Famous Warning Quotes

Oh no! Don't drag us away from Antartica and take us to the playground of the rich and famous! Not that briar patch! -Max

There was a soft chuckle beside me, and my heart stopped. "So this is Oberon's famous half-blood," Ash mused as I whirled around. His eyes, cold and inhuman, glimmered with amusement. Up close, he was even more beautiful, with high cheekbones and dark tousled hair falling into his eyes. My traitor hands itched, longing to run my fingers through those bangs. Horrified, I clenched them in my lap, trying to concentrate on what Ash was saying. "And to think," the prince continued, smiling, "I lost you that day in the forest and didn't even know what I was chasing." I shrank back, eyeing Oberon and Queen Mab. They were deep in conversation and did not notice me. I didn't want to interrupt them simply because a prince of the Unseelie Court was talking to me. Besides, I was a faery princess now. Even if I didn't quite believe it, Ash certainly did. I took a deep breath, raised my chin, and looked him straight in the eye. "I warn you," I said, pleased that my voice didn't tremble, "that if you try anything, my father will remove your head and stick it to a plaque on his wall." He shrugged one lean shoulder. "There are worse things." At my horrified look, he offered a faint, self-derogatory smile. "Don't worry, princess, I won't break the rules of Elysium. I have no intention of facing Mab's wrath should I embarrass her. That's not why I'm here." "Then what do you want?" He bowed. "A dance." "What!" I stared at him in disbelief. "You tried to kill me!" "Technically, I was trying to kill Puck. You just happened to be there. But yes, if I'd had the shot, I would have taken it." "Then why the hell would you think I'd dance with you?" "That was then." He regarded me blandly. "This is now. And it's tradition in Elysium that a son and daughter of opposite territories dance with each other, to demonstrate the goodwill between the courts." "Well, it's a stupid tradition." I crossed my arms and glared. "And you can forget it. I am not going anywhere with you." He raised an eyebrow. "Would you insult my monarch, Queen Mab, by refusing? She would take it very personally, and blame Oberon for the offense. And Mab can hold a grudge for a very, very long time." Oh, damn. I was stuck.

You've never heard of the Trickster King?" Puck asked, shocked. The girls shook their heads. "The Prince of Fairies? Robin Goodfellow? The Imp?" "Do you work for Santa?" Daphne asked. "I'm a fairy, not an elf!" Puck roared. "You really don't know who I am! Doesn't anyone read the classics anymore? Dozens of writers have warned about me. I'm in the most famous of all of William Shakespeare's plays." "I don't remember any Puck in Romeo and Juliet," Sabrina muttered, feeling a little amused at how the boy was reacting to his non-celebrity. "Besides Romeo and Juliet!" Puck shouted. "I'm the star of a Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Congratulation," Sabrina said flatly. "Never read it.

George Washington famously warned against ... 'ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear

Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purpose: ‘Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose.’ This is a liberating thought, which teaches us to never hold the history of something against its possible applications. Even if computers started out as calculators, that doesn’t prevent us from playing games on them. (47) (quoting Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals)

Madame V begins the lesson by reading aloud the first stanza of a famous French poem: Il pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville; Quelle est cette langueur Qui penetre mon coeur? Then she looks up and without any warning she calls on me to translate it. I swallow hard, and try: "It's raining in my heart like it's raining in the city. What is this sadness that pierces my heart?" Saying these words out loud, right in front of the whole class, makes me feel like I'm not wearing any clothes.

I'll reason with him", Vito Corleone said. It was to become a famous phrase in the years to come. It was to become the warning rattle before the deadly strike.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.

The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers.[…]They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn’t matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.

From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that’s bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.

For the book was also about ambition. About wanting to be the biggest, the best, the most famous at any cost. It was about pushing the boundaries of discovery. Most of all, though, it was a warning: without love and kindness, we all become monsters.

Music touches the soul, it stirs passion, it moves us and can make us better people. It’s no coincidence that 2000 years ago a famous Roman politician, Cato the Younger, warned that soldiers shouldn’t listen to music because it would make them unfit to wage war!

Only one story—the story of the dinosaurs themselves—had a happy ending. Happy in comparison, at any rate. Dinosaurs will be famous forever, first of all, and, what is more important, they were granted an enviable finale. Dinosaurs reigned unchallenged for an unimaginable one hundred million years. Then, in a cataclysm that reverberated around the globe, with no warning, no foreboding, no lingering, they vanished.

Hannah Arendt famously warned that “those who choose the lesser evil quickly forget that they chose evil.

Machiavelli famously said that it is better to be feared than to be loved. But he also warned that it is vital not to be hated.

By the end of the war, Sherman was one of the most famous men in America, and yet he sought no public office, had no taste for politics, and wished simply to do his job and then eventually retire. Dismissing the incessant praise and attention endemic to such success, he wrote as a warning to his friend Grant, “Be natural and yourself and this glittering flattery will be as the passing breeze of the sea on a warm summer day.

Singer cited the famous essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in which biologist Garrett Hardin argued that individuals acting in their rational self-interest may undermine the common good, and warned against assuming that technology would save us from ourselves. “If we ignore the present warning signs and wait for an ecological disaster to strike, it will probably be too late,” Singer noted. He imagined what it must have been like to be Noah, surrounded by “complacent compatriots,” saying, “‘Don’t worry about the rising waters, Noah; our advanced technology will surely discover a substitute for breathing.’ If it was wisdom that enabled Noah to believe in the ‘never-yet-happened,’ we could use some of that wisdom now,” Singer concluded.

Chapter 8 explores Jesus’ famous passage where he warns us not to throw pearls to pigs. Chapter 9 looks at the difference between labeling and name-calling; if it seems harsh to you to call someone “toxic,” you’ll find this chapter particularly helpful.

In a famous argument, the logician W. V. Quine showed that there exist families of logically consistent interpretations and theories that can match a given series of facts. Such insight should warn us that mere absence of nonsense may not be sufficient to make something true.

Oedipus is famously clever; that’s how he solves the Sphinx’s virtually-impossible riddle, and earns his right to become King of Thebes. But his cleverness is also his tragic flaw: his quick-wittedness shades into quick-temperedness. This is a man who can solve a puzzle that has baffled all who came before him. But that same quickness explains how a man (who had been warned by an oracle that he would kill his father and was trying desperately to avoid his fate) could be reduced to a murderous frenzy at a crossroads by what amounts to a minor road-rage incident.

Before the Civil War, a group of Southerners came to visit President Abraham Lincoln at the White House to warn him that when it came to the coming conflict, the South would prevail, because God was on their side. Lincoln famously said in response, “It is more important to know that we are on God’s side.

As the famous conqueror and warrior Genghis Khan groomed his sons and generals to succeed him later in life, he repeatedly warned them, “If you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.” He told them that pride would be harder to subdue than a wild lion. He liked the analogy of a mountain. He would say, “Even the tallest mountains have animals that, when they stand on it, are higher than the mountain.

Weber also saw that a bureaucratic world contained risks. It produced increasingly powerful and autonomous bureaucrats who could be spiritless, driven only by impersonal rules and procedures, and with little regard for the people they were expected to serve. Weber famously warned that those who allow themselves to be guided by rules will soon find that those rules have defined their identities and commitments.

John Wesley’s famous sermon on fasting: First, let it be done unto the Lord, with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven; to express our sorrow and shame for our manifold transgressions of His holy law; to wait for an increase of purifying grace, drawing our affections to things above; to add seriousness and to obtain all the great and precious promises which He hath made to us in Jesus Christ. . . . Let us beware of fancying we merit anything of God by our fasting. We cannot be too often warned of this; inasmuch as a desire to “establish our own righteousness,” to procure salvation of debt and not of grace, is so deeply rooted in all our hearts. Fasting is only a way which God hath ordained, wherein we wait for His unmerited mercy; and wherein, without any desert of ours, He hath promised freely to give us His blessing.1

But as luck would have it, the distance from Marathon to Athens was greater by sea than by land. For ships had to negotiate a long spit of land easily crossed on foot. This Miltiades did. He sent a messenger ahead, who was to run as fast as he could, to warn the Athenians. This was the famous Marathon Run after which we call our race. Famous, because the messenger ran so far and so fast that all he could do was deliver his message before he fell down dead.

Such was the carnival atmosphere that Brenner, her boss, his wife, and a local journalist managed to summon up the courage to walk directly toward the white line of the border crossing—where twenty-eight years ago tanks had famously faced one another—to present the East German guards with bottles of champagne. The guards refused the offer, but they didn’t point their weapons, or bark out warnings. It was a surreal moment as the joyous posse from the Adler walked back to the café and prepared the bar for guests—lots of them.

Did you ever hear what happened to Oliver Cromwell’s head? It was originally lashed to the roof of Westminster Hall as a potent warning not to mess with the government of the day, but in 1685 a violent storm blew it off its perch and a captain of the guard had it away and hid it up his chimney, where it stayed until he admitted the crime on his death bed. So can you picture the scene? Cromwell died in 1658. 27 years later this geezer nicks his head and shoves it up his chimney. He’s about to croak it, the whole family’s gathered around his death bed, everybody’s in tears and they’re all wondering if he’ll come out with any famous last words. Perhaps, “Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your father,” or maybe, “Let us pass over the river and rest under the shade of the trees,” or even, “Don’t let it end like this, tell them I said something.” Not this fucking joker! No! What does he say? He says, “Here Jackie, the sausages tasted a bit off tonight. Did I ever tell you I nicked Oliver Cromwell’s head and shoved it up the chimney? It’s still there,” and he draws back the veil of his earthly life and succumbs to eternal peace. They all look at each other, “What did he fucking say?” “He said he nicked Oliver Cromwell’s head.” “What do you mean; he nicked Oliver Cromwell’s head?” “That’s what he said, don’t blame me!” “Fuck’s sake!” “Well, do you think we should look?” “Don’t talk bollocks! You honestly want to look up the chimney to see if Oliver Cromwell’s head’s up there?” “I’m just saying …..” Anyway, one of them had a look up the chimney, found the head and by 1710 it was appearing in a freak show under the banner, ‘The Monster’s Head.’ True story

At this point, perhaps you Hushlanders are beginning to doubt the truth of this narrative. You have seen several odd and inexplicable things happen. (Though, just as a warning, the story so far has actually been quite tame. Just wait until we get to the part with the talking dinosaurs.) Some readers might even think that I’m just making this story up. You might think that everything in this book is dreamy silliness. This book is serious. Terribly serious. Your skepticism results from a lifetime of training in the Librarians’ school system, where you were taught all kinds of lies. Indeed, you’d probably never even heard of the Smedrys, despite the fact that they are the most famous family of Oculators in the entire world. In most parts of the Free Kingdoms, being a Smedry is considered equivalent to being nobility. (If you wish to perform a fun test, next time you are in history class, ask your teacher about the Smedrys. If your teacher is a Librarian spy, he or she will get red-faced and give you a detention. If, on the other hand, your teacher is innocent, he or she will simply be confused, then likely give you a detention.)

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

We know from history that much of what doctors do at any particular time is ineffective or even dangerous when viewed in retrospect. Years ago a famous professor warned his graduating medical students that half of what he'd taught them was wrong, but the trouble was he didn't know which half...the principle still applies: we don't know which of the well-intentioned therapies of the present will end up looking like the leeches and bloodletting of ancient time or like the thalidomide, Dalkon shields, and tonsillectomies of a more recent era gone by. Accordingly, the pronouncements of doctors should be viewed with healthy skepticism.

I don’t think our next-door neighbour is very happy about our mini farm. Mr Tugg is always complaining. Dad and Mr Tugg don’t get on very well, especially since Granny ran off with Mr Tugg’s dad. She did and, yes, Lancelot is Mr Tugg’s dad. They eloped in a hot-air balloon and got married. I mean – she’s sixty-five, and Lancelot is even older! Mr Tugg is quite short and he’s almost bald except for a little bristly moustache that wriggles like a caterpillar when he’s cross. He has a kind of warning system for when he’s angry (which is often). First he goes red, then deep red, then purple and finally he turns white-hot. It’s very impressive,

The dead bring us to life, vivify us, give us scale. We are the unjoined part of them and at their graves we stand at our own. In Ruby Park Cemetery, in the once-famous silver lands of Colorado, the graves are unmarked. There is a single column of marble above a miner's daughter who died at the age of seventeen. The town of Irwin drew thousands of people in the 1870s, some from as far away as England and Scotland. The cemetery is abandoned. The mines have vanished. All but the silent warning, 'My good people as you pass by, As you are now so once was I As I am now you soon must be Prepare yourselves to follow me.' The dust of the pathway whitens our shoes.

Madison’s response is famously expressed in Federalist 10, “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”—arguing that tyranny of the majority was most likely to occur in small republics. When a republic holds a critical mass of diverse interests, no single group is likely to hold the upper hand for long. The combination of diversity and size serves as a cooling mechanism on more heated local passions and prejudices. In a large republic, the necessity of cobbling together broad governing coalitions means that narrow self-interest is forced to give way to a more enlightened self-interest, in the recognition that pursuing the common good can bring about mutual benefits.I

In your light we see light. —Psalm 36:9 (NIV) ELENA ZELAYETA, BLIND CHEF Without warning at age thirty-six, Elena Zelayeta, pregnant with her second child, totally lost her sight. She had been the chef at a popular restaurant she and her husband owned. A sixty-seven-year-old widow now, she continued to prepare her famous Mexican dishes, marketing them with the help of her two sons, the younger of whom she’d never seen. Typical of San Francisco, it was raining when I arrived at her home. The door was opened by a very short, very broad woman with a smile like the sun. Well under five feet tall, “and wide as I am high,” she said, she led me on a fast-paced tour of the sizable house, ending in the kitchen, where pots bubbled and a frying pan sizzled. Was it possible that this woman who moved so swiftly and surely, who was now so unhesitatingly dishing up the meal she’d prepared for the two of us, really blind? She must see, dimly at least, the outlines of things. At the door to the dining room, Elena paused, half a dozen dishes balanced on her arms. “Is the light on?” she asked. No, she confirmed, not the faintest glimmer of light had she seen in thirty years. But she smiled as she said it. “I hear the rain,” she went on as she expertly carved the herb-crusted chicken, “and I’m sure it’s a gray day for the sighted. But for us blind folk, when we walk with God, the sun is always shining.” Let me walk in Your light, Lord, whatever the weather of the world. —Elizabeth Sherrill Digging Deeper: Ps 97:11; 1 Jn 1:5

There has been an enduring misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. Turing’s core message was never “If a machine can imitate a man, the machine must be intelligent.” Rather, it was “Inability to imitate does not rule out intelligence.” In his classic essay on the Turing test, Turing encouraged his readers to take a broader perspective on intelligence and conceive of it more universally and indeed more ethically. He was concerned with the possibility of unusual forms of intelligence, our inability to recognize those intelligences, and the limitations of the concept of indistinguishability as a standard for defining what is intelligence and what is not. In section two of the paper, Turing asks directly whether imitation should be the standard of intelligence. He considers whether a man can imitate a machine rather than vice versa. Of course the answer is no, especially in matters of arithmetic, yet obviously a man thinks and can think computationally (in terms of chess problems, for example). We are warned that imitation cannot be the fundamental standard or marker of intelligence. Reflecting on Turing’s life can change one’s perspective on what the Turing test really means. Turing was gay. He was persecuted for this difference in a manner that included chemical castration and led to his suicide. In the mainstream British society of that time, he proved unable to consistently “pass” for straight. Interestingly, the second paragraph of Turing’s famous paper starts with the question of whether a male or female can pass for a member of the other gender in a typed conversation. The notion of “passing” was of direct personal concern to Turing and in more personal settings Turing probably did not view “passing” as synonymous with actually being a particular way.

Back at the start of World War Two the authorities forbade the use of the Underground as an air raid shelter. Instead Londoners were supposed to rely on hastily built neighborhood shelters or on the famous Anderson shelters, which were basically rabbit hutches made from corrugated iron with some earth shoveled on top. Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air raid warning, at which point the poorly educated but far from stupid populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten meters of earth and concrete and a few centimeters of compost, and moved underground en masse. The authorities were appalled. They tried exhortation, persuasion, and the outright use of force, but the Londoners wouldn’t budge. In fact, they started to organize their own bedding and refreshment services.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

With Eva, I had given no though to the world of adulthood that awaited us. But she had crossed some secret threshold while I was facing the other way, absorbed still by the childish fantasies she had cultivated for us: our talk of traveling the world together; of having a salon in Paris or on the Riviera, where all the famous writers and artists were; of becoming artists ourselves, marrying exotic European strangers and always living close to one another; of how, when our husbands died, we would move together into a great crumbling mansion and be visited by amazing people from around the world. Now, I saw so clearly that all of that had been a silly game. She had a lover, presumably, while I did not even truly know what this vague and glamorous term entailed. She had become a woman, with no thought to warn me that I should be packing away my own childhood, dismantling it piece by piece like a rotten tree house, and preparing myself for the new world.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They’re on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options—neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr. Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there’s cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I’m easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I’ll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome dogs.

I can never understand why Londoners fail to see that they live in the most wonderful city in the world. It is, if you ask me, far more beautiful and interesting than Paris and more lively than anywhere but New York—and even New York can’t touch it in lots of important ways. It has more history, finer parks, a livelier and more varied press, better theaters, more numerous orchestras and museums, leafier squares, safer streets, and more courteous inhabitants than any other large city in the world. And it has more congenial small things—incidental civilities, you might call them—than any other city I know: cheery red mailboxes, drivers who actually stop for you at pedestrian crossings, lovely forgotten churches with wonderful names like St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Giles Cripplegate, sudden pockets of quiet like Lincoln’s Inn and Red Lion Square, interesting statues of obscure Victorians in togas, pubs, black cabs, double-decker buses, helpful policemen, polite notices, people who will stop to help you when you fall down or drop your shopping, benches everywhere. What other great city would trouble to put blue plaques on houses to let you know what famous person once lived there, or warn you to look left or right before stepping off the curb? I’ll tell you. None.

To our amazement Jimmy received a letter, dated August 20, 1963, from Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and peace activist, saying “I have recently finished your remarkable book The American Resolution” and “have been greatly impressed with its power and insight.” The letter goes on to ask for Jimmy’s views on whether American whites “will understand the negro [sic] revolt because “the survival of mankind may well follow or fail to follow from political and social behavior of Americans in the next decades.” On September 5 Jimmy wrote back a lengthy reply saying among other things that “so far, with the exception of the students, there has been no social force in the white population which the Negroes can respect and a handful of liberals joining in a demonstration doesn’t change this one bit.” Russell replied on September 18 with more questions that Jimmy answered in an even longer letter dated December 22. Meanwhile, Russell had sent a telegram to the November 21 Town Hall meeting in New York City at which Jimmy was scheduled to speak, warning Negroes not to resort to violence. In response Jimmy said at the meeting that “I too would like to hope that the issues of our revolt might be resolved by peaceful means,” but “the issues and grievances were too deeply imbedded in the American system and the American peoples so that the very things Russell warned against might just have to take place if the Negroes in the U.S.A. are ever to walk the streets as free men.” In his December 22 letter Jimmy repeats what he said at the meeting and then patiently explains to Russell that what has historically been considered democracy in the United States has actually been fascism for millions of Negroes. The letter concludes: I believe that it is your responsibility as I believe that it is my responsibility to recognize and record this, so that in the future words do not confuse the struggle but help to clarify it. This is what I think philosophers should make clear. Because even though Negroes in the United States still think they are struggling for democracy, in fact democracy is what they are struggling against. This exchange between Jimmy and Russell has to be seen to be believed. In a way it epitomizes the 1960s—Jimmy Boggs, the Alabama-born autoworker, explaining the responsibility of philosophers to The Earl Russell, O.M., F.R.S., in his time probably the West’s best-known philosopher. Within the next few years The American Revolution was translated and published in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. To this day it remains a page-turner for grassroots activists because it is so personal and yet political, so down to earth and yet visionary.

The Sputnik moment for the Open Classroom movement came in 1983, when a blue-ribbon commission appointed by Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, T. H. Bell, delivered a scathing report, entitled, A Nation at Risk, whose famously ominous conclusion warned that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” The response this time was a fervent and growing bipartisan campaign for more accountability from schools, mostly in the form of more of those standardized tests. And by 2001, “accountability” had become a buzzword. Under President George W. Bush that year, the “No Child Left Behind” Act tied federal funding to students’ performance on tests. Eight years later, President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” program sought similar results, although this time using carrots instead of sticks. However the federal policy was constructed, the message was becoming clear: for schools to survive, their students would have to score high on mandated tests. Teachers consequently understood that to preserve their own jobs, they’d have to spend more time and energy on memorization and drills. The classrooms of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution began to look ever more like the dreary common schools of the turn of the twentieth century, and the spirit of Emile retreated once again.

THE DEFENDANT: Thank you, your Honor. I stand before your Honor humbly and painfully aware that we are here today for one reason: Because of my actions that I pled guilty to on August 21, and as well on November 29. I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to, the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America. Viktor Frankl in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," he wrote, "There are forces beyond your control that can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation." Your Honor, this may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. The irony is today is the day I am getting my freedom back as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate. I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. In fact, I now know that there is little to be admired. I want to be clear. I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light. It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the elicit act of the President rather than to listen to my own inner voice which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious.

Looks like everybody's asleep. Don't they keep a light on for you?" "They probably figured I wouldn't be needing it." "Sorry to disappoint your cousins." "Not to mention me.I'm gravely disappointed at the way this evening has ended.You're going to ruin my reputation as a lady-killer." He flashed her one of his famous smiles. He opened the door and climbed down.When he rounded the front of the truck, he paused beside her open window. "Good night,Marilee. I appreciate the ride home. I just wish you didn't have to make that long drive back to town all alone." "I'll be fine.I've got my radio to keep me company." "You could always coe inside and bunk in my room." "What a generous offer.But once again, I'm afraid I'll have to decline,though I have to admit that I've had more fun in a few hours with you than I've had in years." The minute the words were out of her mouth,she wanted to call them back. What was it about Wyatt that had her trusting him enough to reveal such a thing? Though she barely knew him,he'd uncovered an inherent goodness in him that was rare and wonderful. This had been one of the best nights of her life. Still,he'd gone very quiet.As though digesting her words and searching for hidden meanings. As he turned away she called boldly, "What? No kiss good night? Just because I refused to spend the night with you?" He turned back with a smile, but it wasn't his usual silly grin.Instead, she noted,there was a hint of danger in that smile. He studied her intently before reaching out as though to touch her face. Then he seemed to think better of it and withdrew his hand as if he'd been burned. His eyes locked on hers. "I've already decided that I'll never be able to just kiss you and walk away.So a word of warning,pretty little Marilee. When I kiss you,and I fully intend to kiss you breathless,be prepared to go the distance. There's a powerful storm building up inside me,and when it's unleashed,it's going to be one hell of an earth-shattering explosion.For both of us." He walked away then and didn't look back until he'd reached the back door. Startled by the unexpected intensity of his words,Marilee put the truck in gear and started along the gravel lane. As her vehicle ate up the miles back to town,she couldn't put aside the look she'd seen in his eyes.The carefully banked passion she'd taken such pains to hide had left her more shaken than she cared to admit. In truth,she was still trembling. And he hadn't even touched her.

George Washington, in his famous Farewell Address, warned future generations “to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

One of the most famous enemies of Soviet communism is Vladimir Bukovsky. He was tortured by Soviet authorities and spent many years in Soviet prisons. He was even declared “insane” and sent to a psychiatric prison. When Bukovsky was exiled to the West, people paid lip service to his courage; but few heeded his warnings about Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Bukovsky reminded everyone that all Soviet leaders were liars. Gorbachev, he said, was no exception—and was certainly no democrat. Like Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, Gorbachev was a liar and a hangman. But hardly anyone listened. Everyone wanted to believe the Cold War was over.

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

As the story is told, determined to inspire his men to take the offensive, Jackson suddenly rode into the battlefield and attempted to brandish his sword, but the man who had once warned his VMI cadets to be ready to throw the scabbards of their swords away found that due to the infrequency with which he had drawn it, it had rusted in its scabbard.  Undaunted, he unbuckled the sword from his belt--scabbard and all--and waved it over his head.   Then he grabbed a battle flag from a retreating standard bearer and called for his men to rally around him.  Heartened by their commander’s zeal, the Stonewall Brigade set fiercely into the Union troops, quickly driving them back.  And although Union forces were subsequently able to regroup and attack, the Stonewall Brigade had given the Confederate front line time to reform and A. P Hill's troops time to come up and fill in the gaps. Almost

Ash-Shâfi i paid no attention to a slave girl given to him by friends who wants to sleep with him. Abû Hanîfah, asked about the manner in which memorized knowledge can be acquired, exclaimed, “Lamp oil, lamp oil” (al-bizr al-bizr), and a poor student later to become a famous scholar, Abû Hâtim (as-Sijistânî?), being unable to buy lamp oil, used the watchman’s lantern to study at night in the streets. Scholars continue their studies even in the bath. They are so absorbed in their work that they do not notice what is going on around them, that they do not care to waste time on eating, that they do not bother when a hemorrhage occurs during their all-night study. In the last case, a warning note is sounded for the benefi t of the reader: Studying is done for the good of one’s soul (life). If the soul is destroyed, the knowledge acquired is of no use. “Overstepping the right mean in studying may lead to the loss of knowledge.

Jon Huntsman’s 2015 autobiography devoted a full chapter to the Apollo saga, entitling it simply “The Double Cross.” It offered such lines as, “Our earlier experiences with Bain and Blackstone proved there is no honor among thieves or among Wall Street shops. Apollo was no exception…Matlin [a Huntsman board member] had warned us Apollo would attempt to shaft us and Apollo did not disappoint…the route Apollo chose for saving itself was duplicity.

Recipe Hello from Honey Hollow! Lottie here! I hope you’re in the mood for something devilishly delicious. My famous, or rather infamous devil’s food cake is well—to die for. If you have a serious hankering for chocolate, you will not regret this. But be warned, your entire home will hold the scent of warm, tempting chocolate. It is rather hard to resist. Happy baking! From the kitchen of the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery Devil’s Food Cake 1½ cup of softened butter ¾ cup unsweetened baking coco 2 cups sugar 3 eggs 3 cups sifted all-purpose flour ¼ tsp salt 1 ½ tsp baking soda ¾ cup milk 1 cup hot water 1 tsp white distilled vinegar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract Instructions Preheat oven 350° Grease and dust with coco powder or flour, two 9 inch round pans or a 9x13 pan. *I prefer to use a stand mixer. Although mixing by hand works well, too. Mix and cream together coco, sugar, butter, milk and eggs. Slowly mix in one cup of hot water. Add flour, salt, baking soda, vinegar and vanilla extract. Pour into two pans evenly, or a single prepared pan. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle, comes out clean. Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery’s Go-to Chocolate Frosting Recipe 6 tablespoons softened butter ¾ cup unsweetened baking coco Pinch of salt 3 tablespoons hot water 1 ¾ cup of powdered sugar In a mixing bowl, cream butter, coco, salt, and water. Stir until it reaches a smooth finish. Slowly add in powdered sugar. Make sure it reaches your desired consistency. If it’s too thick, add a touch more water. If it’s too thin, add in a touch more powdered sugar. Frost your cooled devil’s food cake and enjoy!

the famous warning of Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

the philosopher George Santayana famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Though the institutions of society have difficulty learning from history, individuals can do so.

Kids Riding Tornados The Wizard of Oz is a famous movie that was made in 1939. Dorothy is the girl who is the main character and in the story, she is picked up by a tornado and carried off to the fictional land of Oz. A few years later, in 1955, a 9-year-old really did go for a ride in a tornado! But first she rode a horse. There’s not a whole lot around Bowdle, South Dakota. It’s a very rural part of the state. Sharon Weron was 9 years old and riding a horse home from a neighbor’s house. Her mom was following in her car and saw everything. Just as Sharon and her horse reached their house, the tornado was on them. They had very little warning. Sharon’s mom saw the tornado pick up her daughter (and horse), spin them around wildly, and carry them away. Sharon was wearing a blue shirt so her mom was looking for that in the tornado and could see her spinning. The tornado carried them around 1,000 feet, over several fences, and dumped Sharon in a ditch. She was wearing a leather jacket and pulled that up around her head during her flight. There was hail and all kinds of debris flying around inside the tornado with her. Sharon’s hands were badly bruised from being hit by the hail and who knows what else. She remembered hitting the ground and grabbing the grass so that she wouldn’t get sucked up again. As she looked around, she found her horse. He was just standing there not far from her. Both were a little beaten up but okay. That’s crazy, right? Their story got picked up by newspapers and spread all over the world. Reporters had no reason to doubt the story. As unbelievable as it seems, it still holds up as credible. Sharon’s ride was also witnessed by neighbors. The Guinness book of world records listed Sharon’s ride as the furthest anyone had ever ridden in a tornado until 2006. It’s remarkable that both Sharon and her horse lived through such a terrifying experience. That has to be the craziest horse story in the history of the world!

You cannot defeat me,” the doppler snarled. “Because I am you, Geralt.” “You are mistaken, Tellico,” the Witcher said softly. “Drop your sword and resume Biberveldt’s form. Otherwise you’ll regret it, I warn you.” “I am you,” the doppler repeated. “You will not gain an advantage over me. You cannot defeat me, because I am you!” “You cannot have any idea what it means to be me, mimic.” Tellico lowered the hand gripping the sword. “I am you,” he repeated. “No,” the Witcher countered, “you are not. And do you know why? Because you’re a poor, little, good-natured doppler. A doppler who, after all, could have killed Biberveldt and buried his body in the undergrowth, by so doing gaining total safety and utter certainty that he would not be unmasked, ever, by anybody, including the halfling’s spouse, the famous Gardenia Biberveldt. But you didn’t kill him, Tellico, because you didn’t have the courage. Because you’re a poor, little, good-natured doppler, whose close friends call him Dudu. And whoever you might change into you’ll always be the same. You only know how to copy what is good in us, because you don’t understand the bad in us. That’s what you are, doppler.” Tellico moved backwards, pressing his back against the tent’s canvas. “Which is why,” Geralt continued, “you will now turn back into Biberveldt and hold your hands out nicely to be tied up. You aren’t capable of defying me, because I am what you are unable of copying. You are absolutely aware of this, Dudu. Because you took over my thoughts for a moment.” Tellico straightened up abruptly. His face’s features, still those of the Witcher, blurred and spread out, and his white hair curled and began to darken. “You’re right, Geralt,” he said indistinctly, because his lips had begun to change shape. “I took over your thoughts. Only briefly, but it was sufficient. Do you know what I’m going to do now?” The leather witcher jacket took on a glossy, cornflower blue colour. The doppler smiled, straightened his plum bonnet with its egret’s feather, and tightened the strap of the lute slung over his shoulder. The lute which had been a sword a moment ago. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Witcher,” he said, with the rippling laughter characteristic of Dandelion. “I’ll go on my way, squeeze my way into the crowd and change quietly into any-old-body, even a beggar. Because I prefer being a beggar in Novigrad to being a doppler in the wilds.

Dorothy Thompson was one of America’s most prominent international journalists. She had famously interviewed Hitler for Cosmopolitan magazine and had been warning the world about the dangers of the Nazi regime in Germany since the early thirties.

So many people were basing decisions on Granville’s forecasts in the early 1980s that when he said something was going to happen, it happened because they believed it would. That is, when he said the market would go down, the prediction scared buyers out of the market – and lo, it went down. This happened early in 1981, when Granville told his disciples to sell everything. The day after this famous warning was issued, the stock market fell out of bed – 23 points on the Dow. All of Wall Street said ooh and ah. What a powerful prophet was this Granville! The plunge was brief but impressive while it lasted.

America’s power position as “the hammer of the whole earth” extends to more than military power. America tells other nations what to do and how to do it. For example, America forced the UBS AG Bank in Switzerland to close all of the offshore accounts in the Swiss Bank held by U.S. citizens, as part of an IRS “tax investigation which challenges Switzerland’s famous banking secrecy laws.” (Reuters, January 9, 2009).

Our media also lavish mega attention on our idols, devoting countless hours of coverage to actors and sports figures, much of the coverage about how they get into trouble. Some networks admit to trying to include some daily snippet of “news” about Britney Spears, or Lindsay Lohan, or some other troubled famous young actor, co-enabled by the coverage and public attention, into their behavior. Some of the nation’s bestselling magazines and weekly newspapers exclusively report on the varied activities of public figures, almost all in the entertainment industry. People Magazine recently paid a movie star $4.1 million dollars. To make a movie? No, $4.1 million dollars was paid for the right to publish pictures of her new baby. America’s media covered the unfortunate death of singer Michael Jackson non-stop for days on end. We are “mad upon our idols.

For better or for worse—although often for the worse—what human nature craves in the face of psychologically acute threats like the 2008 economic meltdown, ISIS, or Ebola is decisiveness. That’s partly why the approval of George W. Bush, who famously bragged, “I don’t do nuance,” jumped more than 30 percentage points after 9/11. Americans found closure in expressing increased trust in a self-convinced government. Bush’s popularity tracked up and down with the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded threat warning.

He groaned. She groaned. They both groaned as he played with the nipple. There were no words exchanged between them, nothing but soft pants and moans of pleasure. And the splash as something hit the water. Then another something. The faint echo of a gunshot froze him. Shit. Someone was fucking shooting at them. “Take a deep breath,” was the only warning he gave before yanking Arabella underwater where they’d prove a more difficult target. Wide eyes met his under the surface. Kind of hard to explain. Only his great-uncle Clive had ever inherited the famous Johnson gills. Hayder got great hair. Since he couldn’t explain why it appeared he wanted to drown her, he kicked off. With her in tow, he scissor-kicked to the deep end of the pool by the waterfall. Having explored this place many a time when working off some energy, he knew the perfect spot to shelter while he figured out where the shooter was. And then we’ll catch ’em and eat ’em. It seemed Hayder wasn’t the only one peeved at the interruption. But still… We don’t eat people. Such a disappointed kitty. But catch the hunter and we’ll order the biggest rare steak they have in stock. With the red sauce stuff? A double order of the red wine reduction, he promised. Lungs burning, Hayder dragged them to the surface, behind the filtering screen of water cascading from above. The little hidden grotto made a great hiding spot. The shooter would have a hard time targeting them, and the water would also slow the bullet and throw off its aim. He knew they were more or less safe for the moment, but she didn’t. Soaked and scentless didn’t mean Hayder couldn’t sense the fear coming off Arabella. She remained tucked close to him, for once not sneezing. Small blessing because one of her ginoromous achoos might have caused quite the amplified echo. “Was someone shooting at us?” she whispered in his ear. Kind of funny since nothing could be heard above the falling splash of water “Yes. Someone was trying to get us.” Which meant heads would roll with whoever was on duty for security today. Exactly how had someone made it on to pride land with a loaded weapon? What kind of cowards hunted shifters with bullets? The kind who thought it was okay to beat a woman. Grrrr. Man, not lion, made the sound. It was also the man who made sure to tuck Arabella as deep as he could into the pocket, using himself as a body shield just in case the gunman got a lucky shot. The crashing of water, not to mention the echoes created by the recess, made it impossible to gauge what happened outside their watery grotto. Did the shooter approach? Did he know where they’d gone? Would he stick around long enough for Hayder to hunt him down and slap him silly? Only one way to find out.

He groaned. She groaned. They both groaned as he played with the nipple. There were no words exchanged between them, nothing but soft pants and moans of pleasure. And the splash as something hit the water. Then another something. The faint echo of a gunshot froze him. Shit. Someone was fucking shooting at them. “Take a deep breath,” was the only warning he gave before yanking Arabella underwater where they’d prove a more difficult target. Wide eyes met his under the surface. Kind of hard to explain. Only his great-uncle Clive had ever inherited the famous Johnson gills. Hayder got great hair. Since he couldn’t explain why it appeared he wanted to drown her, he kicked off. With her in tow, he scissor-kicked to the deep end of the pool by the waterfall. Having explored this place many a time when working off some energy, he knew the perfect spot to shelter while he figured out where the shooter was. And then we’ll catch ’em and eat ’em. It seemed Hayder wasn’t the only one peeved at the interruption. But still… We don’t eat people. Such a disappointed kitty. But catch the hunter and we’ll order the biggest rare steak they have in stock. With the red sauce stuff? A double order of the red wine reduction, he promised. Lungs burning, Hayder dragged them to the surface, behind the filtering screen of water cascading from above. The little hidden grotto made a great hiding spot. The shooter would have a hard time targeting them, and the water would also slow the bullet and throw off its aim. He knew they were more or less safe for the moment, but she didn’t. Soaked and scentless didn’t mean Hayder couldn’t sense the fear coming off Arabella. She remained tucked close to him, for once not sneezing. Small blessing because one of her ginoromous achoos might have caused quite the amplified echo. “Was someone shooting at us?” she whispered in his ear. Kind of funny since nothing could be heard above the falling splash of water “Yes. Someone was trying to get us.” Which meant heads would roll with whoever was on duty for security today. Exactly how had someone made it on to pride land with a loaded weapon? What kind of cowards hunted shifters with bullets? The kind who thought it was okay to beat a woman. Grrrr>/I>. Man, not lion, made the sound. It was also the man who made sure to tuck Arabella as deep as he could into the pocket, using himself as a body shield just in case the gunman got a lucky shot. The crashing of water, not to mention the echoes created by the recess, made it impossible to gauge what happened outside their watery grotto. Did the shooter approach? Did he know where they’d gone? Would he stick around long enough for Hayder to hunt him down and slap him silly? Only one way to find out.

The first is what some psychologists call “hot hate,” based on anger. Imagine yourself yelling at the television, and you get the picture. Most Americans would be ashamed to say “I hate Republicans” or “I hate Democrats.” But our market preferences tell the true story. We reward professional political pundits who say or write that the other side is evil or stupid or both. For some haters, the hot variety is a little too crude. They prefer “cool hate,” based on contempt, and express disgust for another person through sarcasm, dismissal or mockery. Cool hate can be every bit as damaging as hot hate. The social psychologist and relationship expert John Gottman was famously able to predict with up to 94 percent accuracy whether couples would divorce just by observing a brief snippet of conversation. The biggest warning signs of all were indications of contempt, such as sarcasm, sneering and hostile humor. Want to see if a couple will end up in divorce court? Watch them discuss a contentious topic — which Mr. Gottman has done thousands of times — and see if either partner rolls his or her eyes. Disagreement is normal, but dismissiveness can be deadly. As it is in love, so it is in politics. With just an ironic smile, one can dismiss an entire class of citizens as uncultured rubes or mindless theocrats. Feigning shock and dismay at the resulting indignation simply adds insult to injury. The last variety is anonymous hate.

President Truman’s message to Stalin could not have been clearer if written in blood. It was a warning not to contemplate starting a new war in Europe trusting in the Red Army’s old-fashioned strength in numbers. And it signaled more concisely than any speech that Truman had accepted the central argument of George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram,” sent from the U.S. embassy in Moscow six months before the tests: the Soviet Union had to be contained. As Truman himself put it: “If we could just have Stalin and his boys see one of these things, there wouldn’t be any question about another war.

SURE? The Case of the Knockout Artist Bugs Meany’s heart burned with a great desire. It was to get even with Encyclopedia. Bugs hated being outsmarted by the boy detective. He longed to punch Encyclopedia so hard on the jaw that the lump would come out the top of his head. Bugs never raised a fist, though. Whenever he felt like it, he remembered Sally Kimball. Sally was the prettiest girl in the fifth grade—and the best fighter. She had done what no boy under twelve had dreamed was possible. She had flattened Bugs Meany! When Sally became the boy detective’s junior partner, Bugs quit trying to use muscle on Encyclopedia. But he never stopped planning his day of revenge. “Bugs hates you more than he does me,” warned Encyclopedia. “He’ll never forgive you for whipping him.” Just then Ike Cassidy walked into the detective agency. Ike was one of Bugs’s pals. “I’m quitting the Tigers,” he announced. “I want to hire you. But you’ll have to take the quarter from my pocket. I can’t move my fingers.” “What’s this all about?” asked Encyclopedia. “Bugs’s cousin, Bearcat Meany, is spending the weekend with him,” said Ike. “Bearcat is only ten, but he’s built like a caveman. Bugs said he’d give me two dollars to box a few rounds with Bearcat. “Bearcat tripped you and stepped on your fingers?” guessed Encyclopedia. “No, he used his head,” said Ike. “I gave him my famous one-two: a left to the nose followed by a right to the chin. I must have broken both my hands hitting him.” “You should have worn boxing gloves,” said Sally. “We wore gloves,” said Ike. “Man, that Bearcat is something else!” “Did he knock you out?” asked Encyclopedia. “He did and he didn’t,” said Ike. “His first punch didn’t knock me out and it didn’t knock me down. But it hurt so much I just had to go down anyway.” “Good grief!” gasped Encyclopedia. “H-he licked you with one punch?” “With two,” corrected Ike. “When I got up, he hit me again. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move enough to fall down.” “Bearcat sounds like a coming champ,” observed Sally. “He’s training for the next Olympics,” said Ike. “Isn’t he a little young?” said Sally. “You tell him that,” said Ike. “He hurt me when he breathed on me.” The more Encyclopedia heard about Bearcat, the unhappier he became.

What the fuck happened between you two?” Logan asks as soon as the door closes. I shrug. Logan is famous for his shrugs. He should accept mine. But he doesn’t. Instead, he punches me in the shoulder. Shit, that hurt. “What the fuck?” I ask. “What happened?” he asks. He looks straight into my eyes. “Nothing,” I say. I shake my head. “Not a fucking thing.” “Dude, you had a pillow shoved in your lap, and you were getting off her bed when we walked in. Something happened.” He shoves my shoulder, almost knocking me over. Logan’s a big boy. A little bigger than me, and I’m a big guy. “Not to mention that she looked like she’d just been fucked.” I stop and turn to face him. I lay both lands flat on his chest and shove him as hard as I can. “Don’t ever fucking talk about her like that again,” I warn. Logan takes a few steps back. Then he grins. “It’s about fucking time,” he says. He holds up a hand to high five me. “Fuck you,” I say instead, and I keep walking toward my dorm. I can’t get there fast enough. “Did you kiss her?” he asks. He grins at me again, and I feel a smile tugging at my own lips. But it doesn’t last for more than a minute. His joviality isn’t contagious. “I was about to…. Then you guys busted in,” I admit. “She wants you, man. She’s got it as bad as you do. Trust me.” I shake my head. “She doesn’t.” “She does.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “She told Emily. Emily told me.” He pauses and then says, “You’re welcome.” “What did she say?” I ask. I probably don’t want to know. “She said she wants to have your babies.” He jumps back when I go to punch him, and he laughs. “Shut up,” I say. “This is serious.” “Why’s it so serious all of a sudden?” Logan asks.  “This shit’s been going on between you two for a long time. Why does it suddenly matter so much?” “The contest is today. They’re raffling off a kiss from her.” I heave a sigh. “One lucky winner is going to get to kiss the woman I love. In front of everybody.” “Oh, fuck,” Logan breathes. “That’s shit.” “I asked her not to go,” I confess. “So, go buy all the tickets,” he says with a shrug, as though he just solved world poverty or AIDS. “It doesn’t work like that. You have to guess the number of jelly beans in her jar. If you get the wrong number, you don’t get anything. If you get the right number, you get to kiss her.” “So, we need to figure out how many jelly beans are in her jar,” he says simply. He looks at me. “Did you see the jar?” I nod. “It’s a pickle jar.” I hold out my hands to show him the size. “The big kind.” “So we need a jar that size, and we need to fill it with jelly beans and then count them. At least then you can get close, right?” I scrub a hand down my face. “This is stupid. I’ll never get it. Every guess costs a dollar.” I reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet. It’s nearly empty. “You’re just going to let somebody else kiss her?” “If I’m not there, I won’t see it.” I shrug my shoulders, trying to hide the fact that I feel as if I’m being gutted. He stares at me. He doesn’t say anything. “If it were Emily, I’d buy every fucking pickle and every damn jelly bean in the state of New York. There’s no way my girl would kiss some asshole.” “You’re right,” I say. “We need to go to the store.” Hope swells inside me. Do I have a chance? I won’t know until I try, I guess. Logan

From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that’s bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum. This

Discoverer of Göbekli Tepe and its chief excavator, Dr Klaus Schmidt, famously warned against what he called ‘Holy Land Syndrome,’ which is the propensity for archaeologists to head out into the field with a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other. Holy Land Syndrome precludes the finding of something you didn’t already expect to find.

In the 1992 presidential debate, third-party candidate Ross Perot famously warned about a 'giant sucking sound' of American jobs going south of the border to low-wage nations once trade protections were dropped. Perot was right, but no one in our government listened to him. Tariffs were ditched, and then Bill Clinton moved into the White House...He continued Reagan's trade policies and committed the United States to so-called free-trade agreements such as GATT, NAFTA, and the WTO, thus removing all the protections that had kept our domestic manufacturing industries safe from foreign corporate predators for two centuries.

If it all ended on our shores that would be serious enough, indeed, as our idol worship of famous, rich actors and sports figures is not a sign of an emotionally healthy, let alone morally strong, nation.

Nicias, a famous general and Socrates' friend, warns the company: I don't think you know what it is like to get involved in a discussion with Socrates. Whatever the subject you begin with, he will continue to press the argument and he will not stop until until he has made you give a general account of yourself. You will have to account not only for your present mode of life, but also for everything you have done in the past. And even when he has made you do all of this, Socrates will not let you go until he has examined each question deeply and thoroughly.

The most famous faux fatality was “George,” the imaginary welder who was killed during the construction of Pirates of the Caribbean. Evidently, poor George was either electrocuted or crushed by a falling beam and continues to haunt the attraction to this day. Cast members still tell the ghost story to new hires, warning that they best say, “Good morning, George,” when they prepare the ride for opening or they’ll experience a day of breakdowns, evacuations or odd occurrences. “You’ll see or hear something strange,” warned one spooked ride operator. “You’ll see moving shadows on the [hidden camera] monitors or mysterious figures standing in the knee-deep water. You’ll feel a sudden, icy cold breeze. You clean graffiti and it comes back.

That drummer is hot,” Sam says. He’s still watching the footage with no sound, since we play the TV with subtitles for Logan all the time. “I would have thought you’d like the lead singer best,” Emily says, watching his face. He shakes his head. “Not my type.” “Not enough ass,” Pete tosses out. “He’s not into skinny chicks.” Pete looks over at Emily. “No offense, Em.” Emily rolls her eyes and points to her very pregnant belly. Sam shoots Pete a look and shoves Pete’s legs out of his lap. Pete makes a move like he’s grabbing and squeezing. “Sam likes a girl he can hold on to.” Sam’s face goes pink as he shrugs. “I like curves,” he says. “I can’t help it.” Pete shoves him again. “He wants tits and ass,” he says, making that squeezing motion again. “And a brain,” Sam says, holding up his finger. “And an appetite,” I add. Sam raises his brow. “I like to cook. So I like a girl who likes to eat. Go figure.” Emily laughs. Sam must feel the need to explain himself because he goes on. “I hate taking a girl to dinner and having her order a salad. Or having her tell me she can’t eat one of my famous cupcakes because she’s on a diet.” He shivers like he’s repulsed by the very idea of it. He draws an hourglass figure in the air with his hands. “I’ll take tits, ass, and thighs, please,” he says, as though he’s ordering dinner. “And, dammit, if there’s icing that can be licked off places, I want her to be able to partake without thinking about calories.” “TMI, Sam!” Emily cries, covering her ears. Sam laughs, so I throw a remote at his head. “Act like a gentleman,” I warn, because I feel like I should. But that shit’s funny as hell.

Singer cited the famous essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in which biologist Garrett Hardin argued that individuals acting in their rational self-interest may undermine the common good, and warned against assuming that technology would save us from ourselves. “If we ignore the present warning signs and wait for an ecological disaster to strike, it will probably be too late,” Singer noted. He imagined what it must have been like to be Noah, surrounded by “complacent compatriots,” saying, “‘Don’t worry about the rising waters, Noah; our advanced technology will surely discover a substitute for breathing.

In early 1506 a peasant had been fixing up his vineyard near the Colosseum when he accidentally opened up a hole in the ground. There, he discovered a large statue of humans being slaughtered by giant serpents. Word reached the Vatican almost immediately. Experts were sent for, including Michelangelo. The statue was identified as the long-lost Laocoön, the most beloved statue in pagan Rome, thought destroyed by the barbarian hordes in the fifth century. It was originally commissioned by the victorious Greeks after they destroyed Troy. It shows the moment of death of Laocoön, the high priest of Troy, being killed by supernatural snakes sent by the Greek gods to prevent him and his sons from warning the Trojans not to bring the famous Trojan horse inside the city walls. Laocoön is best known for his warning: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” After the serpents killed him and his sons, the Trojans did indeed bring the giant wooden horse into their city. When the hidden Greek soldiers came out of its hollow belly that night, it spelled the end of both Troy and the Trojans. Later, when the victorious Roman legions brought a close to the Greek Empire, they brought home the Laocoön as one of their favorite war trophies.

Petrov was the commander in charge when satellite data indicated there were five American ICBMs on their way to strike Moscow with nuclear weapons. For reasons having to do with human intuition, Petrov became suspicious of that attack information. Years later, he told Washington Post reporter David Hoffman what he was thinking at the time. “I had a funny feeling in my gut,” Petrov said, asking himself, Who starts a nuclear war against another superpower with just five ICBMs? In 1983, Petrov made the decision to interpret the early-warning signal as a “false alarm,” he said, thereby not sending a report up the chain of command. For his well-placed skepticism, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov famously became known as “the man who saved the world from nuclear war.

Crow had few peers in the years before…before his transition. But of that latter—change—sufficient has already been recorded elsewhere. A one-time writer of macabre short stories, he occasionally chronicled his own adventures; at other times such work was undertaken by his lifelong friend Henri-Laurent de Marigny (son of Etienne, the world-famous New Orleans mystic), while others of his adventures were reported by mere acquaintances. All of the Titus Crow adventures, in short story or novelette form, are here collected in one volume. They are presented chronologically, as best as may be determined, and along with The Burrowers Beneath and the “post-transition” novels, they complete the Crow canon. In addition to the tales in which Titus Crow is a primary actor, there are three other closely related stories: The Mirror of Nitocris, the one and only personal chronicle of Crow’s apprentice and fellow traveller, de Marigny; Inception, in which Crow plays only a cameo role; and lastly The Black Recalled, in which nothing of Crow appears at all! …Or does it? Only one thing remains to be said. In the light of Titus Crow’s fascination and lifelong affair with matters of dark concern, much of this volume is naturally taken up with narratives of relentless horror. Therefore—it is not a book for the squeamish. You have been warned!

Oh, Ames, you are so screwed.” Confused, I asked, “Why?” “He bought you a building? There’s no way this stays a ‘fake’ marriage. You’ll be repaying him in sex before too long.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Stop it. It’s Liam. Neither one of us is interested in sex.” “Come on, Amy. This is a classic story—pretending to be married, forced into close proximity, and then falling for each other. Before you know it, it’ll be a real marriage.” Pointing at Natalie, she added, “Just like this one protested that she wouldn't end up with Jaxon after he knocked her up. The writing was on the wall. All you have to do is read it like I am now.” “Listen, we have our separate spaces. I don’t even like Liam most days. I’m not going to want to sleep with him. Ever.” Hannah’s lips quirked up smugly. “Famous last words. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The man may be a grouch, but he is one hell of a male specimen. And marriage to him makes you a princess.

famous warning of Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Is that the only reason you’re helping me?” “Isn’t it enough?” “It is. I’m just wondering if there’s something else.” “No,” he harrumphed. “Wait, yes. Now I remember—I also want to fuck you again.” I tripped over my own feet, about to dive into the ground. He caught me by the hem of my shirt, jerking me upright. I’ll always catch you. When have I ever let you take the hit for something, Dot? “You did not just say that.” I slapped branches out of my way as I regained my balance. “Did too. Fair warning—I want much more than fucking this time around. I want dates. I want laughs. I want you to be honest with me. All the stuff that freaks you out for some reason. No strings attached. No commitment. Just fun. A perfect do-over.” “Why do you need a do-over?” “So my last memory of us won’t be you almost vomiting because we had sex.” “I almost vomited because your sister caught us!” I shrieked. “Which is exactly why this won’t happen again. You’re high if you think I’m betraying her trust a second time around.” “Thought you’d say that. I have great news for you.” “What?” “She no longer gives a fuck.” “That’s not tru—” “It is. Ask her yourself.” The confidence with which he’d said that made my heart twist like Play-Doh. What had changed between then and now? Why was she okay with us hooking up all of a sudden? “Why wouldn’t she care?” I asked in a panic. “Because it no longer matters.” “How c—” “Come on, Bitchy. Put two and two together.” Bitchy. He’d called me Bitchy. The rain intensified, knocking on our faces. I skidded to an abrupt stop. A wave of memories crashed into me all at once, nearly knocking me down on my ass. Everything became crystal clear in one swift moment. Row defending me when Dylan caught us having sex. Row teaching me how to slow dance in his room before my very first prom because I knew I would be too terrified to ever dance with anyone else and didn’t want to miss out. Row and I sitting on the hood of his car, in front of an endless ocean, the moon, and the stars. Me saying, “Isn’t it beautiful?” and him answering, “Yes, you are.” Row being essentially in love with me. I couldn’t even touch the other revelation right now. It was too much to process. Bitchy. Bitchy. Bitchy. McMonster. Selfless, sweet McMonster. Who seemed to know me inside out. Who could read me like an open book. Could it be? But it couldn’t be. No. It couldn't. Not him. not the shinest boy in Staindrop. "No more running." I planted my feet on the pavement, clutching my knees, panting. Tears prickled the back of my eyeballs. Row looked on high alert. Neither of us seemed ready to acknowledge the fact that he was McMonster and I was Bitchy. For the first time since I'd known him, he looked like a boy. Not a heartthrob, not a world-famous chef, not a formidable boss-- just a boy.

Pat Robertson, the popular TV preacher who presided over religious talk show The 700 Club, famously warned families that ‘the feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

In his farewell address, George Washington famously warned against “the baneful effects” of political enmity.41

So you don’t want to have sex with me?” “Oh, I want inside you like you wouldn’t believe. But if you think trying to make things purely physical between us is going to work, you’re kidding yourself.” “We could try.” “If you like,” he said, nonplussed. “But I’m warning you now, if we have sex, we’re cuddling after.” I groaned. “Are you serious?” “Absolutely. I’m not putting out otherwise.

For a few years Trieste once more entered the world’s consciousness, as the Powers argued what to do with it. No longer one of the supreme ports of Europe, it became instead one of those places, like Danzig or Tangier, that have been argued about at international conferences, written about in pamphlets, questioned about in parliamentary debates, less as living cities than as political hypotheses. Winston Churchill, in a famous speech in America, warned the world that an iron curtain had been laid across Europe, dividing democracy and Communism “from Stettin to Trieste.” Abroad the statesmen endlessly parleyed; at home the Triestini of different loyalties, chanting slogans and waving their respective flags, surged about the place rioting. Finally in 1954 the disconsolate and bewildered seaport was given its solution, and Trieste has been what it has been ever since, a geographical and historical anomaly, Italian by sovereignty but in temperament more or less alone.

Second, the warning against insatiable desires makes more sense with respect to some desires, less sense with respect to others. It seems most reasonable when the object of desire is something like territorial conquests, wealth, power, fame, glory, influence, sex, expensive art objects, fancy clothes, sports cars, and so on. But what if the object of desire is knowledge, understanding, artistic satisfaction, the eradication of a disease, or the elimination of injustice? Is the fact that these desires cannot be finally satisfied a reason for reining them in? Isaac Newton famously lamented that his quest for insight into the nature of things could be compared to the actions of a boy playing on the seashore “whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Would it have been better for him to have kept his desire for understanding in check so as to avoid this abiding feeling of disappointment? The accomplished and acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith offers this advice to fellow writers: “Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”28 Should she, instead, advise her readers never to even try? This argument can be taken in two ways. One way is to see it as supporting the previous objection: there are kinds of pleasure and happiness that are invariably tied to feelings of dissatisfaction, and the Epicurean guidelines fail to appreciate this. The other way is to see it as placing a question mark against the prioritizing of happiness. The insatiable desire of Newton for understanding, of Beethoven for adequate artistic expression, of Shackleton for adventure, or of Harriet Tubman for justice may not have brought them happiness; it may even have interfered with their capacity to be happy. But such examples remind us that happiness may not always be a rational person’s primary goal.

The famous verses in Romans 12:1–2 warn us against being conformed to this world. How can we resist the pressures of this world? By being transformed by the renewal of our minds!

In 1935 the famous radical author Lewis Corey (née Louis Fraina) announced in his Crisis of the Middle Class that the Jeffersonian Dream was moribund: ‘That middle-class ideal is gone beyond recall. The United States today is a nation of employees and of propertyless dependents.’ As jobless accountants and ruined stockbrokers stood in the same breadlines as truckdrivers and steelworkers, much of the babbitry of the 1920s was left with little to eat except for obsolete class pride. Corey warned that the downwardly mobile middle stratum, ‘at war with itself’, was approaching a radical crossroads, and would turn either toward socialism or fascism.36

Even famous evangelical author Max Lucado (who had never spoken publicly about presidential candidates) warned against Donald Trump.

Woodrow Wilson’s administration knew the Germans’ U-boat policy and was already warning Germany not to target civilian ships, and on May 1, the very day that passengers were boarding the Lusitania on its trip back across the Atlantic, the president told Americans that "no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed" could justify actually conducting the attack.

Indeed, the British government began warning divers who went to explore the wreck that there were dangerous contents down there: “Successive British governments have always maintained that there was no munitions on board the Lusitania (and that the Germans were therefore in the wrong to claim to the contrary as an excuse for sinking the ship) ... The facts are that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous. The Treasury have decided that they must inform the salvage company of this fact in the interests of the safety of all concerned.

A house in the country to find out what’s true / a few linen shirts, some good art / and you.” This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark. Marriage has a bonsai energy: It’s a tree in a pot with trimmed roots and clipped limbs. Mind you, bonsai can live for centuries, and their unearthly beauty is a direct result of such constriction, but nobody would ever mistake a bonsai for a free-climbing vine. Marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of that.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.” When you become infatuated with somebody, you’re not really looking at that person; you’re just captivated by your own reflection, intoxicated by a dream of completion that you have projected on a virtual stranger. People are far more susceptible to infatuation when they are going through delicate or vulnerable times in their lives. The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely fall in love. Infatuation alters your brain chemistry, as though you were dousing yourself with opiates and stimulants. And infatuation is the most perilous aspect of human desire. Infatuation leads to what psychologists call “intrusive thinking”—that famously distracted state in which you cannot concentrate on anything other than the object of your obsession. An old Polish adage warns: “Before going to war, say one prayer. Before going to sea, say two prayers. Before getting married, say three.” “Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.” We derail our life’s journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time.

Ramequins au Fromage (SWISS CHEESE FONDUE) YIELD: 4 SERVINGS THIS IS an interpretation of the famous Swiss cheese fondue (French for “melted”) as we made it in the Lyon–Bourg-en-Bresse area. Traditional Swiss fondue is a combination of melted Gruyère and Emmenthaler cheeses, white wine, and nutmeg, boiled together and lightly thickened with cornstarch, then finished with kirschwasser. My version uses a lot of garlic, no thickening agent, and no kirsch. The cheese tends to thicken in the bottom of the pot (an enameled cast-iron pot is best), and the flavored white wine comes to the top. As diners drag their bread cubes gently through the fondue, the liquid on the surface and the thicker mixture underneath combine. Only crusty, country-type French bread should be used. If it falls off your fork into the cheese, custom requires that you buy a round of drinks for everyone at the table. Fondue is usually made in the kitchen at the last moment, then brought to the dining room and kept hot over a Sterno or gas burner set in the center of the table. My father always warned against drinking cold white wine with the fondue, claiming it would cause the stomach to swell, but I have drunk my wine throughout without any ill effects. Fondue is a meal in itself at our house and is usually followed by a salad and fruit for dessert.

British physicist, novelist, and science advisor C. P. Snow, a man who straddled many worlds, like the scientist/artist/statesmen of old. In a famous 1959 lecture titled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” Snow warned that the widening communication gulf between the sciences and the humanities threatened the ability of modern peoples to solve their problems:

In 1934, with the country nowhere near able to climb out of the Great Depression, Upton Sinclair, famous for his muckraking novel The Jungle and his socialistic solutions for the ailing economy, had swept the Democratic primary for governor of California. (He was hardly alone in turning to socialism at such a dire time.) Mayer, fearful Sinclair would tax the movie studios to pay for his socialist programs, warned that MGM and other studios would move back east if Sinclair won—not anything he was prepared to let happen. Calling in Irving Thalberg, head of production, Mayer told him to create a fake newsreel showing the disasters that would follow such an election outcome. Movie theaters were forced to show the film when they booked an MGM movie, and William Randolph Hearst would see to its distribution to all other theaters in the state. And indeed, as soon as the fake exposé hit the screens, Sinclair’s huge lead vanished, and Frank Merriam became governor. The dirty politics and stealth tactics of Richard Nixon? As you can see, just a rerun.

Later that evening, Hunter Thompson kicked me. I had no idea who he was. He was in the kitchen, trying to smoke opium. I watched as he sucked the life out of what looked like a Tootsie Roll. It seemed like a lot of effort, almost funny—until he leapt up from the table and kicked me. “What the fuck is your story?” I said. He cursed me out with a string of colorful words that caused me to stop and stare even more intensely, not out of fear or anger but rather amazement at his vocabulary. That was when someone mentioned that he was the famous gonzo journalist and warned it was best not to rile him up any more because he carried a gun and didn’t hesitate to pull it out and start shooting.

The soul is called hugr, Anglo-Saxon hygi, thereby indicating it as desire and inclination, as courage and thought. It inspires a man's behaviour, his actions and his speech are characterised according to whether they proceed out of whole hugr, bold hugr, or downcast hugr. It resides in him and urges him on; thus ends Loki when he has said his say among the gods: “Now I have spoken that which my hugr urged me to say,” thus also Sigurd when he has slain the serpent: “My hugr urged me to it.” It sits within, giving counsel or warning; “my hugr tells me,” is a weighty argument, for when the hugr has told a thing, the matter is pretty well settled. “He seems to me unreliable, you will see he will soon turn the evil side outward; it is against my will that he is with you, for my hugr tells me evil about him,” thus Ingolf exhorts his brother to turn away a vagabond who comes to the place. A winter passed, and Ingolf could say that all had fallen out as his hugr had warned him. And Atli Hasteinson, of noble race, confidently gives directions to his household after the fight with Hrafn: “You, my son, will avenge your father, if you take after your kin, and my hugr tells me you will become a famous man, and your children after you.” And when the hugr is uneasy, as when one can say with Gudrun: “Long I hesitated, long were my hugrs divided in me,” then life is not healthy. But when a man has followed the good counsel from within, and attained his end, then there rises from his soul a shout of triumph, it is his hugr laughing in his breast.— Now and again, the soul has its knowledge directly, as we should say; at times it has acquired it by spying out the land, and then it may chance that the enemy has seen his opponent's hugr coming towards him, whether in human form or in the shape of a beast. He dreams of wolves, and is told that it is the hugrs of men he has seen.

In the introduction, we derived one general prediction for beginning and intermediate practitioners of meditation from both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches (meditation yields generally positive psychological effects), but we did not deal with predictions that refer to advanced or final stages in the meditation practice. Here is such a prediction. Both Hindu and Buddhist approaches hold that practitioners of meditation might develop a kind of supercognition, special abilities (siddhis) that exceed our normal abilities. Buddhist theory predicts that six kinds of siddhis might arise.… Notably, the least spectacular one, destruction of the defiling impulses, is seen as the most significant. The others are psychokinesis, clairaudience, telepathic knowledge, retrocognitive knowledge …, and clairvoyance. The Yoga Sutras report more of these siddhis as a result of extended yoga practice. In both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches, siddhis are not regarded as very important, and the Buddha, as well as famous yogis, has warned of the dangers inherent in the siddhis.… Nonetheless, a theory about the effects of meditation would not be complete without consideration of these altered states of consciousness. There is some evidence that such states can occur spontaneously …, but the effects found in meta-analyses are usually quite small.… To the best of our knowledge, nobody has yet examined whether the respective effects are more pronounced for experienced practitioners of meditation, as both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches would predict

The most famous of these books is probably De Secretis Mulierum (Women’s Secrets), a late medieval text compiled by anonymous monks. Even by the standards of the day, the authors’ conception of female anatomy is fanciful. The text declares that menses is not blood but excess food; asks if said menses comes out the anus; and suggests that urine comes from the vagina. Its grasp on male anatomy is shaky, too. Male readers are warned that if they consume sage on which a cat has ejaculated—which is a really weird hypothetical—they will become pregnant with kittens. The esophagus would have to serve as the birth canal, and the father would need to vomit them out.

(From Rachel): Just sayin: Mary should come with a warning label. “May cause massive anxiety and an inability to get a word in edgewise. Use with caution, or better yet, tranquilizers.

Upon his return to the United States, Fry tried to warn the government about the plight of the Jews in Europe. Curiously, his work in France led him to be investigated by the FBI, who put him on their watch list. Fry died in 1967 while reediting his memoirs. His name often appears in biographies of the famous, many of whom owe their lives to him and his small dedicated team of helpers.