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.

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.

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

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.

You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you. Internalizing this belief will help you a) shift your perspective of care tasks from a moral obligation to a functional errand, b) see what changes you actually want to make, and c) weave them into your life with minimal effort, relying not on self-loathing but on self-compassion.

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.

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

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).

Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? The answers to those questions is freeing because if the change program doesn't satisfy these two requirements, it's not worth your time.  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.

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.

...When my nephew was three, [his mother] was worrying about getting him into the right preschool. Kid's fifteen now. He's under pressure to make sure he gets good grades so he can get into a good school. He needs to show good extracurricular activities to get into a good school. He needs to be popular with his classmates. Which means be just like them. Dress right, use the proper slang, listen to proper music, go away on the proper vacations. Live in the right neighborhood, be sure his parents drive the right car, hang with the right group, have the right interests. He has homework. He has soccer practice and guitar lessons. The school decides what he has to learn, and when, and from whom. The school tells him which stairwell he can go up. It tells him how fast to move through the corridors, when he can talk, when he can't, when he can chew gum, when he can have lunch, what he is allowed to wear..." Rita paused and took a drink. "Boy", I said. "Ready for corporate life." She nodded. "And the rest of the world is telling him he's carefree," she said. "And all the time he's worried that the boys will think he's a sissy, and the school bully will beat him up, and the girls will think he's a geek." "Hard times," I said. "The hardest," she said. "And while he's going through puberty and struggling like hell to come to terms with the new person he's becoming, running through it all, like salt in a wound, is the self-satisfied adult smirk that keeps trivializing his angst." "They do learn to read and write and do numbers," I said. "They do. And they do that early. And after that, it's mostly bullshit. And nobody ever consults the kid about it." "You spend time with this kid," I said. "I do my Auntie Mame thing every few weeks. He takes the train in from his hideous suburb. We go to a museum, or shop, or walk around and look at the city. We have dinner. We talk. He spends the night, and I usually drive him back in the morning." "What do you tell him?" I said. "I tell him to hang on," Rita said. She was leaning a little forward now, each hand resting palm-down on the table, her drink growing warm with neglect. "I tell him that life in the hideous suburb is not all the life there is. I tell him it will get better in a few years. I tell him that he'll get out of that stultifying little claustrophobic coffin of a life, and the walls will fall away and he'll have room to move and choose, and if he's tough enough, to have a life of his own making." As she spoke, she was slapping the tabletop softly with her right hand. "If he doesn't explode first," she said. "Your jury summations must be riveting," I said. She laughed and sat back. "I love that kid," she said. "I think about it a lot." "He's lucky to have you. Lot of them have no one." Rita nodded. "Sometimes I want to take him and run," she said. The wind shifted outside, and the rain began to rattle against the big picture window next to us. It collected and ran down, distorting reality and blurring the headlights and taillights and traffic lights and colorful umbrellas and bright raincoats into a kind of Parisian shimmer. "I know," I said.

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.

This might be illustrated by the way in which, for example, John Owen’s work Of the Mortification of Sin has undoubtedly been read by many more younger ministers than either his Glory of Christ or Communion with God. That may be understandable because of the deep pastoral insight in Owen’s short work; but it may also put the practical cart before the theological horse. Owen himself would not have been satisfied with hearers who learned mortification without learning Christ. A larger paradigmatic shift needs to take place than only exchanging a superficial subjectivism for Owen’s rigorous subjectivism. What is required is a radical recentering in a richer and deeper knowledge of Christ, understood in terms of his person and work. There can be little doubt that Owen himself viewed things this way.

Early-paying customers may be able to support the continuous development of your product and service. More important, early-paying customers allow you to learn how to maximize the value that you can provide to them. You begin by selling them A, and in that process recognize that they need B and C too, and you begin to build in that direction.

From my experience, I knew that if I could make it to a flight nurse in a flight-for-life helicopter, I would have the chance. I have seen flight nurses do incredible things in really bloody, gnarly situations. That became my goal…make it to the helicopter.

Some twenty-three hundred miles away Major General H.H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps, had traveled to Hamilton Field near Sacramento to personally see off a flight of thirteen B-l 7s destined for MacArthur in the Philippines by way of Hawaii. The first leg to Hickam Field took fourteen hours, so the big bombers flew with only four-man crews and were unarmed. One of the pilots objected. At least they ought to carry their bomb sights and machine guns. Arnold said they could be put aboard but without ammunition to save weight. So the bombers could home in on its signal, Major General Frederick L. Martin, head of the Hawaiian Air Force, had his staff ask station WGMB in Honolulu to stay on all night. Sure thing, general. Another night of ukuleles and Glenn Miller drifting out across the Pacific courtesy of the U.S. Army Air Corps. When Lieutenant Colonel George W. Bicknell of Army intelligence heard about it, he blew up. Why tip our hands whenever we have planes coming in? Why not keep WGMB on the air every night? One of those who caught the station was Lieutenant Kermit Tyler on his way to work the graveyard shift at the radar coordinating station at Fort Shafter. Must be planes coming in from the States, he told himself.

As the Arizona’s men gathered for breakfast and the enemy submarine report from the Ward made its way up the naval chain of command, the Army’s Opana Mobile Radar Station at Kahuku Point on the northern tip of Oahu shut down for the day. Privates Joseph Lockard and George Elliott had been on duty since 4:00 a.m., and their three-hour shift training on a relatively new warning system was over. Lockard had been instructing Elliott in reading the radarscope, but just as he reached to turn it off, a large image began to march across his screen from the north. Lockard’s first thought was that something had gone haywire with his set, but when everything checked out, he and Elliott called in a report of what appeared to be more than fifty planes approaching Oahu about 130 miles out. The Information Center at Fort Shafter, to which they reported, was charged with directing pursuit aircraft to intercept any incoming threat, but it was also shutting down for the day. The senior officer remaining at the Information Center was First Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, the executive officer of the 78th Pursuit Squadron, who was serving only his second day of duty at the center. Tyler would always be adamant that it never crossed his mind that these incoming planes could possibly be enemy aircraft, particularly as a far more likely explanation presented itself. Two squadrons of B-17 bombers, totaling twelve aircraft, were nearing Hickam Field from the northeast that morning after an overnight flight from California. After refueling, they were supposed to continue on to the Philippines to augment General MacArthur’s air force. Tyler was convinced that the Opana station had detected this flight of bombers and told Lockard and Elliott, “Well, don’t worry about it.”14

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.)

Prior to the advent of military staffs, armies and navies made military decisions via councils of war, in which the commander would assemble his major subordinates, solicit and pitch courses of action, and seek a consensus on which one to pursue. Napoleon eschewed such meetings once he had enough rank to forego them, calling them "a cowardly proceeding" intended more to shift blame than to determine an effective plan.

A world made one, by the political union of its parts, would not only require of its citizen a shift of allegiance, but it would deprive him of the enormous personal satisfaction of distrusting what he doesn't know and despising what he has never seen. This would be a severe deprivation, perhaps an intolerable one. The awful truth is, a world government would lack an enemy, and that is a deficiency not to be lightly dismissed. It will take a yet undiscovered vitamin to supply the blood of man with a substitute for national ambition and racial antipathy; but we are discovering new vitamins all the time, and I am aware of that too.

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

I started to see a serious decline in health in high altitude professional astronomy. Most noticeable was the onset of constant fatigue, memory issues and confusion. The condition progressed during my time in the commercial and utility solar industry where I started falling asleep at work and developed hot skin. The doctors tested me and said I had shift work disorder in 2008 and vitamin D and Vitamin B12 deficiencies in 2011. In 2015 I had a COVID-19 like sickness that made everyone in the family really sick. I never recovered and this started regular visits to the doctors. They diagnosed severe sleep apnea and mental illness and prescribed a CPAP machine. Under the care of the doctors I became much sicker on their prescription drugs and treatments. I eventually got smart and figured out I was not going to recover under their care and they may actually kill me! In 2021, moving to Hawaii island revealed that I had ‘Altitude Hypersensitivity’ and a high altitude commuting disease called ‘Magee’s Disease’. By the end of 2023 I had developed the treatments for these conditions and made a reasonable recovery. There is no cure for either condition. They are life-long illnesses. I now have to live well below 1,000 feet near sea level and take the treatments for the rest of my life. I documented the conditions in the books ‘Toxic Altitude’ and ‘Magee’s Disease’. The treatments for the hypoxic high altitude damage appeared transferable into COVID-19 and Long COVID and these are documented in the books “COVID Supplements” and ‘Long COVID Supplements’.

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.

What went wrong? Lasko and his team spent ages thinking about risk, but they never shifted their perspective from thinking of the Great Chicago Fire Festival as a unique project to seeing it as “one of those”; that is, part of a wider class of projects. If they had, they would have spent time thinking about live events. How do they fail? One common way is equipment failure. Mics don’t work. Computers crash. How is that risk mitigated? Simple: Identify essential equipment, get backups, and make contingency plans. That kind of analysis is dead easy—but only after you have shifted to the outside view. Notice that risk mitigation does not require predicting the exact circumstances that lead to disaster. Jim Lasko didn’t need to identify when and how the ignition system would fail, only recognize that it could. And have a Plan B if it did. Recall what Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1758: “A little neglect may breed great mischief.” This is why high safety standards are an excellent form of risk mitigation and a must on all projects. They’re not just good for workers; they prevent little things from combining in unpredictable ways into project-smashing black swans.

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.

Unlike us, predators have no comprehension of their fundamental weakness, their fundamental vulnerability, their own subjugation to pain and death. But we know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defencelessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us and that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. We know how we are naked, and how that nakedness can be exploited and that means we know how others are naked, and how they can be exploited. We can terrify other people, consciously. We can hurt and humiliate them for faults we understand only too well. We can torture them literally-slowly, artfully and terribly. That's far more than predation. That's a qualitative shift in understanding. That's a cataclysm as large as the development of self-consciousness itself. That's the entry of the knowledge of Good and Evil into the world.

Indy beware. Suddenly my books ceased to sell on Amazon and Smashwords. Checking the internet I found that they were also being sold by readabookpage,com and euro-books.net neither of which I have authorised . Worse still they claim to have had 290 four star reviews for them which would equipage to a majority of 5 X stars. Moreover, probably only 1 in 20 people , maybe more, ever write a review. So, by my sums, they have probably shifted over 5.800 books and me c.$7,000 out of pocket. Nice to know they are selling so well, sad I don't get the benefits. Unless Amazon, Smashwords, Apple Books, B and N etc.. get together to get pirate sites closed down , then there is very little future in indy books

Alex giggled, kissed her lightly, and then shifted position to lie side by side in a sixty-nine position.

Their followers, desperate to join a potentially masterable new dominance hierarchy (the old one being cluttered by its current occupants), become enamored of that story. While doing so, being less bright than those they follow, they subtly shift “contributed to” or “affected” to “caused.” The originator(s), gratified by the emergence of followers, start to shift their story in that direction as well. Or they object, but it does not matter. The cult has already begun.

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.

greater market integration can cause a psychological shift toward greater impersonal prosociality (arrow A). Greater impersonal prosociality (measured as conditional cooperation) fosters the formation of vol- untary organizations (arrow B) that develop formal institutions, which often involve explicit rules, written agreements, and mutual monitoring (arrow C). Both these formal institutions (arrow D) and people’s motivations for impersonal prosociality (arrow E) contribute to provisioning public goods,

Some research has been done on a concept called ambiversion.4 Similar to ambidextrous people who use either hand to write, ambiverts tend to shift between introversion and extroversion. An example is salespeople who must listen deeply (an introvert strength) and also be able to talk enthusiastically about their products (an extrovert strength). We all have many different assets. It comes down to a matter of degree in how we use them.

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.

But more than any other question, how far along were her contractions? I did my best to get her comfortable, not that it mattered. She was completely out, every ounce of her was dead weight. I took her wrist, searching for a pulse again. I found the faintest rhythm and shifted to place my hand on her belly, hoping to feel the baby move, hoping the child was still alive. I wondered about a miscarriage, my focus on the blood, the amount of it, the concentration around

Adolescence is a period when the social landscape undergoes a massive shift. Suddenly, it’s not just about family, it’s about peers and where one stands in the hierarchy among them. The need for acceptance becomes necessary, and it feels as if one’s survival depends on it.

I shift in my seat and swallow back the lump of anxiety building in my throat while trying to ignore the bouncing of my leg. Do I tell him, do I open the door to my fucked-up memories of something that should never have happened. Yet happened repeatedly.

I can’t help myself. I have an odd feeling in my stomach that won’t shift. Like something is going on with her. Like she’s screaming out for help behind those confident, feisty eyes. As though they’re begging for someone to rescue her.

own significance, even as A’s jokes quietly rouse his hitherto submerged sense of the ridiculous. But move B to another environment, and his concerns will subtly shift in response to a new interlocutor. What, then, may be expected to happen to a person’s identity in the company of a cataract or a mountain, an oak tree or a celandine, objects that after all have no conscious concerns and so, it would seem, can neither encourage nor censor particular behaviours?

[B]y reason of its faster and faster infall [the surface of the imploding star] moves away from the [distant] observer more and more rapidly. The light is shifted to the red. It becomes dimmer millisecond by millisecond, and in less than a second is too dark to see . . . [The star,] like the Cheshire cat, fades from view. One leaves behind only its grin, the other, only its gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction, yes; light, no. No more than light do any particles emerge. Moreover, light and particles incident from outside ... [and] going down the black hole only add to its mass and increase its gravitational attraction.” Black hole was Wheeler’s new name. Within months it was adopted enthusiastically by relativity physicists, astrophysicists, and the general public, in East as well as West—with one exception: In France, where the phrase trou noir (black hole) has obscene connotations, there was resistance for several years.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

not drive a stick shift worth a damn.

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

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.

LINUS PAULING WAS WRONG about megavitamins because he had made two fundamental errors. First, he had assumed that you cannot have too much of a good thing. Vitamins are critical to life. If people don’t get enough vitamins, they suffer various deficiency states, like scurvy (not enough vitamin C) or rickets (not enough vitamin D). The reason that vitamins are so important is that they help convert food into energy. But there’s a catch. To convert food into energy, the body uses a process called oxidation. One outcome of oxidation is the generation of something called free radicals, which can be quite destructive. In search of electrons, free radicals damage cell membranes, DNA, and arteries, including the arteries that supply blood to the heart. As a consequence, free radicals cause cancer, aging, and heart disease. Indeed, free radicals are probably the single greatest reason that we aren’t immortal. To counter the effects of free radicals, the body makes antioxidants. Vitamins—like vitamins A, C, E, and beta-carotene—as well as minerals like selenium and substances like omega-3 fatty acids all have antioxidant activity. For this reason, people who eat diets rich in fruits and vegetables, which are rich in antioxidants, tend to have less cancer, less heart disease, and live longer. Pauling’s logic to this point is clear; if antioxidants in food prevent cancer and heart disease, then eating large quantities of manufactured antioxidants should do the same thing. But Linus Pauling had ignored one important fact: Oxidation is also required to kill new cancer cells and clear clogged arteries. By asking people to ingest large quantities of vitamins and supplements, Pauling had shifted the oxidation-antioxidation balance too far in favor of antioxidation, therefore inadvertently increasing the risk of cancer and heart disease. As it turns out, Mae West aside, you actually can have too much of a good thing. (“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” said West, who was talking about sex, not vitamins.) Second, Pauling had assumed that vitamins and supplements ingested in food were the same as those purified or synthesized in a laboratory. This, too, was incorrect. Vitamins are phytochemicals, which means that they are contained in plants (phyto- means “plant” in Greek). The 13 vitamins (A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12, C, D, E, and K) contained in food are surrounded by thousands of other phytochemicals that have long and complicated names like flavonoids, flavonols, flavanones, isoflavones, anthocyanins, anthocyanidins, proanthocyanidins, tannins, isothiocyanates, carotenoids, allyl sulfides, polyphenols, and phenolic acids. The difference between vitamins and these other phytochemicals is that deficiency states like scurvy have been defined for vitamins but not for the others. But make no mistake: These other phytochemicals are important, too. And Pauling’s recommendation to ingest massive quantities of vitamins apart from their natural surroundings was an unnatural act. For example, as described in Catherine Price’s book, Vitamania, half of an apple has the antioxidant activity of 1,500 milligrams of vitamin C, even though it contains only 5.7 milligrams of the vitamin. That’s because the phytochemicals that surround vitamin C in apples enhance its effect

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.

Medicine will shift from being heavily trafficked on the treatment side to the prevention side,

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).