“
With the world securely in order, Dain was able to devote the leisurely bath time to editing his mental dictionary. He removed his wife from the general category labeled "Females" and gave her a section of her own. He made a note that she didn't find him revolting, and proposed several explanations: (a) bad eyesight and faulty hearing, (b)a defect in a portion of her otherwise sound intellect, (c) an inherited Trent eccentricity, or (d) an act of God. Since the Almighty had not done him a single act of kindness in at least twenty-five years, Dain thought it was about bloody time, but he thanked his Heavenly Father all the same, and promised to be as good as he was capable of being.
”
”
Loretta Chase (Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels, #3))
“
Can I be of assistance?" Saiman asked.
"Have you ever delivered a child?" Doolittle asked.
"Yes, I have."
"Good. We have to perform a C-section. One of her unborn is trying to kill the other."
"Fascinating," Saiman said. [p.304]
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Rises (Kate Daniels, #6))
“
I swallow any sort of apology.
"screwing your neighbor."
There. Said it. React, okay?
pregnant pause becomes three
weeks overdue. Four weeks.
Time for a C-section. What?
Oh, Kaeleigh, I'm so sorry.
Are you sure...?
”
”
Ellen Hopkins (Identical)
“
What is human memory?" Manning asked. He gazed at the air as he spoke, as if lecturing an invisible audience - as perhaps he was. "It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or a tape. It is more like a story-telling machine. Sensory information is broken down into shards of perception, which are broken down again to be stored as memory fragments. And at night, as the body rests, these fragments are brought out from storage, reassembled and replayed. Each run-through etches them deeper into the brain's neural structure. And each time a memory is rehearsed or recalled it is elaborated. We may add a little, lose a little, tinker with the logic, fill in sections that have faded, perhaps even conflate disparate events.
"In extreme cases, we refer to this as confabulation. The brain creates and recreates the past, producing, in the end, a version of events that may bear little resemblance to what actually occurred. To first order, I believe it's true to say that everything I remember is false.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke
“
I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles.
This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear.
But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God.
...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.
”
”
Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
“
We never understood the tendency to underestimate us, we who had been baptized and delivered through pain, who grinned and bore agonies while managing to draw on wing-tipped eyeliner with a surgically steady hand. We plucked our eyebrows, waxed our upper lips, got razor burn on our crotches, held blades to the cups of our armpits. Shoes tore holes in the skin of our heels and crippled the balls of our feet. We endured labor and childbirth and C-sections, during which doctors literally set our intestines on a table next to our bodies while we were awake. We got acid facials. We punctured our foreheads with Botox and filled our lips and our breasts. We pierced our ears and wore pants that were too tight. We got too much sun. We punished our bodies in spin class. All these tiny sacrifices to make us appear more lithe and ladylike—the female of the species. The weaker sex. Secretly, they toughened our hides, sharpened our edges. We were tougher than we looked. The only difference was that now we were finally letting on.
”
”
Chandler Baker (Whisper Network)
“
And Camila—keep in mind she’s just had a C-section—I will never forget it, she goes, “Oh, shut the hell up, Billy. I married a musician. You’ll be a musician. If I wanted to drive a station wagon and have a meatloaf ready at six o’clock, I would have married my father.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & The Six)
“
C-sections and epidurals should be blessings to women, but I suddenly wondered if they had become a means from which to steal the magic of the power of birth away from a generation of mothers.
”
”
P.C. Cast (Divine By Choice (Partholon, #2))
“
When is love? Is love when your heart swells at the sight of him? Is love when you fall asleep on his shoulder? Or when you fold him into sections so you can fit him in your odd-shaped envelope?
”
”
C.D. Reiss (Marriage Games (The Games Duet, #1))
“
My only claim to distinction among writers is that I do not believe my life contains any materials for a novel. I have prowled around Limehouse and the gamiest sections of Paris, but I have never yet seen (a) a really choice murder in a locked room, (b) a mysterious mastermind or (c) a really good‐looking adventuress with slant eyes.
”
”
John Dickson Carr
“
my jeans, the ones I got from the teen section, the ones made for chicks. And I look fucking perfect in them.
”
”
C.M. Stunich (Real Ugly (Hard Rock Roots, #1))
“
What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked.
She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word.
“When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.”
She took a deep breath and talked on.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.”
Liz took another deep breath.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.”
Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.”
I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying.
“Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.”
Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again.
“Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay.
“Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.”
Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand.
“You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.”
A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.”
Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section.
Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone.
“And, most of all, she is my sister.
”
”
Ally Carter (United We Spy (Gallagher Girls, #6))
“
In short, the fossil record is perfectly compatible with the supposition that at some time between eight and six million years ago, at the north end of the Rift Valley where the most ancient hominid remains have been found, one section of the l. c. a. population found itself living in a watery environment and—whether by choice or under duress—began to adapt to a semi-aquatic existence.
”
”
Elaine Morgan (The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (Independent Voices))
“
But there are different kinds of duplication. There is true duplication, in which every change to one instance necessitates the same change to every duplicate of that instance. Then there is false or accidental duplication. If two apparently duplicated sections of code evolve along different paths—if they change at different rates, and for different reasons—then they are not true duplicates. Return to them in a few years, and you’ll find that they are very different from each other.
”
”
Robert C. Martin (Clean Architecture)
“
I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder.
Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in?
The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did.
The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us.
”
”
Nova Ren Suma (The Walls Around Us)
“
What would the world be like if you had to develop a power yourself before you could use it? Just as a silly example: How would the comment section on YouTube change if, to use it, you had to have the schooling necessary to have a basic understanding of how computers and the internet work? More seriously, would anyone smart enough to know how to design and build a tank, or a laser guided anti-aircraft missile, or a computer and video editing software be stupid enough to join ISIS? In fact, if such knowledge was required—would it even be possible for there to be standing armies?
”
”
John C. Wright (Sci Phi Journal: Issue #2, November 2014: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy)
“
Beyond the immediate risks to her health and the health of her baby, when a woman chooses c-section, she decreases the chance that she will be able to get pregnant again and increases the chance that if she does get pregnant, the pregnancy will occur outside the uterus, a situation that never results in a live baby and is life-threatening to the woman. Furthermore, the risk of having an unexplained stillbirth doubles when a woman has had a previous c-section.
”
”
Marsden Wagner (Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First)
“
Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....
As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.
”
”
Lawrence Martin (Harperland: The Politics Of Control)
“
In a conversation on Twitter, a doctor said to me: I do anesthesia for a living, done it for hundreds of tubals I’m sure. I often think: WTF is wrong with the husband? Except when part of a C-section, tubals should be rare. Vasectomies are cheap, low-pain, extremely safe, and highly effective. Why are tubals also a burden that women must carry? An additional point: there has never been a documented death from a vasectomy. However, many women have died from anesthetic or surgical complications from a tubal ligation.
”
”
Gabrielle Stanley Blair (Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion)
“
The Idiot. I have read it once, and find that I don't remember the events of the book very well--or even all the principal characters. But mostly the 'portrait of a truly beautiful person' that dostoevsky supposedly set out to write in that book. And I remember how Myshkin seemed so simple when I began the book, but by the end, I realized how I didn't understand him at all. the things he did. Maybe when I read it again it will be different. But the plot of these dostoevsky books can hold such twists and turns for the first-time reader-- I guess that's b/c he was writing most of these books as serials that had to have cliffhangers and such.
But I make marks in my books, mostly at parts where I see the author's philosophical points standing in the most stark relief. My copy of Moby Dick is positively full of these marks. The Idiot, I find has a few...
Part 3, Section 5. The sickly Ippolit is reading from his 'Explanation' or whatever its called. He says his convictions are not tied to him being condemned to death. It's important for him to describe, of happiness: "you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." That it's the process of life--not the end or accomplished goals in it--that matter. Well. Easier said than lived!
Part 3, Section 6. more of Ippolit talking--about a christian mindset. He references Jesus's parable of The Word as seeds that grow in men, couched in a description of how people are interrelated over time; its a picture of a multiplicity.
Later in this section, he relates looking at a painting of Christ being taken down from the cross, at Rogozhin's house. The painting produced in him an intricate metaphor of despair over death "in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed, and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of this Being." The way Ippolit's ideas are configured, here, reminds me of the writings of Gilles Deleuze. And the phrasing just sort of remidns me of the way everyone feels--many people feel crushed by the incomprehensible machine, in life. Many people feel martyred in their very minor ways. And it makes me think of the concept that a narrative religion like Christianity uniquely allows for a kind of socialized or externalized, shared experience of subjectivity. Like, we all know the story of this man--and it feels like our own stories at the same time.
Part 4, Section 7. Myshkin's excitement (leading to a seizure) among the Epanchin's dignitary guests when he talks about what the nobility needs to become ("servants in order to be leaders"). I'm drawn to things like this because it's affirming, I guess, for me: "it really is true that we're absurd, that we're shallow, have bad habits, that we're bored, that we don't know how to look at things, that we can't understand; we're all like that." And of course he finds a way to make that into a good thing. which, it's pointed out by scholars, is very important to Dostoevsky philosophy--don't deny the earthly passions and problems in yourself, but accept them and incorporate them into your whole person. Me, I'm still working on that one.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“
The problem is that doctors today often assume that something mysterious and unidentified has gone wrong with labor or that the woman's body is somehow "inadequate" - what I call the "woman's body as a lemon" assumption. For a variety of reasons, a lot of women have also come to believe that nature made a serious mistake with their bodies. This belief has become so strong in many that they give in to pharmaceutical or surgical treatments when patience and recognition of the normality and harmlessness of the situation would make for better health for them and their babies and less surgery and technological intervention in birth. Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs.
”
”
Ina May Gaskin
“
Musharraf allowed the C.I.A. to operate drones armed with Hellfires in designated sections of the tribal areas. The C.I.A. agreed to deny that Musharraf had authorized any such thing.
”
”
Steve Coll (Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016)
“
Seriously, if you really, truly don’t understand basic terminology (which was at least half my problem with the adult-level “beginner” books), the children’s section is the place to go.
”
”
Patricia C. Wrede (Wrede on Writing: Tips, Hints, and Opinions on Writing)
“
We are only beginning to understand the importance and nature of a woman’s vaginal microbiome. Babies born by Cesarean section are robbed of this initial wash. The consequences for the baby can be profound. Various studies have found that people born by C-section have substantially increased risks for type 1 diabetes, asthma, celiac disease, and even obesity and an eightfold greater risk of developing allergies.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
Petunia’s having a baby.”
“What?”
“Petunia!” Georgie said, more urgently. “She’s having puppies in the dryer!”
“No, she’s not. She’s having a C-section in two weeks.”
“Great!” Georgie shouted. “I’ll go tell her!
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
“
The human brain has rendered the organism’s most basic task, reproduction, a treacherous affair. That same brain made things like labor and delivery units, cardiotocometers, epidurals, and emergency C-sections both possible and necessary.
”
”
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
“
Vicky hated complicated births because the families never understood. They got angry, they blamed the doctors for the woman bleeding out, for the breached baby, or, in the best cases, for the emergency C-section. They didn't understand the simple explanation that these things happened, that it was nature, that women had died of childbirth for centuries. They couldn't understand that a birth wasn't some sacred experience, all that hocus pocus. These doctors ruining their bliss. She detested relatives.
”
”
Mariana Enríquez (Nuestra parte de noche)
“
Learning how to make decisions in the best possible way and learning to have the courage to make them comes from a) going after what you want, b) failing and reflecting well through radical open-mindedness, and c) changing/evolving to become ever more capable and less fearful. In the final chapter of this section, Learn How to Make Decisions Effectively, I shared some more granular principles for how to do all of the above and weigh your options in specific situations to determine the right path to follow.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
How could I live a life where the person who’d built and experienced and created it alongside me, the person who’d seen me in a hundred different moods, at my highest, at my lowest, in the middle of a C-section with my uterus laid out on my belly, was gone?
”
”
Jennifer Weiner (All Fall Down)
“
Thus the people, who could not bear the very name of king, readily submitted to a magistrate possessed of much greater power; so much do the names of things mislead us, and so little is any form of government irksome to the people, when it coincides with their prejudices.
”
”
Oliver Goldsmith (Pinnock's improved edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome $b to which is prefixed an introduction to the study of Roman history, and a great variety ... end of each section. $c By Wm. C. Taylor.)
“
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity one has to meet every day.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
“
Which is why he said he hated nectarines. Brugnons, in French. People were being nectarized, sweet without kindness, all the right feelings but none of the heart, engineered, stitched, C-sectioned, but never once really born—the head part plum, the ass part peach, and balls the size of Raisinets. The nectarine didn’t have a single
”
”
André Aciman (Harvard Square)
“
Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts:
ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz,
Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts.
LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.
SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc.
LIKE A FABLE. (Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.') Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete (for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow') that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation.
("Introduction")
”
”
Irving Howe (Short Shorts)
“
Make sure you subtly encourage the idea that a c-section or medicated birth or a birth with interventions is a lesser birth, so that the other mum knows she hasn’t reached the pinnacle of birthing. Because we all know that when children are at school, they separate out the kids by their type of birth, rank them, then the ones who had the most natural of births get the meet the queen.
”
”
Emily Writes (Needs Adult Supervision)
“
Which is why he said he hated nectarines. Brugnons, in French. People were being nectarized, sweet without kindness, all the right feelings but none of the heart, engineered, stitched, C-sectioned, but never once really born—the head part plum, the ass part peach, and balls the size of Raisinets. The nectarine didn’t have a single living relative in the kingdom of fruit. It was all graft.
”
”
André Aciman (Harvard Square)
“
This section begged the same sort of question as the first. Was there an Unreasonable Mathematics test? How would that work? Would it have questions like Sally and Sammy were angry at each other. They went to KFC and got an 8-piece bucket. How did they divide the bucket? A) 4/4 B) 2/6 C) 6/2 or D) 0/0. The answer was obviously D. They’re unreasonable, so they would throw the chicken on the floor so the other wouldn’t get any.
”
”
Marshall Thornton (Masc (Femme, #2))
“
Fine. You won’t tell me why your crew worked me over. You won’t let me see Derek. That’s your prerogative. We’ll do it your way. James Damael Shrapshire, in your capacity as the Pack’s chief security officer, you have permitted Pack members under your command to deliberately injure an employee of the Order. At least three individuals involved in the assault wore the shapeshifter warrior form. Under the Georgia Code, a shapeshifter in a warrior form is equivalent to being armed with a deadly weapon. Therefore, your actions fall under O.C.G.A. Section 16-5-21(c), aggravated assault on a peace officer engaged in the performance of her duties, which is punishable by mandatory imprisonment of no less than five and no more than twenty years. A formal complaint will be filed with the Order within twenty-four hours. I advise you to seek the assistance of counsel.” Jim stared at me. The hardness drained from his eyes, and in their depths I saw astonishment. I held his stare for a long moment. “Don’t call; don’t stop by. You need something done, go through official channels. And the next time you meet me, mind your p’s and q’s, because I’ll fuck you over in a heartbeat the second you step over the line. Now return my sword, because I’m walking out of here, and I dare any of your idiots to try and stop me.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
“
In your journal, reserve a section for painful experiences, writing them down right afterward. Leave two lines below each entry. After one month, return to the journal and write in the first blank line what you learned from that bad experience in the intervening period. After six months, fill in the second line with the positives that ultimately came from it. You will be amazed at how this exercise changes your perspective on your past.
”
”
Arthur C. Brooks (Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier)
“
Now I suddenly think that Sarkar, Tracy Anne, and I are most likely the only ones present who can tell exactly what has happened: Katra Kovac, nine months pregnant, has been slit open. Her baby has been taken. The procedure—it’s a disgusting lie to confuse this butchery with the term C-section—has left the mother barely clinging to life. And the baby? Who in hell knows what has become of the baby, this baby who was literally ripped from its mother’s womb.
”
”
James Patterson (The Midwife Murders)
“
By having a great many friends I do not prove that I have a wide appreciation of human excellence. You might as well say I prove the width of my literary taste by being able to enjoy all the books in my own study. The answer is the same in both cases—“You chose those books. You chose those friends. Of course they suit you.” The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there.” Made for
us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
”
”
null
“
Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the New York Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.
”
”
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
“
But despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is
always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. Perhaps, as Plato says, we cannot lie to the deepest part of ourselves.
Had I been a citizen of ancient Athens circa 300 R.C.E. (a time often called the golden age of philosophy) and experienced a death panic or a nightmare, to whom would I have turned to clear my mind of the web of fear? It's likely I'd have trudged off to the agora, a section of ancient Athens where many of the important schools of philosophy were located. I'd have walked past the Academy founded by Plato, now directed by his nephew, Speucippus; and also the Lyceum, the school of Aristotle, once a student of Plato, but too philosophically divergent to be appointed his successor. I'd have passed the schools of the Stoics and the Cynics and ignored any itinerant philosophers searching for students. Finally, I'd have reached the Garden of Epicurus, and there I think I would have found help.
”
”
Irvin D. Yalom (Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death)
“
You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm.
“You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching?
“You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished.
“And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost.
“If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...)
“You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well.
“The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra.
“When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve.
“ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer.
“ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’
“And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.
”
”
John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
“
American gynecology was built by torturing Black women and experimenting on their bodies to test procedures. J. Marion Sims, known as the father of American gynecology, developed his techniques by slicing open the vaginal tissues of enslaved women as they were held down by force. He refused to provide them with anesthesia. François Marie Prevost, who is credited with introducing C-sections in the United States, perfected his procedure by cutting into the abdomens of laboring women who were slaves. These women were treated like animals and their pain was ignored.
”
”
Anna Malaika Tubbs (The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation)
“
In this section I have tried to demonstrate that Darwinian thinking does live up to its billing as universal acid: it turns the whole traditional world upside down, challenging the top-down image of designs flowing from that genius of geniuses, the Intelligent Designer, and replacing it with the bubble-up image of mindless, motiveless cyclical processes churning out ever-more robust combinations until they start replicating on their own, speeding up the design process by reusing all the best bits over and over. Some of these earliest offspring eventually join forces (one major crane, symbiosis), which leads to multicellularity (another major crane), which leads to the more effective exploration vehicles made possible by sexual reproduction (another major crane), which eventually leads in one species to language and cultural evolution (cranes again), which provide the medium for literature and science and engineering, the latest cranes to emerge, which in turn permits us to “go meta” in a way no other life form can do, reflecting in many ways on who and what we are and how we got here, modeling these processes in plays and novels, theories and computer simulations, and ever-more thinking tools to add to our impressive toolbox. This perspective is so widely unifying and at the same time so generous with detailed insights that one might say it’s a power tool, all on its own. Those who are still strangely repelled by Darwinian thinking must consider the likelihood that if they try to go it alone with only the hand tools of tradition, they will find themselves laboring far from the cutting edge of research on important phenomena as diverse as epidemics and epistemology, biofuels and brain architecture, molecular genetics, music, and morality.
”
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Daniel C. Dennett (Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking)
“
During the late separation, all tillage had been entirely neglected, and a famine was the consequence the ensuing season. 2. The senate did all that lay in their power to remedy the distress; but the people, pinched with want and willing to throw the blame on any but themselves, ascribed the whole of their distress to the avarice of the patricians, who, having purchased all the corn, as was alleged, intended to indemnify themselves for the abolition of debts, by selling it out to great advantage. 3. But plenty soon after appeased them for a time. A fleet of ships, laden with corn, from Sicily, once more raised their spirits.
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Oliver Goldsmith (Pinnock's improved edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome $b to which is prefixed an introduction to the study of Roman history, and a great variety ... end of each section. $c By Wm. C. Taylor.)
“
In “Totalitarianism,” the third and last section, she writes — soaringly and with biblical inflection —“It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.” Chronic unemployment, inflation and punitive taxation, the debasement or suppression of a public forum for action and debate, the dislocation that comes from moving from nation to nation or job to job, the imposed inconsequence of innocence and guilt, in groups and out groups, the threat of terror — all tools of totalitarian dominance — seem to prepare victims and bullies alike to undervalue their lives.
”
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Anne C. Heller (Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times)
“
Then the events leading up to her collapse came back to her in a flash. Her hands flew automatically to her belly and she was only partially reassured to feel the tight ball there. Was her baby okay? Was she herself okay?
She blinked harder to bring the room more into focus. There was light shining through a crack in the bathroom door. A glance at the blinds told her that it was dark outside.
Then her gaze fell on the chair beside her bed and she found Ryan staring at her, his gaze intense. She flinched away from the raw emotion shining in his blue eyes.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?”
“Numb,” she answered before she could think better of it. “Kind of blank. My head doesn’t hurt anymore. Are my feet still swollen?”
He carefully picked up the sheet and pushed it over her feet. “Maybe a little. Not as bad as they were. They’ve been giving you meds and they’re monitoring the baby.”
“How is she?” Kelly asked, a knot of fear in her throat.
“For now, she’s doing fine. Your blood pressure stabilized, but they might have to do a C-section if it goes back up or if the baby starts showing signs of distress.”
Kelly closed her eyes and then suddenly Ryan was close to her, holding her, his lips pressed against her temple.
“Don’t worry, love,” he murmured. “You’re supposed to stay calm. You’re getting the best possible care. I’ve made sure of it. They’re monitoring you round-the-clock. And the doctor said the baby has an excellent prognosis at thirty-four weeks’ gestation.”
She sagged against the pillow and closed her eyes. Relief pulsed through her but she was so tired she couldn’t muster the energy to do anything more than lie there thanking God that her baby was okay.
“I’m going to take care of you, Kell,” Ryan said softly against her temple. “You and our baby. Nothing will ever hurt you again. I swear it.”
Tears burned her eyelids. She was emotionally and physically exhausted and didn’t have the strength to argue. Something inside her was broken and she had no idea how to fix it. She felt so…disconnected.
”
”
Maya Banks (Wanted by Her Lost Love (Pregnancy & Passion, #2))
“
You leave the womb sterile, or so it is generally thought, but are liberally swabbed with your mother’s personal complement of microbes as you move through the birth canal. We are only beginning to understand the importance and nature of a woman’s vaginal microbiome. Babies born by Cesarean section are robbed of this initial wash. The consequences for the baby can be profound. Various studies have found that people born by C-section have substantially increased risks for type 1 diabetes, asthma, celiac disease, and even obesity and an eightfold greater risk of developing allergies. Cesarean babies eventually acquire the same mix of microbes as those born vaginally—by a year their microbiota are usually indistinguishable—but there is something about those initial exposures that makes a long-term difference. No one has figured out quite why that should be.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
Everyone in the delivery room was laughing at the story, including me. I never knew whether the doctor thought it was funny or not. She certainly did not join in the lightheartedness the rest of us felt. Because my doctor was also one of my bosses, I respected her and yet felt a bit intimidated by her at the same time. Jase was not intimidated at all. He was so relaxed, and that alleviated all the stress and tension I had felt since I first arrived at the hospital. True to his personality, he kept most of the room enthralled and laughing at his stories. As a lifelong hunter, he is no stranger to blood and gore. He thought the surgical process was very interesting and wanted to study everything inside of me. I’m sure his comment that my insides looked like a deer he had skinned the previous day was the first of its kind uttered during a C-section.
At one point, the doctor said to him, “Jason, you have to be quiet now.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I’m getting close to the baby with this scalpel, and Missy has to stop laughing.”
“Oh,” he said. “My bad.”
As the doctor prepared to remove Cole, the room became quiet; I didn’t know exactly what was going on because I couldn’t see around the sheet, but I knew the time had come for our baby to be born. Jase watched everything intently. The doctor pulled on the baby, but he would not budge. In Jase’s words, “He just wouldn’t come out.”
So Jase decided to lend a hand. He reached into the area near where the doctor was working, which caused every person to freeze. The room fell completely silent. As Jase recalled later, the doctor’s eyes filled with fire, and she shot him laser-sharp looks. No words were spoken, but he immediately raised his hands as if to say, “Don’t shoot,” and backed off.
”
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Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
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soldier named James A. Miller, of Harpers Ferry, had gotten drunk and shot and wounded his captain. An army court-martial had found him guilty and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Because Jackson was in a position to commute the sentence, a number of pleas for leniency were made to him on Miller’s behalf, including an impassioned one from Jackson’s friend Reverend James Graham. Jackson refused. He upheld the court-martial, and Miller was shot to death by the 2nd Virginia in Winchester on November 6. (It was later learned that Jefferson Davis, more sympathetic than his major general, actually did commute Miller’s sentence, but a messenger bearing his order got drunk and never delivered it.4) The men were learning quickly that, in Jackson’s command, unlike most of the rest of the army, or the army they thought they knew, there would be no bending of the rules. Jackson may have had trouble enforcing discipline in his section room with mischievous, fresh-faced college boys, but he had no trouble doing so in a rough army camp.
”
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S.C. Gwynne (Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson)
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It is therefore easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion. It may be a rebellion of serious thinkers against accepted clap-trap or of faddists against accepted good sense; of real artists against popular ugliness or of charlatans against civilised taste; of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness. Whichever it is, it will be unwelcome to Top People. In each knot of Friends there is a sectional ‘public opinion’ which fortifies its members against the public opinion of the community in general. Each therefore is a pocket of potential resistance. Men who have real Friends are less easy to manage or ‘get at’; harder for good Authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to corrupt. Hence if our masters, by force or by propaganda about ‘Togetherness’ or by unobtrusively making privacy and unplanned leisure impossible, ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.
”
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C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
“
For Hal, the general deal with his maternal uncle is that Tavis is terribly shy around people and tries to hide it by being very open and expansive and wordy and bluff, and that it’s very excruciating to be around. Mario’s way of looking at it is that Tavis is very open and expansive and wordy, but so clearly uses these qualities as a kind of protective shield that it betrays a frightened vulnerability almost impossible not to feel for. Either way, the unsettling thing about Charles Tavis is that he’s possibly the openest man of all time. Orin and Marlon Bain’s view was always that C.T. was less like a person than like a sort of cross-section of a person. Even the Moms Hal could remember relating anecdotes about how as a teenager, when she’d taken the child C.T. or been around him at Québecois functions or gatherings involving other kids, the child C.T. had been too self-conscious and awkward to join right in with any group of the kids clustered around, talking or plotting or whatever, and so Avril said she’d watch him just kind of drift from cluster to cluster and lurk around creepily on the fringe, listening, but that he’d always say, loudly, in some lull in the group’s conversation, something like ‘I’m afraid I’m far too self-conscious really to join in here, so I’m just going to lurk creepily at the fringe and listen, if that’s all right, just so you know,’ and so on.
”
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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Tch’en Ché (Chen Sheng n.n.) fut le premier à commencer la révolte ; les braves s’élancèrent comme un essaim d’abeilles et se combattirent les uns les autres en nombre incalculable. Cependant (Hiang) Yu (Xiang Yu n.n.) n’avait ni un pied ni un pouce de terre ; profitant de l’occasion, il s’éleva du milieu des sillons’ ; au bout de trois ans, il commandait à cinq seigneurs’, il avait écrasé Ts’in, il partageait l’empire et nommait des rois et des seigneurs ; l’autorité émanait de (Hiang) Yu ; son titre était « roi suprême ». Quoiqu’il n’ait pas gardé cette dignité jusqu’au bout, cependant depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, il n’y en a jamais eu de si grande.
Ensuite (Hiang) Yu viola (le traité relatif aux) passes et regretta (le pays de) Tch’ou ; il chassa l’empereur juste et se donna le pouvoir à lui- même ; il s’irrita de ce que les rois et les seigneurs se révoltaient contre lui ; quelles difficultés (ne s’attirait-il pas !).
Il s’enorgueillit de ses exploits guerriers, s’enivra de sa propre sagesse et ne prit pas modèle sur l’antiquité. Sous le prétexte d’agir en roi suprême, il voulait s’imposer par la force et régler à son gré tout l’empire. La cinquième année, il perdit soudain son royaume ; lui-même mourut à Tong-tch'eng mais il ne comprit point encore et ne s’incrimina pas lui-même ; quelle erreur ! En effet, « c’est le Ciel, dit-il, qui me perd et ce n’est point que j’aie commis aucune faute militaire. » N'est-ce pas là de l’aveuglement ?
”
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Sima Qian (Mémoires historiques - Deuxième Section (French Edition))
“
Here is a checklist for helping your students maintain and boost their motivation. Relate each item to the key motivators of agency (A), relatedness (R) and competence (C). Some items may be a mixture of more than one motivator. 1 Encourage students to get to know each other and talk to each other about their lives and what matters to them. Join in yourself. 2 Suggest they keep a learning journal in which they reflect on what they have learnt, what activities they have liked or disliked, what is affecting their learning. 3 Allow class time for them to report on their learning to a partner or in small groups 4 Exploit the motivational tools that accompany course books, such as progress tests, ‘can do’ self-evaluative checklists and CEF-based portfolios. There is more on this in the section on coaching with a course book. 5 Wherever possible give your students a choice of what they do in class and for homework (whatever their age!), either as a group by voting for one activity which everyone will do or allowing them individually to choose different activities. 6 Help students set goals for themselves, as a group and individually. Encourage them to write these down and check their progress. 7 Offer your students the opportunity to prepare for an external exam which relates to their needs, such as the Trinity GESE exams for spoken English or the Cambridge ESOL exams. 8 Ask your students how they are feeling about their English on a regular basis. Ask them where their motivation levels are from one week to the next. Get them to ask each other. Be a role model by paying attention to your own motivation!
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Daniel Barber (From English Teacher to Learner Coach)
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What this means is that the (Infinity) of points involved in continuity is greater than the (Infinity) of points comprised by any kind of discrete sequence, even an infinitely dense one. (2) Via his Diagonal Proof that c is greater than Aleph0, Cantor has succeeded in characterizing arithmetical continuity entirely in terms of order, sets, denumerability, etc. That is, he has characterized it 100% abstractly, without reference to time, motion, streets, noses, pies, or any other feature of the physical world-which is why Russell credits him with 'definitively solving' the deep problems behind the dichotomy. (3) The D.P. also explains, with respect to Dr. G.'s demonstration back in Section 2e, why there will always be more real numbers than red hankies. And it helps us understand why rational numbers ultimately take up 0 space on the Real Line, since it's obviously the irrational numbers that make the set of all reals nondenumerable. (4) An extension of Cantor's proof helps confirm J. Liouville's 1851 proof that there are an infinite number of transcendental irrationals in any interval on the Real Line. (This is pretty interesting. You'll recall from Section 3a FN 15 that of the two types of irrationals, transcendentals are the ones like pi and e that can't be the roots of integer-coefficient polynomials. Cantor's proof that the reals' (Infinity) outweighs the rationals' (Infinity) can be modified to show that it's actually the transcendental irrationals that are nondenumerable and that the set of all algebraic irrationals has the same cardinality as the rationals, which establishes that it's ultimately the transcendetnal-irrational-reals that account for the R.L.'s continuity.)
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David Foster Wallace (Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity)
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So okay. C-section in the morning? Why not?
Chris still hadn’t shown up when I felt the examining room. Nor had he answered my call asking him what was up.
I got in my car to drive to the hospital, then did what a lot of women do in that situation: I called my mom.
“Hey, honey, are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes.” I burst into tears. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how close to panicking I really was.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I…don’t know where Chris is. I have to go to the hospital to have the baby-“
“It’ll be OK,” she said quickly. “I’m going to the airport. I’ll be there.”
I didn’t even get to explain the full situation.
Then Chris called. “Where are you?” I asked. I was somewhere between relieved and angry-or maybe I was both angry and relieved.
“I just had some stuff happen,” he said. “I’m okay. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“I need you now,” I said, telling him about the baby.
If you’ve read American Sniper, you know what had happened to him: he passed out during what should have been a very routine procedure to remove a cyst in his neck. It was a freak thing that led to what we think was a temporary seizure.
Some “thing.” But being a SEAL and being Chris, he completely minimized it. In fact, I didn’t know what had happened until later. All I knew was that he met me at the hospital and was by my side when I needed him.
There is a bit of a funny story attached to the incident. A friend of Chris’s happened to be with him when he passed out.
“Stand back,” his friend told the corpsman.
“What? Why?” the corpsman asked.
“Because when he comes to, he’s going to come up swinging.”
“No.”
The corpsman leaned down. Just then, Chris came to and, as his friend had warned, started swinging. Fortunately, the corpsman jerked out of the way just in time.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay’s for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie’s daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, “I’m gonna go have a baby. See you all later!”
For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we’d spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He’d created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me.
I’ll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I’ll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look.
After we admired the baby together, I fell asleep, and Jep took his newborn daughter out to meet the family. He told me later he bawled like a baby. Later, when she went to the hospital nursery, Jep kept going over there to stare at her. I think he was in shock and overwhelmed and excited.
Lily had a light creamy complexion and little pink rosebud lips, and she was born December 26, 2002. Despite the rough pregnancy, she was perfect. God answered our prayers, and now we were a family of three. We’d been married just a little over a year.
”
”
Jessica Robertson (The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness)
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A veritable pacifist when it comes to social guilds or luncheon clubs, I turn into something of a militant on the subject of the only true and living Church on the face of the earth. . . .
Setting aside for a time the heavenly host we hope one day to enjoy, I still choose the church of Jesus Christ to fill my need to be needed--here and now, as well as there and then. When public problems or private heartaches come--as surely they do come--I will be most fortunate if in that hour I find myself in the company of Latter-day Saints. . . .
When asked "What can I know?" a Latter-day Saint answers, "All that God knows." When asked "What ought I to do?" his disciples answer, "Follow the Master." When asked "What may I hope?" an entire dispensation declares, "Peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come" (D&C 59:23), indeed ultimately for "all that [the] Father hath" (D&C 84:38). Depressions and identity crises have a hard time holding up under that response. . . .
We cannot but wonder what frenzy the world would experience if a chapter of the Book of Mormon or a section of the Doctrine and Covenants or a conference address by President Spencer W. Kimball were to be discovered by some playful shepherd boy in an earthen jar near the Dead Sea caves of Qumran. The beneficiaries would probably build a special shrine in Jerusalem to house it, being very careful to regulate temperatures and restrict visitors. They would undoubtedly protect against earthquakes and war. Surely the edifice would be as beautiful as the contents would be valuable; its cost would be enormous, but its worth would be incalculable. Yet for the most part we have difficulty giving away copies of sacred scripture much more startling in their origin. Worse yet, some of us, knowing of the scriptures, have not even tried to share them, as if an angel were an every-day visitor and a prophet just another man in the street. We forget that our fathers lived for many centuries without priesthood power or prophetic leadership, and "dark ages" they were indeed.
”
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Jeffrey R. Holland
“
« Les Arabes auraient facilement pu être aveuglés par leurs premières conquêtes et maltraiter leurs opposants ou les forcer à embrasser l'islam, qu'ils souhaitaient répandre à travers le monde. Mais ils évitèrent cela. Les premiers califes, qui possédaient un génie politique que l'on retrouve rarement chez les adhérents aux nouvelles religions, avaient compris que la religion et les systèmes de pensée ne s'imposent pas par la force. Alors, ils traitèrent les peuples de Syrie, d'Égypte, d'Espagne et de tous les pays dont ils prirent le contrôle avec beaucoup de considération, comme on a pu le voir. Ils leur permirent de conserver intactes leurs lois, leurs règles et leurs croyances et ne leur imposèrent que la jizya, qui était d'un montant dérisoire lorsque comparé à ce qu'ils avaient du payer comme taxes, auparavant, en échange de leur sécurité. La vérité est que jamais les nations n'avaient connu de conquérants plus tolérants que les musulmans ni de religion plus tolérante que l'Islam. »
- La civilisation des arabes, p.154,
__________________________
Remarque : La Jizya n'était imposé qu'aux hommes adultes en bonne santé. Pas aux femmes, aux enfants, aux handicapés, aux personnes âgées, aux pauvres et aux moines.
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Le Coran est entré dans peu de développements sur le droit de propriété, mais tout ce qui le concerne a été bien réglé par les commentateurs. Ce droit a toujours été très respecté par les Arabes, même à l'égard des peuples vaincus. La terre, qui était enlevée à ces derniers par la conquête, leur était rendue moyennant un tribut qui dépassait rarement le cinquième de la récolte.
L'occupation individuelle fondée sur le travail constituait pour les Arabes un droit à la propriété. Dans leur opinion, défricher c'est vivifier la terre morte, créer une valeur, et par conséquent un droit à la propriété. La prescription n'étant pas reconnue par la plupart des commentateurs, le droit de revendication est illimité. Le rite malékite admet cependant la prescription par dix ans entre étrangers, quarante entre parents. L'étranger ne peut acquérir de terre ni posséder d'esclaves sur le sol musulman,mais ce terme d'étrangers s'adresse seulement aux infidèles, les musulmans, à quelque nation qu'ils appartiennent, ne sont jamais des étrangers les uns pour les autres. Un Chinois mahométan, par le seul fait qu'il est mahométan, a sur le sol de l'islam tous les droits que peut posséder l'Arabe qui y est né. Le droit musulman diffère à ce point de vue d'une façon fondamentale du droit civil chez les peuples Européens."
Gustave Le Bon - La civilisation des arabes, Livre IV, section 2 : "Institutions sociales des arabes
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Gustave Le Bon (حضارة العرب)
“
In the opinion of the A. C. Nielsen Company, the ideal radio research service must:
1. Measure the entertainment value of the program (probably best indicated by the size of the audience, bearing in mind the scope of the broadcasting facilities).
2. Measure the sales effectiveness of the program.
3. Cover the entire radio audience; that is:
a. All geographical sections.
b. All sizes of cities.
c. Farms.
d. All income classes.
e. All occupations.
f. All races.
g. All sizes of family.
h. Telephone and non-telephone homes, etc., etc.
4. Sample each of the foregoing sections of the audience in its proper portion; that is, there must be scientific, controlled sampling — not wholly random sampling.
5. Cover a sufficiently large sample to give reliable results.
6. Cover all types of programs.
7. Cover all hours of the day.
8. Permit complete analysis of each program; for example:
a. Variations in audience size at each instant during the broadcast.
b. Average duration of listening.
c. Detection of entertainment features or commercials which cause gain or loss of audience.
d. Audience turnover from day to day or week to week, etc., etc.
9. Reveal the true popularity and listening areas of each station and each network; that is, furnish an "Audit Bureau of Circulations" for radio.
A study was made by A. C. Nielson Company of all possible methods of meeting these specifications. After careful investigation, they decided to use a graphic recording instrument known as the "audimeter" for accurately measuring radio listening. . . .
The audimeter is installed in radio receivers in homes.
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Judith C. Waller (Radio: The Fifth Estate)
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Studies from rich countries show that C-Section mothers are less likely to be breastfeeding at two weeks than those who delivered vaginally.25
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Gabrielle Palmer (The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business)
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What was the very FIRST GAME Mario appeared in? a) Super Mario Bros. b) Donkey Kong c) Super Smash Bros. d) Super Mario World. What is the newest Mario game out today? a) New Super Mario Bros. b) Super Mario Galaxy. What does Luigi say when he wins a race on Mario Cart 64? What is Mario’s last name? a) Costanza b) Italiano c) Mario d) Luigi. Who is the LAST person you play in Mario Party 3 (64 version)? a) Millennium Star b) Waluigi c) Daisy d) Bowser. Correct answers: b b Letsa go (let’s go, here we go) c a. Results: 0 out of 5 – did you play any Mario game at all? The game itself isn’t very complicated. Start playing and you’ll definitely get a higher score. Right now, this is bad. These answers make Mario question his own abilities to do something right. 1 out of 5 – you have probably played Mario games, when someone made you. Come on, you can do way better than this. Even Koopas can get a higher score and you’re way smarter than them. Plus, Princess Peach is most certainly not impressed with this score. 2 out of 5 – well, you’re not totally bad, but you’re also far away from an expert. Let’s just assume you hurried to answer as faster as possible and you made a couple of mistakes. You know what they say, everything gets better with practice. 3 out of 5 – you’re in the middle; still a long way to go to become an expert, but you’re not an amateur at the same time. However, Princess Peach doesn’t want someone who’s going to be happy being “in the middle”. What does this tell you? To do your best, achieve a greater score and, of course, to improve your overall game style as well. 4 out of 5 – very good. You are just one step away from being an expert. If you continue like this, you would be able to do a better job than Mario. You know the game quite well and you would gladly go on an adventure in Super Mario style. 5 out of 5 – expert. Congratulations! You love the game, your favorite pastime is playing Super Mario and let’s face it; you’d give Mario run for his money. You know the game “inside and out” and unlike Mario, you’d actually find princess in the right castle. But, don’t let this get into your head. Always strive to do better. Conclusion Thank you again for downloading this book! I hope you find the third volume of Super Mario joke book as equally entertaining as previous two volumes. In case you haven’t read Super Mario joke book volumes 1 and 2, this is the perfect opportunity to get those books and see what jokes, memes, and other useful and entertaining info you missed out on. Throughout this book, you got to see various jokes, memes, comics, and read about interesting Mario fun facts you didn’t know before. Besides that, the book also included quiz where you had the opportunity to test your knowledge of Mario games. Hopefully, you got the top score and even if you didn’t, you can always retake the test. This joke book is ideal for all people who love Super Mario and it’s impossible to hate this little, chubby guy. With good humor, funny memes, interesting comics, and special Princess Peach section, this book is everything you need whenever you feel sad, bored, or in the mood for a good laugh. I hope this book was able to help you understand the importance of Super Mario as well as to understand
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Jenson Publishing (Super Mario: The Funniest Super Mario Jokes & Memes Volume 3)
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Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal ____ A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? ____ B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? ____ C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? ____ D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow.
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James W. Pennebaker (Expressive Writing: Words That Heal)
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Aa – pronounced as ah, as in father Bb – pronounced as bay Cc – Generally, its French pronunciation is say. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the situation. If this letter comes before I and E, it must be pronounced as the English S (similar to how C in the word center is pronounced). If it comes before A, O, and U, its pronunciation must be the same as c in cat. Dd – pronounced as day, or similar to D in the word dog Ee – must sound like euh, similar to the emphasis of U in the word burp Ff – sounds like eff, similar to how F is pronounced in the word fog Gg – As a general rule, this letter is pronounced as jhay. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the word. If this letter is found before the vowels A, O, and U, it must sound like the g in the word get. On the other hand, if it’s placed before I and E, the pronunciation must be similar to the S in the word measure. Hh – While this letter generally sounds as ash and is found in French written words, it is ALWAYS silent, even if the word begins with this letter. However, H has two kinds in the French language that are useful in writing. In non-aspirated H (or H muet), the letter H is treated as a vowel and the word requires either liaisons or contractions (other rules will be discussed in a later section). On the other hand, in an aspirated H (or H aspiré), the word is treated is a consonant and will not require liaisons or contractions. To determine which words are aspirated or not so that words can be spelled and pronounced correctly, French dictionaries place an asterisk (or any other symbol) on words starting with an H to indicate that they are aspirated. Ii – sounds like ee, or similar to how the letters ea in the word team is pronounced Jj – pronounced as ghee, and sounds like the S in the word measure Kk – sounds like kah, and is pronounced like the K in the word kite Ll – a straightforward el pronunciation, similar to L in the word lemon Mm – simply pronounced as emm, from M in the word minute Nn – similar to N in the word note, as it sounds like enn Oo – This letter can be pronounced as the O in the word nose, or can also sound similar to the U in nut. Pp – pronounced as pay, or similar to the letter P in the word pen Qq – sounds like ku, or how the K in kite is pronounced Rr – must sound like you’re saying air. To do this correctly in French, you must try to force air as if it’s going to the back of your throat. Your tongue must be near the position where you gargle, but the letter must sound softly. Ss – Generally, it must sound like ess. However, the pronunciation might change depending on the word. If the word begins with an S or has 2 S’s, it must sound like the S in sister. However, if the word only has one S, it must sound like the Z in the word amazing. Tt – pronounced as tay, just like t in the word top Uu – To pronounce this properly, you must say the letter E as how it is said in English while making sure that your lips follow the position like you’re saying “oo”. Vv – pronounced as vay, and sounds like the V in violin. Ww – pronounced as dubla-vay as the general rule. However, this may be changed depending on the word. It can sound like V in the word violin, or as W in the word water. Xx – sounds like eeks, and can be pronounced either like gz (as how the word exit is said) or as ks (when the word socks is said). Yy – pronounced as ee-grehk, or similar to ea in leak. Zz – sounds as zed, or like the letter Z in zebra
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Adrian Alfaro (Learn French: A beginner's guide to learning basic French fast, including useful common words and phrases!)
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Part One—The Lipid Panel. Used to evaluate heart health, this panel comprises of four biological markers representing the four types of fat found in the blood—triglycerides, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Two additional measures of cardiovascular health, homocysteine and c-reactive protein (CRP), may also be measured as part of a more comprehensive profile. These two labs are discussed in Part Six, “Optional Tests” (see page 8). • Part Two—The Basic Metabolic Panel. The labs used to evaluate metabolism measure blood sugar regulation, electrolyte and fluid balance, and kidney function. Biomarkers included in this panel are glucose, calcium, sodium, potassium, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine. • Part Three—The Hepatic Function Panel. This panel determines how well your liver is functioning by measuring levels of different proteins produced and processed by the liver, like albumin and globulin, as well as liver enzymes. • Part Four—The Complete Blood Count (CBC) Panel. The lab values measured in the complete blood count (CBC) panel include red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and hemoglobin. Maintaining healthy levels of these biomarkers affect your vitality and energy, immune system, and cardiovascular health. • Part Five—Hormones. Although they are not always included in a routine blood test, hormones should be periodically tested, especially in aging adults. Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, DHEA, and prostate specific antigen (PSA) play an integral role in reproductive wellness and affect other aspects of health. Maintaining balanced levels can slow down the aging process, for instance. Hormones involved in metabolism, like the thyroid hormones and the stress hormone cortisol, are also discussed in this section. • Part Six—Optional Tests. This final part of the book highlights four tests—homocysteine, c-reactive protein (CRP), vitamin D, and magnesium—that are not typically measured unless requested, or if a standard blood test shows an abnormality that requires a more in-depth analysis. These tests can provide a more complete picture of heart health, immunity, calcium absorption, blood sugar regulation, and a number of other vital processes.
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James B. LaValle (Your Blood Never Lies: How to Read a Blood Test for a Longer, Healthier Life)
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While giving birth is one of the most natural functions of all animals, the way humans do it has deviated substantially from the way Mother Nature intended—particularly in the United States, where pregnancy and birth are treated like a disease. It’s dealt with in sterile hospital rooms. Mothers are hooked up with intravenous lines and set up in the strangest positions, which are designed more for the doctor’s view and access than the mother’s comfort and birthing process. Too many women are induced, which often leads to C-sections that would not have been necessary if the natural process of labor had been respected and allowed to proceed without disruption. A baby in the womb is sterile, but when passing through the birth canal, it is exposed to bacteria, mouth first. These bacteria are supposed to colonize the gut, nature’s first vaccination of sorts. This does not happen during a C-Section.
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Alejandro Junger (Clean Gut: The Breakthrough Plan for Eliminating the Root Cause of Disease and Revolutionizing Your Health)
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In the US today the two most common surgeries are both female only, and on the womb: C-sections and hysterectomies. xxxiii
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Lucy H. Pearce (Burning Woman)
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Most of the general considerations in the chapter on 'The Evolution of Ideas' equally apply to the evolution of art. In both fields the truly original geniuses are rare compared with the enormous number of talented practitioners; the former acting as spearheads, opening up new territories, which the latter will then diligently cultivate. In both fields there are periods of crisis, of 'creative anarchy', leading to a break-through to new frontiers-followed by decades, or centuries of consolidation, orthodoxy, stagnation, and decadence-until a new crisis arises, a holy discontent, which starts the cycle again. Other parallels could be drawn: 'multiple discoveries' -the simultaneous emergence of a new style, for which the time is ripe, independently in several places; 'collective discoveries' originating in a closely knit group, clique, school, or team; 'rediscoveries'- the periodic revivals of past and forgotten forms of art; lastly 'cross-fertilizations' between seemingly distant provinces of science and art. To quote a single example: the rediscovery of the treatise on conic sections by Apollonius of Perga, dating from the fourth century B.C., gave the ellipse to Kepler who built on it a new astronomy-and to Guarini, who introduced new vistas into architecture.
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Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation)
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Low Risk of Cardiovascular Disease - Less than 1 mg/L Moderate Risk of Cardiovascular Disease - 1 to 2.9 mg/L High Risk of Cardiovascular Disease - 3 or higher mg/L Further Testing Suggested to Find out the Cause of Severe Inflammation - 10 or higher mg/L CRP-HS (C-Reactive High Sensitivity) Lower Relative Risk - Less than 1.0 Average Relative Risk - Average Risk TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) Normal Range - 0.4 to 4.2 ml/L T4 (Free Thyroid) Normal Range - 0.78 to 2.19 ng/dL T4 (Total Thyroid) Normal Range – 5.53 to 11.00 mcg/dL T3 (Free Thyroid) Normal Range - 2.5 to 5.3 pg/mL SECTION 2
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Christopher David Allen (Reverse Heart Disease: Heart Attack Cure & Stroke Cure)
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Citizen Courtney Hall of the yulp caste, in the name of the Compassionate Society, you are under arrest for a Category Eight PainCrime violation; namely that you did, at or about twenty-thirty of the previous day, unlawfully gain access to, and utilize, a restricted security code, and through use of same, did with full cognizance and malice aforethought cause the general publication of Material Detrimental to the General Populace as specified under Section 29C, Paragraph 12, subsection 6, of the Social Responsibility (Publications and Mass Media) Act: Satire, Irony, and Associated Nonconstructive Criticism.
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Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
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Cultural Diplomacy—and an Accolade Among Piazzolla’s tasks during his first summer at the Chalet El Casco was the composition of “Le Grand Tango,” a ten-minute piece for cello and piano commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom Piazzolla sent the score. Rostropovich had not heard of Piazzolla at the time and did not look seriously at the music for several years.7 Written in ternary form, the work bears all Piazzolla’s hallmarks: tight construction, strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity and melodic inspiration, all apparent from the fierce cello scrapes at the beginning. Piazzolla uses intervals not frequently visited on the cello fingerboard. Its largely tender mood, notably on display in the cello’s snaking melodic line in the reflective middle section, becomes more profoundly complex in its emotional range toward the end. With its intricate juxtapositions of driving rhythms and heart-rending tags of tune, it is just about the most exciting music Piazzolla ever wrote, a masterpiece. Piazzolla was eager for Rostropovich to play it, but the chance did not come for eight years. Rostropovich, having looked at the music, and “astounded by the great talent of Astor,” decided he would include it in a concert. He made some changes in the cello part and wanted Piazzolla to hear them before he played the piece. Accordingly, in April 1990, he rehearsed it with Argentine pianist Susana Mendelievich in a room at the Teatro Colón, and Piazzolla gently coached the maestro in tango style—”Yes, tan-go, tan-go, tan-go.” The two men took an instant liking to one another.8 It was, says Mendelievich, “as if Rostropovich had played tangos all his life.” “Le Grand Tango” had its world premiere in New Orleans on April 24, 1990. Sarah Wolfensohn was the pianist. Three days later, they both played this piece again at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. [NOTE C] Rostropovich performed “Le Grand Tango” at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in July 1994; the pianist was Lambert Orkis. More recently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has described “Le Grand Tango” as one of his “favorite pieces of music,” praising its “inextricable rhythmic sense...total freedom, passion, ecstasy.
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Maria Susana Azzi (Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla (2017 Updated and Expanded Edition))
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The aim of the next nine sections will be to present careful arguments to show that none of the loopholes (a), (b), and (c) can provide a plausible way to evade the contradiction of the robot. Accordingly, it, and we also, are driven to the unpalatable (d), if we are still insistent that mathematical understanding can be reduced to computation. I am sure that those concerned with artificial intelligence would find (d) to be as unpalatable as I find it to be. It provides perhaps a conceivable standpoint-essentially the A/D suggestion, referred to at the end of 1.3, whereby divine intervention is required for the implanting of an unknowable algorithm into each of our computer brains (by 'the best programmer in the business'). In any case, the conclusion 'unknowable'-for the very mechanisms that are ultimately responsible for our intelligence-would not be a very happy conclusion for those hoping actually to construct a genuinely artificially intelligent robot! It would not be a particularly happy conclusion, either, for those of us who hope to understand, in principle and in a scientific way, how human intelligence has actually arisen, in accordance with comprehensible scientific laws, such as those of physics, chemistry, biology, and natural selection-irrespective of any desire to reproduce such intelligence in a robot device. In my own opinion, such a pessimistic conclusion is not warranted, for the very reason that 'scientific comprehensibility' is a very different thing from 'computability'. The conclusion should be not that the underlying laws are incomprehensible, but that they are non-computable.
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Roger Penrose (Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness)
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parallel to all other ages, not a chronological series of events. Indeed, one of the great marvels of God’s gracious activity toward us is that it occurs in real time without being prejudiced in favor of any particular age. Just because we are the latest does not mean we are the best. The effects of sin prevent any age—including ours—from being “golden,” at least in the spiritual sense. Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It reveals important truths about the end times. But it is also last in another important sense—it calls on all the hermeneutical courage, wisdom, and maturity one can muster in order to be understood properly. In many ways it serves as a graduation exercise for the NIV Application Commentary Series, an opportunity to fully apply the many lessons we have learned in the Bridging Contexts sections of previous volumes. God’s time is his, not ours. The story of God’s gracious activity on our behalf will be fulfilled in a great and glorious conclusion. But all Christians, everywhere and at all times, have equal access to the time. That access has been and is made possible by God’s message in the book of Revelation. Terry C. Muck Author’s Preface AS A NEW CHRISTIAN recently converted from atheism, I eagerly hurried through Paul’s letters, reaching Revelation as soon as possible. Once I reached it, however, I could hardly understand a word of it. I listened attentively to the first few “prophecy teachers” I heard, but even if they had not contradicted one another, over the years I watched as most of their detailed predictions failed to materialize. Perhaps six years after my conversion, as I began to read Revelation in Greek for the first time, the book came alive to me. Because I was now moving through the text more carefully, I noticed the transitions and the structure, and I realized it was probably addressing something much different from what I had first supposed. At the same time, I catalogued parallels I found between Revelation and biblical prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. I also began reading an apocalypse contemporary with Revelation, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), to learn more about the way Revelation’s original, first-century audience may have heard its claims. Yet even in my first two years as a Christian, Revelation and other end-time passages proved a turning point for me. As a young Christian, I was immediately schooled in a particular, popular end-time view, which I respectfully swallowed (the
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Craig S. Keener (Revelation (The NIV Application Commentary Book 20))
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Babies who are born via Cesarean section have a higher risk of developing ADHD, but why? Understanding the links in the chain give credence to the importance of healthy gut bacteria to sustain intestinal health and overall wellness. When a baby passes through the birth canal naturally, billions of healthy bacteria wash over the child, thereby inoculating the newborn with appropriate probiotics whose pro-health effects remain for life. If a child is born via C-section, however, he or she misses out on this shower of sorts, and this sets the stage for bowel inflammation and, therefore, an increased risk of sensitivity to gluten and ADHD later in life.12
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David Perlmutter (Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers)
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Yesterday I saw my new born baby masseur ( local bai which has no idea what is right or wrong) massaging my new born baby . My instincts was telling me that a harsh massage is not required ( which she was doing by providing all kinds of wrong exercises as per pediatric) but with all elders experience and this being fourth newborn child in my house I decided to observe massage, though I was feeling to ask her to stop immediately but was helpless with all elders present .Soon after the massage I said my wife we need to consult pediatric about this massage (consultation should have been done before starting massage but was helpless in front of elders decision). In consultation pediatric informed us that massage is only for bonding between masseur and baby (so it is better if Mom gives massage). If massage is not provided to babies its completely fine and if done should be done gently. After listening to this I was feeling guilty and so bad as it is my duty to protect my new born baby against any harm and I was not able to do so. My new born was shouting and crying for help while having massage came in front of my eyes and for this I am very angry with myself and my family members excluding my wife as she herself had c-section delivery and was asked by doctor to rest. Mothers as it is don't get enough time even to sleep after delivery for at least a week.
Nobody wants to harm baby but before taking any action it was my family's duty to know what is right. Nobody has the right to abuse anyone specifically newborn. From this blog I want to make everyone aware that please don't rely on anyone and take actions always take expert advice (pediatric) in case of babies as there are lot of misconceptions and I request elders that its OK if you don't know what's right but please don't misguide and only when damn sure then only advice. Also confirm that with expert before implementing. I hope that I am able to help some of the newborn by not getting that so called good massage (actually a harsh massage).
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Vivek Tripathi
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wish to express my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks to the Jayne Memorial Foundation and its board of trustees, which selected me as the annual lecturer for 1942 to speak on the subject of Sumerian mythology. I also acknowledge my gratitude to the board of managers of the University Museum; to Dr. George C. Vaillant, its director; to Mr. Horace H . F. Jayne, his predecessor; and to Professor Leon Legrain, the curator of its Babylonian section, for their scientific
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Samuel Noah Kramer (Sumerian Mythology)
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Every professional voice coach worth their salt will bring you back to the importance of tone, pace, and pitch. While these concepts were introduced earlier in The Art of Body Language section, we can now elaborate and take a deeper dive into how you can use your voice to improve your communications.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
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A Congress that produces something like Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX) in the name of reducing complexity hardly seems likely to agree on any serious changes that would improve the system.
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T.R. Reid (A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System)
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My niece, Anna, told about a poignant moment with her eight-year-old daughter. I love myself but I hate my thighs. I do. I also hate my post-baby, three-times-C-sectioned tummy. No matter how many planks, sit-ups, or miles I run, it will never be like it was when I was in college. And that makes me sad, frustrated, and sometimes angry. When my sweet husband tells me I look beautiful, instead of just thanking him, I answer back with a caveat: “Thanks, but I look fat.” I do this in front of my kids sometimes without realizing it. My boys always come back with, “No way, Mom. You look awesome” or “We think you’re beautiful!” But my daughter is just quiet. Watching. Listening. Later she’ll come up to me, hug me, and whisper, “I love you so much, Mommy.” A couple of months ago, when she was all dressed up, I saw her looking at herself in the mirror. I stopped and said, “Lillian, you look absolutely stunning!” She turned around and said to me very matter of fact, “No I don’t. I look fat.” I gasped! Doesn’t she know how precious she is? Doesn’t she know how beautiful she is? What a blessing she is? Doesn’t she know what a miracle her very existence is? And then I remembered all the times I answered her dad with the very same words. I was sad, ashamed, and most of all heartbroken. Lillian was eight years old. She understood that “fat” was how I felt about myself, so she decided she should feel that way too. Lillian and I had a long talk that day. I told her what a blessing her life is, and how God made her special, unique, and beautiful. I also apologized to her, my two sons, and my husband for not loving myself like I should. Lately, I’ve been saying “thank you” when I get compliments—something new to me—and it’s made all the difference. Now when I tell Lillian how gorgeous she is (which is all the time), she looks at me with her bright hazel eyes and says, “Thanks, Mommy! I think you’re really beautiful too!
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Sharon Jaynes (Enough: Silencing the Lies That Steal Your Confidence)
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Most of them ran counter to the ethos of BBLR. Virtually all of them made the tax code more complicated—including that bizarre “anti-complexity clause,” Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX). Three decades after the passage of the 1986 reforms, the U.S. tax code is a mockery of the BBLR principle.
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T.R. Reid (A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System)
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IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, a voluminous and hugely complex new law, which included the laughable “anti-complexity clause”—that is, Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX).
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T.R. Reid (A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System)
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Run with More Threads Than Processors Things happen when the system switches between tasks. To encourage task swapping, run with more threads than processors or cores. The more frequently your tasks swap, the more likely you’ll encounter code that is missing a critical section or causes deadlock.
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Robert C. Martin (Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin Series))
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Completing Your Cash Acceleration Strategies (CASh) Tool 1. Read the Harvard Business Review article by Neil C. Churchill and John W. Mullins titled “How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow?” 2. Calculate your existing CCC in days. 3. Calculate the amount of cash required to fund each additional day of CCC. 4. Brainstorm ways to improve your CCC and the 7 financial levers highlighted in the last chapter of this “Cash” section using the one-page CASh tool. Be sure to explore ways in all three general categories — shortening cycle times, eliminating mistakes, and changing the business model — for each segment of the CCC. 5. Choose one cash-improvement initiative every 90 days as one of your quarterly priorities (Rocks).
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Verne Harnish (Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0))
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neuroscientists have discovered that fear activates the amygdala, the section of the brain that is responsible for detecting threats.
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Amy C. Edmondson (The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth)
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we included a section about scientist Bruce Damer’s experiences as a child? In one of the stories, his “future selves” appeared and he asked them to sign a contract to only send positive energy back in time. As you keep track of your spontaneous precognitive experiences or if you pursue controlled precognition as a practice, this kind of thinking will become commonplace. In other words, you will start to think of yourself as not just this version of your body that exists right now as you read this, but instead, as all past and future versions of your body and mind. As a result of this shift, your sense of self can feel more permanent and connected in both time and space. Imagine a line drawn through time, where each point in the line is wherever you have been and wherever you will be, from birth to death. Physicists call this your “world line” – the map of your entire existence in space and time. Similar to this world line, as you become more comfortable with your own precognitive experiences, you will probably start to include your past and future selves as part of your definition of yourself. This is a reasonable response to having first-hand experience with accessing information from the future. It doesn’t mean you always know what your future self will do, or that the future is necessarily determined at the present moment. But thinking of yourself as all of yourself – through time and space – is a shift that is likely coming your way as you continue your training as a Positive Precog. Fortunately, connecting with yourself in this way is likely to make you more compassionate with yourself (the “C” in the REACH principles) – and, as a result, more compassionate with others (also the “C” in the REACH principles). In addition to embracing connections in time, this shift in your sense of self will probably also embrace connections in space. That’s because, as you practise controlled precognition, you’ll notice that not only are you able to sometimes perceive uncannily accurate information from the future, but also this information can be from locations that are distant. You might end up thinking about these connections in space like the Iroquois, a Native American Indian tribe, have done. They speak of a long body. Your long body would include your mind, your body, the minds and bodies of people with whom you have relationships, the tools you use, and the places you live.a Again, this feeling of connection can be very positive. Any feelings of compassion you have for yourself as a result of extending your sense of yourself over time will also extend to those in your long body. And guess what? When compassion is passed around to others, it turns out that the originator of the compassion is more resilient to stress.b That brings us nicely to the changes you can expect in health and wellbeing as a result of your Positive Precog practice.
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Theresa Cheung (The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life)
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Our survey measure rated three behavioral attributes of leadership inclusiveness: one, leaders were approachable and accessible; two, leaders acknowledged their fallibility; and three, leaders proactively invited input from other staff, physicians, and nurses. The concept of leadership inclusiveness thus captures situational humility coupled with proactive inquiry (discussed in the next section).
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Amy C. Edmondson (The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth)
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all adults, especially high-achieving ones, are subject to a cognitive bias called naive realism that gives us the experience of “knowing” what's going on.25 As noted in the previous section, we believe we are seeing “reality” – rather than a subjective view of reality. As a result, we often fail to wonder what others are seeing. We fail to be curious. Worse, many leaders, even when they are motivated to ask a question, worry that it will make them look uninformed or weak.
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Amy C. Edmondson (The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth)
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Two essential behaviors that signal an invitation is genuine are adopting a mindset of situational humility and engaging in proactive inquiry. Designing structures for input, another powerful tool I discuss in this section, also serves as an invitation for voice.
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Amy C. Edmondson (The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth)
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Quelle en est la cause ? La voici : dans les temps modernes et dans l'antiquité, il n'y avait plus de rois depuis longtemps; la maison des Tcheou (Zhou n.n.) s'était affaiblie; quand les cinq hégémons eurent cessé d'être, ses ordres n'eurent plus d'autorité dans l'empire; c'est pourquoi les seigneurs gouvernèrent par la violence ; les forts tyrannisèrent les faibles; la majorité opprima la minorité; les armes et les cuirasses ne furent point déposées; les hommes de valeur et le peuple furent épuisés. Or, quand Ts'in (Qin n.n.) se tourna du côté du sud et régna sur l'empire, il y eut dès lors en haut un Fils du Ciel ; aussitôt la multitude innombrable du peuple espéra obtenir la paix conforme à sa nature et à sa destinée ; il n’y eut per- sonne qui ne se portât vers lui de tout son cœur et qui ne regardât en haut avec respect. Dans ces circonstances, c’était là que se trouvait le principe du prestige protecteur, de la gloire assurée, du péril conjuré.
Le roi de Ts’in (Qin n.n.) nourrissait des sentiments avides et bas; il appliquait les connaissances qui sortaient de son propre esprit; il ne donnait pas sa confiance aux ministres éprouvés et ne contractait pas des liens étroits avec les gens de valeur et le peuple ; il abandonna la ligne de conduite suivie par les rois et établit son pou- voir autocratique; il interdit les écrits et les livres et rendit impitoyables les châtiments et les lois ; il mit au premier rang la tromperie et la violence, et au dernier rang la bonté et la justice; il fit de la tyrannie le fonde- ment de l'empire. Or, si celui qui conquiert et annexe met en avant la tromperie et la violence, d’autre part, celui qui pacifie et affermit tient en estime la douceur et l’équité ; cela signifie que les méthodes ne sont pas les mêmes pour prendre et pour conserver.
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Sima Qian (Mémoires historiques - Deuxième Section (French Edition))
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Ts’in (Qin n.n.) qui n’avait (d’abord) qu’un territoire fort restreint et qui n’avait qu’une puissance de mille chars’, fit venir à lui les huit provinces et obtint l’hommage de ceux qui étaient du même rang que lui, et cela dura pendant plus de cent années. Dans la suite cependant, quand tout l’espace compris dans les directions de l’univers était sa demeure, quand Hiao et Hien étaient son palais, il suffit qu’un simple particulier soulevât des difficultés pour que les sept temples ancestraux fussent ruinés et pour que (le souverain) lui-même périt de la main des hommes, ce qui fut la risée de l’empire. Comment cela se produisit-il ? C’est parce que la bonté et la justice ne furent pas répandues (par Ts’in) et parce que les conditions pour conquérir et les conditions pour conserver sont différentes]
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Sima Qian (Mémoires historiques - Deuxième Section (French Edition))
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The reality is that there is a huge section of this country that feels like D.C. is filled with a bunch of self-serving careerists who’ve never built anything in their lives, and that Wall Street is filled with people making ungodly amounts of money, and Silicon Valley is just totally disconnected from everyone, and all of them are trying to tell me how to live my life,” he says. “If you put aside all the stupid, offensive shit that Trump does and says, the fact is that he is posing some big, important questions about how we are thinking about our labor pool, our trade agreements, NATO, and our international relationships.
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Rana Foroohar (Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World)
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Cold realisation was dawning on her that she wasn't the love of his life, but more a part of his life sectioned off and completely divorced from his life in England. Basically, he wanted both. It suited him and all he needed her to do was accept his declarations of love and intent
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C G Penne (Climatic Crisis)
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The 5C structure is generic—useful to product, marketing, and more—whereas the way we presented the sections in this chapter is very focused on product management. It’s good to know what the “C”s stand for because you’ll likely hear 5C mentioned. Plus if you need to do a situational analysis on your feet in a meeting or interview, it’s relatively easy to remember. Company: This refers to the company’s experience, technology, culture, goals, and more. It’s similar to the material we covered in the “Why Does the Company Exist?,” “How Do We Know If Our Product’s Good?,” and “What Else Has Been, Is Being, and Will Be Built?” sections. Customers: Who are the people buying this product? What are the market segments? How big are they? What are people’s goals with buying this product? How do they make buying decisions? Where do they buy this type or product? This is similar to what we covered in the “Customers and Personas” and “Use Cases” sections. Collaborators: Who are the external people who make the product possible, including distributors, suppliers, logistical operators, groundwork support personnel, and so on? Competitors: Who is competing for your customers’ money? This includes actual and potential competitors. You should look at how they position their product, the market size they address, their strengths and weaknesses, and more. Climate: These are the macro-environmental factors, like cultural, regulatory, or technological trends and innovations.
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Product School (The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager)
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He didn’t get the message that I messed with Glenna. No one else. He drew a dick on her locker and wrote “Dobbs slobbers knobs” under it. The dumbass got the wrong locker section. Not number. Not row. He was on the wrong damn floor of the building. I beat his ass in the parking lot after the game in front of everyone, and on Monday, my boys made sure he scrubbed the graffiti clean before first bell.
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Cate C. Wells (Against a Wall (Stonecut County, #2))
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Section 13-2921 - Harassment; classification; definition A. A person commits harassment if, with intent to harass or with knowledge that the person is harassing another person, the person:
1. Anonymously or otherwise contacts, communicates or causes a communication with another person by verbal, electronic, mechanical, telegraphic, telephonic or written means in a manner that harasses.
2. Continues to follow another person in or about a public place for no legitimate purpose after being asked to desist.
3. Repeatedly commits an act or acts that harass another person.
4. Surveils or causes another person to surveil a person for no legitimate purpose.
5. On more than one occasion makes a false report to a law enforcement, credit or social service agency.
6. Interferes with the delivery of any public or regulated utility to a person. B. A person commits harassment against a public officer or employee if the person, with intent to harass, files a nonconsensual lien against any public officer or employee that is not accompanied by an order or a judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction authorizing the filing of the lien or is not issued by a governmental entity or political subdivision or agency pursuant to its statutory authority, a validly licensed utility or water delivery company, a mechanics' lien claimant or an entity created under covenants, conditions, restrictions or declarations affecting real property. C. Harassment under subsection A is a class 1 misdemeanor. Harassment under subsection B is a class 5 felony. D. This section does not apply to an otherwise lawful demonstration, assembly or picketing. E. For the purposes of this section, "harassment" means conduct that is directed at a specific person and that would cause a reasonable person to be seriously alarmed, annoyed or harassed and the conduct in fact seriously alarms, annoys or harasses the person. A.R.S. § 13-2921 Section 13-2921.01 - Aggravated harassment; classification; definition A. A person commits aggravated harassment if the person commits harassment as provided in section 13-2921 and any of the following applies:
1. A court has issued an order of protection or an injunction against harassment against the person and in favor of the victim of harassment and the order or injunction has been served and is still valid.
2. The person has previously been convicted of an offense included in section 13-3601. B. The victim of any previous offense shall be the same as in the present offense. C. A person who violates subsection A, paragraph 1 of this section is guilty of a class 6 felony. A person who commits a second or subsequent violation of subsection A, paragraph 1 of this section is guilty of a class 5 felony. A person who violates subsection A, paragraph 2 of this section is guilty of a class 5 felony. D. For the purposes of this section, "convicted" means a person who was convicted of an offense included in section 13-3601 or who was adjudicated delinquent for conduct that would constitute a historical prior felony conviction if the juvenile had been tried as an adult for an offense included in section 13-3601. A.R.S. § 13-2921.01
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Arizona Legislature (ARIZONA REVISED STATUTES TITLE 13 CRIMINAL CODE 2022 EDITION: WEST HARTFORD LEGAL PUBLISHING)
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Most readers of this section of the book will smile at this point, realising that a seemingly sophisticated philosophical argument is clearly invalidated by the context within which Lewis sets it. Yet Lewis has borrowed this from Plato—while using Anselm of Canterbury and René Descartes as intermediaries—thus allowing classical wisdom to make an essentially Christian point. Lewis is clearly aware that Plato has been viewed through a series of interpretative lenses—those of Plotinus, Augustine, and the Renaissance being particularly familiar to him. Readers of Lewis’s Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, and Spenser’s Images of Life will be aware that Lewis frequently highlights how extensively Plato and later Neoplatonists influenced Christian literary writers of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Lewis’s achievement is to work Platonic themes and images into children’s literature in such a natural way that few, if any, of its young readers are aware of Narnia’s implicit philosophical tutorials, or its grounding in an earlier world of thought. It is all part of Lewis’s tactic of expanding minds by exposing them to such ideas in a highly accessible and imaginative form.
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Alister E. McGrath (C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet)
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Naomi wondered if the twins had been implanted into her womb by some sinister, external force. “This is unnatural,” Naomi wrote. “Babies shouldn’t be born in this fashion, so far removed from anything human.” When Khalid held the twins up for Naomi to see, she looked away. She was reminded of a friend’s dog who had to be put under during labor. When the dog woke up after a C-section, she appeared not to understand why these foreign puppies were sniffing her body as if they were entitled to it.
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Rachel Aviv (Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us)
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I was trying to remember how to spell ‘cesarean,’ so I looked it up in the dictionary. I was looking under the letter ‘s,’ but then I remembered it was in the C-section.
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Peter O'Mahoney (The Southern Lawyer (Joe Hennessy Legal Thriller #1))
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To be honest, I’m still not okay with it.
To be honest, I still get really fucking angry about it.
To be honest, I struggle when I put my focus on that pinched skin. To be honest, I will always take a breath before I bare myself naked to a partner.
To be honest, I still struggle to run my fingers across it in the bathtub.
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S.D.G.