagogues, but they also spend more time than secular folk serving in neighborhood and civic associations of all sorts. Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.60 Why are religious people better neighbors and citizens? To find out, Putnam and Campbell included on one of their surveys a long list of questions about religious beliefs (e.g., “Do you believe in hell? Do you agree that we will all be called before God to answer for our sins?”) as well as questions about religious practices (e.g., “How often do you read holy scriptures? How often do you pray?”). These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon … none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It’s the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That’s what brings out the best in people. Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: “It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.”61
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
Eager to reestablish their brand as the “King of Beers,” the company’s board of directors had authorized August Jr., the superintendent of the brewery, to buy several teams of Clydesdale draft horses “for advertising purposes.” Gussie, as he was called, purchased sixteen of the massive 2,000-pound animals for $21,000 at the Kansas City stockyards. He also found two wooden wagons from back in the days when the company employed eight hundred teams of horses to deliver its beer, and set about having them restored to the exacting standards of his late grandfather, brewery founder Adolphus Busch, who liked to conduct weekly inspections from a viewing stand, with his son August at his side as all the drivers passed in parade, hoping to win the $25 prize for the best-kept team and wagon.
”
”
William Knoedelseder (Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer)
“
IN 1941, ITS BEST YEAR EVER, the partnership of Kavalier & Clay earned $59,832.27. Total revenues generated that year for Empire Comics, Inc.—from sales of all comic books featuring characters created either in whole or in part by Kavalier & Clay, sales of two hundred thousand copies apiece for each of two Whitman’s Big Little Books featuring the Escapist, sales of Keys of Freedom, of key rings, pocket flashlights, coin banks, board games, rubber figurines, windup toys, and diverse other items of Escapism, as well as the proceeds from the licensing of the Escapist’s dauntless puss to Chaffee Cereals for their Frosted Chaff-Os, and from the Escapist radio program that began broadcasting on NBC in April—though harder to calculate, came to something in the neighborhood of $12 to $15 million.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
When people give these kinds of speeches, they usually tell you all kinds of wise and heartfelt things. They have wisdom to impart. They have lessons to share. They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don't stop dreaming until all of your dreams come true.
I think that's crap.
I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.
The dreamers. They stare at the sky and they make plans and they hope and they talk about it endlessly. And they start a lot of sentences with "I want to be ..." or "I wish."
"I want to be a writer." "I wish I could travel around the world."
And they dream of it. The buttoned-up ones meet for cocktails and they brag about their dreams, and the hippie ones have vision boards and they meditate about their dreams. Maybe you write in journals about your dreams or discuss it endlessly with your best friend or your girlfriend or your mother. And it feels really good. You're talking about it, and you're planning it. Kind of. You are blue-skying your life. And that is what everyone says you should be doing. Right? I mean, that's what Oprah and Bill Gates did to get successful, right?
No.
Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It's hard work that makes things happen. It's hard work that creates change.
”
”
Shonda Rhimes
“
He had told Larry Ellison that his return strategy was to sell NeXT to Apple, get appointed to the board, and be there ready when CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim his kingdom.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Daniel Burnham arrived in Chicago to find the city’s architects and members of the exposition board outraged that he had gone outside the city—to New York, of all godforsaken places—to court architects for the fair; that he had snubbed the likes of Adler, Sullivan, and Jenney. Sullivan saw it as a sign that Burnham did not truly believe Chicago had the talent to carry the fair by itself. “Burnham had believed that he might best serve his country by placing all of the work exclusively with Eastern architects,” Sullivan wrote; “solely, he averred, on account of their surpassing culture.” The chairman of the Grounds and Buildings Committee was Edward T. Jefferey. “With exquisite delicacy and tact,” Sullivan said, “Jefferey, at a meeting of the Committee, persuaded Daniel, come to Judgment, to add the Western men to the list of his nominations.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
“
They'd managed to make it through the room without waking the maid, and all the way to the top of the stairs before the next problem had arisen in the form of the women returning from the ball and entering the foyer below. In a panic, Daniel and Richard had rushed back along the upper hall, and then ducked into this room to wait for the way to be clear.
"We'd best move while we have the chance," Richard said behind him. "Once they have Christiana in bed, the girls will no doubt seek their own rooms and this could be one of them."
Daniel nodded and eased the door open to check the hall. When a quick glance in both directions showed it to be empty, he pulled the door wide and stepped out of the way for Richard to lead with his burden. He then started to follow, but had barely taken a step when Richard suddenly whirled back toward him. Caught by surprise, Daniel was slow to react. Before he could, Richard cursed, and suddenly thrust George's body on him.
Pure instinct made Daniel grab at the blanket-encased corpse. He then found himself stumbling back under a push from Richard, a very stiff George caught to his chest in some sort of macabre dance as the door closed leaving him alone in the dark room. Regaining his footing, Daniel stood absolutely still in the lightless chamber, simply listening as he tried to figure out why Richard hadn't followed him into the room. He relaxed a little when he heard the other man's voice muffled through the door, saying, "Ladies.Might I convince you both to join me in my office for a drink before you retire?"
Daniel adjusted the hold he had on George, but it helped little. The man was stiff as a board and unbending. He may as well have been a life-sized statue.
”
”
Lynsay Sands (The Heiress (Madison Sisters, #2))
“
There’s a story that comes from the tradition of the Desert Fathers, an order of Christian monks who lived in the wastelands of Egypt about seventeen hundred years ago. In the tale, a couple of monks named Theodore and Lucius shared the acute desire to go out and see the world. Since they’d made vows of contemplation, however, this was not something they were allowed to do. So, to satiate their wanderlust, Theodore and Lucius learned to “mock their temptations” by relegating their travels to the future. When the summertime came, they said to each other, “We will leave in the winter.” When the winter came, they said, “We will leave in the summer.” They went on like this for over fifty years, never once leaving the monastery or breaking their vows. Most of us, of course, have never taken such vows—but we choose to live like monks anyway, rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place. Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate. Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. In this way, vagabonding is not a merely a ritual of getting immunizations and packing suitcases. Rather, it’s the ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places. This attitude is not something you can pick up at the airport counter with your boarding pass; it’s a process that starts at home. It’s a process by which you first test the waters that will pull you to wonderful new places.
”
”
Rolf Potts (Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel)
“
The best way to hide your wealth is to give it away. If you are generous with your wealth, the money that would have disappeared sooner or later becomes an everlasting jewel, deeply engraved in the heart of the recipient.” The air I inhale enters my body and becomes part of me. The air that I exhale moves into someone else and becomes part of her. Just by looking at how the air moves, we realize we are all connected to one another, not just figuratively but also literally. “Whether we like it or not, we are all connected, and it is unthinkable to be happy all by oneself.” —HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA* The whole universe is contained in an apple wedge in a lunch box. Apple tree, sunlight, cloud, rain, earth, air, farmer’s sweat are all in it. Delivery truck, gas, market, money, cashier’s smile are all in it. Refrigerator, knife, cutting board, mother’s love are all in it. Everything in the whole universe depends on one another. Now, think about what exists in you. The whole universe is in us.
”
”
Haemin Sunim (The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World)
“
Get it out of your head and onto paper. When I had to explain to my board that, since we were a public company, I thought that it would be best if we sold all of our customers and all of our revenue and changed business, it was messing with my mind. In order to finalize that decision, I wrote down a detailed explanation of my logic. The process of writing that document separated me from my own psychology and enabled me to make the decision swiftly. Focus on the road, not the wall. When someone learns to drive a race car, one of the first lessons taught is that when you are going around a curve at 200 mph, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that. There are always a thousand things that can go wrong and sink the ship. If you focus too much on them, you will drive yourself nuts and likely crash your company. Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.
”
”
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
“
I have to remember as well that I am in a race. Oh, people will say that I’m not competing against anyone. That’s not true. I am competing against time and I will lose. We all lose. In the time that I have, what will I accomplish? Will I give up and say the race is too long or too fast, too hard? Will I tire out early? I am in a race to do my work, the best work I can possibly do. It is important to keep my standards high while others are slacking off saying it’s too hard. It’s supposed to be hard; otherwise, everyone would do it. It’s supposed to make us whine and carp about the pace or the failures we encounter or the simple fact that some days I suck at this work that I have chosen. We all of us feel this way at some time. Then we sleep on it or go for a walk, sit with a friend, or stare out at the mountain. This work is also what makes us feel right. The race is with myself, making myself better each time I go to the bench or the easel or the drawing board. Making sure that I am improving my skills, and staying curious, and getting better at my work each day.
”
”
Gary Rogowski (Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction)
“
home in Pahrump, Nevada, where he played the penny slot machines and lived off his social security check. He later claimed he had no regrets. “I made the best decision for me at the time. Both of them were real whirlwinds, and I knew my stomach and it wasn’t ready for such a ride.” • • • Jobs and Wozniak took the stage together for a presentation to the Homebrew Computer Club shortly after they signed Apple into existence. Wozniak held up one of their newly produced circuit boards and described the microprocessor, the eight kilobytes of memory, and the version of BASIC he had written. He also emphasized what he called the main thing: “a human-typable keyboard instead of a stupid, cryptic front panel with a bunch of lights and switches.” Then it was Jobs’s turn. He pointed out that the Apple, unlike the Altair, had all the essential components built in. Then he challenged them with a question: How much would people be willing to pay for such a wonderful machine? He was trying to get them to see the amazing value of the Apple. It was a rhetorical flourish he would use at product presentations over the ensuing decades. The audience was not very impressed. The Apple had a cut-rate microprocessor, not the Intel 8080. But one important person stayed behind to hear more. His name was Paul Terrell, and in 1975
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
I take a cue from the list I made on my first night here alone and make soup. I chop vegetables and boil pasta, pour a carton of chicken stock into a pot. Once I’ve combined all the ingredients and it’s time to wait while they cook, I turn to the second essay in the solitude book, but my mind is too full of different versions of the last summer’s story. There’s one where I fail him. Where I stop coming home so he stops making dinner, and I’m not around to see how much he needs me. And then there’s one where he fails me. Where I feel it—that he doesn’t want me there, that I’m in the way. So I stay away, for him and for me. So that I never face his rejection. So that I get to pretend I’m the most important thing to him, the way he is to me. Because if we have any sense of self-preservation, we do the best with what we’re given. I was given cakes and cookies and rides to school. I was given songs and dinners at a table with brass candlesticks. I was given a man with a sensitive heart and a devious sense of humor and enough skill at cards to win me a year of private college—tuition and room and board—and I took all of those good things and told myself they made us special. Told myself they meant we were a family the way Mabel and Ana and Javier were, told myself that we weren’t missing anything. We were masters of collusion, Gramps and I. In that, at least, we were together.
”
”
Nina LaCour (We Are Okay)
“
In a 1997 showdown billed as the final battle for supremacy between natural and artificial intelligence, IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue evaluated two hundred million positions per second. That is a tiny fraction of possible chess positions—the number of possible game sequences is more than atoms in the observable universe—but plenty enough to beat the best human. According to Kasparov, “Today the free chess app on your mobile phone is stronger than me.” He is not being rhetorical. “Anything we can do, and we know how to do it, machines will do it better,” he said at a recent lecture. “If we can codify it, and pass it to computers, they will do it better.” Still, losing to Deep Blue gave him an idea. In playing computers, he recognized what artificial intelligence scholars call Moravec’s paradox: machines and humans frequently have opposite strengths and weaknesses. There is a saying that “chess is 99 percent tactics.” Tactics are short combinations of moves that players use to get an immediate advantage on the board. When players study all those patterns, they are mastering tactics. Bigger-picture planning in chess—how to manage the little battles to win the war—is called strategy. As Susan Polgar has written, “you can get a lot further by being very good in tactics”—that is, knowing a lot of patterns—“and have only a basic understanding of strategy.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
Did you see how the ball bounced right off her head? That was great, and one of the best things I’ve . . .” “It was not great that I bounced a ball off of Miss Dixon’s head,” Millie interrupted, her words causing the grin to slide right off Elizabeth’s face. “Sure it was,” Elizabeth countered. “She deserved it because she only wanted to play tennis with you in order to embarrass you, but . . . that didn’t turn out how she wanted, did it?” “I don’t know about that. I was pretty embarrassed when all those people started wagging their fingers at me, and especially when Gertrude began yelling at me that I was unnatural and shouldn’t be allowed in public.” Millie shuddered. “But my embarrassment aside, you, Elizabeth, have some explaining to do regarding that nasty business with the croquet ball. You could have seriously injured Miss Dixon.” Elizabeth looked less than contrite. “I was hoping if I conked her in the head, she’d lose her memory and forget all about the boarding school plan.” She suddenly looked a little hopeful. “Do you think your conking her on the head might have rattled her memory a little?” “Miss Dixon seemed perfectly coherent, and that means logical, when she took to screaming at me, so no, I think her memory is still intact. I believe it might be easier all around though, if you’d just talk to Uncle Everett about your feelings regarding boarding school instead of thinking up dangerous plots that will certainly see you sent off to one.” “If
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Jen Turano (In Good Company (A Class of Their Own Book #2))
“
Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. —Psalm 111:2 (NIV) The church I attend recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. It’s been a festive year, replete with special dinners, panel discussions, and a book on the church’s history. But what amazed me even more were all the little stories that formed the big story—those quiet, individual witnesses of faith who, taken together, made up this grand sweep of 150 years. One woman has been a member for nearly half the church’s life. Fifty-two Sundays times seven decades is how many church services? “You’ve heard thousands of sermons!” I said. “What do you remember about the best ones?” She smiled. “The best sermons are the ones I think about all week. Because then I know God is working in me.” That simple lesson of faith was the start of a new practice for me. When I hear a phrase or sentence in a sermon that especially strikes me, I’ll write it down on the bulletin or on whatever I have handy. (Once it was the palm of my hand!) Then I pin that phrase to the bulletin board behind my computer. This week’s was: May God give me the grace to understand that the world is too small for anything but Love. I see it every day, reminding me to ponder how I might live that message. Like my friend at church, I’ve been able to see in a new way how God is working in my life—all week long. Guide my life, God, by Your Words; that in hearing them, I may live according to Your wishes. —Jeff Japinga Digging Deeper: Pss 105, 111, 119:18; 1 Pt 2:2
”
”
Guideposts (Daily Guideposts 2014)
“
At a Male Allies Plenary Panel, a group of women engineers circulated hundreds of handmade bingo boards among attendees. Inside each square was a different indictment: Mentions his mother. Says “That would never happen in my company.” Wearables. Asserts another male executive’s heart is in the right place. Says feminist activism scares women away from tech. At the center of the board was a square that just said Pipeline. I had heard the pipeline argument, that there simply weren’t enough women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields to fill open roles. Having been privy to the hiring process, I found it incredibly suspect.
What’s the wearable thing, I asked an engineer sitting in my row. “Oh, you know,” she said, waving dismissively toward the stage, with its rainbow-lit scrim. “Smart bras. Tech jewelry. They’re the only kind of hardware these guys can imagine women caring about.” What would a smart bra even do? I wondered, touching the band of my dumb underwire.
The male allies, all trim, white executives, took their seats and began offering wisdom on how to manage workplace discrimination. “The best thing you can do is excel,” said a VP at the search-engine giant whose well-publicized hobby was stratosphere jumping. “Just push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you, and be great.”
Don’t get discouraged, another implored—just keep working hard. Throughout the theater, pencils scratched.
“Speak up, and be confident,” said a third. “Speak up, and be heard.”
Engineers tended to complexify things, the stratosphere jumper said—like pipelines.
A woman in the audience slapped her pencil down. “Bingo!” she called out.
”
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Anna Wiener (Uncanny Valley)
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Alexandre Dumas
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They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair.
Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed?
Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with?
And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read.
And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period.
What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then?
Give them all board erasers to clean.
What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey?
And who the hell do you condemn, just who?
Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?
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Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle)
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Alexandre Dumas
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THE SK8 MAKER VS. GLOBAL INDUSTRIALIZATION This new era of global industrialization is where my personal analogy with the history of the skateboard maker diverges. It’s no longer cost-effective to run a small skateboard company in the U.S., and the handful of startups that pull it off are few and far between. The mega manufacturers who can churn out millions of decks at low cost and record speed each year in Chinese factories employ proprietary equipment and techniques that you and I can barely imagine. Drills that can cut all eight truck holes in a stack of skateboard decks in a single pull. CNC machinery to create CAD-perfect molds used by giant two-sided hydraulic presses that can press dozens of boards in a few hours. Computer-operated cutting bits that can stamp out a deck to within 1⁄64 in. of its specified shape. And industrial grade machines that apply multicolored heat-transfer graphics in minutes. In a way, this factory automation has propelled skateboarding to become a multinational, multi-billion dollar industry. The best skateboarders require this level of precision in each deck. Otherwise, they could end up on their tails after a failed trick. Or much worse. As the commercial deck relies more and more on a process that is out of reach for mere mortals, there is great value in the handmade and one of a kind. Making things from scratch is a dying art on the brink of extinction. It was pushed to the edge when public schools dismissed woodworking classes and turned the school woodshop into a computer lab. And when you separate society from how things are made—even a skateboard—you lose touch with the labor and the materials and processes that contributed to its existence in the first place. It’s not long before you take for granted the value of an object. The result is a world where cheap labor produces cheap goods consumed by careless customers who don’t even value the things they own.
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Matt Berger (The Handmade Skateboard: Design & Build a Custom Longboard, Cruiser, or Street Deck from Scratch)
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Sohla El-Waylly (Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook)
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Joanne Fluke (Blackberry Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen, #17))
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That's all well and good,but my concern is for Willow. I think she's beginning to realize that she both needs and wants the respect and companionship of the women in this town. And frankly, a man with your reputation can only hurt her. Not that I think you'd deliberately cause her harm. I don't. But the girl already has several black marks against her and your attentions could very well add to her problems.Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"
Rider plowed his fingers through his jet hair. "Yes, you'd like me to stay clear of her. I understand,but I'm afraid I can't do that. Look, I know it's asking a lot,but you'll have to trust me where Willow Vaughn is concerned. I promise you that she'll come to no harm from me."
"Trust,Mr. Sinclair,is something to be earned."
"I know,and I hope you'll give me time to earn yours. But if you want me to pack up and find another place to stay, I'll understand."
She considered that a moment. "No," she finally answered. "It would serve no purpose. This town has become a haven for every outlaw in the country and if every boarding house and hotel in Tombstone emptied out the disreputables, they'd soon go broke. I doubt I'll be held accountable for housing one more. Besides, at least this way,I can keep an eye on you."
Rider smiled and stood, politely helping her to her feet. "Thanks. And by the way, for what it's worth, I'm not an outlaw."
"If I truly believed you were, young man, you'd know it."
"I'm very sorry for any trouble I might have caused you, Mrs. Brigham. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to change my clothes and saddle the horses."
Rider walked to the parlor doors, glancing back over his shoulder as Miriam added, "You've asked me to trust you,Mr. Sinclair. Don't disappoint me or I guarantee you'll be sorry. I may be a woman, and not a young one at that, but I still have a few good tricks up my sleeve. If Willow suffers so much as a broken fingernail on your account, you'll have me to answer to."
Rider inclined his head and opened the door to leave. "I'll do my best, ma'am, but much depends on the young lady." Knowing he'd already said more than he should, he turned and left.
”
”
Charlotte McPherren (Song of the Willow)
“
Slavery has a special interaction with the normal structures of being a human being.
So a human being is sort of a generalist creature with a capacity to have its software re-worked for different habitats. The reason that human beings are able to exploit every terrestrial habitat where plants grow is that they don't all have the software program that's the same, right? You can have a software program for hunting in the Calihari, you can have one for terracing the Andes to grow potatoes, you can have any one of a number of software programs.
Well, slavery took the software program that Africans who were brought into the slave trade had, and it did its best to erase that program – and to render that program non-functional. It rendered it non-functional by combining people from different places who didn't even necessarily speak a language so there was not one culture available. And it sort of forces the bootstrapping of a new culture, which was composed of various things but of course it was, you know, prohibition against teaching slaves to read and things like that, and so there was a systematic breaking of the original culture that Africans had during the New World, and a substituting of a version that was not a much of a threat to the slave-holding population, right?
And at the point that slavery comes to an end, it is not as if, frankly, even, you know, we didn't even have the tools to talk about these things in responsible terms. There wasn't enough known about how the mind works and what its relationship is to the body and all...so, the thing that makes the black population and the Indian population different, I would argue, is the systematic hobbling of the on-board, the inherited, evolved culture in the case of Indians by transporting them to reservations and by putting them in schools that disrupt the passage of normal culture and in the case of Africans, it was breaking apart of families, keeping people from being in contact with others they had the right language to talk to and all...so in any case, that carries through to the present: it creates a situation where there has not been access to the materials to fully update software.
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Bret Weinstein
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I am dreaming of happy Pandas. A whole field full of happy Pandas. I am beside myself. I am entirely myself. I am going to set myself on fire. Just you wait and see.
I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it has to be. You'll make the lemonade and I'll ensure that no other lemonade stand stands in our way. We will wear terrific Panda suits. We will have a secret hand shake. We'll stick to the plan. I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it's going to have to be. Pouting about it won't change anything. Pouting about it will only make you look like an unhappy Panda and we can't be having that. So you should think before you speak. You should consider your options before you decide to become an unhappy Panda. Because you don't want to know what happens to Pandas that aren't happy. So you'd best be careful.
Don't worry though. This is just us talking. This is just us coming together at the head. Like Siamese twins, like two happy peas in a pod. You would not like it if we were to do the other routine. There are no happy Pandas to be had in that one. Not at all. No mention of Pandas whatsoever. Just unpleasantness that I would rather avoid. So keep smiling. Always remember to keep smiling. Whatever will be, will be. There is nothing more pathetic than a sore loser. So keep smiling. Everything will take care of itself. Thank goodness.
I'm tired now. I am going to go to bed. I don't much feel like being your friend anymore. The good old days are gone. Best to get on board with the depravity of the here and now. The world consumes, the world revolves, the world will someday come to and end. If not by us, then pulverized by the sun. The mysteries of the universe revealed with no time to study the data and reach an outcome, the sun will go out and all creatures great and small will be helpless against the unknowns of life. So why are you so worried? Why don't you go have some drinks, get laid, get back, get something. After everything has been done, been bought, sold, produced, consumed, recycled, re-packaged, and re-sold, you will have gained nothing by floundering about trying to change things that cannot be changed. The little things exist only so that the important ones never get touched upon. That's why you can wear leather shoes and, at the same time, refuse to eat beef. Because we are all, every one of us, ridiculous. And we've elected you our leader.
I am going to go lay in bed and wait for the hands of impossibility to come strangle me. I am going to smile at my ceiling and sing the song of our undoing. I will wear my Panda pajamas. I will think of you often when I get to where it is that I'm going. Everything will be fine. Just you wait and see. Just you wait and see.
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Matthew Good
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They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again. And then one reads in the papers "Second bomb blast in Nevada bigger than the first! " What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?" Weren't the Russians communists when they helped us slap down the Germans? And now. What could we do with the Russian nation if we bombed it to bits? How could we "rule" such a mass of foreign people - - - we, who don't even speak the Russian language? How could we control them under our "democratic" system, we, who even now are losing that precious commodity, freedom of speech? (Mr. Crockett," that dear man, was questioned by the town board. A supposedly "enlightened" community. All he is is a pacifist. That, it seems, is a crime.) Why do we send the pride of our young men overseas to be massacred for three dirty miles of nothing but earth? Korea was never divided into "North" and "South." They are one people; and our democracy is of no use to those who have not been educated to it. Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it. When I think of that little girl on the farm talking about her brother - "And he said all they can think of over there is killing those God-damn Koreans." What does she know of war? Of lizard-like humans crawling up a hillside? All she knows is movies and school room gossip. Oh, America's young, strong. So is Russia. And how they can think of atom-bombing each other, I don't know. What will be left? War will come some day now, with all the hothead leaders and articles "What If Women are Drafted?" Hell, I'd sooner be a citizen of Africa than see America mashed and bloody and making a fool of herself. This country has a lot, but we're not always right and pure. And what of the veterans of the first and second world wars? The maimed, the crippled. What good their lives? Nothing. They rot in the hospitals, and we forget them. I could love a Russian boy - and live with him. It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual - but to kill off all the ones who could forge a strong nation? How foolish! Of what good - living and freedom without home, without family, without all that makes life?
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”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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”
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Douglas E. Richards (Split Second (Split Second, #1))
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How Google Works (Schmidt, Eric) - Your Highlight on Location 3124-3150 | Added on Sunday, April 5, 2015 10:35:40 AM In late 1999, John Doerr gave a presentation at Google that changed the company, because it created a simple tool that let the founders institutionalize their “think big” ethos. John sat on our board, and his firm, Kleiner Perkins, had recently invested in the company. The topic was a form of management by objectives called OKRs (to which we referred in the previous chapter), which John had learned from former Intel CEO Andy Grove.173 There are several characteristics that set OKRs apart from their typical underpromise-and-overdeliver corporate-objective brethren. First, a good OKR marries the big-picture objective with a highly measurable key result. It’s easy to set some amorphous strategic goal (make usability better … improve team morale … get in better shape) as an objective and then, at quarter end, declare victory. But when the strategic goal is measured against a concrete goal (increase usage of features by X percent … raise employee satisfaction scores by Y percent … run a half marathon in under two hours), then things get interesting. For example, one of our platform team’s recent OKRs was to have “new WW systems serving significant traffic for XX large services with latency < YY microseconds @ ZZ% on Jupiter.”174 (Jupiter is a code name, not the location of Google’s newest data center.) There is no ambiguity with this OKR; it is very easy to measure whether or not it is accomplished. Other OKRs will call for rolling out a product across a specific number of countries, or set objectives for usage (e.g., one of the Google+ team’s recent OKRs was about the daily number of messages users would post in hangouts) or performance (e.g., median watch latency on YouTube videos). Second—and here is where thinking big comes in—a good OKR should be a stretch to achieve, and hitting 100 percent on all OKRs should be practically unattainable. If your OKRs are all green, you aren’t setting them high enough. The best OKRs are aggressive, but realistic. Under this strange arithmetic, a score of 70 percent on a well-constructed OKR is often better than 100 percent on a lesser one. Third, most everyone does them. Remember, you need everyone thinking in your venture, regardless of their position. Fourth, they are scored, but this scoring isn’t used for anything and isn’t even tracked. This lets people judge their performance honestly. Fifth, OKRs are not comprehensive; they are reserved for areas that need special focus and objectives that won’t be reached without some extra oomph. Business-as-usual stuff doesn’t need OKRs. As your venture grows, the most important OKRs shift from individuals to teams. In a small company, an individual can achieve incredible things on her own, but as the company grows it becomes harder to accomplish stretch goals without teammates. This doesn’t mean that individuals should stop doing OKRs, but rather that team OKRs become the more important means to maintain focus on the big tasks. And there’s one final benefit of an OKR-driven culture: It helps keep people from chasing competitors. Competitors are everywhere in the Internet Century, and chasing them (as we noted earlier) is the fastest path to mediocrity. If employees are focused on a well-conceived set of OKRs, then this isn’t a problem. They know where they need to go and don’t have time to worry about the competition. ==========
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Anonymous
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Best Ideas and Tips for Career Growth and Development
In case you're thinking about how you will get where you need to be in your career, there are some basic advances you can take that will assist you in making your own professional development. Similarly, as with all endeavors, you should be clear about your course when you make your own career development plan. You don't take an excursion without knowing where you need to wind up. You additionally don't have to excessively confound this undertaking.
For profession improvement wanting to be compelling, extend your perspective on advancement and that of your representatives. An outside instructional course isn't the best way to create workers. Worker advancement is an incredible idea yet it isn't without issues. The best plans save the duty regarding finish unequivocally on the shoulders of representatives. Something else, if a worker doesn't finish their advancement openings, the individual in question may decide to put the fault on the board, which is counter-profitable for the entirety of the included gatherings.
Certain issues and articulations exist that you would need to maintain a strategic distance from as you and the workers who report to you make plans and strategies for career development.
Best Ideas for Career Growth and Development
1. Analyze your skills by yourself
Experience the expected set of responsibilities detail by detail and rate your present condition of aptitudes, training, or experience to what is recorded. Your rating framework can be as straightforward as 1-10, with 10 an ideal match and one being totally absent. As you rate, make notes about your manner of thinking for future reference.
When you have finished this activity, distinguish the entirety of the things where there is anyplace from a decent measure to a considerable measure of improvement that is required. Search for shared characteristics and cluster those all together. You will find that there will be subjects for your holes.
2. Change Job If or Whenever You Want
You may likewise need to have numerous methods of amplifying your range of abilities to add profundity to it. A model is in the event that you need to move to a venture the board position, you might need to get confirmation and furthermore request venture duties. At first, these might be little, which are fine; they will offer you a chance to develop and learn. Also, you may need to inquire about different approaches to get what it takes you have to develop in your profession.
You can't anticipate to what extent or how much work you should do so as to build up the expertise at the level you need, however, you do have command over the move you make to begin. Follow along. You have to focus on your career development plan at least two times every year. This will permit you to remain concentrated on your advance and help you to remember subsequent stages.
3. Growth Takes Time: But not for Everyone
Some portion of the explanation we presume development is such a high need when you search for an occupation is on the grounds that you weren't getting development and improvement at your last one.
You can totally change occupations at regular intervals to fulfill your longing for development. In any case, that despite everything leaves an extensive timeframe when you're not developing once you sink into work and before you move onto the following one.
Here are some of the plan and strategies for career development, if you have any doubt, let us know in the comment section.
Can also check:
Things which is Important for student to get success
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Messar
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Compulsory, class-based education of young people by teachers in preparation for exams is one of those universal things nobody ever questions. We just assume that’s the way learning happens. But a quick reflection on our own experience shows that there are all sorts of other ways to learn. We learn by reading, by watching, by emulating, by doing. We learn in groups of friends, we learn alone. Yet almost none of this is called ‘education’ – which is always a top–down activity. Is the classroom really the best way for young people to learn things? Or has the obsession with formal education crowded out all sorts of other, more emergent models of learning? What would education look like if allowed to evolve? When you think about it, it is rather strange that liberated, freethinking people, when their children reach the age of five, send them off to a sort of prison for the next twelve to sixteen years. There they are held, on pain of punishment, in cells called classrooms and made, on pain of further punishment, to sit at desks and follow particular routines. Of course it is not as Dickensian as it used to be, and many people emerge with brilliant minds, but school is still a highly authoritarian and indoctrinating place. In my own case, the prison analogy was all too apt. The boarding school I attended between the ages of eight and twelve had such strict rules and such regular and painful corporal punishment that we readily identified with stories of prisoners of war in Nazi Germany, even down to the point of digging tunnels, saving up food and planning routes across the countryside to railway stations. Escapes were frequent, firmly punished, and generally considered heroic.
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Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
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Quickly pushing and shoving to get out of the pool, was in a full-on panic. That is when Shy moved in for the kill- she was Jenny's best friend at the time. She grabbed Lizzy’s goodies, and bikini bottom and pulled the plug out by the sting, and the blood started to show in the water all pink.
Shy dunked her and swam away, that is when Lizzy swam over to the diving board ass showing to get out, she claimed out and ran the length of the Olympic sized pool dripping and shaking to get around everyone, while the rest of us nearly died laughing at the sight of her new hair and a blood-covered vertical smile that was showing. That is how Shy became popular, she did Jenny’s dirty work for her.
It reminded me of the time my parents took me to Kenny Wood when I was about in the fourth grade and made me get on one of the big coasters. My legs were not able to stop shaking and my feet got a tingling feeling on the bottom side of them like they were itching to get out of a pair of hot shoes: I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall out, how high up we were.
After my mom got the picture, they took off on the ride, I started laughing and couldn’t stop at how scared yet thrilled I was. Standing on the high dive with Jenny got me exactly in the same way. It’s like I started craving more and more of that feeling too. It feels like that twenty-six seconds when you have a girly eruption and shaking because of it so good.
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Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh Falling too You)
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Klossowski’s writings therefore invite us to move beyond the impasse of certain intellectual positions inherited from the 1960s: on the one hand, arguments that society is all-determining as a set of institutional and disci- plinary constraints (Frankfurt School, structuralism), and on the other hand, arguments for the perpetual vitality and agency of the subject which continually subverts and undermines these restrictions (post-structural- ism, Deleuze and Guattari). Rather than collapsing these positions, Klossowski requires us to take on board a more complex network of libidi- nal drives that require perpetual restaging and renegotiation. This tension between structure and agency, particular and universal, spontaneous and scripted, voyeur and voyant, is key to the aesthetic effect and social import of the best examples of delegated performance.
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Claire Bishop (Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship)
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The grove owners and their packinghouses had a near monopoly on the growing and selling of citrus. They were among the richest men in central Florida; their European vacations and their daughters’ cotillions and the visits of their children from the best boarding schools in the South were all chronicled in the local papers that everyone, including workers like the Blye brothers and George, could read. It was a multimillion-dollar industry fed by the demands of wealthy and middle-class families from Chicago to Long Island who expected orange juice with their toast and coffee every morning.
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Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
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We all come into this world the same: naked, scared, and ignorant. After that grand entrance, the life we end up with is simply an accumulation of all the choices we make. Our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away.
Think about it. Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Don’t choose at all, and you’ve made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way.
In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you.
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Darren Hardy (The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success)
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I glare over my shoulder at the guy, straighten my helmet, then turn and start to skate away. “Mammering rough-hewn eunuch,” I mutter. Rob snorts in hysterical laughter, skating next to me. “What did you fucking call me?” 27 yells, shoving me from behind. The ref skates in, turning 27 away. Tyler howls in laughter as I grab his arm and drag him with me, skating toward the boards to switch for the last shift. All we have to do is keep the lead I just bought us for the next three minutes and avoid a penalty. Then we win the series and advance to the next round of the playoffs. Rob skates past me, still struggling to contain his laughter. “Best thing I’ve ever heard on the ice.
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Chloe Liese (Always Only You (Bergman Brothers, #2))
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MaxExtend Male Enhancement
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esteem! He was by far the best and most disinterested of my Japanese family. When all my commissions are finished, he puts up his little vehicle under a tree, and, much touched by my departure, insists upon escorting me on board the 'Triomphante', to watch over my final purchases in the sampan which conveys me to the ship, and to see them himself safely into my cabin. His, indeed, is the only hand I clasp with a really friendly feeling, without a suppressed smile, on quitting Japan. No doubt in this country, as in many others, there is more honest friendship and less ugliness among the simple beings devoted to purely physical work.
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Pierre Loti (Madame Chrysantheme - Complete)
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There was a bustle of people in the street as I made my way to La Bonbonnière, which is, quite simply, the most beautiful candy store in the world.
The best thing about La Bonbonnière is that it's all windows. Before I even walk through the door I am greeted by a fuzzy three-foot-high statue of a polar bear trying to dip his paws into a copper cauldron filled with marrons glacés--- whole candied chestnuts. Each one was meticulously wrapped in gold foil, a miniature gift in and of itself. If nothing else, Christmas in Provence reminds you of a time when sugar was a luxury as fine and rare as silk.
Back to my assignment: I needed two kinds of nougat: white soft nougat made with honey, almonds, and fluffy egg whites (the angel's part) and hard dark nougat--- more like honey almond brittle--- for the devil.
Where are the calissons d'Aix? There they are, hiding behind the cash register, small ovals of almond paste covered with fondant icing. Traditional calissons are flavored with essence of bitter almond, but I couldn't resist some of the more exotic variations: rose, lemon verbena, and génépi, an astringent mountain herb.
Though I love the tender chew of nougat and the pliant sweetness of marzipan, my favorite of the Provençal Christmas treats is the mendiant--- a small disk of dark or milk chocolate topped with dried fruit and nuts representing four religious orders: raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustinians, dried figs for the Franciscans, and almonds for the Carmelites. When Alexandre is a bit older, I think we'll make these together. They seem like an ideal family project--- essentially puddles of melted chocolate with fruit and nut toppings. See, as soon as you say "puddles of melted chocolate," everyone's on board.
Though fruits confits--- candied fruit--- are not, strictly speaking, part of les trieze desserts, I can't resist. I think of them as the crown jewels of French confiserie, and Apt is the world capital of production. Dipped in sugar syrup, the fruits become almost translucent; whole pears, apricots, and strawberries glow from within like the gems in a pirate's treasure chest. Slices of kiwi, melon, and angelica catch the light like the panes of a stained-glass window. All the dazzling tastes of a Provençal summer, frozen in time.
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Elizabeth Bard (Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes)
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In a preemptive strike, the lead director asked each director privately to identify one step or action that the chief executive ought to take in the next twelve months to best set the company up for recovery and then success. After compiling the directors’ proposals on a single sheet of paper and appending his own suggestions, the lead director circulated the draft among all the directors for comment or change. Once the document was finalized, the lead director then met the chief executive in a neutral city to present the directors’ specific ideas for action. The director explained to the CEO that the board’s idea list was intended to help him succeed, not to pester him with gratuitous criticism or demand tactical changes. The lead director added that his personal intervention came with the blessing of every member of the board, and he asked the CEO to report his progress in meeting the directors’ recommendations to all board meetings during the coming year.
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Ram V. (Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way)
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He seemed surprised to hear from me now, his tone holding a note of shock. “Saint, how are you? What can I do for you?”
“Kenneth. I just heard about the new volunteer counselor. I was hoping to get a copy of his credentials. As you know, the situation with some of the kids is pretty tenuous and new people scare them,” I said.
“Oh! Didn’t you know he was coming? He said he had been approved months ago but he had delayed his start date due to traveling out of state for a family death. His name is Roland Cunningham. He’s been a high school counselor for fifteen years and now he’s semi-retired and wants to give back. He says that he saw so many gay kids who needed an ear.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself and Rio frowned at me questioningly. I shook my head and pulled in one deep breath before I spoke. “No, he hasn’t been approved for months. I’ve never heard of him. I suspect he’s a spy who belongs to Clay Greene.”
I could hear Kenneth suck air, then chuckle disbelievingly. “Oh, no, Saint. That’s impossible. He had a copy of a volunteer application that you signed and dated in January. You probably just forgot, I know you’ve had a lot on your mind with your sister and everything.” I heard him click his tongue and had to work to not reach through the phone and wring his neck. “He’s going to make sure the kids have someone else to talk to. Don’t worry about it, I’m taking care of everything.”
Rio’s frown had morphed into mild alarm, and I wasn’t sure what my face was doing that was causing it but whatever it was must have been interesting. He edged closer as I took several deep breaths. “Kenneth. Listen to me. You need to be cautious. Have you seen the security reports from Mr. Rao? Did make sure you let him know about this Cunningham? Did you run the background check?”
“I glanced through the reports, yes, but no, I didn’t tell him about Roland. Mr. Rao is the night guard and Roland is scheduled for afternoons.” He chuckled lightly. “I didn’t see the overlap.”
I did not grind my teeth, but it was a near thing. Rio hovered, not touching me, which I was grateful for. Once I got off this phone I was going to go off. “What about the background check, Ken? You know the background check policy.”
“Oh, yes,” Kenneth said. “We did the background check. Completely clean, exemplary record with several awards from his career. Really, you need to calm down. I have it all under control.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it then, Ken. Thank you.” I hung up before Kenneth could reply and Rio looked at me warily. “I am going to have him kicked off the board so fast his fucking head is going to spin. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s full of ball bearings and broken gravel,” I snarled.
“So that didn’t go well,” Rio observed quietly. He was still hovering, clearly unsure of how best to handle me.
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Joy Danvers (Saint's Shelter (Alden Security #4))
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The self-destruction of a group always follows the same patterns. You only need to introduce some viruses to the group and poof, it’s all gone.
These viruses come in the form of very ignorant narcissists that nobody has the courage to kick off of the group. Quite often, the group even promotes itself as being against the personalities that are in front of their eyes every day, people they praise and even lead them. And well, that’s how you know a group is truly finished.
Scientology is a very interesting example of this, because of how clear their books are. For example, they claim to love artists but end up insulting real artists. Scientologists are so obsessed with being perceived as artists, that they downgrade real art in the process.
You have many scientologists, for example, that think splashing a random amount of ink into a white board is art. They all want to be artists, and that’s fine, but they are too lazy to see how real art is made, and so, they downgrade the value of art. And in doing this, they actually distort the meaning of art and decrease the value of the real artists. And so, a group that promotes itself as being uplifting and positive, ends up being offensive and destructive.
They have all these books on moral codes and moral behavior, and dozens of courses on the same topic, and if you report a scientologist for criminal behavior, they ignore you and deem you an attacker of the group. And there goes the level of sanity of this group down the scale, while they themselves invert the scale and tell you the opposite story. It would be like looking at your mental health through someone suffering with poor mental health.
They are as aware of what I am saying as any mentally ill person is aware of his mental illnesses. If anyone confronts them with the facts, they themselves get offended, and then proceed to attack, because that’s what they think their founder told them to do. Except that the founder was talking about attacking insanity and not people. In other words, they should use these facts to look further into their books and their own misinterpretations, and which they don’t.
Those people that splash random colors into a white board, will then tell you, the one who has been using techniques, and winning awards, and creating something unique, that you don’t understand art.
They remind me of the writers with one book that doesn't sell, trying to tell me how they are better than me, with more than 100 books in best selling charts. How delusional, arrogant and stupid has one to be to not see this?
The level of awareness of such individual is comparable to a drunk person going to a Jujitsu dojo, asking the instructor to fight him because he is convinced he can beat anyone with all that alcohol in his head.
That, however, is not the cherry on top of the cake. The cherry on top of the cake, is when a religious group listens to a psychopath talking against psychopaths. You can write many academic papers on this topic and never reach a conclusion, because it's really hard to make conclusions on stupidity.
So what’s wrong with religion? Why are some religious groups persecuted and attacked? The answer to these questions isn’t as relevant as what we can observe people doing, when denying the most obvious writings, inverting them and distorting the meanings. Christians have already mastered this art.
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Dan Desmarques
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Nike’s policy of yanking best-selling shoes from the shelves every ten months has inspired some truly operatic bursts of profanity on running message boards. The Nike Pegasus, for instance, debuted in 1981, achieved its sleek, waffled apotheosis in ’83, and then—despite being the most popular running shoe of all time—was suddenly discontinued in ’98, only to reappear as a whole new beast in 2000. Why so much surgery? Not to improve the shoe, as a former Nike shoe designer who worked on the original Pegasus told me, but to improve revenue; Nike’s aim is to triple sales by enticing runners to buy two, three, five pairs at a time, stockpiling in case they never see their favorites again.
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Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
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First Officer William Warms had given the order. It is almost certain there would have been no fire drill if Captain Robert Wilmott had been in full command. Warms’s order directly contradicted a policy the master of the Morro Castle first instituted on June 16, 1934. On that day—in violation of the seaworthy certificate issued by the government’s Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection, and at the risk of endangering the lives of everybody on board—Captain Wilmott had banned all further fire drills. His order could lay him open to prosecution, imprisonment, and the certain loss of his master’s license. Confronted by the classic dilemma of the company man, Wilmott had acted in what he believed to be the Ward Line’s best interests. The basis for his decision was simple. In May 1934, during a fire drill, a woman passenger had fallen on a deck wet down by a leaking joint connection between a fire hose and its hydrant. She fractured an ankle and hired a good lawyer, and the Ward Line settled out of court for twenty-five thousand dollars. Captain Wilmott, after a visit to the shipping line office, ordered the Morro Castledeck fire hydrants capped and sealed; 2100 feet of fire hose was locked away, along with nozzles, outlets, and wrenches for each length of hose. Whether the captain received positive instructions from an executive of the Ward Line, or whether he acted independently, is not known, nor is it important. What is known is that as a result of Wilmott’s order, the pride of the American merchant marine, one of the fastest and most luxurious liners afloat, became from that moment on, a floating fire hazard in all but its cargo holds. If a fire started in any of the passenger areas, the only pieces of equipment readily available to fight it were seventy-three half-gallon portable fire extinguishers and twenty-one carbon tetrachloride extinguishers.
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Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
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When he finished he had a magnificent house, perched on the edge of a precipice at whose feet the ocean thundered, but it was a house that knew no happiness, for shortly after Whip had moved in with his third wife, the Hawaiian-Chinese beauty Ching-ching, who was pregnant at the time, she had caught him fooling around with the brothel girls that flourished in the town of Kapaa. Without even a scene of recrimination, Ching-ching had simply ordered a carriage and driven back to the capital town of Lihune, where she boarded an H & H steamer for Honolulu. She divorced Whip but kept both his daughter Iliki and his yet-unborn son John. Now there were two Mrs. Whipple Hoxworths in Honolulu and they caused some embarrassment to the more staid community. There was his first wife, Iliki Janders Hoxworth, who moved in only the best missionary circles, and there was Ching-ching Hoxworth who lived within the Chinese community. The two never met, but Howxworth & Hale saw to it that each received a monthly allowance. The sums were generous, but not so much so as those sent periodically Wild Whip's second wife, the fiery Spanish girl named Aloma Duarte Hoxworth, whose name frequently appeared in New York and London newspapers... p623
When the polo players had departed, when the field kitchens were taken down, and when the patient little Japanese gardeners were tending each cut in the polo turf as if it were a personal wound, Wild Whip would retire to his sprawling mansion overlooking the sea and get drunk. He was never offensive and never beat anyone while intoxicated. At such times he stayed away from the brothels in Kapaa and away from the broad lanai from which he could see the ocean. In a small, darkened room he drank, and as he did so he often recalled his grandfather's words: "Girls are like stars, and you could reach up and pinch each one on the points. And then in the east the moon rises, enormous and perfect. And that's something else, entirely different." It was now apparent to Whip, in his forty-fifth year, that for him the moon did not intend to rise. Somehow he had missed encountering the woman whom he could love as his grandfather had loved the Hawaiian princess Noelani. He had known hundreds of women, but he had found none that a man could permanently want or respect. Those who were desirable were mean in spirit and those who were loyal were sure to be tedious. It was probably best, he thought at such times, to do as he did: know a couple of the better girls at Kapaa, wait for some friend's wife who was bored with her husband, or trust that a casual trip through the more settled camps might turn up some workman's wife who wanted a little excitement. It wasn't a bad life and was certainly less expensive in the long run than trying to marry and divorce a succession of giddy women; but often when he had reached this conclusion, through the bamboo shades of the darkened room in which he huddled a light would penetrate, and it would be the great moon risen from the waters to the east and now passing majestically high above the Pacific. It was an all-seeing beacon, brillant enough to make the grassy lawns on Hanakai a sheet of silver, probing enough to find any mansion tucked away beneath the casuarina trees. When this moon sought out Wild Whip he would first draw in his feet, trying like a child to evade it, but when it persisted he often rose, threw open the lanai screens, and went forth to meet it. p625
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James A. Michener (Hawaii)
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I was confident that we could negotiate the rough coral, having done it several times before.
But not this time.
A coral head knocked off one of the tracks. There we were, helplessly immobilized some fifty to one hundred yards from dry land, unable to go one way or another, inaccessible by boat. My experience with previous track problems assured me that its repair would be at least a two-hour job. Admiral King, at his best, was not an easy-going man. When he understood the situation it took him only a moment to address a few plain words to me -- words not intended to contribute to my long-term peace of mind. Then, without hesitation, he clambered over the side -- starched white uniform and all -- followed by his aide, who was not happy either. They waded ashore to the accompaniment of the admiral's cursing, thumbed a ride to the dock two miles away, and finally made their way back to the Wyoming. Members of the staff told me later that the admiral was still enraged when he boarded the ship, making his feelings known to General Smith loudly and without restraint. The general, in a living disclaimer of his nickname, "Howling Mad," never reproved me.
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Estate of V H. Krulak (First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps (Bluejacket Books))
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Saving Saboteurs from Themselves John Henry, a senior management consultant with one of the world’s largest firms, advises a diverse portfolio of senior executive clients and boards. Though he’s found that the social dynamics impeding productive work are often the same wherever he goes, it can be difficult to broach the topic without raising his clients’ hackles. That’s why he keeps a copy of the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a set of guidelines devised by U.S. government officials to sabotage terrorist organizations from the inside, in his briefcase. Originally developed by the OSS during World War II, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a guide for, as the CIA puts it, “teaching people how to do their jobs badly.” Here’s a sample of some of the tactics our nation’s best intelligence officers recommend you use to undermine the operations and efficiency of a terrorist cell—or a typical American board meeting: When possible, refer all matters to committees for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—no fewer than five people. Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Haggle over the precise wording of communications, minutes, resolutions. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision.
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Jennifer Aaker (Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.))
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But this work paled in comparison to the force and impact of A Monetary History of the United States. What had begun as a favor to Arthur Burns had become a book that would turn the conventional wisdom of academic economists, policy-makers, and politicians alike upside down. The American Historical Review put it simply: “This is one of the most important books of our time.”39 Friedman and Schwartz presented voluminous data on nearly a century of U.S. history; but beyond piling up facts, they also advanced a theory of how money worked in the economy. How did money affect business cycles? Friedman and Schwartz had an answer they considered definitive: money mattered. It was the hidden force behind the ups and downs, the breadlines and the bubbles. Friedman knew the book would make an impact. He knew it was the best work he had ever done, or would ever do. He knew that for all his deviationist politics, for all the force of Keynesian assumption, for all the habitual scorn heaped upon the quantity theory of money, their book would have to be answered. It would compel conversation. The book’s centerpiece was its stunning analysis of the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz’s data showed a precipitous 33 percent decline in the quantity of money during what they called “the great contraction.” They convincingly argued that this lack of money transformed an unremarkable dip in the business cycle into a crisis of global proportions. Here was a provocative new explanation for a disaster that continued to cast its shadow across the century. But threaded through the economic argument was another thesis. In 1914, the United States had created a central bank system designed expressly to stabilize the economy. As the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve Board could have opened the spigots and flooded the economy with cash. Why did it fail to do so?
”
”
Jennifer Burns (Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative)
“
Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Wikipedia
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* If you are jobless, you do not have the proper ability, even if you can’t get a cleaning job, join Wikipedia, or become an editor. You may knock all the educated figures, lawyers, professional journalists, academics, and specialists of the various subjects down by the Wikipedia rules and policies that contradict each other. You have a useful weapon, which is called consensus. Your friends can support you in winning all disputes. You can change from wrong to right and right to wrong. You can decide the reliability and assessment of subjects; however, no matter whether you qualify for that or not, you have multiple tools for harassing others. That means Wikipedia.
* The duffer’s heaven is Wikipedia, where academic ones are the house arrested and used for their shelter of qualification.
* Wikipedia is the best place for poor grammar.
* If one desires to explore the unique idiots and fools, Wikipedia has that and such a place.
* The scholarly world rejects Wikipedia as a reliable website because most of the world’s silly clowns contribute their ignorance within the garbage of Wiki-Rules, which also, indeed, contradict each other.
* You cannot delete this, whether with due or undue weight. It is social media, not Wikipedia.
* One cannot trust Wikipedia since its articles have minute or continual variant content in all subjects, which demonstrates a lack of qualification and vision. One may find the most authentic and reliable articles on websites that even have no editorial board.
* Notability cannot prevail in any subject’s reality.
* Virtually, Wikipedia rules are not the law of the judiciary, approved by the majority of the parliament that applied accurately and precisely within its context. Conversely, Wikipedian rules, in other words, tools are only garbage of the frustrated and ignorant heads, which support the blackmailers for blackmailing and comfort for its founding architecture, and also fools who have to execute nothing other than fighting, wasting time. Consequently, every second Wikipedia, having no established and qualified paid editorial board, stays as an encyclopedia of Idiots-Pedia. Thus, it endorses itself as unreliable and untrustworthy an ordinary website, where educationally-unmatured children contribute and decide one’s notability, alongside ignorant ones as well.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Mombasah-city, with her brave array
of sumptuous palace, proudest edifice,
defaced, deformed by fire and steel shall pay
in kind the tale of byegone malefice.
Thence on those Indian shores which proud display
their hostile fleets, and warlike artifice
'gainst the Lusians, with his sail and oar
shall young Lourenço work th' extremes of war.
What mighty vessels Sam'orim's orders own
covering Ocean, with his iron hail
poured from hot copper-tube in thunder-tone
all shall he shatter, rudder, mast and sail;
then with his grapples boldly, deftly thrown,
the hostile Ammiral he shall assail,
board her, and only with the lance and sword
shall slay four hecatombs of Moors abhor'd.
But God's prevision 'scaping human sight,
alone who knows what good best serves His end,
shall place the Hero where ne toil ne might
his lost young life availeth to forfend.
In Cháúl-bay, where fierce and furious fight
with fire and steel shall fervid seas offend,
th' Infidel so shall deal that end his days
where Egypt's navy doth conjoin Cambay's.
There shall the pow'er of man'ifold enemies, —
for only stronger force strong force can tire,—
and Winds defaulting and fierce injuries
of Ocean, 'gainst a single life conspire :
Here let all olden men from death arise
to see his Valour, catch his noble fire :
A second Scæva see who, hackt and torn,
laughs at surrender, quarter holds in scorn.
With the fierce torture of a mangled thigh,
torn off by bullet which at random past,
his stalwart arms he ceaseth not to ply,
that fiery Spirit flaming to the last :
Until another ball clean cuts the tie
so frail that linkèd Soul and Body fast ;—
the Soul which loosed from her prison fleets
whither the prize eterne such Conqueror greets.
Go, Soul! to Peace from Warfare turbulent
wherein thou meritedst sweet Peace serene !
for those torn tortured limbs, that life so rent
who gave thee life prepareth vengeance keen :
I hear een now the furious storm ferment,
threating the terrible eternal teen,
of Chamber, Basilisco, Saker-fire,
to Mameluke cruel and Cambayan dire.
See with stupendous heart the war to wage,
driven by rage and grief the Father flies,
paternal fondness urging battle-gage,
fire in his heart and water in his eyes :
Promise the sire's distress, the soldier's rage,
a bloody deluge o'er the knees shall rise
on ev'ry hostile deck: This Nyle shall fear,
Indus shall sight it, and the Gange shall hear.
”
”
Richard Francis Burton (The Lusiads)