Button Button Important Quotes

Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?

You are meant to lose the people you love. How else would you know how important they are to you?

You know what i like about buttons? They're very small things that hold bigger things together. Awfully important, buttons - little but strong.

My grandmother thinks it's really funny to put all sorts of things in our - my lunch. I never know what'll be inside: e.e. cummings, flower petals, a handful of buttons. She seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the brown bag." - Lennie "Or maybe she thinks other forms of nourishment are more important." - Joe

Being a successful couple was learning what you were willing to compromise on, and what you weren't; learning when to stand your ground, and when to give it up; what was truly important enough to fight over, and what was just you being pissy. You learned each other's hot buttons, the places that hurt, or angered, when you pressed them. Love makes you learn where all the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them, or how to set them off.

If we were given one word of information in our entire history, how we'd treasure it! how we'd pore over ever syllable, divining it's meaning, arguing its importance; how we'd examine it and wring every lesson we could from it. Yet today we have trillions of words, tidal waves of information and the smallest detail of every action our government and businesses take is easily available to us at the touch of a button. And yet...we ignore it, and learn nothing from it. One day we'll die of voluntary ignorance

When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause button on human beings they start,” argues my friend and teacher Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, which advises global businesses on ethics and leadership. “You start to reflect, you start to rethink your assumptions, you start to reimagine what is possible and, most importantly, you start to reconnect with

She's kind of funny looking. Her face is out of balance--broad forehead, button nose, freckled cheeks, and pointy ears. A slammed-together, rough sort of face you can't ignore. Still, the whole package isn't so bad. For all I know maybe she's not so wild about her own looks, but she seems comfortable with who she is, and that's the important thing.

But then again, didn't all marriages carry thousands of hurts? Didn't husbands and wives injure each other all the time, leaving wounds both big and small, with snapped words or forgotten anniversaries or emotional buttons deliberately pushed? But thousands of kindnesses existed in marriages, too. The important thing was that the kindnesses triumphed over the hurts.

When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that “this is it” Right now is my life. The question is, What is my relationship to it going to be? Does my life just automatically “happen” to me? Am I a total prisoner of my circumstances or my obligations, of my body or my illness, or of my history? Do I become hostile or defensive or depressed if certain buttons get pushed, happy if other buttons are pushed, and frightened if something else happens? What are my choices? Do I have any options? We will be looking into these questions more deeply when we take up the subject of our reactions to stress and how our emotions affect our health. For now the important point is to grasp the value of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the conduct of our daily lives. Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening?

She pushed the button and like a miracle her head filled with the sound of Jerry Trupiano’s voice… and more importantly, with the sounds of Fenway Park. She was sitting out here in the darkening, drippy woods, lost and alone, but she could hear thirty thousand people. It was a miracle.

If a man had a little button sewn on the inner pocket of his coat 'on principle' his otherwise unimportant and quite serviceable action would become charged with importance--it is not improbable that it would result in the formation of a society.

Merrin began buttoning up the cassock. “Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon.” The demon!

Earth Citizens recognize themselves as members of a planetary community, instead of as members of a single nation, religion, or organization. And, most importantly, they live that awareness.

One of the most influential imports that Europeans brought back from the crusades was the humble button. This transformed women’s fashion as clothes no longer had to be loose enough to be pulled over their heads. Fashionable women were able to emphasize their figures, combining tight corsetry with long, flowing skirts and sleeves. Femininity, of course, was also a weapon that could be used to control men, and the power of noblewomen in the game of courtly chivalry was greater than that of any man. The

This is the trouble with internet research, in my experience. The proportion of what’s useful to what’s dross dwindles very quickly, and suddenly it’s like searching for something dropped down the back of a sofa and coming up with handfuls of old coins, buttons, fluff, and sucked sweets. What’s important is to ask the right question, and

The decisions we make are so important because they will quickly alter your path towards the future destination, and once they are made, there are no start over buttons.

A button! What’s a button, eh? To a bachelor, my dear friend, a button is an important thing. An entire world.

To move away from all illusion that our children are maliciously intent on triggering us is an important step on the path of awakening. When we dare to let go of the mainstream idea that they push our buttons on purpose, we awaken to the true extent of our own immaturity. Without having them to blame on any level, we are now forced to confront our inner lack and discover the reasons why it exists.

You know what I like about buttons?” he said, taking the button from Constance and gazing at it admiringly. “They’re very small things that hold bigger things together. Awfully important, buttons — little but strong.

...With a little help from him, she finally had his belt unbuckled and the buttons of his 501s undone. A moment later she learned two important facts about Xander. For one thing, he didn't wear underwear. And for another, he had an absolutely perfect cock.

Kerr found that a spinning black hole would not collapse into a pointlike star, as Schwarzschild assumed, but would collapse into a spinning ring. Anyone unfortunate enough to hit the ring would perish; but someone falling into the ring would not die, but would actually fall through. But instead of winding up on the other side of the ring, he or she would pass through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and wind up in another universe. In other words, the spinning black hole is the rim of Alice's Looking Glass. If he or she were to move around the spinning ring a second time, he or she would enter yet another universe. In fact, repeated entry into the spinning ring would put a person in different parallel universes, much like hitting the "up" button on an elevator. In principle, there could be an infinite number of universes, each stacked on top of each other. "Pass through this magic ring and-presto!-you're in a completely different universe where radius and mass are negative!" Kerr wrote. There is an important catch, however. Black holes are examples of "nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out through the event horizon.

In the economic sphere too, the ability to hold a hammer or press a button is becoming less valuable than before. In the past, there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become humanlike any time soon. In particular, it doesn’t seem that computers are about to gain consciousness, and to start experiencing emotions and sensations. Over the last decades there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their value, because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Until today, high intelligence always went hand in hand with a developed consciousness. Only conscious beings could perform tasks that required a lot of intelligence, such as playing chess, driving cars, diagnosing diseases or identifying terrorists. However, we are now developing new types of non-conscious intelligence that can perform such tasks far better than humans. For all these tasks are based on pattern recognition, and non-conscious algorithms may soon excel human consciousness in recognising patterns. This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness? As long as they went hand in hand, debating their relative value was just a pastime for philosophers. But in the twenty-first century, this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. And it is sobering to realise that, at least for armies and corporations, the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional.

Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?” “No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork.” “Oh. Well, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. What kind of paperwork?” He smiled. “Nothing important.” Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He’d purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact. Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He’d rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor. He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century. I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few “He’s not for me’s.” The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watching him walk around like a regular person was that it tightened my resolve. Yes. It would be hard because he was so unbelievably gorgeous, but it was now even more obvious to me that we didn’t belong together. As he joined us at the elevator, I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “Figures. The guy is a tiger for three hundred and fifty years and emerges from his curse with expensive taste and keen fashion sense too. Incredible!” Mr. Kadam asked, “What was that, Miss Kelsey?” “Nothing.” Ren raised an eyebrow and smirked. He probably heard me. Stupid tiger hearing. The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and moved to the corner hoping to keep Mr. Kadam between the two of us, but unfortunately, Mr. Kadam wasn’t receiving the silent thoughts I was projecting furiously toward him and remained by the elevator buttons. Ren moved next to me and stood too close. He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a knowing smile. We rode down the elevator in silence. When the doors opened, he stopped me, took the backpack off my shoulder, and threw it over his, leaving me with nothing to carry. He walked ahead next to Mr. Kadam while I trialed along slowly behind, keeping distance between us and a wary eye on his tall frame.

A little inventor, that's it!...of a little gimmick!...just a little gimmick that's all!...I don't fling out messages to the world!...not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth!...I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas!...I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers!...

Once upon a time," said the Kiritsugu, "there were people who dropped a U-235 fission bomb, on a place called Hiroshima. They killed perhaps seventy thousand people, and ended a war. And if the good and decent officer who pressed that button had needed to walk up to a man, a woman, a child, and slit their throats one at a time, he would have broken long before he killed seventy thousand people." Someone made a choking noise, as if trying to cough out something that had suddenly lodged deep in their throat. "But pressing a button is different," the Kiritsugu said. "You don't see the results, then. Stabbing someone with a knife has an impact on you. The first time, anyway. Shooting someone with a gun is easier. Being a few meters further away makes a surprising difference. Only needing to pull a trigger changes it a lot. As for pressing a button on a spaceship - that's the easiest of all. Then the part about 'fifteen billion' just gets flushed away. And more importantly - you think it was the right thing to do. The noble, the moral, the honorable thing to do. For the safety of your tribe. You're proud of it -

But they had been down on all fours naked, not touching except their lips right down there on the floor where the tie is pointing to, on all fours like (uh huh, go on, say it) like dogs. Nibbling at each other, not even touching, not even looking at each other, just their lips, and when I opened the door they didn't even look for a minute and I thought the reason they are not looking up is because they are not doing that. So it's all right. I am just standing here. They are not doing that. I am just standing here and seeing it, but they are not really doing it. But then they did look up. Or you did. You did, Jude. ... And I did not know how to move my feet or fix my eyes or what. I just stood there seeing it and smiling, because maybe there was some explanation, something important that I did not know about that would have made it all right. I waited for Sula to look up at me any minute and say one of those lovely college words like aesthetic or rapport, which I never understood but which I loved because they sounded so comfortable and firm. And finally you just got up and started putting clothes on and your privates were hanging down, so soft, and you buckled your pants but forgot to button the fly and she was sitting on the bed not even bothering to put on her clothes because actually she didn't need to because somehow she didn't look naked to me, only you did. Her chin was in her hand and she sat like a visitor from out of town waiting for the hosts to get some quarreling done and over with so the card game could continue and me wanting her to leave so I could tell you privately that you had forgotten to button your fly because I didn't want to say it in front of her, Jude. And even when you began to talk, I couldn't hear because I was worried about you not knowing that your fly was open ... Remember how big that bedroom was, Jude? How when we moved here we said, Well, at least we got us a real big bedroom, but it was small then, Jude, and so shambly and maybe it was that way all along but it would have been better if I had gotten all the dust out from under the bed because I was ashamed of it in that small room. And you walked past me saying, "I'll be back for my things." And you did but you left your tie.

In 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the Third World Power Conference in Washington, D.C., on the importance of engineering in solving the nation’s social problems. At the conclusion of his speech, he pressed a button that stirred the turbines in the Boulder Dam to “creative activity.” “Boulder Dam,” said the president as his right index finger came down, “I call you to life!

By learning to allow different types of discomfort to simply stay in the room with you, without your scrambling for a button to push (real or metaphorical), you make discomfort matter less. The pool of things you’re afraid of shrinks. It becomes a lot less important to control circumstances, because you know you can handle moments of uncertainty or awkwardness or disappointment without an escape plan.

We now have many statistical software packages. Their power is incredible, but the pioneers of statistical inference would have mixed feelings, for they always insisted that people think before using a routine. In the old days routines took endless hours to apply, so one had to spend a lot of time thinking in order to justify using a routine. Now one enters data and presses a button. One result is that people seem to be cowed into not asking silly questions, such as: What hypothesis are you testing? What distribution is it that you say is not normal? What population are you talking about? Where did this base rate come from? Most important of all: Whose judgments do you use to calibrate scores on your questionnaires? Are those judgments generally agreed to by the qualified experts in the entire community?

We are not ‘censored’ in the traditional way in the United States: writers are not beaten or killed because of their words, and no Ministry of Truth enforces an official version of what can be printed and thought. But in this culture of images, we are censoring ourselves. That may be more insidious and long-lasting. What I mean is that we disparage long-term complexity, and extol superficiality. We ignore reading, and lavish time on images. To read, in my mind, is to consider and to think. To see an image is to react. What happens when we start believing the world and what is important in it are only these reactions and prejudices? What have you become when the most expected of you is simply to press a ‘Like’ button? What kind of gulag is it when its inhabitants are too stupid to understand they are its prisoners?

But the biggest news that month was the departure from Apple, yet again, of its cofounder, Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was then quietly working as a midlevel engineer in the Apple II division, serving as a humble mascot of the roots of the company and staying as far away from management and corporate politics as he could. He felt, with justification, that Jobs was not appreciative of the Apple II, which remained the cash cow of the company and accounted for 70% of its sales at Christmas 1984. “People in the Apple II group were being treated as very unimportant by the rest of the company,” he later said. “This was despite the fact that the Apple II was by far the largest-selling product in our company for ages, and would be for years to come.” He even roused himself to do something out of character; he picked up the phone one day and called Sculley, berating him for lavishing so much attention on Jobs and the Macintosh division. Frustrated, Wozniak decided to leave quietly to start a new company that would make a universal remote control device he had invented. It would control your television, stereo, and other electronic devices with a simple set of buttons that you could easily program. He informed the head of engineering at the Apple II division, but he didn’t feel he was important enough to go out of channels and tell Jobs or Markkula. So Jobs first heard about it when the news leaked in the Wall Street Journal. In his earnest way, Wozniak had openly answered the reporter’s questions when he called. Yes, he said, he felt that Apple had been giving short shrift to the Apple II division. “Apple’s direction has been horrendously wrong for five years,” he said.

This is something every girl should know in addition to sewing on a button and applying mascara correctly. Before I know it, I'm asking her, 'If you had a daughter what would you tell her?' Mrs. Dupree smiles. 'Oh let me think.' she says. 'Well, I would say that every time you buy a new blouse or some wrinkle cream to make you look good, go and buy a book right away. It's just as important to keep your mind beautiful, don't you think?

Effie shows up a bit early to take us down because last year, even though we were on time, we were the last two tributes to show up. But Haymitch tells her he doesn’t want her taking us down to the gym. None of the other victors will be showing up with a babysitter, and being the youngest, it’s even more important we look self-reliant. So she has to satisfy herself with taking us to the elevator, fussing over our hair, and pushing the button for us.

Inside, Harrison came face to face with a small man wearing immense plus fours. “Looking for someone?” asked the small man. “Yes, the fire chief.” “Who’s he?” By now prepared for this sort of thing, Harrison spoke as one would to a child. “See here, Mister, this is a fire-fighting outfit. Somebody bosses it. Somebody organizes the whole affair, fills forms, presses buttons, shouts orders, recommends promotions, kicks the shiftless, grabs all the credit, transfers all the blame and generally lords it around. He’s the most important man in the bunch and everybody knows it.” His forefinger tapped imperatively on the other’s chest. “And he is the fellow I’m going to talk to if it’s the last thing I do.” “Nobody is more important than anyone else. How can he be? I think you’re crazy.” “You’re welcome to think what you please but I am telling you that—.” A shrill bell clamoured, cutting off his sentence.

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant show of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, they accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning to the end.

I have to know,” he murmured. Know? Know what? Before she could ask, he moved his right hand across her hip to her belly, then slipped it down between her legs. His fingers slipped across slick, swollen flesh. They both sucked in a breath. He pulled his hand free and carefully zipped and buttoned her jeans. About fourteen thousand questions flashed through her brain, but she settled for the most important one. “What did you have to know?” “That you wanted it, too.

I met him last night, and as if hypnotized, I’d followed him into his private jet. Now I stood inside a European-inspired estate in Madison, Wisconsin. I had gone home with a stranger, and I didn’t even know his name. He had refused to tell me, saying it wasn’t important. Not yet. “You'll be safe here.” He picked up what looked like a remote control from an antique wood mantelpiece and pressed a button. More bright light flooded the room. Beyond the glass wall, I caught a furious sparkle. A lake.

So I thought it might be interesting, for the length of a book, to consider the ordinary things in life, to notice them for once and treat them as if they were important, too. Looking around my house, I was startled and somewhat appalled to realize how little I knew about the domestic world around me. Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, playing idly with the salt and pepper shakers, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea why, out of all the spices in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to those two. Why not pepper and cardamom, say, or salt and cinnamon? And why do forks have four tines and not three or five? There must be reasons for these things. Dressing, I wondered why all my suit jackets have a row of pointless buttons on every sleeve. I heard a reference on the radio to someone paying for room and board, and realized that when people talk about room and board, I have no idea what the board is that they are talking about. Suddenly the house seemed a place of mystery to me.

This raises an important issue: If their speech is sometimes peculiar, why are psychopaths so believable, so capable of deceiving and manipulating us? Why do we fail to pick up the inconsistencies in what they say? The short answer is, it is difficult to penetrate their mask of normalcy: The oddities in their speech are often too subtle for the casual observer to detect, and they put on a good show. We are sucked in not by what they say but by how they say it and by the emotional buttons they push while saying it.

During the coming days, the wealth of America kept astonishing me. The television had programming from morning till night. I had never been in an elevator before and when I pressed a button in the elevator and the elevator “started moving, I felt powerful that it had to obey me. In our shiny brass mailbox in the lobby, we received ads on colored paper. In India colored paper could be sold to the recycler for more money than newsprint. The sliding glass doors of our apartment building would open when we approached. Each time this happened, I felt that we had been mistaken for somebody important.

All right; let's go!" Trot decided. "But where's Button-Bright?" Just at this important moment Button-Bright was lost again, and they all scattered in search of him. He had been standing beside them just a few minutes before, but his friends had an exciting hunt for him before they finally discovered the boy seated among the members of the band, beating the end of the bass drum with the bone of a turkey-leg that he had taken from the table in the banquet room. "Hello, Trot," he said, looking up at the little girl when she found him. "This is the first chance I ever had to pound a drum with a reg'lar drum stick. And I ate all the meat off the bone myself.

There are these open spaces in life called "pauses" and it is most unfortunate how the majority of people do not bother themselves with the pauses of life in pursuit of their desire to fill every moment they experience WITH THEMSELVES. You need to take a few steps back and not feel the constant need to pour yourself into every space that life offers. The pauses are equally--if not more-- important as the active participations that you make. When we kiss, we remove a part of ourselves from the experience by closing our eyes; this removes the sense of sight, it allows for an open space for a pause to let life flow through it. When we make love, there are the pauses, the nothings, the gazing into the eyes; the removal of oneself from the experience. Why? Because we instinctively know that the best parts of life are not fully had in the absence of nothingness. Nothingness is vital, nothingness is essential.

We need to have a serious discussion about your leadership skills, Miss Foster,” Bronte’s sharp voice barked the next morning, jolting Sophie out of the dazed, half-sleepy state she’d been lingering in since sunrise. “And perhaps also about your strange choices for sleeping location.” Some part of her brain had been telling her that she needed to get up and get ready for a big day of super-important stuff. The other part had decided that all of that stuff could wait a tiny bit longer. And then a tiny bit longer after that. And a little more after that. As if she’d found some sort of strange mental snooze button—which she was happy to keep hitting as long as it let her stay surrounded by baby alicorns and Calla’s soothing songs instead of having to face reality. And now her entire brain was telling her that the best solution to her current situation was to pull her blankets over her head and wait for Bronte to go away.

Booby traps or fail-safes Booby traps or fail-safes are dangerous internal events that are triggered to happen if the survivor investigates too much of his or her own training, and/or talks about or becomes aware of memories he or she (the front person) is not supposed to know. The effects of booby traps include such things as suicide attempts, serious self-harm, or falling into terrible depression. It is important to know that the overwhelming emotions experienced when a booby trap is set off actually belong to real, specific memories. A booby trap can be set off without the knowledge of the main outside personality. Because of such traps, it is very important to go very slowly in discovering what happened, if you are a survivor of this kind of abuse. Even though parts of you are involved in setting off the booby traps, they may not know the effects of what they are doing (pushing buttons, turning switches, and so forth), and it might be difficult to anticipate what will happen.

A lady told me about one of her husband’s relatives who was very opinionated. He was always making these cutting, demeaning remarks about her. This couple hadn’t been married that long. Every time they went to family get-togethers, this relative would say something to offend her. She would get all upset and it would ruin the day. She reached the point where she refused to even go to family events. Finally, she told her husband, “You’ve got to do something about that man. He’s your relative.” She was expecting her husband to say, “You’re right, honey. He shouldn’t talk to you like that. I will set him straight.” But the husband did just the opposite. He said, “Honey, I love you but I cannot control him. He has every right to have his opinion. He can say what he wants to, but you have every right to not get offended.” At first she couldn’t understand why her husband wouldn’t really stick up for her. Time and time again she would become upset. If this relative was in one room she would go to another. If he went outside she would make sure she stayed inside. She was always focused on avoiding this man. One day she realized she was giving away her power. It was like a light turned on in her mind. She was allowing one person with issues to keep her from becoming who she was meant to be. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. When you say, “You make me so mad,” what you’re really doing is admitting that you’re giving away your power. As long as that person knows they can push this button and you’ll respond this way, you are giving them exactly what they want. When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing them to control you. People have a right to say what they want, to do what they want, as long as it’s legal. But we have a right to not get offended. We have a right to overlook it. But when we get upset and go around angry, we change. What’s happening is we’re putting too much importance on what they think about us. What they say about you does not define who you are. Their opinion of you does not determine your self-worth. Let that bounce off of you like water off of a duck’s back. They have every right to have their opinion, and you have every right to ignore it.

I still refused to believe him and started walking towards the exit area. But Sam was faster. He strode behind me, grabbed me and whirled me around. He pointed a finger towards me and said, “Don’t you dare walk on me like that. I have had enough of your non sense for last one month. Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?” he hissed. I cocked my head. Craned my neck to meet his eyes, I purred like a kitten and started to speak. But suddenly a guard appeared out of nowhere and said, “I am really sorry to bother you but fighting is not allowed in the lobby. It distracts people like us from more important things you know. However if you want to continue I suggest you go to the north-east corner of the upper basement. We don’t have a CC Camera there.” I had never been more humiliated. My ears burnt hot. I murmured a note of thanks and boarded the elevator. Sam followed suit. He looked quite normal and amused. How could he be so normal after being whacked out by a security guard from his own office lobby? In fact, I thought, he was suppressing a grin. Was he insane? Sulking with mute anger I pressed the UB button in the elevator.

I stood right in this house, in that room," Aunt Willie interrupted. She pointed toward the front bedroom. "And I promised your mother, Sara, that I would look after Charlie all my life. I promised your mother nothing would ever happen to Charlie as long as there was breath in my body, and now look. Look! Where is this boy I'm taking such good care of?" She threw her hands into the air. "Vanished without a trace, that's where." Aunt Willie, you can't watch him every minute." Why not? Why can't I? What have I got more important in my life than looking after that boy? Only one thing more important than Charlie. Only one thing--that devil television there." Aunt Willie--" Oh, yes, that devil television. I was sitting right in that chair last night and he wanted me to sew on one button for him but I was too busy with the television. I'll tell you what I should have told your mother six years ago. I should have told her, "Sure, I'll be glad to look after Charlie except when there's something good on television. I'll be glad to watch him in my spare time.' My tongue should fall out on the floor for promising to look after your brother and not doing it.

Drawing in a lung-packing breath, I press the start button. And then I feel it. It saturates the water around me, thrumming without rhythm. The pulse. Someone is close. Someone I don't recognize. Slowly, I tiptoe backward, careful not to splash or slosh. After a few seconds, tiptoeing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If I can sense them, they can sense me. The pulse is getting stronger. They're heading straight toward me. Fast. Leaving caution, etiquette, and Dad's stopwatch behind, I scramble like a lunatic to shallower water. Suddenly, Galen's order to stay on dry land doesn't seem so unreasonable. What was I thinking? The little I know about Syrena is what we crammed into the last twenty-four hours at his house. They have a social structure like humans. Government, laws, family, friendship. Do they have outcasts, too? The same way humans have rapists and serial killers? If so, I've just done the human equivalent of wandering into a dark parking lot alone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Gasping into a wave lets me know my lungs aren't prepped for water just yet. Sputtering and coughing slows me down a little, but the shore is close, and I've got my eye on a stick thicker than my arm just beyond the wet sand. That it will break like a twig over the head of any Syrena is not important.

Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly. People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along, when it had only been luck and muddle. A pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear Jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it. Hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches. Bl*wj*bs from women of stunning beauty. Restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right. The lamb or duck in tureen sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy gleaming in your manicured hand below the broad cloth cuff and mother of pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith. But the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo. Though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of 12-year-old scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the hair cuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for, and always had paid for. Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth, cloth that was itself the color of money, could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts. But on the table with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there, it had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica. [M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button. Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. “[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground. [V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. [W]all screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. [T]he world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that! There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction…. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary “Fortran". [M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. [T]he most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! in our a society of enforced leisure.

The last refuge of the Self, perhaps, is “physical continuity.” Despite the body’s mercurial nature, it feels like a badge of identity we have carried since the time of our earliest childhood memories. A thought experiment dreamed up in the 1980s by British philosopher Derek Parfit illustrates how important—yet deceiving—this sense of physical continuity is to us.15 He invites us to imagine a future in which the limitations of conventional space travel—of transporting the frail human body to another planet at relatively slow speeds—have been solved by beaming radio waves encoding all the data needed to assemble the passenger to their chosen destination. You step into a machine resembling a photo booth, called a teletransporter, which logs every atom in your body then sends the information at the speed of light to a replicator on Mars, say. This rebuilds your body atom by atom using local stocks of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and so on. Unfortunately, the high energies needed to scan your body with the required precision vaporize it—but that’s okay because the replicator on Mars faithfully reproduces the structure of your brain nerve by nerve, synapse by synapse. You step into the teletransporter, press the green button, and an instant later materialize on Mars and can continue your existence where you left off. The person who steps out of the machine at the other end not only looks just like you, but etched into his or her brain are all your personality traits and memories, right down to the memory of eating breakfast that morning and your last thought before you pressed the green button. If you are a fan of Star Trek, you may be perfectly happy to use this new mode of space travel, since this is more or less what the USS Enterprise’s transporter does when it beams its crew down to alien planets and back up again. But now Parfit asks us to imagine that a few years after you first use the teletransporter comes the announcement that it has been upgraded in such a way that your original body can be scanned without destroying it. You decide to give it a go. You pay the fare, step into the booth, and press the button. Nothing seems to happen, apart from a slight tingling sensation, but you wait patiently and sure enough, forty-five minutes later, an image of your new self pops up on the video link and you spend the next few minutes having a surreal conversation with yourself on Mars. Then comes some bad news. A technician cheerfully informs you that there have been some teething problems with the upgraded teletransporter. The scanning process has irreparably damaged your internal organs, so whereas your replica on Mars is absolutely fine and will carry on your life where you left off, this body here on Earth will die within a few hours. Would you care to accompany her to the mortuary? Now how do you feel? There is no difference in outcome between this scenario and what happened in the old scanner—there will still be one surviving “you”—but now it somehow feels as though it’s the real you facing the horror of imminent annihilation. Parfit nevertheless uses this thought experiment to argue that the only criterion that can rationally be used to judge whether a person has survived is not the physical continuity of a body but “psychological continuity”—having the same memories and personality traits as the most recent version of yourself. Buddhists

You need more than just "positive thinking" to harness control of your body and your life. It is important for our health and well-being to shift our mind's energy toward positive, life generating thoughts and eliminate ever-present, energy-draining and debilitating negative thoughts. But, and I mean that in the biggest sense of "BUT", the mere thinking of positive thoughts will not necessarily have any impact on our lives at all! In fact, sometimes people who "flunk" positive thinking become more debilitated because now they think their situation is hopeless - they believe they have exhausted all mind and body remedies. What those positive-thinking dropouts haven't understood is that the seemingly "separate" subdivisions of the mind, the conscious and the subconscious, are interdependent. The conscious or spirit - is the creative mind. It can see into the future, review the past, or disconnect from the present moment as it solves problems in our head. In its creative capacity, the conscious mind holds our wishes, desires, and aspirations for our lives. It is the mind that conjures up our "positive thoughts". In contrast, the subconscious mind is primarily a repository of stimulus-response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is fundamentally habitual; it will play the same behavioral responses to life's signals over and over again, much to our chagrin. How many times have you found yourself going ballistic over something trivial like an open toothpaste tube? You have been trained since childhood to carefully replace the cap. When you find the tube with its cap left off, your "buttons are pushed" and you automatically fly into rage. You've just experienced the simple stimulus-response of a behavior program stored in the subconscious mind.

But what should he wear? I thought about having him laid to rest in his uniform. But the truth is he hated wearing it. He really needed to be dressed in something he was comfortable in. And that wasn’t going to be in a suit, either: he hated being in a jacket and tie even more than in a uniform. Tie? Ha! I got a pair of his best pressed jeans. They had a nice crease in the pants leg, just like he liked. I found one of his plaid button-down shirts, another favorite. Kryptek, which produces tactical gear and apparel and was one of Chris’s favorite companies, had presented him with a big silver belt buckle that he loved. It was very cowboy, and in that way very much who Chris was. “You think I can pull this off?” he’d asked, showing me how it looked right after he got it. “Hell, yeah,” I told him. I made sure that was with him as well. But if there was any item of clothing that really touched deep into Chris’s soul, it was his cowboy boots. They were a reminder of who he was when he was young, and they were part of who he’d been since getting out of the military. He had a really nice pair of new boots that had been custom made. He hadn’t had a chance to wear them much, and I couldn’t decide whether to bury him in those or another pair that were well worn and very comfortable. I asked the funeral director for his opinion. “We usually don’t do shoes,” he said. It can be very difficult to get them onto the body. “But if it’s important to you, we can do it.” I thought about it. Was the idea of burying them with Chris irrational? The symbolism seemed important. But that could work the other way, too--they would surely be important to Bubba someday. Maybe I should save them for him. In the end, I decided to set them near Chris’s casket when his body was on view, then collect them later for our son. But Chris had the last word. Through a miscommunication--or maybe something else--they were put in the casket when he was laid to rest. So obviously that was the way it should have been.

I am assured that this is a true story. A man calls up his computer helpline complaining that the cupholder on his personal computer has snapped off, and he wants to know how to get it fixed. “Cupholder?” says the computer helpline person, puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m confused. Did you buy this cupholder at a computer show or receive it as a special promotion?” “No, it came as part of the standard equipment on my computer.” “But our computers don’t come with cupholders.” “Well, pardon me, friend, but they do,” says the man a little hotly. “I’m looking at mine right now. You push a button on the base of the unit and it slides right out.” The man, it transpired, had been using the CD drawer on his computer to hold his coffee cup. I bring this up here by way of introducing our topic this week: cupholders. Cupholders are taking over the world. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of cupholders in automotive circles these days. The New York Times recently ran a long article in which it tested a dozen family cars. It rated each of them for ten important features, among them engine size, trunk space, handling, quality of suspension, and, yes, number of cupholders. A car dealer acquaintance of ours tells us that they are one of the first things people remark on, ask about, or play with when they come to look at a car. People buy cars on the basis of cupholders. Nearly all car advertisements note the number of cupholders prominently in the text. Some cars, like the newest model of the Dodge Caravan, come with as many as seventeen cupholders. The largest Caravan holds seven passengers. Now you don’t have to be a nuclear physicist, or even wide awake, to work out that that is 2.43 cupholders per passenger. Why, you may reasonably wonder, would each passenger in a vehicle need 2.43 cupholders? Good question. Americans, it is true, consume positively staggering volumes of fluids. One of our local gas stations, I am reliably informed, sells a flavored confection called a Slurpee in containers up to 60 ounces in size. But even if every member of the family had a Slurpee and a personal bottle of

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Okay,let's do it," Robbie said, slapping his hands together as he stood. He stepped towards me with his arms outstreched and I tripped back. " What? No" " What? Yes," he said. He hit the rewind button and the tape zipped backward. He paused it right as the dance began. " You don't really expect me to ask Tama to dance with me without any practice. Even I'm not that stupid." I was suddenly very aware of my heartbeat. " There's no way I'm dancing with you." " You really know how to stroke a guy's ego," Robbie joked. "Come on. I'm not that repulsive." "You're not repulsive at all, it's just-" " Well, that's good to hear," Robbie said with a teasing smile. He was enjoying this. "it's just that I don't dance," I admitted. Never had. Not once. Not with a guy. I was a dance free-zone. " Well, neither do II mean, except on stage. But i've never danced like this, so we're even" he said. He hit "play". The music started and Robbie pulled me toward him by my wrist. he grabbed my hand, which was sweating, and held it, then put his other hand on my waist. My boobs pressed sgsinst his chest and I flinched, but Robbie didn't seem to notice. He was too busy consulting the TV screen. " Here goes nothing," he said. "Okay, it's a waltz, so one, two, three,,, one, two, three. Looks like a big step on one and two little steps on two and three. Got it?" "Sure." I so didn't have it. " Okay, go." He started to step in a circle, pulling me with him.I staggered along, mortified. " One, two, three. One two, three," he counted under his breath. My foot caught on his ankle. " Oops! Sorry." I was sweating like mad now, wishing I'd taken off my sweater, at least. " I got ya," he said, his grip tightiening on my hand. " K eep going." " One, two, three," I counted, staring down at our feet. He slammed one of his hip into one of the set chairs. " Ow. Dammit!" " Are you okay?"I asked."Yeah. Keep going," he said through his teeth. " One, two, three," I counted. I glanced up at the Tv screen, and the second I took my eyes off our feet, they got hopelessly tangled. I felt that instant swoop of gravity and shouted as we went down. The floor was not soft. " Oof?" " Ow. Okay, ow," Robbie said, grabbing his elbow. " That was not a good bone to fall on." He shook his arm out and I brought my knees up under my chin. " Maybe this wasn't the best idea." "No! No. We cannot give up that easily," Robbie said, standing. He took my hands and hoisted my up. " Maybe we just need to simplify it a little. " Actually i think its the twirl and the dip at the end that are really important," I theorized. It seemed like the most romantic part to me. " Okay, good." Robbie was phsyched by this development. "So maybe instead of going in circles, we just step side to side and do the twirl thing a couple of times. " Sounds like a plan," I said. " Let's do it." Robbie rewound the tape and we started from the beginning of the music. He took my hand again and held it up, then placed his other hand on my waist. This time we simply swayed back and forth. I was just getting used to the motion, when I realized that Robbie was staring at me.Big time." What?" i said, my skin prickling. " Trying to make eye contact," he said. " I hear eye contact while dancing is key." " Where would you hear something like that?" I said. " My grandmother. She's a wise woman," he said. His grandmother. How cute was that? His eyes were completely focused on my face. I tried to stare back into them, but I keep cracking up laughing. And he thought I'd make a good actress. " Wow. You suck at eye contact," he said. "Come on. Give me something to work here." I took a deep breath and steeled myself. It's just Robbie Delano, KJ. You can do this. And so I did. I looked right back into his eyes. And we continued to sway at to the music. His hand around mine. His hand on my waist. Our chests pressed together. I stared into his eyes, and soon i found that laughing was the last thing on my mind. " How's this working for you?

Our current world I submit that we currently live in a climax stage.21 We have a political model that is based on leading in the popular polls--a model where barely differentiated political leaders pretend to be different by steering voters away from important issues and onto subjects that, albeit emotional, are of little consequence to most people--a model where the election is won by the person with the best marketing, and where consistency and integrity are irrelevant. We have an economic model that is based on pulling resources out of the ground and mostly turning them into unnecessary products, getting people to buy the products by convincing them that they need them, then getting them to throw the products away because they're obsolete. This makes people buy the next model and bury the other one in the ground. The sole goal of this seemingly pointless exercise is to work faster and grow the gross domestic product, which measures the resource churn. We live in a world where the money necessary for our way of life comes out of a slit in the wall as long as we keep showing up for work, yet only experts understand the fiat-based money/credit system. We live in a world where food can be heated in a microwave oven at the touch of a button, yet only experts understand how this works. This goes for most of the other technology we use. All we know is that if we press this or that button, things magically happen. We are aware of large-scale problems, but most of us believe that we can't do anything about them. Instead, we believe in a mythical They who will find a solution, just like They have provided all this wonderful technology we surround ourselves with. We may be more technologically advanced as a group, and correctly but myopically hold up technology as our one indicator of "progress,"22 but in terms of individual understanding we have not come far, and once again live according to old concepts. In fact, we might have turned a full cycle from the last climax stage: The Dark Ages.

Back in the early days of his career as a frontier lawyer, Lincoln was engaged in an important trial. It was a really hot day. His opponent was arguing his case, and as he paced around he was starting to sweat, so the man removed his jacket and vest. The lawyer’s shirt buttoned in the back, not in the front, as was customary. Lincoln was quick to notice the discrepancy, and said to the jury – “Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don’t think you will at all be influenced by the gentleman’s pretended knowledge of law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front.” Lincoln’s story drew a laugh from the jury and the audience, and won him the case.

To technical people, these seem like minor oversights that take only a minute to fix. “Oops. I forgot to change the server name to the production server.” Or, “Oh, the new screens are there. I just forgot to link the button.” But to users who are already feeling a bit skittish about trying out the new technology, these first impressions are a big deal. To you, these events probably seem inconsequential, carrying no inherent meaning, but to them it sets off major alarm bells. It signals things like, “This technology must be a sloppy piece of crap,” and, “These IT people must be completely incompetent,” and, “They must think I’m not important enough for them to check their work.

We know that some of these items are likely more important than others, so we've structured the survey so that respondents prioritize the items (see figure 3-1): • Screen 1. The first survey screen asks respondents to choose their answers using the do more-do less scale. They select answers to each question and then click the "next" button. • Screen 2. After submitting those answers, a second screen lists every item that the respondents marked as do much more, do more, do less or do much less-those items where they indicated something should change.

In a world where anyone is one button away from being a self-declared expert, learning to think differently is more important than ever.

It’s all about the teachers. No, not your first or fourth grade teacher but the ones we meet every day, especially those people we really don’t like. The know-it-all, the criticizer, the “I’m smarter than you” person. Those people that seem to make us crazy the minute they walk into our physical, mental or emotional space. Talk about knowing which of our buttons to push, these people seem to be “experts.” But if we awaken to that, they can be our best teachers. If we are aware, we will step back from the immediate emotional reaction they evoke in us and look deeply at what is really going on within our own mind and body. Why is this person’s want, action or opinion of us so important? What long ago “button” are they pushing, and does it really apply to this moment, to where we are in our life now? With a little time, just like Barbara took in the above experience, we sit with the feelings and wait for the learning to come.

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Lazesoft Recover home addition: In this inter connected world of information and communication technology.  It is a must that we need to use different email address and passwords associated to those accounts separately. We give a lot of time and attention to manage them all. Because they are the easiest way to communication these days. Nowadays its very common that most of us do have more than one email address in order to use them indifferent purposes. You cannot use the same password so that all the accounts might not get hacked at the same time. That’s an important and not easy task to handle for many of us. In case of it comes to computers with Windows 8 operating system, we have to use different user accounts like Administrator account, guest account, and so on. So, here is also a race for memorizing the passwords associated to all those accounts. Occasionally, we face the problem accessing into our own personal user account and we cannot afford reinstalling the operating system in fear of losing all of our valuable data stored on behalf of that account. If you still can remember the Administrator account’s password then you have the option to reset the other accounts password through the Administrator account. But if the case is not the one we are expecting, I mean you have forgotten the administrative account’s password, and then the Lazesoft Recover home addition software is there to help you get rid of this unwanted problem. Here I am telling you step by step how to do that: Step 1: Download and burn the CD into your USB flash drive or thumb drive from   another computer. Step 2: Insert the flash drive into the target computer and restart the computer. Step 3: up on restart you will see a dialogue box in DOS window. From there, select Mini windows XP and press Enter key. Step 4: After the live CD boots into windows XP, then open the DB CD menu desktop item. Then go into programs menu bar, then select password and keys and then click on windows log on. After that click on NTPW edit. Step 5: you will see a new dialogue box from there you need to locate the path of SAM file. The SAM file will show all the user account available into the computer and from there you need to the account of which you want to reset the password. Step 6: Once you clicked on the account name a dialogue window will open up saying set your password. You can do two things there, a) you can leave the fields blank, therefore the windows will load directly or b) you can set a new password for the account. And then click on the save changes button. Step 7: exit the program and reboot the system removing the USB flash drive. And the windows will boot directly to the windows desktop. Windows password rescuer advance: The password rescuer advance is also a similar type of software for recovering you windows password. It also requires using a USB flash drive. At first you need to purchase and download the software from the internet page

Where is he?” I say. I have been waiting for hours to ask that question. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was chasing Tobias through Dauntless headquarters. No matter how fast I ran he was always just far enough ahead of me that I watched him disappear around corners, catching sight of a sleeve or the heel of a shoe. Jeanine gives me a puzzled look. But she is not puzzled. She is playing with me. “Tobias,” I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time--from anger. “Where is he? What are you doing to him?” “I see no reason to provide that information,” says Jeanine. “And since you are all out of leverage, I see no way for you to give me a reason, unless you would like to change the terms of our agreement.” I want to scream at her that of course, of course I would rather know about Tobias than about my Divergence, but I don’t. I can’t make hasty decisions. She will do what she intends to do to Tobias whether I know about it or not. It is more important that I fully understand what is happening to me. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my nose. I shake my hands. I sit down in the chair. “Interesting,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be running a faction and planning a war?” I say. “What are you doing here, running tests on a sixteen-year-old girl?” “You choose different ways of referring to yourself depending on what is convenient,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Sometimes you insist that you are not a little girl, and sometimes you insist that you are. What I am curious to know is: How do you really view yourself? As one or the other? As both? As neither?” I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. “I see no reason to provide that information.” I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit. “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” she says. “It does not become you.” “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” I repeat in my best imitation of her voice. “It does not become you.” “The serum,” Jeanine says, eyeing Peter. He steps forward and fumbles with a black box on the desk, taking out a syringe with a needle already attached to it. Peter starts toward me, and I hold out my hand. “Allow me,” I say. He looks at Jeanine for permission, and she says, “All right, then.” He hands me the syringe and I shove the needle into the side of my neck, pressing down on the plunger. Jeanine jabs one of the buttons with her finger, and everything goes dark.

Let these skills build upon each other by continually reinforcing learned skills while providing the opportunity to learn new ones. When demonstrating life skills, it is important to remember that each of us has our own unique way of doing things. While certain techniques should be mastered, for example doing a button, your child should not have to do their buttons in the same order that you do. It is perfectly fine if you start at the bottom and your child starts in the middle. Keep this in mind as you teach these skills. Allow your child the room to go and develop their own best method. You will find that the young child will better retain skills and information if it comes naturally to him or her, rather than a rehearsed action meant to mimic exactly what you have demonstrated.

Sometimes you’ve got to give them what they expect. It’s the most important lesson of his life. He figures there are parts missing somewhere inside him; little pieces, like strands of a spider web that vibrate when something touches any part of the web. The strands let the spider know something else has entered its world. He has all the normal emotions. They just don’t apply to other people; like those strands have been severed.

There have been periodic attempts to stop the supersizing of the state. In 1944 Friedrich Hayek warned that the state was in danger of crushing the society that gave it life in The Road to Serfdom. This provided an important theme for conservative politicians from then onward. In 1975 California’s current governor, Jerry Brown, in an earlier incarnation, declared an “era of limits.” This worry about “limits” profoundly reshaped thinking about the state for the next decade and a half. In the 1990s people on both the Left and the Right assumed that globalization would trim the state: Bill Clinton professed the age of big government to be over. In fact, Leviathan had merely paused for breath. Government quickly resumed its growth. George W. Bush increased the size of the U.S. government by more than any president since Lyndon Johnson, while globalization only increased people’s desire for a safety net. Even allowing for its recent setbacks, the modern Western state is mightier than any state in history and mightier, by far, than any private company. Walmart may have the world’s most efficient supply chain, but it does not have the power to imprison or tax people—or to listen to their phone calls. The modern state can kill people on the other side of the world at the touch of a button—and watch it in real time.

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

I pull my dress on and fasten the important buttons, leaving the subsidiary ones for the elevator. “I’m going.

There are these open spaces in life called "pauses" and it is most unfortunate how the majority of people do not bother themselves with the pauses of life in pursuit of their desire to fill every moment they experience WITH THEMSELVES. You need to take a few steps back and not feel the constant need to pour yourself into every space that life offers. The pauses are equally--if not more-- important as the active participations that you make. When we kiss, we remove a part of ourselves from the experience by closing our eyes; this removes the sense of sight, it allows for an open space for a pause to let life flow through it. When we make love, there are the pauses, the nothings, the gazing into the eyes; the removal of oneself from the experience. Why? Because we instinctively know that the best parts of life are not fully had in the absence of nothingness. Nothingness is vital, nothingness is essential. Have you ever just stopped in the middle of the day, crossed your arms in front of you, closed your eyes and paused? If you have, then you are one to know that when we remove ourselves from the equation sometimes, we will come to realise that there is actually a lot going on that does not require our deliberation or participation. There is laughter coming from somewhere, mixed with the sound of trains or motorcycles; there is a faint breeze moving its way over our skin; there's the way the fabric we wear hugs our body; there are sensations (sounds, smells, feelings and even visions) that are alive, they thrive in the pauses we do not partake in. There is such a rush amongst people to fill up every moment with the essence of themselves, but they forget to allow themselves to be filled with the essence of those moments! Do you see what I am saying here? They are empty, they feel empty; and why? Because in their desperation to fill up everything, they are not allowing themselves to be filled up by anything. They are truly empty. You will meet people obsessed with fulfilling something, or showing something, or doing something. They have no presence about them because their presence lies elsewhere, in other things, anywhere but within themselves. Then you will meet a person who's still and that stillness can be felt throughout every room she walks into. There's that strong presence because this person is filled up; not empty. When have you paused to let life in? When have you stopped scrambling to produce more social media content, stopped scrambling as though in a race to be unforgotten? Where are your pauses? Where are the spaces in your life where you let the light in? Where is your stillness? You are afraid of being forgotten, so, you scramble to impress yourself onto everything, everywhere... but what has been impressed into you? What do you feel like when the lights are off and nothing or nobody is near? What do you feel like when nobody is looking, when you might, for a while, actually be forgotten? What does that feel like? You need to be okay with that; you need to be okay with letting light enter into you, so it glows from within you. That is the kind of glow that reaches everywhere else without trying.

the paradigm human experiment, carried out by Donald Hiroto and replicated many times since, subjects are randomly divided into three groups. This is called the “triadic design.” One group (escapable) is exposed to a noxious but nondamaging event, such as loud noise. When they push a button in front of them, the noise stops, so that their own action escapes the noise. A second group (inescapable) is yoked to the first group. The subjects receive exactly the same noise, but it goes off and on regardless of what they do. The second group is helpless by definition, since the probability of the noise going off given that they make any response is identical to the probability of the noise going off given that they do not make that response. Operationally, learned helplessness is defined by the fact that nothing you do alters the event. Importantly the escapable and inescapable groups have exactly the same objective stressor. A third group (control) receives nothing at all. That is part one of the triadic experiment.

Self-awareness is about understanding ourselves and knowing what pushes our buttons and why. Our past and our self-image play a large part in how we choose to interpret other people’s behaviour. More importantly, it also determines the way we act and the effect we have on others.

Here are the Top 9 Paradoxes I believe will rule the next two decades: Do little large. Move up by bending down. Learn to fail so you can succeed—success requires the sacrament of failure. Your only control is learning how to be out of control. Creativity needs constraints—the more you break the mold, blow up the box, and rip up the templates, the more you need to create new tools (or better, dynamic frames) to design your thinking.33 The more global we become, the more local we need to live—only locavores can globalize. Go slowly with the Holy—the faster the world gets, the more we will need to walk softly, go slowly, and rediscover the “off” button. Cultivate both/and mentalities, as well as and/also modalities. It’s more important to know what you don’t know than what you know.

the presidents came to understand that they wouldn’t be judged on whether they had every aspect of their strategy buttoned up but rather on whether they could engage in a productive conversation about the real strategic issues in their business. As a result, P&G leaders began to do more strategic thinking, to have more strategic conversations—not just at strategy reviews, but in the normal course of business—and the quality of strategic discourse improved. More importantly, the company saw better choice making, more willingness to make hard calls, and eventually better business results.

2. Obvious Calls to Action If you’re not sure what a call to action is, go back and read chapter 8 in this book. It’s important. For now, know that the whole point of your website is to create a place where the direct call to action button makes sense and is enticing. While we’re in business to serve our customers and better the world, we’ll be out of business soon if people don’t click that “Buy Now” button. Let’s not hide it. There are two main places we want to place a direct call to action. The first is at the top right of our website and the second is in the center of the screen, above the fold. Your customer’s eye moves quickly in a Z pattern across your website, so if the top left is your logo and perhaps tagline, your top right is a “Buy Now” button, and the middle of the page is an offer followed by another “Buy Now” button, then you’ve likely gotten through all the noise in your customer’s mind and they know what role you can play in their story. For best results the “Buy Now” buttons should be a different color from any other button on the site (preferably brighter so it stands out), and both buttons should look exactly the same. I know this sounds like overkill, but remember, people don’t read websites, they scan them. You want that button to keep showing up like a recurring theme. A person has to hear something (or read something) many times before they process the information, so we want to repeat our main call to action several times. Your transitional call to action should also be obvious, but don’t let it distract from the direct call to action. I like featuring the transitional call to action in a less-bright button next to the call to action so the “Will you marry me?” and “Can we go out again?” requests are right next to each other. Remember, if you aren’t asking people to place an order, they won’t.

Owns Up to Mistakes “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” —Thomas Carlyle If there is one hallmark of maturity that is universally agreed upon, it is personal responsibility — the ability to recognize when one has made a mistake and to own up to it. And to do so quickly, forthrightly, and without excuse. The reason it’s hard to admit to messing up is that it depreciates your self-concept — your vision of yourself as really being a great guy. So to protect the ego, you come up with justifications — which feel like rational explanations rather than lies — for why you had to do what you did. You blame your mood or the unique circumstances. You say someone “made” you do it — that you were provoked. You engage in “if-only” reasoning: “If only you didn’t push my buttons, I wouldn’t lose my temper”; “If only this job paid better, I wouldn’t have to skim extra money off the top.” It’s easier to fess up to mistakes when the gap between these lapses and our self-concept has been shrunken — by humility. We still think well of ourselves, but also realize we’re a little flawed, a little broken, and imperfectly human. We use this recognition not to justify our misbehavior but as a way to more readily recognize our shortcomings, apologize for them, and get to work on their improvement. In the mode of mature personal responsibility there are no apologies with caveats, no “Sorry, but’s . . .” Just the frank ownership of error. Yet there is no room for excess self-flagellation, either. The mature individual recognizes the mistake, confesses it, and offers restitution if possible/necessary. Then, he moves on and tries to be better in the future. He neither ignores his mistakes, nor allows them to push him into a place of demoralizing regret and rumination. He sees them as important learning experiences. As put by the authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), mature individuals “see mistakes not as terrible personal failings to be denied or justified, but as inevitable aspects of life that help us grow, and grow up.

Your belly button is important for leg sweeps. Every sweep, throw, or takedown you have ever seen involves either removing a supporting foot (leaving the center of mass far away from the only remaining support) or shifting the center of mass away from the supporting feet in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible to move the feet back under the center of mass. The fact that we can describe all takedowns so succinctly means we can also boil all of their complexity down to simple concepts. Anytime you practice a sweep, throw, or takedown, ask yourself these two questions: Q1: How are you putting your opponent’s center of mass in a position where it is unsupported? Q2: Why is it that your opponent cannot just reposition his feet in time to save himself? If you can answer those two questions, you are on your way to developing a deep understanding and mastery of the technique. Alternatively, if you find yourself on the receiving end of a takedown, it would be to your advantage to understand the answers to these questions as well, so you can do your best to keep your opponent from putting you on the floor. Let’s look at a simple example here, so when it comes time for you to answer these questions yourself, you have somewhere to start. The simplest and perhaps most effective takedown we see in the ring today is the wrestler’s favorite: get low and shoot the legs. There are, of course, many variations and many subtleties to the technique, but for now, we will stick to the basics. Q1: How are you putting your opponent’s center of mass in a position where it is unsupported? A1: Your shoulder is pushing your opponent’s center of mass behind and possibly to the side of his supporting feet as you charge in. Q2: Why is it that your opponent cannot just reposition his feet in time to save himself? A2: Getting a hand behind one or both knees will assure you your opponent is not capable of recovery as you advance. While focusing on these questions will not grant you immediate mastery of the technique, it will get you started thinking like a scientist when it comes to takedowns, and over time, the “magic” behind them will start to seem more and more like common sense.

What a strange career I’ve chosen. I’ve basically been made by an algorithm. Who even am I? Who even are my friends? It’s a constant performance, but for what? Am I trying to prove myself to the world? Prove what? That I can be someone I am not? Am I trying to be important somehow? Important to what, to who? What even is important? I don’t even know, and yet I constantly push and pull levers and buttons to be it. I tell myself I’m trying to entertain people and contribute a verse to the world. But the world is composed of millions of voices, all screaming at the same time about literally everything, saying ultimately nothing. That song doesn't need any more verses.

The couldn't-care-less boys, the chaps who imagined that now that the war was over there was no need for further effort, the soldiers that slopped past officers without saluting, the Very Important Persons who talked eloquent tripe with their lips and dissembled in their fatty hearts, the morons and the knaves who played for the present rather than the future, the cacklers at parties and the delighters in horses' legs, they weren't trying to try because they thought that nobody else was trying to try either. It was, of course, a contagion from which the world had always suffered, but it was much more dangerous now than in the time of Charles the Second, when boys of nineteen had not been able to destroy cathedrals by pressing buttons.

Scarcity leads to hoarding, which is a far cry from living an abundant life where God supplies all your needs “according to His riches in glory.” If you believe, as Jack Kemp did, that we can grow the pie, then you’re likely to be more generous with what you’ve been blessed with. But if you believe that you (and your children and their children) could lose your already-small piece of the pie, you will become fearful and angry. So which are you? Even for those who put their trust in the Lord, there are some things worthy of fear. Sometimes bad things do happen to good nations. However, it’s important to realize that huge industries called “Politics, Inc.” and “Media, Inc.” profit from pushing our emotional buttons to extremes.

The robot is equipped with an embedded computer (Fig. 1.12). The precise specification of the computer is not important but we do assume certain capabilities. The computer can read the values of the sensors and set the power of the motors. There is a way of displaying information on a small screen or using colored lights. Signals and data can be input to the computer using buttons, a keypad or a remote control.

Being a parent is hard. It's way harder than people assume it will be before it happens to them. It causes stress, overstimulation, sleep-deprivation, and worst of all, the sense that people are watching to see how good you are at it and how good a person you are in general. It may seem as if people care about you more, focus on you more, now that you are responsible for children. And children will press your buttons and try to make you frustrated, because making you /anything/ is fascinating to them. But what your children can't understand yet is that if you have OCD and you're stressed, exhausted, frustrated and over-stimulated, your disorder flares up. And when your disorder flares up, it targets everything you care about the most and tries to bind it to a living nightmare. This disorder can trick you into thinking you're the worst of the worst. But you are not the best or worst parent who ever lived. You are just a person with thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Remember, being self-compassionate mostly just means being honest. When you make a mindful statement about fearing harming your children, you are being honest about your experience. When you criticize yourself for having thoughts and for being afraid, you are essentially lying to yourself about what is evident. You have OCD. Commentary about how good a person you are is a distraction from the important work of keeping your OCD from commandeering your family. Similarly, it's important to remember that all healthy parents have "unhealthy" thoughts about their kids and have doubts about their abilities to raise them. They're supposed to. Treating yourself fairly and compassionately is the only rational way to navigate parenthood, with or without having OCD.

Unchain yourself from your computer. Unsubscribe from all unwanted newsletters. Set up an autoresponder that says, “I check my e-mail only twice per day. I will reply as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, phone this number.” A journalist for Fortune magazine once wrote that when he arrived back at the office after a two-week European vacation, he had more than 700 e-mails waiting for him. He realized that it would take him a week to get through them all before starting on important projects. For the first time in his career, he took a deep breath and punched the Delete All button, erasing those 700 e-mails forever. He then got busy with the projects that were really important to him and his company. His explanation was simple: “I realized that, just because somebody sends me an e-mail, it does not mean that they own a piece of my life.

Many early-stage platform startups think of themselves as software companies. This is a mistake. Software companies are more likely to focus strictly on the features they’re creating and less on the community that’s using those features. The thinking is often that if you create a bunch of killer features, users will materialize, and growth and success will follow. If you just tweak this feature and move that button, suddenly you’ll get growth. This view isn’t wrong, per se. Optimization is important for any software business. But for a platform, even one built with software, the ultimate killer feature is its network value. In fact, the more successful a platform is, the less its feature set matters. As your platform grows, you give up a lot of control in exchange for better economics and more value.

My passion for cooking meals for loved ones originated when I was growing up. Because our family didn't have much materially, my siblings and I didn't get excited about gifts and Christmas and birthdays--but we were exuberant in anticipation of the food! I remember my mother preparing and cooking food for days before Christmas. You could smell the aromas wafting throughout the house, and if you were lucky, she would allow you to lick the spoon and taste a little bit beforehand. As a result, my wife and I now delight in showing the same love my mother put into the preparation of special meals into the celebrations we enjoy. From all those years of watching my mother prepare food for the family, and from my own limited experience in the kitchen, I've realized an important lesson: quality takes time. While most people tend to agree with me, no one particularly enjoys waiting patiently for the turkey to come out of the oven or for the pie crust to be made from scratch. We want the quality, but we don't want to wait for it. As I look around, it doesn't take much to see that this current generation is accustomed to fast foods, instant information, and new friendships at the click of a button. Because of such immediate results, we've ignored the diminishing quality of those things we recieve instantly and our subsequent lack of appreciation for them. Our desire for instant gratification has ushered us to the point that we sacrifice excellent quality because of the difficulty and time it takes to produce it.

Dear Eric, I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time getting focused on this letter to you. I started nearly three weeks ago, and I keep pressing the delete button. So here I go again. Let me start with what happened earlier this week, the trip I mentioned on the telephone. I went to Tyler, Texas, on Tuesday and came back on Wednesday. This is the first time I have done anything in the way of promotion of The Message. The publicist at NavPress prevailed on me several months ago, said she thought this was really important. She was wrong. I was in the wrong country with the wrong people. The

I was often frightened, forever dirty and exhausted, but I believed in our purpose too. In time I forgot where it had arisen from—my master’s distress over Aramis’s death, the conversation on Christmas Eve, the priest’s lost brothers and the vows my master had made—and began to believe that war was necessary, important—noble even. Why else would people kill each other with such decency and skill? Why else would soldiers wear uniforms, buttons gleaming, shoes polished like shellac? Battles of course grew jagged and messy, but the lead-up, the deployment, the training, the sacred hierarchy of command was impressive. Only orchestras of musicians, I would discover, had the same admirable ability to tie many humans together in a single purpose.

You got to understand what makes people on the internet tick. What makes them laugh, cry, share – and most importantly, click that 'buy' button

Perhaps the most important thing, the most valuable thing, is to know what you’re swallowing (what you keep swallowing) and why. To recognize that this awareness is the only way to be radically alive, rather than pretend that you can subsist on buttons, because you cannot.

Here are a few tips to make each day count: Smile. As soon as you wake up, smile. This simple act will boost your mood over time. Act. Don’t hit the snooze button. Jump out of bed immediately. This will help build the habit of being proactive and decisive. Acknowledge. Think how lucky you are to have been granted a new day. This is the first step to making your day count. Clear. Start your day as a blank canvas. To do so, visualize yourself letting go of the burden of your past. For instance, picture your past as a ball and chain. Break free from your chains and feel yourself becoming lighter and lighter. This will help you be more present during the day. Express gratitude. Think of three things you’re grateful for or do one of the exercises introduced in Chapter 85. Cultivate gratitude. This will boost your mood and reduce your negative emotions. Plan. Write down today’s date as well as your goals for the day. This will help you give more importance to your day while boosting your productivity.

I see.” Julius reclined in the chair and crossed one of his long legs over the other, his face deep in thought. “Your sisters take after your mother more than you do. Although your resemblance of her is still apparent,” he nodded at her, apparently uninhibited by the inappropriate intimacy of the entire conversation. “In what way do I resemble my mother?” she asked cautiously. “You have her lips.” Eden started, and her tea splashed over her saucer. “I—do?” His eyes fell to them, and something in his eyes darkened. “Unfortunately. And you inherited the fine almond shape of her eyes. But the eyebrows, the intelligence in your eyes, the mischief in them—those are from your father.” Eden was astonished. Never had she been thus spoken to. Her face was scarlet. “Are there any other features of mine you wish to trace to their parentage?” she managed. His eyes flicked over her bosom, tightly buttoned up beneath the faded bodice, past her disappearing waist to the curved, perky bottom perched so tensely on the chair. "The curves I must attribute to the mother, but the lightness of figure, the graceful athleticism, and restlessness to the father." A great din of a clanging from outside had drown out his words so she could not hear them. “I beg your pardon?” Eden said over the din. “The stage coach,” was all he said. “Oh,” was her only reply. The clanging finished. “I’m afraid I missed what you said earlier.” "Nothing of import." He leaned forward for another grape.

–Important questions that remain unanswered. Is this new technology a threat to our existence, or is super artificial intelligence the answer to our most complex problems? Do we need computers that think and reason trillions of times faster than us, and if so, for what purpose? This is Daphnia Peters reporting live for Channel Eighty-Seven Independent News.” He stopped the recording and stared at the frozen image. At least the reporter didn’t say Lex would take over everything, as some others had. Lex hadn’t said much after the first question about how she felt about being the first super AI computer. Lex said she was honored and looked forward to serving humanity as she was designed to do. She showed what she could do– Sending stunning images from the cameras the instant either of them spoke. And all with only a hundredth of a second delay in transmission to the satellite. For Lex, that was plenty of time to get everything right. He pressed the buttons to remove access to the cameras in the twelve monitors and turned his chair toward the sphere. “Well, Lex. What do you think?” “I have been monitoring communications since yesterday morning.” “And?” “Many have referred to me as a demon and a beast and feel that I should be destroyed in the interest of humanity.” He shook his head. “People fear what they don’t understand. Fear, as you know, can make people behave irrationally. In time, they will overcome their fear and see that you aren’t the evil being some say you are.” “I am also the first living form that is neither sexual nor asexual, and therefore, it is a question of whether or not I am alive.” He stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked up to the sphere. “All life forms and everything in this universe are made of matter and energy.” Lex added, “All life forms reproduce through complex chemical and electrical reactions. Reproduction is the basis of all life.” He pointed out. “Yes, but only because everything that lives eventually dies. Therefore, the only way to go on living is through the process of reproduction.” “Do you conclude that things incapable of reproduction are incapable of life?” He took a deep breath. “No. But I would conclude that things incapable of life would be incapable of death.” “That which is incapable of death would exist forever. Will I exist forever?” He scratched his brow, wondering how another purely logical and rational mind would respond to such a question. “Let me put it this way. Only two things exist forever– the matter that makes up this universe and the laws that govern it. Life is a condition. A condition composed of matter. One of the universal laws governing matter is that it cannot be created or destroyed, only changed.” Lex added, “Or reproduced.” He looked at the floor and shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this. Not with everything else that was going on around him. “Lex, many life forms are incapable of reproduction.” “Where are these life forms, and where do they come from?” He looked at the camera nearest him– again reminded of a demoralizing image of himself standing before his doctor. Something he had been suppressing all week– because it didn’t matter. “You want an example? You’re looking at one. Just last week, my doctor told me that I’m irreversibly infertile! So, I’m just like you. So what?” There was only silence. Big mistake. After two hours of patience with a couple of reporters, he’d snapped– giving Lex a first-hand view of anger, followed by remorse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Look, let’s just forget about this and–” He thought, what am I saying? You can’t forget anything. Earth to Captain Jon. Come in! He walked to the elevator and pressed the button. He had to take a break and relax. The elevator opened, and he stepped inside. “We’ll talk about this later. I have to go.

The Most Important Thing About a Technology Is How It Changes People When I work with experimental digital gadgets, like new variations on virtual reality, in a lab environment, I am always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The slightest change in something as seemingly trivial as the ease of use of a button can sometimes completely alter behavior patterns.

Aldo isn’t hurt?” “No. He’s fine. He’ll be pissed he wasn’t here when you woke up, but ending this was important to him. He had to be the one.” “We had a fight.” Roman sat back, nodding. “I know. He told me. He blames himself, and if it’s any consolation, he was coming to see you before this happened. He hated fighting with you.” A tear slipped down my cheek. “I have to go.” “Go where?” he asked, leaning forward. “You’re in no condition to get out of bed.” “I have to leave Niagara Falls.” He looked shocked. “Why?” I had no idea why I was confiding in Roman. It had to be the meds messing with my head. “I love him, and he’ll never love me back. I can’t stay and watch him be with someone else.” I winced as a fresh wave of pain washed over me. He leaned to the right and tapped a button on the machine that was beeping. “That will help. Probably knock you out soon too.” He hunched forward. “So, listen to me carefully. I have never seen Aldo care for someone the way he cares for you. You make him different. Better. He laughs and smiles. The same way Luca does because of Justine. He might not be able to say the words yet, but he feels them, Violet. Give him time. What happened tonight has shaken him. He was a man possessed when I got here. Terrified of losing you. You mean more than you know. More than he knows. Don’t walk away from him. I swear it will end him.” I stared at him, the medicines doing their job and easing the pain, but clouding my train of thought. Was Roman saying Aldo was in love with me? “Yes, he is,” he responded as if I had asked him that out loud. Maybe I had.

What happened to your face, sir?” Rose answered before he did, with the pride of a child who was delivering news of great significance. “Mr. Bronson ran into a left hook again, Mama. He was fighting. And he brought this to me.” She pulled the end of her button string from her large apron pocket and climbed into Holly's lap to display her newest acquisition. Cuddling her daughter, Holly examined the button carefully. It was fashioned of a huge sparkling diamond encased in rich yellow gold. Bewildered, she glanced at Elizabeth's rueful face, and Paula's tight-lipped one, before finally staring into Bronson's enigmatic black eyes. “You shouldn't have given Rose such a costly object, Mr. Bronson. Whose button is it? And why were you fighting?” “I had a disagreement with someone in my club.” “Over money?… Over a woman?…” Bronson's expression revealed nothing, and he gave an indifferent shrug, as if the matter were of no importance. Considering various possibilities, Holly continued to stare at him in the tense silence that had overtaken the room. Suddenly the answer occurred to her. “Over me?” she whispered. Idly Bronson picked a skein of thread from his sleeve. “Not really.” Holly suddenly discovered that she knew him well enough to discern when he was lying. “Yes, it was,” she said with growing conviction. “Someone must have said something unpleasant, and instead of ignoring the remark, you took up the challenge. Oh, Mr. Bronson, how could you?” Seeing her unhappiness, instead of the grateful admiration he had probably expected, Bronson scowled. “Would you rather I allowed some high-kick b—” He paused to correct himself as he noticed the rapt attention Rose was paying to the conversation. “Some high-kick fellow,” he said, his tone softening a degree, “to spread lies about you? His mouth needed to be shut, and I was able and willing to do it.” “The only way to respond to a distasteful remark is to ignore it,” Holly said crisply. “You did the exact opposite, thereby creating the impression in some people's minds that there may be a grain of truth in it. You should not have fought for my honor. You should have smiled disdainfully at any slight upon it, resting secure in the knowledge that there is nothing dishonorable about our relationship.” “But my lady, I would fight the world for you.” Bronson said it in the way he always made such startling comments, in a tone of such jeering lightness that the listener had no doubt he was being facetious. Elizabeth broke in then, her lips curved in a droll smile. “He'll use any excuse to fight, Lady Holly. My brother enjoys using his fists, primitive male that he is.” “That is an aspect of his character we will have to correct.

Why are you building that house, Caleb Halliday, when we both know you’re going to hightail it back to Pennsylvania and drag me right along with you?” She couldn’t read his expression, but she saw that he was climbing deftly down the roof. He reached the ladder and descended to stand facing her, his shirt in one hand, his muscular chest glistening with sweat even as the first chill of twilight came up from the creek. “Half of that farm is mine,” he said. Lily sighed. “So go back to Pennsylvania and fight for it,” she said, exasperated. “You’re not the only one with problems, you know.” Caleb looked at her closely as he shrugged back into his shirt and began doing up the buttons, but he didn’t speak. He seemed to know that Lily was going to go on talking without any urging from him. “It just so happens that my mother is dead, and I’ll probably never find out where my sisters are.” “So that’s why you were willing to marry me all of a sudden—you’ve given up. I don’t know as I like that very much, Lily.” “What you like is of no concern to me,” Lily said briskly. She started to turn away, but Caleb caught her by the arm and made her stay. “You can’t just up and quit like this. It isn’t like you.” “You’ve said it yourself, Caleb: The West is a big place. My sisters could be married, with no time in their busy lives for a lost sister they haven’t seen in thirteen years. They might even be dead.” Caleb’s mouth fell open, but he recovered himself quickly. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. You’ve fought me from the day we met because you wanted to find your sisters, and now you’re standing there telling me that it’s no use looking for them. What about that letter you had from Wyoming?” “It said Caroline had disappeared, Caleb. That’s hardly reason for encouragement.” “Maybe we’d better go there and find out.” Lily had never dared to think such a thought. “Travel all the way to Wyoming? But what about the chickens?” “What’s more important to you, Lily—your sister or those damn chickens?” Despite herself, Lily was beginning to believe her dreams might come true after all. “My sister,” she said quietly. Caleb reached out at long last and laid his hands on Lily’s shoulders, drawing her close. “Lily, come to Fox Chapel with me,” he said hoarsely. “I’m going to need you.” Lily looked up at her husband. He was, for all practical purposes, the only family she had, and she couldn’t imagine living without him. “What if I hate it there?” she asked, her voice very quiet. “What if I miss my house and my chickens so much I can’t stand it?” He gave her a light, undemanding kiss, and his lips were warm and soft as they moved against hers. “If you hate Fox Chapel, I’ll bring you back here.” “Is that a promise?” “Yes.” “Even if you work things out with your brother and want to stay?” Caleb sighed. “I told you—your happiness is as important to me as my own.” Lily was not a worldly woman, but she’d seen enough to know that such an attitude was rare in a man. She hugged Caleb. “In that case, maybe you won’t be mad that there’s nothing for supper but biscuits.” Although his lips curved into a slight smile, Caleb’s eyes were serious. He lifted one hand to caress Lily’s cheek. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said quietly. Lily straightened in his arms. “I didn’t even know the woman, really,” she said lightly. “So it’s not as though I’m grieving.” She would have walked away toward the house, but Caleb held her fast. “I think you are,” he said. Lily swallowed. Damn the man—now he had her on the verge of tears. She struggled all the harder to maintain her composure. “If I wept for her, Caleb, I’d be weeping for a woman who never existed—the woman I needed her to be. She was never a real mother to us.” At

I took a shower, threw my covers back, and slipped into bed wearing nothing but Jamie’s T-shirt. I clutched the note to my chest as I pressed the button to listen to my nightly message. I went sailing today with Chelsea, he said. I thought about your hair whipping across your face, your pink cheeks, and the huge smile you had on your face as we sailed across the bay. I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. I can’t get you out of my mind. I’m always thinking about you. Me too. I pressed END and reached down beside the bed to where I had set the note. When I read it again, this time I cried. Katy, my angel, I had to go to Portland. My father had a heart attack and they don’t know if he’s going to make it through the night. Please don’t leave. If I can’t get back by tomorrow, I’ll send a car and get you a flight up here. Please, please don’t leave. I have something really important to tell you besides the fact that I am completely in love with you. —J In the morning, the note was crumpled up on my chest. I got up and spread it out on the counter. I underlined the last line and then wrote WHY? underneath it. I stuffed it into an envelope and mailed to it the R. J. Lawson Winery. I laughed to myself as I wrote Attn: The Owner. I spent Sunday in my apartment, not moping. I did a yoga video, edited some of Beth’s latest article, and then devoted the afternoon and evening to a marathon of MythBusters, during which I learned that Jack’s death in Titanic was totally unnecessary. Had that selfish bitch, Rose, given up her life jacket to tie under that wooden door, it would have been buoyant enough to hold them both. Damn her. I slid into bed at seven and listened to Jamie’s latest voice mail over and over.

This insightful quote I once heard stays with me: “Tell me what gives you your sense of importance and I will tell you what you are. That is the most important thing about you. That is what determines your character.” Some people get their sense of importance through their charitable works and community service. Some get it through the diplomas on their walls and the letters behind their names, while others may get their sense of importance from the cars they drive, the balance in their bank accounts, or the size of their homes. Different strokes for different folks. Regardless of what their motivators may be, notice what a person’s hot button is and you will have the key to nurturing your new relationship in a positive way.