Appraisal Time Quotes

By assembling in our mind all the consequential facts we have lived through and by reviewing, appraising or sometimes idealizing the numerous key points of the past, authenticity may gradually mutate and actuality decay at last. At that point in time we are to experience a maimed factuality. ("Labyrinth of the mind")

People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times.

Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.

The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathetical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledge a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't.

The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.

Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, 'the United States of America.' But it is hardly strange. Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind. We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty. I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it. Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales. The Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine's theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation's leaders when they framed the Constitution. Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine. ...Then Paine wrote 'Common Sense,' an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession. In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. It must be remembered that 'Common Sense' preceded the declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the hour... Certainly [the Revolution] could not be forestalled, once he had spoken. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which He brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. He appraises who can learn most from whom at any given time, and then assigns them to each other. Like

Well, kid," Aahz said, sweeping me with an appraising stare, "it looks like we're stuck with each other. The setup isn't ideal, but it's what we've got. Time to bite the bullet and play with the cards we're dealt. You do know what cards are, don't you?" "Of course," I said, slightly wounded. "Good." "What's a bullet?

It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man-- that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times-- whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!

O VENENO ARDENTE DO DESGOSTO. THE WHITE HOT POISON OF ANGER. When others make us angry at them- at their shamelessness, injustice, inconsideration- then they exercise power over us, they proliferate and gnaw at our soul, then anger is like a white-hot poison that corrods all mild, noble and balanced feelings and robs us of sleep. Sleepless, we turn on the light and are angry at the anger that has lodged like a succubus who sucks us dry and debilitates us. We are not only furious at the damage, but also that it develops in us all by itself, for while we sit on the edge of the bed with aching temples, the distant catalyst remains untouched by the corrosive force of the anger that eats at us. On the empty internal stage bathed in the harsh light of mute rage, we perform all by ourselves a drama with shadow figures and shadow words we hurl against enemies in helpless rage we feel as icy blazing fire in our bowels. And the greater our despair that is only a shadow play and not a real discussion with the possibility of hurting the other and producing a balance of suffering, the wilder the poisonous shadows dance and haunt us even in the darkest catacombs of our dreams. (We will turn the tables, we think grimly, and all night long forge words that will produce in the other the effect of a fire bomb so that now he will be the one with the flames of indignation raging inside while we, soothed by schadenfreude, will drink our coffee in cheerful calm.) What could it mean to deal appropriately with anger? We really don't want to be soulless creatures who remain thoroughly indifferent to what they come across, creatures whose appraisals consist only of cool, anemic judgments and nothing can shake them up because nothing really bothers them. Therefore, we can't seriously wish not to know the experience of anger and instead persist in an equanimity that wouldn't be distinguished from tedious insensibility. Anger also teaches us something about who we are. Therefore this is what I'd like to know: What can it mean to train ourselves in anger and imagine that we take advantage of its knowledge without being addicted to its poison? We can be sure that we will hold on to the deathbed as part of the last balance sheet- and this part will taste bitter as cyanide- that we have wasted too much, much too much strength and time on getting angry and getting even with others in a helpless shadow theater, which only we, who suffered impotently, knew anything about. What can we do to improve this balance sheet? Why did our parents, teachers and other instructors never talk to us about it? Why didn't they tell something of this enormous significance? Not give us in this case any compass that could have helped us avoid wasting our soul on useless, self-destructive anger?

Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good. It may be either good or evil. As long as art remained primarily mimetic, the evil which imagination could do was limited by nature. Again, as long as it was treated as an amusement, the evil which it could do was limited in scope. But in an age when the connection between imagination and figuration is beginning to be dimly realized, when the fact of the directionally creator relation is beginning to break through into consciousness, both the good and the evil latent in the working of imagination begin to appear unlimited. We have seen in the Romantic movement an instance of the way in which the making of images may react upon the collective representations. It is a fairly rudimentary instance, but even so it has already gone beyond the dreams and responses of a leisured few. The economic and social structure of Switzerland is noticeably affected by its tourist industry, and that is due only in part to increased facilities of travel. It is due not less to the condition that (whatever may be said about their ‘particles’) the mountains which twentieth-century man sees are not the mountains which eighteenth-century man saw. It may be objected that this is a very small matter, and that it will be a long time before the imagination of man substantially alters those appearances of nature with which his figuration supplies him. But then I am taking the long view. Even so, we need not be too confident. Even if the pace of change remained the same, one who is really sensitive to (for example) the difference between the medieval collective representations and our own will be aware that, without traveling any greater distance than we have come since the fourteenth century, we could very well move forward into a chaotically empty or fantastically hideous world. But the pace of change has not remained the same. It has accelerated and is accelerating. We should remember this, when appraising the aberrations of the formally representational arts. Of course, in so far as these are due to affectation, they are of no importance. But in so far as they are genuine, they are genuine because the artist has in some way or other experienced the world he represents. And in so far as they are appreciated, they are appreciated by those who are themselves willing to make a move towards seeing the world in that way, and, ultimately therefore, seeing that kind of world. We should remember this, when we see pictures of a dog with six legs emerging from a vegetable marrow or a woman with a motorbicycle substituted for her left breast.

Now is not the time for a fanciful dip into our shadow because it is sexy or fashionable. It is essential, now more than ever, to bravely gaze into the darkest chambers of our hearts. It is only with an honest appraisal of the seat of our souls that we can mend ourselves individually and collectively.

Dad lived in fear of time. He felt it stalking him. I could see it in the worried glances he gave the sun as it moved across the sky, in the anxious way he appraised every length of pipe or cut of steel.

mentioning 'our days' as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times...

Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which He brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. He appraises who can learn most from whom at any given time, and then assigns them to each other. Like a giant universal computer, He knows exactly what combination of energies, in exactly what context, would do the most to further God’s plan for salvation. No meetings are accidental. “Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship.

The severe and at times almost condemning glance - a glance that seems to pass judgment - with which the homosexual appraises every good-looking young man he may encounter, is in reality a quick but intense meditation on his own loneliness

Illness especially, may be a blessed forerunner of the individual’s conversion. Not only does it prevent him from realizing his desires; it even reduces his capacity for sin, his opportunities for vice. In that enforced detachment from evil, which is a Mercy of God, he has time to search himself, to appraise his life, to interpret it in terms of larger reality. He considers God, and, at that moment, there is a sense of duality, a confronting of personality with Divinity, a comparison of the facts of his life with the ideal from which he fell. The soul is forced to look inside itself, to inquire whether there is more peace in this suffering than in sinning. Once a sick man, in his passivity, begins to ask, “What is the purpose of my life? Why am I here?” the crisis has already begun. Conversion becomes possible the very moment a man ceases to blame God or life and begins to blame himself; by doing so, he becomes able to distinguish between his sinful barnacles and the ship of his soul. A crack has appeared in the armor of his egotism; now the sunlight of God’s grace can pour in. But until that happens, catastrophes can teach us nothing but despair.

These people look upon inequality as upon an evil. They do not assert that a definite degree of inequality which can be exactly determined by a judgment free of any arbitrariness and personal evaluation is good and has to be preserved unconditionally. They, on the contrary, declare inequality in itself as bad and merely contend that a lower degree of it is a lesser evil than a higher degree in the same sense in which a smaller quantity of poison in a man’s body is a lesser evil than a larger dose. But if this is so, then there is logically in their doctrine no point at which the endeavors toward equalization would have to stop. Whether one has already reached a degree of inequality which is to be considered low enough and beyond which it is not necessary to embark upon further measures toward equalization is just a matter of personal judgments of value, quite arbitrary, different with different people and changing in the passing of time. As these champions of equalization appraise confiscation and “redistribution” as a policy harming only a minority, viz., those whom they consider to be “too” rich, and benefiting the rest—the majority—of the people, they cannot oppose any tenable argument to those who are asking for more of this allegedly beneficial policy. As long as any degree of inequality is left, there will always be people whom envy impels to press for a continuation of the equalization policy. Nothing can be advanced against their inference: If inequality of wealth and incomes is an evil, there is no reason to acquiesce in any degree of it, however low; equalization must not stop before it has completely leveled all individuals’ wealth and incomes.

Alec was deeply relieved to see Magnus stroll into view, Malcolm at his side, dripping canal water. “Please don’t risk my boyfriend’s life or limbs,” said Magnus. “I am attached to both. Malcolm, please call off your . . . plants and things.” The light died in Shinyun’s hands. Malcolm appraised the nest and then clapped his hands several times, taking turns alternating which hand was on top. With each clap, the vines receded. “Where’s Barnabas?” Alec asked, shaking off the scraps and rubble as he stepped free of the mess. “I encouraged him to leave,” said Magnus. “Subtly.” “How?” asked Alec. Magnus considered. “Maybe not all that subtly.” Malcolm’s face was even more pallid than usual. “This is terrible,” he announced. “I think I may have lost my security deposit.” “You don’t have a security deposit,” Alec reminded him. “You stole that Barnabas guy’s house.” “Oh yes,” said Malcolm, cheering up.

Conversely, as such a stock rises to, say, 50 or 60 or 70, the urge to sell and take a profit now that the stock is “high” becomes irresistible to many people. Giving in to this urge can be very costly. This is because the genuinely worthwhile profits in stock investing have come from holding the surprisingly large number of stocks that have gone up many times from their original cost. The only true test of whether a stock is “cheap” or “high” is not its current price in relation to some former price, no matter how accustomed we may have become to that former price, but whether the company’s fundamentals are significantly more or less favorable than the current financial-community appraisal of that stock.

Really, Nan could be very odious when she liked. Yet somehow she [Gay] didn't hate her as before. She felt very indifferent to her. She found herself looking at her with cool, appraising eyes, seeing her as she had never seen her before. An empty, selfish little creature, who had always to be amused like a child. ...A girl who posed as a sophisticate before her country cousins but who was really more provincial than they were, knowing nothing of real life or real love or real emotion of any kind. Gay wondered, as she looked, how she could ever have hated this girl—ever been jealous of her. She was not worth hating. Gay spoke at last. She stood up and looked levelly at Nan. There was contempt in her quiet voice. "I suppose you came here to hurt me, Nan. You haven't—you can never hurt me again. You've lost the power. I think I even feel a little sorry for you. You've always been a taker, Nan. All through your life you've taken whatever you wanted. But you've never been a giver—you couldn't be because you've nothing to give. Neither love nor truth nor understanding nor kindness nor loyalty. Just taking all the time and giving nothing—oh, it has made you very poor. So poor that nobody need envy you.

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera—mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times—

A woman's sexual desire must be filtered through a careful appraisal of potential risks. During human prehistory, women who blindly gave in to every sexual urge likely faced a host of daunting challenges, including - in the extreme cases - death. Most important, from an evolutionary point of view, her children would have a harder time surviving than the children of a woman who limited the expression of her sexual urges to a strong and decent man willing to invest in a stable, long-term, child-rearing relationship. All modern women are the fruit of feminine caution. The result of this whittling away of the impulsive branches of our ancestral maternal tree is a female brain equipped with the most sophisticated neural software on Earth. A system designed to uncover, scrutinize, and evaluate a dazzling range of informative clues.

Mr. Kadam bowed and said, “Miss Kelsey, I will leave you to your dining companion. Enjoy your dinner.” Then he walked out of the restaurant. “Mr. Kadam, wait. I don’t understand.” Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he’s confused. Just then, a deep, all-too-familiar voice behind me said, “Hello, Kells.” I froze, and my heart dropped into my stomach, stirring up about a billion butterflies. A few seconds passed. Or was it a few minutes? I couldn’t tell. I heard a sigh of frustration. “Are you still not talking to me? Turn around, please.” A warm hand slid under my elbow and gently turned me around. I raised my eyes and gasped softly. He was breathtaking! So handsome, I wanted to cry. “Ren.” He smiled. “Who else?” He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he’d had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path. I groaned inwardly. He’s like…like James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one. I decided the safest thing to do would be to look at his shoes. Shoes were boring, right? Not attractive at all. Ah. Much better. His shoes were nice, of course-polished and black, just like I would expect. I smiled wryly when I realized that this was the first time I’d ever seen Ren in shoes. He cupped my chin and made me look at his face. The jerk. Then it was his turn to appraise me. He looked me up and down. And not a quick look. He took it all in slowly. The kind of slow that made a girl’s face feel hot. I got mad at myself for blushing and glared at him. Nervous and impatient, I asked, “Are you finished?” “Almost.” He was now staring at my strappy shoes. “Well, hurry up!” His eyes drifted leisurely back up to my face and he smiled at me appreciatively, “Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself.” I quirked an eyebrow at him and laughed. “Yeah, I’m a regular marathon alright.” He kissed my fingers. “Exactly. A wise man never sprints…in a marathon.” “I was being sarcastic, Ren.” He ignored me and tucked my hand under his arm then led me over to a beautifully lit table. Pulling the chair out for me, he invited me to sit. I stood there wondering if I could sprint for the nearest exit. Stupid strappy shoes, I’d never make it. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to let you escape again. You can either take a seat and have dinner with me like a normal date,” he grinned at his word choice, “or,” he paused thoughtfully then threatened, “you can sit on my lap while I force-feed you.” I hissed, “You wouldn’t dare. You’re too much of a gentleman to force me to do anything. It’s an empty bluff, Mr. Asks-For-Permission.” “Even a gentleman has his limits. One way or another, we’re going to have a civil conversation. I’m hoping I get to feed you from my lap, but it’s your choice.” He straightened up again and waited. I unceremoniously plunked down in my chair and scooted in noisily to the table. He laughed softly and took the chair across from me. I felt guilty because of the dress and readjusted my skirt so it wouldn’t wrinkle.

The door swings open, and there he is, phone in hand. He puts his mouth up to the speaker, his eyes on me, the tiniest smirk pulling at his lips. ‘It’s nice.’ ‘I’m sorry, did you just compliment me?’ ‘Don’t take it personally,’ he echoes. ‘I tell my accountant he looks nice all the time, too.’ ‘It’s a slippery slope to earnest compliments, Spencer.’ He tilts his head, appraising me. ‘I don’t expect you to let me get that far. You’ve never been one for accepting my compliments.’ ‘You’ve never been one for giving them to me.‘’ ‘Maybe you weren’t listening.’ ‘Trust me, I was.

We finally made our way to the front of the line, where a young bouncer snapped an underage wristband on me and gave me an appraising look, eyes scanning my waist-length hair before raising the velvet rope. I rushed under it with Jay on my heels. “For real, Anna, don't let me stand in the way of all these dudes tonight.” Jay laughed behind me, raising his voice as we entered the already packed room, music thumping. I knew I should have put my hair up before we came, but Jay's sister, Jana had insisted on my keeping it down. I pulled my hair over my shoulder and wound it into a rope with my finger, looking around at the tightly packed crowd and wincing slightly at the noise and blasts of emotion. “They only think they like me because they don't know me,” I said. Jay shook his head. "I hate when you say things like that.” “Like what? That I'm especially special?” I was trying to make a joke, using the term us Southerners fondly called people who "weren't right" but anger burst gray from Jay's chest, surprising me, then fizzled away. “Don't talk about yourself that way. You're just...shy.” I was weird and we both knew it. But I didn't like to upset him, and it felt ridiculous having a serious conversation at the top of our lungs. Jay pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen as it vibrated in his hand. He grinned and handed it to me. Patti. “Hello?” I stuck a finger in my other ear so I could hear. “I'm just checking to see if you made it safely, honey. Wow, it's really loud there!” “Yeah, it is!” I had to shout. “Everything is fine. I'll be home by eleven.” It as my first time going to something like this. Ever. Jay had begged Patti for permission himself, and by some miracle got her to agree. But she was not happy about it. All day she'd been as nervous as a cat the vet.

What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.

Actually," she stammered, forcing a smile she hoped looked apologetic, "I am Rupert's sister. I thought this was his room, you see. And ... and the thing is he had brought me a gift and I just could not contain my impatience. I thought I would get just a little peek at it." The gaze he raked down her this time was bold and frankly appraising, and Melantha could not dismiss the sensation of standing completely naked before him, as if he could see directly through her clothing and perceive every tiny flaw.

Dude, wait until you see the hot little number on there!” He was grinning like the Cheshire cat. “What are you talking about? Aren’t all flight attendant’s middle-aged, blonde women?” “Not this one. She’s feisty too, kneed me right in the balls.” I smiled, and it was actually genuine. I wondered if he was fucking with me. But, it was enough to peak my curiosity. I slowly walked towards the plane wondering if it was going to be a grandma, or something. It wouldn’t be the first time. I really hoped that it wasn’t some die-hard groupie either. As soon as I reached the top of the stairs I almost tripped and fell on my face when I got my first look at her. She was gorgeous! She looked like she walked straight off of a pin-up girl calendar. She had long, black hair with strands of hot pink. I appraised my way down her body. She had a slim waist and curvy hips. She was built like an hourglass. I noticed a couple of sexy facial piercings. She had an adorable little nose and big brown eyes. Then I saw a tattoo peeking out on her shoulder. I could tell that she had a chest piece. I was instantly hard. Awesome…

Most of the crime-ridden minority neighborhoods in New York City, especially areas like East New York, where many of the characters in Eric Garner’s story grew up, had been artificially created by a series of criminal real estate scams. One of the most infamous had involved a company called the Eastern Service Corporation, which in the sixties ran a huge predatory lending operation all over the city, but particularly in Brooklyn. Scam artists like ESC would first clear white residents out of certain neighborhoods with scare campaigns. They’d slip leaflets through mail slots warning of an incoming black plague, with messages like, “Don’t wait until it’s too late!” Investors would then come in and buy their houses at depressed rates. Once this “blockbusting” technique cleared the properties, a company like ESC would bring in a new set of homeowners, often minorities, and often with bad credit and shaky job profiles. They bribed officials in the FHA to approve mortgages for anyone and everyone. Appraisals would be inflated. Loans would be approved for repairs, but repairs would never be done. The typical target homeowner in the con was a black family moving to New York to escape racism in the South. The family would be shown a house in a place like East New York that in reality was only worth about $15,000. But the appraisal would be faked and a loan would be approved for $17,000. The family would move in and instantly find themselves in a house worth $2,000 less than its purchase price, and maybe with faulty toilets, lighting, heat, and (ironically) broken windows besides. Meanwhile, the government-backed loan created by a lender like Eastern Service by then had been sold off to some sucker on the secondary market: a savings bank, a pension fund, or perhaps to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage corporation. Before long, the family would default and be foreclosed upon. Investors would swoop in and buy the property at a distressed price one more time. Next, the one-family home would be converted into a three- or four-family rental property, which would of course quickly fall into even greater disrepair. This process created ghettos almost instantly. Racial blockbusting is how East New York went from 90 percent white in 1960 to 80 percent black and Hispanic in 1966.

I run my finger along the textured silk. “It’s so beautiful.” “Salishen silk,” Mage Florel says reverently. “From the Salishen Isles. They’re master weavers, the Salish. True artists. And all of their embroidery is as exquisite as this.” I glance up at her. “Do you think you could use this?” “Of course, Mage Gardner,” she replies, obviously thrilled by my choice. Fallon’s hand comes down on the fabric. “You can’t use this,” she says, her tone hard. I blink up at her in resentful surprise. “Why?” “Because,” she replies, her voice syrupy with condescension, “this is what my dress is being made of.” “Ah, what a pity,” Mage Florel sighs. She pats my shoulder sympathetically. “I’ve others, Mage Gardner, don’t you fret. We’ll find something just as lovely for you...” Heart racing, I put my own hand down firmly on the fabric sample, right next to Fallon’s. I meet Fallon’s stare and hold it. “No. I want this one.” Everyone gapes at me. Fallon leans in a fraction and bares her teeth. “You can’t have it.” I try to ignore the slight trembling of my hand. “Oh, come now, Fallon,” I say as I gesture at the fabric around us, mimicking her sneering tone. “It’s all black. And I’m sure the cut will be different.” I look over at Mage Florel, whose eyes are as wide as everyone else’s. “Can you make sure it’s very different from hers?” Fallon spits out a sound of contempt. “My dress isn’t being made here. I have my own dressmaker.” “Well, then,” I tell her. “That simplifies things.” I turn to Mage Florel. “Can you make it for me in time? With this fabric?” Mage Florel gives me an appraising look, her eyes darting toward Fallon as if weighing the options. She lifts her chin. “Why, yes, Mage Gardner. I think I can.” She smiles coldly at Fallon. “Why don’t you tell me what your dress is like, dear? I’ll make sure it’s quite different.

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one." Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella." "Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty." "I don't like the look of them," Rose says. Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising. After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them." Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate. Then Lily shrugs and says, "Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?" and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back. It's the closest they've ever been.

You are the value. In life, you will have moments when you wonder if you’re good enough for a job, another person, or something else that you really want. When you appraise the importance of your desire as being more valuable than yourself, then you are creating an imbalance in your self-perception. You place the significance on the thing that is outside of yourself as opposed to who you are within yourself. This takes away your power and gives it to an external force. The true question is whether the job, relationship, or thing is good enough for you. Does it align with the vision you have for yourself and your life? Is it worthy of your time and energy? Will it better you? Will it fulfill you? Does it deserve you?

Most of the time, the market is mostly accurate in pricing most stocks. Millions of buyers and sellers haggling over price do a remarkably good job of valuing companies—on average. But sometimes, the price is not right; occasionally, it is very wrong indeed. And at such times, you need to understand Graham’s image of Mr. Market, probably the most brilliant metaphor ever created for explaining how stocks can become mispriced.1 The manic-depressive Mr. Market does not always price stocks the way an appraiser or a private buyer would value a business. Instead, when stocks are going up, he happily pays more than their objective value; and, when they are going down, he is desperate to dump them for less than their true worth.

With the dominance of arithmetic and the decimal system, dependent apparently on the number of fingers or toes, modern students have accepted the linear measure of time. The dangers of applying this procrustean device in the appraisal of civilizations in which it did not exist illustrate one of numerous problems. The difficulties will be illustrated in part in these six lectures in which time becomes a crucial factor in the organization of material and in which a lecture is a standardized and relatively inefficient method of communication with an emphasis on dogmatic answers rather than eternal questions. I have attempted to meet these problems by using the concept of empire as an indication of the efficiency of communication.

Smokers exist in every kitchen. It kills a tastebud or two but we all die, and no one knows better than those who club the fish, clean the guts from the meat, and serve for your delectation a plate from which all blood has been wiped. We cook despite bad pay and sore backs and inadequate sleeps in apartments we can't afford and we wake up choosing again that most temporary of glories that is made, and then consumed: we know. We all die. Whether it comes after thirty years of hard labor or sixty at a desk, whether we calculate or plan, in the end we have only the choice of what touches the lips before we go: lobster if you like it or cold pizza if you don't, a sip of smoke, a drink, a job, a reckless passion, raw fish, the beguilement of mushrooms, cheese luscious beneath its crown of mold. What sustains in the end are doomed romances, and nicotine, and crappy peanut butter, damn the additives and cholesterol because life is finite and not all nourishment can be measured. When I learned to smoke behind a restaurant, my breath curling toward an inconsolable sky, I learned what it means to live by the tongue, dumb beast, obedient to neither time nor money, past nor future, loyal to a now worth living. I took my cigarette to the filter, and for the first time I appraised my employer back. He claimed to have evolved past fear. He lied. Behind the mask was a damp, scared boy. Fear of toxins, fear of carcinogens, tear of flood and smog and protest and entropy and all that could not be optimized, controlled, bought and held behind glass. Fear fueled a country so intent on perfection that they would give up the world.

What is it about the ancients,’ Pinker asks at one point, ‘that they couldn’t leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul play?’ There is an obvious response to this: doesn’t it rather depend on which corpse you consider interesting in the first place? Yes, a little over 5,000 years ago someone walking through the Alps left the world of the living with an arrow in his side; but there’s no particular reason to treat Ötzi as a poster child for humanity in its original condition, other than, perhaps, Ötzi suiting Pinker’s argument. But if all we’re doing is cherry-picking, we could just as easily have chosen the much earlier burial known to archaeologists as Romito 2 (after the Calabrian rock-shelter where it was found). Let’s take a moment to consider what it would mean if we did this. Romito 2 is the 10,000-year-old burial of a male with a rare genetic disorder (acromesomelic dysplasia): a severe type of dwarfism, which in life would have rendered him both anomalous in his community and unable to participate in the kind of high-altitude hunting that was necessary for their survival. Studies of his pathology show that, despite generally poor levels of health and nutrition, that same community of hunter-gatherers still took pains to support this individual through infancy and into early adulthood, granting him the same share of meat as everyone else, and ultimately according him a careful, sheltered burial.15 Neither is Romito 2 an isolated case. When archaeologists undertake balanced appraisals of hunter-gatherer burials from the Palaeolithic, they find high frequencies of health-related disabilities – but also surprisingly high levels of care until the time of death (and beyond, since some of these funerals were remarkably lavish).16 If we did want to reach a general conclusion about what form human societies originally took, based on statistical frequencies of health indicators from ancient burials, we would have to reach the exact opposite conclusion to Hobbes (and Pinker): in origin, it might be claimed, our species is a nurturing and care-giving species, and there was simply no need for life to be nasty, brutish or short. We’re not suggesting we actually do this. As we’ll see, there is reason to believe that during the Palaeolithic, only rather unusual individuals were buried at all. We just want to point out how easy it would be to play the same game in the other direction – easy, but frankly not too enlightening.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.

The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.

Adults can distinguish race from very minimal clues. Stanford researchers showed subjects just the front slices of plain, black profiles—the face from forehead to chin, without the hair. Subjects could tell the race of the profile (80 percent of the time) more often than they could tell the sex (70 percent), or the age within 10 years (68 percent). Race is commonly equated with skin color, but all the profiles were black. It is obviously important for adults to tell the sexes apart, but they were even better at telling races apart. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to determine that what is called the fusiform region of the brain may be associated with the other-race effect. The fusiform region is involved in expert appraisal. In a bird-watcher’s brain, for example, the region lights up at the sight of a bird. All people have considerable expertise in recognizing human faces, but MRI scans show greater fusiform activity—expert appraisal activity—when they are looking at faces of their own race.

I fully understand the trepidation of placing God on trial. I would rather follow the lead of others and say at the conclusion of time, it will all be explained and make sense. I too feel a pull toward fixing my gaze at a happy ending, joyfully proclaiming ‘it is well with my soul.’ Oh, how much more comforting it would be to proclaim, 'God is good – always!’ With all my heart, soul, mind, and being, I wish to become intoxicated with the simplicity of an unquestionable and uncomplicated faith. But to do so would be an insult to the God in whom I claim to believe. To challenge God, to yell out in protest, to place God on trial is not the ultimate act of arrogance; rather, it is to take God seriously by crucifying our Christian-based idols for an honest appraisal of the metaphysical – whatever that might or might not be. And maybe this is the ultimate beauty of faith – to doubt, to wrestle, to curse, to question, to disbelieve, to oppose, to joder, and to hold accountable God in defense of God’s creation. God is placed on trial, not rejected.

The newcomers and those who were at home were accustoming themselves to each other in their own way and their own time; getting to know what the strangers smelled like, how they moved, how they breathed, how they scratched, the feel of their rhythms and pulses. These were their topics and subjects of discussion, carried on without the need of speech. To a greater extent than a human in a similar gathering, each rabbit, as he pursued his own fragment, was sensitive to the trend of the whole. After a time, all knew that the concourse was not going to turn sour or break up in a fight. Just as a battle begins in a state of equilibrium between the two sides, which gradually alters one way or the other until it is clear that the balance has tilted so far that the issue can no longer be in doubt—so this gathering of rabbits in the dark, beginning with hesitant approaches, silences, pauses, movements, crouchings side by side and all manner of tentative appraisals, slowly moved, like a hemisphere of the world into summer, to a warmer, brighter region of mutual liking and approval, until all felt sure that they had nothing to fear.

I, having my previous impressions of awe deepened by these solemn trophies of chance and change amongst mighty nations, had suddenly been surprised by a dream, as profound as at present, in which a thought that often had persecuted me figured triumphantly. This thought turned upon the fatality that must often attend an evil choice. As an oracle of fear I remembered that great Roman warning, Nessit vox missa reverti (that a word once uttered is irrevocable), a freezing arrest upon the motions of hope too sanguine that haunted me in many shapes. Long before that fifteenth year of mine, I had noticed, as a worm lying at the heart of life and fleeting its security, the fact that innumerable acts of choice change countenance and are variously appraised at varying stage of life - shift with the shifting hours. Already at fifteen, I had become deeply ashamed of judgements which I had once pronounced, of idle hopes that I had once encouraged, false admirations or contempts with which once I had sympathized. And, as to the acts which I surveyed with any doubts at all, i never felt sure that after some succession of years I might not feel withering doubts about them, both as to principle and as to inevitable results.

Furthermore, as if forgetting the existence of the Soviet “Evil Empire”, she practically called for the various peoples of the USSR to stay “loyal to the Soviet Union as a commonwealth of nations”, to be content with a certain degree of cultural and religious autonomy, like the various tribes in Nigeria. And this was said at the time of the offensive against the sovereignty of the Baltic republics, whose absorption into the USSR was never acknowledged by Britain or the USA. Alas, Thatcher was no exception. Even Ronald Reagan, President of the USA, a man for whom the very name Lenin was always anathema, did not fail to praise Gorbachev for his “return to the paths of Lenin.” This was also said in a radio address transmitted to the USSR. As for his successor, George Bush and his Secretary of State Jim Baker, they outdid everyone, opposing the inevitable disintegration of the USSR until the very last day. “Yes, I think I can trust Gorbachev,”—said George Bush to Time magazine357 just when Gorbachev was beginning to lose control and was tangled hopelessly in his own lies—“I looked him in the eye, I appraised him. He was very determined. Yet there was a twinkle. He is a guy quite sure of what he is doing. He has got a political feel.

You have only hours until you go from palace servant to the future queen of Aurelais. Many will not take the news well, particularly not the blue-blooded young ladies who will resent the prince for rebuffing them for you." Cinderella thought of her stepsisters, who'd reveled for years in tormenting her. "I can handle it." When she did not elaborate, Genevieve appraised her. "When Charles declares that you are to be the princess of Aurelais, all attention will be on you. This is the first impression everyone will have of you. "You have natural grace, which most princesses take decades to learn, but it won't be enough. Nothing would ever be enough, even if you had been born royal." The duchess lifted Cinderella's chin so their eyes were level. "In my time, we stood by the three P's. I thought it was a bunch of hogwash, but I'll impart it to you anyway. It was essential that a princess be poised, pleasant, and-" "Pretty?" Cinderella guessed. "Presentable," corrected the duchess. "That's what all the wigs and powder and rouge were for. Nowadays, women are more after the natural look. Which, I suppose, isn't a problem for you." She hummed approvingly. "Now, what color gown should you like to wear tonight?" "Something blue," replied Cinderella thoughtfully. "It was my mother's favorite color, and I wish with all my heart she could have met Charles and seen us together." "That's a beautiful thought, Cindergirl.

During a recent lunch with a close friend who is also the mother of two young children, Diana told of an incident which underlines not only the current state of her relationship with her husband but also the protective nature of her son William. She told her friend that the week that Buckingham Palace decided to announce the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York was understandably a trying time for her. She had lost an amicable companion and was acutely aware that the public spotlight would once again fall on her marriage. Yet her husband seemed unmoved by the furore surrounding the separation. He had spent a week touring various stately homes, gathering material for a book he is writing on gardening. When he returned to Kensington Palace he failed to see why his wife should feel strained and rather depressed. He airily dismissed the departure of the Duchess of York and launched, as usual, into a disapproving appraisal of Diana’s public works, especially her visit to see Mother Teresa in Rome. Even their staff, by now used to these altercations, were dismayed by this attitude and felt some sympathy when Diana told her husband that unless he changed his attitude towards her and the job she is doing she would have to reconsider her position. In tears, she went upstairs for a bath. While she was regaining her composure, Prince William pushed a handful of paper tissues underneath the bathroom door. “I hate to see you sad,” he said.

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

freeze, so she opted for pants with a thick, nubbly sweater that added substance to her frame. As always, her necklace was in place, and she donned a lovely bright cashmere scarf to keep her neck warm. When she stepped back to appraise herself in the mirror, she felt she looked almost as good as she had before chemotherapy started. Collecting her purse, she took a couple more pills—the pain wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but no reason to risk it—and called an Uber. Pulling up to the gallery a few minutes after closing time, she saw Mark through the window, discussing one of her photographs with a couple in their fifties. Mark offered the slightest of waves when Maggie stepped inside and hurried to her office. On her desk was a small stack of mail; she was quickly sorting through it when Mark suddenly tapped on her open door. “Hey, sorry. I thought they’d make a decision before you arrived, but they had a lot of questions.” “And?” “They bought two of your prints.” Amazing, she thought. Early in the life of the gallery, weeks could go by without the sale of even a single print of hers. And while the sales did increase with the growth of her career, the real renown came with her Cancer Videos. Fame did indeed change everything, even if the fame was for a reason she wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Mark walked into the office before suddenly pulling up short. “Wow,” he said. “You look fantastic.” “I’m trying.” “How do you feel?” “I’ve been more tired than usual, so I’ve been sleeping a lot.” “Are you sure you’re still up for this?” She could see the worry in his expression. “It’s Luanne’s gift, so I have to go. And besides, it’ll help me get into the Christmas spirit.

what I knew that morning in March 1977 as we settled around the conference table. I wasn’t even sure how these guys reached us, or how they’d arranged this meeting. “Okay, fellas,” I said, “what’ve you got?” It was a beautiful day, I remember. The light outside the room was a buttery pale yellow, and the sky was blue for the first time in months, so I was distracted, a little spring feverish, as Rudy leaned his weight on the edge of the conference table and smiled. “Mr. Knight, we’ve come up with a way to inject . . . air . . . into a running shoe.” I frowned and dropped my pencil. “Why?” I said. “For greater cushioning,” he said. “For greater support. For the ride of a lifetime.” I stared. “You’re kidding me, right?” I’d heard a lot of silliness from a lot of different people in the shoe business, but this. Oh. Brother. Rudy handed me a pair of soles that looked as if they’d been teleported from the twenty-second century. Big, clunky, they were clear thick plastic and inside were—bubbles? I turned them over. “Bubbles?” I said. “Pressurized air bags,” he said. I set down the soles and gave Rudy a closer look, a full head-to-toe. Six-three, lanky, with unruly dark hair, bottle-bottom glasses, a lopsided grin, and a severe vitamin D deficiency, I thought. Not enough sunshine. Or else a long-lost member of the Addams Family. He saw me appraising him, saw my skepticism, and wasn’t the least fazed. He walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing numbers, symbols, equations. He explained at some length why an air shoe would work, why it would never go flat, why it was the Next Big Thing. When he finished I stared at the blackboard. As a trained accountant I’d spent a good part of my life looking at blackboards, but this Rudy fella’s scribbles were something else. Indecipherable.

Once, I was doing a late-night case with one of the neurosurgery attendings, a suboccipital craniectomy for a brain-stem malformation. It’s one of the most elegant surgeries, in perhaps the most difficult part of the body—just getting there is tricky, no matter how experienced you are. But that night, I felt fluid: the instruments were like extensions of my fingers; the skin, muscle, and bone seemed to unzip themselves; and there I was, staring at a yellow, glistening bulge, a mass deep in the brain stem. Suddenly, the attending stopped me. “Paul, what happens if you cut two millimeters deeper right here?” He pointed. Neuroanatomy slides whirred through my head. “Double vision?” “No,” he said. “Locked-in syndrome.” Another two millimeters, and the patient would be completely paralyzed, save for the ability to blink. He didn’t look up from the microscope. “And I know this because the third time I did this operation, that’s exactly what happened.” Neurosurgery requires a commitment to one’s own excellence and a commitment to another’s identity. The decision to operate at all involves an appraisal of one’s own abilities, as well as a deep sense of who the patient is and what she holds dear. Certain brain areas are considered near-inviolable, like the primary motor cortex, damage to which results in paralysis of affected body parts. But the most sacrosanct regions of the cortex are those that control language. Usually located on the left side, they are called Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas; one is for understanding language and the other for producing it. Damage to Broca’s area results in an inability to speak or write, though the patient can easily understand language. Damage to Wernicke’s area results in an inability to understand language; though the patient can still speak, the language she produces is a stream of unconnected words, phrases, and images, a grammar without semantics. If both areas are damaged, the patient becomes an isolate, something central to her humanity stolen forever. After someone suffers a head trauma or a stroke, the destruction of these areas often restrains the surgeon’s impulse to save a life: What kind of life exists without language? When I was a med student,

And if someone can lead me to him?” Malaki asks. “Report back to me first. I don’t want to chance losing him. Oh and by the way—” Des’s eyes inadvertently land on Temper, “be discreet.” “Why are you looking at me?” Temper’s voice is several octaves louder than everyone else’s. The Bargainer arches an eyebrow. “I’m as motherfucking discreet as they come,” she says. I’m trying really, really hard not to laugh, but the struggle is real. Malaki manages a sharp nod. “We will be discreet,” he assures Des. The sorceress huffs. “Y’all need to get your heads checked. I am not the problem.” She turns on Malaki. “And you don’t need to go making promises for me. I never even said I was coming along.” “And you don’t need to.” The Bargainer stands. “But if you imagined staying behind so that you could have fun with Callie, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. The future Night Queen has official business that will take her away from the palace.” It takes me a second to realize Des is referring to me. “Wait,” I say, “I haven’t agreed to be queen.” “Yeah,” Temper agrees, “my girl hasn’t agreed—what?” She turns on me. “Bitch, have you lost your mind? Take that crown and wear that shit like it’s your birthright.” Ignoring Temper, Des’s gaze falls on me, his features sharp. “I apologize, the Night King’s consort has official business that will take her away from the palace.” I narrow my eyes at my mate. I might not have jumped onboard with this whole queen business, but I sure as hell don’t want to be known simply as someone else’s consort. “Hoooo!” Temper whoops, falling back into her seat. “You better sleep with one eye open, Desmond. I’ve seen my girl make men pay for less.” He’s still staring intensely at me. “That’s odd. For as long as I’ve known Callie, she’s the one who’s paid for my services. I admit, it’ll be nice to not be the prostitute in our relationship for once.” Temper snickers, appraising Des all over again. “Fuck one eye. Sleep with both eyes open.” I shake my head at Des as I stand, my eyes slitted. “It’s time to go.” We give curt goodbyes to Temper and Malaki, then slip out of the library. “You do realize how close you were to getting glamoured, don’t you?” I say as we head down the hallway. Des’s eyes seem to be laughing at me. “You say that like I’d mind.

[T]he great decided effective Majority is now for the Republic," he told Jefferson in late October 1792, but whether it would endure for even six months "must depend on the Form of Government which shall be presented by the Convention" and whether it could "strike out that happy Mean which secures all the Liberty which Circumstances will admit of combin'd with all the Energy which the same Circumstances require; Whether they can establish an Authority which does not exist, as a Substitute (and always a dangerous Substitute) for that Respect which cannot be restor'd after so much has been to destroy it; Whether in crying down and even ridiculing Religion they will be able on the tottering and uncertain Base of metaphisic Philosophy to establish a solid Edifice of morals, these are Questions which Time must solve." At the same time he predicted to Rufus King that "we shall have I think some sharp struggles which will make many men repent of what they have done when they find with Macbeth that they have but taught bloody Instructions which return to plague the Inventor." . . . In early December, he wrote perhaps his most eloquent appraisal of the tragic turn of the [French] Revolution, to Thomas Pinckney. "Success as you will see, continues to crown the French Arms, but it is not our Trade to judge from Success," he began. "You will soon learn that the Patriots hitherto adored were but little worthy of the Incense they received. The Enemies of those who now reign treat them as they did their Predecessors and as their Successors will be treated. Since I have been in this Country, I have seen the Worship of many Idols and but little [illegible] of the true God. I have seen many of those Idols broken, and some of them beaten to Dust. I have seen the late Constitution in one short Year admired as a stupendous Monument of human Wisdom and ridiculed as an egregious Production of Folly and Vice. I wish much, very much, the Happiness of this inconstant People. I love them. I feel grateful for their Efforts in our Cause and I consider the Establishment of a good Constitution here as the principal Means, under divine Providence, of extending the blessings of Freedom to the many millions of my fellow Men who groan in Bondage on the Continent of Europe. But I do not greatly indulge the flattering Illusions of Hope, because I do not yet perceive that Reformation of Morals without which Liberty is but an empty Sound." . . . [H]e believed religion was "the only solid Base of Morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments." He described the movement as a "new Religion" whose Votaries have the Superstition of not being superstitious. They have with this as much Zeal as any other Sect and are as ready to lay Waste the World in order to make Proselytes.

The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic. In contrast to the German and Russia state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism. This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe's dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbors more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a czar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm. By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other had, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old. This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their own flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different—more open and more accessible—attitude toward the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else. We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.

So are you planning on dressing me in addition to everything else?” she asked once they’d cleared a challenging rise. “I planned to pack as much as I could this morning, so you could sleep later,” he lowered his voice, “or take care of what went unfinished last night.” He’d amazed himself by behaving so unselfishly as that. Her unfulfilled desire made it more likely that he’d get her into bed with him, and yet, he couldn’t stand to think of her suffering. “I was attempting to be considerate. Though I’ve little experience with it.” “I’m not talking to you about this. I’m just not.” “I can feel your need as strong as my own.” “Maybe I do have these needs—doesn’t mean you’re the one I’ll choose to help me work them out.” Her gaze drifted to Cade, who was greedily chugging water. His voice low and seething, Bowe said, “You regard him with an appraising eye one more time, Mariketa, and you’re going to get that demon killed. All he wants is to ‘attempt’ you. Do you ken what that means?” “In fact, I do ken what it means. In the throes, you know. One of my boyfriends was a demon.” “Boyfriends?” He frowned. “You mean lovers. How bloody many have you had?” He stopped. “Are you free with yourself, then? With other males? Because that’ll be ending—” “What’d you think?” she asked over her shoulder. “That I was a virgin?” “You’re only twenty-three,” he said, sounding very stodgy, even to himself. “And I try no’ to think of any male before me. But if you were no’ an innocent, then I’d hoped it would have been once, in the dark, with a ham-handed human who was so bad you had to stifle a yawn or fight against laughing.” She shrugged. “I’m sure the number of notches in my bedpost can’t compare to yours.” “Aye, but I’m twelve hundred years old! Even if I had one female a year, you’d understand how they could accumulate.” “Well, I am young.” Just as he felt a flicker of ease, she murmured in a sexy voice, “But, baby, I’ve been busy.” His fists clenched. “Jealous?” She probably wouldn’t think he’d admit to it, but in a low tone, he said, “Aye, I envy any man that’s had his hands on you.” She gave him an enigmatic, studying expression. “Now, if I guess the number you’ve taken into your bed, then you’ll tell me if I’m right.” She hastily faced forward once more. “Not playing. Get bent.” He narrowed his eyes. “One. You’ve had one.” Her shoulders stiffened barely perceptibly, and he wanted to sag with relief. “Because any male worthy of you would kill a rival who tried to steal you from him. I’m guessing the demon was your first and last. And how did you get him to let you go, then?” “What if I told you I was still seeing him?” Bowen shook his head. “No’ considering the way you were with me that first night. Besides, if he allowed you to enter the Hie without being there to guard you, he does no’ deserve you. When we return, I’ll kill him on principle.

Barrons’ hand shot out and closed around V’lane’s throat. “You lying fuck.” V’lane grabbed Barrons’ arm with one hand, his throat with the other. I stared, fascinated. I was so discombobulated by recent developments that I hadn’t even realized Barrons and V’lane were standing face-to-face on a crowded dance floor for what was probably the first time in all eternity—close enough to kill each other. Well, close enough for Barrons to kill V’lane. Barrons was staring at the Fae prince as if he’d finally caught a fire ant that had been torturing him for centuries while he’d lay spread-eagled on the desert, coated in honey. V’lane was glaring at Barrons as if he couldn’t believe he’d be so stupid. “We have larger concerns than your personal grievances,” V’lane said with icy disdain. “If you cannot remove your head from your ass and see that, you deserve what will happen to your world.” “Maybe I don’t care what happens to the world.” V’lane’s head swiveled my way, cool appraisal in his gaze. “I have permitted you to retain your spear, MacKayla. You will not let him harm me. Kill him—” Barrons squeezed. “I said shut up.” “He has the fourth stone,” I reminded Barrons. “We need him.” “Keltars!” V’lane said, staring up at the foyer. He hissed through his teeth. “I know. Big fucking party tonight,” said Barrons. “Where? Is that who just came in?” I said. Barrons leaned closer to V’lane and sniffed him. His nostrils flared, as if he found the scent both repulsive and perfect for a fine, bloody filet. “Where is she?” a man roared. The accent was Scottish, like Christian’s but thicker. V’lane ordered, “Shut him up before his next question is, ‘Where is the queen,’ and every Unseelie in this place discovers she is here.” Barrons moved too fast for me to see. One second, V’lane was his usual gorgeous self, then his nose was crushed and gushing blood. Barrons said, “Next time, fairy,” and was gone. “I said, where the bloody hell is the—” I heard a grunt, then the sounds of fists and more grunts, and all hell broke loose at Chester’s.

I caught Nicholas’ eye again and prepared this time, gave him a friendly wave. “Hey you,” he said, smiling wide as his brown eyes darted down to my chest and quickly back to my face. His appraisal of my rack, while subtle, was unmistakable. Not that a guy checking out a girl’s chest was an indication of actual interest. It was probably merely instinct for them, but I was still thrilled.

The advice process: From the start, make sure that all members of the organization can make any decision, as long as they consult with the people affected and the people who have expertise on the matter. If a new hire comes to you to approve a decision, refuse to give him the assent he is looking for. Make it clear that nobody, not even the founder, “approves” a decision in a self-managing organization. That said, if you are meaningfully affected by the decision or if you have expertise on the matter, you can of course share your advice. A conflict resolution mechanism: When there is disagreement between two colleagues, they are likely to send it up to you if you are the founder or CEO. Resist the temptation to settle the matter for them. Instead, it’s time to formulate a conflict resolution mechanism that will help them work their way through the conflict. (You might be involved later on if they can’t sort the issue out one-on-one and if they choose you as a mediator or panel member.) Peer-based evaluation and salary processes: Who will decide on the compensation of a new hire, and based on what process? Unless you consciously think about it, you might do it the traditional way: as a founder, you negotiate and settle with the new recruit on a certain package (and then probably keep it confidential). Why not innovate from the start? Give the potential hire information about other people’s salaries and let them peg their own number, to which the group of colleagues can then react with advice to increase or lower the number. Similarly, it makes sense right from the beginning to choose a peer-based mechanism for the appraisal process if you choose to formalize such a process. Otherwise, people will naturally look to you, the founder, to tell them how they are doing, creating a de facto sense of hierarchy within the team.

To be sure, the cheder curriculum was narrowly limited, the pedagogical methods primitive: drill, repetition, and cracks across the knuckles with a pointer or ruler. But at a time when the overwhelming majority of humanity was illiterate, there was hardly a Jewish male over the age of five who could not read and write. The cultural impact and importance of this are for historians, sociologists, and educators to appraise.

Once a little boy went to a drug store, reached for a soda carton and pulled it near the telephone. He climbed on the cartons so that he could reach the buttons of the phone and started to punch in the numbers. The storekeeper, who was observing this, listened to boy’s conversation. Boy: “Lady, can you give me a job of cutting your lawn?” Woman (at the other end): “I already have someone to cut my lawn”. Boy: “Lady, I will cut your lawn for half the price of the person who cuts your lawn now.” Woman: “I am very satisfied with the person who is presently cutting my lawn” Boy: “Lady I will even sweep your curb and your sidewalks. So on Sunday you will have the prettiest lawn”. Woman: “No, Thank you”. With a smile on his face, the little boy cuts the call. The store owner who was listening to all this, walked over to the boy and asked “Son… I like your attitude; I like your positive spirit and would like to offer you a job.” The boy says: “No. Thank you.” Owner: “But you are really pleading for one” Boy: “No Sir, I was just checking my performance at the job I already have. I am the one who is working for that lady I was talking to”. The owner got amazed with the boys attitude Every time we can’t wait for others appreciation. So this is the time where we have to understand, what good work we are doing and appraise our self for doing such good job and move on.

handled, he was stunned into silence to the point where I wondered whether he was still connected. Finally, after clearing his throat, he talked with me about the specifics of all that it would entail. I told him that secrecy was the foremost priority. Over the next few months, the details were arranged. I went to Howie’s office two more times and met with the representatives from Sotheby’s. I met again with the executive directors of various Jewish charities; the sums they would receive obviously depended on the auction itself and how much money the collection would fetch. To that end, appraisers spent weeks cataloging and photographing the entire collection, estimating value, and establishing provenance. Eventually, a catalog was sent for my approval. The estimated value of the collection was mind-boggling even to me, but again it did not matter. When

The DSM-V offers a comprehensive set of criteria to define narcissism: A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by: 1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b): a. Identity: Excessive reference to others for self-definition and self-esteem regulation; exaggerated self-appraisal may be inflated or deflated, or vacillate between extremes; emotional regulation mirrors fluctuations in self-esteem. b. Self-direction: Goal-setting is based on gaining approval from others; personal standards are unreasonably high in order to see oneself as exceptional, or too low based on a sense of entitlement; often unaware of own motivations. AND 2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b): a. Empathy: Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others; excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self; over- or underestimate of own effect on others. b. Intimacy: Relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation; mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain. B. Pathological personality traits in the following domain: 1. Antagonism, characterized by: a. Grandiosity: Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert; self-centeredness; firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others; condescending toward others. b. Attention seeking: Excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others; admiration seeking. C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations. D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual’s developmental stage or sociocultural environment. E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).7

The first sign that something had gone wrong manifested itself while he was playing golf. Or rather it was the first time he admitted to himself that something might be wrong. For some time he had been feeling depressed without knowing why. In fact, he didn't even realize he was depressed. Rather it was the world and his life around him which seemed to grow more senseless and farcical with each passing day. Then two odd incidents occurred on the golf course. Once he fell down in a bunker. There was no discernable reason for his falling. One moment he was standing in the bunker with his sand-iron appraising the lie of his ball. The next he was lying flat on the ground. Lying there, cheek pressed against the earth, he noticed that thinks looked different from this unaccustomed position. A strange bird flew past. A cumulus cloud went towering thousands of feet into the air. Ordinarily he would not have given the cloud a second glance. But as he gazed at it from the bunker, it seemed to turn purple and gold at the bottom while the top went boiling up higher and higher like the cloud over Hiroshima. Another time, he sliced out-of-bounds, something he seldom did. As he searched for the ball deep in the woods, another odd thing happened to him. He heard something and the sound reminded him of an event that had happened a long time ago. It was the most important event of his life, yet he had managed until that moment to forget it. Shortly afterwards, he became even more depressed. People seemed more farcical than ever. More than once he shook his head and, smiling ironically, said to himself: This is not for me. Then it was that it occurred to him that he might shoot himself. First, it was only a thought which popped into his head. Next, it was an idea which he entertained ironically. Finally, it was a course of action which he took seriously and decided to carry out. The lives of other people seemed even more farcical than his own. It astonished him that as farcical as most people's lives were, they generally gave no sign of it. Why was it that it was he not they who had decided to shoot himself? How did they manage to deceive themselves and even appear to live normally, work as usual, play golf, tell jokes, argue politics? Was he crazy or was it rather the case that other people went to any length to disguise from themselves the fact that their lives were farcical? He couldn't decide. What is one to make of such a person? To begin with: though it was probably the case that he was ill and that it was his illness - depression - which made the world seem farcical, it is impossible to prove the case. On the one hand, he was depressed. On the other hand, the world is in fact farcical. Or at least it is possible to make the case that for some time now life has seemed to become more senseless, even demented, with each passing year. True, most people he knew seemed reasonably sane and happy. They played golf, kept busy, drank, talked, laughed, went to church, appeared to enjoy themselves, and in general were both successful and generous. Their talk made a sort of sense. They cracked jokes. On the other hand, perhaps it is possible, especially in strange times such as these, for an entire people, or at least a majority, to deceive themselves into believing that things are going well when in fact they are not, when things are in fact farcical. Most Romans worked and played as usual while Rome fell about their ears.

A face in the window, she thought suddenly. Perhaps not just from somewhere in this world, but from another plane of existence altogether. She probed harder with her magic, trying to break through to whatever was out there, to generate a response that would reveal something more. Her efforts were rewarded almost at once. Something small and dark appeared at the edges of the light, like a wraith come out of the netherworld, not altogether shapeless, but lacking any clear definition. It slid in and out of the light like a child playing hide and seek, first here, then there, never quite revealing itself altogether, never quite showing what it was. Kermadec was whispering hurriedly, anxiously, telling her to back away, to give herself more space. It wasn’t safe to be so close, he was saying. She ignored him; she was caught up in the link she had established between the foreign magic and her own. Something was there, quick and insubstantial, just out of reach. And then all at once it wasn’t hiding anymore. It was there, right in front of her, it’s face turned full into hers, edges and angles caught in the light. She caught her breath in spite of herself. The face was vaguely human, but in no other way recognizable. Malevolence marked it’s features in a way she had not thought possible, so darkly threatening, so hate-filled and remorseless, that even in her time as the Ilse Witch, she had not experienced its like. Dark shadows draped it like strands of thick hair, shifting with the light, changing the look of it from instant to instant. Eyes glimmered like blue ice, cool and appraising. There was recognition in those eyes; whoever was there, hiding in the light, knew who she was. Grianne lashed out at the face with ferocious intent, surprising even herself with her vehemence. She felt such loathing, such rage, that she could not stop herself from reacting, and the deed was done before she could think the better of it. Her magic exploded into the face, which disappeared instantly, taking with it the flashes and the burning air, leaving only darkness and the lingering smell of expended magic. She compressed her lips tightly, fighting back the snarl forming on them, consumed by the feelings this thing had generated. It was all she could do to pull herself together and turn back to an obviously unnerved Kermadec. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked at once. She nodded. ‘But I wasn’t for a moment, old bear. That thing radiated such evil that I think letting it come even that near was a serious mistake. If I didn’t know better, I would say it lured me here.

TIME has an idiosyncrasy for hyperbolizing its relevance within all that exists, all that is to be. Suggesting the first fundamental form of appraising practicality, efficiency and greatness by its usage; defined by a hindsight perspective once it has passed.

What are you trying to buy? Asset type? Size? Price? To determine the answer to the first question, do the following: Start with your own net worth. Add in friends and family. The total team net worth is your starting point. Choose a market. Consider travel time and expense. You must be able to be in your market to look at deals at least once a month. Determine the viability of your market. Job growth? Population growth? Get deal flow from the market. Real estate agents Find all commercial realty companies in the city. Get on all their mailing lists. Analyze deals online from realtors in the area. Call the realtors about their listings. Direct to owners Get lists of owners. Create a system to reach owners directly. Mail Text Cold calling Analyze deals. Income approach Income – Expenses = Net operating income Net operating income – Debt service = Cash flow Check with lenders for current terms on debt. What is the CoC return? Cap rate? Debt ratio? Comparable data Check the analyzed cap rate against cap rates in the area for similar properties. Check comparable sale prices. Comps should be close in size and age to the subject property. Comps should have similar amenities. Comps should be within a few miles of the subject property. Exit Hold and operate. Refinance. Sell or flip. Consider upcoming market conditions. Debt Check with lenders or a mortgage broker to determine the availability of loans for this type of property. What are the terms and conditions? Is this the information you used to analyze the deal originally? Make the offer. Use an LOI to submit the offer in writing. The LOI will summarize the main deal points. If your offer is less than 15 percent of the asking price, speak with the realtor before you submit the offer. Once the offer is accepted, send the LOI to your attorney and have them draft the purchase agreement. Draft the purchase and sale agreement. Now that you have a fully executed contract, the clock starts. Earnest money goes into escrow. Do your due diligence. Financial inspection Physical inspection Lease audit Begin your loan application. The lender will complete three inspections. Appraisal Environmental inspection Physical engineer inspection of the buildings Do your closing. The lender will wire the loan proceeds to the closing escrow. Wire your down payment funds to the closing escrow. You own a new property! Engage property management for takeover of operations.

They say, 'No private property', and immediately after strive to maintain private property in its daily manifestations. 'You shall be a commune as far as regards production: fields, tools, machinery, all that has been invented up till now - factories, railways, harbours, mines, etc., all are yours. Not the slightest distinction will be made concerning the share of each in this collective property. 'But from tomorrow you will minutely debate the share you are going to take in the creation of new machinery, in the digging of new mines. You will carefully weigh what part of the new produce belongs to you. You will count your minutes of work, and you will take care that a minute of your neighbours should not buy more than yours. 'And as an hour measures nothing, as in some factories a worker can see to six power-looms at a time, while in another he only tends two, you will weigh the muscular force, the brain energy, and the nervous energy you have expended. You will accurately calculate the years of apprenticeship in order to appraise the amount each will contribute to future production. And this - after having declared that you do not take into account his share in past production.' Well, for us it is evident that a society cannot be based on two absolutely opposed principles, two principles that contradict one another continually. And a nation or a commune which would have such an organization would be compelled to revert to private property in the instruments of production, or to transform itself into a communist society.

By analogy, both sculptors and appraisers have the power to raise the market value of a piece of stone. The sculptor raises the market value of a piece of stone by shaping it. The appraiser raises the market value of a piece of stone by judging it. Teachers need to ask ourselves, “How much of what we do is sculpting, and how much is appraising?

...one need not be religious at all to believe that we should be willing to give what we seek: charitable interpretations of behavior and a willingness to offer just appraisals of conduct with an eye toward fairness.

An informed appraisal of life absolutely require(s) a full understanding of life’s arena–the universe. … By deepening our understanding of the true nature of physical reality, we profoundly reconfigure our sense of ourselves and our experience of the universe.

The definition of art is problematic, but, simplistically, it is the application of skills to the creation of aesthetic values. Science can be defined as the methodical pursuit of knowledge about the phenomena of the physical world on the basis of unbiased observation and systematic experimentation. Roughly speaking, the objects of art and science are beauty and truth, respectively. Yoga is an art because it evidently does not have the mathematical exactitude of the natural sciences. The British-American mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked: “Art flourishes when there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment; but when caution comes in you get repetition, and repetition is the death of art.”2 These comments apply to Yoga quite well. It is an incredible adventure of the spirit, which seeks to create an altogether new destiny. Each time the practitioner applies the wisdom of Yoga to life’s many situations, he or she must engage the process as if it were the first time. Thus Yoga is continuous self-application but not merely repetition. The Sanskrit term abhyāsa, which literally means “repetition,” has the primary meaning of “practice” in the context of Yoga, and practice calls for what the Zen masters call “beginner’s mind.” Any efforts to squeeze Yoga into the much-celebrated scientific method is doomed to failure, which is not to say that Yoga cannot or should not be studied rigorously from a scientific perspective. In fact, since the 1920s various research organizations and individual researchers have conducted such research, especially medical investigations, with varying degrees of success, and their findings have definitely been helpful in appraising Yoga’s effectiveness.3 Yet, Yoga is not completely subjective and inexact either. It proceeds according to careful rules established over a long period of (repeatable) personal experimentation.

Once the defenses fall and we let go of faith, we are overcome by a sobering clarity: Of course, a religion that ever failed so miserably must be the product of humans, not divinity. There is no way that a god would sit back and watch for 600 years while his highest priests tortured thousands of innocents via the likes of anal vice until they denounced him. Something truly holy would never have been subjected to such gross misunderstanding and atrocious implementation in the past. It would be timeless, not a work in progress; otherwise it reduces the billions of people who have lived before us to some sort of experiments for our own well-being today, us living in much better times. What a horrifically narcissistic and insensitive attitude this would be, to disregard the past in order to soothe our own existential fears about our own deaths, most of which will be quite pampered relative to theirs.

Sacré, Belle!" Marguerite had exclaimed upon entering, and though the grandeur of the room had never dulled for Belle, it was a treat to see it through Marguerite's eyes, and only made Belle more certain that opening it to the public was the right decision. "I know. It's magnificent, isn't it?" Belle replied dreamily. Marguerite ran her hands along the gilded banisters encircling the spiral staircase. "I've never seen so many books in all my life." She turned back to Belle and gave her a wry grin. "Is it true that your husband simply gave it to you during your courtship?" A blush crept up her neck. She had thought of her time in the castle as many things, but a courtship was never one of them. "Something like that," she admitted. She wondered if she would ever feel close enough to Marguerite to tell her the truth. Marguerite let out an appraising whistle. "No wonder you married him." Belle blushed as she pulled her through the stacks, pointing out favorite books along the way. She ushered Marguerite to her favorite chaise nestled in her favorite alcove. "This spot is best for a gloomy afternoon," Belle told her, pointing to a red velvet settee next to a small fireplace, framed by a window almost as tall as the room itself. "The patter of raindrops on the glass mixed with the warmth of the fire..." "It must be heavenly," said Marguerite. "It is." Marguerite spun back around, head tilted to the ceiling, before collapsing in a heap on the plush carpet and motioning for Belle to join her on the floor. Belle acquiesced, lying down beside her friend and noting the view was even more remarkable from that new vantage.

Thus instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold – a poem, a painting, a book, a great building – consider making of your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who and what you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become. It need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract any notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself, and then attain – something you can then take a look at, with honest self appraisal, and be proud of.

If we truly appreciated the more fundamental aspects of living, we probably wouldn’t be so driven to travel or skydive and such. We wouldn’t be so desperate to do those things, that’s for sure. Instead, we’re talking about appreciating the mere act of existing. Whenever we can do this, boredom becomes obsolete, as the most fundamental activities become worthy of our time and attention. Taking a walk. Marveling at nature: trees, birds, stars, your own consciousness. The simple fact that we are here at all, along with oceans, comets, Facebook, government conspiracies, and gridlock.

The monks are not idling away their precious time in the monastery. They are trained here in a peculiar way to develop their moral and spiritual energies and also to see into the mysteries of their being. When all this is appraised in the proper light, we can appreciate the real significance of the Zendo life, which goes on in a.way so contrary to modern trends of thought and actual living.

My EQ Action Plan Part One – My Journey Begins Date Completed: _______________ List your scores from the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test below. Score Overall EQ: ________________ Self-awareness: ________________ Self-management: ________________ Social Awareness: ________________ Relationship Management: ________________ Pick One EQ Skill and Three Strategies Which of the four core emotional intelligence skills will you work on first? Circle your chosen skill in the image below. Review the strategies for the EQ skill you selected, and list up to three below that you will practice. 1. 2. 3. My EQ Mentor Who do you know who is gifted in your chosen EQ skill and willing to provide feedback and advice throughout your journey? My EQ mentor is: Part Two – How Far My Journey Has Come Date Completed: _______________ After you take the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test a second time, list your new and old scores below. Old Score New Score Change Overall EQ: ________________ ________________ ________________ Self-awareness: ________________ ________________ ________________ Self-management: ________________ ________________ ________________ Social Awareness: ________________ ________________ ________________ Relationship Management: ________________ ________________ ________________ Pick a New EQ Skill and Three Strategies Based on the results explained in your Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® feedback report, where will you focus your skill development efforts going forward? Pick a new EQ skill and circle it in the image below. Review the strategies for the EQ skill you selected, and list up to three below that you will practice. 1. 2. 3. My New EQ Mentor Who do you know who is gifted in your new chosen EQ skill and willing to provide feedback and advice throughout your journey? My new EQ mentor is: 5

Shakespeare understood what it was to be female—better than most men writing today. He saw the misogyny of his time—there are plenty of misogynists in his plays—but he held that misogyny up for critical appraisal. And he created women who resist it. In All’s Well That Ends Well, Helena, exhausted by the prospect of guarding her virginity—her only value in the world—against men whose chief policy is to “blow you up” (impregnate you) wonders, “Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?” “To whom should I complain?

I woke up every morning at six to study—because it was easier to focus in the mornings, before I was worn out from scrapping. Although I was still fearful of God’s wrath, I reasoned with myself that my passing the ACT was so unlikely, it would take an act of God. And if God acted, then surely my going to school was His will. The ACT was composed of four sections: math, English, science and reading. My math skills were improving but they were not strong. While I could answer most of the questions on the practice exam, I was slow, needing double or triple the allotted time. I lacked even a basic knowledge of grammar, though I was learning, beginning with nouns and moving on to prepositions and gerunds. Science was a mystery, perhaps because the only science book I’d ever read had had detachable pages for coloring. Of the four sections, reading was the only one about which I felt confident. BYU was a competitive school. I’d need a high score—a twenty-seven at least, which meant the top fifteen percent of my cohort. I was sixteen, had never taken an exam, and had only recently undertaken anything like a systematic education; still I registered for the test. It felt like throwing dice, like the roll was out of my hands. God would score the toss. I didn’t sleep the night before. My brain conjured so many scenes of disaster, it burned as if with a fever. At five I got out of bed, ate breakfast, and drove the forty miles to Utah State University. I was led into a white classroom with thirty other students, who took their seats and placed their pencils on their desks. A middle-aged woman handed out tests and strange pink sheets I’d never seen before. “Excuse me,” I said when she gave me mine. “What is this?” “It’s a bubble sheet. To mark your answers.” “How does it work?” I said. “It’s the same as any other bubble sheet.” She began to move away from me, visibly irritated, as if I were playing a prank. “I’ve never used one before.” She appraised me for a moment. “Fill in the bubble of the correct answer,” she said. “Blacken it completely. Understand?” The test began. I’d never sat at a desk for four hours in a room full of people. The noise was unbelievable, yet I seemed to be the only person who heard it, who couldn’t divert her attention from the rustle of turning pages and the scratch of pencils on paper. When it was over I suspected that I’d failed the math, and I was positive that I’d failed the science. My answers for the science portion couldn’t even be called guesses. They were random, just patterns of dots on that strange pink sheet. I drove home. I felt stupid, but more than stupid I felt ridiculous. Now that I’d seen the other students—watched them march into the classroom in neat rows, claim their seats and calmly fill in their answers, as if they were performing a practiced routine—it seemed absurd that I had thought I could score in the top fifteen percent. That was their world. I stepped into overalls and returned to mine.

The formal Salvage Organization began on 14 December 1941, an even week after the Japanese attack. It was under the direction of then Commander James M. Steele, who was previously in command of Utah. He remained in command of salvage under the Base Force until relieved by the author, Captain Homer N. Wallin, on 9 January, 1942. At that time the Salvage Division became a part of the Navy Yard under the Manager, Captain Claude S. Gillette.

When teaching various psychology courses over time, I’ve conducted informal polls of my students regarding what they would prefer in a situation similar to Alvin Ford’s. About two-thirds to three-fourths have preferred the delusion, at least when queried on the fly. Although my classes have not exactly comprised a random sample of the population at large, their position corroborates my hunch that most Americans prefer the delusion over the truth.

Thus a perimeter could be drawn which would discourage the United States, British, and Dutch responses and would in due time destroy the American will to fight an enemy so far from home.

The question was asked why torpedo nets were not used by the fleet, and why captive balloons were not employed. The answers are very simple. Due to the restricted area, and the need for seaplane lanes for taking off and landing, torpedo nets could not be used. Balloon barrages were considered undesirable because they interfered with our own aircraft over the fleet. Probably, the best answer is that these items were not available in sufficient quantity at that time.

Official Washington lost no time in appointing a Commission to investigate Pearl Harbor. This was headed by Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts of the United States Supreme Court, a Republican. Three of the members were retired officers of the Army and the Navy while one member was on active duty with the Army Air Corps.

The lesson to be learned from Vestal's experience is that water-tight integrity cannot be counted on in the case of older vessels. This ship was about thirty-three years old at the time, and it was found that flooding was progressive through the bulkhead and deck boundaries which supposedly were watertight. 7.

Damage to Curtiss resulted from an enemy aircraft colliding with the forward crane. The enemy plane burned on the boat deck. This occurred at 0905. Another bombing attack occurred at 0912. One bomb fell on the mooring buoy aft and two bombs fell alongside. Fragment damage from these three bombs was considerable. Another bomb struck the starboard side of the boat deck, passed through three decks, and exploded on the main deck causing considerable damage. These bombs were about 250 kilograms, measured about 12 inches in diameter, and carried about 130 pounds of TNT. They were released by dive-bombers from a height of about 300 to 400 feet. The widespread damage caused by fragments to the piping, electric wires, steam lines, and ammunition supply, etc. overshadowed entirely the structural damage which they caused. Even the after engine room was affected by fragments from the bomb hit. Many fires were started and these were difficult to extinguish due to smoldering cork insulation and poor lighting. Much of the fragment damage could have been prevented by use of some armor, which was forbidden in auxiliary vessels under the arms limitation treaties. Later designs provided two-inch splinter protection for sixty percent of the length, as well as splinter protection for gun, fire control, and ship control stations. The Navy Yard undertook repairs to Curtiss on two separate availabilities; the first was from 19 to 27 December. When replacement parts were received, Curtiss was in the Yard from 26 April to 28 May 1942. At that time final repairs were made. 9. U.S.S. HELM, DESTROYER (LAUNCHED IN 1937) We have seen how Helm got underway promptly and patrolled the waters for submarines

Connie, in what I realised later was an effort to steer the conversation to where she needed it, mentioned that Fortean Times had reported that a moose shot dead by a hunter was later found to have amassed a considerable library of George Eliot novels, critical appraisals, biographies and poetry, and had been attempting to write a dissertation on how Eliot’s life could be viewed from the viewpoint of even-toed ungulates singled out for their lack of apparent good looks.

Man is subordinate to material things and subjects; he is a servant of the state of affairs and contents in all circumstances and degeneracy, from the commencement of his life until the conclusion. Time has a fundamental influence on this, as man remains trapped in the assumptions of postulating according to his appetencies and readiness; his neglected plight of mind remains anxious to obtain its objects, turning him into a debtor for his inauthentic and disconnected actions. Man is supposed to be affected by external factors, including manufacturers and their supported themes. As a result, there are times when he succumbs to self-determination and experiences low self-esteem. However, there are also times when he is self-interested, inauspicious, banal, and banausic. The value of materials becomes useful, apparent, appraisable, attendable, and respectable over time. Something acquired before its time prematurely underperforms, or its subjectivity does not enhance extremely utilitarian or assessable but rather useless because it loses its dearness and consequence. Man pursues the levantine of all of those in its underplots; perfect timing and momentousness keep everything in proportion with the desirability of ponderability.

At about this time two fatalities occurred on Nevada due to poisonous gas. On 7 February Lieutenant James S. Clarkson removed a cap from the air test fitting of the steering engine room. He was in a trunk which had limited space and air volume. Several men went to his rescue, but too late as escaping gas killed him. Machinist Mate DeVries who reached him first, later died at the hospital. In all, six men were overcome by the gas. At once a Board of Investigation was called, and the Navy Yard chemist ascertained that the gas was hydrogen sulfide. It is odorless in high concentrations and acts without warning; it originates in stagnant water which has a quantity of paper products in the pressured space. Thereafter frequent samples of air were taken for analysis, and temporary ventilation was greatly increased on all ships under salvage. Confined spaces were not entered without wearing rescue breathing apparatus. Besides the temporary ventilation which was provided as spaces were unwatered, temporary lighting lines were run. Both were essential for the efficient performance of the work.

My crew tells me I can be narrow-minded in the pursuit of my goals.” He appraised me before continuing. “When I want something, everything else disappears. I can be terribly stubborn, but then again so can you, by the looks of it. I currently have no country to call my own, and little to my name besides what Pelias has promised me upon my return. I am slow to trust, and slower still to love. I have little interest in scholarly pursuits. As a boy, Chiron found me easily distracted from my studies. When I become angry, I go silent, sometimes for days at a time. It makes me feel superior. Is that sufficient to satisfy your curiosity?

Once the defenses fall and we let go of faith, we are overcome by a sobering clarity: Of course, a religion that ever failed so miserably must be the product of humans, not divinity. There is no way that a god would sit back and watch for 600 years while his highest priests tortured thousands of innocents via the likes of anal vice until they denounced him. Something truly holy would never have been subjected to such gross misunderstanding and atrocious implementation in the past. It would be timeless, not a work in progress; otherwise it reduces the billions of people who have lived before us to some sort of experiments for our own well-being today, us living in much better times. What a horrifically narcissistic and insensitive attitude this would be, to disregard the past in order to soothe our own existential fears about our own deaths, most of which will be quite pampered relative to theirs. Again, I did it, too. And now I’m ashamed. In fact, it makes me wonder if some of the hostility I have towards people who remain faithful is projected, that is, I’m mad at myself for ever having been in so much denial, too. The truth is that we have come a long way so that religion is more civilized than ever before. But this is not because God cares more about us today than he did those living in the Middle Ages; it’s simply because we’re smarter than we were back then. And, despite how far we’ve come, we’re far from out of the woods. There’s still much more divinely inspired torture and murder in the world today than there ever should have been, and religious-based oppression of a less lethal nature remains quite rampant, even in the progressive and privileged West. Overall, we are still in a state of progress, meaning that we are actually an ongoing experiment for the people of the future who will have even better religious lives than us, one where there is even less murder of heretics and less oppression of slaves, women, and homosexuals.

The true aspirant who has made a positive turning-over of his personal and worldly life to the care of the impersonal and higher power in whose existence he fully believes, has done so out of intelligent purpose, self-denying strength of will, and correct appraisal of what constitutes happiness. What this intuitive guidance of taking or rejecting from the circumstances themselves means in lifting loads of anxiety from his mind only the actual experience can tell. It will mean also journeying through life by single degrees, not trying to carry the future in addition to the present. It will be like crossing a river on a series of stepping-stones, being content to reach one at a time in safety and to think of the others only when they are progressively reached, and not before. It will mean freedom from false anticipations and useless planning, from vainly trying to force a path different from that ordained by God. It will mean freedom from the torment of not knowing what to do, for every needed decision, every needed choice, will become plain and obvious to the mind just as the time for it nears. For the intuition will have its chance at last to supplant the ego in such matters. He will no longer be at the mercy of the latter’s bad qualities and foolish conceit.

How?” “Everyone is appraised when they share a meal. Do you belong here? Do you pay attention? Will you abide by the rules of our family? Will you show respect?” Aragón nodded toward La Tía, vigorously scrubbing a pan under steaming water. “Two times you offered to help. A man who doesn’t offer to help cannot be trusted. Two times she rebuffed you. The third time you didn’t ask.

The Army radar service was operative every day except Sunday from 0400 to 1600 hours, but on Sunday it was manned from 0400 to 0700 hours. General Short considered these hours the most dangerous time for an air attack. Except for the large installation where one enlisted man had volunteered to continue because of his interest and desire for experience, no radar was operating on the morning of 7 December. This turned out to be a well-publicized circumstance, because this man detected on the radar screen a large flight of aircraft bearing north at a distance of about 130 miles.

The active units of the fleet operated on a strenuous schedule of training. They were engaged in sea maneuvers about 60 percent of the time and were in port at Pearl Harbor the other 40 percent. The submarines based at Pearl Harbor operated on a special schedule, while all other ships were divided into three separate task forces which overlapped each other in their scheduled time at sea and in port. While at sea, major units of the fleet were screened by aircraft and destroyers to be sure that enemy submarines were not in the operating areas. It was assumed that the operating areas were infested with Japanese submarines, and that a surprise attack would be by submarines against major units of the fleet.

The Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937 placed a rigid embargo on the export of arms to all belligerents, and thus had an injurious effect on friendly nations which were comparatively deficient in military equipment with which to resist the aggressors. At various times President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull endeavored to persuade Congress to amend the Acts favorably to the victimized nations, but to no avail until November 1939 when the Acts were partially repealed. Although the Congress continued to stand firm for military neutrality, the apathy and complacency of the people were challenged and gradually broken down because of the shockingly predatory events abroad. c.

A sudden insight teased him. What if she didn’t want to leave? What if she was just angry with him and acting impulsively? He left Rand to kneel at her feet. She eyed him suspiciously. He hated that he’d given her cause to look at him that way. “I will ask ye this but once. Do ye wish to forsake our bond and my offered protection? Do ye truly wish to return to your life of providing for yourself and working and raising your bairn alone? I would have ye stay here with me, and I would care for you your whole life. I would treat your bairn as my own. I have means, and I am a good man, though I ken I havena given ye cause to believe it. “Stay with me, Malina. Let me prove to you the man I am. I wouldna expect your love, and I dinna expect you to share my bed. But I wish ye to stay and be my wife. I wish to be your husband. Will you release me from the vow I made to help ye return home?” He made himself stop blathering and waited for her answer, drowning in the emerald pools of her eyes. Closing his hands around hers, around the box, he found some solace in the fact that she didn’t pull away. She appraised him with liquid eyes. Could that be tenderness he glimpsed? But it was gone too soon, replaced with suspicion. Och, he’d been so dishonest with her she likely would never be able to trust him. Mayhap it was for the best she was leaving. If she couldn’t trust him, he’d nay be able to make her happy. At last, she shook her head. “I suspect you’re a good man, even though you lied to me. I see goodness in you, and honor. Any woman would be lucky to have you as her husband.” His heart lifted with hope. “Any woman from your time,” she added gently. “I don’t belong here. I need to go back to my time. My being here is a mistake. This is all a huge mistake.” His heart crumbled as he released her hands and pulled the heavy velvet pouch from his sporran. “Then, take this. ’Tis my wedding gift to you. If I canna be with you to keep my marriage vows, I pray this will clear my name before the Lord.” She took the pouch and looked inside. Her eyes grew wide. “It’s gold. I can’t take this.” She tried to push it back into his hands, but he refused it. “You must. ’Tis the best I can do for you, Malina mine. I hope ye will remember me well when you use it. I hope this will provide for you and your bairn for many years.” Not giving her a chance to reject his gift as she’d rejected him, he rose and blew out the lantern. He led Rand from the stables, and said, “Come, Malina. ’Tis time to send you home.

The Acme Company is a provider of financial services located in Cheyenne, which has been in business for 30 years and has a capitalized market value of $800 million. The Acme buyer knows this! It’s nothing novel or new or related to the project. It’s irrelevant. Here’s an excellent situation statement: The Acme Company has traditionally attracted the best and brightest talent because of its excellent brand and relationships with top schools. However, recent bad publicity over poor financial decisions, the removal of the CEO, and loss of key contacts in top schools have made it imperative to launch an aggressive plan to acquire the best talent in the industry, both at entry and senior levels. That situation appraisal explains exactly why you’ve been talking, why the project is urgent, and what the general goals are. Take a project you’re considering, have under way, or have completed, and try writing your own situation appraisal below:

One time I told her that she reminded me of that charming tale, the one with the red shoes." Helen had always hated that story, in which a little girl who had dared to wear red shoes to her confirmation had been doomed to dance in them until she died. "You're referring to the one by Hans Christian Andersen? It's a morality tale about the wages of sin, is it not?" His smile faded, and his gaze returned to hers, now appraising rather than dismissive. "I confess, I don't recall the moral of the story." "No doubt it's been a long time since you've read it." Helen made her face into the inscrutable mask that had always annoyed the twins and provoked them to call her a sphinx. "The red shoes become instruments of death, after a girl yields to temptation.

... The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuing political values with conviction.