Endeavor Show Quotes

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor. Quite often during the past several years I have felt myself a sleepwalker, moving through the world unconscious of the moment’s high issues, oblivious to its data, alert only to the stuff of bad dreams, the children burning in the locked car in the supermarket parking lot, the bike boys stripping down stolen cars on the captive cripple’s ranch, the freeway sniper who feels “real bad” about picking off the family of five, the hustlers, the insane, the cunning Okie faces that turn up in military investigations, the sullen lurkers in doorways, the lost children, all the ignorant armies jostling in the night. Acquaintances read The New York Times, and try to tell me the news of the world. I listen to call-in shows.

Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose — to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury — he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others… At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance — the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought — they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.

For me, it goes without saying that much of the dogma of many religions is harmful. Thinking other people will burn forever because they love the wrong person or worship the wrong god has done a whole lot of bad. What I wanted was the part where people were asked to get together once a week to talk about how to be a good person and, like, hang out with their neighbors. It's pretty amazing that apparently the only way to get people to do that is to invent an all-seeing, kindhearted sky dad who will be super disappointed/burn you for eternity if you don't show up.

What if depression – reason’s failure to achieve self-mastery – is not the failure of reason but instead the result of reason? What if human reason works “too well,” and brings us to conclusions that are anathema to the existence of human beings? What we would have is a “cold rationalism,” shoring up the anthropocentric conceits of the philosophical endeavor, showing us an anonymous, faceless world impervious to our hopes and desires.

Give yourself time to think. Don’t fill it all up with podcasts and TV shows. Talk it out, think it out, be present.

One of the goals of this show is to have a much more genuinely global perspective [...] This really is a global, collaborative endeavor [...] There is a shared working condition that's universal, and there are overlapping trajectories and aspirations and we can learn from each other.

If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.

As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is today one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred - and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth. Look at the grande Doumo of Florence - a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said. "Oh, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?

Yes! And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose--to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury--he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him--and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.

So when we say that Christians work from a gospel worldview, it does not mean that they are constantly speaking about Christian teaching in their work. Some people think of the gospel as something we are principally to “look at” in our work. This would mean that Christian musicians should play Christian music, Christian writers should write stories about conversion, and Christian businessmen and -women should work for companies that make Christian-themed products and services for Christian customers. Yes, some Christians in those fields would sometimes do well to do those things, but it is a mistake to think that the Christian worldview is operating only when we are doing such overtly Christian activities. Instead, think of the gospel as a set of glasses through which you “look” at everything else in the world. Christian artists, when they do this faithfully, will not be completely beholden either to profit or to naked self-expression; and they will tell the widest variety of stories. Christians in business will see profit as only one of several bottom lines; and they will work passionately for any kind of enterprise that serves the common good. The Christian writer can constantly be showing the destructiveness of making something besides God into the central thing, even without mentioning God directly.

We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

All too often people say to artists, 'To be an artist is fine if your art can be used for evangelism.' And art has often become a tool for evangelism. But let's be precise. As such there is nothing against this. But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God; if Christ came to make us human, the humanity and the reality of art find their foundation in him. So art should not be used to preach even if it can help. Yet there is another way that art can be or is meaningful.

Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose—to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury—he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers.

Photos never tell the whole story. They are singular moments captured to encompass the illusion of happiness. It’s to remind ourselves of the good times in life, and to show others that we aren’t so miserable. Outside of the frames is where the truth is found, no matter how dark it might be.

The office, like most offices, has the fake-cheerful feel of death row, with its jokey signs and personal possessions. This is a place that sucks up time and energy on pointless tasks and futile activities and leaves little to show for human endeavor but a growing collection of novelty mugs.

The term paradigm shift was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn shows how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms.

Some readers are bound to want to take the techniques we’ve introduced here and try them on the problem of forecasting the future price of securities on the stock market (or currency exchange rates, and so on). Markets have very different statistical characteristics than natural phenomena such as weather patterns. Trying to use machine learning to beat markets, when you only have access to publicly available data, is a difficult endeavor, and you’re likely to waste your time and resources with nothing to show for it. Always remember that when it comes to markets, past performance is not a good predictor of future returns—looking in the rear-view mirror is a bad way to drive. Machine learning, on the other hand, is applicable to datasets where the past is a good predictor of the future.

She did not expect Jacob to recognize the source of the materials she used, particularly since she hardly ever showed him her more sentimental side, preferring to hide behind a veneer of practicality and strength. She knew he would only see constellations atop the interlocking of dark blue squares that made up the night sky. But since the war began, she knew the importance of putting her entire spirit into every endeavor. So as she fashioned the only protection she could now give him, she sewed her soul into every stitch.

What I wanted was the part where people were asked to get together once a week to talk about how to be a good person and, like, hang out with their neighbors. It’s pretty amazing that apparently the only way to get people to do that is to invent an all-seeing, kindhearted sky dad who will be super disappointed/burn you for eternity if you don’t show up.

But it was there, and studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor.

studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor.

Words wouldn’t come, so I used my body to show her. And if she didn’t understand that I loved her, then I’d show her again tomorrow.

We must not just be recipients but givers! We must not just be keepers but donors! Giving brings relief and sharing enlightens the heart. Caring joins and showing love is life. It is never enough to acquire all acquisition. It is never enough to have all our ambitions. We must endeavor to give for giving out of a true heart is a true love and a true love is life.

...[T]wo of you can be no match for the three giants, I will find you, if I can, a third brother, who will take on himself the third share of the fight, and the preparation...I will show him to you in a glass, and, when he comes, you will know him at once. If he will share your endeavors, you must teach him all you know, and he will repay you well, in present song, and in future deeds.' She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the room. On the inside of this door was an oval convex mirror...we at length saw reflected the place where we stood, and the old dame seated in her chair...at the feet of the dame lay a young man...weeping. 'Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.' The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,'said she.

Says the Cardinal: "Freethought leads to Atheism, to the destruction of social and civil order, and to the overthrow of government." I accept the gentleman's statement; I credit him with much intellectual acumen for perceiving that which many freethinkers have failed to perceive: accepting it, I shall do my best to prove it, and then endeavor to show that this very iconoclastic principle is the salvation of the economic slave and the destruction of the economic tyrant. ... Hence the freethinker who recognizes the science of astronomy, the science of mathematics, and the equally positive and exact science of justice, is logically forced to the denial of supreme authority. For no human being who observes and reflects can admit a supreme tyrant and preserve his self-respect. No human mind can accept the dogma of divine despotism and the doctrine of eternal justice at the same time; they contradict each other, and it takes two brains to hold them. The cardinal is right: freethought does logically lead to atheism, if by atheism he means the denial of supreme authority.

He wanted Jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. But memory turned traitor, and as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Jo's oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects – beating mats with her head tied up in a bandana, barricading herself with the sofa pillow, or throwing cold water over his passion a la Gummidge – and an irresistable laugh spoiled the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint. Jo wouldn't be put into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a 'Bless that girl, what a torment she is!' (...)

But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God.

All things considered, science is the best means of understanding almost everything around us. It works well on the human scale and stands as a stark counter-point to beliefs that by their very nature refute the notion of evidence. And I would be the last person to attack people encouraging the rest of us to use our ability to be rational, thereby defending the value and the necessity of science. But I will lift a querying hand when the notion of ‘science’ is held to be immutable, because ‘science’ as such does not exist. Science is a process to be sure, a way of thinking, but what science is above all is that which scientists do, and alas, scientists are people, too. As potentially fallible, irrational, biased, greedy, in short, as flawed, as the rest of us. So, by all means defend science as a process. But don’t confuse it with the very human endeavor of science as a profession. Because they’re not the same thing. And this is why when some guy in a white lab-coat says ‘you can trust me, I’m a scientist,’ best take it with a big bucket of salt, and then say ‘Fine, now show me the evidence and more to the point, show me how you got to it.

studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor. Can you change this with a new law or program? Probably not. Some scales aren’t that amenable to the proverbial thumb.

David Levithan lives in the best of times and the worst of times, the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness, the epoch of belief and the epoch of incredulity, the season of Light, and the season of Darkness. He has endeavored in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an Idea which shall not put his readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with him. Whether he shall turn out to the be hero of his own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, time must show.

We have raised the bar so high on how church is done that few believe they could ever do it themselves. The dark side of this endeavor is that we have lowered the bar of what is means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes.

Most people do not act consistently. Under certain circumstances a given person acts intelligently and under different circumstances the same person will act helplessly. The only important exception to the rule is represented by the stupid people, who normally show a strong proclivity toward perfect consistency in all fields of human endeavors.

Christians agree that when we sell and market, we need to show potential customers that a product “adds value” to their lives. That doesn’t mean it can give them a life. But because Christians have a deeper understanding of human well-being, we will often find ourselves swimming against the very strong currents of the corporate idols of our culture.

Yohannes D. Asega > My Quotes (showing 1-1 of 1) sort by ↑ top up up position down down ↓ bottom Remove this quote from your collectionArthur Schopenhauer “We, the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world may invade and agitate our personal environment.

This American government—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

In fact, the poor are generally too busy making ends meet to be the vanguard of any revolution. History shows that terrorism is a largely bourgeois endeavor, from the Russian anarchists of the late nineteenth century to the German Marxists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang of the 1970s, to the apocalyptic Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo of the 1990s. Islamist terrorists, it turns out, are no different.

Autistic children have the ability to see things and events around them from a new point of view, which often shows surprising maturity. This ability, which remains throughout life, can in favorable cases lead to exceptional achievements which others may never attain. Abstraction ability, for instance, is a prerequisite for scientific endeavor. Indeed, we find numerous autistic individuals among distinguished scientists. He

Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. For years Rush had been investigating the causes of and remedies for madness and other “diseases” of the mind. “The subjects of them have hitherto been enveloped in mystery,” he wrote to Adams. “I have endeavored to bring them down to the level of all other diseases of the human body, and to show that the mind and body are moved by the same causes and subject to the same laws.

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated, if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by any accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were also deeply religious souls, even though they made no public show of their religious feeling. It is from the cooperation of the understanding with the will that the finest fruit of philosophy has arisen, namely, the ethical fruit. Science enhances the moral values of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

Tell me," replied Faria, "what has hindered you from knocking down your father with a piece of wood torn from your bedstead, dressing yourself in his clothes, and endeavoring to escape?" "Simply the fact that the idea never occurred to me," answered Dantes. "Because," said the old man, "the natural repugnance to the commission of such a crime prevented you from thinking of it; and so it ever is because in simple and allowable things our natural instincts keep us from deviating from the strict line of duty. The tiger, whose nature teaches him to delight in shedding blood, needs but the sense of smell to show him when his prey is within his reach, and by following this instinct he is enabled to measure the leap necessary to permit him to spring on his victim; but man, on the contrary, loathes the idea of blood - it is not alone that the laws of social life inspire him with a shrinking dread of taking life; his natural construction and physiological formation" - Dantes was confused and silent at this explanation of the thoughts which had unconsciously been working in his mind, or rather soul; for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

What do you expect—not indifference or ingratitude?’ (-Miss Benson) ‘It is better not to expect or calculate consequences. The longer I live, the more fully I see that. Let us try simply to do right actions, without thinking of the feelings they are to call out in others. We know that no holy or self-denying effort can fall to the ground vain and useless; but the sweep of eternity is large, and God along knows when the effect is to be produced. We are trying to do right now, and to feel right; don’t let us perplex ourselves with endeavoring to map out how she should feel, or how she should show her feelings.’ (-Thurstan)

The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose—to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury—he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers. Look

Again, we are reminded that life is precious… fleeting. Let’s endeavor to live this amazing life to the fullest. Let’s have the courage to pursue our dreams…To unapologetically cultivate a personal environment conducive to our growth, by nourishing healthy relationships and starving the toxic ones. Let’s laugh at the little nonsense that used to anger us and let go of the grudges that used to weigh us down. Let’s help each other. Let’s show our unquestionable love to the special people in our lives. Let’s squeeze this experience for all it’s worth. We are so blessed to be here, NOW… Let's not throw away another day of this beautiful precious life.

What silliness that we must consider the proper order of milk and tea when pouring a cup." Callie swallowed back a laugh. "I suppose you do not place much stock in such ceremony in Venice?" "No. It is liquid. It is warm. It is not coffee. Why worry?" Juliana's smile flashed, showing a dimple in her cheek. "Why indeed?" Callie said, wondering, fleetingly, if Juliana's brothers had such an endearing trait. "Do not be concerned," Juliana held up a hand dramatically. "I shall endeavor to remember tea first, milk second. I should hate to cause another war between Britain and the Continent." Callie laughed, accepting a cup of perfectly poured tea from the younger woman. "I am certain that Parliament will thank you for your diplomacy.

Advice to your 20-year-old self? “I would say, ‘Write everything down because it’s all very fleeting.’ I would say, ‘Keep a journal,’ which I have but I would have been more meticulous. Then I would say, ‘Don’t bow to the gatekeepers at the head of, in my case, show business, but at the gate of any business or any endeavor.’ Don’t bow to the gatekeepers because I think, in essence, there are no gatekeepers. You are the gatekeeper. . . . “Don’t waste your time on marketing, just try to get better. . . . “And also, it’s not about being good; it’s about being great. Because what I find, the older I get, is that a lot of people are good, and a lot of people are smart, and a lot of people are clever. But not a lot of people give you their soul when they perform.

We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive for happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavor has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. In its narrower sense the word 'happiness' only relates to the last. In conformity with this dichotomy in his aims, man's activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize — in the main, or even exclusively — the one or the other of these aims.

One of my greatest cultural pet peeves is the belief that watching, playing, and talking about sports are more prestigious and valuable than taking an interest in beauty or fashion. I once worked at a beauty magazine where most of the staff was female but several of the higher-ups were men. It was hard not to notice how tirelessly these guys worked to assert their manliness by making sports references in all their company-wide presentations, only to immediately suggest that they were surely going over our silly female heads. Objectively, there is nothing more complicated or of greater consequence about discussing who won the World Series than there is about discussing who put on the most beautiful show at New York Fashion Week; it’s simply that the former is generally a more male-centric endeavor and thus perceived as more important.

Witnessing the panoply of beauty in all of nature takes us out of our shell of self-absorption and makes us realize that we are merely bit players in the game of life. Witnessing the majesty of beauty confirms that the real show lies outside us to observe and appreciate and not inside us to transfix us. True beauty charms us into seeing the grandeur of goodness that surrounds us and by doing so, the pristine splendor of nature releases us from wallowing in the poverty of our self-idealization. The bewitching spell cast by the exquisiteness of nature levitates our souls and transforms our psyche. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch what is beautiful, we cannot suppress the urge to replicate its baffling texture by singing, dancing, painting, or writing. Opening our eye to the loveliness of a single flower is how we stay in touch with the glorious pageantry of living.

In television the democratization of knowledge and its pedagogical commercial exuberance have become one. Consider from the end of the nineties such BBC history shows as Surviving the Iron Age or The Ship: Retracing Cook’s Endeavor Voyage—each shown 2001.... All these shows recruit volunteers who are put into environments conspicuously uncomfortable.... An emphasis on participants’ surprise at the difficulties of daily life and a previously unexamined and thus taken for granted assumption of physical comfort is the formula for melodrama in these kinds of shows.... All of them are one part soap opera, one part period recreation—and with folks from our time who invite audience identification as “us,” viewers mentally enacting too, playing at, reenacting, shadowing, experimenting, speculating, trying to provide evidence for, various understandings of varying pasts.... “Science” and all it stands for—knowledges broadly understood or our everyday knowledge-managed technologies—are especially lively players in the action....

In neurotic anxiety, the cleavage between expectations and reality is in the form of a contradiction . Expectation and reality cannot be brought together, and since nobody can bear the constant tension of the experience of such a cleavage, the individual engages in a neurotic distortion of reality. Though this distortions is undertaken for the purpose of protecting the individual from neurotic anxiety, in the long run it makes the contradiction between the individual's expectations and reality more rigid and hence sets the stage for greater neurotic anxiety. In productive activity, on the other hand, the expectations are not in contradiction to reality, but are used as a means of creatively transforming reality. The cleavage is constantly being resolved by the individual's bringing expectations and reality progressively into greater accord. This, as we have endeavored to show at many points throughout this book, is the sound way to overcome neurotic anxiety. Thus our human power to resolve the conflict between expectation and reality - our creative power - is at the same time our power to transcend neurotic anxiety and to live with normal anxiety.

Will you live in piety toward the Essaios? Will you observe justice toward all men? Will you do no harm to any one unless the Medium commands you? Will you always hate the Myriad Ones, oppose them in all things, and assist the righteous causes? Will you live a life of purity and forsake every pleasure except with your husband? Will you show fidelity to all mastons, and especially Aldermastons in authority? If you become an Aldermaston, will you at no time whatsoever abuse your authority, nor endeavor to outshine the learners either in your garments, your speech, or any other finery? Will you be perpetually a lover and speaker of truth and reprove those that speak falsehoods? Will you will keep your hands clear from theft, and your soul from unlawful gains? Will you never discover any of these doctrines to others, even should anyone should compel you so to do at the hazard of your life? Will you preserve the tomes belonging to the mastons? Will you safeguard the names of the Essaios and those who visit your world from Idumea? Will you shun the enticings of Ereshkigal and her hetaera and qualify yourself to receive a new body and return to the world of Idumea?

Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“ “Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?” “Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.” “No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.” From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck. Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.” “Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered. “You may bring it up to us.” Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man. “What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.” “You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?” “Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?” Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!” Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.” Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.

His first stop was the local branch of Child's Bank; once he replenished his supply of cash, he followed the bank manager's directions to the town's premier bootmaker, and was lucky enough to find an excellent pair of riding boots that fit him. His next stop was the best gentleman's outfitters, where he created a small furore by demanding they assemble for him outfits suitable for a groom and for a north country laborer. The head tailor goggled at him and the assistants simply stared; holding onto his temper, he brusquely explained that the outfits were for a country house party where fancy dress was required. Then they fell to with appropriate zeal. It still took longer than he would have liked. The tailor fussed with the fitting until Breckenridge declared, "Damn it, man! There's no prize for being the most perfectly dressed groom in the north!" The tailor jumped. Pins cascaded from between his lips and scattered on the ground. His assistants rushed in to gather them up. The tailor swallowed. "No, of course not, sir. If Sir will remain still, I will endeavor to remove the pins...although really, such shoulders...well, I would have thought..." "Never mind about showing off my damned shoulders-just make sure I have room to move.

Nietzsche’s background makes sense of his convictions that the loss of faith in God is a calamitous cultural crisis. Although writing as one who has lost faith and who sees his own religious tradition as having many pernicious effects on its adherents, he experienced the loss of faith as a personal trauma. He was shocked that others seemed to throw off their religious backgrounds so casually, and he eventually concluded that many of his contemporaries had not really shed their religion but instead continued their old habits in disguised forms. Because he was convinced that the Christian worldview had harmful psychological effects, he endeavored to show how much damage continued to affect his contemporaries who maintained habits of the old worldview, even though they no longer endorsed it. We see Nietzsche not as the ‘atheist by instinct’ he claims to be in his autobiography but as a religious desperado. If one understands by ‘religious’ the effort to integrate one’s life with what is larger than oneself, Nietzsche rejects Christianity for religious reasons. His many complaints about the ideology that the Christian Church has foisted on its members express his conviction that it harms our ability to love and to be responsive to others in the world and to nature.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principles of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so. Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affection of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself. Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say - thou knowest not so well as I.

I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38

Who May Enter? Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts. Psalm 15:1-2 When we kneel at the altar, we present our hearts in reverent worship to God. It is our inward sacrifice of praise. In these verses the psalmist presents another side of worship—the worship that praises God with our lives. We offer this type of worship when we live in integrity and honesty in everyday situations. We offer it when we treat others with fairness in business deals and speak highly of others no matter who is listening. When we avoid the bitter tongue of gossip, tell the truth instead of resorting to a lie, or keep a promise we have made even at great cost, we are showing that our lives are a living sacrifice of worship to God. I’m thankful that we don’t have to be perfect to worship God. No one is without fault. However, when we endeavor to worship God through the way we live our lives, we offer him more than a show of worship. We present him with a heartbeat that sincerely desires to please him. Ask God today to help you live in such a way that your life is an offering of praise to his name. GOD, I am far from perfect, but I desire to serve you in integrity and honesty. I realize that others watch my life and that my daily decisions influence others. I pray that they will see you in both my words and my actions. Lord, I sincerely desire to worship you not only with my heart but with my character. Help me to live a blameless life. Only you can do this. May I speak your truth from a sincere heart so that you will receive the glory and honor you deserve.   THE HEART THAT IS NOT ENTRUSTED TO GOD FOR HIS SEARCHING, WILL NOT BE UNDERTAKEN BY HIM FOR CLEANSING. Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879)

Which is actually good because we’re doing an AP Euro study group this week at the library—I mean good that it got canceled, not good that someone died—so I was wondering too if maybe I can use the car, so you won’t have to come pick me up super late every night?” Alma had been a wildly clingy kid, but now she is a mostly autonomous and wholly inscrutable seventeen-year-old; she is mean and gorgeous and breathtakingly good at math; she has inside jokes with her friends about inexplicable things like Gary Shandling and avocado toast, paints microscopic cherries on her fingernails and endeavors highly involved baking ventures, filling their fridge with oblong bagels and six-layer cakes. “I’m asking now because last time you told me I didn’t give you enough notice,” she says. She has recently begun speaking conversationally to Julia and Mark again after nearly two years of brooding silence, and now it’s near impossible to get her to stop. She regales them with breathless incomprehensible stories at the dinner table; she delivers lengthy recaps of midseason episodes of television shows they have never seen; she mounts elaborate and convincing defenses of things she wants them to give her, or give her permission to do. Conversing with her is a mechanical act requiring the constant ability to shift gears, to backpedal or follow inane segues or catapult from the real world to a fictional one without stopping to refuel. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that she won’t be accepted next month to several of the seventeen exalted and appallingly expensive colleges to which she has applied, and because Julia would like the remainder of her tenure at home to elapse free of trauma, she responds to her daughter as she did when she was a napping baby, tiptoeing around her to avoid awakening unrest. The power dynamic in their household is not unlike that of a years-long hostage crisis.

it is helpful to keep in mind three ways in which we can know something. The first is by way of theoretical statements. We can learn a lot by listening to a lecture. In this mode of knowing, we endeavor to abstract from the particulars of the case and grasp what is essential to it. Although the lecturer might use examples or illustrations to aid comprehension, the primary mode of delivery is by way of statements and arguments made up out of abstract notions. Another way we can know something is by what we might call the way of doing. There’s real know-how that comes from doing something, especially when we do something so much that our experience of it becomes rich and varied. For example, our sweet, humble Aunt Emily knows a lot about the virtue of humility by having lived humility over many years. Her theoretical knowledge of humility—her knowledge of humility by way of universal statements and arguments—may be nil. She may have never studied moral theology. If asked to give a definition of humility, she would probably be at a loss. And yet, it’s undeniable that Aunt Emily has a real understanding of what it means to be humble, an experiential knowledge embodied in her habitually humble acts. And by imitating Aunt Emily’s humility, we can proceed along this way of doing as well. The third way of knowing is by what we might call the way of showing. By “showing,” I mean the activities of the artistic imagination. A movie is a kind of showing, as is a play. But there are other kinds of showing that do not involve performance either live or recorded. A novel is a kind of showing, as is a poem, as is a short story. These latter arts are showings in the sense that they, just like a movie or play, offer us images of human beings doing things. And whether a showing is performance-based or text-based, it attempts—as we so often say about a work of art—to “say” something. It offers us the experience of something meaningful.

Franklin also combined science and mechanical practicality by devising the first urinary catheter used in America, which was a modification of a European invention. His brother John in Boston was gravely ill and wrote Franklin of his desire for a flexible tube to help him urinate. Franklin came up with a design, and instead of simply describing it he went to a Philadelphia silversmith and oversaw its construction. The tube was thin enough to be flexible, and Franklin included a wire that could be stuck inside to stiffen it while it was inserted and then be gradually withdrawn as the tube reached the point where it needed to bend. His catheter also had a screw component that allowed it to be inserted by turning, and he made it collapsible so that it would be easier to withdraw. “Experience is necessary for the right using of all new tools or instruments, and that will perhaps suggest some improvements,” Franklin told his brother. The study of nature also continued to interest Franklin. Among his most noteworthy discoveries was that the big East Coast storms known as northeasters, whose winds come from the northeast, actually move in the opposite direction from their winds, traveling up the coast from the south. On the evening of October 21, 1743, Franklin looked forward to observing a lunar eclipse he knew was to occur at 8:30. A violent storm, however, hit Philadelphia and blackened the sky. Over the next few weeks, he read accounts of how the storm caused damage from Virginia to Boston. “But what surprised me,” he later told his friend Jared Eliot, “was to find in the Boston newspapers an account of the observation of that eclipse.” So Franklin wrote his brother in Boston, who confirmed that the storm did not hit until an hour after the eclipse was finished. Further inquiries into the timing of this and other storms up and down the coast led him to “the very singular opinion,” he told Eliot, “that, though the course of the wind is from the northeast to the southwest, yet the course of the storm is from the southwest to the northeast.” He further surmised, correctly, that rising air heated in the south created low-pressure systems that drew winds from the north. More than 150 years later, the great scholar William Morris Davis proclaimed, “With this began the science of weather prediction.”4 Dozens of other scientific phenomena also engaged Franklin’s interest during this period. For example, he exchanged letters with his friend Cadwallader Colden on comets, the circulation of blood, perspiration, inertia, and the earth’s rotation. But it was a parlor-trick show in 1743 that launched him on what would be by far his most celebrated scientific endeavor. ELECTRICITY On a visit to Boston in the summer of 1743, Franklin happened to be entertained one evening by

propose that we consider our farmers on a spectrum, let’s say, of agrarianism. On one end of the spectrum we have farmers like James, interested in producing the finest foodstuffs that they can, given the soil, the climate, the water, the budget, and their talent. They observe how efficacious or not their efforts are proving, and they adapt accordingly. Variety is one of the keys to this technique, eschewing the corporate monocultures for a revolving set of plants and animals, again, to mimic what was already happening on the land before we showed up with our earth-shaving machinery. It’s tough as hell, and in many cases impossible, to farm this way and earn enough profit to keep your bills paid and your family fed, but these farmers do exist. On the other end of the spectrum is full-speed-ahead robo-farming, in which the farmer is following the instructions of the corporation to produce not food but commodities in such a way that the corporation sits poised to make the maximum financial profit. Now, this is the part that has always fascinated me about us as a population: This kind of farmer is doing all they can to make their factory quota for the company, of grain, or meat, or what have you, despite their soil, climate, water, budget, or talent. It only stands to reason that this methodology is the very definition of unsustainable. Clearly, this is an oversimplification of an issue that requires as much of my refrain (nuance!) as any other human endeavor, but the broad strokes are hard to refute. The first farmer is doing their best to work with nature. The second farmer is doing their best despite nature. In order for the second farmer to prosper, they must defeat nature. A great example of this is the factory farming of beef/pork/chicken/eggs/turkey/salmon/etc. The manufacturers of these products have done everything they can to take the process out of nature entirely and hide it in a shed, where every step of the production has been engineered to make a profit; to excel at quantity. I know you’re a little bit ahead of me here, but I’ll go ahead and ask the obvious question: What of quality? If you’re willing to degrade these many lives with impunity—the lives of the animals themselves, the workers “growing” them, the neighbors having to suffer the voluminous poisons being pumped into the ecosystem/watershed, and the humans consuming your products—then what are you about? Can that even be considered farming? Again, I’m asking this of us. Of you and me, because what I have just described is the way a lot of our food is produced right now, in the system that we all support with our dollars. How did we get here, in both the US and the UK? How can we change our national stance toward agriculture to accommodate more middle-size farmers and less factory farms? How would Aldo Leopold feel about it?

Wife's Letter (excerpt) It was not the mask that died among the boots, but you. The girl with the yoyo was not the only one to know about your masked play. From the very first instant, when, elated with pride, you talked about the distortion of the magnetic field, I too saw through you completely. Please don’t insult me any more by asking how I did it. Of course, I was flustered, confused, and frightened to death. Under any circumstances, it was an unimaginably drastic way of acting, so different from your ordinary self. It was hallucinatory, seeing you so full of self-confidence. Even you knew very well that I had seen through you. You knew and yet demanded that we go on with the play in silence. ... But you went from one misunderstanding to the next, didn’t you? You write that I rejected you, but that’s not true. Didn’t you reject yourself all by yourself?.. In a happy frame of mind, I reflected that love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it, is there? ... Is what you think to be the mask in reality your real face, or is what you think to be your real face really a mask? Yes, you do understand. Anyone who is seduced is seduced realizing this. ... At first you were apparently trying to get your own self back by means of the mask, but before you knew it you had come to think of it only as your magician’s cloak for escaping from yourself. So it was not a mask, but somewhat the same as another real face, wasn’t it? You finally revealed your true colors. It was not the mask, but you yourself. It is meaningful to put a mask on, precisely because one makes others realize it is a mask. Even with cosmetics, which you abominate so, we never try to conceal the fact that it is make-up. After all, it was not that the mask was bad, but that you were too unaware of how to treat it. Even though you put the mask on, you could not do a thing while you were wearing it. Good or bad, you could not do a thing. All you could manage was to wander through the streets and write long, never-ending confessions, like a snake with its tail in its mouth. It was all the same to you whether you burned your face or didn’t, whether you put on a mask or didn’t. You were incapable of calling the mask back. Since the mask will not come back, there is no reason for me to return either. ... While you spoke of the face as being some kind of roadway between fellow human beings, you were like a snail that thinks only of its own doorway. You were showing off. Even though you had forced me into a compound where I had already been, you set up a fuss as if I had scaled a prison wall, as if I had absconded with money. And so, when you began to focus on my face you were flustered and confused, and without a word you at once nailed up the door of the mask. Indeed, as you said, perhaps death filled the world. I wonder if scattering the seeds of death is not the deed of men who think only of themselves, as you do. You don’t need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself.

Dr. Sherman VanMeter has made a career of unpacking the densest areas of scientific endeavor in accessible—if not polite—terms. You’ve written books on everything from astrophysics to zoology. How are you able to achieve expertise in so many disparate fields? There’s a perception that scientific disciplines are separate countries, when in fact science is a universal passport. It’s about exploring and thinking critically, not memorization. A question mark, not a period. Can you give me an example? Sure. Kids learn about the solar system by memorizing the names of planets. That’s a period. It’s also scientifically useless, because names have no value. The question mark would be to say instead, “There are hundreds of thousands of sizable bodies orbiting the sun. Which ones are exceptional? What makes them so? Are there similarities? What do they reveal?” But how do you teach a child to grasp that complexity? You teach them to grasp the style of thinking. There are no answers, only questions that shape your understanding, and which in turn reveal more questions. Sounds more like mysticism than science. How do you draw the line? That’s where the critical thinking comes in. I can see how that applies to the categorization of solar objects. But what about more abstract questions? It works there too. Take love, for example. Artists would tell you that love is a mysterious force. Priests claim it’s a manifestation of the divine. Biochemists, on the other hand, will tell you that love is a feedback loop of dopamine, testosterone, phenylethylamine, norepinephrine, and feel-my-pee-pee. The difference is, we can show our work. So you’re not a romantic, then? We’re who we are as a species because of evolution. And at the essence, evolution is the steady production of increasingly efficient killing machines. Isn’t it more accurate to say “surviving machines”? The two go hand in hand. But the killing is the prime mover; without that, the surviving doesn’t come into play. Kind of a cold way to look at the world, isn’t it? No, it’s actually an optimistic one. There’s a quote I love from the anthropologist Robert Ardrey: “We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.” You used that as the epigraph to your new book, God Is an Abnorm. But I noticed you left out the last line, “We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.” Why? That’s where Ardrey’s poetic license gets the better of his science, which is a perilous mistake. We aren’t “known among the stars” at all. The sun isn’t pondering human nature, the galaxy isn’t sitting in judgment. The universe doesn’t care about us. We’ve evolved into what we are because humanity’s current model survived and previous iterations didn’t. Simple as that. Why is a little artistic enthusiasm a perilous mistake? Because artists are more dangerous than murderers. The most prolific serial killer might have dozens of victims, but poets can lay low entire generations.

Everyone wants to be successful rather than forgotten, and everyone wants to make a difference in life. But that is beyond the control of any of us. If this life is all there is, then everything will eventually burn up in the death of the sun and no one will even be around to remember anything that has ever happened. Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. That is what the Christian faith promises. “In the Lord, your labor is not in vain,” writes Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 58. He was speaking of Christian ministry, but Tolkien’s story shows how this can ultimately be true of all work. Tolkien had readied himself, through Christian truth, for very modest accomplishment in the eyes of this world. (The irony is that he produced something so many people consider a work of genius that it is one of the bestselling books in the history of the world.) What about you? Let’s say that you go into city planning as a young person. Why? You are excited about cities, and you have a vision about how a real city ought to be. You are likely to be discouraged because throughout your life you probably will not get more than a leaf or a branch done. But there really is a New Jerusalem, a heavenly city, which will come down to earth like a bride dressed for her husband (Revelation 21–22). Or let’s say you are a lawyer, and you go into law because you have a vision for justice and a vision for a flourishing society ruled by equity and peace. In ten years you will be deeply disillusioned because you will find that as much as you are trying to work on important things, so much of what you do is minutiae. Once or twice in your life you may feel like you have finally “gotten a leaf out.” Whatever your work, you need to know this: There really is a tree. Whatever you are seeking in your work—the city of justice and peace, the world of brilliance and beauty, the story, the order, the healing—it is there. There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others. Your work will be only partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek—the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community—will come to fruition. If you know all this, you won’t be despondent because you can get only a leaf or two out in this life. You will work with satisfaction and joy. You will not be puffed up by success or devastated by setbacks. I just said, “If you know all this.” In order to work in this way—to get the consolation and freedom that Tolkien received from his Christian faith for his work—you need to know the Bible’s answers to three questions: Why do you want to work? (That is, why do we need to work in order to lead a fulfilled life?) Why is it so hard to work? (That is, why is it so often fruitless, pointless, and difficult?) How can we overcome the difficulties and find satisfaction in our work through the gospel? The rest of this book will seek to answer those three questions in its three sections, respectively.

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Modern physics plays perhaps only a small role in this dangerous process of unification. But it helps at two very decisive points to guide the development into a calmer kind of evolution. First, it shows that the use of arms in the process would be disastrous and, second, through its openness for all kinds of concepts it raises the hope that in the final state of unification many different cultural traditions may live together and may combine different human endeavors into a new kind of balance between thought and deed, between activity and meditation.

Many of these students seem to have a blinkered view of their options. There’s crass but affluent investment banking. There’s the poor but noble nonprofit world. And then there is the world of high-tech start-ups, which magically provides money and coolness simultaneously. But there was little interest in or awareness of the ministry, the military, the academy, government service or the zillion other sectors. Furthermore, few students showed any interest in working for a company that actually makes products. . . . [C]ommunity service has become a patch for morality. Many people today have not been given vocabularies to talk about what virtue is, what character consists of, and in which way excellence lies, so they just talk about community service. . . . In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence. . . . Furthermore . . . [a]round what ultimate purpose should your life revolve? Are you capable of heroic self-sacrifice or is life just a series of achievement hoops? . . . You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and schmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job. 110

He had no political experience, was fond of spouting baseless conspiracy theories, and the only endeavor in which he had engaged the height not gone bankrupt was not even his own – a reality TV show.

Through all his endeavors William always took care to remember his beginnings during Jefferson's embargo. This experience taught him two lessons he took to heart. The first one was that the ideal conditions in business were never given. One had to create them. If the embargo had initially shattered his dreams, he found a way to turn the situation to his favor. And his second and main discovery was that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good, as all the transactions he conducted throughout his life eloquently show. These two principles (we make our own weather; personal gain ought to be a public asset) I have always striven to follow.

I'm trying to show you how good my brain was at convincing me that I never belonged where I was. These are the lies our brain tell us to push happiness out of our reach. What is the evolutionary purpose of that? Is happiness stagnation? Maybe. Maybe life (all life, not just human life) is nothing more than wanting something and being able to go for it. What is life with no want? Satisfaction sounds lovely, but it evolutionarily it was apparently selected against.

This show was the most ambitious thing I’d done. Although the idea was simple, the fact that every piece of gear had to come onstage for tech check in the afternoon and then be removed again before the show was a lot of work for the crew. But the show was a success; the transparency and conceptual nature of its structure took away nothing from the emotional impact. It was tremendously gratifying. I didn’t perform for a while after that. It was hard to top that experience. I directed a feature film, married, and had a child, and I wanted to be around for as much of my daughter’s early years as I could. I continued to make records and launch other creative endeavors, but I didn’t perform.

I would say, ‘Write everything down because it’s all very fleeting.’ I would say, ‘Keep a journal,’ which I have but I would have been more meticulous. Then I would say, ‘Don’t bow to the gatekeepers at the head of, in my case, show business, but at the gate of any business or any endeavor.’ Don’t bow to the gatekeepers because I think, in essence, there are no gatekeepers. You are the gatekeeper. . . . “Don’t waste your time on marketing, just try to get better. . . . “And also, it’s not about being good; it’s about being great. Because what I find, the older I get, is that a lot of people are good, and a lot of people are smart, and a lot of people are clever. But not a lot of people give you their soul when they perform.

Perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding of the images—symbols—inherent in religious texts throughout the centuries. Lux (Latin for light) in most all spiritual paths is the end goal of the spiritual experience. Regardie discusses the importance of understanding the role of lux in initiation. Certainly, to reach and attain direct contact and communion with the Light of God is the goal, if ever there was one, of spirituality. This shows that the function of initiation, in seeking light, is shepherding oneself into a process of labor. It is an alchemical endeavor, just as the ancient alchemists were initiates themselves. Turning the lead within oneself into gold—chrysopoeia—is the prime goal. The whole aim of magic, alchemy, and mysticism is to purify one’s soul through illumination of the divine light, which is in fact an inner light. This is initiation.

Perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding of the images—symbols—inherent in religious texts throughout the centuries. Lux (Latin for light) in most all spiritual paths is the end goal of the spiritual experience. Regardie discusses the importance of understanding the role of lux in initiation. Certainly, to reach and attain direct contact and communion with the Light of God is the goal, if ever there was one, of spirituality. This shows that the function of initiation, in seeking light, is shepherding oneself into a process of labor. It is an alchemical endeavor, just as the ancient alchemists were initiates themselves. Turning the lead within oneself into gold—chrysopoeia—is the prime goal. The whole aim of magic, alchemy, and mysticism is to purify one’s soul through illumination of the divine light, which is in fact an inner light. This is initiation. One cannot receive the light, cannot receive initiation, just by wanting it. Desire alone is not sufficient. One must condition oneself accordingly so that the light of spiritual illumination may be received, for the light will not fill a container that is impure. Initiation is a state of mind. It comes as a result of discipline, rather than circumstance. It should not be our base desires which drive our life, but Will. This Will is a will not of our own but of the Divine.

The primacy of performance dominates their thoughts. To return to Dylan’s Nobel Lecture, we find him musing on the practicalities of ‘putting on a show’: “I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn’t have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want to set this in Denmark8?” His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature? But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?

For as they [the Papists] endeavor studiously to weaken the authority of Scripture in order the more easily to establish their unwritten (agraphous) traditions and the supreme tribunal of the pope himself; so, for the same reason, they are accustomed in many ways to impair its necessity in order to prove it useful indeed to the church, but not necessary (as Bellarmine shows, VD 4.4, pp. 119–22). Yea Cardinal Hosius does not hesitate blasphemously to say, 'Better would it be for the interests of the church had no Scripture ever existed'; and Valentia, 'It would be better had it not been written.

Through all his endeavors William always took care to remember his beginnings during Jefferson’s embargo. This experience taught him two lessons he took to heart. The first one was that the ideal conditions for business were never given. One had to create them. If the embargo had initially shattered his dreams, he found a way to turn the situation to his favor. And his second and main discovery was that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good, as all the transactions he conducted throughout his life eloquently show. These two principles (we make our own weather; personal gain ought to be a public asset) I have always striven to follow.

Onward to the second principle: whenever possible, we should endeavor to transform information into an artifact, to make data into something real—and then proceed to interact with it, labeling it, mapping it, feeling it, tweaking it, showing it to others. Humans evolved to handle the concrete, not to contemplate the abstract. We extend our intelligence when we give our minds something to grab onto: when we experience a concept from physics as a bicycle wheel spinning in our hands, for example, or when we turn a foreign language vocabulary word into a gesture we can see and sense and demonstrate to others.

I’m trying to show you how good my brain was at convincing me that I never belonged where I was. These are the lies our brains tell us to push happiness out of our reach. What is the evolutionary purpose of that? Is happiness stagnation? Maybe. Maybe life (all life, not just human life) is nothing more than wanting something and being able to go for it. What is life with no want? Satisfaction sounds lovely, but evolutionarily it was apparently selected against.

The questions specially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest kingship that can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous;—Spectral—that is to say, aspects and shows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "Likeness of a kingly crown have on"; or else tyrannous—that is to say, substituting their own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.

I am not ignorant, however, and I have no wish to disguise the fact, that they endeavor to evade the charge by means of a more subtle distinction...The worship which they pay to their images they cloak with the name of idolodulia, and deny to be idolatria. So they speak, holding that the worship which they call dulia may, without insult to God, be paid to statues and pictures. Hence, they think themselves blameless if they are only the servants, and not the worshippers, of idols; as if it were not a lighter matter to worship than to serve. And yet, while they take refuge in a greek term, they very childishly contradict themselves. For the Greek word λατρεύειν having no other meaning than to worship, that they say is just the same as if they were to confess that they worship their images without worshiping them. They cannot object that I am quibbing upon words. The fact is, that they only betray their ignorance while they attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the simple. But how eloquent soever they may be, they will never prove by their eloquence that one and the same thing makes two. Let them show how the things differ if they would be thought different from ancient idolaters. For as a murderer or adulterer will not escape conviction by giving some adventitious name to his crime, so it is absurd for them to expect that the subtle device of a name will exculpate them, if they, in fact, differ in nothing from idolaters whom they themselves are forced to condemn. But so far are they from proving that their case is different, that the source of the whole evil consists in a preposterous rivalship with them, while they with their minds devise, and with their hands execute, symbolical shapes of God.

Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, who was one of its authors, very properly says: "The whole document utterly negatives the idea, which so many have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of 'conspirators,' whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and the erection of a great 'slavery oligarchy,' instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. This work of the Montgomery Convention, with that of the Constitution for a Provisional Government, will ever remain, not only as a monument of the wisdom, forecast, and statesmanship of the men who constituted it, but an everlasting refutation of the charges which have been brought against them. These works together show clearly that their only leading object was to sustain, uphold, and perpetuate the fundamental principles of the Constitution of the United States.

There is one mind common to all individual men.” This is Platonism; Emerson means we all have reason in common. Communication is possible because all human minds are, in important respects, similarly constituted. The second of Emerson’s Goose Pond principles is the Stoic ground law: “There is a relation between man and nature so that whatever is in matter is in mind.” This is the basis for language and for what the writer does. The third point is that expression is as basic a human drive as sex: “It is a necessity of the human nature that it should express itself outwardly and embody its thought.” “As all creatures are allured to reproduce themselves, so must the thought be imparted in speech.” He adds, as a corollary, “Action is as great a pleasure and cannot be foreborne.” Point four says, “It is the constant endeavor of the mind to idealize the actual, to accommodate the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” He gives architecture and art as examples.6 Point five is the theory of classification: “It is the constant tendency of the mind to unify all it beholds, or to reduce the remotest facts to a single law.” Point six extends point five and is a specific application of point two: “There is a parallel tendency/corresponding unity in nature which makes this [unification] just, as in the composition of a compound shell or leaf or animal from few elements.” Point seven describes, in Baconian fashion, an idol of the mind, the tendency to “separate particulars” and magnify them, from which come “all false views and particular sects.” Emerson’s last point is the intellectual parallax or corrective postulate for the previous point: “The remedy for all abuses, all error in thought or practice, is the conviction that underneath all appearances and causing all appearances are certain eternal laws which we call the Nature of Things.

So it felt significant—generous—for Auntie to sit here and tell me that the way my mother raised me was unfair. It was a permission of sorts to recognize—even among this generation that was so inured to pain—that the way I was brought up” “was not right. Not how it was supposed to be. It had been so unfair, it seemed, that Auntie had placed a finger on the scale of my life, trying to level things. All that time, I had not actually been the favorite child. I was not loved more or less than anyone else. But the truth was something better than that: I had been seen. My family had seen me. And they loved me enough to orchestrate a grand performance that had spanned decades and involved my entire family. All those years of “Ho gwaai, ho gwaai. You’re so well-behaved. You’re such a good girl.” At first, those lines were crafted to show my mother that I was deserving of love. That didn’t work. But perhaps they were also endeavoring to show me.

Freedom was the idea that together we can ensure that we all have the things we need—love, food, shelter, safety. The way I’ve come to understand it, freedom is both an individual and collective endeavor—a multilayered process, not a static state of being. Being free is, in part, achieved through being connected.

Conan O'Brien doesn’t have it,' the NBC lawyers assured Jeff Gaspin, Entertainment Chairman (at NBC Universal). 'Conan was guaranteed The Tonight Show. He was not guaranteed that it would start at 11:35 p.m'.

I would have been prepared to like a relationship with him had he been capable of affection or willing to show any. From the first day of our encounter, I had come to a sad conclusion about him. If you allow yourself to love that man, you will be the unhappiest creature on earth. This man is thoroughly immature, unaware the affect of his actions to others, carousing with others, sacredly looks at you, talks of nothing but his lei sureness and such things, and pays more attention to any other people than yourself. Never such two minds resemble each other less than ours. I love reading so did he, but what did he read? He reads stories of high woman and novels that were not to my tastes (trashy novels), while I read about philosophy, history, economics, and politics to prepare me for a life career and meaningful purpose to contribute to society as well as my own personal endeavors.

Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel that you are, and as inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or holy: turn us loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we can do. --thomas havens

The barrel has a built in suppressor so it can’t be heard more than a half mile away over the flattest land and doesn’t need hearing protection to fire safely outdoors. The sight is a green laser that is invisible without the filter, so you look through the lens and you see the dot – wherever the dot is, that is where the bullet goes. The weapon has a computer processor on board that controls the recoil and adjusts the laser sight dependent on the range of the target in your sites as well as environmental variables like wind, humidity, and temperature. On the side of the weapon is a display you can flip up showing whatever the weapon is aimed at. You have a choice of regular, thermal, or night vision. The screen can also flip to the side so you can hold the weapon around a corner and still see what you are aiming at.” Jack

He was fitted with skin tight gloves and socks, lightweight boots that were surprisingly comfortable, and finally a helmet. The clear shield on the helmet had a heads up display that showed him a small view of what was behind him in the top right. There was an overlay display that showed night vision over the top of what he was looking at, and he could switch back and forth on the fly. There was a button on the M74 that fed the video and ammunition count to the helmet so he could see it without using the screen on the gun. He

Over the past year, I have realized something about myself. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia: I hate being at home by myself. I am a people person. My life has been a magnificent indulgence. I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit? I suppose that I never completely gave up my childhood idea of being a minister. Only the medium and the message changed. I have still endeavored to touch people’s souls, to raise their spirits and put smiles on their faces.

Jimmy’s goal since childhood, he explained to Siegel, had been to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. He was endearing. After a two-hour call, Siegel offered to represent him. She had one question, however. “Why don’t you stay and graduate?” Jimmy was a semester shy of a degree. Siegel suggested that they get started in the summer, so he’d have a bachelor’s degree to fall back on, just in case. “No, no,” Jimmy insisted. “I need to get on Saturday Night Live, and you’re going to make it happen, because you know Adam Sandler! I don’t want to do anything else.” Siegel knew this was a long shot—and a long-term endeavor—especially for an out-of-town kid with zero acting credits. But for some reason, she couldn’t turn him down; she had never met someone as focused and passionate about a single dream as this grinning bumpkin from the tiny town of Saugerties, New York. And though his skills were rough, given some time in the industry, she thought he might just make it. “OK, let’s do this,” she said. So, in January 1996 Jimmy quit college and moved to Los Angeles. For six months, Siegel booked him gigs on small, local stand-up comedy stages. Then, without warning, SNL put a call out for auditions; three cast members would be leaving the show. Having worked with one of the departing actors, David Spade, Siegel pulled a few strings and arranged a Hail Mary for the young Jimmy Fallon: an audition at The Comic Strip. SO HERE HE WAS. Fresh-faced, sweating in his light shirt, holding his Troll doll. In front of Lorne Michaels and a phalanx of Hollywood shakers. When Jimmy ended his three-minute bit, the audience clapped politely. True to his reputation, Michaels didn’t laugh. Not once. Jimmy went home and awaited word. Finally, the results came: SNL had invited Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, and Chris Kattan, each of whom had hustled in the comedy scene for years, to join the cast. Jimmy—the newbie whose well-connected manager had finagled an invite—was crushed. “Was he completely raw? A hundred percent,” Siegel says. But, the SNL people said, “Let’s keep an eye on him.

Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel that you are, and as inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or holy: turn us loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we can do.

A model is a qualitative or quantitative representation of a process or endeavor that shows the effects of those factors which are significant for the purposes being considered.

The style of a soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it 'style.' He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle....I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You'll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won't show it to you. His face will. You'd have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else.

Anders disentangled himself from Valerie’s clinging arms and took a step back. He paused to take several breaths, attempting to give his brain a chance to recover before turning toward Lucian. Once he faced the man, he simply asked, “What did you say?” “I said I’d rather my wife not look out our French doors and see your bare ass if you don’t mind,” Lucian said succinctly. Anders glanced down at himself, relieved to see that, as he’d thought, he hadn’t yet achieved undoing and dropping his drawers. Trying for dignity he straightened his shoulders and said, “I assure you my self-control would have kicked in before things went that far.” “Yeah right,” Lucian snorted. “One more minute and you would have been bare-assed and giving Valerie a good seeing to right there on the porch rail.” Grimacing, he added, “For future reference, I don’t recommend it. Leigh got some nasty slivers off that rail some months ago. It’s too rough for such endeavors.” Anders glanced over his shoulder to Valerie with concern at this news. The shorts she was wearing weren’t especially long and he had no doubt her upper legs at least had been ground into the wood as he’d dry humped her. “Are you all right?” Blushing brightly, she nodded. “I think so.” “I’ll check later.” Anders had meant that to be reassuring, but Valerie’s blush went from a becoming rosy color to the red of a tomato and her wide eyes shot to Lucian with embarrassment. “And that is precisely why we need help at the moment,” Lucian said dryly to Valerie, obviously having read enough of their minds to know that was what Anders had been trying to show her. He clarified, however, by adding, “I’ve lost most of my best Enforcers to life mate brain . . . which means more often than not, they’re as brainless as cats in heat. Even I suffer from it on occasion. We’ll need help for the next year or so until the worst of it passes.” “Oh,” Valerie breathed.

This was true of any and every aspect of knowledge; you figured out how to learn it, and you exposed yourself to people who were willing to make their understanding public if you thought it could be a worthwhile part of your endeavor. That is the basis for the formation of universities in the Middle Ages—places where thinkers were willing to spend their time making their thoughts public. The only ones who got to stay were the ones whom other people (“students”) found relevant enough to their own personal quests to make listening to them worthwhile. By the way, this attitude toward teaching has not disappeared. When quantum theory was being developed in the second quarter of the twentieth century, aspiring atomic physicists traveled to the various places where different theorists were developing their thoughts, often in radically different directions. Students traveled to Bohr’s institute to find out how he viewed quantum theory, then to Heisenberg, to Einstein, to Schrodinger, to Dirac, and so on. What was true of physics was equally true of art, architecture...you name it. It is still true today. One does not go to Pei to learn “architecture”; one goes to learn how he does it—that is, to see him “teach” by telling and showing you his approach. Schools should enable people to go where they want to go, not where others want them to. The