“
In a noisy place I can’t understand speech, because I cannot screen out the background noise.
”
”
Temple Grandin (Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism)
“
We’d said we’d keep in touch. But touch is not something you can do from a distance. Touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it’s gone, it’s gone. We should have said we’d keep in words, because they are all we can string between us-words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen. But they cause more complications than clarity. On the phone, there are always voices in the background. On the screen, there are always the sentences saying he has to go.
”
”
David Levithan (How They Met, and Other Stories)
“
... you've experienced the single scene out there - it's blood test and background checks and references and 'Please pee in this cup before we can go on a date' screenings, all clinical and stripped bare of any romance.
”
”
Katie MacAlister (A Girl's Guide to Vampires (Dark Ones #1))
“
I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background - even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes.
”
”
Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black)
“
The screen blanked, then produced a book cover. The jacket image—in black-and-white—showed barking dogs surrounding a scarecrow. In the background, shoulders slumped in a posture of weariness or defeat (or both), was a hunter with a gun. The eponymous Cortland, probably.
”
”
Stephen King (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
“
In my own life, I’ve never been the leading role. I just don’t have that star power. Wasn’t born with it. I’ve always been a sidekick. My singular purpose is to bolster heroes, stay in the background, and maybe, in one big on-screen moment, sacrifice my life for the greater good.
”
”
Emiko Jean (Tokyo Ever After (Tokyo Ever After, #1))
“
Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something which she understood, something which she could never do without, or be without, for it seemed as though it were her own self, her own body, at which she gazed and which lay so intimately upon the skyline. Gormenghast. The long, notched outline of her home. It was now his background. It was a screen of walls and towers pocked with windows. He stood against it, an intruder, imposing himself so vividly, so solidly, against her world, his head overtopping the loftiest of its towers.
”
”
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
“
Computers thwart, contort, and befuddle us. We mess around with fonts, change screen backgrounds, slow down or increase mouse speed. We tweak and we piddle. We spend countless hours preparing PowerPoint slides that most people forget in seconds. We generate reports in duplicate and triplicate and then somw that end up serving only one function for most of the recipients - to collect dust.
”
”
Jeff Davidson (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done)
“
Then the screen comes on, showing a familiar menu on a blue background and I stare at it, transfixed, like a yokel who’s never seen a television before. Because it’s not a TV. It’s a flat-screen PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition. They can’t be that dumb. It’s got to be a trap, I gibber to myself. Not even the clueless cannon-fodder-in-jumpsuits who staff any one of the movies on the shelf would be that dumb!
”
”
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
“
Everything he saw was distasteful to him. He hated the blue and white, the intensity and definiteness, the hum and heat of the south; the landscape seemed to him as hard and as romantic as a cardboard background on the stage, and the mountain but a wooden screen against a sheet painted blue. He walked fast in spite of the heat of the sun.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (The Voyage Out (The Virginia Woolf Library))
“
And I can see the home screen. And the photo saved as the background is… me. Asleep in his bed.
”
”
S.J. Tilly (Hans (Alliance, #4))
“
psychometric assessments cannot fully replace speaking with people and looking at their backgrounds and histories, they are far more powerful than traditional interviewing and screening methods.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
The computer hummed, sliced Roarke's face onto the screen. Such an intriguing couple.
His background was no prettier than the cop's had been. But he'd chosen, at least initially, the other side of the law to make his mark. And his fortune.
Now they were a set. A set that could be destroyed on a whim.
But not yet. Not for some little time yet.
After all, the game had just begun.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Rapture in Death (In Death, #4))
“
Art Levinson, who was on Apple’s board, was chairing the board meeting of his own company, Genentech, when his cell phone rang and Jobs’s name appeared on the screen. As soon as there was a break, Levinson called him back and heard the news of the tumor. He had a background in cancer biology, and his firm made cancer treatment drugs, so he became an advisor. So did Andy Grove of Intel, who had fought and beaten prostate cancer. Jobs called him that Sunday, and he drove
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
people astray and into potentially horrific acts. Both of these views relate to the world that is delivered to us by our senses. There is a third way that Buddhist practitioners know as “Emptiness.” This is the unseen, formless energy that extrudes itself as the myriad forms of the world, creating and then retrieving them back to the source. Suzuki Roshi suggested that we think of it as the white screen in a movie theater, the unseen background against which the shimmering movie of
”
”
Peter Coyote (The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education)
“
It is understandable that anyone with a Christian background would recoil in horror when he or she first encounters Crowley's shocking use of words and imagery, such as the Beast 666, Scarlet Woman, All-Father Chaos, Whore of Babylon, or blood of the saints. While these dark “blasphemies” effectively serve to screen out faint-hearted dabblers (and all who choose to remain self-blinded by superstition), they offer a radiant and altogether wholesome spiritual treasure for anyone bold and tenacious enough to do a little research (and a little meditation).
”
”
Lon Milo DuQuette (Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot)
“
John Isidore said, “I found a spider.”
The three androids glanced up, momentarily moving their attention from the TV screen to him.
“Let’s see it,” Pris said. She held out her hand.
Roy Baty said, “Don’t talk while Buster is on.”
“I’ve never seen a spider,” Pris said. She cupped the medicine bottle in her palms, surveying the creature within. “All those legs. Why’s it need so many legs, J. R.?”
“That’s the way spiders are,” Isidore said, his heart pounding; he had difficulty breathing. “Eight legs.”
Rising to her feet, Pris said, “You know what I think, J. R.? I think it doesn’t need all those legs.”
“Eight?” Irmgard Baty said. “Why couldn’t it get by on four? Cut four off and see.” Impulsively opening her purse, she produced a pair of clean, sharp cuticle scissors, which she passed to Pris.
A weird terror struck at J. R. Isidore.
Carrying the medicine bottle into the kitchen, Pris seated herself at J. R. Isidore’s breakfast table. She removed the lid from the bottle and dumped the spider out. “It probably won’t be able to run as fast,” she said, “but there’s nothing for it to catch around here anyhow. It’ll die anyway.” She reached for the scissors.
“Please,” Isidore said.
Pris glanced up inquiringly. “Is it worth something?”
“Don’t mutilate it,” he said wheezingly. Imploringly.
With the scissors, Pris snipped off one of the spider’s legs.
In the living room Buster Friendly on the TV screen said, “Take a look at this enlargement of a section of background. This is the sky you usually see. Wait, I’ll have Earl Parameter, head of my research staff, explain their virtually world-shaking discovery to you.”
Pris clipped off another leg, restraining the spider with the edge of her hand. She was smiling.
“Blowups of the video pictures,” a new voice from the TV said, “when subjected to rigorous laboratory scrutiny, reveal that the gray backdrop of sky and daytime moon against which Mercer moves is not only not Terran—it is artificial.”
“You’re missing it!” Irmgard called anxiously to Pris; she rushed to the kitchen door, saw what Pris had begun doing. “Oh, do that afterward,” she said coaxingly. “This is so important, what they’re saying; it proves that everything we believed—”
“Be quiet,” Roy Baty said.
“—is true,” Irmgard finished.
The TV set continued, “The ‘moon’ is painted; in the enlargements, one of which you see now on your screen, brush strokes show. And there is even some evidence that the scraggly weeds and dismal, sterile soil—perhaps even the stones hurled at Mercer by unseen alleged parties—are equally faked. It is quite possible in fact that the ‘stones’ are made of soft plastic, causing no authentic wounds.”
“In other words,” Buster Friendly broke in, “Wilbur Mercer is not suffering at all.”
The research chief said, “We at last managed, Mr. Friendly, to track down a former Hollywood special-effects man, a Mr. Wade Cortot, who flatly states, from his years of experience, that the figure of ‘Mercer’ could well be merely some bit player marching across a sound stage. Cortot has gone so far as to declare that he recognizes the stage as one used by a now out-of-business minor moviemaker with whom Cortot had various dealings several decades ago.”
“So according to Cortot,” Buster Friendly said, “there can be virtually no doubt.”
Pris had now cut three legs from the spider, which crept about miserably on the kitchen table, seeking a way out, a path to freedom. It found none.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
“
Shortly after the Gulf War in 1992 I happened to visit a July Fourth worship service at a certain megachurch. At center stage in this auditorium stood a large cross next to an equally large American flag. The congregation sang some praise choruses mixed with such patriotic hymns as “God Bless America.” The climax of the service centered on a video of a well-known Christian military general giving a patriotic speech about how God has blessed America and blessed its military troops, as evidenced by the speedy and almost “casualty-free” victory “he gave us” in the Gulf War (Iraqi deaths apparently weren’t counted as “casualties” worthy of notice). Triumphant military music played in the background as he spoke.
The video closed with a scene of a silhouette of three crosses on a hill with an American flag waving in the background. Majestic, patriotic music now thundered. Suddenly, four fighter jets appeared on the horizon, flew over the crosses, and then split apart. As they roared over the camera, the words “God Bless America” appeared on the screen in front of the crosses.
The congregation responded with roaring applause, catcalls, and a standing ovation. I saw several people wiping tears from their eyes. Indeed, as I remained frozen in my seat, I grew teary-eyed as well - but for entirely different reasons. I was struck with horrified grief.
Thoughts raced through my mind: How could the cross and the sword have been so thoroughly fused without anyone seeming to notice? How could Jesus’ self-sacrificial death be linked with flying killing machines? How could Calvary be associated with bombs and missiles? How could Jesus’ people applaud tragic violence, regardless of why it happened and regardless of how they might benefit from its outcome? How could the kingdom of God be reduced to this sort of violent, nationalistic tribalism? Has the church progressed at all since the Crusades?
Indeed, I wondered how this tribalistic, militaristic, religious celebration was any different from the one I had recently witnessed on television carried out by Taliban Muslims raising their guns as they joyfully praised Allah for the victories they believed “he had given them” in Afghanistan?
”
”
Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
“
The topics round the table narrowed to a single issue – targets. Everyone approved. A policy working group had just completed a paper. If Labour came to power, the public sector was to be made efficient and humane by being set clearly defined outcomes. Fear of failure would raise performance. Fulfilling targets would lift morale. The public interest would be met. To be targeted and increased: breast screenings, apprenticeships, ethnic minorities visiting national parks, kids from disadvantaged backgrounds at universities, literacy levels at ages seven, ten and fourteen, crimes solved, rapists tried and imprisoned, people moved out of unemployment. To be targeted and reduced: numbers of homeless, suicides, schizophrenics, air pollution, Accident and Emergency
”
”
Ian McEwan (Lessons)
“
Still lying on the floor of my bedroom, I took a deep breath and looked at my hand. I felt strange and tingly, almost separated from my body. I wasn’t really here, I told myself. I was in Chicago, and I was watching all of this happen to someone else. It was a movie, maybe on the big screen, maybe cable. But it couldn’t be my life…could it?
My phone rang again. It was Marlboro Man.
“Hey,” he said. I heard the diesel engine rattling in the background. “I just dropped Mike at the mall.”
“Hi,” I said, smiling. “Thanks for doing that.”
“I just wanted to tell you that…I’m happy,” he said. My heart leapt out of my chest and shot through the roof.
“I am, too,” I said. “Surprised…and happy.”
“Oh,” he continued. “I told Mike the news. But he promised he wouldn’t tell anybody.”
Oh, Lord, I thought. Marlboro Man obviously has no idea who he’s dealing with.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
I’m at the point of banging my head against my laptop screen when Adele starts singing to me.
Glancing down I see Jake’s name flashing. The smile it brings to my lips stays there as I answer it. “Hey, baby.”
“How’s it going?”
“Not good. You’re incredibly hard to write about, you know.”
“But incredibly easy to love.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s only because you have a big willy,” I joke.
“Cock, baby. Call it cock, or dick. I’ll even swing for snake. But not willy. Willy just sounds so wrong, on so many levels.”
“No it doesn’t! It’s a British term. Have you forgotten those altogether?”
“No, but that’s one I will gladly forget.”
I hear voices in the background.
“Are you with someone?”
“I’m in the studio with the guys. Zane’s here.”
“You just said ‘cock,’ ‘dick,’ and ‘willy’ in front of them.” I groan.
He lets out a loud laugh. “They’ve heard me say worse, baby, trust me.
”
”
Samantha Towle (Wethering the Storm (The Storm, #2))
“
The only people who ever called me were my dad, my brother, assorted Vaders to tell me to come early or late to work (including Sean, but he always sounded grumpy that he had to call me, so it wasn’t as big a thrill as you’d think), Tammy to tell me to come early or late to tennis practice, and Frances. I glanced at the caller ID screen and clicked the phone on. “What’s up, Fanny?”
From the time Mom died until I was eleven, Frances the au pair had hung out in the background of my life. Once Sean overheard someone calling her Fanny, whch apparently is a nickname for Frances. We found this shocking. I mean, who has a nickname that’s a synonym for derriere? Who’s named Frances in the first place? So the boys started calling her Fanny the Nanny. Then, Booty the Babysitter. Then, Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. This had everything to do with the nickname Fanny and the fact that she tried not to get upset at being addressed in this undignified manner when she was trying to raise compassionate, responsible children. It had nothing to do with her having an outsized rumpus. Frances had a cute figure, if you could see it under all that hippie-wear.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2))
“
Selecting officials on the basis of their mastery of literature and philosophy had several advantages. It ensured that most Chinese bureaucrats were smart—the examinations had the effect of screening for IQ as well as the ability to memorize. Another advantage of the examination system was its emphasis on merit over family background, engaging the loyalties of the lower classes by making it possible for a man of humble birth to pass the jin shi and become a mandarin. Still a third advantage was that the examination system co-opted the intellectual classes, who in other societies were often critics of the established order. Intellectuals in traditional China had a ready avenue to power. Above all, the examination system ensured that throughout the country, voluntarily, each generation of the most talented people in China steeped themselves in the core cultural values of the empire. From a pragmatic standpoint, this was a good thing for preserving cultural continuity. But it was also a good thing because those core cultural values constituted such a remarkable legacy in themselves, amalgamating properties that in the West would be divided into religion and civic culture.
”
”
Charles Murray (Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950)
“
You were taught that even when the charism of celibacy and chastity is present and embraced, the attractions, the impulses, the desires will still be present. So the first thing you need to do is be aware that you are a human being, and no matter how saintly or holy you are, you will never remove yourself from those passions. But the idea was making prudent choices. You just walk away. Celibacy is a radical call, and you’ve made a decision not to act on your desire.” Today, seminaries say they screen applicants rigorously. In Boston, for example, a young man must begin conversations with the vocations director a year before applying for admissions, and then the application process takes at least four months. Most seminaries require that applicants be celibate for as long as five years before starting the program, just to test out the practice, and students are expected to remain celibate throughout seminary as they continue to discern whether they are cut out to lead the sexless life of an ordained priest. Some seminaries screen out applicants who say they are sexually attracted to other men, but most do not, arguing that there is no evidence linking sexual orientation to one’s ability to lead a celibate life. The seminaries attempt to weed out potential child abusers, running federal and local criminal background checks, but there is currently no psychological test that can accurately predict whether a man who has never sexually abused a child is likely to do so in the future. So seminary officials say that in the screening process, and throughout seminary training, they are alert to any sign that a man is not forming normal relationships with adults, or seems abnormally interested in children. Many potential applicants are turned away from seminaries, and every year some students are forced out. “Just because there’s a shortage doesn’t mean we should lessen our standards,” said Rev. Edward J. Burns,
”
”
The Boston Globe (Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight)
“
If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognised as the subjective witness of all objective experience. Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects. In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience. All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing. All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing. All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing. Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect, complete, indivisible and without limits. This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’.
”
”
Rupert Spira (Being Aware of Being Aware)
“
In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.
”
”
Jack Donovan (The Way of Men)
“
To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.
Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
”
”
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
“
people, and pets. Always include a caption. Screen Tints — Use screen tints to draw attention to specific areas of copy. This gives the appearance of more than one color when doing one-color printing. Use light backgrounds for maximum readability. Short Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs — Short. Delivers. Punch. Short grabs attention, helps keep the reader reading, and effectively breaks up long copy. Sidebars — Sidebars help hold together — and differentiate — blocks of copy. They are excellent for case studies, testimonials, and product highlights. Simulated Hand-Drawn Doodles — A.k.a. CopyDoodles®. Simulated hand-drawn doodles help draw the reader's eyes to important areas of your copy, add variety and interest to the eye and brain, and create a more personal reading experience. Simulated Handwritten Margin Notes — These
”
”
Dan S. Kennedy (The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.)
“
At the clinic, they fed us pills like they were biscuits. Those pills made the tongue loose in my head, my left arm numb from the elbow down. Sometimes the world would smoulder at the edges. Patients came and went, people from every kind of background but all with one thing in common: no longer capable of contributing to society, they needed to be kept out of sight: losers, loners, dreamers, freaks; God forbid they ever make it onto a TV screen.
”
”
Philip Elliott (Hunger & Hallelujahs)
“
In Ads, we had completely failed to realize the importance of the logout page on FB. A bit of background: In most developing countries, people do not own desktop computers, and their phones are non-smartphone pieces of shit (this is, of course, gradually changing). So people do what you do as a Western backpacker in Brazil or India or whatever: they use an Internet café or other public computer. They log in, use Facebook at some rate per hour, and then log out. What they leave behind is the logout screen, which just so happens to be the most common webpage up on browsers in the world. Really. You walk into a library or café anywhere in the world, and most of the screens will be glowing Facebook blue. And that is also how most new Facebook users in these countries came into being, not to mention nudging existing users into using Facebook. A fact that we in Ads did not even begin to appreciate.
”
”
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine)
“
When the crowd thins a little, I rotate in a circle, taking a 360-degree panoramic. Darren ducks out of my way, so I make him pose for me to get a shot of him alone with the brick ruins in the background.
I preview it on the little screen. His hair is magically controlled today, every curl falling perfectly in place around his head, though his facial hair is the scruffiest I’ve seen yet. His smile is more of a smirk, mischievous. Like he knows I have every intention of making this the background picture on my computer.
”
”
Kristin Rae (Wish You Were Italian (If Only . . . #2))
“
Hedda Hopper had had several careers before moving into radio and becoming one of the two major outlets for Hollywood gossip. She was born Elda Furry, June 2, 1890. She was a chorus girl, a silent-screen actress, and a real estate saleswoman. She had married comedian De Wolf Hopper and changed her name to Hedda, though she was occasionally confused with Edna Wallace Hopper, who gave beauty tips on the networks ca. 1930–32. In 1936 she decided to break into radio. Louella Parsons was then the country’s top purveyor of gossip, and Hopper—with her 25-year background in Hollywood—
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
And, insofar as the Freudian name for this radical negativity is the death drive, Schuster is right to point out how, paradoxically, what Sade misses in his celebration of the ultimate Crime of radical destruction of all life is, precisely, the death drive:
“for all its wantonness and havoc, the Sadeian will-to-extinction is premised on a fetishistic denial of the death drive. The sadist makes himself into the servant of universal extinction precisely in order to avoid the deadlock of subjectivity, the “virtual extinction” that splits the life of the subject from within. The Sadeian libertine expels this negativity outside himself in order to be able to slavishly devote himself to it; the apocalyptic vision of an absolute Crime thus functions as a screen against a more intractable internal split. What the florid imagination of the sadist masks is the fact that the Other is barred, inconsistent, lacking, that it cannot be served for it presents no law to obey, not even the wild law of its accelerating auto-destruction. There is no nature to be followed, rivalled or outdone, and it is this void or lack, the non-existence of the Other, that is incomparably more violent than even the most destructive fantasm of the death drive. Or as Lacan argues, Sade is right if we just turn around his evil thought: subjectivity is the catastrophe it fantasizes about, the death beyond death, the “second death.” While the sadist dreams of violently forcing a cataclysm that will wipe the slate clean, what he does not want to know is that this unprecedented calamity has already taken place. Every subject is the end of the world, or rather this impossibly explosive end that is equally a “fresh start,” the unabolishable chance of the dice throw.”[6]
Kant characterized the free autonomous act as an act that cannot be accounted for in the terms of natural causality, of the texture of causes and effects: a free act occurs as its own cause, it opens up a new causal chain from its zero-point. So, insofar as “second death” is the interruption of the natural life-cycle of generation and corruption, no radical annihilation of the entire natural order is needed for this—an autonomous free act already suspends natural causality, and the subject as such is already this cut in the natural circuit, the self-sabotage of natural goals. The mystical name for this end of the world is “the night of the world,” while the philosophical name is “radical negativity” as the core of subjectivity. And, to quote Mallarmé, a throw of the dice will never abolish the hazard, i.e., the abyss of negativity remains forever the unsublatable background of subjective creativity. We may even risk here an ironic version of Gandhi’s famous motto “be the change you want to see in the world”: the subject is itself the catastrophe it fears and tries to avoid.
”
”
Slavoj Žižek (Sex and the Failed Absolute)
“
• Look for any judgments or liens. If the tenant has a judgment on their background check and you will be denying them because of it, one way to respond to the applicant is by putting the ball in their court. “Hey John, your background check revealed a judgment owed to Property USA, LLC in the amount of $4,200. What can you tell me about that?” Likely, they’ll give you an excuse of some kind, but don’t buy into it. Instead, ask them to have the company in question get in touch with you, but you will need to put their application on hold until you hear from them. Don’t worry, you never will.
”
”
Brandon Turner (The Book on Managing Rental Properties: Find, Screen, and Manage Tenants With Fewer Headaches and Maximum Profits)
“
Getting the job If you’re looking to land an early PM job at a startup, making a strong impression with your vision for the future of their industry can help you. Shalendra Chhabra (Shalen), now director of marketing at Indix, was able to get hired as an early PM at two different startups by using this approach, despite lacking strong connections to the companies. When he was looking for a new job, he brainstormed a list of startups with a friend. Swype, a company that makes on-screen keyboards for touch devices, was on that list. He was interested in the company and wrote a memo about how he saw the future: touch devices would explode in popularity, and they would want to expand into different languages and add new features such as predictive tap. In the memo, he described how his background and skills would add value to the company. He then was able to get an introduction to someone at the company through a friend of a friend and sent along his memo.
”
”
Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology (Cracking the Interview & Career))
“
Similarly, if Baron had realized he was writing for a group raised on applications-first approaches, perhaps he would have started his e-mail with a few bullet points summarizing his proposal and explaining what he needed from the group. He might then have continued with a bit of background data, presented briskly with the recognition that “shorter is sweeter” for people with an applications-first orientation. Baron subsequently learned this lesson. “One British colleague told me that, if my e-mail doesn’t fit on the screen of an iPhone, it risks not getting read,” Baron laughs. “That’s the test I use now before I send out my e-mail.
”
”
Erin Meyer (The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business)
“
Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic.
His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo?
He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude.
A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not.
The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety.
The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world.
The word is 'thanks'.
'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?'
'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.'
"Any chance you can recover any of it?'
'You sitting near a window, Gerry?'
'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?'
'Can you see the sky?'
'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.'
'See any pigs flying past?'
To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears.
'...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.'
'..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.'
He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day.
..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year.
'...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator.
'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.'
On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...'
Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis.
'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.'
It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time.
'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.'
'Ever heard of knocking on a door?'
'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?'
'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.'
No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.
”
”
Peter James
“
Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic.
His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo?
He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude.
A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not.
The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety.
The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world.
The word is 'thanks'.
'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?'
'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.'
"Any chance you can recover any of it?'
'You sitting near a window, Gerry?'
'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?'
'Can you see the sky?'
'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.'
'See any pigs flying past?'
To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears.
'...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.'
'..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.'
He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day.
..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year.
'...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator.
'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.'
On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...'
Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis.
'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.'
It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time.
'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.'
'Ever heard of knocking on a door?'
'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?'
'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.'
No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.
”
”
Peter James (Dead at First Sight (Roy Grace, #15))
“
The contents of a Brand Toolbox depend on the specific needs of the company but usually a Brand Toolbox contains An explanation of your brand strategy along with background and rationale so that everyone can understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and definitions of key terms so everyone grasps the meaning behind the words Principles and guidelines for delivering brand values and attributes at key touchpoints between your brand and the outside world Sample applications for how the brand should be expressed and delivered Guides that walk people through important decisions, along with outlines that map processes so that people learn how to do things on brand like select a co-marketing partner and screen a new product
”
”
Denise Lee Yohn (What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest)
“
The author stipulates that while television lately background noise for a child, it tends to shift to the foreground for the adult. The adult pays enough attention to the media attention is paid to the child.
”
”
Gary Chapman (Growing Up Social: Raising Relational Kids in a Screen-Driven World)
“
When volunteers looked at a black-and-white picture of a banana, tests showed they saw it as slightly yellow—even though in fact it was purely gray. The researchers demonstrated this by asking the volunteers to adjust the background on a screen until it was the same color as the banana shape. Without realizing it, the volunteers selected a background with a slight yellow tinge. They had such a strong presumption that the banana would be yellow that their brains decided it actually was.6
”
”
Caroline Webb (How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life)
“
To technical people, these seem like minor oversights that take only a minute to fix. “Oops. I forgot to change the server name to the production server.” Or, “Oh, the new screens are there. I just forgot to link the button.” But to users who are already feeling a bit skittish about trying out the new technology, these first impressions are a big deal. To you, these events probably seem inconsequential, carrying no inherent meaning, but to them it sets off major alarm bells. It signals things like, “This technology must be a sloppy piece of crap,” and, “These IT people must be completely incompetent,” and, “They must think I’m not important enough for them to check their work.
”
”
Paul Glen (The Geek Leader's Handbook: Essential Leadership Insight for People with Technical Backgrounds)
“
Seated in the copilot’s chair, Tarkin watched Vader expectantly as the Predator emerged from hyperspace. “Full ahead,” the Dark Lord said. Tarkin was glad to oblige, though he saw nothing through the viewports but star-strewn space and nothing on the sensor screens but background noise.
”
”
James Luceno (Tarkin (Star Wars))
“
Wrath bared his fangs. “John, as God is my fucking witness, I will cut you if you don’t—”
“Easy, there, big guy,” V gritted out. “I’m going to translate. You want to hit the library where we can—”
“No, I want to fucking know where my shellan is!” Wrath boomed.
John started signing, and whereas most of the time people translated half sentences sequentially, V waited until he’d finished the whole report.
A couple of the Brothers muttered in the background as they shook their heads.
“In the library,” V ordered the King in a way John never could have. “You’re gonna wanna do this in the library.”
Wrong thing to say.
Wrath wheeled on the Brother and went for him with such speed and accuracy no one was prepared: One minute V was standing next to the King; the next he was defending himself against an attack that was as unprovoked as it was . . . well, vicious.
And then things went shit-wild. Like Wrath knew he was on the thin edge of a bad ledge, he broke off from V, and went total wrecking ball on the billiards room.
The first thing he ran into was the pool table Butch was chilling next to—and there was barely any time for the cop to get that ashtray up off the side rails: Wrath grabbed the gunnels and flipped the thing like it was nothing but a card table, the mahogany and slate-topped behemoth flying up so high, it wiped out the hanging light fixture above, its weight so great it splintered the marble floor beneath on landing.
Without missing a breath, the King EF5’d into his next victim . . . the heavy leather sofa that Rhage had just leaped up off.
Talk about your couch-icopters.
The entire thing came at John at about five feet off the floor, the pair of ends trading places as it spun around and around, cushions flying in all directions. He didn’t take it personally—especially as its mate do-si-doed with the bar, smashing the top-shelf bottles, liquor splashing all over the walls, the floor, the fire that was crackling in the hearth.
Wrath wasn’t finished.
The King picked up a side table, hauled it overhead, and pitched it in the direction of the TV.
It missed the plasma screen, but managed to shatter an old-fashioned mirror—although the Sony didn’t last.
The coffee table that had been in between the two sofas did that deed, killing the muted image of the two Boston guys and the old man from Southie with the baseball bat shilling for DirectTV.
The Brothers just let Wrath go.
It wasn’t that they were afraid of getting hurt.
Hell, Rhage stepped in and caught the first couch before it tore a hunk off of the archway’s molding.
They just weren’t stupid.
Wrath - Beth x Overnight = Psycho-hose Beast
”
”
J.R. Ward (The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #12))
“
Tank and Major Timms sat at a wide teak desk in Hayley’s study. She used it as her base to run a re-seller business on the internet, so that she could combine work with being a mother to five-year-old twins. The desk had a thin layer of dust across it, a sign that the study hadn’t been used since the twins were snatched. Thick beige carpet covered the floor and two bookshelves flanked the window. Tank fired the computer up and the screen flickered through a series of different backgrounds as the broadband connected. Hayley’s home page appeared and an automated voice informed them that the e-mail box was full. Tank scanned the headers in the inbox to see if there was anything suspicious in there. It all appeared to be innocent. There were no ransom demands – more is the pity, he thought. A
”
”
Conrad Jones (The Child Taker & Slow Burn)
“
There were tiny flecks of opacity—minihalos—against the black background. “Good, I think we have some,” she said. “Now we’re ready.” She pulled out an electronic module from an instrument attached to the large copper cryogenic tank. It was a bolometer, she told him, germanium crystals combined with an ultrasensitive thermometer, linked to a microprocessor. She placed the petri dish on the germanium plate, pushed the module back in and manned the workstation. The screen came alive with dense plots of red and green dots. “What do you see?” he asked. She didn’t look up. “Nothing yet! I need to do more calibrations.” “Sorry …
”
”
Glenn Cooper (The Resurrection Maker)
“
I’ll figure a way out,” he promises, and in some part of his own mind sees a monochrome image, himself and Reno, Raul and Lupe, Sarah looking as if she’s been lit by von Sternberg and bearing a resemblance to Louise Brooks, all in some improbably large delta cabin, sailing against a background of gray watercolor-wash clouds pierced by the bright swords of sunbeams, a happy silver nitrate ending glowing on the screen of Cowboy’s closed lids, and he has a feeling he can work it somehow, flick a switch and things will turn out that way, if he just knows what switch and when.
”
”
Walter Jon Williams (Hardwired (Hardwired, #1))
“
Walking through the inert office that night, the dark broken only by the flicker of a screen saver dancing alone, I thought that if I could ever do a background check on myself, I knew exactly what I'd do with it. I wouldn't even read it, just take it somewhere sacred and set it on fire.
”
”
Catherine Lacey (The Answers)
“
IBM launched its Chess machine, renamed simply the Personal Computer, in August 1981, a scant four months after the Star. Judged against the technology PARC had brought forth, it was a homely and feeble creature. Rather than bitmapped graphics and variable typefaces, its screen displayed only ASCII characters, glowing a hideous monochromatic green against a black background. Instead of a mouse, the PC had four arrow keys on the keyboard that laboriously moved the cursor, character by character and line by line. No icons, no desktop metaphor, no multitasking windows, no e-mail, no Ethernet. Forswearing the Star’s intuitive point-and-click operability, IBM forced its customers to master an abstruse lexicon of typed commands and cryptic responses developed by Microsoft, its software partner. Where the Star was a masterpiece of integrated reliability, the PC had a perverse tendency to crash at random (a character flaw it bequeathed to many subsequent generations of Microsoft Windows-driven machines). But where the Star sold for $16,595-plus, the IBM PC sold for less than $5,000, all-inclusive. Where the Star’s operating system was closed, accessible for enhancement only to those to whom Xerox granted a coded key, the PC’s circuitry and microcode were wide open to anyone willing to hack a program for it—just like the Alto’s. And it sold in the millions.
”
”
Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age)
“
When actors from Arab backgrounds make it to our cinema and television screens in non-stereotypical roles, their ethnicity is almost always whitewashed: How many people are aware that Catherine Keener, Salma Hayek, and Wendy Malick have some Arab ancestry? Apart from Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek and Aladdin’s Mena Massoud, there is a dearth of openly Arab/Middle Eastern actors
”
”
Ruby Hamad (White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color)
“
True salvation consists of the coexistence of the phenomenal content of the mind, such as ordinary thoughts and feelings, with the background screen of pure consciousness as no-mind or the void of conceptions.
”
”
William S. Haney II (Cyberculture, Cyborgs And Science Fiction)
“
Contrary to popular opinion, screening doesn’t begin with a background check or an application; it begins with the initial contact. This is known as pre-screening
”
”
Brandon Turner (The Book on Managing Rental Properties: Find, Screen, and Manage Tenants With Fewer Headaches and Maximum Profits)
“
The areas on which we offer our expertise in HR Consulting, include:
Understanding the specific requirements of our clients and providing them with prospective candidates to suit the job profile. The process we follow stats with collecting resumes suited to the hob profile, shortlist them and forward them to our clients Our process of screening, Verification of background and making the correct assessment is done through our Developed Pre Screening Checking processes so that we are able to provide pre-screened candidates to speed up hiring needs. We also have an Applicant Tracking System.
abhishek.sinngh@wawcl.com
+91-9953328778
408, 4th Floor, Tower C
KLJ Noida One, B-8, Block B, Sector 62,
Noida – 201309 ( UP )
”
”
wawcl
“
One newer technique that can enhance the ability of a screening MRI to differentiate between a cancer and noncancer is something called diffusion-weighted imaging with background subtraction, or DWI for short.
”
”
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
“
What people are saying about WAR EAGLES
5 out of 5 stars!
WW2 with a dash of fantasy!
I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed.
Well done to both the author and the narrator.
Reminiscent of Golden Age Sci Fi
This audio book reminded me of some of the 40's and 50's era tales, but what it happens to be is an alternative timeline World War II era fun adventure story. Think of a weird mash-up of a screw-up Captain America wanna-be mixed with the Land of the Lost mixed with Avatar where Hitler is the real villain and you might come close. At any rate, it's load of good fun and non stop action. But don't get distracted for a minute or you'll miss something! There are american pilots, Polish spies, Vikings, giant prehistoric eagles and, of course, Nazis! What more could you ask for to while away an afternoon? Our hero even gets the (Viking) girl! Put your feet up an get lost in what might have been....
4 out of 5 stars!
it's Amelia Earnhart meets WWII
This is not an accurate historical fiction book, but rather an action-packed book set an historical time. I normally listen to my books at a higher speed, however the amount of drama and action in this book I had to slow it down. I like the storyline and the narrator however, the sound effects throughout the book did kind of throw me since I'm not used to that and most audible books. still I would recommend this is a good read.
5 out of 5 stars!
I Would Like to See this on the Silver Screen
Back in the late 1930s, the director of King Kong started planning War Eagles as his next block buster film. Then World War II intervened and the project languished for decades. It helps to know this background to fully appreciate this novel. It’s a big cinematic adventure waiting to find the screen. The heroes are larger than life, but more importantly, the images are bigger and more vivid than the mighty King Kong who reinvented the silver screen. And what are those images you may ask? Nazis developing super-science weapons for a sneak attack on America, Viking warriors riding gargantuan eagles in a time-forgotten land of dinosaurs, and of course, those same Vikings fighting Nazis over the skyline of New York City.
This book is a heck of a lot of fun. It starts a little bit slow but once the Vikings enter the story it chugs along at a heroic pace. There is a ton of action and colorful confrontations. Narrator William L. Hahn pulls out all the stops adding theatrical sound effects to his wide repertoire of voices which adds a completely appropriate cinematic feel to the entire story. If you’re looking for some genuinely heroic fantasy, you should try War Eagles.
Wonderful story
War Eagles is a really good adventure story.
5 out of 5 stars!
”
”
Debbie Bishop (War Eagles)
“
Like other immigrant nations that had come into being during the nineteenth century, Israel thus erected a “medical border,” which, to an increasing degree, also fulfilled the function of social selection and screened according to criteria of health, fitness, class, and ethnic origin.6 The selective Aliyah regime strove to keep out those deemed a burden on society, the sick and poor—who often were identified with “Oriental” (mizrachi) and, in particular, Moroccan Jewry—and allow entry to those considered useful. These would include young people, agricultural workers, “people with (economic) means,” and those of Ashkenazi middle-class background from the United States or from Eastern Europe.
”
”
Jannis Panagiotidis (The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany)
“
Entrainment or the management of the body through the heart rather than brain leads to higher functioning mental and emotional states, as well as a healthier body.52 It also enables a person to screen the outer environment for “good messages” instead of “negative messages,” enabling a more positive relationship with the external world.53 This “heart healing power” is possible because of the energetic nature of the body. All energy contains information and all cells are energetic. The closer a group of cells, the more likely they are to oscillate or vibrate in a coordinated rhythm, thereby producing a more powerful and intense signal. Heart cells are tightly organized, thus generating an extremely strong, shared signal, which is both electrical and magnetic. The heart’s internal signal is stronger than any produced by other parts of the body because it is more intense. Thus can the heart dynamically move into the lead position in the body, its rhythms able to modulate or “take over” those of the other organs. What about its relationship with the external world? We are constantly receiving information—sometimes called “background noise”—from outside of ourselves. Not only can the heart override the incoming flow of communiqués, but it can also sort and filter information from the world outside of the body—even intuitive information. As explained by researcher Stephen Harrod Buhner in his book The Secret Teachings of Plants, highly synchronized cells, such as those compactly organized in the heart, are able to use background noise to increase the amplitude of an incoming signal—if they are interested in perceiving it.54 The heart will “hear” what it is programmed to “hear.” If love resides in the heart, it will attune to love. If fear, greed, or envy resides within, the heart will access negativity. Most people believe that the brain initiates the first response to incoming events and then orders our reactions. Analysis reveals, however, that incoming information first impacts the heart, and through the heart, the brain and then rest of the body.55 Our hearts are so strong that they can actually formulate the most well known symbol of love: light. Research has shown that under certain conditions, a meditator can actually generate visible light from the heart. The meditation technique must be heart-centered, not transcendent. When this occurred during studies at the University of Kassel in Germany in 1997, the heart emanated a sustained light of one hundred thousand photons per second, whereas the background had a count of only twenty photons per second. The meditations drew upon energetic understandings from several cultures, including the Hindu practice of kundalini.56 It has been said that the heart is the center of the body, but it might also be the core of a subtle universe—or perhaps a “subtle sun” generated by every individual.
”
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Cyndi Dale (The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy)
“
To recap, here’s what we all can do to stop the mass shooting epidemic:
As Individuals:
Trauma: Build relationships and mentor young people
Crisis: Develop strong skills in crisis intervention and suicide prevention
Social proof: Monitor our own media consumption
Opportunity: Safe storage of firearms; if you see or hear something, say something.
As Institutions:
Trauma: Create warm environments; trauma-informed practices; universal trauma screening
Crisis: Build care teams and referral processes; train staff
Social proof: Teach media literacy; limit active shooter drills for children
Opportunity: Situational crime prevention; anonymous reporting systems
As a Society:
Trauma: Teach social emotional learning in schools. Build a strong social safety net with adequate jobs, childcare, maternity leave, health insurance, and access to higher education
Crisis: Reduce stigma and increase knowledge of mental health; open access to high quality mental health treatment; fund counselors in schools
Social proof: No Notoriety protocol; hold media and social media companies accountable for their content
Opportunity: Universal background checks, red flag laws, permit-to-purchase, magazine limits, wait periods, assault rifle ban
”
”
Jillian Peterson (The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic)
“
As a little girl, having a mixed background didn’t allow me to have a life as my classmates. I simply didn’t fit in, and was already starting a pattern that would follow me for most of my life.
”
”
Deborah Bettega (Screen's queen)
“
What’s Slipping Under Your Radar?
Word Count:
1096
Summary:
Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure.
Keywords:
Dr. Karen Otazo, Global Executive Coaching, Leadership
Article Body:
Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure.
At work, one of Ben’s greatest strengths is keeping his focus no matter what. As a strategic visionary, he keeps his eyes on the ongoing strategy, the high-profile projects and the high-level commitments of his group. Even on weekends Ben spends time on email, reading and writing so he can attend the many meetings in his busy work schedule. Since he is so good at multi-processing in his work environment, he assumed he could do that at home too.
But when we talked, Ben was surprised to realize that he is missing a crucial skill: keeping people on his radar. Ben is great at holding tasks and strategies in the forefront of his mind, but he has trouble thinking of people and their priorities in the same way. To succeed at home, Ben needs to keep track of his family members’ needs in the same way he tracks key business commitments. He also needs to consider what’s on their radar screens.
In my field of executive coaching, I keep every client on my radar screen by holding them in my thinking on a daily and weekly basis. That way, I can ask the right questions and remind them of what matters in their work lives. No matter what your field is, though, keeping people on your radar is essential.
Consider Roger, who led a team of gung-ho sales people. His guys and gals loved working with him because his gut instincts were superb. He could look at most situations and immediately know how to make them work. His gut was great, almost a sixth sense.
But when Sidney, one of his team of sales managers, wanted to move quickly to hire a new salesperson, Roger was busy. He was managing a new sales campaign and wrangling with marketing and headquarters bigwigs on how to position the company’s consumer products. Those projects were the only things on his radar screen. He didn’t realize that Sidney was counting on hiring someone fast.
Roger reviewed the paperwork for the new hire. It was apparent to Roger that the prospective recruit didn’t have the right background for the role. He was too green in his experience with the senior people he’d be exposed to in the job. Roger saw that there would be political hassles down the road which would stymie someone without enough political savvy or experience with other parts of the organization. He wanted an insider or a seasoned outside hire with great political skills.
To get the issue off his radar screen quickly, Roger told Human Resources to give the potential recruit a rejection letter. In his haste, he didn’t consult with Sidney first. It seemed obvious from the resume that this was the wrong person. Roger rushed off to deal with the top tasks on his radar screen. In the process, Sidney was hurt and became angry. Roger was taken by surprise since he thought he had done the right thing, but he could have seen this coming.
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What’s Slipping Under Your Radar?
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Station’s openin’ up with the PDCs,” Alex said. “This’ll get a mite bumpy.” Holden switched from mirroring Naomi’s screen to watching Alex’s. His panel filled with thousands of rapidly moving balls of light and Thoth Station rotating in the background. The Roci’s threat computer was outlining the incoming point defense cannon fire with bright light on Alex’s HUD. It was moving impossibly fast, but at least with the system doing a bright overlay on each round, the pilot could see where the fire was coming from and which direction it was traveling. Alex reacted to this threat information with consummate skill, maneuvering away from the PDCs’ direction of fire in quick, almost random movements that forced the automated targeting of the point defense cannons to adjust constantly. To Holden, it looked like a game. Incredibly fast blobs of light flew up from the space station in chains, like long and thin pearl necklaces. The ship moved
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James S.A. Corey (Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1))
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gave her some background on how electronic screen devices irritate the brain and overstimulate the nervous system, especially in children.
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Victoria Dunckley (Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time)
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The river waters were bright honey, as intensely colored as paint. A faint mist drifted over its surface. The forest massing on either side was so dense it looked black, except where, strangely delicate, a slash of flowers glowed white, or tear-shaped mangoes dripped pale green. Strange smells seeped out of the foliage, savory and disturbing. There was the sense of unknown things hiding beneath that painted-honey water, behind the screen of trees, even below the slowly creaking planks of dock we stood on. Animal noises rumbled together in an ever-present background thunder, but no life was actually visible, apart from a single butterfly tumbling over the water, its wings flickering red as a racing heart.
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Rinsai Rossetti (The Girl with Borrowed Wings)
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Now and then we know a moment of supreme bliss, when we ask nothing, give nothing, know nothing but bliss. Then it passes, and we again see the panorama of the universe moving before us; and we know that it is but a mosaic work set upon God, who is the background of all things. Vedanta teaches that nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self, and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality. Having eyes, we must see the apparent, but all the time we know what it is; we have found out its true nature. It is the screen that hides the Self, which is unchanging. The screen opens and we find the Self behind it. All change is the screen. In the saint the screen is thin, and the reality can almost shine through. In the sinner the screen is thick, and we are able to lose sight of the truth that the atman [Self] is there, as well as behind the saint’s screen. When the screen is wholly removed, we find it never existed—that we were the atman and nothing else, even the screen is forgotten.
The two phases of this distinction in life are: First, that the man, who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly, that that man alone can do good to the world. That man alone will have seen the real motive of doing good to others, because there is only one. It cannot be called egoistic, because that would be differentiation. It is only selflessness. It is the perception of the universal, not of the individual. Every case of love and sympathy is an assertion of this universal. “Not I, but thou.” Help another, because you are in him and he is in you, is the philosophical way of putting it. The real Vedantist alone will give up his life for a fellow being without any compunction, because he knows he will not die. As long as there is one insect left in the world, he is living; as long as one mouth eats, he eats. So he goes on doing good to others, and is never hindered by the modern ideas of caring for the body. When a man reaches this point of abnegation, he goes beyond the moral struggle, beyond everything. He sees in the most learned priest, in the cow, in the dog, in the most miserable places, neither the learned man, nor the cow, nor the dog, nor the miserable place, but the same divinity manifesting itself in them all. He alone is the happy man; and the man who has acquired that sameness has, even in this life, conquered all existence. God is pure; therefore such a man is said to be living in God.
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Vivekananda (The Complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1)
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Pan marks Flying Down to Rio as the first time full dance numbers were seen on the screen, that is, a complete dance sequence that demanded the viewers’ attention from beginning to end. Prior to that, dance had most often been relegated to background scenery or brief interludes or served as backup for vocal numbers.
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John C. Tibbetts (American Classic Screen Interviews)
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When we applied for citizenship, I rounded the hard edges of my accent and that was one tangible way in which I had changed. We heard nothing for a year. We grew thin. We understood how little we were worth, how small our claim in the world. We had no money after our application fee, and nowhere to go. Then, we received the summons for our interview, the final background check, the examination, the approval. At the ceremony, they screened a video filled with eagles and artillery and all of us recited a pledge. We sang our new anthem and once it was done it was said we were American. The newest batch of Americans
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Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Fruit of the Drunken Tree)
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What does True Wireless Earbuds Mean
Where are my earphones? Ahh!! There they are….and they are tangled (with irksome scream inside your head). There is nothing more frustrating than going on a search operation for your headphones and finally finding them entangled. Well thanks to the advance technology these days one of your daily struggles is gone with the arrival of wireless earphones in the market. No wire means no entanglement. ‘Kill the problem before it kills you’, you know the saying. Right!
So what actually truly wireless earbuds are? Why should you replace your old headphones and invest in wireless ones?
Without any further delay let’s dig deep into it.
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WHAT ARE TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS?
A lot of people misunderstand true wireless earbuds and wireless earphones as the same thing. When it’s not. A true wireless earbuds which solely connects through Bluetooth and not through any wire or cord or through any other source.
While wireless earphones are the ones which are connected through Bluetooth to audio source but the connection between the two ear plugs is established through a cable between them.
Why true wireless earbuds?
Usability: Who doesn’t like freedom! With no wire restrictions, it’s easier to workout without sacrificing your music motivation. From those super stretch yoga asanas to marathon running, from weight training to cycling - you actually can do all those without worrying about your phone safety or the dilemma of where to put them. With no wire and smooth distance connection interface, you have the full freedom of your body movement. They also comes with a charging case so you don’t have to worry about it’s battery.
Good audio quality and background noise cancellation: With features like active noise cancellation, which declutter the unwanted background voice giving you the ultimate audio quality. These earbuds has just leveled up the experience of music and prevents you from getting distracted.
Comfort and design: These small ear buddies are friendly which snuggles into your ear canal and don’t put too much pressure on your delicate ears as they are light weight. They are style statement maker and are comfortable to use even when you are on move, they stick to your ear and don’t fall off easily. Apart from all that you can easily answer your call on go, pause your music or whatever you are listening, switch to next by just touching your earplugs.
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Convenience: You don’t necessarily have to have your phone on you like the wired ones. The farthest distance you could go was the length of the cable. But with wireless ones this is not the case, they could transmit sound waves from 8 meter upto 30 meters varying from model to model. Which allows you multi-task and make your household chores interesting. You can enjoy your podcasts or music or follow the recipe while cooking in your kitchen when your phone is lying in your living room.
Voice assistance: How fascinating was it to watch all those detective/ secret agent thriller movies while they are on run and getting directions from their computer savvy buddies. Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible….. Remember! Many wireless earphones comes with voice assistance feature which makes it easy to go around the places you are new to. You don’t have to stop and look to your phone screen for directions which makes it easier to move either on foot or while driving.
Few things for you to keep in mind and compare before investing in a true wireless earphones :-
Sound Quality
Battery Life
Wireless Range
Comfort and design
Warranty
Price
Gone are those days when true wireless earbuds were expensive possession. They are quite economical now and are available with various features depending upon different brands in your price range.
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Hammer
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Very often these luminous designs, rich in data, take the form of geometry. I speak from experience, having participated in more than seventy ayahuasca sessions since 2003, continuing to work with the brew for the valuable lessons it teaches me long after Supernatural was researched, written, and published. Here’s part of my account of the first time I drank ayahuasca in the Amazon: I raise the cup to my lips again. About two thirds of the measure that the shaman poured for me still remains, and now I drain it in one draught. The concentrated bittersweet foretaste, followed instantly by the aftertaste of rot and medicine, hits me like a punch in the stomach…. Feeling slightly apprehensive, I thank the shaman and wander back to my place on the floor…. Time passes but I don’t keep track of it. I’ve improvized a pillow from a rolled-up sleeping bag and I now find I’m swamped by a powerful feeling of weariness. My muscles involuntarily relax, I close my eyes, and without fanfare a parade of visions suddenly begins, visions that are at once geometrical and alive, visions of lights unlike any light I’ve ever seen—dark lights, a pulsing, swirling field of the deepest luminescent violets, of reds emerging out of night, of unearthly textures and colors, of solar systems revolving, of spiral galaxies on the move. Visions of nets and strange ladder-like structures. Visions in which I seem to see multiple square screens stacked side by side and on top of each other to form immense patterns of windows arranged in great banks. Though they manifest without sound in what seems to be a pristine and limitless vacuum, the images possess a most peculiar and particular quality. They feel like a drum-roll—as though their real function is to announce the arrival of something else.13 Other notes I made following my ayahuasca sessions in the Amazon refer to a “geometrical pulse,”14 to “a recurrence of the geometrical patterns,”15 to “a background of shifting geometrical patterns,”16 and to “complex interlaced patterns of geometry…. I zoom in for a closer view…. They’re rectangular, outlined in black, like windows. There’s a circle in the centre of each rectangle.”17
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Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
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When we make films for young children, we use point-of-view shots, with close-up frontal images of people talking directly into camera. If the shots on the screen are profile shots, of people speaking to each other but not directly to children who are watching, their eyes stray away from the screen. They do absorb what is happening, but they do not give it their full attention. They have a clear idea of when they are being spoken to, and what speech can be treated as background noise.
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Peggy Mohan (Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages)
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AS WE REACQUAINT OURSELVES WITH OUR BREATHING BODIES, then the perceived world itself begins to shift and transform. When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimension of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip toward the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness. The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved—the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens—all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities—crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfalls—all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into a unique dance. Even boulders and rocks seem to speak their own uncanny languages of gesture and shadow, inviting the body and its bones into silent communication. In contact with the native forms of the earth, one’s senses are slowly energized and awakened, combining and recombining in ever-shifting patterns.
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David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World)
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American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray. We are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. But prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time. Every bone in our bodies screams, “Get to work.” When we aren’t working, we are used to being entertained. Television, the Internet, video games, and cell phones make free time as busy as work. When we do slow down, we slip into a stupor. Exhausted by the pace of life, we veg out in front of a screen or with earplugs. If we try to be quiet, we are assaulted by what C. S. Lewis called “the Kingdom of Noise.” 1 Everywhere we go we hear background noise. If the noise isn’t provided for us, we can bring our own via iPod. Even our church services can have that same restless energy. There is little space to be still before God. We want our money’s worth, so something should always be happening. We are uncomfortable with silence. One of the subtlest hindrances to prayer is probably the most pervasive. In the broader culture and in our churches, we prize intellect, competency, and wealth. Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary. Money can do what prayer does, and it is quicker and less time-consuming. Our trust in ourselves and in our talents makes us structurally independent of God. As a result, exhortations to pray don’t stick.
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Paul E. Miller (A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World)