Contract Bridge Quotes

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You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place.
Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)
...The fact is that Dale and Grady had made a pact long before they ever came into this earthly existence. This is why so often there is one physical death that follows another. They are from the same soul family. They are so intertwined that they need to leave together. They are all returning home together.
Kate McGahan (Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: An Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Trilogy Book 3))
Twenty-five years from now all religion will be fundamentalist religion, even the Church of England. Wild-eyed “Tutuist” Anglicans will riot in Anzania (formerly the Union of South Africa). They’ll force people to play contract bridge at gunpoint and make unbelievers eat little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. No woman will dare appear in the street without a small, stupid hat like Queen Di’s.
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This?" (O'Rourke, P. J.))
The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs. Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place where daughters love their mothers; the other attributes of Heaven you could have for a song. Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay to Peru. And when on the balcony her thoughts reached this turn, her mouth would contract with shame for she knew that she too sinned and that though her love for her daughter was vast enough to include all the colors of love, it was not without a shade of tyranny: she loved her daughter not for her daughter's sake, but for her own. She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond; but the passion was too fierce to cope with.
Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey)
As citizens, we knew we had ceded some of our individual rights to society in order to live together as a community. But we did not believe this social contract included support for an immoral system. Since the people invested government with its authority, we understood that we had to obey the law. But when law became suppressive and tyrannical, when human law violated divine principles, we felt it was not only our right, but our duty to disobey. As Henry Thoreau strongly believed, to comply with an unjust system is to accept abuse. It is not the role of the citizen to follow the government down a path that violates his or her own conscience.
John Lewis (Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change)
The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamour, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clock like tick of the rails, moved towards the bridge - it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid - the temperature of warm blood... The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
He could see the inchworm in his mind even now, that snip of green elastic with it's tiny blunt legs, coiling and stretching its way toward the tabletop, on a mission whose nature was a mystery. Survival, he understood now - that was all. That contracting and straining, that frantic rearing-up to look around: It was nothing less than the urgent business of staying alive.
Julie Orringer (The Invisible Bridge)
Arnold Wilson complained he had to spend time bridging the cultural gap between the British “who cannot say what they mean and Persians who do not always mean what they say.” The British, he declared, saw a contract as an agreement that would stand up in court; the Persians simply saw it as an expression of intentions.
Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads: A New History of the World)
Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood…. The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank. Silence crept down again over the wet country;
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
one day Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six per cent and his fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down. The consummation of these deals represented an important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized institutions. Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and material right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
Once, traveling at night, I fell asleep in the passenger seat of a moving car, lulled by the noise and motion into an illusion of serene weightlessness. The driver of the car took a bridge too fast and lost control, and I woke from my floating dream straight into the glare of headlights and the sickening sensation of falling at high speed. That abrupt transition is as close as I can come to describing the feeling I experienced, but it falls woefully short. I could say that my field of vision contracted to a single dark spot, then disappeared altogether, leaving not darkness, but a bright void. I could say that I felt as though I were spinning, or as though I were being pulled inside out. All these things are true, yet none of them conveys the sense I had of complete disruption, of being slammed very hard against something that wasn’t there. The truth is that nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing whatever appeared to happen and yet I experienced a feeling of elemental terror so great that I lost all sense of who, or what, or where I was. I was in the heart of chaos, and no power of mind or body was of use against it. I
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
Milo's planes were a familiar sight. They had freedom of passage everywhere, and one day Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six percent, and his fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down. The consummation of these deals represented an important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized institutions. Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and materiel right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
Joseph Heller (Catch 22)
All we believe is the roads, the bridges, the railways, the electricity they build only on televisions. I always ask my self these questions: 1. Where are the roads? ✏The Abuja - Lokoja road was awarded by Obasanjo's administration. He spent 8 years in the office. Then Yaradua and Goodluck spent another 4 years. Now if Goodluck is elected, he will be spending another 8 years. This will amount to 20 years and 180 km road is yet to be completed. ✏Enugu - Onitsha road was also awarded by the Obasanjo administration and till date, a journey that is supposed to take 45 minutes can take you 8 hours if it rains. ✏Enugu- PH road is on the same series. ✏What about Uyo - Calabar route? Just to mention a few. 2. Where is the power? They sold all the NEPA to their friends. We pay for the light that was not supplied. 3. Our education and health system go bad everyday. Lecturers and Health workers spent more time at home than in the schools and hospitals as a result of incessant strikes. 4. The government failed to provide us with security. People are being killed everyday and yet government comes out to tell us they are in control. 5. Why are we pretending that all is well? It is only in Nigeria where monies develop wings and fly. $20 billion oil money disappeared and they said it was $10 billion. Forensic investigators were hired and that was the end of the story. N20 billion pension fund stolen and nothing came out of it. $9.3 million seized in South Africa and government claimed it was meant for ammunition purchase. The immigration scandal has also been swept under the carpet because the senate could not proceed with their investigation. The man behind the contract is sitting among the high seats in the senate. Innocent people were defrauded and they at the same time lost their lives yet, we have a transparent governance. 6. Why are we praising government as if they are doing whatever with their personal money. How many people in their various communities have they provided scholarship with their personal money before they got elected? The reason they got elected is to manage our resources and not to loot us dry. One thing I know is that we will not have any meaningful development except if we make a CHANGE.
claris yetunde ramsin
By passing through alone, the LORD made a prophetic promise – that when this Covenant would later be broken by Abraham’s descendants, the LORD Himself (represented by the smoking furnace) would pay the price on the cross at Calvary so that the eternal Covenant could be renewed in the blood of Jesus.  As the original Covenant was between Abraham and God, and because Abraham didn’t break the terms of the covenant, God to this day honors that contract with Abraham in that He has promised to never forsake or destroy the genetic remnant of Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob.[40]
Tyler Dawn Rosenquist (The Bridge: Crossing Over Into the Fullness of Covenant Life)
Watson had been at the nerve center of the Ring. Indeed, if there was “magic” to the Ring, Watson was the unseen assistant who made it work, and as with most grand deceptions the secret was extremely simple. Watson merely required everyone who received a contract from the city to increase his bills before submitting them by 50 to 65 per cent. Watson paid the face amount of the bill, then the contractor returned the overcharge in cash, and Watson, like a dutiful paymaster, handed it out within the Ring. Among New York contractors it was commonly said, “You must do just as Jimmy tells you, and you will get your money.” Anyone who knew a little bookkeeping could look at Watson’s voucher records and see what was going on. O’Rourke, for example, judged from what he saw that the Ring had made off with $75 million since 1869.
David McCullough (The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge)
Their society was deeply marked by the years under corrupt Ottoman rule. Rumanians had a saying: “The fish grows rotten from the head.” In Rumania almost everything was for sale: offices, licenses, passports. Indeed, a foreign journalist who once tried to change money legally instead of on the black market was thrown into jail by police who thought he must be involved in a particularly clever swindle. Every government contract produced its share of graft. Although Rumania was a wealthy country, rich in farmland and, by 1918, with a flourishing oil industry, it lacked roads, bridges and railways because the money allocated by government had been siphoned off into the hands of families such as Brătianu’s own. Rumanians tended to see intrigues everywhere. In Paris they hinted darkly that the Supreme Council had fallen under the sway of Bolshevism or, alternatively, that it had been bribed by sinister capitalist forces.280
Margaret MacMillan (Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World)
It happened in 2006 when the company’s COO and soon-to-be CEO, Randall Stephenson, quietly struck a deal with Steve Jobs for AT&T to be the exclusive service provider in the United States for this new thing called the iPhone. Stephenson knew that this deal would stretch the capacity of AT&T’s networks, but he didn’t know the half of it. The iPhone came on so fast, and the need for capacity exploded so massively with the apps revolution, that AT&T found itself facing a monumental challenge. It had to enlarge its capacity, practically overnight, using the same basic line and wireless infrastructure it had in place. Otherwise, everyone who bought an iPhone was going to start experiencing dropped calls. AT&T’s reputation was on the line—and Jobs would not have been a happy camper if his beautiful phone kept dropping calls. To handle the problem, Stephenson turned to his chief of strategy, John Donovan, and Donovan enlisted Krish Prabhu, now president of AT&T Labs. Donovan picks up the story: “It’s 2006, and Apple is negotiating the service contracts for the iPhone. No one had even seen one. We decided to bet on Steve Jobs. When the phone first came out [in 2007] it had only Apple apps, and it was on a 2G network. So it had a very small straw, but it worked because people only wanted to do a few apps that came with the phone.” But then Jobs decided to open up the iPhone, as the venture capitalist John Doerr had suggested, to app developers everywhere. Hello, AT&T! Can you hear me now? “In 2008 and 2009, as the app store came on stream, the demand for data and voice just exploded—and we had the exclusive contract” to provide the bandwidth, said Donovan, “and no one anticipated the scale. Demand exploded a hundred thousand percent [over the next several years]. Imagine the Bay Bridge getting a hundred thousand percent more traffic. So we had a problem. We had a small straw that went from feeding a mouse to feeding an elephant and from a novelty device to a necessity” for everyone on the planet. Stephenson insisted AT&T offer unlimited data, text, and voice. The Europeans went the other way with more restrictive offerings. Bad move. They were left as roadkill by the stampede for unlimited data, text, and voice. Stephenson was right, but AT&T just had one problem—how to deliver on that promise of unlimited capacity without vastly expanding its infrastructure overnight, which was physically impossible. “Randall’s view was ‘never get in the way of demand,’” said Donovan. Accept it, embrace it, but figure out how to satisfy it fast before the brand gets killed by dropped calls. No one in the public knew this was going on, but it was a bet-the-business moment for AT&T, and Jobs was watching every step from Apple headquarters.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
The following year, on June 20, 1947, not suspecting what was about to happen, Bugsy Siegel was sitting on a couch in the living room of Virginia Hill’s home at 810 Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. As he was reading a newspaper, an assassin fired a number of shots, from a rifle, through the front window. Siegel was shot twice in the head, with one bullet exiting his skull near the bridge of his nose, causing his left eye to be blown out of its socket. He was also hit twice in the torso. His death was instantaneous and the graphic photos of his bullet-riddled body made headline news. Although there were enough suspects to go around, Eddie Cannizzaro, the “Cat Man,” a connected west coast mobster, made a deathbed confession that he was the one who carried out the contract. Although the case isn’t closed, it is cold and will most likely remain so, as it rests on the desk of Detective Les Zoeller of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Hank Bracker
Spare time, as I used to understand it, was the time left over from doing the necessary, unpleasant things, like correcting Sophomore English themes or washing out silk stockings in the bathroom. It was the time i frittered away on useless, entertaining pursuits, like the movies or contract bridge. Now almost everything I do - except cooking- is fun, and it is also useful. There is no line of demarcation between work and play. It makes it hard to explain what I do with my spare time.
Louise Dickinson Rich
Antibody drugs like the products that Trump and Christie received could have been a bridge to a vaccine. They could be used as effective treatments in high-risk patients, especially when the drugs were administered early in the course of the disease. Moreover, these drugs could also be used as a prophylaxis to prevent infection in those at greater risk of contracting COVID and suffering a bad outcome.
Scott Gottlieb (Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic)
Everywhere about her, lesser men, witless, vulgar, corrupt, men of narrow ambition and the cheapest of values, were prospering as never before, grabbing up power, money, or just about anything else they hungered for. This Gilded Age, as Mark Twain had named it, seemed to be tailor-made for that sort. It was the grand and glorious heyday of the political bribe, the crooked contract, the double standard at every level. It seemed the old verities simply were not negotiable any longer. Good and brave men who had legitimate claim to honor, respect, position-at least according to every standard she had been raised by-were somehow in the way now and so got swept aside.
David McCullough (The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge)
When you rent yourself to some concentration of capital in the private sector—that’s what taking a job is—you’re giving your life over to a dictatorship, in fact, an extreme form of dictatorship that reaches far beyond political dictatorships. The tyranny to which you are handing yourself over to has almost total control over you. It controls every minute of your working day: what you wear and are allowed to say, when you’re allowed to get a bathroom break, how your hands and legs move, whether you smoke cigarettes at home. Just about everything in your life is controlled by this extreme dictatorship, which goes far beyond any totalitarian dictatorship in the degree of control it exercises. That raises some questions. One is whether a socioeconomic system is legitimate if it subjects people to extreme forms of tyranny for most of their lives. And that leads to the next question, whether the wage labor contract is itself legitimate. The argument in favor of legitimacy is that the contract is freely undertaken—in the sense of Anatole France’s remark that the rich and poor are equally free to sleep under the bridge at night. In the real world, the contract is accepted under duress. You accept it or you starve, conditions exacerbated under increasing monopolization, as Marv discussed in our last session. There are very few options.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Panting, she pressed closer to him as he unfastened the row of buttons and freed his swollen erection. With a soothing murmur, Ross positioned her over his hips, canting them to just the right angle. She sank down eagerly, gasping as he filled her completely. Her hands clutched at the fabric of his coat, fingertips digging into the smooth broadcloth. "Hold onto me," he whispered. When she had wrapped herself around him, he picked his feet up from the stepping board and let the chamber-horse seat drop several inches in a sudden electrifying jolt. The movement forced Sophia harder onto the hilt of his shaft, and she whimpered in pleasure. Ross smiled as he stared into her wide, unfocused eyes. Color burnished the edges of his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, and sweat misted his skin. His thighs went taut as he braced his feet on the board once more, then let them drop again. "Is this all right?" he murmured. "Is it too much?" "No," she gulped. "Do it again." Obligingly he began a bouncing motion that elicited a rhythmic squeak from the chamber horse. Air rushed from the contraction and expansion of the cushions like the sighing of fireplace bellows. Sophia held on tightly, her body gripping his intimately. Each drop of the seat caused the stiff, thick shaft to push harder inside her, again, again, until the stroking, grinding motion caused her to convulse in a release that had no end. Feeling the spasms of her body, Ross impaled her one last time and groaned in satisfaction. When at least he leaned backward with her body clasped in his arms, Sophia draped herself over him, utterly relaxed. Their bodies were still joined , and she moaned as he flexed inside her.
Lisa Kleypas (Lady Sophia's Lover (Bow Street Runners, #2))
LIES *Watch for clusters or groups of behaviors. Touching – mouth, nose, neck, eyes, ears, objects Omission – words, ideas, answers, clarifying statements Speech – stuttering, mumbling, pausing, scrambling phrases, slurring words, bad syntax, higher-pitched voice Posture – stiff, leaning away, stonewalling, turning sideways, shoulder roll, head jerks or shifts Obfuscation – fake smile, ill-timed gestures, words unlike emotions, no use of contractions Tells – mimicking, bridging, modifying, blocking, displacing, stalling, blocking, denial, inclusion
Mark Bouton (How to Spot Lies Like the FBI)
While the discussions focus on how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies can transform many industries. The cryptocurrency community is witnessing several hackers steal millions from blockchains, exchanges, and bridges. From the 2014 MT GOX hack to the recent Nomad Bridge attack, hackers are advancing along with the growth of blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency industry. Several million-dollar attacks have occurred, and hackers are becoming more ambitious and dangerous. In the past few days, Attacks have escalated, as well as the amount of funds stolen has increased too. Many individuals are in a panic as they have lost their savings, The attacks on the Solana wallets, Nomad bridge, and ZB exchange brought another riskier prospect of cryptocurrencies. There are many doubts surrounding the security of cryptocurrencies: how can these bridges be easy targets for hackers? how hackers can easily access other crypto wallets? Let's get into the detail of these three different types of attacks and how hackers make millions through them. Bridge attacks Blockchain bridges are applications that allow people to transfer digital assets between blockchains. Since cryptocurrencies are often isolated and unable to communicate with one another (for example, you cannot make a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain using Dogecoins), "bridges" have emerged as an essential mechanism, if not a vital missing link, in the cryptocurrency economy. The bridge "locks" your cash on one side and dispenses the equal amount in so-called "wrapped" tokens on the other. To change one form of cryptocurrency into another, bridge services "wrap" the money. As a result, if you visit a bridge to use a different currency, such as Bitcoin (BTC), the bridge will dispense wrapped bitcoins (WBTC). It represents stored value in a flexible alternate format, similar to a gift card or a cheque. Bridges require a reserve of cryptocurrency currencies to back all of those wrapped coins, and hackers frequently target this reserve. Additionally, if a bridge becomes popular over time, it can have a lot of money (imagine hundreds of millions of dollars) tied up in its smart contracts. If those smart contracts contain security flaws, some or all of that money can be stolen. As former Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pointed out, another issue with crypto bridges is that they are by design vulnerable to attacks on two sides. Nomad attack On July 29, Nomad, a bridge protocol for moving cryptocurrencies across multiple blockchains, lost about $200 million due to a security flaw. In the case of Nomad, it appears that a fault in its smart contract allowed someone to set up a cryptocurrency transaction such that they sent a few amounts of crypto on one side, but received a larger amount on the other, as multiple experts stated on Twitter. For example, you could transfer 0.1 Crypto on one side and receive 100 Crypto on the other. Things start to become intriguing at this point. Usually, when a security flaw like this is discovered, a skilled hacker or a small group can quickly drain out all the money. However, in the case of Nomad, once someone successfully stole some cash from the Nomad bridge, other people joined in and also grabbed some money. This is not the only bridge that has been compromised this year. The Ronin Bridge, which was used by the developers of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, was hacked earlier this year for approximately $625 million. The Harmony Bridge was also hacked for $100 million. Wallet Hacks
Coingabbar.com
I have new words for the dictionary. to knock boots, phr., to have sexual intercourse tracks, n., contract (as in “I got a track to kill him”) to do, v., to fuck to do, v., to kill clean, adj., handsome to Brodie, v., to jump, usually from a building or a bridge; taken from a Mr. Brodie who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to lash, v., to urinate chronic, n., marijuana, esp. high-quality smudge, n., black person Ape Avenue, n., Eighth Avenue (police slang) puppy, n., handgun (Jamaican word) scrambler, n., low-level runner for a drug dealer cocola, n., black person (Puerto Rican word) spliv, n., black person to be hung like a horse, phr., to have influential connections in the police department; also a guy who is hung like a horse ground ball, phr., something easy or simple to pull a train, v., to have group sex, gang-bang stinger, n., drug dealer to inflash, v., to inform (as in “he inflash me with the bitch’s scenario”) to double, v., to double-park to sleep in a tent, exp., to have a large penis to be built like a tripod, phr., to have a large penis dixie cup, n., a person who is considered disposable her, she, pron., wife
Susanna Moore (In the Cut)
The most important fact is not that there are one or three or four or six identifiable periods of crisis in a lifetime; rather, adulthood unfolds its promise in an alternating rhythm of expansion and contraction, change and stability. In human life as in the rest of nature, change accumulates slowly and almost invisibly until it is made manifest in the sudden form of fledging out or thawing or leaf-fall. It is the transition process rather than a thing called “a mid-life transition” that we must understand.
William Bridges (Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes)
To lovers out there ... A relationship is verbal contract between two people. Like any contract there are clauses, terms and conditions. If you don’t know any clauses, terms and conditions of your relationship. How then would you know if you are not bridging your contract. When to end your contract and how to make your partner happy based on the agreement. When to upgrade your contract to a written one which is Marriage .
De philosopher DJ Kyos
had approximately ten operational nuclear warheads. Two months earlier Lanphier had argued before Congress that if Convair had been allowed to start building Atlas missiles in 1957 it would have four hundred of them by now. One month before the shoot-down he made a specific plea for an order for one hundred Atlases and twenty Titans. After May 1, he never had to plead again. A contract with Convair was signed and by 1963 the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command had thirteen Atlas missile squadrons with one hundred thirty-seven ICBMs between them. Twenty-six years later, each superpower had roughly nine thousand warheads. Harold Macmillan called the U-2 affair “a very queer story.” For the defense industry, it was also a very happy one. *
Giles Whittell (Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War)
There are many variable factors which help to determine just how much work a muscle is doing as it is contracting, and information coming only from the muscle spindles can be as confusing as it is helpful with regard to measuring this real work. For instance, a muscle cell is “weaker” when it is stretched out to its full length, because the myosin and actin chains do not overlap very much and therefore have fewer cross-bridges to ratchet; hence contractions at this end of the muscles range do not have as much force behind them as they do when the muscle shortens by about half and the myosin and actin filaments are overlapping deeply and creating many cross-bridges. Or, increasing fatigue can make a muscle feel as though it is working harder and harder, in spite of the fact that it is actually contracting with less and less force. Even changes in my mood can significantly alter my sense of ease or effort during any given contraction. So the Golgis add an indispensable quantum of information to the spindles’ measure of changing muscle lengths: The Golgis assess the exact amount of resistance which is overcome in order to contract a given distance in a given time.
Deane Juhan (Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork)
The lowest level of this modifying intermediate network is the spinal cord. The cord still possesses many features that were first developed in the segmented earthworm. It is largely made up of neurons completely contained within it, which form bridges between the sensory and motor elements throughout the whole body. Each peripheral nerve trunk still innervates a specific segment of the body, and still joins the cord at a specific level, creating a ganglion. Sensory signals entering into a single segment may be processed by its own ganglion, and cause localized motor response within the segment; or the signals may pass to adjacent segments, or be carried even further up or down the line, involving more ganglia in a more widely distributed response. In this way, the cord can monitor a large number of sensorimotor reactions without having to send signals all the way up to the brain. Thus stereotyped responses can be made without our having to “think” about them on a conscious level. Most of these localized and segmentally patterned responses are not the result of experience or training, but of genetically consistent wiring patterns in the internuncial network of the cord itself. These basic wiring patterns unfold in the foetus during the “mapping” process of the nervous system, and they have been pre-established by millions of years of development and usage. The spinal cord can be surgically sectioned from the higher regions of the internuncial net, and the experimental animal kept alive, so that we can isolate the range of responses that are primarily controlled by these cord reflexes. Almost all segmentally localized responses can be elicited, such as the knee jerk caused by tapping the tendon below the knee cap, or the elbow jerk caused by tapping the bicep tendon. These simple responses can also be spread into other segments, so that a painful prick on a limb causes the whole body to jerk away in a general withdrawal reflex. The bladder and rectum can be evacuated. A skin irritation elicits scratching, and the disturbance can be accurately located with a paw. Some of the basic postural and locomotive reflex patterns seem to reside in the wiring of the cord as well. If an animal with only its cord intact is assisted in getting up, it can remain standing on its own. The sensory signals from the pressure on the bottoms of the feet are evidently enough to trigger postural contractions throughout the body and hold the animal in the stance typical of its species. And if the animal is suspended with its legs dangling down, they will spontaneously initiate walking or running movements, indicating that the fundamental sequential arrangements of the basic reflexes necessary for walking are in the cord also. All of these localized and intersegmental responses are rapid and automatic, follow specific routes through the spinal circuitry, and elicit stereotyped patterns of muscular response. Most of them appear to consistently use the same neurons, synapses, and motor units every time they are initiated.
Deane Juhan (Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork)
The great drive of our people stems from insecurity. It is often considered that the violent interest in little games, the mental rat-mazes of contract bridge, and the purposeful strinking of little white balls with sticks, comes from an inner sterility. But more likely it comes from an inner complication. Boredom arises not so often from too little to think about, as from too much.
John Steinbeck (Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research)