Crashing Series Quotes

How else do you think life happens? A series of coincidences and occurrences have to happen somehow. Our lives all crash and collide and you think there's no reason or rhyme to it? If there wasn't any reason for it all, what would be the point? Why do you think anything happens at all? There is an outcome, repercussions and occurrences to everybody you meet and everything you say.

The last thing he felt was Bethany being pulled from his limp arms. A finality of black crashed over him in waves he couldn’t surface from, welcoming him into the nothingness that dug in deep, refusing to ever let him go.

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry.

Previous experience taught her that the pain would not be unending - but neither would it subside smoothly, incrementally, but rather in a series of crashing waves, some of which might still knock her off her feet

That's enough!" Holly scrambled out of her seat, too. "My three-year-old behaves better than all of you." She looked down at LJ, who was trying to stuff a fry up his nostril. "And that's not saying a whole lot.

The particular myth that's been organizing this talk, and in a way the whole series, is the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible. The civilization we live in at present is a gigantic technological structure, a skyscraper almost high enough to reach the moon. It looks like a single world-wide effort, but it's really a deadlock of rivalries; it looks very impressive, except that it has no genuine human dignity. For all its wonderful machinery, we know it's really a crazy ramshackle building, and at any time may crash around our ears. What the myth tells us is that the Tower of Babel is a work of human imagination, that its main elements are words, and that what will make it collapse is a confusion of tongues. All had originally one language, the myth says. The language is not English or Russian or Chinese or any common ancestor, if there was one. It is the language that makes Shakespeare and Pushkin authentic poets, that gives a social vision to both Lincoln and Gandhi. It never speaks unless we take the time to listen in leisure, and it speaks only in a voice too quiet for panic to hear. And then all it has to tell us, when we look over the edge of our leaning tower, is that we are not getting any nearer heaven, and that it is time to return to earth. [p.98]

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank...

the point is, how do you steer your ship in a clear direction? How do you stay on course even when the water is choppy or the boat is crashing on rocks? You do that by keeping your eyes on the horizon.

A second red-orange spearhead leaps straight at O'Shaughnessy. The whole world seems to stand still. Then the gun behind it crashes, and there's a cataclysm of pain all over him, and a shock goes through him as if he ran head-on into a stone wall. A voice from the car says blurredly, while the ground rushes up to meet him, 'Finish him up, you guys! I'm getting so I don't trust their looks no more, no matter how stiff they act!' ("Jane Brown's Body")

There are kinds of human problems which really do seem, as our tidy expressions would have it, to “come to a head” and “demand to be dealt with.” But there are also problems, often just as serious, which come to nothing that we can recognize or openly deal with. Some long-lived, insidious problems simply slip us off to one side of ourselves. Some gently rob us of just enough energy or faith so that days which once took place on a horizontal plane become an endless series of uphill slogs. And some—like high water working year after year at the roots of a riverside tree—quietly undercut our trust or our hope, our sense of place, or of humor, our ability to empathize, or to feel enthused, and we don’t sense impending danger, we don’t feel the damage at all, till one day, to our amazement, we find ourselves crashing to the ground.

Rather than embrace reality as it is, the left brain is hopelessly addicted to storytelling and interpretations about reality, which provide a short-term hit of purpose and meaning but an inevitable crash of suffering. And most people never even know this cycle is going on.

One of our greatest flaws is having too much confidence in understanding that which we really don’t comprehend.

In a series of experiments, safety officials ran regular people through mock evacuations from planes. The trials weren't nearly as stressful as real evacuations, of course, but it didn't matter. People, especially women, hesitated for a surprisingly long time before jumping onto the slide. That pause slowed the evacuation for everyone. But there was a way to get people to move faster. If a flight attendant stood at the exit and screamed at people to jump, the pause all but disappeared, the researchers found. In fact, if flight attendants did not aggressively direct the evacuation, they might as well have not been there at all. A study by the Cranfield University Aviation Safety Centre found that people moved just as slowly for polite and calm flight attendants as they did when there were no flight attendants present.

This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics.

Previous experience taught her that the pain would not be unending – but neither would it subside smoothly, incrementally, but rather in a series of crashing waves, some of which might still knock her off her feet.

It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily - a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest. 'Here we go, baby!' he shouts, teeth bared. 'Now I'm going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain!...' There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock - and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage. ("Jane Browns Body")

Aubade with a Broken Neck" The first night you don’t come home summer rains shake the clematis. I bury the dead moth 1 found in our bed, scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough with dirt. The dog finds me and presents between his gentle teeth a twitching nightjar. In her panic, she sings in his mouth. He gives me her pain like a gift, and I take it. I hear the cries of her young, greedy with need, expecting her return, but I don’t let her go until I get into the house. I read the auspices the way she flutters against the wallpaper’s moldy roses means all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling means a storm approaches. You should see her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing at the starless window, her body a dart, her body the arrow of longing, aimed, as all desperate things are, to crash not into the object of desire, but into the darkness behind it.

Big Bang, Shooting Star, Blazing Fire If this is darkness, then I will be the light. I will be the crashing supernova. If this is darkness, I will howl at it until the moon awakens. Until the stars roar back. Until the sun and the seas and everything in between scream to burn the skeletons away. I know there is ugliness hiding within the light. I know the monsters beneath my bed won’t disappear with the dawn. But it is enough to see them, wretched little beasts, to look them straight in the eyes and say, I will not run from my sins. I am more than my ghosts. I am better than the dark parts of me.

Who else had ever met the business-end of a bolt of lightning in mid-flight, as he had just now, flying blind through a storm, lost a wing, managed to come down still alive even if it is on a wooded mountainside, to cut the contact at the moment of crashing so that he wasn't roasted alive, and crawl out with just a wrenched shoulder and a lot of cuts and bruises? He couldn't bail out because he was flying too low, hoping for a break through the clouds through which to spot something flat enough to come down on; he doesn't like bailing out anyway, hates to throw away a good plane. ("Jane Brown's Body")

I believe that everyone should keep a reserve of liquidity outside their portfolio to meet family emergencies. While a portfolio can be part liquidated relatively quickly, there have been times, such as the secondary banking crisis of the early 1970s or the 2008 subprime/banking crash, when markets have plunged and stocks have become almost unsaleable.

There is so much silence all around that I think I can hear moonlight crashing against the windows. A foreign voice awakes inside my breast, singing a longing which is not my own. They say that ancestors, who died before their time, with young blood in their veins, with great passions in their blood, with living sun in passions, return, return to live inside us their unspent lives. There is so much silence all around that I think I can hear moonlight crashing against the windows. Oh, who knows, my soul -in whose breast you too will sing, in centur- ies to come, on sweet strings of silence on a harp of darkness, your smothered longing and your broken joy of life? Who knows? Who knows?

I freeze, my feet suddenly glued to the floor. It takes me a minute to gather the courage to turn around, but when I do, I immediately wish I hadn't. The boy is standing in the doorway at the end of the hall. Why is he here again? I barely allow myself time to ask the question before I move. Panicked, I turn and run back downstairs as fast as I can. "Hey! Wait!" he calls after me. I don't stop.

I’m not sure what to say about this book and this series and this piece of my soul. I’ve spent almost every day of the last eight years with Ty and Zane, and saying good-bye to them as this series comes to a close is bittersweet. My world will be an emptier place without them. Ty and Zane started their lives as a message between myself and my former cowriter. A message asking, “What should we do now?” “How about murder?” was my reply, and that was that. We wrote Cut & Run, and we finished it with enough content to fill two books, and in the end Ty and Zane walked off into the sunset, happy and in love. It didn’t feel right. After a day to let the ending settle, it was painfully obvious that this was not the proper end of the story. There was more to tell, and the rewrite began. A story arc formed—a tortuous, cruel story that would force Ty and Zane to work for their happy ending. It

I slammed down on my hip first, followed by my shoulder, followed by my ego. It’s not often that I crash like this, but often enough that I’ve recognized a series of reactions that occurs by instinct rather than reason, which explains why they are so ridiculously misprioritized. 1. First thought: “I’m never riding a bike again.” 2. Pop quickly onto my feet, and then scan for bystanders to assess embarrassment level. 3. Check bike for damage. 4. Check body for damage.

A group of giant insectoid creatures floated to the area near the stage. One of them spoke in a series of clicks that the language master knew instantly. "Play hard and fast hairless monkeys!" Greeg shouted, "We're Transmitted Infections from the inner-worlds and this is punk fucking rock!" Crash hit a crunching , distorted guitar note. the Slugs spit in happiness at the sound of the guitar. Greeg liked a species with a love for badass music. He was sure this would be a great show.

The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication. One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps—and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them. “The whole flight-deck design is intended to be operated by two people, and that operation works best when you have one person checking the other, or both people willing to participate,” says Earl Weener, who was for many years chief engineer for safety at Boeing. “Airplanes

The godfather’s name is Saul Alinsky. His most famous students are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hardly anyone recognizes this, but Alinsky and the Alinsky method is the hidden force behind the 2008 economic meltdown. The meltdown was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; it was the main cause of median wealth in the United States in the subsequent three years declining nearly 40 percent. While the meltdown is routinely attributed to Wall Street “greed,” its real cause was government and activist pressure on banks and banking agencies—like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—to change their lending and loan guarantee practices. Yes, the 2008 crash was actually the result of an Alinskyite scam—actually a series of Alinskyite scams, carried out over many years. Basically the Alinskyites were trying to steal money from the banks and, in the process, force the banks to make loans to people that they had no intention of making loans to. The banks acquiesced, and eventually the whole scheme came crashing down. It was toppled not by greed but by the sober reality that when you loan money to millions of people who cannot afford to pay, those people are very likely to default on those loans. That’s how Alinskyites almost destroyed the U.S. economy a few years ago. If Alinsky had never lived, none of this would have happened.

Hardly anyone recognizes this, but Alinsky and the Alinsky method is the hidden force behind the 2008 economic meltdown. The meltdown was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; it was the main cause of median wealth in the United States in the subsequent three years declining nearly 40 percent. While the meltdown is routinely attributed to Wall Street “greed,” its real cause was government and activist pressure on banks and banking agencies—like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—to change their lending and loan guarantee practices. Yes, the 2008 crash was actually the result of an Alinskyite scam—actually a series of Alinskyite scams, carried out over many years.

CHAPTER 17 The Lie: I AM DEFINED BY MY WEIGHT When people talk about divorce, they use words like irreconcilable or messy. But those words are too light—too easy for the destruction of a family. Divorce is a book falling onto a house made of Legos. It’s a cannonball shot over the bow that crashes through the deck and sinks the other ship. Divorce is destruction that starts at the top and breaks everything apart on the way down. So, no. Messy isn’t the right adjective. Horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating—these are closer. When I was sixteen, my parents were in the middle of a horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating divorce that had been on again, off again since I was nine years old.

I am told there are readers of Genesis who argue the following: If evolution is true, there was no Adam and Eve. If there was no Adam and Eve, there was no fall. If there was no fall, we didn’t need Jesus to save us. But this argument has reversed things. In reality, we know we needed Jesus to save us, and we recognize the way Genesis describes our predicament as human beings. We know we have not realized our vocation to take the world to its destiny and serve the earth; we know there is something wrong with the world in its violence; we know there is something wrong with our relationships with one another, especially relationships between men and women and between parents and children; and we know there is something wrong with our relationship with God. We also know we die, so we know we need Jesus to save us. The question Genesis handles is, Was all that a series of problems built into humanity when it came intoexistence? The answer is no. God did not create us that way. There was a point when humanity had to choose whether it wanted to go God’s way, and it chose not to. The Adam-and-Eve story gives us a parabolic account of that. They ignored the red light and crashed the train. God brought the first human beings into existence with their vocation, and they turned away from it. That is true whether or not you believe that the theory of evolution helps us understand how God brought them into existence.

Isn’t it time we left behind the Ship of Fools, and embarked instead on the Ship of Geniuses? What is the Star Trek vision of the future if not a depiction of a world ruled by meritocrats? You wouldn’t let the religious, the violent, or the rich onboard a starship. With them in your crew, you’d never reach your destination. You’d go round and round in circles, or crash. If humanity wants to arrive at the gates of heaven, only the smartest humans can build the sleek vessels to take us there. Prayer, meditation and the super rich didn’t land men on the moon... incredibly smart humans did, using reason, logic, technology, engineering, science and mathematics. These are all the subjects most shunned by average people. And that’s exactly the human tragedy.

But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.

that’s how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.” “I guess it’s one way to look at things,” Grant said. “No,” Malcolm said. “It’s the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.” “Okay …” “But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That’s a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.

Morally and practically, the Freedmen’s Bank was part of the Freedmen’s Bureau, although it had no legal connection with it. With the prestige of the government back of it, and a directing board of unusual respectability and national reputation, this banking institution had made a remarkable start in the development of that thrift among black folk which slavery had kept them from knowing. Then in one sad day came the crash,—all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disappeared; but that was the least of the loss,—all the faith in saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness has never yet made good. Not even ten additional years of slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freedmen as the mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series of savings banks chartered by the Nation for their especial aid.

When I was very young I once saw a variety act on TV. A man put a bunch of plates on the end of a series of supple rods, and kept them up in the air by whipping the rods around to spin the plates. And if he slowed down or turned his back, even for a moment, one of the plates would wobble and then crash to the ground, followed by all the others in series. That's a terrific metaphor for life, isn't it? We're all trying to keep our plates spinning in the air, and once you get them up there you can't take your eyes off them and you have to keep chugging along without the rest. Except that in life, somebody keeps adding more plates, hiding the rods, and changing the law of gravity when you're not looking. And so every time you think you have all your plates spinning nicely, suddenly you hear a hideous clattering crash behind you and a whole row of plates you didn't even know you had begins to hit the ground

Select people find themselves early on in life, while other people undergo painful stages of vast changes. Some people never exhibit a centralizing persona and they tend to undergo a series of crisis throughout their lives. I observed some friends, family members, and other acquaintances at various stages in their lives and they seem virtually the same person years later. I am a person who cyclically turns himself inside out after crashing and burning, failing, and then reassembling the seeds of defeat into new victories, only to run aground again. I mentally and emotionally resist change and must consciously force a personal metamorphosis. Could I radically change again? Did I possess the internal reserves to weather a period of reconstitution and then make myself over into a new prototype? Can I will myself to becoming the person I aspire to be? Can I take advantage of human consciousness to broker a way out of self-defeat and a misery-ridden life?

Clearly, it’s time to lay down the ground rules and let her know she can’t order me around. This is my life, and I’m going to be in control of it. “I can train with you in the afternoons, as long as we go somewhere with air-conditioning. But before we do that, you’re explaining everything. Got it?” Personally I’m pretty proud of the line I just drew in the sand. But Audra’s eyes narrow and her jaw sets, turning her face into a series of hard lines. “You seem to be under the misimpression that you’re in charge here, so let me correct that right now.” She whips her arms in front of her and whispers, “Rush.” A blast of wind slams against my chest and sends me flying backward. I grunt as my back crashes into one of the remaining walls of the fire-scarred house. The wind pins me to the scratchy stucco and my eyes water from the racing air. Audra steps toward me, the glare in her eyes leaving no doubt that she can end me right here, right now. “Let’s get a few things straight,” she says, her voice deadly serious. “We’re in a tremendous amount of danger, and I am responsible for keeping everyone in this valley alive—including you. No one will be making greater sacrifices than I will, so you will do what I say when I say it—and you will do it without complaint. Is. That. Understood?

In a typical crash, for example, the weather is poor—not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stressed than usual. In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying. In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other. Then the errors start—and it’s not just one error. The typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors. One of the pilots does something wrong that by itself is not a problem. Then one of them makes another error on top of that, which combined with the first error still does not amount to catastrophe. But then they make a third error on top of that, and then another and another and another and another, and it is the combination of all those errors that leads to disaster. These seven errors, furthermore, are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill. It’s not that the pilot has to negotiate some critical technical maneuver and fails. The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication. One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps—and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them. “The whole flight-deck design is intended to be operated by two people, and that operation works best when you have one person checking the other, or both people willing to participate,” says Earl Weener, who was for many years chief engineer for safety at Boeing. “Airplanes are very unforgiving if you don’t do things right. And for a long time it’s been clear that if you have two people operating the airplane cooperatively, you will have a safer operation than if you have a single pilot flying the plane and another person who is simply there to take over if the pilot is incapacitated.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

dabbled

before—heck,

muttered,

calf

brunt

sundry.

CEO Bill Hewlett personally authorized a $1 million crash program to develop a miniature, hand-held successor to the successful 9100 series desktop scientific calculator launched four years earlier. By that time, the HP catalog listed some 1,600 products, none of which sold more than ten units per day. Within six months of its launch in January 1972, the new HP-35 was selling 1,000 per day, and a year later accounted for a staggering 41 percent of the company’s total profits.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

Crash films…shot between 1948 and 1950, before Colombia. As the Web authors explained, this was a series of nineteen films whose sole aim was to display things never before attempted in the medium, a kind of artistic exploit on celluloid. Lacombe didn’t care about the point of a film, only about the public’s reactions: its passivity toward images, its relationship to plot and story line, its voyeuristic tendencies, its fascination with intimacy, and also its tolerance for conceptual cinema. He challenged people’s watching habits and turned filmmaking conventions on their heads. Always a need to innovate, disturb, shock…

I was denying myself. I knew, but… I was faced with the past again, you know. To admit that I liked you, I had to also admit that I’m gay, and while I don’t have a problem with that…” He trailed off, sighing as he shook his head. “It’s confusing.” “No, it’s not.” I took his hand and twined our fingers. For some reason, it felt familiar. “You don’t want to be the gay kid who made his father crash, but by admitting you like me, you had to face your past… like I do every day.

My best friend is the one person I lean on when my world comes crashing down before my eyes.

one tower falls the other follows do chickens come home to roost? enormity crashes dazed disbelief (chickens won’t roost here again pigeons either)

the creation of expectations about future growth is a crucial role for government, and not just during downturns. It is why mission-oriented innovation policy—bringing Keynes and Schumpeter together—has such an important role to play in driving stronger economic performance. Indeed, Keynes argued that the ‘socialisation of investment’—which, as Mazzucato suggests, could include the public sector acting as investor and equity-holder—would provide more stability to the investment function and hence to growth.53 It is because public expenditure is critical to the co-production of the conditions for growth, as Kelton highlights, that the austerity policies which have reduced it in the period since the financial crash have proved so futile, increasing rather than diminishing the ratio of debt to GDP. And as Wray and Nersisyan emphasise, the endogenous nature of money created by ‘keystrokes’ in the banking system gives governments far greater scope to use fiscal policy in support of economic growth than the orthodox approach allows.

you’re already awake and have been doing research of your own, you may know some or all and even more than what I’m going to talk about here. Great. Awesome. Love it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking a keen interest in our future. But if you are just waking up and recently coming off my last two books, you will find this a continuation in your crash-course about how the NWO operates.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” Lisa shrilled as she was interrupted by a loud crashing sound coming from the hall way, followed by a sound like water gushing. We both jumped into each other’s arms again and screamed. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” “It’s ok,” I said to Lisa. “It’s probably just a roof beam falling in letting the rain come in. There’s nothing to be worried about. We need to find somewhere safe to hide.” “Safe? Where is safe? Safe from the storm or safe from the ghosts.” “There are no ghosts here. Ghosts DON’T exist!” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, Lisa or myself. “This is a haunted house. Why wouldn’t ghosts exist?” she challenged. “Because, because….I don’t know, they just don’t that’s all. It’s just a tourist attraction.” “Well what about the boy on the swing out there?” Lisa was determined to scare us both. “We don’t know that there’s a boy on the swing out there. Our eyes aren’t seeing right in the storm,” but before I could continue reassuring Lisa, I heard a high pitched melodic sound coming from somewhere in the house, echoing

my hunch was confirmed. In the late 1920s there had been an explosive, though rarely mentioned, growth in private debt, right before the all-too-frequently invoked stock market crash of October 1929.

At a surface level, the Kalman filter resembles the kind of time series analysis that’s common in finance. The key difference is that the Kalman filter is used on reproducible systems while finance is typically a non-reproducible system. If you’re using the Kalman filter to guide a drone from point A to point B, but you have a bug in your code and the drone crashes, you can simply pick up the drone21, put it back on the launch pad at point A, and try again. Because you can repeat the experiment over and over, you can eventually get very precise measurements and a functioning guidance algorithm. That’s a reproducible system. In finance, however, you usually can’t just keep re-running a trading algorithm that makes money and get the same result. Eventually your counterparties will adapt and get wise. A key difference relative to our drone example is the presence of animate objects (other humans) who won’t always do the same thing given the same input.

And Ella starts rapping: Straight A's, good grades, that's the plan Study hard, top of the class Doing the best you can You won't need it but you're studying algebra Won't use Japanese, world history or calculus You follow the path they tell you to Go straight to college when you finish school If there's no scholarship take out a loan Clock up a debt kid, you're on your own Take all your stuff, you're leaving home The big wide world is yours to roam The crowd roars. She is seriously so good! Damon picks up his guitar and starts singing: But life can give us lemons and not ice cream And the path we take is not what it seems But we can't give up and cry and scream We have to turn up and change our dream Ella raps again: Science, physics and chemistry Make sure you ace your SATs Gotta get into an Ivy League Make my parents proud of me The say the road is straight and clear No need to wait, choose a career Doctor, lawyer, engineer Need to make a hundred grand a year And Damon sings: But life can give you lemons and not ice cream Find yourself against the current going upstream And all you wanna do is cry and scream Because you realize this ain't your dream You realize you have to change your dream Ella raps: Sat in class reading Romeo and Juliet But never understanding a word of it It's so old fashioned, it just doesn't fit You hate it so much, you wanna quit That's the stuff they think you need to learn But what happens when you crash and burn What happens when life deals you a blow What happens when you sink so low? And Damon sings: When life gives you lemons and not ice cream When you find yourself without a team When it throws you things that are too extreme When you can no longer chase your dream Then know it's time to change your dream And together they sing: When life gives you lemons and not ice cream When you wanna cry and shout and scream When you've fallen off your balance beam Then you know it's time to change your dream And you can do it You Can Change Your Dream

I was supposed to be the captain of this damn rocket ship and I was sure going to clobber the guy that tied me out on the nose of the thing. Here we were going through space a million miles an hour and we were pointed right at the moon and we were going to crash for sure and my head wasn't that hard. I had a pretty good idea what would happen when the moon and I met head on.

only took that Peruvian rugby team that crashed in the Andes in the early 1970s nine days without food before they were so desperate with hunger they resorted to eating the dead bodies of their friends to survive.

I stop thinking that overworking, overmanaging, over-volunteering is necessary for my part of the world to keep running. For everyone I care about to be okay. It turns out that the universe is requesting a much more manageable amount of contribution from me. A kind of spiritual arrogance where I put myself at the center holding things up. In fact, it has happened that when I do less, more good has actually opened up for me. Go figure. Like a spiritual magic trick instead and the best kind. If I’m not spending time trying to figure out how to help, how to make things better, how to get more done by myself, that leaves chunks of time to ponder doing something else. Like – something fun. Suddenly hobbies are possible. Time opens up to sit still on my back deck watching the flowers grow. Reading a good book just because. And the more I let myself try those things, the more fun things I think up to do. Kayaking on the lake, learning to ride a bike again. Yeah, you heard me, learning to ride a bike. Turns out that old cliché is wrong – at least with me. Even better is the payoff I didn’t expect. When things didn’t crash to the ground without me driving the bus, and weirdly even got better, I felt more like I was a part of the universe. I was snugly fit somewhere in the middle as just a piece of everything. I was never meant to try and take on so much. What a relief. I am just a passenger on the bus and I don’t need to know where I’m headed. I didn’t anyway, only raising my anxiety and probably my meddling. I was able to give myself permission to hang back, do less and still know I’d done my part. Go enjoy the rest of life. And that’s exactly what I’m setting out to do. Maybe a little later than most, but all we have is the day we’re in so – it’s never too late. Next week I’ll be sitting among the redwoods listening to the sea far below. More adventures to follow. AUTHOR NOTES - MICHAEL ANDERLE AUGUST 25, 2021 Thank you for not only reading this book, but this entire series and these author notes as well.

Hindu treatise on the art of government, the Arthashastra, lays down the rules of policy for the complete tyrant, describing the organization of his palace, his court, and his state in such fashion as to make Machiavelli seem a liberal. The first rule is that he must trust no one, and be without a single intimate friend. Beyond this, he must organize his government as a series of concentric circles composed of the various ministers, generals, officers, secretaries, and servants who execute his orders, every circle constituting a degree of rank leading up to the king himself at the center—like a spider in its web. Beginning with the circle immediately surrounding the king, the circles must consist alternately of his natural enemies and his natural friends. Because the very highest rank of princes will be plotting to seize the king’s power, they must be surrounded and watched by a circle of ministers eager to gain the king’s favor—and this hierarchy of mutually mistrusting circles must go all the way out to the fringe of the web. Divide et impera—divide and rule. Meanwhile, the king remains in the safety of his inmost apartments, attended by guards who are in turn watched by other guards hidden in the walls. Slaves taste his food for poison, and he must sleep either with one eye open or with his door firmly locked on the inside. In case of a serious revolution, there must be a secret, underground passage giving him escape from the center—a passage containing a lever which will unsettle the keystone of the building and bring it crashing down upon his rebellious court. The Arthashastra does not forget to warn the tyrant that he can never win. He may rise to eminence through ambition or the call of duty, but the more absolute his power, the more he is hated, and the more he is the prisoner of his own trap. The web catches the spider. He cannot wander at leisure in the streets and parks of his own capital, or sit on a lonely beach listening to the waves and watching the gulls. Through enslaving others he himself becomes the most miserable of slaves.

There once was a guy from Cape Cod. Who flew in his plane and—oh, God! He crashed in the sea. And between you and me. There’s something around here with claws.

The moment the first missile crashed into the Skylark, Captain Jeane Blake realized she had gravely underestimated the danger they’d gotten themselves into. The spaceship jolted, and a series of yellow warning messages flashed up on the screens. On the radar display, the markers showing the Lark and the Union vessel hot on its trail flickered in and out of existence in the interference, and the gravitational anomalies of the lane kept throwing both ships off-course. Their pursuer was gaining on them.

We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI ...," Kleinrock ... said in an interview, "We typed the L and we asked on the phone, "Do you see the L?" "Yes, we see the L," came the response. We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O." "Yes, we see the O." Then we typed the G, and the system crashed... Yet a revolution had begun…

be a dead fool. She braced for the crash, sad that her brother and parents would never know what happened

Ulay’s Polaroids of that period often showed him piercing his own flesh in various bloody ways. In one work, he tattooed one of his aphorisms on his arm: ULTIMA RATIO (meaning final argument or last resort, referring to force). Then he cut a square hunk of flesh containing the tattoo out of his arm, slicing so deeply that the muscle and tendon were visible. He framed and preserved the tattooed flesh in formaldehyde. For another image, he held a bloodstained paper towel over a self-inflicted razor wound in his belly. A series of shots showed him slicing his fingertips with a box cutter and painting the white tiles of a bathroom with his own blood. (...)somebody gave Ulay a Newton’s cradle. He was fascinated by the back-and-forth swinging of the shiny metal balls, the little clack they made when they collided, the perfect transfer of energy. “What if we did that?” he said. I immediately understood what he was talking about: a performance where the two of us would collide and bounce off each other. We were naked, standing twenty meters apart. We were in a warehouse on the island of Giudecca, just across the lagoon from Venice. A couple hundred people were watching. Slowly at first, Ulay and I began to run toward each other. The first time, we just brushed past each other as we met; on each successive run, though, we moved faster and faster and made harder contact—until finally Ulay was crashing into me. Once or twice he knocked me over. We had placed microphones near the collision point, to pick up the sounds of flesh slapping flesh. (...) then [Ulay] took out a heavy needle, the kind used to sew leather, attached to some thick white thread, and he sewed his lips shut. This didn’t happen quickly. First he had to penetrate the skin below his lower lip—not easy—and then the skin above his upper lip. Also not easy. Then he pulled the thread tight and tied a knot. And then he and I changed places: Ulay sat down among the audience, and I sat in the chair he had just occupied. “Now,” I told our friends, “you will ask me questions and I will answer as Ulay.

[...]We simply have to get used to this split, to a world dominated by this distortion. Of course, there really was a crisis in 1929, and Hiroshima really happened, so both financial crashes and nuclear bombs have had their respective moments of truth. But there has been no series of increasingly serious crashes (as Marx predicted), nor has war gone from one nuclear showdown to the next. In each case, there was one event - and that was that. The sequel has been something else entirely: both big financial capital and the means of destruction have been 'hyper-realized' - and both are now in orbit above our heads on courses which not only escape our control but, by the same token, escape from reality itself. War hyper-realized and money hyper-realized circulate alike in a space which is inaccessible - but which consequently leaves the world just as it is. The upshot is that our (real) economies continue to produce, even though the slightest logical consequence of the fluctuations occurring in our imagined economy would have sufficed to destroy them utterly (we should not forget that the total volume of trade currently represents a mere forty-fifth of the total movement of capital). Similarly, the world continues to exist even though the detonation of a thousandth part of the available nuclear explosives would have reduced it to nothing.[...]

...I imagine I'll have a reckoning. That’s what this is all leading to, and there’s no avoiding it. Every man has one whether he knows it or not. Sometimes he blows past it at speed. Sometimes he steps over it like an unmarked grave. And sometimes it’s a dire affair fraught with the type of stuff that delivers him afire, still smoking as he comes crashing down.

Whatever she called it, I was not a fan. I felt like I was in an elevator when the cable snapped, sending me crashing to the ground faster than my own bodyweight would have accounted for. Rainbow light blazed across the cosmos of my mind and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath—because I’d left my lungs about five miles above me back in the Mausoleum. This continued for the length of a particularly long infomercial rather than a snap of the fingers. It was absolutely the worst.

The reason this UFO crashed was no different from youngsters (18 to 22 years of age) driving cars at excessive speeds on the 400 series highways in Canada or Interstate highways in the USA. The pilot and co-pilot who were young were not aware of the earth’s gravitational pull and it was too late to slow down when they reversed their thrusters so they crashed. Most of the craft was not seriously damaged but the collision caused havoc on board.

What Motivated Me To Write My 5th Book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope" by Beth Praed When my neurologist told me that my MS would eventually be fatal for me, I was depressed and angry. The reason for being depressed is obvious. But the anger? I was mad at God! How could He let this happen to me! I had been working on a devotional book about living with a disease. But when I received the latest diagnosis from her, I shelved the book and didn't write again for a year and a half. And then, I had a dream about my funeral. In that dream, I could see my body in a casket. Then the "dream minister" began his homily. He mentioned how "God gave Beth her first book on MS in a series of dreams. That book became the top book on multiple sclerosis for six years at Amazon. But the book for which she is best remembered is her devotional about disease." When I woke up, I remembered the dream. It was then that I realized that the dream minister was talking about this book! So, I started writing again. Maybe it was just some wacky dream! But my dear friend Jim didn't think so. He once said to me, "If I am ever flying on a plane sometime, and you have a dream that my plane crashed, guess what? I would cancel the flight!" Jim unfortunately died before the devotional book about disease was published, but I do believe that he knows. So now my 5th book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope", has been published by CrossLink Publishing and is available. But mainly I am so grateful to God for giving me the motivation to finish writing the book. It probably wouldn't have happened otherwise if He hadn't given me that dream. Multiple Sclerosis has robbed me of absolutely everything. I have gone from doing daily kick boxing to now being in a wheelchair. But if this book helps other people who are suffering from a serious disease, then my life will have had some purpose and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak to other individuals who are also suffering.

Motivation To Write My Book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope" When my neurologist told me that my MS would eventually be fatal for me, I was depressed and angry. The reason for being depressed is obvious. But the anger? I was mad at God! How could He let this happen to me! I had been working on a devotional book about living with a disease. But when I received the latest diagnosis from her, I shelved the book and didn't write again for a year and a half. And then, I had a dream about my funeral. In that dream, I could see my body in a casket. Then the "dream minister" began his homily. He mentioned how "God gave Beth her first book on MS in a series of dreams. That book became the top book on multiple sclerosis for six years at Amazon. But the book for which she is best remembered is her devotional about disease." When I woke up, I remembered the dream. It was then that I realized that the dream minister was talking about this book! So, I started writing again. Maybe it was just some wacky dream! But my dear friend Jim didn't think so. He once said to me, "If I am ever flying on a plane sometime, and you have a dream that my plane crashed, guess what? I would cancel the flight!" Jim unfortunately died before the devotional book about disease was published, but I do believe that he knows. So now my 5th book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope", has been published by CrossLink Publishing and is available. But mainly I am so grateful to God for giving me the motivation to finish writing the book. It probably wouldn't have happened otherwise if He hadn't given me that dream. Multiple Sclerosis has robbed me of absolutely everything. I have gone from doing daily kick boxing to now being in a wheelchair. But if this book helps other people who are suffering from a serious disease, then my life will have had some purpose and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak to other individuals who are also suffering.

What Motivated Me To Write My 5th Book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope" by Beth Praed When my neurologist told me that my MS would eventually be fatal for me, I was depressed and angry. The reason for being depressed is obvious. But the anger? I was mad at God! How could He let this happen to me! I had been working on a devotional book about living with a disease. But when I received the latest diagnosis from her, I shelved the book and didn't write again for a year and a half. And then, I had a dream about my funeral. In that dream, I could see my body in a casket. Then the "dream minister" began his homily. He mentioned how "God gave Beth her first book on MS in a series of dreams. That book became the top book on multiple sclerosis for six years at Amazon. But the book for which she is best remembered is her devotional about disease." When I woke up, I remembered the dream. It was then that I realized that the dream minister was talking about this book! So, I started writing again. Maybe it was just some wacky dream! But my dear friend Jim didn't think so. He once said to me, "If I am ever flying on a plane sometime, and you have a dream that my plane crashed, guess what? I would cancel the flight!" Jim unfortunately died before the devotional book about disease was published, but I do believe that he knows. So now my 5th book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope", has been published by CrossLink Publishing and is available. But mainly I am so grateful to God for giving me the motivation to finish writing the book. It probably wouldn't have happened otherwise if He hadn't given me that dream. Multiple Sclerosis has robbed me of absolutely everything. I have gone from doing daily kick boxing to now being in a wheelchair. But if this book helps other people who are suffering from a serious disease, then my life will have had some purpose and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak to other individuals who are also suffering.

A Whacky Dream Or Not? When my neurologist told me that my MS would eventually be fatal for me, I was depressed and angry. The reason for being depressed is obvious. But the anger? I was mad at God! How could He let this happen to me! I had been working on a devotional book about living with a disease. But when I received the latest diagnosis from her, I shelved the book and didn't write again for a year and a half. And then, I had a dream about my funeral. In that dream, I could see my body in a casket. Then the "dream minister" began his homily. He mentioned how "God gave Beth her first book on MS in a series of dreams. That book became the top book on multiple sclerosis for six years at Amazon. But the book for which she is best remembered is her devotional about disease." When I woke up, I remembered the dream. It was then that I realized that the dream minister was talking about this book! So, I started writing again. Maybe it was just some whacky dream! But my dear friend Jim didn't think so. He once said to me, "If I am ever flying on a plane sometime, and you have a dream that my plane crashed, guess what? I would cancel the flight!" Jim unfortunately died before the devotional book about disease was published, but I do believe that he knows. So now my 5th book, "So You Have a Disease: Devotions and Stories To Restore Hope", has been published by CrossLink Publishing and is available. But mainly I am so grateful to God for giving me the motivation to finish writing the book. It probably wouldn't have happened otherwise if He hadn't given me that dream. Multiple Sclerosis has robbed me of absolutely everything. I have gone from doing daily kick boxing to now being in a wheelchair. But if this book helps other people who are suffering from a serious disease, then my life will have had some purpose and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak to other individuals who are also suffering. So was the dream about my funeral a whacky dream or not? Only time will tell.

These seven errors, furthermore, are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill. It’s not that the pilot has to negotiate some critical technical maneuver and fails. The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication. One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps—and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them.

I crash into him, clinging to him tightly as a wave of emotion threatens to make me burst into tears again. I bury my cheek into his chest as the heady, manly scent of Zak's cologne invades my senses, instantly calming my inner chaos. It's been forever since I have been in Zak's arms. "I'm here." He quietly moans next to my ear, rocking us from side to side, squeezing me tighter. "Had to make a quick stop, but I'm here, Bella." I forgot how much I love Zak's hugs.

Jesus help me,’ Reg shouted, as Jack crashed into him. ‘It's me you fool,’ Jack hissed.

The German swung an entrenching tool at Ham, the big soldier ducking from the blow, before thrusting up with his bayonet, the blade digging into the German’s thigh and sending him crashing into the ditch, his arms reaching up, before Ham crashed his boot down on his head.

With certainty, being thoroughly fucked by Caden Ashford would be the most agreeable event to occur since he had crashed so disruptively into her life.

If you don’t want to taste it, why do you even drink it?” “Because the point isn’t to taste it, it’s to fucking feel it. To forget about everything else. Hell, the world could crash and burn around you, and you wouldn’t give a fuck.

shell tumbled overhead and Jack saw a plume of water spit up from the river, his eyes squinting as he saw something moving amongst the smoke. 'Sir.' 'What is it?' Connor asked, as he looked up from the paper. 'It's,' Jack paused, his hands rubbing his eyes as a figure took shape on the bridge. 'It's a man riding a bicycle, sir.' 'A man doing what?' Connor asked, before turning, his face flashing with surprise as he saw the figure steering around a burnt out truck, his front wheel squeaking as he pedalled towards the pillbox. Jack followed Connor as he stepped outside, the captain ducking down as a shell spat overhead, the cyclist swerving as the projectile crashed into the river, sending a jet of water spurting into the air. 'What the hell are you doing?' Connor shouted, as the man drew near, his legs back-pedalling as he came to a stop. 'Are you trying to get killed?' Connor asked, his hand seizing him by the arm and dragging him behind a concrete barrier as another shell screamed overhead. 'I am sorry,' the man said, before wiping a handkerchief over his brow. 'Where the hell have you come from?

I’m not afraid of flying,” she told Crash but didn’t let go of her hand. The corners of Crash’s mouth twitched. “Of course not.” “No, really. I’m not. It’s just the takeoffs and the landings that I don’t like.

of chips. “I thought you’d know what

In fact, he was beginning to forget what his existence had been like before she crashed into his life like a raging hurricane and destroyed everything in her wake. But nothing had prepared him for such a display of utter domesticity. The sight of Kara in a fucking apron sent all of the blood in his body rushing straight to his suddenly hard as hell cock.

To live is to risk. To hide from life is to fade away. We must swing on the trapeze, or we’ll never fly. And without flying, what is life worth? I want to fly, even if I might crash to the ground now and then.

If those same scientists analyzed babies who are born with congenital heart disorders- who have to undergo open-heart surgery the moment they are born, whose tiny chests are opened and doused with icy water to paralyze their metabolisms, who are kept alive by machines and must have a series of surgeries as they grow-they might conclude those children would have worse outlooks than healthy children. Personally, I believe their lives are neither better nor worse, only different. We, on the mountain, and these children with their surgeries are sort of "abnormal," a kind of "mutant," because we both challenged our destiny and wrote a new ending. It's why I identify with them. When I'm with them, my life has meaning, and my heart grows. They are messengers of life, these children with voices made hoarse by the intubation that will often affect their vocal cords. In their raspy voices, they whisper to me that I was right to continue trudging over that mountain...

I love you, Forest Blackburn. I loved you even when I hated you. I want you to only ever love me. I want to be the only one who holds you like this. I want you if the world comes crashing down. I will only ever want you. Nothing in this life can hurt me but you,” He whispers,

You know, big stories and smash pictures always have a way of breaking around him. He’s better than a rabbit’s foot any day!” “We were lucky yesterday,” Flash admitted with a grin. “Those auto crashes seemed to have been staged for our special benefit.

but she kept her hand on Crash’s knee the entire way.

the ancients were fond of the metaphor of a charioteer. To win the race, one must not only get their horses to run quickly—but also keep the team under control, calm their nerves and jitters, have such a firm grasp on the reins that they can steer with pinpoint precision in even the most difficult of circumstances. The charioteer must figure out how to balance strictness and kindness, the light and the heavy touch. They have to pace themselves and their animals, and find every ounce of speed when it counts. A driver without control will go fast . . . but they will inevitably crash. Especially around the hairpin turns of the arena and the winding, pockmarked road of life. Especially when the crowd and the competition are rooting for exactly that. It is through discipline that not only are all things possible, but also that all things are enhanced.

A note on the file folder said More series material in box 3312. “That one, Molly.” Reed pointed to the box on the top shelf in the corner. “Get that one. Look for two stories from the series. The folders might have something written on them.” Still on the higher shelf, Wilson heaved the box nearer, opening to the case of Cyras Makepeace. “Remember that case, Tom? Wilderness guide whose customers died hiking?” “Yeah, it’s all coming back. Cyras arranged to make himself a beneficiary on their insurance policies before his clients had wilderness accidents. They never charged him even after a couple of exhumations.” “Here’s the last one on the series,” Wilson said, just as the lights flickered, the floor shook from the presses, and the board she was standing on cracked. “Look out!” Wilson caught herself but the box crashed, files spilled on the floor at Reed’s feet He bent down to collect them. He reached for a black-and-white mug shot and he froze. “Jesus Christ!” Realization rushed at him with all the fury and the earth-shaking thunder of the presses, driving him to his knees as he studied the face that met his in the flickering light.

The mists parted and a figure that haunts all of humanity's nightmares glided ethereally towards him. Its black cloak absorbed the street light. The scythe in its hand glimmered with the memory of a thousand dying suns. This guy had really made an effort with his Halloween costume. The image was ruined, though, when he crashed to the ground like he had been shot. His feet waving in the air, Dave could see the roller skates. 'A

Things existed and so had a right to nobility, a right to be honored and appreciated, as much as more sentient things that walked around and demanded the honor themselves. Things had a right to names: when named, and called by those names, of course they would respond positively—for the universe wants to be ordered, wants to be cared for, and has nothing to fulfill this function (said another contributor) but us. Or (said a third person) if there are indeed gods, we’re their tool toward this purpose. This is our chance to be gods, on the physical level, the caretakers and orderers of the “less sentient” kinds of life. More than nine thousand people, from Gorget and other ships, added to this written tradition as time went by: they wrote letters, dissertations, essays, critiques, poems, songs, prose, satire. It was the longest-running conversation on one subject in the history of that net. The contribution started two years after the departure from Vulcan, and continued without a missed day until seventy-eight years thereafter, the day the core of the computer in question crashed fatally, killing the database.

Then his mouth was on hers and they were kissing hard and deep and wet, and they were moaning and rubbing and tugging and grinding. Harper’s heart crashed in her chest and her pulse roared in her ears and her breathing came in shallow gasps and her breasts were squashed against his chest and they were in a goddamn bathroom at her work and she didn’t care.

She’d jury-rigged a computer using pieces scavenged from several crashed fighters over the years, including a cracked but still-usable display from an old BTL-A4 Y-wing. There were no radio communications to speak of—no way to transmit or receive and, frankly, nobody she wanted to talk to anyway. On the wreckage of a Zephra-series hauler, though, she’d once found a stash of data chips, and after painstakingly going through each and every one of them, she’d discovered three with their programs intact; one of them, to her delight, had been a flight simulator.

In an email to Robertson, the whistleblower Sunny described how Ranbaxy used hidden areas of the plant to store and cover up testing machines that were not connected to the company’s main computer network. He was referring to the crucial high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) machines, the workhorses of any good testing laboratory. The bulky machines looked like a stack of computer printers. Once a drug sample is mixed with a solvent, injected into the machine, and pressed through a column filled with granular material, the machine separates out and measures the drug’s components, including impurities. It displays them as a series of peaks on a graph called a chromatogram. In a compliant laboratory, HPLC machines would be networked with the main computer system, making all their data visible and preserved. During a recent inspection, Sunny wrote, the unauthorized HPLC machines were kept in two ancillary labs: “Ranbaxy creates small such hidden areas where these manipulations can be done.” Sunny estimated that some thirty products on the U.S. market did not pass specifications and advised Robertson that the agency needed to raid Paonta Sahib and Dewas, just as it had done in New Jersey, to find the evidence. He warned, “The move has already started in Ranbaxy to share such details of problematic products personally and not on emails or letters.” But because the U.S. Attorney had no jurisdiction in India, the FDA couldn’t execute a search warrant there. Robertson felt thwarted: “People said, ‘You need to go to India.’” But her response was, “What am I going to do [over there], knock on people’s doors and hope they talk to me? I don’t have authority over in India. It’s all a voluntary, good-faith system.” The case had crashed like a wrecking ball into the overtaxed agency, exposing the fact that the FDA had no effective way to police a foreign drug company.

But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That’s a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.

Do you hear me, Harley Payne?” I whispered. “I see you.” Harley nodded and then he was on me, his lips crashing hot and hard into mine.

Have you ever heard of the Swiss cheese model? In order for a catastrophic event, such as a plane crash, to occur, a sequence of events precedes it. Think of these separate factors as slices of Swiss cheese lined up one behind the other. If any one of the holes in them doesn't align with the others, the series of events is changed or curtailed, and a catastrophe is prevented." "But if all the holes line up ---" "The door is open for disaster.