Checkerboard Quotes

Pop guns! And bicycles! Roller skates! Drums! Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums! And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, very nimbly, Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimbley!

The majority of people have successfully alienated themselves from change; they tediously arrange their lives into a familiar pattern, they give themselves to normalcy, they are proud if they are able to follow in auspicious footsteps set before them, they take pride in always coloring inside the lines and they feel secure if they belong to a batch of others who are like them. Now, if familiar patterns bore you, if normalcy passes before you unnoticed, if you want to create your own footsteps in the earth and leave your own handprints on the skies, if you are the one who doesn't mind the lines in the coloring book as much as others do, and perchance you do not cling to a flock for you to identify with, then you must be ready for adversity. If you are something extraordinary, you are going to always shock others and while they go about existing in their mundaneness which they call success, you're going to be flying around crazy in their skies and that scares them. People are afraid of change, afraid of being different, afraid of doing things and thinking things that aren't a part of their checkerboard game of a life. They only know the pieces and the moves in their games, and that's it. You're always going to find them in the place that you think you're going to find them in, and every time they think about you, you're going to give them a heart attack.

Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate indecision!

Light bounced off the cut glass and illuminated the checkerboard floor: alternating squares of darker and lighter wood. If you climbed to the chandelier and looked down, they revealed themselves as the shape of the Angelic Power rune. Not that Emma would admit she’d done that. Though one did get an excellent view of the massive stone chair of the Institute’s head from that angle.

In parting, I would remind you that “Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate decisions!

Tis all a Checkerboard of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and stays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.

But when my gaze falls on my bed, I freeze, no longer worried what Nolan thinks of the pink or DR.Hoo or my unicorn collection. Instead, I hold up my hand and point at the checkerboard. Someone has made the next move.

From this vantage point in the summer, the countryside below is a dreaming checkerboard over which it seems that one could, with a running start, spread one's arms and fly.

This is the great failing of today’s evangelical lobby. Instead of testifying confidently to the presence of a supreme and sovereign God—a celestial chess master rolling His eyes at our earthly checkerboard—Christian conservatives have acted like toddlers lost at the shopping mall, panicked and petrified, shouting the name of their father with such hysteria that his reputation is diminished in the eyes of every onlooker.

Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares – boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her – I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over – anywhere – her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears – her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth.

Flying to Monterey I had a sharp apprehension of the many times before when I had, like Lincoln Steffens, "come back," flown west, followed the sun, each time experiencing a lightening of spirit as the land below opened up, the checkerboards of the midwestern plains giving way to the vast empty reach between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada; then home, there, where I was from, me, California. It would be a while before I realized that “me” is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me now, where will I be from.

The primitive ideals of centralization are now largely self-defeating. Human crucifixion by vertically on the now static checkerboard of the old city is pattern already in agony; yet for lack of any organic planing it is going on and on--not living, but rather hanging by its eyebrows from its nervous system.

A blanket could be used as one square on a giant checkerboard.


are like the red and black squares on a checkerboard, defining each other by contrast.

...and it's ridiculous that anyone would praise a child for standing with arms spread out on a wooden cross, as if she were Jesus's dead sister wearing a checkerboard tablecloth.

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours. There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.

God worked discreetly, and in the ways that pleased Him. It had pleased Him that the Children of Israel should sweat and strain under the Egyptian yoke for generations. It had pleased Him to send Joseph into slavery, his fine coat of many colors ripped rudely from his back. It had pleased Him to allow the visitation of a hundred plagues on hapless Job, and it had pleased Him to allow His only Son to be hung up on a tree with a bad joke written over His head. God was a gamesman—if He had been a mortal, He would have been at home hunkering over a checkerboard on the porch of Pop Mann’s general store back in Hemingford Home. He

I feel lost for a moment, all of my men inside while I stand out here, waiting to be invited. I want to think that I’m necessary—part of what’s happening behind that door—but the hard truth is that I’m not. The Lords have been setting up these chess pieces long before I even thought to see the checkerboard beneath my feet.

When modern humans first invented computer ray tracing, they generated thousands if not millions of images of reflective chrome spheres hovering above checkerboard tiles, just to show off how gorgeously ray tracing rendered those reflections. When they invented lens flares in Photoshop, we all had to endure years of lens flares being added to everything, because the artists involved were super excited about a new tool they’d just figured out how to use. The invention of perspective was no different, and since it coincided with the Renaissance going on in Europe at the same time, some of the greatest art in the European canon is dripping with the 1400s CE equivalent of lens flares and hovering chrome spheres.

Elsewheres South The long green shutters are drawn. Against what parades? Closing our eyes against the sun, We try to imagine The darkness of an interior Where something might still happen: The razor lying open On the cool marble washstand, The drip of something--is it water?-- Upon stone floors.” - North Already it is midsummer In the Sweden of our lives. The peasants have joined hands, They are circling the haystacks. We watch from the veranda. We sit, mufflered, Humming the tune in snatches Under our breath. We tremble sometimes, Not with emotion. - Waiting Room Reading the signs, We learn what to expect-- The trains late, The machines out of order. We learn what it is To stare out into space. Great farms surround us, Squares of a checkerboard. Taking our places, we wait, We wait to be moved.

The train reached Ogden at two o’clock, where it rested for six hours, Mr. Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City, connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the Union, like a checker-board, “with the sombre sadness of right-angles,” as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints could not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxons.

The majority of people are carried along like the falling stone, obedient to environment, outside influences and internal moods, desires etc., not to speak of the desires and wills of others stronger than themselves, heredity, environment, and suggestion, carrying them along without resistance on their part, or the exercise of the Will. Moved like the pawns on the checkerboard of life, they play their parts and are laid aside after the game is over. But the Masters, knowing the rules of the game, rise above the plane of material life, and placing themselves in touch with the higher powers of their nature, dominate their own moods, characters, qualities, and polarity, as well as the environment surrounding them and thus become Movers in the game, instead of Pawns — Causes instead of Effects. The Masters do not escape the Causation of the higher planes, but fall in with the higher laws, and thus master circumstances on the lower plane. They thus form a conscious part of the Law, instead of being mere blind instruments. While they Serve on the Higher Planes, they Rule on the Material Plane.

Despite the popularity of this view, the DeValoises felt it was only a partial truth. To test their assumption they used Fourier's equations to convert plaid and checkerboard patterns into simple wave forms. Then they tested to see how the brain cells in the visual cortex responded to these new wave-form images. What they found was that the brain cells responded not to the original patterns, but to the Fourier translations of the patterns. Only one conclusion could be drawn. The brain was using Fourier mathematics—the same mathematics holography employed—to convert visual images into the Fourier language of wave forms. 12 The DeValoises' discovery was subsequently confirmed by numerous other laboratories around the world, and although it did not provide absolute proof the brain was a hologram, it supplied enough evidence to convince Pribram his theory was correct. Spurred on by the idea that the visual cortex was responding not to patterns but to the frequencies of various wave forms, he began to reassess the role frequency played in the other senses. It didn't take long for him to realize that the importance of this role had perhaps been overlooked by twentieth-century scientists. Over a century before the DeValoises' discovery, the German physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz had shown that the ear was a frequency analyzer. More recent research revealed that our sense of smell seems to be based on what are called osmic frequencies. Bekesy's work had clearly demonstrated that our skin is sensitive to frequencies of vibration, and he even produced some evidence that taste may involve frequency analysis. Interestingly, Bekesy also discovered that the mathematical equations that enabled him to predict how his subjects would respond to various frequencies of vibration were also of the Fourier genre.

Day an' night they set in a room with a checker-board on th' end iv a flour bar'l, an' study problems iv th' navy. At night Mack dhrops in. 'Well, boys,' says he, 'how goes th' battle?' he says. 'Gloryous,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Two more moves, an' we'll be in th' king row.' 'Ah,' says Mack, 'this is too good to be thrue,' he says. 'In but a few brief minyits th' dhrinks'll be on Spain,' he says. 'Have ye anny plans f'r Sampson's fleet?' he says. 'Where is it?' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'I dinnaw,' says Mack. 'Good,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Where's th' Spanish fleet?' says they. 'Bombardin' Boston, at Cadiz, in San June de Matzoon, sighted near th' gas-house be our special correspondint, copyright, 1898, be Mike O'Toole.' 'A sthrong position,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. 'Undoubtedly, th' fleet is headed south to attack and seize Armour's glue facthory. Ordher Sampson to sail north as fast as he can, an' lay in a supply iv ice. Th' summer's comin' on. Insthruct Schley to put on all steam, an' thin put it off again, an' call us up be telephone. R-rush eighty-three millyon throops an' four mules to Tampa, to Mobile, to Chickenmaha, to Coney Island, to Ireland, to th' divvle, an' r-rush thim back again. Don't r-rush thim. Ordher Sampson to pick up th' cable at Lincoln Par-rk, an' run into th' bar-rn. Is th' balloon corpse r-ready? It is? Thin don't sind it up. Sind it up. Have th' Mulligan Gyards co-op'rate with Gomez, an' tell him to cut away his whiskers. They've got tangled in th' riggin'. We need yellow-fever throops. Have ye anny yellow fever in th' house? Give it to twinty thousand three hundherd men, an' sind thim afther Gov'nor Tanner. Teddy Rosenfelt's r-rough r-riders ar-re downstairs, havin' their uniforms pressed. Ordher thim to th' goluf links at wanst. They must be no indecision. Where's Richard Harding Davis? On th' bridge iv the New York? Tur-rn th' bridge. Seize Gin'ral Miles' uniform. We must strengthen th' gold resarve. Where's th' Gussie? Runnin' off to Cuba with wan hundherd men an' ar-rms, iv coorse. Oh, war is a dhreadful thing. It's ye'er move, Claude,' says th' Sthrateejy Board. "An

Polybius, devised a system of signaling that has been adopted very widely as a cryptographic method. He arranged the letters in a square and numbered the rows and columns. To use the English alphabet, and merging i and j in a single cell to fit the alphabet into a 5 × 5 square: Each letter may now be represented by two numbers—that of its row and that of its column. Thus e = 15, v = 51. Polybius suggested that these numbers be transmitted by means of torches—one torch in the right hand and five in the left standing for e, for example. This method could signal messages over long distances. But modern cryptographers have found several characteristics of the Polybius square, or “checkerboard,” as it is now commonly called, exceedingly valuable—namely, the conversion of letters to numbers, the reduction in the number of different characters, and the division of a unit into two separately manipulable parts. Polybius’ checkerboard has therefore become very widely used as the basis of a number of systems of encipherment.

The checkerboarded fields of the Imperial Valley were refreshingly green with irrigated crops. Then the highline canal stretched like a huge snake below the plane and immediately the desert took over. It was as abrupt as that. Below the highline canal irrigation had turned the desert into a rich, fertile area. On the other side of the canal there was nothing but sand and a long straight ribbon of paved highway.

In parting, I would remind you that “Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate indecision!

The French word—actually it’s a Norman word,” said Colonel Bruce, “is bocage. Ancient by any standard. Won’t trouble you with etymology. Basically it describes a terrain featuring a checkerboard of pasture, woodland, brush, hill, hedgerow, farmer’s fields plowed or unplowed, lots of cows and bumblebees,

If you haven’t had the pleasure of physically comparing different Wall Street trading floors, you needn’t bother. They are all basically alike. The floor itself is a checkerboard of stained carpet squares covering a maze of twisted wires and electronic equipment. These removable squares serve as the lid of a massive trash can, and hidden below are dozens of half-empty Chinese food containers and mice. (Mice love trading floors, and banking employees are constantly discussing creative ways to trap and kill them.) If you stop by virtually any trading floor on Wall Street, this is what you will inevitably encounter: Hundreds of telephones are ringing. Television monitors are blasting news and flashing scattered bond quotes. One of the checkerboard squares is upended, and several maintenance men are taking a break to yell at each other in front of a pile of circuits and cables. Dozens of traders and salespeople are standing at three-foot intervals face-to-face at several long rectangular desks, which are stacked with a rainbow of colorful computers, flashing monitors, blue Reuters and green Telerate screens, beige Bloomberg data systems, and customized black broker quote boxes.

Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is TIME. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by TIME. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate INDECISION!

The empty prairie, crisscrossed by a grid of startlingly straight roads, rolled out like a vast wasteland in front of the hood ornament of the GTO. It was remarkable, Sarah thought, how quickly the suburban sprawl of Chicago gave way to the broad gray-and-white checkerboard of the heartland at its most bleak.

In parting, I would remind you that "Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is TIME. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by TIME. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate INDECISION!

Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate decisions!

The Polybius Checkerboard Polybius was an ancient Greek writer who first proposed a method of substituting different two-digit numbers for each letter. The alphabet is written inside a 5–by–5 square matrix which has numbered rows and columns:

The shogunate was the primary root of power in Japan, and the country was virtually a checkerboard of shogun power bases.

The Checkered Game of Life was a real game, invented by a young draftsman named Milton Bradley in 1860. Checkered referred both to the board, which was patterned like a checkerboard, and also to the checkered way life sometimes goes. No dice were included because of their connection to gambling and because

Hybrid Flowers Certain combinations of flowers can breed to make new variations known as hybrids. Planting red and white flowers next to each other will often result in pink flowers, and yellow and red flowers can breed for orange versions. However, hybrids can only spawn when the flowers are watered, whether by watering can or by rain, and only if the flowers are close enough to each other with enough space for a new flower to grow. Because of this, the best way to get hybrids is to plant your flowers in a checkerboard pattern where the flowers you want to hybridize are diagonal from each other. Golden Tip: Flowers watered by friends have a better chance of hybridizing than ones you water yourself, so invite some friends over for a gardening party!

Victor’s attitude It was a narrow passage, But it led people into a new age, Where everything was wide and filled with grandeur, Kissed by the hope, enabling them to strive and endure, As life stretched its checkerboard of new moves, And chance and fate filled its groves, Those who had reached there via this narrow passage, Received for his/her effort a due wage, Because it led them all into the world of deeds, Where only actions matter, nothing else, no castes and no creeds, As they reached there hope greeted them all, And she whispered to them, “no matter what happens rise every time you fall, Because everything may be working against you, Do not forget I am always on your side, because I was born just for you!” Then all get pitched against life and its main actor “the chance,” And based on its wishes all play the game of life and to its tunes they begin to dance, Many lose after few blows, a few after many blows, but some rise after every fall, And it is then life makes them experience the might of fate, and thus ensues the grand brawl, Where life, chance and fate form the formidable side, While men and women on the other end reside, And life offers them blows of chance and fate, Most of them are sent sooner than expected behind the graveyard's always open gate, But few rise from their graves too because they never lose hope, They remember her whispers and it becomes their renewed courage’s most befitting trope, And as life begins to feel weary, because it runs short of its reserves of chances, And fate too appears to have exhausted all its probabilities and likelihoods of adding new steps to life’s dances, The victor is born, who never rests until he/she is dead, Because a true victor is not by life, but by his/her attitude fed!

The Magic machines had intercepted an unusual message sent via the Purple codes, and it immediately crossed the desks of everyone in Washington authorized to receive it. It was an oddly detailed set of instructions from the Japanese foreign ministry to its consulate in Honolulu. The instructions called for the entire area in and around Pearl Harbor to be laid out in a series of grid lines, as though a checkerboard was to be superimposed over a map. The instructions also called for the consulate to designate the types and classes of the warships anchored in the harbor.

Caroline stared at the checkerboard of fields passing by. She had expected him to be furious, but except for a little yelling through the door at the barber’s, his usual good nature had prevailed. She had forgotten that about him, how fast his temper disappeared, how he never carried grudges.

They were both intimidated, they could not understand what they were doing so far from their youth on a terrace with checkerboard tiles in a house that belonged to no one and that was still redolent of cemetery flowers.

The majority of people are carried along like the falling stone, obedient to environment, outside influences and internal moods, desires, etc., not to speak of the desires and wills of others stronger than themselves, heredity, environment, and suggestion, carrying them along without resistence on their part, or the exercise of the Will. Moved like the pawns on the checkerboard of life, they play their parts and are laid aside after the game is over. But the Masters, knowing the rules of the game, rise above the plane of material life, and placing themselves in touch with the higher powers of their nature, dominate their own moods, characters, qualities, and polarity, as well as the environment surrounding them and thus become Movers in the game, instead of Pawns-Causes instead of Effects. The Masters do not escape the Causation of the higher planes, but fall in with the higher laws, and thus master circumstances on the lower plane. They thus form a conscious part of the Law, instead of being mere blind instruments. While they Serve on the Higher Planes, they Rule on the Material Plane. But, on higher and on lower, the Law is always in operation.

on for the rest of my life.” That evening, Virgilio joined us at dinner. I asked him about the clear-cutting that checkerboarded the jungle we had flown over. He was shocked and concerned by what he’d seen. He said we had found the site in the nick of time, before deforestation and

The universe had just been upended. All of the pieces and places, the people and the particles, slid off a grand checkerboard and crashed into the ground, scattershot.

Marcus studied those NASA pictures for hours, the gorgeous Hasselblad pictures of men on the moon and the pictures of Jupiter’s turbulence. Since Newton’s laws apply everywhere, Marcus programmed a computer with a system of fluid equations. To capture Jovian weather meant writing rules for a mass of dense hydrogen and helium, resembling an unlit star. The planet spins fast, each day flashing by in ten earth hours. The spin produces a strong Coriolis force, the sidelong force that shoves against a person walking across a merry-go–round, and the Coriolis force drives the spot. Where Lorenz used his tiny model of the earth’s weather to print crude lines on rolled paper, Marcus used far greater computer power to assemble striking color images. First he made contour plots. He could barely see what was going on. Then he made slides, and then he assembled the images into an animated movie. It was a revelation. In brilliant blues, reds, and yellows, a checkerboard pattern of rotating vortices coalesces into an oval with an uncanny resemblance to the Great Red Spot in NASA’s animated film of the real thing. “You see this large-scale spot, happy as a clam amid the small-scale chaotic flow, and the chaotic flow is soaking up energy like a sponge,” he said. “You see these little tiny filamentary structures in a background sea of chaos.” The spot is a self-organizing system, created and regulated by the same nonlinear twists that create the unpredictable turmoil around it. It is stable chaos.

By the time she had emptied the teapot and he the coffeepot, they had both attempted and then broken off several topics of conversation, not so much because they were really interested in them but in order to avoid others that neither dared to broach. They were both intimidated, they could not understand what they were doing so far from their youth on a terrace with checkerboard tiles in a house that belonged to no one and that was still redolent of cemetery flowers. It was the first time in half a century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity, and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people, ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the memory of an ephemeral last that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren.

the ordinary man or woman, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; one’s life is thus centered not in reality itself but in one’s ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each object and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life. Sitting zazen and mobile zazen are two functions equally dynamic and mutually reinforcing. Those who sit devotedly in zazen every day, their minds free of discriminating thoughts, find it easier to relate themselves wholeheartedly to their daily tasks, and those who perform every act with total attention and clear awareness find it less difficult to achieve emptiness of mind during sitting periods.

Mothers who hand sewed kids' clothes, who read used Jane Austen paperbacks and stenciled checkerboards and hearts onto their kitchen cupboards, did not go away on weekend benders. Not according to my husband they didn't. "This one does," I told him, tossing long underwear, a disposable camera, and a Led Zeppelin cassette tape into a denim duffel bag.