Blackburn Quotes

My point is that I am going to figure this out, like I always do. First, we’re going to find a way to get into Artemisia. We’re going to find Cress and rescue Cinder and Wolf. We’re going to overthrow Levana, and by the stars above, we are going to make Cinder a queen so she can pay us a lot of money from her royal coffers and we can all retire very rich and very alive, got it?" Winter started to clap. "Brilliant speech. Such gumption and bravado." "And yet strangely lacking in any sort of actual strategy," said Scarlet. "Oh, good, I'm glad you noticed that too," said Iko. "I was worried my processor might be glitching.

We thought you fell down a hole and died somewhere." "Close. I was with Blackburn.

In fact,” Cinder continued, “my understanding is that, under Kai—Emperor Kai—Kaito?” She raised her eyebrows at him, realizing this was the first time she’d ever been expected to be formal in his presence. In response, Kai looked like he wanted to laugh. She glared at him.

Never marry a man unless you can sit with him reading a book and feel perfectly comfortable. If it makes you nervous to sit quietly with him while you read, feeling like you need to entertain him or provide conversation, then this would not be the person you should spend your life with. You should feel free to just be when you are with him.

Then, on the twenty-first day of December in the 109th year of the third era, Queen Channary gave birth to a baby girl. She was officially named Princess Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn of Luna,

How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all.

Risk is everywhere. Only the nobles have the luxury of a long easy life. Justice, vengeance, the ability to carve out your own fate instead of being herded like an animal. Sometimes it’s worth dying for.

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.

Citizens of Luna, I ask that you stop what you’re doing to listen to this message. My name is Selene Blackburn. I am the daughter of the late Queen Channary, niece to Princess Levana, and the rightful heir to Luna’s throne. You were told that I died thirteen years ago in a nursery fire, but the truth is that my aunt, Levana, did try to kill me, but I was rescued and taken to Earth. There, I have been raised and protected in preparation for the time when I would return to Luna and reclaim my birthright. In my absence, Levana has enslaved you. She takes your sons and turns them into monsters. She takes your shell infants and slaughters them. She lets you go hungry, while the people in Artemisia gorge themselves on rich foods and delicacies. But Levana’s rule is coming to an end. I have returned and I am here to take back what’s mine. Soon, Levana is going to marry Emperor Kaito of Earth and be crowned the empress of the Eastern Commonwealth, an honor that could not be given to anyone less deserving. I refuse to allow Levana to extend her tyranny. I will not stand aside while my aunt enslaves and abuses my people here on Luna, and wages a war across Earth. Which is why, before an Earthen crown can be placed on Levana’s head, I will bring an army to the gates of Artemisia. I ask that you, citizens of Luna, be that army. You have the power to fight against Levana and the people that oppress you. Beginning now, tonight, I urge you to join me in rebelling against this regime. No longer will we obey her curfews or forgo our rights to meet and talk and be heard. No longer will we give up our children to become her disposable guards and soldiers. No longer will we slave away growing food and raising wildlife, only to see it shipped off to Artemisia while our children starve around us. No longer will we build weapons for Levana’s war. Instead, we will take them for ourselves, for our war. Become my army. Stand up and reclaim your homes from the guards who abuse and terrorize you. Send a message to Levana that you will no longer be controlled by fear and manipulation. And upon the commencement of the royal coronation, I ask that all able-bodied citizens join me in a march against Artemisia and the queen’s palace. Together we will guarantee a better future for Luna. A future without oppression. A future in which any Lunar, no matter the sector they live in or the family they were born to, can achieve their ambitions and live without fear of unjust persecution or a lifetime of slavery. I understand that I am asking you to risk your lives. Levana’s thaumaturges are powerful, her guards are skilled, her soldiers are brutal. But if we join together, we can be invincible. They can’t control us all. With the people united into one army, we will surround the capital city and overthrow the imposter who sits on my throne. Help me. Fight for me. And I will be the first ruler in the history of Luna who will also fight for you.

That's lucky?" Tom repeated bitterly. "Lucky now means 'worst case scenario ever,' then. That's great. Good to know." "Sir," Blackburn corrected. "You outrank me. You shouldn't call me 'sir.'" "Raines, you'll address me as 'sir' or I will stick you back down in that cell next to the census device until 'sir' is the only word you remember." Tom bristled. He'd never hated someone so much. "Sir, yes, sir. I'll use 'sir,' sir. Is that all, sir?" "Oh, I'd say that's all. Get into the simulation with the others." Blackburn jabbed at his forearm keyboard. "It irritates me just looking at you." Back at you, Tom thought.

It is better to die honorably and render yourself immortal than live to old age and fade to dust.

Reassurance that I'm not alone. That despite all the bullshit life can throw sometimes, I have someone looking out for me, fighting in my corner, and giving me everything that I need to get through.

The process doesn’t end there. Stories are more than just images. As you continue in the tale, you get to know the characters, motivations and conflicts that make up the core of the story. This requires more parts of the brain. Some parts process emotion. Others infer the thoughts of others, letting us empathize with their experiences. Yet other parts package the experience into memories for future reflection

Nothing's promised us by the gods. Isn't that all the more reason to love while we can?

There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything.

Blackburn thought that any band that believed it's lyrics were crucial was kidding itself. Kids out on Saturday night wanted to drink, dance and yell "WOOOO!" and have sex with somebody. They didn't want to hear a bad poet bare the angst in his tortured and immature soul. They could go to college for that shit.

Someone sitting on a completely unreasonable belief is sitting on a time bomb. The apparently harmless, idiosyncratic belief of the Catholic Church that one thing may have the substance of another, although it displays absolutely none of its empirical qualities, prepares people for the view that some people are agents of Satan in disguise, which in turn makes it reasonable to destroy them.

Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.

Genes load the gun, and environment pulls the trigger.

You need to define who you are. Otherwise, people will happily do it for you.

You see, I’m responsible for my happiness.’ She presses a hand to her chest. ‘I would have lived my life disappointed if I had not known that happiness is a choice. Do you know what would be even more disappointing?

Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.

Du wirst keine Mahre finden, die Tessa lieben. Auch wir haben Geschmack.

One by one, the moths of the night took their release. And she watched them float off like butterflies, silhouetted in the glow of morning.

Caracola” They’ve bought me a shell. It sings inside a sea on a map. My heart fills up with water with a little fish shadow & silver. They’ve brought me a shell.

People are always confusing my weirdly good memory with being a stalker.

[...] like any human practices, those of religions are not exempt from ethical questioning. Rituals and rites in groups change behavior, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the madness of crowds is a very close cousin to the fervor or congregations and the martial spirit of armies.

Then she compared the work we did to the peeling of an onion: "It takes a long time, and we peel the layers slowly, incrementally, transparent layers, around and around, peeling until we get to the core," then she smiled, "and there are always tears." (141)

A friend of mine said that dogs and kids were great as long as you let them run around and tire themselves out. My mind was the same way. (176)

We can check on what people say by seeing what they do.

Food is one of the great comforts and healers in life

Yes, there is a sequel on the way!

Freedom is a dangerous word, just because it is an inspirational one.

Attempting to eliminate an entire Secret Service office is no small undertaking. You have to be seriously angry.

Look at my daemons, peasant.

To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.

The most significant trust-related challenge for people with autism is trusting other people. Most of us are neurologically hardwired with the ability to predict the behavior of others—to read body language intuitively and make subconscious judgments based on how relaxed a person’s body is, on how a person looks at other people, or by the social context. But that is often more difficult for people with autism. Ros Blackburn explains that she lives every day trying to understand people’s intentions when they approach her. “Because I find it so difficult to predict the behavior of other people,” Ros explains, “what they do often comes across as very sudden and threatening to me.

It was beautiful not despite but because of the friction it has had to endure. It had been thrashed around, but instead of being destroyed, it was improved with every scratch and scrape, sculpted. In fact, the scuffs themselves are what gave it its quiet splendor; they are responsible for turning a simple piece of glass (which could have just as easily been trash) into a gem. It wouldn't be the same without the wear and tear; it wouldn't be something pretty enough to be turned into jewelry if it hadn't been damn near broken. I closed my fist around this tear-shaped gem and thought about my own uneven edges, my own abrasions, and things I have endured that have, instead of breaking me, completed me, prepared me for the next tumble. Its odd beauty was hard-won. It came from reinventing itself. From having risen to the top of the discard pile. Like a phoenix, from victim to victor. (325)

I was starting to understand that the more you talked about something the less it hurt, each telling deflating it a little bit more. That was why we had to say it out loud at the beginning of every meeting: My name is Delia and I'm an addict. It was so we could stop flinching and just live with it. (72)

Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn is more optimistic and says, "Every sign, including genetics, says there's some causality [between telomeres] and the nasty things that happen with aging." She notes that there is a direct link between the shortened telomeres and certain diseases. For example, if you have shortened telomeres- if your telomeres are in the bottom third of the population in terms of length-then your risk of cardiovascular disease is 40 percent greater. "Telomere shortening," she concludes, "seems to underlie the risks for the diseases that kill you...heart disease, diabetes, cancer, even Alzheimer's.

Science similarly contains within itself the devices for correcting the illusions of science. That is its crowning glory. When we come upon intellectual endeavours that contain no such devices—one might cite psychoanalysis, grand political theories, ‘new age’ science, creationist science—we need not be interested.

Sometimes I felt like I was running from somewhere, but other times I felt like I was running to somewhere. (178)

She was one of the toughest people he’d ever known. But even the most imposing tower could be weakened after taking a blow to a support structure.

Her dad had always wanted her to live bravely. To tackle anything. To know she was secure, both in his love and in God’s.

Remember, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Don’t be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

This is the School of Babylon And at its hand we learn To walk into the furnaces And whistle as we burn.

Interesting idea. We fill in the fissures when things start to fall apart, but the fix is never really seamless, is it?

So the middle-ground answer reminds us that reflection is continuous with practice, and our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections.

Every now and then, something so profound comes out of your mouth that I am convinced you have to be consistently stupid on purpose.

and what they do that looks so beautiful, is hunt .

The time we take out, whether it is to do mathematics or music, or to read Plato or Jane Austen, is time to be cherished.

Just because a thought pops into your head does not mean it is fit to come out of your mouth.

the unexamined life is not worth living. It has insisted on the power of rational reflection to winnow out bad elements in our practices, and to replace them with better ones.

But you know how I am with big crowds. I don’t do well with mixed energies. It just … I dunno. Disturbs my inner peace.

Well, I know you believe in love, yeah. And it’s great that you believe that one day you’ll find it. But don’t you think you actually need to, you know, step out to find it?

Yeah, I’m tired of my mum and aunties praying over my love life as though I’m terminally ill.

Donovan chuckles, and he must have read into my raised brows, because he says, ‘Yinka, counselling isn’t just for the white man, you know.

He used to love Mondays. There was nothing quite like tackling the week and showing it who was boss before the sun had a chance to reach the horizon.

Now he was alone and wounded in enemy territory, so he made the rational decision and continued exploring.

Make the murder-plants work for you, not against you, his grandpa always said. It was something like that, anyway.

Reflection matters because it is continuous with practice. How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all.

Ben never was very bright. I’ve always wondered how he even became a cop. Most cops are sharp,

Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.

A system of thought is something we live in, just as much as a house, and if our intellectual house is cramped and confined, we need to know what better structures are possible. The

Nana shakes her head. ‘So you telling me, yeah, that you’re not pretty enough, huh? That being dark and skinny is not beautiful? Yinka, I’m also dark and skinny, and I think I’m hot.

Papa had once told me that as every man grows the layers of mysticism and wonder peel away like an onion until all that's left is the hardened center on which you must swallow or choke.

In a rush, Joan and Timothy and the log cabin and the prayers and even those tough little pieces of beachglass came into my mind, reminding me that the point is to endure, not to break. (71)

Choosing a Life Partner The person you choose to partner with for life is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Your choice of life mate will impact every aspect of your being.

Others may want to stand upon the ‘politics of identity’, or in other words the kind of identification with a particular tradition, or group, or national or ethnic identity that invites them to turn their back on outsiders who question the ways of the group. They will shrug off criticism: their values are ‘incommensurable’ with the values of outsiders. They are to be understood only by brothers and sisters within the circle. People like to retreat to within a thick, comfortable, traditional set of folkways, and not to worry too much about their structure, or their origins, or even the criticisms that they may deserve. Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.

I realize how freeing it is to say what I think. To stand up for myself. I realize how much less of an effort it is to be my authentic self, as opposed to trying to be someone else. I love this feeling.

You're the strongest woman I know. And I know some of the strongest women in the state. He spoke with a conviction that left no room for argument. He believed what he was saying. But I've learned from the men who love those women. I know when a strong, determined woman gives her heart to a man, it's his responsibility to cherish and protect it because he's the only one who knows how fragile that heart really is.

As we ate, I watched the waves crashing and thought about the erosion, the turning of rock into sand, and how long it takes to see any difference in the coastline even though it's constantly being worked on. (167)

That’s the thing with coming from a Nigerian family.’ I drag my eyes back to Brian. ‘They forget that love is a process. That you need to fall in love first, not just meet a random guy and decide he’s the one to marry.

Faith hadn't expected adulthood to be one endless game of whack-a-mole where all she did was beat into submission every new problem that popped up-all the while, standing still. Never going anywhere. Never changing the view.

Learning to think for yourself is how you separate yourself from your parents and make the transition from being a child to being an adult, though part of maturity is being able to take opposing viewpoints into consideration.

I wanted to curl up in her lap and stay there forever. I wanted to be her. She was raising me, cultivating me, molding me into a far better version of me than I could have ever dreamed up, let alone lived out, on my own. (149)

I spent the next two hours down there, first sitting in the sand, sifting and swirling, watching the grains fall from the webs of my dusty hands and then walking down by the water, collecting those little pieces of beach glass. There were more of them than I thought. They were surprisingly strong. I tried to snap one in half to see if the inside was still shiny and clear like regular glass, but it wouldn't break. Its scuffy exterior was like scar tissue. (67)

I hope I am the kind of woman who embraces the daily work of letting God's kingdom come on earth with perseverance, faithfulness, and love. I hope we experience things together that prove love wins in eternity, evil loses every time. While we keep our eyes open and cling tightly to the promises of God, I want you to remember that no matter what trouble there is in the world, the grave they put Jesus in is still empty and God has already overcome the fear we carry.

I’m saving myself for marriage because in the Bible, sex is something sacred. And while I respect that everyone makes their own choices, I wish that society didn’t make me feel alien for mine. So, yup. There you have it. I’m a virgin.

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, “Coercion can be mental as well as physical.” In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup—intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on—of the suspect.

What? Why didn’t tell me?” Rye grinned. “By that point I was ninety percent certain you weren’t a murderer. Call me foolish, but I kind of wanted to keep it that way.” “Believe it or not, I haven’t fantasized about killing my ex for months.

Pleased to meet you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘How many crime scenes have you been to?’ ‘This is my second. I went to a suicide in Blackburn two months ago,’ she said. ‘Not technically a crime scene, sweetheart,’ Towler said, smirking. ‘It was by the time I’d finished,’ she replied, looking at Towler without flinching. ‘I told the police in Lancashire that the body had been dead at least two days before they thought it had been. Convinced the coroner to do a post-mortem and Henry confirmed it.

Recently, scientists have been experimenting with telomerase, the enzyme discovered by Blackburn and her colleagues that prevents the telomeres from shortening. It can, in some sense, “stop the clock.” When bathed in telomerase, skin cells can divide indefinitely, far beyond the Hayflick limit. I once interviewed Dr. Michael D. West, then of the Geron Corporation, who experiments with telomerase and claims that he can “immortalize” a skin cell in the lab so that it lives indefinitely.

WORTH IT? It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [...] It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [...] The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that.

It is the thought that the least efficient way of of finding either happiness or pleasure is to pursue them. Put in terms of happiness, we can see it like this: To be happy you must quite literally "lose yourself". You must lose yourself in some pursuit; you need to forget your own happiness and find other goals and projects, other objects of concern that might include the welfare of some other people, or the cure of the disease, or simply in the variety of everyday activities with their little successes and setbacks.

Timothy said there were just those people who, when it all came down to that final moment and you were leaving Earth on a spaceship that could fit only so many people, got On the Ship with you. They were familiar. Part of you. Necessary, for various reasons. (152)

Rona soon picked out her own plot of land - one hundred eighty acres that stretched along the bottom of a rocky hill and only a stone's through from the shoreline. Quickly, much more quickly than natural for a man much less a woman - even one of Rona Blackburn's stature - a house appeared. She filled her new home with reminders of her previous one on the Aegean island she had loved so much: pastel seashells and a front door painted a deep cobalt blue - a color the yiayias always claimed had the power to repel evil. Then she set up her bed, made a pit for her fire, and erected two wooden tables. One table she kept bare. The other she covered in tinctures and glass jars of cut herbs and other fermented bits of flora and fauna. On this table, she kept a marble mortar and pestle, the leather sheath in which she wrapped her knives, and copper bowls - some for mixing dry ingredients, some for liquid, and a few small enough to bring to the mouth for sipping. And when the fire was stoked and the table was set, she placed a wooden sign - soon covered in a blanket of late December snow - outside that blue front door. It read one world: Witch.

I cannot climb out onto the nature of your mind. So how then do I know anything about your mental life? How do I know, for instance, that you see the colour blue the way that I do? Might it be that some of us feel pain more, but make less fuss about it, or that others feel pain less, but make more fuss?

Joan had told me a story once about some elephants in captivity somewhere, how as babies they were put into ankle cuffs with chains that were attached to spikes driven into the ground, which they couldn't pull out. They stopped trying within their first years, because it was frustrating and pointless, so they grew up believing that the spikes were stronger than they were. Apparently it never occurred to them to try again later when they were giant adult elephants perfectly capable of yanking the spikes out without even exerting much effort and running free into the jungle, so they wound up staying put next to these tiny little spikes that were now ridiculously weak in comparison to their powerful legs. Joan said we were like that, too. She said we humans often remained bound by old beliefs that had not real power aside from that which we placed upon them. She said our fears were the little tiny spikes we were sill seeing from the vantage point of the baby elephants, but now, my darling, she had told me, now we were mighty beasts who could uproot the spike any old time we were ready. (266)

To an extent that has surprised us and the rest of the scientific community, telomeres do not simply carry out the commands issued by your genetic code. Your telomeres, it turns out, are listening to you. They absorb the instructions you give them. The way you live can, in effect, tell your telomeres to speed up the process of cellular aging. But it can also do the opposite.

We may worry that the witness has the whole of time and space in its gaze, and our life shrinks to nothingness, just an insignificant, infinitesimal fragment of the whole. ‘The silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me,’ said Blaise Pascal (1623–62). But the Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903–30) replied: Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone. My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings, and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits.

I wanted everything to freeze, it was finally where I wanted it, and I whispered to my empty dining room, "Nobody move." Timothy was healthy, my dad was still sober, I had good friends, I was in love, my work as a counselor was so rewarding, but above all of that, I had a drag queen who strutted through my life, always at just the right time, teaching me that there is glitter in the darkness if only you remember to look in the right places. (265)

In retrospect, the influential figures in the clinical investigation of human obesity in the 1970s can be divided into two groups. There were those who believed carbohydrate-restricted diets were the only efficacious means of weight control—Denis Craddock, Robert Kemp, John Yudkin, Alan Howard, and Ian McLean Baird in England, and Bruce Bistrian and George Blackburn in the U.S.—and wrote books to that effect, or developed variations on these diets with which they could treat patients. These men invariably struggled to maintain credibility. Then there were those who refused to accept that carbohydrate restriction offered anything more than calorie restriction in disguise—Bray, Van Itallie, Cahill, Hirsch, and their fellow club members. These men rarely if ever treated obese patients themselves, and they repeatedly suggested that since no diet worked nothing was to be learned by studying diets.

There’s a balance here of yin and yang, a dance between aggression and gentleness that creates real strength in any warrior. Attack, and fall back. Thrust and parry. It’s beautiful, really.” Mulan thrust her sword forward and then skipped back. “A balance of yin and yang,” she repeated. “I don't have to turn myself into a man to fight or rule. And I don't have to be a docile woman like my ministers expect me to be. I can be gentle and strong as circumstances requires.

We spend just as much time—more even—studying dragons, learning their habits, cataloging what they eat, mapping where they go. See, the Earth is changing around us at a crazy pace. Forests are disappearing, ice caps are melting, the climate is shifting. There are people working to protect other species—the polar bears and wolves, turtles, gorillas. But who’s looking out for dragons?” Dominick’s voice was low and urgent. “We are the only people in the world who know about them. If we’re going to do a good job protecting them, we sure as heck better understand them.

She told me to keep writing. After my journal filled up, I bought another one. As I wrote and read my entries to Joan, I felt myself metamorphosing. My growth was like the tide, coming in waves, retracting out of reach, coming back. Sometimes undercurrents came, pulling at my feet, sucking the sand out from under them. I dug my toes in hard and closed my eyes and managed to stay mostly upright, but those riptides came anyway, guided by the same moon that looked so benevolent, so white and happy against the indigo sky, so serene and fat and innocent, so far away. (141)

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such an achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. —Albert Einstein, as quoted in the New York Times, March 29, 1972

was laughable. An aisle stretched down the middle of the ballroom, defined by candelabras topped with more pale orbs, their light flickering like little flames. The aisle runner was black and set with rhinestones in mimicry of the night sky. Or, the always sky, as it was here on Luna. A hush fell over the room, and Kai could tell it was not a normal hush. It was too controlled, too flawless. His heart pounded, uncontrolled in its cage. This was the moment he’d been dreading, the fate he’d fought against for so long. No one was going to interfere. He was alone and rooted to the floor. At the far back of the room, the massive doors opened, chorused with a fanfare of horns. At the end of the aisle, two shadows emerged—a man and a woman in militaristic uniforms carrying the flags of Luna and the Eastern Commonwealth. After they parted, setting the flags into stands on either side of the altar, a series of Lunar guards marched into the room, fully armed and synchronized. They, too, spread out when they reached the altar, like a protective wall around the dais. Next down the aisle were six thaumaturges dressed in black, walking in pairs, graceful as black swans. They were followed by two in red, and finally Head Thaumaturge Aimery Park, all in white. A voice dropped down from some hidden speakers. “All rise for Her Royal Majesty, Queen Levana Blackburn of Luna.” The people rose. Kai clasped his shaking hands behind his back. She appeared as a silhouette first in the lights of the doors, a perfect hourglass dropping off to a full billowing skirt that flowed behind her. She walked with her head high, gliding toward

It turns out that our perspective has a surprising amount of influence over the body’s stress response. When we turn a threat into a challenge, our body responds very differently. Psychologist Elissa Epel is one of the leading researchers on stress, and she explained to me how stress is supposed to work. Our stress response evolved to save us from attack or danger, like a hungry lion or a falling avalanche. Cortisol and adrenalin course into our blood. This causes our pupils to dilate so we can see more clearly, our heart and breathing to speed up so we can respond faster, and the blood to divert from our organs to our large muscles so we can fight or flee. This stress response evolved as a rare and temporary experience, but for many in our modern world, it is constantly activated. Epel and her colleague, Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, have found that constant stress actually wears down our telomeres, the caps on our DNA that protect our cells from illness and aging. It is not just stress but our thought patterns in general that impact our telomeres, which has led Epel and Blackburn to conclude that our cells are actually “listening to our thoughts.” The problem is not the existence of stressors, which cannot be avoided; stress is simply the brain’s way of signaling that something is important. The problem—or perhaps the opportunity—is how we respond to this stress. Epel and Blackburn explain that it is not the stress alone that damages our telomeres. It is our response to the stress that is most important. They encourage us to develop stress resilience. This involves turning what is called “threat stress,” or the perception that a stressful event is a threat that will harm us, into what is called “challenge stress,” or the perception that a stressful event is a challenge that will help us grow. The remedy they offer is quite straightforward. One simply notices the fight-or-flight stress response in one’s body—the beating heart, the pulsing blood or tingling feeling in our hands and face, the rapid breathing—then remembers that these are natural responses to stress and that our body is just preparing to rise to the challenge. •

One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our 'good'. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or Plato, or the founders of the Christian tradition, the central concern was the state of one's soul, meaning some personal state of justice or harmony. Such a state might include resignation or renunciation, or detachment, or obedience, or knowledge, especially self-knowledge. For Plato there could be no just political order except one populated by just citizens.... Today we tend not to believe that; we tend to think that modern constitutional democracies are fine regardless of the private vices of those within them. We are much more nervous talking about our good: it seems moralistic, or undemocratic, or elitist. Similarly, we are nervous talking about duty. The Victorian ideal of a life devoted to duty, or a calling, is substantially lost to us. So a greater proportion of our moral energy goes to protecting claims against each other, and that includes protecting the state of our soul as purely private, purely our own business.