Fabric Design Quotes

Now he's [Cinna] arranging things around my living room: Clothing, fabrics, and sketchbooks with designs he's drawn. I pick one up and examine one of the dresses I supposedly created. You know, I think I show a lot of promise," I say. Get dressed, you worthless thing.

We were so wholly one I had not thought That we could die apart. I had not thought That I could move,—and you be stiff and still! That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb! I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof In some firm fabric, woven in and out; Your golden filaments in fair design Across my duller fibre.

They loved so intensely that moments of their life have been etched into the very fabric of the mansion. Some say the king designed it that way, so if one day he lost her he could come live with her residue.

Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.

The people who are with us by either happenstance or design during life-altering events become woven into the fabric of those events.

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service

I took the liberty of designing your pennant,” said Rhy, resting his elbows on the gallery’s marble banister. “I hope you don’t mind.” Kell cringed. “Do I even want to know what’s on it?” Rhy tugged the folded piece of fabric from his pocket, and handed it over. The cloth was red, and when he unfolded it, he saw the image of a rose in black and white. The rose had been mirrored, folded along the center axis and reflected, so the design was actually two flowers, surrounded by a coil of thorns. “How subtle,” said Kell tonelessly. “You could at least pretend to be grateful.” “And you couldn’t have picked something a little more … I don’t know … imposing? A serpent? A great beast? A bird of prey?” “A bloody handprint?” retorted Rhy. “Oh, what about a glowing black eye?” Kell glowered. “You’re right,” continued Rhy, “I should have just drawn a frowning face. But then everyone would know it’s you. I thought this was rather fitting.

You have to see fate as a design, a pattern, and the will as the knife, the blade, the thing slicing through the fabric...

When we are young, we think life will be like a supo: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths-bits and pieces, odds and ends-people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps.

She thought for a moment, then said, “When we are young, we think life will be like a su po: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths--bits and pieces, odds and ends--people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps. There is harmony in this, too, and beauty. I suppose that is why I like the chogak po.

When we are young, we think life will be like a su po: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths—bits and pieces, odds and ends—people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps. There is harmony in this, too, and beauty. I suppose that is why I like the chogak po.

It’s only fabric! Freestyle fabric cutting and sewing is a low-risk endeavor with a strong payoff of personal growth and empower- ment.

Each event touching another; like threads that design in concert, creating the fabric that is life.

A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a piece of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn't simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again." "I don't think I know Strawberry Thief," Sadie said. "One moment," Mrs. Watanabe said. Mrs. Watanabe went into her bedroom, and she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn't known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it. "This was William Morris's garden. These were his strawberries. Those were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It's the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

Jackie chose an overstuffed easy chair with a paisley design. “Wow,” she said, settling back and back into fabric that continued to give. For a moment the pain vanished. Comfort was the answer to all of life’s problems. It didn’t solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.

PICK YOUR FABRIC “The importance of this step cannot be understated. If you pick the wrong fabric, your dress is doomed from the start. Pick a fabric that has the right weight, that will flatter the design. And the figure of the bride who will wear it. Once you pick your fabric, the die is cast. There is no going back.

The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.

What causes all the hatred? At some level, it’s always the same thing: human beings operating under the influence of human brains whose design presupposed their specialness. That is, human beings operating under the influence of the reality-distortion fields that control us in many and subtle ways, convincing us that we and ours are in the right, that we are by nature good, and that, when we do the occasional bad thing, it’s not a reflection of the “real us”; whereas they and theirs aren’t in the right and aren’t by nature good, and when they do the occasional good thing, it’s not a reflection of the “real them.” And it doesn’t help matters that these reality-distortion fields often magnify, even out-and-out fabricate, the threat posed by them and theirs.

By God’s design, he has wired his children for spiritual reproduction. He has woven into the fabric of every single Christian’s DNA a desire and ability to reproduce.

Golden Ratio is a powerful mathematical constant woven into the very fabric of biology. It is the unique visual tension between comforting symmetry and compelling asymmetry, and its thoughtful application can bring beauty and harmony and intrigue to all manner of designed things.

Remember - the fault is in the garment, certainly not the girl. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the shape of her. Some designers cut their clothes for certain body types and others for others. Occasionally the pattern will make her ass look strangely square or the fabric will cling in an unflattering way, but Not Cut Well is always the answer, and it has the extremely delightful quality of saving your ass and being completely true at the same time. Use it wisely.

Punctuation has been defined many ways. Some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation as the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape. Another writer tells us that punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop. I have even seen a rather fanciful reference to the full stop and comma as “the invisible servants in fairy tales – the ones who bring glasses of water and pillows, not storms of weather or love”. But best of all, I think, is the simple advice given by the style book of a national newspaper: that punctuation is “a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling”.

Reluctantly, he knew that he despised his fellow residents for the way in which they fit so willingly into their appointed slots in the apartment buildings, for their overdeveloped sense of responsibility and lack of flamboyance. Above all, he looked down on them for their good taste. The building was a monument to good taste, to the well-designed kitchen, to sophisticated utencils and fabrics, to elegant and never ostentatious furnishings. In short, to that whole aesthetic sensibility which these well-educated, professional people had inherited from all the schools of industrial design, all the award-winning schemes of interior decoration institutionalized by the last quarter of the century. Royal detested this orthodoxy of the intelligent. Visiting his neighbors’ apartments, he would find himself physically repelled by the contours of an award-winning coffee pot, but the well-modulated color schemes, by the good taste and intelligence that, Midas-like, had transformed everything in these apartments into an ideal marriage of function and design. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture, and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.

Faking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don’t believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling. There are fake beliefs, fake opinions, fake kinds of expertise. There is also fake emotion, which comes about when people debase the forms and the language in which true feeling can take root, so that they are no longer fully aware of the difference between the true and the false. Kitsch is one very important example of this. The kitsch work of art is not a response to the real world, but a fabrication designed to replace it. Yet both producer and consumer conspire to persuade each other that what they feel in and through the kitsch work of art is something deep, important and real. Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention — in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. In an important sense, therefore, faking is not something that can be intended, even though it comes about through intentional actions. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but his pretence is merely a continuation of his lying strategy. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a high culture works, and how it can become corrupted.

The culture's reverence for nature accentuates Kyoto's innate beauty. Designs on fabric, pottery, lacquer, and folding screens depict swirling water, budding branches, and birds in flight. Delicate woodcuts and scrolls celebrate the moonlight, rain, and snow. Elegant restaurant dishes arrive with edible garnishes of seasonal flora.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbors and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distant from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalized, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilization, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being molded by the great machines of entertainment that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination.

Maggie felt sorry for her, a woman surrounded by beautiful expensive things, all of them by authentic designers, genuine gold-trims, the best-quality fabrics and woods, rare collector accessories of porcelain and ceramic—nothing artificial except her personality. Maggie

Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.

Women are gaslit into believing that their bodies - the very thing that allows them to hack the big brain-small pelvis equation - are problematic and that consequently they themselves are problematic. We're dirty, silly, fat, gross, weak, or we're simply complainers. We are forced to make do with a medical system largely designed around the needs of men and we have our medical concerns dismissed as "not that bad" or we are told they are fabricated.

I didn't care for the energy of the place—too many people and too much cigarette smoke—so I ventured instead near the lobby and the shops. At first I was a little intimidated by all the designer labels, but after a while I ventured into Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton and of course my favorite, Jimmy Choo. I was like a kid at the petting zoo, stroking the luxurious fabrics, cuddling with the fine leather purses, and cooing to the shoes. "Want to come home with me?" I asked one pair of beautiful snakeskin sandals. Their $450 price tag begged to differ, however, and I left them to find another home.

Mrs. Watanabe loved hand painting, quilting, and the discipline of woven textiles, but she worried these techniques were a dying art. “Computers make everything too easy,” she said with a sigh. “People design very quickly on a monitor, and they print on some enormous industrial printer in a warehouse in a distant country, and the designer hasn’t touched a piece of fabric at any point in the process or gotten her hands dirty with ink. Computers are great for experimentation, but they’re bad for deep thinking.

Pico,” Yuan mutters. “I’m listening, Yuan,” Pico’s voice resonates in the library. “Was backing away cowardice?” “About your old research?” Pico begins, “No, you weren’t a coward. Everything needs caution. But Ruem was taking great risks. Risking one’s own life in the war field is not the same as risking the lives of millions. Even if the goal is good.” “Do you think his goal was good?” Yuan asks. “Cosmic energy is the Source, the fabric that forms the universe. Now you, humans, call it prana. You learned to absorb it by being willing to absorb it. It evolves you, yes. Your mind and your body are designed for this purpose, true. I can’t deny that it could bring a greater good. But, theoretically good. Ruem, however, his idea is dark; it’s always been dark. Artificially forcing people into evolution is risky.” Pico explains—now it’s not Senior or Junior anymore. Now they both are one. For that, each of them had to face a small death. A death of the individual, yes. But for the both, it’s a new life, a connected life. A whole life.

Take a good look at your fabric and intuit what it is saying to you.

Your suffering is by design. It's in the woodwork, its stain in your finest fabrics, its smell in your hope.

Though unity is the basic fabric of creation, duality brings texture, design, and color to life.

Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, What are you weaving? labor and sorrow? Look to your loom again, faster and faster Fly the great shuttles prepared by the Master. There’s life in the loom! Room for it, room! There’s life in the loom! Room for it, room! Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, Lighten the labor and sweeten the sorrow; Now while the shuttles fly faster and faster, Up and be doing the work with the Master. He stands at the loom! Room for Him, room! He stands at the loom! Room for Him, room! Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, Look at your fabric of labor and sorrow; Seamy and dark with despair and disaster, Turn it and lo, the design of the Master. The Lord’s at the loom! Room for Him, room! The Lord’s at the loom! Room for Him, room!

The problem with most people, he felt, is that they build artificial walls around subjects and ideas. The real thinker sees the connections, grasps the essence of the life force operating in every individual instance. Why should any individual stop at poetry, or find art unrelated to science, or narrow his or her intellectual interests? The mind was designed to connect things, like a loom that knits together all of the threads of a fabric. If life exists as an organic whole and cannot be separated into parts without losing a sense of the whole, then thinking should make itself equal to the whole.

On a larger scale, it’s true of this whole book. All I’m doing here is recording facts that don’t fall together. There’s no novelistic fabrication involved, so it’s not interesting the way a novel is. But it’s a lot more mysterious than a novel. Natural facts, which have been dramatized by fate, are freer of laws than a novel devised by human design. Which is why they’re mysterious. Or so I’ve always thought.

Paying attention to what nourishes and stimulates your heart, soul, and imagination leads to listening to your instincts. In turn, listening to your instincts jump-starts the process of creating the fabric of your destiny. Like a designer sewing a garment, you take the vision within you and bring it to life in a suit to be worn for your next season of life. You are instinctively best at inventing what is in your inventory!

I did as I was told, smoothing my hand across the lush fabric of the Moonflower. I’d named the dress design after the white flower, which looked like a long dress midtwirl when it opened. But there was a catch that made me insist on the name—the moonflower only opened at night. It blossomed in the dark. Sven had said to call it something that reminded me of myself. Nothing reminded me of myself more than blossoming in the arms of darkness.

The big thing is the product, and any hurry in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T—which is what is known to-day as the Ford car—that suited me.

With no small amount of trepidation, we walked alone past a colony of black-faced monkeys we’d been told were extremely dangerous. We avoided eye contact and certainly didn’t take pictures. And dearly wished our old Sherpa bag-carrying matey was nearby. We visited Gandhi’s tomb. We saw saris being printed and hand-knotted carpets being fabricated and negotiated a decent price for a small hand-crafted rug of Mughal design that, as long as we keep the certificate of authenticity safe, should appreciated in value. We witnessed poverty beyond poverty, with ‘untouchables’ so poor that they are actually outside the caste system, and who can’t even afford to live in the unsanitary slums described as 'unfit for human habitation.

Our olfactory bulbs have gathered endless sense patterns of foods high in sugar, fat and salt. These flavour memories have become part of the fabric of our sense of self and are not easily discarded, because the system, as we have seen, is designed ‘not to forget’.

an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The

Susannah Buxton, costume designer: This dress (above) was made of original beading so delicate that it couldn't be worn again. The red dress (right) is made from a turn-of-the-century Spanish evening dress. We sourced beautiful silk chiffon and had it pleated for the cap sleeves and bands across the front. We built layers for the final effect, with embroidered lace laid over the deep-red satin under-dress. We used evening gloves from the costume house selection, which are "dipped down" - that is, run through with dyes to take the brightness out of the fabric.

No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

God Will, I wish you'd stop telling me what to do. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?" My voice had become shrill. "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't need to fill my days with activity?" "Bur one day you might wish you had", he said quietly. "Do you know what I would do if I were you?" I put down my peeler. "I suspect you're going to tell me." "Yes. And I'm completely unembarrassed about telling you. I'd be doing night school. I'd be training as a seamstress or a fashion designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love." He gestured at my minidress, a Sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made with the fabric that had once been a pair of Grandad's curtains. The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled, "Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!" It had taken him a full five minutes to stop laughing. "I'd be finding out what I could do that didn't cost much - keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I'd be teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else's dog, or -" "Okay, okay, I get the message," I said, irritably. "But I'm not you, Will." "Luckily for you.

People design very quickly on a monitor, and they print on some enormous industrial printer in a warehouse in a distant country, and the designer hasn’t touched a piece of fabric at any point in the process or gotten her hands dirty with ink. Computers are great for experimentation, but they’re bad for deep thinking.

What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the whole universe… . I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously… . A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. Shadows or simulacra of that single word equivalent to a language and to all language can embrace are the poor and ambitious human words, all, world, universe… . Then there occurred what I cannot forget nor communicate. There occurred the union with the divinity, with the universe (I do not know whether these words differ in meaning). Ecstasy does not repeat its symbols; God has been seen in a blazing light, in a sword or in the circles of a rose. I saw an exceedingly high Wheel, which was not before my eyes, nor behind me, nor to the sides, but every place at one time. That wheel was made of water, but also of fire, and it was (although the edge could be seen) infinite. Interlinked, all things that are, were, and shall be formed it, and I was one of the fibers of that total fabric… .I saw the universe and I saw the intimate designs of the universe; … I saw the faceless god concealed behind the other gods. I saw infinite processes that formed one single felicity and, understanding all, I was able to understand the script of the tiger.

Scott stared at her mouth, just stared like he was hypnotized, paralyzed, like that crimson O was the answer to all of life’s problems, or maybe just his prayers. I kicked his shin to break the spell, which worked; he blinked, then ate the bite himself as if he’d never even offered it to anyone at all. I looked frankly at Carmel; her expression was innocently amused. There are women whose whole selves are engaged in being a public commodity, and Carmel was one of these. Every gesture she made, every syllable she uttered, the tinkle of her laughter, the way her dress’s fabric draped over her breasts, all of it was self-conscious and deliberate, designed to elicit admiration in women, desire in men. This isn’t to say I held any of that against her. Not a bit. I liked her, in fact. The way I saw it, she was a kind of living work of art, and funny and thoughtful besides. Was it her fault if she, as had happened to me, sometimes provoked the basest feelings in a man? Scott and Fred made short work of that second bottle of brandy while Carmel’s and my glasses still held our initial pour. I’d found that drinking very much of any kind of alcohol still did bad things to my stomach. Carmel might have found that it did bad things to her self-preservation; I know that if I looked like her, I’d never let down my guard.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbours and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distanced from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalised, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilisation, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being moulded by the great entertainment machines that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination".

The big thing is the product, and any hurry in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T—which is what is known to-day as the Ford car—that suited me. We did not attempt to go into real production until we had a real product. That product has not been essentially changed.

These were his strawberries. These were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.” Sadie caressed the

I helped her dry off, dress, put on the wedding dress that I--I, thought with a mixture of pride and suffering--had chosen for her. The fabric became living, over its whiteness ran Lila's heat, the red of her mouth, her hard black eyes. Finally, she put on the shoes that she herself had designed. Pressed by Rino, who if she hadn't worn them would have felt a kind of betrayal, she had chosen a pair with low heels, to avoid seeming too much taller than Stefano. she looked at herself in the mirror, lifting the dress slightly. 'They're ugly,' she said. 'It's not true.' She laughed nervously. 'But yes, look: the mind's dreams have ended up under the feet.' She turned with a sudden expression of fear. 'What's going to happen to me, Lenù?

A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a piece of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn’t simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again.

Is that . . . are those tiny flying pigs on your shirt?” I ask as I narrow my gaze, taking in the white shirt buttoned up to a black velvet Peter Pan collar. “Yes. The fabric is from a designer in New York. I ordered it a month ago and went crazy. I even made Romeo a pillow.” “Is that the new wide receiver for the Saints? Drafted last year?” She cocks her head. “Hardly. He’s my little potbellied pig. A teacup.

So this summer, this first summer when he was allowed to have “visitation rights” with his father, with the divorce only one month old, Brian was heading north. His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit. He was working in the oil fields of Canada, up on the tree line where the tundra started and the forests ended. Brian was riding up from New York with some drilling equipment—it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing—that had to be specially made in the city, riding in the bushplane with the pilot named Jim or Jake or something who had turned out to be an all right guy, letting him fly and all.

And there by the door was a big piece of some kind of woven fabric, neatly framed and under glass, with a pattern of blue leaves and vines and speckled birds and little white flowers, and everything so close and tight that it played with my eyes and made me squint. And the funny thing was, I was almost sure I'd seen that pattern somewhere before... For a minute I looked at it, trying to work out the design. The leaves looked a bit like strawberry-leaves, and there were strawberries in there too, which made me think of my strawberry wood, grown dark and strange under the glass. But there were so many things in there, so many shapes and colors, that it was hard to focus. And the pattern kept repeating, so that it looked like the birds were moving; chasing each other through the leaves, and flowers, and briars, and bunches of strawberries.

Raistlin's lip curled in a sneer. "How does that thread weave into the grand design?" "As do all threads," Astinus said. "Look at the rug beneath your feet. Were you to turn the rug over, you would see what appears to be a confused tangle of many-colored strands of thread. But look at the rug from the top—the strands are neatly, tightly woven, merged together to form a strong fabric. Oh, it is frayed a bit at the corners, but—overall—it has worn well.

despite professing a deep distrust of traditional institutions of authority such as governments – conspiracy theories actually reveal an extraordinary faith in the organizational aptitude and institutional discipline of such bodies. Consider the scheming, forward planning, and perpetual fidelity to an agenda that would be required for governments and/or military operations to prosecute an effective conspiracy. Surely the effort involved in a four-and- a-half-decade intergovernmental ruse required to fake the Apollo 11 moon landing would dwarf the cost and organization of a moon landing itself. The conspiracy would be, in many ways, a grander accomplishment than the space exploration it purportedly fabricates. (Then again, perhaps the conspiracist counter is that the substantial sums once diverted to NASA are now being allocated to government programs designed to fake all levels of space exploration...)

Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves—Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions—and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency—On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not—let vigorous measures be adopted—not to limit the price of articles—for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself—but to punish speculators—forestallers—& extortioners—and above all—to sink the money by heavy Taxes—To promote public & private Œconomy—encourage Manufactures &ca—Measures of this sort gone heartily into by the several states will strike at once at the root of all our misfortunes, & give the coup-de-grace to British hope of subjugating this great Continent, either by their Arms or their Arts—The first as I have before observed they acknowledge is unequal to the task—the latter I am sure will be so if we are not lost to every thing that is good & virtuous.

smart call. To make the Apple II successful required more than just Wozniak’s awesome circuit design. It would need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product, and that was Jobs’s role. He began by asking their erstwhile partner Ron Wayne to design a case. “I assumed they had no money, so I did one that didn’t require any tooling and could be fabricated in a standard metal shop,” he said. His design called for a Plexiglas cover attached by metal straps and

There is an object blocking my view of the Petrova line. It’s right next to my ship. Maybe a few hundred meters away. It’s roughly triangle-shaped and it has gable-like protrusions along its hull. Yes. I said hull. It's not an asteroid- the lines are too smooth; too straight. This object was made. Fabricated. Constructed. Shapes like that don't occur in nature. It's a ship. Another ship. There's another ship in this system with me. Those flashes of light- those were its engines. It's Astrophage-powered. Just like the Hail Mary. But the design, the shape- it's nothing like any spacecraft I've ever seen. The whole thing is made of huge, flat surfaces- the worst possible way to make a pressure vessel. No one in their right mind would make a ship that shape. No one on Earth would, anyway. I blink a few times at what I'm seeing. I gulp. This... this is an alien spacecraft. Made by aliens. Aliens intelligent enough to make a spacecraft. Humanity isn't alone in the universe. And I've just met our neighbours. 'Holy fucking shit!

In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end. Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent. Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points. If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.

Whatever else it produces, an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The

It was after a Frontline television documentary screened in the US in 1995 that the Freyds' public profile as aggrieved parents provoked another rupture within the Freyd family, when William Freyd made public his own discomfort. 'Peter Freyd is my brother, Pamela Freyd is both my stepsister and sister-in-law,' he explained. Peter and Pamela had grown up together as step-siblings. 'There is no doubt in my mind that there was severe abuse in the home of Peter and Pam, while they were raising their daughters,' he wrote. He challenged Peter Freyd's claims that he had been misunderstood, that he merely had a 'ribald' sense of humour. 'Those of us who had to endure it, remember it as abusive at best and viciously sadistic at worst.' He added that, in his view, 'The False memory Syndrome Foundation is designed to deny a reality that Peter and Pam have spent most of their lives trying to escape.' He felt that there is no such thing as a false memory syndrome.' Criticising the media for its uncritical embrace of the Freyds' campaign, he cautioned: That the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been able to excite so much media attention has been a great surprise to those of us who would like to admire and respect the objectivity and motive of people in the media. Neither Peter's mother nor his daughters, nor I have wanted anything to do with Peter and Pam for periods of time ranging up to two decades. We do not understand why you would 'buy' into such an obviously flawed story. But buy it you did, based on the severely biased presentation of the memory issue that Peter and Pam created to deny their own difficult reality. p14-14 Stolen Voices: An Exposure of the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony

she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn’t known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it. “This was William Morris’s garden. These were his strawberries. These were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

she came out—dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric—asking for a wood saw and spackle, he’d been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn’t look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he’d designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms.

She froze, bracing one hand against the wall. Gild stared up at her, clutching a bundle of fabric in his arms. His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and she could see lines of red welts where the gold chains had wrapped around him. There was tension in his shoulders. His expression was too careful, too wary. She wanted to rush into his arms, but they did not open to her. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she found words. “I was coming to free you.” His jaw tensed, but a second later, his gaze softened. “I was starting to make a bit of a ruckus. Moaning. Chain-rattling. Typical poltergeist stuff. They finally got tired of listening to me and brought me down around sunset.” She eased down the steps. A finger reached for one of the marks on his forearm, but he flinched away. She pulled back. “How did they do it?” “Cornered me outside the tower,” he said. “They had the chains around me before I knew what was happening. I’ve never had to worry about that before. Being…trapped like that.” “I’m so sorry, Gild. If it wasn’t for me—” “You didn’t do this to me,” he interrupted sharply. “But the gold—” “I made the gold. I designed my own prison. How’s that for torture?” He looked briefly like he wanted to smile but couldn’t quite figure out how. “But if I’d told the truth…at anytime, if I’d just told the truth, rather than asking you to spin the gold, too keep coming back, to keep helping me—” “Then you would be dead.

I don’t think I know Strawberry Thief,” Sadie said. “One moment,” Mrs. Watanabe said. Mrs. Watanabe went into her bedroom, and she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn’t known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it. “This was William Morris’s garden. These were his strawberries. These were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.” Sadie caressed the thick cotton.

Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.

A modern example of this stunning knowledge of nature that Einstein has gifted us, comes from 2016, when gravitational waves were discovered by a specially designed observatory tuned for just this purpose.† These waves, predicted by Einstein, are ripples moving at the speed of light across the fabric of space-time, and are generated by severe gravitational disturbances, such as the collision of two black holes. And that’s exactly what was observed. The gravitational waves of the first detection were generated by a collision of black holes in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away, and at a time when Earth was teeming with simple, single-celled organisms. While the ripple moved through space in all directions, Earth would, after another 800 million years, evolve complex life, including flowers and dinosaurs and flying creatures, as well as a branch of vertebrates called mammals. Among the mammals, a sub-branch would evolve frontal lobes and complex thought to accompany them. We call them primates. A single branch of these primates would develop a genetic mutation that allowed speech, and that branch—Homo sapiens—would invent agriculture and civilization and philosophy and art and science. All in the last ten thousand years. Ultimately, one of its twentieth-century scientists would invent relativity out of his head, and predict the existence of gravitational waves. A century later, technology capable of seeing these waves would finally catch up with the prediction, just days before that gravity wave, which had been traveling for 1.3 billion years, washed over Earth and was detected. Yes, Einstein was a badass.

Two glistening fish appeared on each side of the beaded rectangle, symbolic of the Gothic arched tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as they had mutually planned the design. But above that rectangle there was now a third shimmering, pointed oval, shaped the same as the fish but minus the tail. This pointed oval glimmered with delicate iridescence as the fabric moved. Visually, the shape was a subtle repetition of the Gothic arch and finished off the rectangular shape so that the impression became that of a lighted flame at the center of the design, a light reminiscent of Liberty’s torch. At a deeper, hidden level in Alice’s mind, the shape completed an allusion to Constance’s three children. This she had done for both of them, for their dead sons, regardless of whether Constance ever fathomed that aspect of Alice’s addition to the design. Every stitch in that simple shape had given Alice comfort.

As noted in About ESC Electrol Specialties Company began fabricating CIP System components as a vendor to one of the nations largest suppliers of cleaning chemicals to the Dairy industry more than 50 years ago. This vendor was a major provider of the engineering services, components and skilled personnel required to design and install CIPable automaed processes, for dairies initialy, and later food and beverage processors. This vendor was actively involved with new facility construction, but more importantly, also developed and applied the methodos of applying such new technology equally well to "recycle old dairies" via rennovation projects planned to provide the exisitng facility increased capacity, efficiency and quality capabilities, and keep it running during the rennovation process. This vendor worked on a design and install" basis and used its own wsanitary welding crews, even Internationally, through the mid 70s.

You and I are learning to see our trait as a neutral thing—useful in some situations, not in others—but our culture definitely does not see it, or any trait as neutral. The anthropologist Margaret Mead explained it well. Although a culture’s newborns will show a broad range of inherited temperaments, only a narrow band of these, a certain type, will be the ideal. The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead's words, in 'every thread of the social fabric—in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy.' Other traits are ignored, discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed. What is the ideal in our culture? Movies, advertisements, the design of public spaces, all tell us we should be as tough as the Terminator, as stoic as Clint Eastwood, as outgoing as Goldie Hawn. We should be pleasantly stimulated by bright lights, noise, a gang of cheerful fellows hanging out in a bar. If we are feeling overwhelmed and sensitive, we can always take a painkiller.

The graceful lines of pearl on the bodice transported her to her father’s study, to the newspaper photo of the Brooklyn Bridge. Today, tonight, she was crossing a bridge into another sense of self, an unknown, unexplored woman, a woman incognito, even to herself. And holding those lines of strength was the dove, Analee’s handiwork, the strength of peace holding everything, there on the gown, there at her heart, again on her face, beneath her eyes, allowing her a new vision, though she herself would not be seen. Constance fingered the smooth finish of the silk, this fine fabric given to her by someone who believed in her, who mentored and cared for her, whoever she was as a woman, without the constraints of convention. She turned the gown and gazed at its train, centered with the Gothic arch of the bridge, now converted into a torch of liberty. Everything in this gown spoke of strength and transformation, nothing left behind. There were her children, the girls as shimmering fish swimming freely, even her dead son transformed into light, the light of the bridge into the unknown.

A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a pice of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn't simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again." "I don't think I know Strawberry Thief," Sadie said. "One moment," Mrs. Watanabe said. Mrs. Watanabe went into her bedroom, and she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn't known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it. "This was William Morris's garden. These were his strawberries. Those were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It's the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a piece of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn’t simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again.” “I don’t think I know Strawberry Thief,” Sadie said. “One moment,” Mrs. Watanabe said. Mrs. Watanabe went into her bedroom, and she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn’t known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it. “This was William Morris’s garden. These were his strawberries. These were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It’s the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer11 (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous—a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.13

It was when Maya showed me the benches at Gallaudet University that I started to glimpse sound—the physical structure of it, the elastic bounce of its travel. My friends who are deaf have always told me that sound also belongs to them—that hearing people are forever getting it wrong to imagine deafness as a “silent world”—but the benches were the thing that made this idea vividly real. They were a feature in the design at the scale of rooms at Gallaudet, alongside a dozen other architectural choices that a hearing person could easily miss. Maya had paused for a moment in our campus tour to point them out, standing in the middle of a big, airy common space lined with windows on three sides, the lobby of a dorm where many students study and socialize, alone or in groups. The benches serve as seating for nearby wood tables, sets that are interspersed with soft fabric chairs arranged 360 degrees around for discussion. “Wood is the best material for this kind of group seating,” she told me, and mimed lightly slapping the wood with her palm. The resonance of wood makes it reverberate when struck. Students sometimes tap or slap nearby surfaces to get one another’s attention or to call a group to order, she said, and materials like concrete or thick plastics tend to absorb the sound rather than scatter it productively.

Perhaps I’m off the mark,” Westcliff said, “but I suspect it may have something to do with Miss Hathaway.” Cam sent him a damning glare. St. Vincent looked alertly from Cam’s stony face to Westcliff’s. “You didn’t tell me there was a woman.” Cam stood so quickly the chair nearly toppled backward. “She has nothing to do with it.” “Who is she?” St. Vincent always hated being left out of gossip. “One of Lord Ramsay’s sisters,” came Westcliff’s reply. “They reside at the estate next door.” “Well, well,” St. Vincent said. “She must be quite something to provoke such a reaction in you, Rohan. Tell me about her. Is she fair? Dark? Well formed?” To remain silent, or to deny the attraction, would have been to admit the full extent of his weakness. Cam lowered back into his chair and strove for an offhand tone. “Dark-haired. Pretty. And she has … quirks.” “Quirks.” St. Vincent’s eyes glinted with enjoyment. “How charming. Go on.” “She’s read obscure medieval philosophy. She’s afraid of bees. Her foot taps when she’s nervous.” And other, more personal things he couldn’t reveal … like the beautiful paleness of her throat and chest, the weight of her hair in his hands, the way strength and vulnerability were pleated inside her like two pieces of fabric folded together. Not to mention a body that had been designed for mortal sin.

Frankie turned back and forth in front of the three-way mirror. "I have absolutely no ass whatsoever." A few feet away,a woman whose designer velour fit her like a sausage casing, gave an amused snort. "Honey," she said over a display of two-hundred-dollar T-shirts. "I have been waiting forty years to say those words." Frankie padded toward her in his socks and Alexander McQuenn pants.He thrust his hands into the pockets, pulling the fabric tighter, and presented her with his outthrust bottom. "Honestly. This is what you want?" She lasted about five seconds before grinning-and sighing at the same time. "No,I guess not." He turned around, leaned in, and informed her conspiratorially, "There is not a T-shirt on earth worth that much." She looked down at the plain blue cotton in her hands. "You are so right." She put it back. "And with that face, sweetie, you could have the ass of a rhino and no one would notice.I'm just saying." "What does she know?" he muttered when she'd gone. "What good has this face done me?" Apparently, Connor hadn't been quite as available as he'd let on. Apparently, along with dancing, juggling was one of his talents. "You couldn't have known," Sadie said gently. "Oh,yes,I could.I mean, he's a guy,isn't he?" There's not much you can say to a boy when he makes a statement like that. So we just scooted in until we were up against Frankie's thin shoulders, bookending him.

Yes. Exactly. Everyone thinks that it’s simple. New, invasive species comes in and it has an advantage and it outcompetes, right? That’s the story, but there’s another part to that. Always, always, the local environment resists. Yes, yes, maybe badly. Maybe without a clear idea of coping with novelty. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I am saying it’s there. Even when an invasive species takes over, even when it wins, there is a counterbalancing process it has to overcome to do that. And—” The tall man was scowling, and his discomfort made Prax want to speak faster. To say everything he had in his heart before the hammer fell. “And that counterprocess is so deep in the fabric of living systems, it can never be absent. However well the new species is designed, however overwhelming its advantages seem to be, the pushback will always be there. If one native impulse is overcome, there will be another. You understand? Conspecifics are outcompeted? Fine, the bacterial and viral microecologies will push back. Adapt to those, and it’ll be micronutrient levels and salinity and light. And the thing is, the thing is, even when the novel species does win? Even when it takes over every niche there is, that struggle alone changes what it is. Even when you wipe out or co-opt the local environment completely, you’re changed by the pushback. Even when the previous organisms are driven to extinction, they leave markers behind. What they are can never, never be completely erased.

I say that there are pseudo-problems, and that they are the agonizing problems of metaphysics. I reduce them to two. One gave rise to theories of being, the other to theories of knowledge. The first false problem consists in asking oneself why there is being, why something or someone exists. The nature of what is is of little importance; say that it is matter, or mind, or both, or that matter and mind are not self-sufficient and manifest a transcendant Cause: in any case, when existences and causes are brought into consideration and the causes of these causes, one feels as if pressed into a race—if one calls a halt, it is to avoid dizziness. But just the same one sees, or thinks one sees, that the difficulty still exists, that the problem is still there and will never be solved. It will never, in fact, be solved, but it should never have been raised. It arises only if one posits a nothingness which supposedly precedes being. One says: “There could be nothing,” and then is astonished that there should be something—or someone. But analyze that sentence: “There could be nothing.” You will see you are dealing with words, not at all with ideas, and that “nothing” here has no meaning. “Nothing” is a term in ordinary language which can only have meaning in the sphere, proper to man, of action and fabrication. “Nothing” designates the absence of what we are seeking, we desire, expect. Let us suppose that absolute emptiness was known to our experience: it would be limited, have contours, and would therefore be something. But in reality there is no vacuum.

The next room was a great round ballroom. Its walls were arrayed in gold-painted moldings; its floor was a swirling mosaic of blue and gold; its dome was painted with the loves of all the gods, a vast tangle of plump limbs and writhing fabric. The air was cool, still, and hugely silent. My footsteps were only a soft tap-tap-tap, but they echoed through the room. After that came what seemed like a hundred more rooms and hallways. In every one, the air was different: hot or cold, fresh or stuffy, smelling of rosemary, incense, pomegranates, old paper, pickled fish, cedarwood. None of the rooms frightened me like the first hallway. But sometimes--especially when sunlight glowed through a window--I thought I heard the faint laughter. Finally, at the end of a long hallway with a cherrywood wainscot and lace-hung windows between the doors, we came to my room. I could see why the Gentle Lord called it the "bridal suite": the walls were papered with a silver pattern of hearts and doves, and most of the room was taken up by a huge canopied bed, more than big enough for two. The four posts were shaped like four maidens, coiffed and dressed in gauzy robes that clung to their bodies, their faces serene. They were exactly like the caryatids holding up the porch of a temple. The bed curtains were great falls of white lace, woven through with crimson ribbons. A vase of roses sat on the bedside table. Their red petals had blossomed wide to expose their gold centers, and their musk wove through the air. It was a bed that had been built for pleasure, just like my dress, and as I stared at it I felt hot and cold at once.

Helen wriggled in protest as his hand stole to the back of her skirts. She was wearing a ready-made traveling dress, which fit nicely after a few minor alterations made by one of Mrs. Allenby’s assistants. It was a simple design of light blue silk and cashmere, with a smart little waist-jacket. There was no bustle, and the skirts had been drawn back snugly to reveal the shape of her body. The skirts descended in a pretty fall of folds and pleats, with a large decorative bow placed high on her posterior. To her vexation, Rhys wouldn’t leave the bow alone. He was positively mesmerized by it. Every time she turned her back to him, she could feel him playing with it. “Rhys, don’t!” “I can’t help it. It calls to me.” “You’ve seen bows on dresses before.” “But not there. And not on you.” Reluctantly Rhys let go of her and pulled out his pocket watch. “The train should have departed by now. We’re five minutes late.” “What are you in a rush for?” she asked. “Bed,” came his succinct reply. Helen smiled. She stood on her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “We have a lifetime of nights together.” “Aye, and we’ve already missed too many of them.” Helen turned and bent to pick up her small valise, which had been set on the floor. At the same time, she heard the sound of fabric ripping. Before Helen had straightened and twisted to look at the back of her skirts, she already knew what had happened. The bow hung limply, at least half of its stitches torn. Meeting her indignant glance, Rhys looked as sheepish as a schoolboy caught with a stolen apple. “I didn’t know you were going to bend over.” “What am I going to say to the lady’s maid when she sees this?” He considered that for a moment. “Alas?” he suggested. Helen’s lips quivered with unwilling amusement.

The pink?" she suggested, holding the shimmering rose-colored satin in front of Sara's half-clad figure. Sara held her breath in awe. She had never worn such a sumptuous creation. Silk roses adorned the sleeves and hem of the gown. The short-waisted bodice was finished with a stomacher of silver filigree and a row of satin bows. Lily shook her head thoughtfully. "Charming, but too innocent." Sara suppressed a disappointed sigh. She couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than the pink satin. Busily Monique discarded the gown and sorted through the others. "The peach. No man will be able to keep his eyes from her in that. Here, let us try it, chérie." Raising her arms, Sara let the dressmaker and her assistant Cora pull the gauzy peach-hued gown over her head. "I think it will have to be altered a great deal," Sara commented, her voice muffled beneath the delicate layers of fabric. The gowns had been fitted for Lily's lithe, compact lines. Sara was more amply endowed, with a generous bosom and curving hips, and a tiny, scoped-in waist... a figure style that had been fashionable thirty years ago. The current high-waisted Grecian mode was not particularly flattering to her. Monique settled the gown around Sara's feet and then began to yank the back of it together. "Oui, Lady Raiford has the form that fashion loves." Energetically, she hooked the tight bodice together. "But you, chérie, have the kind that men love. Draw in your breath, s'il vous plaît." Sara winced as her breasts were pushed upward until they nearly overflowed from the low-cut bodice. The hem of the unusually full skirt was bordered with three rows of graduated tulip-leaves. Sara could hardly believe the woman in the mirror was herself. The peach gown, with its transparent layers of silk and shockingly low neckline, had been designed to attract a man's attention. It was too loose at the waist, but her breasts rose from the shallow bodice in creamy splendor pushed together to form an enticing cleavage.

THE IRIS OF THE EYE WAS TOO BIG TO HAVE BEEN FABRICATED AS A single rigid object. It had been built, beginning about nine hundred years ago, out of links that had been joined together into a chain; the two ends of the chain then connected to form a loop. The method would have seemed familiar to Rhys Aitken, who had used something like it to construct Izzy’s T3 torus. For him, or anyone else versed in the technological history of Old Earth, an equally useful metaphor would have been that it was a train, 157 kilometers long, made of 720 giant cars, with the nose of the locomotive joined to the tail of the caboose so that it formed a circular construct 50 kilometers in diameter. An even better analogy would have been to a roller coaster, since its purpose was to run loop-the-loops forever. The “track” on which the “train” ran was a circular groove in the iron frame of the Eye, lined with the sensors and magnets needed to supply electrodynamic suspension, so that the whole thing could spin without actually touching the Eye’s stationary frame. This was an essential design requirement given that the Great Chain had to move with a velocity of about five hundred meters per second in order to supply Earth-normal gravity to its inhabitants. Each of the links had approximately the footprint of a Manhattan city block on Old Earth. And their total number of 720 was loosely comparable to the number of such blocks that had once existed in the gridded part of Manhattan, depending on where you drew the boundaries—it was bigger than Midtown but smaller than Manhattan as a whole. Residents of the Great Chain were acutely aware of the comparison, to the point where they were mocked for having a “Manhattan complex” by residents of other habitats. They were forever freeze-framing Old Earth movies or zooming around in virtual-reality simulations of pre-Zero New York for clues as to how street and apartment living had worked in those days. They had taken as their patron saint Luisa, the eighth survivor on Cleft, a Manhattanite who had been too old to found her own race. Implicit in that was that the Great Chain—the GC, Chaintown, Chainhattan—was a place that people might move to when they wanted to separate themselves from the social environments of their home habitats, or indeed of their own races. Mixed-race people were more common there than anywhere else.

Between concentric pavement ripples glide errant echoes originating from beyond the Puddled Metropolis. Windowless blocks and pickle-shaped monuments demarcate the boundaries of patternistic cycles from those wilds kissed neither by starlight nor moonlight. Lethal underbrush of razor-like excrescence pierces at the skins of night, crawls with hyperactive sprouts and verminous vines that howl with contempt for the wicked fortunes of Marshland Organizers armed with scythes and hoes and flaming torches who have only succeeded in crafting their own folly where once stood something of glorious and generous integrity. There are familiar whispers under leaves perched upon by flapping moths. They implore the spirit again to heed the warnings of the vines and to not be swayed by the hubris of these organizing opportunists. One is to stop moving at frantic zigzags through gridlocked streets, stop climbing ladders altogether, stop relying on drainage pipes where floods should prevail, stop tapping one’s feet in waiting rooms expecting to be seen and examined and acknowledged. Rather, one is to eschew unseemly fabrications and conceal oneself beneath the surface of leaves—perhaps even inside the droplets of dew—one is, after all, to feel shameful of the form, of all forms, and seek instead to merge with whispers which do not shun or excoriate, for they are otherwise occupied in the act of designating meaning. Yet, what meaning stands beyond the rectitude of angles and symmetry, but rather in wilds among agitated insects and resplendent bogs and malicious spiders and rippling mosses pronouncing doom upon their surroundings? One is said to find only the same degree of opportunism, and nothing greatly edifying that could serve to extend beyond the banalities of self-preservation. But no, surely there is something more than this—there absolutely must be something more, and it is to be found! Forget what is said about ‘opportunism’—this is just a word and, thusly, a distraction. The key issue is that there are many such campaigns of contrivance mounted by the taxonomic self-interest of categories and frameworks ‘who’ only seek primacy and authority over their consumers. The ascription of ‘this’ may thusly be ascribed also with that of ‘this other’ and so it cannot be ‘that precisely’ because ‘this’ contradicts another ‘that other’ with which ‘this other’ surely claims affiliation. Certainly, in view of such limiting factors, there is a frustration that one is bound to feel that the answers available are constrained and formulaic and insufficient and that one is simply to accept the way of things as though they are defined by the highest of mathematics and do not beget anything higher. One is, thusly, to cease in one’s quest for unexplored possibility. The lines have been drawn, the contradictions defined and so one cannot expect to go very far with these mathematical rules and boundaries in place. There are ways out: one might assume the value of an imaginary unit and bounce out of any restrictive quadrant as with the errant echoes against the rippling pavement of this Puddled Metropolis. One will then experience something akin to a bounding and rebounding leap—iterative, but with all subleaps constituting a more sweeping trajectory—outward to other landscapes and null landscapes, inward through corridors and toward the centroid of circumcentric chamber clusters, into crevices and trenches between paradigms and over those mountain peaks of abstruse calculation.

My little undomesticated pornstar pushed me so hard between her legs, my oxygen levels plummeted. She clenched around my fingers through her panties as an orgasm rolled through her in waves. The gush of warmth soaked the cotton. I kissed her through the fabric, again and again, knowing tomorrow everything would return to its proper position—my boundaries, my limits, my hang-ups, my demons. “Can I return the favor?” Dallas sat half up. “But not through your briefs. Men’s briefs always smell like old cheese that’s been sitting in a crockpot for days. I know because whenever my housekeeper went on vacation, we all took turns doing the laundry. And, well, I really shouldn’t say, but Dadd—” Not wanting the moment to be ruined with a conversation about her father’s underwear, I pulled forward, shutting her smart mouth with a kiss that tasted like her sweet pussy. At first, she pinched her lips and made a face, unsure what she thought about her own taste. But when I dragged the tip of my hard cock along her slit through our clothes, she went wild and kissed me back, shoving her tongue so deep down my throat I thought she would fish out my dinner. “Yes.” She wiggled against me. “Please, sir, may I have some more?” She’d quoted Oliver Twist while getting fucked. Truly, the woman was one of a kind. Knowing it was idiotic, and dangerous, and deranged, I pushed my tip through her slit. She was tight—tighter, still, through the tattered, stretched cotton of her ruined panties—but wet and sleek, ready for what was coming. The sensation, how warm and taut she felt, completely undid me. I thrust harder and deeper, entering her through our underwear, fucking her slowly with only flimsy fabric between us. I tore my mouth from hers, eyes glued to my cock each time it sank into her. I could barely fit inside, she was so tight. This was, by far, the best fuck I’d ever had. She panted. “Is this what people call dry-humping?” No. Nothing about this was dry. I was basically fucking her through our underwear. Only, explaining to her that this was full-blown sex with a side order of my issues was not in my plans for tonight. Or ever. “Sure.” Each push brought me closer to a climax. From slow, controlled, teasing thrusts designed to drive her mad with desire, I quickly derailed to jerky, manic, need-to-be-inside-this-woman plunges. Of a man so hungry for human connection, for affection, for carnal needs to be met and satisfied. My head grew dizzy. I’d taken into consideration the possibility that Dallas couldn’t come through penetration. It merely placed her in the same majority as most females on Planet Earth. But she shook, clawed, and reached for me, looking ready to climax. Her tits bounced and jiggled each time I slammed into her. Her mouth opened in awe, probably because this orgasm felt different from the first two. Deeper and more violent. She clutched the lapels of my shirt, shoving her face in mine. “Lose the underwear.” She met my thrust, groaning when my crown peeked past the slot in my boxer briefs. “I want you to come inside me. I want to feel you.” I was about two seconds from fulfilling her demand. Luckily, my logic grabbed the steering wheel, which my cock had seized sometime this evening, and derailed the situation from full-blown calamity. I managed to wait until she came, just barely, before pulling out, flipping her onto her stomach, and jerking off. I aimed for her bare ass but somehow came on her hair. No matter. She had plenty of time to wash it. Her agenda wasn’t exactly full. Dallas fell back onto the pillows, a lopsided grin on her face. (Chapter 31)

Our creating is a part of the unfolding, generative process of God’s goodness filling the earth. Our desire to create is an imprint of the divine, designed into the fabric of our existence. Artists and creatives feel this acutely.

But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous—a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.13

The illusions are fabrications of fragmented data, designed to appease the soul and entice the flesh, even in the real world we are always surrounded by illusions. Mindplant is not that different when you actually think about it. People's misrepresentations, false advertising and false media projections, Visual just created a fake world that's not so different from our own." Spiral explained.

There has to be some reason you want to leave,” St. Vincent persisted. “Perhaps I’m off the mark,” Westcliff said, “but I suspect it may have something to do with Miss Hathaway.” Cam sent him a damning glare. St. Vincent looked alertly from Cam’s stony face to Westcliff’s. “You didn’t tell me there was a woman.” Cam stood so quickly the chair nearly toppled backward. “She has nothing to do with it.” “Who is she?” St. Vincent always hated being left out of gossip. “One of Lord Ramsay’s sisters,” came Westcliff’s reply. “They reside at the estate next door.” “Well, well,” St. Vincent said. “She must be quite something to provoke such a reaction in you, Rohan. Tell me about her. Is she fair? Dark? Well formed?” To remain silent, or to deny the attraction, would have been to admit the full extent of his weakness. Cam lowered back into his chair and strove for an offhand tone. “Dark-haired. Pretty. And she has … quirks.” “Quirks.” St. Vincent’s eyes glinted with enjoyment. “How charming. Go on.” “She’s read obscure medieval philosophy. She’s afraid of bees. Her foot taps when she’s nervous.” And other, more personal things he couldn’t reveal … like the beautiful paleness of her throat and chest, the weight of her hair in his hands, the way strength and vulnerability were pleated inside her like two pieces of fabric folded together. Not to mention a body that had been designed for mortal sin.

Inside Hod Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab at Cornell University, fantastically shaped robots are learning to crawl and fly, probably even as you read this. One looks like a slithering tower of rubber bricks, another like a helicopter with dragonfly wings, yet another like a shape-shifting Tinkertoy. These robots were not designed by any human engineer but created by evolution, the same process that gave rise to the diversity of life on Earth. Although the robots initially evolve inside a computer simulation, once they look proficient enough to make it in the real world, solid versions are automatically fabricated by 3-D printing. These are not yet ready to take over the world, but they’ve come a long way from the primordial soup of simulated parts they started with. The algorithm that evolved these robots was invented by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. He didn’t think of it as an algorithm at the time, partly because a key subroutine was still missing. Once James Watson and Francis Crick provided it in 1953, the stage was set for the second coming of evolution: in silico instead of in vivo, and a billion times faster. Its prophet was a ruddy-faced, perpetually grinning midwesterner by the name of John Holland.

To do so, we first have to learn to see it for what it is—by cutting through all of the buzzwords, the marketing hype, the pseudoscientific shibboleths and mumbo-jumbo. Then we have to learn to evaluate it: if it is efficient, then by what measure, and who stands to benefit from its efficiency? Efficiency as a euphemism for corporate profitability shouldn’t fool us. Efficiency is a measure that relates productivity (output) to labor and resource inputs; it is meaningless unless we understand all the implications of these inputs and outputs. For a solar panel, does it simply input solar radiation and output electric current? No, its input is all the energy—mainly from fossil fuels—that went into mining, refining, fabricating, finance, design, research, sales, shipping, installation, tech support, maintenance and disposal. Its output is, yes, a modest amount of electricity. It could well turn out that your solar panel is a way to convert a lot of fossil fuel energy into a bit of electricity with the help of sunlight. How efficient is that? Perhaps it would be more efficient to use less electricity—or to not use electricity at all.

Modern culture has disenchanted the world by disenchanting numbers. For us, numbers are about quantity and control, not quality and contemplation. After Bacon, knowledge of numbers is a key to manipulation, not meditation. Numbers are only meaningful (like all raw materials that comprise the natural world) when we can do something with them. When we read of twelve tribes and twelve apostles and twelve gates and twelve angels, we typically perceive something spreadsheet-able. By contrast, in one of Caldecott’s most radical claims, he insists, “It is not simply that numbers can be used as symbols. Numbers have meaning—they are symbols. The symbolism is not always merely projected onto them by us; much of it is inherent in their nature” (p. 75). Numbers convey to well-ordered imaginations something of (in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s metaphor) the inner design of the fabric of creation. The fact that the words “God said” appear ten times in the account of creation and that there are ten “words” in the Decalogue is not a random coincidence. The beautiful meaningfulness of a numberly world is most evident in the perception of harmony, whether in music, architecture, or physics. Called into being by a three-personed God, creation’s essential relationality is often evident in complex patterns that can be described mathematically. Sadly, as Caldecott laments, “our present education tends to eliminate the contemplative or qualitative dimension of mathematics altogether” (p. 55). The sense of transcendence that many (including mathematicians and musicians) experience when encountering beauty is often explained away by materialists as an illusion. Caldecott offers an explanation rooted in Christology. Since the Logos is love, and since all things are created through him and for him and are held together in him, we should expect the logic, the rationality, the intelligibility of the world to usher in the delight that beauty bestows. One

am not suggesting that successes in academics, athletics, or vocation somehow stand outside God’s good plan. Learning and play are joys that God himself wove into the very fabric of creation. Although cursed in the fall, work was also part of God’s good design before the fall (Gen. 2:15; 3:17–23). And yet, whenever any activity, however good it may be, becomes amplified to the point that no time remains for family members to disciple one another, a divinely designed joy has been distorted into a hell-spawned idol. God

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