Bent Related Quotes

Royce understood then why she had come: she had come to finish the task her relatives had begun; to do to him what he had done to her brother. Unmoving, he watched her, noting that tears were pouring down her beautiful face as she slowly bent down. But instead of reaching for his lance or her dagger, she took his hand between both of hers and pressed her lips to it. Through his daze of pain and confusion, Royce finally understood that she was kneeling to him, and a groan tore from his chest: "Darling," he said brokenly, tightening his hand, trying to make her stand, "don't do this…" But his wife wouldn't listen. In front of seven thousand onlookers, Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland, countess of Rockbourn, knelt before her husband in a public act of humble obeisance, her face pressed to his hand, her shoulders wrenched with violent sobs. By the time she finally arose, there could not have been many among the spectators who had not seen what she had done. Standing up, she stepped back, lifted her tear-streaked face to his, and squared her shoulders. Pride exploded in Royce's battered being—because, somehow, she was managing to stand as proudly—as defiantly—as if she had just been knighted by a king.

She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

We all look for strategies or techniques that will free us from the pain of relationships and the hard work good relationships demand. We hope that better planning, more effective communication, clear role definitions, conflict resolution strategies, gender studies, and personality typing--to name just a few -- will make the difference. There may be value in these things, but if they were all we needed, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection would be unnecessary or, at best, redundant. Skills and techniques appeal to us because they promise that relational problems can be fixed by tweaking our behavior without altering the bent of our hearts. But the Bible says something very different. It says that Christ is the only real hope for relationships because only he can dig deep enough to address the core motivations and desires of our hearts. Most dangerous aspect of your relationships is not your weakness, but your delusions of strength. Self-reliance is almost always a component of a bad relationship.

Admirable? And she’s related to Rey? How come he’s such a weasel then?” “There’s a messed up weasel in every family. Look at you.” Lex smirked at his brother as he heaved himself off the couch and headed down the hall to the kitchen. He bent to grab a beer from the fridge and tossed one to Cade. “Ha ha, very funny. Call me Alpha when you say that,” Cade growled.

The establishment’s reply is that dissenting students are bent, not on positive innovation, but on negative disruption. Against this, however, it can be argued that these two processes are very closely related and that the former only degenerates into the latter when it finds itself blocked.

Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS. "What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door. "You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day." I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me. "I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!" Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy. My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.

I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who did not perceive what we perceived, were in a quite legitimate position. Their opinion was quite in order. One must not be afraid to say that the kingdom of letters is only a province of the vast empire of entertainment. One picks up a book, one puts it aside; and even when one cannot put it down one very well understands that this interest is related to the facility of pleasure. That is to say that every effort of a creator of beauty or of fantasy should be bent, by the very essence of his work, on contriving for the public pleasure which demands no effort, or almost none. It is through the public that he should deduce what touches, moves, soothes, animates or enchants the public. There are however several publics; amongst whom it is not impossible to find some people who do not conceive of pleasure without pain, who do not like to enjoy themselves without paying, and who are not happy if their happiness is not in some part their own contrivance through which they wish to realize what it costs them.

Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Most of us learn in childhood to "cope"--which is to say ignore, numb, manage, or reinterpret reality. We do it to survive, but our relational instincts get bent in the process.

Uncertainty in estimating viability is related in this way not only to the innate difficulty of predicting the future but also to power and interests.

There he is, bent over the page, with a monocle in his right eye, wholly devoted to the noble but rugged task of ferreting out the error. He has already promised himself to write a little monograph in which he will relate the finding of the book and the discovery of the error, if there really is one hidden there. In the end, he discovers nothing and contents himself with possession of the book. He closes it, gazes at it, gazes at it again, goes to the window and holds it in the sun. The only copy! At this moment a Caesar or a Cromwell passes beneath his window, on the road to power and glory. He turns his back, closes the window, stretches in his hammock, and fingers the leaves of the book slowly, lovingly, tasting it sip by sip...An only copy!

Over the past twenty years, terrified of appearing culturally insensitive or even racist, Western nations have bent over backward to accommodate the demands of their Muslim citizens for special treatment. We appeased the Muslim heads of government who lobbied us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. We appeased leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies, who asked universities to disinvite speakers deemed ‘offensive’ to Muslims. Instead of embracing Muslim dissidents, Western governments treated them as troublemakers and instead partnered with the wrong people – groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.... The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the most of. The long-recognized blood-relations and connexions by marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness.

There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restrain of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions, among men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of your goods, but of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this, is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; IT IS OF THE SAME KIND OF LIBERTY WHEREWITH CHRIST HATH MADE US FREE

You’re beautiful, Evie,” came his soft comment. Having been raised by relations who had always lamented the garish color of her hair and the proliferation of freckles, Evie gave him a skeptical smile. “Aunt Florence has always given me a bleaching lotion to make my freckles vanish. But there’s no getting rid of them.” Sebastian smiled lazily as he came to her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he slid an appraising glance along her half-clad body. “Don’t remove a single freckle, sweet. I found some in the most enchanting places. I already have my favorites… shall I tell you where they are?” Disarmed and discomfited, Evie shook her head and made a movement to twist away from him. He wouldn’t let her, however. Pulling her closer, he bent his golden head and kissed the side of her neck. “Little spoilsport,” he whispered, smiling. “I’m going to tell you anyway.” His fingers closed around a handful of the chemise and eased the hem slowly upward. Her breath caught as she felt his fingers nuzzling tenderly between her bare legs. “As I discovered earlier,” he said against her sensitive throat, “there’s a trail inside your right thigh that leads to—” A knock at the door interrupted them, and Sebastian lifted his head with a grumble of annoyance. “Breakfast,” he muttered. “And I wouldn’t care to make you choose between my lovemaking or a hot meal, as the answer would likely be unflattering.

Socrates sat up on the bed, bent his leg and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed he said: "What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head. I think c that if Aesop had noted this he would have composed a fable that a god wished to reconcile their opposition but could not do so, so he joined their two heads together, and therefore when a man has the one, the other follows later. This seems to be happening to me. My bonds caused pain in my leg, and now pleasure seems to be following.

Give up", groaned Mauricio, "or else you are a dead duck!" "You give up first," coughed Jacob, "or else I'll snip your tail off!' And then both let go at the same time and sat facing each other, all out of breath. With tears in his eyes the little cat tried to straighten out his tail, which no longer looked elegant in the least but had been bent into a zigzag, while the melancholy raven eyed the feathers scattered on the floor, feathers he couldn't really spare. But as is often the case after such bickering, both felt relatively peaceful and ready for reconciliation. Jacob thought he should not have been so rude to the small, fat tomcat, and Maurizio wondered if he might have done something wrong with the poor, unfortunate raven. "Forgive me, please," he mewed. "I'm sorry, too," rasped Jacob.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love—only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart.

But now, in the daily business of our warped cosmos, Vulcan barley registers, even as an antiquarian curiosity. Only a few have some vague memory of the story – mostly physicists and astronomers with a historical bent. For them, Vulcan is a cautionary tale: it’s so damn easy to see what one wants or expects to find.

Actors, who relate their woes in many clever sentences and with much waving of hands and rolling of eyes—they should be made to ride in the cars for passengers with heavy loads, to learn that a slightly bent hand can hold in it the misery of all time, and that the quiver of an eyelid can be more moving than a whole evening full of crocodile tears.

The sentiment that is very inappropriately named quality is fresh, strong, alert, precisely because it is not, in fact, a sentiment of equality and is not related to any abstraction, as a few naive “intellectuals” still believe; but because it is related to the direct interests of individuals who are bent on escaping certain inequalities not in their favour, and setting up new inequalities that will be in their favour, that latter being their chief concern.

Our contact was based on a misunderstanding that could not fail to become apparent the moment my homage, instead of being addressed to the relatively superior being she believed herself to be, was diverted to some other woman of similar mediocrity and exuding the same unconscious charm. A misunderstanding so natural, and one that will always exist between a young dreamer and the society woman he elects, but one that disturbs him profoundly for as long as he remains ignorant of the nature of his imaginative bent and has not yet resigned himself to the inevitable disappointments he is bound to discover with people, as is the case with the theater, with travel, with love.

I told myself it was curiosity spurring me on. I didn't realize that a dictionary might be like reading a map or looking in a mirror. butch (v. transitive), to slaughter (an animal), to kill for market. Also: to cut up, to hack dyke (n.), senses relating to a ditch or hollowed-out section gay (v. intransitive), to be merry, cheerful, or light-hearted. Obsolete lesbian rule (n.), a flexible (usually lead) ruler which can be bent to fit what is being measured... queer (adj.), strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character, suspicious, dubious... Even at school I remember wondering about closets, whether there was a subtle difference between someone being in a closet and a skeleton being in a closet.

Are you a relative of her late husband?” the woman asked. His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” “It must be so hard for her, pregnant and just widowed,” the middle-aged woman continued. “We’ve all done what we could to make her happy here. Mr. Johnson, the curator, is a widower himself. He’s already sweet on her. But you’re probably anxious to see Mrs. Peterson. Shall I ring her and let her know you’re coming?” Tate’s eyes were blazing. “No,” he said with forced politeness. “I want to surprise her!” He stalked out, leaving the rented vehicle where it was as he trudged through the small layer of snow and glared contemptuously at the cars sliding around in the street as they passed. This little bit of snow was nothing compared to the six-foot snowdrifts on the reservation. Southerners, he considered, must not get much winter precipitation if this little bit of white dust paralyzed traffic! As for Cecily’s mythical dead husband, he considered, going up the walkway to the small brick structure where she lived, he was about to make a startling, resurrected appearance! He knocked on the door and waited. There was an irritated murmur beyond the closed door and the sound of a lock being unfastened. The door opened and a wan Cecily looked straight into his eyes. He managed to get inside the screen door and catch her before she passed out. She came to on the sofa with Tate sitting beside her, smoothing back her disheveled hair. The nausea climbed into her throat and, fortunately, stayed there. She looked at him with helpless delight, wishing she could hide what the sight of him was doing to her after so many empty, lonely weeks. He didn’t speak. He touched her hair, her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, with fingers that seemed bent on memorizing her. Then his hands went to the robe carelessly fastened over her cotton nightdress and pushed it aside. He touched her belly, his face radiant as he registered the very visible and tangible signs of her condition. “When did we make him?” he asked without preamble. She felt her world dissolve. He knew about the baby. Of course. That was why he was here. He met her eyes, found hostility and bitter disillusionment in them. His hand pressed down over her belly. “I would have come even if I hadn’t known about the baby,” he said at once. “The baby is mine.” “And mine.” “Audrey is not getting her avaricious little hands on my child…!

You're beautiful, Evie," came his soft comment. Having been raised by relations who had always lamented the garish color of her hair and the proliferation of freckles, Evie gave him a skeptical smile. "Aunt Florence has always given me a bleaching lotion to make my freckles vanish. But there's no getting rid of them." Sebastian smiled lazily as he came to her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he slid an appraising glance along her half-clad body. "Don't remove a single freckle, sweet. I found some in the most enchanting places. I already have my favorites... shall I tell you where they are?" Disarmed and discomfited, Evie shook her head and made a movement to twist away from him. He wouldn't let her, however. Pulling her closer, he bent his golden head and kissed the side of her neck. "Little spoilsport," he whispered, smiling.

The wind was blowing from the east and the cedars bent before it,—blowing from the east like the breath of the war god. And Fred and Stanley were waving their hats gayly back to her, while the cedars bent and the wind blew from the east. They were like her own boys marching off to war. Children of her children, she loved them as she had loved their parents. Did a woman never get over loving? Deep love brought relatively deep heartaches. Why could not a woman of her age, whose family was raised, relinquish the hold upon her emotions? Why could she not have a peaceful old age, wherein there entered neither great affection nor its comrade, great sorrow? She had seen old women who seemed not to care as she was caring, whose emotions seemed to have died with their youth. Could she not be one of them? For a long time she stood in the window and looked at the cedars twisting before the east wind, like so many helpless women under the call from the east.

Despite her grave concern over her uncle, Elizabeth chuckled inwardly as she introduced Duncan. Everyone exhibited the same stunned reaction she had when she’d discovered Ian Thornton’s uncle was a cleric. Her uncle gaped, Alex stared, and the dowager duchess glowered at Ian in disbelief as Duncan politely bent over her hand. “Am I to understand, Kensington,” she demanded of Ian, “that you are related to a man of the cloth?” Ian’s reply was a mocking bow and a sardonic lift of his brows, but Duncan, who was desperate to put a light face on things, tried ineffectually to joke about it. “The news always has a peculiar effect on people,” he told her. “One needn’t think too hard to discover why,” she replied gruffly. Ian opened his mouth to give the outrageous harridan a richly deserved setdown, but Julius Cameron’s presence was worrying him; a moment later it was infuriating him as the man strode to the center of the room and said in a bluff voice, “Now that we’re all together, there’s no reason to dissemble. Bentner, being champagne. Elizabeth, congratulations. I trust you’ll conduct yourself properly as a wife and not spend the man out of what money he has left.” In the deafening silence no one moved, except it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire room was beginning to move. “What?” she breathed finally. “You’re betrothed.” Anger rose up like flames licking inside her, spreading up her limbs. “Really?” she said in a voice of deadly calm, thinking of Sir Francis and John Marchman. “To whom?” To her disbelief, Uncle Julius turned expectantly to Ian, who was looking at him with murder in his eyes. “To me,” he clipped, his icy gaze still on her uncle. “It’s final,” Julius warned her, and then, because he assumed she’d be as pleased as he to discover she had monetary value, he added, “He paid a fortune for the privilege. I didn’t have to give him a shilling.” Elizabeth, who had no idea the two men had ever met before, looked at Ian in wild confusion and mounting anger. “What does he mean?” she demanded in a strangled whisper. “He means,” Ian began tautly, unable to believe all his romantic plans were being demolished, “we are betrothed. The papers have been signed.” “Why, you-you arrogant, overbearing”-She choked back the tears that were cutting off her voice-“you couldn’t even be bothered to ask me?” Dragging his gaze from his prey with an effort, Ian turned to Elizabeth, and his heart wrenched at the way she was looking at him. “Why don’t we go somewhere private where we can discuss this?” he said gently, walking forward and taking her elbow. She twisted free, scorched by his touch. “Oh, no!” she exploded, her body shaking with wrath. “Why guard my sensibilities now? You’ve made a laughingstock of me since the day I set eyes on you. Why stop now?

Tell me, Princess Olivia... why do you have to stay in your tower?" The soft entreaty made Livia feel as if she were melting inside. She laughed unsteadily, wishing for a moment that she dared to trust him. But the habit of independence was too strong. Shaking her head, Livia approached him, expecting him to back away from the doorway. He retreated half a step, his hands still grasping the edges of the doorway, so that she couldn't help but walk into an open-armed embrace. The bonnet ribbons slipped from her fingers. "Mr. Shaw-" she began, making the mistake of looking up at him. "Gideon," he whispered. "I want to know your secrets, Olivia." A bitter half smile touched her lips. "You'll hear them sooner or later from other people." "I want to hear them from you." As Livia began to retreat into the glasshouse, Shaw deftly caught the little cloth belt of her walking dress. His long fingers hooked beneath the reinforced fabric. Unable to back away from him, Livia clamped her hand over his, while a hectic blush flooded her face. She knew that he was toying with her, and that she once might have been able to manage this situation with relative ease. But not now. When she spoke, her voice was husky. "I can't do this, Mr. Shaw." To her amazement, he seemed to understand exactly what she meant. "You don't have to do anything," he said softly. "Just let me come closer... and stay right there..." His head bent, and he found her mouth easily. The coaxing pressure of his lips made Livia sway dizzily, and he caught her firmly against him. She was being kissed by Gideon Shaw, the self-indulgent, debauched scoundrel her brother had warned her about. And oh, he was good at it. She had thought nothing would ever be as pleasurable as Amberley's kisses... but this man's mouth was warm and patient, and there was something wickedly erotic about his complete lack of urgency. He teased her gently, nudging her lips apart, the tip of his tongue barely brushing hers before it withdrew. Wanting more of those silken strokes, Livia began to strain against him, her breath quickening. He nurtured her excitement with such subtle skill that she was utterly helpless to defend against it. To her astonishment, she found herself winding her arms around his neck and pressing her breasts against the hard plane of his chest. His hand slid behind her neck, tilting her head back to expose her throat more fully. Still gentle and controlled, he kissed the fragile skin, working his way down to the hollow at the base of her throat. She felt his tongue swirl in the warm depression, and a moan of pleasure escaped her. Shaw lifted his head to nuzzle the side of her cheek, while his hand smoothed over her back. Their breaths mingled in swift puffs of heat, his hard chest moving against hers in an erratic rhythm.

Good disciplemaking requires both intentionality and relationality. It means being strategic and being social. Most of us are bent one way or the other. We’re naturally relational, but lacking in intentionality. Or we find it easy to be intentional, but not relational. We typically tip (or sometimes lean) one way or the other as we begin the disciplemaking process. But tipping and leaning won’t cover the full picture of what life-on-life disciplemaking requires. It’s not just friend-to-friend, and it’s not just teacher-to-student. It’s both. There is the sharing of ordinary life (relationship) and seeking to initiate and make the most of teachable moments (intentionality). There are the long walks through Galilee and the sermons on the mount. Disciplemaking is both organic and engineered, relational and intentional, with shared context and shared content, quality and quantity time.

In any event, if upon recounting your eerie encounter you get caught up in the spirit of the story and say you saw an ethereal being, then you may convince not just your audience, but yourself. One notable finding of modern psychology is how systematically misleading memory is. People often remember events wrongly from the get-go, and even when they don’t, their memory can later be steered toward falsehood. In particular, the act of reporting false details can cement them firmly in mind. You don’t just recount what you remember; you remember what you recount. (Football star O. J. Simpson’s former agent was sure Simpson had killed his ex-wife and also sure that Simpson believed he didn’t.) This built-in fallibility makes sense from a Darwinian standpoint, allowing people to bend the truth self-servingly with an air of great and growing conviction. And, clearly, bent truths of a religious sort could be self-serving. If you were a close friend or relative of the deceased, then the idea that his powerful spirit is afoot may incline people to treat you nicely, lest they invite his wrath. Another gem from social psychology: publicly espousing something not only helps convince you of its truth; it shapes your future perception, inclining you to see evidence supporting it but not evidence against it. So if you speculate that the strange, shadowy creature was the disgruntled spirit of the deceased, you’ll likely find corroboration. You may notice that one of his enemies fell ill only a week after your sighting, while forgetting that one of his friends fell ill a few days earlier. If you’re a person of high status, all of this will carry particular weight, as such people are accorded unusual (and often undue) credibility. If, in a hunter-gatherer band of thirty people, someone widely esteemed claims to have seen something strange—and has a theory about what it was—twenty people may be convinced right off the bat. Then the aforementioned tendency of people to conform to peer opinion could quickly yield unanimity.

Now Mrs. Retallack wondered how the effects of what she called "intellectual mathematically sophisticated music of both East and West" would appeal to plants. As program director for the American Guild of Organists, she chose choral preludes from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orgelbuchlein and the classical strains of the sitar, a less-com­ plicated Hindustani version of the south Indian veena, played by Ravi Shankar, the Bengali Brahmin. The plants gave positive evidence of liking Bach, since they leaned an unprecedented thirty-five degrees toward the preludes. But even this affirmation was far exceeded by their reaction to Shankar: in their straining to reach the source of the classical Indian music they bent more than halfway to the horizontal, at angles in excess of sixty degrees, the nearest one almost embracing the speaker. In order not to be swayed by her own special taste for the classical music of both hemispheres Mrs. Retallack, at the behest of hundreds of young people, followed Bach and Shankar with trials of folk and "country-western" music. Her plants seemed to produce no more reac­tion than those in the silent chamber. Perplexed, Mrs. Retallack could only ask: "Were the plants in complete harmony with this kind of earthy music or didn't they care one way or the other?" Jazz caused her a real surprise. When her plants heard recordings as varied as Duke Ellington's "Soul Call" and two discs by Louis Arm­ strong, 5 5 percent of the plants leaned fifteen to twenty degrees toward the speaker, and growth was more abundant than in the silent chamber. Mrs. Retallack also determined that these different musical styles markedly affected the evaporation rate of distilled water inside the chambers. From full beakers, fourteen to seventeen milliliters evapo­rated over a given time period in the silent chambers, twenty to twenty­ five milliliters vaporized under the influence of Bach, Shankar, and jazz; but, with rock, the disappearance was fifty-five to fifty-nine milliliters.

The opponent’s skull is sent backward, shaking the brain and nerves to a concussion. The key to devastating hand strikes is to maintain maximum speed and weight shift at the contact point. Before we learn defenses, we learn hand strikes since we need to know how to counterattack with our defenses. In addition, we want our training partners to challenge us with the most devastating attacks. At the end of the lesson, a student should be able to execute devastating knockout punches. Straight Hand Strikes Front (hand closer to the opponent) and Rear Straight hand strikes can be executed when your body is positioned facing directly at or up to a forty-five degree angle relative to your opponent. Although the effective range is the distance covered with one leap forward while pivoting your shoulders, you should allow enough room to accelerate your hand and pass the target you are trying to reach. 1. Standing position has your hands down to avoid projecting intentions. 2.     Lift your hands up. As your left hand moves forward, your torso is kept at about forty-five degrees toward the opponent. Roll your left knuckles into a tight fist. Keep your thumb bent forty-five degrees over your index finger. Tighten your forearm muscles to support its connection to the fist. Begin and end the punch with the back of the hand pointed to the sides of your body. Upon contact with the target, twist your fist to forty-five degrees where your two big knuckles stab your target. The knuckles should be positioned as a straight extension of your hand. Do not move your wrist once you have it ready for a punch. Keep your elbow pointed to the ground at all times to better deliver your body weight into the punch. The fist is moving toward the opponent’s face to hit his chin, and the body follows, pivoting right behind the hand. The key is to lunge forward and only twist your shoulders when your fist is close to the opponent's chin. This will propel the weight shift supporting the punch. If you do it too soon, you will not have your weight supporting the punch! 3.     Your left hand is passing the target at maximum speed as your right shoulder aligns your left shoulder. 4.     Left hand is retracted to about ninety degrees away from the body. At this point, the punch has ended. Your right shoulder is behind the left. Stay in this position until you notice your opponent’s next move. 5.     Throw your right hand forward and pivot your body directly behind it in the direction of your opponent’s chin. Note that when you execute a front hand strike your torso leans forward. Now you need to erect your torso, keeping your rear leg extended and your rear shoulder knee locked, pivoting the rear heel and shoulder forward. 6.     Your right hand fully extends in a strike with the seam of the pants facing the opponent.

The opponent’s skull is sent backward, shaking the brain and nerves to a concussion. The key to devastating hand strikes is to maintain maximum speed and weight shift at the contact point. Before we learn defenses, we learn hand strikes since we need to know how to counterattack with our defenses. In addition, we want our training partners to challenge us with the most devastating attacks. At the end of the lesson, a student should be able to execute devastating knockout punches. Straight Hand Strikes Front (hand closer to the opponent) and Rear Straight hand strikes can be executed when your body is positioned facing directly at or up to a forty-five degree angle relative to your opponent. Although the effective range is the distance covered with one leap forward while pivoting your shoulders, you should allow enough room to accelerate your hand and pass the target you are trying to reach. 1. Standing position has your hands down to avoid projecting intentions. 2.     Lift your hands up. As your left hand moves forward, your torso is kept at about forty-five degrees toward the opponent. Roll your left knuckles into a tight fist. Keep your thumb bent forty-five degrees over your index finger. Tighten your forearm muscles to support its connection to the fist. Begin and end the punch with the back of the hand pointed to the sides of your body. Upon contact with the target, twist your fist to forty-five degrees where your two big knuckles stab your target. The knuckles should be positioned as a straight extension of your hand. Do not move your wrist once you have it ready for a punch. Keep your elbow pointed to the ground at all times to better deliver your body weight into the punch. The fist is moving toward the opponent’s face to hit his chin, and the body follows, pivoting right behind the hand. The key is to lunge forward and only twist your shoulders when your fist is close to the opponent's chin. This will propel the weight shift supporting the punch. If you do it too soon, you will not have your weight supporting the punch! 3.     Your left hand is passing the target at maximum speed as your right shoulder aligns your left shoulder. 4.     Left hand is retracted to about ninety degrees away from the body. At this point, the punch has ended. Your right shoulder is behind the left. Stay in this position until you notice your opponent’s next move. 5.     Throw your right hand forward and pivot your body directly behind it in the direction of your opponent’s chin. Note that when you execute a front hand strike your torso leans forward. Now you need to erect your torso, keeping your rear leg extended and your rear shoulder knee locked, pivoting the rear heel and shoulder forward. 6.     Your right hand fully extends in a strike with the seam of the pants facing the opponent. 7.     Your right hand retracts, while your body is still in a forward motion.

Although their number in Recife was only somewhat greater than in Amsterdam, relative to the latter’s Christian population the difference was huge. In 1640, Amsterdam’s Jews numbered less than 2 percent of the populace, while those in Recife constituted 30–40 percent of the white population. Given their merchandising bent, “Christian merchants soon found themselves reduced to the role of spectators of the Israelite business.”25 However, once they learned Portuguese and no longer needed the Jews as intermediaries, their leaders objected:

Fuck it, at that point, she would rather they murder her. At least being shot or stabbed would be a relatively quick and clean death versus slowly succumbing to a demise from humiliation after being bent over and spanked by Caden fucking Ashford.

There is an expression in Ottawa that every member of Parliament believes they should be in cabinet and every member of cabinet thinks they should be prime minister. The exception is any member of Parliament from Newfoundland. They go to bed at night thinking they should be ambassador to Ireland. What a job it would be, lying around the fancy house in Dublin, representing the not very pressing interests of Canada in the land of your forefathers. The spare bedroom in the house would be filled with a steady stream of relatives and old high school buddies hell-bent on having a party and finding out where their great-grandparents are buried. The best Newfoundland musicians would be at the embassy, hobnobbing with their fiddle-playing Irish counterparts. The kitchen parties would be epic. Mother Ireland. The Emerald Isle. The Land of Saints and Scholars. She's easy on the eyes and hard on the liver.

When the men finished their game of whist and downed the last of the brandy, they decided the evening was at last over. “That’s enough for me.” Godric turned towards the ladies. “Come along, Em. Time to depart.” Emily didn’t spare her husband a glance. She had one hand on Horatia’s shoulder and another on Audrey’s while she spoke to the pair of them in a huddle. None of the men really bothered trying to figure out what women whispered about. Lucien guessed it would always remain one of life’s mysteries, like why a woman needed countless bonnets when they were such ugly and useless things. It was a damned nuisance trying to untie yards of unnecessary ribbons in order to touch a woman’s hair while he was kissing her. “That’s an unholy alliance if I ever saw one,” Cedric noted. The Sheridan sisters were trouble enough, but adding Emily was like a lit match near a very large powder keg. “I’d best collect my wife before she causes trouble,” Godric replied. Lucien didn’t miss Godric’s pleased tone as he had said ‘wife.’ Godric stood, then walked quietly over and plucked her away from the group, scooping her up into his arms. “Godric!” Emily kicked her feet in outrage. “Put me down at once!” “I don’t think so, my dear. It’s time I put you to bed.” Godric bent his head low so his face was inches from hers. “Oh if you must.” She tried to sound reluctant, but there was a breathless quality to her voice that fooled no one. For a moment, Lucien was struck with a sharp sense of envy. If Horatia weren’t related to his friend, he would have been carrying her out the door in the same fashion, to find the nearest bed. “Good night, everyone!” Godric called over his shoulder as he and Emily left the drawing room. Cedric shook his head, but his eyes glinted with merriment. “By the way they act I swear you’d never know they were married.” “They are indeed fortunate,” Ashton said. “To be so in love that marriage is a blessing rather than a burden.

Only humans perceive an open realm. Unless the strict relation between ἀλήθεια and openness is maintained, the essence of the open, as that essence is understood within the history of beyng, can never be thought with essential legitimacy. Only in interrogating the essential occurrence of beyng does thinking attain the concept of the “open” as thus determined. Only where this openness obtains is there “world” as structure of the steadfastly grounded open realm (truth) of beings. A being is a possible object, something standing over and against (ἀντί), only because it stands in the open domain of being. Precisely where there is an “over and against,” something more originary occurs essentially, the clearing of the “in between.” And precisely this open domain is denied to plant, animal, and everything that merely lives. To be sure, this has happened only where beings have become objects, because at the same time the being of beings is no longer appreciated in its essence but, instead, is taken to be purely decided: precisely as the certain, what is bent back to in “reflexion,” and, thus fastened down, the secured. This lack of appreciation of being is, in the mode of the oblivion of being, a proper mode of the truth of beings, a mode that all the more testifies to the essential occurrence of being, i.e., to the disconcealment of the open.

January 28: Marilyn arrives in San Francisco the day before embarking for Japan, where DiMaggio has been invited to make appearances. She breaks her thumb, although a DiMaggio relative said Joe was responsible for her injury. He seems to have been taken by surprise when she came up behind him, and he instinctively grabbed her hand and bent back her thumb. Dr. Clifton Bennett vaccinates Marilyn for her trip.

There is usually something pretty odd about sisters that come in triplicate. Consider pretty little Cinderella and her ugly and dance-mad relations. Consider Chekhov's trio, high and dry in the provinces and longing gloomily for Moscow. Consider Macbeth's friends, bent keenly over the cauldron and intent on passing that Culinary Test for the Advanced Student.

He believed that “a day will come when the sexual relations will be regulated in every case by the private will of the parties. The public sentiment, then, or law, … will declare the entire freedom of every man or woman to follow the bent of their private affections, will justify every alliance sanctioned by these affections.”31

Do you give your servants reasons for your expenditure, or your economy in the use of your own money? We, the owners of capital, have a right to choose what we will do with it.' 'A human right,' said Margaret, very low. 'I beg your pardon, I did not hear what you said.' 'I would rather not repeat it,' said she; 'it related to a feeling which I do not think you would share.' 'Won't you try me?' pleaded he; his thoughts suddenly bent upon learning what she had said. She was displeased with his pertinacity, but did not choose to affix too much importance to her words. 'I said you had a human right. I meant that there seemed no reason but religious ones, why you should not do what you like with your own.

Visionary leadership is not reactive. It refuses to arrogantly offer the right solution or give the right answer. Rather, leading with vision requires that we relate to people. Dan Allender writes, Leadership is not about problems and decisions; it is a profoundly relational enterprise that seeks to motivate people toward a vision that will require significant change and risk on everyone’s part. Decisions are simply the doors that leaders, as well as followers, walk through to get to the land where redemption can be found.3 Leadership hinges on relationship, and that requires us to risk. And though I’m convinced that visionary, relational leadership is a bedrock Christian posture, we all have a disturbing bent toward relational immaturity. I see how easily I become cynical, dismissive, judgmental, and reactive. I see how quickly I’m tempted to blast back at the person who sends a critical e-mail, or judge the person who doesn’t make progress fast enough, or get impatient with those I manage who don’t accomplish exactly what I think they should. Our journey toward dealing compassionately with difficult people doesn’t simply require us to learn a bit more about others. It also requires us to become better acquainted with ourselves.

Of course I was hell-bent on diagnosing everyone because I couldn’t relate to anyone. But

Today, many folks would find “Men at Work” signs objectionable. Many would also find the Bible objectionable—because right from the get-go, it posts all sorts of “signs” about men working. God gave men a responsibility to work that is unique to what it means to be a man. Work is foundational to manhood in a way that it isn’t foundational to womanhood. Don’t get me wrong. That’s not to say that women don’t work, or can’t work, or don’t want to work, or should never work outside of the home. That’s nonsense, and not at all what the Bible teaches. Right up front, let’s be clear about that! However, it does mean that male and female are different. As part of our God-created “wiring,” man is connected to “work” in a way woman is not; and woman is connected to home and relationships in a way man is not. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that a woman is incapable of working, or that a man is incapable of creating a home and relating, or that they do not ever do these things. It just means that God created male and female with differing natural “bents” and spheres of responsibility. The male was created with a unique responsibility to work to provide for the family, and the female was created with a unique responsibility to nest and to nurture family relationships.

Firestone still smiles when he relates this, playing out each line of the dialogue in Americanized, but nearly perfect, Russian. And he tells me of the time he had to hide out in a government hospital to hide from corrupt cops (they could grab him anywhere apart from a hospital full of ministers); and when his first office was raided by thugs working for his neighbor and his staff were handcuffed to the furniture and threatened at knifepoint; or when he had to fly to New York and buy up all the bugging equipment at the Spy store to give to the antifraud squad in Moscow so they would have the equipment with which to bust other bent cops trying to extort money from him.

But at least he’d died at home and not some hospice. Who in their right mind wanted to die among the dying? Or surrounded by a load of caring, sharing hospice nurses hell-bent on making sure you’d drawn up a “good death plan.” If you were having an OK day, somebody might wheel you into the hospice garden and sit you on a wooden bench donated by relatives of a former dying person. From there you would, no doubt, have an uninterrupted view of the ornamental fountain and fiberglass flamingos.

If Abbie knew about this, she'd say that he'd let The Race down. She said colored people (sometimes she just said The Race) had to be cleaner, smarter, thriftier, more ambitious than white people, so that white people would like colored people. The way she explained it made him feel as though he were carrying The Race around with him all the time. It kept him confused, a little frightened, too. At that moment The Race sat astride his shoulders, a weight so great that his back bent under it.

In the early 1960s, Northern cities including Philadelphia, Rochester, and New York, were the sites of particularly intense urban rebellions against seemingly intractable discrimination and the lack of jobs, as well as against the abusive actions of law enforcement.1 Although Northern politicians had been relatively sympathetic when such racial uprisings rocked Southern cities like Birmingham, Alabama, when they witnessed upheaval in their own downtowns they were greatly unnerved. Northern politicians very quickly began responding to the unrest and anger they saw on their city streets just as their Southern counterparts had: they sought to discredit these protests as the behavior of a criminal element bent on destruction. By 1965, politicians from both North and South, and from both major political parties, were routinely equating urban disorder with urban criminality. All agreed not only that crime was fast becoming the nation’s most serious problem, but also that it was well past time to wage a major new war against it.

Each session do as few or as many exercises as you wish but do not work equally hard on every one of them. For example, on Monday do a lot of sets of the bent press, on Tuesday skip the bent press or take it easy and work hard on snatches, etc. Do not be overly pedantic about the order. Just do not do one pet feat at the expense of everything else all the time. Also, do not be afraid to make some workouts relatively easier than others.

All that becomes known of the course of events in War is usually very simple, and has a great sameness in appearance; no one on the mere relation of such events perceives the difficulties connected with them which had to be overcome. It is only now and again, in the memoirs of Generals or of those in their confidence, or by reason of some special historical inquiry directed to a particular circumstance, that a portion of the many threads composing the whole web is brought to light. The reflections, mental doubts, and conflicts which precede the execution of great acts are purposely concealed because they affect political interests, or the recollection of them is accidentally lost because they have been looked upon as mere scaffolding which had to be removed on the completion of the building. If, now, in conclusion, without venturing upon a closer definition of the higher powers of the soul, we should admit a distinction in the intelligent faculties themselves according to the common ideas established by language, and ask ourselves what kind of mind comes closest to military genius, then a look at the subject as well as at experience will tell us that searching rather than inventive minds, comprehensive minds rather than such as have a special bent, cool rather than fiery heads, are those to which in time of War we should prefer to trust the welfare of our women and children, the honour and the safety of our fatherland.

In fact, minimal thought ever went into race-related issues when it came to the Sussexes. This is the same institution that suggested that Lady Susan Hussey (yes, that Lady Susan Hussey) help biracial Meghan acclimate to Palace life and navigate the royal system. The duchess turned down the offer, probably having already sensed that it might not be the best idea. When Palace aides later told reporters, including myself, that they “bent over backwards” to make Meghan feel comfortable at Buckingham Palace, this included a follow-up suggestion that perhaps the Queen’s Ghanaian-born household cavalry officer Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah should be the one to help Meghan. Though a charming and intelligent man, it stood out like a sore thumb to Meghan and her friends that, due to a lack of Black or other non-white staff, let alone women, in relevant senior roles, the Palace had to turn to someone who was the Queen’s attendant. “I doubt Kate was offered an equerry [for guidance],” a pal said to Meghan.

As Wang Shouren, at the time an official in the Ministry of Works and later a major intellectual figure in the development of Ming interpretations of Confucianism, put it optimistically in a memorial on border security in 1500, "If I am sufficient, then the enemy becomes increasingly exhausted; if I am flourishing, then the enemy declines; if I am strong and vigorous, the enemy is increasingly bent, weak; if I am rested, then the enemy is increasingly exhausted; if I am strengthened, then the enemy is increasingly empty and weak; if I am sharp, then the enemy is increasingly dulled, and ineffectual "(Wang Shouren MCZY: 167).

As Wang Shouren, at the time an official in the Ministry of Works and later a major intellectual figure in the development of Ming interpretations of Confucianism, put it optimistically in a memorial on border security in 1500, "If I am sufficient, then the enemy becomes increasingly exhausted; if I am flourishing, then the enemy declines; if I am strong and vigorous, the enemy is increasingly bent, weak; if I am rested, then the enemy is increasingly exhausted; if I am strengthened, then the enemy is increasingly empty and weak; if I am sharp, then the enemy is increasingly dulled, and ineffectual "(Wang Shouren MCZY: 167).

The musty, unkept odor of her apartment seemed more invasive than usual, inviting her in obnoxiously. Like it was a vindictive relative bent on keeping her down.

Third, an iterative process such as Pixar’s corrects for a basic cognitive bias that psychologists call the “illusion of explanatory depth.” Do you know how a bicycle works? Most people are sure they do, yet they are unable to complete a simple line drawing that shows how a bicycle works. Even when much of the bicycle is already drawn for them, they can’t do it. “People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do,” researchers concluded. For planners, the illusion of explanatory depth is obviously dangerous. But researchers also discovered that, unlike many other biases, there is a relatively easy fix: When people try and fail to explain what they mistakenly think they understand, the illusion dissolves. By requiring Pixar film directors to walk through every step from the big to the small and show exactly what they will do, Pixar’s process forces them to explain. Illusions evaporate long before production begins, which is when they would become dangerous and expensive.[24]

So, in a sense, capitalism is a monopoly. Without competition, capitalism has bent towards the agglomeration of profit and power in the hands of relatively few families, corporations, industries and governments. The coercion of twentieth century dictatorships as methods of individual persuasion and control has been replaced by marketing, far more benign and effective. Meanwhile vasts rafts of people--entire regions even--sit becalmed in seas of poverty and resentment

John’s later tendency to minimize the disgrace probably had several causes, ranging from filial piety to shrewd public relations; he knew people bent upon proving his own immorality wanted to buttress their case by first tarnishing his father.

It’s relatively easy to build something small and simple.

Almost any nightmare you can imagine can happen—and has happened—during delivery. You want to limit your exposure to this. You do it by taking all the time necessary to create a detailed, tested plan. Planning is relatively cheap and safe; delivering is expensive and dangerous. Good planning boosts the odds of a quick, effective delivery, keeping the window on risk small and closing it as soon as possible.

an iterative process such as Pixar’s corrects for a basic cognitive bias that psychologists call the “illusion of explanatory depth.” Do you know how a bicycle works? Most people are sure they do, yet they are unable to complete a simple line drawing that shows how a bicycle works. Even when much of the bicycle is already drawn for them, they can’t do it. “People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do,” researchers concluded. For planners, the illusion of explanatory depth is obviously dangerous. But researchers also discovered that, unlike many other biases, there is a relatively easy fix: When people try and fail to explain what they mistakenly think they understand, the illusion dissolves. By requiring Pixar film directors to walk through every step from the big to the small and show exactly what they will do, Pixar’s process forces them to explain. Illusions evaporate long before production begins, which is when they would become dangerous and expensive.

Generally, Morgenthau ignored the hate mail, though he occasionally responded to the more temperate letters. But one public attack that he chose to answer came from the influential, nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop. Among the members of the press, he was the most vociferous of hawks. Even lifelong friends like Isaiah Berlin thought his views on Vietnam “a trifle mad . . . even odious.” In March 1965 Alsop wrote a column directed at Morgenthau that began: “One proof of the wisdom of President Johnson’s Vietnamese policy is its marked success to date.” But that success had generated criticism from credulous politicians like Fulbright and “pompous” professors like Morgenthau, whom Alsop labeled an “appeaser” in the mold of “the be-nice-to-Hitler group in England before 1939.” The mention of Hitler had to be especially wounding to Morgenthau, who said “the gates of the political underworld seem to have opened.” Before Alsop’s column appeared, Morgenthau reported, even those who disagreed with him did so respectfully, but now “I receive every day letters with xenophobic, red-baiting, and anti-Semitic attacks.” Morgenthau responded to Alsop with a long letter to the editor of the Washington Post. The debate, such as it was, turned on the intentions of the Communist Chinese. To Alsop, who prided himself on his knowledge and appreciation of Chinese civilization, the Chinese were historically expansionist, always bent on conquest and therefore analogous to the Nazis of the Third Reich. To which Morgenthau rejoined that “Mao Zedong is not Hitler, that the position of China in Asia is not like that of Nazi Germany in Europe,” and that his opposition to the war in Vietnam could not be equated with the appeasers of the 1930s. No doubt wearily, he took up the task once again of explaining that spheres of influence were a reality of international relations, ignored only at one’s peril, and that if China had managed to extend its power in Asia it was “primarily through its political and cultural superiority and not through conquest.” (Years later, Kissinger would offer a similar assessment of the Chinese.)

Once the economy appeared to be recovering, a powerful public relations campaign was mounted. The New Deal was depicted as the creature of leftist forces bent on transforming the country’s economy.

effect are base lies, I'll have you and your friend know! However—" he yawned again "—I've been up all day and so, purely coincidentally, I do find myself just a bit sleepy at the moment. The which being so, I think I should take myself off to bed. I'll see you all in the morning." "Good night, Alistair," she said, and smiled as he sketched a salute and disappeared into the night with a chuckle. "You two are really close, aren't you?" Benson observed quietly after McKeon had vanished. Honor raised an eyebrow at her, and the blond captain shrugged. "Not like me and Henri, I know. But the way you look out for each other—" "We go back a long way," Honor replied with another of her half-smiles, and bent to rest her chin companionably on the top of Nimitz's head. "I guess it's sort of a habit to watch out for each other by now, but Alistair seems to get stuck with more of that than I do, bless him." "I know. Henri and I made the hike back to your shuttles with you, remember?" Benson said dryly. "I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of his vocabulary. I don't think he repeated himself more than twice." "He probably wouldn't have been so mad if I hadn't snuck off without mentioning it to him," Honor said, and her right cheek dimpled while her good eye gleamed in memory. "Of course, he wouldn't have let me leave him behind if I had mentioned it to him, either. Sometimes I think he just doesn't understand the chain of command at all!" "Ha!" Ramirez' laugh rumbled around the hut like rolling thunder. "From what I've seen of you so far, that's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Dame Honor!" "Nonsense. I always respect the chain of command!" Honor protested with a chuckle. "Indeed?" It was Benson's turn to shake her head. "I've heard about your antics at—Hancock Station, was it called?" She laughed out loud at Honor's startled expression. "Your people are proud of you, Honor. They like to talk, and to be honest, Henri and I encouraged them to. We needed to get a feel for you, if we were going to trust you with our lives." She shrugged. "It didn't take us long to make our minds up once they started opening up with us." Honor felt her face heat and looked down at Nimitz, rolling him gently over on his back to stroke his belly fur. She concentrated on that with great intensity for the next several seconds, then looked back up once her blush had cooled. "You don't want to believe everything you hear," she said with commendable composure. "Sometimes people exaggerate a bit." "No doubt," Ramirez agreed, tacitly letting her off the hook, and she gave him a grateful half-smile. "In the meantime, though," Benson said, accepting the change of subject, "the loss of the shuttle beacon does make me more anxious about Lunch Basket." "Me, too," Honor admitted. "It cuts our operational safety margin in half, and we still don't know when we'll finally get a chance to try it." She grimaced. "They really aren't cooperating very well, are they?" "I'm sure it's only because they don't know what we're planning," Ramirez told her wryly. "They're much too courteous to be this difficult if they had any idea how inconvenient for us it is." "Right. Sure!" Honor snorted, and all three of them chuckled. Yet there was an undeniable edge of worry behind the humor, and she leaned back in her chair, stroking Nimitz rhythmically, while she thought. The key to her plan was the combination of the food supply runs from Styx and the Peeps' lousy communications security. Her analysts had been right about the schedule on which the Peeps operated; they made a whole clutch of supply runs in a relatively short period—usually about three days—once per month. Given

Speaking of which, on a lighter note, a rather odd case distributed in the world press on October 10, 2003 related the story of Roland Thein, age 54, of the Berlin suburb of Lichtenrade, who had trained his black sheepdog, named Adolf, to raise his front paw in a Hitler salute. Thein was stopped and questioned by police after he and his dog had been seen saluting together in the vicinity of a local school. A group of alien residents observed the antics and reported Thein to the police. Moments after police arrived, Thein repeated the little trick for their entertainment, ordering, “Adolf, sitz! Mach den Gruss!” [Adolf, sit, give the salute], and the dog obediently obliged by hoisting his right paw in the air. The police were not amused and took Thein and his dog into custody. German prosecutors charged Thein with “using the characteristic marks of an unconstitutional organization,” - a punishable offense that falls under Paragraph 86a of the Federal Criminal Code, which forbids neo-Nazi activities, and prescribes a penalty of three years’ imprisonment, if convicted. A spokesperson for the Berlin criminal court declared that “Adolf” would not be called as a witness. Thein’s attorney, Nicole Burmann-Zarske, told reporters, “Adolf is a very sweet dog. He loves cookies, just like his owner.” A friend of the accused later informed reporters that the dog had since been struck by a car and suffered a serious injury to its right paw, adding, “It’s all bent, he can’t stick it out anymore.” Thein was fortunate to be let off with probation.

Oh, for Christians and pas tors whose might in the truth is matched by their meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched by their manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are matched by their depths of humility. Yes, and the other way around!—whose relational warmth is matched by their rigor of study, whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of their biblical discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of their calling. I dream of durable, never-say-die defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known for the delight they have in God and the joy in God that they bring to the people of God—who enter controversy when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but because they love Christ and the church.

boxer with a stronger right hand stands with the left side of the torso forward (in half-turn to the opponent), thus providing his right hand with a more favorable starting position for dealing strong blows. The left leg, advanced forward, rests on the floor with the entire foot. The right foot is just a small step behind and on the right step sweat, parallel to the left, touching the floor with your front part. In relation to the opponent, the feet are returned half a turn to the right. The weight of the body is evenly distributed on both legs, with slightly bent legs, which gives the possibility of free stepping with any foot in any direction. Torso straightened to facilitate balancing while moving around the ring.

In order to ensure the defensive position of the chin, which should be carefully protected from impacts, the head is slightly inclined downwards; the fist of the left hand on the level of the shoulder joint, the elbow lowered, the hand should be held without tension, bent in the elbow joint; a fist with the back surface of the metacarpal bone in half a turn on the outside and up. In relation to the forearm, the fist takes a typical position for the moment of dealing a blow.

The uncomfortable assumption had begun to dawn on me that maybe this was all some sex-related thing I was better off not knowing. I looked at the side of his face: petulant, irritable, glasses low on the tip of his sharp little nose and the beginnings of jowls at his jawline. Might Henry have made a pass at him in Rome? Incredible, but a possible hypothesis. If he had, certainly, all hell would have broken loose. I could not think of much else that would involve this much whispering and secrecy, or that would have had so strong an effect on Bunny. He was the only one of us who had a girlfriend and I was pretty sure he slept with her, but at the same time he was incredibly prudish — touchy, easily offended, at root hypocritical. Besides, there was something unquestionably odd about the way Henry was constantly shelling out money to him: paying his tabs, footing his bills, doling out cash like a husband to a spendthrift wife. Perhaps Bunny had allowed his greed to get the better of him, and was angry to discover that Henry's largesse had strings attached. But did it? There were certainly strings somewhere, though — easy as it seemed on the face of it — I wasn't sure that this was where those particular strings led. There was of course that thing with Julian in the hallway; still, that had been very different. I had lived with Henry for a month, and there hadn't been the faintest hint of that sort of tension, which I, being rather more disinclined that way than not, am quick to pick up on. I had caught a strong breath of it from Francis, a whiff of at times from Julian; and even Charles, who I knew was interested in women, had a sort of naive, prepubescent shyness of them that a man like my father would have interpreted alarmingly — but with Henry, zero. Geiger counters dead. If anything, it was Camilla he seemed fondest of, Camilla he bent over attentively when she spoke, Camilla who was most often the recipient of his infrequent smiles. And even if there was a side of him which I was unaware (which was possible) was it possible that he was attracted to Bunny? The answer to this seemed, almost unquestionable, No. Not only did he behave as if he wasn't attracted to Bunny, he acted as if he were hardly able to stand him. And it seemed that he, disgusted by Bunny in what appeared to be virtually all respects, would be far more disgusted in that particular one than even I would be. It was possible for me to recognize, in a general sort of way, that Bunny was handsome, but if I brought the lens any closer and tried to focus on him in a sexual light, all I got was a repugnant miasma of sour-smelling shirts and muscles gone to fat and dirty socks. Girls didn't seem to mind that sort of thing, but to me he was about as erotic as an old football coach.

But it was Mother who spun the stories that made the things we studied really unforgettable. If Dad saw motion study and teamwork in an ant hill, Mother saw a highly complex civilization governed, perhaps, by a fat old queen who had a thousand black slaves bring her breakfast in bed mornings. If Dad stopped to explain the construction of a bridge, she would find the workman in his blue jeans, eating his lunch high on the top of the span. It was she who made us feel the breathless height of the structure and the relative puniness of the humans who had built it. Or if Dad pointed out a tree that had been bent and gnarled, it was Mother who made us sense how the wind, eating against the tree in the endless passing of time, had made its own relentless mark.

Isaac studied the huge, airy room and went to stand in front of a wall of watercolor apples- each one was set off by a colored background ranging from deep blue to fluorescent green to soft pink. He turned to ask Sanna about it, but she was still in the kitchen, pulling salt-crusted baked potatoes from the oven. Bass kneeled on a bar stool and stirred sliced apples with cinnamon and sugar. On the counter were the fixings for a baked potato bar, with cheese, bacon, broccoli, sour cream, and minced chives. "Are the apples above the fireplace meaningful?" Einars bent lower to talk to Bass, as they layered the apples into a dish, forcing Sanna to answer the question. "Those are all the apples we grow in our orchard." There were at least thirty. He hadn't even known there were that many varieties of apple in the world. "Did you paint them?" "Some of them. Most were done by much older relatives.

Whatever the relevant mechanisms of testing, from simple trial and error to sketches, woodand-cardboard models, crude videos, simulations, minimum viable products, and maximum virtual products, test everything from the big ideas down to the small details. With good testing mechanisms that make failure relatively safe, take calculated risks and try new ideas.

Yvette practised the ars moriendi; I had long known that she would. The day before she died, her spirit intact, she listened with a look of beatitude on her simplified face to the story that I had brought with me from Leamington Spa, where I had just moved, to the Brighton hospice, where she lay in a room that formed a hard crystal of light, exposed to the raucous and merciless spring. It was a love story, and when I had finished relating it to her, and had sat quietly with her for several hours, she finally spoke out of the suffused silence, ‘You are now going to leave.’ Then, in her own way, she gave me her blessing: ‘You know how I feel. You know how I feel. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. All the very best. All the very best.’ I bent over her and kissed her on the lips several times, her lips reaching mine each time before mine touched hers.

Another form of this identity mania is our contemporary individualism. Neo-individualism, bent on performance and entrepreneurial heroism, athletic individualism (Alain Ehrenberg) - possibly neohedonistic, syncretic and tribal - bears no relation to the hero of bourgeois individualism. This latter, the hero of subjectivity, of breaking with the old, of free will and Stirner's radical singularity, is well and truly dead. Even Riesman's 'self-directed' individuality has disappeared from the horizon of the social as it has from the purview of the human sciences. The neo-individual is, by contrast, the purest product of 'other-directedness': an interactive, communicational particle, plugged into the network, getting continuous feedback, · and with a clear vision of the podium in his mind's eye. Everyone is ready to turn themselves, depending on their various advantages or handicaps, into an autonomous micro-particle. And why not? This is the age of the daily invention of new particles. Why should the innumerable particles of our society not each demand their own identity and personal 'charm'? Obviously, this gives rise to chaotic sets and Brownian motion, in which freedom is merely the statistical endproduct of impacts between singularities and no longer, therefore, in any sense a philosophical problem. This individual is not an individual at all. He is a pentito of subjectivity and alienation, of the heroic appropriation of himself. His only aim is the technical appropriation of the self. He is a convert to the sacrificial religion of performance, efficiency, stress and time-pressure - a much fiercer liturgy than that of production - total mortification and unremitting sacrifice to the divinities of data [information], total exploitation of oneself by oneself, the ultimate in alienation.

The first domain is aesthetic. The weird describes a peculiar domain of feelings and images associated with stories, spaces, atmospheres, and moods that relate to the uncanny, the fantastic, the perverse, and the macabre side of the supernatural. The weird here is essentially a genre—not just of cultural production, but of affect and possibility, of the visionary imagination and the experimental body. Books can be weird, but so can subcultural happenings. The second domain marks the weird as a space of deviancy, social or otherwise. Weird things are anomalous—they deviate from the norms of informed expectation and challenge established explanations, sometimes quite radically. In the human world, you are being weird or a weirdo when you refuse or transgress dominant behavioral and conceptual codes. Despite its numinous, supernatural ambience, the weird also hunkers down in the margins of the actual, as a centrifugal turn away from naturalistic or probabilistic or historical norms to which it remains, nonetheless, intimately tied. The third and most substantial sense of the weird is ontological.4 In this view, weirdness is a mode of reality, of the way things are or the way they appear to be (which may be just two sides of the same strange coin). Weirdness here is not simply an artifact of our bent minds but a feature of the art and manner of existence itself—an existence I believe we can still talk about directly, though perhaps always with a forked tongue. More than a genre, more than a psychological mode, the weird inheres in the loopy, twisty, tricksy way whereby things come to be.