Assistant Director Quotes

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election of the President (CRP) ALEXANDER P. BUTTERFIELD Deputy Assistant to the President; aide to H. R. Haldeman JOHN J. CAULFIELD Staff aide to John Ehrlichman DWIGHT L. CHAPIN Deputy Assistant to the President; appointments secretary KENNETH W. CLAWSON Deputy Director of
Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men)
We've hired the calmest babies in the world to play the hysterical Thomas. One did finally start to cry but stopped every time Chris [Newman (assistant director)] yelled 'Action'. ... Babies smiled all afternoon. Buddhist babies. They didn't cry once. We, however, were all in tears by 5 p.m.
Emma Thompson (The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film)
Official state historical markers form a smaller population, and early in my research I determined to read all of them. Texas dissuaded me. The Lone Star state has more state historical markers—nearly twelve thousand—than the rest of the United States put together. To read and digest one marker per minute would require 200 hours—five full weeks in the Texas office. At the other end of the spectrum is Maine, whose assistant director of historic preservation flatly assured me, “Maine does not have historical markers along its highways.” Maine has markers and monuments, of course, not put up by a state agency, so the only way to read them is to drive every road in the state, keeping a sharp lookout.
James W. Loewen (Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong)
The story was solid. Howard Simons ordered the front page remade for the second edition. Bernstein was more shaken by all this than by anything since June 17. It was the language and the context of Ehrlichman’s remark to Dean that troubled him. Just as if they were a couple of Mafiosi talking to each other in a restaurant, the President’s number-two assistant had said to the President’s consigliere: Hey, Joe, we gotta dump this stuff in the river before the boss gets hurt. Howard Simons slouched in a chair, drawing deeply on a cigarette, the color gone from his face. “A director of the FBI destroying evidence? I never thought it could happen,” he said quietly.
Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men)
You okay, there, Mr. Rat Man?” Minho asked. “My name is Assistant Director Janson,” he replied, his voice low and strained, as if it was hard work to stay calm. His eyes never left Thomas. “Learn to show respect for your elders.
James Dashner (The Death Cure (Maze Runner, #3))
The girl with the greyhound was an assistant lighting director for a musical comedy about American history, and she kept her poor greyhound, who was named Lancer, in a one-room apartment fourteen feet wide and twenty-six feet long, and six flights of stairs above the street level. His entire life was devoted to unloading his excrement at the proper time and place. There were two proper places to put it: in the gutter outside the door seventy-two steps below, with the traffic whizzing by, or in a roasting pan, his mistress kept in front of the Westinghouse refrigerator. Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
The actor, writer, and director Woody Allen once said, “80% of success is just showing up!” You Can Show Up By . . . • Participating. • Sharing ideas. • Being dependable. • Keeping your word. • Taking the initiative. • Volunteering to be of assistance. • Being there when a friend needs you. • Raising your hand and asking questions. • Attending your children’s sporting events. • Taking your place and claiming your space. • Demonstrating that you have something to offer.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
The assistant director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Hyman Bookbinder, in a frank statement on December 29, 1966, declared that the long-range costs of adequately implementing programs to fight poverty, ignorance and slums will reach one trillion dollars. He was not awed or dismayed by this prospect but instead pointed out that the growth of the gross national product during the same period makes this expenditure comfortably possible. It is, he said, as simple as this: “The poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate.” Furthermore, he predicted that unless a “substantial sacrifice is made by the American people,” the nation can expect further deterioration of the cities, increased antagonisms between races and continued disorders in the streets. He asserted that people are not informed enough to give adequate support to antipoverty programs, and he leveled a share of the blame at the government because it “must do more to get people to understand the size of the problem.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2))
strong team working solely on this special access program. This means only those around this table—and some hand-picked intelligence specialists and NSC officials—have access to this most sensitive of classified information.” Lieutenant General Black leaned forward and allowed his gaze to wander around the assembled faces. “Assistant Director Meyerstein’s word is law. She
J.B. Turner (Hard Kill (Jon Reznick, #2))
Over the years, I went through like two bottles of it. One day I forgot to spray it on and didn’t realize it until I was in the middle of a scene, so I asked our second AD [assistant director] to grab my cologne from the bathroom. I had to have it. And I know that makes me sound like a crazy person, which is somewhat true, but everyone’s process is what it is. And then you become kind of superstitious.
Jessica Radloff (The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series)
This question was fired at me by one Ulf Bronner, an assistant director, in his mid-thirties perhaps, and a strikingly ill-dressed man. Still, he was not dressed as shabbily as the cameramen; through my recent work for and with broadcasting companies I have discovered that they are the scruffiest-looking individuals in any form of employment, outdone only by press photographers. I have no idea why it should be thus, but as far as I can make out press photographers seem to wear the ragged cast-offs of television cameramen. Perhaps they imagine that nobody will ever see them, because after all the camera is in front of their faces. Whenever I come across an unflattering picture of someone in a magazine—they may be grimacing or similar—I frequently wonder what the photographer must have looked like. This Bronner fellow was better dressed than that, but not much.
Timur Vermes (Look Who's Back)
How could a superstition be true? Maybe “superstition” was what snuck into the gaps, the cracks, when you worked in a place with falling morale and depleted resources. Maybe superstition was what happened when your director went missing in action and your assistant director was still mourning the loss. Maybe that was when you fell back on spells and rituals, the reptile brain saying to the rest of you, “I’ll take it from here. You’ve had your shot.
Jeff VanderMeer (Authority (Southern Reach, #2))
It takes an army to make a movie. Camera crews, lighting crews, wardrobe crews, makeup crews, hair crews, painters, builders (called grips), a crew to provide the props, a crew to provide the furnishings (the art department), electricians, special-effects people, stunt performers, stand-ins, the accountant, scheduling and finance (called the unit production manager), catering and someone to provide snacks and drinks (called craft service), and the team of walkie-talkie-armed Gestapo that police the second-by-second momentum of shooting: the assistant director staff.
Rob Lowe (Stories I Only Tell My Friends)
Aaron Copland, whom Bernstein had met when he was in his junior year at Harvard and who would become a lifelong friend and mentor, wrote him encouraging letters. “Don’t expect miracles,” Copland advised the young man, “and don’t get depressed if nothing happens for a while. That’s NY.” But on August 25, 1943, his twenty-fifth birthday, Bernstein got his first professional break when Artur Rodzinski, then the music director of the New York Philharmonic, chose him to become his conducting assistant. “I have gone through all the conductors I know of in my mind,” Rodzinski explained to his new assistant, “and I finally asked God whom I should take, and God said, ‘Take Bernstein.
Jonathan Cott (Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein)
You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in "spiritual direction". Actually, I am more than a little ambivalent about the term, particularly in the ways it is being used so loosely without any sense of knowledge of the church's traditions in these matters. If by spiritual direction you mean entering into a friendship with another person in which an awareness and responsiveness to God's Spirit in the everydayness of your life is cultivated, fine. Then why call in an awkward term like "spiritual direction"? Why not just "friend"? Spiritual direction strikes me as pretentious in these circumstances, as if there were some expertise that can be acquired more or less on its own and then dispensed on demand. The other reason for my lack of enthusiasm is my well-founded fear of professionalism in any and all matters of the Christian life. Or maybe the right label for my fear is "functionalism". The moment an aspect of Christian living (human life, for that matter) is defined as a role, it is distorted, debased - and eventually destroyed. We are brothers and sisters with one another, friends and lovers, saints and sinners. The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction. But then it begins to develop a culture and language and hierarchy all its own. It becomes first a special interest, and then a specialization. That is what seems to be happening in the circles you are frequenting. I seriously doubt that it is a healthy (holy) line to be pursuing. Instead, why don't you look over the congregation on Sundays and pick someone who appears to be mature and congenial. Ask her or him if you can meet together every month or so - you feel the need to talk about your life in the company of someone who believes that Jesus is present and active in everything you are doing. Reassure the person that he or she doesn't have to say anything "wise". You only want them to be there for you to listen and be prayerful in the listening. After three or four such meetings, write to me what has transpired, and we'll discuss it further. I've had a number of men and women who have served me in this way over the years - none carried the title "spiritual director", although that is what they have been. Some had never heard of such a term. When I moved to Canada a few years ago and had to leave a long-term relationship of this sort, I looked around for someone whom I could be with in this way. I picked a man whom I knew to be a person of integrity and prayer, with seasoned Christian wisdom in his bones. I anticipated that he would disqualify himself. So I pre-composed my rebuttal: "All I want you to do is two things: show up and shut up. Can you do that? Meet with me every six weeks or so, and just be there - an honest, prayerful presence with no responsibility to be anything other than what you have become in your obedient lifetime." And it worked. If that is what you mean by "spiritual director," okay. But I still prefer "friend". You can see now from my comments that my gut feeling is that the most mature and reliable Christian guidance and understanding comes out of the most immediate and local of settings. The ordinary way. We have to break this cultural habit of sending out for an expert every time we feel we need some assistance. Wisdom is not a matter of expertise. The peace of the Lord, Eugene
Eugene H. Peterson (The Wisdom of Each Other (Growing Deeper))
How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).
Charles L. Bailey Jr. (In the Shadow of the Cross: The True Account of My Childhood Sexual and Ritual Abuse at the Hands of a Roman Catholic Priest)
IC directors ask Congress for money to rent contract workers from private companies, congresspeople approve that money, and then those IC directors and congresspeople are rewarded, after they retire from office, by being given high-paying positions and consultancies with the very companies they’ve just enriched. From the vantage of the corporate boardroom, contracting functions as governmentally assisted corruption. It’s America’s most legal and convenient method of transferring
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
McGuire and Raleigh also studied 48 students in a university fraternity, including officers and regular members. They discovered that the officers’ serotonin levels were 25 percent higher than those of the regular members. In an amusing small-sample test, the researchers then analyzed their own serotonin levels and found that McGuire (the lab director) had 50 percent more serotonin than Raleigh (the research assistant). In sum, the neurotransmitter serotonin joins T as one of the brain chemicals responsible for mediating one’s position in the status hierarchy.
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
President George W. Bush. He worked directly under CIA “asset” James Comey, who held the position of Deputy Attorney General, and Comey worked directly under CIA officer John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the United States. As FBI Director, Wray worked directly under Attorney General William Barr, who, like Wray, is a CIA officer who used an “official cover.” Barr was “officially” in the CIA in the 1970s, first with the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate from 1973 to 1975 and then with the CIA’s Office of Legislative Counsel from 1975 to 1977.[357] Shortly after CIA officer George H. W. Bush became President, he appointed Barr to be an Assistant
Anthony Frank (DESTROYING AMERICA: The CIA’s Quest to Control the Government)
This Saturday, Galle and a volunteer assistant, Heinrich Ludwig d’Arrest, command the main telescope. Galle stands at the eyepiece and guides the instrument, pointing toward Capricorn. As each star comes into view, he calls out its brightness and position. D’Arrest pores over a sky map, ticking off each candidate as it reveals itself as a familiar object. So it goes until, sometime between midnight and 1 A.M., Galle reels out the numbers for one more mote of light invisible to the naked eye: right ascension 21 h, 53 min, 25.84 seconds. D’Arrest glances down at the chart, then yelps: “that star is not on the map!” The younger man runs to fetch the observatory’s director, who earlier that day had only reluctantly given his permission to attempt what he seems to have thought a fool’s errand. Together, the trio continue to watch the new object until it sets at around 2:30 in the morning. True stars remain mere points in even the most powerful telescopes. This does not, showing instead an unmistakable disk, a full 3.2 arcseconds across—just as Le Verrier had told them to expect. That visible circle can mean just one thing: Galle has just become the first man to see what he knows to be a previously undiscovered planet, one that would come to be called Neptune, just about exactly where Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier told him to look. —
Thomas Levenson (The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe)
Likewise, U.S. Naval Technical Intelligence had officers in Paris preparing for its own highly classified hunt for any intelligence regarding the Henschel Hs 293, a guided missile developed by the Nazis and designed to sink or damage enemy ships. The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) were still heavily engaged in strategic bombing campaigns, but a small group from Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, was laying plans to locate and capture Luftwaffe equipment and engineers. Spearheading Top Secret missions for British intelligence was a group of commandos called 30 Assault Unit, led by Ian Fleming, the personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence and future author of the James Bond novels.
Annie Jacobsen (Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America)
The goal of Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee was to investigate all things related to German science. Target types ran the gamut: radar, missiles, aircraft, medicine, bombs and fuses, chemical and biological weapons labs. And while CIOS remained an official joint venture, there were other groups in the mix, with competing interests at hand. Running parallel to CIOS operations were dozens of secret intelligence-gathering operations, mostly American. The Pentagon’s Special Mission V-2 was but one example. By late March 1945, Colonel Trichel, chief of U.S. Army Ordnance, Rocket Branch, had dispatched his team to Europe. Likewise, U.S. Naval Technical Intelligence had officers in Paris preparing for its own highly classified hunt for any intelligence regarding the Henschel Hs 293, a guided missile developed by the Nazis and designed to sink or damage enemy ships. The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) were still heavily engaged in strategic bombing campaigns, but a small group from Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, was laying plans to locate and capture Luftwaffe equipment and engineers. Spearheading Top Secret missions for British intelligence was a group of commandos called 30 Assault Unit, led by Ian Fleming, the personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence and future author of the James Bond novels. Sometimes, the members of these parallel missions worked in consort with CIOS officers in the field.
Annie Jacobsen (Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America)
There was a risk that Morrison might slip away, and before releasing him, Agent Burger made sure that he’d gone through a rigorous process known as Bertillonage. Devised by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon in 1879, it was the first scientific method for identifying repeat criminals. Using a caliper and other special tools, Agent Burger, with the help of the Dallas police, took eleven of Morrison’s body measurements. Among them were the length of his left foot, the width and length of his head, and the diameter of his right ear. After Agent Burger informed Morrison of the purpose of these measurements, he also commissioned a mug shot, another of Bertillon’s innovations. In 1894, Ida Tarbell, the muckraking journalist, wrote that any prisoner who passed through Bertillon’s system would be forever “spotted”: “He may efface his tattooing, compress his chest, dye his hair, extract his teeth, scar his body, dissimulate his height. It is useless.” But Bertillonage was already being displaced by a more efficient method of identification that was revolutionizing the world of scientific detection: fingerprinting. In some cases, a suspect could now be placed at the scene of a crime even without a witness present. When Hoover became the bureau’s acting director, he created the Identification Division, a central repository for the fingerprints of arrested criminals from around the country. Such scientific methods, Hoover proclaimed, would assist “the guardians of civilization in the face of the common danger.
David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI)
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover “mistrusted and disliked all three Kennedy brothers. President Johnson and Hoover had mutual fear and hatred for the Kennedys,” wrote the late William Sullivan, for many years an assistant FBI director. Hoover hated Robert Kennedy, who as Attorney General was his boss, and feared John. In turn, the President distrusted Allen Dulles, and eased him out as CIA director after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle. When JFK moved to lower the oil depletion allowance, he incurred the displeasure of John McCloy, whose clients’ profits would be trimmed. Hoover, Dulles and McCloy did not belong to the Kennedy fan club. Hoover controlled the field investigation when the president was shot. Dulles and McCloy helped mold the final verdict of the Warren Commission.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
If we had flown Victoria to New Zealand, she would have been at a funeral home, with private viewings in an atmosphere of stilted, muffled unquiet. I would have had little opportunity to sit with the body and pour out my lament. The Singaporeans would not have been there with their reassuring ease in the ritual of mourning. My family might have come bristling with disrespect, and rent the air with accusations and blame. Some mourners would have been embarrassed by my tears. They and others would have wanted the whole thing done and dusted quickly. The funeral director or an assistant might well have been the ones dressing the body. I would have not realised the normality of death so quickly, and more importantly at this point, the absolute necessity to go briefly mad with grief, to cover yourself— metaphorically—in the dowdy burlap of mourning.
Linda Collins (Loss Adjustment)
As it was in Mao’s China with the Red Guard, it is a political crime in today’s Republican Party to appear well educated. So we find Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeting a rant about “unelected progressive elites in our govt.”16 The senator went to Stanford, taught at St. Paul’s School in London (founded in 1509), and graduated from Yale Law School. Senator Ted Cruz denounces “coastal elites who attack the NRA.”17 Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School, was a Supreme Court clerk, worked in the Bush administration, and is a former assistant attorney general. His wife was born in the coastal town of San Luis Obispo, California, and holds a BA from Claremont McKenna College, an MA from Université Libre de Bruxelles, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She works as a managing director at Goldman Sachs.
Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….
Hank Bracker
FOCUS ON GENERATING REVENUE THE DOJ FOUND THAT virtually every branch and tributary of the city’s bureaucracy—the mayor, city council, city manager, finance director, municipal court judge, municipal court prosecutor, court clerk, assistant clerks, police chief—all were enmeshed in an unending race to raise revenue through municipal fines and fees:            City officials routinely urge Chief [Tom] Jackson to generate more revenue through enforcement. In March 2010, for instance, the City Finance Director wrote to Chief Jackson that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year. . . . Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, it’s not an insignificant issue.” Similarly, in March 2013, the Finance Director wrote to the City Manager: “Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5%. I did ask the Chief if he thought the PD [police department] could deliver 10% increase. He indicated they could try.” The importance of focusing on revenue generation is communicated to FPD officers. Ferguson police officers from all ranks told us that revenue generation is stressed heavily within the police department, and that the message comes from City leadership. The evidence we reviewed supports this perception.
Norm Stamper (To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America's Police)
Donald Trump repeatedly promised he would hire "the best people." He did not. That is not my opinion; it is President Trump's, which he expresses frequently. Trump has said that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell." His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was "scared stiff and Missing in Action," "didn't have a clue," and "should be ashamed of himself." Trump described one of his assistants, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as "wacky," "deranged," "vicious, but not smart," a "crazed, crying lowlife," and finally a "dog." After lasting only eleven days as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci "was quickly terminated 'from' a position that he was totally incapable of handling" and was called "very much out of control." An anonymous adviser to the president was called "a drunk/drugged-up loser." Chief strategist Steve Bannon was "sloppy," a "leaker," and "dumped like a dog by almost everyone." His longtime lawyer Michael Cohen was "TERRIBLE," "hostile," "a convicted liar & fraudster," and a "failed lawyer." The president was "Never a big fan!" of his White House counsel Don McGahn and "not even a little bit happy" with Jerome Powell, his selection to head the Federal Reserve, whom he called an "enemy." His third national security advisor, John Bolton, was mocked as a "tough guy [who] got us into Iraq." When the president was irritated with his former chief of staff, John Kelly, the president's press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, declared that Kelly "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.
John Dickerson (The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency)
Equity financing, on the other hand, is unappealing to cooperators because it may mean relinquishing control to outside investors, which is a distinctly capitalist practice. Investors are not likely to buy non-voting shares; they will probably require representation on the board of directors because otherwise their money could potentially be expropriated. “For example, if the directors of the firm were workers, they might embezzle equity funds, refrain from paying dividends in order to raise wages, or dissipate resources on projects of dubious value.”105 In any case, the very idea of even partial outside ownership is contrary to the cooperative ethos. A general reason for traditional institutions’ reluctance to lend to cooperatives, and indeed for the rarity of cooperatives whether related to the difficulty of securing capital or not, is simply that a society’s history, culture, and ideologies might be hostile to the “co-op” idea. Needless to say, this is the case in most industrialized countries, especially the United States. The very notion of a workers’ cooperative might be viscerally unappealing and mysterious to bank officials, as it is to people of many walks of life. Stereotypes about inefficiency, unprofitability, inexperience, incompetence, and anti-capitalism might dispose officials to reject out of hand appeals for financial assistance from co-ops. Similarly, such cultural preconceptions may be an element in the widespread reluctance on the part of working people to try to start a cooperative. They simply have a “visceral aversion” to, and unfamiliarity with, the idea—which is also surely a function of the rarity of co-ops itself. Their rarity reinforces itself, in that it fosters a general ignorance of co-ops and the perception that they’re risky endeavors. Additionally, insofar as an anti-democratic passivity, a civic fragmentedness, a half-conscious sense of collective disempowerment, and a diffuse interpersonal alienation saturate society, this militates against initiating cooperative projects. It is simply taken for granted among many people that such things cannot be done. And they are assumed to require sophisticated entrepreneurial instincts. In most places, the cooperative idea is not even in the public consciousness; it has barely been heard of. Business propaganda has done its job well.106 But propaganda can be fought with propaganda. In fact, this is one of the most important things that activists can do, this elevation of cooperativism into the public consciousness. The more that people hear about it, know about it, learn of its successes and potentials, the more they’ll be open to it rather than instinctively thinking it’s “foreign,” “socialist,” “idealistic,” or “hippyish.” If successful cooperatives advertise their business form, that in itself performs a useful service for the movement. It cannot be overemphasized that the most important thing is to create a climate in which it is considered normal to try to form a co-op, in which that is seen as a perfectly legitimate and predictable option for a group of intelligent and capable unemployed workers. Lenders themselves will become less skeptical of the business form as it seeps into the culture’s consciousness.
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
In March, at HHS’s request, several large pharmaceutical companies—Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, and others—donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA, an agency under the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.56 BARDA’s Director, Dr. Rick Bright, later claimed the chloroquine drugs were deadly, and he needed to protect the American public from them.57 Bright colluded with FDA to restrict use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. FDA publicized the authorization using language that led most physicians to believe that prescribing the drug for any purpose was off-limits. But at the beginning of June, based on clinical trials that intentionally gave unreasonably high doses to hospitalized patients and failed to start the drug until too late, FDA took the unprecedented step of revoking HCQ’s emergency authorization,58 rendering that enormous stockpile of valuable pills off limits to Americans while conveniently indemnifying the pharmaceutical companies for their inventory losses by allowing them a tax break for the donations. After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID. With the encouragement of Dr. Fauci and other HHS officials, many states simultaneously imposed restrictions on HCQ’s use.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Lillian was determined that her next role would be Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and assumed she only needed to find the right actor to play opposite her as Reverend Dimmesdale. Mayer informed her there was a much larger issue at stake; The Scarlet Letter was on the Hays office “blacklist” of books that could not be filmed. The very idea of a blacklist was ridiculous to Lillian and she took up the matter directly with Will Hays. While he would occasionally publicly chastise the studios, Hays never forgot that the full name of his office was the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and worked to smooth the path any and every way he could. He told Lillian that the major source of objection was “the Protestant Church, especially the Methodists,” and directed her to the heads of several church and women’s organizations where she forcefully presented her case. Even with Hays’s assistance, no other actress had the personal and professional reputation pure enough to garner the response she received: the ban would be lifted if she was “personally responsible” for the film. Lillian turned her attention to finding the consummate Dimmesdale and Mayer suggested she watch Lars Hanson in The Saga of Gosta Berling. The studio boss had seen Mauritz Stiller’s film in Berlin the previous December and he immediately put the director and the film’s three stars, Hanson, Mona Martenson, and Greta Gustafsson, all under contract. Lillian agreed Hanson was “perfect” and was enthusiastic when Thalberg suggested the experienced Swede Victor Seastrom (Sjöström) direct, for she believed he had “Mr. Griffith’s sensitivity to atmosphere.” And so the ban was lifted from The Scarlet Letter, Lars Hanson was coming from Sweden, Victor Seastrom was assigned to direct, and now it was Irving Thalberg’s problem. He had no script. Lillian would later say that Irving “told me that Frances Marion and I could adapt it,” but it was hardly that simple.
Cari Beauchamp (Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood)
Who really benefited from the death of President Kennedy? Oswald only served as a straw man.[86] Unbeknownst to him, he was being prepared by the CIA and the FBI for his role as a scapegoat. Do not forget that there are often mind control elements at work in these kinds of political assassinations (See chapter 44, Josef Mengele and Monarch Mind Control). Lyndon B. Johnson had foreknowledge of the plan to kill Kennedy. His longtime lover, Madeleine Brown, wrote about Johnson’s foreknowledge of the assassination in her book Texas in the Morning (see also Benjamin Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy 1975). One day before Kennedy was killed, Johnson said: “Tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.” Why John Kennedy choosed Lyndon Johnson as his running mate is unknown. He and his brother Robert did not like Johnson at all. They knew that Johnson stole the election that put him in the US Senate. There were also many scandals swirled around Johnson as vice president and a string of murders that may be associated with him. To his assistant Hyman Raskin, Kennedy once said: “You know, we had never considered Lyndon. But I was left with no choice. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems.” Who were those bastards? Did he refer to the Illuminati? There is no doubt that Kennedy had been submitted to blackmail. Kennedy excused his choice of Johnson several times: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well that it won’t be.” Lyndon Johnson, who was an Illuminati mole, was up to his neck into the conspiracy. He had orders to cover everything up. Within hours of the killing, he placed all the weight of his newly acquired authority to obstruct the quest for the truth. He received the full support of the CIA and FBI director Edgar Hoover, who circulated a memo asserting his conviction that Oswald had acted on his own initiative. Harvey Oswald fired just three bullets from above and behind. Did he really wound all the limousine’s occupants with these shots? The killing of Kennedy is more complex than is usually admitted. Officially, one of Oswald´s bullets hit Kennedy twice and Governor John Connally who was sitting in the front seat of the limousine, three times!
Robin de Ruiter (Worldwide Evil and Misery - The Legacy of the 13 Satanic Bloodlines)
In the shock of the moment, I gave some thought to renting a convertible and driving the twenty-seven hundred miles back alone. But then I realized I was neither single nor crazy. The acting director decided that, given the FBI’s continuing responsibility for my safety, the best course was to take me back on the plane I came on, with a security detail and a flight crew who had to return to Washington anyway. We got in the vehicle to head for the airport. News helicopters tracked our journey from the L.A. FBI office to the airport. As we rolled slowly in L.A. traffic, I looked to my right. In the car next to us, a man was driving while watching an aerial news feed of us on his mobile device. He turned, smiled at me through his open window, and gave me a thumbs-up. I’m not sure how he was holding the wheel. As we always did, we pulled onto the airport tarmac with a police escort and stopped at the stairs of the FBI plane. My usual practice was to go thank the officers who had escorted us, but I was so numb and distracted that I almost forgot to do it. My special assistant, Josh Campbell, as he often did, saw what I couldn’t. He nudged me and told me to go thank the cops. I did, shaking each hand, and then bounded up the airplane stairs. I couldn’t look at the pilots or my security team for fear that I might get emotional. They were quiet. The helicopters then broadcast our plane’s taxi and takeoff. Those images were all over the news. President Trump, who apparently watches quite a bit of TV at the White House, saw those images of me thanking the cops and flying away. They infuriated him. Early the next morning, he called McCabe and told him he wanted an investigation into how I had been allowed to use the FBI plane to return from California. McCabe replied that he could look into how I had been allowed to fly back to Washington, but that he didn’t need to. He had authorized it, McCabe told the president. The plane had to come back, the security detail had to come back, and the FBI was obligated to return me safely. The president exploded. He ordered that I was not to be allowed back on FBI property again, ever. My former staff boxed up my belongings as if I had died and delivered them to my home. The order kept me from seeing and offering some measure of closure to the people of the FBI, with whom I had become very close. Trump had done a lot of yelling during the campaign about McCabe and his former candidate wife. He had been fixated on it ever since. Still in a fury at McCabe, Trump then asked him, “Your wife lost her election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” Andy replied. The president of the United States then said to the acting director of the FBI, “Ask her how it feels to be a loser” and hung up the phone.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
During [Erté]’s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century … In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company … It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an offspring of the brilliant foreign colony in the imperial capital. Before 1890 he formed a club of fellow-pupils who were called ‘The Nevsky Pickwickians’. They were joined by the young Jew, Leon Rosenberg, who later took the name of one of his grandparents, Bakst. Another member introduced his cousin to the group―Serge Diaghilev. From these origins emerged the Mir Iskustva (World of Art) society, the forerunner of the whole modern movement in Russia. Soon after its foundation in 1899 both Benois and Bakst produced their first work in the theatre, The infiltration of the members of Mir Iskustva into the Imperial theatre was due to the patronage of its director Prince Volkonsky who appointed Diaghilev as an assistant. But under Volkonsky’s successor Diagilev lost his job and was barred from further state employment. He then devoted his energies and genius to editing the Mir Iskustva magazine and to a series of exhibitions which introduced Russia to work of foreign artists … These culminated in the remarkable exhibition of Russian portraiture held at the Taurida Palace in 1905, and the Russian section at the salon d'Autumne in Paris the following year. This was the most comprehensive Russian exhibition ever held, from early icons to the young Larionov and Gontcharova. Diagilev’s ban from Russian theatrical life also led to a series of concerts in Paris in 1907, at which he introduced contemporary Russian composers, the production Boris Godunov the following year with Chaliapin and costumes and décor by Benois and Golovin, and then in 1909, on May 19, the first season of the ballet Russes at the Châtelet Theatre.
Charles Spencer (Erte)
Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.
Hank Bracker
has George Soros’ Open Society Initiative for Europe. Serving on the International Advisory Board with Pinchuk is Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper. Obama’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, who claims to have received the Steele dossier at the State Department and then passed it on to the FBI before the investigation started, has spoken at the Atlantic Council.
Dan Bongino (Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump)
Jason Gesser is an American college football former coach born in 31 May, 1979. He is a former player, former assistant Athletic director for major gifts at WSU. He played for Washington State University under head coach Mike Price. In February 2019 Jason Gesser was hired as the quarterbacks' coach at Wyoming under fourth-year head coach Dave Christensen.
Jason Gesser
Eighty years ago on July 2, 1937 Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the world in a Lockheed Model 10- Electra. Her expedition, sponsored by Purdue University, a public research university located in West Lafayette, Indiana, was brought to an end when this daring woman aviator and her navigator and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared near Howland Island in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. Since that time it was generally assumed that she had crashed at sea and simply disappeared beneath the waves of an unforgiving ocean. All the speculation ended on Sunday July 9, 2017 when Shawn Henry, a former executive assistant director for the FBI, brought world attention on the “History Channel” to a photograph that apparently shows Earhart and Noona on the dock of Jaluit Atoll, overlooking the SS Kaoshu towing a barge, with what looks like the Electra they had been flying. The intensive research and analysis that Shawn Henry and his team conducted presents compelling evidence and leaves no doubt but that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had survived the crash. The team’s research also presents evidence that Amelia Earhart was held as a prisoner of war on the island of Saipan by the Japanese and died while in their custody.
Hank Bracker
Jason Gesser has a historic and successful football programs and has enriched his college career by the leading, Cougars to two 10 win seasons that included a trip to the Rose Bowl. Jason Gesser also had a victory in the Sun Bowl. He is basically a perfect fit for the people. And the best part is that Jason Gesser considers WSU, a perfect fit for himself. Now he has a new role as an assistant director of the development team with the Cougar Athletic Fund.
Jason Gesser
A man with a beard - Suzanne guessed he was an assistant director - came toward her, speaking into a walktie-talkie. “Yep, she just got here,” he said. “I’ll show her to her trailer.” He smiled at her. “I’m Ted,” he said, “designed to make your life a more annoying place to be.” Suzanne smiled back, bowed her wet head, and said, “Suzanne, designed to be annoyed.” Ted laughed. “The we ought to get along great.
Carrie Fisher (Postcards from the Edge)
A man with a beard - Suzanne guessed he was an assistant director - came toward her, speaking into a walktie-talkie. “Yep, she just got here,” he said. “I’ll show her to her trailer.” He smiled at her. “I’m Ted,” he said, “designed to make your life a more annoying place to be.” Suzanne smiled back, bowed her wet head, and said, “Suzanne, designed to be annoyed.” Ted laughed. “Then we ought to get along great.
Carrie Fisher (Postcards from the Edge)
A little black plastic horse. This time, it was received by a colleague of mine, a guy I worked with years ago. Andy Mason, Assistant Field Director out there. He has no idea where it came from. It wasn’t mailed to him—it was on his doorstep when he went home last night.
Heather Graham (Shadow of Death (Amy Larson & Hunter Forrest #3))
I perfected the game quickly and became bored. The challenge was gone when I could consistently get the ball through the elephant’s trunk and onto the waterwheel.” I also worked as an assistant for Julius Monk, who produced revues in New York.
James Burrows (Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More)
Your title is child of God, not pastor, director, coordinator, associate, assistant, or what other title you have in your role as a female leader.
Melissa Mashburn (Ministry Chick: Find Your Community, Own Your Leadership, Take Your Step!)
NSO was founded in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, school friends who had entered the tech start-up world in the 2000s and soon realized the potential of developing a tool that could access a mobile phone undetected. They were joined by former Mossad employee and military intelligence agent Niv Karmi. Hulio served in the Israeli military reserves and conducted IDF operations in the West Bank in the early 2000s. Conspiring with the dark side was thus assured from the beginning of NSO’s life.17 The first deal the company struck was with the assistance of convicted US felon Elliott Broidy, a long time director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. A big supporter of Donald Trump in his campaign for the presidency in 2016, Broidy was pardoned by President Trump in 2021 after Broidy pleaded guilty to violating foreign lobbying laws.
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
John Hughes, special assistant to Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Joseph Carroll during the Crisis, wrote later that the greatest barrier to developing strategic warning is ‘the tendency of the human mind to assume that the status quo will continue … Nations do not credit their potential opponents with the will to make unexpected acts.
Max Hastings (Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962)
Now you’ve brought him in for a burglary that, unless I’m mistaken, didn’t actually take place.” “He was in the process of breaking into the building,” she said. “We caught him in the act.” Somehow, his smile grew even broader. “Really? He was in the building? Was he even in the parking lot? One of your colleagues says he wasn’t.” “How did you—” “Did my client have any burglary tools in his possession? Lockpicks? A crowbar hidden up his sleeve, perhaps?” “No, but—” “So he had no way of accessing the property he was supposedly there to burglarize, and he wasn’t even apprehended on said property. Very disappointing, Agent Black. A rookie police officer on his first beat wouldn’t make that arrest, and you know it. Your zeal to imprison my client speaks to the prejudicial nature of your so-called ‘task force.’ This isn’t a lawful inquiry; it’s a witch hunt.” I could almost hear Harmony’s teeth grating. “You have two choices.” Perkins ticked them off on his fingers. “One, release my client at once, and we can pretend this never happened. Two, you can proceed with this travesty, I’ll have the case dismissed before you can say ‘wrongful arrest,’ and my next call will be to your deputy assistant director to discuss a lawsuit against you, her, and the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Harmony leaned against the table with one hand. Her shoulders sagged. “You want him?” she said. “Fine. Take him and leave.” Perkins opened the door, ushering me toward it with a grand sweep of his arm like he was rolling out a red carpet.
Craig Schaefer (A Plain-Dealing Villain (Daniel Faust, #4))
SEPTEMBER 11 Fueling Relief When we finally got the clearance to drive through the checkpoints, two weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, the street was lined with New Yorkers—New Yorkers!—waving banners with simple messages. “We love you. You’re our heroes. God bless you. Thank you.” The workers were running on that support as their vehicles ran on fuel. They had so little good news in a day. They faced a mountainously depressing task of removing tons and tons of twisted steel, compacted dirt, smashed equipment, broken glass. But every time they drove past the barricades, they faced a line of fans cheering them on, like the tunnel of cheerleaders that football players run through, reminding them that an entire nation appreciated their service. In a Salvation Army van with lights flashing, we attracted some of the loudest cheers of all. Moises Serrano, the Salvation Army officer leading us, was Incident Director for the city. He had been on the job barely a month when the planes hit. He worked thirty-six straight hours and slept four, forty hours and slept six, forty more hours and slept six. Then he took a day off. His assistant had an emotional breakdown early on, in the same van I was riding in, and may never recover. Many of the Salvationists I met hailed from Florida, the hurricane crews who keep fully stocked canteens and trucks full of basic supplies. When the Manhattan buildings fell, they mobilized all those trucks and drove them to New York. The crew director told me, “To tell you the truth, I came up here expecting to deal with Yankees, if you know what I mean. Instead, it’s all smiles and thank yous.” I came to appreciate the cheerful toughness of the Salvation Army. These soldiers worked in the morgue and served on the front lines. Over the years, though, they had developed an inner strength based on discipline, on community, and above all on a clear vision of whom they were serving. The Salvation Army may have a hierarchy of command, but every soldier knows he or she is performing for an audience of One. As one told me, Salvationists serve in order to earn the ultimate accolade from God himself: “Well done, thy good and faithful servant.” Finding God in Unexpected Places
Philip Yancey (Grace Notes: Daily Readings with Philip Yancey)
Since 1870 a commander has seldom if ever been able to survey a whole battlefield from a single spot; and in any case he has had little opportunity—although sometimes a considerable inclination—to try. For the modern commander is much more akin to the managing director of a large conglomerate enterprise than ever he is to the warrior chief of old. He has become the head of a complex military organization, whose many branches he must oversee and on whose cooperation, assistance, and support he depends for his success. As the size and complexity of military forces have increased, the business of war has developed an organizational dimension that can make a mighty contribution to triumph—or to tragedy. Hitherto, the role of this organizational dimension of war in explaining military performance has been strangely neglected. We shall return to it later—indeed, it will form one of the major themes of this book. For now we simply need to note its looming presence.
Eliot A. Cohen (Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War)
the lawn from a grassy field to a twilit garden. As if on cue, Sebastian arrived leading a parade into the clearing, and called everyone to order. “Honored guests,” he shouted, holding his hands out in greeting. “I’m pleased to announce we have record attendance this year. This is in no small part due to the efforts of our friends-of-the-farm coordinator, Benjamin Thorndike, and his new assistant, Jason Adams.” Polite applause accompanied an occasional cheer. One woman at the back called out, “Which ones are they, Sebastian?” The managing director scanned the crowd and pointed. “Over there. Benjamin’s the one on the porch steps with the camera, taking your pictures. And you can’t miss Jason. He’s the tallest here, but just in case, raise your hand, Jason.” Helena watched, bemused, as Jason raised his hand. He seemed embarrassed, but she thought he was enjoying the celebrity. Once Sebastian completed his welcome, the crowd headed for the food and drink, then milled around sipping apple wine and taking in the scene. Two farm members mounted the steps of the great house and began to play music on a penny whistle and violin, a lilting tune from a time when farmers would gather to celebrate the harvest. A few people came over to meet
David Litwack (The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky)
unusual for me. I didn’t know if it was because I was still recovering from a near-lethal dose of silver poisoning, or because of the news I’d just heard. “Disappeared?” Director Chen demanded, voicing the words I was too stunned to utter. “That doesn’t make any sense. A dirigible is too large a contraption to simply go up in thin air, not without the assistance
Jasmine Walt (Shadow Born (Shadows of Salem, #1))
Many states have relinquishment policies that force parents to choose between keeping their children or getting them help. Those who do relinquish their children may face criminal abandonment charges and may be ineligible to adopt again.”               -- Mary Boo, Assistant Director of the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC)  in Minnesota. 
Lori Carangelo (Chosen Children 2016: People as Commodities in America's Failed Multi-Billion Dollar Foster Care, Adoption and Prison Industries)
When we reached Pistillo’s office, I demanded to see him in my firmest voice. His secretary appeared unintimidated. She smiled with the genuineness of a politician’s wife and sweetly asked us to have a seat. Katy looked at me and shrugged. I would not sit. I paced like a caged lion, but I could feel my fury ebbing. Fifteen minutes later, the secretary told us that Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Pistillo—that was exactly how she said it, with the full title—would see us now. She opened the door. I blasted into the office. Pistillo
Harlan Coben (Gone for Good)
Below are just a few of the infinite questions that, if asked with high emotion and a deep desire to seek out constructive answers, will stimulate new thoughts to resolve your job and career challenges. By asking courageous questions, your brain will come up with seemingly miraculous answers so that you’ll better manage negativity and fear. And when you better manage negativity and fear, you’ll be in a much better state of mind to pursue and land your next job. How have others effectively dealt with this problem in the past? How do I turn this problem into an adventure and meet this challenge with a positive outlook? What can I learn from this, and how can I enjoy the process? What resources are available to me in the community that will assist me in getting a new job? What do I need to research to gain better control of my future? Whom can I recruit for my job transition campaign “board of directors” that will advise me and support my efforts in a positive way? How can I be a hero to myself and others by meeting this challenge head-on with confidence and self-respect? Am I spending more time on the solution than on the problem? Am I displaying leadership qualities to the members of my family so they can be proud of me? What do I have to read to make myself a more educated job campaigner? How can I make those I love more comfortable and at ease with my situation? Whom do I have to meet so I can achieve my goals quickly?
Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
As assistant director of programs, Anne was struggling with how to get more food out where it was needed. "Donors love pictures of cute little kids having snacks at school," she said. "And they support meal programs for seniors. But nobody's lining up to say, Gee, I want to put food in the cupboard for really poor black mothers who use drugs; I want to buy groceries for everyone living in the projects. Very few donors trust poor people enough to just give away food without conditions." Anne held a dim view of charity kitchens that kept poor people waiting in line two or three times a day just to get a meal ladled out. "They're convenient for staff," she said, "but they take away people's dignity, and they reinforce dependency. They're about control." In addition, she said, institutional meal programs, such as those in school lunchrooms, tended to provide unhealthy food that was fast to make—bologna sandwiches on white bread, instant mashed potatoes, canned fruit cocktail.
Sara Miles (Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion)
My first job as assistant director was to make sure he didn't cast the talented blond dancer who had so easily stolen my boyfriend the summer before. I accomplished this with the persistent and skilled manipulation of a grade A bitch.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
Lafitte turned up in yet another tangle of major, historic proportions during the 1960s. Around the time of the JFK assassination, Lafitte worked for the Reily Coffee Company and then as a chef for the World Trade Mart, both in New Orleans. William B. Reily, an avid anti-Communist, owned the Reily Coffee Company and was closely connected to McCarthyite and rabid anti-Communist Edward Scannell Butler, who were both close to CIA assistant director Charles Cabell, CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor, and Agency ARTICHOKE official Morse Allen. Readers may recall that alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald also worked as a maintenance man for the Reily Coffee Company in the summer of 1963.
H.P. Albarelli Jr. (A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments)
BEETHOVEN should by no means be offered as a model for directors of orchestras. The performers under him were obliged cautiously to avoid being led astray by their conductor, who thought only of his composition, and constantly laboured to depict the exact expression required by the most varied gesticulations. Thus, when the passage was loud, he often beat time downwards, when his hand should have been up. A diminuendo he was in the habit of making by contracting his person, making himself smaller and smaller; and when a pianissimo occurred, he seemed to slink, if the word is allowable, beneath the conductor's desk. As the sounds increased in loudness, so did he gradually rise up, as if out of an abyss; and when the full force of the united instruments broke upon the ear, raising himself on tiptoe, he looked of gigantic stature, and, with both his arms floating about in undulating motion, seemed as if he would soar to the clouds. He was all motion, no part of him remained inactive, and the entire man could only be compared to a perpetuum mobile. When his deafness increased, it was productive of frequent mischief, for the maestro's hand went up when it ought to have descended. He contrived to set himself right again most easily in the piano passages, but of the most powerful fortes he could make nothing. In many cases, however, his eye afforded him assistance, for he watched the movements of the bows, and, thus discovering what was going on, soon corrected himself.
Anton Schindler (Life of Beethoven)
Both of these attitudes -- unrelenting listlessness and dogged good cheer -- have to yield to the realities of prayer and life if the relationship with God is to grow and spiritual direction be helpful. Pointing repeatedly to discordant notes that sound in prayer will usually be the most valuable assistance directors can give. But sometimes people's defenses will be so entrenched that only a forthright confrontation will capture their attention. Such a confrontation would have to be focused clearly on the main issue: Are they willing to notice what is happening in prayer and in life, or are they screening out material that conflicts with a mood they feel they must maintain?" (Ch.5, p. 75)
William A. Barry (The Practice of Spiritual Direction)
It was really disturbing to see Lieutenant Kazi Bayzidul Islam in 10 East Bengal. He was a former officer of 32 Punjab, the unit that carried out the genocide in Dacca on the night of March 25/26. Islam served the Pakistanis loyally throughout the liberation war. After the gruesome killings on March 25/26, Islam was the person who read the Bengali announcements on the radio to the population in Dacca. 32 Punjab was moved to the Rajshahi area sometime after March and two of its companies including the battalion headquarters were in Chapai Nawabganj. This unit fought against us in the battle of Chapai Nawabganj. Now, Islam and we freedom fighters were in the same army! I found this absurd and a cruel joke to say the least. What could be bigger collaboration than participating or assisting in the killing of Bengalis in Dacca on March 25? Who cleared him? Islam never revealed how he was cleared but it was not hard to guess. If the Director General of Razakars could be the Secretary in the Prime Minister's Secretariat, Islam was no aberration.
A. Qayyum Khan (Bittersweet Victory A Freedom Fighter's Tale)
dramatically, but helium gas was 10 times as expensive. Under these conditions, Dr. Eckener, a pilot whose primary concern was safety and as Director of a Company attempting to make a profit, he was forced to make a difficult decision. His discussions with American businessmen and political officials had not resulted in the helium gas he so badly wanted. On the other hand he realized, an airship without lifting gas could not fly. His own company officials believed hydrogen to be safe and they did not share the American concern nor that of Eckener. During many of the flights in 1936, U.S. Naval officials were onboard the LZ-129, to study German operating methods of using hydrogen gas. Their resulting reports concluded that hydrogen properly used, was safe and should be considered used in any new or future American airships. The building of a dream The LZ-129 was a typical design for a Zeppelin airship, only it’s size was so remarkable. The structure was primarily built of triangular girders made of Duralumin, the interior was divided by a wire braced main frame, into 16 bays, in which each held a gas cell.2 Duralumin was an alloy of aluminum and copper with traces of magnesium, manganese, iron and silicon. It had been discovered by Dr. Alfred Wilm and his assistant Ing. Jablonsky, in September 1906. Late one Saturday evening, Jablonsky had completed testing numerous pieces and was ready to go home, when Dr. Wilm entered the lab, with just one more test. To everyone’s astonishment, the test piece was harder, with only ½% more Magnesium having been added. The last train for Berlin had departed and the two men worked the through the weekend, to perfect their Duralumin. Although Dr. Wilm wanted to obtain a patent on this new metal, that so many industries so badly required, he failed to take action. By not obtaining a patent, he gave German industry the opportunity to copy. Count von Zeppelin was amongst the first to realize the value of this new material. Dr. Alfred Wilm did not achieve the wealth he so rightfully desired and passed away on a small farm in the Riesengebirge, on August 6, 1937. Dr. Wilm placed an important mark on not only Zeppelin history, but in the design of countless airplanes ever since.3 The first Zeppelin airships had been constructed of simple aluminum, which is considerably weaker, so that strength was a major problem. It was not until LZ-26, which was the only Zeppelin assembled in Frankfurt-Rebstock, that Duralumin was practically used. Designed as a passenger airship, production of it’s parts had begun, when World War One started. Suddenly, this airship was no longer needed for civilian purposes and would fulfill military requirements only marginally. In order to provide space in the Friedrichshafen Zeppelin Sheds, for newer and larger designs; the completed girders and materials were transported to Frankfurt for assembly. The ship, approx. only 1/8 the
John Provan (The Hindenburg - a ship of dreams)
So this was how our assistant directors were finding their guidance? Dug up from five-year-old e-mails? Later I learned that the staff members had to print out their e-mails in order to store them in safety. Evidently, the New York office server was scrubbed periodically to free up storage space. Dawn couldn’t save e-mails on her computer for long. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A five-year-old crumpled paper copy of an e-mail in one employee’s files held crucial documentation for a federal agency? If SEC inspectors ever arrived at a financial firm for an examination and discovered that the firm had no manual on how to comply with federal securities laws, that firm would immediately be cited for deficiencies and most likely subject to enforcement action.
Norm Champ (Going Public: My Adventures Inside the SEC and How to Prevent the Next Devastating Crisis)
In the early days of the picture industry—that is, before the formation of the Directors Guild—whenever they filmed mob scenes, “herders” were employed to help out the few assistant directors assigned to the show. Although termed “herders,” they were actually extra assistant directors for crowd control.
Jeanine Basinger (Hollywood: The Oral History)
On an early morning scouting trip in the foothills north of Los Angeles, two van-loads of crew people fan out over an area that the production designer wants to make into a guerrilla army encampment. I stay close to the vans, keeping an overview of the area and waiting for the director to emerge. It’s a warm sunny day. Most of the crew is wearing shorts and running shoes. The director is another story. He climbs out of his van wearing a location-specific hunter-outdoorsman khaki outfit complete with an impressive pair of lug-sole hiking boots and walks off in the general direction the crew has taken, thumbing through some script notes. A few seconds later he steps squarely into a pile of dog-doo that everyone else has successfully navigated. I watch, transfixed, as he leaps back in horror and freezes. He does not spot me as he quickly looks around to see if anyone has noticed his predicament. No one else has. He hurriedly examines the bottom of his now-disgusting hiking boot. I take a deep breath and step from beside the van, pretending I am deeply involved in a conversation on my walkie-talkie. As I walk toward him, I pull a little folding penknife from my pocket and flip the blade open. I hand it to him without a word as I pass and continue on toward the location, still pretending to be talking into the radio. I round the corner of a building and find a vantage point. The director is hopping up and down on one foot, hurriedly scraping the bottom of his boot with the tiny knife. He finishes the messy job, pulls himself together, and strides purposefully around the building and toward a clearing where the crew has gathered, waiting for his comments. I quickly take my place as the director approaches. He walks briskly past me and without looking, hands the little knife back to me with the dog-doo-covered blade still open. He continues on to the front of the group and with complete authority runs through his ideas for the scene. Over the next few months of filming, neither of us ever mentions the incident.
David McGiffert (Best Seat in the House - An Assistant Director Behind the Scenes of Feature Films)
1950 crime film, Side Street. The original had a famous car chase in and around Wall Street, shot from choppers and the tops of buildings. This time, they’re using drones, and we’ll be closing half a dozen streets over the weekend for the shoot. I haven’t met the director yet, just the DP and some assistants, but the lead was there—Leonardo DiCaprio!
Douglas Preston (The Cabinet of Dr. Leng (Pendergast #21))
Eventually, when I decided to leave coaching and compete again, we got married and moved to the small town of Hills, Iowa, which is south of Iowa City. Before we knew it, Lyn was pregnant with Jake, and our family was growing. I was growing too, now responsible for three lives beside my own. I was waiting on tables a couple of days a week and earning a small stipend from the Hawkeye wrestling club. We had a small house out in the country, and we were happy, but finances were tight. Like most couples starting out, we had to work together and stay together. As a waiter, I wasn’t bringing in a lot of money, and the Hawkeye club couldn’t pay much other than assist with training expenses. We started our family, had no health insurance, and struggled to make ends meet. Things weren’t working so well. I remember my conversation with Coach Gable. His honesty gave me some great clarity. Wanting big things for our lives simply isn’t enough. We need a deep obsession to act on what we desire. It’s chosen suffering and self-learning through the deepest desire to prevail. Toward the end of my first-year wrestling for the Hawkeye wrestling club, a job at Hofstra opened up. The Athletic Director called me for a meeting about their program. A few Hofstra alumni called as well. A good friend, Guy Truicko, wanted to help me get the position.
Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
His attitude was that in order to train his assistant directors it was worth sacrificing his own pictures. At least, that seems to me the only possible interpretation.
Akira Kurosawa (Something Like An Autobiography)
The text is published at the back of Ryan S. Wood’s book Majic Eyes Only: Earth’s Encounters with Extraterrestrial Technology.6 Dr. Michael Wolf, who was associated with the MJ-12, confirmed its existence and said that it now has 36 members.7 Another source suggested that the enlarged group is an international board of directors. The contact pace picked up on February 20, 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower met with an extraterrestrial contingent at Edwards Air Force Base in California, then called Muroc Air Base.8 The visitors offered their assistance in the development of incredible new technology. All we (the U.S.) had to do in return was to ‘beat our swords into plowshares,’ that is, give up our nuclear weapons. Apparently the top generals at the Pentagon believed this to be some sort of ruse that would leave us defenseless in very dangerous times. So we had to say ‘no thanks.’ It seems evident now that the president and his advisors had their conclusions confirmed, at that point, that one or more of the extraterrestrial groups that had reached Earth were hostile and that we had to assume a defensive posture against a possible interplanetary war. After all, Eisenhower, as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, had undoubtedly been privy to the information about extraterrestrial involvement in World War II. That defensive posture, of course, required ultra-secrecy, just as in wartime. That basically sealed the deal as regards disclosure. From that point on, all negotiations with extraterrestrials of every stripe was deemed too sensitive for public consumption, and the curtain of secrecy descended for the foreseeable future.
Paul T. Hellyer (The Money Mafia: A World in Crisis)
There’s another level at which attention operates, this has to do with leadership, I argue that leaders need three kinds of focus, to be really effective, the first is an inner focus, let me tell you about a case that’s actually from the annals of neurology, there was a corporate lawyer, who unfortunately had a small prefrontal brain tumour, it was discovered early, operated successfully, after the surgery though it was a very puzzling picture, because he was absolutely as smart as he had been before, a very high IQ, no problem with attention or memory, but he couldn’t do his job anymore, he couldn’t do any job, in fact he ended up out of work, his wife left him, he lost his home, he’s living in his brother spare bedroom and in despair he went to see a famous neurologist named Antonio Damasio. Damasio specialized in the circuitry between the prefrontal area which is where we consciously pay attention to what matters now, where we make decisions, where we learn and the emotional centers in the midbrain, particularly the amygdala, which is our radar for danger, it triggers our strong emotions. They had cut the connection between the prefrontal area and emotional centers and Damasio at first was puzzled, he realized that this fellow on every neurological test was perfectly fine but something was wrong, then he got a clue, he asked the lawyer when should we have our next appointment and he realized the lawyer could give him the rational pros and cons of every hour for the next two weeks, but he didn’t know which is best. And Damasio says when we’re making a decision any decision, when to have the next appointment, should I leave my job for another one, what strategy should we follow, going into the future, should I marry this fellow compared to all the other fellows, those are decisions that require we draw on our entire life experience and the circuitry that collects that life experience is very base brain, it’s very ancient in the brain, and it has no direct connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words, it has very rich connectivity to the gastro- intestinal tract, to the gut, so we get a gut feeling, feels right, doesn’t feel right. Damasio calls them somatic markers, it’s a language of the body and the ability to tune into this is extremely important because this is valuable data too - they did a study of Californian entrepreneurs and asked them “how do you make your decisions?”, these are people who built a business from nothing to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they more or less said the same strategy “I am a voracious gatherer of information, I want to see the numbers, but if it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go ahead with the deal”. They’re tuning into the gut feeling. I know someone, I grew up in farm region of California, the Central Valley and my high school had a rival high school in the next town and I met someone who went to the other high school, he was not a good student, he almost failed, came close to not graduating high school, he went to a two-year college, a community college, found his way into film, which he loved and got into a film school, in film school his student project caught the eye of a director, who asked him to become an assistant and he did so well at that the director arranged for him to direct his own film, someone else’s script, he did so well at that they let him direct a script that he had written and that film did surprisingly well, so the studio that financed that film said if you want to do another one, we will back you. And he, however, hated the way the studio edited the film, he felt he was a creative artist and they had butchered his art. He said I am gonna do the film on my own, I’m gonna finance it myself, everyone in the film business that he knew said this is a huge mistake, you shouldn’t do this, but he went ahead, then he ran out of money, had to go to eleven banks before he could get a loan, he managed to finish the film, you may have seen
Daniel Goleman
I can’t stand Martin in PR. He says things like, “Let’s action that” in meetings, and clicks his fingers at Ruby, who is a marketing exec, but who Martin seems to think is his personal assistant. He’s only twenty-three but has decided it will further his merciless pursuit of seniority if he can seem older than he is, so he always puts on this awful jocular voice and tries to talk to our managing director about golf.
Beth O'Leary (The Flatshare)
British choreographer Norman Maen, alongside his assistant Maureen Bright, combined the American dance vernacular of syncopated jazz moves with the French idiom of classical ballet.
Darren Waldron (Jacques Demy (French Film Directors Series))
The Sayanim: Mossad’s International Volunteers by Michael Ellmer April 16, 2021 In the Hebrew language, Sayanim translates to mean “helpers” or “assistants”. In the Mossad, the Sayanim are a volunteer network of Jews across the world who are loyal to the nation of Israel and willing to help the agency in their global mission. According to a comparative study of HUMINT in counterterrorism between Israel and France, Amy Kirchheimer writes that Israel has “the challenge of collecting intelligence on a vast array of targets with a comparatively small number of intelligence officers, and the Sayanim network helped the Mossad Katsas (case officers) somewhat lessen this problem.” According to Gordon Thomas in his book Gideon’s Spies: Mossad’s Secret Warriors, the Sayanim were a creation of Mier Amit, the Chief Director of the Mossad from 1963-1968. Thomas writes, “Each Sayan was an example of historical cohesiveness of the world Jewish community. Regardless of allegiance to his or her country, in the final analysis, a Sayan would recognize a greater loyalty: the mystical one to Israel, and a need to help protect it from its enemies”. The loyalty of the Sayanim is what fuels their mission and none reside on a Mossad payroll. The flexibility and diversity in their roles give the Mossad a unique operational capability with increased protection from detection and a way to avoid budget restraints or accountability. Most Sayanim fulfil various roles that can themselves be used to support Mossad operations. For example, Thomas writes, “A car Sayan, running a rental agency, provided a Katsa with a vehicle without the usual documentation. A letting agency Sayan offered accommodation. A bank Sayan might unlock funds outside normal hours. A Sayan physician would give medical assistance – treating a bullet wound for example – without informing the authorities”.
Michael Ellmer
Alice Heath, a student of Richard’s at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of his current teaching assistants, experienced this maxim very clearly when she started working with state child welfare agencies, whose mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect. The children and families they work with face very tough circumstances. Unfortunately, there is often no policy choice that a child welfare agency’s leadership can make that is likely to completely prevent abuse or neglect. “Completely preventing abuse or neglect would likely require draconian measures that would not be good for anyone. The best an agency can do is make the choice that has a higher probability of a better outcome relative to the other choices. Even with the best decisions there will still, sadly, be a high chance that some children suffer abuse and neglect. I have seen state legislators and commentators fail to understand this idea over and over, reading every tragic incident as a decision-making failure rather than the result of a set of choices where the best option is not a good option. As a result, state child welfare directors too often have very short terms and agencies lack stable leadership, which only makes things worse for the children and families who need help.
Dan Levy (Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser)
One of the top assistants to the chairman of the FCC is a former Google employee and another ran a public lobbying firm funded in part by Google. • The director of United States Digital Service, responsible for fixing and maintaining Healthcare.gov, is a former Google employee. • The director of the US Patent and Trademark Office is the former head of patents at Google.
Jonathan Taplin (Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy)
There is a difference between empathy and sympathy and it is an important distinction for those who work in caregiving. Dr. Nicola Davies writes on her website, “Imagine being at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Peer up to the top of the hole and you might see some of your friends and family waiting for you, offering words of support and encouragement. This is sympathy; they want to help you out of the pit you have found yourself in. This can assist, but not as much as the person who is standing beside you; the person who is in that hole with you and can see the world from your perspective; this is empathy.
Caleb Wilde (Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life)
Then one day you find yourself in a boutique of terminal illness, forced to purchase something in order to use the bathroom, and from then on, you have nothing to think about except a catalogue of the instances you took when you could have given. My assistant said, “You are not alone.” “There is no time to update my software,” I snapped at her the next day, from my deathbed. “Who in God’s name cares if my cursor’s disappeared?” “What can I do for you?” she asked. That dreadful refrain. She offered me a cottage, a precious director, a bottomless brunch. The window was open, and the breeze was hot, and the pain was totalizing. “Blamelessness,” I told her. “Doctor my biography.
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
He claimed he was the assistant communications director, but rumor had it he was actually just the communications director’s assistant. In any case, he had graduated from Sciences Po. Everyone knew this because he generally reminded them every ten minutes.
Nicolas Mathieu (Connemara)
At this time, in nineteen thirty-nine, radar aboard Arizona had not yet been introduced, nor had the ship been retrofitted to include two bridge wings that would support twin anti-aircraft directors, above the admiralty bridge. Bruner would eventually be assigned to one of them, to assist in optically measuring target range, bearing and elevation, with his fellow crew mates, for transmission of coordinates down
Edward McGrath (Second to the Last to Leave USS Arizona - SIGNED Copy - Interactive Edition: Memoir of a Sailor - The Lauren F. Bruner Story)
In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction. In the film, one of the heptapods sacrifices its life to save that of Louise and her team members from a bomb planted by some soldiers, even though it clearly knows its fate well in advance. Their race even knows that in 3,000 years, humanity will offer them some needed assistance, and thus their visit is just the beginning of a long relationship of mutual aid in the block universe. At the end of the film, Louise chooses to have her daughter, even knowing that the girl will die.
Eric Wargo (Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious)
With the thirty-foot miniature of Helm’s Deep, complete with the Hornburg keep, Deeping Wall and polystyrene cliffsides recently constructed with Lee’s assistance, Jackson went out and bought 5,000 1/32nd scale plastic soldiers. ‘Sort of Medieval guys with pikes,’ he reports happily, having cleaned out Wellington’s toyshops. A poor soul spent two weeks laboriously gluing them down in groups of twelve to blocks of wood so the director could move formations of Uruk-hai around like Napoleon.
Ian Nathan (Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth)
The battery commander, Captain John W. Powell, had his right arm shot off.45 Udaunted by the loss of his limb, Powell later served with Grant at Vicksburg, and he wound up a major. After the war, the one-armed ex-soldier made the first trip down the turbulent Colorado River as well as many other exploring expeditions. Later he assisted in founding the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, becoming its director in 1879. From 1881-1894, he was Director of the U. S. Geographical Survey. Powell died in 1902, at the age of sixty-eight, one of America’s most respected and esteemed scientists and explorers.
O. Edward Cunningham (Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862)
Much like GM and GE, Kodak had a fair employment policy in place by the 1960s and had laid out is own Plan for Progress, which included a commitment to “hold discussions with the employment interviewers in the various division to remind them: that “such things as race, creed, color, or national origin” are neither to “help nor hinder in getting a job at Kodak.” Yet for blacks trying to work and move up at the company, these assurances didn’t mesh with their own experiences. Some of this was a consequence of blacks being poorly educated, especially those who had relocated to Rochester from the rural South. In the company’s eyes, the simply weren’t qualified. “We don’t grow many peanuts in Eastman Kodak,” Monroe Dill, Kodak’s industrial relations director said in 1963, adding that the company would start to recruit more from all-black colleges so as to not keep “discriminating by omission.” But there was also plenty of discrimination by commission, as individual Kodak managers used their discretion to hire whomever they liked and cast off whomever they didn’t. “They would say it blatant, like, 'We don't have any colored jobs,"" recalled Clarence Ingram, who served as general manager of the Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation, an entity formed after the '64 riots to support minority businesses. "They would tell you that." Apparently, they told a lot of blacks that. In 1964, only about 600 African Americans worked for Kodak in Rochester. less than 2 percent of the 33,000 employees based there. Determined to remedy this was FIGHT, which was led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Florence, the thirty-one-year-old pastor of the Reynolds Street Church of Christ, a stocky, hard-charging, charismatic man, who called Malcolm X a friend. On September 2, 1966, a delegation of sixteen from FIGHT walked into Kodak's executive suite. Florence, sporting a Black Power button in his lapel, said he wanted to see "the top man." Before he knew it, the minister and his retinue were sitting in front of three top men: Kodak chairman Albert Chapman, president William Vaughn, and executive vice president Louis Eilers. Florence told them about the harshness of life in Rochester's black ghetto and said he wanted Kodak to start a training program for people who normally wouldn't be recruited into the company. Florence braced himself, expecting Kodak to resist. But Vaughn listened carefully and then asked Florence to submit a more specific proposal. Two weeks later, he did. Calling FIGHT " the only mass based organization of poor people and near poor people in the Rochester area," Florence requested that Kodak train 500 to 600 men and women over eighteen months. FIGHT also wanted direct involvement in the process; the group would "recruit and counsel trainees and offer advice, consultation, and assistance.
Rick Wartzman (The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America)
Having heard so many stories similar to Mrs. Thomas’s, several years ago I decided to study the needs for ministry in the nursing homes of my region. With the help of a local pastor, we interviewed the administrators, activities directors, and residents of twenty-seven nursing homes. We could have stopped after the first interview. We learned almost nothing new in the remaining twenty-six nursing homes. As soon as we began asking our questions, we found almost instant anger against pastors and local churches. Everywhere we went we heard that, with almost no exception, within a few weeks of admission, no representatives from local churches visited their patients. Were it not for the families’ visits, their patients would have been totally abandoned. Few families truly abandon their loved ones who have entered a nursing home or assisted living facility.
Richard L. Dayringer (Training Guide for Visiting the Sick: More Than a Social Call)
As the saying goes, "It's not who you know, but who knows you." How does that relate to getting a job? Lets look at 2 cases where "who knows you" resulted in landing the best job. Keep in mind: The great thing is that you can start right where you are right now! Case 1 In my first teaching job in Mexico in the early 1980's, we were half way through the semester, when the director called me into his office to tell me he had taken a job in Silicon Valley, California. What he said next floored me. "I'd like you to apply for my job." How could I apply to be the director of an English school when it was my first teaching job, all the teachers had more teaching experience than I did, and many of them had doctorate degrees. I only had a bachelors degree. "Don't worry," he said. "People like you, and I think you have what it takes to be a good director." The director knew me, or at least got to know me from teachers' meetings, seeing me teach, and noticing how I interacted with people. Case 2 Fast forward 3 years. After Mexico, I moved to Reno, Nevada, to work on my Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. I applied for a teaching job at the community college, and half-way into the semester, a teacher had to leave and I got the job. I impressed the director enough that she asked me to be the Testing and Placement Coordinator the next year. At the end of that year, I wrote a final report about the testing and placement program. It so impressed the college administration that when a sister university was looking for a graduate student to head up a new language assessment program for new foreign graduate teaching assistants and International faculty, I got recommended. What Does This Mean? From these two examples, you can see that when people see what you can do, you have a greater chance of being seen and being known. When people see what you are capable of doing, there is less risk in hiring you. Why? Because they've seen you be successful before. Chances are you'll be successful with them, too. But, if people don't know you and haven't seen what you can do, there is much greater risk in hiring you. In fact, you may not even be on their radar screen. Get On Their Radar Screens To get on the radar screens for the best jobs, do the best job you can where you work right now. Don't wait for the job announcement to appear in the newspaper. Don't wait for something else to happen. Right now, invest all of you and your unique talents into what you're doing. Impress people with what you can do! Do that, and see the jobs you'll get!
HASANM21
One incident from Yasuko’s days in the village elementary school was indelibly etched in her memory. She was the head of her class for two or three years in a row, including the time when it happened. Just before graduation the principal asked the pupils how many would go on to attend middle school. Of the twenty pupils from Sunada and Tsukigata only three were able to do so. Those three raised their hands. The other pupils—children of poor tenant farmers, small-time candy store owners, and barkeepers—turned around to look at them, their faces vivid with envy. With everyone’s eyes focused on them the three blushed a little but, as might be expected, they looked proud. Not only was each of the three inferior to Yasuko in grades, they—except for the assistant class leader—were from the bottom half of the class. At that moment Yasuko was assailed by a strange and incomprehensible feeling. She felt she could not bear to explain it away convincingly even within her own heart. Pupils who were much, much worse than she were going on to a higher school! She understood of course that it was because their families had “money,” but understanding alone was not enough to make Yasuko accept it. Similar things had happened a number of times. For instance, when a Hokkaido government director came to inspect their school it was really Yasuko who as head of the class should have delivered the congratulatory address. However, since she did not even have a different kimono to change into, a rich child took her place. The lack of clothes and money also led to her being absent from athletic meets and excursions. But at such times Yasuko, unlike Okei, assumed a scornful expression. She smiled faintly while listening to the rich child read the congratulatory address; and said that only those with nothing better to do wanted to take part in excursions and athletic meets. Unlike Yasuko, Okei often cried at such times, saying it was a terribly cruel and unfair way to treat fellow schoolmates.
Takiji Kobayashi (The Crab Cannery Ship: and Other Novels of Struggle)
Manga represents and extremely unfiltered view of the inner workings of their creator's minds. This is because manga are free of the massive editing and "committee"-style production used in other media like film, magazines and television. Even in American mainstream comics, the norm is to have a stable of artists, letterers, inkers, and scenario writers all under the control of the publisher. In Japan, a single artist might employ many assistants and act as a sort of "director," but he or she is usually at the core of the production process and retains control over the rights to the material created. That artists are not necessarily highly educated and deal frequently in plain subject matter only heightens the sense that manga offer the reader an extremely raw and personal view of the world. Thus, of the more than 2 billion manga produced each year, the vast majority have a dreamlike quality. They speak to people's hope, and fears. They are where stressed-out modern urbanites daily work out their neuroses and their frustrations. Viewed in their totality, the phenomenal number of stories produced is like the constant chatter of the collective unconscious -- and articulation of the dream world. Reading manga is like peering into the unvarnished, unretouched reality of the Japanese mind.
Frederik L. Schodt (Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga)
That same year, Will Smith returned to the big screen after a hiatus, following 2008’s surprise disappointment, Seven Pounds. He starred in a sequel that Sony had been dying to make for many years. Men in Black 3 was a challenging movie to produce with a mature Will Smith. Now used to being the dominant creative force in his productions, he often demanded repeated changes to scripts and never worked with directors who could wield more power than he did. That was fine for Overbrook-led productions, but it became a challenge on the third Men in Black offering, which was made in a rush, to take advantage of New York tax credits. The production was a nightmare. The unhappy Smith holed up in his fifty-three-foot-long trailer, which featured a screening room, offices for assistants, and an all-granite bathroom, while multiple screenwriters reworked the script again and again. The creative conflicts between the star, his producers, and the studio were so severe that production was halted for three months to resolve them. Greenlit with a budget of $210 million, Men in Black 3 ended up costing $250 million and barely broke even.
Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
This job was at a large talent agency, and I worked as the assistant to a junior film agent who, like many people in Hollywood, wasn’t much older than me. Brad represented screenwriters and directors, and he was so boyish-looking, with his smooth cheeks and mop of floppy hair he’d constantly swat from his eyes, that his fancy suits and expensive shoes always seemed too mature for him, like he was wearing his father’s clothing. Technically, my first day on the job was a trial. I’d been told by Gloria in human resources (I never learned her last name; everyone called her “Gloria-in-human-resources”)
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
Mankind unreasonably complain of their nature, that, being weak and short-lived, it is governed by chance rather than intellectual power; for, on the contrary, you will find, upon reflection, that there is nothing more noble or excellent, and that to nature is wanting rather human industry than ability or time. The ruler and director of the life of man is the mind, which, when it pursues glory in the path of true merit, is sufficiently powerful, efficient, and worthy of honor, and needs no assistance from fortune, who can neither bestow integrity, industry, or other good qualities, nor can take them away. But if the mind, ensnared by corrupt passions, abandons itself to indolence and sensuality, when it has indulged for a season in pernicious gratifications, and when bodily strength, time, and mental vigor, have been wasted in sloth, the infirmity of nature is accused, and those who are themselves in fault impute their delinquency to circumstances. If man, however, had as much regard for worthy objects, as he has spirit in the pursuit of what is useless, unprofitable, and even perilous, he would not be governed by circumstances more than he would govern them, and would attain to a point of greatness, at which, instead of being mortal, he would be immortalized by glory.
Sallust (The Jugurthine War / The Conspiracy of Catiline (Penguin Classics))
I smiled. “You mean like a psychic imprint? I know your assistant director of the Preternatural Division, and I mean no disrespect, but I never got the feeling you believed in magic as an investigative tool.' From the book 9 Incarnate - Caitlin Diggs Series
Gary Starta (9 Incarnate (Caitlin Diggs #4))
It is sometimes overlooked that, despite their usually impressive eloquence, generative AI’s outputs quickly devolve into mediocrity and mendacity without human assistance. The need for “humans in the loop” is the technology’s quiet shame. “There’s a lot of human intervention in the operations of these things continuously, much like there is in the case of Google Search,” says Usama Fayyad, director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. “In the case of ChatGPT, sometime the queries are answered by humans. If the algorithm realizes—and this is admirable—hey, I’m in trouble, I need help, a human will jump in and start answering. It’s a mode of intervention that gets turned into training data, and the machine gets better.”30
Joseph E. Aoun (Robot-Proof, revised and updated edition: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)