B Shift Quotes

Life is All About How you Handle Plan B Plan A is always my first choice. You know, the one where Everything works out to be Happily ever-after. But more often than not, I find myself dealing with The upside-down, inside-out version -- Where nothing goes as it should. It's at this point that the real Test of my character comes in.. Do I sink, or do I swim? Do I wallow in self pity and play the victim, Or simply shift gears And make the best of the situation? The choice is all mine... Life is all about how you handle Plan B.

... continually shifting perspective ... including, always, the side where we laugh at everything, including ourselves; and all with love-- love for ourselves with all imperfections, love for others and theirs, love for this crazy, delicious, brutal world in which we live.

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You’ll guess we don’t use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don’t dance around it in sunlight. But there’s a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn’t ask these high questions when we’re confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness.

she felt that there was a tide within her, moving with the power of the moon and the ocean and the goddess, who had bound them together, rising, cresting within her heart untill she thought that she must weep, or laugh, or both. she felt her world shifting, remaking itself; holding on to all she was and all she known, but creating a space within these things for this man she was holding in her arms, so that he might share it with her, bringing to it all that he was and all that he had known. And in that instant, in the eternity of that kiss, Alayna knew, with a joy that she found frightening even as it encompassed her, that her life would never again be as it had been.

Many social justice or social activist movements have been rooted in a position. A position is usually against something. Any position will call up its opposition. If I say up, it generates down. If I say right, it really creates left. If I say good, it creates bad. So a position creates its opposition. A stand is something quite distinct from that. There are synonyms for “stand” such as “declaration” or “commitment,” but let me talk for just a few moments about the power of a stand. A stand comes from the heart, from the soul. A stand is always life affirming. A stand is always trustworthy. A stand is natural to who you are. When we use the phrase “take a stand” I’m really inviting you to un-cover, or “unconceal,” or recognize, or affirm, or claim the stand that you already are. Stand-takers are the people who actually change the course of history and are the source of causing an idea’s time to come. Mahatma Gandhi was a stand-taker. He took a stand so powerful that it mobilized millions of people in a way that the completely unpredictable outcome of the British walking out of India did happen. And India became an independent nation. The stand that he took… or the stand that Martin Luther King, Jr. took or the stand that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took for women’s rights—those stands changed our lives today. The changes that have taken place in history as a result of the stand-takers are permanent changes, not temporary changes. The women in this room vote because those women took so powerful a stand that it moved the world. And so the opportunity here is for us to claim the stand that we already are, not take a position against the macro economic system, or a position against this administration, although some of you may have those feelings. What’s way more powerful than that is taking a stand, which includes all positions, which allows all positions to be heard and reconsidered, and to begin to dissolve. When you take a stand, it actually does shift the whole universe and unexpected, unpredictable things happen.

Q: Your warehouse workers work 11/5-hour shifts. In order to make rate, a significant number of them need to take over-the-counter painkillers multiple times per shift, which means regular backups at the medical office. Do you: A. Scale back the rate ---clearly, workers are at their physical limits B. Make shifts shorter C. Increase the number or duration of breaks D. Increase staffing at the nurse's office E. Install vending machines to dispense painkillers more efficiently Seriously---what kind of fucking sociopath goes with E?

In the current Christian-based Gregorian calendar the year 1 B.C. was followed by the year A.D. 1—there was no year zero. Century reckoning is therefore shifted by one year. Before

A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our relationship to our own stuff: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves replacing an entire system because some minute component has failed.

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is.

In all of these Midpoint examples, you might have noticed a subtle shift from wants to needs. This is no coincidence. The third essential Midpoint element is the intersection of the A and B stories, when your hero starts to let go of what they want in lieu of figuring out what they need.

What is bad luck? Opinion. What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity? They are all opinions, and more than that, they are opinions that lie outside of our own reasoned choice, presented as if they were good or evil. Let a person shift their opinions only to what belongs in the field of their own choice, and I guarantee that person will have peace of mind, whatever is happening around them.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.3.18b–19

You can’t do everything, but you can do one thing, and then another and another. In terms of energy, it’s better to make a wrong choice than none at all. You might begin by listing your priorities—for the day, for the week, for the month, for a lifetime. Start modestly. List everything you want to do today or tomorrow. Set priorities by dividing the items into A, B, and C categories. At the least, accomplish the A items. Try the same thing with long-term goals. Priorities do shift, and you can change them at any time, but simply getting them down in black and white adds clarity to your life, and clarity creates energy.

Many have no happier moments than those that they pass in solitude, abandoned to their own imagination, which sometimes puts sceptres in their hands or miters on their heads, shifts the scene of pleasure with endless variety, bids all the forms of beauty sparkle before them, and gluts them with every change of visionary luxury.

Effort shifts your attention from perception to action. Making a focused effort activates your brain to establish new synaptic connections.

Repentance is an internal shift

Christian shrugged. “I’m a charming guy.” Marc scoffed loudly. “Show some respect, asshole. I’m your Sire.” “Right,” Marc said, his expression shifting to one of mocking attention.

shift your brain to a different attractor state (borrowed from neurodynamics)

When Man’s State inverts, these positions shift. Mind remains at the right angle, but now Spirit shares its base. Body occupies the highest point. Here, it is essential to remember this schema represents not a hierarchy, but a state of yearning. Man’s State yearns toward Spirit, while its inverse yearns toward the Body, for all things yearn toward what they do not (or no longer) possess.

Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we really live is small."5 For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest—this man desires an advocate,6 this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master. And then certain men show the most senseless indignation—they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience! But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another's company, but could not endure your own.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.’” “The other one, Daddy,” Ziggy say quietly. He kisses her forehead. “‘The most common form of despair is not being who you are.’” Ziggy smiles. “That’s my favorite.” “And my favorite,” Dr. B says, as he shifts Ziggy on his lap, “is—” A new voice breaks in. I glance over my shoulder to see Ren smiling down at me, hands in his pockets. “‘To cheat oneself out of love,’” he says, “‘is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation.

When I discarded the idea that God was not a man (as I had been raised to think and believe without question), I grew distant, and the flame that once lit my path began to flicker and hiss like a candle burnt to its wick, making longevity impossible without a new energy source.

It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions. The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow. It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself. But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters. Or were there? The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they? What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats? She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside. She knew something was out there.

We “bowl alone,” as sociologist Robert Putnam has put it. Yet this fails to account for a monumental shift in whom we join and for what. We still join together, but now we join for services too expensive to purchase alone—child care, the schools our children attend, recreational facilities, and security...

What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore.

Once upon a time, our problem was guilt: the feeling that you have made a mistake, with reference to something forbidden. This was felt as a stain on one’s character. Ehrenberg suggests the dichotomy of the forbidden and the allowed has been replaced with an axis of the possible and the impossible. The question that hovers over your character is no longer that of how good you are, but of how capable you are, where capacity is measured in something like kilowatt hours—the raw capacity to make things happen. With this shift comes a new pathology. The affliction of guilt has given way to weariness—weariness with the vague and unending project of having to become one’s fullest self. We call this depression.

What I found telling was what Trump and his team didn’t ask. They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be. Nor did they ask how the United States might prepare itself to meet that threat. Instead, with the four of us still in our seats—including two outgoing Obama appointees—the president-elect and his team shifted immediately into a strategy session about messaging on Russia. About how they could spin what we’d just told them. Speaking as if we weren’t there, Priebus began describing what a press statement about this meeting might look like. The Trump team—led by Priebus, with Pence, Spicer, and Trump jumping in—debated how to position these findings for maximum political advantage. They were keen to emphasize that there was no impact on the vote, meaning that the Russians hadn’t elected Trump. Clapper interjected to remind them of what he had said about sixty seconds earlier: the intelligence community did not analyze American politics, and we had not offered a view on that.

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don’t have a partner. They were right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent—84 percent of whom are women. I

Q: Your customer-service representatives handle roughly sixty calls in an eighty-hour shift, with a half-hour lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks. By the end of the day, a problematic number of them are so exhausted by these interactions that their ability to focus, read basic conversational cues, and maintain a peppy demeanor is negatively affected. Do you: A. Increase staffing so you can scale back the number of calls each rep takes per shift -- clearly, workers are at their cognitive limits B. Allow workers to take a few minutes to decompress after difficult calls C. Increase the number or duration of breaks D. Decrease the number of objectives workers have for each call so they aren't as mentally and emotionally taxing E. Install a program that badgers workers with corrective pop-ups telling them that they sound tired. Seriously---what kind of fucking sociopath goes with E?

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind,  a doing evil deeds, 22he has now reconciled  b in his body of flesh by his death,  c in order to present you holy and blameless and  d above reproach before him, 23 e if indeed you continue in the faith,  f stable and steadfast, not shifting from  g the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed  h in all creation [7] under heaven,  i and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Even so, little separation between the soteriological and the humanitarian motifs was in evidence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The missionaries persisted in the pre-Enlightenment tradition of the indissoluble unity of “evangelization” and “humanization” (cf van der Linde 1973), of “service to the soul” and “service to the body” (Nergaard 1988:34–40), of proclaiming the gospel and spreading a “beneficent civilization” (Rennstich 1982a, 1982b). For Blumhardt of the Basel Mission this clearly included “reparation for injustice committed by Europeans, so that to some extent the thousand bleeding wounds could be healed which were caused by the Europeans since centuries through their most dirty greediness and most cruel deceitfulness” (quoted by Rennstich 1982a:95; cf 1982b:546). And Henry Venn, famous General Secretary of the British CMS, urged missionaries to take their stand between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the tyranny of the system and the morally and physically threatened masses of the people to whom they went (cf Rennstich 1982b:545).

And begins to rot. There is no other way to describe it. As if devoured by insects, his flesh withers away, his muscles decomposing as silvery fungi erupt along his flank, then rot in turn. The skin falls from his face to reveal yellowed bone and cracked teeth, his eyes sink into his skull and vanish in the blackness of gaping sockets. His skeleton breaks and shifts and reforms; it is as if his body is taking itself apart and reassembling into a whole new shape. Into a man. No, a half-man; the stag’s ghoulish skull remains, hiding his face from view.

Scientists will discover a weak correlation between A and B, assuming C under D conditions. The university PR office will then post something for immediate release: ‘Scientists Find Potential Link Between A and B (under certain conditions)’. News organisations will pick it up and publish, ‘A causes B, say scientists’, which will then be read by The Internets and turned into ‘A causes B - ALL THE TIME!’ Which will then be picked up by TV shows that run stories like ‘A ... A Killer Among Us??’ All of this eventually leads to your grandma getting all weird about A.

The quality of our life on planet earth depends on the choices we make every day. Choices about how we spend our time, how we live our lives, and most important, how we treat ourselves and others. I am sad to see how people seem to be more bitter, divided, and overwhelmed than ever these days. We are as a global community, increasingly disconnected from ourselves and other people. The first step toward fixing what ills us, is to embrace feeling better. Habits are a means to this end. They teach us the skills of change and they propel us towards our dreams, and they add more shine to the world.  By embracing feelings of success and adding more goodness to you day-to-day life, you are making the world brighter not only for yourself, but also for others. You are vanquishing shame and guilt and you are freeing yourself and others who have endured a lifetime of self trash talk. The most profound transformations I've shared with you in this book are not about discreet habits being formed, they are about essential shifts in experience, from suffering to less suffering, from fear to hope, from being overwhelmed to feeling empowered.

Jack Goody (1977) has convincingly shown how shifts hitherto labeled as shifts from magic to science, or from the so-called ‘prelogical’ to the more and more ‘rational’ state of consciousness, or from Lévi-Strauss’s ‘savage’ mind to domesticated thought, can be more economically and cogently explained as shifts from orality to various stages of literacy. I had earlier suggested (1967b, p. 189) that many of the contrasts often made between ‘western’ and other views seem reducible to contrasts between deeply interiorized literacy and more or less residually oral states of consciousness.

For example, the first time Aunt B came to the Pack Council, he took it upon himself to lecture her about how men should be men and women should be women, and Clan alphas should be men with women helping them, not the other way around." I laughed. "What did she do?" "She patted his shoulder and said, 'Bless your heart, you must be awful in bed.'" Ha! "Then she turned to Martha and told her that if she ever was in need of a man who respected women enough to think they were human beings she had several available in her clan." That sounded like Aunt B. "Mahon turned purple and didn't say another word through the whole Council meeting.

Words pack power and these definitions are laden with values, often wildly idiosyncratic ones. Here’s an example, namely the ways I think about the word “competition”: (a) “competition”—your lab team races the Cambridge group to a discovery (exhilarating but embarrassing to admit to); (b) “competition”—playing pickup soccer (fine, as long as the best player shifts sides if the score becomes lopsided); (c) “competition”—your child’s teacher announces a prize for the best outlining-your-fingers Thanksgiving turkey drawing (silly and perhaps a red flag—if it keeps happening, maybe complain to the principal); (d) “competition”—whose deity is more worth killing for? (try to avoid).

[Booker T. Washington's] doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs. The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?

Willow gazed up at him, her silly grin still in place. "You know wha'? You're kinda cute when you crook your eyebrows down like tha'." Rider muttered a curse, lifted her off the floor, and tossed her over his shoulder. "Juan, you and Hicks help Mrs. Brigham to her room. I'll take care of this little hellion." Willow lifted her head from where she dangled over Rider's shoulder. "See yuh later, Mrs. B." Miriam smiled and waved. "i think Mrs. B is pickled," Rider's passenger said in a loud whisper as he hauled her out the door. "No thanks to you,hellion," he growled, and smacked her bottom. "Ow!" As he carried Willow into the house, Rider was hard pressed to quell a sudden urge to laugh. In her bedroom, he unceremoniously dumped her on her bed, but when he turned to leave, her pitiful sounding voice halted his exit. "Rider,come here a min-it." "Oh,hell, I suppose you're going to be sick." Grabbing a basin off her dresser, he shoved it under her chin. "It serves you right, you know." He watched nervously as she knocked the bowl aside. "Dun...don't be mad." She held her arms out to him. "Come closer. Gimme a kiss and we'll make up. I like your kisses so-o-o-o much." This time Rider couldn't stall his grin and inadvertently leaned closer. She was on him like a duck on a June bug. With two hearty handfuls of his shirt, she yanked him down on top of her and plastered her mouth against his. Talking against his lips, the tipsy girl had the audacity to complain, "Not like this. Do it like before. You know, with your tongue." Rider squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. This isn't fair, he bemoaned silently. He tried to rise but Willow held tight, squirming her voluptuous little body against his. Sweat broke out on his forehead. If he didn't put a stop to this soon...He lifted his mouth from hers. "If I promise to kiss you with my tongue, will you let go of me and go to sleep?" "Uh-huh." Willow's eyes drooped, but the affect appeared more seductive than drunken. Lifting her shoulders slightly off the bed, he wound his arms around her and covered her mouth with his. His tongue explored hers in a long, liquid kiss, tasting of wine and desire. Rider savored its promise, wishing just this once, he could be less a gentleman. Willow wrapped one of her legs over his and shifted her hips, innocently aligning his swelling heat with hers. He started and bolted off the bed. "Holy hell! You did it again!" "What?" Her voice was sluggish and sleepy now. Disgusted with himself, Rider stomped to the door. "Sleep it off, Freckles." Outside Willow's door, Rider slumped against the wall and shook his head. Willow Vaughn was a constant surprise, and he loved the girl so bad it hurt.

Graham Allison, a Harvard historian, has warned that this process of rebalancing power from West to East contains a trap. As the United States steps back and China steps up, both powers, and their dependents, will feel unbalanced, out of sync with decades of history, creating a moment when the slightest misunderstanding, resentment, or offense could topple everyone into the trap of war. It happened in the fifth century B.C. when Athens’ rise threatened Sparta. Hence Allison’s name for it, the Thucydides trap, after the Greek historian who wrote the defining history of the Peloponnesian War. It happened in the twentieth century, when Germany threatened the established European order and provoked two world wars. It could happen again if China and the United States cannot find a cooperative, trusting way to manage the shift in political power that must follow the shift in economic power that has already taken place.

Freud famously saw the ‘horror’ of Medusa’s head as a symbol of male castration, but the original trauma in the Medusa story is not castration but rape. Most scholars and historians dismiss Poseidon’s rape of Medusa as an insignificant detail, merely one among so many rapes of mortal, immortal and semi-divine women committed by male gods. However, myths which glorify rape as a strategy ‘to enact the principle of domination by means of sex’ are comparatively recent, becoming widespread in Attica around the 5th century BCE. It is likely that myths celebrating rape reflect a devastating historical shift in cultural values, the change from a society based on equality and partnership to a hierarchical structure based on unequal distribution of resources and the need to control women’s sexuality. Joseph Campbell describes the myth of Perseus and Medusa as reflecting ‘an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma’ which occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C.E. The myth may refer to the overrunning of the peaceful, sedentary, matrifocal and most likely matrilineal early civilizations of Old Europe by patriarchal warlike Indo-European invaders.

It's like this," Maddy said at last. "say the A people and the B people get in an argument. The A people do something that hurts the B people. The B people strike back to get even. But that just makes the A people angry all over again. They say, 'You hurt us, so we're going to hurt you.' It keeps on like that. One bad thing leads to a worse bad thing, on and on." It was like what Torren had said when he was telling her about the Disaster. Revenge. he'd called it. "Can't it be stopped?" said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, tying to find a place to sit where rocks weren't digging into her. "maybe it can be stopped at the beginning," Maddy said. "if someone sees what's happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction." "Reverse the direction?" "Yes, turn it around." "How would you do that?" "You'd do something good." said Maddy. "Or at least you'd keep yourself from doing something bad." "But how could you?" said Lina. "When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?" "You wouldn't want to," Maddy said. "That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad."- The People of Sparks

We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7) As believers, “we live by faith, not by sight”—God never wants us to live by our feelings. Our inner self may want to live by feelings, and Satan may want us to, but God wants us to face the facts, not feelings. He wants us to face the facts of Christ and His finished and perfect work for us. And once we face these precious facts, and believe them simply because God says they are facts, He will take care of our feelings. Yet God never gives us feelings to enable or encourage us to trust Him, and He never gives them to show us that we have already completely trusted Him. God only gives us feelings when He sees that we trust Him apart from our feelings, resting solely on His Word and His faithfulness to His promise. And these feelings that can only come from Him will be given at such a time and to such a degree as His love sees best for each individual circumstance. Therefore we must choose between facing our feelings or facing the facts of God. Our feelings may be as uncertain and changing as the sea or shifting sand. God’s facts, however, are as certain as the Rock of Ages Himself—“Jesus Christ . . . the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

For the Fertile Crescent, the answer is clear. Once it had lost the head start that it had enjoyed thanks to its locally available concentration of domesticable wild plants and animals, the Fertile Crescent possessed no further compelling geographic advantages. The disappearance of that head start can be traced in detail, as the westward shift in powerful empires. After the rise of Fertile Crescent states in the fourth millennium B.C., the center of power initially remained in the Fertile Crescent, rotating between empires such as those of Babylon, the Hittites, Assyria, and Persia. With the Greek conquest of all advanced societies from Greece east to India under Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C., power finally made its first shift irrevocably westward. It shifted farther west with Rome’s conquest of Greece in the second century B.C., and after the fall of the Roman Empire it eventually moved again, to western and northern Europe. The major factor behind these shifts becomes obvious as soon as one compares the modern Fertile Crescent with ancient descriptions of it. Today, the expressions “Fertile Crescent” and “world leader in food production” are absurd. Large areas of the former Fertile Crescent are now desert, semidesert, steppe, or heavily eroded or salinized terrain unsuited for agriculture. Today’s ephemeral wealth of some of the region’s nations, based on the single nonrenewable resource of oil, conceals the region’s long-standing fundamental poverty and difficulty in feeding itself.

Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success. In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.” The Indians rather enjoyed being French allies one day and difficult neighbors the next. Lorette Indians might find this a fine way to stab a French soldier in the back without drawing blood. They would need Father Meriel. He could arrange anything if he chose; he had power among all the peoples. But he might say no, and so might Eben’s Indian family. Mercy translated what was going on for Nistenha and Snow Walker. “They want to get married,” she told them. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She couldn’t help laughing from the joy and the terror of it. Ransom would no longer be the first word in Sarah’s heart. Eben would be. Mercy said, “Eben asked her right here in the street, Snow Walker. He wants to save her from marriage to a French soldier she doesn’t want. He’s loved Sarah since the march.” The two Indians had no reaction. For a moment Mercy thought she must have spoken to them in English. Nistenha turned to walk away and Snow Walker turned with her. If Nistenha was not interested in Sarah and Eben’s plight, no Indian would be. Mercy called on her memory of every speech in every ceremony, every dignified phrase and powerful word. “Honored mother,” she said softly. “Honored sister. We are in need and we beg you to hear our petition.” Nistenha stopped walking, turned back and stared at her in amazement. Sarah and Eben and Snow Walker stared at her in amazement. Sam can build canoes, thought Mercy. I can make a speech. “This woman my sister and this man my brother wish to spend their lives together. My brother will need the generous permission of his Indian father. Already we know that my sister will be refused the permission of her French owners. We will need an ally to support us in our request. We will need your strength and your wisdom. We beseech you, Mother, that you stand by us and help us.” The city of Montreal swirled around them. Eben, property of an Indian father in Lorette; Sarah, property of a French family in Montreal; and Mercy, property of Tannhahorens, awaited her answer. “Your words fill me with pride, Munnunock,” said Nistenha softly. She reached into her shopping bundle. Slowly she drew out a fine French china cup, undoubtedly meant for the feast of Flying Legs. She held it for a moment, and then her stern face softened and she gave it to Eben. Indians sealed a promise with a gift. She would help them. From her bundle, Snow Walker took dangling silver earrings she must have bought for Mercy and handed them to Sarah. Because she knew that Sarah’s Mohawk was not good enough and that Eben was too stirred to speak, Mercy gave the flowery thanks required after such gifts. “God bless us,” she said to Sarah and Eben, and Eben said, “He has.

Renfrew noted the general features of systems collapse, itemizing them as follows: (1) the collapse of the central administrative organization; (2) the disappearance of the traditional elite class; (3) a collapse of the centralized economy; and (4) a settlement shift and population decline. It might take as much as a century for all aspects of the collapse to be completed, he said, and noted that there is no single, obvious cause for the collapse.

I stood in my room. I shifted my feet on the white marble. Sunlight poured into the room like a golden waterfall. I looked behind me. The two cat statues of black onyx flanked the door. The bed was made up with a silk sheet. The water fall shower fell from the ceiling into the pool. It all was still here. The white gauze curtain swayed in the window and I grinned. I could not help but grin. I entered the balcony and looked down at the river that fell into the ravine. As always, I could jump and I would land in the pool below. I could smell the earth and the green. I could feel the wind and the spray of mist carried on the breeze like never before. It was real. I could touch it.And I knew, beyond the trees was my cottage and stream.

In May 2016, there appeared a website called WhoIsElonMusk .com. Most prominent on the site was an autoplaying video on the home page that featured foreboding music and the dark, smoky-voiced narration of a true-crime TV show. It spent two minutes shifting through B-roll footage and clips pilfered from documentaries about Musk.

Hunter Cain shifted in the passenger seat as he dragged hard on a cigarette. He stared out as the headlights pierced the dark Florida highway. “How

Author Bruce Feiler believes the problem lies in the offer to “do anything.” He writes that “while well meaning, this gesture unintentionally shifts the obligation to the aggrieved. Instead of offering ‘anything,’ just do something.

One of the mysteries of music is that two can achieve together what one never could do alone. The effect is exponential. It’s also the only activity on Planet Earth that can transport those who hear it from place A to place B in about two beats. It can shift a mood from laughter to tears to I-can-conquer-the-world to what-if and hope. It’s the original time travel machine.

… and while I had been helping Wolfe get the orchids primped up I had been accosted by a tall skinny guy in a pin-check suit, as young as me or younger, wearing a smile that I would recognize if I saw it in Siam—the smile of an elected person who expects to run again, or a novice in training to join the elected person class at the first opportunity. He looked around to make sure no spies were sneaking up on us at the moment, introduced himself as Mr. Whosis, Assistant District Attorney of Crowfield County, and told me at the bottom of his voice, shifting from the smile to Expression 9B, which is used when speaking of the death of a voter, that he would like to have my version of the unfortunate occurrence at the estate of Mr. Pratt the preceding evening. Feeling pestered, I raised my voice instead of lowering it. “District Attorney, huh? Working up a charge of murder against the bull?” That confused him, because he had to show that he appreciated my wit without sacrificing Expression 9B…

It was only the middle cluster, Group B, who were forced to wrestle with an experience that reconstituted reality without changing anything about the physical world. These interlocked generations-Boomers and Xers-will be the only people who experienced this shift as it happened, with total recall of both the previous world and the world that came next. "If we're the last people in history to know life before the Internet," wrote Michael Harris in his book The End of Absence, "we are also the only ones who will ever speak, as it were, both languages. We are the only fluent translators of Before and After.

we included a section about scientist Bruce Damer’s experiences as a child? In one of the stories, his “future selves” appeared and he asked them to sign a contract to only send positive energy back in time. As you keep track of your spontaneous precognitive experiences or if you pursue controlled precognition as a practice, this kind of thinking will become commonplace. In other words, you will start to think of yourself as not just this version of your body that exists right now as you read this, but instead, as all past and future versions of your body and mind. As a result of this shift, your sense of self can feel more permanent and connected in both time and space. Imagine a line drawn through time, where each point in the line is wherever you have been and wherever you will be, from birth to death. Physicists call this your “world line” – the map of your entire existence in space and time. Similar to this world line, as you become more comfortable with your own precognitive experiences, you will probably start to include your past and future selves as part of your definition of yourself. This is a reasonable response to having first-hand experience with accessing information from the future. It doesn’t mean you always know what your future self will do, or that the future is necessarily determined at the present moment. But thinking of yourself as all of yourself – through time and space – is a shift that is likely coming your way as you continue your training as a Positive Precog. Fortunately, connecting with yourself in this way is likely to make you more compassionate with yourself (the “C” in the REACH principles) – and, as a result, more compassionate with others (also the “C” in the REACH principles). In addition to embracing connections in time, this shift in your sense of self will probably also embrace connections in space. That’s because, as you practise controlled precognition, you’ll notice that not only are you able to sometimes perceive uncannily accurate information from the future, but also this information can be from locations that are distant. You might end up thinking about these connections in space like the Iroquois, a Native American Indian tribe, have done. They speak of a long body. Your long body would include your mind, your body, the minds and bodies of people with whom you have relationships, the tools you use, and the places you live.a Again, this feeling of connection can be very positive. Any feelings of compassion you have for yourself as a result of extending your sense of yourself over time will also extend to those in your long body. And guess what? When compassion is passed around to others, it turns out that the originator of the compassion is more resilient to stress.b That brings us nicely to the changes you can expect in health and wellbeing as a result of your Positive Precog practice.

A heart's desire is carved at birth, scraped into our souls by the cruel, bitterly cold air that shocks us into sucking in our first breath, sealing up inside us.

Money and looks are Ok to an extent to lure women, but better realise that it’s the luck that enables one to lay them. Why, you can’t even screw a whore if you’re not destined to have her for your visit to the brothel would’ve coincided with her periods, and the next time you’re eager, she could’ve shifted out of the town itself.

According to Ivar, he and Dr Glowacki reached a final agreement on July 2, 1925, just days before the new participating preferred shares were to be sold. Ivar’s assistant, Karin Bökman, said she witnessed the signatures to the secret deal; she certified the translation of the original contract, as did a Polish notary. Dr Glowacki signed on behalf of the “Treasury of the Polish State,” and Ivar signed on behalf of International Match Corporation.32 Ivar apparently didn’t need to use the stamp he had prepared with a facsimile of Dr Glowacki’s signature. Like the B Shares, this contract was a marvel of financial innovation. First, the agreement provided for the creation of a new Dutch company called N.V. Maatschappij Garanta, or Garanta for short. Garanta would be incorporated in Amsterdam, and its shares would be owned by Polish citizens nominated by Dr Glowacki. Garanta would take over the entire match industry in Poland, from production to sale. Garanta also would assume “certain exchange losses which have been sustained by International Match Corporation in connection with financial transactions in Poland. This item is to be carried as an asset on the books of Garanta.”33 Apparently, Ivar had continued gambling on foreign exchange rates during 1925. This time, though, he had used International Match’s money, and this time he had lost. The secret agreement shifted those losses from International Match to Garanta. Durant and Berning were unaware of these losses, or their transfer.

In Hayek’s monetary theory of the cycle the upswing is generated by monetary expansions that cause an excess of investment over volun- tary saving and a shift in the structure of production toward more time- consuming processes. This structure, created by a depressed money rate of interest, cannot be sustained. Monetary expansion, then, will not pro- duce an everlasting boom, and when the expansion eventually stops, crisis and depression follow. With regard to the sources of monetary expansion, while others like Mises put the blame on the misguided (“inflationist” or “cheap money”) attitude of the monetary authorities, Hayek pointed to the endogenous process of money creation by the banks, in particular in a sys- tem of fractional reserve banking (see, e.g., Hayek 2012a [1933a], chap. 4, vs. Mises 2006b [1928]).

He laid out the defining characteristics, workflow, and management as follows. A two-pizza team will: Be small. No more than ten people. Be autonomous. They should have no need to coordinate with other teams to get their work done. With the new service-based software architecture in place, any team could simply refer to the published application programming interfaces (APIs) for other teams. (More on this new software architecture to follow.) Be evaluated by a well-defined “fitness function.” This is the sum of a weighted series of metrics. Example: a team that is in charge of adding selection in a product category might be evaluated on: a)  how many new distinct items were added for the period (50 percent weighting) b)  how many units of those new distinct items were sold (30 percent weighting) c)  how many page views those distinct items received (20 percent weighting) Be monitored in real time. A team’s real-time score on its fitness function would be displayed on a dashboard next to all the other two-pizza teams’ scores. Be the business owner. The team will own and be responsible for all aspects of its area of focus, including design, technology, and business results. This paradigm shift eliminates the all-too-often heard excuses such as, “We built what the business folks asked us to, they just asked for the wrong product,” or “If the tech team had actually delivered what we asked for and did it on time, we would have hit our numbers.” Be led by a multidisciplined top-flight leader. The leader must have deep technical expertise, know how to hire world-class software engineers and product managers, and possess excellent business judgment. Be self-funding. The team’s work will pay for itself. Be approved in advance by the S-Team. The S-Team must approve the formation of every two-pizza team.

Shifting identity helps you consider other new habits you might not have thought of doing that will move you closer to your aspiration.

Finish the sentence “I’m the kind of person who” with the identity—or identities—you’d like to embrace. Go to events that gather people, products, and services related to your emerging identity. When I decided I wanted to get into fermented foods, I went to the local Fermentation Festival. I met enthusiasts who were more experienced than I was. I learned about new products. I attended a workshop where an expert showed us how to make sauerkraut. I bought gear to ferment foods. I came home with a much stronger identity about being the kind of person who eats—and even makes—fermented foods. Learn the lingo. Know who the experts are. Watch movies related to the area of change you’re interested in. As I learned to surf, I looked up the lingo that described waves and started using it. I paid attention to big surfing events and watched videos of the most proficient people in the sport. I learned to understand the tide shifts and

Snatch. The kettlebell snatch is a total-body exercise with special emphasis on the entire posterior chain. It simultaneously develops strength, explosiveness, structural integrity, cardiorespiratory capacity, and virtually every attribute on the athletic continuum. There are six stages to the snatch: Inertia swing Acceleration pull with hip and trapezius Hand insertion deep into the handle Overhead lockout Direction change into the drop Grip change into the backswing To perform this exercise, with the kettlebell on the floor in front of you, load your hips and grip the kettlebell with your fingers as you would for the swing (see figure 7.21a). Swing the kettlebell back between your legs as you begin to stand, further loading the hips (see figure 7.21b). As with the swing and clean, various thumb positions can be used in the downswing and upswing portion of the snatch. The most common is to rotate the thumb back at the end of the downswing and transition to a 45-degree angle (thumb up) at the beginning of the acceleration pull. Keep your arm connected to your body and extend your knees and hips, allowing the inertia of the kettlebell to pull your arm forward (figure 7.21c). Just as the arm begins to separate from the body, accelerate the kettlebell vertically as fast as you can by rapidly pulling with the hip, followed by a shrug of the trapezius. If you are snatching with your right hand, push forcefully with your left leg, pull back your right hip, and shrug with your right trapezius (see figure 7.21d). As the kettlebell is accelerating upward, release your fingers and insert your palm deeply into the handle (see figure 7.21e). Allow the momentum to carry the kettlebell all the way to the top and lock out your arm in the fully extended elbow position (see figure 7.21f). This overhead lockout position is identical to the overhead position in the push or push press (thumb facing back, no or minimal rotation). To drop the kettlebell back down, first shift your weight to the opposite foot (if snatching with the right hand, shift to the left foot) and lean your upper body back (see figure 7.21g). Keep your hips and torso extended maximally and let your triceps connect to your torso. Finish the downswing by changing grips and pulling your hand back to catch the handle with your fingers (see figure 7.21h), and tighten the fingers as you follow the kettlebell between your legs into the backswing (see figure 7.21i). Use the rhythmic motion to continue the snatch for the desired repetitions.

Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, released a report in early 2021 that concluded that there is a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. This is apartheid.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International followed suit soon after. More than half a century of occupation and these prominent reports made a difference. Although Palestinians had been saying it for decades, the shift took time to filter through to Western elites and populations. Israel’s illiberalism is now impossible to deny, and many Western liberals no longer feel constrained in saying it.1

The Bob Verga shift describes how one mans chance illness changed history in 1966, by ensuring that Kentucky play Texas Western. The book examines Duke, Kentucky and Black America. in 1966 and later to see how Bob Verga's illness changed history.

Facebook’s ranking work was sloppy—there was no other way to put it. The company altered its recommendation systems on the basis of A/B tests that ran for just a few weeks, months less than the period Netflix considered necessary to observe longer-term shifts in user behavior. Facebook was more cavalier in shaping a global communications and broadcasting platform than Netflix was about deciding to steer users toward The Great British Bake Off. (A company spokeswoman disputed Gomez-Uribe’s recollection of hasty and inadequate testing of ranking changes, calling the company’s experiments rigorous and focused on improving user experience.)

Indeed, rapid OODA looping is merely one aspect of the process of adaptation. In the comprehensive OODA loop model Boyd’s attention to this broader theme comes most clearly to the fore. While the early presentations are clearly aimed at a military audience and pertain to operational art, by shifting his focus to a number of processes that in abstract are similar for a variety of organisms and social systems, Boyd steers A Discourse beyond military history and warfare. In particular during his later period Boyd approached and explained patterns for winning and losing from this more abstract point of view, suggesting patterns in the behavior of organisms and organizations when confronted with threats and challenges of an even more general nature.

A. B. Bruce summarizes this point: “The careful, painstaking education of the disciples secured that the Teacher’s influence on the world should be permanent, that His Kingdom should be founded on deep and indestructible convictions in the minds of a few, not on the shifting sands of superficial impressions on the minds of many.”1

The entrepreneur,’ said the French economist J. B. Say around 1800, ‘shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.’ But Say’s definition does not tell us who this ‘entrepreneur’ is. And since Say coined the term almost two hundred years ago, there has been total confusion over the definitions of ‘entrepreneur’ and

For the elite of his day, and for the monetary elite today, the Hegelian dialectic provides tools for the manipulation of society. To move the public from point A to point B, one need only find a spokesperson for a certain argument and position him or her as an authority. That person represents Goalpost One. Another spokesperson is positioned on the other side of the argument, to represent Goalpost Two. Argument A and B can then be used to manipulate a given social discussion. If one wishes, for in stance, to promote Idea C, one merely needs to promote the arguments of Goalpost One (that tend to promote Idea C) more effectively than the arguments of Goalpost Two. This forces a slippage of Goalpost Two’s position. Thus both Goalpost One and Goalpost Two advance downfield toward Idea C. Eventually, Goalpost Two occupies Goalpost One’s original position. The “anti-C” argument now occupies the pro-C position. In this manner whole social conversations are shifted from, say, a debate over market freedom vs. socialism to a debate about the degree of socialism that is desirable. The Hegelian dialectic is a powerful technique for influencing the conversations of cultures and nations, especially if one already controls (owns) much of the important media in which the arguments take place. One can then, as the monetary elite characteristically do, emphasize one argument at the expense of the other, effectively shifting the positions of Goalposts One and Two.” - Daily Bell, Hegelian Dialectic

An experimental analysis shifts the determination of behaviour from autonomous man to the environment - an environment responsible both for the evolution of the species and for the repertoire acquired by each member. Early versions of environmentalism were inadequate because they could not explain how the environment worked, and much seemed to be left for autonomous man to do. But environmental contingencies now take over functions once attributed to autonomous man, and certain questions arise. Is man then 'abolished'? Certainly not as a species or as an individual achiever. It is the autonomous inner man who is abolished, and that is a step forward. But does man not then become merely a victim or passive observer of what is happening to him? He is indeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making. The evolution of a culture is a gigantic exercise in self-control. It is often said that a scientific view of man leads to wounded vanity, a sense of hopelessness, and nostalgia. But no theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. And a new theory may change what can be done with its subject matter. A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man.

Church fellowships that imagine they are indispensable and whose thinking revolves about earthly and eternal survival will have to be told that God allows us all to die, that great churches have gone under, that only the bourgeoisie with its claim to ownership and permanence confuses the resurrection of the dead with its own survival. What is indispensable for our Lord is only that we follow him and shoulder the cross rather than shifting it back to the neighbor or stranger, only to make it heavier there. Put stiffly, but in genuinely evangelical fashion, the Crucified inspires all prophecy that has any right to genuine authority. It is not, as occurred in early Christianity according to 3 John, interchangeable with hierarchy, nor, contrary to 2 Peter 1:20, to be reduced to the message of the printed Scripture and needing official church interpretation. The Crucified is its legitimation at all times, and still is today. But the Crucified should not be made an edifying altar painting. He is present among the least. —E. Käsemann2

The two-point rhythm of walking's stride clears the mind for thinking. (N.B.: Perhaps, after telling the spinal circuits to "take a walk," the forebrain shifts to automatic pilot, so to speak, freeing the neocortex to ponder important issues of the day.) Many philosophers were lifetime walkers, who found that bipedal rhythms facilitated creative contemplation and thought. In his short life, e.g., Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles--ten times the circumference of earth.

Supercapitalism has triumphed as power has shifted to consumers and investors. They now have more choice than ever before, and can switch ever more easily to better deals. And competition among companies to lure and keep them continues to intensify. This means better and cheaper products, and higher returns. Yet as supercapitalism has triumphed, its negative social consequences have also loomed larger. These include widening inequality as most gains from economic growth go to the very top, reduced job security, instability of or loss of community, environmental degradation, violations of human rights abroad, and a plethora of products and services pandering to our basest desires. These consequences are larger in the United States than in other advanced economies because America has moved deeper into supercapitalism. Other economies, following closely behind, have begun to experience many of the same things. Democracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to such social consequences. That’s where citizen values are supposed to be expressed, where choices are supposed to be made between what we want for ourselves as consumers and investors, and what we want to achieve together. But the same competition that has fueled supercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbyists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns. The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Age—industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, “corporate statesmen” responding to all stakeholders, and regulatory agencies—have been largely blown away by the gusts of supercapitalism. Instead of guarding democracy against the disturbing side effects of supercapitalism, many reformers have set their sights on changing the behavior of particular companies—extolling them for being socially virtuous or attacking them for being socially irresponsible. The result has been some marginal changes in corporate behavior. But the larger consequence has been to divert the public’s attention from fixing democracy. 1

Renfrew noted the general features of systems collapse, itemizing them as follows: (1) the collapse of the central administrative organization; (2) the disappearance of the traditional elite class; (3) a collapse of the centralized economy; and (4) a settlement shift and population decline.

But the reason why this is all so important is because the standard interpretation of Biblical archaeology is increasingly that the events of the Bible did not happen because they do not line up with the artifactual evidence of archaeology. There is simply no current evidence of a crushing defeat of Egypt or the resultant wandering of the Jews in the desert around the traditional date of 1445-1400 B.C. (or the more critical late date of 1275 B.C.) There is no current evidence of the cities of Ai or Jericho being inhabited, much less destroyed around the dates that Biblical scholars say they must have happened. Aardsma shows that there is however archaeological evidence of all of the above occurring about one thousand years earlier than normally attested by Bible scholars. With a thousand year shift backwards, all the Biblical history falls into place with known external evidence.

LIFE PLAN FOR YOUR DREAM Plan A - Apply for a job and use it to Finance Your dream. Plan B - Borrow Other People's Money (OPM) to Finance your dream if you don't want the job route. Plan C - Consider working full time and pursue your dream part-time. Plan D - Diligently work on your dream until it overtakes your job. Plan E - Effect a paradigm shift by making your dream full time and your job part time. Plan F - F means time to Fire your boss.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees “Remember how in Deerfield there was nobody to marry? Remember how Eliza married an Indian? Remember how Abigail even had to go and marry a French fur trader without teeth?” Mercy had to laugh again. It was such a treat to laugh with English friends. “Your man doesn’t have teeth?” “Pierre has all his teeth. In fact, he’s handsome, rich and an army officer. But what am I to do about the marriage?” Sarah was not laughing. She was shivering. “I do not want that life or that language, Mercy, and above all, I do not want that man. If I repeat wedding vows, they will count. If I have a wedding night, it will be real. I will have French babies and they will be Catholic and I will live here all my life.” Sarah rearranged her French scarf in a very French way and Mercy thought how much clothing mattered; how changed they were by what they put on their bodies. “The Catholic church won’t make you,” said Mercy. “You can refuse.” “How? Pierre has brought his fellow officers to see me. His family has met me and they like me. They know I have no dowry, but they are being very generous about their son’s choice. If I refuse to marry Pierre, he and the French family with whom I live will be publicly humiliated. I won’t get a second offer of marriage after mistreating this one. The French family will make me a servant. I will spend my life waiting on them, curtseying to them, and saying ‘Oui, madame.’” “But surely ransom will come,” said Mercy. “Maybe it will. But what if it does not?” Mercy stared at her feet. Her leggings. Her moccasins. What if it does not? she thought. What if I spend my life in Kahnawake? “What if I stay in Montreal all my life?” demanded Sarah. “A servant girl to enemies of England.” The world asks too much of us, thought Mercy. But because she was practical and because there seemed no way out, she said, “Would this Frenchman treat you well?” Sarah shrugged as Eben had over the gauntlet, except that when Eben shrugged, he looked Indian, and when Sarah shrugged, she looked French. “He thinks I am beautiful.” “You are beautiful,” said Eben. He drew a deep breath to say something else, but Nistenha and Snow Walker arrived beside them. How reproachfully they looked at the captives. “The language of the people,” said Nistenha in Mohawk, “is sweeter to the ear when it does not mix with the language of the English.” Mercy flushed. This was why she had not been taken to Montreal before. She would flee to the English and be homesick again. And it was so. How she wanted to stay with Eben and Sarah! They were older and would take care of her…but no. None of the captives possessed the freedom to choose anything or take care of anyone. It turned out that Eben Nims believed otherwise. Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees None of the captives possessed the freedom to choose anything or take care of anyone. It turned out that Eben Nims believed otherwise. Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.

By questioning the control exercised by autonomous man and demonstrating the control exercised by the environment, a science of behavior also seems to question dignity or worth. A person is responsible for his behavior, not only in the sense that he may be justly blamed or punished when he behaves badly, but also in the sense that he is to be given credit and admired for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts the credit as well as the blame to the environment, and traditional practices can then no longer be justified. These are sweeping changes, and those who are committed to traditional theories and practices naturally resist them.

In 2014, corporate profits before taxes reached their highest share of the total economy in at least eighty-five years, tying the previous record set in 1942 when World War II pushed up profits (only to have most then taxed away). Between 2000 and 2014, quarterly corporate after-tax profits rose from $529 billion to $1.6 trillion. This rise didn’t reflect increasing returns to capital; it reflected increasing economic power. As I will show, this pushed the stock market to unprecedented heights, thereby enriching investors—most of whom are already in the upper ranks of the nation’s wealthy. Meanwhile, labor’s share of the economy has dropped. In 2000, labor’s share of nonfarm business income was 63 percent. In 2013, it was 57 percent, representing a shift from labor to capital of about $750 billion annually. Importantly,

Her gaze shifted from him to Keir and back again, a smile curling one end of her tantalizing lips. "So you're the brotherhood of the fighting toilet cleaners?

not drive a stick shift worth a damn.

Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees “Girl! English, eh? What is your name? Indians stole you, eh? I’ll send news to your people.” His excellent speech meant that he did a lot of trading with the English. It meant, Mercy prayed, that he liked the English. She found her tongue. “Will you take me to France, sir? Or anywhere at all? Wherever you are going--I can pay.” He raised his eyebrows. “You do not belong to an Indian?” She flushed and knew her red cheeks gave their own answer, but rather than speaking, she held out the cross. The sun was bright and the gemstones even brighter. The man sucked in his breath. He leaned very close to her to examine the cross. “Yes,” he said. “It is worth much.” He straightened up slowly, his eyes traveling from her waist to her breast to her throat to her hair. The other sailors also straightened, and they too left their work, drawn by the glittering cross. “So you want to sail with me, girl?” He stroked her cheek. His nails were yellow and thick like shingles, and filthy underneath. He twined her hair into a hank, circling it tighter and tighter, as if to scalp. “You are the jewel,” he said. “Come. I get a comb and fix this hair.” The other sailors slouched over. They pressed against her and she could not retreat. He continued to hold her by the hair, as if she were a rabbit to be skinned. She could see neither river nor sky, only the fierce grins of sailors leaning down. “Eh bien,” said the Frenchman, returning to his own tongue. “This little girl begs to sail with us,” he told his men. “What do you say, boys?” He began laughing. “Where should she sleep? What am I bid?” She did not have enough French to get every word, but it was the same in any language. The sailors laughed raucously. Indians had strong taboos about women. Men would not be with their women if they were going hunting or having important meetings, and certainly not when going off to war. She had never heard of an Indian man forcing himself on a woman. But these were not Indians. She let the cross fall on its chain and pushed the Frenchman away, but he caught both her wrists easily in his free hand and stretched her out by the wrists as well as by the hair. Tannhahorens pricked the white man’s hand with the tip of his scalping knife. White men loading barrels stood still. White sailors on deck ceased to move. White passersby froze where they walked. The bearded Frenchman drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. A little blood ran down his arm. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “She’s yours. I see.” The sailors edged away. Behind them now, Mercy could see two pirogues of Indians drifting by the floating dock. They looked like Sauk from the west. They were standing up in the deep wells of their sturdy boats, shifting their weapons to catch the sun. Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim.

Samaritans were worse than Gentiles (cf Hengel 1983b:56). This attitude was due, to a large degree, to the Samaritan defilement of the Jewish temple and the killing of a company of Jewish pilgrims by Samaritans (for details, cf Ford 1984:83-86).

These circumstances have prompted B. Violet and particularly Joachim Jeremias to suggest that the key to the entire enigma of interpreting the Nazareth episode should be looked for in the dramatic way in which the reading from Isaiah 61 is terminated just before the reference to the day of vengeance and the portrayal of the hoped-for reversal—for which the entire congregation must have been waiting. Jesus does the unimaginable by omitting this (cf Jeremias 1958:4146).

Gort (1980b:52, 58) affirms that, in the Reformed position, theology and ethics belong together. Ethics is the hands and feet and face of theology, and theology the vital organs, the soul of ethics. Such a position, of course, has tremendous consequences for our understanding of mission. In this model, liberation and black theologies become “a challenge to mission” (cf the title of Kritzinger 1988).

7. Ricky Gervais as David Brent Only people who have seen the British Office will remember the moment when David Brent says, “I think there’s been a rape up there” in a sensitivity training seminar he is holding. As my friend B. J. Novak described it, it was such a profoundly funny moment on television that there was a paradigm shift in comedy after he said it. With the character of David Brent, Ricky Gervais guaranteed that he would live in the pantheon forever, even if he did years of terrible, mediocre stuff. (I’m not saying he will, but he could if he wanted.) He’s like Woody Allen, and the original The Office is his Annie Hall.

André Beaufre captured the interactive nature, the dueling character of strategic behavior when he states that strategy is the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute.37 A recently posited definition emphasizes the dynamic nature of this process, and of strategy, stating that strategy is a process, a constant adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world where chance, uncertainty and ambiguity dominate, a view that is very much in line with Boyd’s idea.38 Strategy has also widespread application beyond the military sphere. Since World War II civil institutions – businesses, corporations, non-military government departments, universities – have come to develop strategies, by which they usually mean policy planning of any kind.39 But here too there are various opinions of what strategy is and does.40 The following viewpoints enjoy agreement among experts:41 Strategy concerns both organization and environment: the organization uses strategy to deal with changing environments; Strategy affects overall welfare of the organization: strategic decisions are considered important enough to affect the overall welfare of the organization; Strategy involves issues of both content and process: the study of strategy includes both the actions taken, or the content of strategy, and the processes by which actions are decided and implemented; Strategies exist on different levels: firms have corporate strategy (what business shall we be in?) and business strategy (how shall we compete in each business?); Strategy involves various thought processes: strategy involves conceptual as well as analytical exercises.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (Edward B. Burger;Michael Starbird) - Your Highlight on page 17 | location 251-270 | Added on Monday, 6 April 2015 03:03:56 Understand simple things deeply The most fundamental ideas in any subject can be understood with ever-increasing depth. Professional tennis players watch the ball; mathematicians understand a nuanced notion of number; successful students continue to improve their mastery of the concepts from previous chapters and courses as they move toward the more advanced material on the horizon; successful people regularly focus on the core purpose of their profession or life. True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. Trumpeting understanding through a note-worthy lesson. Tony Plog is an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, composer, and teacher. A few years ago we had the opportunity to observe him conducting a master class for accomplished soloists. During the class, each student played a portion of his or her selected virtuosic piece. They played wonderfully. Tony listened politely and always started his comments, “Very good, very good. That is a challenging piece, isn’t it?” As expected, he proceeded to give the students advice about how the piece could be played more beautifully, offering suggestions about physical technique and musicality. No surprise. But then he shifted gears. He asked the students to play a very easy warm-up exercise that any beginning trumpet player might be given. They played the handful of simple notes, which sounded childish compared to the dramatically fast, high notes from the earlier, more sophisticated pieces. After they played the simple phrase, Tony, for the first time during the lesson, picked up the trumpet. He played that same phrase, but when he played it, it was not childish. It was exquisite. Each note was a rich, delightful sound. He gave the small phrase a delicate shape, revealing a flowing sense of dynamics that enabled us to hear meaning in those simple notes. The students’ attempts did not come close—the contrast was astounding. The fundamental difference between the true master and the talented students clearly occurred at a far more basic level than in the intricacies of complex pieces. Tony explained that mastering an efficient, nuanced performance of simple pieces allows one to play spectacularly difficult pieces with greater control and artistry. The lesson was simple. The master teacher suggested that the advanced students focus more of their time on practicing simple pieces intensely—learning to perform them with technical efficiency and beautiful elegance. Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything. ==========

It is today widely acknowledged that Paul was the first Christian theologian precisely because he was the first Christian missionary (Hengel 1983b:53; cf Dahl 1977a:70; Russell 1988), that his “theology of mission is practically synonymous with the totality of (his) awesome reflections on Christian life” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:161) and “practically coextensive with his entire Christian vision” (:165) so that “there is something wrong in the very distinction between Paul's mission and his theology” (Dahl 1977a:70; cf Hahn 1965:97).

There are good theological reasons to reject making authorial intention the goal of the interpretation of Scripture. First, we must recognize that what has traditionally been considered authoritative for the church is Scripture, not the intentions, real or imagined, of the original authors. Yes, Christian interpreters throughout history have talked about what Paul or some other biblical writer may have meant to say, but that has traditionally not been taken to limit the meaning of the text to that intention. Thus, even if the psalmist intended to speak of David or some other king of ancient Israel, the church has always considered it legitimate to interpret the psalm as referring also—or even only or supremely—to Christ. Even if the human authors did not intend to affirm the Trinity in the first century, the church may legitimately interpret Scripture in Trinitarian terms. The church has traditionally not located the site of inspiration to be in the mind of the human author but in the text of Scripture itself. The shift to concentrating on the intentions of the human author is something that only happened in the modern era, with the rise of historical criticism.

Gunners, shift to APs but hold your fire. Main lasers, defocus and

What kind of an asshole are you, James?” she demanded in a harsh whisper. Her mood had shifted as quickly as an autumn wind—but that was Kivi for you. “Why are people always asking me that?” I wondered aloud.

What this finally comes to mean, in slightly less elaborate terms, is (a) that historical discourse, like political discourse (and, as we shall see, journalistic discourse) is a series of decisions, of revisions, many or most of which are calculated to certain ends, while others are accidental; and (b) that myth treats these choices as inevitable, presents such discourses as faits accompli, thereby lending an apparently— but falsely—natural (predestined) grounding to choices that, ultimately, could have turned out otherwise. In a sense, this is also what Jacques Derrida sought to do through deconstruction: to challenge the center, or the grounding, of those “truths that we hold to be self-evident,” as the expression goes, to expose human constructs as constructs, and to “de-construct” (emphasis on the first syllable of construct, as a noun) ourselves, that is, rid ourselves of the burden of such assumptions. In exposing those “self-evident” groundings as fallacies, we encounter both the curse and the blessing of the shifting center: on the one hand we realize that all reality becomes somehow less reliable in the process, mutable as the center shifts, now this way, now that; on the other, we are liberated from constructs masquerading as absolute truths. Thus is all language politicized.43

You wanted me to insist. You wanted me to win the argument.” “Wanted is too simple,” Susan said. She had shifted her gaze from her martini to the ongoing afternoon outside her kitchen window. “I wanted and didn’t want. I needed both my autonomy and your protection. By acting the way I did, I managed to have both.

Warren Lafont was a two-year patrol cop who worked day shifts. “Did Warren return fire?” “No.

the task is “to get the subject to shift from a psychic reality to a true reality” (1988b,

common situation of visual miscommunication between people and dogs is when owners let their leashed dogs meet each other for the first time. The humans are often anxious about how the dogs will get along, and if you watch them instead of the dogs, you’ll often notice that the humans will hold their breath and round their eyes and mouths in an “on alert” expression. Since these behaviors are expressions of offensive aggression in canine culture, I suspect that the humans are unwittingly signaling tension. If you exaggerate this by tightening the leash, as many owners do, you can actually cause the dogs to attack each other. Think of it: the dogs are in a tense social encounter, surrounded by support from their own pack, with the humans forming a tense, staring, breathless circle around them. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen dogs shift their eyes toward their owners’ frozen faces and then launch growling at the other dog. You can avoid a lot of dogfights by relaxing the muscles in your face, smiling with your eyes, breathing slowly, and turning away from the dogs rather than leaning forward and adding more tension.

Mrs Annesley approached the lieutenant, her eyes cold and unforgiving. “You should be horse whipped,” she said in an angry tone, then stormed out. Mr Wickham shifted his eyes between the floor and the doorway.

The French economist J-B Say coined the word “entrepreneur” around 1800, saying that “the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower productivity into an area of higher productivity and yield.