“
And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
“
DETECTION HAS MANY METHODS, MANY PATHWAYS, NARROW AND subtle. Fingerprints. The lost piece of thread. The dog barking in the night. But there is also Google.
”
”
Maureen Johnson (The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2))
“
But I dog sit for those people. Once they notice he’s gone, they will ask me if I’ve seen him.”
“So what?”
“I pride myself in being an honest man. That’s what!
”
”
Cricket Rohman (Wanted: An Honest Man (Lindsey Lark #1))
“
There are roughly 1,200 dogs trained to detect bombs and bomb making materials in the US - and over 40,000 trained to detect marijuana. Some of the bomb-dogs are also cross trained as drug-dogs which accounts for their ability to sleep well at night.
”
”
T. Rafael Cimino (Mid Ocean)
“
Greek mythology has always been my Achilles elbow.
”
”
Adrian McKinty (Rain Dogs (Detective Sean Duffy, #5))
“
Dude--she's your wife." He pointed to the locker where the Bible lay concealed. "God first, family second, country third.
”
”
Ronie Kendig (Beowulf: Explosives Detection Dog (A Breed Apart, #3))
“
Saskia groaned again. She threw back her bed covers, the last vestiges of sleep leaving her. It would be evening in Lyon. Clarissa would be expecting to hear from her. A call-in at least once every 24 hours was part of several protocols Clarissa had established. The instruction at the end of the conversation, “Give the dogs a pat for me”, reassured Clarissa that all was well. Leave the words out, replace any one of the words in the sentence with another or not place a call in a 24-hour period, and Clarissa would alert authorities. In her younger years, Clarissa had served in the British army. Her experiences in those years had caused the trauma she now lived with, though she used her expertise by teaching her three partners basic self-defence, how to operate firearms and how to wield weapons. She also programmed their watches and phones to enable her to constantly track their whereabouts, explaining, “I want to know that my three charges are safe”.
Another protocol was to always check accommodation venues for listening devices. Saskia did this before calling Clarissa.
“Clarissa. Ça va?”
“What have you to report?
”
”
Miriam Verbeek (The Forest: A thrilling international crime novel (Saskia van Essen crime thrillers))
“
They can herd you only because you can't herd yourselves. Forget the flock. Forget the dogs. Herd yourselves.
”
”
Leonie Swann (Three Bags Full (Sheep Detective Story, #1))
“
If you can see a cop in your rear view mirror - no matter how far back the cop is - TURN! The sooner you turn the better. Your goal while driving should be to never let a law enforcement officer into a position where he can pull you over. Don't even let them come close enough to read your tag.
”
”
Ian Tinny (Drug Detection Dog Training: Libertarian Lawyers Fight Police State USA)
“
I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question.
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #6))
“
Duchess was barking her head off as she raced after a snarling, hissing, yowling white ball of Maleficent. Aphrodite was chasing after the dog, screaming for her to ''Come! Stay. Be good, damnit!'' Damien was close behind her, flailing his arms and yelling ''Duchess! Come!'' All of a sudden the Twins' cat, the huge and very stuck-up Beelzebub joined in the chase, only he was tearing around after Duchess.
''Ohmygod! Beelzebub! Honey!'' Shaunee ran into my view, yelling at the top of her very healthy lungs.
''Beelzebub! Duchess! Stop!'' Erin wailed, right behind her twin.
Darius suddenly burst out into the hallway, and I stepped back behind the curtains, not sure is my shrouding could be detected by him. Apparently he didn't notice me, or anything else, because he ran into the Council Room. I peeked through the drapes and could hear him telling Neferet that she was needed on the school grounds-that there was an 'altercation.' Then Neferet was hurrying out of the room and down the hall, following Darius into the dog-barking, cat-yowling, kid-screaming craziness.
I noticed that through all of it I hadn't seen hide nor hair of Jack.
Talk about an excellent diversion!
”
”
Kristin Cast (Untamed (House of Night, #4))
“
Never been around dogs much. My mom had a collie when I was a boy, but she was a gentle animal who stayed around the house, mostly. My father, and the men he knew, all had braces of big surly hunting dogs they used for going after wild hogs. The times he took me with him on those hunts, I was more afraid of those dogs than the feral hogs. Think they could sense it. Always felt like they would’ve taken the least opportunity to sink their teeth into me.
”
”
Phil Truman (Dire Wolf of the Quapaw: a Jubal Smoak Mystery (Jubal Smoak Mysteries Book 1))
“
The driver had on Radio 1, which was giving us Kylie Minogue's 'I should be so lucky'....By the song's second verse I was already longing for an IRA ambush and and by the second chorus I was dreaming of a rogue comet strike.
”
”
Adrian McKinty (Rain Dogs (Detective Sean Duffy, #5))
“
Sometimes a girl's gotta be bad to be good.
Murder in the Dog Park
”
”
Jill Yesko
“
The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Consider, for instance, advertising campaigns in which a pig dances joyfully over the fire pit where he or she is to be barbecued, or chickens wear aprons while beseeching the viewer to eat them. And consider the Veterinarian's Oath of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 'I solemnly swear to use my...skills for the...relief of animal suffering,' in light of the fact that the vast majority of veterinarians eat animals simply because they like the way meat tastes. Or think about how poeple won't replace their hamburgers with veggie burgers, even if the flavor is identical, because they claim that, if they try hard enough, they can detect a subtle difference in texture. Only when we deconstruct the carnistic schema can we see the absurdity of placing our preference for a flawless re-creation of a textural norm over the lives and deaths of billions of others.
”
”
Melanie Joy (Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism)
“
If you can see a cop in your rear view mirror - no matter how far back the cop is - TURN!" according to Attorney Rex Curry, "The sooner you turn the better. Your goal while driving should be to never let a law enforcement officer into a position where he can pull you over. Don't even let them come close enough to read your tag.
”
”
Ian Tinny (Drug Detection Dog Training: Libertarian Lawyers Fight Police State USA)
“
the sea is like having a pet dog asleep on the hearth. When I’m near it, even inside my cottage, it’s like I can feel it breathing. It’s a companion of sorts. It’s less lonely to live alone by the sea.
”
”
Alex Pavesi (The Eighth Detective)
“
How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water... with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song... with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog's... with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!
Ah! If we had other senses which would work other miracles for us, how many more things would we not discover around us!
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques (Classiques hachette))
“
Andy kicked her way in, moonlit and angerstruck, doors shattering the decoration behind as she shouted at the shocked furniture: “Blyton Summer Fucking Detective Club! Anybody home?” Kerri and Nate came to flank her right after, rifles aimed at the horrified haunted house. Tim scurried between them, promenaded across the hall, stopped by a decorative suit of armor, and peed on it.
”
”
Edgar Cantero (Meddling Kids)
“
In the days to come, when it will seem as if I were entombed, when the very firmament threatens to come crashing down upon my head, I shall be forced to abandon everything except what these spirits implanted in me. I shall be crushed, debased, humiliated. I shall be frustrated in every fiber of my being. I shall even take to howling like a dog. But I shall not be utterly lost! Eventually a day is to dawn when, glancing over my own life as though it were a story or history, I can detect in it a form, a pattern, a meaning. From then on the word defeat becomes meaningless. It will be impossible ever to relapse.
For on that day I become and I remain one with my creation.
On another day, in a foreign land, there will appear before me a young man who, unaware of the change which has come over me, will dub me "The Happy Rock." That is the moniker I shall tender when the great Cosmocrator demands-" Who art thou?"
Yes, beyond a doubt, I shall answer "The Happy Rock!"
And, if it be asked-"Didst thou enjoy thy stay on earth?"-I shall reply: "My life was one long rosy crucifixion."
As to the meaning of this, if it is not already clear, it shall be elucidated. If I fail then I am but a dog in the manger.
Once I thought I had been wounded as no man ever had. Because I felt thus I vowed to write this book. But long before I began the book the wound had healed. Since I had sworn to fulfill my task I reopened the horrible wound.
Let me put it another way. Perhaps in opening my own wound, I closed other wounds.. Something dies, something blossoms. To suffer in ignorance is horrible. To suffer deliberately, in order to understand the nature of suffering and abolish it forever, is quite another matter. The Buddha had one fixed thought in mind all his life, as we know it. It was to eliminate human suffering.
Suffering is unnecessary. But, one has to suffer before he is able to realize that this is so. It is only then, moreover, that the true significance of human suffering becomes clear. At the last desperate moment-when one can suffer no more!-something happens which is the nature of a miracle. The great wound which was draining the blood of life closes up, the organism blossoms like a rose. One is free at last, and not "with a yearning for Russia," but with a yearning for ever more freedom, ever more bliss. The tree of life is kept alive not by tears but the knowledge that freedom is real and everlasting.
”
”
Henry Miller
“
Dogs can read signals -- look at sheepdogs; they understand hand movements for left and right. Dogs are no fools, you know." He paused. "Well, some are. Some dogs are truly stupid, Ulf.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Department of Sensitive Crimes (Detective Varg, #1))
“
Heaven is all around you. You just can’t see us because we are vibrating at a higher level than you are. It’s kind of like a dog whistle. There is a noise, a pitch so high that the human ear cannot detect it but it is there nonetheless, for don’t you see all the dogs come running!
When we cross Rainbow Bridge we become only love and love is the highest level of vibration; the highest “pitch” so to speak. This is why you cannot see us. We are here, only gone from your sight until one day you are the same vibration as we are. When you vibrate in love all the time you will not have to ask again if I am here, you will know that I am here with you.
”
”
Kate McGahan (Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: A Dog's Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Series Book 3))
“
The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine raced and then died away; there was a touch of wind, warm dusty wind, redolent of thorn trees.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)
“
The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings—the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life. And yet he had always been haunted—had he not?—by the knowledge that there were men, lunatic cryptographers, mad detectives, who squandered their brilliance and sanity in decoding and interpreting the messages in cloud formations, in the letters of the Bible recombined, in the spots on butterflies’ wings. One might, perhaps, conclude from the existence of such men that meaning dwelled solely in the mind of the analyst. That it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things. That all the apparent significance and pattern had no more intrinsic sense than the chatter of an African gray parrot. One might so conclude; really, he thought, one might.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Final Solution)
“
No, this was Philly. Drunks here boo Santa and get in more trouble than a dog with an Easter basket, and like the dog, they usually end up either sick or dead. Ah yes, another lovely eve in the big city.
”
”
Kym Grosso (Kade's Dark Embrace (Immortals of New Orleans, #1))
“
The olfactory sensors of dogs, he said, had evolved over millions of years to be able to detect a handful of molecules, and that kind of sensitivity is extremely difficult to match, even with our most finely tuned sensors. It’s likely that we will continue to rely on dogs at airports for the foreseeable future.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
“
I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular
God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond
the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of
built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not
merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until
now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or
Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an
abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But
there's a difference between our countries that is also a
similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different
faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don't
have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your
survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and
I would not want to exchange that for your abundance.
”
”
Henning Mankell (The Dogs of Riga (Kurt Wallander, #2))
“
Human remains dogs are distinct from the dogs that search for escaped felons and the dogs that search for whole cadavers. They are trained to alert their owners when they detect the specific scents of decomposed human tissue. They can pinpoint the location of a corpse at the bottom of a lake by sniffing the water’s surface for the gases and fats that float up from the rotting remains. They can detect the lingering scent molecules of a decomposing body up to fourteen months after the killer lugged it away.
”
”
Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers)
“
Despite the life-saving contributions of a shelter pit bull named Howard, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division as a tactical explosive detection dog, pit bulls are banned from privatized housing on all major military bases.
”
”
Bronwen Dickey (Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon)
“
Here’s what I’m selling—you leave the world a better place than when you entered it. That’s all there is. For us it means we take down bad guys. For the dude who owns Lafayette it means serving the best goddamned coney dogs you’re ever gonna eat. For some Peace Corps sap it means putting rice in some poor kid’s bowl and swatting the flies off him. It doesn’t matter what you choose, it only matters what you can make stick.
”
”
Scott J. Holliday (Punishment (Detective Barnes, #1))
“
In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."
(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948)
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
Jennings is too tough and honest a writer to let anyone off her moral hook, even her hero.
”
”
Maureen Jennings (Let Loose the Dogs (Detective Murdoch, #4))
“
The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a detective story which means that there are clues and Red Herrings.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
“
YOU SPEND ENOUGH time chasing a dog to get back a precious black boot, you start to think like a dog. Spend the rest of your time chasing criminals, and you learn to think like a criminal.
”
”
Lisa Gardner (Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #11 FBI Profiler, #8))
“
If you train your explosive dog using a half-ounce target scent, it will miss one pound of the same material because the scent pictures of a half ounce and a pound are different. For humans the scent is the same -a bit stronger or weaker- but for the dog it is the difference between making a detection and not. You need to plan for this and reinforce using targets of different sizes and weights.
”
”
Resi Gerritsen (K9 Behavior Basics)
“
In the nineteenth century, The Romantics viewed Nature as benign, a glowing reflection of God's grace. Now we know better. Nature is brutal and, if it is feminine, she's not the kind of woman you can trust. Human beings may be her finest achievement yet, but when you get right down to brass tacks, we're meat. AIDS and organisms like streptococcus don't give a crap that we subdued the earth or produced a Shakespeare...
”
”
Rick Yancey
“
Do you know that dogs are descendants of wolves—all dogs, even those ridiculous little dogs you see in the parks. Wolves. Imagine how embarrassed a real wolf would be if he knew that he was cousin to a shih-tzu? Of course, we shouldn’t think animals have feelings like us—I don’t think they can be embarrassed, do you? My daughter’s cat is incapable of feeling anything very much, I can tell you—and certainly not embarrassment...
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Department of Sensitive Crimes (Detective Varg #1))
“
He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in mortal fear that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was burglars and open the window and call “Police!” and then these two detectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the police-court. He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart. So he gave up trying to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven.
”
”
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog))
“
Our dogs relieve chronic pain, lift our spirits, sniff out cancer, detect impending heart attacks, seizures and migraines, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help us recover from devastating illness, and even improve our children’s IQ, as well as lowering their risk for adult allergies and asthma. Just think—the unconditional love, limitless affection and to-die-for loyalty of a well-chosen, well-trained, well-cared-for dog could be just what the doctor ordered!
”
”
Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul: Stories of Canine Companionship, Comedy and Courage (Chicken Soup for the Soul))
“
And I maintain, Detective Halse,” said Inspector Fry doggedly, “that the civil unrest which allowing this message to remain in view would foment is against the principles of conscience and of British decency. Are you against the principles of British decency, Detective?
”
”
Lyndsay Faye (Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson)
“
You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved: a neat lop that took first person—that assured, confident woman, the girl detective, the adventurer—away from second, who was always anxious and vibrating like a too-small breed of dog.
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House)
“
he disclosed that he had been set upon by two Bedlamites, both of whom had jumped out from behind a bush, roaring at him like a couple of ferocious wild beasts ... The Sergeant cast a doubtful glance at Lieutenant Ottershaw, for, in his opinion, this had a false ring. His men, as he frequently informed them, put him forcibly in mind of many things, ranging from gape-seeds, hedge-birds, slush-buckets, and sheep-biters, to beetles, tailless dogs, and dead herrings, but none of them, least of all the two raw dragoons in question, had ever reminded him of a ferocious wild beast. Field-mice, yes, he thought, remembering the sad loss of steel in those posted to watch the Dower House; but if the young gentleman had detected any resemblance to ferocious wild beasts in his assailants, the Sergeant was prepared to take his Bible oath they had not been the baconbrained knock-in-the-cradles he had posted (much against his will) within the ground of Darracott place.
But Sergeant Hoole had never, until this disastrous evening, set eyes on Mr. Claud Darracott. Lieutenant Ottershaw had beheld that Pink of the Ton picking his delicate way across the cobbles in Rye, clad in astonishing but unquestionably modish raiment, and holding a quizzing-glass up to his eye with one fragile white hand, and it did not strike him as remarkable that this Bartholomew baby should liken two overzealous dragoons to wild beasts.
”
”
Georgette Heyer (The Unknown Ajax)
“
Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View
You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved: a neat lop that took first person—that assured, confident woman, the girl detective, the adventurer—away from second, who was always anxious and vibrating like a too-small breed of dog.
I left, and then lived: moved to the East Coast, wrote a book, moved in with a beautiful woman, got married, bought a rambling Victorian in Philadelphia. Learned things: how to make Manhattans and use starchy pasta water to create sauces and keep succulents alive.
But you. You took a job as a standardized-test grader. You drove seven hours to Indiana every other week for a year. You churned out mostly garbage for the second half of your MFA. You cried in front of many people. You missed readings, parties, the supermoon. You tried to tell your story to people who didn’t know how to listen. You made a fool of yourself, in more ways than one.
I thought you died, but writing this, I’m not sure you did.
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House)
“
Atsushi hated pain.
But pain had been an intimate part of his life for as long as he could remember. The pain of being stabbed, the pain from being punched, the pain of his hands numbing in the cold, pain inside his head, the pain of hunger—suffering clung to Atsushi like clothing, shaping him. Pain made Atsushi feel like himself. He didn’t know any other way to experience this feeling.
After joining the detective agency, the nature of the pain changed, he got hurt less often, and he stopped feeling miserable. Instead, the crushing pressure of necessity tore at Atsushi’s flesh. It split open his shoulder, pierced his chest, and snapped off his leg. The agony was so unbearable that it was as if he could feel his soul leaving his body, but even then, he fought through the pain because it was worth it. He knew he could stubbornly resist the pain no matter how bad it got.
There’s a beast inside me, thought Atsushi. And that’s not a metaphor. There’s a literal beast inside me. Right now, he’s howling and wildly feasting as he rampages. For some reason or another, he seems to have the power to negate wounds. Not the power to heal them or to recover but to negate. The reason he’s able to do this isn’t totally unrelated to my birth, probably. It’s not unrelated to the suffering I’ve had to bear all these years.
The beast—the tiger—is a manifestation of something within me. I still don’t know what that something is, but if he commands me to stand, then I can’t not stand—just like if he negates my wounds, then my wounds have no choice but to disappear.
”
”
Kafka Asagiri (文豪ストレイドッグス 55Minutes [Bungō Stray Dogs 55 Minutes])
“
Most cult leaders are narcissists. They brainwash people. It’s done by intermittent reinforcement. Let’s say you kick a dog then give it a treat. The dog learns that to get the treat it has to first withstand the kick. Gradually the treats decrease while the kicks increase, but by then the dog has been conditioned to associate being kicked with receiving a treat so it will accept the punishment in the vain hope that one
”
”
Anna-Lou Weatherley (The Couple on Cedar Close (Detective Dan Riley, #2))
“
Deepfakes are built on a technology called generative adversarial networks (GAN). As the name suggests, a GAN is a pair of “adversarial” deep learning neural networks. The first network, the forger network, tries to generate something that looks real, let’s say a synthesized picture of a dog, based on millions of pictures of dogs. The other network, the detective network, compares the forger’s synthesized dog picture with genuine dog pictures, and determines if the forger’s output is real or fake.
”
”
Kai-Fu Lee (AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future)
“
relationship and twenty-five years later we are still together. I had written four shows for her: Foyle’s War, Injustice, Collision and Menace. She was the first person to read my books, even before Hilda Starke. It feels odd to be writing about her and the truth is she has made it clear that she’s uncomfortable being a character in my book. Unfortunately, truth is what it’s all about. She is the main character in my life. ‘You’re working with that detective again, aren’t you?’ she said as we sat there, eating. ‘Yes.’ I hadn’t wanted her to know but I never tell her lies. She can see right through me. ‘Is that a good idea?’ ‘Not really. But I have a three-book deal and a case came up.’ I felt guilty. I knew she was waiting for my script. ‘I think it’s over anyway,’ I went on. ‘Hawthorne knows who did it.’ He hadn’t said as much but I could tell. There was something quite animalistic about Hawthorne. The closer he got to the truth, the more you could see it in his eyes, in the way he sat, in the very contours of his skin. He really was the dog with the bone. I’d hoped we might
”
”
Anthony Horowitz (The Sentence is Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz #2))
“
But soon Flush became aware of the more profound differences that distinguish Pisa—it was in Pisa that they were now settled—from London. The dogs were different. In London he could scarcely trot round to the pillar-box without meeting some pug dog, retriever, bulldog, mastiff, collie, Newfoundland, St. Bernard, fox terrier or one of the seven famous families of the Spaniel tribe. To each he gave a different name, and to each a different rank. But here in Pisa, though dogs abounded, there were no ranks; all—could it be possible?—were mongrels. As far as he could see, they were dogs merely—grey dogs, yellow dogs, brindled dogs, spotted dogs; but it was impossible to detect a single spaniel, collie, retriever or mastiff among them. Had the Kennel Club, then, no jurisdiction in Italy? Was the Spaniel Club unknown? Was there no law which decreed death to the topknot, which cherished the curled ear, protected the feathered foot, and insisted absolutely that the brow must be domed but not pointed? Apparently not. Flush felt himself like a prince in exile. He was the sole aristocrat among a crowd of canaille. He was the only pure-bred cocker spaniel in the whole of Pisa.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Flush)
“
Most dogs could hear four times better than a person, but Maggie’s enormous, upright ears evolved to detect quiet predators and distant prey. She could control each ear independently of the other. Eighteen muscles articulated each ear, shaping and sculpting her sail-like pinna to gather and concentrate sounds at frequencies far beyond any a human could hear. This allowed Maggie to hear seven times better than Scott. She could hear the whine of a jet at thirty thousand feet, termites chewing through wood, the crystal in Scott’s watch hum, and thousands of sounds as invisible to Scott as the scents he could not smell. When
”
”
Robert Crais (The Promise (Elvis Cole, #16; Joe Pike, #5; Scott James & Maggie, #2))
“
The feline passion for pyrophosphates might explain the animal’s reputation as a picky eater. “We make [pet food] choices based on what we like,” says Reed, “and then when they don’t like it, we call them finicky.” There is no way to know or imagine what the taste of pyrophosphate is like for cats. It’s like a cat trying to imagine the taste of sugar. Cats, unlike dogs and other omnivores, can’t taste sweetness. There’s no need, since the cat’s diet in the wild contains almost nothing in the way of carbohydrates (which include simple sugars). Either cats never had the gene for detecting sweet, or they lost it somewhere down the evolutionary road. Rodents,
”
”
Mary Roach (Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal)
“
I haven’t said it yet, but it seemed implied, that cinema for me was the American one, current Hollywood productions. “My” period goes roughly from The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935) with Gary Cooper and Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935) with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, to the death of Jean Harlow (which I relived many years later like the death of Marilyn Monroe, in an era more aware of the neurotic power of every symbol), with lots of comedies in between, the mystery-romances with Myrna Loy and William Powell and the dog Asta, the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the crime pictures of Chinese detective Charlie Chan and the horror films of Boris Karloff. I didn’t remember the names of the directors as well as the names of the actors, except for a few like Frank Capra, Gregory La Cava, and Frank Borzage, who represented the poor rather than the millionaires, usually with Spencer Tracy: they were the good-natured directors from the Roosevelt era; I learned this later; back then I consumed everything without distinguishing between them too much. American cinema in that moment consisted of a collection of actors’ faces without equal before or after (at least it seemed that way to me) and the adventures were simple mechanisms to get these faces together (sweethearts, character actors, extras) in different combinations.
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Italo Calvino (Making a Film)
“
Landsman is a tough guy, in his way, given to the taking of wild chances. He has been called hard-boiled and foolhardy, a momzer, a crazy son of a bitch. He has faced down shtarkers and psychopaths, he has been shot at, beaten, frozen, burned. He has pursued suspects between the flashing walls of urban firefights and deep into bear country. Heights, crowds, snakes, burning houses, dogs schooled to hate the smell of a policeman, he has shrugged them all off or functioned in spite of them. But when he finds himself in lightless or confined spaces, something in the animal core of Meyer Landsman convulses. No one but his ex-wife knows it, but Detective Meyer Landsman is afraid of the dark.
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Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union)
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Bumblebees detect the polarization of sunlight, invisible to uninstrumented humans; put vipers sense infrared radiation and detect temperature differences of 0.01C at a distance of half a meter; many insects can see ultraviolet light; some African freshwater fish generate a static electric field around themselves and sense intruders by slight perturbations induced in the field; dogs, sharks, and cicadas detect sounds wholly inaudible to humans; ordinary scorpions have micro--seismometers on their legs so they can detect in darkness the footsteps of a small insect a meter away; water scorpions sense their depth by measuring the hydrostatic pressure; a nubile female silkworm moth releases ten billionths of a gram of sex attractant per second, and draws to her every male for miles around; dolphins, whales, and bats use a kind of sonar for precision echo-location.
The direction, range, and amplitude of sounds reflected by to echo-locating bats are systematically mapped onto adjacent areas of the bat brain. How does the bat perceive its echo-world? Carp and catfish have taste buds distributed over most of their bodies, as well as in their mouths; the nerves from all these sensors converge on massive sensory processing lobes in the brain, lobes unknown in other animals. how does a catfish view the world? What does it feel like to be inside its brain? There are reported cases in which a dog wags its tail and greets with joy a man it has never met before; he turns out to be the long-lost identical twin of the dog's "master", recognizable by his odor. What is the smell-world of a dog like? Magnetotactic bacteria contain within them tiny crystals of magnetite - an iron mineral known to early sailing ship navigators as lodenstone. The bacteria literally have internal compasses that align them along the Earth's magnetic field. The great churning dynamo of molten iron in the Earth's core - as far as we know, entirely unknown to uninstrumented humans - is a guiding reality for these microscopic beings. How does the Earth's magnetism feel to them? All these creatures may be automatons, or nearly so, but what astounding special powers they have, never granted to humans, or even to comic book superheroes. How different their view of the world must be, perceiving so much that we miss.
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Carl Sagan (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)
“
Fortunately, getting hold of people’s garbage was a cinch. Indian detectives were much luckier than their counterparts in, say, America, who were forever rooting around in people’s dustbins down dark, seedy alleyways. In India, one could simply purchase an individual’s trash on the open market. All you had to do was befriend the right rag picker. Tens of thousands of untouchables of all ages still worked as unofficial dustmen and women across the country. Every morning, they came pushing their barrows, calling, “Kooray Wallah!” and took away all the household rubbish. In the colony’s open rubbish dump, surrounded by cows, goats, dogs and crows, they would sift through piles of stinking muck by hand, separating biodegradable waste from the plastic wrappers, aluminium foil, tin cans and glass bottles.
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Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri, #1))
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Flush lay with his eyes wide open, Listening. Though he could make no sense of the little words that hurtled over his head from two-thirty to four-thirty sometimes three times a week, he could detect with terrible accuracy that the tone of the words was changing. Miss Barrett’s voice had been forced and unnaturally lively at first. Now it had gained a warmth and an ease that he had never heard in it before. And every time the man came, some new sound came into their voices—now they made a grotesque chattering; now they skimmed over him like birds flying widely ; now they cooed and clucked, as if they were two birds settled in a nest; and then Miss Barrett’s voice, rising again, went soaring and circling in the air; and then Mr. Browning’s voice barked out its sharp, harsh clapper of laughter; and then there was only a murmur, a quiet humming sound as the two voices joined together.
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Virginia Woolf (Flush)
“
He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one.
Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other.
He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too.
Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons.
He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon.
p. 282-3
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Steve Burrows (A Siege of Bitterns (Birder Murder Mystery, #1))
“
Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were made more human by the washing that was hung out to dry from their balconies; by the children who congregated in their doorways, or played with skipping ropes and dogs on their pathways; by the music that the residents listened to, melodies that drifted out of the open windows and throbbed with life. All of this made it harder for large new buildings to deaden the human spirit. It was like the bush: you could clear it and build something where once there had been nothing but trees and grass and termite mounds, but if you turned your back for a moment, Africa would begin to reclaim what had always been hers. The grass would encroach, its seeds carried by the wind; birds would drop the seeds of saplings that would then send tiny shoots up out of the ground; the termites would marshal their exploratory troops to begin rebuilding their own intricate cities of mud in the very places they had claimed once before. And sooner or later the bush would have covered all your efforts and it would be as it was before, the wound on nature completely healed.
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Alexander McCall Smith (The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #14))
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By the time that paper appeared, the SARS epidemic of 2003 had been stopped, with the final toll at 8,098 people infected, of whom 774 died. The last case was detected and isolated in Taiwan on June 15. Hong Kong had been declared “SARS-free.” Singapore and Canada had been declared “SARS-free.” The whole world was supposedly “SARS-free.” What those declarations meant, more precisely, was that no SARS infections were currently raging in humans. But the virus hadn’t been eradicated. This was a zoonosis, and no disease scientist could doubt that its causal agent still lurked within one or more reservoir hosts—the palm civet, the raccoon dog, or whatever—in Guangdong and maybe elsewhere too. People celebrated the end of the outbreak, but those best informed celebrated most guardedly. SARS-CoV wasn’t gone, it was only hiding. It could return. In late December, it did. Like an aftershock to a quake, a new case broke in Guangdong. Soon afterward, three more. One patient was a waitress who had been exposed to a civet. On January 5, 2004, the day the first case was confirmed, Guangdong authorities reversed policy again, ordering the death and disposal of every masked palm civet held at a farm or a market in the province. Wild civets were another question, left unanswered.
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David Quammen (Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic)
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told me more about what happened the other night?” she asked, deciding to air her worst fears. “Am I under suspicion or something?” “Everyone is.” “Especially ex-wives who are publicly humiliated on the day of the murder, right?” Something in Montoya’s expression changed. Hardened. “I’ll be back,” he promised, “and I’ll bring another detective with me, then we’ll interview you and you can ask all the questions you like.” “And you’ll answer them?” He offered a hint of a smile. “That I can’t promise. Just that I won’t lie to you.” “I wouldn’t expect you to, Detective.” He gave a quick nod. “In the meantime if you suddenly remember, or think of anything, give me a call.” “I will,” she promised, irritated, watching as he hurried down the two steps of the porch to his car. He was younger than she was by a couple of years, she guessed, though she couldn’t be certain, and there was something about him that exuded a natural brooding sexuality, as if he knew he was attractive to women, almost expected it to be so. Great. Just what she needed, a sexy-as-hell cop who probably had her pinned to the top of his murder suspect list. She whistled for the dog and Hershey bounded inside, dragging some mud and leaves with her. “Sit!” Abby commanded and the Lab dropped her rear end onto the floor just inside the door. Abby opened the door to the closet and found a towel hanging on a peg she kept for just such occasions, then, while Hershey whined in protest, she cleaned all four of her damp paws. “You’re gonna be a problem, aren’t you?” she teased, then dropped the towel over the dog’s head. Hershey shook herself, tossed off the towel, then bit at it, snagging one end in her mouth and pulling backward in a quick game of tug of war. Abby laughed as she played with the dog, the first real joy she’d felt since hearing the news about her ex-husband. The phone rang and she left the dog growling and shaking the tattered piece of terry cloth. “Hello?” she said, still chuckling at Hershey’s antics as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Abby Chastain?” “Yes.” “Beth Ann Wright with the New Orleans Sentinel.” Abby’s heart plummeted. The press. Just what she needed. “You were Luke Gierman’s wife, right?” “What’s this about?” Abby asked warily as Hershey padded into the kitchen and looked expectantly at the back door leading to her studio. “In a second,” she mouthed to the Lab. Hershey slowly wagged her tail. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth Ann said, sounding sincerely rueful. “I should have explained. The paper’s running a series of articles on Luke, as he was a local celebrity, and I’d like to interview you for the piece. I was thinking we could meet tomorrow morning?” “Luke and I were divorced.” “Yes, I know, but I would like to give some insight to the man behind the mike, you know. He had a certain public persona, but I’m sure my readers would like to know more about him, his history, his hopes, his dreams, you know, the human-interest angle.” “It’s kind of late for that,” Abby said, not bothering to keep the ice out of her voice. “But you knew him intimately. I thought you could come up with some anecdotes, let people see the real Luke Gierman.” “I don’t think so.” “I realize you and he had some unresolved issues.” “Pardon me?” “I caught his program the other day.” Abby tensed, her fingers holding the phone in a death grip. “So this is probably harder for you than most, but I still would like to ask you some questions.” “Maybe another time,” she hedged and Beth Ann didn’t miss a beat. “Anytime you’d like. You’re a native Louisianan, aren’t you?” Abby’s neck muscles tightened. “Born and raised, but you met Luke in Seattle when he was working for a radio station . . . what’s the call sign, I know I’ve got it somewhere.” “KCTY.” It was a matter of public record. “Oh, that’s right. Country in the City. But you grew up here and went to local schools, right? Your
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Lisa Jackson (Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Malice & Devious (A Bentz/Montoya Novel))
“
We had something real,” Nobley said, starting to sound a little desperate. “You must have felt it, seeping through the costumes and pretenses.”
The brunette nodded.
“Seeping through the pretenses? Listen to him, he’s still acting.” Martin turned to the brunette in search of an ally.
“Do I detect any jealousy there, my flagpole-like friend?” Nobley said. “Still upset that you weren’t cast as a gentleman? You do make a very good gardener.”
Martin took a swing. Nobley ducked and rammed into his body, pushing them both to the ground. The brunette squealed and bounced on the balls of her feet.
“Stop it!” Jane pulled at Nobley, then slipped. He put out an arm and caught her midfall across her middle.
“Here, let me…” Nobley tried to give her a hand up and push Martin away at the same time.
“Get off me,” Martin said. “I’ll help her.”
He kicked Nobley in the rear, followed by some swatting of hands. Jane planted her feet, grabbed Nobley’s arm, and pulled him off. Martin was still swiping at Nobley from the ground. Nobley’s cap fell off, then his trench coat twisted up around Martin, who batted at it crazily.
“Cut it out!” Jane said, pushing Nobley back and putting herself between them. She felt more like a teacher stopping a schoolboy scuffle than an ingénue with two brawling beaus.
“M-m-martin’s gay!” Nobley said.
“I am not! You’re thinking of Edgar.”
“Who the hell is Edgar?”
“You know, that other gardener who always smells of fish.”
“Oh, right.”
Jane raised her hands in exasperation. “Would you two…”
A stuffed-up voice over the PA announced preboarding for Jane’s flight. The brunette made an audible moan of disappointment. Martin struggled to his feet with a hand up from Nobley, and they both stood before Jane, silent, pathetic as wet dogs who want to be let back in the house. She felt very sure of herself just then, tall and sleek and confident.
“Well, they’re playing my song, boys,” she said melodically.
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Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
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No teacher of RE ever said to me: “Beyond the limited realm of the senses, the shallow pool of the known, is a great untamable ocean, and we don’t have a fucking clue what goes on in there.” What we receive through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is all we know. We have tools that can enhance that information, we have theories for things that we suspect lie beyond that information, filtered through an apparatus limited once more to those senses. Those senses are limited; the light range we detect is within a narrow spectrum, between infrared light and ultraviolet light; other species see light that we can’t see. In the auditory realm, we hear but a fraction of the sound vibrations; we don’t hear high-pitched frequencies, like dog whistles, and we don’t hear low frequencies like whale song. The world is awash with colors unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests. Expressible only through symbol and story, as it can never be known by the innocent mind. The stories are formulas, poems, tools for reflection through which we may access the realm behind the thinking mind, the consciousness beyond knowing and known, the awareness that is not connected to the haphazard data of biography. The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer—at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction (“Don’t look in the mirror, Russ, it’ll fuck your head up.” Mental note: “Look in mirror.”). I saw that my face wasn’t my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I’d taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature.
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Russell Brand (Revolution)
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Doremus Jessup, so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. Seven years before his present credo—derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the revue Of Thee I Sing—little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the county poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors.
Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said.
There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.
But below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him. He could dramatize his assertion that he was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist but a Democrat—a homespun Jeffersonian-Lincolnian-Clevelandian-Wilsonian Democrat—and (sans scenery and costume) make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, the while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted Democratic inventions, every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness of Europe.
Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man.
Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate.
But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.
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Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
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thepsychchic chips clips ii
If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135
W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142
Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147
Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159
You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162
Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190
The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191
An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208
Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217
John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224
Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237
[on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go.
One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.”
Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257
Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251
JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252
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Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win)
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with granite of black, gray, and ash white. Jericho explained how all the municipal buildings were built from the same quarry stone, including the courthouse, township building and the walls lining the morgue. It wasn’t the sightseeing that delayed my exit though. In the rich corridors next to the courthouse, we ran into District Attorney Ashtole and Mayor Jonathon Miller, their voices an echo, greeting me with arms extended and questions on their lips. “I’ve already heard so much about you,” the mayor said, his barrel chest filling like a machine as he sucked in air. The man stood a half-foot over me, and though he smiled, his face was fixed in a scowl, his bushy eyebrows stuck in a permanent slant. His shoulders were wide like a football player’s and his hands were like clubs. I wasn’t normally intimidated but he had a presence, and I suddenly found myself feeling nervous. “It’s nice to meet you,” I answered, my hand disappearing in his. Ashtole stood at his side, dwarfed, nearly hidden. “What’s the progress?” the district attorney asked, his voice annoyingly sharp, like the bark of an ankle-high dog. “Three bodies. We need something to tell the press. Heck, the timing is awful.” “Daniel,” the mayor said in a foreboding tone.
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B.R. Spangler (Taken from Home (Detective Casey White #1))
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Molly’s ability to break down the barriers between cat and dog owners and to bring both “camps” together was quite remarkable. She could charm and disarm the most avowed felinophile—I think her friendly and placid manner helped in that respect—and the fact that she’d been trained to find their missing cats only added to her charisma.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
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The next household—a young father—was far more accommodating, thank goodness. He ushered the three of us through his back gate and five minutes later, appeared on the patio with his toddler, who was clad in an all-in-one playsuit.
“You don’t mind if we watch, do you?” he asked. “Ethan and I have had enough of Tom and Jerry for one morning. Molly the detective dog seems far more exciting.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
I contemplated the task that lay ahead. It felt like I was in the middle of a Midsomer Murders case in many respects, since our village location was similarly quaint and rustic and teeming with a cast of colorful characters. The central theme of this particular episode was abundantly clear, and of course: where on earth is Simba? Had he wandered off and got lost? Was he trapped in an outbuilding? Had he been kidnapped by a local? Was he still alive, even? Fortunately, I had my problem-solving pooch waiting in the wings, who’d no doubt help me to get to the bottom of it.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere around the breakfast table that morning was fraught. A teary Lindsey was inconsolable—“How can I carry on without Simba?” she kept repeating—and both parents, sitting on either side of their daughter, tried their utmost to reassure her.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
There before me, in the living room, lay a vision of domestic bliss. Sarah was curled up on the sofa with Marian Keyes’s latest novel and a glass of wine and wrapped around her feet was a snoozing, snoring Molly. I couldn’t help but smile. Once upon a time, Sarah—an avowed cat-lover—could hardly bear to be within a yard of this hair-shedding, handbag-snuffling rescue mutt, but now here they were, snuggling like a pair of old friends.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
The “Bring Newton Home” social media accounts had evidently gone into meltdown when the news of his recover had filtered through—well-wishers from all around the world had posted photos of themselves jumping for joy and holding NEWTON IS HOME!!! posters—and it seemed the little dog had become something of a celebrity, both at home and abroad.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
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The air was heavy with hope and expectation and the three men watched on, agog, as my smart little spaniel stuck her snout deep into the jar, her tail wagging nineteen to the dozen.
Responding to my usual “Seek, seek” command, Molly raced into the long grass, springing high and squatting low as she traced the rise and fall of the riverside breeze. Then, suddenly, she homed in on the upended oak tree and—bang!—hit the deck immediately before giving me a textbook “down.” She locked her brown, unblinking eyes on mine, as if to say FOUND IT, EVERYONE!
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
I thought you’d gone forever!” she squealed, flinging her arms around him and smothering him in kisses. “You’ll never know how much I missed you.
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Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
Right, first the bad news,” said Rob, when, as promised, he called me with an update. My shoulders sagged as I braced myself for yet more disappointment.
“Molly’s very, very demanding. She’s been badly deprived of love and affection. She suffers from terrible separation anxiety. She barks like crazy when she’s frustrated. She steals food from people’s plates and pinches treats from their pocket. And she’s one of the most willful, wayward and stubborn dogs I’ve ever met.”
“And the good news?” I replied despondently.
“I reckon we’ve found our dog, Colin.
”
”
Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
We learned an awful lot about cats’ day-to-day behavior, habits and movements and, critically, the circumstances that led them to migrate or go missing. Some cats, we noted, reacted adversely to a change within the household—the arrival of a new baby, perhaps, or even a room being redecorated—and others were driven from their usual territory by an aggressive cat encroaching on their home or garden.
”
”
Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
I gave my dog the signal to proceed. With Tim and I trailing behind her, an all-guns-blazing Molly charged across number 38’s lawn, her stride unbroken as she gobbled up some bacon rind that had been left for the birds. She sprang up to the decking, whirled around to face me, locked her eyes with mine, and—a slither of bacon rind drooping from her mouth—gave me the most emphatic “down” I’d ever seen.
“Oh my god, she’s doing that trembly thing again,” whispered Tim, his voice shaking. “Has she found her?
”
”
Colin Butcher (Molly the Pet Detective Dog: The true story of one amazing dog who reunites missing cats with their families)
“
The other detectives’ free-spirited work style was always a cause of anxiety
for a stickler for infallible business operations like Kunikida. [...] Kenji, who would suddenly disappear after saying his cow went into labor…
”
”
Kafka Asagiri (Bungo Stray Dogs, Vol. 1 -9 (light novel) by Kafka Asagiri collection set)
“
As Harry Truman sort of said, if a detective wants a friend, she should get a dog.
”
”
Sara Paretsky (Love & Other Crimes)
“
If a mouse rustles, a dog barks, or a tree falls in a forest, it produces waves of pressure that radiate outward. As these waves travel, the air molecules in their path repeatedly bunch up and spread out. These movements, which occur in the same direction as the wave’s line of travel, are what we call sound. The number of times the molecules compress and disperse in a second determines the sound’s frequency—its pitch, which is measured in hertz (Hz). The extent to which they move determines the sound’s amplitude—its loudness, which is measured in decibels (dB). Hearing is the sense that detects those movements. Your ear consists of three parts—the outer, middle, and inner ears. Your outer ear greets incoming sound waves, collecting them with a fleshy flap and sending them down the ear canal. At the end of the canal, they vibrate a thin, taut membrane called the eardrum. Those vibrations are amplified by the three small bones of the middle ear, which we met in the last chapter, and transmitted to the inner ear—specifically, into a long fluid-filled tube called the cochlea. There, the vibrations are finally detected by a strip of movement-sensitive hair cells, which send signals to the brain. A sound is heard.[*1]
”
”
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
Rosie Sams (Dog Detectives - The Beagle Mysteries - 6 Book Box Set)
“
The detectives later learned that Phyllis had told Melton that she felt sorry for Richard Ramirez because he hadn’t gotten proper representation with the Hernandezes. Melton thought Ramirez was a mad dog that needed killing. An argument ensued, which grew into a senseless murderous rage.
”
”
Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)
“
in about a minute flat. “That’s a month’s salary for a lot of dogs. No one offers that kind of dough on a small job unless the pooch they’re offering it to is about a week away from turning up in the Arc River with a fresh pair of concrete slippers sized just for him. Either that, or we’re talking about more than just missing jewelry.” “Mr. Trigger, I assure you you’re in no significant danger. The
”
”
M.A. Owens (Detective Trigger and the Ruby Collar (Detective Trigger, #1))
“
They’re service dogs,” Norah said, without missing a beat. “So they have to stay with us.”
Patel looked at the mutts dubiously. “These are service dogs?”
“Yes,” Norah said serenely.
One of the things that Alicia had always admired about Norah was the fact that she was a committed liar. Not to be confused with a good liar; Norah’s gift was the ability to come up with a lie on the spur of the moment and remain committed to it against all logic and reason.
“For…?”
The pause was negligible. “Irritable bowel syndrome.”
The detectives exchanged a look. Hando, still stroking the dog’s chin, snorted. “You have service dogs for IBS?”
“Of course.
”
”
Sally Hepworth (Darling Girls)
“
stamp or where they sealed the envelope?” I asked. “Sure, we’ll check those too. That’s common procedure, but we have nothing to compare it to.” Jack added his two cents. “The message itself sounds kind of like the hell-and-damnation type of speech. Somebody in the clergy or even a religious zealot could have written it.” Clayton slowly read the message out loud again. “Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, Jack. It does sound kind of preachy.” “Yes it does,” I said, “but we still don’t know if it’s a serious threat or just someone blowing smoke.” Clark stood. “Okay, guys, check out whatever you can as far as forensic evidence. Make ten copies of that letter before you get started. The rest of you, keep your eyes and ears peeled for somebody with an ax to grind. That’s all we can do for now.” Chapter 2 The long driveway beyond the dead-end road led to the small, faded clapboard house. The walls inside the home held family secrets that were as dead and buried as the family dog. Nobody spoke of Alice’s incident anymore—it was neatly tucked away, hopefully forgotten, and life carried on. Forced smiles and the cautious daily routine filled the family’s waking hours. Alice’s eyes darted toward Mandy and then at the clock. She watched as her twenty-year-old daughter crossed the living room, barefoot and still wearing her green flannel bathrobe. Mandy took a seat on the old floral couch, as she did every day at eleven o’clock. The dark-paneled living room in that house held the sofa, a rocker, two end tables, and two velvet wall hangings of horses. The sofa had seen better days—sun fading had taken a toll on it after being in front of windows year after year. What used to be vibrant colors on that threadbare couch now appeared as pastel hues at best. Two flattened cushions looked as though somebody had let the air out of them; they held permanent indentions from years of use.
”
”
C.M. Sutter (Fallacy (Detective Jade Monroe, #3))
“
I come from the lower orders, that is understood by all. Not the lowest; you’d have to go back to my grandfather for the lowest. He was a night-soil remover, did you know that, Sam? One shilling per stinking cesspit. Did you know that they set me to working with him when I was a boy? One summer I chucked it, ran to the countryside, hid in a hay mow. Farmer found me in the morning, took pity, let me stay. Let me work with him and his dogs, tending his sheep. It was bliss. I never loved anything like I loved them dogs. Then my father showed up and dragged me home. Why? He didn’t want me. “Never mind. You could say my father’s rise to running his own public house was nothing short of a miracle, really. And then I went and edged up a rung from him, didn’t I, when I became a constable. Promoted to detective. Then chief of detectives. Still and all, I got about as high as I could possibly go, given what I come from. And that ain’t particular high. Just ask Sir Richard Mayne, commissioner of the Metropolitan, if you’re unsure of that.” Llewellyn sighed deeply and shook his head. “You seem impatient, Mr. Llewellyn. Am I keeping you?” Field poured the last of the whiskey into his glass. “Now, forget my old man. Forget the night-soil remover. Start over. Say I come from a monkey. And so did you. And Commissioner Mayne—him, too.” He looked around the tavern. “And so did every bleeding body on the whole earth come from monkeys, and those monkeys come from God knows what—fish? Worms? Who benefits, Sam? Who gets hurt? Who likes it, and who don’t?” Llewellyn shrugged. “I’ll tell you who don’t like it: the merchants who run the bleeding empire don’t like it, not one bit. It puts every man on the same level as them, see? The rich, the poor, the light-skinned, and the dark. The bishops don’t like it, nor the lords, because if Mr. Darwin has his way, where’s the control? Who’s in charge, who’s on top and who’s not? Bad for business, Mr. Darwin’s notions are. But for blokes like me and you? Well, even a policeman can dream, can’t he? It’s not flattering, perhaps, having an orangutan as your forefather, but there’s a kind of hope in it, don’t you see? Last I checked, there weren’t no quality monkeys, nor were there lower-class ones.” “And?” “Crash, boom, Mr. Darwin brings it all down. Rule Britannia and the lot. Brings it down harder and more thorough than Mr. Marx ever dreamt in his darkest revolutionary dream.
”
”
Tim Mason (The Darwin Affair)
“
The truth was somewhere between her brain and her beak. I wasn’t sure it would survive the trip.
”
”
Doreen Cronin (The Trouble With Chickens (J.J. Tully Mystery #1))
“
Can I get you anything? I’ve got green tea, herbal, filtered water, or I could juice up some carrots and celery for you.”
“No Pepsi? Isn’t it illegal to be that healthy?”
“Cherry Coke is a deep dark secret in my life, Detective, but I only get one a month.”
“That’s even worse, having a disciplined vice.
”
”
C. A. Newsome (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries: Books 5 - 7)
“
In thinking about other animals, we are biased by our own senses and by vision in particular. Our species and our culture are so driven by sight that even people who are blind from birth will describe the world using visual words and metaphors.fn4 You agree with people if you see their point, or share their view. You are oblivious to things in your blind spots. Hopeful futures are bright and gleaming; dystopias are dark and shadowy. Even when scientists describe senses that humans lack altogether, like the ability to detect electric fields, they talk about images and shadows. Language, for us, is both blessing and curse. It gives us the tools for describing another animal’s Umwelt even as it insinuates our own sensory world into those descriptions. Scholars of animal behavior often discuss the perils of anthropomorphism—the tendency to inappropriately attribute human emotions or mental abilities to other animals. But perhaps the most common, and least recognized, manifestation of anthropomorphism is the tendency to forget about other Umwelten—to frame animals’ lives in terms of our senses rather than theirs. This bias has consequences. We harm animals by filling the world with stimuli that overwhelm or befuddle their senses, including coastal lights that lure newly hatched turtles away from the oceans, underwater noises that drown out the calls of whales, and glass panes that seem like bodies of water to bat sonar. We misinterpret the needs of animals closest to us, stopping smell-oriented dogs from sniffing their environments and imposing the visual world of humans upon them. And we underestimate what animals are capable of to our own detriment, missing out on the chance to understand how expansive and wondrous nature truly is—the delights that, as William Blake wrote, are “clos’d by your senses five.
”
”
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
“
How could an organization so tightly controlled by the very politicians responsible for the nation's rampant corruption be expected to solve the crisis? Were politicians not the root cause of all the unsolved cases in the country? Could the hunter’s dogs be led by the animals themselves and the hunter hopes to get a kill in the end? Could a housefly pass a bad judgment on an open sore?
”
”
A.O. Nathaniels (The Last Agent: A Novel (Alex Cooper Detective Series))
“
Student: Master, the path I follow seems to never want me, it always gives me terrible difficulties! Master: The path you followed has detected a lack of willpower and determination in you! Just like when you are afraid of a dog, the dog attacks you, the road also attacks you! Completing the path depends on you, not on the path!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Behind the shoulders of the Virgin or some bearded Father of the Church, the Italian painter joyfully depicted a miniature town or a well-cultivated landscape, so small that only from a very short distance could all the details be discerned, the walls, towers, churches, streets, the artisans at work, the ships in the river, the ladies on the balcony, the children, the barking dogs, the gaily coloured clothes drying in the sun, the ploughman and the hunter. Many nordic travellers who lagged behind the times apprehensively thought they detected a slight odour of sulphur and brimstone about art and life in Italy, the ‘odour of unsanctity’. They still detect it today. The country was in fact slowly acquiring that pagan, slightly irreverent, sacrilegious reputation which it was never to lose. The reputation did not repel visitors. In fact, the danger of losing their souls attracted as many of them as the hope of gaining everlasting salvation.
”
”
Luigi Barzini (The Italians)
“
The movie was great, too. They sometimes play old movies at the campus theater on Saturdays, and tonight was “The Thin Man.” It’s the one from the thirties with the husband and wife detectives. To tell the truth though, I liked the dog best.
”
”
J.J. DiBenedetto (Dream Student (Dream #1))
“
His agency dog tags pressed against his skin under his uniform reminded him he was no longer a homicide detective, but a soldier. He’d been awarded his tags six months in, after passing his probation with flying colors. Despite
”
”
Charlie Cochet (Blood & Thunder (THIRDS, #2))
“
Look, when we get there let me handle things, okay?” Isaiah said. “This is what I do.” “I know you got the detective part down,” Dodson said, “but customer relations at this level ain’t the same as finding somebody’s lost dog. You need diplomacy, finesse, and salesmanship. Qualities your surly unpleasant ass is sadly lacking. You lucky you got skills, son, ’cause if you had to survive on your personality you’d be working at the morgue with dead people.” Cal’s
”
”
Joe Ide (IQ)
“
Why do you ask that dog if he has a soul?” Mma Ramotswe sighed. “It’s very complicated, Rra. You see…Well, you see: Mma Makutsi said dogs were just meat inside. Those were her actual words.” “She’s wrong,” he said. “I think so. I
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (Precious and Grace (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #17))
“
That’s weird. Most dogs won’t attack an adult unless commanded to, even the aggressive breeds.
”
”
L.J. Sellers (Rules of Crime (Detective Jackson Mystery, #7))
“
I believe in Life. I believe Life to be outside of time, powerful, subtle and spread throughout the universe -- a power something like gravity. There are many such energies. Once we are able to detect life it will boggle our minds for centuries to come. The shear magnitude will rapture many, and destroy others, but we're not there yet. We can say something is alive, or dead, but not if life is there or not. Perhaps because it is too quiet, maybe because it is so loud we can hear nothing else, but mainly -- I believe -- because we haven't bothered to listen yet. -- , from the Black Dog
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”
Glenn Hefley
“
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. They use that sentence in keyboarding class because it has every letter of the alphabet in it.
”
”
Allen Eskens (The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Detective Max Rupert, #1))
“
Applying nail polish is an art. You need non-shaky
hands. And a calm and Zen-like nature. I am not calm and have but a nodding acquaintance with Zen. At the best of times, I’m not great at applying nail polish, and if anyone has attempted to apply nail polish when they are in a rush, they will understand the difficulties involved. Your hands will shake. Your hands will take the nail polish beyond the boundaries of your nail and onto the surrounding skin, you will carefully loop it off your skin with a handy ear bud, only to realise you have now got it onto your fingernails, which were also pale pink to begin with, but will now have to be made post-box red—you could never live down the indignity of mottled red and pink nail polish that looks like the visage of a rabid dog, and will spend the entire evening holding your hand petulantly behind your
back and refusing to extend it even when you are being introduced to folk you cannot air-kiss and must shake hands with, aka senior corporate types.
”
”
Kiran Manral (The Reluctant Detective)
“
organ (VNO), thought to be specialized for detecting scents from other dogs and therefore to function in some capacity for social signaling
”
”
Gregory Berns (How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain)
“
That was the moment I realized that I had messed up. I'd left the lock picking kit on the floor in Hoffman’s room. Oh no. Now what?
”
”
Sandra Baublitz (Mastiffs, Mystery, and Murder (Dog Detective #1))