Compare Removals Quotes

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

I only believe in the easy things, like red lipstick and coffee before noon and writing essays in pen. I make my mind up about boys and then I unmake it, compare us to continental drift, two ships passing. I hit the snooze button too often. Write disposable poems on napkins and old homework, try to discipline myself when it comes to removing my makeup before bed. I am trying to understand men better, cut them some slack, write about them less. I dream about oceans and mountains and wolves. I do not always love myself. I do not always forgive myself. I write apology letters and do not send them. Usually, I do not mean it when I tell someone goodbye.

I didn't really want to talk. I'd wanted him there, but I asn't sure why. Maybe just to have someone to drink with. Actually, that sounded pretty good at the moment. I sat on the seat of the chaise and he sat on the foot, and we just drank at each other for a while. After a few minutes, he leaned back against the railing, like maybe he wanted a backrest, and I shifted my feet over to make room. But I guess I didn't shift far enough, because a large, warm hand covered my right foot, adjusting it slightly. And then it just stayed there, like he'd forgotten to remove it. I looked at it. Pritkin's hands were oddly refined compared to the rest of him: strong but long fingered, with elegant bones and short-clipped nails. They always looked like they'd wandered off from some fine gentleman, one they'd probably like to get back to, because God knew they weren't getting a manicure while attached to him.

There was a phantom woman in my mind that I was comparing myself to, and I had to force her from the dressing room. When she was gone, I looked at my body, the body that had kept me alive for nearly thirty years, without any serious health problems, the body that had taken me where I needed to go and protected me. I had never appreciated or loved the body that had done so much for me. I had thought of it as my enemy, as nothing more than a shell that enclosed my real self, but it wasn’t a shell. The body was me. This is your real life. You’re already living it. I removed the clothes and stood naked before the mirrors, turning this way and that. I was round and cute in a way I’d never seen before.

The ploy of using dark psychology to dehumanise certain ethnic and religious groups is so effective that it has been used repeatedly throughout history. Such racist psychology with discriminatory dehumanisation consists of five basic elements that include alluding to the below par intelligence or morality of the minority group to cause it to be ostracised while boosting the ego of the majority by assuring them of their own superiority; using infestation analogies to make the majority fearful that the minority is a threat to their welfare and security; comparing and referring to the minority as animals with the Nazis having frequently referred to innocent Jewish victims as rats; encouraging the use of violence by the majority who have been brainwashed into accepting that the minority are inhuman; and physically isolating or removing the minority by means of deportation, the formation of ghettos, or the use of concentration camps.

Some would call it tolerance, I said. Yes he replied, the same tolerance that overtook ancient Israel..a tolerance for everything opposed to God, a growing tolerance for immorality and a growing intolerance for the pure-a tolerance that mocked, marginalized and condemned those who ramined faithful to the values now being discarded. Innocence was ridiculed and virtue was vilified. Children were taught of sexual immorality in public schools while the Word of God was banned. It was a tolerance that put the profane on public display and removed nativity scenes from public sight..contraband, as if somehow they had become a threat-a strangely intolerant tolerance. "But still, I countered, how does all that compare to what happened in ancient Israel? America does'nt offer its children on altars of sacrifice? "Does it not? he said. Ten years after removing prayer and Scripture from its public schools, the nation legalized the illing of its unborn.

…depressive realism. Depression is not the near death experience described by so many, [Kayla Dunn] suggests, but a rebirth in which the new psyche has removed self-delusion. Compared with so-called healthy individuals, depressives are more realistic in their worldview.

All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we were to apply this visionary concept to education, it would be pointless to compare one child to another. Instead, all the energy would be focused on chipping away at the stone, getting rid of whatever is in the way of each child’s developing skills, mastery, and self-expression.

Driving a hybrid car could save about one ton of carbon-dioxide emissions per year but adopting a plant-based diet would save nearly one and a half tons over a comparable period." "If every American reduced chicken consumption by one meal per week, the carbon-dioxide savings would be equivalent to removing 500,000 cars form the road." In a given year, "the number of animals killed to satisfy American palates is 8.6 billion, or 29 animals per average American meat eater. The total number of animals killed on land and sea was approximately 80 billion, or 270 per American meat and fish eater - making the average number of animals consumed in one American lifetime 21,000.

Some may wonder whether part of the harvest of this invisible pollution (electromagnetic radiation) may be the comparative rarity of visionary experience in the modern world, and the predominence of a removed, overanalytical, repelling 'onlooker' intelligence in its place, resembling that of the (Martin) Amis hero (who will not see because he cannot feel). If this is so, such an intelligence has produced conditions favoring its evolution and survival.

People say, when I complain of being less lively, less energetic, less high - spirited, "Well, now you're just like the rest of us," meaning, among other things to be reassuring. But I compare myself with my former self, not with the others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. And I miss Saturn very much." An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison page 92, paragraph 1 sentence 2 -4 and paragraph 2

Everything we do produces karma in the mind. In fact, it is in the mind rather than the world that karma’s seeds are planted. Aptly, Indian philosophy compares a thought to a seed: very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, deep-rooted, wide-spreading tree. I have seen places where a seed in a crack of a pavement grew into a tree that tore up the sidewalk. It is difficult to remove such a tree, and terribly difficult to undo the effects of a lifetime of negative thinking, which can extend into many other people’s lives. But it can be done, and the purpose of the Gita is to show how.

Many „pathogens“ (both chemical and behavioral) can influence how you turn out; these include substance abuse by a mother during pregnancy, maternal stress, and low birth weight. As a child grows, neglect, physical abuse, and head injury can cause problems in mental development. Once the child is grown, substance abuse and exposure to a variety of toxins can damage the brain, modifying intelligence, aggression, and decision-making abilities. The major public health movement to remove lead-based paint grew out of an understanding that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less inteligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive. How you turn out depends on where you´ve been. So when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path. It´s problematic to imagine yourself in the shoes of a criminal and conclude, „Well, I wouldn´t have done that“ – because if you weren´t exposed to in utero cocaine, lead poisoning, or physical abuse, and he was, then you and he are not directly comparable.

Some of my greatest difficulties lie in things that would appear to you comparatively trivial. I find it so hard to repel the rude familiarity of children. I find it so difficult to ask either servants or mistress for anything I want, however much I want it. It is less pain for me to endure the greatest inconvenience than to go into the kitchen to request its removal. I am a fool. Heaven knows I cannot help it!

But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language in which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” ... “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. ... The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity. Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. ... There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. ... Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.

When you see the truth of your unfolding life and compare it to realistic expectations of how life actually unfolds, you will remove the reasons to be unhappy and realize, more often than not, that everything’s fine, and so you will feel happy.

Manifestation of life we desire can easily be compared to sowing seeds. A seed sprouts depending on whether it has been thrown into a fertile ground or sand, and the same goes for our soul's desire. For the seeds to sprout and grow, they need a healthy, fertile land, without unnecessary ballast, which on the level of the mind are the outlived patterns, fears and limitations we have taken upon ourselves as our own. Just like the farmer ploughs his field and enriches the soil, it is up to us to maintain the best possible conditions for the sprouting and development of our being. Let us remove the rocks and sand from our field, maintain the fertile soil, devote the time to caring for our spirit and mind, and our field of life will prosper in abundance.

A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, makingsure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N' Roses. my favorite heavy metal band!" I asked the neurosurgeon If he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was, would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unliken"Silent Night") has one canonical version. so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patients humming with the standard record and compared the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, thesurgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. ''Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!' Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man. and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do it." replied the neurosurgeon. "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?" I asked. "No,'' the surgeon replied, ''I already told you — I hate rock music.

(W)e have spent many ages attempting to divine the principles that move our world. It goes without saying that the road ahead of us is still long, and there is more that we do not know than we do. Were you to compare our knowledge now to a spoonful of sugar, that which we do not know would be a field of sugar cane stretching as far as the eye can see... To obtain knowledge from that field, we must cut it and refine it. We must learn the most effective ways of harvesting and the methods of removing impurities. All this we must obtain as well as simply the knowledge we seek. That is what it means to study and learn.

The Parks Department continued to cut down trees, removing a sick elm to save the remaining twenty, then removing another to save the remaining nineteen, and so on and so on until only the half-tree remained in front of the Lisbons’ old house. Nobody could bear to watch when they came for it (Tim Winer compared the tree to the last speaker of Manx),

It’s an offer you present to the marketplace that cannot be compared to any other product or service available, combining an attractive promotion, an unmatchable value proposition, a premium price, and an unbeatable guarantee with a money model (payment terms) that allows you to get paid to get new customers . . . forever removing the cash constraint on business growth.

Help you?” he said without looking up. I glanced at Meg, silently double-checking that we were in the right building. She nodded. “We’re here to surrender,” I told the guard. Surely this would make him look up. But no. He could not have acted less interested in us. I was reminded of the guest entrance to Mount Olympus, through the lobby of the Empire State Building. Normally, I never went that way, but I knew Zeus hired the most unimpressible, disinterested beings he could find to guard the desk as a way to discourage visitors. I wondered if Nero had intentionally done the same thing here. “I’m Apollo,” I continued. “And this is Meg. I believe we’re expected? As in…hard deadline at sunset or the city burns?” The guard took a deep breath, as if it pained him to move. Keeping one finger in his novel, he picked up a pen and slapped it on the counter next to the sign-in book. “Names. IDs.” “You need our IDs to take us prisoner?” I asked. The guard turned the page in his book and kept reading. With a sigh, I pulled out my New York State junior driver’s license. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that I’d have to show it one last time, just to complete my humiliation. I slid it across the counter. Then I signed the logbook for both of us. Name(s): Lester (Apollo) and Meg. Here to see: Nero. Business: Surrender. Time in: 7:16 p.m. Time out: Probably never. Since Meg was a minor, I didn’t expect her to have an ID, but she removed her gold scimitar rings and placed them next to my license. I stifled the urge to shout, Are you insane? But Meg gave them up as if she’d done this a million times before. The guard took the rings and examined them without comment. He held up my license and compared it to my face. His eyes were the color of decade-old ice cubes. He seemed to decide that, tragically, I looked as bad in real life as I did in my license photo. He handed it back, along with Meg’s rings. “Elevator nine to your right,” he announced. I almost thanked him. Then I thought better of it.

Juice is not a fruit. Per drop, juice has the same amount or more of both sugar and calories when compared with sugared soda. If you agree that adding vitamins and minerals to Coca-Cola wouldn’t make it a healthy choice, then you should probably reconsider that morning glass of orange juice, as that’s all it really is—flat soda pop with vitamins, from which the processing has removed the vast majority of the fruit’s actual nutrition.

In a study in Scotland, members of the public were adamant that they could remember a nurse removing a skin sample from their little finger. But this never happened. A week earlier these volunteers had been asked by researchers to imagine a nurse removing the sample. But somehow, on recollection, it had morphed into a real event. They were four times as likely to recall it as real compared with those who had not been asked to imagine it.

Was the weight loss simply statistically significant or actually significant? That’s for you to decide. During the three-month trial, compared to the placebo group, the group taking one daily tablespoon of vinegar steadily lost about a pound a month and the group taking two daily tablespoons were down a total of about five pounds. Five pounds may not sound like a lot, but that weight loss was achieved for just pennies a day without removing anything from their diets.

Imagine, if you will, that the sum of all human thoughts could be represented on a measuring scale. The thoughts of a powerful maston, one enabled by the Medium to his fullest potential, could each be represented by a gold coin on one side. Imagine then, that all of the evil, uncontrolled, vengeful thoughts have the weight of chaff and try to tip the scales. The world is a granary of ill-bred thoughts. There is enough to weigh down the world, to bury each one of us alive. Yet if we have enough of the good, it balances it out or keeps it firmly in the cause of right. Imagine, then, scales the size of a kingdom. How many gold coins are there compared with chaff? Enough—just enough. There is enough weight and enough strength to keep the scales balanced. But if you begin to remove the gold coins, one by one? Then every seed of evil matters. Every little seed begins to tip the scales. As long as the scales are balanced to the side of the mastons, the Medium blesses everyone—both the evil and the good. But if the balance is altered, if the weight of the wrong begins to exceed the weight of the right, it triggers the Blight to purge the chaff. It is a warning from the Medium. There are curses that follow.

Saving your income is such a painful process, especially when you see ur friends who don't save, spending extravagantly and acquiring different good names from ladies, society and bar men.I will compare savings to a toothache, where by the tooth pains you the whole night, but in the morning you are afraid to face that dentist with his huge chisel and a 2 inches jackson, ready to remove the tooth. the pains of removing the tooth is just for a few hours compared with the pain you will experience the whole night. Save now good names like Boss and Merchant will follow you forever in the future not these temporally ones

Evolutionary psychologists have also hypothesized that men seeking short-term sex would prioritize women’s bodies, since a body cues provide possibly the most powerful cues to her fertility (Confer et al., 2010; Currie & Little, 2009; see Chapter 5 on WHR, BMI, and other bodily cues to fertility). In one experiment, participants viewed an image of an opposite-sex individual whose face was occluded by a “face box” and whose body was occluded by a “body box” (Confer et al., 2010). Participants then were instructed to imagine themselves having either a one-night stand or a committed relationship with the person and were then asked to decide on which box they would remove to inform their decision—they could only remove one box (see Figure 6.3). Compared to the long-term mating context in which men prioritized facial information, men considering casual sex shifted significantly in the direction of prioritizing body information—a finding also discovered by Currie and Little (2009) using a different methodology. Women, in contrast, do not show this shift and tend to prioritize a man’s face in both short-term and long-term mating contexts. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that men prioritize cues to fertility in short-term sex partners.

Augustus, who in almost everything save his ambition was deeply conservative, had far too much respect for tradition ever to think of having such a venerable memorial removed from the Forum. Nevertheless, the statue of Marsyas was troubling to him on a number of levels. At Philippi, where his own watchword had been ‘Apollo’, that of his opponents had been ‘liberty’. Not only that, but Marsyas was believed by his devotees to have been sprung from his would-be flayer’s clutches by a rival god named Liber, an anarchic deity who had taught humanity to enjoy wine and sexual abandon, whose very name meant ‘Freedom’, and who – capping it all – had been worshipped by Antony as his particular patron. The clash between the erstwhile Triumvirs had been patterned in the heavens. Antony, riding in procession through Cleopatra’s capital, had done so dressed as Liber, ‘his head wreathed in ivy, his body draped in a robe of saffron gold’.89 Visiting Asia Minor, where in ancient times the contest between Apollo and Marsyas had been staged, he had been greeted by revellers dressed as satyrs. The night before his suicide, ghostly sounds of music and laughter had filled the Egyptian air; ‘and men said that the god to whom Antony had always compared himself, and been most devoted, was abandoning him at last’.

Compared to the despotic societies that were the norm in Europe and Asia, Haudenosaunee was a libertarian dream. In the same sense, it was also a feminist dream: the Five Nations were largely governed internally by the female clan heads, and the Great Law explicitly ordered council members to heed “the warnings of your women relatives.” Failure to do so would lead to their removal. The equality granted to women was not the kind envisioned by contemporary Western feminists—men and women were not treated as equivalent. Rather, the sexes were assigned to two separate social domains, neither subordinate to the other. No woman could be a war chief; no man could lead a clan.

So many of his proposals looked crazy at first glance, but once you peeled back the first layer, you realized that underneath there existed a core of irrefutable logic. Take the new punishment laws, those really set me off. Putting people in stocks? Whipping them in town squares!?! What was this, Old Salem, the Taliban’s Afghanistan? It sounded barbaric, un-American, until you really thought about the options. What were you going to do with thieves and looters, put them in prison? Who would that help? Who could afford to divert able-bodied citizens to feed, clothe, and guard other able-bodied citizens? More importantly, why remove the punished from society when they could serve as such a valuable deterrent? Yes, there was the fear of pain—the lash, the cane—but all of that paled when compared to public humiliation. People were terrified of having their crimes exposed. At a time when everyone was pulling together, helping each other out, working to protect and take care of one another, the worst thing you could do to someone was to march them up into the public square with a giant poster reading “I Stole My Neighbor’s Firewood.” Shame’s a powerful weapon, but it depended on everyone else doing the right thing. No one is above the law, and seeing a senator given fifteen lashes for his involvement in war profiteering did more to curb crime than a cop on every street corner.

1. Choose to love each other even in those moments when you struggle to like each other. Love is a commitment, not a feeling. 2. Always answer the phone when your husband/wife is calling and, when possible, try to keep your phone off when you’re together with your spouse. 3. Make time together a priority. Budget for a consistent date night. Time is the currency of relationships, so consistently invest time in your marriage. 4. Surround yourself with friends who will strengthen your marriage, and remove yourself from people who may tempt you to compromise your character. 5. Make laughter the soundtrack of your marriage. Share moments of joy, and even in the hard times find reasons to laugh. 6. In every argument, remember that there won’t be a winner and a loser. You are partners in everything, so you’ll either win together or lose together. Work together to find a solution. 7. Remember that a strong marriage rarely has two strong people at the same time. It’s usually a husband and wife taking turns being strong for each other in the moments when the other feels weak. 8. Prioritize what happens in the bedroom. It takes more than sex to build a strong marriage, but it’s nearly impossible to build a strong marriage without it. 9. Remember that marriage isn’t 50–50; divorce is 50–50. Marriage has to be 100–100. It’s not splitting everything in half but both partners giving everything they’ve got. 10. Give your best to each other, not your leftovers after you’ve given your best to everyone else. 11. Learn from other people, but don’t feel the need to compare your life or your marriage to anyone else’s. God’s plan for your life is masterfully unique. 12. Don’t put your marriage on hold while you’re raising your kids, or else you’ll end up with an empty nest and an empty marriage. 13. Never keep secrets from each other. Secrecy is the enemy of intimacy. 14. Never lie to each other. Lies break trust, and trust is the foundation of a strong marriage. 15. When you’ve made a mistake, admit it and humbly seek forgiveness. You should be quick to say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” 16. When your husband/wife breaks your trust, give them your forgiveness instantly, which will promote healing and create the opportunity for trust to be rebuilt. You should be quick to say, “I love you. I forgive you. Let’s move forward.” 17. Be patient with each other. Your spouse is always more important than your schedule. 18. Model the kind of marriage that will make your sons want to grow up to be good husbands and your daughters want to grow up to be good wives. 19. Be your spouse’s biggest encourager, not his/her biggest critic. Be the one who wipes away your spouse’s tears, not the one who causes them. 20. Never talk badly about your spouse to other people or vent about them online. Protect your spouse at all times and in all places. 21. Always wear your wedding ring. It will remind you that you’re always connected to your spouse, and it will remind the rest of the world that you’re off limits. 22. Connect with a community of faith. A good church can make a world of difference in your marriage and family. 23. Pray together. Every marriage is stronger with God in the middle of it. 24. When you have to choose between saying nothing or saying something mean to your spouse, say nothing every time. 25. Never consider divorce as an option. Remember that a perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. FINAL

A laboratory analogy to repression can be found in an experiment by A.F. Zeller. Zeller arranged a situation so that one group of students underwent an unhappy “failure” experience right after they had successfully learned a list of nonsense syllables. When tested later, these subjects showed much poorer recall of the nonsense syllables compared to a control group, who had not experienced failure. When this same “failure” group was later allowed to succeed on the same task that they had earlier failed, their recall showed tremendous improvement. This experiment indicates that when the reason for the repression is removed, when material to be remembered is no longer associated with negative effects, a person no longer experiences retrieval failure.

Under those conditions, first-wave feminists were too busy to say much about questions of inborn differences between men and women. An exception was Kate Austin, who compared the plight of women to those of Chinese women with bound feet: “We know that at birth the feet of the little baby girl were straight and beautiful like her brothers, but a cruel and artificial custom restrained the growth. Likewise it is just as foolish to assert that woman is mentally inferior to man, when it is plain to be seen her brain in a majority of cases receives the same treatment accorded the feet of Chinese girls.”4 As Helena Swanwick put it, “There does not seem much that can be profitably said about [the alleged inferiority of women]… until the incubus of brute force is removed.

To the Realists. Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists, and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before you alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it, oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist? and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human element therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do that! If ye could forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling, your whole history as man and beast! There is no "reality" for us nor for you either, ye sober ones, we are far from being so alien to one another as ye suppose; and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of drunkenness.

Although, since days when we had been at school together, I had been seeing him on and off—very much on and off—for more than twenty years by this time, I found when I worked under him there were still comparatively unfamiliar sides to Widmerpool. Like most persons viewed through the eyes of a subordinate, his nature was to be appreciated with keener insight from below. This new angle of observation revealed, for example, how difficult he was to work with, particularly on account of a secretiveness that derived from perpetual fear, almost obsession, that tasks completed by himself might be attributed to the work of someone else. On that first morning at Division, Widmerpool spoke at length of his own methods. He was already sitting at his table when I arrived in the room. Removing his spectacles, he began to polish them vigorously, assuming at the same time a manner of hearty military geniality.

But all this is still small potatoes compared to 1009’s fascinating and potentially malevolent toilet. A harmonious concordance of elegant form and vigorous function, flanked by rolls of tissue so soft as to be without the usual perforates for tearing, my toilet has above it this sign: THIS TOILET IS CONNECTED TO A VACUUM SEWAGE SYSTEM. PLEASE DO NOT THROW INTO THE TOILET ANYTHING THAN ORDINARY TOILET WASTE AND TOILET PAPER 70 Yes that’s right a vacuum toilet. And, as with the exhaust fan above, not a lightweight or unambitious vacuum. The toilet’s flush produces a brief but traumatizing sound, a kind of held high-B gargle, as of some gastric disturbance on a cosmic scale. Along with this sound comes a concussive suction so awesomely powerful that it’s both scary and strangely comforting—your waste seems less removed than hurled from you, and hurled with a velocity that lets you feel as though the waste is going to end up someplace so far away from you that it will have become an abstraction… a kind of existential-level sewage treatment.

Every living creature exists by a routine of some kind; the small rituals of that routine are the landmarks, the boundaries of security, the reassuring walls that exclude a horror vacui; thus, in our own species, after some tempest of the spirit in which the landmarks seem to have been swept away, a man will reach out tentatively in mental darkness to feel the walls, to assure himself that they still stand where they stood - a necessary gesture, for the walls are of his own building, without universal reality, and what man makes he may destroy. To an animal these landmarks are of greater importance, for once removed from its natural surroundings, its ecological norm, comparatively little of what the senses perceive can be comprehended in function or potentiality, and the true conditions are already established. As among human beings, animal insecurity may manifest itself as aggression or timidity, ill-temper or ill-health, or as excessive affection for a parental figure; unfortunately this last aspect encourages many to cultivate insecurity in their charges, child or animal, as a means to an end.

Darwin singled out the eye as posing a particularly challenging problem: 'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.' Creationists gleefully quote this sentence again and again. Needless to say, they never quote what follows. Darwin's fulsomely free confession turned out to be a rhetorical device. He was drawing his opponents towards him so that his punch, when it came, struck the harder. The punch, of course, was Darwin's effortless explanation of exactly how the eye evolved by gradual degrees. Darwin may not have used the phrase 'irreducible complexity', or 'the smooth gradient up Mount Improbable', but he clearly understood the principle of both. 'What is the use of half an eye?' and 'What is the use of half a wing?' are both instances of the argument from 'irreducible complexity'. A functioning unit is said to be irreducibly complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment's thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can't see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree. Whatever fraction of a wing you have, there is a fall from which it will save your life where a slightly smaller winglet would not. The thought experiment of trees of different height, from which one might fall, is just one way to see, in theory, that there must be a smooth gradient of advantage all the way from 1 per cent of a wing to 100 per cent. The forests are replete with gliding or parachuting animals illustrating, in practice, every step of the way up that particular slope of Mount Improbable. By analogy with the trees of different height, it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance at which you catch sight of your prey—or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus 'pinhole camera' eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak—not the highest peak but a high one.

It was the secret no one told you, the thing you had to learn for yourself: viz. that in the antiques trade there was really no such thing as a “correct” price. Objective value—list value—was meaningless. If a customer came in clueless with money in hand (as most of them did) it didn’t matter what the books said, what the experts said, what similar items at Christie’s had recently gone for. An object—any object—was worth whatever you could get somebody to pay for it. In consequence, I’d started going through the store, removing some tags (so the customer would have to come to me for the price) and changing others—not all, but some. The trick, as I discovered through trial and error, was to keep at least a quarter of the prices low and jack up the rest, sometimes by as much as four and five hundred percent. Years of abnormally low prices had built up a base of devoted customers; leaving a quarter of the prices low kept them devoted, and ensured that people hunting for a bargain could still find one, if they looked. Leaving a quarter of the prices low also meant that, by some perverse alchemy, the marked-up prices seemed legitimate in comparison: for whatever reason, some people were more apt to put out fifteen hundred bucks for a Meissen teapot if it was placed next to a plainer but comparable piece selling (correctly, but cheaply) for a few hundred.

Inching into the room, it’s clear something is wrong here. There’s a tingling sensation up my legs and back before I can even really focus on the parlor’s details. There are silhouettes of people, but I can see through them. It’s like shadows were cast and left behind to do as they please. Lost in the surreal sight of them for a moment, I inch further into the room without noticing that some were now moving behind me. There is no warning. I’m suddenly in the air, and moving backward rapidly toward the wall. It’s almost a full second before my body registers the actual pain of the blow my stomach just took. Being hit by a car doesn't even compare to this, and I didn't even see it coming. “For a shadow, you hit like a sledgehammer!” The words barely escape before something else slams into the base of my skull embedding most of my upper body in the wall and all but removing my head. These things are like Lucy; the disembodied dead who haven’t moved on. I've never met others that can actually touch things physically, they must be fairly potent. I pull my face out of the hole it had been planted in, letting plaster dust fall, coating my chest and legs like snow. Looking around quickly I try to gauge my surroundings. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there. Is one easy night, without a huge dry-cleaning bill, too much to ask for these days? I only have time to dwell on it a moment before my head is bouncing off the hardwood floor; once, twice, and then a third time in quick succession. Now ‘pick splinters out of my forehead’ can be added to my Saturday night to-do list. Damn it, this is not going as planned.

To the Realists.—Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before you alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it,—oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist?—and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example—oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human element therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do that! If ye could forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling,—your whole history as man and beast! There is no "reality" for us—nor for you either, ye sober ones,—we are far from being so alien to one another as ye suppose, and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of drunkenness.

Ship Protected From Storm The students of the great Ghawth (r.a) state that once he was delivering his lessons as usual to them when suddenly his blessed face turned red and beads of perspiration covered his blessed forehead. He then placed his hand into his cloak and remained silent for a short time. The students state that after he removed his hand from inside his cloak, drops of water began to drip from his sleeves. Due to his spiritual state, the students say that they did not ask him any questions but rather, they recorded the date, day and time of this astonishing event. The students say that two months after this incident, a group of traders, who had come by sea to Baghdad, arrived and presented various gifts to al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) The students were very confused by this as they had never seen these traders in Baghdad before. They asked the traders the reason for them bringing the gifts. The traders said that two months previously, whilst they were sailing to Baghdad, their ship was caught in a fierce storm. When they realised that there was a real danger of sinking, they called out the name of “Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani” (r.a). When they called out his name, they found that from the Unseen a hand lifted their ship to safety. When the students compared this narration to the incident in the Madrassa, it was confirmed that it was the same date, day and time in which the great Saint (r.a) had put his hand into his cloak. Suhban-Allah! This incident shows that although Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) seemed to be placing his hand into his cloak, but in reality, he was stretching his hand into the sea to assist those who called for his assistance!

Key Points: ● Transparency - Blockchain offers significant improvements in transparency compared to existing record keeping and ledgers for many industries. ● Removal of Intermediaries – Blockchain-based systems allow for the removal of intermediaries involved in the record keeping and transfer of assets. ● Decentralization – Blockchain-based systems can run on a decentralized network of computers, reducing the risk of hacking, server downtime and loss of data. ● Trust – Blockchain-based systems increase trust between parties involved in a transaction through improved transparency and decentralized networks along with removal of third-party intermediaries in countries where trust in the intermediaries doesn’t exist. ● Security – Data entered on the blockchain is immutable, preventing against fraud through manipulating transactions and the history of data. Transactions entered on the blockchain provide a clear trail to the very start of the blockchain allowing any transaction to be easily investigated and audited. ● Wide range of uses - Almost anything of value can be recorded on the blockchain and there are many companies and industries already developing blockchain-based systems. These examples are covered later in the book. ● Easily accessible technology – Along with the wide range of uses, blockchain technology makes it easy to create applications without significant investment in infrastructure with recent innovations like the Ethereum platform. Decentralized apps, smart contracts and the Ethereum platform are covered later in the book. ● Reduced costs – Blockchain-based ledgers allow for removal of intermediaries and layers of confirmation involved in transactions. Transactions that may take multiple individual ledgers, could be settled on one shared ledger, reducing the costs of validating, confirming and auditing each transaction across multiple organizations. ● Increased transaction speed – The removal of intermediaries and settlement on distributed ledgers, allows for dramatically increased transaction speeds compared to a wide range of existing systems.

What is the use of half an eye?’ and ‘What is the use of half a wing?’ are both instances of the argument from ‘irreducible complexity’. A functioning unit is said to be irreducibly complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment’s thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can’t see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree. Whatever fraction of a wing you have, there is a fall from which it will save your life where a slightly smaller winglet would not. The thought experiment of trees of different height, from which one might fall, is just one way to see, in theory, that there must be a smooth gradient of advantage all the way from 1 per cent of a wing to 100 per cent. The forests are replete with gliding or parachuting animals illustrating, in practice, every step of the way up that particular slope of Mount Improbable. By analogy with the trees of different height, it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance at which you catch sight of your prey – or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus ‘pinhole camera’ eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak – not the highest peak but a high one.

God’s renown is our first concern. Our task is to be an expert in “hallowed be your name” and “your kingdom come.” “Hallowed” means to be known and declared as holy. Our first desire is that God would be known as he truly is, the Holy One. Implicit in his name being hallowed is that his glory or fame would cover the earth. This takes us out of ourselves immediately. Somehow, we want God’s glory to be increasingly apparent through the church today. If you need specifics, keep your eyes peeled for the names God reveals to us. For example, we can pray that he would be known as the Mighty God, the Burden-Bearer, and the God who cares. “Your kingdom come” overlaps with our desire for his fame and renown. It is not so much that we are praying that Jesus would return quickly, though such a prayer is certainly one of the ways we pray. Instead, it is for God’s kingdom to continue its progress toward world dominion. The kingdom has already come and, as stewards of the kingdom for this generation, we want it to grow and flourish. The kingdom of heaven is about everything Jesus taught: love for neighbors and even enemies, humility in judgment, not coveting, blessing rather than cursing, meekness, peacemaking, and trusting instead of worrying. It is a matter of “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). Edward T. Welch February 1 Matthew 18:21–35 People mistreat us, sometimes in horrific ways. Spouses cheat. Children rebel. Bosses fire. Friends lie. Pastors fail. Parents abuse. Hurts are real. But how do all these one hundred denarii (about $6,000) offenses against us compare to the ten thousand talent (multimillion-dollar) debt we owed God, which he mercifully canceled? Since birth, and for all our lives, we have failed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). But in one fell swoop—by the death and resurrection of Jesus—God wiped our records clean. Through the cross of Jesus and our faith in him, God removed our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12); he hurled “all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Could it be that one reason you find it so hard to forgive is because you have never received God’s forgiveness by repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus as your Savior? Or maybe you have yet to grasp the enormity of God’s forgiveness of all your many sins. If you dwell on your offender’s $6,000 debt against you, you will be trapped in bitterness until you die. But if you dwell on God’s forgiveness of your multimillion-dollar debt, you will find release and liberty. Robert D. Jones

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous, they were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, “I do not ask how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is sick or who is sound;” and so they ran desperately into any place or any company. As it brought the people into publick company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They enquired no more into who, they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together, as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they shewed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they shewed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last. Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away all manner of prejudice or of scruple about the person who they found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those who they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on the occasion and preached publickly to the people. Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.

Certain AWS resource types like Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon RDS DB instances, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes, etc., can be launched from a golden image: a snapshot of a particular state of that resource. When compared to the bootstrapping approach, a golden image results in faster start times and removes dependencies to configuration services or third-party repositories. This is important in auto-scaled environments where you want to be able to quickly and reliably launch additional resources as a response to demand changes.

Religion is a different matter. Other subjects may lend themselves, in varying degree, to objective study, and in some cases personal commitment serves only to distort what should be a clear and balanced picture. Religion is a different matter for here objectivity only skims the surface, missing the essential. The keys to understanding lie within the observer's own being and experience, and without these keys no door will open. This is particularly true of Islam, a religion which treats the distinction between belief and disbelief as the most fundamental of all possible distinction, comparable only on the physical level to that between the sighted and the blind. Believing and understanding complement and support one other. We do not seek fir an adequate description of a landscape from a blind man, even if he has made a scientific study of its topography, and has analyzed the nature of its rocks and vegetation. In Islam, every aspect of human life, every thought and every action, is shaped by and evaluated in the light of the basic article of faith. Remove this linchpin and the whole structure falls apart.

Why are pig farmers particularly likely to have their appendix removed? In 1991, a Finnish scientist called Markku Seiru conducted a fascinating study into pig farmers and abattoir workers in Finland, comparing the rate of appendectomies within this group with that of the general population. The study found that pig farmers were around two and a half times more likely to have their appendix removed than other Finns, while abattoir workers were almost four times more likely to have an appendectomy. But why, you may wonder, should working with pigs carry such a bizarre and specific risk?

Smart Acupuncture Pointers That Will Boost Your Knowledge How much have you learned in the past about acupuncture? Acupuncture is often symbolized by the patient, face-down, with needles protruding from their bodies in various locations. Perhaps it would surprise you to know that acupuncture is really very beneficial; although, you must be informed to make a wise choice regarding treatment. Read this post to learn all that you can about it. There is a lot more to acupuncture than the treatments involving needles. This medicinal practice is associated with a philosophy. You should learn more about the philosophy of acupuncture to adopt a healthier lifestyle. There are plenty of meditation exercises, home remedies and other practices you can use to introduce acupuncture in the different aspects of your life. Keep in mind that it may take some time for you to feel the full benefits from your acupuncture treatments. It may take more than one or two visits to find relief from pain or improvement in your conditions. Make sure you are ready to commit to the full program recommended. If you want to know more about acupuncture, but fear needles, see if your practitioner is familiar with laser treatments. This type of acupuncture uses lasers instead of needles. This does not hurt at all, and lots of people claim that it works really well in relieving their conditions. You should drink plenty of water before you attend your scheduled acupuncture session. It has been shown that people who are well hydrated respond better to treatments. While you should not consume a lot of food before a session, it is a great idea for you to drink a good amount of water. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Before your procedure, the acupuncturist may recommend herbal treatments. Such herbs can be helpful, but they may result in undesirable side effects or harmful drug interactions. Therefore, talk with your doctor before starting any herbal regimen. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. Hopefully, you are more comfortable with the idea of scheduling an acupuncture appointment. Acupuncture can be very beneficial. Follow the tips presented here to make the most of your therapy by visiting rosholistic.com

Tops Tips About Acupuncture That Anyone Can Follow Do you have aches and pains that do not seem to respond to traditional medicines? If you do, you may want to give acupuncture a try. This form of medicine has been around for thousands of years, and has becoming quite popular among Western medicine. If you want to find out more about it, read the following article. Some people find acupuncture treatments are quite effective for migraine headaches. One very positive aspect of this type of alternative treatment is the lack of any side effects. Even though very fine needles are inserted into the flesh at specific points, most people do not feel any pain at all from the procedure. In most places around the United States, a license is required to practice acupuncture. Before going to a new office, ask to see the acupuncturists credentials. It is important to ask how experienced they are and where they went to school. Any place that can not provide this information should be visited with caution. Ask your acupuncturist about the style they use. Acupuncture is a very complex discipline and there are several methods acupuncturists can use to relieve pain or stress. Make sure the methods your acupuncturist uses are painless. If you are new to acupuncture, ask if you can get a very simple treatment to get used to the sensatin. Understand that acupuncture focus on the entire well being of you as a person. In Western culture, it's often the norm to concentrate on symptoms, what's ailing you immediately. That's not true of acupuncture. It looks at the big picture and tries to help your entire body. It's a major difference in thought. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Herbal treatments could be suggested to you by your acupuncturist before treatment. As beneficial as certain herbs are, if you are on certain medications, you may develop side effects. You should check with your doctor for possible issues before adding herbs to your treatment. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. Acupuncture can give you relief from pain that no other methods can provide. Just take your time to learn more about it so you will be comfortable with the idea. Talk to people who have gone through treatments. The more find out about acupuncture by visiting rosholistic.com

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works. Now you can make the decision about going through with it, if it's right for you!

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works by visit rosholistic.com

The fastest, easiest way to sell your car. No need to negotiate trade-in deals, ring around car wreckers, or go through the hassle of selling your car privately. Simply post your car on CarBuyers to receive instant cash offers from up to 5 trusted car buying companies. Compare cash offers, choose the best one, and you'll get paid cash on the spot and have your car removed for free. Car buyers is a 100% free, no-obligation service.

The Economist has produced a more sophisticated set of ‘back-of-the-envelope’ estimates in an interactive basic income calculator for all OECD countries.4 This purports to show how much could be paid as a basic income by switching spending on non-health transfers, leaving tax revenues and other public spending unchanged. Interestingly, even on this very restrictive basis, a cluster of seven west European countries could already pay over $10,000 per person per year. The United States could pay $6,300 and Britain $5,800. Obviously, for most countries, the level of basic income that could be financed from this tax-neutral welfare-switching exercise would be modest – though, especially for bottom-ranked countries such as South Korea ($2,200) or Mexico (only $900), this largely reflects their current low tax take and welfare spending. The Economist’s interactive calculator also aims to calculate what tax rises would be needed to pay a basic income of a given amount. For the UK, the calculator estimates that the cost of a basic income of one-third average GDP per head would require a 15 percentage point rise in tax take. Its calculations can again be questioned in their own terms. However, all these back-of-the-envelope exercises are flawed in more fundamental ways. First, they do not allow for clawing the basic income back in tax from higher-income earners, which could be done with no net cost to the affluent or to the Exchequer, simply by tweaking tax rates and allowances so that the extra tax take equals the basic income paid. Second, they do not take account of administrative savings from removal of means testing and behaviour conditions. Administration accounted for £8 billion of the £172 billion 2013–14 budget of the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions, much of which will have gone to pay staff in local job centres to monitor and sanction benefit recipients. This does not include hundreds of millions of pounds paid to private contractors to carry out so-called ‘work assessment’ tests on people with disabilities, which have led to denial of benefits to some of society’s most vulnerable people. Third, they compare the cost of a basic income with the existing welfare budget and assume that all other areas of public spending remain intact. Yet governments can always choose to realign spending priorities. The UK government could save billions by scrapping the plan to replace the Trident nuclear missile system, now estimated to cost more than £200 billion over its lifetime. It could save further billions by ending subsidies that go predominantly to corporations and the affluent.

A Chinese Zen master[FN#230] tells us that the method of instruction adopted by Zen may aptly be compared with that of an old burglar who taught his son the art of burglary. The burglar one evening said to his little son, whom he desired to instruct in the secret of his trade: "Would you not, my dear boy, be a great burglar like myself?" "Yes, father," replied the promising young man." "Come with me, then. I will teach you the art." So saying, the man went out, followed by his son. Finding a rich mansion in a certain village, the veteran burglar made a hole in the wall that surrounded it. Through that hole they crept into the yard, and opening a window with complete ease broke into the house, where they found a huge box firmly locked up as if its contents were very valuable articles. The old man clapped his hands at the lock, which, strange to tell, unfastened itself. Then he removed the cover and told his son to get into it and pick up treasures as fast as he could. No sooner had the boy entered the box than the father replaced the cover and locked it up. He then exclaimed at the top of his voice: "Thief! thief! thief! thief!" Thus, having aroused the inmates, he went out without taking anything. All the house was in utter confusion for a while; but finding nothing stolen, they went to bed again. The boy sat holding his breath a short while; but making up his mind to get out of his narrow prison, began to scratch the bottom of the box with his finger-nails. The servant of the house, listening to the noise, supposed it to be a mouse gnawing at the inside of the box; so she came out, lamp in hand, and unlocked it. On removing the cover, she was greatly surprised to find the boy instead of a little mouse, and gave alarm. In the meantime the boy got out of the box and went down into the yard, hotly pursued by the people. He ran as fast as possible toward the well, picked up a large stone, threw it down into it, and hid himself among the bushes. The pursuers, thinking the thief fell into the well, assembled around it, and were looking into it, while the boy crept out unnoticed through the hole and went home in safety. Thus the burglar taught his son how to rid himself of overwhelming difficulties by his own efforts; so also Zen teachers teach their pupils how to overcome difficulties that beset them on all sides and work out salvation by themselves. [FN#230]

Now consider this. A small number of invertebrate species, a mere 2 percent of all species of insects, is capable of social behaviors that do rival in complexity many human social achievements. Ants, bees, wasps, and termites are the prominent examples.10 Their genetically set and inflexible routines enable the survival of the group. They divide labor intelligently within the group to deal with the problems of finding energy sources, transform them into products useful for their lives, and manage the flow of those products. They do so to the point of changing the number of workers assigned to specific jobs depending on the energy sources available. They act in a seemingly altruistic manner whenever sacrifice is needed. In their colonies, they build nests that constitute remarkable urban architectural projects and provide efficient shelter, traffic patterns, and even systems of ventilation and waste removal, not to mention a security guard for the queen. One almost expects them to have harnessed fire and invented the wheel. Their zeal and discipline put to shame, any day, the governments of our leading democracies. These creatures acquired their complex social behaviors from their biology, not from Montessori schools or Ivy League colleges. But in spite of having come by these astounding abilities as early as 100 million years ago, ants and bees, individually or as colonies, do not grieve for the loss of their mates when they disappear and do not ask themselves about their place in the universe. They do not inquire about their origin, let alone their destiny. Their seemingly responsible, socially successful behavior is not guided by a sense of responsibility, to themselves or to others, or by a corpus of philosophical reflections on the condition of being an insect. It is guided by the gravitational pull of their life regulation needs as it acts on their nervous systems and produces certain repertoires of behavior selected over numerous evolving generations, under the control of their fine-tuned genomes. Members of a colony do not think as much as they act, by which I mean that upon registering a particular need—theirs, or the group’s, or the queen’s—they do not ponder alternatives for how to fulfill such a need in any way comparable to ours. They simply fulfill it. Their repertoire of actions is limited, and in many instances it is confined to one option. The general schema of their elaborate sociality does resemble that of human cultures, but it is a fixed schema. E. O. Wilson

How may we form a right idea of God’s greatness? The Bible teaches us two steps that we must take. The first is to remove from our thoughts of God limits that would make him small. The second is to compare him with powers and forces which we regard as great.

Due to the progressing sickness that the doctors appeared not to understand, I could only hold a job for months before I would be laid off. My manager would slowly become aware that I had health issues. Chronic fatigue and mental confusion are hard to hide on a daily basis! I was working for older electrical engineering managers and they also appeared to have health issues. One was constantly taking vitamin energy drinks, another had a brain tumor removed in the past, another would open his desk drawer and there would be several bottles of prescription medications in there, and another had been wondering the streets in confused state a year earlier! Engineering staff I was supervising had unusual personalities and issues with progressing their work. Some appeared to have health issues comparable to my own. This was the reality of my “American Dream”.

Here are some common grains that can be eaten in their intact form: Amaranth: A gluten-free grain that is particularly high in protein compared with other grains, and even higher in lysine. It maintains its crunchiness after cooking in water. Be sure to use lots of water when you cook it because it thickens the water. Barley: Hulled or dehulled barley is considered intact because just the inedible hull is removed. Pearled barley is not a whole grain. Barley is high in beta-glucan, which helps lower cholesterol. Soak barley overnight before cooking. It is great cooked like rice; mixed with beans, onions, herbs, and spices; used in soup; eaten as a breakfast cereal; or used in dehydrated crackers. Brown rice: Brown rice has gotten bad press lately since Consumer Reports published a story on arsenic levels in brown rice secondary to fertilizers used and the increased uptake of arsenic in the bran of the rice. At this point, I do not recommend consumption of brown rice on a regular basis, as there are lots of other better options, including wild rice.

Best Season for Hair Removal has Arrived! Here at Ulike, we love to nerd out over every hair removal detail. Our team of experts explores the science behind smooth and beautiful skin, so you can focus on the results! According to the study, starting IPL during the "Anagen phase" (also known as Fall by normal people) is the best time to break your hair’s growth cycle for longer-lasting effects. Meanwhile, the clothing we wear during fall can cover our skin from deadly UV light to get a better result. Therefore, start your IPL treatment now, and shine like a million dollars in summer. Can I Achieve Permanent Effect At Home? Yes, you can! People want to solve the hair removal issue once and for all. And this is what Ulike's IPL hair removal can do. With many years of experience developing home-use IPL devices, Ulike's IPL hair removal handset is capable of producing 19.8J of high energy (energy density 6J/cm²) to bring better and faster permanent results within 4-6 weeks. Ulike's product adapts clinical-grade sapphire ice-touch technology that can effectively lower the epidermal temperature of the effective area to 50°F~104°F while emitting high-energy light simultaneously, effectively avoiding burning and pain during use. In comparison, most hair removal devices on the market light window reached temperatures of 158°F~212°F during use, hence having a sense of burning. Will it Cost More? No! It Only Cost Less! Compared with Ulike at-home hair removal and clinic hair removal, both methods can achieve permanent hair removal, and both adapted sapphire Ice-Cooling technology. BUT, The Ulike IPL hair remover can provide you with more privacy and sanitation with only 2.5% cost of doing hair removal in a clinic. Ulike Sapphire AIR White IPL Hair Removal Handset at the price of $309 Main Features: Painless hair removal by Sapphire Ice-Cooling technology Savings more than $10k expense than hair removal at a beauty salon Salon-Grade hair removal in the comfort of your own home Safety and hygiene are guaranteed with no skin damage Easy to sensitize with its flat window design Treat all body parts' hair with five intensity levels 284grams ultra-light compact design for travel convenience

I remember the friendliness of everyone. Shaking hands and kissing when they said hello and goodbye, it was so removed from the cold and unfeeling place we had come from. I was beginning to appreciate the place we were in and loving Europe and its way of life. It was so laid-back compared to my old world.

Finally, it is worth cultivating moments in life in which we feel immense satisfaction and happiness divorced from our own success or achievements. This happens commonly when we find ourselves in a beautiful landscape—the mountains, the sea, a forest. We do not feel the prying, comparing eyes of others, the need to have more attention or to assert ourselves. We are simply in awe of what we see, and it is intensely therapeutic. This can also occur when we contemplate the immensity of the universe, the uncanny set of circumstances that had to come together for us to be born, the vast reaches of time before us and after us. These are sublime moments, and as far removed from the pettiness and poisons of envy as possible.

The thirty-day no-contact rule Recovering from a breakup on a more practical basis can be likened to getting over an addiction. You go through periods of major withdrawal where you become overwhelmed by a cocktail of emotions, including guilt, fear, randomly missing him, and suddenly feeling like what he did to you ‘wasn’t that bad’. You start to play the mental showreel of all your good times (even if you only had a few), and suddenly you can’t remember why you left. Feeling this cluster of imbalanced emotions can be very confusing and irritating, but all hope is not lost. Contrary to popular belief, breakups don’t actually have to be hard. We assign so much spiritual and emotional value to these men, that by the time we finally distance ourselves from them, we feel distant from ourselves. And that’s really heartbreaking, because no man is worth losing yourself over. Ever. They say it takes about thirty days to break a habit. Texting your ex, stalking his profile from your second account, deliberately asking your mutual friends certain questions to get updates on his life and his new girl – it all needs to stop. So right now, go cold turkey, block his number on whatever messaging app you use, remove him from all your social media. Maintaining little corridors of access to him means he’s still on a pedestal. It also means your value system when it comes to men is warped, because naturally you’re going to keep comparing new guys to him as long as he holds this much space in your head. You want to evict him from that space so that someone new can blow you away when the time is right! This guy is not the be-all and end-all of your experiences with men, and the outcome of your situation with him really doesn’t have to define your future relationships. This thirty-day period of making yourself the centre of your world has a 100 per cent success rate, because by the time you get to day thirty, if it’s done honestly and correctly, you will have either a) met a new guy or b) found a whole heap of new reasons to love your healing self. But the thirty-day no-contact rule must be adhered to strictly, and if you break the pact with yourself, you must start all the way from the beginning – which might feel like torture.

Many years ago, one of my life coaches gave me a metaphor. She compared life’s passage to that of peeling an onion. We continue to remove layer after layer of that onion, revealing new challenges and new realms. Our conscious beliefs reside in layers like those of an onion. As we continue to watch our thoughts and practice self-awareness, we’ll uncover new self-limiting beliefs. As we reveal each limiting belief, we grow as Spiritual Artists, and our creative results deepen.

Not unlike the herbicide-spraying campaigns in Asia, Central Europe was also flown over by helicopters spraying chemicals intended to wipe out the deciduous forests, which had gone out of fashion. Beech and oak trees held very little value at that time; low oil prices meant that no one was interested in firewood. The scales were tilted in favour of spruce – sought after by the timber industry and safe from being devoured by the high game populations. Over 5,000 square kilometres of deciduous woodlands was cleared just in my local region of Eifel and Hunsrück, through this merciless method of dropping death from the air. The carrier for the substance, sold under the trade name Tormona, was diesel oil. Elements of this mixture may still lurk in the soil of our forests today; the rusty diesel drums are certainly still lying around in some places. Have things improved now? Not completely, because chemical sprays are still used, even if they’re not directed at the trees themselves. The target of the helicopters and trucks with their atomising nozzles is the insects that feed on the trees and wood. Because the drab spruce and pine monocultures give free rein to bark beetles and butterfly caterpillars, these are then bumped off with contact insecticides. The pesticides, with names like Karate, are so lethal for three months that mere contact spells the end for any unfortunate insects. Parts of a forest that have been sprayed with pesticide are usually marked and fenced off for a while, but wood piles at the side of the track are often not considered dangerous. I would therefore advise against sitting on them when you’re ready for a rest stop and look out for a mossy stump instead, which is guaranteed to be harmless. This is quite apart from the fact that freshly harvested softwood is often very resinous. The stains don’t come out in the normal wash; you need to attack it with a special stain remover. Stacked wood carries another danger: the whole pile is liable to come crashing down. When you know that a single trunk can weigh hundreds of kilograms, you tend to stay away from a precariously stacked pile. It’s not for nothing that the German name for a wood stack is Polter, as in the crashing and banging of a poltergeist. Back to the poison. In areas sprayed by helicopter I wouldn’t pick berries or mushrooms for the rest of the summer. Otherwise, the forest is low in harmful substances compared to industrial agriculture.

It’s an offer you present to the marketplace that cannot be compared to any other product or service available, combining an attractive promotion, an unmatchable value proposition, a premium price, and an unbeatable guarantee with a money model (payment terms) that allows you to get paid to get new customers . . . forever removing the cash constraint on business growth. In other words, it allows you to sell in a “category of one,” or, to apply another great phrase, to “sell in a vacuum.

38 Paul was still thinking of singles and albums as he did during the Beatles’ days, and as many British groups (and record labels) did in the 1960s—as separate releases, with no crossover. With few exceptions, when the Beatles released a song as a single, it was removed from consideration as an album track. They explained this as a value-for-money issue: fans who already bought a single should not have to buy those tracks again on the next LP. It was different in the United States. Singles were considered teasers for albums. Record executives like Coury considered albums more marketable when they had hits on them, and American consumers considered it a convenience to have the songs they knew as singles on albums as well. In the Beatles’ case, because Capitol LPs typically included 12 songs, compared with

These three, the minerals, plants, and animals, having no Reason, know God by a natural 'unveiling' or immediate evidential knowledge. Man, on the contrary, possesses Reason, and the Reason develops his ego to a full extent, and he becomes veiled by his own ego. 'Thus from the viewpoint of the ideal state of 'servant-ness', Man is situated on the lowest level on the scale of Being. In order to climb to scale upward, he must first of all dispel from himself Reason - which is, paradoxically, exactly the thing that makes him a Man - and bring to naught al the properties that derive from Reason. Only when he succeeds in doing so, does he ascend to the rank of animals. He must then go on to ascent to the rank of plants, and thence finally to the rank of minerals. Then only does he find himself in the highest position on the whole scale of Being. There will no longer remain in him even a shadow of Reason, and the Light of the Absolute will illumine him undimmed, unhindered, in its original splendor.' These considerations make us aware of the fact that Man as an Idea is per se 'perfect' and occupies the highest position, but that in his actual situation he is far from being a perfect realization of his own ideal. We can maintain that Man is the highest being in the world only when we take the viewpoint of a philosophical anthropology standing on the supposition that the ideal of Man is perfectly realized in the actual Man. The actual Man, however, is a being in full possession of Reason, a being dependent upon his Reason and brandishing it everywhere in his understanding of everything. He who brandishes his Reason is not capable of penetrating the mystery of Being. But while making this observation, we realize that we are already far removed from the sphere in which we began our discussion of Man. We started from the basic assumption that Man can be considered on two entirely different levels: cosmic and individual. And the purpose of the present chapter has been to elucidate the concept of Man on the cosmic level, as Microcosm. And on this level, Man is certainly the highest of all beings. However, in the last section of this chapter, we have been moving down to the concept of Man on the individual level. We have learnt that on this latter level, Man is, in a certain sense, even lower than animals, plants and minerals. On this level, not all men, but only a small number of special men are worthy to be called 'perfect men'. They are 'perfect' because, having already died to their own ego through the mystical experience of self-annihilation and subsistence, they are no longer veiled by Reason.

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.

Rebels, gathering from three houses that had been removed from power,” Nura was saying, as we strode through the halls. Her voice was strained. “Bold of them. But for the first time, they have real backing. Three powerful families. A few thousand soldiers. Nothing compared to the Guard, but…” We rounded a corner, reaching the outer halls of the Tower and a sheet of glass windows. My breath died in my throat. “Gods,” I breathed. “Fuck,” Max whispered. “Exactly,” Nura murmured. The outskirts of the Capital, far in the distance, were bright with fire. As if the city was a living being, and a burning infection spread along its edges through flaming veins.

Mark Patkowski (1980) studied the relationship between age and the acquisition of features of a second language other than pronunciation. He hypothesized that, even if accent were ignored, only those who had begun learning their second language before the age of 15 could achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski studied 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. They had started to learn English at various ages, but all had lived in the United States for more than five years. He compared them to 15 native-born Americans with a similarly high level of education, whose variety of English could be considered the second language speakers’ target language. The main question in Patkowski’s research was: ‘Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?’ However, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences that some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a person’s success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal ESL instruction each speaker had had. A lengthy interview with each person was tape-recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the results would be affected by accent, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews and asked trained native-speaker judges to place each transcript on a scale from 0 (no knowledge of English) to 5 (a level of English expected from an educated native speaker). The findings were quite dramatic. The transcripts of all native speakers and 32 out of 33 second language speakers who had begun learning English before the age of 15 were rated 4+ or 5. The homogeneity of the pre-puberty learners suggests that, for this group, success in learning a second language was almost inevitable. In contrast, 27 of the 32 post-puberty learners were rated between 3 and 4, but a few learners were rated higher (4+ or 5) and one was rated at 2+. The performance of this group looked like the sort of range one would expect if one were measuring success in learning almost any kind of skill or knowledge: some people did extremely well; some did poorly; most were in the middle.

The trick is in genuinely appreciating the elements of apparent resistance while you are engaging them. Not to oppose or remove them as much as to creatively fold them into one’s linear line of movement, exploiting them and making the necessary adjustments as you go.

General attitude and outlook—the way we perceive and experience anything—is more influenced by our physical state than anything other single factor. I’d guess that for most of us, at least 50% of our struggles and discontent are brought on by being physically out of balance. The causes of that imbalance are many, but at the core, there’s an insensitivity or inability to locate and maneuver essential physical processes within us: how to breathe, how to sit, stand and walk, how to see and hear, how to slow down or speed up, how to relax, how to sleep, how to eat, how to adjust our physiological responses to the different circumstances we find ourselves within. This kind of removal or abstraction from our physicality causes an enormous amount of problems on many levels. One key result of it is a distrust in our own ability to influence our emotional state and our energy and perspectives in general; we often feel that we can’t get our hands on the control switches, as if most of life just happens and we can’t do much about it.

Traditionally, true contemplation involves an act of devotion, wherein self-consciousness is removed by transferring consciousness onto the thing at hand. The better you perceive it, the less you observe yourself doing that. In other words, you could say that, at least for the extended moments of engaging it, you love it more than yourself.

This chapter continues the comparison of Jehovah with the false gods and idols worshiped by so many people in Isaiah’s day. The point is that there is no comparison! Verse 1 introduces us to two prominent false gods in Isaiah’s day. Bel and Nebo were chief gods in Babylon. Ancient cultures such as Babylon believed that each “god” had a territory, and when a city or country was defeated in battle by enemies, it meant that their gods (such as Bel and Nebo) had been defeated by the enemy’s gods. Chapter 46 ties in with chapters 13 and 14 concerning Babylon’s downfall, and with chapters 40–45 concerning Jehovah’s power as compared to the lack of power of idols. 1 Bel boweth down [German: has been defeated], Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle [the idols are powerless; they can’t move by themselves and have to be transported upon beasts of burden]: your carriages were heavy loaden; they [the idols] are a burden to the weary beast [the message, by implication, is that Bel and Nebo are burdens to those who “created” them, in contrast to the true God of Israel, who lightens the burdens of those He created, who worship Him]. 2 They [Bel and Nebo] stoop, they bow down together [German: they are both defeated]; they could not deliver [German: remove] the burden[they couldn’t do the job],but themselves are gone into captivity [they have failed their worshippers and couldn’t even save themselves]. 3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me [note that I the Lord carry you, help you, am not a burden] from the belly [ from the womb, or from the beginning], which are carried from the womb [I have carried you from the beginning, contrasted to idol worshipers who have to transport their “gods”]: 4 And even to your old age [throughout your entire life] I am he [the true God]; and even to hoar[gray]hairs will I carry you: I have made [German: I want to do it], and I will [German: desire to] bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you [I want to help, support and bless you throughout your entire life; I want to be your Redeemer!]. 5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like [who among your false gods can compare to Me]? [Same question as in 40:18, 25.]

2. The total percentage of C2S and C3S in all types of Portland cements is around 70 per cent, so that even though the strength development of two cements at early stages may be different, the final strength obtained after long periods of time may not be different. However, removal of formwork, prestressing of concrete depends to a large extent on the early strength of concrete. 3. When producing low-heat Portland cement the percentage of C2S is increased and that of C3S and C3A is decreased. This type of cement is of particular use in construction of dams, massive foundation, etc. to reduce the production of heat. 4. Reducing C3A increases sulphate resistance but the 7 day and 28 day strengths also get lowered as compared to the ordinary Portland cement. Sulphate-resisting Portland cement has less than 5% C3A. This type of cement is recommended for sewer works. 5. Rapid hardening cements compared to ordinary cements have more or less the same composition except that the latter is more finely ground and may sometimes contain higher percentage of C3S. The increased fineness increases the 7 day strength.

Excuse me, Cinderella?” a deep voice called next to my ear. Cinderella? I removed my hand from my face to look at the guy who belonged to that voice, then quickly pushed myself up onto my elbows when I took in his face, so close to mine. My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat, but I didn’t know how to look away from him. Despite a large red mark on his forehead, his face was flawless and masculine, with a strong brow and nose, a smirk I knew would’ve made my knees weak had I been standing, and a lethal stare from green eyes so clear it was as if I could see through the iris. My gaze had become so fixated on the way his lips moved that it took a few seconds too long to realize he’d said something. “I’m sorry, what?” The smirk broadened for a brief moment, giving me a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He leaned over me until his lips were at my ear, and if I’d had the capability to breathe around him, I would’ve stopped then. “I said I think you lost this,” he drawled, and I swooned. Literally . . . swooned. As in: all the air left my body in one hard rush, I was unable to keep myself up on my elbows any longer, my head felt light and dizzy, the room spun, and I was pretty sure I’d just entered a romance novel. It really didn’t matter that it was from the lingering effects of nearly choking to death, and then unknowingly holding my breath for too long. “Whoa.” He quickly put a hand under my head before it could smack on the hardwood floor. “I’m fine,” I said breathlessly, and internally berated myself for doing everything imaginable to look like an idiot tonight. I tried to sit up, but the guy was still hovering over me, making it impossible to go farther than I’d been. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I promised, and blew out a steadying breath when he sat back. “Good. I can’t have you passing out on me, Cinderella.” “Cin—” My head shook firmly as I corrected him. “No, my name is Rorie.” With another slow smirk, he gestured to the red mark on his forehead for barely a second, then reached behind him and produced my stiletto. My embarrassment from earlier couldn’t compare to the level it was at then as I put it all together. My shoe had flown into his face. “Oh my God,” I whispered so low, the words drifted away with the bass of the music. “I’m so sorry.” He laughed easily, as if he hadn’t just taken a five-inch stiletto to the face, and glanced from my shoe to me. “My name is Declan,” he provided. “I already know this shoe belongs to you. What I want to know now, Cinderella, is if I give this back to you, are you going to run away from me?” Despite my humiliation, my lips spread into a smile as the name finally made sense. I reached for the shoe, but Declan held it away from me. His expression showed he was still waiting for an answer. With a raised eyebrow, I said, “I lost both shoes. I don’t care what Disney said, a girl can’t run away very easily with only one shoe.” His smirk stretched to match my smile, and he dipped his head close. “Then I’m keeping the other one that hit the back of my head.

Excuse me, Cinderella?” a deep voice called next to my ear. Cinderella? I removed my hand from my face to look at the guy who belonged to that voice, then quickly pushed myself up onto my elbows when I took in his face, so close to mine. My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat, but I didn’t know how to look away from him. Despite a large red mark on his forehead, his face was flawless and masculine, with a strong brow and nose, a smirk I knew would’ve made my knees weak had I been standing, and a lethal stare from green eyes so clear it was as if I could see through the iris. My gaze had become so fixated on the way his lips moved that it took a few seconds too long to realize he’d said something. “I’m sorry, what?” The smirk broadened for a brief moment, giving me a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He leaned over me until his lips were at my ear, and if I’d had the capability to breathe around him, I would’ve stopped then. “I said I think you lost this,” he drawled, and I swooned. Literally . . . swooned. As in: all the air left my body in one hard rush, I was unable to keep myself up on my elbows any longer, my head felt light and dizzy, the room spun, and I was pretty sure I’d just entered a romance novel. It really didn’t matter that it was from the lingering effects of nearly choking to death, and then unknowingly holding my breath for too long. “Whoa.” He quickly put a hand under my head before it could smack on the hardwood floor. “I’m fine,” I said breathlessly, and internally berated myself for doing everything imaginable to look like an idiot tonight. I tried to sit up, but the guy was still hovering over me, making it impossible to go farther than I’d been. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I promised, and blew out a steadying breath when he sat back. “Good. I can’t have you passing out on me, Cinderella.” “Cin—” My head shook firmly as I corrected him. “No, my name is Rorie.” With another slow smirk, he gestured to the red mark on his forehead for barely a second, then reached behind him and produced my stiletto. My embarrassment from earlier couldn’t compare to the level it was at then as I put it all together. My shoe had flown into his face. “Oh my God,” I whispered so low, the words drifted away with the bass of the music. “I’m so sorry.” He laughed easily, as if he hadn’t just taken a five-inch stiletto to the face, and glanced from my shoe to me. “My name is Declan,” he provided. “I already know this shoe belongs to you. What I want to know now, Cinderella, is if I give this back to you, are you going to run away from me?” Despite

EVERY TIME something thwarts your plans or desires, use that as a reminder to communicate with Me. This practice has several benefits. The first is obvious: Talking with Me blesses you and strengthens our relationship. Another benefit is that disappointments, instead of dragging you down, are transformed into opportunities for good. This transformation removes the sting from difficult circumstances, making it possible to be joyful in the midst of adversity. Begin by practicing this discipline in all the little disappointments of daily life. It is often these minor setbacks that draw you away from My Presence. When you reframe setbacks as opportunities, you find that you gain much more than you have lost. It is only after much training that you can accept major losses in this positive way. But it is possible to attain the perspective of the apostle Paul, who wrote: Compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, I consider everything I once treasured to be as insignificant as rubbish.

The passions, moreover, become good in those who are spiritually earnest once they have wisely separated them from corporeal objects and used them to gain possession of heavenly things. For instance, they can turn desire (ἐπιθυμία) into the appetitive movement of the mind’s longing for divine things, or pleasure (ἡδονή) into the unadulterated joy of the mind when enticed toward divine gifts, or fear (φόβος) into cautious concern for imminent punishment for sins committed, or grief (λύπη) into corrective repentance of a present evil. In short, we can compare this with the wise physicians who remove the existing or festering infection of the body using the poisonous beast, the viper. [49] The spiritually earnest use the passions to destroy a present or anticipated evil, and to embrace and hold to virtue and knowledge.4 Thus, as I have already suggested, the passions become good when they are used by those who take every thought captive in order to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5).5

EARNINGS McDonald's Plans Marketing Push as Profit Slides By Julie Jargon | 436 words Associated Press The burger giant has been struggling to maintain relevance among younger consumers and fill orders quickly in kitchens that have grown overwhelmed with menu items. McDonald's Corp. plans a marketing push to emphasize its fresh-cooked breakfasts as it battles growing competition for the morning meal. Competition at breakfast has heated up recently as Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell entered the business with its new Waffle Taco last month and other rivals have added or discounted breakfast items. McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson said it hasn't yet noticed an impact from Taco Bell's breakfast debut, but that the overall increased competition "forces us to focus even more on being aggressive in breakfast." Mr. Thompson's comments came after McDonald's on Tuesday reported that its profit for the first three months of 2014 dropped 5.2% from a year earlier, weaker than analysts' expectations. Comparable sales at U.S. restaurants open more than a year declined 1.7% for the quarter and 0.6% for March, the fifth straight month of declines in the company's biggest market. Global same-store sales rose 0.5% for both the quarter and month. Mr. Thompson acknowledged again that the company has lost relevance with some customers and needs to strengthen its menu offerings. He emphasized Tuesday that McDonald's is focused on stabilizing key markets, including the U.S., Germany, Australia and Japan. The CEO said McDonald's has dominated the fast-food breakfast business for 35 years, and "we don't plan on giving that up." The company plans in upcoming ads to inform customers that it cooks its breakfast, unlike some rivals. "We crack fresh eggs, grill sausage and bacon," Mr. Thompson said. "This is not a microwave deal." Beyond breakfast, McDonald's also plans to boost marketing of core menu items such as Big Macs and french fries, since those core products make up 40% of total sales. To serve customers more quickly, the chain is working to optimize staffing, and is adding new prep tables that let workers more efficiently add new toppings when guests want to customize orders. McDonald's also said it aims to sell more company-owned restaurants outside the U.S. to franchisees. Currently, 81% of its restaurants around the world are franchised. Collecting royalties from franchisees provides a stable source of income for a restaurant company and removes the cost of operating them. McDonald's reported a first-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or $1.21 a share, down from $1.27 billion, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier. The company partly attributed the decline to the effect of income-tax benefits in the prior year. Total revenue for the quarter edged up 1.4% to $6.7 billion, though costs rose faster, at 2.3%. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of $1.24 a share on revenue of $6.72 billion.

Standing, she turned toward him, dropped into an exaggerated curtsy, and, smiling broadly, said, “Your Grace. I trust I pass inspection?” He chuckled at her use of the ducal address and offered her a hand to lift her from her position. Tilting his head, he answered in a voice rich with humor. “Far be it from me to answer that particular question. I wouldn’t dare risk removing that opinion from the purview of the duchess. You know that.” Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he continued, “Suffice to say, my lady, that I believe you are the most beautiful of my offspring.” Alex burst into laughter and leaned up to kiss her father’s cheek. “Well said…ever the diplomat. Although I rather think it shouldn’t be that difficult to be the most beautiful when compared to the hulking brutes you call sons.” “Not diplomacy at all, daughter. You look lovely. And, sadly, very grown up. When did you get so tall?” Alex was just a few inches from her father’s height, and she smiled at the question. “Strong Stafford blood, of course, Father. Are you certain we’re not descended from the Vikings?” “Looking at the four of you, one does wonder. But then there is I, the diminutive duke…pathetically small and not at all Norse.

If psychics are real, it implies that the universe is far vaster and stranger than conventional perception would state. If psychics can talk to the dead, that removes the sting of mortality and loss. It also suggests there is predestination, a way to cheat the vagaries of Fate with foreknowledge. The cost for believing in them is tiny indeed compared to that.

It was at that moment that he felt how much he missed Magdalena. What he once thought of as Magdalena’s weaknesses—her quick temper, lack of education, her practicality, and shrewdness, things that were so far removed from Benedikta’s French etiquette and finesse—all that now made Magdalena seem beyond compare, unique.

In the Bible, God called Gideon a mighty man of (fearless) courage. Gideon looked around and said, “Who’s He talking to? That’s not me.” God had an assignment for Gideon, something great for him to accomplish, but Gideon had not renewed his mind. He had these toxic thoughts. God saw him as strong, but Gideon saw himself as weak, defeated, not able to. God wanted him to lead the people of Israel and to defeat an opposing army, but Gideon said, “God, I can’t do that. I’m the least one in my father’s house. I come from the poorest family. I don’t have the education, the skills, the courage.” Notice how Gideon perceived himself compared to how God saw him. God said he was a mighty man of fearless courage. If God were to call your name today, He wouldn’t say, “Hello, you weak worm of the dust. Hello, you failure. Hello, you ol’ sinner. How’s My loser doing today?” God would say the same sort of thing to you that He said to Gideon: “Hello, Mary, you mighty woman of fearless courage.” Or “Hello, Bob, you mighty man of fearless courage.” I wonder if you would be like Gideon and say, “God, who are You talking to? Don’t You know what family I come from? Haven’t You seen the mistakes I’ve made? Let me remind You of some of them. God, You know I’m not that talented. Why are You calling me a mighty man?” The problem is, you have allowed these wrong thoughts to infect your thinking. But thank God this is a new day. You are beginning a new diet. You are starting a fast by cutting out every negative, discouraging, can’t do it thought. When those wrong thoughts come up, instead of saying like Gideon, “I’m not able. Who am I?” Turn it around and say, “I know who I am. I am well able. I’m ready for my assignment. God I am who You say I am.” I believe in the coming days God will present you with new opportunities. New doors will open. New people will come across your path. Maybe there will even be a new career opportunity. If you are to reach a new level, you must have a new way of thinking. You have to clean out the old so you’ll have room for the new. I’m asking you to detox all the garbage telling you what you’re not and what you can’t do. Remove all those strongholds. Detox little dreams. Detox low self-esteem. Detox the negative words. Stay on your diet. Every morning go through a good cleanse. Start the day off in faith. If you’ll guard your mind and instead of letting it get toxic keep it full of faith-filled thoughts, God promises you’ll overcome every obstacle, you’ll defeat every enemy, and every dream and every desire God has put in your heart will come to pass.

The Master is not trapped in opposites. His this is also a that. He sees that life becomes death and death becomes life, that right has a kernel of wrong within it and wrong a kernel of right, that the true turns into the false and the false into the true. He understands that nothing is absolute, that since every point of view depends on the viewer, affirmation and denial are equally beside the point.   The place where the this and the that are not opposed to each other is called “the pivot of the Tao.” When we find this pivot, we find ourselves at the center of the circle, and here we sit, serene, while Yes and No keep chasing each other around the circumference, endlessly. Mind can only create the qualities of good and bad by comparing. Remove the comparison, and there go the qualities. What remains is the pure unknown: ungraspable object, ungraspable subject, and the clear light of awareness streaming through. The pivot of the Tao is the mind free of its thoughts. It doesn’t believe that this is a this or that that is a that. Let Yes and No sprint around the circumference toward a finish line that doesn’t exist. How can they stop trying to win the argument of life until you stop? When you do, you realize that you were the only one running. Yes was you, No was you, the whole circumference, with its colored banners, its pom-pom girls and frenzied crowds—that was you as well. At the center, the eyes open and again it’s the sweet morning of the world. There’s nothing here to limit you, no one here to draw a circumference. In fact, there’s no one here—not even you. 7 Nothing in the world is bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount Everest is tiny.

Later, I thought of the permanent instructors at Muroc and felt a twinge of guilt comparing their situation to ours. Many of them had already completed a combat tour, and it must have been a tremendous letdown to be assigned to a base so far removed from anywhere just to train a bunch of green lieutenants.

my lab conducted a brain-scanning study on four patients with apotemnophilia and compared the results with four normal control subjects. In the controls, touching any part of the body activated right SPL. In all four patients, touching the part of the limb each one wanted removed evoked no activity in the SPL—the brain’s map of the body didn’t light up, so to speak, on the scans.

As he travelled through India, Gandhi continued to be reminded that what all parts of the country had in common was the treatment of certain castes as ‘untouchable’. He was appalled by this stigmatization by his fellow Hindus of their co-religionists. In May 1920, he emphatically declared that 'We cannot compare the sufferings of the untouchables with those of any other section in India. It passes my understanding how we consider it dharma to treat the depressed classes as untouchables; I shudder at the very thought of this. My conscience tells me that untouchability can never be a part of Hinduism. I do not think it too much to dedicate my whole life to removing the thick crust of sin with which Hindu society has covered itself for so long by stupidly regarding these people as untouchables. I am only sorry that I am unable to devote myself wholly to that work'.

It is true that the worlds of the other gods are not without paradox. But none of these worlds is as disrupted by it as the world of Dionysus. He, the nurturer and the god of rapture; he, the god who is forever praised as the giver of wine which removes all sorrow and care; he, the deliverer and healer, “the delight of mortals”, “the god of many joys”, the dancer and ecstatic lover, “the bestower of riches”, the “benefactor” – this god who is the most delightful of all the gods is also the most frightful. No single Greek god even approaches Dionysus in the horror of his epithets, which bear witness to a savagery that is absolutely without mercy. In fact, one must evoke the memory of the monstrous horror of eternal darkness to find anything at all comparable. He is called the “render of men”, “the eater of raw flesh”, “who delights in the sword and bloodshed”. Correspondingly we hear not only of human sacrifice in his cult but also of the ghastly ritual in which a man is torn to pieces.

Circumcision For Adults Has Approval from Medical Experts IIn a few religions like Judaism, circumcision is an essential ritual. It gets performed when the male child is eight days old. During this, the foreskin on the genital gets removed. And almost all Jews follow this without fail. But sometimes, due to unavoidable circumstances, it may not be possible to circumcise baby. Yes, then the mohel may recommend some other auspicious day for circumcision. The family follows all the Jewish rituals during this ceremony. Indeed, there is a belief that doing so has a lot of health benefits for that person. Not all religions follow this custom. So, there is always a debate about whether it is beneficial to perform this ritual. Avoid Infection with Circumcision And research has proved that it is advantageous to do the bris ceremony. There is a reduced risk of contracting infections like STI, UTIs, and cancer of the penis. It has also proved that there is an improvement in the hygiene in the genital area. So, an expert may recommend an adult to undergo circumcision who has not done so in infancy. Yes, but you must get this procedure done through a professional. You can find many an expert mohel who can perform this ritual for children as well as adults. Essential To Hire a Professional This procedure gets performed in a sensitive area that needs a lot of precaution. So, you should engage only an expert in circumcision Los Angeles for this. a novice or an amateur may make mistakes. And you may have to face a lot of trouble because of this. And when a professional gets hired, especially for an adult circumcision, it will avoid post-procedure complications. It is not prudent to take a shortcut concerning health. People who resort to them get into more trouble. So, it is best avoided. Approval From Modern Science Look for a qualified rabbi and get it done as soon as possible. Modern science also approves of this religious ritual. It may seem that people undergo this procedure because of religious beliefs. But anyone who wants to stay safe and not get infected by some diseases should circumscribe themselves. The benefits of doing so are many compared to not undergoing it. And if you contact a mohel who is a professional, it will get done in no time. It is always advisable to stay safe rather than get infected and then for its treatment.

Whether a line forms a complete sentence or an incomplete one, whether it forms a musical phrase or strikes a harsh note, its purpose is clearly not limited to revealing sense. It is a unit of attention. The line momentarily removes a selection of words from the normal flow of language and suspends it for examination. You might compare this to the instant of consciousness – approximately three seconds long – which neuropsychologists believe constitutes the present moment. In that brief space we can appreciate the language contained in the line on a number of levels: its rhythm, its sound, its ideas, its phrase-making or its metaphoric content. We can even relate it to previous lines and anticipate its relationship with subsequent ones.

In this work, our real purpose is to seek the Self, we don't just use techniques to achieve perception. To reach the Self, we use perception. If you have two oranges in a basket and a cherry, the oranges can easily hide the cherry. But if you remove the two oranges from the basket, the cherry becomes visible. One orange is the object of perception, the other is the perception process, and the cherry is the perceiver's self-awareness. When separating the sight from the object of perception, you achieve a discernment stage similar to removing the two oranges from the basket. That's why you may have such wonderful flashes of internal awakening when you become conscious of the seeingness–unexpected inner explosions that expose the Self. As you continue to practice the triple vision process, your vision will gradually evolve. It seems to be faint at the start. But as you practice it, it turns into an increasingly tangible quality, becoming as clear and evident as the warmth perception. One might also compare the sight to a muscle that hasn't been used for a long time. It is likely to be slow at the beginning to reactivate the muscle: you hardly feel it, you don't even know when it contracts or doesn't, and its contraction is weak. Once you've done the job, it becomes as clear and tangible to activate your vision as contracting your biceps. This aspect of the inner alchemy process actually involves bodybuilding–not concrete, but subtle bodybuilding. There's a paradox now. What do you do if you want to become conscious of seeingness? You make sure you don't look at anything, and you don't care about the content of the image. In other words, you are getting out of the basket one of the two oranges. You're getting rid of the perception object. And then the second orange (seeing, awareness process) becomes apparent.

However, the E=mc2 does not take into account the momentum, which is also a form of energy, and in 1905 Einstein added the momentum (p), thus obtaining the energy-momentum-mass equation (E2=m2c4+p2c2). Since energy is squared (E2) and in the momentum (p) there is time, a square root is used and there are two solutions: negative time energy and positive time energy. Positive time energy implies causality, whereas negative time energy implies retrocausality: the future that acts backwards into the past. This was considered impossible and to solve this paradox Einstein removed the momentum, given the fact that it is practically equal to zero compared to the speed of light (c). In this way, he returned to the E=mc2.

All this likely begs the questions: “What’s wrong with you, Seth? Why do you do so many drugs and why can’t you stop talking about it?” And the best answer to that I can come up with is “They give me insights into my own thinking, feeling, and behavior in ways that I haven’t found elsewhere, and they’re super-fun.” It’s really nothing new. People have been getting fucked up for thousands of years. There’s something about removing myself from my normal baseline of operation that feels exciting and adventurous. And shared adventures can be incredibly bonding. I think I also keep yapping about drugs like acid, MDMA, and shrooms because of how incredibly fucking bothered I am that they’re viewed as these big bad wolves compared to alcohol, which is both way more prevalent and way more shitty for you.

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values, what would be the effect? In the first place it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, capital and labour, from all those burdens that now bear upon them. What a start that would give to production! In the second place we could, from the value of the land, not merely pay all the present expenses of the government, but we could do infinitely more. In the city of San Francisco James Lick left a few blocks of ground to be used for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in the world, large public baths and other public buildings, and various costly works. If, instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land upon which the city is built had accrued to San Francisco what could she not do?  So in this little town, where land values are very low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San Francisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit and public improvement did you appropriate to public purposes the land values that now go to individuals. You could have a great free library; you could have an art gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a magnificent public park, too. You have here one of the finest natural sites for a beautiful town I know of, and I have travelled much. You might make on this site a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. You will not as you go now—oh, no! Why, the very fact that you have a magnificent view here will cause somebody to hold on all the more tightly to the land that commands this view and charge higher prices for it. The State of New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people to see Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it! Look at all the great cities; in Philadelphia, for instance, in order to build their great city hall they had to block up the only two wide streets they had in the city. Everywhere you go you may see how private property in land prevents public as well as private improvement.  But I have not time to enter into further details.