Automatic Double Quotes

Within sixty-minute limits or one-hundred-yard limits or the limits of a game board, we can look for perfect moments or perfect structures. In my fiction I think this search sometimes turns out to be a cruel delusion. No optimism, no pessimism. No homesickness for lost values or for the way fiction used to be written. Everybody seems to know everything. Subjects surface and are totally exhausted in a matter of days or weeks, totally played out by the publishing industry and the broadcast industry. Nothing is too arcane to escape the treatment, the process. Making things difficult for the reader is less an attack on the reader than it is on the age and its facile knowledge-market. The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous. Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That’s why so many of them are in jail. Some people prefer to believe in conspiracy because they are made anxious by random acts. Believing in conspiracy is almost comforting because, in a sense, a conspiracy is a story we tell each other to ward off the dread of chaotic and random acts. Conspiracy offers coherence. I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfillment in America... I see this desperation against the backdrop of brightly colored packages and products and consumer happiness and every promise that American life makes day by day and minute by minute everywhere we go. Discarded pages mark the physical dimensions of a writer’s labor. Film allows us to examine ourselves in ways earlier societies could not—examine ourselves, imitate ourselves, extend ourselves, reshape our reality. It permeates our lives, this double vision, and also detaches us, turns some of us into actors doing walk-throughs. Every new novel stretches the term of the contract—let me live long enough to do one more book. You become a serious novelist by living long enough.

For within the very structure of family life, in families that do or did embrace the male religions, are the almost invisibly accepted social customs and life patterns that reflect the one-time strict adherence to the biblical scriptures. Attitudes towards double-standard premarital virginity, double-standard marital fidelity, the sexual autonomy of women, illegitimacy, abortion, contraception, rape, childbirth, the importance of marriage and children to women, the responsibilities and role of women in marriage, women as sex objects, the sexual identification of passivity and aggressiveness, the roles of women and men in work or social situations, women who express their ideas, female leadership, the intellectual activities of women, the economic activities and needs of women and the automatic assumption of the male as breadwinner and protector have all become so deeply ingrained that feelings and values concerning these subjects are often regarded, by both women and men, as natural tendencies or even human instinct.

I know that back when you were in seventh-grade typing class and pecking away at your Smith Corona Coronet Automatic 12, Mrs. Tegnell taught you to type a double space after a sentence-ending period, but you are no longer in the seventh grade, you are no longer typing on a typewriter, and Mrs. Tegnell is no longer looking over your shoulder.

There’s nothing more irritating than witnessing someone else’s unfair share of happiness, and to some of their colleagues at Hastings Research Institute, Elizabeth and Calvin had an unfair share. He, because he was brilliant; she, because she was beautiful. When they became a couple, their unfair shares automatically doubled, making it really unfair.

Any animal can fuck. But only humans can experience sexual passion, something wholly different from the biological urge to mate. And sexual passion’s endured for millennia as a vital psychic force in human life — not despite impediments but because of them. Plain old coitus becomes erotically charged and spiritually potent at just those points where impediments, conflicts, taboos, and consequences lend it a double-edged character — meaningful sex is both an overcoming and a succumbing, a transcendence and a transgression, triumphant and terrible and ecstatic and sad. Turtles and gnats can mate, but only the human will can defy, transgress, overcome, love: choose. History-wise, both nature and culture have been ingenious at erecting impediments that give the choice of passion its price and value: religious proscriptions; penalties for adultery and divorce; chivalric chastity and courtly decorum; the stigma of illegitimate birth; chaperonage; madonna/whore complexes; syphilis; back-alley abortions; a set of “moral” codes that put sensuality on a taboo-level with defecation and apostasy… from the Victorians’ dread of the body to early TV’s one-foot-on-the-floor-at-all-times rule; from the automatic ruin of “fallen” women to back-seat tussles in which girlfriends struggled to deny boyfriends what they begged for in order to preserve their respect. Granted, from 1996’s perspective, most of the old sexual dragons look stupid and cruel. But we need to realize that they had something big in their favor: as long as the dragons reigned, sex wasn’t casual, not ever. Historically, human sexuality has been a deadly serious business — and the fiercer its dragons, the seriouser sex got; and the higher the price of choice, the higher the erotic voltage surrounding what people chose." -from "Back in New Fire

when he was little, and I picture him bouncing and smiling. So happy. I tried so hard to comfort him last night, but I just couldn’t find the right words. And now I think of how close I came to being a grandmother and it is too much. Tears. No sound: just the sensation of wetness on my cheeks. I let myself cry while drinking my coffee, the saltiness of the tears running into my mouth and mixing with the drink, and then I shake my head and reach for tissues from my bag on the counter. I wipe my face, sniff and turn to look back at the flowers. Automatic pilot again. I dry my hands carefully on the towel by the sink and select double-sided ivory ribbon from the drawer – the expensive roll set aside for weddings – and the little packet of pearl pins. This bit needs real care. I lift the flowers from

Women do this every day, in hundreds of tiny ways. For most of us, it is automatic. When you’ve been shouted at, grabbed and made to feel afraid for your safety by men in the street a hundred times, responses such as crossing the street, doubling back, avoiding darker routes, clenching your fists, walking faster, and countless others, happen instinctively. It still doesn’t stop us from being harassed, assaulted and raped.

The end of this history saw the banality of art merge with the banality of the real world - Duchamp's act, with its automatic transference of the object, being the inaugural (and ironic) gesture in this process. The transference of all reality into aesthetics, which has become one of the dimensions of generalized exchange... All this under the banner of a simultaneous liberation of art and the real world. This 'liberation' has in fact consisted in indexing the two to each other - a chiasmus lethal to both. The transference of art, become a useless function, into a reality that is now integral, since it has absorbed everything that denied, exceeded or transfigured it. The impossible exchange of this Integral Reality for anything else whatever. Given this, it can only exchange itself for itself or, in other words, repeat itself ad infinitum. What could miraculously reassure us today about the essence of art? Art is quite simply what is at issue in the world of art, in that desperately self-obsessed artistic community. The 'creative' act doubles up on itself and is now nothing more than a sign of its own operation - the painter's true subject is no longer what he paints but the very fact that he paints. He paints the fact that he paints. At least in that way the idea of art remains intact.

You learn more about how to use the desktop environment in Chapter 4. For now, double-click the Wi-Fi Config icon on the desktop to open the tool. Click the Scan button to search for available Wi-Fi networks. Double-click the one you’d like to use, and it will prompt you to enter your security information by completing the white (unshaded) boxes (see Figure 3-10). The SSID box is used for the name of the network and will be completed automatically for you. You most likely have a WPA network, so the PSK box is where you type in your Wi-Fi password. You can ignore the optional boxes. Finally, click the Add button to connect to the network.

golden opportunity to learn to cope with criticism and anger effectively. This came as a complete surprise to me; I hadn't realized what good fortune I had. In addition to urging me to use cognitive techniques to reduce and eliminate my own sense of irritation. Dr. Beck proposed I try out an unusual strategy for interacting with Hank when he was in an angry mood. The essence of this method was: (1) Don't turn Hank off by defending yourself. Instead, do the opposite—urge him to say all the worst things he can say about you. (2) Try to find a grain of truth in all his criticisms and then agree with him. (3) After this, point out any areas of disagreement in a straightforward, tactful, nonargumentative manner. (4) Emphasize the importance of sticking together, in spite of these occasional disagreements. I could remind Hank that frustration and fighting might slow down our therapy at times, but this need not destroy the relationship or prevent our work from ultimately becoming fruitful. I applied this strategy the next time Hank started storming around the office screaming at me. Just as I had planned, I urged Hank to keep it up and say all the worst things he could think of about me. The result was immediate and dramatic. Within a few moments, all the wind went out of his sails—all his vengeance seemed to melt away. He began communicating sensibly and calmly, and sat down. In fact, when I agreed with some of his criticisms, he suddenly began to defend me and say some nice things about me! I was so impressed with this result that I began using the same approach with other angry, explosive individuals, and I actually did begin to enjoy his hostile outbursts because I had an effective way to handle them. I also used the double-column technique for recording and talking back to my automatic thoughts after one of Hank's midnight calls (see Figure 16–1, page 415).

So,’ I said, making a second attempt at nonchalance, ‘are you and Thalia, er …?’ Reyna raised an eyebrow. ‘Involved romantically?’ ‘Well, I just … I mean … Um …’ Oh, very smooth, Apollo. Have I mentioned I was once the god of poetry? Reyna rolled her eyes. ‘If I had a denarius for every time I got asked that question … Aside from the fact that Thalia is in the Hunters, and thus sworn to celibacy … Why does a strong friendship always have to progress to romance? Thalia’s an excellent friend. Why would I risk messing that up?’ ‘Uh –’ ‘That was a rhetorical question,’ Reyna added. ‘I do not need a response.’ ‘I know what rhetorical means.’ I made a mental note to double-check the word’s definition with Socrates the next time I was in Greece. Then I remembered Socrates was dead. ‘I only thought –’ ‘I love this song,’ Meg interrupted. ‘Turn it up!’ I doubted Meg had the slightest interest in Tego Calderón, but her intervention may have saved my life. Reyna cranked up the volume, thus ending my attempt at death by casual conversation. We stayed silent the rest of the way into the city, listening to Tego Calderón singing ‘Punto y Aparte’ and Reyna’s greyhounds jubilantly barking like semi-automatic clips discharged on New Year’s Eve.

Late in the nineteenth century came the first signs of a “Politics in a New Key”: the creation of the first popular movements dedicated to reasserting the priority of the nation against all forms of internationalism or cosmopolitanism. The decade of the 1880s—with its simultaneous economic depression and broadened democratic practice—was a crucial threshold. That decade confronted Europe and the world with nothing less than the first globalization crisis. In the 1880s new steamships made it possible to bring cheap wheat and meat to Europe, bankrupting family farms and aristocratic estates and sending a flood of rural refugees into the cities. At the same time, railroads knocked the bottom out of what was left of skilled artisanal labor by delivering cheap manufactured goods to every city. At the same ill-chosen moment, unprecedented numbers of immigrants arrived in western Europe—not only the familiar workers from Spain and Italy, but also culturally exotic Jews fleeing oppression in eastern Europe. These shocks form the backdrop to some developments in the 1880s that we can now perceive as the first gropings toward fascism. The conservative French and German experiments with a manipulated manhood suffrage that I alluded to earlier were extended in the 1880s. The third British Reform Bill of 1884 nearly doubled the electorate to include almost all adult males. In all these countries, political elites found themselves in the 1880s forced to adapt to a shift in political culture that weakened the social deference that had long produced the almost automatic election of upper-class representatives to parliament, thereby opening the way to the entry of more modest social strata into politics: shopkeepers, country doctors and pharmacists, small-town lawyers—the “new layers” (nouvelles couches) famously summoned forth in 1874 by Léon Gambetta, soon to be himself, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, the first French prime minister of modest origins. Lacking personal fortunes, this new type of elected representative lived on their parliamentarians’ salary and became the first professional politicians. Lacking the hereditary name recognition of the “notables” who had dominated European parliaments up to then, the new politicians had to invent new kinds of support networks and new kinds of appeal. Some of them built political machines based upon middle-class social clubs, such as Freemasonry (as Gambetta’s Radical Party did in France); others, in both Germany and France, discovered the drawing power of anti-Semitism and nationalism. Rising nationalism penetrated at the end of the nineteenth century even into the ranks of organized labor. I referred earlier in this chapter to the hostility between German-speaking and Czech-speaking wage earners in Bohemia, in what was then the Habsburg empire. By 1914 it was going to be possible to use nationalist sentiment to mobilize parts of the working class against other parts of it, and even more so after World War I. For all these reasons, the economic crisis of the 1880s, as the first major depression to occur in the era of mass politics, rewarded demagoguery. Henceforth a decline in the standard of living would translate quickly into electoral defeats for incumbents and victories for political outsiders ready to appeal with summary slogans to angry voters.

The integrity of my body is undermined in pregnancy not only by this externality of the inside, but also by the fact that the boundaries of my body are themselves in flux. In pregnancy I literally do not have a firm sense of where my body ends and the world begins. My automatic body habits become dislodged; the continuity between my customary body and my body at this moment is broken. In pregnancy, my prepregnant body image does not entirely leave my movements and expectations, yet it is with the pregnant body that I must move. This is another instance of the doubling of the pregnant subject. I move as if I could squeeze around chairs and through crowds as I could seven months before, only to find my way blocked by my own body sticking out in front of me - but yet not me, since I did not expect it to block my passage. As I lean over in my chair to tie my shore, I am surprised by the graze of this hard belly on my thigh. I do not anticipate my body touching itself, for my habits retain the old sense of my boundaries. In the ambiguity of bodily touch, I feel myself being touched and touching simultaneously, both on my knee and my belly. The belly is other, since I did not expect it there, but since I feel the touch upon it, it is me.

Operator overloading is coded in a Python class with specially named methods; they all begin and end with double underscores to make them unique. These are not built-in or reserved names; Python just runs them automatically when an instance appears in the corresponding operation.

When I went to Amherst, I valued my pastoral role as dean as part of a complex web of responsibilities to faculty, students, and the long-term integrity of the institution. I had not foreseen that the stereotype of nurturance would be used as a weapon. It is a double-sided blade that is turned only against women: my colleagues were equally ready to condemn faculty women for being too nurturant, and for not being nurturant enough. I also had not anticipated the extra burdens that went with meeting the expectation of nurturance. The president, for instance, had a wife, several secretaries, and a personal assistant, yet he still demanded a disproportionate amount of caretaking. Although he wouldn’t ask me to bring him cups of coffee or perform personal errands, he would ask me to support his morale, cover for him when he was unprepared, prevent his impulsive actions, and listen to him let off steam or think out loud for hours at a time. These were tasks he automatically expected of women, but he also demanded them, to a lesser degree, from the men around him. Yet he appeared to have no sense that he had some caretaking responsibility for his staff, who used to end up in my office, expecting me to nurse them back to self-respect. It took a lot of us to care for the president and keep him in good running order, at the cost of neglecting other responsibilities. Some of his need was a legitimate balance to the strains of his position; some of it was a habit of being indulged that made me wish parents could rear their children without such a core of neediness and without the expectation that others could be used to fill it.

Manmohan Singh’s lost opportunity The anti-corruption agitations of 2011 provided a wonderful opportunity for the prime minister and his government to start the process of purging the system of corruption and retrieving black money illegally stashed away in foreign banks. The government had two options to get our money back. The first, to behave like a responsible, honourable and strong nation and demonstrate political will to fight corruption using the ample machinery available through international and bilateral legal instruments, the Tax Information Exchange Treaties (TIEAs), Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) automatic exchange route. The Swiss have volunteered cooperation; and India can follow the example of the US and UK, and get India’s stolen money back to the country. Or, the government can take the other option and behave like a banana republic and a failed state, plunder capital from their own country through a UPA-sponsored version of imperialism, perpetuate poverty and backwardness by denying the people of this country their rightful development dividend while repeatedly rewarding and incentivizing the looters with amnesty schemes. Mr Singh’s government has continuously concealed information on black money by fooling the people of our country, shielding the corrupt and guilty who have illegal bank accounts in foreign banks, and by creating obstacles for any progress in the matter instead of taking proactive measures to obtain the information from the foreign governments concerned. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could have chosen the former option and gone down in history as a great patriot and leader of our country, a pioneer against corruption. But sadly, he has lost the opportunity and chosen such, that history will remember him as having presided over the greatest frauds practised on this poor and gullible nation.

Of course, television is not alone in being confronted with this destiny - this vicious circle: the destiny of all those things which , no longer having an objective purpose, take themselves for their own ends. In so doing, they escape all responsibility, but also become bogged down in their own insoluble contradictions. This is, however, more particularly the critical situation of all the current media. Opinion polls themselves are a good example. They have had their moment of truth (as, indeed, did television), when they were the representative mirror of an opinion, in the days when such a thing still existed, before it became merely a conditioned reflex. But perpetual harassment by opinion polls has resulted in their being no longer a mirror at all; they have, rather, become a screen. A perverse exchange has been established between polls which no longer really ask questions and masses who no longer reply. Or rather they become cunning partners, like rats in laboratories or the viruses pursued in experiments. They toy with the polls at least as much as the polls toy with them. They play a double game. It is not, then, that the polls are bogus or deceitful, but rather that their very success and automatic operation have made them random. There is the same double game, the same perverse social relationship between an all-powerful, but wholly self-absorbed, television and the mass of TV viewers, who are vaguely scandalized by this misappropriation, not just of public money, but of the whole value system of news and information. You don't need to be politically aware to realize that, after the famous dustbins of history, we are now seeing the dustbins of information. Now , information may well be a myth, but this alternative myth, the modern substitute for all other values, has been rammed down our throats incessantly. And there is a glaring contrast between this universal myth and the actual state of affairs. The real catastrophe of television has been how deeply it has failed to live up to its promise of providing information- its supposed modern function. We dreamed first of giving power - political power- to the imagination, but we dream less and less of this, if indeed at all. The fantasy then shifted on to the media and information. At times we dreamed (at least collectively, even if individually we continued to have no illusions) of finding some freedom there — an openness, a new public space. Such dreams were soon dashed: the media turned out to be much more conformist and servile than expected, at times more servile than the professional politicians. The latest displacement of the imagination has been on to the judiciary. Again this has been an illusion, since, apart from th e pleasing whiff of scandal produced, this is also dependent on the media operation. We are going to end up looking for imagination in places further and further removed from power - from any form of power whatever (and definitely far removed from cultural power, which has become the most conventional and professional form ther e is). Among the excluded, the immigrants, the homeless. But that will really take a lot of imagination because they, who no longer even have an image, are themselves the by-products of a whole society's loss of imagination, of the loss of any social imagination. And this is indeed the point. We shall soon see it is no use trying to locate the imagination somewhere. Quite simply, because there no longer is any. The day this becomes patently obvious, the vague collective disappointment hanging over us today will become a massive sickening feeling.

The facial stills that Mario lap-dissolves between are of Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner, founding standard-bearer of the seminal new ‘Clean U.S. Party,’ the strange-seeming but politically prescient annular agnation of ultra-right jingoist hunt-deer-with-automatic-weapons types and far-left macrobiotic Save-the-Ozone, -Rain-Forests, -Whales, -Spotted-Owl-and-High-pH-Waterways ponytailed granola-crunchers, a surreal union of both Rush L.– and Hillary R.C.–disillusioned fringes that drew mainstream-media guffaws at their first Convention (held in sterile venue), the seemingly LaRoucheishly marginal party whose first platform’s plank had been Let’s Shoot Our Wastes Into Space, 150 C.U.S.P. a kind of post-Perot national joke for three years, until—white-gloved finger on the pulse of an increasingly asthmatic and sunscreen-slathered and pissed-off American electorate—the C.U.S.P. suddenly swept to quadrennial victory in an angry reactionary voter-spasm that made the U.W.S.A. and LaRouchers and Libertarians chew their hands in envy as the Dems and G.O.P.s stood on either side watching dumbly, like doubles partners who each think the other’s surely got it, the two established mainstream parties split open along tired philosophical lines in a dark time when all landfills got full and all grapes were raisins and sometimes in some places the falling rain clunked instead of splatted, and also, recall, a post-Soviet and -Jihad era when—somehow even worse—there was no real Foreign Menace of any real unified potency to hate and fear, and the U.S. sort of turned on itself and its own philosophical fatigue and hideous redolent wastes with a spasm of panicked rage that in retrospect seems possible only in a time of geopolitical supremacy and consequent silence, the loss of any external Menace to hate and fear.

When the Coupling Equation Cube CEC is introduced with an apex - having the double value of the GPG's angle - in the new pyramidal model, it automatically projects that measure onto its base width; and halving the angle of the apex produces a base width which also projects that same angle yet reduced by the 10.88 Solar/Lunar Calendar difference.

Obama has nearly doubled the National Debt, relaxed the requirements for receiving food stamps and disability payments, given away 12,000,000 free “Obama phones”, overridden attempts by the individual States to end inner city vote fraud, (14) broken his promise to close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, and built up the Praetorian Guard known as the “Department of Homeland Security” to monstrous dimensions (2000 armored vehicles, 10’s of 1000’s of fully automatic machine guns, 100’s of millions of rounds of bullets etc).

Candidates commonly and mistakenly interchange sales with profits. A company that wants to grow profits wants something completely different than does one that cares only about growing sales. Many candidates hear the word grow and automatically assume the client wants to grow only sales or only profits. Never assume. Always listen carefully and always double-check that you heard correctly.)

The familiar voice made Megan automatically smile. The voice still had the sexy rasp of whiskey, cigarettes, and late nights, where every utterance had a hint of a laugh and a dollop of a double entendre.

Dodge Caravan three weeks ago, out in Pittsfield.’ Pittsfield, she thought, right across the state border from Albany. Where a woman vanished just last month. She stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, her pulse starting to hammer. ‘Where’s that van now?’ ‘Our team sat tight and didn’t follow it. By the time they heard back about the plates, it was gone. It hasn’t come back.’ ‘Let’s change out that car and move it to a parallel street. Bring in a second team to watch the house. If the van comes by again, we can do a leapfrog tail. Two cars, taking turns.’ ‘Right, I’m headed over there now.’ She hung up. Turned to look into the interview room where Charles Cassell was still sitting at the table, his head bowed. Is that love or obsession I’m looking at? she wondered. Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference. Twenty-eight DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Rizzoli cruised up Dedham Parkway. She spotted Frost’s car and pulled up behind him. Climbed out of her car and slid into his passenger seat. ‘And?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Not a damn thing.’ ‘Shit. It’s been over an hour. Did we scare him off?’ ‘There’s still a chance it wasn’t Lank.’ ‘White van, stolen plates from Pittsfield?’ ‘Well, it didn’t hang around. And it hasn’t been back.’ ‘When’s the last time Van Gates left the house?’ ‘He and the wife went grocery shopping around noon. They’ve been home ever since.’ ‘Let’s cruise by. I want to take a look.’ Frost drove past the house, moving slowly enough for her to get a good long gander at Tara-on-Sprague-Street. They passed the surveillance team, parked at the other end of the block, then turned the corner and pulled over. Rizzoli said: ‘Are you sure they’re home?’ ‘Team hasn’t seen either one of them leave since noon.’ ‘That house looked awfully dark to me.’ They sat there for a few minutes, as dusk deepened. As Rizzoli’s uneasiness grew. She’d seen no lights on. Were both husband and wife asleep? Had they slipped out without the surveillance team seeing them? What was that van doing in this neighborhood? She looked at Frost. ‘That’s it. I’m not going to wait any longer. Let’s pay a visit.’ Frost circled back to the house and parked. They rang the bell, knocked on the door. No one answered. Rizzoli stepped off the porch, backed up the walkway, and gazed up at the southern plantation facade with its priapic white columns. No lights were on upstairs, either. The van, she thought. It was here for a reason. Frost said, ‘What do you think?’ Rizzoli could feel her heart starting to punch, could feel prickles of unease. She cocked her head, and Frost got the message: We’re going around back. She circled to the side yard and swung open a gate. Saw just a narrow brick walkway, abutted by a fence. No room for a garden, and barely room for the two trash cans sitting there. She stepped through the gate. They had no warrant, but something was wrong here, something that was making her hands tingle, the same hands that had been scarred by Warren Hoyt’s blade. A monster leaves his mark on your flesh, on your instincts. Forever after, you can feel it when another one passes by. With Frost right behind her, she moved past dark windows and a central air-conditioning unit that blew warm air against her chilled flesh. Quiet, quiet. They were trespassing now, but all she wanted was a peek in the windows, a look in the back door. She rounded the corner and found a small backyard, enclosed by a fence. The rear gate was open. She crossed the yard to that gate and looked into the alley beyond it. No one there. She started toward the house and was almost at the back door when she noticed it was ajar. She and Frost exchanged a look. Both their weapons came out. It had happened so quickly, so automatically, that she did not even remember having drawn hers. Frost gave the back door a push, and it swung

Did you know that credit cards automatically give you amazing consumer protection? Here are a few examples you might not know about: ■ Automatic warranty doubling: Most cards extend the warranty on your purchases. So if you buy an iPhone and it breaks after Apple’s warranty expires, your credit card will still cover it up to an additional year. This is true for nearly every credit card for nearly every purchase, automatically. ■ Car rental insurance: If you rent a car, don’t let them sell you on getting the extra collision insurance. It’s completely worthless! You already have coverage through your existing car insurance, plus your credit card will usually back you up to $50,000. ■ Trip-cancellation insurance: If you book tickets for a vacation and then get sick and can’t travel, your airline will charge you hefty fees to rebook your ticket. Just call your credit card and ask for the trip-cancellation insurance to kick in, and they’ll cover those change fees—usually between $3,000 to $10,000 per trip. ■ Concierge services: When I couldn’t find LA Philharmonic tickets, I called my credit card and asked the concierge to try to find some. He called me back in two days with tickets. They charged me (a lot, actually), but he was able to get them when nobody else could.

When no interpreter was present, the doctor and the patient stumbled around together in a dense fog of misunderstanding whose hazards only increased if the patient spoke a little English, enough to lull the doctor into mistakenly believing some useful information had been transferred. When an interpreter was present, the duration of every diagnostic interview automatically doubled. (Or tripled. Or centupled. Because most medical terms had no Hmong equivalents, laborious paraphrases were often necessary. In a recently published Hmong-English medical glossary, the recommended Hmong translation for “parasite” is twenty-four words long; for “hormone,” thirty-one words; and for “X chromosome,” forty-six words.) The prospect of those tortoise-paced interviews struck fear into the heart of every chronically harried resident.

frame Tom for the two murders. What did he have against Tom?’ ‘Ah,’ Richard said, ‘you’re right. He didn’t have anything against Tom. Not really. But I remembered something that your solicitor said when she showed me Grandfather William’s will. She said that when Freddie died, the trust would automatically be dissolved and would then be inherited in its entirety by Freddie’s firstborn, assuming that that person was over the age of eighteen, of sound mind and body, and – crucially – had no unspent prison time. ‘That’s why Matthew worked so hard to pin the murders on his brother. Because the moment we arrested Tom, he’d be stopped from inheriting anything. And when Tom was then convicted of double murder – as I’m sure he would have been, considering the evidence against him, both direct and indirect – then he’d have ended up in prison. Tom would have been ineligible to inherit. The whole estate would automatically have passed on to the next oldest child, Matthew. And seeing as Matthew has always been on record as wanting to sell the plantation, it wouldn’t have even begun to look suspicious when he then sold the plantation for five million dollars. ‘So Matthew wasn’t just killing the only two people in the world he thought knew his secret shame. He was also making sure he inherited five million dollars. And five million dollars is always an incentive to commit murder. Don’t you think, Sylvie?’ A few minutes later, Richard emerged from the shower room to see Dwayne and Fidel already guarding the locked boot of the Police jeep where a handcuffed Matthew was sitting inside. From the way his shoulders were heaving up and down, Richard could see that he was crying. As for Camille, she’d taken Andy Lucas off to the shade of a palm tree and was talking to him. ‘Detective Inspector?’ a voice said from behind Richard. Richard turned and saw Hugh standing by the entrance to the shower room with Rosie and Tom. As for Sylvie, she was already heading back to the main house on her own. ‘I’m sorry,’ Hugh said. ‘That you saw our family…like this. That you saw what we’re really like.’ Richard knew that there was nothing he could say that would make Hugh feel any better.

Natural Ways to Help Anxiety Don’t start something you may not be able to stop. After the pandemic, anxiety disorders more than doubled in children and teenagers.[1] Prescriptions for antianxiety medications, such as benzodiazepines like alprazolam (Xanax) and clonazepam (Klonopin) dramatically increased. The problem is that they are addictive, and once you start them they are often very hard to stop. Here are 11 strategies to consider before going on antianxiety medications. 1. Check for hypoglycemia, anemia, and hyperthyroidism. 2. Try an elimination diet for three weeks. (See day 257 for more detail.) 3. Practice meditation and hypnosis daily (research shows they can both calm stress and anxiety). 4. Try heart rate variability (HRV) training (anxiety is linked to low levels of HRV, but you can hack your way to a healthier HRV with biofeedback apps such as Welltory). See day 202 for more information. 5. Practice diaphragmatic breathing—deep breathing from your belly—when you feel anxious. 6. Eliminate the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). See days 22, 116–117. 7. Incorporate a calming exercise, such as yoga or qi gong, into your week. 8. Take 200–400 mg of L-Theanine per day. 9. Take 500–1,500 mg of GABA per day. 10. Take 100–500 mg of magnesium glycinate, citrate, or malate with 30 mg of vitamin B6 per day. 11. Schedule neurofeedback to help retrain your brain. Anxiety disorders are very painful, but too often people reach for marijuana, alcohol, or prescribed benzodiazepines, which can be of short-term benefit but cause long-term problems with addiction and memory issues. If the above interventions are ineffective or only partly effective with my patients, I’ll try other nutraceuticals or medications targeted to a specific type of anxiety (take the test at brainhealthassessment.com).

Victims are often, automatically, accused of lying. But when a perpetrator is exposed for lying, the stigma doesn't stick. Why is that we're wary of victims making false accusations, but rarely consider how many men have blatantly lied about, downplayed, or manipulated others to cover their own actions?

Victims are often, automatically, accused of lying. But when a perpetrator is exposed for lying, the stigma doesn't stick. Why is that we're wary of vctims making false accusations, but rarely consider how many men have blatanly lied about, downplayed, or manipulated others to cover their own actions?

There is a certain feeling that goes along with a double bind, a feeling of being trapped. This feeling should be your cue to start being aware of your environment. This feeling should automatically make you stop thinking, stop introverting. Remove yourself from the immediate situation, and take a look at what’s happening. Once an invalidator has you introverted and thinking, you are under his or her control. The solution: Do not introvert. Do not take it personally. Step back and take a look. Do not defend yourself. Try to notice what makes the invalidator want to put you on the spot.

His big hands moved quickly, efficiently, over the hard polymer—re-assembling the Smith & Wesson M&P Compact he’d brought with him across the unguarded border with France. No borders. It was a lofty idea, in theory. In reality, it only served to make the work of men like him easier. He lifted the semi-automatic pistol in one hand, sliding a full double-stacked magazine into the grip. Twelve rounds of 9mm Federal Hydra-Shok, jacketed hollowpoints. Carrying hardball wouldn’t have been of much use—pistol rounds weren’t going to go through good body armor on the best of days. The Smith & Wesson went into a holster under his armpit, in a cross-draw position. Another pair of loaded magazines went into the pocket of his motorcycle jacket. Along with a long, thin suppressor.

Our entire system, both technical and mental, tends towards oneness, identity and totality, at the cost of an extraordinary simplification. And the whole of our metaphysics and all our neuroses chart the evils and confusions that ensue from that simplification. But duality is indefectible. It is totality that falters in the more or less long term. Any political, economic, moral or mental system that achieves this even virtual totalization, that achieves this kind of perfection, either automatically fractures or duplicates itself to infinity in a simulacrum of itself. Everything that comes close to its definitive formula or its absolute potency can only repeat itself indefinitely or produce a monstrous double - whether it be terrorism or clones. There is never any equilibrium state or state of completion that cannot suddenly be destabilized by a process of automatic reversion. Everything which offends against duality, which is the fundamental rule, everything which aims to be integral, leads to disintegration through the violent resurgence of duality - or in conformity with the principle of evil, whichever you prefer. It is duality and reversibility which everywhere govern the principle of evil. It is duality, liquidated everywhere, conjured away by all possible means, that restores an absence and an emptiness that are generally submerged by a total presence. It is duality that fractures Integral Reality, that smashes every unitary or totalitarian system by emptiness, crashes, viruses or terrorism.

The third stage of the power transition is the stage of the power maturity… when the nation is fully industrial… technological change is still rapid, economic efficiency is high, national income continues to rise, but at a slower rate than previously… Bureaucratization seems to be increasing both in political and economic institutions... There is still room for much improvement in producing greater wealth and in distributing it… But the great burst of energy characteristic of nations in the early stages of industrialization lies in the past for mature nations. They cannot again double and triple and quadruple their capital investment as they did in the early years… The internal qualities that give a nation international power do not disappear in the stage of power maturity. They may even continue to increase, but not at the rate they did before, and to slow down even a little in a race where everyone is running forward is to run the risk of falling behind eventually. This is why the power of a nation must decline in the stage of power maturity, even though the nation continues to grow richer, more industrial and more efficient. We must remember that power is relative, not absolute… Had all nations of the world gone through the industrial revolution and the concomitant demographic transition at the same time and at the same speed, the result would have been a great change in international relations but not necessarily any major shift in the distribution of power among nations. There would have been no power transition. However, industrialization has proceeded unevenly though the world… It is the differential spread of industrialization to the world and the resulting power transition, not some automatic `balancing` process`, that provides the framework of modern international politics (304-306).

The Starflex, like all Brownies, allowed no focusing. The shuttle cocked automatically to avoid double exposures—which the manual billed as a convenience for the amateur. All you had to do was all that you could do: peek into the viewfinder and press the shutter.

Slater felt the weight of his semiautomatic at his hip. Special Enforcements carried assault rifles as well GLOCKs, depending on their preference, but Slater liked his double-action, self-loading weapon, liked that the pull of the trigger cocked the weapon, liked the heft and surety of the automatic revolver.

There is another me in the remaining cell. He is wearing a white tennis shirt, shorts and oversized mirrorshades, lounging in a deck chair by a swimming pool. He has a book in his lap: Le Bouchon de cristal. One of my favorites, too. ‘It got you again,’ he says, not bothering to look up. ‘Again. What is that, three times in a row now? You should know by now that it always goes for tit-for-tat.’ ‘I almost got it this time.’ ‘That whole false memory of cooperation thing is a good idea,’ he says. ‘Except, you know, it will never work. The warminds have non-standard occipital lobes, non-sequential dorsal stream. You can’t fool it with visual illusions. Too bad the Archons don’t give points for effort.’ I blink. ‘Wait a minute. How do you know that, but I don’t?’ ‘Did you think you are the only le Flambeur in here? I’ve been around. Anyway, you need ten more points to beat it, so get over here and let me help you out.’ ‘Rub it in, smartass.’ I walk to the blue line, taking my first relieved breath of this round. He gets up as well, pulling his sleek automatic from beneath the book. I point a forefinger at him. ‘Boom boom,’ I say. ‘I cooperate.’ ‘Very funny,’ he says and raises his gun, grinning. My double reflection in his shades looks small and naked. ‘Hey. Hey. We’re in this together, right?’ And this is me thinking I had a sense of humor. ‘Gamblers and high rollers, isn’t that who we are?’ Something clicks. Compelling smile, elaborate cell, putting me at ease, reminding me of myself but somehow not quite right— ‘Oh fuck.’ Every prison has its rumours and monsters and this place is no different. I heard this one from a zoku renegade I cooperated with for a while: the legend of the anomaly. The All-Defector. The thing that never cooperates and gets away with it. It found a glitch in the system so that it always appears as you. And if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust? ‘Oh yes,’ says the All-Defector, and pulls the trigger

Total revolt responds to total order, not just dialectical conflict. At this point, it is double or nothing: the system shatters and drags the universal away in its disintegration. It is vain to want to restore universal values from the debris of globalization. The dream of rediscovered universality (but did it ever exist?) that could put a stop to global hegemony, the dream of a reinvention of politics and democracy and, as for us, the dream of a Europe bearing an alternative model of civilization opposed to neoliberal hegemony - this dream is without hope. Once the mirror of universality is broken (which is like the mirror stage of our modernity), only fragments remain, scattered fragments. Globalization automatically entails, in the same movement, fragmentation and deepening discrimination -and our fate is for a universe that no longer has anything universal about it - fragmentary and fractal - but that no doubt leaves the field free for all singularities: the worst and the best, the most violent and the most poetic.

All on Automatic We were once at a client site where all the developers were using the same IDE. Their system administrator gave each developer a set of instructions on installing add-on packages to the IDE. These instructions filled many pages—pages full of click here, scroll there, drag this, double-click that, and do it again. Not surprisingly, every developer's machine was loaded slightly differently. Subtle differences in the application's behavior occurred when different developers ran the same code. Bugs would appear on one machine but not on others.

Kundalini is a primitive spirit, a creative force that typically resides in a dormant state within our bodies. We realize our innate power and completeness upon awakening. We know there is everything within us that we need to be happy and fulfilled. Kundalini is not a physical reality but a perceptible reality. Once we have been awakened, we are shedding our old tendencies, and negativity like a snake sheds off its old skin. The kundalini is said to empower us with Shakti — that Divine Mother's primordial energy. Charged with this feminine creative force, we get filled with the vigor, enthusiasm, willpower, and self-confidence that we need to shake off negative memories and emotions hidden deep within our subconscious mind. Our mind is getting dormant. Issues and issues that had once held our focus now seem insignificant. Such a mind-state automatically produces intuitive wisdom.  Released from the endless chain of uncertainty and misunderstanding, insight is our guardian and guide.  The strength of discernment is unfailing. The reason kundalini awakening is such a remarkable aspect of spiritual awakening is that it is not based on complex theological arguments or religious norms that are culturally defined. Instead, Kundalini concentrates on the divine's immediate, ultimate experience within us. And regardless of your particular religious background and values, we can all use kundalini yoga to assist in our spiritual evolution. Most ancient myths allude to the meaning of kundalini. Tiresias narrative is a prime example. If Tiresias–the ancient Greek seer discovered two copulating snakes, he would stick his staff between them to distinguish them. He was immediately turned into a woman and remained like that for seven years until he was able to repeat his action and turn back into a male. In this novel, the force of change, powerful enough to completely reverse both male and female physical polarities, emerges from the fusion of the two serpents, passed on by the ring. Tiresias staff was later passed on to Hermes along with serpents. Several medical organizations use the ancient Greek icon of Hermes, the Greek god and messenger of all gods, called “Karykeion.” In occult Hermetic philosophy, Hermes Caduceus represents the masculine's potential as a central phallic rod surrounded by two coupling serpents ' writhing, woven Shakti energies. The rod also represents the spine (sushumna), while the serpents perform metaphysical currents (pranas) along the inda and pingala channels from the chakra at the base of the spine to the pineal gland in a double helix pattern.

We were in the middle of a three car caravan accompanied by Jim Carlisle, a career diplomat and the perfect Charge’ de Affaires. His manner was formal but always with a practiced smile to make his counterparts feel at ease. He sat in the jump seat in front of Owen, Alex and I sat together in the back near the double cargo doors guarding the luggage. The driver was Pakistani as was the security guard on the passenger side. The cars were crossing a bridge when it happened. First the blinding flash, then the delayed sound, it was deafening with the unmistakable smell of high explosives. The Ford Expedition in front erupted in a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire as it leaped off the road and settled back in a black pile of melting plastic, glass and metal. Our driver slammed on the brakes, ramming the gear into reverse while twisting his body around for a better view out the rear door windows. It was to late, the car behind us had met the same fate, we were bookended by smoking heaps of scrap metal as the masked bombers, five of them, surrounded our SUV. This was a professional hit team, their leader was calm, he directed the others with chilling efficiency. They wore black ski masks, bullet proof vests and ear phone sets, only the leader spoke, the others took orders. The shortest one had a knapsack, he turned his back to another who unzipped it and removed the gray matter, it looked like putty, he slapped it hard against the double rear doors. These would be the most vulnerable, they locked together rather than to the structural integrity of the vehicle. Both doors exploded out and away from the car dangling precariously on their hinges. The short one jumped in first, throwing the luggage out and scrambling towards us as our security guard leveled his government issue Glock-45, he hesitated to long, the red dot sighting device from the backup shooter was in the center of his forehead. The bone and brain fragment from the melon sized exit wound in the back of his head splattered against the windshield. The driver went for the concealed weapon under the front seat but thought better of it as the bombers surrounded the vehicle. Outside the driver side window, the leader hit the bullet proof glass with the butt of his matt black automatic, he wanted the doors opened, the driver had already hit the lock release.

Have Enjoyable Swimming with the Indoor Pool by Patio Enclosures Whatsoever be the climate outside the craving for swimming always puts you jump into the swimming pool. And if you have an Indoor Pool then the enthusiasm gets doubled. For this you can make your pool inside the area of home. Or if you are already having an open pool then too there is nothing more to worry. These days the technology has made such advancements that can modify your home constructions without even doing any damage to it. This is well illustrated with the pool enclosures available in the market. You can get them to make your pool come into enclosed area to enjoy the enthusiasm fully. It is a well-known fact that weather has three natures but the most furious is the winter when the chillness is almost killing to roam outside. In that case you forget to swim or can say that miss swimming. There the pool enclosures come to be a supporting property that makes your outer pool to be an indoor swimming pool. With this convenience the Patio Enclosures are helpful in making you home look more extravagant with wonderful finishing touch. It is also known as an inexpensive way to decorate your home. There are various materials that can be made use of making these enclosures. The materials that are used in making enclosures most commonly are fiber, glass, timber, plastic, etc. These days many companies are keen in doing fabrication and installation of variety of enclosure present in their stock. So you need not worry for having construction or reconstruction of pools. They supply with most proficient workers expert in their performance. In the time of technology when every small thing you can get as automated then why not these. You can have the eccentric innovation of automatic pool covers present in the market provided by many companies. With the expected feature of covering and uncovering the swimming pool automatically this type of enclosures are in demand mostly. Through this feature you can have swimming in enclosed area in winters along with enjoying the open pool in summers too as required. You can even make the maintenance costs low by covering the pool not to come in contact with dust or dirt. Indoor pools are fabulous but if you have open pools then make them covered with the patio enclosures. This makes you enjoy swimming throughout the year and also makes the maintenance costs for swimming pools lower.

A dramatic illustration of how environment shapes personality is the story of the Gilmore family. On January 17, 1978, in Utah, the convicted double murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad, his unyielding refusal to appeal his death sentence having gained him a measure of international notoriety. The shattering story of his childhood, blighted by family violence, alcoholism and spite was chronicled later by his brother Mikal Gilmore in the memoir Shot in the Heart. Mikal, the youngest of four boys, was born when Gary was eleven years old. If children reared in the same family shared the same environment, the differences between siblings would have to be due to genetic inheritance. In the case of the Gilmores, it is easy to see why Mikal, born at a time when the family was enjoying a period of relative stability, would feel he had been brought up in a different world, why the misery of his childhood, as he put it, had been so radically different from the misery of his brothers’ childhood. Even without such vast chasms in experience, the environment of siblings is never the same. Environment has far greater impact on the structures and circuits of the human brain than was realized even a decade ago. It is what shapes the inherited genetic material. I believe it to be the decisive factor in determining whether the impairments of ADD will or will not appear in a child. Many variables will influence the particular environment a child experiences. Birth order, for one, automatically places siblings in dissimilar situations. The older sibling has to suffer the pain of seeing parental love and attention directed toward an intruder. The younger sibling may need to learn survival in an environment that harbors a stronger, potentially hostile rival, and never comes to know either the special status or the burden of being an only child. The full weight of unconscious parental expectations is far more likely to fall on the firstborn. Historical studies of birth order have established it as an important influence on the shaping of the personality, comparable with sex.

But what if she acted like a credit card company? What if she stopped calling when the bill was due? What if, in very fine print in her very long contract, she said she would bill them $750 for every day that they were past due and after 15 days she would automatically charge their credit card on file? Only she didn’t write out the $750. Instead, she calculated it down to a percentage of their total fee, which seemed such a minuscule amount. Less than 1 percent, really. So that even when people did bother to read the clause, they usually shrugged, the amount seeming so nominal. She thought the idea so bold when she implemented it, she was certain she would lose clients or have wild fights about it when her invoices went out. Instead, she discovered something else about the ultra-rich. The only thing they enjoyed less than parting with their money was talking about it. It seemed to physically pain them. She had one person ask what the fee was and as soon as she explained that they could refer to item 26a in their contract they apologized, said they would FedEx a check, and hung up the phone. The Eikenborns were particularly reticent to talk about bills or budgets or anything of that sort, yet maniacally uninclined to spend a penny, Olga noticed, on other human beings. Mrs. Eikenborn delightfully coughed up cash for luxury bathroom trailers, fine wine, freshly shucked oysters, Kobe beef steaks, and custom tuxedos for Victoria’s two dogs. Yet, she balked at the cost of feeding the staff who installed the tents and lighting, proclaimed outrage at the photographer’s need for breaks, and once booked Olga on a double layover to save $200 on a $750,000 event.

The man looked at him dispassionately in the gray morning light. With one hand he pinched together the Professor’s nostrils. When the Professor opened his mouth to breathe, the man swiftly seized his tongue and pulled on it with all his might. The Professor was gagging and catching his breath; he did not see what was happening. He could not distinguish the pain of the brutal yanking from that of the sharp knife. Then there was an endless choking and spitting that went on automatically, as though he were scarcely a part of it. The word “operation” kept going through his mind; it calmed his terror somewhat as he sank back into darkness. The caravan left sometime toward midmorning. The Professor, not unconscious, but in a state of utter stupor, still gagging and drooling blood, was dumped doubled-up into a sack and tied at one side of a camel. The lower end of the enormous amphitheater contained a natural gate in the rocks. The camels, swift mehara, were lightly laden on this trip. They passed through single file, and slowly mounted the gentle slope that led up into the beginning of the desert. That night, at a stop behind some low hills, the men took him out, still in a state which permitted no thought, and over the dusty rags that remained of his clothing they fastened a series of curious belts made of the bottoms of tin cans strung together. One after another of these bright girdles was wired about his torso, his arms and legs, even across his face, until he was entirely within a suit of armor that covered him with its circular metal scales. There was a good deal of merriment during this decking-out of the Professor. The Professor was no longer conscious; to be exact, Even when all his wounds had healed and he felt no more pain, the Professor did not begin to think again; he ate and defecated, and he danced when he was bidden, a senseless hopping up and down that delighted the children, principally because of the wonderful jangling racket it made. And he generally slept through the heat of the day, in among the camels.

Powered by a bearingless engine, the Blue Edge main rotor has five double-swept blades, each with three Blue Pulse flaps in its trailing edge that are automatically activated as many as forty times per second. This all but eliminates blade-vortex interaction that produces the thwop-thwop-thwop noise when a rotor blade impacts the wake vortex created by the blade in front of it.

[Dial 833.742.9500] How to Install and set up QuickBooks Desktop for Mac after new updates? Installing and Setting Up QuickBooks Desktop for Mac: Complete Guide QuickBooks Desktop for Mac offers a comprehensive accounting solution designed specifically for Apple users. This guide walks you through the entire installation and setup process, helping you get your financial management system up and running quickly. System Requirements and Preparation Q: What are the system requirements for the latest QuickBooks Desktop for Mac? A: The latest version of QuickBooks Desktop for Mac typically requires: macOS 11 (Big Sur) or newer At least 4GB of RAM (8GB recommended) 2.4 GHz processor or faster 2GB of disk space (additional space for company files) Internet connection for activation, updates, and online features Display resolution of 1280 x 800 or higher Always check Intuit's website for the most current requirements, as they update with each new release. Q: Should I close any applications before installing QuickBooks for Mac? A: Yes, before beginning installation: Close all applications, especially other financial software Ensure you have administrator access to your Mac Disable sleep mode to prevent interruptions Back up any existing financial data Temporarily disable antivirus software Ensure you have a stable internet connection Purchasing and Downloading Q: What's the best way to purchase QuickBooks Desktop for Mac? A: You have several options: Purchase directly from the Intuit website to ensure you get the latest version Buy from authorized retailers like Apple Store, Amazon, or Best Buy Purchase through a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who may offer discounts Consider subscribing to get automatic updates rather than buying outright Q: After purchasing, how do I download QuickBooks Desktop for Mac? A: Follow these steps: Log in to your Intuit account at accounts.intuit.com Navigate to "Your Products and Services" Find QuickBooks Desktop for Mac in your purchases Click "Download" and save the .dmg file to a location you can easily access Wait for the download to complete (file size is typically 1-2GB) If you purchased a physical copy, insert the installation disc and proceed to the installation section. Installation Process Q: How do I install QuickBooks Desktop for Mac once I've downloaded it? A: Complete installation with these steps: Locate and double-click the downloaded .dmg file When the installation window appears, drag the QuickBooks icon to the Applications folder Enter your Mac administrator password if prompted Wait for the copying process to complete Eject the installation disk image Navigate to your Applications folder and double-click the QuickBooks icon Accept the software license agreement Enter your license and product numbers when prompted Complete registration when asked.