Comparison Kills Quotes

Stay in your own lane. Comparison kills creativity and joy.

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembered, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst. Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings.

Comparison to others is the emperor of all emotional maladies. It kills the spirit and creates divisions in our social interactions.

Many people, who should have been rejoicing for what they've achieved, are rather regretting just because of one reason; they looked at what someone else was doing. Comparison eliminates contentment and then kills inner joy!

Look at us. We build giant highways and murderously fast cars for killing each other and committing suicide. Instead of bomb shelters we construct gigantic frail glass buildings all over Manhattan at Ground Zero, a thousand feet high, open to the sky, life a woman undressing before an intruder and provoking him to rape her. We ring Russia's borders with missile-launching pads, and then scream that she's threatening us. In all history there's never been a more lurid mass example of the sadist-masochist expression of the thanatos instinct than the present conduct of the United States. The Nazis by comparison were Eagle Scouts.

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.

No matter what I do, I really do love you Celaena." The word hit her like a stone to the head. He'd never said that word to her before. Ever. A long silence fell between them. Arobynn's neck shifted as he swallowed. "I do the things that I do because I'm sacred ... and because I don't know how to express what I feel." He said it so quietly that she barely heard it. "I did all of those things because I was angry with you for picking Sam." Arobynn's carefully cultivated mask fell, and the wound she'd given him flickered in those magnificent eyes. "Stay with me," he whispered. "Stay in Rifthold." She swallowed, and found it particularly hard to do so. "I'm going." "No," he said softly. "Don't go." No. That was what she'd said to him that night he'd beaten her, in the moment before he'd struck her, when she thought he was going to hurt Sam instead. And then he'd beaten her so badly she'd been knocked unconscious. Then he'd beaten Sam, too. Don't. That was what Ansel had said to her in the desert when Celaena had pressed the sword into the back of her neck, when the agony of Ansel's betrayal had been almost enough to make Celaena kill the girl she'd called a friend. But that betrayal had paled in comparison to what Arobynn had done to her when he'd tricked her into killing Doneval, a man who could have freed countless slaves. He was using word as chains to bind her again. He'd had so many chances over the year to tell her that he loved her--he'd known how much she craved those words. But he hadn't spoken them until he needed to use them as weapons. And now that she had Sam, Sam who said those words without expecting anything in return, Sam who loved her for reasons she still didn't understand... Celaena tilted her head to the side, the only warning she gave that she was still ready to attack him. "Get out of my house.

Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval. Good sirloin steak – if you’ll excuse the comparison – needs to be cooked until it’s medium rare. Of course, if the opportunity arises, don’t be prudish, and go for the kill

It is not the case that one can create new people on the assumption that if they are not pleased to have come into existence they can simply kill themselves. Once somebody has come into existence and attachments with that person have been formed, suicide can cause the kind of pain that makes the pain of childlessness mild by comparison. Somebody contemplating suicide knows (or should know) this. This places an important obstacle in the way of suicide. One’s life may be bad, but one must consider what affect ending it would have on one’s family and friends. There will be times when life has become so bad that it is unreasonable for the interests of the loved ones in having the person alive to outweigh that person’s interests in ceasing to exist. When this is true will depend in part on particular features of the person for whom continued life is a burden. Different people are able to bear different magnitudes of burden. It may even be indecent for family members to expect that person to continue living. On other occasions one’s life may be bad but not so bad as to warrant killing oneself and thereby making the lives of one’s family and friends still much worse than they already are.

A week earlier, Dominic couldn’t have imagined Levi describing him as trustworthy under any circumstances. Now he felt the same way he did when his sister Angela’s cat—a standoffish bastard with a wicked set of claws—came to him for petting while regally ignoring everyone else in the room. Not that he would ever make that comparison to Levi’s face.

Sherlock Holmes and Jem Finch would agree.

Don’t let comparison kill your creativity.

Whereas the food debris of the Neanderthals shows a wide variety of animal bones, suggesting that they took whatever they could find, archaeological remnants from Homo sapiens show that they sought out particular kinds of game and tracked animals seasonally. All of this strongly suggests that they possessed a linguistic system sufficiently sophisticated to deal with concepts such as: “Today let’s kill some red deer. You take some big sticks and drive the deer out of the woods and we’ll stand by the riverbank with our spears and kill them as they come down towards us.” By comparison Neanderthal speech may have been something more like: “I’m hungry. Let’s hunt.

I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. Can we not make the transition from automated aerospace killing to automated aerospace exploration of the solar system in which we live?

Over decades that seem but a moment in time, lines of scarlet figures shuttled among the sorghum stalks to weave a vast human tapestry. They killed, they looted, and they defended their country in a valiant, stirring ballet that makes us unfilial descendants who now occupy the land pale by comparison.

Though they have been subjected to disgraceful treatment, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem are fortunate in comparison with those who are less visible, and therefore can be killed, tortured, humiliated, and driven from their destroyed homes and lands virtually at will. It is, in fact, astonishing that their spirit has not been broken.

Comparing kills fulfillment.

Once upon a time, I’d thought demon-hunting was hard. But that was before I’d become a mom. Trust me. In comparison to parenting, stalking and killing demons is a piece of cake.

This is not true, you give yourself the right to adopt a religion that orders you to kill others, and you say, this is a religion don’t come close to it? There is a difference in the comparison, The Koran is the highest religious and political authority in the Islamic world, but the Danish cartoons are just a passing event in a newspaper that doesn’t represent any religious or political authority in Denmark. When you respect others beliefs, others will be obligated to respect your beliefs. Don’t ask others for what you don’t apply first on yourself.

In a fight between a shifter and a witch, the shifter would often win—but only if they could keep the witch from speaking, usually by severing the throat or tearing out the tongue. If the witch was powerful enough, and quick enough, physical size didn't matter. Catherine had heard of the horrible ways the witches could kill their victims. Cooking them alive from the inside out, restricting oxygen flow through the nasal and oral passages by creating a vacuum, drowning them with vapor pulled from the very air. It made fights between shifters look almost humane by comparison.

Japan held some 132,000 POWs from America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Holland, and Australia. Of those, nearly 36,000 died, more than one in every four.*1 Americans fared particularly badly; of the 34,648 Americans held by Japan, 12,935—more than 37 percent—died.*2 By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died. Japan murdered thousands of POWs on death marches, and worked thousands of others to death in slavery, including some 16,000 POWs who died alongside as many as 100,000 Asian laborers forced to build the Burma-Siam Railway. Thousands of other POWs were beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism. And as a result of being fed grossly inadequate and befouled food and water, thousands more died of starvation and easily preventable diseases. Of the 2,500 POWs at Borneo’s Sandakan camp, only 6, all escapees, made it to September 1945 alive. Left out of the numbing statistics are untold numbers of men who were captured and killed on the spot or dragged to places like Kwajalein, to be murdered without the world ever learning their fate.

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no “normal,” because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. You can’t compare your relationship with the playful couple who lives next door, because they’re probably modeling themselves after Chandler Bing and Monica Geller. Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool.

How lame it is for me to sit in some cushy living room watching Apocalypse Now, on videocassette no less. You think you have pain? That guy went up the river to kill a guy. I’m sitting in a suburban living room on a plush carpet with Search and Destroy tattooed on my back and I’m watching the real thing, it makes touring seem rather easy in comparison. I

Comparison is a trap. It will kill our joy. It will rob us of our peace. It makes us act foolish and stupid. It causes dissension and division in the body of Christ. It creates terrible tension in our relationships with others. So here’s what you need to focus on: Let God use you the way he sees fit to do so. Embrace what he is doing in and through your life.

Another site of Leftist struggle [other than Detroit] that has parallels to New Orleans: Palestine. From the central role of displacement to the ways in which culture and community serve as tools of resistance, there are illuminating comparisons to be made between these two otherwise very different places. In the New Orleans Black community, death is commemorated as a public ritual (it's often an occasion for a street party), and the deceased are often also memorialized on t-shirts featuring their photos embellished with designs that celebrate their lives. Worn by most of the deceased's friends and family, these t-shirts remind me of the martyr posters in Palestine, which also feature a photo and design to memorialize the person who has passed on. In Palestine, the poster's subjects are anyone who has been killed by the occupation, whether a sick child who died at a checkpoint or an armed fighter killed in combat. In New Orleans, anyone with family and friends can be memorialized on a t-shift. But a sad truth of life in poor communities is that too many of those celebrate on t-shirts lost their lives to violence. For both New Orleans and Palestine, outsiders often think that people have become so accustomed to death by violence that it has become trivialized by t-shirts and posters. While it's true that these traditions wouldn't manifest in these particular ways if either population had more opportunities for long lives and death from natural causes, it's also far from trivial to find ways to celebrate a life. Outsiders tend to demonize those killed--especially the young men--in both cultures as thugs, killers, or terrorists whose lives shouldn't be memorialized in this way, or at all. But the people carrying on these traditions emphasize that every person is a son or daughter of someone, and every death should be mourned, every life celebrated.

He was staring at my face. His eyes couldn't leave my eyes and his flesh was already dying with the fear inside him. He tried to talk and made only harsh breathing sounds. He raised his hands as if I were something evil and he had to keep me away. I was evil. I was evil for the good. I was evil and he knew it. I was worse than they were, so much worse that they couldn't stand the comparison. I had one, good, efficient, enjoyable way of getting rid of cancerous Commies. I killed them.

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

legitimate comparison must begin with life rather than death. Death is not a solution, but only a subject. It must be a source of disquiet, never of satisfaction. It must not, above all, supply the rounding rhetorical flourish that brings a story to a defined end. Since life gives meaning to death, rather than the other way around, the important question is not: what political, intellectual, literary, or psychological closure can be drawn from the fact of mass killing? Closure is a false harmony, a siren song masquerading as a swan song. The important question is: how could (how can) so many human lives be brought to a violent end?

LOVE AND HATE There has never been a great "love" movement in the history of the world that hasn't wound up killing countless numbers of people, we must assume, to prove how much they loved them! Every hypocrite who ever walked the earth has had pockets bulging with love! Every pharisaical religionist claims to love his enemies, every thought when wronged he consoles himself by thinking "God will punish them". Instead of admitting to themselves that they are capable of hating their foes and treating them in the manner they deserve, they say: "There, but for the grace of God, go I," and "pray" for them. Why should we humiliate and lower ourselves by drawing such inaccurate comparisons?

To live without comparison, to live without any kind of measurement inwardly, never to compare what you are with what you should be. The word 'meditation' means not only to ponder, to think over, to probe, to look, to weigh; it also has a much deeper meaning in Sanskrit - to measure, which is `to become'. In meditation there must be no measurement. This meditation must not be a conscious meditation in deliberately chosen postures. This meditation must be totally unconscious, never knowing that you are meditating. If you deliberately meditate it is another form of desire, as any other expression of desire. The objects may vary; your meditation may be to reach the highest, but the motive is the desire to achieve, as the business man, as the builder of a great cathedral. Meditation is a movement without any motive, without words and the activity of thought. It must be something that is not deliberately set about. Only then is meditation a movement in the infinite, measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and without a beginning. And that has a strange action in daily life, because all life is one and then becomes sacred. And that which is sacred can never be killed. To kill another is unholy. It cries to heaven as a bird kept in a cage. One never realizes how sacred life is, not only your little life but the lives of millions of others, from the things of nature to extraordinary human beings. And in meditation which is without measurement, there is the very action of that which is most noble, most sacred and holy.

In Uprooting Racism, Paul Kivel makes a useful comparison between the rhetoric abusive men employ to justify beating up their girlfriends, wives, or children and the publicly traded justifications for widespread racism. He writes: During the first few years that I worked with men who are violent I was continually perplexed by their inability to see the effects of their actions and their ability to deny the violence they had done to their partners or children. I only slowly became aware of the complex set of tactics that men use to make violence against women invisible and to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. These tactics are listed below in the rough order that men employ them.… (1) Denial: “I didn’t hit her.” (2) Minimization: “It was only a slap.” (3) Blame: “She asked for it.” (4) Redefinition: “It was mutual combat.” (5) Unintentionality: “Things got out of hand.” (6) It’s over now: “I’ll never do it again.” (7) It’s only a few men: “Most men wouldn’t hurt a woman.” (8) Counterattack: “She controls everything.” (9) Competing victimization: “Everybody is against men.” Kivel goes on to detail the ways these nine tactics are used to excuse (or deny) institutionalized racism. Each of these tactics also has its police analogy, both as applied to individual cases and in regard to the general issue of police brutality. Here are a few examples: (1) Denial. “The professionalism and restraint … was nothing short of outstanding.” “America does not have a human-rights problem.” (2) Minimization. Injuries were “of a minor nature.” “Police use force infrequently.” (3) Blame. “This guy isn’t Mr. Innocent Citizen, either. Not by a long shot.” “They died because they were criminals.” (4) Redefinition. It was “mutual combat.” “Resisting arrest.” “The use of force is necessary to protect yourself.” (5) Unintentionality. “[O]fficers have no choice but to use deadly force against an assailant who is deliberately trying to kill them.…” (6) It’s over now. “We’re making changes.” “We will change our training; we will do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.” (7) It’s only a few men. “A small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use-of-force incidents.” “Even if we determine that the officers were out of line … it is an aberration.” (8) Counterattack. “The only thing they understand is physical force and pain.” “People make complaints to get out of trouble.” (9) Competing victimization. The police are “in constant danger.” “[L]iberals are prejudiced against police, much as many white police are biased against Negroes.” The police are “the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America.” Another commonly invoked rationale for justifying police violence is: (10) The Hero Defense. “These guys are heroes.” “The police routinely do what the rest of us don’t: They risk their lives to keep the peace. For that selfless bravery, they deserve glory, laud and honor.” “[W]ithout the police … anarchy would be rife in this country, and the civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish.” “[T]hey alone stand guard at the upstairs door of Hell.

it’s a long lane that has no turning,” “the weariest day draws to an end,” etc., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor. It showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men’s work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does NOT take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. The

The 36 unarmed black male victims of police shootings in 2015 measured against the total black male population (nearly 19 million in mid-2014, Per the Census Bureau) amounts to a per capita rate of 0.0000018 unarmed fatalities by police. In comparison, 52 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed while engaged in such duties as traffic stops and warrant service in 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The FBI counted close to 628,000 full-time law enforcement officers in 2014. Assuming that the number of officers did not markedly increase in 2015, the per capita rate of officers being feloniously killed is 0.000081. The Memorial Fund does not have data on the race of cop-killers in 2015, but applying the historical percentages would yield 21 cops killed by blacks in 2015. An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 0.000033.

The victims of right-wing violence are typically immigrants, Muslims, and people of color, while the targets of environmental and animal rights activism are among “the most powerful corporations on the planet” — hence the state’s relative indifference to the one and obsession with the other. The broader pattern helps to explain one partial exception to the left/right gap in official scrutiny—namely, the domestic aspects of the “War on Terror.” Al Qaeda is clearly a reactionary organization. Like much of the American far right, it is theocratic, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal. Like Timothy McVeigh, the 9/11 hijackers attacked symbols of institutional power, killing a great many innocent people to further their cause. But while the state’s bias favors the right over the left, the Islamists were the wrong kind of right-wing fanatic. These right-wing terrorists were foreigners, they were Muslim, and above all they were not white. And so, in retrospect and by comparison, the state’s response to the Oklahoma City bombing seems relatively restrained—short-lived, focused, selectively targeting unlawful behavior for prosecution. The government’s reaction to the September 11th attacks has been something else entirely — an open-ended war fought at home and abroad, using all variety of legal, illegal, and extra-legal military, police, and intelligence tactics, arbitrarily jailing large numbers of people and spying on entire communities of immigrants, Muslims, and Middle Eastern ethnic groups. At the same time, law enforcement was also obsessively pursuing — and sometimes fabricating—cases against environmentalists, animal rights activists, and anarchists while ignoring or obscuring racist violence against people of color. What that shows, I think, is that the left/right imbalance persists, but sometimes other biases matter more.

What are the heights, and depths, and lengths, of human science, with all the boasted acquisitions of the brightest genius of mankind! Learning and science can measure the globe, can sound the depths of the sea, can compass the heavens, can mete out the distances of the sun and moon, and mark out the path of every twinkling star for many ages past, or ages to come; but they cannot acquaint us with the way of salvation from this long, this endless distress. What are all the sublime reasonings of philosophers upon the abstruse and most difficult subjects? What is the whole circle of sciences which human wit and thought can trace out and comprehend? Can they deliver us from the guilt of one sin? Can they free us from one of the terrors of the Almighty? Can they assuage the torment of a wounded spirit, or guard us from the impressions of divine indignation? Alas, they are all but trifles in comparison of this blessed Gospel, which saves us from eternal anguish and death. It is the Gospel that teaches us the holy skill to prevent this worm of conscience from gnawing the soul, and instructs us how to kill it in the seed and first springs of it, to mortify the corruptions of the heart, to resist the temptations of Satan, and where to wash away the guilt of sin. It is this blessed Gospel that clearly discovers to us how we may guard against the fire of divine wrath, or rather how to secure our souls from becoming the fuel of it. It is this Book that teaches us to sprinkle the blood of Christ on a guilty conscience by faith, by receiving Him as sincere penitents, and thereby defends us from the angel of death and destruction. This is that experimental philosophy of the saints in Heaven whereby they have been released from the bonds of their sins, have been rescued from the curse of the law, and have been secured from the gnawing worm and devouring fire.

One of our greatest epidemics today is obesity. It is estimated that more than 500 million people suffer from obesity worldwide today, and that it kills more than three million people each year. In comparison, about 55,000 people are killed in war each year, which of course in no way suggests that we are overestimating the horror and seriousness of war – how could we? – but the little attention we give to obesity in comparison does suggest, however, that we are not taking the “war” we should be waging against obesity seriously. It seems that we overlook what a merciless killer and cause of pain that obesity and the overeating that leads to it really is: it increases the risk of heart disease (the most common cause of death worldwide), many kinds of cancer, type 2 diabetes, degenerative joint disease and mental problems such as depression and low self-esteem.[27] Fortunately, a lot seems to imply that we have a powerful and peaceful weapon at our hands that can help us overcome obesity: a vegan diet.

Before you start spouting off information you’ve been brainwashed with about evolution and the food chain, read on. Yes, humans have a high level of intelligence. Yes, we created weapons for hunting and fire for cooking. Yes, we found a way to mass-produce animals for consumption. However, if you study animals in the wild, you will note that they do not rely on anything other than their natural hunting ability, speed, strength, claws, teeth, and jaws. They have no tools or weapons. Now look at yourself. Look at your flimsy fingernails in comparison to an eagle’s talons. Look at your flat, blunt teeth compared to a lion’s fangs. Compare your speed and agility to that of a tiger. Compare the strength of your jaw to a wolf’s. Imagine yourself trying to run after an animal, catch it, and kill it using your bare hands, fingernails, teeth, and jaws. Not only would you look ridiculous, but you’d probably get your ass kicked, too. And even if you were successful, envision yourself eating the kill without the aid of an oven and silverware.

At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the [Page 9] ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilization were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthaśāstra (p. 152f). No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu (p. 126). In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of noncombatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity.

point of comparison, over the previous century, during which it had expanded its empire to five continents, the British Empire had been involved in some forty different conflicts around the globe—colonial insurrections mostly, but including the Crimean and Boer wars—and had lost some forty thousand soldiers in the process. Over the next four years, it would lose over twenty times that number. In the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, France had suffered an estimated 270,000 battlefield casualties; in the present war, it was to surpass that number in the first three weeks. In this conflict, Germany would see 13 percent of its military-age male population killed, Serbia 15 percent of its total population, while in just a two-year span, 1913 to 1915, the life expectancy of a French male would drop from fifty years to twenty-seven. So inured would the architects of the carnage become to such statistics that at the launch of his 1916 Somme offensive, British general Douglas Haig could look over the first day’s casualty rolls—with fifty-eight thousand Allied soldiers dead or wounded, it remains the bloodiest single day in the history of the English-speaking world—and judge that the numbers “cannot be considered severe.” The effect of all this on the collective European

In its rampage over the east, Japan had brought atrocity and death on a scale that staggers the imagination. In the midst of it were the prisoners of war. Japan held some 132,000 POWs from America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Holland, and Australia. Of those, nearly 36,000 died, more than one in every four.* Americans fared particularly badly; of the 34,648 Americans held by Japan, 12,935—more than 37 percent—died.* By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died. Japan murdered thousands of POWs on death marches, and worked thousands of others to death in slavery, including some 16,000 POWs who died alongside as many as 100,000 Asian laborers forced to build the Burma-Siam Railway. Thousands of other POWs were beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism. And as a result of being fed grossly inadequate and befouled food and water, thousands more died of starvation and easily preventable diseases. Of the 2,500 POWs at Borneo’s Sandakan camp, only 6, all escapees, made it to September 1945 alive. Left out of the numbing statistics are untold numbers of men who were captured and killed on the spot or dragged to places like Kwajalein, to be murdered without the world ever learning their fate. In accordance with the kill-all order, the Japanese massacred all 5,000 Korean captives on Tinian, all of the POWs on Ballale, Wake, and Tarawa, and all but 11 POWs at Palawan. They were evidently about to murder all the other POWs and civilian internees in their custody when the atomic bomb brought their empire crashing down. On the morning of September 2, 1945, Japan signed its formal surrender. The Second World War was over.

Entrenched myth: Successful leaders in a turbulent world are bold, risk-seeking visionaries. Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. Entrenched myth: Innovation distinguishes 10X companies in a fast-moving, uncertain, and chaotic world. Contrary finding: To our surprise, no. Yes, the 10X cases innovated, a lot. But the evidence does not support the premise that 10X companies will necessarily be more innovative than their less successful comparisons; and in some surprise cases, the 10X cases were less innovative. Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card we expected; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. Entrenched myth: A threat-filled world favors the speedy; you’re either the quick or the dead. Contrary finding: The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to. Entrenched myth: Radical change on the outside requires radical change on the inside. Contrary finding: The 10X cases changed less in reaction to their changing world than the comparison cases. Just because your environment is rocked by dramatic change does not mean that you should inflict radical change upon yourself. Entrenched myth: Great enterprises with 10X success have a lot more good luck. Contrary finding: The 10X companies did not generally have more luck than the comparisons. Both sets had luck—lots of luck, both good and bad—in comparable amounts. The critical question is not whether you’ll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.

Worldly morality and love for Krishna. (18/43 Mall Road, Kanpur, December 1, 1927)   Bless me so that I can dedicate my life to fulfilling Śrī Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s desire and glorifying the Supreme Lord, which is the goal of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Śrī Gaurasundara has been established at Kurukṣetra, which is a center for vipralambha-rasa. His service has now been introduced at Naimiṣāraṇya, which is the place for Bhāgavata recitation. Next year, Śrī Gaurasundara may be installed in Vṛndāvana. I have visited Puṣkara, Dvārakā, Gopīsarovara, Prabhāsa, Sudāmāpurī, and Avantipura. Yet, even after seeing these seven major holy places that award liberation, I am not being liberated because of not engaging in the service of all of you. It is not that I do not have a desire to serve Lord Krishna in a liberated state. Since today I remembered the Bhagavad-gītā verses, api cet suduracāra (9.30), sarvadharmān parityajya (18.66), yat karoṣi yad aśnāsī (9.27), and yā prītiravivekīnāṁ, as well as the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam verse, janmādasya (1.1.1), I wrote this letter to disturb you. Ethical principles and moral rules are best according to material considerations. I have no second opinion about this. But since love of Krishna is most relishable, moral rules are not superior to nor more relishable than Krishna. In fact, there is no comparison. Many people do not like the way Lord Krishna forcibly killed the washerman in Mathurā and took away the clothes, garlands, etc., They may think that sincere premika bhaktas, who are under the shelter of the transcendental parakīya-rasa, are less ethical, but love for Hari has such a wonderful power that even a greatly delightful moral standard becomes dim in front of it. The code of conduct that is found when one becomes absorbed in service to Krishna, giving up all impediments that come in its way and are born of “a sense of duty,” should be ardently respected. Unless a chanter is considerate, he does not attain devotional service, and if devotional service is not attained, then a mundane sense of duty and a doubting temperament do not go away.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants," wrote Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. In the original and primary sense of lacks or needs, wants tend to structure our vision of government's responsibilities. The quest for security - whether economic, physical, psychological, or military - brings a sense of urgency to politics and is one of the enduring sources of passion in policy controversies. Need is probably the most fundamental political claim. Even toddlers know that need carries more weight than desire or deservingness. They learn early to counter a rejected request by pleading, "I need it." To claim need is to claim that one should be given the resources or help because they are essential. Of course, this raises the question "essential for what?" In conflicts over security, the central issues are what kind of security government should attempt to provide; what kinds of needs it should attempt to meet; and how the burdens of making security a collective responsibility should be distributed. Just as most people are all for equity and efficiency in the abstract, most people believe that society should help individuals and families when they are in dire need. But beneath this consensus is a turbulent and intense conflict over how to distinguish need from mere desire, and how to preserve a work - or - merit based system of economic distribution in the face of distribution according to need. Defining need for purposes of public programs become much an exercise like defining equity and efficiency. People try to portray their needs as being objective, and policymakers seek to portray their program criteria as objective, in order to put programs beyond political dispute. As with equity and efficiency, there are certain recurring strategies of argument that can be used to expand or contract a needs claim. In defense policy, relative need is far more important than absolute. Our sense of national security (and hence our need for weapons) depends entirely on comparison with the countries we perceive as enemies. And here Keynes is probably right: The need for weapons can only be satisfied by feeling superior to "them." Thus, it doesn't matter how many people our warheads can kill or how many cities they can destroy. What matters is what retaliatory capacity we have left after an attack by the other side, or whether our capacity to sustain an offense is greater than their capacity to destroy it. The paradox of nuclear weapons is that the more security we gain in terms of absolute capability (i.e., kill potential), the more insecure we make ourselves with respect to the consequences of nuclear explosions. We gain superiority only by producing weapons we ourselves are terrified to use.

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick—"Fire! for God's sake fire!"—and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.

Gilbert computed that the average IQ for the twenty-one Nazi defendants, with a high of 143 and a low of 106, was 128—falling in the superior to very superior range of intellectual abilities. (For purposes of comparison, the average IQ is 100; that of college graduates is 118; that of doctoral students is 125.)

the words good and evil are judgments of what others think is right and wrong, not symbols of reality.  The truth of the matter is that the words good and evil can only have reference to what is a benefit or a hurt to oneself.  Killing someone may be good in comparison to the evil of having that person kill me.  The reason someone commits suicide is not because he is compelled to do this against his will, but only because the alternative of continuing to live under certain conditions is considered worse. 

Comparison kills...There will always be someone ahead of you and someone behind you in life...When you see someone behind you...feel blessed for you are ahead of them...When you see someone ahead of you...feel inspired for your own growth...Compare yourself to YOU of yesterday, if that's what you like to do...so you can become better today !

And those stats don’t figure to improve anytime soon. While Amtrak isn’t currently in danger of being killed, it also isn’t likely to do more than barely survive. Last month, the House of Representatives agreed to fund Amtrak for the next four years at a rate of $1.4 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Chinese government—fair comparison or not—will be spending $128 billion this year on rail. (Thanks to the House bill, though, Amtrak passengers can look forward to a new provision allowing cats and dogs on certain trains.)

Riyadh’s strategy of turning militant Sunnism into a growth stock raised few Western eyebrows right through the 1990s, when Iran and its brand of Shia extremism still seemed to be the most dangerous face of Islam and the main threats to Western interests. It was the Shia who popped first into Western minds when Westerners thought about anti-Americanism, revolution, terrorism, hostage-taking, and suicide bomb attacks. The political fervor that emanated from Tehran and the kind of violence that it perpetrated were seen as flowing naturally from the Shias’ apocalyptic bent and cult of martyrdom. Even hotheaded Sunnis seemed less dangerous by comparison. They may have been hard-shell reactionaries who despised modern and Western ways, the thinking went, but they entertained no religious doctrines bloodthirsty enough to match those of the Shia, with their fixation on killing and dying for the cause. This inclined the West toward complacency when it came to Sunni extremism and its spread, first to Pakistan, then to Talibanera Afghanistan, and then across Central Asia. Also largely unnoticed was Sunni sectarianism’s role in the horrors visited upon Iraq’s Shias after the first Gulf war and the failed uprising of 1991.

The dangers of children getting into guns pale in comparison to many other risks. Over 1,260 children under ten died as a result of motor vehicles in 1999, and almost another 370 died as pedestrians killed by cars.101 Accidents involving residential fires took 484 children’s lives in 1999. Bicycles are also much more likely to result in accidental deaths than guns.102 Ninety-three children under ten drowned in bathtubs; another thirty-six children under age five drowned in five-gallon plastic water buckets.103 More children under five drown in this one type of water bucket than children under ten die from any type of accidental gunshot. Strangely, none of our doctors asked questions about whether we kept our buckets stored away or our bathroom doors locked.

After 'cat', Lilah next learned 'flower'. Flowers (scrunch up nose as if sniffing) were everywhere, first only outside on plants, but soon she generalized to flowers on her clothes or her shoes, or in pictures in books and magazines. I wanted to hook up wires and do experiments and comparisons and studies to understand it all. 'You want to do what?' Diane would say. But really, who wouldn't?

Whoa,” I murmured, trying to calm the animal enough to set it loose, not wanting it to come to harm. I gripped the reins, but the horse, its eyes wild with fear, snapped its head back, catching my hand in the leather strap, and I inhaled sharply from the sting. How long had the poor thing been out here? My senses on full alert, I glanced behind me at the busy street, weighing my options. Seeing no one, I hoisted up my skirt, and unsheathed the dagger I had kept. The instant I cut the reins, the horse bolted past me, almost knocking me over. Its owner would not be happy, but at least the animal would live to see another day. It wasn’t until someone clamped an arm around my waist, seizing the knife, that I realized I was no longer alone. So much for having reliable senses. “Well, aren’t you just incorrigible?” Imprisonment or execution was the punishment for bearing weapons in this new Hytanica. The dagger itself was a small loss, but I had to get away. I brought my elbow back, my mother’s reluctance to let me leave the house flashing like lightning in my brain. If I were arrested, killed, she would never forgive herself, even though she would bear no fault. “Empress, the bruises you’ve given me are too many to count!” I whirled around, dismayed that I had not succeeded in getting the Cokyrian to release me, at the same time recognizing the voice and the curse. Saadi pushed me against the side of the shop, leaning in so close to me that I could feel his breath upon my cheek, and his pale blue eyes stared me into submission. “I can’t call you a horse thief for what you just did,” he told me, glancing after the gelding. “At least, not a very good horse thief. But I can, and I must, bring you in for this little utensil of yours. Some niece of the captain you are.” “Are you going to take me to your sister?” I spat, and he grimaced, contemplating me for an instant before disregarding the barb. Gripping me by the upper arm, he hauled me toward the thoroughfare. “Come on. To the Bastion.” Though my question about Rava appeared to have had its intended effect, I was numb with fear. What if he did take me to her? Rava had been the one to order me lashed for my failed prank, she’d been the one to inflict punishment upon Steldor. It seemed no one could exert control over her, a thought that made me ill. The nearer we came to our destination, the more rapidly my heart beat, and by the time we reached the palace gates, I was again fighting Saadi. “Let…me…go!” I howled, unexpectedly pulling out of his grasp, but one of the Cokyrian sentries caught me, laughing at my plight. “Need some help, Saadi?” the burly man offered, shoving me back at my captor, who was rather slight in comparison to his comrade. “No,” Saadi grumbled and the sentry moved ahead to open the gates for us. As we passed through, the large man called, “Rava is at the city headquarters, minding the peacekeeping force. If you were looking for her, that is.” “I wasn’t.” Even though my circumstances were inarguably bleak, a wave of relief washed over me. She, at least, would not be the one to show me the error of my ways.

Cooper smiled. “You feel weird yet? Pulling the trigger is easy, but the stuff afterwards will bother you.” “I’ll be honest, Cooper. If you wanted me to kill a kid or a woman, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m not hardcore and you shouldn’t think what I did proved I was. Corbin was a dead man walking. Someone was killing him. It just happened to be me.” Studying me, Cooper smiled. “I don’t want blood thirsty freaks, you know? A lot of clubs have violent muscle. That might sound great, but try controlling the fuckers. I prefer obedient dogs to the rabid ones.” “Thanks for comparing me to a dog.” “You’re welcome,” he said, smirking.

The massacre of 1622 appeared to have been devastating in the Bermuda area and led to its temporary abandonment. The list of those killed is, however, rather light in comparison with settlements such as Martin's Hundred. There were twenty-seven at four specified points. It leads one to doubt that a full list of names was submitted.

What had Subhash told Bela, to keep her away? Nothing, probably. It was the just punishment for her crime. She understood now what it meant to walk away from her child. It had been her own act of killing. A connection she had severed, resulting in a death that applied only to the two of them. It was a crime worse than anything Udayan had committed. She had never written to Bela. Never dared reach out, to reassure her. What reassurance was hers to give? What she’d done could never be undone. Her silence, her absence, seemed decent in comparison.

Now just a word about zoos. Many folks think that animals in a zoo know no comforts; nothing but constant fright from living in captivity. Such folks do not stop to think of a thing or two about an animal’s wild condition. Wild animals must not only constantly hunt for food, but invariably fight to kill it and to hold it, too; for, in such a fight, a big antagonist will naturally win from a small individual. Thus, what food is found, is also lost; and hunting must go on, day by day, or night by night until a tragic climax—by thirst or starvation. But in a zoo, food is brought daily, with facility for drinking, and laid right in front of hoofs, paws or bills. For small animals, roofs and thick walls ward off cold winds and rain; and so, days of calm inactivity, daily naps without worrying about attack; and a carting away of all rubbish and filth soon puts a zoo animal in bodily form which has no comparison with its wild condition. Lack of room in which to climb, roam or play, may bring a zoo animal to that condition known as “soft”; but, as it now has no call for vigor, and its fighting passions find no opportunity for display, such an animal is gradually approaching that condition which has brought Man, who is only an animal, anyway, to his lofty point in Natural History, today. Truly, with such tribulations, worry, and hard work as Man puts up with to obtain his food and lodging, a zoo animal, if it could only know of our daily grind, would comfortably yawn, thankful that Man is so kindly looking out for it. With similar animals all around it, and, day by day, just a happy growth from cub-hood to maturity, I almost wish that I was a zoo animal, with no boss to growl about my not showing up, mornings, at a customary hour!

Flow is a rush like no other. If you want grounds for comparison, consider the current use-abuse rates for mood-altering, mind-altering, and performance-enhancing drugs: In America, over 22 percent of the population has an illicit drug problem; one out of ten take antidepressants; 26 percent of kids are on stimulants, purportedly for ADHD, anecdotally for performance enhancement. And prescription drugs? They’ve just surpassed car accidents as the number one cause of accidental death. Add this up and you’ll find a trillion-dollar public-health crisis. Now consider what these abused drugs do. The primary illicit drug of choice is marijuana—that triggers the release of anandamide. Antidepressants are some combination of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin; tobacco and ADHD drugs affect dopamine and norepinephrine; and prescription drugs of abuse are opioids like Oxycontin—meaning they affect the endorphin system. In other words, Americans are literally killing themselves trying to achieve artificially the same sensations that flow produces naturally. Of course, as a perfect endogenous combination of these drugs, flow is also a major rush. But unlike the dead-end highs currently plaguing public health, flow doesn’t sidetrack one’s life; it revitalizes it.

36 million Chinese died from starvation during the Great Famine. As a comparison, the Holocaust killed 6 million Jews. Every educated person in the world knows about the Holocaust. How many in the world have heard of China’s Great Famine?

It's been a few decades since I last saw one of you,' Lucien drawled, 'but you humans never change, so I don't think I'm wrong in asking why you find our company to be so unpleasant, when surely the men back home aren't much to look at.' At the other end of the table, Tamlin gave his emissary a long, warning look. Lucien ignored it. 'You're High Fae,' I said tightly. 'I'd ask why you'd even bother inviting me here at all- or dining with me.' Fool- I should have been killed ten times over already. Lucien said. 'True. But indulge me: you're a human woman, and yet you'd rather eat hot coals than sit here longer than necessary. Ignoring this'- he waved a hang at the metal eye and brutal scar on his face- 'surely we're not so miserable to look at.' Typical faerie vanity and arrogance. That, at least, the legends have been right about. I tucked the knowledge away. 'Unless you have someone back home. Unless there's a line of suitors out the door of your hovel that makes us seem like worms in comparison.

Some 50 Americans were killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing, for a total of 94 casualties. According to Gage, the Redcoats suffered 65 killed, 157 wounded, and 27 missing, for a total of 272 casualties.41 The patriots exhibited excellent marksmanship for shooting flintlocks in anger, many for the first time in their lives. By comparison, U.S. forces in Vietnam expended 50,000 rounds to cause a single enemy casualty.

Let’s face it: what dangers do we encounter these days? The threats we face are no comparison to the hunter-gatherer days from Man’s earliest history. In fact, life is easy, even when you compare it to several centuries ago. When we started the agricultural revolution, 10.000 years ago, people were killing each other over land every day. That continued for centuries. If it wasn’t war that was killing us, it was an epidemic that would. We have only found cures for most diseases in recent history. But the days of war and widespread disease are behind us. Thousands of years of civilization have made life gradually easier. And fear is no longer protecting us but has turned into our worst enemy.

Listen to his performance of “Boys of Kilmichael” in London’s Brixton Academy on St. Patrick’s Day, 1994. Then compare that to any other version of the song – Jimmy Crowley, Donie Carroll, or Oliver Kane. There is no comparison. The others are pretty. MacGowan makes you want to go out and kill an Englishman. Isn’t that what rebel songs are supposed to do?

All who have come into relationship with Him know His presence, power, splendor, and majesty are unfathomable and beyond comparison. He’s so mighty that some of the most powerful beings in the universe, called seraphim, continually stand in awe in heaven and piercingly cry out to each other about His awesome greatness. These massive beings do this with such passion and strength that their voices shake the doorposts of an enormous arena in heaven that likely holds more than a billion beings.

Detteras said thoughtfully, “You know, I think it only fair that you leave the filament here. Why victimize us?” “I don’t plan to be killed, Mr. Detteras.” “Your plans might go awry.” “If so, your troubles will seem very trivial in comparison to mine. May I have my weapons?

(2) The sense of their own sinfulness will be overruled for the good of the godly. Thus our own sins shall work for good. This must be understood warily, when I say the sins of the godly work for good - not that there is the least good in sin. Sin is like poison, which corrupts the blood, infects the heart, and, without a sovereign antidote, brings death. Such is the venomous nature of sin, it is deadly and damning. Sin is worse than hell, but yet God, by His mighty over ruling power, makes sin in the issue turn to the good of His people. Hence that golden saying of Augustine, ‘God would never permit evil, if He could not bring good out of evil.’ The feeling of sinfulness in the saints works for good several ways. (a) Sin makes them weary of this life. That sin is in the godly is sad, but that it is a burden is good. St. Paul’s afflictions (pardon the expression) were but a play to him, in comparison of his sin. He rejoiced in tribulation (2 Corinthians 7:4). But how did this bird of paradise weep and bemoan himself under his sins! ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Romans 7:24). A believer carries his sins as a prisoner his shackles; oh, how does he long for the day of release! This sense of sin is good. (b) This inbeing of corruption makes the saints prize Christ more. He that feels his sin, as a sick man feels his sickness, how welcome is Christ the physician to him! He that feels himself stung with sin, how precious is the brazen serpent to him! When Paul had cried out of a body of death, how thankful was he for Christ! ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 7:25). Christ’s blood saves from sin, and is the sacred ointment which kills this quicksilver.

Your wish, my command.’ Marcel sprawled on the couch while I started the movie, fast-forwarding through the opening credits. When I perched on the edge of the sofa in front of him, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his chest. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as a sofa cushion would be, what with his chest being hard and cold-and perfect-as an ice sculpture, but it was preferable. He pulled the old afghan off the back of the couch and draped it over me, so I wouldn't freeze beside his body. ‘You know, I've never had much patience with Romeo,’ he commented as the movie started. ‘What's wrong with Romeo?’ I asked, a little offended. Romeo was one of my favorite fictional characters. Until I'd met Marcel, I'd had a thing for him. ‘Well, first, he's in love with this Rosaline-don't you think it makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his happiness any more thoroughly?’ I sighed. ‘Do you want me to watch this alone?’ ‘No, I'll mostly be watching you, anyway.’ His fingers traced patterns across the skin of my arm, raising goosebumps. ‘Will you cry?’ ‘Probably,’ I admitted, ‘if I'm paying attention.’ ‘I won't distract you then.’ But I felt his lips on my hair, and it was very distracting. The movie eventually captured my interest, thanks in large part to Marcel whispering Romeo's lines in my ear-his irresistible, velvet voice made the actor's voice sound week and coarse by comparison. And I did cry, to his amusement, when Juliet woke and found her new husband dead. ‘I'll admit, I do sort of envy him here, ‘Marcel said, drying the tears with a lock of my hair.

No, I'll mostly be watching you, anyway.’ His fingers traced patterns across the skin of my arm, raising goosebumps. ‘Will you cry?’ ‘Probably,’ I admitted, ‘if I'm paying attention.’ ‘I won't distract you then.’ But I felt his lips on my hair, and it was very distracting. The movie eventually captured my interest, thanks in large part to Marcel whispering Romeo's lines in my ear-his irresistible, velvet voice made the actor's voice sound week and coarse by comparison. And I did cry, to his amusement, when Juliet woke and found her new husband dead. ‘I'll admit, I do sort of envy him here, ‘Marcel said, drying the tears with a lock of my hair. ‘She's very pretty.’ He made a disgusted sound. ‘I don't envy him the girl-just the ease of the suicide,’ he clarified in a teasing tone. ‘You humans have it so easy! All you have to do is throw down one tiny vial of plant extracts…’ ‘What?’ I gasped. ‘It's something I had to think about once, and I knew from Chiaz's experience that it wouldn't be simple. I'm not even sure how many ways Chiaz tried to kill himself in the beginning… after he realized what he'd become…’ His voice, which had grown serious, turned light again. ‘And he's still in excellent health.’ I twisted around so that I could read his face. ‘What are you talking about?’ I demanded. ‘What do you mean, this something you had to think about once?’ ‘Last spring, when you were… nearly killed…’ He paused to take a deep breath, snuggling to return to his teasing tone. ‘Of course, I was trying to focus on finding you alive, but part of my mind was making contingency plans. As I said, it's not as easy for me as it is for a human.’ For one second, the memory of my last trip to Phoenix washed over my head and made me feel dizzy. I could see it all so clearly-the the blinding sun, the heat waves coming off the concrete as I ran with desperate haste to find the sadistic angel who wanted to torture me to death. James, waiting in the mirrored room with my mother as his hostage-or so I'd thought. I hadn't known it was all a ruse. Just as James hadn't known that Marcel was racing to save me; Marcel made it in time, but it had been a close one. Unthinkingly, my fingers traced the crescent-shaped scar on my hand that was always just a few degrees cooler than the rest of my skin. I shook my head as if I could shake away the bad memories and tried to grasp what Marcel meant. My stomach plunged uncomfortably. ‘Contingency plans?’ I repeated. ‘Well, I wasn't going to live without you.’ He rolled his eyes as if that fact were childishly obvious. ‘But I wasn't sure how to do it- I knew Emmah and Joh would never help… so I was thinking maybe I would go to Italy and do something to provoke the Ministry.’ I didn't want to believe he was serious, but his golden eyes were brooding, focused on something far away in the distance as he contemplated ways to end his own life. Abruptly, I was furious. ‘What is Vulture?’ I demanded. ‘The Ministry is a family,’ he explained, his eyes still remote. ‘A very old, very powerful family of our kind. They are the closest thing our world has to a royal family, I suppose. Chiaz lived with them briefly in his early years, in Italy, before he settled in America-do you remember the story?’ ‘Of course, I remember.

Prince Arjuna, though born into the warrior estate, was at heart a peace-loving man. When the two colossal armies lined up on opposite sides, he began to have serious doubts about his task. It was not so much personal fear of death that swayed his heart but, rather, acute moral qualms. Has anyone the right, he wondered, to use force in order to promote the larger good? His dilemma was greatly aggravated by the fact that among those whom he was supposed to fight—maim and possibly kill—were kinsmen and revered teachers. Arjuna’s duty as a warrior was clear enough; he had to fight. But the moment he contemplated the larger implications of this action, he was terrified to abide by his decision to reconquer his lost kingdom. Arjuna’s attitude is typical of human life itself. We are all the time engaged in decision-making or in decision-avoidance. The more consciously we live, the more we realize that life is really an incessant stream of potential decisions. Arjuna, as we know, did fight his war and also emerged victorious. But first he had to learn an important spiritual lesson. Lord Krishna, who acted as his charioteer, convinced the prince that his whole confusion was the result of a faulty perspective. The God-man demonstrated to the prince that the problem that caused him such anxiety was a problem conjured up by the ego. It had no existence apart from the ego. The divine teacher made Arjuna understand that we can never transcend our circumstances merely by closing our eyes, by avoiding action, by dropping out. Even avoidance is an action, which will have its inevitable repercussions since avoidance is rooted in the ego. What Lord Krishna recommended instead was a cognitive shift, a new view of the whole matter: away from the delimiting, anxious ego and toward the boundless Self. All action must be sacrifice, he explained. We must not hold on to any conventional ego-derived scheme. Only when we abandon the delusion that we, as ego-personalities, are the ultimate initiators of actions can we have knowledge of what is truly right and good. That is to say, when we discover the “witness,” the transcendental Self, we realize that life unfolds spontaneously and mysteriously, and that the ego is merely one of the countless forms arising within the flux of life. For the Hindu authorities, the general deterioration of spirituality and the decline of humanity’s psychological health in no way precludes the possibility of spiritual aspiration and success. It is nowhere denied that contemporary humanity, feeble as it may be in comparison to its ancestors, can swim against the stream. On the contrary, all spiritual teachings affirm that we must do our utmost to cultivate spiritual values in the midst of the great darkness surrounding us.

One thing that kills a man easily is COMPARISON. Know in your head and heart that you are different from others and not just only in appearance but also in everything. You won't be successful with your peer at the same time, and you won't have the same level of wealth. Accepting this, makes it easy for you to appreciate God and yourself.

a marked change occurred between 2019 and 2020. The dual crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests ran slam into the twin dangers of Q-Anon and the consolidation of the Trump paramilitary. In 2019, there were sixty-five incidents of domestic terrorism or attempted violence, but in the run-up to the election in 2020, that number nearly doubled, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Twenty-one plots were disrupted by law enforcement.5 Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization. Both are motivated by devotion to a charismatic leader, are successful at smashing political norms, and are promised a future racially homogeneous paradise. Modern American terrorists are much more akin to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) than they are to the old Ku Klux Klan. Though they take offense at that comparison, the similarities are quite remarkable. Most American extremists are not professional terrorists on par with their international counterparts. They lack operational proficiency and weapons. But they do not lack in ruthlessness, targets, or ideology. However, the overwhelming number of white nationalist extremists operate as lone wolves. Like McVeigh in the 1990s and others from the 1980s, they hope their acts will motivate the masses to follow in their footsteps. ISIS radicals who abandon their homes and immigrate to the Syria-Iraq border “caliphate” almost exclusively self-radicalize by watching terrorist videos. The Trump insurgents are radicalizing in the exact same way. Hundreds of tactical training videos easily accessible on social media show how to shoot, patrol, and fight like special forces soldiers. These video interviews and lessons explaining how to assemble body armor or make IEDs and extolling the virtues of being part of the armed resistance supporting Donald Trump fill Facebook and Instagram feeds. Some even call themselves the “Boojahideen,” an English take on the Arabic “mujahideen,” or holy warrior. U.S. insurgents in the making often watch YouTube and Facebook videos of tactical military operations, gear reviews, and shooting how-tos. They then go out to buy rifles, magazines, ammunition, combat helmets, and camouflage clothing and seek out other “patriots” to prepare for armed action. This is pure ISIS-like self-radicalization. One could call them Vanilla ISIS.

The newer tactic of scattering bodies on city streets, as happened when Joaquín Guzmán’s goons pushed thirty-five bloody corpses (twelve of them women) off two trucks on Manuel Ávila Camacho Boulevard, near a shopping mall in the prettier part of the port city of Veracruz one day in September 2011, to terrorize their adversaries... Guzmán, known as El Chapo (Shorty) for his small stature, ran the largest airborne opera- tion in Mexico; he owned more aircraft than Aeromexico, the national air- line. Between 2006 and 2015, Mexican authorities seized 599 aircraft — 586 planes and 13 helicopters—from the Sinaloa cartel; by comparison, Aeromexico had a piddling fleet of 127 planes.... One Zeta atrocity I knew nothing about took place in 2010, in the small town of San Fernando, south of Reynosa. A roaming band of Zetas stopped two buses of migrants—men, women, and children from Central and South America, who were fleeing the violence in their countries. The Zetas demanded money. The migrants had no money. The Zetas demanded that the migrants work for them, as assassins or operatives or drug mules. The migrants refused. So they were taken to a building in the village of El Huizachal, blindfolded, their hands and legs bound, and each one was shot in the head. Seventy-two of them died. One man (from Ecuador) played dead, escaped, and raised the alarm... The gory details of this massacre became known when one of the perpetrators was arrested, Édgar Huerta Montiel, an army deserter known as El Wache, or Fat Ass. He admitted killing eleven of the migrants person- ally, in the belief (so he said) that they were working for a gang hostile to his own. A year later, near the same town, police found 47 mass graves containing 193 corpses — mostly migrants or passengers in buses hijacked and robbed while passing through this area of Tamaulipas state, about eighty miles south of the US border... But in the early 2000s headless bodies began to appear, tossed by the roadside, while human heads were displayed in public, at intersections, and randomly on the roofs of cars. This butchery was believed to be inspired by a tactic of the Guatemalan military’s elite commandos, known as Kaibiles. A man I was to meet in Matamoros, on my traverse of the border, explained how the Kaibiles were toughened by their officers. The officers encouraged recruits to raise a dog from a puppy, then, at a certain point in their training, the recruit was ordered to kill the dog and eat it.... When the Kaibiles became mercenaries in the Mexican cartels, the first beheadings occurred, the earliest known taking place in 2006: a gang in Michoacán kicked open the doors of a bar and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. Decapitations are now, according to one authority on the business, “a staple in the lexicon of violence” for Mexican cartels....

Ana supposes she should be thankful for the anguish in her life. She should appreciate the formative pain forced on her under the guise of necessity and be grateful for the endless cycle of endings and beginnings. Death and resurrection. Every new experience ended in the death of her former self. The first time Ana had died was the night she was taken. That night marked the death of her innocence and the beginning of her new life. Her immaturity had been the next thing she had to sacrifice. Hardening herself in order to survive, sharpening her resolve and suppressing her disdain. Learning to inflict pain—training to kill. The day she met Katya was the only death she had welcomed. Katya reminded her there was life beyond the academy. Those crimson curls, a mirror image of the mother she had lost. Hope. Katya was hope. The last time she had died was the morning she escaped. Desperation had led her down a dark path. Her morals had been the last part of herself she had killed in order to live. The minor aches and pains seem so mundane in comparison now.

Religion says 'I've really fouled up; Dad is going to kill me.' Grace says 'I have really fouled up; I need to call Dad.'" This comparison highlights a profound shift from fear to relationship in our understanding of sin and its consequences.

You must have heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. Well, its usage has vanished from popular literature in recent years. What has taken its place is the comparison of the pen to a gun. This reflects, I hypothesize, the growing awareness that the act of writing kills quickly and from a great distance. Literature murders—not the reader, as one might expect, but the characters, who are no different from real people. Behind every character is a person out in the world whose sanctity is violated in the process of literary transfiguration. Every black letter on a white page is a bullet.

As Theodore Roosevelt explained: There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful businessman, or railway man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Littledenn’s numbers are small in comparison to the other villages. Still, they hold their own, setting fire to any savage crows that dare cross their path. Highly skilled archers—perched atop cottages—shoot arrows into enemy hearts while others fight with swords, spears, and even reaping hooks. They edge up enough of an advantage that I glance eastward, Raina Bloodgood heavy on my mind. At this rate, the people of Littledenn might annihilate the remains of this army, but I can’t take the chance they won’t. The Eastlanders are here to kill, though they may also take prisoners, and the possibility that a Seer could fall into enemy hands is too dangerous a thought. The Prince of the East has larger plans of destruction than this. He must. I won’t make it easier for him.

Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. ………. Entrenched myth: A threat filled world favors the speedy; you’re either the quick or the dead. Contrary finding: The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to. Entrenched myth: Radical change on the outside requires radical change on the inside. Contrary finding: The 10X cases changed less in reaction to their changing world than the comparison cases. Just because your environment is rocked by dramatic change does not mean that you should inflict radical change upon yourself.

Did I know that I had begun my life in a totalitarian state? How could I have? I didn't even realize I was being treated in a cruel and confusing way, something I would never have dreamed of suggesting. So rather than question my mother's behavior, I cast doubt on the rightness of my own feeling that I was being unjustly treated. As I had no point of comparison of her behavior with that of other mothers, and as she constantly portrayed herself as the embodiment of duty and self-sacrifice, I had no choice but to believe her. And, anyway, I had to believe her. To have realized the truth would have killed me. Therefore, it had to be my wickedness that was to blame when Mother didn't speak to me, when she refused to answer my questions and ignored my pleas for clarification, when she avoided the slightest eye contact with me and returned my love with coldness. If Mother hates me, reasoned the child, then I must be hateful.

I have a black Kia Optima and I'm dark with no tattoos. So where did the comparison look familiar? They were ready to kill with weapons drawn out. If I would've made one wrong move, somebody may have fired and shot me. The description they gave me was nothing like me, our cars were even two different types and colors. Would they have shot an innocent person if I would've moved the wrong way? 

Thus we have it illustrated in the story of the snake who was sent to kill Hercules, when an infant in his cradle; [482:2] also in the story of Typhon, who sought the life of the infant Saviour Horus. Again, it is illustrated in the story of the virgin mother Astrea, with her babe beset by Orion, and of Latona, the mother of Apollo, when pursued by the monster. [482:3] And last, that of the virgin mother Mary, with her babe beset by Herod. But like Hercules, Horus, Apollo, Theseus, Romulus, Cyrus and other solar heroes, Christ Jesus has yet a long course before him. Like them, he grows up both wise and strong, and the "old Serpent" is discomfited by him, just as the sphynx and the dragon are put to night by others.

If love is only like a disease, where when you learn the disease for you to able to kill it. I would learn how to love so that I can kill it when it comes.

Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, endeavored to continue the old-time instructions. Each day before her academy stood a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. They came to listen to her discourses on those questions which man in all ages has asked, but which have never yet been answered: "What am I? Where am I? What can I know?" Hypatia and Cyril; philosophy and bigotry; they cannot exist together. As Hypatia repaired to her academy, she was assaulted by (Saint) Cyril's mob—a mob of many monks. Stripped naked in the street, she was dragged into a church, and there killed by the club of

Comparison can kill. It can put you in virtual chains and keep you locked down in a cage you build for yourself with your own words and thoughts.

No group of humans has ever been held in as low regard or exploited on anything close to the same level as non-human beings have been throughout history and still are today. No group of humans has ever been systematically bred, raised, killed, and eaten. No group of humans has ever been born and raised in order for people to make basketballs, wallets, or boots out of their skin. No, there is no comparison. No group of humans has ever truly been “treated like animals”.

But by any broad human rights criteria, the republican regimes of the region were responsible for far more killing, brutality, oppression and, often, corruption and theft of the people’s wealth than were the monarchies. Between, on the one side the Shah of Iran, Nuri Said of Iraq and King Faruq of Egypt and, on the other, the Islamic Republic, the Iraqi Ba‘th Party and the militaristic junta that has ruled Egypt since 1952, there is no comparison.

Stay in your own lane. Comparison kills creativity and joy.” For me, swimming is the trifecta of health—meditation, therapy, and exercise—but only when I stay in my own lane, focused on my breathing and my stroke.

Who today reflects that in the Battle of the Somme alone, where every man was an eager volunteer of ‘Kitchener’s Army’, more British lives were lost than in the whole of the Second World War? Or that in the first day’s fighting of any major attack on the Western Front, more men were killed than the Americans lost in eight years fighting in Vietnam?—31,000 at the time these words are written. The average man and woman of today is not interested in such profitless comparisons. Modern life does not want to hear about these inconceivable calamities of the past.

It was over 50 years ago that I had the privilege of being the Class Advisor to the class of 1969 at what was then called Henry Abbott Regional Vocational Technical School. It was another era and a time when we as a nation stood tall. It was the year when Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins lifted off from Cape Kennedy, for the first manned landing on the Moon. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a time when we felt proud to be Americans! Fifty years ago the 4 Beatles got together in a recording studio for the last time, where they cut “Abbey Road.” In 1969 alone they published 13 songs including “Yellow Submarine.” John Lennon claimed that the best song he ever did was “Come Together” and that was in 1969. Although it wasn’t possible for me to attend the class reunion I did however connect with them by telephone and a speaker system. I had the opportunity to wish them well and share some thoughts with my former students who are now looking forward to their senior years that I always thought of as “The Youth of Old Age.” Having just celebrated my 85th birthday, 69 years old does seem quite youthful in comparison. Earlier in the week Dave Coelho, the class Vice President read to me the list of graduates that are no longer with us. I was stunned by the number, but at the time the United States was at war, regardless of what it was called. In 1968, the year before the class graduated, our country had a peak of 549,000 of our young people serving in Viet Nam. During the year of the Tet Offensive alone, 543 were killed and 2547 were wounded, and that is what the class of 1969 faced upon their graduation! It was a war in which 57,939 of our young people were killed or went missing! It was nice to talk to the class president LaBarbera and I enjoyed the feeling of guilt when one former student told me that he still has a problem with addition. To this I gladly accepted the blame but reminded him that this would not be of much help, if he had to face the IRS when his taxes didn’t compute. Look for part 2, the conclusion

I was jogging this morning and I noticed a person about half a km ahead. I could guess he was running a little slower than me and that made me feel good, I said to myself I will try catch up with him. So I started running faster and faster. Every block, I was gaining on him a little bit. After just a few minutes I was only about 100 feet behind him, so I really picked up the pace and pushed myself. I was determined to catch up with him. Finally, I did it! I caught up and passed him. Inwardly I felt very good. "I beat him". Of course, he didn't even know we were racing. After I passed him, I realized I had been so focused on competing against him that ..... I had missed my turn to my house, I had missed the focus on my inner peace, I missed to see the beauty of greenery around, I missed to do my inner soul searching meditation, and in the needless hurry stumbled and slipped twice or thrice and might have hit the sidewalk and broken a limb. It then dawned on me, isn't that what happens in life when we focus on competing with co-workers, neighbours, friends, family, trying to outdo them or trying to prove that we are more successful or more important and in the bargain we miss on our happiness within our own surroundings? We spend our time and energy running after them and we miss out on our own paths to our given destination. The problem with unhealthy competition is that it's a never ending cycle. There will always be somebody ahead of you, someone with a better job, nicer car, more money in the bank, more education, a prettier wife, a more handsome husband, better behaved children, better circumstances and better conditions etc. But one important realisation is that You can be the best that you can be, when you are not competing with anyone. Some people are insecure because they pay too much attention to what others are, where others are going, wearing and driving, what others are talking. Take whatever you have, the height, the weight and personality. Accept it and realize, that you are blessed. Stay focused and live a healthy life. There is no competition in Destiny. Everyone has his own. Comparison AND Competition is the thief of JOY. It kills the Joy of Living your Own Life. Run your own Race that leads to Peaceful, Happy Steady Life.

Here, supposing that neither Harry Perkins nor the servants nor some outsider called ‘X’ had killed Stephen Anthony, was a murderer. He or she was drinking with the rest, talking with the rest casually, remembering little family jokes with the rest and saying with them, ‘Remember when we all—’ and laughing when they laughed. And perhaps the murderer, sitting there with the others, almost forgot at times he was a murderer, because even a murderer cannot always remember, as the grief-stricken cannot always remember grief. But it must come back again and again, that sense of being a murderer. Sometimes it must come in the middle of speech, confusing a thought already formulated—it must go round and round in the head, the knowledge of murder and of pursuit. The thought that shrewd men and clumsy men, intelligent men and dogged men, men in blue uniforms and men in slouch hats, were everywhere after you must make a coldness in your mind. Here a man was talking to somebody, and perhaps a word would give you away. Here a man was peering through a comparison microscope at tiny scratches on a piece of metal, and perhaps some scratch would give you away. Here a man was sifting through papers, steadily, unwearingly, looking for some written word that would give you away. And when he was tired, another man would look. And somewhere men in white uniforms were probing with knives into the body of the man you had killed, looking for something which would give you away. All over the city, you would think, men would be searching for you—in words and in metal, in scraps of paper, in the things you did yesterday and the things your victims had planned to do tomorrow—and there would be no stopping them. Because, whatever they tolerated, the police did not tolerate murder, or ever give up looking for a murderer.

It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a president, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Something in me tells me the worst is yet to come, but I don’t want to believe it. How beastly we men have become, but, no, that is too good a comparison. We are worse than the beasts of the field, for they kill to eat, but we kill for much lesser things.--Silver Moon

The study of stem cell niches in mammalian systems presents an 'arduous endeavor'; in comparison, the fly germarium is relatively easy to manipulate. In the 1990s, H. Lin, A.C. Spradling, and others used of a number of approaches to study Drosophilia GSCs and their niche, including killing specific cells in the germarium with precisely directed lasers; transplantation of cells from the ovary of one fly to another; and genetic perturbations that included the dialing up or down of Hh pathway signaling. The researchers found that following laser ablation of cells surrounding the GSCs - that is killing the niche cells - all the GSCs went on to form eggs, and the system was quickly depleted of its GSC reserve. Moreover, through genetic analyses the researchers identified specific genes required in the niche cells to maintain GSCs within the niche, as would be deduced for a gene that, when disrupted in niche cells, has the same effect as laser ablation of those cells. These studies are credited with providing the first clear experimental evidence of a stem cell niche, as well as defining what genes - what signaling pathways and other cellular activities - are important to the process. Many of the same pathways relevant in other cell types proved relevant to communication between the niche and GSCs, including the Hh pathway. The genes required for suppression of transposon mobilization by the piRNA system also have relevance to the GSC niche; disruption of the piwi gene, for example, can lead to uncontrolled proliferation of GSCs.

It is said that the spirits of the night are alarmed when they catch sight of the executioner’s sword: how then must they be alarmed when they are confronted by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason! This book is the sword with which deism was put to death in Germany. Frankly, in comparison with us Germans, you French are tame and moderate. You have at most been able to kill a king . . . Immanuel Kant has stormed . . . heaven, he has put the whole crew to the sword, the Supreme Lord of the world swims unproven in his own blood.

he had reluctantly approved the shooting of a handful of Yellowstone wolves who had attacked livestock grazing near the park. Such culling wouldn’t normally have been allowed under the Endangered Species Act, but a special concession had been made to ranchers in the original reintroduction plan: any reintroduced wolves who preyed on livestock would be shot. The wolves’ overall impact on ranching hadn’t been severe; around two hundred cattle—out of roughly five million across Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming—were lost to predation in an average year. (By comparison, tens of thousands of cattle were killed every year by winter storms, lightning, floods, or drought.) But some individual operations near the

I can never be interested in an idea to the same extent. I could never shoot myself. In spite of which, he commits suicide, although he has no hopes from suicide: I know it will be another delusion, a delusion in an infinite series of delusions. Nothing is real—consequently he has nothing to live for and no reason for dying: My love will be as petty as I am myself.... I know I ought to kill myself, to brush myself off the earth like some loathsome insect.... Always in Dostoevsky there is this comparison of men to insects: half a dozen passages spring to mind. It is the Hemingway position, ‘Most men ... die like animals’, or the comparison of Catherine Barkely’s death with that of ants on a burning log. There is no belief. Men’s lives are futile, and they die ‘not with a bang but a whimper’. And when they are inspired by a belief, it depends on their blinding themselves with their emotions. This is Stavrogin’s position, and he hates it. He would like to breathe clean air and feel a sensation of power. But how? To do good? That is out of the question; he sees it as a game of emotional profit, self-flattery, nothing more. Then evil ? His ‘confession’ is an account of his attempt to do evil. It is a deliberate sensation-seeking

There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful businessman, or railway man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

You let me think you were dead,” he says, his voice strained. “I didn’t want to risk contacting you and getting you in trouble,” I quickly explain. “They were monitoring your calls because you were stirring up trouble even on leave and—” He puts a finger over my mouth, silencing my babble. “They still don’t know it was you. Did you kill Jason as a sign to me that you’re still alive, or was he just unfinished business? The torture was mild in comparison to the others, almost as though you were in a hurry.

I hiked on until I startled a wolf standing at the edge of a willow thicket. It leapt away, then froze and glanced back. One of its paws was mangled. Its head looked huge in comparison to its emaciated body. Slowly, on three legs, its ribs jutting out of its mangy gray coat, the wolf approached. I yelled, and it hopped back into the brush. The wolf followed me, whining, barking, and letting out ominous howls. A few minutes passed before it emerged from the brush and cut me off. It glanced around nervously then walked toward me. I yelled and waved my arms over my head. It stopped for a moment and then came closer. I had brought my brother Luke's .357 pistol - it was light for bears but, at the time, was the only handgun I had access to. I pulled the pistol from the holster and yelled as angrily as I could. The wolf froze, glancing skittishly back and forth, before hopping into the willows. I continued hiking, and the wolf paralleled me. Twenty minutes later, it cut me off and approached again. At thirty feet, I leveled the pistol and yelled. It glanced back and forth, looking both desperate and terrified, then hobbled closer. At twenty feet, I aimed the pistol. "Leave me alone!" I yelled as loud as I could. I'm not sure why I didn't pull the trigger. Maybe it was because I was confident it could not hurt me, armed as I was. Maybe it was because I don't like killing animals I don't eat. Maybe it was because I tricked myself into thinking there was hope the wolf would somehow survive. Maybe it was because I lacked the compassion to help it die.

For the first time, he could see how this “accident” would happen. When the balloon was over the city, the explosion would be triggered remotely. There would be no huge fireball, no mushroom cloud like what the town’s residents had witnessed from their rooftops countless times. No, this detonation would be tiny by comparison but sufficient enough to crack the plutonium core and spew perhaps the most deadly element on earth across the valley below, an invisible mist spreading through the open air, poisoning thousands as they unwittingly inhaled the radioactive particles into their lungs, killing them in miserable ways over the next weeks and months and making the area uninhabitable for the rest of man’s time on earth.