Car Dashboard Quotes

Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. “What’s wrong?” I yelled. “We can’t stop here. This is bat country!

I'm not going to roll the window down," I told him. "This car doesn't have automatic windows. I'd have to pull over and go around and lower it manually. Besides, it's cold outside, and unlike you, I don't have a fur coat." He lifted his lip in a mock snarl and put his nose on the dashboard with a thump. "You're smearing the windshield," I told him. He looked at me and deliberately ran his nose across his side of the glass. I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that was mature. The last time I saw someone do something that grown-up was when my little sister was twelve.

Our emotions always serve a purpose, like the warning lights on a car dashboard. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, and often ignoring our feelings only makes the problem worse.

of course, he has his shortcomings—but he has an inner moral compass that is finely tuned, the kind of person who leaves notes on car dashboards if he reverses into them. I am hit and run.

On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well, I must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion ... everything slides off ... It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?

Quoyle remembered purple-brown seckle pears the size and shape of figs, his father taking the meat off with pecking bites, the smell of fruit in their house, litter of cores and peels in the ashtrays, the grape cluster skeletons, peach stones like hens' brains on the windowsill, the glove of banana peel on the car dashboard. In the sawdust on the basement workbench galaxies of seeds and pits, cherry stones, long white date pits like spaceships. . . . The hollowed grapefruit skullcaps, cracked globes of tangerine peel.

It was almost noon when the plane touched down at the Triad airport on the outskirts of Greensboro. There was a hire car waiting for me; I waved my notepad at the dashboard to transmit my profile, then waited as the seating and controls rearranged themselves slightly, piezoelectric actuators humming. As I started to reverse out of the parking bay, the stereo began a soothing improvisation, flashing up a deadpan title: Music for Leaving Airports 11 June 2008.

….For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming, “Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll! Jeremy’s SPO-ken! But he’s still al-LIIIIIVE!

This church picnic ain't no picnic./You're my fried chicken./ Holy finger-lickin'..." Savannah yelled at him over the music. "Are you callin' me a piece a fried chicken?" "Nah. Not you, Slush Queen. Never." He closed his eyes and pounded out the drums on the dashboard of the Beater. As I got out of the car, I felt sorrier for Link than ever.

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American - that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.

The GPS on the car dashboard proves that there is more than one route to our goals

I get sentimental over the music of the '90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I'm concerned, the '90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Every note from those years is charged with life for me now. For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming "Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll!

Melinda," Mr. Freeman says. Snow filters into the car and melts on the dashboard. "You're a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I'd like to hear it." I close the door.

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—

The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months. "It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar. As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.

Driving a desk was sometimes lonely, but Eddie had been in the drivers'-seat himself more than once, his aspirator riding there with him on the dashboard, its trigger reflected ghostly in the windshield (and a bucket-load of pills in the glove compartment), and he knew that real loneliness was a smeary red: the color of the taillights of the car ahead of you reflected on wet hottop in a driving rain.

For as long as I’d been dating, I’d had a mental flow chart, a schedule, of how things usually went. Relationships always started with that heady, swoonish period, where the other person is like some new invention that suddenly solves all life’s worst problems, like losing socks in the dryer or toasting bagels without burning the edges. At this phase, which usually lasts about six weeks max, the other person is perfect. But at six weeks and two days, the cracks begin to show; not real structural damage yet, but little things that niggle and nag. Like the way they always assume you’ll pay for your own movie, just because you did once, or how they use the dashboard of their car as an imaginary keyboard at long stoplights. Once, you might have thought this was cute, or endearing. Now, it annoys you, but not enough to change anything. Come week eight, though, the strain is starting to show. This person is, in fact, human, and here’s where most relationships splinter and die. Because either you can stick around and deal with these problems, or ease out gracefully, knowing that at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will emerge another perfect person, who will fix everything, at least for six weeks.

But maybe it's only been a brief separation that feels like years. Like a solo car ride that takes all night but feels like a lifetime. Watching all those highway dashes flying by at seventy miles an hour, your eyes becoming lazy slits and your mind wandering over the memory of a whole lifetime-past and future, childhood memories to thoughts of your own death-until the numbers on the dashboard clock do not mean anything more. And then the sun comes up and you get to your destination and the ride becomes the thing that is no longer real, because that surreal feeling has vanished and time has become meaningful again.

In the morning I want to see if my car will start.” He shook his head. “It won’t. All the oil ran out through a tiny hole in the oil pan. The engine overheated and the pistons froze up. Your car’s fucked.” “Shit. None of my dashboard lights came on.” “No? Oh, that’s probably because I disabled them.” “What?” “Yeah, I removed a few fuses, right after I drilled that tiny little hole in the pan.” She stared at him for a long moment as her thoughts spun in utter turmoil. “You vandalized my car?

The only good thing was that by midnight, even most of the bums had gone home to sleep it off. That was lucky for them, because Ray was the worst damn driver I’d ever seen. And that was after I jerked his head out of the duffel and parked it on the dashboard. “Gah! That makes it worse!” he told me, as I tried to get the eyes facing forward. “How can it possibly be worse?” “Because I got double vision now! Get it off! Get it off!” He batted at his own head and succeeded in sending it tumbling into Christine’s lap. She immediately went into hysterics and slapped it away. The head fell out of the car; Ray hit the brakes and we came to a screeching halt. “What are you doing?” I screeched, as he hopped out. “There are people firing at us!” “Tough!” came from somewhere under the car.

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American — that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.

I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said, focusing on the dashboard in front of me to prevent the tears that filled my eyes from falling. “Please don’t ask me again.” Then I got out of the car. I closed the door and didn’t look back, fighting the newly created anxiety in my belly.

*** I pulled into the driveway of Kyle’s condo. His car wasn’t there; he must have still been at work. I glanced at the clock on my dashboard: 7:15. “Overachiever,” I mumbled as I grabbed my workout bag and headed for the front door. I sifted through the keys on my key ring, quickly selecting

Adamo let the window down, and the officer looked at him. “Get out of the car.” I leaned forward, my forearm with my tattoo propped up against the dashboard and smiled darkly at the man. “Unfortunately, Officer, we have somewhere we need to be.” The police officer registered my tattoo and my face and took a step back. “This is a misunderstanding. Safe travels.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” — John 14:27 Whenever events surface that cause us anxiety, they are an invitation from God to healing. They are similar to the warning lights on the dashboards of our cars. They let us know that something is wrong and needs to be remedied.

There’s an unexpected lull in the traffic about two-thirds of the way to Darmstadt, and I make the mistake of breathing a sigh of relief. The respite is short-lived. One moment I’m driving along a seemingly empty road, bouncing from side to side on the Smart’s town-car suspension as the hairdryersized engine howls its guts out beneath my buttocks, and the next instant the dashboard in front of me lights up like a flashbulb.

The passenger door popped open, and Owen peered inside. ‘Going my way?’ he asked with more than a hint of sarcasm. The interior was illuminated by a complicated range of VDUs and dashboard controls. Captain Jack Harkness was at the wheel, a broad grin on his face. ‘All the way,’ he said. ‘I bet you pick up guys like this all the time,’ said Owen as he climbed in and shut the door. ‘It’s the car,’ Jack smiled. ‘Everyone digs the car.

Go faster,” I urged Steven, poking him in the shoulder. “Let’s pass that kid on the bike.” Steven shrugged me off. “Never touch the driver,” he said. “And take your dirty feet off my dashboard.” I wiggled my toes back and forth. They looked pretty clean to me. “It’s not your dashboard. It’s gonna be my car soon, you know.” “If you ever get your license,” he scoffed. “People like you shouldn’t even be allowed to drive.” “Hey, look,” I said, pointing out the window. “That guy in a wheelchair just lapped us!” Steven ignored me, and so I started to fiddle with the radio. One of my favorite things about going to the beach was the radio stations. I was as familiar with them as I was with the ones back home, and listening to Q94 made me just really know inside that I was there, at the beach. I found my favorite station, the one that played everything from pop to oldies to hip-hop. Tom Petty was singing “Free Fallin’.” I sang right along with him. “She’s a good girl, crazy ‘bout Elvis. Loves horses and her boyfriend too.” Steven reached over to switch stations, and I slapped his hand away. “Belly, your voice makes me want to run this car into the ocean.” He pretended to swerve right. I sang even louder, which woke up my mother, and she started to sing too. We both had terrible voices, and Steven shook his head in his disgusted Steven way. He hated being outnumbered.

Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders. In Diane’s case, this was easy, as she was not a very social or public person, and most any mundane thing in her life could be a secret. In Josh’s case this was hard, because for teenagers most every mundane thing in their lives is a secret that they do not like sharing in front of their parents. Then, after the clutch and the secret, the driver has to grab the stick shift, which is a splintered wood stake wedged into the dashboard, and shake it until something happens—anything really—and then simultaneously type a series of code numbers into a keyboard on the steering wheel. All this while sunglasses-wearing agents from a vague yet menacing government agency sit in a heavily tinted black sedan across the street taking pictures (and occasionally waving). This is a lot of pressure on a first-time driver.

I didn’t respond. It would only encourage her. Instead I looked at the display on the dashboard and thought of the dangers of talking on the phone while driving. My small city car had Bluetooth capabilities, but I never used it. I tended to become too focused when talking on the phone, which impeded my concentration on whatever else I was doing. It confirmed the studies that proved that talking on one’s phone, even when using a hands-free system, could impair one’s driving as profoundly as driving while inebriated.

Dad?" she said. "Do you want some coffee?" he asked. "Are you okay?" She shook her head. No. "There are only so many hours you can sleep in a stranded vehicle." He glanced at the dashboard of her car, then at the untouched receipt--her receipt--sticking out of the machine a few feet away like a white tongue. "There's only so many times you can try to resurrect the dead. You can sit there all you want but you're not going anywhere. And, stuck as you are, you'll be forced to think about it, forced to wake up at some point, forced to depart or die here.

With that in mind, I pull the door shut and look for a seat belt to buckle. I find only the frayed end of a seat belt and a broken buckle. “Where did you find this piece of junk?” says Christina. “I stole it from the factionless. They fix them up. It wasn’t easy to get it to start. Better ditch those jackets, girls.” I ball up our jackets and toss them out the half-open window. Marcus shifts the truck into drive, and it groans. I half expect it to stay still when he presses the gas pedal, but it moves. From what I remember, it takes about an hour to drive from the Abnegation sector to Amity headquarters, and the trip requires a skilled driver. Marcus pulls onto one of the main thoroughfares and pushes his foot into the gas pedal. We lurch forward, narrowly avoiding a gaping hole in the road. I grab the dashboard to steady myself. “Relax, Beatrice,” says Marcus. “I’ve driven a car before.” “I’ve done a lot of things before, but that doesn’t mean I’m any good at them!” Marcus smiles and jerks the truck to the left so that we don’t hit a fallen stoplight. Christina whoops as we bump over another piece of debris, like she’s having the time of her life. “A different kind of stupid, right?” she says, her voice loud enough to be heard over the rush of wind through the cab. I clutch the seat beneath me and try not to think of what I ate for dinner.

Another bottle was brought out and poured into the reservoir. Once more I climbed inside the car and pressed the spurter button. Once more nothing happened--and once more, when we looked inside the reservoir, we found it empty. "Two litres!" I said. "Where has it all gone?" They'd vaporized, evaporated. And do you know what? It felt wonderful. Don't ask me why: it just did. It was as though I'd just witnessed a miracle: matter--these two litres of liquid--becoming un-matter--not surplus matter, mess or clutter, but pure, bodiless blueness. Transubstantiated. I looked up at the sky: it was blue and endless. I looked back at the boy. His overalls and face were covered in smears. He'd taken on these smears so that the miracle could happen, like a Christian martyr being flagellated, crucified, scrawled over with stigmata. I felt elated--elated and inspired. "If only..." I started, but paused. "What?" he asked. "If only everything could..." I trailed off. I knew what I meant. I stood there looking at his grubby face and told him: "Thank you." Then I got into the car and turned the ignition key in its slot. The engine caught--and as it did, a torrent of blue liquid burst out of the dashboard and cascaded down. It gushed from the radio, the heating panel, the hazard-lights switch and the speedometer and mileage counter. It gushed all over me: my shirt, my legs, my groin.

There’s some chitchat in the car, but most of it goes from his father to the jittery dashboard. “Easy there, honeybug… no big deal .. I’m right here…” The rest is just a ride to no place in particular, wasting gas galore. Even in bed that night Zinkoff can still feel the shake and shimmy of the old rattletrap, and coming through loud and clear is a message that was never said. He knows that he could lose a thousand races and his father will never give up on him. He knows that if he ever springs a leak or throws a gasket, his dad will be there with duct tape and chewing gum t0 patch him up, that no matter how much he rattles and knocks, he’ll always be a honeybug to his dad, never a clunker.” (p. 108)

No one said a word, and I waited a beat, then pushed forward. Screw Kevin. Screw Maggie. Screw whatever happened to them now. I went after Caden. He didn’t have to push his way through the crowd. It automatically opened for him. Not so much for me. I was at a disadvantage, and when I ran to the parking lot, he was already in the car and peeling past me. “HEY!” I yelled, raising my hands in the air. He braked, a little too close for comfort, right next to me. The passenger window rolled down. “What?” I reached for the door. “Let me in.” His eyebrows pinched together. “Why?” “Let me in.” He unlocked the door. I opened it and climbed in. “Okay. I’m with you.” I had no idea what I was doing. “Excuse me?” “I’m with you.” I clapped the dashboard, pointing ahead. “Whatever you’re going to do, I’m in. You seem to need a friend. You’re in luck. I could use one myself. So I’m in.” “I’m going to get drunk and have sex.” “Oh.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You still in?” He was laughing now. He was still mad, but he was laughing. For whatever reason—maybe I did want to go with him, or maybe I heard my own voice calling me boring and pathetic again—I sat back and folded my hands in my lap. “I’m in.” He shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into..” He shifted his Land Rover into drive and started forward. “But that’s your problem, not mine.” He careened out of the parking lot, and I fell against the door. I grabbed the oh shit handle above my head, and I had a feeling that was going to be the theme for the rest of the night: Oh, shit.

Gabriel stared at the dashboard of Hunter’s Jeep and made no move to get out of the vehicle. “I don’t know what the hell we’re doing here,” he said. “Well,” said Hunter, “we could always go back to the house and watch Mamma Mia! with my grandparents. Or maybe we could stare at the police scanner for another hour and wait for nothing to happen. Or maybe ” “I just don’t feel like being at a party.” At this party. Full of guys who’d know he wasn’t allowed on the team. Full of girls who’d tease him about being an idiot. Hunter’s dog stuck his head between the seats, and Gabriel reached up to scratch him behind his ears. “I’ll just stay here with the dog.” Hunter sighed and gave him a look. “Come on, baby, don’t be like that. Did you pack your Midol?” “All right, all right.” Gabriel climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind him. “I don’t even know why I like you.

To turn the page to the next chapter of a more satisfying life-as-adventure, these steps that have proved fruitful for me -- when I've actually followed them. 1. Find Your True North to Become More Joyful First be clear about choosing a goal that rings true. Forget "should" or adopting someone else's goal for you. 2. Picture Being Your Hero Afraid you will fail? Supplant your fear with a greater motivation. When you are tempted to fall back, picture how you'll feel when you succeed. ." Rather than talking about what you are giving up or how you might fail, reflect upon and discuss the benefits you clearly see. 3. Surround Yourself With Mutual Support Systems To keep your resolve, surround yourself with those who want you to succeed - and who are also on a path of practice. Agree on shared and individual behaviors that reinforce your mutual support. The authors of Influencer found that is the only way to permanently change. 4. Involve Your Senses To Stay On Your Path Tie your goal for your new chapter to your frequent experiences. Write it down. Say it out loud. Associate it with things you see, hear, smell, taste and touch every day. Plant sticky messages on your bathroom mirror, your car dashboard and smart device screen. Smell your shampoo and connect it with living that chapter. Brush your teeth and feel the motion towards it. 5. Notice Where You Get Detoured Notice your pattern of avoidance. What activities get you sidetracked? What time of day or day of the week is it most likely to happen? What else is happening that can numb you into avoidance? What colleagues and friends help or hinder you on your path? Conversely, when are your stronger moments? 6. Plan A Grand Reward The bigger the change, the larger the reward you deserve. Enable others who supported you, to savor it with you. Since behavior is contagious to the third degree, you don't know which friends, and friends of your friends' friends might be moved, by your example, to also turn the page to the next chapter of the adventure story they were meant to live.

Take a clever boy, who knows nothing about the principle of internal combustion or the inside of an engine, and leave him inside a motor-car, first telling him to move the various knobs, switches and levers about and see what happens. If no disaster supervenes, he will end by finding himself able to drive the car. It will then be true to say that he knows how to drive the car; but untrue to say that he knows the car. As to that, the most we could say would be that he has an 'operative' knowledge of it - because for operation all that is required is a good empirical acquaintance with the dashboard and the pedals. Whatever we say, it is obvious that what he has is very different from the knowledge of someone else, who has studied mechanics, though he has perhaps never driven a car in his life, and is perhaps too nervous to try. Now whether or no there is another kind of knowledge of nature, which corresponds to 'engine-knowledge' in the analogy, it seems that, if the first view of the nature of scientific theory is accepted, the kind of knowledge aimed at by science must be, in effect, what I will call 'dashboard-knowledge.

The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked. These gangling progeny with black hair hanging from their armpits now sat idle and wide-eyed day after day in chairs and crates about the little yard cleared out of the tips while their harried dam called them one by one to help with chores and one by one they shrugged or blinked their sluggard lids. Uretha, Cerebella, Hernia Sue. They moved like cats and like cats in heat attracted surrounding swains to their midden until the old man used to go out at night and fire a shotgun at random just to clear the air. He couldn't tell which was the oldest or what age and he didn’t know whether they should go out with boys or not. Like cats they sensed his lack of resolution. They were coming and going all hours in all manner of degenerate cars, a dissolute carousel of rotting sedans and niggerized convertibles with bluedot taillamps and chrome horns and foxtails and giant dice or dashboard demons of spurious fur. All patched up out of parts and lowslung and bumping over the ruts. Filled with old lanky country boys with long cocks and big feet.

There’s an unexpected lull in the traffic about two-thirds of the way to Darmstadt, and I make the mistake of breathing a sigh of relief. The respite is short-lived. One moment I’m driving along a seemingly empty road, bouncing from side to side on the Smart’s town-car suspension as the hairdryersized engine howls its guts out beneath my buttocks, and the next instant the dashboard in front of me lights up like a flashbulb. I twitch spasmodically, jerking my head up so hard I nearly dent the thin plastic roof. Behind me the eyes of Hell are open, two blinding beacons like the landing lights on an off-course 747. Whoever they are, they’re standing on their brakes so hard they must be smoking. There’s a roar, and then a squat, red Audi sports coupe pulls out and squeezes past my flank close enough to touch, its blonde female driver gesticulating angrily at me. At least I think she’s blonde and female. It’s hard to tell because everything is gray, my heart is trying to exit through my rib cage, and I’m frantically wrestling with the steering wheel to keep the roller skate from toppling over. A fraction of a second later she’s gone, pulling back into the slow lane ahead of me to light off her afterburners. I swear I see red sparks shooting out of her two huge exhaust tubes as she vanishes into the distance, taking about ten years of my life with her.

Nope- it was not! Ava and her girls that day went, and they cut a class at some point in the day and broke into my baby. Then Ava- ‘Rubbed one out!’ that means that she masturbated, and squirted her lady- juices all over the inside of my car. Yes- and I mean it went all over. It was on my seat on the dash, on the floor, and Ava smeared what creaminess that was on her two fingers on the windows, and driver’s side vent. As her clan, sisters pissed all over the carpet on the floor, and took their dumps on the seat, and left their thongs behind. Alison, she wrote a note on her undies saying- ‘Now you have some pairs to wear!’ It was so nasty! Plus- the outside was covered and wrapped with toilet paper as well as littered with Ava and her sisters used feminine products. What is wrong with these girls? What did I do to deserve this one? Likewise, the other kids thought it was the most humorous thing, which they ever witnessed at the end of the school day. When I discovered it- You know, I was utterly sick to my stomach. I think I screamed so loudly it echoed throughout the land, and started to cry and ran while being pushed around bouncing around off their bodies, I cannot remember- I was so upset, and then the kids were all around me kicking, and pushing me from one place to another. I was just like a hacky sack for them, until I passed out, and dropped to the hard ground. That gave them time for them to spit on me, and dump things like glue in my hair or whatever that shit was. Then what gets me is that she signed her name- Ava on the dashboard with a black permanent sharpie marker, and It reads, ‘Suck on this- Nevaeh- lick, what I gave you all up!’ and she drew a heart, with a line through it also. She wanted me to know because there was not a thing I could do about it. Depressed- to say that her juicy sprays were more yellowish, and a thick sticky white, then clear on my blue and white cloth seats. Yet, Hope had the car towed and cleaned for me inside and out, she could not believe what kids do these days. Therefore, that was the first time that I drove my car to school and the last. That whole thing cost me a lot. I guess it is back to the bus. That is what everyone wants is it not. This completely sucked; I have a car that I cannot drive anywhere other than at home or have locked up in the barn- with the other rust bucket car.

In 2012, noted font design group Monotype worked with a team of researchers at MIT’s AgeLab to study the impact of type design on what the study called “glance behavior,” the type of quick display reading most often utilized by drivers when interacting with a car’s dashboard. The study found that using “humanist” typefaces with open shapes, wider inter-character spacing and varying proportions could produce a 13% increase in overall response time among males taking the study. Clearly, reducing glance time is potentially lifesaving in a high-risk activity such as driving. It turns out the same feature may also be critical for any content creator trying to contend with one of the most profound consequences of our information-filled world: the shrinking human attention span.

alleviate the inferno raging on her behind, which was slowly driving her mad. Surely he was some evil wizard disguised in adorable man/boy packaging. “That almost sounds like a challenge,” she snapped. “Baby, if issuing me a challenge makes you happy, I’ll do my best to rise to it. You don’t need to get so worked up. You’re getting all flushed.” He was confident to the point of sounding condescending; self-assured to the point of being smug. She resumed the crossed-arm battle stance in her seat, fighting back tears of frustration at the whole exchange and his ability to roast her derriere without laying a hand on her. And then she caught sight of it, in the far right corner on the digital display in the center of the dashboard. A tiny icon of a car seat appearing, then disappearing, intermittently flashing, and underneath it read, 86 . . . then 87 . . . and then 88. As soon as it fully registered, Amanda dug her feet into the floor mat, heels and all, and arched her body off the seat as best she could. “What’s the big idea!” she shrieked. “Just a little reminder, angel.” He chuckled, depressing

That tank," Bucktooth pointed at the gas gauge on the dashboard of the decidedly unfredneck-like '65 Dodge Dart, "is almost empty. We ain't going much farther." "Indeed it is." A solemn Phosphate agreed. "I suggest we stop the car and weigh our options." "What options?" Professor Buckley asked. "Why do-that is- we've been traveling up and down this path for over an hour without seeing anyone or encountering anything. Even the doughnut shop cannot be relocated. In light of this, what options do we have?" It was difficult to argue with the ex-history teacher's typically alarmist position. Brisbane's reliable old automobile had indeed been expending its remaining fuel supply in what seemed to be a hopeless effort to exit the unnamed dirt path. After leaving the doughnut shop and the blonde presidential descendant who worked there, they'd been unable to find DeMohrenschildt Lane again, or any other side street.

You have no other choice, I tell myself. There is no other way. With that in mind, I pull the door shut and look for a seat belt to buckle. I find only the frayed end of a seat belt and a broken buckle. “Where did you find this piece of junk?” says Christina. “I stole it from the factionless. They fix them up. It wasn’t easy to get it to start. Better ditch those jackets, girls.” I ball up our jackets and toss them out the half-open window. Marcus shifts the truck into drive, and it groans. I half expect it to stay still when he presses the gas pedal, but it moves. From what I remember, it takes about an hour to drive from the Abnegation sector to Amity headquarters, and the trip requires a skilled driver. Marcus pulls onto one of the main thoroughfares and pushes his foot into the gas pedal. We lurch forward, narrowly avoiding a gaping hole in the road. I grab the dashboard to steady myself. “Relax, Beatrice,” says Marcus. “I’ve driven a car before.” “I’ve done a lot of things before, but that doesn’t mean I’m any good at them!” Marcus smiles and jerks the truck to the left so that we don’t hit a fallen stoplight. Christina whoops as we bump over another piece of debris, like she’s having the time of her life. “A different kind of stupid, right?” she says, her voice loud enough to be heard over the rush of wind through the cab. I clutch the seat beneath me and try not to think of what I ate for dinner.

The electric car was fully charged. He patted the dashboard. “How far can this go?” Her eyes lit up. “Almost four hundred miles on a single charge. It has the new Lithium-air batteries.

electric motor to power a car. The motor he built measured a mere 40 inches long and 30 inches across, and produced about 80 horsepower. Under the hood was the engine: a small, 12-volt storage battery and two thick wires that went from the motor to the dashboard. Tesla connected the wires to a small black box, which he had built the week before with components he bought from a local radio shop. “We now have power,” he said. This mysterious device was used to rigorously test the car for eight days, reaching speeds of 90 mph. He let nobody inspect the box, and cryptically said that it taps into a “mysterious radiation which comes out of the aether,” and that the energy is available in “limitless quantities.” The public responded superstitiously with charges of “black magic” and alliances with sinister forces of the universe. Affronted, he took his black box back with him to New York City and spoke nothing further of it.

Eiji restarted the car, stepped on the clutch, shifted the car into gear, and pulled out onto the road… at two miles per hour. Then he increased his speed to eight miles per hour and held onto the wheel with both hands, peering over the dashboard. A butterfly flittered past the window at a faster speed than them. Alec shot Cronin a disbelieving look. We just got overtaken by a bug, Alec whispered into Cronin’s mind.

The result is man's Contrast-MisReaction Tendency. Few psychological tendencies do more damage to correct thinking. Small- scale damages involve instances such as man's buying an overpriced $1,000 leather dashboard merely because the price is so low compared to his concurrent purchase of a $65,000 car. Large- scale damages often ruin lives, as when a wonderful woman having terrible parents marries a man who would be judged satisfactory only in comparison to her parents. Or as when a man takes wife number two who would be appraised as all right only in comparison to wife number one.

On top of the dashboard are three dials in a raised binnacle. They tell you nothing you need to know but they look good. They look sporty. They tell you that you are a man in a hurry, but here's hoping you aren't, because this is not a fast car.

Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can't. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that not other creature endures. A fear of time running out

Could there be a greater consolation known to man than these six hope-giving words: “His mercies are new every morning”? Post those six words on the mirror that you look into each morning. Affix them on the door of your refrigerator. Tape them to the dashboard of your car. Glue them on the inside of your glasses. Put them somewhere where you will see them every day. Don’t allow yourself to have a view of yourself, of others, of circumstances, of daily joys and struggles, of God, of meaning and purpose, and of what life is all about that is devoid of this gorgeous redemptive reality: mercy. Mercy is the theme of God’s story. Mercy is the thread that runs through all of Scripture. Mercy is the reason for Jesus’s coming.

The first item on the list referred to a cough drop. As I read it, I asked her about it. “Oh,” she answered, “that is about a cough drop someone left on the dashboard of our car. The other day I saw the cough drop and thought, I’ll have to throw that away. When I arrived at my first stop, I forgot to take the cough drop to a trash can. When I got back into the car, I saw it and thought, I’ll throw it away at the gas station. The gas station came and went and I hadn’t thrown the cough drop away. Well, the whole day went like that, the cough drop still sitting on the dashboard. When I got home, I thought, I’ll take it inside with me and throw it out. In the time it took me to open the car door, I forgot about the cough drop. It was there to greet me when I got in the car the next morning. Jeff was with me. I looked at the cough drop and burst into tears. Jeff asked me why I was crying, and I told him it was because of the cough drop. He thought I was losing my mind. ‘But you don’t understand,’ I said, ‘my whole life is like that. I see something that I mean to do and then I don’t do it. It’s not only trivial things like the cough drop; it’s big things, too.’ That’s why I cried.

Is this a good time to raise the question of seat belts?" asked Giordino with his feet raised and wedged against the dashboard of the L-29 Cord town car. Pitt shook his head. "Not optional equipment in 1930.

Some people thought to travel with chunks of dry ice, suspended in towel slings from the inside windows of the car—again a potentially lethal idea, as the release of all that carbon dioxide could cause everyone in the car to black out right on the road. Less dangerously, there was a small rubber-bladed fan that plugged into the cigarette lighter and clipped on to the dashboard to give the driver a breeze. Failing any of these remedies, drivers joked about the least expensive cooling system of all: “Four-Forty Air Conditioning—four windows down, forty miles an hour.

Their pulses thrum from stocks, driverless cars, phones that collect the data of their lives in digital dashboards reporting: songs listened to, steps taken, places visited, workouts completed, hours slept. Those of us who aren’t

I got Jeremiah and me both Slurpees, half Coke and half cherry, a combination I had perfected over the years. When I got back to the car, I climbed in and handed Jeremiah his Slurpee. His whole face lit up. “Aw, thanks, Bells. What flavor did you get me?” “Drink it and see.” He took a long sip and nodded appreciatively. “Half Coke, half cherry, your specialty. Nice.” “Hey, remember that time—,” I started to say. “Yup,” he said. “My dad still doesn’t want anyone touching his blender.” I put my feet up on the dashboard and leaned back, sipping on my Slurpee. I thought to myself, Happiness is a Slurpee and a hot pink straw. From the back, Conrad said, irritably, “Where’s mine?” “I thought you were still asleep,” I said. “And you have to drink a Slurpee right away or it’ll melt, so… I didn’t see the point.” Conrad glared at me. “Well, at least let me have a sip.” “But you hate Slurpees.” Which was true. Conrad didn’t like sugary drinks, he never had. “I don’t care. I’m thirsty.” I handed him my cup and turned around and watched him drink. I was expecting him to make a face or something, but he just drank and handed it back. And then he said, “I thought your specialty was cocoa.” I stared at him. Did he really just say that? Did he remember? The way he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised, I knew he did. And this time, I was the one to look away. Because I remembered. I remembered everything.

Jalvert begins to whimper and clings on to Kate. In the car, Kuan Yin's slender figure is on the dashboard, her face serene, eyes down. Kate's eyes are on the expressway, Jalvert crying in the seat next to her. The orange lamp posts light their faces in intervals.

It was Mikey who told him that to worship Kuan Yin Ma, the Goddess of Mercy, was better than to worship Kuan Kong, the God of War. The next day Kuan Yin was in a snow globe in his car, like a doggie on a dashboard with its head bobbing up and down. Except that she didn't bob, that would be disrespectful. Her face was calm and serene, and sitting in her lotus position, she faced the road and protected his going ins and outs.

DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Selective Attention Exercise 1: In what areas of your life do you focus on the negative rather than the positive? Write down three positive affirmations about that area of your life. Make 10 copies. Place one in your wallet. Tape others to your refrigerator, bathroom mirror, computer monitor, video screen, car dashboard, and other places you can’t avoid noticing them. Practice repeating the positive affirmations the second you catch yourself focusing on the negative. Journaling Exercise: Write down a list of personality flaws that you’d like to change. Create a reminder in your online calendar for 1 year from now, reminding you to check today’s date in your journal. Next year, you might be surprised to see how much some have shifted after a year of meditation. Emotional Contagion Practice: Put the power of emotional contagion to work for you. Make a list of the happiest people you know, and make a plan to get together with at least four of them in the coming month. Selective Attention Exercise 2: Whenever you hear a bad news story that upsets you, do a web search for contradictory evidence (e.g., “Good news about . . .”). This will put the bad news in context. Field Effects Exercise: Look at the Insight Timer app each day you meditate and notice how many other people are meditating worldwide. It’s usually hundreds of thousands. This reminds you that you are not alone.

08. It is against the law to ski down a mounting while reciting poetry. 09. At one time it was against the law to slam car doors in Switzerland. 10. It is required that every car with snow tires has to have a sticker on its dashboard which tells that the driver should not drive faster than 160 km/h with these tires. 11. People must pass verbal and written tests before they are allowed to own a dog.

Years ago, a woman named Amanda Holmes also vanished in Langley Woods. She went missing from the area. I remember that she was twenty-two at the time, a senior in college. Her case was strange, the kind that captured national attention. It was all over the news. I followed her story at the time because it was interesting. I didn’t think it would ever matter to me on a more personal level. When Amanda first went missing, her car was found about a quarter mile from Langley Woods. There was a suicide note set on the dashboard. The search for her should have been cut-and-dried. It was anything but. Search parties looked for her for days that stretched into weeks. They used bloodhounds and then cadaver dogs to scavenge the woods and the residential areas around them. Even the dogs couldn’t find her. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people searched for Amanda, whose friends called her Mandy, by air and by foot. Her family was devastated. This was maybe five years ago. I remember at the time watching her parents cry on TV. I remember that months passed without finding her. Eventually everyone gave up. People stopped talking about Amanda Holmes. They came to believe that she wasn’t at Langley Woods or anywhere even close to it, that something else had happened to her, something far more mysterious and insidious, but no one knew what. There were theories, and unconfirmed reports of Amanda sightings all over the Chicagoland area and around the country. Had someone met her and driven her elsewhere? Was the suicide note just part of a cunning plan? Had she abandoned her life, her family, and was she living a new life somewhere else? But why? No one knew. The case went cold. A year passed and still she wasn’t found, until one day when some hikers stumbled upon her body in the woods. The medical examiner determined the cause of death: suicide. Amanda Holmes took her own life. She hung herself from a tree. She had been in these woods the whole time everyone was looking for her, and still no one could find her.

In the car, the two figures saw the flash of a light bobbing on the water before them. At last... From the dashboard, she could see Sofran's shadow slowly drifting to shore, the hum of the motorboat gradually stopping. Big Jim's body, which had been lying in the boot of their car, would now have a permanent home-either in a factory or a granite quarry somewhere in Batam, crushed among limestone shards together with their fears. Together, those two bad things would disappear into the cement mix that builders bought. Together, they would be sold back to build Singapore's homes, universities and offices.

Six months later, though I still loathed the man, I changed my approach to the task list. I got up after the first wake-up call without delay. There would be no more early-morning baptisms for me. Instead, I focused on the details Sgt. Jack always noticed and finished each job right the first time. That was the only way I’d get any free time to play basketball. However, my new approach produced an unexpected side effect as well: a sense of pride in a job well done. In fact, that sense of pride came to mean more to me than basketball time. When I washed his car collection, a weekly assignment, I knew every drop of water had to be wiped away with a chamois before the first coat of wax. I used SOS pads to get the white walls gleaming and buffed the hell out of every panel. I also used Armor All on the dashboards and all the vinyl insides. I buffed the leather seats too. It bothered me if I saw streaks on the glass or chrome. I was annoyed if I missed a soiled spot or cut a corner here or there on any chore. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was a sign that I was actually healing. When a half-assed job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self-respect in the work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half-ass your life. I knew I had every reason in the world to rebel and remain a lazy motherfucker. I also sensed that would only make me more miserable, so I adapted. But no matter how well I did or how fast I completed a given task, there were no atta’ boys or weekly allowance. No ice cream cones or surprise gifts, hugs, or high fives. In Sgt. Jack’s mind, I was finally doing what I should have been doing all along.

From the front passenger seat, one of Yaqub’s fighters produced a short-barreled shotgun. As soon as Harvath saw it come above the line of the dashboard, he yelled, “Gun!” and fired multiple rounds through the windshield, killing the man instantly. The ISI driver tried to unholster his weapon, but Sloane was already at his window and fired two shots at his head, shattering the glass and killing him. When the fighter in the backseat on the passenger side made himself known, Chase had almost been on top of him. The man didn’t wait to get the door all the way open before firing. He sent heavy 7.62 rounds from his AK-47 slicing right through the door panel. Chase had to lunge between two parked cars to take cover and avoid being hit.

I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned, the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Every note from those years is charged with life for me now. For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming, “Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll! Jeremy’s SPO-ken! But he’s still al-LIIIIIIVE!” I don’t recall making the decision to love Pearl Jam. Hating them was a lot more fun.

His own hands were full, sandwich and paper cup, but the small ivory knob on the silver handle was a temptation. Just a few turns and he could fill the car with the sound of the rushing wind. The hair was mussed across the back of his father’s head, the familiar gleam of his white scalp peering through. His father leaned forward to put the china teacup on the dashboard and then, leaning back, placed his hand over his shoulder, kneading the material of his shirt, raising the shoulder toward his neck, like a pitcher on the mound. “Are you all right?” their mother asked, all their voices grown soft and gentle now that they were out of the wind. “An ache is all,” their father said. The wind seemed to come up from under the car, it pressed against the window, muffled, shut out, although they all still felt the sting of it on their cheeks. Michael placed the paper cup, almost empty, between the knees of his jeans and moved his fingers to the ivory knob. His hands were pale, the fingers plump and squared-off, the nails flat and broad, just like his father’s.

Aerodynamically there isn’t much you can do to enhance your Beetle’s handling. The Porsche style whale tale – um, tail is just that – a load of nonsense. It does no aerodynamic spoiling at all except to spoil your car ergonomically, and quite frankly, it looks like crap. It goes with blue LED lights under the car and (yuk) fur on the dashboard.

Hellooo.” The ferry captain shot a thumb at her Jeep. “Gonna get it off ?” “Oh.” She laughed. “Sorry.” Releasing Nicole, she ran back onto the ferry and slid behind the wheel. By the time she revved the engine, Nicole was in the passenger’s seat, sliding a hand over the timeworn dashboard. “I am paying you for this.” Charlotte shot her a startled look and inched forward. “For this car? You are not.” “You wouldn’t have bought it if it weren’t for my book, and you won’t take money for that.” “Because it’s your book. I’m just along for the ride.” She laughed at her own words. “Can you believe, this is the first car I’ve ever owned?” She eased it onto the dock. “Is it real or what?” “Totally real,” Nicole said, though momentarily wary. “Safe on the highway?” “It got me here.” Charlotte waved at the captain. “Thank you!” Still crawling along, she drove carefully off the pier. When she was on firm ground, she stopped, angled sideways in the seat, and addressed the first of the ghosts. “I’m sorry about your dad, Nicki. I wanted to be there. I just couldn’t.” Seeming suddenly older, Nicole smiled sadly. “You were probably better off. There were people all over the place. I didn’t have time to think.” “A heart attack?” “Massive.” “No history of heart problems?” “None.” “That’s scary. How’s Angie?” Nicole’s mother. Charlotte had phoned her, too, and though Angie had said all the right words—Yes, a tragedy, he loved you, too, you’re a darling to call—she had sounded distracted. “Bad,” Nicole confirmed. “They were so in love. And he loved Quinnipeague. His parents bought the house when he was little. He actually proposed to Mom here. They always said that if I’d been a boy, they’d have named me Quinn. She can’t bear to come now. That’s why she’s selling. She can’t even come to pack up. This place was so him.” “Woo-hoo,” came a holler that instantly lifted the mood. “Look who’s here!” A stocky woman, whose apron covered a T-shirt and shorts, was trotting down the stairs from the lower deck of the Chowder House. Dorey Jewett had taken over from her father midway through Charlotte’s summers here and had brought the place up to par with the best of city restaurants. She had the gleaming skin of one who worked over steam, but the creases by her eyes, as much from smiling as from squinting over the harbor, suggested she was nearing sixty. “Missy here

Look – changing a life is a big thing. It’s not like a “wake up on the right side of the bed” kind of choice. It takes work – hard work. And time – a lot of it. But you want to know the hardest part? Beginning. The absolute hardest part about changing your life is convincing yourself that it is worth doing. Forcing yourself to get it out of your head and into the world. So do me a favor. Start by SAYING IT OUT LOUD. That thing. I mean it. Speak it into existence. Write it on a mirror in lipstick. Stick it to the dashboard in your car. Hell, tattoo it on your writs if that’s your thing. But the trick is, you keep that thing CENTRAL to everything you do and are in this life. And love, I promise you that your life will change. Your life is only a series of habits that are formed from the choices you make – and continue to make – every single day. So if you want something different, teach yourself to do something differently. It’s both that simple and that complex. Because getting what you want begins with knowing what you want. And then working every day on progress.

to explore if he wants, but don’t force it. Make the car familiar by allowing Kitty to cheek rub and spread his scent to claim the car as purr-sonal territory, and he'll feel more relaxed and happy during travels. Give Him Smell Comfort. Place the kitten’s bed, blanket, or a towel you've petted him with inside the car on the back seat. That way, his scent is already inside. Spraying Feliway on the towel or car upholstery also may help the baby feel more relaxed. Sit For A While. While inside the car, take care that small kittens don't squirm into cubbyholes under the dashboard. Five minutes is long enough. Repeat this five-minute car visit a couple times a day for several days, extending the time whenever the kitty stays calm. Be ready to get the kitty back into safe, non-scary surroundings should he act overwhelmed.  You might see fluffed fur, downward turned ears, a flailing tail and hear vocalizations from hisses and growls to yowls of protest. Some cats won’t want to leave the carrier, and that’s fine. In those cases, keep the carrier covered with a towel, and don’t worry about him exploring the car.

OK. Day four in the Big Brother Jeep,’ she quipped, with a bad Geordie accent, as she pulled the door shut. ‘What’s with the plastic?’ A thin sheet of plastic had been pulled across the dashboard. ‘In case it gets messy,’ said John. ‘Clara—I’d like you to meet Yanos.’ Shocked, Clara spun in her seat and saw a dark-haired man sitting in the rear of the Jeep. He was smiling and she noticed a white flash through his hair at one temple. ‘What the hell—?’ ‘Calm down—he’s been sent,’ said John, reaching for the car stereo. Clara eyed the man, who was still smiling. Plastic crackled under her walking boots. The foot-well was lined with it too. The hair prickled up across her arms. John turned the radio on and a heavy bass line pounded out of it at high volume. Clara swallowed, keeping calm. ‘What has he been sent for?’ The man smiled even more, lifted one eyebrow in a roguish way and brought out a .22 calibre pistol, partially wrapped in a plastic bag. ‘To kill you.’ She went for the Glock but there was no time. He shot her in the centre of her forehead. The radio hid the thud. The plastic caught the mess.   The

Do you question every woman that you sleep with about this? If I knew what I was getting myself into, I would have…” “What? Run off with one of those fuckers that you were dirty dancing with at the club?” Wait what! “What the hell is that supposed to mean? How the hell do you…” “You caused quite an eyeball that night and one of my girls…” “Are-are you a pimp? Is that how I ended up at your Loft…” He stopped the car. She heard the brakes screech and then she jolted forward. His hand quickly moved in front of her chest supporting her from hitting the dashboard. “What the fucking hell is wrong with you!” She tried to open the door to get away from this loony bin but his stupid fast car had central locking. “You are the most nerve wrecking, annoying, erratic woman I have ever met. Are you like this to all men or did you just decide to infuriate me with your sarcasm and stupid questions?” “Well you do leave yourself open and...” Without letting her finish, he pulled her towards him and pressed his lips against hers. It was a fierce kiss but it felt so right to her. His tongue teased hers and she felt something stir inside her inner core. It sent tingles down her spine and fireworks exploded in her head. He pulled away and she was still twirling from this feeling that was so alien to her. No man had ever kissed her like that before. Score!

Don’t think I’m getting on that thing.” His left eyebrow raises a fraction. “Why not? Julio’s not good enough for you?” “Julio? You named your motorcycle Julio?” “After my great uncle who helped my parents move here from Mexico.” “I like Julio just fine. I just don’t want to ride on him wearing this short dress. Unless you want everyone riding behind us to see my undies.” He rubs his chin, thinking about it. “Now that would be a sight for sore eyes.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m jokin’. We’re takin’ my cousin’s car.” We get in a black Camry parked across the street. After driving a few minutes he pulls a cigarette from a pack lying on the dashboard. The click of the lighter makes me cringe. “What?” he asks, the lit cigarette dangling from his lips. He can smoke if he wants. This might be an official date, but I’m not his official girlfriend or anything. I shake my head. “Nothing.” I hear him exhale, and the cigarette smoke burns my nostrils more than my mom’s perfume. As I lower my window all the way, I suppress a cough. When he stops at a stoplight, he looks over at me. “If you’ve got a problem with me smokin’, tell me.” “Okay, I’ve got a problem with you smoking,” I tell him. “Why didn’t you just say so?” he says, then smashes it into the car’s ashtray. “I can’t believe you actually like it,” I say when he starts driving again. “It relaxes me.” “Do I make you nervous?” His gaze travels from my eyes to my breasts and down to where my dress meets my thighs. “In that dress you do.

ROZ: My sister and I became guarded with each other in the weeks and months after our mother died. I don’t think either of us had a handle on what it was about, but I, in my characteristic way, was eager to roll up my sleeves and iron out some issues with her. She, less given to argument, preferred to keep her distance. Many is the time I drove through the streets of Boston presenting my case in the most cogent terms to a full courtroom just beyond the dashboard, while she was safely closeted a state away. My birthday came and went and still we had not managed to get together; of course I felt all the more put upon. Finally I had the grace to ask myself, “What’s happening here?” and I caught a glimpse of the in-between. All the energy I had been expending to shape a persuasive argument was actually propelling us apart. And I missed her—acutely. I thought that if I could just see her we surely could find some solutions. So I called her, and invited myself to her house for breakfast, and got up in the dark and was down in Connecticut by seven. There in the kitchen in her nightgown I found her, looking like my favorite sister in all the world. We talked gaily while we drank black Italian coffee, and then we took a long morning walk down the leafy dirt roads of Ashford, Connecticut, while her chocolate Lab, Chloe, ran ahead and came back, ran ahead and came back, in long arcs of perpetual motion. What did we talk about? The architecture, and the countryside, and the cats that Chloe was eager to visit at the farm ahead. We revisited scenes featuring our hilarious mother. We talked about my work, and about a paper she was about to present. My “case” never came up; it must have gotten lost somewhere along that wooded road because by the time I got in the car—my courtroom, my favorable jury—it was no longer on the docket. Did we resolve the issues? Obviously not, but the issues themselves are rarely what they seem, no matter what pains are taken to verify the scoreboard. We walked together, moved our arms, became joyous in the sunlight, and breathed in the morning. At that moment there were no barriers between us. And from that place, I felt our differences could easily be spoken. My disagreements with my sister were but blips on our screen compared to the hostilities individuals and nations are capable of when anger, fear, and the sense of injustice are allowed to develop unchecked. “Putting things aside” then becomes quite a different matter. At the apex of desperation and rage, we need a new invention to see us through.

The following year, the Pierce-Arrow automobile manufacturer and George Westinghouse commissioned Tesla to develop an electric motor to power a car. The motor he built measured a mere 40 inches long and 30 inches across, and produced about 80 horsepower. Under the hood was the engine: a small, 12-volt storage battery and two thick wires that went from the motor to the dashboard. Tesla connected the wires to a small black box, which he had built the week before with components he bought from a local radio shop. “We now have power,” he said. This mysterious device was used to rigorously test

Most of what doctors do to treat today’s diseases does little to extend human lifespan; in the majority of cases, it is almost worthless. Why so? Because the drugs prescribed by doctors encourage patients’ risky lifestyle behaviors and self-destructive eating choices to continue; they give patients “permission” to continue poor behaviors because they mask the symptoms of disease. The symptoms are not the actual pathology (or damage); they are just markers that the pathology has developed. Treating the symptoms does not halt the advancing pathology, which in all likelihood will continue to worsen. That “solution” is akin to your mechanic’s “fixing” the flashing oil light on your car’s dashboard by simply snipping the wire to the light.

The truth is my dad may have loved his cars a little too much. When it came to selecting optional trim packages, styling accessories, and color combinations, he could go a little overboard. In an era when automobile designers already pushed the limits of good taste, my father was all too willing to nudge them just a little further. He loved whitewall tires and sparkling chrome wheels. He insisted on pinstripes, the more lines the better. He adored monument-size hood ornaments and glimmering side trim. He considered features like carriage tops and burled wood dashboards standard equipment. As a result, one of the two cars my family owned at any given time often resembled the perp vehicle being chased down on the latest episode of Starsky and Hutch.

This is because heat that has gone in to your car has been absorbed by the seats, the dashboard, the fluffy dice etc.

Soon it will be different. Soon there will be a night when we’re in my car and she’s screaming, raging, stabbing herself in the arm with a knife she’s pulled from her purse. Blood all over her, me and the dashboard. Me tearing up my shirt to bind her arm with. Her crying and saying she’s sorry. Everything being different, and then there being nothing between us.