Attendance Check Quotes

When Ms. Adams took attendance and called out the name of an absent classmate, Noah’s hand shot up. I watched him cautiously. After she finished roll call, Noah stood, completely unself-conscious as heads followed his progress to the front of the room. “Um—” Ms. Adams checked her clipboard. “Ibrahim Hassin?” Noah nodded. I died.

If anyone should talk to her," Renfield piped up, "it should be me. We're the most compatible, culturewise. I'm sure that on top of feeling as if she's been thrust into one of the many levels of Hades, with all of its attendant demons, she feels like a lady wandering, lost, amongst the mannerless cads of the slums." We were all silent for a moment before Tom asked, "You do realize that we're sitting right here, right?" "Oh, I am horribly aware of this fact." "Just checking.

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights,” with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.

A Hard Life With Memory I’m a poor audience for my memory. She wants me to attend her voice nonstop, but I fidget, fuss, listen and don’t, step out, come back, then leave again. She wants all my time and attention. She’s got no problem when I sleep. The day’s a different matter, which upsets her. She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly, stirs up events both important and un-, turns my eyes to overlooked views, peoples them with my dead. In her stories I’m always younger. Which is nice, but why always the same story. Every mirror holds different news for me. She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders. And takes revenge by hauling out old errors, weighty, but easily forgotten. Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction. Then comforts me, it could be worse. She wants me to live only for her and with her. Ideally in a dark, locked room, but my plans still feature today’s sun, clouds in progress, ongoing roads. At times I get fed up with her. I suggest a separation. From now to eternity. Then she smiles at me with pity, since she knows it would be the end of me too.

At least I’m not asking you to go to six o’clock Mass with me in the morning.” “Darling Eve, to get me to do that the amount and variety of the sexual favors required are so many and myriad even my imagination boggles.” “I don’t think you can exchange sexual favors for Mass attendance. But if I decide to go check it out, and I get the chance, I’ll ask the priest.

As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking “Is this new?” and “Is this something I need to attend to?

There is another Brain Principle to go with ‘First Things First’: that of ‘Last Things Too’. This states that, all other things being equal, you will recall more easily the ‘last’ things. Check your own memory banks and see if this principle holds for the following. You will probably recall: � -The last new person you met � -The last time you saw the person you love the most � -The last social event you attended

When you drive, for example, you rely automatically on your previous experiences with cars and roads; if you had to focus on every aspect of what your senses are taking in, you’d be overwhelmed and would probably crash. As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking “Is this new?” and “Is this something I need to attend to?

THE NO CONTACT RULE: 1. Zero contact; face to face & online. 2. No phone calls. 3. No text messaging. 4. No attending events where they're present. 5. No emails. 6. No letters, cards, or gifts. 7. No checking their social media profile. 8. No contacting their family and friends. 9. No combing through old photographs. 10. No going down memory lane. 11. Zero communication.

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable and at the same time dreaded to be just from the pain of obligation were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to town he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise and where he was reduced to meet frequently meet reason with persuade and finally bribe the man whom he always most wished to avoid and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient when required to depend on his affection for her—for a woman who had already refused him—as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for his interference which asked no extraordinary stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been wrong he had liberality and he had the means of exercising it and though she would not place herself as his principal inducement she could perhaps believe that remaining partiality for her might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially concerned. It was painful exceedingly painful to know that they were under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They owed the restoration of Lydia her character every thing to him. Oh how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself she was humbled but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour he had been able to get the better of himself. She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It was hardly enough but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some pleasure though mixed with regret on finding how steadfastly both she and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted between Mr. Darcy and herself.

Many of us go through our days attending to multiple stimuli simultaneously without giving any one thing our full and complete attention. We eat while watching TV and check our email while in the presence of our families. We think about our problems in the middle of a conversation or during an otherwise positive experience. We talk on the phone while driving and choose to distract ourselves from everyday tasks rather than attending to them. We escape the small moments rather than recognizing life is the small moments.

And how is your head? Better?" he asked. "Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved." "Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?" I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender." And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws.... These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.

My very best thinking led me to a therapist’s office weeping and pleading for help regarding my alcoholism at the age of 19. I thought I could ‘manage’ my alcohol addiction, and I failed miserably until I asked for help. My older friends in recovery remind me that I looked like ‘death’ when I started attending support groups. I was not able to give eye contact, and I covered my eyes with a baseball cap. I had lost significant weight and was frightened to talk to strangers. I was beset with what the programme of Alcoholics Anonymous describes as ‘the hideous Four Horseman – terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair’. Similarly, my very best thinking led me to have unhappy, co-dependent relationships. I can go on. The problem was I was dependent on my own counsel. I did not have a support system, let alone a group of sober people to brainstorm with. I just followed my own thinking without getting feedback. The first lesson I learned in recovery was that I needed to check in with sober and wiser people than me regarding my thinking. I still need to do this today. I need feedback from my support system.

23 January On the way home, a visit - forced - to Dean Street Tesco. What a dump this chain is. Reduced their staff as much possible in favour of shoppers checking their own food out, cabinets missing items, one variety of fruit and a 15 minute wait for one of the few attendants to go get a bottle of vodka. A must to avoid. A sort of shopping equivalent of our shoddy government.

Surgeons, as a group, adhere to a curious egalitarianism. They believe in practice, not talent. People often assume that you have to have great hands to become a surgeon, but it’s not true. When I interviewed to get into surgery programs, no one made me sew or take a dexterity test or checked if my hands were steady. You do not even need all ten fingers to be accepted. To be sure, talent helps. Professors say every two or three years they’ll see someone truly gifted come through a program—someone who picks up complex manual skills unusually quickly, sees the operative field as a whole, notices trouble before it happens. Nonetheless, attending surgeons say that what’s most important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious, and boneheaded enough to stick at practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end. As one professor of surgery put it to me, given a choice between a Ph.D. who had painstakingly cloned a gene and a talented sculptor, he’d pick the Ph.D. every time. Sure, he said, he’d bet on the sculptor being more physically talented; but he’d bet on the Ph.D. being less “flaky.” And in the end that matters more. Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot.

Ferris had nearly gotten it right. In that single day 713,646 people had paid to enter Jackson Park. (Only 31,059—four percent—were children.) Another 37,380 visitors had entered using passes, bringing the total admission for the day to 751,026, more people than had attended any single day of any peaceable event in history. The Tribune argued that the only greater gathering was the massing of Xerxes’ army of over five million souls in the fifth century B.C. The Paris record of 397,000 had indeed been shattered. When the news reached Burnham’s shanty, there were cheers and champagne and stories through the night. But the best news came the next day, when officials of the World’s Columbian Exposition Company, whose boasts had been ridiculed far and wide, presented a check for $ 1.5 million to the Illinois Trust and Savings Company and thereby extinguished the last of the exposition’s debts. The Windy City had prevailed.

A piece of plastic stole an entire species— In lobbies, in the bathroom, in an elevator, Ideas, reactions, and silent contemplations, During lunchtime, during mass, during his funeral, On the street, on break, on duty, Before the waiter brings the food and after the check, While the flight attendant bothers to request airplane mode, While a trafficked victim speaks to you in code, While the potential love of our life just walked past, While mother cooks with a recipe we forgot to ask.

In the meantime, I need you to return to your session, Mr. Sencen. I realize elvin history isn’t your favorite subject, but it’s crucial that you attend, both for a better understanding of our world, and to prove you’re committed to your education.” Keefe snorted. “We all know that’s not true.” Magnate Leto ignored him. “I’ve spoken to Lady Sanja, and she’ll have an exam ready for you when you arrive, covering the lectures you’ve missed recently.” “Please, like I need to be tested.” Keefe tapped the side of his head. “I skimmed through the reading material on the first day. Photographic memories are so handy that way.” “I’m glad to hear it. But it won’t help you with the notes I expect you to take during the lecture Lady Sanja will give once you’ve completed the exam. I’ll be checking them in this afternoon’s study hall.” “Aw, come on, Leto,” Ro whined. “I can’t take another speech on how the world would be lost if you guys hadn’t started bossing everyone around. I swear, for such a scrawny species, your egos are out of control!

I. Getting the Text in View A. Select the text B. Reconsider where the text begins and ends C. Establish a reliable translation of the text  II. Getting Introduced to the Text D. Read the text for basic understanding E. Place the text in its larger context III. Attending to the Text F. Listen attentively to the text IV. Testing What Is Heard in the Text G. Explore the text historically H. Explore the literary character of the text  I. Explore the text theologically  J. Check the text in the commentaries  V. Moving toward the Sermon K. State the claim of the text upon the hearers (including the preacher) A

It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend received opinions. When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole frame of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner, from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvelous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated from human nature.

ACTIVE LISTENING OBVIOUSLY REQUIRES THE RECEIVER TO SUSPEND HIS OWN THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS IN ORDER TO ATTEND EXCLUSIVELY TO THE MESSAGE OF THE CHILD. IT FORCES ACCURATE RECEIVING; IF THE PARENT IS TO UNDERSTAND THE MESSAGE IN TERMS OF THE CHILD’S MEANING, HE MUST PUT HIMSELF INTO THE CHILD’S SHOES (INTO HIS FRAME OF REFERENCE, INTO HIS WORLD OF REALITY), AND HE CAN THEN HEAR THE MEANING INTENDED BY THE SENDER. THE “FEEDBACK” PART OF ACTIVE LISTENING IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE PARENT’S ULTIMATE CHECK ON THE ACCURACY OF HIS LISTENING, ALTHOUGH IT ALSO ASSURES THE SENDER (CHILD) THAT HE HAS BEEN UNDERSTOOD WHEN HE HEARS HIS OWN “MESSAGE” FED BACK TO HIM ACCURATELY.

The ambulance arrived when the police cars did. They were accompanied by a man in a black suit who had the look of a federal agent. It didn’t surprise Cecily that he went right up to Tate and drew him to one side. While Cecily was being checked over by a paramedic, Gabrini, who’d already been loaded onto a gurney, was being watched by two police officers. Tate came back to Cecily while the federal agent paused by the police officers. “You can take him to the hospital to have his ribs strapped,” the man told the ambulance attendant. “But we’ll have transport for him to New Jersey with two federal marshals.” “Marshals!” Gabrini exclaimed, holding his side, because the outburst had hurt. “Marshals,” the federal agent replied. There was something menacing about the smile that accompanied the words. “It seems that you’re wanted in Jersey for much more serious crimes than breaking an entering and assault with a deadly weapon, Mr. Gabrini.” “Not in Jersey,” Gabrini began. “No, those other charges, they’re in D.C.” “You’ll get to D.C. eventually,” the federal agent murmured, then the dark man smiled. And Gabrini knew at once that he wasn’t connected in any way at all to the government. Gabrini was suddenly yelling his head off, begging for federal protection, but nobody paid him much attention. He was carried off in the ambulance with the sedan following close behind.

You ever read about the first black person to do so and so or hold such and such a job? I know I have. Here’s the first black head football coach in the NFL. Here’s the first black owner in the NFL. Here’s the first black editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Here’s the first black person to attend Harvard, the first black valedictorian at Princeton. Here’s the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. Now think of when you’ve ever heard about the first white person to do something significant. I can’t remember one time reading, “Check it out, finally a white person’s done this!” And you know why? Because white people have had a lock on significance since before this country was even a country.

Our conscious memory is full of gaps, of course, which is actually a good thing. Our brains filter out the ordinary and expected, which is utterly necessary to allow us to function. When you drive, for example, you rely automatically on your previous experiences with cars and roads; if you had to focus on every aspect of what your senses are taking in, you’d be overwhelmed and would probably crash. As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking “Is this new?” and “Is this something I need to attend to?” So as you move down the road, your brain’s motor vestibular system is telling you that you are in a certain position. But your brain is probably not making new memories about that. Your brain has stored in it previous sitting experiences in cars, and the pattern of neural activity associated with that doesn’t need to change. There’s nothing new. You’ve been there, done that, it’s familiar. This is also why you can drive over large stretches of familiar highways without remembering almost anything at all that you did during the drive. This is important because all of that previously stored experience has laid down the neural networks, the memory “template,” that you now use to make sense out of any new incoming information. These templates are formed throughout the brain at many different levels, and because information comes in first to the lower, more primitive areas, many are not even accessible to conscious awareness.

Homework _Yes _No 1. Did you make a serious effort to understand the text? (Just hunting for relevant worked-out examples doesn’t count.) _Yes _No 2. Did you work with classmates on homework problems, or at least check your solutions with others? _Yes _No 3. Did you attempt to outline every homework problem solution before working with classmates? Test Preparation The more “Yes” responses you recorded, the better your preparation for the test. If you recorded two or more “No” responses, think seriously about making some changes in how you prepare for the next test. _Yes _No 4. Did you participate actively in homework group discussions (contributing ideas, asking questions)? _Yes _No 5. Did you consult with the instructor or teaching assistants when you were having trouble with something? _Yes _No 6. Did you understand ALL of your homework problem solutions when they were handed in? _Yes _No 7. Did you ask in class for explanations of homework problem solutions that weren’t clear to you? _Yes _No 8. If you had a study guide, did you carefully go through it before the test and convince yourself that you could do everything on it? _Yes _No 9. Did you attempt to outline lots of problem solutions quickly, without spending time on the algebra and calculations? _Yes _No 10. Did you go over the study guide and problems with classmates and quiz one another? _Yes _No 11. If there was a review session before the test, did you attend it and ask questions about anything you weren’t sure about? _Yes _No 12. Did you get a reasonable night’s sleep before the test? (If your answer is no, your answers to 1–11 may not matter.) _Yes _No TOTAL

As we prepared for sleep that night I noticed that Lisa was staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as young now as the day I met her, no grey upon her jet black hair, face always pale, she rarely sun bathed, dark glittering eyes and finally pearly white teeth. What a woman, always passionate about her affairs and always interested in my work. Shame her family could not attend our wedding. I suppose that is the hazard of marrying a Slav, either the family is dead, scattered or too poor to fly to England. Still it was a happy wedding, a quiet one with a few friends from work. Lisa crawled into bed beside me; her body, always cold, quickly warmed to my touch. Why are women always cold when they first get into bed? We kissed for what seemed an age, caressing each other’s bodies until at last she pushed me onto my back, straddled me and smiled looking down into my eyes. She licked her lips and slowly leant forward. The next morning I checked my neck for any tell-tale signs of our love making. Again Lisa had bitten every inch of my body and left not a mark. I smiled down at her sleeping form, kissed her cheek and went to my study. I had term papers to mark and research for my next set of lectures. Lisa came into my study just after lunch. For a woman just out of bed she looked remarkably well, her hair was untangled, her cheeks full in bloom, there were no signs of tiredness in her eyes at all. I smiled at her as we kissed, then she told me of the theme for the dinner party. Eleven guests as usual and each one would have to be very special. I left her to set up the invitations and planning. This was going to be the Last supper revisited it seemed.

When this story goes out into the world, I may become the most famous hermaphrodite in history. There have been others before me. Alexina Barbin attended a girls’ boarding school in France before becoming Abel. She left behind an autobiography, which Michel Foucault discovered in the archives of the French Department of Public Hygiene. (Her memoirs, which end shortly before her suicide, make unsatisfactory reading, and it was after finishing them years ago that I first got the idea to write my own.) Gottlieb Göttlich, born in 1798, lived as Marie Rosine until the age of thirty-three. One day abdominal pains sent Marie to the doctor. The physician checked for a hernia and found undescended testicles instead. From then on, Marie donned men’s clothes, took the name of Gottlieb, and made a fortune traveling around Europe, exhibiting himself to medical men.

As for the Chupwalas, all of whom belonged to the Union of the Zipped Lips, and were the Cultmaster’s most devoted servants—well, Haroun kept being struck by how ordinary they were, and how monotonous was the work they had been given. There were hundreds of them in their Zipped Lips cloaks and hoods, attending to the tanks and cranes on the deck, performing a series of mindless, routine jobs: checking dials, tightening joints, switching the tanks’ stirring mechanisms on and off again, swabbing the decks. It was all as boring as could be; and yet—as Haroun kept having to remind himself—what these scurrying, cloaked, weaselly, scrawny, snivelling clerical types were actually up to was nothing less than the destruction of the Ocean of the Streams of Story itself! ‘How weird,’ Haroun said to Iff, ‘that the worst things of all can look so normal and, well, dull.

The second was in her late teens or early twenties, and therefore too callow to advise me. The third, in the manner of Goldilocks, was just right—around my age, well groomed, sensible-looking. I approached with caution. “Excuse me, I wonder if I could possibly ask for your assistance?” I said. She stopped folding sweaters and turned to me, smiling insincerely. “I’m attending a concert at a fashionable venue, and I wondered if you might assist me with the selection of an appropriate ensemble?” Her smile broadened and looked more genuine. “Well, we do offer a personal shopper service,” she said. “I could make you an appointment, if you like?” “Oh no,” I said, “it’s for this evening. I really do need something right now, I’m afraid.” She looked me up and down. “Where is it that you’re going?” “The Cuttings,” I said proudly. She stuck out her bottom lip, nodded once, slowly. “What are you, a twelve?” I nodded, impressed that she had been able to size me up so accurately by sight alone. She checked her watch.

I had grown weary of so many rules. That's the thing about every discipline. There's often a format, a belief that if you don't follow the structure to the tiniest detail, you won't get the maximum value: mantras are private. Om is the most perfect sound in the universe. Never lay a sacred text to chant on the floor. If you are in a seminar, always wear a name tag. Put your name in the upper right hand corner of every essay. Just breathe. No, scream. No, cry or hit something. But don't lose yourself. Never do yoga on the full moon. Walk clockwise around a temple. Don't eat protein and starch in the same meal. Always begin the day with fruit. Don't eat any fruit. Never utter the word of G_d. There is no God. There are multiple gods. To be a good acupuncturist, "check your stuff" at the door. Bring all of you. Never do work on the Sabbath. Don't cary anything in your pockets. Consciousness is constant work. Accept Jesus. Read the Bible. There is no suffering. Acknowledge suffering as a noble truth. Tread lightly on the Earth. Leave no trace. Make your mark. Get noticed. Travel silently through life. Attend to the needs of others. Follow your bliss. Suppress. Express. Withhold. Let go. Let it in. Get off the grid. Join the marketplace. Go toward the light. Hadn't I heard enough?

If ... we hear ourselves speaking words that convey attunement to the process unfolding in this moment--a felt sense of receiving, cultivating, believing, supporting and trusting--we are more apt to be attending from the right with support from the left. This way of experiencing may also be coupled with attention to felt sense, comfort with being rather than pressure to do, and a respect for the undulating rise and fall of healing that unfolds naturally in the space between. When we are in this mode, we have a tendency to speak more tentatively and to check in with our relational partner about how he or she is receiving what we are offering. This past part is particularly important because it reflects our growing felt-sense awareness that the system of the person we are helping knows more about what needs to happen next than we do. In addition to the humility and respect this engenders, we may also notice that instead of wanting to get rid of some state, we are more apt to acknowledge its meaningfulness and be present to it just as it is. Listening in this way, the so-called negative state may reveal itself as telling an important truth and become an opening toward healing. We may also be aware of the limitation and incompleteness of words, leading us to honor silence as well.

Some members of the Church seem to compartmentalize the restored gospel into a lengthy list of things to do—as separate and unrelated “applications” to be accomplished and checked off. Daily scripture study—check. Personal and family prayer—check. Tithing—check. Family home evening—check. Temple attendance—check. Home and visiting teaching—check. But the purification, the joy, the happiness, the continuing conversion, and the spiritual power and protection that come from “yielding [our] hearts unto God” (Helaman 3:35) cannot be obtained merely by performing and checking off all of the gospel things we are supposed to do. Consistently completing the various tasks without experiencing the mighty change of heart and becoming more devoted disciples will not produce the spiritual strength we need to withstand the evils and opposition of the latter days. Rather, the power of the Savior’s gospel to bless and guide us comes from the connectedness and interrelatedness of its doctrines, principles, and practices. Only as we gather together in one all things in Christ can we diligently strive to become what God desires us to become (see Matthew 5:48; 3 Nephi 12:48). And the framework of doctrines, principles, and applications is a tool that can help us investigate and learn about the interrelatedness of gospel truths and practices

and the two of you started dating… he proposed on New Year’s Eve and you married in April of the following year.’ I nod, twisting the wedding ring on my finger. ‘And, just to confirm, you had no suspicion that he was anyone other than Dominic Stephen Gill?’ I think back to the little anomalies. The tiny signs that I was only too happy to ignore. ‘No, not at all,’ I say. ‘I’d be more than happy to take a lie detector test to that effect.’ For Christ sake, why did you say that? I ask myself. What do you think this is, an episode of Law and Order? DS Sutherland’s sorrowful expression returns, as he closes the cover of the file. ‘That won’t be necessary, Ms Palmer.’ April arrives, with its cloud of blossom and canopy of acid-bright greenery. I sign the documents selling my interest in Comida Catering Ltd and bank a substantial sum of money. I attend my first antenatal ultrasound appointment as Alice Palmer, having first removed the rings from my left hand and shoved them into the back of a drawer. And I receive a Metropolitan Police compliment slip, with three handwritten words Please See Attached. The attached is a formal document, a ‘Recorded Crime Outcome’, confirming that there would be sufficient evidence to charge the individual using the alias Ben MacAlister with the murder of Dominic Stephen Gill, if said individual were still alive. A check of the envelope reveals nothing more. I take out my phone and

In The Descent of Man, Darwin says: With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. This is pure Malthus. So is the demurral: “[We could not] check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature … We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind…” None of this is abstract or general or innocent of political history or implication. The Descent of Man (1871) is a late work which seems to be largely ignored by Darwinists now.

The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and it consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence evokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality. Accordingly the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of the understanding , the sublime as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason, Hence, the delight is in the former case coupled with the representation of quality, but in this case with that of quantity. Moreover, the former delight is very different from the latter in kind. For the beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and thus is compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arrises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check of the vital forces followed all at once by discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no play, but a serious matter of the imagination. Hence charms are also incompatible with it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the object, but is also alternately repelled thereby, the delight in the sublime does not show how much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect, i.e. merits the name of a negative pleasure.

Usually, these services went something like this: an aggressive message on why going to hell would be like putting your face in the fire while listening to AC/DC, and that the solution to hell is to “ask Jesus into your heart.” In this paradigm, Jesus becomes the ticket out of a bad situation, and all that’s required to get your free pass is to “repeat this simple prayer after me.” And, poof…you’re “saved” and now a fully vetted Jesus follower. American Christianity has been poorly marketing Jesus in this way for years. The deep, mysterious, and beautifully difficult message of Jesus becomes diluted to the point that we sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus” or “All to Jesus I Surrender” as we make our way up the aisle—thinking that following Jesus is actually that simple. What’s worse is that often our motivation for “asking Jesus into our hearts” is that we’re petrified of the myriad of ways that Jesus will have us tortured for eternity if we don’t properly pray the “sinner’s prayer” to show him that we love him back. From that night forward, we’re supposed to faithfully attend a “Bible-believing church” and destroy our Guns n’ Roses CDs in order to show that we actually meant it when we prayed it. In American Christianity, we’re often sold this bill of goods that makes following Jesus look relatively easy…as if it were a singular event instead of a radical new lifestyle. Said the magic prayer? Check. Willing to go to church? Check. Going to work really hard to cut back on how much I use the “F word”? Check. The rewards of following this simple, relatively easy checklist of what it means to follow Jesus supposedly has a huge payout. Not only do we get to claim our “get out of hell free” card, but

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. —2 Corinthians 5:6–7 (NIV) I was clicking though my usual Monday morning e-mail glut when I noticed in the reflection of the monitor that I’d missed a spot shaving. Now I was beating myself up about being so careless and felt like the Wolfman himself, transmogrifying from human to beast. I recalled that somewhere deep in the recesses of one of my drawers was a razor. A second later I was ransacking my desk in search of it. That’s when Carlos walked in, a gentleman who shows up once a week with his watering can to check on our office foliage. “What are you looking for?” he asked. “Nothing, really,” I muttered. “You are looking awfully hard for nothing,” he said. His watering can gurgled as he attended to one of my philodendrons. “I’m trying to find a razor. I missed a spot shaving this morning.” “Stubble is fashionable on men these days,” he said. “I look like the Wolfman.” “Maybe people will appreciate what a good job you did on the rest of your face.” I turned from my rummaging and shot Carlos a look. He was laughing, his face crinkled up with mirth. All of a sudden I was laughing too. “Don’t take yourself so seriously, Mr. Edward. It’s only Monday. You have the whole week ahead of you!” Then Carlos and his watering can were off to the next office. He was right: A whole week lay ahead—a good week, if I wanted it to be. Lord, it’s me again, Mr. Edward. Thank You for Carlos and beard stubble and gurgling watering cans and thirsty philodendrons and all the other stray blessings You bestow upon this too often insecure soul. —Edward Grinnan Digging Deeper: Ps 118:24; Mt 6:11

It’s not like I wasn’t busy. I was an officer in good standing of my kids’ PTA. I owned a car that put my comfort ahead of the health and future of the planet. I had an IRA and a 401(k) and I went on vacations and swam with dolphins and taught my kids to ski. I contributed to the school’s annual fund. I flossed twice a day; I saw a dentist twice a year. I got Pap smears and had my moles checked. I read books about oppressed minorities with my book club. I did physical therapy for an old knee injury, forgoing the other things I’d like to do to ensure I didn’t end up with a repeat injury. I made breakfast. I went on endless moms’ nights out, where I put on tight jeans and trendy blouses and high heels like it mattered and went to the restaurant that was right next to the restaurant we went to with our families. (There were no dads’ nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.) I took polls on whether the Y or the JCC had better swimming lessons. I signed up for soccer leagues in time for the season cutoff, which was months before you’d even think of enrolling a child in soccer, and then organized their attendant carpools. I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

Yes,” Andy said. “But I’ll be hiring a lawyer, you know.” “What in God’s name for?” “I think we can put it together,” Andy said. “With Tommy Williams and with my testimony and corroborative testimony from records and employees at the country club, I think we can put it together.” “Tommy Williams is no longer an inmate of this facility.” “What?” “He’s been transferred.” “Transferred where?” “Cashman.” At that, Andy fell silent. He was an intelligent man, but it would have taken an extraordinarily stupid man not to smell deal all over that. Cashman was a minimum-security prison far up north in Aroostook County. The inmates pick a lot of potatoes, and that’s hard work, but they are paid a decent wage for their labor and they can attend classes at CVI, a pretty decent vocational-technical institute, if they so desire. More important to a fellow like Tommy, a fellow with a young wife and a child, Cashman had a furlough program . . . which meant a chance to live like a normal man, at least on the weekends. A chance to build a model plane with his kid, have sex with his wife, maybe go on a picnic. Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy’s nose with only one string attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now, not ever. Or you’ll end up doing hard time in Thomaston down there on scenic Route 1 with the real hard guys, and instead of having sex with your wife you’ll be having it with some old bull queer. “But why?” Andy said. “Why would—” “As a favor to you,” Norton said calmly, “I checked with Rhode Island. They did have an inmate named Elwood Blatch. He was given what they call a PP—provisional parole, another one of these crazy liberal programs to put criminals out on the streets. He’s since disappeared.” Andy said: “The warden down there . . . is he a friend of yours?” Sam Norton gave Andy a smile as cold as a deacon’s watchchain. “We are acquainted,” he said.

Except then a local high school journalism class decided to investigate the story. Not having attended Columbia Journalism School, the young scribes were unaware of the prohibition on committing journalism that reflects poorly on Third World immigrants. Thanks to the teenagers’ reporting, it was discovered that Reddy had become a multimillionaire by using H-1B visas to bring in slave labor from his native India. Dozens of Indian slaves were working in his buildings and at his restaurant. Apparently, some of those “brainy” high-tech workers America so desperately needs include busboys and janitors. And concubines. The pubescent girls Reddy brought in on H-1B visas were not his nieces: They were his concubines, purchased from their parents in India when they were twelve years old. The sixty-four-year-old Reddy flew the girls to America so he could have sex with them—often several of them at once. (We can only hope this is not why Mark Zuckerberg is so keen on H-1B visas.) The third roommate—the crying girl—had escaped the carbon monoxide poisoning only because she had been at Reddy’s house having sex with him, which, judging by the looks of him, might be worse than death. As soon as a translator other than Reddy was found, she admitted that “the primary purpose for her to enter the U.S. was to continue to have sex with Reddy.” The day her roommates arrived from India, she was forced to watch as the old, balding immigrant had sex with both underage girls at once.3 She also said her dead roommate had been pregnant with Reddy’s child. That could not be confirmed by the court because Reddy had already cremated the girl, in the Hindu tradition—even though her parents were Christian. In all, Reddy had brought seven underage girls to the United States for sex—smuggled in by his brother and sister-in-law, who lied to immigration authorities by posing as the girls’ parents.4 Reddy’s “high-tech” workers were just doing the slavery Americans won’t do. No really—we’ve tried getting American slaves! We’ve advertised for slaves at all the local high schools and didn’t get a single taker. We even posted flyers at the grade schools, asking for prepubescent girls to have sex with Reddy. Nothing. Not even on Craigslist. Reddy’s slaves and concubines were considered “untouchables” in India, treated as “subhuman”—“so low that they are not even considered part of Hinduism’s caste system,” as the Los Angeles Times explained. To put it in layman’s terms, in India they’re considered lower than a Kardashian. According to the Indian American magazine India Currents: “Modern slavery is on display every day in India: children forced to beg, young girls recruited into brothels, and men in debt bondage toiling away in agricultural fields.” More than half of the estimated 20.9 million slaves worldwide live in Asia.5 Thanks to American immigration policies, slavery is making a comeback in the United States! A San Francisco couple “active in the Indian community” bought a slave from a New Delhi recruiter to clean house for them, took away her passport when she arrived, and refused to let her call her family or leave their home.6 In New York, Indian immigrants Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani were convicted in 2006 of bringing in two Indonesian illegal aliens as slaves to be domestics in their Long Island, New York, home.7 In addition to helping reintroduce slavery to America, Reddy sends millions of dollars out of the country in order to build monuments to himself in India. “The more money Reddy made in the States,” the Los Angeles Times chirped, “the more good he seemed to do in his hometown.” That’s great for India, but what is America getting out of this model immigrant? Slavery: Check. Sickening caste system: Check. Purchasing twelve-year-old girls for sex: Check. Draining millions of dollars from the American economy: Check. Smuggling half-dead sex slaves out of his slums in rolled-up carpets right under the nose of the Berkeley police: Priceless.

Writing about the circulation of information, Berardi makes a distinction that’s especially helpful here, between what he calls connectivity and sensitivity. Connectivity is the rapid circulation of information among compatible units—an example would be an article racking up a bunch of shares very quickly and unthinkingly by like-minded people on Facebook. With connectivity, you either are or are not compatible. Red or blue: check the box. In this transmission of information, the units don’t change, nor does the information. Sensitivity, in contrast, involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous—and this meeting, this sensing, requires and takes place in time. Not only that, due to the effort of sensing, the two entities might come away from the encounter a bit different than they went in. Thinking about sensitivity reminds me of a monthlong artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other—that wasn’t the point—but we listened to each other, and we did each come away different, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position. So connectivity is a share or, conversely, a trigger; sensitivity is an in-person conversation, whether pleasant or difficult, or both. Obviously, online platforms favor connectivity, not simply by virtue of being online, but also arguably for profit, since the difference between connectivity and sensitivity is time, and time is money. Again, too expensive. As the body disappears, so does our ability to empathize.

MATHEMATICAL MIRACLE Some years ago, I heard a story which has been making the rounds in Midwest A.A. circles for years. I don’t have any names to back up this story, but I have heard it from many sources, and the circumstances sound believable. A man in a small Wisconsin city had been on the program for about three years and had enjoyed contented sobriety through that period. Then bad luck began to hit him in bunches. The firm for which he had worked for some fifteen years was sold; his particular job was phased out of existence, and the plant moved to another city. For several months, he struggled along at odd jobs while looking for a company that needed his specialized experience. Then another blow hit him. His wife was forced to enter a hospital for major surgery, and his company insurance had expired. At this point he cracked, and decided to go on an all-out binge. He didn’t want to stage this in the small city, where everyone knew his sobriety record. So he went to Chicago, checked in at a North Side hotel, and set forth on his project. It was Friday night, and the bars were filled with a swinging crowd. But he was in no mood for swinging—he just wanted to get quietly, miserably drunk. Finally, he found a basement bar on a quiet side street, practically deserted. He sat down on a bar stool and ordered a double bourbon on the rocks. The bartender said, “Yes, sir,” and reached for a bottle. Then the bartender stopped in his tracks, took a long, hard look at the customer, leaned over the bar, and said in a low tone, “I was in Milwaukee about four months ago, and one night I attended an open meeting. You were on the speaking platform, and you gave one of the finest A.A. talks I ever heard.” The bartender turned and walked to the end of the bar. For a few minutes, the customer sat there—probably in a state of shock. Then he picked his money off the bar with trembling hands and walked out, all desire for a drink drained out of him. It is estimated that there are about 8,000 saloons in Chicago, employing some 25,000 bartenders. This man had entered the one saloon in 8,000 where he would encounter the one man in 25,000 who knew that he was a member of A.A. and didn’t belong there. Chicago, Illinois

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

It is good to be connected to family and friends, but when we cannot resist the urge to check updates or upload a photo, we are veering toward idolatry. Idols serve our needs according to our schedule. When we call, they answer. They give us a false sense of being in control. But over time, the relationship reverses. We end up attending to their needs, centering our lives on their priorities and agendas.

Back in the days, PMS were pretty much just that: fancy versions of excel spreadsheets: you used them to assign rooms, print attendants’ sheets or, best case scenario, manage guest invoicing. Today, on the other hand, PMS are required to manage a multitude of tasks, and they have to flawlessly integrate with a multitude of third-party apps and software: channel managers, booking engines, CRM, Yield Management tools, MICE planning software, self-check-in apps, reputation management systems… Well, you get the idea.

It was that Madame was the one who found schools for the children, wrote the rent check, shopped for groceries, cooked the meals, washed the dishes, cleaned the bathrooms, found a church—in short, undertook all the menial tasks of household drudgery that, for her entire cocooned existence, someone else had managed. She attended to these tasks with a grim grace, in short order becoming the house’s resident dictator, the General merely a figurehead who occasionally bellowed at his children like one of those dusty lions in the zoo undergoing a midlife crisis. They lived in this fashion for most of the year before the credit line of her patience finally reached its limit.

Now, when I read back through my journals of those rocky times, I wonder why my family didn’t just put me in a strait- jacket and check me into someplace called Sunnydale or Happy Hills. Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. What’s especially peculiar to me as I think back on this time in my life is the fact that I never stopped to realize my depression and frustration might stem from a spiritual problem. I’ve told you before I’ve been a Christian almost my entire life. I’d studied the Bible and attended church and all those other things good Christians do. But none of it seemed to matter anymore.

Prologue               It started with rain. A torrential downpour that began around midnight and waged throughout the next day. Occasionally it would ease off for a few minutes, only to come back even stronger.               Step two was the temperature drop. Rapid and even, it took only a matter of hours for the mercury to dip below freezing. Once it did, the rain gave way to heavy, wet snowflakes.               Dr. Hardy Nicks stood just outside the front door of the Vanderbilt Medical Center. He checked his watch repeatedly while hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, hoping to stay warm. A plume of vapor extended from of his mouth, each breath hanging like a cloud in front of him.               As an attending surgeon at the center, Hardy had been on the floor for twenty hours straight. Enormous bags hung beneath each eye and his thinning hair was plastered to his head from being smashed beneath a surgical cap. He hadn't bothered to change out of the light blue scrubs he'd been wearing all day, the shapeless togs doing little to hide his slight frame.               An airlock released behind him.

Anxiety does not exist to control you. You exist to control it. It is, as I said, a simple fact of life that can be managed. In fact, used properly, it can actually give you an extra boost by heightening your energy and awareness. If you have social anxiety about such things as giving a presentation, speaking up at a meeting, attending a social gathering, initiating plans, developing intimacy in friendships and dating, then learning to manage your anxiety will help. This book will teach you how to channel your anxiety—not how to eliminate it. The twelve chapters delineate a five-step program that essentially works like this: Step I: Identify your anxiety symptoms and recognize the ways in which they interfere with your life. Your social fears prevent you from doing things you would like to do (pursue friendships, date, achieve career success). Pinpointing your stress responses and noting what causes them give you the information you need to move on to Step 2. Step 2: Set short- and long-term social goals. Having identified the situations you have trouble confronting, you can identify immediate goals to work toward, and start to form a vision of your ideal social self. Goal-setting is a valuable way of letting your imagination offer a reward for your hard work. Next, you will begin to learn skills that can make your dream a reality. Step 3: Learn stress management and self-awareness. The techniques outlined in this book will allow you to control your anxiety response and tune in to your own desires and strong points, giving you more to share as you become more comfortable interacting. With your anxiety in check and your self-awareness guiding you toward fulfillment, anxiety becomes positive energy and will be the base of your self-empowerment. Now you are ready to polish your social skills. Step 4: Learn or refine social skills. Your fear has diminished, making it possible to refine social skills and enhance your interactive productivity, which will make the difference between social success and failure. Good conversation, active listening, an awareness of what behavior is appropriate—all of these skills will add to your overall social ability and self-empowerment. Step 5: Expand and refine your social network. At this point, you are ready to roll. You understand your anxiety, your stress is manageable, and you have learned the finer points of interacting in a positive, productive manner. The final step is to use your community’s resources to create, expand, or refine your social network to best meet your interactive goals. No matter who you are, you can improve your social network to better suit your needs. From here, anything is possible!

When your social anxiety becomes so great that you have to avoid the specific situation that causes it, you are dealing with a social phobia. In movies and on television, in both serious and comical contexts, we have heard of many phobias: fear of heights, fear of trains, fear of bridges, fear of crowds. And this, according to the Journal of Psychiatry, is the decade of social phobia. What is social phobia? As we discussed earlier, social phobia is essentially performance anxiety. Here is how the DSMII-R defines it: “The essential feature is a persistent irrational fear and compelling desire to avoid situations in which the individual may be exposed to scrutiny by others.” In other words, the avoidance typical of social anxiety sufferers becomes so extreme that it overshadows any desire to participate in the situation. The fear of being scrutinized by others includes not only the evaluation of the performance but also a fear that anxiety symptoms will become obvious. Obsessive thought patterns (“They can tell I’m nervous,” “They can see I’m sweating”) are common, along with the actual physical symptoms. Both mental and physical symptoms become as stressful as the situation itself. “There is also fear that the individual will behave in a manner that will be humiliating or embarrassing.” Again, the individual is preoccupied with fear of failure or performance anxiety. “Marked anticipatory anxiety occurs if the individual is confronted with the necessity of entering into such a situation.” Even the thought of being evaluated causes the social phobic reaction, so ingrained is the anxiety response. Where social phobia exists, there is a pronounced inhibition of interaction on all levels. The individual is so preoccupied by fear of symptoms and by finding a way of avoiding the situation that he cannot successfully interact. Some specific social phobias are included here: -Fear of public speaking -Fear of participating in a group presentation -Fear of eating in a restaurant -Fear of raising a hand to talk in class -Fear of writing a check in front of someone -Fear of using a public bathroom -Fear of dating -Fear of participating in an activity with other people -Fear of attending public events Think of social phobia as extreme performance anxiety about a specific act, such as those listed above. Where there is any chance of being evaluated by others in the situation he fears, the social phobic will experience extreme anxiety and will do all he can to avoid the situation.

Furthermore, the managerial ethos of parliamentary reformism is in direct tension with important values associated with the dialogue that attends our system of checks and balances. The term "parliamentary reform" should not be allowed to cloud the fact that the critics advance a highly pro-executive position that would seek a strong government primarily by undercutting the independence of Congress.

Privilege theory offers the liberal multicultural subject a phantasmatic reality. It gives that subject the tools to name society’s bad apples: they are easily discernable; they are those who don’t check their privilege, blind to the social and cultural power that they undeservedly enjoy. And if privilege theory calls on you to curtail the pleasures of your own privilege, to willingly renounce your culturally given claims on the world, you are rewarded with “libidinal profit,” with what Lacan calls a “surplus-enjoyment,” an enjoyment-in-sacrifice or enjoyment-inconfession. Suffering—the feeling of guilt from realizing that you can never fully eradicate your privilege (again, privilege theory concedes that “one can no more renounce privilege than one can stop breathing”), that you are enjoying the fruits of an impure liberalism, that you’re taking up the space of someone more deserving, and so on—and exhaustion— the emotional cost for your unflinching vigilance in naming racism and denouncing prejudice wherever it appears—ironically become signs not of your defeat but of your self-enlightenment, moral righteousness, and true commitment to social justice. There is thus a kind of illicit satisfaction—an unconscious enjoyment—not only in exposing the blind spots of others, in the rhetorical disciplining of others, but in your own self-discipline, in your perceived suffering and exhaustion as well, amounting to an abstract testimony to the heroism of whiteness (“another self-glorification in which whiteness is equated with moral rectitude,” as Butler puts it) and the progress of multicultural liberalism: it’s not perfect, but we’re getting there . Along the way, privilege theory redeems its practitioners: since its biopolitical logic tends to individualize racism— check your privilege—your self-check exempts you from the charge of racism. It is fundamentally the problem of individual others (typically that of the less educated, white blue collar workers), concealing society’s “civil racism,” the pervading, naturalized racism of everyday liberal life. In contrast, psychoanalysis compels the liberal multicultural subject to confront a starker reality. For psychoanalysis, the routinized and ritualized call to check your privilege appears too convenient; it enables the liberal multicultural subject to diminish his or her guilt ( I ’m doing something personally about implicit biases) without needing to take on the sociopolitical framework directly. If privilege theorists are pressed, they will gladly confess that they know that it is not enough to denounce the unearned privileges of others without simultaneously attending to the networks of power relations that sustain such advantages. And yet in their active scholarly activist lives, they act as if it were enough, displaying the psychoanalytic structure of fetishistic disavowal (I know very well, but all the same). They maintain a split attitude toward antiracism. They know very well that denouncing white privilege is necessary but not sufficient, yet they don’t really believe that this critico-gesture does not accomplish the task at hand. Privilege theory, we might say, “wants social change with no actual change.” Rather than addressing the social antagonisms immanent to capitalism, it misapprehends the framework (and its enablement of racism). Privilege theory typically only sees social structures as the sum of their individual parts, their individual consciences. At its base level, it provides you with the fantasy of intervention and action; it offers you criticism without critique . For the proponents of privilege theory, social change follows the gradual and predictable path of reform.

which owed $1.3 million to the Marine National Bank, premised on fictitious collateral. Of such knowledge, Grant was as innocent as a child. Still hobbling on crutches, he agreed to see William H. Vanderbilt and plead with him for $150,000. The son of Commodore Vanderbilt, and heir to a vast railroad empire, William was a heavyset man with flaring sideburns. Unlike Grant, he paid dutiful attention to business. At first Grant balked at borrowing from Vanderbilt, afraid he wouldn’t be repaid at once. But Ward insisted that Grant would simply be swapping guaranteed checks with Vanderbilt. Grabbing his crutches, Grant escorted Ward and Buck to Vanderbilt’s palatial Fifth Avenue residence. Receiving the group in his ornate home, Vanderbilt was startled by their request. He had never done such a thing before, he said, but he revered Grant and handed him a check for $150,000. In exchange, Grant gave him a Grant & Ward check with the proviso that he not cash it for a day or two. With Vanderbilt’s check in hand, Ward assured Grant everything was now fine. The former two-term president and hero of the Civil War had been reduced to an errand boy for a young charlatan. When a friend called on him that evening, Grant was in a cheerful mood and invited him to attend a poker game that Tuesday night. “Ward is certainly

Your injuries must be checked, and needs attended to as quickly as possible, and then we will leave this haunted cavern – this place that makes my belly roll and my heart lurch – and face our enemies full in the teeth.

The Hawaii Police Department gave me a citation for sleeping in my car. I went to the courthouse wearing a NASA tee-shirt and checked out the courtroom where I was supposed to go to for my future citation hearing. Much to my surprise, I walked in on the Mauna Kea protectors court hearing that I had no idea was taking place! I could see everyone looking at the NASA tee-shirt I was wearing and I was asked to leave by the court attendant. I told him it was public hearing and I was staying! I am a Mauna Kea protector also and I had only wore the NASA tee-shirt that day because it was the only clean shirt I had. I never bought the NASA tee-shirt, it was a gift from my daughter. Most of my tee-shirts say protect Mauna Kea!

Lady Asha, as the mother of a prince, found herself much in demand with the Court, if not the High King. Given to whimsy and frivolity, she wished to return to the merry life of a courtier. She couldn't attend balls with an infant in tow, so she found a cat whose kitten were still born to act as his wet nurse. That arrangement lasted until Prince Cardan was able to crawl. By then, the cat was heavy with a new litter and he'd begun to pull at her tail. She fled to the stables, abandoning him, too. And so he grew up in the palace, cherished by no one and checked by no one. Who would dare stop a prince from stealing food from the grand tables and eating beneath them, devouring what he'd taken in savage bites? His sisters and brothers only laughed, playing with him as they would with a puppy. He wore clothes only occasionally, donning garlands of flowers instead and throwing stones when the guard tired to come near him. None but his mother exerted any hold over him, and she seldom tried to curb his excesses. Just the opposite.

Lady Asha, as the mother of a prince, found herself much in demand with the Court, if not the High King. Given to whimsy and frivolity, she wished to return to the merry life of a courtier. She couldn't attend balls with an infant in tow, so she found a cat whose kittens were still born to act as his wet nurse. That arrangement lasted until Prince Cardan was able to crawl. By then, the cat was heavy with a new litter and he'd begun to pull at her tail. She fled to the stables, abandoning him, too. And so he grew up in the palace, cherished by no one and checked by no one. Who would dare stop a prince from stealing food from the grand tables and eating beneath them, devouring what he'd taken in savage bites? His sisters and brothers only laughed, playing with him as they would with a puppy. He wore clothes only occasionally, donning garlands of flowers instead and throwing stones when the guard tired to come near him. None but his mother exerted any hold over him, and she seldom tried to curb his excesses. Just the opposite.

Mrs. B’s story is well-known but worth telling again. She came to the United States 77 years ago, unable to speak English and devoid of formal schooling. In 1937, she founded the Nebraska Furniture Mart with $500. Last year the store had sales of $200 million, a larger amount by far than that recorded by any other home furnishings store in the United States. Our part in all of this began ten years ago when Mrs. B sold control of the business to Berkshire Hathaway, a deal we completed without obtaining audited financial statements, checking real estate records, or getting any warranties. In short, her word was good enough for us. Naturally, I was delighted to attend Mrs. B’s birthday party. After all, she’s promised to attend my 100th.

I check the books on the shelves. This is not the kind of yeshiva I attended back then. This is a totally different animal. On the shelves here you can find books written by modern-day extremist rabbis who, in their spare time, discuss complex, brainy issues such as the permissibility of killing enemy children (Arabs) during war.

food on our trays. I grabbed my tray full of wonderful army chow and made my way over to an empty seat for breakfast. After sitting there eating with the other soldiers for a few minutes, I noticed a staff sergeant eyeballing me. A few minutes passed and he approached the table. The trainees around me immediately got uneasy; they weren’t sure what was going on. “Hey, Specialist, what are you doing here?” “I’m waiting to get assigned to a training battalion, Drill Sergeant.” “Oh, you’re a trainee? How long have you been here?” “I’ve been here almost a full week Drill Sergeant.” “I’ll check and see if we can find a unit for you. It’s better if we get you out of here and assigned to a unit, even if you have to attend a little bit of basic training.” “Roger that, Drill Sergeant.” The next day I found myself packing my bags and making my way to my

While we were absent from Rochester on this eastern tour the foreman of the Office was attacked with cholera. He was an unconverted young man. The lady of the house where he boarded died with the same disease, also her daughter. He was then brought down and no one ventured to take care of him, fearing the disease. The Office hands watched over him until the disease seemed checked, then took him to our house. He had a relapse and a physician attended him and exerted himself to the utmost to save him, but at length told him that his {296} case was hopeless, that he could not survive through the night. Those interested for him could not bear to see the young man die without hope. They prayed around his bedside while he was suffering great agony. He also prayed that the Lord would have mercy upon him, and forgive his sins. Yet he obtained no relief. He continued to cramp and toss in restless agony. The brethren continued in prayer all night that he might be spared to repent of his sins and keep the commandments of God. He at length seemed to consecrate himself to God, and promised the Lord he would keep the Sabbath and serve him. He soon felt relief. The next morning the physician came, and as he entered, said, ‘I told my wife about one o’clock this morning that in all probability the young man was out of his trouble.’ He was told that he was alive. The physician was surprised and immediately ascended the stairs to his room, and as he examined his pulse, said, ‘Young man, you are better, the crisis is past, but it is not my skill that saved you, but a higher power. With good nursing you may get about again.’ He gained rapidly, and soon took his place in the Office, a converted man. 

When a rural Greek is hospitalized, relatives are in constant attendance to keep a check on the doctor and the treatment he prescribes.

Playing Chess Unconsciously For another demonstration of the power of our unconscious vision, consider chess playing. When grand master Garry Kasparov concentrates on a chess game, does he have to consciously attend to the configuration of pieces in order to notice that, say, a black rook is threatening the white queen? Or can he focus on the master plan, while his visual system automatically processes those relatively trivial relations among pieces? Our intuition is that in chess experts, the parsing of board games becomes a reflex. Indeed, research proves that a single glance is enough for any grand master to evaluate a chessboard and to remember its configuration in full detail, because he automatically parses it into meaningful chunks.29 Furthermore, a recent experiment indicates that this segmenting process is truly unconscious: a simplified game can be flashed for 20 milliseconds, sandwiched between masks that make it invisible, and still influence a chess master’s decision.30 The experiment works only on expert chess players, and only if they are solving a meaningful problem, such as determining if the king is under check or not. It implies that the visual system takes into account the identity of the pieces (rook or knight) and their locations, then quickly binds together this information into a meaningful chunk (“black king under check”). These sophisticated operations occur entirely outside conscious awareness.

I flew back to the States in December of 1992 with conflicting emotions. I was excited to see my family and friends. But I was sad to be away from Steve. Part of the problem was that the process didn’t seem to make any sense. First I had to show up in the States and prove I was actually present, or I would never be allowed to immigrate back to Australia. And, oh yeah, the person to whom I had to prove my presence was not, at the moment, present herself. Checks for processing fees went missing, as did passport photos, certain signed documents. I had to obtain another set of medical exams, blood work, tuberculosis tests, and police record checks--and in response, I got lots of “maybe’s” and “come back tomorrow’s.” It would have been funny, in a surreal sort of way, if I had not been missing Steve so much. This was when we should have still been in our honeymoon days, not torn apart. A month stretched into six weeks. Steve and I tried keeping our love alive through long-distance calls, but I realized that Steve informing me over the phone that “our largest reticulated python died” or “the lace monitors are laying eggs” was no substitute for being with him. It was frustrating. There was no point in sitting still and waiting, so I went back to work with the flagging business. When my visa finally came, it had been nearly two months, and it felt like Christmas morning. That night we had a good-bye party at the restaurant my sister owned, and my whole family came. Some brought homemade cookies, others brought presents, and we had a celebration. Although I knew I would miss everyone, I was ready to go home. Home didn’t mean Oregon to me anymore. It meant, simply, by Steve’s side. When I arrived back at the zoo, we fell in love all over again. Steve and I were inseparable. Our nights were filled with celebrating our reunion. The days were filled with running the zoo together, full speed ahead. Crowds were coming in bigger than ever before. We enjoyed yet another record-breaking day for attendance. Rehab animals poured in too: joey kangaroos, a lizard with two broken legs, an eagle knocked out by poison. My heart was full. It felt good to be back at work. I had missed my animal friends--the kangaroos, cassowaries, and crocodiles.

One evening Steve and I didn’t feel like cooking, and we had ordered a pizza. I noticed that I was a bit leaky, but when you are enormously pregnant, all kinds of weird things happen with your body. I didn’t pay any particular attention. The next day I called the hospital. “You should come right in,” the nurse told me over the phone. Steve was fairly nearby, on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, filming bull sharks. I won’t bother him, I thought. I’ll just go in for a quick checkup. “If everything checks out okay,” I told them at the hospital, “I’ll just head back.” The nurse looked to see if I was serious. She laughed. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re having a baby.” I called Steve. He came up from the Gold Coast as quickly as he could, after losing his car keys, not remembering where he parked, and forgetting which way home was in his excitement. When he arrived at the hospital, I saw that he had brought the whole camera crew with him. John was just as flustered as anyone but suggested we film the event. “It’s okay with me,” Steve said. I was in no mood to argue. I didn’t care if a spaceship landed on the hospital. Each contraction took every bit of my attention. When they finally wheeled me into the delivery room at about eight o’clock that night, I was so tired I didn’t know how I could go on. Steve proved to be a great coach. He encouraged me as though it were a footy game. “You can do it, babe,” he yelled. “Come on, push!” At 9:46 p.m., a little head appeared. Steve was beside himself with excitement. I was in a fog, but I clearly remember the joy on his face. He helped turn and lift the baby out. I heard both Steve and doctor announce simultaneously, “It’s a girl.” Six pounds and two ounces of little baby girl. She was early but she was fine. All pink and perfect. Steve cut the umbilical cord and cradled her, gazing down at his newborn daughter. “Look, she’s our little Bindi.” She was named after a crocodile at the zoo, and it also fit that the word “bindi” was Aboriginal for “young girl.” Here was our own young girl, our little Bindi. I smiled up at Steve. “Bindi Sue,” I said, after his beloved dog, Sui. Steve gently handed her to me. We both looked down at her in utter amazement. He suddenly scooped her up in the towels and blankets and bolted off. “I’ve got a baby girl!” he yelled, as he headed down the hall. The doctor and midwives were still attending to me. After a while, one of the midwives said nervously, “So, is he coming back?” I just laughed. I knew what Steve was doing. He was showing off his beautiful baby girl to the whole maternity ward, even though each and every new parent had their own bundle of joy. Steve was such a proud parent. He came back and laid Bindi beside me. I said, “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been here.” “Yes, you could have.” “No, I really needed you here.” Once again, I had that overwhelming feeling that as long as we were together, everything would be safe and wonderful. I watched Bindi as she stared intently at her daddy with dark, piercing eyes. He gazed back at her and smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks, with such great love for his new daughter. The world had a brand-new wildlife warrior.

Even at a distance, he recognized Emma sprawled headlong in the street, and he broke into a run. The road was empty, so was the boardwalk. He knelt beside her and helped her sit up. “Emma . . . honey, are you okay?” Tears streaked her dusty cheeks. “I-I lost my Aunt Kenny, and”—she hiccupped a sob—“m-my mommy’s gone.” Her face crumpled. “Oh, little one . . . come here.” He gathered her to him, and she came without hesitation. He stood and wiped her tears, and checked for injuries. No broken bones. Nothing but a skinned knee that a little soapy water—and maybe a sugar stick—would fix right up. “Shh . . . it’s okay.” He smoothed the hair on the back of her head, and her little arms came around his neck. A lump rose in his throat. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” Her sobs came harder. “Clara fell down too, Mr. Wyatt.” She drew back and held up the doll. “She’s all dirty. And she stinks.” Wyatt tried his best not to smile. Clara was indeed filthy. And wet. Apparently she’d gone for a swim in the same mud puddle Emma had fallen in. Only it wasn’t just mud, judging from the smell. “Here . . .” He gently chucked her beneath the chin. “Let’s see if we can find your Aunt Kenny. You want to?” The little girl nodded with a hint of uncertainty. “But I got my dress all dirty. She’s gonna be mad.” Knowing there might be some truth to that, he also knew Miss Ashford would be worried sick. “Do you remember where you were with Aunt Kenny before you got lost?” Emma shook her head. “I was talkin’ to my friend, and I looked up . . .” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “And Aunt Kenny was gone.” Wyatt knew better than to think it was McKenna Ashford who had wandered away. “We’ll find her, don’t you worry.” “Clara’s dress is dirty like mine, huh?” She held the doll right in front of his face. Wyatt paused, unable to see it clearly. Easily supporting Emma’s weight, he took Clara and did his best to wipe the dirt and mud from the doll’s dress and its once-yellow strands of hair. His efforts only made a bigger mess, but Emma’s smile said she was grateful. “She likes you.” Emma put a hand to his cheek, then frowned. “Your face is itchy.” Knowing what she meant, he laughed and rubbed his stubbled jaw. He’d bathed and shaved last night in preparation for church this morning, half hoping he might see McKenna and Emma there. But they hadn’t attended. “My face is itchy, huh?” She squeezed his cheek in response, and he made a chomping noise, pretending he was trying to bite her. She pulled her hand back, giggling. Instinctively, he hugged her close and she laid her head on his shoulder. Something deep inside gave way. This is what it would have been like if his precious little Bethany had lived. He rubbed Emma’s back, taking on fresh pain as he glimpsed a fragment of what he’d been denied by the deaths of his wife and infant daughter so many years ago. “Here, you can carry her.” Emma tried to stuff Clara into his outer vest pocket, but the doll wouldn’t fit. Wyatt tucked her inside his vest instead and positioned its scraggly yarn head to poke out over the edge, hoping it would draw a smile. Which it did.

Not long ago, I attended a gathering with a congregation other than my own, and I thought my ears were going to bleed. The moment the preservice music began, the congregation collectively shuddered and stood cringing under the instrumental blast for the next thirty minutes, until the sermon began. We hoped that the volume would modulate downward after the sermon, but it didn’t. The preacher left the platform and the onslaught continued. I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull out my iPhone and use an app to check the sound levels. While the app surely isn’t the most accurate measurement, it measured sustained levels well over 110 decibels, which can be damage-inducing. (By contrast, our sound engineers at Sojourn are trained to keep sustained volume at about 90 decibels or below, at which they have varied levels of success.) The irony of this, of course, is that I was in a traditional service, and the instrument in question was a roaring pipe organ.

This means that our outward-facing marketing and PR efforts are needed simply to reach out to and capture, at the beginning, a group of highly interested, loyal, and fanatical users. Then we grow with and because of them. If they are geeks, they are at TechCrunch or Hacker News or reddit or attending a handful of conferences every year. If they are fashionistas, they are regularly checking a handful of fashion blogs like Lookbook.nu or Hypebeast.

But Charles, at that very moment, was roving the house in search of Amy.  He had stayed at the ball only long enough to claim the first dance with his sister; then, when the dancing was in full swing, he'd melted into the crush, strode through the doors leading back to the main part of the castle, and gone looking for Amy. But she was not in her rooms.  She was not in the dining room, the library, or wandering the halls.  It wasn't until he strode into the Gold Parlor and found Juliet — who would not, of course, be attending the ball in her advanced condition — quietly working on a piece of embroidery, that Charles got the first clue to her whereabouts. He bowed to his sister-in-law, who looked up at him in some surprise. "Why, hello, Charles.  What are you doing out here?  You look most annoyed." "Amy.  I can't find her anywhere, haven't seen her all day and I'm sick to death of everyone monopolizing her time.  You haven't seen her, have you?" Juliet looked at him peculiarly, then lowered her needlework, a little smile touching her lips.  "Actually, I have.  You might try checking the ballroom." "She wouldn't be in there." Juliet's eyes sparkled with mirth.  "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure." At that moment Gareth, who was dividing his time between his wife and the ball, entered the room, fashionably splendid in raspberry silk, tight breeches, and shoes sporting huge Artois buckles.  In his hand were two glasses, one of sherry, the other of cider, the latter of which he handed to his wife.  He had caught the tail end of the conversation. "Yes, you really should check the ballroom, Charles," he said, his own blue eyes twinkling. Was there some damned conspiracy going on here? 

Peninsula Freeway, and another off Penzance Beach Road, which wound in a dizzying climb high above sea level. She slowed for an intersection, the light green. She should make a right turn here, but that meant giving way to the oncoming traffic, which was streaming indifferently towards her, and what if some maniac failed to stop before she completed the turn? She tried to swallow. Her mouth was very dry. Someone sounded their horn at her. She continued through the intersection without turning. All those people there last Saturday, as close as bodies can get to one another, yet Janine hadn’t expected, sought or found any kind of togetherness. She knew from past experience that the other couples would look out for each other, the wives watching out for their husbands, always with a smile, a kiss, a comforting or loving caress, ‘Just checking that you’re happy’ kind of thing, and the husbands checking on how their wives were doing, ‘Are you okay? Love you’ kind of thing, even stopping to have sex with them before moving on to another play area. But that wasn’t Robert’s style. He would never so much as say ‘Enjoy yourself’ but go after the single women and younger wives, a glint of grasping need in his eyes, and last Saturday hadn’t been any different. He’d kept her there until three in the morning, long after most of the others had gone home. ‘Mum?’ ‘What?’ ‘Can I have a Happy Meal for lunch?’ ‘We’ll see.’ Beside her, Georgia began to sing. It had taken her husband about three months to wear her down. When he’d first proposed attending one of the parties, late last year, Janine had thought he was joking, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t. She’d felt vaguely discomfited, more from the tawdriness and risk of exposure than realising he probably didn’t want her sexually any more. ‘Why do you want to have sex with other women besides me?’ she’d asked, putting on a bit of a quiver. ‘But

I spotted Delilah instantly. She was one of a handful of people quietly attending the room’s lone baccarat table, and the only non-Asian in sight. She was dressed plainly, in black pants and a black, shoulderless top. Her hair was pulled back and I saw no signs of makeup or jewelry. If she’d been trying to downplay her looks, though, she hadn’t been notably successful. I checked the usual hotspots and saw nothing that set off any alarms. So far, my assessment that she wouldn’t yet do anything precipitous seemed correct. But it was too soon to really know. After all, the casino, with its cameras, guards, and other forms of security, would have made a poor place for an ambush. An attack, if one were to come, would happen later.

When he returned to Florida in the early part of 1939, Hemingway took his boat the Pilar across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where he checked into the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Shortly thereafter, Martha joined him in Cuba and they first rented, and later in 1940, purchased their home for $12,500. Located 10 miles to the east of Havana, in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, they settled into what they called Finca Vigía, the Lookout Farm. On November 20, 1940, after a difficult divorce from Pauline, Ernest and Martha got married. Even though Cuba had become their home, they still took editorial assignments overseas, including one in China that Martha had for Collier’s magazine. Returning to Cuba just prior to the outbreak of World War II, he convinced the Cuban government to outfit his boat with armaments, with which he intended to ambush German submarines. As the war progressed, Hemingway went to London as a war correspondent, where he met Mary Welsh. His infatuation prompted him to propose to her, which of course did not sit well with Martha. Hemingway was present at the liberation of Paris and attended a party hosted by Sylvia Beach. He, incidentally, also renewed a friendship with Gertrude Stein. Becoming a famous war correspondence he covered the Battle of the Bulge, however he then spent the rest of the war on the sidelines hospitalized with pneumonia. Even so, Ernest was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Once again, Hemingway fell in lust, this time with a 19-year-old girl, Adriana Ivancich. This so-called platonic, wink, wink, love affair was the essence of his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which he wrote in Cuba.

Try experimenting with a policy where you will not develop demos, pilots, attend multiple exploratory meetings or develop lengthy customized proposals for prospects until the price expectations are set up front and you have done a basic check on whether the prospect can afford your services. You will be shocked to see how much time you will stop wasting on bad deals. The more time you can stop wasting on dead end deals, the more time you can devote to deals that can be highly profitable and take your business to the next level!

The Probate Home Sale When an offer to purchase a home being sold through probate in New Jersey has been accepted, a notice will be mailed to heirs of the estate. This notice is the Notice of Proposed Action. The Notice of Proposed Action enables estate heirs to object to the sale of the home. Should an estate heir - or, should estate heirs - object to the sale of the home, a court date will be set. Any offer to purchase a home being sold through probate must be equal to - or greater than - 90% of the appraisal value of the home. The appraisal value of the home is provided to the court by a licensed real estate appraiser who has been designated by the court to conduct such an appraisal. Whats next? The attorney for the estate schedules a confirmation hearing. This hearing takes place within 45 days of the filing date. Throughout the process, the listing agent of the home being sold through probate continues to show the home to prospective buyers. One directive the listing agent has in continuing to show the home to buyers is to determine whether an over-bidder emerges. An over-bidder is a buyer who submits their offer to purchase the home at a sale price which is greater than offers which have been received, to date. Thus, raising the sale price of the home. Increasing proceeds for the estate. In the event that there is an offer submitted by an over-bidder, the over-bidder attends a confirmation hearing. At the confirmation hearing, the over-bidder is required to present a certified check which is equal to or greater than 10% of the proposed sale price.

Mr. Leszczynski attended class faithfully, arriving on time, and rarely succumbed to the undergraduate impulse to check his cell phone for messages or relentlessly zip and unzip his backpack in the final minutes of class.

The war against the crime syndicate in Chicago never ends. Those who attended the wedding of Tony Accardo’s kid were inspired after they saw how the battle is being waged. Long before the wedding began, dozens of law enforcement agents poured into the area around St. Vincent Ferrer Church on North Avenue, a few blocks west of Harlem. Veteran crime syndicate observers were quick to spot the FBI, the Secret Service, the Chicago Police Undercover Unit, the Crime Commission, and the Quickie Credit-Check Service. This phase of the never-ending battle against the gang-lords is fought, not with guns, but with notebooks and cameras. Nobody knows if this is effective against the mob, but at least no cops got shot in the foot.

The flight attendants, beautiful as angels, check to make sure we're fit to travel, and then, with a benevolent motion of the hand, permit us to plunge on into the soft, carpet-lined curves of the tunnel that will lead us aboard our plane and onto a chilly aerial road to new worlds. That smile of theirs hold - or so it strikes us - a kind of promise that perhaps we will be born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place.

Oh, yes.” We were in the Hamptons, attending a brunch one of my clients had thrown to celebrate the Fourth of July. “What time is it, anyway?” Josie murmured. Her eyes widened when she checked her phone. “Hunter, it’s already three o’clock. We won’t make it in time to Amelia’s. She’ll roast our asses for being late.

A common pitfall I see is multiple cofounders trying to tag-team fundraising. This is nonoptimal. As with any business objective: one person needs to be ultimately responsible. With fundraising, one cofounder should take a leading role. The other cofounder should focus on keeping the business running and should be leveraged in a supporting role to: ● Attend a 2nd/3rd meeting with the investor (increases buy-in and adds another touchpoint) ● Amplify the shared network and investor introductions ● Help check references ● Take the blame for being a hard negotiator :-) As I hope I’ve illustrated, fundraising isn’t an afterthought — it requires this kind of discipline, follow-through, and planning to get right. Make that one person’s whole job, not two people’s shared job.

They conclude that “in the United States…the majority does not rule—at least in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.” Another political scientist found that “senators’ [policy] preferences diverge dramatically from the preference of the average voter in their state…unless these constituents are those who write checks and attend fundraisers.” Still another wrote that the preferences of people “in the bottom one-third of the income distribution have no discernable impact on the behavior of their elected representatives

FOCUS is one of the most valuable skills in business, and is becoming increasingly rare. If you can master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results and make more money than most people. In his book, "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success In a Distracted World", Cal Newport says: “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep – spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.” When I started writing a book a month, I have to admit, it was challenging. I quickly realized I had a focus problem. Coincidentally, I attended a book festival and picked up a book by Catherine Price, "How to Break Up With Your Phone", and discovered my life was being sucked away one text message, one social media post, and one email at a time. If I wanted to write a book a month, I needed to get my life and my time back. I read Catherine’s book, and the following especially resonated with me: “Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we’re beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good. We feel busy but ineffective… The same technology that gives us freedom can also act like a leash—and the more tethered we become, the more it raises the question of who’s actually in control.” I had lost control of my time and my ability to focus. It wasn’t an overnight event, it was a slow, insidious change that happened over a long period of time. Below are some other interesting statistics from Price’s book: Americans check their phones 47 times per day.

The action of commerce, like the motion of the sea or the atmosphere, follows an undulatory line. First comes an ascending wave of activity and rising prices; next, when prices have risen to a point that checks demand, comes a period of hesitation and caution; then, care among lenders and discounters; then comes the descending movement, in which holders simultaneously endeavor to realize, thereby accelerating a general fall in prices. Credit then becomes more sensitive and is contracted; transactions are diminished; losses are incurred through the depreciation of property, and finally the ordeal becomes so severe to the debtor class that forcible liquidation has to be adopted, and insolvent firms and institutions must be wound up. This process is a periodical experience in every country; and the extent of the destructiveness of the crisis that attends it depends chiefly on the steadiness and conservatism of the business methods in each particular community affected.

In September, there was more outreach, Ivanka said, from a Schneiderman advisor, who “said that Mr. Schneiderman would ‘greatly appreciate’ if I attended a fundraising event for newly elected California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris as Mr. Schneiderman’s guest. He also asked that we make a substantial contribution to Ms. Harris’s re-election campaign.” Ivanka’s father, Donald Trump, wrote a five-thousand-dollar check to Harris’s campaign, but Ivanka attended the fundraiser, “an intimate gathering of New York

Hey there, I am james. I live in Birmingham. I am a blog writer by profession for a long time. I like to attend events or functions regarding furniture exhibitions. After attending all the events, I think I have lots of ideas about blog writing. I am going to share some of my blogs with you. So check it out.

During the next two weeks Trurl fed general instructions into his future electropoet, then set up all the necessary logic circuits, emotive elements, semantic centers. He was about to invite Klapaucius to attend a trial run, but thought better of it and started the machine himself. It immediately proceeded to deliver a lecture on the grinding of crystallographical surfaces as an introduction to the study of submolecular magnetic anomalies. Trurl bypassed half the logic circuits and made the emotive more electromotive; the machine sobbed, went into hysterics, then finally said, blubbering terribly, what a cruel, cruel world this was. Trurl intensified the semantic fields and attached a strength of character component; the machine informed him that from now on he would carry out its every wish and to begin with add six floors to the nine it already had, so it could better meditate upon the meaning of existence. Trurl installed a philosophical throttle instead; the machine fell silent and sulked. Only after endless pleading and cajoling was he able to get it to recite something: "I had a little froggy." That appeared to exhaust its repertoire. Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated, disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn't there to laugh — imagine, simulating the whole Universe from scratch, not to mention Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six cliché filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an alternating rhyme generator — which nearly ruined everything, since the machine resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they'd all be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper.

Nemesis personifies “the Goddess of Retribution, who brings down all immoderate good fortune, checks the presumption that attends it, …and is the punisher of extraordinary crimes”.36

After Chandavarkar shortlisted a few candidates in 1997, Kiran came in for the final interview. All five shortlisted students already had job offers in hand. The interview lasted forty-five minutes, of which Kiran spoke for forty. She spoke about why she wanted to enter pharmaceuticals and how she wanted the company to grow. That ‘campus-placement experience’ was different for Shreehas Tambe. ‘My offer was from Lupin; I don’t think D.B. Gupta [founder and chairman of Lupin] gave a damn about who was joining the company. A general manager had come from Tarapur and we were all very happy because the salary was nice,’ says Tambe, a hefty man with a sense of humour. On hearing Kiran out, he was impressed that the ‘chairperson’ of the company was explaining to a fresher what the vision was. At twenty-three, the idea of working in a pub city wasn’t bad even though leaving Mumbai was not in his scheme of things. ‘I thought it’d be fun to check out the city for two to three years and then come back to Mumbai,’ he remembers thinking. Kiran said she had spoken to his placement manager; she knew his salary and would match it. She insisted that he say yes to the offer right then. Tambe was anxious. He had not submitted his master’s thesis and his supervisor, J.B. Joshi, generally decided where his students would go, which often was Reliance Industries. Surprisingly, after some intimidating remarks like ‘how could you attend the campus interview without asking me’, Joshi encouraged him to join Biocon. He did not conceal his cautionary advice though: ‘Come back after two years, finish your Ph.D and then we’ll see.

or talk about it at all. I attended board meetings and private meetings, was always by Caleb’s side at all times as we worked through each day. But I kept myself strictly professional, not uttering a single word to him unless absolutely necessary. Heck, I even made sure I was never alone in the office in places where he could sneak up on me, because I wasn’t sure if I could resist as much as when we had someone with us. So sue me. I was feeling pretty confident in how I decided to separate my work life from my personal life, and things were looking up—until I heard the screech of a car before it stopped beside me, the door opening. I’d recognize his Rolls Royce anywhere. “Get in.” I shook my head, refusing to look at Caleb. We were right in front of the building, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that people were glancing at us curiously as they passed by. “No, thank you,” I clipped out, forcing myself to be polite. “I have somewhere to go.” “I’ll drive you.” “No, thank you—” “Get in the damn car, Tessa, or I’m going to get out of this car and give you a very large gift outside for everyone to see.” I glared at him, suddenly furious. He smirked at me, and I could swear his eyes were gleaming from behind his sunglasses. Glancing one more time to check that no one from the building was looking, I hurriedly got in and slammed the door, crossing my arms and looking straight ahead. The car cruised on quickly, with none of us saying a word to each other until we exited the street. “You know, Mr. Snow, you can’t just force people to do your bidding like that all the time,” I bit out, unable to stop myself. “It’s highly unethical.” “You got in the car. And it’s Caleb. Stop it with that Mr. Snow nonsense.” It was said so casually and offhandedly that I couldn’t help but glare at him again. “I got in the car because people were going to speculate again!” “Again?” Darn it. Realizing I was saying too much, I snapped my mouth shut and straightened again. I could feel him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, but surprisingly enough, he didn’t persist. Instead, he kept driving until we were out of the city’s busy streets, heading in the direction of my apartment. That made me feel better, though I still did not let my guard down in case he got ideas of inviting himself in. But

After a stint at community college, and with the encouragement of professors, Roberts applied to Berkeley and was admitted at age twenty-three. There was no box on the form to check that would indicate he was disabled, so, after his acceptance, he had to figure out how he would live on campus. Students with other disabilities had attended Berkeley and other colleges in the United States, but nearly all of Roberts’s body was paralyzed, so he would need assistance in an acute way, for things like getting from his bed to his wheelchair every day—the kind of help that exceeded dormitory norms. Berkeley administrators initially tried to backtrack and refuse him admission, citing past failed experiments with enrolling disabled students. Roberts went to see Dr. Henry Bruyn at the Cowell Hospital on campus. Bruyn had overseen the care of children in Roberts’s generation who’d contracted polio and lived with the aftermath of the disease. He agreed to work with Roberts to outfit a hospital room for his needs while on campus—as a makeshift, semipermanent approximation of a dorm room. Berkeley agreed, and Roberts arrived on campus, but expectations were low. The headline in Cal’s own newspaper read: “Helpless Cripple Attends UC Classes Here in Wheelchair.

On day three I am very excited to attend one of our special excursions for which you pay extra. We are going to get off the boat early in the morning in Bermuda, where we will be given bicycles. We will ride our bikes around the island with a guide to a special secluded beach where we can swim and have rum swizzles and then we will be taken back to the ship by a party boat. Sounds pretty good, right? That’s what I thought, too. I wouldn’t shut up about it. For weeks before we left I bragged about how I had chosen the best excursion. It was fun and fitness combined! It was a great way to see the island! My husband and I wait at the designated pickup point at 8:30 A.M. No one else shows up. A quick check of our itinerary reveals the heartbreaking truth. The bike trip was yesterday. In my excitement, I memorized it wrong. I cry. I cry like a three year old who just wants to take her toy cash register into the bathtub. I cry in a way that reveals that I’m not finding the rest of the cruise that fun. This is definitely the low point of the trip, until the fire. Oh yes, there’s a ship fire coming in this story. Wait for it.

He led the USFL with 28 sacks for 199 yards lost (both professional football records), but also led in manic mayhem. Early on during training camp, Corker—nicknamed Sack Man—gathered the team in a circle and guided the Panthers in prayer. “He started praying like a Baptist black preacher,” said Dave Tipton, a defensive tackle, “and I thought, Wow, Corker must walk with the Lord.” Not quite. Blessed with the world’s largest penis, Corker never shied away from showing it off to fellow Panthers. “The biggest johnson in the USFL,” said Matt Braswell, the team’s center. “We had women reporters come into the locker room, and Corker would position himself so he was in full view of any females. He had this vat of Nivea skin cream, and he would just make sure to completely rub it and moisturize it.” Corker operated on a clock that required only two to three hours of sleep per night, and was powered by the dual fuels of alcohol and cocaine. He kept a gun in his car’s glove compartment, missed as many meetings as he attended, and proudly pasted his pay stubs to his locker, so that teammates could marvel at the money he was being docked. Once, Hebert drove with Corker from Pontiac to Detroit for a promotional appearance. It was snowing outside, the roads were slippery—“and Corker was driving, smoking one joint after another,” said Hebert. “We both walked in reeking of pot.” In a USFL urban legend that actually checks out, Corker was once found naked on the ice at Joe Louis Arena in the early-morning hours. He had passed out, and spent so much time on the cold surface that some of his skin had to be ripped off. “That,” said Bentley, “surprised none of us.

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until the sun dipped down beneath the horizon at dusk. He had felt closer to a drink in Tokyo than he had for months, and had resolved to attend a meeting every day for a month in order to find his balance again. There were plenty to choose from, most of them attended by US sailors from the nearby base. His Wednesday evening meeting was in a gazebo at the north end of Chatan beach, close to the Hilton. He checked his watch as he made his way to the gazebo, the sand warm between his toes. He had struggled to find the venue the first time, the familiar AA sign just visible in the darkening light. He took a folding chair from the stack at the rear of the gazebo and sat down at the back of the small congregation of men and women. It was a rich mixture of colour and age, a collection scraped from all strata of society and united only by their addictions. There were the usual unlikely alcoholics: the well-turned-out men and women who would have looked more at home at a tennis club or on a golf course. They sat among those who more readily fulfilled the stereotype of the drunk: red noses and bloodshot eyes, the unwashed and unwanted.

When a silverback gorilla dies of Ebola, he does it beyond the eyes of science and medicine. No one is there in the forest to observe the course of his agony, with the possible exception of other gorillas. No one takes his temperature or peers down his throat. When a female gorilla succumbs to Ebola, no one measures the rate of her breathing or checks for a telltale rash. Thousands of gorillas may have been killed by the virus but no human has ever attended one of those deaths - not even Billy Karesh, not even Alain Ondzie. A small number of carcasses have been found, some of which have tested positive for Ebola antibodies. A large number of carcasses have been seen and reported by casual witnesses, in Ebola territory at Ebola times, but because the forest is a hungry place, most of those carcasses could never be inspected and sampled by scientific researchers.

Although America is a country with all the faults that attend a varied humanity, it is nonetheless a symbol of freedom. It is, more precisely, an experiment in freedom where an average person can live a decent life; where the voice of the political fanatic is muted, and the ideologue is distrusted; where even the demagogue must check himself, and make the customary bucolic sounds. The totalitarian misfit, seeking a more glorious existence, can find no sustenance in this kind of politics. If he runs for office, if he is elected, he is demeaned by critics and compelled by bribery. At best he can corrupt the constitutional mechanism in some small way, or he can promote some harmful legislation. But he cannot become dictator without exposing himself to arrest and prosecution. Power is not there to be had. Glory is not there. For the glory-seeking politician there is only final humiliation. Even the most promising presidential career, with high approval ratings, is finally blighted by a negative press. Clinton, Bush, Obama – all two-term presidents – ended their terms as lame ducks, finding themselves encircled by an ever tightening ring of criticism and scandal. Such a political system must appear a kind of prison to the totalitarian.

FloridaMiami: A new administrative policy bans police officers from taking their guns next time they attend a Miami City Commission meeting unless they are assigned to City Hall or handling a call. The Miami Herald reported the new rule follows a protest in February. Officers will now have to check their guns at the door before entering the chambers.

There’s an old wooden sign in the church my dad grew up in. It still hangs on the left wall behind the pulpit. Maybe you’ve seen one like it. The sign has slats that display numbers announcing the church’s critical statistics. There is a column for “Last Week” and a column for “This Week.” Every Sunday you can check out how things are progressing in three areas: attendance, the number of visitors, and total offerings. I can remember, as a kid, looking up at the numbers and thinking, Things are getting better. Or during some weeks, Things are getting worse. That sign has been hanging there for at least thirty years, but I’m not sure it truly communicates whether or not the church is actually winning. Most churches do not have a reliable system for defining and measuring what success looks like at every level of the organization. Instead they post some general statistics that give them a vague sense of progress or failure as a church, and they go through the motions of continuing to do ministry the way they always have, productive or not. Thus it is possible for a church to become very efficient at doing ministry ineffectively.