Blocks Rules Quotes

Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.

Princes & Kings Isn't it strange how princes and kings, and clowns that caper in sawdust rings, and common people, like you and me, are builders for eternity? Each is given a list of rules; a shapeless mass; a bag of tools. And each must fashion, ere life is flown, A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone.

Through living in a space that we do not understand, everything may become meaningless, incoherent, and forcefully scary. If fear rules our lives, we lose the core of our being, since 'fear' disrupts the schedule of our existence and blocks the soothing waves of the sound vibrations. (“Because the world has corona”)

So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much.” These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile.

A world without dialogue is a universe of darkness. If people don't get together and share views and exchange ideas, they remain unaware, ignorant, and unconscious. As they live in a space that they don't understand, everything becomes meaningless, incoherent, and forcefully scary. If fear rules our lives, we lose the core of our being, since 'fear' is disrupting the schedule of our existence, and blocks the waves of the good vibrations. ("Beware of the neighbor")

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.

We're in the Chicago suburbs, ruling our 'hood and the streets that lead here. It's a street war, where other suburban gangs fight us for territory. Three blocks away are mansions and million-dollar houses. Right here, in the real world, the street war rages on. The people in the million-dollar houses don't even realize a battle is about to begin less than a half mile from their backyards.

Your mind is likewise blocked. But the right road awaits you still. Cast out your doubts, your fears and your desires, let go of grief and of hope as well, for where these rule the mind is their subject.

It is often advantageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down every street in the city, people not yet old enough to have lines on their foreheads were laughing away memory, warmly ensconced in shrines of forgetfulness. Those who followed the word of God and those who preferred what the priests called "hoodoo" alike. People everywhere forgetting with drink or forgetting with religion or forgetting with the numbing quality of their many heaps of things. They looked forward and imagined rosy tomorrows, and gave up whatever horrors heckled their dreams, and listened to the pretty stories of whomever ruled their pulpit.

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. --- Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. ---- Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. --- Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. --- The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.

She steeled her spine. “Like Boleyn to the chopping block.” Anna smirked. “Queen of England, are we?” Mara shrugged. “Something to aspire to.

It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn’t it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn’t playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules.

Matter never makes jokes: it is always full of the tragically serious. Who dares to think that you can play with matter, that you can shape it for a joke, that the joke will not be built in, will not eat into it like fate, like destiny? Can you imagine the pain, the dull imprisoned suffering, hewn into the matter of that dummy which does not know why it must be what it is, why it must remain in that forcibly imposed form which is no more than a parody? Do you understand the power of form, of expression, of pretense, the arbitrary tyranny imposed on a helpless block, and ruling it like its own, tyrannical, despotic soul?

Standing at this liquor store, whiskey coming through my pores, feeling like I run this whole block

Autism, as far as I understand it, is about not being given the rule book at birth.

The Republican Party has used objection, obstruction, and filibustering not only to block the necessary processes of government but also in order to make ordinary Americans deeply cynical about Washington. Republicans perpetually run against government and come out on top. But, in the process, they are undermining the foundations of self-rule in a representative democracy.

It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted…secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology…by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more…The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite… Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged, humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—” We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid…we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function…zeroing in on what incalculable plot? Up here, on the surface, coal-tars, hydrogenation, synthesis were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unrolling…this ruinous plant, waiting for its Kabbalists and new alchemists to discover the Key, teach the mysteries to others…

The building block of organizations should be small teams. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, at one point had a “two-pizza team” rule,41 which stipulates that teams be small enough to be fed by two pizzas.

It’s a pretty good rule to remember that every time we come into contact with another person, even though just walking a block, our job is to lead him to a higher plane than that one on which we found him.

Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water, peacefully floating along in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace. Sometimes, though, as you float along, you veer too close to one of the river’s two banks. This causes different problems, depending on which bank you approach. One bank represents chaos, where you feel out of control. Instead of floating in the peaceful river, you are caught up in the pull of tumultuous rapids, and confusion and turmoil rule the day. You need to move away from the bank of chaos and get back into the gentle flow of the river. But don’t go too far, because the other bank presents its own dangers. It’s the bank of rigidity, which is the opposite of chaos. As opposed to being out of control, rigidity is when you are imposing control on everything and everyone around you. You become completely unwilling to adapt, compromise, or negotiate. Near the bank of rigidity, the water smells stagnant, and reeds and tree branches prevent your canoe from flowing in the river of well-being. So one extreme is chaos, where there’s a total lack of control. The other extreme is rigidity, where there’s too much control, leading to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. We all move back and forth between these two banks as we go through our days—especially as we’re trying to survive parenting. When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health. The longer we can avoid either bank, the more time we spend enjoying the river of well-being. Much of our lives as adults can be seen as moving along these paths—sometimes in the harmony of the flow of well-being, but sometimes in chaos, in rigidity, or zigzagging back and forth between the two. Harmony emerges from integration. Chaos and rigidity arise when integration is blocked.

What Asia's postwar economic miracle demonstrates is that capitalism is a path toward economic development that is potentially available to all countries. No underdeveloped country in the Third World is disadvantaged simply because it began the growth process later than Europe, nor are the established industrial powers capable of blocking the development of a latecomer, provided that country plays by the rules of economic liberalism.

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on.

Over the long term, however, too much adrenaline produces scarring on the insides of your blood vessels. These scars become magnets for molecules to accumulate, creating lumps called plaques. These can grow large enough to block the blood vessels. If it happens in the blood vessels of your heart, you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke.

MILFs rule Bonoboville

Wall your life, guard your heart and mind your mind! A life without a wall least blocks something! A mind without a wall accepts anything at all!

Creativity is a delicate and temperamental creature, and it often wilts away under the weight of “the rules” or the carping of our infernal internal editors.

As a rule, young children don't complain of wanting to fingerpaint but finding themselves mysteriously unable to do so.

These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Escalade or a 633i for however long they have left.

Elites do often make the environment worse and block solutions, but to blame the problem of elite capture entirely on their moral successes and failures is to confuse effect for cause. The true problem lies in the system itself, the built environment and rules of interaction that produced the elites in the first place.

to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn’t mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it’s sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention. The simple strategy proposed here of scheduling Internet blocks goes a long way toward helping you regain this attention autonomy. Work

One's understanding of the truth—whether that's the correctness of a fact or the guilt of a person—should never be unalterable. Think of a strongly held, defensible point of view as a block of ice, fixed and solid. When such views are well-founded, holding fast to them is commendable. But if new facts come to light—or new revelations materialize—then that block of ice should crack, melt, and even evaporate.

When I look at all the forces aligned to roll back and block democratic change--the concentration of wealth, the structures of minority rule, the market imperative of endless growth, the seemingly irrepressible appeal of racism, and the rapidity of climate change--I feel my will weaken. Given the magnitude of the task at hand, how can people like me possibly make a dent? The established order is so big and powerful, and a single individual so vulnerable and small. But when I engage my intellect, something approaching optimism is possible. The past is proof that it can be done,

As Schell had taught me, "a con starts when there is something you want and you are blocked from attaining it by certain obstacles. The good con artist elicits the assistance of those who mean to stand in the way of one's attainment by appealing to their vanity, pride, jealousy, ignorance, or fear. One must first throw into a pile the expected rules of engagement, morality, society, and thought, set them on fire, and then proceed. Think big, have confidence.

Christianity would be powerless to block this trend because it exists only in the realm of the spirit—“like a vision in a pure ideal world.” Islam, on the other hand, is “a complete system” with laws, social codes, economic rules, and its own method of government. Only Islam offered a formula for creating a just and godly society. Thus

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly. 'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I’m too skeptical, but I can’t take it too seriously.' Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.' Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children’s bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You’re probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I’d hate to want to take that seriously.' ("The Venus Hunters")

There are eight worlds, the first one said. They lie side by side, in degrees of perfection. This world is the most perfect one. Below these lines, written in a different ink, was: There is one single world, divided into three levels which are partitioned off from each other by greased membranes. Then in red ink: There are two worlds and they overlap. The first is the land of Day, which belongs to the humans. The second is the land of Twilight, which belongs to the free folk, and of which the woods is a little backwater part. Both lands must obey Time, but the Twilight is ruled by the Heart, whereas the Day is ruled by Thought. At the bottom of the page, large block letters proclaimed: ALL OF THIS IS TRUE.

The laziness of System 2 is an important fact of life, and the observation that representativeness can block the application of an obvious logical rule is also of some interest.

Well, you got me there, I could have said. You’re right, I broke the rules, I didn’t play fair. And you know what? Fuck you.

In Bonoboville, the females gently but firmly rule the roost, keeping the males gentle and firm

Self-aware individuals — strong I’s — are the building blocks of great teams.

I don’t make the rules,” said Zeb calmly. “I just explain them.

representativeness can block the application of an obvious logical rule is also of some interest.

That some advantages might have resulted from such a precaution [of supermajority rule], cannot be denied,” he writes. “It might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures.” But then Madison proceeds to explain why “these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale.” If a minority was allowed to block a majority, he writes, then “in all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority

researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not…you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

We cannot think another’s thoughts, but we can feel their pain. Also, their pleasure, but we focus on pain because pain threatens us. We turn our eyes and block our ears and pretend it is not ours to feel. We let our brains rule our bodies. Our brains tell us we cannot withstand all the feeling, that our bodies are not capable. But we have forgotten—I have forgotten—that we heal, not through logic, not through the brain, but through discharging energy. When we have a fever, we sweat and have fever dreams that make us writhe and cry out. When we eat something rotten, we heave and vomit and shit liquid. We absorb pain and anger through the body, and we must expel it through the body, like a virus, like rot. Can I lick myself clean? Can I scale my skin? Can I molt?

This work will only mater if it's sustained. To sustain it, people have to believe that the myriad small, incremental actions matter. That they matter even when the consequences aren't immediate or obvious. They must remember that often when you fail at your immediate objective—to block a nominee or a pipeline or to pass a bill—that, even then, you may have changed the whole framework in ways that make broader change more possible. You may change the story or the rules, give tools, templates, or encouragements to future activists, and make it possible for those around you to persist in their efforts.

Do I need to check up on you guys later? You know the rules.No sleeping in opposite-sex rooms." My face flames,and St. Clair's cheeks grow blotchy. It's true.It's a rule. One that my brain-my rule-loving, rule-abiding brain-conveniently blocked last night. It's also one notoriously ignored by the staff. "No,Nate," we say. He shakes his shaved head and goes back in his apartment. But the door opens quickly again,and a handful of something is thrown at us before it's slammed back shut. Condoms.Oh my God, how humiliating. St. Clair's entire face is now bright red as he picks the tiny silver squares off the floor and stuffs them into his coat pockets. We don't speak,don't even look at each other,as we climb the stairs to my floor. My pulse quickens with each step.Will he follow me to my room,or has Nate ruined any chance of that? We reach the landing,and St. Clair scratches his head. "Er..." "So..." "I'm going to get dressed for bed. Is that all right?" His voice is serious,and he watches my reaction carefully. "Yeah.Me too.I'm going to...get ready for bed,too." "See you in a minute?" I swell with relief. "Up there or down here?" "Trust me,you don't want to sleep in my bed." He laughs,and I have to turn my face away,because I do,holy crap do I ever. But I know what he means.It's true my bed is cleaner. I hurry to my room and throw on the strawberry pajamas and an Atlanta Film Festival shirt. It's not like I plan on seducing him. Like I'd even know how. St. Clair knocks a few minutes later, and he's wearing his white bottoms with the blue stripes again and a black T-shirt with a logo I recognize as the French band he was listening to earlier. I'm having trouble breathing. "Room service," he says. My mind goes...blank. "Ha ha," I say weakly. He smiles and turns off the light. We climb into bed,and it's absolutely positively completely awkward. As usual. I roll over to my edge of the bed. Both of us are stiff and straight, careful not to touch the other person. I must be a masochist to keep putting myself in these situations. I need help. I need to see a shrink or be locked in a padded cell or straitjacketed or something. After what feels like an eternity,St. Clair exhales loudly and shifts. His leg bumps into mine, and I flinch. "Sorry," he says. "It's okay." "..." "..." "Anna?" "Yeah?" "Thanks for letting me sleep here again. Last night..." The pressure inside my chest is torturous. What? What what what? "I haven't slept that well in ages." The room is silent.After a moment, I roll back over. I slowly, slowly stretch out my leg until my foot brushes his ankle. His intake of breath is sharp. And then I smile,because I know he can't see my expression through the darkness.

This need to be always in guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of essence. It contributed to the fast breakdown of our bodies. So I feared not just the violence of the world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, a contort again so as not to give the police a reason.

And we're not just talking high school students; this practice of hovering often begins before they've learned how to write. Kids used to grow up in a neighborhood-- on the block or in the parks, playing games with other kids. These games had rules, but the kids themselves determined them, flexing their imaginations. Social scientists called these activities -- capture the flag, bike races, pickup baseball games -- "free play, " and it's been steadily decreasing since the 1950s. Scientists have also noted a correlation between the decreasing amount of childhood free play—any play not directed by adults—and the increasing rates of anxiety and depression among kids. As free play decreases, anxiety increases.

Closed-minded people block others from speaking. If it seems like someone isn’t leaving space for the other person in a conversation, it’s possible they are blocking. To get around blocking, enforce the “two-minute rule” I mentioned earlier.

Power and influence in Congress," he explained, "are not obtained by promoting one's own measures. They come either from blocking measures others want enacted or sup-                                     porting measures others oppose. As a member of the Agricul- ture Committee, Mrs. Chisholm would have been in an ideal position to make her presence felt. Without offending her own constituents, she could have voted against all of the bills introduced for the benefit of farmers. At the same time she could have introduced bills to scuttle price supports and other farm programs. Before long, farm belt congressmen would have been knocking on her door, asking favors." That kind of long-range Machiavellian strategy may be fine for a white, mid-western congressman whose district has more cows than voters, and who has all the time in the world to try to work himself up to that comfortable share of power that a House member can achieve if he plays by the rules, makes his district "safe," and lives long enough. What I can never forget, and what my friend the reporter apparently never knew, is that there are children in my district who will not live long enough for me to play it the way he proposes.

In one study, elite violinists had separated themselves from all others by each accumulating more than 10,000 hours of practice by age 20. Thus the rule. Many elite performers complete their journey in about ten years, which, if you do the math, is an average of about three hours of deliberate practice a day, every day, 365 days a year. Now, if your ONE Thing relates to work and you put in 250 workdays a year (five days a week for 50 weeks), to keep pace on your mastery journey you’ll need to average four hours a day. Sound familiar? It’s not a random number. That’s the amount of time you need to time block every day for your ONE Thing. More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested. Michelangelo once said, “If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.” His point is obvious. Time on a task, over time, eventually beats talent every time. I’d say you can “book that,” but actually you should “block it.

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. — Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. — Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. — The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.

We should figure out how to block our thoughts?" Her smile slipped a little. His did too. "Or not", he said. "I kind of like having you in my head. Especially since I have to rule Eldr and you have to rule Ravenspire, so we'll be spending time apart." "Not too much time. I'm pretty sure I could find use for a dragon king--" "Could you now?" She laughed. "Of course. A dragon king to help me tour my kingdom--" "To kiss you senseless--" "To save me time when I need to light a winter's fire--" He leaned toward her. "To kiss you senseless--" "To help me find--" He kissed her. Her lips parted for his, her hands, full of magic, pressed against his hearts, and though he was miles from Eldr and everything he'd ever known, he knew he was home.

We know this because finding an apartment belongs to a class of mathematical problems known as “optimal stopping” problems. The 37% rule defines a simple series of steps—what computer scientists call an “algorithm”—for solving these problems. And as it turns out, apartment hunting is just one of the ways that optimal stopping rears its head in daily life. Committing to or forgoing a succession of options is a structure that appears in life again and again, in slightly different incarnations. How many times to circle the block before pulling into a parking space? How far to push your luck with a risky business venture before cashing out? How long to hold out for a better offer on that house or car? The same challenge also appears in an even more fraught setting: dating. Optimal stopping is the science of serial monogamy.

But first, he knew he had to apologize for hurting Dr. Larch’s feelings – it had all just slipped out of him, and it made him almost cry to think that he had cause Dr. Larch any suffering. He went straight across the hall to the dispensary, where he could see what he thought were Dr. Larch’s feet extending off the foot of the dispensary bed; the dispensary medicine cabinets blocked the rest of the bed from view. He spoke to Dr. Larch’s feet, which to Homer’s surprise were larger than he remembered them; he was also surprised that Dr. Larch – a neat man – had left his shows on and that his shoes were muddy. ‘Doctor Larch?’ Homer said. ‘I’m sorry.’ When there was no response, Homer thought crossly to himself that Dr. Larch was under an unusually ill-timed ether sedation. ‘I’m sorry, and I love you,’ Homer added, a little louder. He held his breath, listening for Larch’s breathing, which he couldn’t hear; alarmed, he stepped around the cabinets and saw the lifeless stationmaster stretched out on Larch’s bed. It did not occur to Homer that this had been the first time someone had said ‘I love you’ to the stationmaster.

A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now... ...that the names of all the men eligible in each assembly district be put into a hat (or, if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one... The advantages that this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehearsing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive cost of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block the reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart-burnings. It would, in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedented cast of mind – men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, having got into office unwillingly, would be eager only to finish their duties and go home, and even those who acquired a taste for the life would be unable to increase the probability, even by one chance in a million, of their reelection. The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack the vast knowledge of public affairs needed by makers of laws? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any, of the existing legislators possess it... Would that be a disservice to the state? Certainly not. On the contrary, it would be a service of the first magnitude, for the worst curse of democracy, as we suffer under it today, is that it makes public office a monopoly of a palpably inferior and ignoble group of men. They have to abase themselves to get it, and they have to keep on abasing themselves in order to hold it. The fact reflects in their general character, which is obviously low. They are men congenitally capable of cringing and dishonorable acts, else they would not have got into public life at all. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule among them, but how many? What I contend is simply that the number of such exceptions is bound to be smaller in the class of professional job-seekers than it is in any other class, or in the population in general. What I contend, second, is that choosing legislators from that populations, by chance, would reduce immensely the proportion of such slimy men in the halls of legislation, and that the effects would be instantly visible in a great improvement in the justice and reasonableness of the laws.

Children can be damaged as much or more by a lack of incisive attention as they are by abuse, mental or physical. This is damage by omission, rather than commission, but it is no less severe and long-lasting. Children are damaged when their “mercifully” inattentive parents fail to make them sharp and observant and awake and leave them, instead, in an unconscious and undifferentiated state. Children are damaged when those charged with their care, afraid of any conflict or upset, no longer dare to correct them, and leave them without guidance. I can recognize such children on the street. They are doughy and unfocused and vague. They are leaden and dull instead of golden and bright. They are uncarved blocks, trapped in a perpetual state of waiting-to-be. Such children are chronically ignored by their peers. This is because they are not fun to play with. Adults tend to manifest the same attitude (although they will deny it desperately when pressed).

Just like our forefathers in Boston Harbor, who boarded a British ship to let the king know they would have none of his tyrannical rule, this man boarded the pirate ship called the IRS, and let the repressive government, the unfeeling government that is embodied by the man who inhabits the building over there," Hamilton said, pausing and pointing to the White House, a few blocks away. "This courageous man let that evil government know he would no longer suffer under its indifference. Would no longer tolerate taxation without representation. Would no longer accept the injustice and indignity met out by that government organization." From TAX BREAK, written in 1991, but sounding like today's politics.

I'm afraid that just as wealth and privilege can be a stumbling block on the path to the gospel, theological expertise and piety can also get in the way of the kingdom. Like wealth, these are not inherently bad things. However, they are easily idolized. The longer our lists of rules and regulations, the more likely it is that God himself will break one.

When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not…you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled. Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border. It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world. But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence. Regulations like these were part of our daily life, but they never failed to infuriate me. One day I was seized by an absolute compulsion to get out. I faked illness and got permission to go to a hospital in the middle of the city. I wandered the streets desperately trying to spot the sea, without success. The local people were unhelpful: they did not like non-Cantonese speakers, and refused to understand me. We stayed in the port for three weeks, and only once were we allowed, as a special treat, to go to an island to see the ocean. As the point of being there was to talk to the sailors, we were organized into small groups to take turns working in the two places they were allowed to frequent: the Friendship Store, which sold goods for hard currency, and the Sailors' Club, which had a bar, a restaurant, a billiards room, and a ping-pong room. There were strict rules about how we could talk to the sailors. We were not allowed to speak to them alone, except for brief exchanges over the counter of the Friendship Store. If we were asked our names and addresses, under no circumstances were we to give our real ones. We all prepared a false name and a nonexistent address. After every conversation, we had to write a detailed report of what had been said which was standard practice for anyone who had contact with foreigners. We were warned over and over again about the importance of observing 'discipline in foreign contacts' (she waifi-lu). Otherwise, we were told, not only would we get into serious trouble, other students would be banned from coming.

I narrowed the focus of my research to examine a specific expression of the relational paradox: the psychosociology of eating animals, a phenomenon I named carnism. Seeking to understand how people who care about the well-being of nonhuman animals nevertheless consume (or kill) them, I conducted interviews and surveys, and coded and analyzed responses. I concluded that eating (certain) animals results from extensive social and psychological conditioning that causes naturally empathic and rational people to distort their perceptions and block their empathy so that they act against their values of compassion and justice without fully realizing what they're doing. In other words, carnism teaches us to violate the Golden Rule without knowing or caring that we're doing so.

At that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home. But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

If you let the past rule you it will hold you from blessings in the future. If you let the future rule you, before it happens, you block your destiny and blessings from occurring. Live each day, one day, one moment at a time and let God heal the past and let him decide your future ! Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is not yet here so enjoy today to the fullest and your future will be a much happier and brighter beginning !

There is one notable exception to Jablonski and Chaplin’s equation—and it’s the exception that proves the rule. The Inuit—the indigenous people of the subarctic—are dark-skinned, despite the limited sunlight of their home. If you think something fishy’s going on here, you’re right. But the reason they don’t need to evolve the lighter skin necessary to ensure sufficient vitamin D production is refreshingly simple. Their diet is full of fatty fish—which just happens to be one of the only foods in nature that is chock-full of vitamin D. They eat vitamin D for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so they don’t need to make it. If you ever had a grandmother from the Old World try to force cod liver oil down your throat, she was onto something for the same reason—since it’s full of vitamin D, cod liver oil was one of the best ways to prevent rickets, especially before milk was routinely fortified with it.   IF YOU’RE WONDERING how people who have dark skin make enough vitamin D despite the fact that their skin blocks all those ultraviolet rays, you’re asking the right questions. Remember, ultraviolet rays that penetrate the skin destroy folate—and ultraviolet rays that penetrate the skin are necessary to create vitamin D. Dark skin evolved to protect folate, but it didn’t evolve

Mom's Rules for Life in New York City 1. Always have your key out before you reach the front door. 2. If a stranger is hanging out in front of the building, don't ever go in - just keep walking around the block until he's gone. 3. Look ahead. If there's someone acting strange down the block, looking drunk or dangerous, cross to the other side of the street, but don't be obvious about it. Make it look like you were planning to cross the street all along. 4. Never show your money on the street.

In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McKinney. On hearing his nomination, former associates and one officer came forward with charges of sexual coercion and misconduct. In 1998 he was acquitted of all charges after women spoke (of how they were being stigmatized, their careers stopped, and their characters questioned. A Congressional panel studied military investigative practices. In 1998, the Court of Appeals ruled against Dorothy Mackay. She had been outspoken on media and highly visible. There is an old Arabic saying “When the hen crows cut off her head.”“This court finds that Col. Milam and Lt. Col. Elmore were acting in the scope of their duties” in 1991-1992 when Capt. Mackey alleged they harassed, intimidated and assaulted her. A legislative remedy was asked for and she appealed to the Supreme Court. Of course the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1999, as it always has under the feres doctrine. Her case was cited to block the suit of one of the Aberdeen survivors as well!

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not…you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

She shut her eyes to block out the image. This was all kinds of madness. “Tanner.” Matilda opened her eyes at the sound of her voice. It was deep and ragged, almost a growl. Maybe a plea. “Tanner, what?” he asked, his voice as husky as hers as he flicked his gaze to her face. “Tanner, stop? Tanner, leave?” He slid a hand low on her stomach, the muscles beneath tensing in anticipation. “Tanner touch me?” A lazy finger stroked the skin just above the waist band of her boxers, the sensation coursing white hot need straight between her legs.

The Greeks created the Olympics to measure a man’s excellence,” he continued. “It’s the same thing with Basketball – or any other sport for that matter. Not everyone can play it, and not many are good at it. In Basketball, running, blocking, dribbling, and shooting test the stamina, strength, and balance of a person. Teamwork, though, tests discipline. All of it is supposed to be a challenge. It’s pointless if it doesn’t have any rules. To win and at the same time follow the rules is a challenge. And the ability to do it and be good at it measure’s a man’s excellence.

Reversive blockade: Emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person’s mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the “golden mean” between the truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. If the counterfeit of the truth is the opposite of a moral truth, at the same time, it simultaneously represents an extreme paramoralism, and bears its peculiar suggestiveness. We rarely see this method being used by normal people; even if raised by the people who abused it; they usually only indicate its results in their characteristic difficulties in apprehending reality properly. Use of this method can be included within the above-mentioned special psychological knowledge developed by psychopaths concerning the weaknesses of human nature and the art of leading others into error. Where they are in rule, this method is used with virtuosity, and to an extent conterminous with their power.

I know as a general rule the Veneno Conclave teaches us to be reactive—to act only when magic or foul magical creatures are interfering with the lives of folk. But mages with as much power as we do have a duty to help the weak as well.” “Help?” Angelique furrowed her forehead as she tested the word. “In what way?” “However we can.” A fallen tree blocked the path, so Evariste turned and started traveling south again. “It means something different for every situation—though of course you must not act against your morals, and many times you’ll find that helping a person does not mean giving them what they most desire.

The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depression reasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down the memories stored in the body, and refuse them the attention they clamor for. Why are such positive developments the exception rather than the rule? Why do most people (including the “experts”) greatly prefer to believe in the power of medication rather than let themselves be guided by the knowledge stored in their own bodies? Our bodies know exactly what we need, what we have been denied, what disagrees with us, what we are allergic to. But many people prefer to seek aid from medication, drugs, or alcohol, which can only block off the path to the understanding of the truth even more completely. Why? Because recognizing the truth is painful? This is certainly the case. But that pain is temporary. With the right kind of therapeutic care it can be endured. I believe that the main problem here is that there are not enough such professional companions to be had. Almost all the representatives of what I’ll call the “caring professions” appear to be prevented by our morality system from siding with the children we once were and recognizing the consequences of the early injuries we have sustained. They are entirely under the influence of the Fourth Commandment, which tells us to honor our parents, “that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.

We're all so happy you're feeling better, Miss McIntosh. Looks like you still have a good bump on your noggin, though," she says in her childlike voice. Since there is no bump on my noggin, I take a little offense but decide to drop it. "Thanks, Mrs. Poindexter. It looks worse than it feels. Just a little tender." "Yeah, I'd say the door got the worst of it," he says beside me. Galen signs himself in on the unexcused tardy sheet below my name. When his arm brushes against mine, it feels like my blood's turned into boiling water. I turn to face him. My dreams really do not do him justice. Long black lashes, flawless olive skin, cut jaw like an Italian model, lips like-for the love of God, have some dignity, nitwit. He just made fun of you. I cross my arms and lift my chin. "You would know," I say. He grins, yanks my backpack from me, and walks out. Trying to ignore the waft of his scent as the door shuts, I look to Mrs. Poindexter, who giggles, shrugs, and pretends to sort some papers. The message is clear: He's your problem, but what a great problem to have. Has he charmed he sense out of the staff here, too? If he started stealing kids' lunch money, would they also giggle at that? I growl through clenched teeth and stomp out of the office. Galen is waiting for me right outside the door, and I almost barrel into him. He chuckles and catches my arm. "This is becoming a habit for you, I think." After I'm steady-after Galen steadies me, that is-I poke my finger into his chest and back him against the wall, which only makes him grin wider. "You...are...irritating...me," I tell him. "I noticed. I'll work on it." "You can start by giving me my backpack." "Nope." "Nope?" "Right-nope. I'm carrying it for you. It's the least I can do." "Well, can't argue with that, can I?" I reach around for it, but he moves to block me. "Galen, I don't want you to carry it. Now knock it off. I'm late for class." "I'm late for it too, remember?" Oh, that's right. I've let him distract me from my agenda. "Actually, I need to go back to the office." "No problem. I'll wait for you here, then I'll walk you to class." I pinch the bridge of my nose. "That's the thing. I'm changing my schedule. I won't be in your class anymore, so you really should just go. You're seriously violating Rule Numero Uno." He crosses his arms. "Why are you changing your schedule? Is it because of me?" "No." "Liar." "Sort of." "Emma-" "Look, I don't want you to take this personally. It's just that...well, something bad happens every time I'm around you." He raises a brow. "Are you sure it's me? I mean, from where I stood, it looked like your flip-flops-" "What were we arguing about anyway? We were arguing, right?" "You...you don't remember?" I shake my head. "Dr. Morton said I might have some short-term memory loss. I do remember being mad at you, though." He looks at me like I'm a criminal. "You're saying you don't remember anything I said. Anything you said." The way I cross my arms reminds me of my mother. "That's what I'm saying, yes." "You swear?" "If you're not going to tell me, then give me my backpack. I have a concussion, not broken arms. I'm not helpless." His smile could land him a cover shoot for any magazine in the country. "We were arguing about which beach you wanted me to take you to. We were going swimming after school." "Liar." With a capital L. Swimming-drowning-falls on my to-do list somewhere below giving birth to porcupines. "Oh, wait. You're right. We were arguing about when the Titanic actually sank. We had already agreed to go to my house to swim.

Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one’s peers. The problem with evaluation apprehension is that there’s not much we can do about it. You’d think you could overcome it with will or training or a set of group process rules like Alex Osborn’s. But recent research in neuroscience suggests that the fear of judgment runs much deeper and has more far-reaching implications than we ever imagined.

Every Pirate Wants to Be an Admiral IT’S NOT AS though this is the first time we’ve had to rethink what copyright is, what it should do, and whom it should serve. The activities that copyright regulates—copying, transmission, display, performance—are technological activities, so when technology changes, it’s usually the case that copyright has to change, too. And it’s rarely pretty. When piano rolls were invented, the composers, whose income came from sheet music, were aghast. They couldn’t believe that player-piano companies had the audacity to record and sell performances of their work. They tried—unsuccessfully—to have such recordings classified as copyright violations. Then (thanks in part to the institution of a compulsory license) the piano-roll pirates and their compatriots in the wax-cylinder business got legit, and became the record industry. Then the radio came along, and broadcasters had the audacity to argue that they should be able to play records over the air. The record industry was furious, and tried (unsuccessfully) to block radio broadcasts without explicit permission from recording artists. Their argument was “When we used technology to appropriate and further commercialize the works of composers, that was progress. When these upstart broadcasters do it to our records, that’s piracy.” A few decades later, with the dust settled around radio transmission, along came cable TV, which appropriated broadcasts sent over the air and retransmitted them over cables. The broadcasters argued (unsuccessfully) that this was a form of piracy, and that the law should put an immediate halt to it. Their argument? The familiar one: “When we did it, it was progress. When they do it to us, that’s piracy.” Then came the VCR, which instigated a landmark lawsuit by the cable operators and the studios, a legal battle that was waged for eight years, finishing up in the 1984 Supreme Court “Betamax” ruling. You can look up the briefs if you’d like, but fundamentally, they went like this: “When we took the broadcasts without permission, that was progress. Now that someone’s recording our cable signals without permission, that’s piracy.” Sony won, and fifteen years later it was one of the first companies to get in line to sue Internet companies that were making it easier to copy music and videos online. I have a name for the principle at work here: “Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

You’re around an awful lot lately. Are you stalking me?” “Stalking you? This is my Starbucks. I live around the corner,” I tell her. “There’s at least two Starbuckses closer to your apartment than this one. I think you picked this Starbucks so you’d run into me.” I can’t imagine that’s true, but I wouldn’t mind it if it was. She’s been on my mind since I first laid eyes on her almost a week ago. “Uh, no,” she replies sarcastically. It seems to be her go-to when she’s nervous. “I never meet first dates anywhere within a three-block radius of my apartment.” A three-block radius? She kills me. She cannot be getting laid much, which pleases me in some ridiculously caveman way. “Well, that sounds very… safe of you.” She nods in a way that tells me she’s a little bit smug about her safety rules. She’s so fucking cute.

Come on, Bob, kill it!” “I’m trying, Tom. It won’t stop moving.” I looked at Wolf and whispered, “What do you think they are trying to kill?” Wolf shrugged. “Let’s go check it out.” We snuck forward until we could get a visual on what was happening. We saw that there were two large slimes and one baby slime. Judging by the way the large slimes were protecting the baby, I assumed it was their child rather than a random baby slime. The two players were slashing at the large slimes who were trying to defend themselves but failing. Eventually the players chopped the two large slimes into medium slimes, then into small slimes until they had finally killed all the pieces. That left the baby slime all alone. Bob and Tom looked at each other. “I think we should kill it,” said Tom. “Otherwise, it’s going to grow into an adult slime and try to get its revenge on us.” Where have I heard this story before? Bob laughed. “Slimes are stupid. It won’t be able to get revenge because it will be dead.” The players began to move forward to the baby slime. And that’s when something snapped in me. I was reminded of the night my parents sacrificed their lives for me. I couldn’t let this baby slime be killed. I jumped up and rushed to the players. Wolf shout-whispered, “No! Don’t do it!” I didn’t care. I ran up to the two players and without giving them a chance to surrender, mercilessly assassinated them. The baby slime looked at me with fear in its eyes and backed away, fearful that I would kill it too. But I didn’t. I put my sword back into my inventory and reached down and gently picked up the slime. “Can you talk?” I asked. The slime made cooing and booping noises, but apparently was too young to be able to speak yet. “I wish I could talk to you, Child. I would tell you that everything is going to be alright. I’ll be your new guardian.” Wolf arrived by my side a moment later. “It’s not part of the Way to kill players unless the killing falls under a specific rule or arises from self-defense.” I shot a look at Wolf. “I was defending the life of another. Is that not the same as self-defense?” “I guess, but it’s … hurrr … it’s a slime.” “Are you saying a slime has less right to be alive than us?” “I’m not saying that, but now that you mention it….” “Shut up. I’m taking charge of this child.” Wolf shook his head. “You realize that according to the Way, if you take the life of an orphan into your hands you have to protect it and see that it makes it to adulthood, just as I have with you.

This should have stopped the schizophrenogenic voodoo right in its tracks. High blood pressure can be lessened with a drug that blocks a receptor for a different type of neurotransmitter, and you conclude that a core problem was too much of that neurotransmitter. But schizophrenic symptoms can be lessened with a drug that blocks dopamine receptors, and you still conclude that the core problem is toxic mothering. Remarkably, that’s what psychiatry’s psychoanalytic ruling class concluded. After fighting the introduction of the medications tooth and nail in America and eventually losing, they came up with an accommodation: neuroleptics weren’t doing anything to the core problems of schizophrenia; they just sedated patients enough so that it is easier to psychodynamically make progress with them about the scars from how they were mothered. The psychoanalytic scumbags even developed a sneering, pejorative term for families (i.e., mothers) of schizophrenic patients who tried to dodge responsibility by believing that it was a brain disease: dissociative-organic types. The influential 1958 book Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Study (John Wiley), by the Viennese psychiatrist Frederick Redlich, who chaired Yale’s psychiatry department for seventeen years, and the Yale sociologist August Hollingshead, explained it all. Dissociative-organic types were typically lower-class, less educated people, for whom “It’s a biochemical disorder” was akin to still believing in the evil eye, an easy, erroneous explanation for those not intelligent enough to understand Freud. Schizophrenia was still caused by lousy parenting, and nothing was to change in the mainstream for decades.

In Qutb’s passionate analysis, there was little difference between the communist and capitalist systems; both, he believed, attended only the material needs of humanity, leaving the spirit unsatisfied. He predicted that once the average worker lost his dreamy expectations of becoming rich, America would inevitably turn toward communism. Christianity would be powerless to block this trend because it exists only in the realm of the spirit—“like a vision in a pure ideal world.” Islam, on the other hand, is “a complete system” with laws, social codes, economic rules, and its own method of government. Only Islam offered a formula for creating a just and godly society. Thus the real struggle would eventually show itself: It was not a battle between capitalism and communism; it was between Islam and materialism. And inevitably Islam would prevail.

Hope, though; now there’s a real pest. Hope doesn’t just nibble your cheese and chew holes in your skirting boards. Hope keeps you plodding on when it really is time to call it quits. Hope drags you to sixteen auditions in a single day, when there’s a nice job in your brother-in-law’s tannery just waiting for you. Hope keeps you going in Old Stairs or Paradise, even though there’s no money and nothing to eat and the landlord just took your chair and your chamber pot. Personally, I can see no great merit in simply being alive if you’re miserable and in pain, but Hope won’t let you go. She’s a tease, like bad children teasing a dumb animal, and I’ve made a point of avoiding her whenever I can. Still, sometimes she runs you down and there’s nowhere left for you to go. You can turn and fight her and lose, or let her scoop you up and turn your brain to mush. Hope against hope. We had human chains shifting those blocks with levers and rollers, through the narrow alleys where carts couldn’t go. We had shifts digging the ditch by lamplight, in the rain. And in every working party there was at least one man who cheerfully announced that it wasn’t going to work, the whole idea was stupid, the enemy’ll find a way round this in two shakes, just you see; and even he didn’t really believe it, because of Hope. Hope turns a hundred men and women ripping the skin off their hands on a coarse hemp rope into a street party. Someone tells a joke, or clowns around, or starts singing a favourite song from one of the shows, and Hope bursts through, like sappers, and next thing you know she’s everywhere, like smoke, or floodwater, or rats. We’re going to beat Ogus, she whispers in every ear, and this time it’ll be different.

Hitler and Mussolini were indeed authoritarians, but it doesn’t follow that authoritarianism equals fascism or Nazism. Lenin and Stalin were authoritarian, but neither was a fascist. Many dictators—Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile, Perón in Argentina, Amin in Uganda—were authoritarian without being fascists or Nazis. Trump admittedly has a bossy style that he gets from, well, being a boss. He has been a corporate boss all his life, and he also played a boss on TV. Republicans elected Trump because they needed a tough guy to take on Hillary; previously they tried bland, harmless candidates like Romney, and look where that got them. That being said, Trump has done nothing to subvert the democratic process. While progressives continue to allege a plot between Trump and the Russians to rig the election, the only evidence for actual rigging comes from the Democratic National Committee’s attempt to rig the 2016 primary in favor of Hillary over Bernie. This rigging evoked virtually no dissent from Democratic officials or from the media, suggesting the support, or at least acquiescence, of the whole progressive movement and most of the party itself. Trump fired his FBI director, provoking dark ruminations in the Washington Post about Trump’s “respect for the rule of law,” yet Trump’s action was entirely lawful.18 He has criticized judges, sometimes in derisive terms, but contrary to Timothy Snyder there is nothing undemocratic about this. Lincoln blasted Justice Taney over the Dred Scott decision, and FDR was virtually apoplectic when the Supreme Court blocked his New Deal initiatives. Criticizing the media isn’t undemocratic either. The First Amendment isn’t just a press prerogative; the president too has the right to free speech.

Sixty years ago, Austin Ranney, an eminent political scientist, wrote a prophetic dissent to a famous report by an American Political Science Association committee entitled “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.”4 The report, by prominent political scientists frustrated with the role of conservative Southern Democrats in blocking civil rights and other social policy, issued a clarion call for more ideologically coherent, internally unified, and adversarial parties in the fashion of a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy like Britain or Canada. Ranney powerfully argued that such parties would be a disaster within the American constitutional system, given our separation of powers, separately elected institutions, and constraints on majority rule that favor cross-party coalitions and compromise. Time has proven Ranney dead right—we now have the kinds of parties the report desired, and it is disastrous.

She moved, opening to him, her thighs widening, the cool air of the room rushing through the slit in her pantalettes. Her cheeks burned and she moved her hands to block his view. He was watching them, and he made a low sound of approval. "That's where my hands would be as well. Can you feel why? Can you feel the heat? The temptation?" Her eyes were closed now. She couldn't look at him. But she nodded. "Of course you can... I can almost feel it myself." The words were hypnotic, all temptation, soft and lyric and wonderful. "And tell me, my little anatomist, have you explored that particular location, before?" Her cheeks burned. "Don't start lying now, Pippa. We've come so far." "Yes." "Yes, what?" "Yes, I've explored it before." The confession was barely sound, but he heard it. When he groaned, she opened her eyes to find him pressed back against the desk once more. "Did I say the wrong thing?" He shook his head, his hand rising to his mouth once more, stroking across firm lips. "Only in that you made me burn with jealousy." Her brows furrowed. "Of whom?" "Of you, lovely." His grey gaze flickered to the place she hid from him. "Of your perfect hands. Tell me what you found." She couldn't. While she might know the clinical words for all the things she had touched and discovered, she could not speak them to him. She shook her head. "I cannot." "Did you find pleasure?" She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. "Did you?" he whispered, the sound loud as a gunshot in this dark, wicked room. She shook her head. Once, so small it was barely a movement. He exhaled, the sound long and lush in the room, as though he'd been holding his breath... and he moved. "What a tragedy." Her eyes snapped open at the sound of him- of trouser against carpet as he crawled toward her, eyes narrow and filled with wicked, wonderful promise. He was coming for her. Predator stalking prey. And she could not wait to be caught.

So let’s imagine for now that our love for our children and our thankfulness for their existence is a given. Let’s imagine that no one can possibly doubt the depths of our feelings for our sons and daughters. Let’s imagine that everyone in the world knows exactly how much we love all the many things there are to love about our children and the relationships we have with them. Let’s imagine that we are all most definitely Good Moms, and, with all that on our side, admit for a moment what we don’t love. I’ll give you my list, you add your own. I don’t love every minute of going to the playground. I don’t love every minute of going to the museums. I don’t love every minute of watching Elmo. I don’t love every minute of having to wake up early in the morning. I don’t love every minute of having interrupted sleep at night. I don’t love every minute of having to be the one to make the rules and the one who must enforce them. I don’t love every minute of laundry. I don’t love every minute of changing diapers. I don’t love every minute of having to endure the stares of people when my child freaks out in public. I don’t love every minute of making food that my kid ends up throwing on the floor. I don’t love every minute that I have the Barney song stuck in my head. I don’t love every minute of having to reason with a tantrum-throwing toddler. I don’t love every minute of being peed on, pooped on, and thrown-up on. I don’t love every minute of weaning. I don’t love every minute of sidewalk chalk. I don’t love every minute of having to pick up the blocks fifteen times a day. I don’t love every minute of putting my life on hold. I don’t love every minute of tantrums. I don’t love every minute of going to story time at the library. I HATE the Teletubbies. I don’t love every minute of being chained to someone else’s routine. I don’t love every minute of not being able to go to the bathroom without company. I don’t love every minute of being a mother.

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

On paper, at least, none of this would necessarily stop us from getting a stimulus bill passed. After all, Democrats enjoyed a seventy-seven-seat majority in the House and a seventeen-seat majority in the Senate. But even in the best of circumstances, trying to get the largest emergency spending bill in history through Congress in record time would be a little like getting a python to swallow a cow. I also had to contend with a bit of institutionalized procedural mischief—the Senate filibuster—which in the end would prove to be the most chronic political headache of my presidency. The filibuster isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Instead, it came into being by happenstance: In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr urged the Senate to eliminate the “motion to proceed”—a standard parliamentary provision that allows a simple majority of any legislature to end debate on a piece of business and call for a vote. (Burr, who seems never to have developed the habit of thinking things through, reportedly considered the rule a waste of time.) It didn’t take long for senators to figure out that without a formal way to end debate, any one of them could bring Senate business to a halt—and thereby extract all sorts of concessions from frustrated colleagues—simply by talking endlessly and refusing to surrender the floor. In 1917, the Senate curbed the practice by adopting “cloture,” allowing a vote of two-thirds of senators present to end a filibuster. For the next fifty years the filibuster was used only sparingly—most notably by southern Democrats attempting to block anti-lynching and fair-employment bills or other legislation that threatened to shake up Jim Crow. Gradually, though, the filibuster became more routinized and easier to maintain, making it a more potent weapon, a means for the minority party to get its way. The mere threat of a filibuster was often enough to derail a piece of legislation. By the 1990s, as battle lines between Republicans and Democrats hardened, whichever party was in the minority could—and would—block any bill not to their liking, so long as they remained unified and had at least the 41 votes needed to keep a filibuster from being overridden.

the sociologist Sun Liping from Beijing’s Tsinghua University identified three techniques for “mind control.”33 One central technique is the control of news sources: “The meal you cook can never be better than the rice you cook it with.” The system successfully blocks information from outside and replaces it with “patriotic education.” Hence, for example, the ubiquitous narrative in which China’s “special national circumstances” have made the country into a unique place unlike anywhere else in the world, and which requires the Party to rule in the precise way China’s subjects are currently experiencing. Second, the system starts building the parameters for your thought when you’re very young, changing the way in which you ask questions and steering you into predetermined channels. Once you have swallowed and internalized what the Party has fed you, says Sun Liping, you can’t even ask certain questions: they lie outside your realm of experience and powers of imagination. And third, the system inspires the kind of fear that suppresses awkward questions: “If you don’t swallow all this, you’ll be punished.

What tempts you, Pippa?" "I-" She hesitated. "I care a great deal for meringue." He laughed, the sound bigger and bolder than she expected. "It's true." "No doubt you do. But you may have meringue anytime you like." He stood back and indicated that she should enter the carriage. She ignored the silent command, eager to make her point. "Not so. If the cook has not made it, I cannot eat it." A smile played on his lips. "Ever-practical Pippa. If you want it, you can find it. That's my point. Surely, somewhere in London, someone will take pity upon you and satisfy your craving for meringue." Her brow furrowed. "Therefore, I am not tempted by it?" "No. You desire it. But that's not the same thing. Desire is easy. It's as simple as you wish to have meringue, and meringue is procured." He waved a hand toward the interior of the carriage but did not offer to help her up. "In." She ascended another step before turning back. The additional height brought them eye to eye. "I don't understand. What is temptation, then?" "Temptation..." He hesitated, and she found herself leaning forward, eager for this curious, unsettling lesson. "Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment." The words were low and dark and full of truth, and they hovered in the silence for a long moment, an undeniable invitation. He was close, protecting her from toppling off the block, the heat of him wrapping around her despite the cold. "It makes you ache," he whispered, and she watched the curve of his lips in the darkness. "You'll make any promise, swear any oath. For one... perfect... unsoiled taste." Oh, my. Pippa exhaled, long and reedy, nerves screaming, thoughts muddled. She closed her eyes, swallowed, forced herself back, away from him and the way he... tempted her. Why was he so calm and cool and utterly in control? Why was he not riddled with similar... feelings? He was a very frustrating man. She sighed. "That must be a tremendous meringue." A beat followed the silly, stupid words... words she wished she could take back. How ridiculous. And then he chuckled, teeth flashing in the darkness. "Indeed," he said, the words thicker and more gravelly than before.

The bag circles the table several times. Each time Maya passes it to her neighbor, saying nothing. Finally the discussion is done. Maya looks troubled. She’s embarrassed, I’m guessing, that she hasn’t participated. Samantha reads from her notebook a list of enforcement mechanisms that the group has brainstormed. “Rule Number 1,” she says. “If you break the laws, you miss recess.…” “Wait!” interrupts Maya. “I have an idea!” “Go ahead,” says Samantha, a little impatiently. But Maya, who like many sensitive introverts seems attuned to the subtlest cues for disapproval, notices the sharpness in Samantha’s voice. She opens her mouth to speak, but lowers her eyes, only managing something rambling and unintelligible. No one can hear her. No one tries. The cool girl in the group—light-years ahead of the rest in her slinkiness and fashion-forward clothes—sighs dramatically. Maya peters off in confusion, and the cool girl says, “OK, Samantha, you can keep reading the rules now.” [...] Maya, for her part, sits curled up at the periphery of the group, writing her name over and over again in her notebook, in big block letters, as if to reassert her identity. At least to herself.

In those days I would come out of the house, turn onto Flatbush Avenue, and my face would tighten like a Mexican wrestler's mask, my eyes would dart from corner to corner, my arms loose, limber, and ready. This need to be always on guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of the essence. It contributed to the fast breakdown of our bodies. So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I;d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as thought they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our heads and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. No one told those little white children, with their tricycles, to be twice as good. I imagined their parents telling them to take twice as much.

Is it as bad out there as they say it is?” he asked. “From my six-inch window, it looks like we got hit with one hell of a storm.” “It took me nearly an hour to shovel the sidewalk this morning,” Jordan said. Kyle brushed his neck-length dark blond hair off his face. “See? That’s one of the positives of being in prison. No shoveling.” Her brother had long ago set the rules regarding their visits. Jokes about being in prison were expected and encouraged, sympathy was not. Which was good for both of them, considering her family had never done particularly well with the mushy and sentimental stuff. “You live in a penthouse condo and haven’t shoveled snow for years,” she pointed out. “A deliberate choice I made because of the trauma of my youth,” Kyle said. “Remember how Dad used to make me shovel the whole block every time it snowed? I was eight when he came up with that plan—barely taller than the shovel.” “And I got to stay inside making hot chocolate with Mom.” Jordan waved off the retort she saw coming. “Hey, it was good for you—it built character.” She paused for a moment, taking in their steel-barred surroundings. “Maybe Dad should’ve made you shovel the next block over, too.” “That’s cute.” “I thought so.

Our mathematics is a combination of invention and discoveries. The axioms of Euclidean geometry as a concept were an invention, just as the rules of chess were an invention. The axioms were also supplemented by a variety of invented concepts, such as triangles, parallelograms, ellipses, the golden ratio, and so on. The theorems of Euclidean geometry, on the other hand, were by and large discoveries; they were the paths linking the different concepts. In some cases, the proofs generated the theorems-mathematicians examined what they could prove and from that they deduced the theorems. In others, as described by Archimedes in The Method, they first found the answer to a particular question they were interested in, and then they worked out the proof. Typically, the concepts were inventions. Prime numbers as a concept were an invention, but all the theorems about prime numbers were discoveries. The mathematicians of ancient Babylon, Egypt, and China never invented the concept of prime numbers, in spite of their advanced mathematics. Could we say instead that they just did not "discover" prime numbers? Not any more than we could say that the United Kingdom did not "discover" a single, codified, documentary constitution. Just as a country can survive without a constitution, elaborate mathematics could develop without the concept of prime numbers. And it did! Do we know why the Greeks invented such concepts as the axioms and prime numbers? We cannot be sure, but we could guess that this was part of their relentless efforts to investigate the most fundamental constituents of the universe. Prime numbers were the basic building blocks of matter. Similarly, the axioms were the fountain from which all geometrical truths were supposed to flow. The dodecahedron represented the entire cosmos and the golden ratio was the concept that brought that symbol into existence.

Another howl ruptured the quiet, still too far away to be a threat. The Beast Lord, the leader, the alpha male, had to enforce his position as much by will as by physical force. He would have to answer any challenges to his rule, so it was unlikely that he turned into a wolf. A wolf would have little chance against a cat. Wolves hunted in a pack, bleeding their victim and running them into exhaustion, while cats were solitary killing machines, designed to murder swiftly and with deadly precision. No, the Beast Lord would have to be a cat, a jaguar or a leopard. Perhaps a tiger, although all known cases of weretigers occurred in Asia and could be counted without involving toes. I had heard a rumor of the Kodiak of Atlanta, a legend of an enormous, battle-scarred bear roaming the streets in search of Pack criminals. The Pack, like any social organization, had its lawbreakers. The Kodiak was their Executioner. Perhaps his Majesty turned into a bear. Damn. I should have brought some honey. My left leg was tiring. I shifted from foot to foot . . . A low, warning growl froze me in midmove. It came from the dark gaping hole in the building across the street and rolled through the ruins, awakening ancient memories of a time when humans were pathetic, hairless creatures cowering by the weak flame of the first fire and scanning the night with frightened eyes, for it held monstrous hungry killers. My subconscious screamed in panic. I held it in check and cracked my neck, slowly, one side then another. A lean shadow flickered in the corner of my eye. On the left and above me a graceful jaguar stretched on the jutting block of concrete, an elegant statue encased in the liquid metal of moonlight. Homo Panthera onca. The killer who takes its prey in a single bound. Hello, Jim. The jaguar looked at me with amber eyes. Feline lips stretched in a startlingly human smirk. He could laugh if he wanted. He didn’t know what was at stake. Jim turned his head and began washing his paw. My saber firmly in hand, I marched across the street and stepped through the opening. The darkness swallowed me whole. The lingering musky scent of a cat hit me. So, not a bear after all. Where was he? I scanned the building, peering into the gloom. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the walls, creating a mirage of twilight and complete darkness. I knew he was watching me. Enjoying himself. Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my patience had run dry. I crouched and called out, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Two golden eyes ignited at the opposite wall. A shape stirred within the darkness and rose, carrying the eyes up and up and up until they towered above me. A single enormous paw moved into the moonlight, disturbing the dust on the filthy floor. Wicked claws shot forth and withdrew. A massive shoulder followed, its gray fur marked by faint smoky stripes. The huge body shifted forward, coming at me, and I lost my balance and fell on my ass into the dirt. Dear God, this wasn’t just a lion. This thing had to be at least five feet at the shoulder. And why was it striped? The colossal cat circled me, half in the light, half in the shadow, the dark mane trembling as he moved. I scrambled to my feet and almost bumped into the gray muzzle. We looked at each other, the lion and I, our gazes level. Then I twisted around and began dusting off my jeans in a most undignified manner. The lion vanished into a dark corner. A whisper of power pulsed through the room, tugging at my senses. If I did not know better, I would say that he had just changed. “Kitty, kitty?” asked a level male voice. I jumped. No shapechanger went from a beast into a human without a nap. Into a midform, yes, but beast-men had trouble talking. “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve caught me unprepared. Next time I’ll bring cream and catnip toys.” “If there is a next time.

The notion that property is the means to all other means was ruled out by the new radicals. The deep seated ressentiment towards private property, indeed towards anything private, blocked the conclusion that follows from any impartial examination of wealth-producing and freedom-favouring mechanisms: an effective world improvement would call for the most general possible propertization. Instead, the political metanoeticians enthused over general dispossession, akin to the founders of Christian orders who wanted to own everything communally and nothing individually. The most important insight into the dynamics of economic modernization remained inaccessible to them: money created by lending on property is the universal means of world improvement. They are all the blinder to the fact that for the meantime, only the modern tax state, the anonymous hyper-billionaire, can act as a general world-improver, naturally in alliance with the local meliorists - not only because of its traditional school power, but most of all thanks to its redistributive power, which took on unbelievable proportions in the course of the twentieth century. The current tax state, for its part, can only survive as long as it is based on a property economy whose actors put up no resistance when half of their total product is taken away, year after year, by the very visible hand of the national treasury for the sake of communal tasks. What the un-calm understands least of all is the simple fact that when government expenditures constitute almost 50 per cent of the gross national product, this fulfills the requirements of actually existing liberal-fiscal semi-socialism, regardless of what label is used to describe this situation - whether people call it the New Deal, 'social market economy' or 'neoliberalism'. What the system lacks for total perfection is a homogeneous worldwide tax sphere and the long-overdue propertization of the impoverished world.

Areli kicked her dragon upwards and followed Aquilina and Fides through the lanterns and rock, out into clean mountain air. Aquilina had picked only the two, whom she said were hands down the greatest riders on the team, to ride with her. Areli didn’t know how to respond to that, except to turn red and cover her mouth with surprise. And now she was flying, not in an arena, but in free air, a privilege given to only the best professional riders. They flew over the city. The buildings looked like small blocks and the carriages looked like gold-colored ants roaming about. The sweep of the cool air was refreshing against Areli’s face. They flew over the trees leading to Emperor Abhiraja’s forest, which looked like nothing but a tossed salad from their view. And then they were over Emperor Abhiraja’s trees. Back at the boarding facility, before they left, Aquilina told them there was only one rule if they were to ride with her . . . keep up. Aquilina veered down towards the trees. Fides took after her and Areli followed. Areli sat hard into her seat and pulled the reins to her right. She leaned her leg into Kaia’s left shoulder and held on tight to the saddle horn. Kaia leaned her body and they knifed through the air. Areli shifted her legs and hands, chasing after Fides and Aquilina. They slipped through a tiny gap in the tops of the massive trees. Areli saw the red of Fidelja’s dragon ahead of her, and then it disappeared. She saw shades of brown and green coming up fast. Areli pulled on the reins, keeping her hands light, and sunk into the seat, leveling off their descent into the forest. She immediately started kicking Kaia forward as she saw Fides dragon’s tail wrap past a tree. Areli commanded Kaia in a way she never had before. Using every skill she ever learned, she cued Kaia right, then left, then into a roll to get through two narrowly placed trees, and then up, always following the blur of red in front of her. They came out above the trees again and then they swooped back down. This time it was into the Columns of Abhi. They curved around the large rock structures like a knife full of butter caressing a freshly baked roll. Areli didn’t think she could feel this exhilarated. But there was something utterly breathtaking about flying without walls, without spectators or trainers. This was true freedom, according to Areli. Freedom from homework, freedom from fears, freedom from worries. This was the place where she could be . . . just to be.

Bobby ran up on the deck and skidded to a stop in front of them. “It’s time for the Kowalski Fourth of July Football Game of Doom!” Cat laughed and pushed herself out of her seat. “We’ll talk about this some other time, Emma. Go have fun.” “I’m not sure I want to play football. Especially if there’s doom involved,” she said, but Bobby grabbed her hand and dragged her off the deck. They were divvied up into teams roughly by size, each with an assortment of men, women and children. Emma was on Sean’s team, which was good. She’d just hide behind him, because the only thing she knew about football was that it involved a lot of hitting. It only took a few plays to see that the Kowalskis played by their own rules and the few they had were fluid. Mostly they served to ensure the smaller kids didn’t get plowed over, victims of the adults’ competitive streak. Five minutes into the game, Emma somehow ended up with the ball. She squealed and looked around for somebody—anybody—to hand it off to, but there was nobody. Well, there was Danny, but he was doubled over in laughter. “Run, Emma,” Lisa yelled. She ran in the direction her friend was frantically waving her hand, but she only went a few feet before two very strong arms wrapped around her waist and then she was falling. Luckily, she landed on a body instead of the ground. “I love football,” Mitch said, grinning up at her. Emma grimaced and managed to get one of her knees on solid ground so she could push herself to her feet. He was quicker and freed himself to stand and help her up. “They should give you the ball more often,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling and the grin so like Sean’s—but not quite as naughty—in full force. “Hands off my girl,” Sean told him, pulling on Emma’s elbow. “You should do a better job of blocking for her. “Let’s go,” Brian shouted. The very next play, Mitch intercepted Mike’s pass to Evan and turned to run toward the other end zone. He was halfway there when Sean took him down hard. They hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud that made Emma wince, and came up pushing and shoving. When Sean drew back his arm to throw the first punch, Mary blew her whistle from the sidelines. “Boys! Enough!” Instead of heading straight for the huddle, Sean walked to Emma and pulled her into his arms for a hard, almost punishing caveman kiss that made her skin sizzle and her knees go wobbly. Then he glared at his brother for a few long seconds and went back to his team, leaving Emma standing there breathless and discombobulated.

I long for the Church to be more truly itself, and for me this involves changing its stance on war, sex, investment and many other difficult matters. I believe in all conscience that my questions and my disagreements are all of God. Yet I must also learn to live in and attend to the reality of the Church as it is, to do the prosaic things that can be and must be done now and to work at my relations now with the people who will not listen to me or those like me—because what God asks of me is not to live in the ideal future but to live with honesty and attentiveness in the present, i.e., to be at home. "What if the project in question is myself, and not some larger social question such as war? At the end of the day, it is the central concern for most of us. We long to change and to grow, and we are rightly suspicious of those who are pleased with the way they are and cannot seem to conceive of changing any further. Yet the torture of trying to push away and overcome what we currently are or have been, the bitter self-contempt of knowing what we lack, the postponement of joy and peace because we cannot love ourselves now—these are not the building blocks for effective change. We constantly try to start from somewhere other than where we are. Truthful living involves being at home with ourselves, not complacently but patiently, recognizing that what we are today, at this moment, is sufficiently loved and valued by God to be the material with which he will work, and that the longed-for transformation will not come by refusing the love and the value that is simply there in the present moment. "So we come back, by a longish detour, to the point to which Mark's narrative brought us: the contemplative enterprise of being where we are and refusing the lure of a fantasized future more compliant to our will, more satisfying in the image of ourselves that it permits. Living in the truth, in the sense in which John's Gospel gives it, involves the same sober attention to what is there—to the body, the chair, the floor, the voice we hear, the face we see—with all the unsatisfactoriness that this brings. Yet this is what it means to live in that kingdom where Jesus rules, the kingdom that has no frontiers to be defended. Our immersion in the present moment which is God's delivers the world to us—and that world is not the perfect and fully achieved thing we might imagine, but the divided and difficult world we actually inhabit. Only, by the grace of this living in the truth, we are able to say to it at least an echo of the 'yes' that God says, to accept as God accepts.

Sam was about to travel to Asia with her boyfriend and she was fretting about what her backers would think if she released some of her new songs while she was 'on vacation'. She was worried that posting pictures of herself sipping a Mai Tai was going to make her look like an asshole. What does it matter? I asked her, where you are whether you're drinking a coffee, a Mai Tai or a bottle of water? I mean, aren't they paying for your songs so that you can... live? Doesn't living include wandering and collecting emotions and drinking a Mai Tai, not just sitting in a room writing songs without ever leaving the house? I told Sam about another songwriter friend of mine, Kim Boekbinder, who runs her own direct support website through which her fans pay her monthly at levels from $5 to $1,000. She also has a running online wishlist of musical gear and costumes kindof like a wedding registry, to which her fans can contribute money anytime they want. Kim had told me a few days before that she doesn't mind charging her backers during what she calls her 'staring at the wall time'. She thinks this is essential before she can write a new batch of songs. And her fans don't complain, they trust her process. These are new forms of patronage, there are no rules and it's messy, the artists and the patrons they are making the rules as they go along, but whether these artists are using crowdfunding (which is basically, front me some money so I can make a thing) or subscription services (which is more like pay me some money every month so that I can make things) or Patreon, which is like pay per piece of content pledge service (that basically means pay me some money every time I make a thing). It doesn't matter, the fundamental building block of all of these relationships boils down to the same simple thing: trust. If you're asking your fans to support you, the artist, it shouldn't matter what your choices are, as long as you're delivering your side of the bargain. You may be spending the money on guitar picks, Mai Tais, baby formula, college loans, gas for the car or coffee to fuel your all-night writing sessions. As long as art is coming out the other side, and you're making your patrons happy, the money you need to live (and need to live is hard to define) is almost indistinguishable from the money you need to make art. ... (6:06:57) ... When she posts a photo of herself in a vintage dress that she just bought, no one scolds her for spending money on something other than effects pedals. It's not like her fan's money is an allowance with nosy and critical strings attached, it's a gift in the form of money in exchange for her gift, in the form of music. The relative values are... messy. But if we accept the messiness we're all okay. If Beck needs to moisturize his cuticles with truffle oil in order to play guitar tracks on his crowdfunded record, I don't care that the money I fronted him isn't going towards two turntables or a microphone; just as long as the art gets made, I get the album and Beck doesn't die in the process.