Feat Short Quotes

We have all heard such stories of expert intuition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announces “White mates in three” without stopping, or the physician who makes a complex diagnosis after a single glance at a patient. Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of the car in the next lane is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced firefighter or physician—only more common. The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.

Our kind has surely accomplished brilliant feats during our short time on this earth as a species. But before we poison, pollute, degrade and murder every other creature on the planet, we must learn to limit our numbers and our greed. This is the lesson that humans so desperately need to learn at this turning point in human history.

You loved her," Isobel said. "Worshipped," Scrimshaw corrected. "But more ludicrous than that, let us not forget, she loved me." He gave a short ironic laugh. "Not just him-the poet. But me as well. I, the epitome of our own penchant for self-destruction. Do you know how difficult...how impossible such a feat must have been?

Stubbornness is a weapon. People tend to draw it out when a sensitive part of their identity is threatened—be it dignity, honor, pride, desires, etc. If loaded with righteous resolve, stubbornness can assist in overcoming obstacles and achieving great feats; however, more often than not it is loaded with anger, used as a means of destruction for both the possessor and those whom he turns his weapon upon. It is best utilized by wise individuals who are able to dispassionately perceive if their stubbornness will accomplish good, or if it should be put away and replaced by a humble substitute to spare the lives of everyone affected.

Like our IQ, talent is a gift from our ancestors. If we're lucky, we inherit it. In the fortunate talented few, the dark dimension of their natures will first resist the labor that creativity demands, but once they commit to the task, their talented side stirs to action and rewards them with astonishing feats. These flashes of creative genius seem to arrive from out of the blue for the obvious reason: They come from the unconscious mind. In short, if the Muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented.

If she takes the next point, she’ll win the US Open and hit a record-breaking twenty-three Slams—a feat that, just a few short years ago, was unheard of. But that’s Nicki for you. Unstoppable. Raising the bar for absolutely everyone.

It is no great hermeneutic feat to recognize that Rome crucified Jesus because of His claim to be king. The charge was posted over His head, after all. What is often overlooked, however, is that it is precisely because of their allegiance to that king—Jesus—that Rome persecuted His followers. That the God of the Jews should father a son with magical powers was no more offensive to the Romans than the idea that Zeus should father Hercules. But what was intolerable was the fact that Jesus’ followers did not stop with recognizing Him as divine; they had the audacity to claim He was their actual sovereign. In short, while the Jews preserved their religion by shouting, “We have no king but Caesar,” the early Christians sealed their fate by unabashedly declaring, “We have no king but Jesus!

As Louie bent, gasping, over his spent legs, he marveled at the kick that he had forced from his body. It had felt very, very fast. Two coaches hurried up, gaping at their stopwatches, on which they had clocked his final lap. Both watches showed precisely the same time. In distance running in the 1930s, it was exceptionally rare for a man to run a last lap in one minute. This rule held even in the comparatively short hop of a mile: In the three fastest miles ever run, the winner’s final lap had been clocked at 61.2, 58.9, and 59.1 seconds, respectively. No lap in those three historic performances had been faster than 58.9. In the 5,000, well over three miles, turning a final lap in less than 70 seconds was a monumental feat. In his record-breaking 1932 Olympic 5,000, Lehtinen had spun his final lap in 69.2 seconds. Louie had run his last lap in 56 seconds.

Man is strange: despite his feats of scientific and societal progress, his search for the best the earth has to offer, his construction of skyscrapers, his control over the diseases that used to wipe us out, and his escape from the short life that used to define his existence on earth, here he is, still prisoner to ideologies able to move him from heaven to hell in the blink of an eye.

the idea of action at a distance—that one particle could instantaneously influence another trillions of miles away—was a stark violation of the special theory of relativity. This expressly decreed that nothing could outrace the speed of light and yet here were physicists insisting that, somehow, at the subatomic level, information could. (No one, incidentally, has ever explained how the particles achieve this feat.

The other sources, even when they mention Hel, rarely describe it. But when they do, it's cast in neutral or even positive terms. For example, the mention that the land of the dead is "green and beautiful" in Ibn Fadlan's account is mirrored in a passage from Saxo (The medieval Danish historian, as you likely recall). In Saxo's telling of the story of Hadding, the hero travels to the "Underworld" and finds a "fair land where green herbs grow when it is winter on earth." His companion even beheads a rooster just outside of that land and flings its carcass over the wall, at which point the bird cries out and comes back to life - a feat which is highly reminiscent of another detail from Ibn Fadlan, namely the beheading of a rooster and a hen whose bodies are then tossed into the dead man's boat shortly before it's set aflame. In both cases, the emphasis is on abundant life in the world of the dead, even when death and absence prevail on earth.

Violet had carefully chosen some long-hanging, loose-fitting basketball shorts to wear over her swimsuit, in hopes of keeping her injuries at least partially hidden. But it didn’t take long before one . . . and then two . . . and then at least twenty of her friends had noticed her bandages peeking out from beneath the swishing fabric, and she was forced to recount her morning accident. Jay loved hearing her tell the story, and every time he heard her talking about it, he would come over so that he could interject, and of course embellish, his role in the events. In his version, he was her champion, practically carrying her from the woods and performing near-miraculous medical feats to save her legs from complete amputation. Violet, and annoyingly every other girl within earshot, couldn’t help but giggle while he jokingly sang his own praises. Violet happened to walk up just in time to hear Jay recounting his version once more to a group of eager admirers. “Hero? I wouldn’t say hero . . .” he quipped. Violet rolled her eyes, turning to Grady Spencer, a friend of theirs from school. “Can you believe him?” Grady gave her a concerned look. “Seriously, are you okay, Violet? It sounds like it was pretty bad.” Violet was embarrassed that Jay’s exaggerations were actually dredging up real sympathy from others. “It’s fine,” she assured him, and when Grady didn’t look convinced, she added, “Really, I just tripped.” She reached out and shoved Jay. “Will you knock it off, hero? You’re making an ass out of yourself.

To me, fiction writing at any length, in any form, is a feat of radical compression: take the sprawling chaos of human experience, run it through the sieve of perception, and distill it into something comparatively miniscule that somehow, miraculously, illuminates the vast complexity around it. I don’t think about short stories any differently than I do about novels or novellas or even memoirs. But the smaller scale of a story is important; the distillation must be even more extreme in order to succeed. It also must be purer; there is almost no room for mistakes.

I had never been to the Amazon, my jungle experience had mostly come from Central America with some short trips to Borneo, but the Amazon undoubtedly had a mystique all of its own. Surely the trees would be much bigger, the wildlife had to be much richer and more diverse and the people would be that bit wilder and cut off from the outside world. It gave me butterflies to think of spending time in the Amazon. Not knowing the geography of the area in any detail, my dreams were restricted to what I did know. There was a ruddy great river that virtually crossed the whole continent from west to east, and…that was about it. I had heard of expeditions that had kayaked the entire river from source to sea – phenomenal endurance feats taking five-plus months – the problem was I was a rubbish kayaker. Sure, I’d done a bit on the canals in England as a Cub Scout but that cold, depressing experience had been enough to put me off for life. What a dull, miserable sport, instructed by overenthusiastic dickheads in stupid helmets.

Nostromo is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which belong to the period following upon the publication of the Typhoon volume of short stories. I don’t mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious, extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that after finishing the last story of the Typhoon volume it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about. This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for Nostromo came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely destitute of valuable details. As a matter of fact in 1875 or ’6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution. On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details, and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked up outside a second-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the course of his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on board a schooner, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali

It is no great hermeneutic feat to recognize that Rome crucified Jesus because of His claim to be king. The charge was posted over His head, after all. What is often overlooked, however, is that it is precisely because of their allegiance to that king Jesus, that Rome persecuted His followers. That the God of the Jews should father a son with magical powers was no more offensive to the Romans than the idea that Zeus should father Hercules. But what was intolerable was the fact that Jesus’ followers did not stop with recognizing Him as divine; they had the audacity to claim He was their actual sovereign. In short, while the Jews preserved their religion by shouting “We have no king but Caesar,” the early Christians sealed their fate by unabashedly declaring “We have no king but Jesus!

When it comes to antidepressants in particular, there’s one more rumple: the American attitude about happiness. In this country, happiness is another ideal that carries nearly the weight of a moral imperative; as Elliott observes, there is an unspoken expectation in America that people should feel and act happy most of the time. Travelers to the United States often remark that in America, more than other places, cheerfulness is viewed as a default state, and that there’s considerable pressure to present oneself as upbeat. There’s also a peculiarly American belief that authenticity and happiness stand in a causal relationship to each other—that really being oneself will lead to happiness every time. Elliott thinks that this belief evolved from a loose interpretation of Freud, who taught that unhappiness was caused by repressions of various kinds: by that logic, the least repressed, most fully realized self would be the most happy. Americans possess, says Elliott, a naive trust that achieving perfect personal authenticity, a feat summed up in the popular phrase “self-actualization,” will result in the deepest possible contentment. So: Americans are supposed to be authentic, and we’re supposed to be happy. When happiness comes easily, this is not a problem. But for people who aren’t feeling happy and are contemplating antidepressants, it can make for tough choices. Is it better to take antidepressants and be happy (but maybe inauthentic, if you believe that antidepressants can temper the self)? Or is it better to press on, authentic but not happy? Either way, you’ll be failing to fulfill the script that American lore has laid out for you: be who you are, and happiness will surely and naturally follow. There’s only one way out of this bind, and it’s to believe that antidepressants make you more, not less, authentic. As it happens, this is precisely the claim that Elliott finds people make about a wide variety of enhancement technologies: people use a technique to alter a certain thing about themselves, and then speak about the alteration as something that makes them into, or expresses, who they really were inside all along. (For example, recipients of sex-change operations often describe them as a way to bring the physical body in line with a deeper reality. I always felt like a woman, and now I am one.) In short, people who use personal enhancements often speak like Tess did when she told Peter Kramer that, off Prozac, “I am not myself.

Name: Artemis Landon Class: Runesmith Level: 2 XP: 15/300 Skills: Athletics: D Acrobatics: F Crossbow: C Crafting: D Runesmithing: C Short Swords: F Stealth: F Search: F Healing: D Trapfinding: D Dungeoneering: F Feats: - Trapsenses: Gain a mental warning when about to set off a trap. Class Features: - Runesmithing: By carving intricate runes, you may imbue magic into items and objects. These runes retain all magic until removed or affected by Enchantment Breaking spells. - Runescribbler: Once per day you may use dirt, water or paint to create a temporary rune. This rune functions the same as any other rune, with the exception that it lasts only for one hour regardless of type. Runes: Harden: Supernaturally hardens an item, toughening it against all elements. Shield: Creates a force of magical energy that prevents one type of damage from applying. Requires a damage type rune in order to be functional. Force: Adds a kinetic damage modifier.

Name: Artemis Landon Class: Runesmith Level: 3 XP: 40/750 Skills: Athletics: D Appraisal: F Acrobatics: F Crossbow: C Crafting: D Runesmithing: C Short Swords: F Stealth: F Search: F Healing: D Trapfinding: B Dungeoneering: D Feats: - Trapsenses: Gain a mental warning when about to set off a trap. - Roguish Intentions: Increases your Trapfinding skill to Rank B Class Features: - Runesmithing: By carving intricate runes, you may imbue magic into items and objects. These runes retain all magic until removed or affected by Enchantment Breaking spells. - Runescribbler: Once per day you may use dirt, water or paint to create a temporary rune. This rune functions the same as any other rune, with the exception that it lasts only for one hour regardless of type. Runes: Harden: Supernaturally hardens an item, toughening it against all elements. Shield: Creates a force of magical energy that prevents one type of damage from applying. Requires a damage type rune in order to be functional. Force: Adds a kinetic damage modifier. Boost: Increases a single skill by 1 rank. Does not grant skill if wielder does not have it.

Unfortunately, these days, focusing on our long-term goals isn’t an easy feat. Many external forces lead us to become caught up in short-term thinking and encourage us to fall for immediate gratification.

Shortly after reading Tolstoy I discovered his countryman Fyodor Dostoevsky. These two, the most famous and accomplished of all Russian writers, lived and worked during the same period of history. Though they read each other’s work with admiration, they never met, and perhaps it was just as well—they were opposites in every way. Where Tolstoy wrote bright, sunny novels, Dostoevsky wrote brooding, interior ones. Where Tolstoy worked out ascetic schemes for self-improvement, Dostoevsky periodically squandered his health and fortune on alcohol and gambling. Dostoevsky made many mistakes in life, but achieved an amazing feat in art. His novels communicate grace and forgiveness, the heart of the Christian gospel, with a Tolstoyan force. [Continued

The above comments are intended to justify the emphasis in our discussion on the ways in which scientists produce order. This necessarily involves an examination of the methodical way in which observations and experiences are organised so that sense can be made of them. As already noted, we have every reason to believe that the accomplishment of this kind of task is no mean feat, as is clear from a consideration of the corresponding task faced by the observer when confronted by his field notes. The observer’s task is to transform notes of the kind presented at the beginning of this chapter into an ordered account. But exactly how and where should the observer begin this transformation? It is clear that when seen through the eyes of a total newcomer, the daily comings and goings of the laboratory take on an alien quality. The observer initially encounters a mysterious and apparently unconnected sequence of events. In order to make sense of his observations, the observer normally adopts some kind of theme by which he hopes to be able to construct a pattern. If he can successfully use a theme to convince others of the existence of a pattern, he can be said, at least according to relatively weak criteria, to have “explained’’ his observations. Of course, the selection and adoption of “themes” is highly problematic. For example, the way in which the theme is selected can be held to bear upon the validity of his explanation; the observer’s selection of a theme constitutes his method for which he is accountable. It is not enough simply to fabricate order out of an initially chaotic collection of observations; the observer needs to be able to demonstrate that this fabrication has been done correctly, or, in short, that his method is valid.

Whenever a noise exceeds our processing abilities—we can’t decipher all the different sound waves hitting our hair cells— the mind . . . stops trying to understand the individual notes and seeks instead to understand the relationships between the notes. The human auditory cortex pulls off this feat by using it's short- term memory for sound (in the left posterior hemisphere) to uncover patterns at the large level of the phrase, motif, and movement. This new approximation lets us extract order from all those notes haphazardly ͒flying through space, and the brain is obsessed with order . . . It is this psychological instinct—this desperate neuronal search for a pattern, any pattern, that is the source of music . . . We continually abstract on our own inputs, inventing patterns in order to keep pace with the onrush of noise. And once the brain ͒finds a pattern, it immediately starts to make predictions . . . It projects imaginary order into the future . . . The structure of music reflects the human brain’s penchant for patterns . . . But before a pattern can be desired by the brain, that pattern must play hard to get

Carlton Church review – Why Tokyo is populated? How Tokyo became the largest city? Apparently Tokyo Japan has been one of the largest global cities for hundreds of years. One of the primary reasons for its growth is the fact that it has been a political hotspot since they Edo period. Many of the feudal lords of Japan needed to be in Edo for a significant part of the year and this has led to a situation where increasing numbers of the population was attracted to the city. There were many people with some power base throughout Japan but it became increasingly clear that those who have the real power were the ones who were residing in Edo. Eventually Tokyo Japan emerged as both the cultural and the political center for the entire Japan and this only contributed to its rapid growth which made it increasingly popular for all people living in Japan. After World War II substantial rebuilding of the city was necessary and it was especially after the war that extraordinary growth was seen and because major industries came especially to Tokyo and Osaka, these were the cities where the most growth took place. The fact remains that there are fewer opportunities for people who are living far from the cities of Japan and this is why any increasing number of people come to the city. There are many reasons why Japan is acknowledged as the greatest city The Japanese railways is widely acknowledged to be the most sophisticated railway system in the world. There is more than 100 surface routes which is operated by Japan’s railways as well as 13 subway lines and over the years Japanese railway engineers has accomplished some amazing feats which is unequalled in any other part of the world. Most places in the city of Tokyo Japan can be reached by train and a relatively short walk. Very few global cities can make this same boast. Crossing the street especially outside Shibuya station which is one of the busiest crossings on the planet with literally thousands of people crossing at the same time. However, this street crossing symbolizes one of the trademarks of Tokyo Japan and its major tourism attractions. It lies not so much in old buildings but rather in the masses of people who come together for some type of cultural celebration. There is also the religious centers in Japan such as Carlton Church and others. Tokyo Japan has also been chosen as the city that will host the Olympics in 2020 and for many reasons this is considered to be the best possible venue. A technological Metropolitan No other country exports more critical technologies then Japan and therefore it should come as no surprise that the neighborhood electronics store look more like theme parks than electronic stores. At quickly becomes clear when one looks at such a spectacle that the Japanese people are completely infatuated with technology and they make no effort to hide that infatuation. People planning to visit Japan should heed the warnings from travel organizations and also the many complaints which is lodged by travelers who have become victims of fraud. It is important to do extensive research regarding the available options and to read every possible review which is available regarding travel agencies. A safe option will always be to visit the website of Carlton Church and to make use of their services when travelling to and from Japan.

News in abundance was offered in return. The porters of the Livingstone East-Coast Aid Expedition had plenty to relate to the porters sent by Mr. Stanley. Mirambo's war dragged on its length, and matters had changed very little since they were there before, either for better or for worse. They found the English officers extremely short of goods; but Lieut. Cameron, no doubt with the object of his Expedition full in view, very properly felt it a first duty to relieve the wants of the party that had performed this Herculean feat of bringing the body of the traveller he had been sent to relieve, together with every article belonging to him at the time of his death, as far as this main road to the coast.

She looked at Julien before returning her gaze to Gabriel, who watched her unabashedly. Did her son not recognize the man, their savior? Did none of the boys remember their servant? He looked so much as he had all those years ago, though Rowena realized that he must be now, what six and thirty? He still had the long straight nose of his Gallic ancestors and the thick black hair, though he had acquired a few patches of gray at his temples. His eyes were pale greenish blue and framed by thick brows and lashes. He had high patrician cheekbones and a strong noble jaw, though he certainly was no nobleman. “Allow me to introduce the most celebrated man in all of England,” the countess said, finally indicating Gabriel. “This is a fellow Frenchman, Monsieur Lemarque. But he is better known as the French Fox.” Bastien gasped. “Good God, man, is that you?” He cut his gaze to his mother. Most of the family was aware of her fascination with the French Fox. She’d followed the reports of his feats of bravery religiously. The way he’d snatched innocent aristos—mothers and children, old men—from the blade of the guillotine was nothing short of heroic. He escaped even the most intricate traps the enemy laid for him, seemed to laugh in the face of danger, risked everything for men and women to whom he owed nothing. She was half in love with the mysterious spy already. And Gabriel was the French Fox. It all made sense now. Gabriel, the man who had once held her hand when they’d been hiding from revolutionaries—“Do not fear, duchesse. I will die before I allow these devils to so much as look at you.” Now Gabriel smiled thinly and glanced at Lady Winterson. “That was supposed to be our secret, my lady.” Rowena took a slow, shaky breath as heat flooded through her. His voice. That accent. Lady

Fasting, prayama (breath control), japa (repetition of a name of God or a short mantra), and study of scriptures are among the most common practices. At the mels one can observe other varieties of tapas: lying on a bed of thorns or nails, prolonged standing on one leg, lifting one arm for years till it is withered, looking straight into the glaring sun for long hours, and similar sportive feats. Many ascetics keep silent for years. This is one of the most powerful means of storing up spiritual energy.

The knights performed their feats with very little planning and rarely did their post-feat paperwork, but they made up for these shortcomings with their fearlessness, their strength, and their energy. The king was also lucky to have a very good prime minister. The minister saw that taxes were collected, that the majority of the revenues were wisely spent to improve the kingdom, and that the excess monies were well managed. One day the prime minister died, and the king asked his bravest and most fearless knight to be the new minister. Unfortunately, the knight chosen for the job liked jumping on his white charger more than he liked caring for the affairs of the kingdom. He continued to gallop off to slay dragons whenever he had the opportunity and neglected tax collections, investments, improvements, and repairs. After only a short time, the king ran out of money, the peasants ran out of patience, and the kingdom collapsed.

From the wheel to the steel - from papyrus to kindle - from churchbell to doorbell - from holy books to comic books - from monotheism to secularism - from fundamentalism to humanism - from steam engine to jet engine - from cave painting to apple pencil - from antibiotics to antipsychotics - from embroidery to surgery - from moving pics to netflix - every single feat that we can think of, good or bad, is born of the neurons. In short, neurons can make the world or break the world.

Over the next weeks and months, my daughters had to learn to live without their father, and me without my husband. In addition to the overwhelming, everyday tasks like buying groceries, making meals, and getting the girls to their activities, I suddenly had to navigate the legal system and file for divorce. I had to figure out the nearly impossible feat of owning a small business and solo parenting two active, preteen girls. I learned the hard way that you have to remove the leaves from the gutter if you don’t want your basement to flood. I had to muster the courage to pull the hair out of the shower drain. I had to somehow find the time and energy to decontaminate the entire house when the dreaded scourge that is lice made its unwanted appearance. And I had to do it all with the added anger, sadness, and sheer frustration that these were all things John used to take care of. As tempting as it was to collapse, I had two girls who needed me now more than ever. I needed my business to survive. I had a mountain of legal bills—tens of thousands of dollars and increasing daily. As a business owner, if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. Stepping away to take care of my mental and emotional state was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I had to balance what was best for my business in the long term with what the girls and I needed in the short term. I had to get through each day and keep moving forward. This meant I toggled back and forth between dealing with this trauma and running a business. I lived in a constant state of holding it all together, while simultaneously watching it all fall apart.

Depression deprives you of a good many things on it's long, winding course and one of the first things it divests you of is your sense of self. For me, depression's finest feat was tricking me out of an identity...

In all, the crew of the St Laurent picked up and took to safety over eight hundred survivors, an astonishing feat almost without parallel in the lifesaving annals of the sea, almost enough to make one forget, if even only for a moment, the barbed wire and the thousand men who died. Almost, but not quite.

Few Carpathian women carry to full term. The child rarely survives the first year of life. Do not be so certain we are out of the woods. You must rest and be cared for. The child comes first. Byron would say so also. Mikhail must take you far from this place, away from the vampire and the assassins. I will hunt and rid our people of the danger while your mate looks after you.” Gregori’s voice was low and pitched in silver tones, tones of light that beckoned and danced. Nearly impossible to resist. So calm and soothing and reasonable. Raven actually had to shake off the compulsion to do as he wished. She glared at him. “Don’t even try that with me, Gregori.” She included Mikhail in her stare. “And you, you big lunk, you would have gone along with him like the tree-swinging macho man you are. Watch these guys, Shea, they’re impossible. They’ll do anything to get their way.” Shea found herself smiling. “So I’ve noticed.” It was reassuring to see that Raven had learned to hold her own with the men. Shea was every bit as strong. “I can’t leave Byron out there to suffer the same fate as Jacques,” Raven insisted stubbornly. She looked beyond Gregori to Shea for support. “We can’t.” Shea had seen firsthand what the human butchers were capable of, and she could no more leave Byron to such a fate than she could walk away from Jacques. She nodded in agreement. “Once we have Byron’s location, you men can go after him. I’ll stay with raven, and we’ll wait for you here. The vampire can’t come out with the sun up, and we have guns if the humans show up.” “In any case, Mikhail, you know you could protect us from humans, even from a distance,” Raven reminded him. “Shea is right, healer.” Jacques suddenly threw his support to the women. He owed Byron. He could not allow anyone to suffer as he had. He glanced at Gregori. “You knew Raven and Mikhail were in trouble when their minds were connected to Byron’s. What is it? How does the vampire trap us?” “He ensnared Raven and me through Byron, a monumental feat,” Mikhail admitted. Then he rubbed his jaw ruefully. “Is it possible, little brother, you enjoyed hitting me just a bit too much?” Jacques’ teeth gleamed white in the semblance of a smile. He could not help but admire Mikhail’s coolness in the midst of a threat as lethal as the healer’s and the vampire’s combined. To be able to joke, to put aside the ego of the Carpathian male, was nothing short of a miracle.

What can explain this difference? On the surface, much appears to hinge on Richard’s programming feat, his software shim. Otherwise, his effort with Konqueror seems much like my struggles with Mozilla. Perhaps he was just a better programmer than me, and without his coding cleverness, there would be no story. That explanation is too simple. Richard made his shim only after determining he needed one last link in a chain of inspiration, intuition, reasoning, and estimation. His shim was a consequence of his overall plan. To show what I mean, here’s an accounting of what Richard did in his first couple of days at Apple. He began by quizzing us on the browser analysis we had done before his arrival, and after hearing it, he quickly discarded our effort with Mozilla as unlikely to bear fruit. By doing so, he demonstrated the self-confidence to skip any ingratiating display of deference to his new manager, a person who had years of experience in the technical field he was newly entering. Next, Richard resolved to produce a result on the shortest possible schedule. He downloaded an open source project that held genuine promise, the Konqueror code from KDE, a browser that might well serve as the basis for our long-term effort. In getting this code running on a Mac, he decided to make the closest possible approximation of a real browser that was feasible on his short schedule. He identified three features—loading web pages, clicking links, and going back to previous pages. He reasoned these alone would be sufficiently compelling proofs of concept. He then made his shortcuts, and these simplifying choices defined a set of nongoals: Perfect font rendering would be cast aside, as would full integration with the Mac’s native graphics system, same for using only the minimum source code from KDE. He reasoned that these shortcuts, while significant, would not substantially detract from the impact of seeing a browser surf web pages. He resolved to draw together these strands into a single demo that would show the potential of Konqueror. Then, finally, he worked through the technical details, which led him to develop his software shim, since that was the only thing standing between him and the realization of his plan. His thought process amplified his technical acumen. In contrast, Don and I were hoping Mozilla would pan out somehow. I was trying to get the open source behemoth to build on the Mac, with little thought beyond that. I had no comparable plan, goals, nongoals, tight schedule, or technical shortcuts.

Self-propagating systems all have a hardwired tendency to pursue short-term advantage in order to outcompete other systems’ in a context of Natural Selection, even if doing so destroys the superset of which it was a smaller part. The real paradox is that just as a civilization achieves sufficient technological sophistication to be able to attempt intergalactic space travel, it would have already advanced far enough along the trajectory of competitive behaviour to have destroyed itself or its environment. The crucial window of time between the two is therefore more like a vanishing mediator or an impossible object than something which could be achieved in reality, since achieving the ultimate technological feat requires the system to advance beyond the point of self-destruction.