Batting Practice Quotes

Support your partner in their interests. You never know when batting practice, kung fu movie moves, or even a poker night might come in handy during a zombie infestation.

To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives. It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear. But it’s worth it, for what’s left is truth. While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are—neither good nor bad.

Miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very practical sway.

This generation is a generation of risk takers. And not all the risks taken will be seen as real faith. Some will come to light as steps of foolishness and presumption. But they must be taken just the same. How else can we learn? Make room for risk takers in your life that don’t bat a thousand. They will inspire you to the greatness available in serving a great God.

She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.

Flirtation is no different from mounting a good argument or coming out ahead in a deal,' he says. He starts batting the last chunk of his scone back and forth across the table with his fingers. 'It's manipulation, Julia. Good convincing. Hell, it's practically theater.

Royce had the hearing of a bat. He could practically listen in on what was happening tomorrow.

....I never expected to lose in court. In practice, I did lose, of course. Every lawyer loses, just as every baseball player makes an out seventy percent of the time he goes to bat.

But doesn't add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.

Séraphine." The whisper in her dreams and Bridget whimpered and tried to bat it away. She needn't wake yet. It wasn't time to rise. She had hours still. A soft chuckle and the brush of something soft on her cheek. "I would never have guessed you were such a deep sleeper, my practical housekeeper." She had a terrible foreboding, an awful suspicion, even in her dreams, and she fought valiantly through the sluggish waves. Bridget opened her eyes, blinking, in the candlelight, to find azure eyes only inches from her own. They crinkled at the corners. "There you are.

In high school, I could recognize extremes of emotion. I knew enough to run if a guy came yelling and screaming at me with a baseball bat. But a girl with a subtle expression on her face … was she smiling at me? Laughing? Quizzical and curious? I had no idea. That led to a lot of awkward interactions and years of loneliness.

Do you want to know the first time I ever saw you?" he said with his lips at my ear. I knew the story,but I nodded anyway, frantically. "Your family had just moved in. You were...how old were you,Becks?" I shrugged,and he ran his fingers over my head, calming me.He knew the answer. "You were eleven," he said. "I was twelve.I remember Joey Velasquez talking about the pretty new girl in the neighborhood.Actually his exact words were 'the hot chick.' But I didn't think a thing about it until I saw you at the baseball field. We were having practice at the park and your family showed up for a picnic.You had so much dark hair,and it was hiding your face.Remember?" I nodded. "I know what you're trying to do." He ignored me. "I had to see if Joey was right,about the hot chick part, and I kept trying to get a good look at your face, but you never looked over our way.I hit home run after home run trying to get your attention, but you couldn't be bothered with my record-shattering, supherhuman performance." I smiled,and breathed in slowly. I'd heard this story so many times before.The familiarity of it enveloped me with warmth. "So what did you do?" I asked, fully aware of the answer. "I did the only thing I could think of. I went up to the bat,lined my feet up in the direction of your head,and swung away." "Hitting the foulest foul ball anyone had ever seen," I continued the story. I felt him chuckle next to me. "Yep. I figured in order to return the ball,you'd have to get really close to me, because..." He waited for me to fill in the blank. "Because someone made the mistake of assuming I would throw like a girl," I said softly. He pressed his lips against my head before he went on. "Which,of course, was stupid of me to think. You stood right where you were and chucked the ball farther than I'd ever seen a girl, or even any guy,chuck it." "It was all those years of Bonnet Ball my parents forced on me." "The entire team went nuts. You gave a little tiny shrug, like it was no big deal, and sat back down with your family. Completely ignoring me again. So my plan totally backfired. Not only did you get the attention of every boy on the field-which was not my intention-but I got reamed by the coach, who couldn't understand why I suddenly decided to stand perpendicular to home plate.

I could practically feel the movement of Manifestations on the high, shadowed ceiling, like a mass of roosting bats…

Presents? Cake? I could use a new bat, maybe some good work boots or running shoes.

In a proud fatherly sadomasicisticly way, I am thrilled when I get hit. As every deep purple bruise on my body represented a perfect swing. If I were to lift my shirt at any time there would be 4-5 bruises on my body. ... As soon as I was able to, I would throw batting practice again from the short distance, and take another shot if necessary to keep the boys in the zone.

Observing, it turns out, does more than activate our visual perceptions; observed actions are mapped onto our motor systems. So if you are watching someone hitting a baseball, you're actually practicing your swing in your head. You are working all the neurological connections that you need to actually stand up and swing the bat. And so seeing can be a powerful enabler of doing (as well as a powerful enabler of empathy).

What the hell are you tryng to do?" She gave him an innocent stare. "Why, have a conversation. I suppose you're out of practice." He glared,narrow-eyed, then turned away. "I'm going for a walk," he muttered. "Lovely." Gennie slipped her arm through his. "I'll go with you." "I didn't ask you," Grant said flatly, stopping again. "Oh." Gennie batted her eyes. "You're trying to charm me by being rude again. It's so difficult to resist.

Anyone who knows baseball knows Ted Williams. He played professionally from 1939 to 1960 and is one of the undisputed greatest hitters of all time, right up there with Babe Ruth. But whether you’re familiar with him or not, I have news for you: Ted Williams never played baseball. Nope, he never did. The problem there is the verb: Williams wasn’t playing. To him, hitting a baseball wasn’t a game. He always took it very, very seriously. In a 1988 interview he said as a child he literally wished on a falling star that he would become the greatest hitter to ever live. But he didn’t sit around and wait for the dream to come true. His obsessive, perfectionist work ethic would bring him more success than any descending celestial body would. Williams said, “I . . . insist that regardless of physical assets, I would never have gained a headline for hitting if I [had not] kept everlastingly at it and thought of nothing else the year round . . . I only lived for my next time at bat.” Ten thousand hours to achieve expertise? Williams probably did that a few times over. He was obsessed. After school, he’d go to a local field and practice hitting until nine P.M., only stopping because that’s when they turned the lights out. Then he’d go home and practice in the backyard until his parents made him go to bed. He’d get to school early so he could fit in more swings before classes started. He’d bring his bat to class. He picked courses that had less homework, not because he was lazy but so he’d have more time for hitting.

This place has got a rhythm to it. It's like a heart beating. Buh-bump. In forty-five minutes our guys will come out for batting practice. Then the vendors will start showing up. Buh-bump. Buh-bump. And the fans will start to arrive, and the other team will come in, and you can see them over there in the dugout. Buh-bump-buh-bump-buh-BUMP. Then the lights go on and the umpires step onto the field and they play the national anthem. - And in his mind's eye, Lefebvre could see it, and feel it, as surely as he could feel his own pulse, the baseball game, a living, breathing thing.

The History of Truth In that ago when being was believing, Truth was the most of many credibles, More first, more always, than a bat-winged lion, A fish-tailed dog or eagle-headed fish, The least like mortals, doubted by their deaths. Truth was their model as they strove to build A world of lasting objects to believe in, Without believing earthenware and legend, Archway and song, were truthful or untruthful: The Truth was there already to be true. This while when, practical like paper-dishes, Truth is convertible to kilowatts, Our last to do by is an anti-model, Some untruth anyone can give the lie to, A nothing no one need believe is there.

The fact of the matter is that the positions you might see porn stars doing are not positions the rest of us can do right off the bat, if at all. These actors are professionals—in fact, think of them as trained athletes. You wouldn’t expect to wake up on a Sunday morning and run a marathon without any training, would you? Athletic accomplishments, including sexual ones, take practice.

In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers, and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those among whom they live.

Jay came over as soon as Violet called him; she didn’t even have to give him a reason. He was there in less than ten minutes. Of course, he’d heard about what had happened to Hailey. Everyone had. Buckley was a small town, and news traveled fast . . . especially bad news. When he got there she told him what she was thinking about doing. It was nothing dangerous, at least as far as she was concerned, and she hadn’t expected Jay to disagree with her about it. So when he did, she was more than a little bit surprised by his stubborn reaction. “No way,” he insisted, and his voice left little room for argument. “There is no way you’re going to go around looking for this guy.” Violet was shocked by the tone of his voice, and by the harsh look he shot at her. She thought maybe he misunderstood her plan, so she tried to explain it to him again. “Jay, I’m only going to public places, like malls and parks, to see if I can get a feeling for who this guy is. Who knows, maybe he goes to places like that to find them, maybe he hands out there waiting to pick out a girl to . . . you know, kidnap.” She tried to make her argument sound logical, but there was a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not going out alone . . . you can go with me. We’ll just hang out at different places to see if we can find him. And if we do, we’ll call my uncle. It’s not like we’d do anything stupid.” “’Anything stupid’ would be going out to look for a killer. I won’t let you go looking for trouble, Violet. This guy is dangerous, and you need to leave it to the cops. They know what they’re doing. And they’re armed.” He sounded like he thought she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had, but she had already made her decision. “Look, I’m doing this. I was just asking you to come along with me.” “You’re not,” he insisted. “Even if I have to tell your uncle and your parents what you’re planning. I promise you, you’re not doing it.” She could feel her temper flaring. “You can’t stop me, Jay. If you tell on me, then I’ll lie. I’ll bat my eyes innocently and promise not to go looking for this guy. But I swear to you that every chance I get, even if I have to sneak out of the house to do it, I will be trying to find him.” She stood up, meaning to glare back at him, but instead found herself craning her neck just so she could see his face. The awkward position didn’t steal nay of her thunder. She refused to back down. “I mean it, Jay. You can’t stop me.” Jay glared incredulously back at her. Emotions ranging from disbelief to frustration and back to disbelief again flashed darkly across his face. He seemed to be fighting with himself now. But when she heard him sigh, and then saw him raking his hand restlessly through his hair, she knew she’d won. His icy determination seemed to melt right before her eyes. “Damn it, Violet.” He sighed brusquely, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “What choice do I have?” he asked as he practically squeezed the life out of her. She wasn’t sure how to react to him now. It definitely wasn’t a tender hug, but the close contact made her undisclosed desires stir all the same. She couldn’t help wondering if he felt even a fraction of what she did. His arms were strong, and she felt safe in the circle of them. She’d never imaged that she could feel so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time. She waited within the space of his embrace to see where this was going. “So, how is this going to work?” he demanded roughly against the top of her head.

Ben had the most expressive face I’d ever seen. When he told a story, he dove into it, re-enacting each character with a new set of his jaw and cast of his brow. His eyes shone vibrantly, and every time he laughed, it showed in his whole body. Just watching him made me smile. I felt warm around him, and happy, and comfortable. I felt like flannel pajamas, hot cocoa, a teddy bear, and my favorite comedy on DVD. I felt like home. I loved Ben, that’s what I felt. It popped into my head, and I didn’t doubt it for a second. I loved Ben. Well that was settled then, wasn’t it? Then my eyes darted to Sage, and I noticed he wasn’t focused on Ben’s story either. He was watching me. He was watching me watch Ben, to be precise, leaning back on his elbows and staring so fixedly that I could practically hear him scratching his way into my brain to listen to what I was thinking. And the minute I felt that, I was desperate to take back what I’d thought, and make sure he hadn’t understood. Especially since I had this strong feeling that if he believed I loved Ben, he’d disappear. Maybe not right away, but as soon as he could. And that would be the end of the world. “Okay, Sage, your turn,” Rayna said. “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done in the middle of a social function?” Instantly Sage’s intense stare was gone, replaced by a relaxed pose and a charming smile. “Um, I would say doing a spit take in front of Clea’s mom, several senators, and the Israeli foreign minister would probably cover it.” “You did that?” I asked. “Oh yes, he did,” Rayna nodded. “And the minister still offered you his house in Tel Aviv for the honeymoon? That’s shocking.” “Rayna is particularly charming,” Sage noted. “Thank you, darling.” She batted her eyes at him like a Disney princess. “What happened?” Ben asked. “Piri spiked your drink with garlic?” “You say that like it’s a joke,” Sage said. “I’m pretty sure she did.” “She must really have it out for you,” Ben said. “Palinka’s Hungarian holy water. You don’t mess with that.” “Speaking of holy water, I so did not get that on our trip,” Rayna put in. “Clea and I were touring one of the cathedrals in Italy, and in front of the whole tour I go, “That’s too cute! Look, they have birdbaths in the church!

Ashoka not only exhorted others to cultivate Dhamma, he practiced what he preached. He abolished human and animal sacrifice. He “made provision for two types of medical treatment: medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals.” Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them imported and grown. Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals. This concern for animals is particularly touching. He was the first ruler ever to publish a list of protected species: “parrots, mainas, aruna, ruddy geese, wild ducks, nandimukhas, gelatas, bats, queen ants, terrapins, boneless fish .

I was a kid in Florida, in Sarasota, and the New York Giants trained in Sarasota. When teams would come, we’d stand outside the ballpark, and we would get the balls they hit over the fence during batting practice. We’d sell them to the tourists. And we made a stepladder so we could climb a pine tree out there. That way we could look into the ballpark. The Yanks were in town. I’m out there behind the fence, and I hear this sound. I’d never heard THAT sound off the bat before. Instead of me running to get the ball, I ran up the ladder to see who was hitting it. Well, it was a barrel-chested sucker, with skinny legs, with the best swing I’d ever seen. That was Babe Ruth hitting that ball. Yeah. I don’t hear that sound again until 1938, I’m with the Monarchs, we’re at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. We’re upstairs, changing clothes, and the Grays are taking batting practice. I’ve got nothing on but my jock. And I hear that sound. I ran down the runway, ran out on the field, and there’s a pretty black sucker with a big chest and about 34 in the waist, prettiest man I’d ever seen. That was Josh Gibson hitting that ball. And I don’t hear the sound again until I’m a scout with the Cubs. I’m scouting the Royals. When I opened the door to go downstairs, I heard that sound again. I rushed down on the field, and here’s another pretty black sucker hitting that ball. That was Bo Jackson. That’s three times I heard the sound. Three times. But I want to hear it a fourth. I go to the ballpark every day. I want to hear that sound again.

The talent code is built on revolutionary scientific discoveries involving a neural insulator called myelin, which some neurologists now consider to be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Here's why. Every human skill, whether it's playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse—basically, a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin's vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way—when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note—our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.

… and one day, after Mahlke had learned to swim, we were lying in the grass, in the Schlagball field. I ought to have gone to the dentist, but they wouldn't let me because I was hard to replace on the team. My tooth was howling. A cat sauntered diagonally across the field and no one threw anything at it. A few of the boys were chewing or plucking at blades of grass. The cat belonged to the caretaker and was black. Hotten Sonntag rubbed his bat with a woolen stocking. My tooth marked time. The tournament had been going on for two hours. We had lost hands down and were waiting for the return game. It was a young cat, but no kitten. In the stadium, handball goals were being made thick and fast on both sides. My tooth kept saying one word, over and over again. On the cinder track the sprinters were practicing starts or limbering up. The cat meandered about. A trimotored plane crept across the sky, slow and loud, but couldn't drown out my tooth. Through the stalks of grass the caretaker's black cat showed a white bib. Mahlke was asleep. The wind was from the east, and the crematorium between the United Cemeteries and the Engineering School was operating. Mr. Mallenbrandt, the gym teacher, blew his whistle: Change sides. The cat practiced. Mahlke was asleep or seemed to be. I was next to him with my toothache. Still practicing, the cat came closer. Mahlke's Adam's apple attracted attention because it was large, always in motion, and threw a shadow. Between me and Mahlke the caretaker's black cat tensed for a leap. We formed a triangle. My tooth was silent and stopped marking time: for Mahlke's Adam's apple had become the cat's mouse. It was so young a cat, and Mahlke's whatsis was so active – in any case the cat leaped at Mahlke's throat; or one of us caught the cat and held it up to Mahlke's neck; or I, with or without my toothache, seized the cat and showed it Mahlke's mouse: and Joachim Mahlke let out a yell, but suffered only slight scratches. And now it is up to me, who called your mouse to the attention of this cat and all cats, to write. Even if we were both invented, I should have to write. Over and over again the fellow who invented us because it's his business to invent people obliges me to take your Adam's apple in my hand and carry it to the spot that saw it win or lose.

I still don’t see why we couldn’t sleep in that cave,” Mari said as MacRieve led her out into the night. “Because my cave’s better than their cave.” “You know, that really figures.” After the rain, the din of cicadas and frogs resounded in the underbrush all around them, forcing her to raise her voice. “Is it far?” When he shook his head, she said, “Then why do I have to hold your hand through the jungle? This path looks like a tractor busted through here.” “I went back this way while you ate to make sure everything was clear. Brought your things here, too,” he said as he steered her toward a lit cave entrance. When they crossed the threshold, wings flapped in the shadows, building to a furor before settling. Inside, a fire burned. Beside it, she saw he’d unpacked some of his things, and had made up one pallet. “Well, no one can call you a pessimist, MacRieve.” She yanked her hand from his. “Deluded fits, though.” He merely leaned back against the wall, seeming content to watch her as she explored on her own. She’d read about this part of Guatemala and knew that here limestone caverns spread out underground like a vast web. Above them a cathedral ceiling soared, with stalactites jutting down. “What’s so special about this cave?” “Mine has bats.” She breathed, “If I stick with you, I’ll have nothing but the best.” “Bats mean fewer mosquitoes. And then there’s also the bathtub for you to enjoy.” He waved her attention to an area deeper within. A subterranean stream with a sandy beach meandered through the cavern. Her eyes widened. A small pool sat off to the side, not much larger than an oversize Jacuzzi, and laid out along its edge were her toiletries, her washcloth, and her towel. Her bag—filled with all of her clean clothes—was off just to the side. Mari cried out at the sight, doubling over to yank at her bootlaces. Freed of her boots, she hopped forward on one foot then the other as she snatched off her socks. She didn’t pause until she was about to start on the button fly of her shorts. She glanced up to find him watching her with a gleam of expectation in his eyes. “You will be leaving, of course.” “Or I could help you.” “I’ve had a bit of practice bathing myself and think I can stumble my way through this.” “But you’re tired. Why no’ let me help? Now that I’ve two hands again, I’m eager to use them.” “You give me privacy or I go without.” “Verra well.” He shrugged. “I’ll leave—because your going without is no’ an option. Call me if you need me.

Future visitors from outer space, who mount archaeological digs of our planet, will surely find ways to distinguish designed machines such as planes and microphones, from evolved machines such as bat wings and ears. It is an interesting exercise to think about how they will make the distinction. They may face some tricky judgements in the messy overlap between natural evolution and human design. If the alien scientists can study living specimens, not just archaeological relics, what will they make of fragile, highly strung racehorses and greyhounds, or snuffling bulldogs who can scarcely breathe and can't be born without Caesarian assistance, of blear-eyed Pekinese baby surrogates, of walking udders such as Friesian cows, walking rashers such as Landrace pigs, or walking woolly jumpers such as Merino sheep? Molecular machines - nanotechnology - crafted for human benefit on the same scale as the bacterial flagellar motor, may pose the alien scientists even harder problems... Given that the illusion of design conjured by Darwinian natural selection is so breathtakingly powerful, how do we, in practice, distinguish its products from deliberately designed artefacts?... [Graham] Cairns-Smith was writing in a different context, but his point works here too. An arch is irreducible in the sense that if you remove part of it, the whole collapses. Yet it is possible to build it gradually by means of scaffolding[, which after] the subsequent removal of the scaffolding... no longer appears in the visible picture...

For a hitter, there’s no thrill quite like a late inning, game-changing home run. Unless, that is, the shot is called back. On July 24, 1983, Kansas City superstar George Brett was riding high after hitting a two-out, two-run homer in Yankee Stadium. The future Hall of Famer’s blast changed a 4–3 ninth inning deficit into a 5–4 Royals lead. The joy soon faded, though, when New York manager Billy Martin asked home plate umpire Tim McClelland to inspect Brett’s bat. Earlier in the season, Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles had noticed that Brett seemed to use more pine tar than the rules allowed—and Martin had saved that choice information for just such a moment as this. McClelland measured the goo on Brett’s bat, finding it exceeded the eighteen inches allowed. Brett was called out, erasing the home run and giving the Yankees a 4–3 victory. The Royals were incensed by the ruling, which was later overturned by American League president Lee McPhail, who said “games should be won and lost on the playing field—not through technicalities of the rules.” Baseball’s official acknowledgment of the “bigger picture” is reminiscent of Jesus’ approach to God’s laws. Arguing with hypocritical Pharisees, Jesus once said, “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23). Our concern for the letter of the law should be balanced by an equal concern for the spirit of the law. If you’re inclined to spiritual pickiness, don’t forget the “more important matters.

In retrospect, however, her mother's irreverence might have been one of her greatest gifts as a parent. Such as the day when Merritt had run crying to her because a group of boys hadn't wanted her to play rounders with them. Lillian had hugged and comforted her, and said, "I'll go tell them to give you a turn." "No, Mama," Merritt had sobbed. "They don't want me to play because I'm not good at it. I mostly can't hit the ball, and when I do, it doesn't go anywhere. They said I have baby arms." The indignity of that had been intolerable. But Mama, who'd always understood the fragility of a child's pride, had curved her fingers around Merritt's upper arm and said, "Make a muscle for me." After feeling Merritt's biceps, her mother had lowered to her haunches until their faces were level. "You have very strong arms, Merritt," she'd said decisively. "You're as strong as any of those boys. You and I are going to practice until you're able to hit that blasted ball over all their heads." For many an afternoon after that, Mama had helped her to learn the right stance, and how to transfer her weight to the front foot during the swing, and how to follow through. They had developed her eye-hand coordination and had practiced until the batting skills felt natural. And the next time Merritt played rounders, she'd scored more points than anyone else in the game. Of the thousands of embraces Mama had given her throughout childhood, few stood out in Merritt's mind as much as the feel of her arms guiding her in a batting stance. I want you to attack the ball, Merritt. Be fierce." Not everyone would understand, but "Be fierce" was one of the best things her mother had ever told her.

At Bridgewater, every employee has a believability score on a range of dimensions. In sports, statistics for every player’s performance history are public. In baseball, before you sign a player, you can look up his batting average, home runs, and steals; assess his strengths and weaknesses; and adjust accordingly. Dalio wanted Bridgewater to work the same way, so he created baseball cards that display statistics on every employee’s performance, which can be accessed by anyone at the company. If you’re about to interact with a few Bridgewater colleagues for the first time, you can see their track records on seventy-seven different dimensions of values, skills, and abilities in the areas of higher-level thinking, practical thinking, maintaining high standards, determination, open-mindedness yet assertiveness, and organization and reliability.

Intuitively it makes sense that difficulties that don’t strengthen the skills you will need, or the kinds of challenges you are likely to encounter in the real-world application of your learning, are not desirable. Having somebody whisper in your ear while you read the news may be essential training for a TV anchor. Being heckled by role-playing protestors while honing your campaign speech may help train up a politician. But neither of these difficulties is likely to be helpful for Rotary Club presidents or aspiring YouTube bloggers who want to improve their stage presence. A cub towboat pilot on the Mississippi might be required in training to push a string of high-riding empty barges into a lock against a strong side wind. A baseball player might practice hitting with a weight on his bat to strengthen his swing. You might teach a football player some of the principles of ballet for learning balance and movement, but you probably would not teach him the techniques for an effective golf drive or backhand tennis serve. Is there an overarching rule that determines the kinds of impediments that make learning stronger? Time and further research may yield an answer. But the kinds of difficulties we’ve just described, whose desirability is well documented, offer a large and diverse toolkit already at hand.

TEACHER: How many times did you play it? STUDENT: Ten or twenty. TEACHER: How many times did you play it correctly? STUDENT: Umm, I dunno . . . Once or twice . . . TEACHER: Hmm . . . How did you practice it? STUDENT: I dunno. I just played it. This is naive practice in a nutshell: I just played it. I just swung the bat and tried to hit the ball. I just listened to the numbers and tried to remember them. I just read the math problems and tried to solve them.

This is similar to the Twister technique, in that you are using a two-handed grip on the big stick in order to duplicate the sudden redirection of short stick abaniko, or fan, technique. Start in right high guard with the stick resting over your right shoulder. Throw an overight, then suddenly change direction so that the stick travels 180 degrees in the opposite direction, striking the opponent in the knee or groin with an underleft. It helps to step out to the right with your right foot to clear a path for the second strike. Suddenly pull the left hand back and downward, like pulling a lever, while simultaneously pushing forward and upward with the right. One possible application is to draw the opponent's left hand up to block your overight strike, then drop down to strike at the opening created at his knee or groin. Practice this technique on the heavy bag, striving to make both strikes as powerful and as close together as possible.

Following up the butt strike, your weapon is now at your left shoulder, held in rifle grip with the right hand palm-down at the handle of the weapon and the left hand palm-up maybe one third to one half the distance up the stick. To execute the rap, bring the right hand in toward the right hip while the left hand pushes the barrel end outward into the opponent's face. The weapon retraces the path it originally took from middle guard to the left shoulder, only in reverse. In practice you will find that the left elbow acts like a shock absorber, causing the end of the stick to snap back. Redirect this rebound up to your right shoulder, while letting your left hand slide down to bat grip. Follow through with an overight strike. Practice these three moves in sequence: underight butt, overleft rap, overight strike from bat grip. Your weapon will trace a 'V,' moving from one shoulder to another. Slam I have also seen this technique referred to as a “bar strike” because you are striking with the portion of the stick between the hands, which is like a bar. The slam is typically performed with the hands palm down in staff grip, equidistant from the ends, and thrown so that the stick is horizontal. Realize, though, that the slam can be thrown with multiple grips in multiple orientations. From the middle guard, throw the stick forward and diagonally, parallel to your adversary, striking him in the chest. Don't just shove the opponent, but aim for an explosive strike that knocks him back on impact. If the attacker crouches and lunges in to tackle, jam the portion of the stick between your hands into the juncture of the opponent's right shoulder and neck.

1) Aristide grabbed the arms of his folding chair and turned to us so fast he almost flipped his chair over. 2) Ker stood up so fast she stepped on her own tail in the process and fell down again. 3) Something loud crashed in the garage—Charon had obviously heard Shiloh’s question as well thanks to his elf hearing. I remained perfectly still—not because I wasn’t shocked by the question. No. It was only because of years of practice at passing as a normal cat that made me remain in Noctus’s arms. Well, practice, and maybe I was paralyzed in my shock. Noctus didn’t bat an eye, didn’t react to any of us, he didn’t even hesitate. “Yes,” he said. This time Aristide did tip over, but that was all I had time to see before I bonelessly slid off Noctus’s shoulder and pooled into his arms like goo, gazing up at him in horror. Have you lost your mind!? What could possibly inspire you to say that?

Zen . . . does not belong to monks only. Everyone can study and practice it. Many laymen have been recognized as illustrious Zen Masters, and have aroused the respect of the monks themselves. The laity are related to the monasteries by the material support they provide to them, as it sometimes happens that the labor of the monks may not be sufficient to ensure the upkeep of the monastery. The laity are also related to the monasteries by their participation in the construction of temples and sanctuaries and by their cultural activities; for example, the printing and publishing of sutras and scriptural works by monks. A good number of monasteries each month organize bat quan trai gioi for laymen who wish to live for twenty-four or forty-eight hours in a monastery exactly like monks. Places are reserved for them for these periods of bat quan trai gioi, during which they practice Zen under the direction of monks.

Try these journal prompts as you work to integrate your type 8 shadows: See yourself through your ex’s eyes. This can be a difficult exercise, but if anyone’s up for it, Challenger, it’s you. Write a letter to yourself from your ex’s point of view. Take a moment to remember all you did wrong and write it down—even if (especially if!) you think the failure of the relationship was their fault, not yours. What negative traits of yours do you need to own and master to be better in your next relationship? Write a letter to the person who hurt you the most in your past. Tell them everything they did that made you feel unworthy of love or less-than. Don’t be afraid to hit below the belt! Get it all out! When you’re done, put the letter away somewhere safe. Come back and re-read it two weeks later and consider whether you can see any of the negative qualities of this person in yourself. How have you hurt others? Is it similar to the way you’ve been hurt? Think about the people you love most. If you had the power, what would you like to change about them in order to improve your relationship with them? (This might also have to do with the way you resolve conflicts.) How does this action reflect on you? Based on this exercise, is there anything you might consider improving in yourself to help? TYPE 8 SELF-CARE PRESCRIPTION Type 8s tend to struggle with inaction when it comes to self-care. Since you’re always seeking progress and pushing yourself, it’s challenging for you to sit in a quiet place alone and rest. But the world is a complicated place, and you are prone to feeling angry about the things you can’t control or change. You want so much to do something to heal the pain of the world, to fix the broken systems. But you can’t fight for others until you’ve first fought for yourself by releasing the need for control and choosing stillness. Being still probably feels unnatural to you, even scary, but that’s where your real inner work begins! Learn your limits. As an energetic 8, you frequently push yourself to your limits, even if you’re unaware you’re doing so. Pay closer attention to your own feelings, and force yourself to rest and recover whenever necessary, instead of pushing through. You’ll be much better off for it! Practice mindful breathing for anger management. When you feel the need to let loose with an angry tirade, take it as a cue to practice your calming breaths. Find an outdoor exercise activity you love. When you’re feeling especially furious or antsy, hop on your bike and go for a ride or do a few laps around the neighborhood. These activities are healthy outlets for that restless energy of yours. Let others take the lead sometimes. With your commanding presence and direct approach, you make a natural leader. But sometimes, you need to step back and allow someone else to step up to bat. Take a break and learn not to carry all responsibilities on your own shoulders; this will benefit both you and your relationships with others.

see rainbows in rainstorms and opportunities in disasters. When life hands me lemons, I whip up a lemon meringue pie. Challenges? Just plot twists in my epic saga, and setbacks are setups for my grand comeback. Where others see roadblocks, I see shortcuts to awesomeness. My glass isn’t just half full; it’s practically overflowing with optimism. So, while the world tosses curveballs, I’m here with my metaphorical bat, ready to hit them out of the park and do a victory dance.

She sort-of batted her eyes at him. He leered a little longer. Then she rolled her eyes and turned away. But it didn’t feel like a rejection, more like a tease. If he had been more practiced in the art of male chauvinism, he may have swaggered over to her side for a bit of self-promotion. More from ignorance than from enlightenment, he smiled and nodded to the empty space in front of him, embarrassed by the confusion she had conjured just for him, and any like him, who might have been observing her moves.

Brad’s desk to the BATS exchange in Weehawken, was about 2 milliseconds, and the slowest, from Brad’s desk to Carteret, was around 4 milliseconds. In practice, the times could vary much more than that, depending on network traffic, static, and glitches in the pieces of equipment between any two points. It took 100 milliseconds to blink your eyes; it was hard to believe that a fraction of the blink of an eye could have such vast market consequences.

The practice of silent reading would not become common until almost the modern period, and some linguists argue that while most modern Western languages are easy to read silently, the ancient Semitic languages, particularly vowel-less Hebrew, could not be read silently, a contention that most bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls would surely agree with.19 In the words of biblical scholar David Carr, When you list those people who are depicted as writing in ancient Israel, it quickly becomes evident that virtually all are some sort of official. Aside from God, who is one of the Bible’s most prolific writers, virtually all writers and readers in the Bible are officials of some kind: scribes, kings, priests, and other bureaucrats.20

From the Smith Papyrus, we know that head wounds were treated with fresh meat, and for a headache the Kahun Papyrus prescribed goose fat rubbed into the eyes, with a helping of jackass liver. A person with a toothache would have a dead mouse stuffed down their throat. People with cataracts had hot broken glass poured into their eyes, a treatment that actually worked, and ingrown eyelashes were rubbed with bat’s blood.

Hayder didn’t bother checking the time when he left the condo. He banged on the closest door and waited with arms crossed, foot tapping. It opened a moment later on a tousled-hair Luna, who scowled. “What do you want?” “A lifetime supply of porterhouse steaks in my freezer.” Like duh. What feline wouldn’t? “Smartass.” “Thank you. I knew those IQ tests I took in college were wrong. But enough of my mental greatness, I need a favor.” “I am not lending you my eighties greatest hits CDs again to use for skeet practice,” she grumbled. “That’s not a favor. That’s just making the world a better place. No, I need you to watch Arabella’s place while I talk to the boss about her situation.” Obviously the rumor mill had been busy because Luna didn’t question what he meant. “You really think those wolves would be stupid enough to try something here?” Luna slapped her forehead. “Duh. Of course they are. Must be something in their processed dog food that inhibits their brain processes.” “One, while I agree that pack is mentally defective, you might want to refrain from calling them dogs or bitches or any other nasty names in the near future.” “Why? Aren’t you the one who coined the phrase ‘ass-licking, eau de toilette fleabags’?” Ah yes, one of his brighter inspirations after a few too many shots of tequila. “Yeah. But that was in the past. If I’m going to be mated to a wolf—” “Whoa there, big guy. Back up. Mated? As in”— Luna hummed the wedding march—“ dum-dum-dum-dum.” Hayder fought not to wince. Knowing he’d found the one and admitting it in such final terms were two different things. “Yes, mated. To Arabella.” “The girl who is allergic to you?” Luna needed the wall to hold her up as she laughed. And laughed. Then cried as she laughed. Irritated, Hayder tapped a foot and frowned. It just made her laugh all the harder. “It isn’t that funny.” “Says you.” Luna snorted, wiping a hand across her eyes to swipe the tears. “Oh, wait until the girls hear this.” “Could we hold off on that? It might help if I got Arabella to agree first.” Which, given her past and state of mind, wasn’t a sure thing. “You’re killing me here, Hayder. This is big news. Real big.” “I’ll let you borrow my treadmill.” Damned thing was nothing more than a clothes rack in his room. Indoor running just couldn’t beat the fresh adrenaline of an outdoor sprint. “Really big news,” she emphasized. He sighed. “Fine. You can borrow my car. But don’t you dare leave any fast food wrappers in it like last time.” “Who, me?” The innocent bat of her lashes didn’t fool him one bit.

structure has been defined as ‘any assemblage of materials which is intended to sustain loads’, and the study of structures is one of the traditional branches of science. If an engineering structure breaks, people are likely to get killed, and so engineers do well to investigate the behaviour of structures with circumspection. But, unfortunately, when they come to tell other people about their subject, something goes badly wrong, for they talk in a strange language, and some of us are left with the conviction that the study of structures and the way in which they carry loads is incomprehensible, irrelevant and very boring indeed. Yet structures are involved in our lives in so many ways that we cannot really afford to ignore them: after all, every plant and animal and nearly all of the works of man have to sustain greater or less mechanical forces without breaking, and so practically everything is a structure of one kind or another. When we talk about structures we shall have to ask, not only why buildings and bridges fall down and why machinery and aeroplanes sometimes break, but also how worms came to be the shape they are and why a bat can fly into a rose-bush without tearing its wings. How do our tendons work? Why do we get ‘lumbago’? How were pterodactyls able to weigh so little? Why do birds have feathers? How do our arteries work? What can we do for crippled children? Why are sailing ships rigged in the way they are? Why did the bow of Odysseus have to be so hard to string? Why did the ancients take the wheels off their chariots at night? How did a Greek catapult work? Why is a reed shaken by the wind and why is the Parthenon so beautiful? Can engineers learn from natural structures? What can doctors and biologists and artists and archaeologists learn from engineers? As it has turned out, the struggle

The game is a thread, microscopic in breadth, a hint of gossamer drawing unsuspecting souls together in simple competition to the exclusion of all else, from a mother and her infant playing peekaboo to two old men hunched over a chessboard and everything in between. The game unifies, joining father and son pitching baseballs at night after a long day at the office, pitches pounding the mitt or skipping past, one time even knocking the coffee cup handle clean off and the boy scampering off to retrieve a wild one as the dad sips and ponders. The game allows brothers to bond even when the age gap is too great for real competition, their mutual effort to fashion a bridge between disparate age and ability forming a bond of trust and respect. And finally, it is the game’s presence and past and its memory that inspires each of us to forgive time and aging and their inevitable accompanying attrition because the gray and hobbled old man before me was once lean and powerful and magnificent and some of what became of him was due to the investment he made in me and after all the batting practice he threw and grounders he hit, his shoulder aches and his knees need replacement. Even though youth masks it so you don't realize it all when you’re a kid, someday it happens to you and suddenly you realize you are him and you are left wishing you could go back and tell him what you now know and perhaps thank him for what he gave up. You imagine him back then receiving nothing in return except the knowledge that you would someday understand but he could not hasten that day or that revelation and he abided it all so graciously knowing that your realization might be too late for him. So you console yourself that in the absence of your gratitude he clung to hope and conviction and the future. Turn the page and you find yourself staring out at the new generation and you wince as his pitches bruise your palm and crack your thumb and realize that today the game is growth and achievement and tomorrow it will be love and memories. The game is a gift.

During batting practice Sexson hit a ball that broke a window at Friday’s Front Row Sports Grill in left field. Leftfielder Geoff Jenkins, Sexson’s teammate and closest friend, razzed him mercilessly about having to pay for the window. A day or two later, general manager Dean Taylor dropped a fake invoice on the chair in front of Sexson’s locker. Sexson read it and was simultaneously incredulous and livid. The letter said that he had to pay for the replacement window and that $3,200 would be withheld from his next paycheck.

One of baseball’s more confusing traditions, at least in my eyes, is that the home team has batting practice first. That means that when the gates open, fans usually see the opposing team take batting practice. That has never made sense to me.

Former Brewers catcher Jason Kendall referred to batting practice as a “war zone.” Others have called it “controlled chaos,” a “beehive,” or a “sporting symphony.” There is so much going on during the session that it’s hard for people to understand the activity.

And one day I hit one up the middle. I thought it was going to hit him right between the eyes. It missed him, and the ball was in the outfield by the time he ducked. At that point I think we all agreed that dad was done throwing me batting practice.

However much this annoyed me, it is accepted practice for a duellist's supporters to cheer them on- in fact, i was entitled to similar outbursts from my own admirers. 'This Undriel fellow really is remarkably skilled,'Kest remarked. Undriel. That was the bastard's name. Brasti came to my defence, after a fashion. 'It's not Falcio's fault. He's getting old. And slow. Also, i think he might be getting fat. Just look at him- barely four months since he beat Shuran and already he's half the man he once was.' Always nice to have friends nearby in troubled times, i thought, batting at Undriel's blade with a clumsy parry that was testament to my increasing exhaustion.

Get away from me!” I snarled as I spun circles of flames in the dark air, batting the whip away from me and almost setting the retiarius net aflame. “Stay back or burn, you jackals!” One girl screamed in alarm as my torch set her tunic hem smoldering, and she quickly fell back, slapping at the cloth. The firebrands flared and flamed in my hands, trailing smoke and embers in the dimachaerus patterns I’d practiced, as my attackers backed off. When I lunged straight at the girl with the whip, she turned and ran, melting back into the night, the other girls following close on her heels. I shouted after them to come back and face me. In truth, I was just as glad they were gone. My arms and legs throbbed as I let the torches drop to my sides. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear the afterglare of fire blindness. When I opened them again and lifted my head to the cool night breeze, I saw a figure, cloaked and hooded, standing on the balcony above the courtyard, watching me. The Lanista. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was her. I could feel her gaze on me, sharp and appraising. I straightened up, standing as tall as I could, and met her gaze. She stood there for a long moment. Then she turned without a word and disappeared into the darkness.

You’re really angry about the hard practicality of Eric marrying Freyda.” I winced, but Bill continued ruthlessly. “You have to admit that her character is much like Eric’s and that they’d make a good team.” “Eric’s my team,” I said. “He loves me. He wants to stay here.” I realized that I was, so to speak, batting with another hand now. I’d been just as sure the night before that Eric would leave, that he loved power more than he loved me. “But … Sookie, you must see … staying might be the death of him.

I stand there, shivering slightly in a jacket that isn’t warm enough for the amount of time I’ve been standing out on this porch. I hear raised voices inside the house—Tim and his mother arguing. I can only imagine what they’re saying to each other. He doesn’t want to see me. That much is clear. After what feels like an eternity, the door swings open again. And there he is. Tim Reese. The boy next door. The guy I thought I was falling in love with before I temporarily sent him to prison for murder. Oh boy. He doesn’t look great. I remember how I swooned a bit when I saw him standing outside the elementary school on Josh’s first day of school. But now he looks tired and pale and about fifteen pounds thinner. And pissed off as hell. “Brooke.” His eyes are like daggers. “What are you doing here?” He doesn’t invite me in. He doesn’t even budge from the doorway. “Um.” I wish I had planned something to say. I could have written down a little speech. Why oh why didn’t I write out a speech? “I wanted to say hi.” His eyebrows shoot up. “Hi?” “And welcome home,” I add. There isn’t even a hint of a smile on Tim’s lips. “No thanks to you.” “Look…” I squirm on the porch. “This hasn’t been easy for me either, you know—” “I was in prison, Brooke.” “Yeah, well.” I raise my eyes to meet his. “Josh’s dad tried to kill me. So, you know, it hasn’t been any picnic.” “No kidding.” Tim folds his arms across his chest. He’s wearing just a sweater, and I’m cold in my coat, so he’s got to be freezing, but he doesn’t look it. “I’d been telling you all along that Shane was dangerous. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I warn you repeatedly?” I hang my head. He absolutely did. “The guy stabbed me in the gut.” His fingers go to the area on his abdomen where he still has that scar. “I was practically bleeding to death, barely conscious, and I dragged myself off the floor when I saw you make a run for it. I grabbed that baseball bat off the floor and hit Shane as hard

Why is it always about the mother?” She looked to Ellery. “The school notices come to me, not him. It’s the mothers who are expected to contribute to the bake sales and make the posters for the book fair and volunteer at the Halloween parade. If the homework is late, if the child isn’t practicing her piano enough, the teachers go to the mother, not the father. Fathers can jet off to work for weeks at a time. They can be twenty-five or sixty-five and no one bats an eye.

To review, in facing the storm, take your 5 tools with you: You are not a victim. You have needs and the right to expect those needs to get met. Get conscious of your fear-based thoughts and actions. Have a voice. Have boundaries. You won’t be good at facing the storm at first. It will not go smoothly. It will be scary. That’s okay. Expect it. You’ll feel like you’re bungling along at first. You will be. Don’t get discouraged. Practice. Remember, the first time you swung a baseball bat you probably didn’t hit a home run.

Curiosity is crucial to success. What worked yesterday is out-of-date today and forgotten tomorrow—replaced by a new tool or technique we haven’t yet heard of. Consider that the telephone took 75 years to reach 50 million users, whereas television was in 50 million households within 13 years, the internet in 4, . . . and Angry Birds in 35 days. In the tech era, the pace is accelerating further: it took Microsoft Office 22 years to reach a billion users, but Gmail only 12, and Facebook 9. Trying to resist this tide of change will drown you. Successful people in the digital age are those who go to work every day, not dreading the next change, but asking, “What if we did it this way?” Adherence to process, or how we’ve always done it, is the Achilles’ heel of big firms and sepsis for careers. Be the gal who comes up with practical and bat-shit crazy ideas worth discussing and trying. Play offense: for every four things you’re asked to do, offer one deliverable or idea that was not asked for.

Little Lamby might be a snob. Thinks she’s too good to hang out at the Palisades.” “I don’t think that,” I whispered. Tristan’s arm pressed on my chest like an iron bar as his hand inched down to the curve of my breast. My nails dug into my thighs, my mind racing with ideas of how to get out of here. If I could get my voice to work, I’d scream, but my throat was too tight from fear. At the same time Tristan squeezed my breast, the screen door flew open. Helen stood in the doorway like an avenging angel, her hair flowing in the breeze, tapping a bat against her palm. “Knock, knock, boys. I seem to have a problem. I have batting practice, but I don’t have a ball.” Her red lips fell open, and she pointed to each of the guys with her bat. “Oh, wait, I see three pairs of balls my bat would just love to smash. Who volunteers to go first?

If you were landed with a corpse on your hands, by what method could you dispose of it so as to avoid any future liabilities? Highest marks will be given for a method which is not only ingenious, but possesses the elements of practical common sense.

She pouts, batting her eyelashes over her big steel colored eyes before she whispers, “I’ve had a lot of practice being a very good girl but it felt a lot better a few minutes ago being bad.

In 1962, the San Francisco Giants were preparing to host the LA Dodgers for a crucial three-game series, late in the season. The Dodgers, led by master base stealer Maury Wills, were five and a half games ahead of the Giants. Before the series began, the Giants manager approached Matty Schwab, the team’s head groundskeeper, and asked if anything could be done—wink wink—to slow down Wills. “Dad and I were out at Candlestick before dawn the day the series was to begin,” said Jerry Schwab, Matty’s son, as quoted by Noel Hynd in Sports Illustrated. “We were installing a speed trap.” Hynd continues: Working by torchlight, the Schwabs dug up and removed the topsoil where Wills would take his lead off first base. Down in its place went a squishy swamp of sand, peat moss and water. Then they covered their chicanery with an inch of normal infield soil, making the 5- by 15-foot quagmire visually indistinguishable from the rest of the base path. The Dodgers were not fooled. When the team began batting practice, the players and coaches noticed the quicksand, and so did the umpire, who ordered it removed. Schwab and the grounds crew came out with wheelbarrows, shoveled up the mixture, and returned soon after with reloaded wheelbarrows. It was the same bog. They’d just mixed in some new dirt, which made it even looser. Somehow the umpires were satisfied. Then Matty Schwab ordered his son to water the infield. Generously. By the time the game started, there was basically a swamp between first and second base. (“They found two abalone under second base,” wrote an irritated Los Angeles sports columnist.) Maury Wills, en route to an MVP season, stole no bases, and neither did his teammates, and the Giants won, 11–2. Pleased, the Schwab father-son team continued to conjure more marshy conditions, and the Giants swept the Dodgers—and went on to leapfrog them to win the National League pennant. There’s something admirably mischievous about this story. I mean, it’s cheating, let’s be clear, but it’s cheeky cheating. It’s fun to think that the father-son groundskeeping team pulled one over on the National League’s MVP. The underdogs won one—they tilted the odds in favor of their home team.

a study that some colleagues and I (RG)18 conducted a few years ago suggests that way pitchers are given advance information about hitters can influence how they handle pressure. It has become common in baseball to give pitchers a “heat map” representing a particular hitter’s batting average for pitch locations throughout the strike zone. While it has been shown that athletes can use this type of information to improve performance,19,20 it also has the potential to change how athletes respond to pressure. The theory of ironic processes21 proposes that pressure will cause a skilled performer to maintain a movement profile typical of an expert but act as though he or she has a different goal: achieving a result that was intentionally avoided (e.g., throwing a pitch into one of a batter’s high average, hot zones). In other words, showing a pitcher where NOT to throw the ball might produce a “don’t think about pink elephants” kind of effect. To test this, we compared pitching performance for two groups: one group that was shown only their target (i.e., a cold zone) and a group was shown the target and an ironic (avoid, hot) zone. Performance was measured in low pressure (just pitching) and high pressure (crowd, monetary incentive for control) conditions. Consistent with the ironic process theory, the two-zone group missed their target more often, but not because they were wild and erratic in their delivery. This occurred because they threw significantly more pitches into the hot zone as compared to when they were not under pressure. Thus, we have two suggestions here. First, advance information should show the goal targets (cold zones) and not include things we want the pitcher to avoid. Second, this type of advance information should be included and manipulated in some practice activities. For example, in the Sniper Challenge described above, pitchers could be given different zones they are trying to target indicated using different types of advance information displays/graphics. This will allow the athlete to get practice at setting their intentions based on this type of information.

connection with this, may I respectfully make a suggestion? Tradition is very important, and traditional medicine is often valuable, but perhaps using bat feces to treat eye disorders is one practice we might consider letting go of. This is not because it’s feces—indeed, Western medicine is now learning uses for that long known in China—but because of what we now know about bat viruses. The Chinese people asking for that particular remedy to be taken out of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and traditional Chinese medicine shops have a point. There are safer ways to get vitamin A.

She thought of Dr Kellet and Pindar. Become such as you are, having learned what that is. She knew what that was now. She was Ursula Beresford Todd and she was a witness. She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.

Keep it in your pants, Gentry,” Coach says, making me chuckle. “It’s a possibility, but you have to continue to work hard, don’t let up, and don’t settle.” “I won’t, Coach, you know I won’t. I’m the first one to show up for practice and the last one to leave. I spend more hours in the batting cages than anyone, I practically have a marriage with one of the batting tees.” “I do recall you proposed to it last year.” “She’s been so loyal, I had to do something.” He shakes his head and then pushes a few papers around on his desk. “Enough with the bullshit. Stay focused, set a good example, and show the underclassmen what it takes to make it to the majors.” “I can do that.

The walls covered with paintings and tapestries that often concealed the doors didn't help either. There were countless animal heads of all kinds lit by torches in several corridors, and I could have sworn I saw them move, but I was always so late for the lessons that I had no time to pay attention to them. Intense smells of herbs, vapors, and fumes filled this space, as potions and spells were constantly being played throughout the days and nights. Every time we passed Mrs. Fitz's secretary's office, we had to pinch our Nose, because she seemed to burn horrible herbs while she worked, and the smell spread down the hallway to the classrooms. Then there was Miss Melva Flin with her ever-vigilant bat. She controlled every person who came in and out of Philcrocks and roamed the corridors making sure no students broke the rules or tried to stick their noses where they weren't called. She had two spare eyes as her bat squeaked whenever it detected problems. No student liked her and everyone wished they could close that bat in the library where he could eat the bookworms for the rest of his life. Found the practice sites, there were still the lessons. Every Thursday at midnight the clan would gather in the High Ridge stone circle, at which hour it aligned with the moon, and it was possible to make omens from the constellations. On Tuesdays we went to the Philcrocks Woods where we watched the wild animals and any other species that walked around, hunted and fished in the river and even stayed overnight for the next day hoping to see the vampires hunt, which did not happen. I still couldn't believe vampires existed but the next day I turned away from all the sarcophagi I came across in the castle corridors. The most boring of the chairs was the Philcrocks Story, where they talked about the story of magic. Especially because the teacher talked monotonously and always behind the book, which made it impossible to see his face and understand what he was saying. He also made references to maps and wall articles that no one understood, which did not matter to him as long as he remained immersed in its reading aloud. Most interesting so far has been the story of the division of the 3 kingdoms and the emergence of the 3 clans. For many centuries they had lived peacefully until pure races emerged and the thirst for power increased, promoting their perpetuation. The segregation of sleves began there. King Elive's Night Clan was destroyed by King Ashen and the Night Clan disappeared, except for some sorcerers who chose the Shadow Kingdom to live on and continued the clan to which I now belong. Having to memorize endless dates and events was the worst part. It was hard to remember if it was Orlk or Orls who started the battle and whether it was in Cral or Crap, especially since all those names were strange to me.

On a scale of one to ten, how strong is the emotion attached to the memories we’ve been working on?” Curtis Rouanzoin asks one day. The procedure I’ve been going through with him is called EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which looks at the way trauma is stored in the brain and attempts to properly process it. “If it used to be a ten, now it’s an eight,” I tell him. Lindsay Joy Greene is trained in a therapy called SE, or somatic experiencing, and she’s been locating trauma trapped not in my brain, but in my body, and releasing the stored energy. One day she asks, “On a scale of one to ten, how much anger do you feel when you recall the memories we’ve been discussing?” “If it used to be an eight, now it’s a seven,” I tell her. Olga Stevko practices her own variant of NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. Where the experientials with Lorraine were about debugging my operating system, her process is about rewriting the original code. For example, she tells me that inside my mother’s words, “Never grow up to make anyone as miserable as your father makes me,” was a hidden command: Never grow up. As she helps me grow up, it brings my trauma down to a six. Greg Cason specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, which takes it to a five. And I don’t know what to call Barbara McNally’s method and her bottomless quiver of techniques, but they work, they’re original, and they bring the emotion associated with those memories to a four. And I do so much more: I beat pillows with baseball bats. I tap on energy meridians. I make shadow maps of my dark side. I try psychodrama. Not all of it works, but none of it hurts.

How does he talk when he's a snake? Their mouths aren't built for it." "How does he turn into a snake in the first place? How does Ruthven change from sixty or seventy kilos of bipedal humanoid into a few grams of regrettably adorable bat?

Practice, Ami. There is no talent without practice." And practice you did. You hacked at livers and pig brains for sisig, spent hours over a hot stove for the perfect sourness to sinigang. You dug out intestines and wound them around bamboo sticks for grilled isaw, and monitored egg incubation times to make balut. Lola didn't frequent clean and well-lit farmers markets. Instead, you accompanied her to a Filipino palengke, a makeshift union of vendors who occasionally set up shop near Mandrake Bridge and fled at the first sight of a police uniform. Popular features of such a palengke included slippery floors slicked with unknown ichor; wet, shabby stalls piled high with entrails and meat underneath flickering light bulbs; and enough health code violations to chase away more gentrification in the area. Your grandmother ruled here like some dark sorceress and was treated by the vendors with the reverence of one. You learned how to make the crackled pork strips they called crispy pata, the pickled-sour raw kilawin fish, the perfect full-bodied peanuty sauce for the oxtail in your kare-kare. One day, after you have mastered them all, you will decide on a specialty of your own and conduct your own tests for the worthy. Asaprán witches have too much magic in their blood, and not all their meals are suitable for consumption. Like candy and heartbreak, moderation is key. And after all, recipes are much like spells, aren't they? Instead of eyes of newt and wings of bat they are now a quarter kilo of marrow and a pound of garlic, boiled for hours until the meat melts off their bones. Pots have replaced cauldrons, but the attention to detail remains constant.

There were a few other things he was afraid of, too. Like the fact that he might not make the basketball team, no matter how hard he practiced. He’d already failed at Little League—never hit the ball, not even once—and Boyd Middle School didn’t have football, so that would have to wait. Basketball was his best shot at becoming an athlete. You might as well be nothing if you don’t excel at something. That was one of his dad’s favorite expressions, and right now Chet was batting average at everything. Basketball could change that.

How to stay positive in your life? Learn positivity You can characterize positive speculation as positive symbolism, positive self-talk, or general good faith, however, these are on the whole despite everything general, vague ideas.They are clear about objectives and they are certain that they will achieve them, at some point or another. Second, confident people search for the positive qualities in each issue or trouble. At the point when things turn out badly, as they frequently do, they state, "That is acceptable!" And then set about discovering something positive about the circumstance. At the point when we attempt to transform ourselves to improve things; we quite often center around our practices. We believe that in the event that we change what we are doing and pick a progressively positive conduct, we will see better outcomes. Fundamentally, this is valid however it truly streamlines the issue. Over and over again, we overlook our considerations and convictions about the things that we need to change when our musings massively affect how we act. Thinking emphatically is basic to effective living. For instance, on the off chance that you need to be increasingly emphatic and go to bat for your privileges, you should initially accept that you have those rights; that you are qualified for shield those rights and that you can impart your privileges in a powerful way. On the off chance that you do not have any of those musings or convictions, you are going to battle to be self-assured. On the off chance that you need trust in any everyday issue, you are going battle to make an accomplishment of that part of your life. 7 Important positive thoughts about life 1. How you start the morning establishes the pace for the remainder of the day. Have you at any point woken up late, froze, and afterward felt like no good thing happened the remainder of the day? This is likely on the grounds that you began the day with a negative feeling and a cynical view that conveyed into each other occasion you encountered. 2. Positive reasoning can add such a great amount to your life – both regarding quality and amount. At the point when you think positively you dispose of pressure and will in general carry on with a more beneficial life and settle on better decisions. In case you're normally a negative mastermind, there are ways you can change that reasoning and jump on the way to a life getting an updated perspective. 3. Note that you don't need to acknowledge your musings as realities. On the off chance that you are feeling terrible, you are probably going to see everything in a negative light yet you can challenge this. We as a whole experience the ill effects of what is alluded to as deduction blunders every now and then. It is significant that we challenge these negative considerations, pick increasingly positive and steady contemplation, and search out proof to help those new musings. 4. Permit yourself to encounter humor in even the darkest or most difficult circumstances. Advise yourself that this circumstance will presumably make for a decent story later and attempt to break a joke about it. 5. It's useful on the off chance that you can see toward the day's end what your considerations have been. Set aside the effort to record them. You'll see what turned out badly with your musings and have the option to improve them. A diary is one of the least difficult however most useful assets that you can use in your endeavors to be increasingly sure and positive. 6. When something turns out badly, cataclysmic reasoning can without much of a stretch dominate. This is the place you lose all viewpoints and believe that since one thing has turned out badly; everything is destroyed. 7. Thinking emphatically comes normal to certain individuals yet there are those. Can also Check: Things Which Is Important To Get Success.

What time is it?" he asked. "Nine o'clock. I just told you," said Mrs. Benson. "We'd better get going, Dad," Michael said. Mr. Benson lowered his newspaper. "It's only an hour's drive to the stadium and the game doesn't start until two." "But I want to be there before anyone. Owen Zabriskie likes to take early batting practice. He's probably there already." "Owen Zabriskie is probably still asleep," Mr. Benson said. "But, Dad, we could have a flat tire or get caught in a traffic jam..." "Calm down, Michael. What's gotten into you this morning? Are you trying to drive your mother and me crazy?

I sat down to prepare a new presentation. It was time for me to get my thinking and my teaching straight. The simplicity principle was my lodestar and salvation. At the next team practice I decided to concentrate on the three factors I thought were most important. “It’s all about the three Hs: Hands, Hips, and Head.” Hands: how you grip the bat with your hands and where you hold your hands in relation to your torso. Hips: how you orient your hips toward the pitcher and swivel them as you swing. Head: how you keep your eyes on the ball all the time, from watching it in the pitcher’s hand to trying to see it touch your bat.

hegemony of the modern synagogue. These are the events that surround birth, coming of age, marriage (including divorce), and death. Many synagogues will name babies for parents who are not members, presuming that one day they might become members. And more often than not, those who marry are not synagogue members, since they no longer live in their hometowns and, as young singles, have not been motivated to join a synagogue in their new city of residence. Following the common trajectory of synagogue membership, by the time people die (in old age), they have already discontinued their synagogue membership, although perhaps their children are still members. Thus, some synagogues do funerals for people who are technically not members. In practice, the synagogue generally limits its services only to members in the area of bat or bar mitzvah. Most life-cycle events (outside of these four core events) that individuals mark,

practice, the synagogue generally limits its services only to members in the area of bat or bar mitzvah. Most life-cycle events (outside of these four core events) that individuals mark, such as getting a drivers license or graduating from college, are outside the purview of the synagogue. And for life-cycle events that used to be a benefit of synagogue membership, such as bar or bat mitzvahs and weddings, families are looking outside of the synagogue for assistance. This new model allows the synagogue to reach a larger target population and expand its ability to bring Judaism together with important milestones, beyond the traditional four, in a person’s life.

Another aspect of concentration which intrigues me was a batsman’s ability to actually find a gap by remembering the field settings and then playing the ball through the fielders. A ball that was thrown at him at 150 kmph! The commentators always mention how the batsmen found beautiful gaps and that irritated the hell out of me because as a mediocre cricketer I never reached a stage in my batting where I could actually place the ball in a certain direction. So I once gathered the courage to ask Ricky Ponting if batsmen really found the gaps or was it merely a matter of luck. I knew it was a brave question but what I did not expect was a life philosophy that was one of the most impactful one I have heard in a long time. He said, “Ya mate, batting is an an instinct you hone over years of practice and that enables you to reach a level of expertise where you see the field placements in your mind. A good batsman imprints the fielders in the sub-conscious, but an excellent batsman imprints the gaps. There was a time I used to do the former and hit to the fielders but the moment I started to do the latter I found the gaps.” I was stunned by this analogy. When I mentioned this philosophy to my friend Rajiv Bajaj, the MD of Bajaj Auto he immediately added his business perspective to the same and said, “Exactly! In business, if you focus on the competitors you’ll start behaving like them. But if you focus on the gaps in the market you’ll become a champion company.

For Frege, an account of what it is for a purely logical power to be in act suffices to allow us to achieve a proper philosophical appreciation of what “content,” “object,” “thought,” “judgment,” and “truth,” as such, are. These notions come to be fully in place through an elucidation of that power, considered apart from our capacity to arrive at kinds of knowledge that are not purely logical in content. Our capacity for empirical judgment, when it comes into view, will come into view as a comparatively complex joint exercise of a variety of faculties, in which the logically fundamental notions that figure in its explication (“content,” “object,” thought,” “judgment,” “truth”) are still supposed to retain the specific sense originally conferred upon them in our explication of the purely logical case, while allowing for their extension to logically impure cases of thought and proposition. A certain picture of the role of reflection on the purely logical case, inthe order of explication of kinds of knowledge, is at work here—a picture that has been enormously influential on the subsequent development of analytic philosophy. On this picture, only if we are armed with a prior account of the case of purely logical thought, supplementing it as we go along, can we come to understand what empirically contentful theoretical thought (or practical thought) is. On this picture, the spatiotemporal bearing and the self-consciousness of the thinking subject do not belong to the form of thought (and hence their treatment does not belong, as Kant held, to a suitably capacious conception of philosophical logic); rather, all such further details among various species of thought are to be subsequently specified, if at all, through the introduction of further indices figuring within the content of thought. (Thoughts are simply conceived of as occurring at a time or at a person.) These consequences of the Fregean picture are not, on the whole, something for which post-Fregean analytic philosophers argue. Rather, it involves an entire philosophical picture that is simply tacitly, and largely unwittingly, assumed—a picture that is already under attack, albeit in very different ways, in both Kant and early Wittgenstein. According to this post-Fregean picture, we can furnish an account of the wider reaches of our capacity for finite theoretical cognition only by assuming the prior intelligibility of some self- standing account of how one of the ingredient capacities in empirical cognition—the capacity for logical thought—off its own bat is able to yield a delimitable sphere of truth-evaluable, object-related thoughts with judgable content, without its yet having entered into any form of co- operation with our other cognitive capacities.