False Alarm Quotes

Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me. No hope, no harm; just another false alarm

Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions, you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help.

My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

I am sick of the girl who cries 'wolf' all the time. Even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm

If people in power are artfully pulling a red herring to cover up the cataclysm of their commitments, keeping people on a short leash and driving them playfully into an alley of false promises, we would do well to rely on attentive and considerate observers who send out alarm signals in time to prevent social corrosion. (" High noon. ")

Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming.

I am so tired of the girl in the infirmary, I am so sick of the girl who cries wolf all the time - even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm. Not one of my pleas was ever less than truly urgent because when it's all in your mind, there always IS a wolf.

Last night I dreamt, That somebody loved me, No hope no harm, just another false alarm.

The common and continual mischief's [sic] of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.

She thinks she's a siren, but she looks more like a false alarm.

My thoughts are punctured by the feel of Anna's hand on me. Down there. Jackpot. I look down, and she's pulling my mobile from my pocket, holding it out to me. Damn. Major false alarm. "That was brave," I tell her.

The common denominator of all jokes is a path of expectation that is diverted by an unexpected twist necessitating a complete reinterpretation of all the previous facts — the punch-line…Reinterpretation alone is insufficient. The new model must be inconsequential. For example, a portly gentleman walking toward his car slips on a banana peel and falls. If he breaks his head and blood spills out, obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call an ambulance. But if he simply wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him, and then gets up, you start laughing. The reason is, I suggest, because now you know it’s inconsequential, no real harm has been done. I would argue that laughter is nature’s way of signaling that "it’s a false alarm." Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? I suggest that the rhythmic staccato sound of laughter evolved to inform our kin who share our genes; don’t waste your precious resources on this situation; it’s a false alarm. Laughter is nature’s OK signal.

—and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

How long your closet held a whiff of you, Long after hangers hung austere and bare. I would walk in and suddenly the true Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air And life was in that small still living breath. Where are you? since so much of you is here, Your unique odour quite ignoring death. My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dear And vital in my longing empty arms. But other clothes fill up the space, your space, And scent on scent send out strange false alarms. Not of your odour there is not a trace. But something unexpected still breaks through The goneness to the presentness of you.

The false alarm was the result of the explosive amplifying effects of a hyper-information society when fed sensitive news.

They got so accustomed to the false alarms that when she did eventually die, they did not realize it, and she lay there twenty minutes, serene in my embrace, smiling blankly at me.

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

But the address, if it ever existed, never was sent, which made me sad, there was so much I wanted to write her: that I'd sold two stories, had read where the Trawlers were countersuing for divorce, was moving out of the brownstone because it was haunted. But mostly, I wanted to tell about her cat. I had kept my promise; I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets, and there were many false alarms--flashes of tiger-striped fur that, upon inspection, were not him. But one day, one cold sunshiny Sunday winter afternoon, it was. Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.

Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in king Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his backpocket. Just you try it on.

When news of the false alarm leaked to the press, the Air Force denied that the missile warning had ever been taken seriously. Percy, who later became a Republican senator from Illinois, disputed that account. He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD. A subsequent investigation found the cause of the computer glitch. The BMEWS site at Thule had mistakenly identified the moon, slowly rising over Norway, as dozens of long-range missiles launched from Siberia.

A false alarm is sounded that government budget deficits will increase consumer prices — with no discussion of how private-sector credit deflates economies. The problem is that credit is debt — and paying debt service to bankers and bondholders (and various grades of loan sharks) leaves less income available to spend on goods and services. So debt deflation is today’s major problem, not inflation.

Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it anymore. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and i was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming.

Of course there had been clues. A bite of the lip. An indrawn breath. Wrinkled brows and shrugged shoulders. A few false starts at conversations about work and balance, but the real alarms should have gone off when all of that faded. Silence chilled like nothing else.

For where Love reigns, disturbing Jealousy Doth call himself Affection's sentinel; Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, And in a peaceful hour doth cry 'Kill, kill!

We entered an era of false alarms.

His bike was lying against the curb, and he righted it, holding the handlebars. “What I do, I do out of hate, not humanity. Because punishing assholes gets me off—not saving victims. And actually all this . . .” He cast his gaze around us. “This isn’t doing a fucking thing for me. So if you’re not going to jump, I’d just as soon be home in bed.” Home. Well, there was one question answered. Face burning, I shook my head. “No, I’m not jumping.” “Great.” He slung a leg over his crossbar. Face utterly unchanged, the Badger drew his infamous Glock from inside his hoodie, took aim, and shot me in the thigh from five feet. “Ow, Jesus!” White paint exploded across my favorite jeans, and a bolt of exquisite pain promised a welt. “That’s for wasting my time,” he said, replacing the pistol. “I’m too fucking tired for false alarms, so next time have the decency to jump.” My slack mouth produced no words. I watched him glide away, silent and passive once more. As ever. I glanced at my palm, streaked with white from where I’d grabbed my leg. Looked and felt just like when a bird shits on your hair. You pray it’s a raindrop, but it never is. Fuck you too, Badger.

I had kept my promise; I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets, and there were many false alarms—flashes of tiger-striped fur that, upon inspection, were not him. But one day, one cold sunshiny Sunday winter afternoon, it was. Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he’d arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” In

A few weeks later alarms went off in an air defense bunker south of Moscow. A Soviet early-warning satellite had detected five Minuteman missiles approaching from the United States. The commanding officer on duty, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, tried to make sense of the warning. An American first strike would surely involve more than five missiles—but perhaps this was merely the first wave. The Soviet general staff was alerted, and it was Petrov’s job to advise them whether the missile attack was real. Any retaliation would have to be ordered soon. Petrov decided it was a false alarm. An investigation later found that the missile launches spotted by the Soviet satellite were actually rays of sunlight reflected off clouds.

The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll’s frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy!

Take these torture devices off me! I beg of you!” he cries. And like the good guy I am, I grab his shirt and pull it up, exposing his toned stomach. “Not my shirt!” “Oh! I thought you meant your clothes,” I say. “Sorry, ladies, false alarm.

08/14/1025h. Dessert Competitions. 08/14/1315h. Illinois State Fair Infirmary; then motel; then Springfield Memorial Medical Center Emergency Room for distention and possible rupture of transverse colon (false alarm); then motel; incapacitated till well after sunset; whole day a washout; incredibly embarrassing, unprofessional; indescribable. Delete entire day.

Once the process of falsification is set in motion, it won't stop. We're in a country where everything that can be falsified has been falsified: paintings in museums, gold ingots, bus tickets. The counterrevolution and the revolution fight with salvos of falsification: the result is that nobody can be sure what is true and what is false, the political police simulate revolutionary actions and the revolutionaries disguise themselves as policemen." And who gains by it, in the end?" It's too soon to say. We have to see who can best exploit the falsifications, their own and those of the others: whether it's the police or our organization." The taxi driver is pricking up his ears. You motion Corinna to restrain herself from making unwise remarks. But she says, "Don't be afraid. This is a fake taxi. What really alarms me, though, is that there is another taxi following us." Fake or real?" Fake, certainly, but I don't know whether it belongs to the police or to us.

Heredity and environment are funny things. You can’t rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; antisocial. The girl? She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious, I’m sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it.

It was an alarming thought that these false selves should still have me in their power, and in my bewilderment I began wondering whether any such thing as my real self could be said to exist at all. Like a sudden revelation, then, it became clear to me that the self was always changing, always developing, only capable of evolving fully through the integration of all past semblances. I wouldn’t be my true self till I accepted and learned to know all those selves I’d disowned and deserted...As if this were something I could do consciously, there and then, the last of my inertia vanished, consumed by an ardent desire for identification with the essential ‘I’ – until this had been achieved I’d always be as I was now, wandering like a stranger, lost, frightened and confused, among the changes and contradictions of my own personality.

And my point is, there's always something I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. You want to believe that were uniquely important, that were living at the end of history, that now, after all these Millennia of false alarms, now it's finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally, we have reached the end of the world" "But all of this raises an interesting question, " Olive said. "What if it always is the end of the world? She paused for effect before her the holographic audience was almost perfectly still. "Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world," Olive said "as a continuous and never-ending process

What do we learn from all of this? COVID-19 is a disease that makes some people sick, proves fatal to a few, and does nothing to the rest. Like any annual flu.

False alarms are not uncommon in the workplace.

the Thing has stirred in its moorings. The Thing that my Grandfather Harry and his generation of Harrys had thought was nothing but a false alarm.

They’re basically trick contractions. They make you think you’re going to finally exorcise the demon from your belly, but they’re just a constant false alarm.

But they are all false alarms. Whatever Nick is

Rape culture manifests in a myriad ways…but its most devilish trick is to make the average, noncriminal person identify with the person accused, instead of the person reporting the crime. Rape culture encourages us to scrutinize victims’ stories for any evidence that they brought the violence onto themselves – and always to imagine ourselves in the terrifying role of Good Man, Falsely Accused, before we ‘rush to judgment’. We're not meant to picture ourselves in the role of drunk teenager at her first college party, thinking 'Wow, he seems to think I'm pretty!' Or the woman who accepts a ride with a 'nice guy,' who's generously offered to see her safely home from the bar. Or the girl who's passed out in a room upstairs, while the party rages on below, so chaotic that her friends don't even notice she's gone. When it comes to rape, if we're expected to put ourselves in anyone else's shoes at all, it's the accused rapist's. The questions that inevitably come along with 'What was she wearing?' and 'How much did she have to drink?' are, 'What if there was no rape at all? What if she's lying? What happens to this poor slob she's accusing? What if he goes to prison for a crime he didn't commit?

We startled awake, alarmed by her shouting, jumping to our feet, drawing swords, looking for imminent danger. Jeb was saying it was a false alarm, that there was nothing wrong, but Lia had somehow gotten to her feet on her own, her eyes wild, telling us we had to leave. A relieved breath hissed between my teeth and I lowered my sword. She’d only had a nightmare. I stepped toward her. “Lia, it was just a bad dream. Let me help you lie back down.” She hobbled backward, determined, sweat glistening on her face, and her arm stretched out to keep me at a distance. “No! Get ready. We leave this morning.” “Look at you,” I said. "You’re tottering like a drunk. You can’t ride.” “I can and I will." “What’s your hurry, Your Highness?” Sven asked. She looked from me to my men. Their feet were firmly planted. They weren’t going anywhere based on her wild-eyed demands. Had she spiked another fever? Her expression sobered. “Please, Rafe, you have to trust me on this.” “What did you see?” I asked. “It’s not what I saw but what I heard— Aster’s voice telling me not to tarry.” “Didn’t she say that to you a dozen times?” “At least,” she answered, but her stance remained determined. All this rush over don’t tarry? Ever since I had gathered her into my arms on that riverbank, I had been looking over my shoulder for danger. I knew it was there. But I had to weigh that uncertainty against the benefits of healing too. I looked away, trying to think. I wasn’t sure if I was making the right decision or not, but I turned back to my men. “Pack up.

there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

Most people reflect on their own thoughts: Is this true? Am I overreacting? I should check this out. But people with PDs don’t seem to have the ability to reflect on their own thoughts or behavior. Like someone who is drunk, their thinking is continually “under the influence” of their cognitive distortions. They can send, but not receive, new information. Because they are unaware of their cognitive distortions, these distortions can underlie serious misbehavior, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, and even legal abuse (using the legal system to attack a target and to promote false or unnecessary litigation). Information that does not fit the distortion is rigidly unconsciously blocked as too threatening and confusing. Instead, people with PDs defend their distortions in an effort to protect themselves. Blamers repeatedly react to “false alarms” caused by all-or-nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, and so forth. They truly believe that they are in danger, and they feel powerless and out of control inside.

One of the reasons women are evolved to communicate their feelings is because the responses they get van verify whether their attraction was real or a false alarm. Invalidating those feelings vetoes her interest.

Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs—and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown.

We want to deter an enemy decision to attack us—not only a cool-headed, premeditated decision that might be taken in the normal course of the Cold War, at a time when the enemy does not consider an attack by us to be imminent, but also a nervous, hot-headed, frightened, desperate decision that might be precipitated at the peak of a crisis, that might result from a false alarm or be engineered by somebody’ s mischief—a decision taken at a moment when sudden attack by the United States is believed a live possibility.

A person who reports sexual violence to police, most likely, is not an attention monitoring mandating liars. It is safe and logical and ethical to presume that person is a victim, unless there are specific indications that this is one of the rare false reports.

True story: a friend received a preliminary diagnosis suggesting advanced breast cancer. Normally shy, she took this as license to tell or show everyone in her circle how little she liked or respected them. False alarm. It was cat-scratch fever. She moved overseas.

Perimeter greatly reduced the pressure to launch on warning at the first sign of an American attack. It gave Soviet leaders more time to investigate the possibility of a false alarm, confident that a real attack would trigger a computer-controlled, devastating response. But it rendered American plans for limited war meaningless; the Soviet computers weren’t programmed to allow pauses for negotiation. And the deterrent value of Perimeter was wasted. Like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, the system was kept secret from the United States.

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world... But all of this raises an interesting question... What if it always is the end of the world?... Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world... as a continuous and never-ending process.

The Press. -- If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place; -- what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?

Gaining victory over fear does not mean that we can only be free from fear when something we think will be bad turns out to be okay, like my supposed blue nevus. It means we can stay brave, bold, confident, courageous, and strong in our faith in God whether a situation is a false alarm or the real thing.

She only came through that gate once a day, but my heart would beat faster from at least ten false alarms every morning. Then when her time came and the hands were pointing to noon, my heart went on thumping until her shoes with their black patent-leather straps and steel buckles drew level, almost soundlessly, with my basement window.

there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been,

think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of

NIGEL. Great Scott. How is it the two of you ever came to be married? DOLLY. Jeeze, um...We met only this one time at a party, and I thought I was, you know, late. And my ma said I wasn't gonna have no fatherless baby, so she made us get married. Only a couple weeks later it turned out to be a false alarm. IGOR. One of the great love stories of our time.

as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” In

As you grow older, you start to notice that most of the alarms in our lives turn out to be false ones.

think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” In

She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on." "Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?" "Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!" It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the waist upwards, as if he had been filleted. He was just raising his fingers limply to his cap when he suddenly saw that the girl wasn't alone. A chappie in clerical costume was also among those present, and the sight of him didn't seem to do Bingo a bit of good. His face got redder and his nose bluer, and it wasn't till they had nearly passed that he managed to get hold of his cap. The girl bowed, the curate said, "Ah, Little. Rough weather," the dog barked, and then they toddled on and the entertainment was over.

My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

-and my point is, there's always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world. Pages 189

Because the amygdala can become hypersensitive, chronic stress can make you more jumpy and anxious. This is why a war veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will hit the floor and cover his head when he hears the loud blast of fireworks. Before he has a chance to think about it, the blast reminds him of an improvised explosive device (IED) exploding or a gunshot. His amygdala triggers the fight-or-flight response—a false alarm. When you experience severe trauma or excessive chronic stress, the once-cooperative partnership between your hippocampus and your amygdala becomes skewed in favor of the amygdala. This is because the hippocampus is assaulted by excess cortisol and glutamate when the amygdala is pumped up. Cortisol and glutamate act to excite the amygdala, and the more it is excited, the more easily it is triggered.

What characterizes an addiction?” asks the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the power to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.” Addiction cuts large swaths across our culture. Many of us are burdened with compulsive behaviours that harm us and others, behaviours whose toxicity we fail to acknowledge or feel powerless to stop. Many people are addicted to accumulating wealth; for others the compulsive pull is power. Men and women become addicted to consumerism, status, shopping or fetishized relationships, not to mention the obvious and widespread addictions such as gambling, sex, junk food and the cult of the “young” body image. The following report from the Guardian Weekly speaks for itself: Americans now [2006] spend an alarming $15 billion a year on cosmetic surgery in a beautification frenzy that would be frowned upon if there was anyone left in the U.S. who could actually frown with their Botox-frozen faces. The sum is double Malawi’s gross domestic product and more than twice what America has contributed to AIDS programs in the past decade. Demand has exploded to produce a new generation of obsessives, or “beauty junkies.

George Washington was unambiguous in his distrust of manipulation by political parties, writing that it: “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity…[and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus, the policy and will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

Did he live in a false world, a world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation—in the face now of Jim's silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real?

The real work in raising the bar is to stop doing the same old thing you’ve always done, to try out new strategies, to ignore false alarms, to resist the urge to quit, and to refuse to fall back into familiar terrain. The ability to tolerate discomfort—doing what might not feel good, but doing it anyway—is the only way you’ll ever complete the path to financial success. It helps to keep in mind that the discomfort is temporary, but the payoff is extraordinary

whatever an individual might secretly know or believe to be the truth is neatly illustrated by a medieval anecdote according to which a sentry, on duty to watch and warn the townspeople of the enemy’s approach, jokingly sounded a false alarm—and then was the last to rush to the walls to defend the town against his invented enemies. From this, one may conclude that the more successful a liar is, the more people he has convinced, the more likely it is that he will end by believing his own lies.

When a company (e.g. Enron) is calling for more environmental regulation, we need to look very carefully at what they might stand to gain from it… I don’t believe that there is some kind of grand conspiracy to promote scare stories about environmental crisis. I do believe that companies, the media, and politicians benefit from those stories. This confluence of interests goes a long way to explaining why the conversation surrounding climate change has become so detached from scientific reality.

Cold homes are one of the leading causes of deaths in winter… A climate policy reversing the price reduction due to fracking will drive energy prices back up. People will be less able to heat their homes, and the consequent death rate will go back up.

These two systems still risk doomsday: both are still on hair-trigger alert that makes their joint existence unstable. They are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch, or a desperate decision to escalate. They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth. This is true even though the Cold War that rationalized their existence and hair-trigger status—and their supposed necessity to national security—ended thirty years ago. Does the United States still need a Doomsday Machine? Does Russia? Did they ever? Does the existence of such a capability serve any national or international interest whatsoever to a degree that would justify its obvious danger to human life? I ask the questions not merely rhetorically. They deserve sober, reflective consideration. The answers do seem obvious, but so far as I know they have never been addressed. There follows another question: Does any nation on earth have a right to possess such a capability?

Washington’s Farewell Address consists of a series of warnings about the danger of disunion. The North and the South, the East and the West, ought not to consider their interests separate or competing, Washington urged: “your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty.” Parties, he warned, were the “worst enemy” of every government, agitating “the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,” kindling “the animosity of one part against another,” and even fomenting “riot and insurrection.

Throughout the Cold War such priorities reflected a command environment in which —it was regarded as overwhelmingly more important to assure a Go response when required than to prevent a false alarm or an unauthorized action; and —there was tremendous emphasis on a fast, immediate response to warnings of a nuclear attack and to a high-level Go command, for two reasons: to destroy enemy weapons before they were launched; and to get American weapons launched before they, or command posts and communications, were destroyed.

Washington's Farewell Address consists of a series of warnings about the danger of disunion. The North and the South, the East and the West, ought not to consider their interests separate or competing, Washington urged, "your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty." Parties, he warned, were the "worst enemy" of every government, agitating "the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms," kindling "the animosity of one part against another," and even fomenting "riot and insurrection". As to the size of the Republic, "Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it." The American experiment must go on. But it could only thrive if the citizens were supported by religion and morality, and if they were well educated. "Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," he urged. "In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that the public opinion should be enlightened.

But in the highest alarm—a life-and-death situation—the fight/flight/freeze system shuts down your rational mind. This prevents you from thinking too much. Why? Because thinking would delay quick action to get you out of harm’s way. The problem with post-traumatic stress is that it doesn’t take much to kick your fight/flight/freeze system into alarm mode. And false alarms are common. The higher the level of false alarm, the less your rational mind is able to do its job. This makes it difficult to function well in your life after trauma. For

What matters most is that we make sure that the most vulnerable, worst-off people living in shantytowns are lifted out of poverty. It is growth, not carbon dioxide reductions, that will prevent the harrowing losses that the world’s poorest endure as a result of hurricanes.

IN AN OLD YUGOSLAV JOKE mocking police corruption, a policeman returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife naked in their marital bed, obviously hot and excited. Suspecting that he surprised her with a lover, he starts to look around the room for a hidden man. The wife goes pale when he leans down to look under the bed; but after some brief whispering, the husband rises with a satisfied, smug smile and says “Sorry, my love, false alarm. There is no one under the bed!,” while his hand is holding tightly a couple of high denomination banknotes.

Christian meets two more ill-fated pilgrims as he continues his expedition down the King's Highway. His ability to discern a false pilgrim has been advanced since his experience with Simple, Sloth, and Presumption. Christian immediately focuses on three things that seem out of place. First, the tumbling over the wall called Salvation without coming through Christ, the narrow gate, or experiencing any illumination by the Holy Spirit immediately warns Christian that these are trespassers. Second, their testimony of having come from the land of Vain-Glory warns Christian that they are neither humble nor burdened by sin. Third, their wish to arrive at Mt. Zion to receive praise rather than to give praise to the only one worthy of praise alarms Christian. Christian quickly discerns that the motives of Formalist and Hypocrisy are unworthy and contemptuous. Formalist

. . . such a rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! Then scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the neck, pommel his back and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of wonder and delight with wich the development of every package was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the parlor, and by one stair at a time up to the top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.

When have we ever believed that the world wasn’t ending? “I had a fascinating conversation with my mother once, where she talked about the guilt she and her friends had felt about bringing children into the universe. This was in the mid-2160s, in Colony Two. It’s hard to imagine a more tranquil time or place, but they were concerned about asteroid storms, and if life on the moon became untenable, about the continued viability of life on Earth—” Olive’s mother drinking coffee in Olive’s childhood home: yellow flowered tablecloth hands clasped around a blue coffee mug her smile “—and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” In a world that no longer exists but whose exact end date is unclear, Captain George Vancouver stands on the deck of the HMS Discovery, gazing anxiously out at a landscape with no people in it “But all of this raises an interesting question,” Olive said. “What if it always is the end of the world?” She paused for effect. Before her, the holographic audience was almost perfectly still. “Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world,” Olive said, “as a continuous and never-ending process.

Many kids would hit the streets at about 4 a.m., though early birds got started even earlier; the first calls regarding disorderly behavior usually reached the police by 2 a.m. Celebrants of Luilak (which means “lazybones”) would ring doorbells, beat drums, blow horns, crash pot lids together, scream “Luilak!,” sing a Luilak song, drag strings of empty tin cans behind their bikes, overturn garbage cans, bang windows, break windows, light bonfires, ignite fireworks, drink bottles of milk left out by the milkman, set buckets of water over doorways and trigger false fire alarms. They did anything and everything to annoy sleeping adults. This yearly debauchery—particular to Amsterdam and a few surrounding towns and with unknown origins—was centuries old.*

His bike was lying against the curb, and he righted it, holding the handlebars. “What I do, I do out of hate, not humanity. Because punishing assholes gets me off—not saving victims. And actually all this . . .” He cast his gaze around us. “This isn’t doing a fucking thing for me. So if you’re not going to jump, I’d just as soon be home in bed.” Home. Well, there was one question answered. Face burning, I shook my head. “No, I’m not jumping.” “Great.” He slung a leg over his crossbar. Face utterly unchanged, the Badger drew his infamous Glock from inside his hoodie, took aim, and shot me in the thigh from five feet. “Ow, Jesus!” White paint exploded across my favorite jeans, and a bolt of exquisite pain promised a welt. “That’s for wasting my time,” he said, replacing the pistol. “I’m too fucking tired for false alarms, so next time have the decency to jump.

It took some time for me to understand my unreasonable claims on that fisherwoman. To understand that I was longing for and missing some aspect of myself, and that there are no strangers. There are only versions of ourselves, many of which we have not embraced, most of which we wish to protect ourselves from. For the stranger is not foreign, she is random; not alien but remembered; and it is the randomness of the encounter with our already known--although unacknowledged--selves that summons a ripple of alarm. That makes us reject the figure and the emotions it provokes--especially when these emotions are profound. It is also what makes us want to own, govern, and administrate the Other. To romance her, if we can, back into our own mirrors. In either instance (of alarm or false reverence), we deny her personhood, the specific individuality we insist upon for ourselves.

Climate policies often make life WORSE specifically for the poor...Choosing climate policies over growth policies doesn’t just do nothing. It means more people die avoidable deaths… Lifting incomes significantly reduces the damage from any potential climate-change-caused increase in hurricanes, droughts, and floods...A comprehensive study...shows that strong global action to reduce climate change would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.

Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.

There was a girl next door," he said, slowly. "She's gone now, I think, dead. I can't even remember her face. But she was different. How? How did she happen?" Beatty smiled. "Here or there, that's bound to occur. Clarisse McClellan? We've a record on her family. We've watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; antisocial. The girl? She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious, I'm sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead.

I can’t be here.” It was almost alarming how panicked she grew at his imminent departure. Her throat closed to the size of a straw and an engine false started in her belly, chugging and failing, again and again. “Can I drive you somewhere? I’d have to use the hearse, but—” “You should not be offering me a ride, Ginny. I’m a stranger.” He turned to face her over the metal table, looking deeply perturbed. “Do you often give rides to men you don’t have the slightest knowledge about?” “Yes, but they’re usually dead. It’s kind of a given that they’ll accept.

The Paris Agreement will be the costliest pact ever agreed to, by far. It will cost us $1–$2 trillion per year from 2030 onward, if actually fully implemented. Yet the agreement will do almost nothing for the climate: all of its promises will reduce the temperature rise by the end of the century by an almost imperceptible 0.05°F. And none of the big emitting countries are anywhere close to actually delivering on their promises. Spending trillions to achieve almost nothing is, not surprisingly, a bad idea. Every dollar spent will produce climate benefits worth just 11¢.

The science shows us that fears of a climate apocalypse are unfounded. Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world. It is a manageable problem. Yet, we now live in a world where almost half the population believes climate change will extinguish humanity. This has profoundly altered the political reality. It makes us double down on poor climate policies. It makes us increasingly ignore all other challenges, from pandemics and food shortages to political strife and conflicts, or subsume them under the banner of climate change… If we don’t say stop, the current, false climate alarm, despite its good intentions, is likely to leave the world much worse off than it could be… We need to dial back on the panic, look at the science, face the economics, and address the issue rationally.

Remember that some organizations, especially activist groups, have no obligation to rigorous, unbiased data. They are working to convince you to adopt their view of the world and thus aren't necessarily impartial [...] This type of bias or spin is common, and you need to be on the alert for it in the reports you read. In fact, bias is a major reason to get multiple kinds of trend data before drawing conclusions. Even if activist groups don't publish false information, they might leave out key data, which might lead you in another direction. If you read particularly alarming data, for example, a trend that says, "we're losing 10 percent of all bird species each year," you should make sure you verify it with other sources. In a world that moves as fast as ours does, sensational problems sometimes arise, but if it's really an issue, more than one expert will be covering it.

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

Also bearing witness to the unbearable nature of the vulnerability experienced by peer-oriented kids is the preponderance of vulnerability-quelling drugs. Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. The older and more peer-oriented the kids, the more drugs seem to be an inherent part of their lifestyle. Peer orientation creates an appetite for anything that would reduce vulnerability. Drugs are emotional painkillers. And, in another way, they help young people escape from the benumbed state imposed by their defensive emotional detachment. With the shutdown of emotions come boredom and alienation. Drugs provide an artificial stimulation to the emotionally jaded. They heighten sensation and provide a false sense of engagement without incurring the risks of genuine openness. In fact, the same drug can play seemingly opposite functions in an individual. Alcohol and marijuana, for example, can numb or, on the other hand, free the brain and mind from social inhibitions. Other drugs are stimulants — cocaine, amphetamines, and ecstasy; the very name of the latter speaks volumes about exactly what is missing in the psychic life of our emotionally incapacitated young people. The psychological function served by these drugs is often overlooked by well-meaning adults who perceive the problem to be coming from outside the individual, through peer pressure and youth culture mores. It is not just a matter of getting our children to say no. The problem lies much deeper. As long as we do not confront and reverse peer orientation among our children, we are creating an insatiable appetite for these drugs. The affinity for vulnerability-reducing drugs originates from deep within the defended soul. Our children's emotional safety can come only from us: then they will not be driven to escape their feelings and to rely on the anesthetic effects of drugs. Their need to feel alive and excited can and should arise from within themselves, from their own innately limitless capacity to be engaged with the universe. This brings us back to the essential hierarchical nature of attachment. The more the child needs attachment to function, the more important it is that she attaches to those responsible for her. Only then can the vulnerability that is inherent in emotional attachment be endured. Children don't need friends, they need parents, grandparents, adults who will assume the responsibility to hold on to them. The more children are attached to caring adults, the more they are able to interact with peers without being overwhelmed by the vulnerability involved. The less peers matter, the more the vulnerability of peer relationships can be endured. It is exactly those children who don't need friends who are more capable of having friends without losing their ability to feel deeply and vulnerably. But why should we want our children to remain open to their own vulnerability? What is amiss when detachment freezes the emotions in order to protect the child?

Enjoyment requires discernment. It can be a gift to wrap up in a blanket and lose myself in a TV show but we can also amuse ourselves to death. My pleasure in wine or tea or exercise is good in itself but it can become disordered. As we learn to practice enjoyment we need to learn the craft of discernment: How to enjoy rightly, to have, to read pleasure well. There is a symbiotic relationship, cross-training, if you will, between the pleasures we find in gathered worship and those in my tea cup, or in a warm blanket, or the smell of bread baking. Lewis reminds us that one must walk before one can run. We will not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable but we shall not have found Him so. These tiny moments of beauty in our day train us in the habits of adoration and discernment, and the pleasure and sensuousness of our gathered worship teach us to look for and receive these small moments in our days, together they train us in the art of noticing and reveling in our God’s goodness and artistry. A few weeks ago I was walking to work, standing on the corner of tire and auto parts store, waiting to cross the street when I suddenly heard church bells begin to ring, loud and long. I froze, riveted. They were beautiful. A moment of transcendence right in the middle of the grimy street, glory next to the discount tire and auto parts. Liturgical worship has been referred to sometimes derisively as smells and bells because of the sensuous ways Christians have historically worshipped: Smells, the sweet and pungent smell of incense, and bells, like the one I heard in neighborhood which rang out from a catholic church. At my church we ring bells during the practice of our eucharist. The acolyte, the person often a child, assisting the priest, rings chimes when our pastor prepares the communion meal. There is nothing magic about these chimes, nothing superstitious, they’re just bells. We ring them in the eucharist liturgy as a way of saying, “pay attention.” They’re an alarm to rouse the congregation to jostle us to attention, telling us to take note, sit up, and lean forward, and notice Christ in our midst. We need this kind of embodied beauty, smells and bells, in our gathered worship, and we need it in our ordinary day to remind us to take notice of Christ right where we are. Dostoevsky wrote that “beauty will save the world.” This might strike us as mere hyperbole but as our culture increasingly rejects the idea and language of truth, the churches role as the harbinger of beauty is a powerful witness to the God of all beauty. Czeslaw Milosz wrote in his poem, “One more day,” “Though the good is weak, beauty is very strong.” And when people cease to believe there is good and evil, only beauty will call to them and save them so that they still know how to say, “this is true and that is false.” Being curators of beauty, pleasure, and delight is therefore and intrinsic part of our mission, a mission that recognizes the reality that truth is beautiful. These moments of loveliness, good tea, bare trees, and soft shadows, or church bells, in my dimness, they jolt me to attention and remind me that Christ is in our midst. His song of truth, sung by His people all over the world, echos down my ordinary street, spilling even into my living room.