Certified Quotes

I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

I am not a certified idiot—" "Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence," Will muttered.

A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.

Rule number 2 - don't listen to me!" Arriane laughed, "I'm certifiably insane!

That's when I heard the sounds of a certified genius spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.

I would have thought even a certified idiot like Gabriel here would have taken account of it and notified someone." "Notified who?" asked Jem, not unreasonably. He had moved closer to Tessa as the conversation had continued. As they stood side by side, the backs of their hands brushed. "The Clave. The postman. Us. Anyone," said Will, shooting an irritated look at Gabriel, who was starting to get some color back and looked furious. "I am not a certified idiot—" "Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence," Will muttered.

IF YOU HURT INSIDE, GET CERTIFIED, AND IF LIFE SHOULD TREAT YOU BAD... DON'T GET EE-EE-EVEN, GET MAD!

This is one Fruit Loop beyond certifiable.

I mean, how sad is it that I needed a freaking Facebook profile to tell me my boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend? As if Facebook is the official record keeper of relationships and you have to confirm all breakups and hookups with this sacred online registrar before you can consider them certified and approved.

Diabolical. You’re a scoundrel in tasteful athleisure wear.”  I grinned and stretched my arms. “Isn’t this jacket cute? I really couldn’t pass it up.”  “It’s adorable.” She sipped her tea. “You’re adorable. Cooper should eat you up. But I have two of you that are as stubborn as mules. How is even a certified busybody supposed to Hallmark-ending you two?

I hereby certify that the bearer of this note, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the night in question at Satan's ball, having been lured there in a transportational capacity... Hella, put in parentheses! And write 'hog.' Signed- Behemoth.

…I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being ‘infatuated’ with someone means you think you are in love, but you’re actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being ‘in love’ is an abstract notion, and it’s not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else… well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? They’re both human constructions. If you think you’re in love with someone and you feel like you’re in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is. Why do we feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?

The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

Homeschooling and public schooling are as opposite as two sides of a coin. In a homeschooling environment, the teacher need not be certified, but the child MUST learn. In a public school environment, the teacher MUST be certified, but the child need NOT learn.

I think he was worried about pushing things too far for the time being since I was obviously rocking a first-class ticket to certifiable insanity.

Every single person is a fool, insane, a failure, or a bad person to at least ten people.

He was nuts. He'd scammed the quarterly mental health exam and was certifiably insane. Not that that's ever stopped me from sleeping with anyone.

We're a disaster, a certifiable catastrophe, and there's nothing beautiful about the way we're going. She's trying to be unbreakable but I'm unshakeable. She's going crazy, and I'm already goddamn insane. I clipped my jailbird's wings so she couldn't fly away from me, and then I wonder why the fuck I can't make her soar.

We’re taught at an early age that we’re not good enough. That someone else has to choose us in order for us to be…what? Blessed? Rich? Certified? Legitimized? Educated? Partnership material?

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild" and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

Obtaining a certificate in nursing assistant trains students to provide quality care to residents in nursing homes.

One more minute of this, and she’d be a certifiable simpleton.

A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.

What I wanted most was for this certified hot person to see a hotness in me, thereby verifying, once and for all, that I was hot. It wasn’t that civilians didn’t find me attractive. But for a licensed hot person to verify me? That was the real shit.

Yes, he was that good looking. Take-your-breath-away good looking. Want-to-strip-your-body-naked-and-let-him-devour-you-alive good looking. Certified-eye-candy good looking.

They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.

Being self-taught is no disgrace; but being self-certified is another matter.

Well, look at that. I am a certified badass.

Because Spencer is a certifiable genius, Ford is as ruthless as they come, and I'm an accomplished liar.

Christians belive in a sovereign God who never says "Oops". We believe that all our days ... are divine strokes on the canvas of our lives by the Master Artist who certified his skill, his power, and his love in the Masterpiece of Calvary. If you doubt His skill in painting your life - look at the Calvary

In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.

A certified fucking wake up call.

In order to be labeled organic, a crop must be grown without the use of certain synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, as specified by the USDA. Though produced with fewer synthetic compounds, organic vegetables are not necessarily tastier or more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. Also keep in mind that the certification process is often too expensive for small farms even though their practices may meet or exceed those set by the USDA. The smallest farms-those selling less than $5,000 worth of crops annually-may by law label their produce organic without being inspected or certified. Rather than rely on labeling, we prefer, when possible, to buy locally grown vegetables in their season.

To have a museum chronicling the great crime that was African slavery in the United States of America would be to acknowledge that the evil was here. Americans prefer to picture the evil that was there, and from which the United States-a unique nation, one without any certifiably wicked leaders throughout its entire history-is exempt. That this country, like every other country, has its tragic past does not sit well with the founding, and still all-powerful belief in American exceptionalism.

It's one of the ironies of mountaineering,' said Young, 'that grown men are happy to spend months preparing for a climb, weeks rehearsing and honing their skills, and at least a day attempting to reach the summit. And then, having achieved their goal, they spend just a few moments enjoying the experience, along with one or two equally certifiable companions who have little in common other than wanting to do it all again, but a little higher.

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.

Writers are certified bullshitters.

You’re crazy,” I breathe. His hands dart out, gripping my ankles, and he yanks me down the bed. Again. Nero bends over me, putting our faces an inch apart. “For you, I’m fucking certifiable.

To evade insanity and depression, we unconsciously limit the number of people toward whom we are sincerely sympathetic.

They say the crazies come out at night. I say the crazies come out during election year: Elections have the power to turn once seemingly normal people into certified loonies.

How are you?” Delusional. Possibly certifiable. Weirdly happy. “Fine,” Georgie said.

Blaming others doesn't certify your goodness.

It's your job to be you, and if that's sad or positive or out of this world certifiable, then that's you. And it's my job to love you just as you are.

I’m a certified bad-ass indestructible bitch. The sun tries to burn me, I’ll kick him in his fiery balls. I don’t need no stinking suntan lotion.

if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable?

My psychiatrist said I had charisma so at least I'm certified

It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the said night at Satan’s ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a means of transportation…make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put “hog". Signed — Behemoth.

If only he didn't believe he was Shamu's distant cousin. It was such a shame for someone so sublime to be certifiable.

Dad, I would very much like to plunge off the edge of commonsense existence, at your expense, and become certifiably unemployable.

In the United States, of the ten million certified scuba divers, it is likely that only a few hundred dive deep for shipwrecks. To those few, it is not a matter of if they will taste death, only of whether they'll swallow.

Certification from one source or another seems to be the most important thing to people all over the world. A piece of paper from a school that says you’re smart, a pat on the head from your parents that says you’re good or some reinforcement from your peers that makes you think what you’re doing is worthwhile. People are just waiting around to get certified.

I remembered reading that the sweat and breath of certifiable psychopaths have a subtle but distinctive chemical odor because of certain physiological conditions accompanying that mental disorder. Maybe her breath smelled of craziness.

... But that age; remember that age? They’re not the same. They don’t put things together. That’s why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don’t make sense, when you’re that age; you don’t make sense. You stop expecting to.

If you have enough unanswered questions, you have a certifiable mystery, and those are impossible to resist.

The woman may be a biomedical engineer, but I begin to think that she is a certifiable idiot.

I stamped, certified, and lipsticked my life in a package sent through Priority Mail directly to the devil herself...and there's no turning back.

Don't even try your bullshit with us...! You psycho idiot, certifiable, father-complex, bitch!

Now I know my father was a certified man of God, but at a fairly young age, I decided that when it came to my destiny, he did not know what he was talking about.

A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel.

Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

After the fog lifts and you awaken to the truth about abuse, the narcissist and flying monkeys will minimize the facts about what took place. They will discredit you. They will undermine your own perception. They will accuse you of being insane. Even if you took the time to explain yourself, they will cast all blame onto you.

I believe that Donald Trump’s decision to attack the lawfully certified Electoral College results and to ignore the rulings of our courts was an assault on the structural constitutional safeguards that keep us free.

I work at a retirement home. I'm a CNA.” “What's that?” “It stands for Certified Nursing Assistant.” “That sounds important,” I said. She laughed. “If changing old people's diapers is important.” I thought for a moment, then said, “It is for the old people.

Being certified as a user means you have basic knowledge and can turn things on and off;

Perry was in charge of music; Asher, lighting, seating, and structures; and presiding the service was Elaine, who was, not suprisingly, a certified minister and wedding planner.

What's life without perfectly certifiable friends?

breakfast one morning, Da said, “The C words would certainly cause consternation considering countless certifiable cases kept coming.

Chloe Bishop took an ax and gave Skanky Skyla forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her family forty-one." A tingle of fear rises through my spine as Chloe cackles her way into Ethan's bedroom. Chloe Bishop is certifiably insane. And dear God Almighty - I do believe she's going to kill us all.

There are three qualities that make someone a true professional. These are the ability to work unsupervised, the ability to certify the completion of a job or task and, finally, the ability to behave with integrity at all times.

In medical school, doctors are taught to view the human body as a random mistake-ridden vessel that has to be forced into submission with surgery, antibiotics, antihypertensives, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, and other medical interventions. The natural extension of this paradigm over the past 100 years has been for the medical profession to condition human beings not to trust anyone but certified medical doctors to fix these defective aberrations of creation.

There was nothing whatever wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

At the core of the problem is an obsolete factory model of schooling that sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies working-class children as if they were products on an assembly line. The purpose of education, I said, cannot be only to increase the earning power of the individual or to supply workers for the ever-changing slots of the corporate machine. Children need to be given a sense of the 'unique capacity of human beings to shape and create reality in accordance with conscious purposes and plans.

Selective amnesia by harmful people is blame-shifting. According to FreeDictionary.com, “Blame-shifting is when someone shifts the blame from person to person.” The root of blame-shifting is when an abusive person fails to take responsibility for their cruelty.

I, _______________________, certify that by signing below I agree to abide by the rules outlined in the REACH Handbook. I understand the rules, which have been properly explained to me by a REACH staff member. I further acknowledge that if I disregard the rules for any reason I will be subject to disciplinary action which may include in-house detention, additional counseling, and/or expulsion from the REACH program. What it really means: I, __________________, sign my freedom over to REACH staff. By signing this piece of paper, I certify that my life will be dictated by other people and I'll live a miserable existence while I'm in Colorado.

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.

The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things you can pinpoint the day, the hour, the minute. When you think about it, though, those things, mostly seem to happen to other people. This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I am going to tell it to you. It's a true story as much as six decades or telling and remembering can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell, the weather, say, or the splash of light on the river's ripples as the sun was going down into the black pines. things not even connected to anything in particular, while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than the big things.

Unless you eat foods clearly marked “Certified organic by the USDA,” you are taking part in a genetic experiment that is unprecedented in earth’s long history.

We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen — certification probably guarantees it won’t.

That chick is certifiably out of her fucking tree. -Isaac

Anger is a certified destroyer, from its birth till now, it is yet to build a lasting legacy

To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted.

The book was sloppily written in many parts (the words came too quickly and too easily) and there was hardly a noun in any sentence that was not holding hands with the nearest and most commonly available adjective — scalding coffee and tremulous fear are the sorts of thing you will find throughout. Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing.

[Aunt Dahlia to Bertie Wooster] 'To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot--certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post. I thought as much. Well, it needed but this. I don't see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad..I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid.

You’re looking for a man who can fix you?” “No! I don’t expect a man to fix me! I’m not an idiot. I just want a man I can hide behind.” Chase’s eyebrows flew high. His mouth twitched up, and Jane felt her mouth twitch, too. “Jane, I’m no Dr. Phil, but I’m pretty sure you’re certifiably fucked-up.” “Shut up!” “It’s true. Man, if I wasn’t already in love with you, I’d be out of here.

Our society has a twisted sense of motherhood. They believe that all mothers are kind, tender, gentle, and loving. Unfortunately, not all women who give birth to children are a good parent. Not all women are fit to be mothers.

Gaslighting is a subtle form of emotional manipulation that often results in the recipient doubting their own perception of reality and their sanity. In addition, gaslighting is a method of manipulation by toxic people to gain power over you. The worst part about gaslighting is that it undermines your self-worth to the point where you’re second-guessing everything.

You?" I start to laugh. "Look at you. You're a knock-out. You're smarter than I am. You're on a career track and you're family-centered and you probably even can balance your checkbook." "And I'm lonely, Cambell." Jewel adds. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zipcode. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PSM. You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

And a big thank-you to local scientist, certified genius, and, oh yeah, my boyfriend, Carlos, who came by earlier to explain clouds. Need something explained in language that for all you know could be scientific? Feel free to drop by Carlos's lab. Sometimes he'll be there. Sometimes it's date night, and he's with me. I am his boyfriend. I don't know if I mentioned that.

If you were raised as child by a narcissistic mom, you may have spent a lifetime being mistreated and shamed for things that you never did. Toxic shame is a result of being told you are not enough. You may feel worthless and unlovable.

This woman had no idea who I was. She has no idea I was once a smoker, was thrown out of boarding school twice and a certified rebel with strong opinions. To her, I was new, fresh, immaculate to the bone. This was all strangely wonderful.

Oftentimes, the scapegoat feels worthless and powerless. After being beaten down, year after year, we have a strong sense of false guilt. Unconsciously, we take the narcissist’s guilt as if it were our own. As if it were our fault. As if we are deserving of mental torture and physical abuse.

Abby Rivers was a certified grown-up because she'd finally cried at a movie.

The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified

I’m afraid it’s too late to realize that I’m addicted to books. Is that considered a certified addiction? I hope not. If so, I don’t care. I’m not giving it up.

The girl made me completely insane. Fucking certified.

He was certifiably insane, an Ayn Rander who fancied himself an Übermensch and “the Singularity’s chosen avatar,

I mean, what was she thinking? Letting a strange man watch her, come into her home, and touch her? That’s insane. Certifiably insane.

I’ve just been certified as a shaman, or sha-woman, if you please,” Dr. Tuttle said.

It’s perplexing how family members claim their undying love for us. They can say whatever they choose, but their actions and behaviors don’t match their words. There is an imbalance in the relationships with distinct discrepancies, especially in who overpowers the scapegoat.

The insults didn't faze me. It did piss me off to hear them call Jimmy a traitor. The man had earned a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in Afghanistan while serving his country. He'd returned for multiple tours of duty. He was already a certified American patriot, a hero. Jimmy brushed off the taunts with sarcasm. "That's hurtful." My body-worn camera caught him smiling as he said it. It was the last time either of us would smile for a really fucking long time.

I talk to her sometimes, I'm not ashamed to admit it. When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life. A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I'm confident that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.

Trauma wounds are invisible. We cannot see visible bruises, cuts, or scars. Yet, if we don’t tend to them, we can carry them throughout our lives. We may relive our trauma over and over, again.

He knew what the others thought of him. They thought him mad. Well, perhaps they were right. Brandt was mad. Well and truly mad. Gleefully, joyously, certifiably, insanely mad. But he wasn’t stupid.

Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you are certified dead; and you can be certified dead only by an officer who himself (herself) holds state certification. The state pursues the certification of death with extraordinary thoroughness—witness the dispatch of a host of forensic scientists and bureaucrats to scrutinize and photograph and prod and poke the mountain of human corpses left behind by the great tsunami of December 2004 in order to establish their individual identities. No expense is spared to ensure that the census of subjects shall be complete and accurate. Whether the citizen lives or dies is not a concern of the state. What matters to the state and its records is whether the citizen is alive or dead.

The narcissistic mother cannot give her child unconditional love. She’s not capable of being self-less, devoted, warm, mature, or attentive to you. Instead, everything is about her. Life revolves around meeting her unrealistic, immature needs. She expects your undivided attention. Your admiration. Your praises. Your loyalty to her. She demands you to meet her needs no matter how ridiculous they can be.

For men who prided themselves on being disciples of reason, their drive to live on the edge seemd inexplicable, unless they believed that becoming the richest would certify them as also being the smartest.

Not exactly a certified philosopher—my degree is in engineering and architecture, but my true home was philosophy, and even at the Polytechnic I found some learned professors who guided my private readings.

Just because your mother gave birth to you doesn’t mean they are capable of caring for you. Just because a woman had a child doesn’t necessarily equate to being safe, respectful, or healthy. NOT ALL MOTHERS CAN LOVE.

An educational strategy to help you maintain your clear boundaries is the JADE technique. JADE is an acronym and it stands for: J = Justify: Don’t try to justify yourself to toxic people. It’s unproductive. A = Argue: Do not waste your energy arguing with toxic people. D = Defend: Don’t waste your breath trying to defend yourself to those who don’t care. E = Explain: Never explain yourself, especially to those who discredit you. The goal of the JADE technique is to take back your power. To stand up for yourself without needing to defend or explain yourself. It’s essential to not engage in this ridiculous mind-game with abusive people.

COBWEBS. The spider as an artist    Has never been employed Though his surpassing merit    Is freely certified By every broom and Bridget    Throughout a Christian land. Neglected son of genius,    I take thee by the hand.

The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs round. After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board, the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may, by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into his hereditary level.

In Calvin’s time, one might have had a hereditary occupation. And as recently as the 1970s, it was possible to compose a working life centered around the steady accumulation of experience, and be valued in the workplace for that experience; for what you have become. But, as the sociologist Richard Sennett has shown in his studies of contemporary work, it has become difficult to experience the repose of any such settled identity. The ideal of being experienced has given way to the ideal of being flexible. What is demanded is an all-purpose intelligence, the kind one is certified to have by admission to an elite university, not anything in particular that you might have learned along the way. You have to be ready to reinvent yourself at any time, like a good democratic Übermensch. And while in Calvin’s time the threat of damnation might have been dismissed by some as a mere superstition, with our winner-take-all economy the risk of damnation has acquired real teeth. There is a real chance that you may get stuck at the bottom.

Healing generational trauma takes courage and strength. It’s common for dysfunctional families to deny their abuse. They silence victims and dump toxic shame onto them. Complicit families keep abuse alive from generation to generation, until one brave survivor boldly ends the cycle of abuse.

The malignant narcissist has a split persona. They are like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute, they are sweet as sugar. The next minute, they fly into an uncontrollable seething rage! The narcissist loves playing mind games with you. They are clever to conceal who they are. Wherever there’s a narcissist, you can find a false mask plastered upon their face.

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

When I certify someone insane, I am not equivocating when I write that he is of unsound mind, may be dangerous to himself and others, and requires care and attention in a mental hospital. However, at the same time, I am also aware that, in my opinion, there are other people who are regarded as sane, whose minds are as radically unsound, who may be equally or more dangerous to themselves and others and whom society does not regard as psychotic and fit persons to be in a madhouse.

Doubt has also been cast on the value of McKeith’s certified membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, especially since Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre managed to buy the same membership online for his dead cat for $60.

If you’ve watched enough of Duck Dynasty, you might actually believe Uncle Si is certifiably insane. He is actually just as crazy off camera--if not more so! Like Uncle Si says, you’d never want to be left alone with the thoughts inside his head.

As an adult survivor of sibling abuse, the most difficult fact pertaining to it is that 90% of abusive siblings deny they have abused their sibling. They will not take accountability for it.

I'm certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I'm not exactly a teacher. I write fiction, but I've never been published, so I'm not a writer yet, either." "You're nothing." Tengo nodded. "Exactly. For the moment, I'm nothing.

Equally worrying, and far less recognized, medicine has been slow to confront the very changes that it has been responsible for—or to apply the knowledge we have about how to make old age better. Although the elderly population is growing rapidly, the number of certified geriatricians the medical profession has put in practice has actually fallen in the United States by 25 percent between 1996 and 2010. Applications to training programs in adult primary care medicine have plummeted, while fields like plastic surgery and radiology receive applications in record numbers. Partly, this has to do with money—incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine. And partly, whether we admit it or not, a lot of doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.

Regulus swallows. "You're a good person, Evan Rosier." "That's the thing, though. I'm really not." Evan blinks at him slowly. "I just—like you. Isn't that mental?" "Certifiably insane," Regulus says, his chest feeling tight. Evan waves his free hand lazily. "I don't mean the way your boyfriend likes you. Just…person to person, I suppose. It's a shame, really. I think—well, I think you're my friend.

We cannot outrun our past trauma. We can’t bury it and think that we will be fine. We cannot skip the essential stage of processing, accepting, and doing the hard, yet necessary trauma recovery work. There’s a body-mind connection. Trauma can manifest itself into chronic physical pain, cancer, inflammation, auto-immune conditions, depression, anxiety, PTSD, Complex PTSD, addictions, and ongoing medical conditions.

Gaslighting causes us to doubt our own memories, perceptions, and judgments. It throws us psychologically off balance. It’s like being in the Twilight Zone. If you feel as though your self-esteem, confidence, and dignity has withered under the flame of gaslighting, you are not alone.

Prodigy" Huge, megalithic corporation seeks a talented, ambitious prodigy to join our exciting dynamic Prodigy Division for summer job. Requirements include at least fourteen years' experience as a certified child prodigy ability to anagram adeptly (and alliterate agilely), fluency in eleven languages. Job duties include reading, remembering encyclopedias, novels, and poetry; and memorizing the first ninety-nine digits of pi.33

For girls of our class, only a convent-school education would do. This meant that until we reached the age of marital consent, we could be certified (of course) as virgins, but also as never having occupied unchaperoned confined space of any kind with a boy of our own age who was not a close relative.

She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

When a narcissist and flying monkeys see that you are onto their sly tricks, they will argue with you. This is their final attempt to find a way out of getting caught. No matter how much they scream, cuss, and fight with you, their arguments are to trip you up. They want to provoke you into more conflicts. Remember, they crave narcissistic supply. This is why they are projecting and gaslighting you. They need you to have a negative emotional reaction to them. It feeds the fuel with them. Don’t participate in the drama, denial, and dysfunction.

A family scapegoat is burdened with criticism, toxic shame, and blame for something they have not done. The wrongdoings of others are projected onto them. You were a convenient receptacle for your insecure family members who were incapable or unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions, words, and behaviors.

THE MINUTE I WALK INTO THE HOSPITAL with Judge at my side, I know I’m in trouble. A security officer—think Hitler in drag with a very bad perm—crosses her arms and blocks my entry at the elevator bank. “No dogs,” she orders. “This is a service dog.” “You’re not blind.” “I have an irregular heartbeat and he’s CPR certified.

Licensing sounds good because we all want reliable services and qualified people, but that’s why it’s unnecessary. There’s nothing wrong with a group saying that if you don’t meet their standards, they won’t certify you – but when the governments do that, not only is it funded by taxation, it comes with the threat of force.

This to certify that I am alive after all; yes, and getting stronger, and intending to be strong before long, though the sense left to me is of a peculiar frailty of being; no very marked opinion upon my hold of life. But life will last as long as God finds it useful for myself and others — which is enough, both for them and me.

Sure, there have always been ideologues on campuses, but the old ideologues were at least expected to argue the validity of their ideas. The new brand are ideologues of feelings, and feelings can’t be argued. Despite being a certified left-wing feminist, I just don’t believe that experience or identity credentialize you intellectually.

This toxic pattern within the broken family system will continue from one generation to the next, until one brave survivor finally ends the cycle of abuse. The dysfunction, bullying, and abuse didn’t start with you, but it most certainly can end with you.

I have an iron lung, and the dog keeps me from getting too close to magnets. [...] I have SARS. He's tallying the people I infect. [...] I'm nearsighted. He helps me read the road signs. [...] I'm a recovering alcoholic. The dog gets between me and a beer. [...] I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified. [...] Color-blind. He tells me when the traffic lights change. [...] He translates for my Spanish-speaking clients. [...] He's a chick magnet. [...] I'm a lawyer. He chases ambulances for me.

My hens all died and my plow is broke My well is dry and my yak just croaked My farm’s all rotted straight down to the roots But I don’t care because now I can wearrrrr—! My worldwide, superglide, yellow-dyed, verified, Certified, ratified, justified and dignified, Qualified ironside, fortified and purified, Bona fide, amplified, khernhide boots!

Packets don't lie.

As I raised the glass and said, "South Bend is back," the roar of the crowd at once reflected, certified, and caused it to be so.

The simple conclusion: Congress does not have the authority to undo an election by refusing to count state-certified electoral votes. Period.

The politicians gave her a certified copy as a memento. She kept it for years afterward,

The trouble is, we have up-close access to women who excel in each individual sphere. With social media and its carefully selected messaging, we see career women killing it, craft moms slaying it, chef moms nailing it, Christian leaders working it. We register their beautiful yards, homemade green chile enchiladas, themed birthday parties, eight-week Bible study series, chore charts, ab routines, “10 Tips for a Happy Marriage,” career best practices, volunteer work, and Family Fun Night ideas. We make note of their achievements, cataloging their successes and observing their talents. Then we combine the best of everything we see, every woman we admire in every genre, and conclude: I should be all of that. It is certifiably insane.

Narcissistic abuse is cited as being ‘soul murder.’ It not only breaks your heart and crushes your spirit, but it’s directly linked to trauma wounds. Trauma pierces your core essence. It breaks you into dozens of pieces. Your trauma runs deep. Unaware, you may carry it into your adulthood.

Jacob slid down my body and knelt in front of me. The two of us were wedged into the narrow lane between the and the dresser. He took the front button of my shirt into his mouth. I heard a snap. He spat, and a button pinged to the floor. He was nuts. He'd scammed the quarterly mental health exam and was certifiably insane. Not that that's ever stopped me from sleeping with anyone.

My Kind of Girl A letter of inspiration from a loving Mother Understands who she is Stands for what she believes in She cannot be broken No one can belittle her When trials come her way She remains unfazed My Kind of Girl Walks with confidence She exudes excellence An epitome of elegance She does due diligence Being mindful of her intelligence And knowing her importance My Kind of Girl Builds her own future A certified trailblazer Who utilizes the power within her To be of good influence Always on top of her game Yes, she keeps soaring like an eagle My Kind of Girl Takes charge for her own life Secures her name in historical archives For she is no ordinary woman An extraordinary being She dares to dream In the world, she makes a difference That is my kind of girl

...this midlevel cultural-capital audience is not as far from the average white pop critic as we might have expected. We usually make middling incomes or worse, and while most have university degrees, our expertise is usually more self-taught than PhD-certified, a pattern believed would produce an anxious, fact-hoarding intellectual style in contrast with the relaxed mastery of a fully legitimated cultural elite.

The biggest hurdle most scapegoats face is the fear of doing something wrong by going grey rock, no contact, or upsetting the narcissist if you distance yourself. You walk on eggshells. You don’t feel safe. You don’t know from one minute to the next how the narcissist will react to you. At any moment, they can explode!

criminal record represents a unique mechanism of state-sponsored stratification. As Pager puts it, “it is the state that certifies particular individuals in ways that qualify them for discrimination or social exclusion.

Car pour s’intégrer à une culture, il faut, je vous le certifie, se désintégrer d’abord, du moins partiellement, de la sienne. Se désunir, se désagréger, se dissocier. Tous ceux qui appellent les immigrés à faire des ‘efforts d’intégration’ n’osent pas les regarder en face pour leur demander de commencer par faire ces nécessaires 'efforts de désintégration'. Ils exigent d’eux d’arriver en haut de la montagne sans passer par l’ascension

How we see ourselves, how we see each other,” she said, “should be determined by us and not by people who generally don’t like us; people who pass laws certifying us as less than human. Too many of us see each other as ‘they’ see us,” she continued. “Time for that shit to stop. We’re going to have to decide for ourselves what we are and what we’re not. Create our own image of ourselves. And nurture it and feed it till it can stand on its own.

I’ve always dealt fairly in business, even when I believed someone was trying to take advantage of me. That’s one reason I have had to grind away incessantly to achieve success. In some ways I guess I’m naive. I always take a man at his word unless he’s given me a reason not to, and I’ve worked out many a satisfactory deal on the strength of a handshake. On the other hand, I’ve been taken to the cleaners often enough to make me a certified cynic.

What the toxic family unit has lost sight of is the positive traits of the innocent person who was manipulated into being the scapegoat. The scapegoat can feel the acute injustice that leaves a psychological scar. Although nobody would willingly choose to be a scapegoat, this person has countless wonderful strengths, characteristics, and accomplishments.

Ultimately, the purpose of a certification is to establish a particular level of proficiency in a discipline. Unfortunately, “social media” in and of itself, is not a discipline. Digital crisis management, on the other hand, is. So are digital customer service and online community management. This means that a certification program that focuses on social media without addressing each specific business function adapted to social media won’t end up certifying anyone in much of anything.

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) causes problems in many areas of life, such as relationships, work, school or financial affairs. People with NPD may be generally unhappy and disappointed when they're not given the special favors or admiration, which they believe they deserve. They may find their relationships unfulfilling. Others may not enjoy being around them.

Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called hidden people—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free, but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.

I think I have a lot going for me as far as dating. I have a high IQ, I'm 6'3", and on May 23rd I'll be Forklift Certified. That's right, I'll soon be qualified to transport stacked pallets, and I know that's the first thing women look for in a potential partner.

Not many years ago, nearly 100 percent of people who thought they were being constantly watched were certifiable paranoids. But recently it was revealed that, in the name of public safety, Homeland Security and more than a hundred other local, state, and federal agencies are operating aerial surveillance drones of the kind previously used only on foreign battlefields— at low altitudes outside the authority of air-traffic control. Soon, the bigger worry will not be that, as you walk your dog, you are secretly being watched but that the rapidly proliferating drones will begin colliding with one another and with passenger aircraft, and that you’ll be killed by the plummeting drone that was monitoring you to be sure that you picked up Fido’s poop in a federally approved pet-waste bag.

Are there things you would not do for any amount of money? For any consideration? For a young body? The Integrity Coin attests to the bearer's inaccessibility to any quantitative bribe. The coin certifies that the bearer has definitely refused the Devil's Bargain.

If something doesn’t feel right or if something feels ‘off,’ learn to trust your internal warning signals. They are alerting you to danger. Some physical signs are a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, anxiety, perspiration, a migraine, nausea, or vertigo. Your body is screaming for you to pay attention. Do not dismiss it or deny your conscious reality. Instead, learn to trust your intuition.

The fact of the matter is that when I drink, I am 100 percent certifiably insane. Hopelessly, utterly, undeniably bat shit crazy. I do things that are abhorrent to me; anathema to my nature, my morals, and my upbringing. And once I start, I cannot stop the craziness. It just spirals on and on, ever downward, until I die or hit rock bottom. And even at rock bottom, despite all evidence that I should stop, I will grab a cold beer and a pick ax and keep digging deeper. It's insane. The only way I know to not be crazy is just not to drink.

We cannot repair broken relationships if they won't take ownership of how they intentionally hurt us. We find strength to release them. For our mental health, we let them go. It is the kindest act of self-preservation, self-love, and self-care. It is how we can heal our trauma.

A primary concern among Mac users, and a benefit to the hacking community, is the Mac owner mind-set that Macs aren’t susceptible to viruses or attack. It is an interesting stance considering that the thing they are claiming to be naturally impervious from attack is, well, a computer!

A strip of white paper was looped around the seat of the toilet bowl to certify that no one had sat there since the strip was placed in position. The toilet paper from the toilet-paper holder in the wall to the left of the toilet seat was soft and very absorbent, and would stick to the anus.

When I was arrested,’ I said, ‘I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I’ve actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you’ve gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who’ll be able to prove they’re sane will be the people behind bars.

We’re certified book dragons. I will rearrange your internal organs with my cane if you even think of calling me a worm. There is nothing worse in a library than a book worm. Book worms do not read. They eat my precious books. Call me a book worm, and I will turn your death into a masterpiece.

One day, we wake up to the narcissist’s cunning masquerade. We watch their fake mask slip off their face. Everything becomes crystal clear. We see right through their phony disguise. To anyone who’s dealt with the pain and torment of a narcissist, a silver lining is a sign of hope. Hope that someday you can break free from the abuse. Hope to rebuild a better life. Hope to find comfort and peace within. Hope to recover from your trauma. Hope to embrace a brighter future. We can no longer unsee their hideous charade. We accept how lethal a malignant narcissist is. We actively set healthy boundaries. We walk away from hurtful relationships. Like the Phoenix, we rise above the fiery ashes. We stand up, dust ourselves off, and march forward.

Insane’ probably means to have an innate mental problem, something that calls for professional treatment, while ‘lunatic’ means to have your sanity temporarily seized by the luna, which is ‘moon’ in Latin. In nineteenth-century England, if you were a certified lunatic and you committed a crime, the severity of the crime would be reduced a notch. The idea was that the crime was not so much the responsibility of the person himself as that he was led astray by the moonlight. Believe it or not, laws like that actually existed. In other words, the fact that the moon can drive people crazy was actually recognized in law.

EVERY WEDNESDAY, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid. Don’t start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don’t end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don’t use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such perimeters established. With each variable the list isolates, their imaginations soar higher. They smile and nod. The mood in the room is congenial, almost festive with learning. I feel like a very effective teacher; I can practically hear my course-evaluation scores hitting the roof. Then, when the students reach the last point on the list, the mood shifts. Some of them squint at the words as if their vision has gone blurry; others ask their neighbors for clarification. The neighbor will shake her head, looking pale and dejected, as if the last point confirms that she should have opted for that aseptic-surgery class where you operate on a fetal pig. The last point is: Don’t Write What You Know. The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent workshops, my students have included Iraq War veterans, professional athletes, a minister, a circus clown, a woman with a pet miniature elephant, and gobs of certified geniuses. They are endlessly interesting people, their lives brimming with uniquely compelling experiences, and too often they believe those experiences are what equip them to be writers. Encouraging them not to write what they know sounds as wrongheaded as a football coach telling a quarterback with a bazooka of a right arm to ride the bench. For them, the advice is confusing and heartbreaking, maybe even insulting. For me, it’s the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters.

Over the past twenty years, Maher watched that pattern play out again and again as major clothing brands made demands on suppliers in Bangladesh to lower their prices while also completing orders faster and constantly improving their workplace and environmental standards. Fakir Fashion has implemented certified projects to treat its wastewater, harvest rainwater, use more solar power, provide meals and child care for workers, hire workers with disabilities, build schools in the local area and more. They have been unable to pass on any of the expenses of these improvements to apparel brands or consumers, who continue to want more for less.

False guilt is feeling guilty when one is not actually guilty. Genuine guilt is a result of wrongdoing. It is appropriate to feel guilty if we had done something wrong. However, false guilt is rooted in deception, denial, and dysfunction. It is directly connected to our destructive and codependent relationship with a narcissist.

We’ve been talking on the phone for a few days, and I gotta admit the shit was refreshing. One night I caught myself lying flat on the floor with my legs going up the wall, cheesing on the phone like I was in middle school. Shit had me feeling gay as fuck. So, I had to go out and shoot a nigga in the middle of the night to get my gangsta back.

So, I was going to have to spend a few weeks in the psych ward. It’s standard procedure. I have been through it a couple of times. After a few weeks they would give me a certificate certifying me sane, and I would hang it on my wall with the others, apart from the one I keep in my wallet. I make a point of showing it to people when they call me crazy.

In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. Man, a bit later, created the fable that "the dog, when he understands, always wants to please.

In the Laundry we supposedly pride ourselves on our procedures. We’ve got procedures for breaking and entering offices, procedures for reporting a shortage of paper clips, procedures for summoning demons from the vasty deeps, and procedures for writing procedures. We may actually be on track to be the world’s first ISO-9000 total-quality-certified intelligence agency.

Reporters insist on portraying me as a curiosity. Rather like a talking horse." "You're an unusual woman." "Not really. Many thousands of women have the minds and temperaments to practice medicine. However, no medical school here will admit a female, which is why I had to study and train in France. I was fortunate enough to become certified before the British Medical Association closed the loopholes to prevent other women from doing the same." "What did your father say about it?" "At fist he was against the idea. He thought it indecent for a woman to have such an occupation. Viewing unclothed people, and so forth. However, as I pointed out to him, if we're made in God's image, there can be nothing wrong with the study of the human body.

We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin’ over Africa! Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin’ over Africa— (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an’-twenty mile to-day— Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before— (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! Don’t—don’t—don’t—don’t—look at what’s in front of you. (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again!) Men—men—men—men—men go mad with watchin’ ’em, And there’s no discharge in the war! Try—try—try—try—to think o’ something different— Oh—my—God—keep—me from goin’ lunatic! (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! Count—count—count—count—the bullets in the bandoliers. If—your—eyes—drop—they will get atop o’ you (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! We—can—stick—out—’unger, thirst, an’ weariness, But—not—not—not—not the chronic sight of ’em— Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again! An’ there’s no discharge in the war! ’Tain’t—so—bad—by—day because o’ company, But—night—brings—long—strings—o’ forty thousand million Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again. There’s no discharge in the war! I—’ave—marched—six—weeks in ’Ell an’ certify It—is—not—fire—devils—dark or anything, But boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again, An’ there’s no discharge in the war!

From the recent Balkan Wars, journalist Slavenka Drakulic observed that “someone is always a Jew. Once the concept of ‘otherness’ takes root, the unimaginable becomes possible.”8 She continues, “Once excluded, [people] become aliens. Not-me. Not-us. You still feel responsible but in a different way, as towards beggars. . . . The feeling of human solidarity turns into an issue of my personal ethics. . . . You are no longer obliged to do something for their sake.”9 This is true of anyone we place in special categories—refugees, veterans, victims, and survivors, as well as enemies—even though they may be our neighbors. In the British movie Pretty Dirty Things, one migrant shouts at another, “I’m a certified refugee. You’re an illegal. You have nothing. You are nothing.

If we ignore our abuse and trauma, it will continue to reveal itself to us. It may be subtle or it may be intense. Trauma can show up in our sleep. We may battle insomnia and nightmares. We can experience physical pain and emotional distress. We may struggle with anxiety and depression. Or we may suffer hypervigilance, dissociation, and Complex PTSD/PTSD. We may have flashbacks. We may battle triggers. Or we can suddenly be slammed with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. Each of these signs are a normal trauma response. Even if we are unaware that it’s linked to our emotional trauma.

That week—the week of the rain—was one of my dad’s bad times. So I went out to the site a lot. One day, I was just picking around one of the foundations. It was all cinder block and pits; hardly any of the building had actually gotten done. And then I saw this little box. A shoe box.” She sucks in a breath, and even in the dark I see her tense. The rest of her story comes out in a rush: “Someone must have left it there, wedged in the space underneath a part of the foundation. Except the rain was so bad it had caused a miniature mudslide. The box had rolled out into the open. I don’t know why I decided to look inside. It was filthy. I thought I might find a pair of shoes, maybe some jewelry.” I know, now, where the story is going. I am walking toward the muddy box alongside her; I am lifting the water-warped cover. The horror and disgust is a mud too: It is rising, black and choking, inside of me. Raven’s voice drops to a whisper. “She was wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket with yellow lambs on it. She wasn’t breathing. I—I thought she was dead. She was … she was blue. Her skin, her nails, her lips, her fingers. Her fingers were so small.” The mud is in my throat. I can’t breathe. “I don’t know what made me try to revive her. I think I must have gone a little crazy. I was working as a junior lifeguard that summer, so I’d been certified in CPR. I’d never had to do it, though. And she was so tiny—probably a week, maybe two weeks old. But it worked. I’ll never forget how I felt when she took a breath, and all that color came rushing into her skin. It was like the whole world had split open. And everything I’d felt was missing—all that feeling and color—all of it came to me with her first breath. I called her Blue so I would always remember that moment, and so I would never regret.

It hit us all of a sudden, one night after one of these mouth-marathons, that anyone who has a complaint ought to have to qualify and be certified first. I mean, here’s somebody who thinks it’s just awful about the dirty water and the foul air. What is he doing about the solid waste he creates in his own house? What kind of poison-factory is he driving, and does he keep it running in such a way as to minimize the junk it puts into the air? Does he support government people he knows are corrupt, or by apathy just let them go on corrupting? The more we heard this kind of crap from these hobby gripers, the more we felt that a man should qualify to complain, just as he has to qualify to drive a bus or cut an appendix or run a ferryboat. Or vote. And if we were going to be honest about it, we had to look at ourselves. Point a finger at anybody and you’ll find you have three fingers pointing at you.

We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of political science, or of private economy. Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man’s head back to his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, almost no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.

back-scratching of liquor licenses, the netherworld of trash removal, linen, grease disposal. And with every dime you've got tied up in your new place, suddenly the drains in your prep kitchen are backing up with raw sewage, pushing hundreds of gallons of impacted crap into your dining room; your coke-addled chef just called that Asian waitress who's working her way through law school a chink, which ensures your presence in court for the next six months; your bartender is giving away the bar to under-age girls from Wantagh, any one of whom could then crash Daddy's Buick into a busload of divinity students, putting your liquor license in peril, to say the least; the Ansel System could go off, shutting down your kitchen in the middle of a ten-thousand-dollar night; there's the ongoing struggle with rodents and cockroaches, any one of which could crawl across the Tina Brown four-top in the middle of the dessert course; you just bought 10,000 dollars-worth of shrimp when the market was low, but the walk-in freezer just went on the fritz and naturally it's a holiday weekend, so good luck getting a service call in time; the dishwasher just walked out after arguing with the busboy, and they need glasses now on table seven; immigration is at the door for a surprise inspection of your kitchen's Green Cards; the produce guy wants a certified check or he's taking back the delivery; you didn't order enough napkins for the weekend — and is that the New York Times reviewer waiting for your hostess to stop flirting and notice her?

Do you know what day it is?” she asked, peering at him. “Don’t you?” “Here in Spindle Cove, we ladies have a schedule. Mondays are country walks. Tuesdays, sea bathing. Wednesdays, you’d find us in the garden.” She touched the back of her hand to his forehead. “What is it we do on Mondays?” “We didn’t get to Thursdays.” “Thursdays are irrelevant. I’m testing your ability to recall information. Do you remember Mondays?” He stifled a laugh. God, her touch felt good. If she kept petting and stroking him like this, he might very well go mad. “Tell me your name,” he said. “I promise to recall it.” A bit forward, perhaps. But any chance for formal introductions had already fallen casualty to the powder charge. Speaking of the powder charge, here came the brilliant mastermind of the sheep siege. Damn his eyes. “Are you well, miss?” Colin asked. “I’m well,” she answered. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same for your friend.” “Bram?” Colin prodded him with a boot. “You look all of a piece.” No thanks to you. “He’s completely addled, the poor soul.” The girl patted his cheek. “Was it the war? How long has he been like this?” “Like this?” Colin smirked down at him. “Oh, all his life.” “All his life?” “He’s my cousin. I should know.” A flush pressed to her cheeks, overwhelming her freckles. “If you’re his cousin, you should take better care of him. What are you thinking, allowing him to wander the countryside, waging war on flocks of sheep?” Ah, that was sweet. The lass cared. She would see him settled in a very comfortable asylum, she would. Perhaps Thursdays would be her day to visit and lay cool cloths to his brow. “I know, I know,” Colin replied gravely. “He’s a certifiable fool. Completely unstable. Sometimes the poor bastard even drools. But the hell of it is, he controls my fortune. Every last penny. I can’t tell him what to do.” “That’ll be enough,” Bram said. Time to put a stop to this nonsense. It was one thing to enjoy a moment’s rest and a woman’s touch, and another to surrender all pride. He gained his feet without too much struggle and helped her to a standing position, too. He managed a slight bow. “Lieutenant Colonel Victor Bramwell. I assure you, I’m in possession of perfect health, a sound mind, and one good-for-nothing cousin.” “I don’t understand,” she said. “Those blasts…” “Just powder charges. We embedded them in the road, to scare off the sheep.” “You laid black powder charges. To move a flock of sheep.” Pulling her hand from his grip, she studied the craters in the road. “Sir, I remain unconvinced of your sanity. But there’s no question you are male.” He raised a brow. “That much was never in doubt.” Her only answer was a faint deepening of her blush. “I assure you, all the lunacy is my cousin’s. Lord Payne was merely teasing, having a bit of sport at my expense.” “I see. And you were having a bit of sport at my expense, pretending to be injured.” “Come, now.” He leaned forward her and murmured, “Are you going to pretend you didn’t enjoy it?” Her eyebrows lifted. And lifted, until they formed perfect twin archer’s bows, ready to dispatch poison-tipped darts. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.

One of the challenges adult children of narcissistic mother’s face is the myth that every mother is giving, nurturing, and gracious. Worldwide, this is a false notion and taboo topic. For many adult children, they are scolded by our society who chides, “But it’s your MOTHER!” Despite the fact that we’ve spent a lifetime suffering chronic mental abuse, rejection, criticisms, and scapegoating by our mothers, most people don’t believe us, don’t understand us, nor have they personally experienced narcissistic abuse by their mothers.

So dominant is soy as industrial animal feed that the average person in the UK or Europe consumes approximately 61kg of soy per year, largely in the form of animal products such as chicken, pork, salmon, cheese, milk and eggs.36 Only 20–30 per cent of imported soy is ‘certified sustainable’ (and we have already discussed how little that means). So, if you live in the UK, there is a tennis court of land producing soy in the tropics just for you, and most of it comes from places like Brazil and Argentina where ecosystems that affect global climate are being destroyed.**

Child neglect and abuse is a hidden epidemic. The topic is taboo. Surviving abusive relationships, especially in the family unit, is complicated. Oftentimes, victims of child abuse, sexual assaults, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse don’t report it. During my extensive research, I discovered that most children don’t disclose their sexual abuse, until late in life. On the website, Child USA, they share about delayed disclosure. “Most child victims of sexual assault disclose, if they disclose at all, during adulthood, with a median age of 48 and an average age of 52.

Wallace would never realize his political ambitions, but he would certainly play a part in seeing that Johnson realized his. After the assassination of President Kennedy, a fingerprint was found on a cardboard box in the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. It could not be linked with Oswald, any other employee of the Texas School Book Depository, or any law enforcement officer who had handled the box. Wallace’s print from his previous conviction and the one found on the box were a match, according to fingerprint expert A. Nathan Darby, former head of Austin’s police identification unit. Darby was the most experienced certified latent print examiner in America, with more than thirty-five years of military forensic and police experience. An initial comparison found a match between the two prints on fourteen unique points while Darby ultimately ascertained that the two prints had thirty-two matching points,65 far exceeding the requirement for identification and conviction. “I’m positive,” said Darby. “The finger that made the ink print also made the latent print. It’s a match.” In comparison, “the Dallas police found only three partial fingerprints of Oswald on only two of the boxes in the area.”66

opinions are erroneous. The guilt of Breck is manifest; and your testimony, in which you admit you saw him on the hill at the very moment, will certify his hanging.” “It will be rather ill to hang him till you catch him,” I observed. “And for other matters I very willingly leave you to your own impressions.” “The Duke has been informed,” he went on. “I have just come from his Grace, and he expressed himself before me with an honest freedom like the great nobleman he is. He spoke of you by name, Mr. Balfour, and declared his gratitude beforehand in case you would be led by those who understand your own interests and those of the country so much better than yourself.

It seems to me indisputably true that a good many people, the wide world over, of varying ages, cultures, natural endowments, respond with a special impetus, a zing, even, in some cases, to artists and poets who as well as having a reputation for producing great or fine art have something garishly Wrong with them as persons: a spectacular flaw in character or citizenship, a construably romantic affliction or addiction-extreme self-centredness, marital infidelity, stone-deafness, stone-blindness, a terrible thirst, a mortally bad cough, a soft spot for prostitutes, a partiality for grand-scale adultery or incest, a certified or uncertified weakness for opium or sodomy, and so on, God have mercy on the lonely bastards. If suicide isn't at the top of the list of compelling infirmities for creative men, the suicide poet or artist, one can't help noticing, has always been given a very considerable amount of avid attention, not seldom on sentimental grounds almost exclusively, as if he were (to put it much more horribly than I really want to) the floppy-eared runt of the litter. It's a thought, anyway, finally said, that I've lost sleep over many times, and possibly will again. Според мен много и много хора по широкия свят, хора на различна възраст, с различна култура и различни заложби гледат с особен възторг и дори понякога величаят онези художници и поети, които освен дето са си спечелили име с голямото си или добро изкуство имат нещо шантаво в себе си: нетърпими недостатъци в характера или в гражданското поведение, любовна страст или скръб, изключителен егоцентризъм, извънбрачна връзка, глухота, слепота, неутолима жажда, смъртоносна кашлица, слабост към проститутки, склонност към чудовищни прелюбодеяния или кръвосмешение, документирана или недокументирана страст към опиума или содомията и прочее — пази боже, самотните копелета. Макар самоубийството да не стои на първо място в списъка на задължителните за твореца недостатъци, не можем да не забележим, че самоубилият се поет или художник винаги се радва на много голямо, завидно внимание, нерядко само по чисто сантиментални причини, сякаш е (ще се изразя по-ужасно, отколкото ми се ще) клепоухото недорасло кутре от кучилото. Тази мисъл — това е последно — много пъти не ми е давала мира по цели нощи и сигурно пак ще върши същото.

Whenever one of his engineers cited “a requirement” as a reason for doing something, Musk would grill them: Who made that requirement? And answering “The military” or “The legal department” was not good enough. Musk would insist that they know the name of the actual person who made the requirement. “We would talk about how we were going to qualify an engine or certify a fuel tank, and he would ask, ‘Why do we have to do that?’ ” says Tim Buzza, a refugee from Boeing who would become SpaceX’s vice president of launch and testing. “And we would say, ‘There is a military specification that says it’s a requirement.’ And he’d reply, ‘Who wrote that? Why does it make sense?’ ” All requirements should be treated as recommendations, he repeatedly instructed. The only immutable ones were those decreed by the laws of physics.

My whole sorry existence has been building towards this one night. The night of the Reynolds’ Fortuna Ball. A celebration that invites the entire town to eat, drink, and dance the night away. It’s become tradition in these parts for the Reynolds family to hand over all the properties, businesses, offshore accounts, cars, and whatever else rich people own, to the heir on his twenty-fifth birthday. Nice, right? And the ball is their public way of celebrating the handover, or so everyone thinks. The truth is way weirder. Try an ancient curse; a deal signed in blood and a pair of families joined in perpetuity. The whole thing gives me the itches and I sound certifiable to boot, but for the last four hundred years the women in my family have been ripping off the Reynolds family, and those a**eholes throw us a party so we can do it in style.

McDougall was a certified revolutionary hero, while the Scottish-born cashier, the punctilious and corpulent William Seton, was a Loyalist who had spent the war in the city. In a striking show of bipartisan unity, the most vociferous Sons of Liberty—Marinus Willett, Isaac Sears, and John Lamb—appended their names to the bank’s petition for a state charter. As a triple power at the new bank—a director, the author of its constitution, and its attorney—Hamilton straddled a critical nexus of economic power. One of Hamilton’s motivations in backing the bank was to introduce order into the manic universe of American currency. By the end of the Revolution, it took $167 in continental dollars to buy one dollar’s worth of gold and silver. This worthless currency had been superseded by new paper currency, but the states also issued bills, and large batches of New Jersey and Pennsylvania paper swamped Manhattan. Shopkeepers had to be veritable mathematical wizards to figure out the fluctuating values of the varied bills and coins in circulation. Congress adopted the dollar as the official monetary unit in 1785, but for many years New York shopkeepers still quoted prices in pounds, shillings, and pence. The city was awash with strange foreign coins bearing exotic names: Spanish doubloons, British and French guineas, Prussian carolines, Portuguese moidores. To make matters worse, exchange rates differed from state to state. Hamilton hoped that the Bank of New York would counter all this chaos by issuing its own notes and also listing the current exchange rates for the miscellaneous currencies. Many Americans still regarded banking as a black, unfathomable art, and it was anathema to upstate populists. The Bank of New York was denounced by some as the cat’s-paw of British capitalists. Hamilton’s petition to the state legislature for a bank charter was denied for seven years, as Governor George Clinton succumbed to the prejudices of his agricultural constituents who thought the bank would give preferential treatment to merchants and shut out farmers. Clinton distrusted corporations as shady plots against the populace, foreshadowing the Jeffersonian revulsion against Hamilton’s economic programs. The upshot was that in June 1784 the Bank of New York opened as a private bank without a charter. It occupied the Walton mansion on St. George’s Square (now Pearl Street), a three-story building of yellow brick and brown trim, and three years later it relocated to Hanover Square. It was to house the personal bank accounts of both Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and prove one of Hamilton’s most durable monuments, becoming the oldest stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Inarguably, a successful restaurant demands that you live on the premises for the first few years, working seventeen-hour days, with total involvement in every aspect of a complicated, cruel and very fickle trade. You must be fluent in not only Spanish but the Kabbala-like intricacies of health codes, tax law, fire department regulations, environmental protection laws, building code, occupational safety and health regs, fair hiring practices, zoning, insurance, the vagaries and back-alley back-scratching of liquor licenses, the netherworld of trash removal, linen, grease disposal. And with every dime you've got tied up in your new place, suddenly the drains in your prep kitchen are backing up with raw sewage, pushing hundreds of gallons of impacted crap into your dining room; your coke-addled chef just called that Asian waitress who's working her way through law school a chink, which ensures your presence in court for the next six months; your bartender is giving away the bar to under-age girls from Wantagh, any one of whom could then crash Daddy's Buick into a busload of divinity students, putting your liquor license in peril, to say the least; the Ansel System could go off, shutting down your kitchen in the middle of a ten-thousand-dollar night; there's the ongoing struggle with rodents and cockroaches, any one of which could crawl across the Tina Brown four-top in the middle of the dessert course; you just bought 10,000 dollars-worth of shrimp when the market was low, but the walk-in freezer just went on the fritz and naturally it's a holiday weekend, so good luck getting a service call in time; the dishwasher just walked out after arguing with the busboy, and they need glasses now on table seven; immigration is at the door for a surprise inspection of your kitchen's Green Cards; the produce guy wants a certified check or he's taking back the delivery; you didn't order enough napkins for the weekend — and is that the New York Times reviewer waiting for your hostess to stop flirting and notice her?

... nature did not make us to feel too good for too long (which would be no good for the survival of the species) but only to feel good enough to imagine, erroneously, that someday we might feel good all the time. To believe that humanity will ever live in a feel-good world is a common mistake. And if we do not feel good, we should act as if we do. If you act happy, then you will become happy—everybody in the workaday world knows that. If you do not improve, then someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. We are on our way to the future, and no introverted melancholic is going to impede our progress. You have two choices: start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin the world of fabricated reality—civilization, that is—or stubbornly insist on . . . what? That we should rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch, questioning all the ways and means that delivered us to a lofty prominence over the amusement park of creation? Try to be realistic. We made our world just the way nature and the Lord wanted us to make it. There is no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no nihilistic head case is going to get a bad word in edgewise. The universe was created by the Creator, goddamn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, as we spin upon this good earth, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to become unraveled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double plus good and never will be and who believes that anyone is better off dead than alive. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. It is the trap of tomorrow. Love it or leave it—choose which and choose fast. You will never get us to give up our hopes, demented as they may seem. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. Your opinions are not certified by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity, and therefore whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to assign to you who are only “one of those people.” So get the hell out if you can. But we are betting that when you start hurting badly enough, you will come running back. If you are not as strong as Samson— that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines—then you will return to the trap. Do you think we are morons? We have already thought everything that you have thought. The only difference is that we have the proper and dignified sense of futility not to spread that nasty news. Our shibboleth: “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. But there was no getting around it—here were the certified checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the judicial one’s altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy—but those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.

A hundred bucks,cuz.And judging by that spectacular toss over the rail, I'd say you earned it." Wyatt tucked the money into his pocket. "It was pretty spectacular, wasn't it? And it worked. It got the attention of our pretty little medic." Jesse,Amy,and Zane stopped dead in their tracks. Amy laughed. "You did all that to get Lee's attention?" "Nothing else I've tried has worked. I was desperate." Jesse shook his head in disbelief. "Did you ever think about just buying her a beer at the Fortune Saloon? I'd think that would be a whole lot simpler than risking broken bones leaping off a bull." "But not nearly as memorable.The next time she sees me at the saloon, she'll know my name." Zane threw back his head and roared. "So will every shrink from here to Helena. You have to be certifiably nuts to do all that just for the sake of a pretty face." "Hey." Wyatt slapped his cousin on the back. "Whatever works.'" Zane pulled out a roll of bills. "Ten says she's already written you off as someone to avoid at all costs." Wyatt's smile brightened. "Chump change. If you want to bet me, make it a hundred." "You got it." Zane pulled a hundred from the roll and handed it to Jesse. "Now match it, cuz. I was going to bet that you can't persuade Marilee Trainor to even speak to you again. But just to make things interesting, I'm betting that you can't get her to have dinner with you tonight." "Dinner? Tonight? Now you're pushing the limits,cuz. She's already refused me." "Put up or shut up." Wyatt arched a brow. "You want me to kiss and tell?" "I don't say anything about kissing. I don't care what you do,after you get her to have dinner with you.That's the bet. So if you're ready to admit defeat, just give me the hundred now." "Uh-oh." Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks. "Is that a dare?" Amy stood between them,shaking her head. "You sound like two little kids." Wyatt shot her a wicked grin. "Didn't you know that all men are just boys at heart?" He reached into his pocket and handed Zane a bill before he strolled away. Over his shoulder he called, "I'll catch you back at the ranch. You can pay me then." He left his cousins laughing and shaking their heads.

One reason was that rocket components were subject to hundreds of specifications and requirements mandated by the military and NASA. At big aerospace companies, engineers followed these religiously. Musk did the opposite: he made his engineers question all specifications. This would later become step one in a five-point checklist, dubbed “the algorithm,” that became his oft-repeated mantra when developing products. Whenever one of his engineers cited “a requirement” as a reason for doing something, Musk would grill them: Who made that requirement? And answering “The military” or “The legal department” was not good enough. Musk would insist that they know the name of the actual person who made the requirement. “We would talk about how we were going to qualify an engine or certify a fuel tank, and he would ask, ‘Why do we have to do that?’ ” says Tim Buzza, a refugee from Boeing who would become SpaceX’s vice president of launch and testing. “And we would say, ‘There is a military specification that says it’s a requirement.’ And he’d reply, ‘Who wrote that? Why does it make sense?’ ” All requirements should be treated as recommendations, he repeatedly instructed. The only immutable ones were those decreed by the laws of physics.

My Future Self My future self and I become closer and closer as time goes by. I must admit that I neglected and ignored her until she punched me in the gut, grabbed me by the hair and turned my butt around to introduce herself. Well, at least that’s what it felt like every time I left the convalescent hospital after doing skills training for a certification I needed to help me start my residential care business. I was going to be providing specialized, 24/7 residential care and supervising direct care staff for non-verbal, non-ambulatory adult men in diapers! I ran to the Red Cross and took the certified nurse assistant class so I would at least know something about the job I would soon be hiring people to do and to make sure my clients received the best care. The training facility was a Medicaid hospital. I would drive home in tears after seeing what happens when people are not able to afford long-term medical care and the government has to provide that care. But it was seeing all the “young” patients that brought me to tears. And I had thought that only the elderly lived like this in convalescent hospitals…. I am fortunate to have good health but this experience showed me that there is the unexpected. So I drove home each day in tears, promising God out loud, over and over again, that I would take care of my health and take care of my finances. That is how I met my future self. She was like, don’t let this be us girlfriend and stop crying! But, according to studies, we humans have a hard time empathizing with our future selves. Could you even imagine your 30 or 40 year old self when you were in elementary or even high school? It’s like picturing a stranger. This difficulty explains why some people tend to favor short-term or immediate gratification over long-term planning and savings. Take time to picture the life you want to live in 5 years, 10 years, and 40 years, and create an emotional connection to your future self. Visualize the things you enjoy doing now, and think of retirement saving and planning as a way to continue doing those things and even more. However, research shows that people who interacted with their future selves were more willing to improve savings. Just hit me over the head, why don’t you! I do understand that some people can’t even pay attention or aren’t even interested in putting money away for their financial future because they have so much going on and so little to work with that they feel like they can’t even listen to or have a conversation about money. But there are things you’re doing that are not helping your financial position and could be trouble. You could be moving in the wrong direction. The goal is to get out of debt, increase your collateral capacity, use your own money in the most efficient manner and make financial decisions that will move you forward instead of backwards. Also make sure you are getting answers specific to your financial situation instead of blindly guessing! Contact us. We will be happy to help!

Once people believed her careful documentation, there was an easy answer—since babies are cute and inhibit aggression, something pathological must be happening. Maybe the Abu langur population density was too high and everyone was starving, or male aggression was overflowing, or infanticidal males were zombies. Something certifiably abnormal. Hrdy eliminated these explanations and showed a telling pattern to the infanticide. Female langurs live in groups with a single resident breeding male. Elsewhere are all-male groups that intermittently drive out the resident male; after infighting, one male then drives out the rest. Here’s his new domain, consisting of females with the babies of the previous male. And crucially, the average tenure of a breeding male (about twenty-seven months) is shorter than the average interbirth interval. No females are ovulating, because they’re nursing infants; thus this new stud will be booted out himself before any females wean their kids and resume ovulating. All for nothing, none of his genes passed on. What, logically, should he do? Kill the infants. This decreases the reproductive success of the previous male and, thanks to the females ceasing to nurse, they start ovulating. That’s the male perspective. What about the females? They’re also into maximizing copies of genes passed on. They fight the new male, protecting their infants. Females have also evolved the strategy of going into “pseudoestrus”—falsely appearing to be in heat. They mate with the male. And since males know squat about female langur biology, they fall for it—“Hey, I mated with her this morning and now she’s got an infant; I am one major stud.” They’ll often cease their infanticidal attacks. Despite initial skepticism, competitive infanticide has been documented in similar circumstances in 119 species, including lions, hippos, and chimps. A variant occurs in hamsters; because males are nomadic, any infant a male encounters is unlikely to be his, and thus he attempts to kill it (remember that rule about never putting a pet male hamster in a cage with babies?). Another version occurs among wild horses and gelada baboons; a new male harasses pregnant females into miscarrying. Or suppose you’re a pregnant mouse and a new, infanticidal male has arrived. Once you give birth, your infants will be killed, wasting all the energy of pregnancy. Logical response? Cut your losses with the “Bruce effect,” where pregnant females miscarry if they smell a new male. Thus competitive infanticide occurs in numerous species (including among female chimps, who sometimes kill infants of unrelated females). None of this makes sense outside of gene-based individual selection. Individual selection is shown with heartbreaking clarity by mountain gorillas, my favorite primate. They’re highly endangered, hanging on in pockets of high-altitude rain forest on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are only about a thousand gorillas left, because of habitat degradation, disease caught from nearby humans, poaching, and spasms of warfare rolling across those borders. And also because mountain gorillas practice competitive infanticide. Logical for an individual intent on maximizing the copies of his genes in the next generation, but simultaneously pushing these wondrous animals toward extinction. This isn’t behaving for the good of the species.

A famous British writer is revealed to be the author of an obscure mystery novel. An immigrant is granted asylum when authorities verify he wrote anonymous articles critical of his home country. And a man is convicted of murder when he’s connected to messages painted at the crime scene. The common element in these seemingly disparate cases is “forensic linguistics”—an investigative technique that helps experts determine authorship by identifying quirks in a writer’s style. Advances in computer technology can now parse text with ever-finer accuracy. Consider the recent outing of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as the writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling , a crime novel she published under the pen name Robert Galbraith. England’s Sunday Times , responding to an anonymous tip that Rowling was the book’s real author, hired Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola to analyze the text of Cuckoo , using software that he had spent over a decade refining. One of Juola’s tests examined sequences of adjacent words, while another zoomed in on sequences of characters; a third test tallied the most common words, while a fourth examined the author’s preference for long or short words. Juola wound up with a linguistic fingerprint—hard data on the author’s stylistic quirks. He then ran the same tests on four other books: The Casual Vacancy , Rowling’s first post-Harry Potter novel, plus three stylistically similar crime novels by other female writers. Juola concluded that Rowling was the most likely author of The Cuckoo’s Calling , since she was the only one whose writing style showed up as the closest or second-closest match in each of the tests. After consulting an Oxford linguist and receiving a concurring opinion, the newspaper confronted Rowling, who confessed. Juola completed his analysis in about half an hour. By contrast, in the early 1960s, it had taken a team of two statisticians—using what was then a state-of-the-art, high-speed computer at MIT—three years to complete a project to reveal who wrote 12 unsigned Federalist Papers. Robert Leonard, who heads the forensic linguistics program at Hofstra University, has also made a career out of determining authorship. Certified to serve as an expert witness in 13 states, he has presented evidence in cases such as that of Christopher Coleman, who was arrested in 2009 for murdering his family in Waterloo, Illinois. Leonard testified that Coleman’s writing style matched threats spray-painted at his family’s home (photo, left). Coleman was convicted and is serving a life sentence. Since forensic linguists deal in probabilities, not certainties, it is all the more essential to further refine this field of study, experts say. “There have been cases where it was my impression that the evidence on which people were freed or convicted was iffy in one way or another,” says Edward Finegan, president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. Vanderbilt law professor Edward Cheng, an expert on the reliability of forensic evidence, says that linguistic analysis is best used when only a handful of people could have written a given text. As forensic linguistics continues to make headlines, criminals may realize the importance of choosing their words carefully. And some worry that software also can be used to obscure distinctive written styles. “Anything that you can identify to analyze,” says Juola, “I can identify and try to hide.