Fee We Quotes

We are all wounded. But wounds are necessary for his healing light to enter into our beings. Without wounds and failure and frustrations and defeats, there will be no opening for his brilliance to tickle in and invade our lives. Failures in life are courses with very high tuition fees, so I don't cut classes and miss my lessons: on humility, on patience, on hope, on asking others for help, on listening to God, on trying again and again and again.

I'm here to tell you, though, ladies that the term "gold digger" is one of the traps we men set to keep you off our money trail; we created that term for you so that we can have all our money and still get everything we want from you without you asking for or expecting this very basic, instincual responsibility that men all over the world are obligated to assume and embrace. ... KNOW THIS: It is your right to expect that a man will pay for your dinner, your movie ticket, your club entry fee, or whatever else he has to pay for in exhange for your time.

Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Venezuelan dream dolls? We have some on display in the palace. They're incredibly rare." He examined its back. "What is it doing here?" "I'm pretty sure Thorne stole it." Kai's expression filled with clarity. "Ah. Of course." He nestled the doll back into its packaging. "He'd better plan on giving all this stuff back." "Sure I'll give it back, Your Majesticness. For a proper finder's fee.

Many of us live in denial of who we truly are because we fear losing someone or something-and there are times that if we don't rock the boat, too often the one we lose is ourselves...It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.

There was a rich old guy named John Donnelly who must have donated a bunch of money. He had forgotten his member card one day, and when I tried to explain that it was a four-dollar fee to enter without a card, he went batshit. "Don't you know who I am, goddammit?" I had never seen him before. "Do you know who I am?" I wanted to say. "Then how could I know who you are? We don't know each other.

What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.

This was my wake-up call. I opened my eyes to the depressing fact that there are other forces at work in medicine besides science. The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity over quality. We don’t get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5

There will never be another Dark-Hunter who goes free. Your happiness comes at the expense of their freedom because there’s no one else I want to barter with. No one else to pay the fee you set up centuries ago. Knowing that, I hope you sleep well at night. (Artemis) (Artemis leaves.) But what about the Dark-Hunters? (Acheron) The one thing I’ve learned most out of all this is that it’s not over until all the cards are played. She laid down her ace, thinking we can’t beat it. But there are fifty-one other cards in the deck and the game isn’t over yet. We’ll figure something out. Her little fit fight now just shows that she’s played her best hand. That was all she’s capable of doing to hurt you, which is exactly why she did it. Don’t let her ruin your day, baby, and don’t let her take from us what we have. We’ve gotten this far together. What’s another bitter goddess to us? Like my papou always says, over, under, around, or through. There’s always a way and we’ll find it. (Tory)

Even utopias need a tax clause. For example, we could start with a transactions tax to rein in the financial industry. Back in 1970, American stocks were still held for an average of five years; forty years later, it’s a mere five days.21 If we imposed a transactions tax – where you would have to pay a fee each time you buy or sell a stock – those high-frequency traders who contribute almost nothing of social value would no longer profit from split-second buying and selling of financial assets. In

what you and I have a receiver would never receive even if their soul is a fee to purchase what we feel

The hoopoe said: 'Your heart's congealed like ice; When will you free yourself from cowardice? Since you have such a short time to live here, What difference does it make? What should you fear? The world is filth and sin, and homeless men Must enter it and homeless leave again. They die, as worms, in squalid pain; if we Must perish in this quest, that, certainly, Is better than a life of filth and grief. If this great search is vain, if my belief Is groundless, it is right that I should die. So many errors throng the world - then why Should we not risk this quest? To suffer blame For love is better than a life of shame. No one has reached this goal, so why appeal To those whose blindness claims it is unreal? I'd rather die deceived by dreams than give My heart to home and trade and never live. We've been and heard so much - what have we learned? Not for one moment has the self been spurned; Fools gather round and hinder our release. When will their stale, insistent whining cease? We have no freedom to achieve our goal Until from Self and fools we free the soul. To be admitted past the veil you must Be dead to all the crowd considers just. Once past the veil you understand the Way From which the crowd's glib courtiers blindly stray. If you have any will, leave women's stories, And even if this search for hidden glories Proves blasphemy at last, be sure our quest Is not mere talk but an exacting test. The fruit of love's great tree is poverty; Whoever knows this knows humility. When love has pitched his tent in someone's breast, That man despairs of life and knows no rest. Love's pain will murder him and blandly ask A surgeon's fee for managing the task - The water that he drinks brings pain, his bread Is turned to blood immediately shed; Though he is weak, faint, feebler than an ant, Love forces him to be her combatant; He cannot take one mouthful unaware That he is floundering in a sea of care.

You're a rule person," he said. "My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary." "She cheated at this game?" "She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always insisted on being banker, then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate transaction. I was, like, ten or eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do that." He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling, remembering. "During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'd swear up and down she hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied. Blatantly.

About Bane. Don’t hurt him,” Raphael said abruptly. Alec hesitated. “No,” he said, his voice softer. “I would never—” Raphael held up a peremptory hand. “Stop being disgusting, please,” he said. “I don’t care if you wound his, as the kids say, ‘wittle fee-fees.’ Dump him like a ton of magic bricks. I wish you would. I just meant, don’t kill him.” “I’m not going to kill him,” Alec said, appalled. His blood ran cold at the idea, and colder as he looked down into Raphael’s face. The vampire was serious. “Aren’t you?” Raphael asked. “Shadowhunter.” He said the word the same way as the Downworlders of the Shadow Market had, but it sounded different in service of protecting someone Alec would gladly give his life to shield from harm. It made Alec wonder if the people of the Market were all looking at him and seeing a threat to someone they cared for. “Stop it, Raphael,” said Lily. She gave Alec a brief, surprisingly sympathetic look. “Kid’s obviously in love.” “Ugh,” said Raphael. “Terrible business. Let’s get out of here.” Elliott cheered. “Can we go to the after-party?” “No,” Raphael said with distaste. He left Alec and walked away without a look back. After a quick last glance, Lily and then Elliott turned to follow.

Sure, doing business in the Congo is unconventional, but try to look at it from a strictly business point of view. The fees we pay to the government are no different from taxes paid in other countries. Everything we do is legal to the extent that there is any law in this country. If the regime says we pay for this licence, we pay for the licence. It just so happens the money might be paid in a big, black plastic bag delivered at night to a politician’s house.

Well,' said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, 'it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?' 'Experience,' said Holmes, laughing. 'Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.

America is still AmeriKKKa. rather we like it or not

now i believe that the way to anyone's heart is through their stomach, and, my boy, i'm here to tell you, we ware in the heart business. we're going to reach deep past the menu and into the emotional power of food because a person comes back to a restaurant again and again for one reason only - to fee their soul.

I am every story I’ve ever read and every word I’ve ever written... I am every man who’s ever hurt me, and the quiet hope that we’ve only got to get it right once.

...I believe that God requires nothing of us. There is no entrance fee or requirement for participation. He is there already, inside each of us, if only we'd stop and listen.

We may regard certain days as free days. Free days are however fee days. We will pay later

I thought you wanted to leave me." Jurgen sounded dazed. Nik patted his chest. "My poor, big, dumb asshole." He sighed, kissing Jurgen's neck. "Why didn't you just ask me?" Nik could feel the dumbfounded rising up from Jurgen's skin. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I didn't need to ask you if I knew how to fix it." "Oh, Jurgen." Nik patted him some more, petting his sternum. "We could probably spend a few years and thousands of dollars in psychologist's fees figuring you out, couldn't we?

When you were in law school you had some noble idea of what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client’s principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize we’re nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay our outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It’s supposed to be an honorable profession, but you’ll meet so many crooked lawyers you’ll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah, Mitch, you’ll get cynical. And it’s sad, really.

Man, this is the best fucking wedding I’ve ever been to,” Sasha blurted out, taking a gulp of his drink. “We should do this more often. Vasili’s wedding was a fucking bore. But this… fuck, yeah! Invite me to all your weddings. Drama, suspense, threatening bride… it’s the whole package without paying a subscription fee.

We all know the classic scene in the cartoons: the cat reaches the precipice but goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under hits fee; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss.

no matter what you call him...we all pray to the same source

Industrial capitalism transformed nature’s raw materials into commodities, and surveillance capitalism lays its claims to the stuff of human nature for a new commodity invention. Now it is human nature that is scraped, torn, and taken for another century’s market project. It is obscene to suppose that this harm can be reduced to the obvious fact that users receive no fee for the raw material they supply. That critique is a feat of misdirection that would use a pricing mechanism to institutionalize and therefore legitimate the extraction of human behavior for manufacturing and sale. It ignores the key point that the essence of the exploitation here is the rendering of our lives as behavioral data for the sake of others’ improved control of us. The remarkable questions here concern the facts that our lives are rendered as behavioral data in the first place; that ignorance is a condition of this ubiquitous rendition; that decision rights vanish before one even knows that there is a decision to make; that there are consequences to this diminishment of rights that we can neither see nor foretell; that there is no exit, no voice, and no loyalty, only helplessness, resignation, and psychic numbing; and that encryption is the only positive action left to discuss when we sit around the dinner table and casually ponder how to hide from the forces that hide from us.

Tell me what you know of my kinfolk. "Fee, fi, fo, fum?" Oxton muttered under his breath. Vanora raised her hand. "I've heard something about a beanstalk and a cow." The giant gave a great nod. "We've well established you know absolutely nothing of my kind.

Yeah. Think I'll have to pass on the sex, though.” “We don't have to have sex just because you're staying the night.” “Oh! I thought it was the standard fee for the pillow, but now when I know better...” “I might take that back...” “Too late!” she laughed.

To my lovely starling, Maybe there are magical words that will make you understand, but if so, I do not know them. Words are your domain. I've always been better with pictures. I fear you think I am a monster. It's true I've disrupted many graves. The way I see it, the dead are dead. If, after their death, we can learn things from the about the human form - things that will increase the sum of human knowledge and the possibilities of art - what harm is that? After death, new life, new beauty. How can that be wrong? My friends and I have made use of some of the bodies as models. some we sell to surgeons who study them with the hopes of learning something about the frail mechanisms of the human body. I don't know exactly what Dottor de Gradi does in his workshop on the Rialto, and I was as surprised as you were to stumble on it. He couldn't - he wouldn't tell me if your friend's body ended up there. But he did assure me all of his work is focused solely on extending human life. I won't lie. I did it for the money as well. Don Loredan is holding a private exhibition in his palazzo tomorrow. The entry fee was quite steep but two of my paintings were accepted. This could be the beginning for me. I could find my own patrons. I could be more than just a peasant. Tommaso's assistant. So yes; a little for money. But mostly I did for the art. I don't expect these words to change how you feel. I simply want you not to see me as a monster. I don't want to be a monster. Not anymore. Not after meeting you. I know that we disrupted you dear friend's body, and for that I am deeply regretful. But if we had not done so, if I had not lingered in the San Domenico churchyard after standing guard for my friends, you and I might never have met. Meeting you is one thing I will never regret. I hope you like the painting. Consider tit a wedding gift. How stupid of me to let my heart go. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted, though, wasn't it? Yours, Falco

The Ashanti, he reminded me, are guided by, and survive through, the forces of kinship and ancestral linkage. "We take care of each other on earth," he said. "If a family member asks for help, I give it. When a family member needs money for school fees or hospital bills, I send it. And my whole extended family loves you as if you are their child. We take care of each other's children. We raise each other's children. My cousins are my brothers and sisters. My aunts are also my mothers. Your aunts are your mothers, especially Auntie Harriet because she is my eldest sister. You will never be alone in this world." "And do you really believe our ancestors are watching over us?" I asked. He smiled. "I believe in the power of remembrance," he said. "And I believe love does not die with the body.

... Broken people just need piecing back together. For so long I'd carried the pieces of me. Every now and then I'd drop one like a breadcrumb. So I could find my way home. Then Ashley came along and gathered the pieces and somewhere between 11,000 fee and sea level, the picture began taking shape. Dim at first, then clearer. Not yet clear. But these things take time. Maybe each of us was once a complete whole. A clear picture. A single piece. Then something happened to crack and shatter us. Leaving us disconnected, torn and splintered. Some of us lie in a hundred pieces. Some ten thousand. Some are edged with sharp contrast. Some dim shades of gray. Some find they are missing pieces. Some find they have too many. In any case, we are left shaking our heads. It can't be done. Then someone comes along who mends a tattered edge, or returns a lost piece. The process is tedious, painful, and there are no shortcuts. Anything that promises to be one is not. But somehow, as we walk from the crash site - away from he wreckage - whole sections start taking shape, something vague we see out of the corner of our eye. For a second, we stop shaking our heads. We wonder. Maybe...just maybe. It's risky for both of us. You must hope in an image you can't see, and I must trust you with me. That's the piecing.

It's WW2 and there are wage controls in place. Instead of health care, companies decide to offer employees shoes. Having absorbed those costs, they later lobby for every company to be required to offer shoes. That calls forth regulation and monopolization of the shoe industry. Shoes are heavily subsidized. Every shoe must be approved. Producers must be domestic. They must adhere to a certain quality. They can't discriminate based on foot size or individual need. Prices rise, and some people lack shoes, so the Affordable Shoe Act forces everyone to buy into an official shoe plan or pay a fee. Here we have a perfect plan for making shoes egregiously expensive. The entire country would be consumed with the fear of being shoeless if they lose their job. The left wing calls for a single shoe provider to offer universal shoes and the right wing meekly suggests that shoe makers be permitted to sell across state lines. Meanwhile, libertarians suggest that we just forget the whole thing and let the market make and deliver shoes of every quality to anyone from anyone. Everyone screams that this is an insane and dangerous idea.

That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love, I maintain. It's similar with books. Not quite the same, of course (it never is); but similar. If you quite enjoy a writer's work, if you turn the page approvingly yet don't mind being interrupted, then you tend to like that author unthinkingly. Good chap, you assume. Sound fellow. They say he strangled an entire pack of Wolf Cubs and fed their bodies to a school of carp? Oh no, I'm sure he didn't; sound fellow, good chap. But if you love a writer, if you depend upon the drip-feed of his intelligence, if you want to pursue him and find him -- despite edicts to the contrary -- then it's impossible to know too much. You seek the vice as well. A pack of Wolf Cubs, eh? Was that twenty-seven or twenty-eight? And did he have their little scarves sewn up into a patchwork quilt? And is it true that as he ascended the scaffold he quoted from the Book of Jonah? And that he bequeathed his carp pond to the local Boy Scouts? But here's the difference. With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst -- be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal spark -- you are almost relieved. Life is as I thought it was; shall we now celebrate this disappointment? With a writer you love, the instinct is to defend. This is what I meant earlier: perhaps love for a writer is the purest, the steadiest form of love. And so your defense comes the more easily. The fact of the matter is, carp are an endangered species, and everyone knows that the only diet they will accept if the winter has been especially harsh and the spring turns wet before St Oursin's Day is that of young minced Wolf Cub. Of course he knew he would hang for the offense, but he also knew that humanity is not an endangered species, and reckoned therefore that twenty-seven (did you say twenty-eight?) Wolf Cubs plus one middle-ranking author (he was always ridiculously modest about his talents) were a trivial price to pay for the survival of an entire breed of fish. Take the long view: did we need so many Wolf Cubs? They would only have grown up and become Boy Scouts. And if you're still so mired in sentimentality, look at it this way: the admission fees so far received from visitors to the carp pond have already enabled the Boy Scouts to build and maintain several church halls in the area.

Those on the far right I came to know felt two things. First, they felt the deep story was true. Second, they felt that liberals were saying it was not true, and that they themselves were not feeling the right feelings. Blacks and women who were beneficiaries of affirmative action, immigrants, refugees, and public employees were not really stealing their place in line, liberals said. So don't feel resentful. Obama's help to these groups was not really a betrayal, liberals said. The success of those who cut ahead was not really at the expense of white men and their wives. In other words, the far right felt that the deep story was their real story and that there was a false PC cover-up of that story. They felt scorned. "People think we're not good people if we don't fee sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees," one man told me. "But I am a good person and I don't feel sorry for them." With the cover-up, as my new friends explained to me, came the need to manage the appearance of their real feelings and even, to some extent, the feelings themselves. They didn't have to do this with friends, neighbors, and family. But they realized that the rest of America did not agree. ("I know liberals want us to feel sorry for blacks. I know they think they are so idealistic and we aren't," one woman told me.) My friends on the right felt obliged to try to modify their feelings, and they didn't like having to do that; they felt under the watchful eye of the "PC police." In the realm of emotions, the right felt like they were being treated as the criminals, and the liberals had the guns.

the price of harmony has been set too high, we can’t afford the entrance fee. And that’s why I hasten to return my entry ticket.

We still have an hour, Fee.” He licked his lips. “And I’m hungry for pussy.” My clit did a series of victory throbs, which was probably suck me now in Morse code,

If we are going to create a financial system that works for all Americans, we have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees. In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM. It is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent. The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for those who charged people usurious interest rates. Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitch forks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.

I treasure ruefully some memories of W.H. Auden that go back to the middle 1960s, when he arrived in New Haven to give a reading of his poems at Ezra Stiles College. We had met several times before, in New York City and at Yale, but were only acquaintances. The earlier Auden retains my interest, but much of the frequently devotional poetry does not find me. Since our mutual friend John Hollander was abroad, Auden phoned to ask if he might stay with my wife and me, remarking of his dislike of college guest suites. The poet arrived in a frayed, buttonless overcoat, which my wife insisted on mending. His luggage was an attache case containing a large bottle of gin, a small one of vermouth, a plastic drinking cup, and a sheaf of poems. After being supplied with ice, he requested that I remind him of the amount of his reading fee. A thousand dollars had been the agreed sum, a respectable honorarium more than forty years ago. He shook his head and said that as a prima donna he could not perform, despite the prior arrangement. Charmed by this, I phoned the college master - a good friend - who cursed heartily but doubled the sum when I assured him that the poet was as obdurate as Lady Bracknell in 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. Informed of this yielding, Auden smiled sweetly and was benign and brilliant at dinner, then at the reading, and as he went to bed after we got home.

We are mortals, not gods. We die. Death is our nature. Without that fee paid in advance, the world does not come to us. That is the hard bargain life makes with us — with all of us, every one — and the condition we share. And for that reason, if no other, we should have pity for one another's losses. For the sorrows that must come sooner or later to each one of us, in a world we enter only on mortal terms.

Let me tell you what it is I believe in so that we better understand each other. I believe in a man thinking for himself and being his own master. I believe in going where I want to go, and doing what I want to do, being as fee as the wind. No limits, no obligations, and no laws. There may or may not be a path, but it makes no difference to me because I'm sure that, by whatever means, we'll reach that kingdom and I'll be paid.

It's a deal we all make, I remember thinking. What kind of life will I live with this person? All relationships are a balancing act, after all, each individual perched on either side of a seesaw. Your husband snores. Your wife leaves wet towels on the floor. But he brings you tea every morning. She's a terrific cook. All unions, all associations, every partnership- they all have their benefits and their drawbacks, their subscription fees.

We live in a bizarre world where the only people who can make money are those who don’t need it. Our government would charge the poor an admission fee just to gaze up at the sky if they could only find a way of owning it.

The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense.

Of your friend, I can find no trace,” said the man. “He seems to have been eaten by one of the thin hairless apes from the Okanti isles; all it does is screech at me. What became of the last leech to take a look at him?” “We left him in Talisham,” said Jean. “I’m afraid my friend’s attitude moved him to bring an early end to his own sea voyage.” “Well, I might have done the same. I waive my fee, in profound sympathy. Keep your silver—you shall need it for wine. Or poison.

So, how we doin'?" "Same as usual: dead people, a mystery, more dead people." "Who we lost?" "The boy. His guardians. Maybe Elliot Norton." "Shit, don't sound like we got anybody left. Anyone hires you better leave you your fee in their will.

I did want to be included. I just wasn't willing to pay the entry fee. On my better days I could even grant that we were the same creatures. Much was the same and little different. The same unlikely forms. Elbows. Skulls. The remnants of a soul.

I did want to be included. I just wasn't willing to pay the entry fee. On my better days I could even grant that we were the same creatures. Much was the same and little different. The same unlikely forms. Elbows. Skulls. The remnants of a soul.

Forest is the backbone of the O-fers. He pitches, bats cleanup, collects the fees, makes all the pre game reminder calls, fills out the lineup card, and is the undisputed (though unspoken) team captain. Few things inspire like watching Forest round third in the late innings with a head full of steam and two bad knees, his spare tire heaving violently beneath his snug jersey, just as the second basemen is fielding the relay. "Run, Forest, run!" We yell, from the dugout. It never gets old.

Truly to speak, and with no addition, We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it. 20Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I don't even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it's an equal darkness. Or light. My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within. I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything. I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not our doing: I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant. I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it. Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves. I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy. Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything much more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say. Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge. I think about the chandelier too much, though it's gone now. But you could use a hook, in the closet. I've considered the possibilities. All you'd have to do, after attaching yourself, would be to lean your weight forward and not fight. Deliver us from evil. Then there's Kingdom, power, and glory. It takes a lot to believe in those right now. But I'll try it anyway. In Hope, as they say on the gravestones. You must feel pretty ripped off. I guess it's not the first time. If I were You I'd be fed up. I'd really be sick of it. I guess that's the difference between us. I feel very unreal talking to You like this. I fee as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone. All alone by the telephone. Except that I can't use the telephone. And if I could, who could I call? Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living.

These days, there are so few pure country people left on the concession roads that we may be in need of a new category of membership, much as sons and daughters of veterans are now allowed to join the Legion. A few simple questions could be asked, a small fee paid and (assuming that the answers are correct) you could be granted the status of an "almost local." Here are some of the questions you might be asked: Do you have just one suit for weddings and funerals? Do you save plastic buckets? Do you leave your car doors unlocked at all times? Do you have an inside dog and an outside dog? Has your outside dog never been to town? When you pass a neighbour in the car, do you wave from the elbow or do you merely raise one finger from the steering wheel? Do you have trouble keeping the car or truck going in a straight line because you are looking at crops or livestock? Do you sometimes find yourself sitting in the car in the middle of a dirt road chatting with a neighbour out the window while other cars take the ditch to get around you? Can you tell whose tractor is going by without looking out the window? Can people recognize you from three hundred yards away by the way you walk or the tilt of your hat? If somebody honks their horn at you, do you automatically smile and wave? Do most of your conversations open with some observation about the weather? Is your most important news source the store in the village? Have you had surgery in the local hospital? If you hear about a death or a fire in the community, does the woman in your house immediately start making sandwiches or a cake? Do you sometimes find yourself referring to a farm in the neighbourhood by the name of someone who owned it more than twenty-five years ago? If you answered yes to all of the above questions, consider it official: you are a local.

There is a story that Simonides was dining at the house of a wealthy nobleman named Scopas at Crannon in Thessaly, and chanted a lyric poem which he had composed in honor of his host, in which he followed the custom of the poets by including for decorative purposes a long passage referring to Castor and Pollux; whereupon Scopas with excessive meanness told him he would pay him half the fee agreed on for the poem, and if he liked he might apply for the balance to his sons of Tyndaraus, as they had gone halves in the panegyric. The story runs that a little later a message was brought to Simonides to go outside, as two young men were standing at the door who earnestly requested him to come out; so he rose from his seat and went out, and could not see anybody; but in the interval of his absence the roof of the hall where Scopas was giving the banquet fell in, crushing Scopas himself and his relations underneath the ruins and killing them; and when their friends wanted to bury them but were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed, the story goes that Simonides was enabled by his recollection of the place in which each of them had been reclining at table to identify them for separate interment; and that this circumstance suggested to him the discovery of the truth that the best aid to clearness of memory consists in orderly arrangement. He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty must select localities and form mental images of the facts they wish to remember and store those images in the localities, with the result that the arrangement of the localities will preserve the order of the facts, and the images of the facts will designate the facts themselves, and we shall employ the localities and images respectively as a wax writing tablet and the letters written on it.

She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. “Our friend is behind us again and he’s coming up fast. Closing the distance.” Then he knows we’re on to him.” Christ! He’s got a gun, Red! He’s stuck his arm out the window.” Don’t worry,” Red told her. “Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he’d be lucky to hit that mountain.” There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console. Unless,” Red continued thoughtfully, “that’s Orvid Crayle behind us. He’s very good.

Is this what I think it is?" Having returned his focus to his own crate, Kai held up a carved wooden doll adorned with bedraggled feathers and four too many eyes. Cinder finished unloading the handgun and set it next to the others. "Don't tell me you've actually seen one of those hideous things before." "Venezuelan dream dolls? We have some on display in the palace. They're incredibly rare." He examined its back. "What is it doing here?" "I'm pretty sure Thorne stole it." Kai's expression filled with clarity. "Ah, Of course." He nestled the doll back into its packaging. "He'd better plan on giving all this stuff back." "Sure I'll give it back, Your Majesticness. For a proper finder's fee.

Thou art like one of those fellows that when he enters the confines of a tavern claps me his sword upon the table and says “God send me no need of thee!” and by the operation of the second cup draws it on the drawer, when indeed there is no need. BENVOLIO: Am I like such a fellow? MERCUTIO: Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved. BENVOLIO: And what to? MERCUTIO: Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast: thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as fun of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling: thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun: didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old riband? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling! BENVOLIO: An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter. MERCUTIO: The fee-simple! O simple!

Our job is not to create a masterpiece but to give voice to that which only we can give voice to.

It's said (truly) that most women forget the pain of childbirth; I think that we all forget the pain of being a child at school for the first time, the sheer ineptitude, as though you'll never learn to mark out your own space. It's double shaming - shaming to REMEMBER as well, to fee so sorry for your scabby little self back there in small people's purgatory.

We don't give the people who don't have the right connection and supreme wealth the map to where the opportunities are, and then they forge a path there themselves, against immense offs, we charge them a fee for admission we know they can't afford. And then we reward incredibly fortunate, connected, and bankrolled creators without acknowledging there was almost no way they would ever fail.

It’s our turf,” the younger woman barked. “Actually it’s my turf.” The thugs spun to me. “Let’s see . . . You’re hassling people in my territory, so you owe me a fee. A couple of fingers ought to do it. Do we have a volunteer?” The small thug pulled a bowie knife from a sheath on his waist. I kept coming. “That’s a mistake.” The thug crouched down. He clenched his knife, like he was drowning and it was a straw that would pull him out. A little crazy light danced in his eyes. “Come on, whore. Come on.” The oldest bluff in the book: get a crazy glimmer in your eyes, look like you’re ready to fight, and the other guy might back off. Heh. “That might work better for you if you held the knife properly. You were doing okay until you pulled the blade. Now I know that you have no clue how to use it and I’ll have to chop your hand off and shove that knife up your ass just to teach you a lesson. Nothing personal. I have a reputation to uphold.” I pulled Slayer out. I had years of practice to back me up and I made the draw fast. The two bravos behind the knife-wielding thug backed away. I looked at Slayer’s blade. “Well, check this out. Mine is bigger. Let’s go, knife-master. I don’t have all day.

What happened next is perhaps one of my favorite Angela stories ever. Still a little stung by our Ivy experience, Angela was determined to salvage a “star” moment for us. She coyly said to the photographer, “Do you know who she is? She’s Pam from The Office.” He looked at us blankly. Angela then motioned to the group. “We are the ladies of The Office.” Still nothing. Angela pushed harder. “On NBC. The Office. On NBC.” Finally, the guy’s face lit up. “Are you serious?!” But he didn’t raise his camera. Instead, he reached into his pocket and produced a business card. He said, “Here’s my card. If you ever want to tip me off on when celebrities will be out and about, I’ll give you a finder’s fee.” It took us a minute until we all collectively realized that he thought we worked IN AN OFFICE at NBC. OMG. We died.

Prospecting & Marketing Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I were conducting a multiday seminar for her clients — corporate executives and general agents from life insurance companies — about new methods of recruiting agents. Even though the attendees had paid a very high per-person fee to be there, most had traveled great distances, and the subject was of critical importance to them, we both noticed that on breaks, what most of them were talking about was where

Presently they came out. "Excuse us, folks. Uh, Hazel?" "What is it, Cas?" "You said your fee was two-thirds of our net." "Huh? Did your leg come away in my hand, chum? I wouldn't—" "Oh, no, we'd rather pay it." He reached out, dropped half a dozen small coins in her hand. "There it is." She looked at it. "This is two-thirds of all you made on the deal?" "After taxes." "Of course," added Pollux, "it wasn't a total loss. We had the use of the bicycles for a couple of hundred million miles.

She’d just come back when Marvel tapped the computer screen and said, “See, what happened was, this guy, Representative Diller, got the licensing fees on semi-trailers reduced by about half, so they’d supposedly be in line with what they were in the surrounding states. He said he wanted to do that so the trucking companies wouldn’t move out of Minnesota. But what you see over here is a bunch of 1099 forms that were sent by trucking companies to Sisseton High-Line Consulting, LLC, of Sisseton, South Dakota. Over here is the South Dakota LLC form and we find out that a Cheryl Diller is the president of Sisseton High-Line Consulting. And we see that she got, mmm, fifty-five thousand dollars for consulting work that year, from trucking companies.” “So if these two Dillers are related . . .” Lucas began. “I promise you, they are,” Marvel said. Kidd said, “Marvel’s a state senator. In Arkansas.” Marvel added, “This shit goes on all the time. On everything you can think of, and probably a lot you can’t think of.

In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all. These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger. What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

A brick could be used to show you how to live a richer, fuller, more satisfying life. Don’t you want to have fulfillment and meaning saturating your existence? I can show you how you can achieve this and so much more with just a simple brick. For just $99.99—not even an even hundred bucks, I’ll send you my exclusive life philosophy that’s built around a brick. Man’s used bricks to build houses for centuries. Now let one man, me, show you how a brick can be used to build your life up bigger and stronger than you ever imagined. But act now, because supplies are limited. This amazing offer won’t last forever. You don’t want to wake up in ten years to find yourself divorced, homeless, and missing your testicles because you waited even two hours too long to obtain this information. Become a hero today—save your life. Procrastination is only for the painful things in life. We prolong the boring, but why put off for tomorrow the exciting life you could be living today? If you’re not satisfied with the information I’m providing, I’m willing to offer you a no money back guarantee. That’s right, you read that wrong. If you are not 100% dissatisfied with my product, I’ll give you your money back. For $99.99 I’m offering 99.99%, but you’ve got to be willing to penny up that percentage to 100. Why delay? The life you really want is mine, and I’m willing to give it to you—for a price. That price is a one-time fee of $99.99, which of course everyone can afford—even if they can’t afford it. Homeless people can’t afford it, but they’re the people who need my product the most. Buy my product, or face the fact that in all probability you are going to end up homeless and sexless and unloved and filthy and stinky and probably even disabled, if not physically than certainly mentally. I don’t care if your testicles taste like peanut butter—if you don’t buy my product, even a dog won’t lick your balls you miserable cur. I curse you! God damn it, what are you, slow? Pay me my money so I can show you the path to true wealth. Don’t you want to be rich? Everything takes money—your marriage, your mortgage, and even prostitutes. I can show you the path to prostitution—and it starts by ignoring my pleas to help you. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want to help. You have some serious trust issues, my friend. I have the chance to earn your trust, and all it’s going to cost you is a measly $99.99. Would it help you to trust me if I told you that I trust you? Well, I do. Sure, I trust you. I trust you to make the smart decision for your life and order my product today. Don’t sleep on this decision, because you’ll only wake up in eight hours to find yourself living in a miserable future. And the future indeed looks bleak, my friend. War, famine, children forced to pimp out their parents just to feed the dog. Is this the kind of tomorrow you’d like to live in today? I can show you how to provide enough dog food to feed your grandpa for decades. In the future I’m offering you, your wife isn’t a whore that you sell for a knife swipe of peanut butter because you’re so hungry you actually considered eating your children. Become a hero—and save your kids’ lives. Your wife doesn’t want to spread her legs for strangers. Or maybe she does, and that was a bad example. Still, the principle stands. But you won’t be standing—in the future. Remember, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair. Mushrooms are for pizzas, not clouds, but without me, your life will atom bomb into oblivion. Nobody’s dropping a bomb while I’m around. The only thing I’m dropping is the price. Boom! I just lowered the price for you, just to show you that you are a valued customer. As a VIP, your new price on my product is just $99.96. That’s a savings of over two pennies (three, to be precise). And I’ll even throw in a jar of peanut butter for free. That’s a value of over $.99. But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next ten minutes, I’ll even throw in a blanket free of charge. . .

I found the number, called the compound and said to the man on the phone that the owner of the vehicle couldn’t collect it because he was dead. He was my father. That he didn’t mean to leave the car there but he died. That he really didn’t mean to leave it. Lunatic sentences, deadpan, cut from rock. I didn’t understand his embarrassed silence. He said, ‘Sorry, oh God. I’m so sorry’, but he could have said anything at all and it would have signified nothing. We had to take Dad’s death certificate to the compound to avoid the towing fee. This also signified nothing. After

The future for ancient DNA laboratories that I find appealing is based on a model that has emerged among radiocarbon dating laboratories. For example, the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit processes large numbers of samples for a fee, and uses this income stream to support a factory that churns out routine dates and produces data more cheaply, efficiently, and at higher quality than would be possible if its scientists limited themselves to their own questions. But its scientists then piggyback on the juggernaut of the radiocarbon dating factory they have built to do cutting-edge science,

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

Instead of animals, we can offer our own life-force energy to the gods in the form of spiritual vows. A typical modern Hindu vow, for example, may consist of intense fasts, lengthy meditations, mantra recitations, abstinence of sex, or other types of vows that can last from 40 days to one year or more. In other words, nowadays, our own time and energy are far more valuable to us than the relatively easily acquired flesh of animals which can be found on every street corner. Regardless of the source, spiritual sacrifice is the fee we give to the gods in exchange for their help in transforming energy into the form we desire.

Our development team of 100 engineers drinks a lot of coffee… Equipping each floor with new coffee stations would cost $15,000, plus additional ongoing fees for supplies and maintenance. At 10 minutes a day per person traveling down to the break room for coffee and back, our engineering department spends 80 hours a week getting caffeine. New coffee makers would pay for themselves within weeks; afterward, they’d make money for the company. Our current system acts as if we’ve hired 2 full-time engineers just to walk back and forth from their offices to the break room, and their hall banter isn’t even close to West Wing quality.

Maryrose smiled good-humouredly, and remained in the circle of his arm, but as if she detached herself from him and every other man. Very many as it were professionally pretty girls have this gift of allowing themselves to be touched, kissed, held, as if this were a fee they have to pay to Providence for being born beautiful. There is a tolerant smile which goes with a submission to the hands of men, like a yawn or a patient sigh. But there was more to it, in Maryrose’s case. “Maryrose,” said Ted, bluffly, looking down at the gleaming little head at rest on his shoulder, “why don’t you love any of us, why don’t you let any of us love you?” Maryrose merely smiled, and even in this broken light, branch-and-leaf-stippled, her brown eyes showed enormous and shone softly. “Maryrose has a broken heart,” observed Willi above my head. “Broken hearts belong to old-fashioned novels,” said Paul. “They don’t go with the time we live in.” “On the contrary,” said Ted. “There are more broken hearts than there have ever been, just because of the times we live in. In fact I’m sure any heart we are ever likely to meet is so cracked and jarred and split it’s just a mass of scar tissue.” Maryrose smiled up at Ted, shyly, but gratefully, and said seriously: “Yes, of course that’s true.

Great companies know that customer relationships in these times call for more than just having a great product (or service) backed by a great sales team. Customers have to be wooed until they fall so deeply in love with your offering that they will ward off advances from potential suitors. No matter how well you perform as a business, there are little things that can cause the relationship with your customers to suffer. The companies, products and/or services that we love are those that “touch” us in the right places at the right times. After all, that is what “romancing” the customer is all about—feeing your way to the customer’s heart.

We want to allow millions of small businesses to accept credit cards for the first time, so we have to make it easy to sign up. We need easy sign-up, so we have to design simple software and eliminate paper contracts. We have millions of people signing up, so we have to keep our customer service costs down. We need to keep customer service costs down, so we have to have simple pricing, and net settlements, and no hidden fees, and no paper contracts. We need to have a low price, so we have to save money on advertising, so we have to have an amazing product, and hardware so cool that people talk about it, and a product that they can explain without our help.

I suppose that woman is the reason you've gone all fee-male on us, ain't it?" Gavin guffawed at his father's query. "Hell,Pa, ain't you noticed in all this time? Willie,here,is one of them double-breasted critters. She's supposed to wear dresses." Willow met Rider's eyes, her face flaming in embarrassment. Forgetting for the moment all that Miriam had impressed upon her, she picked up the empty bread plate and hurled it at her brother's head. Gavin dodged it and watched as it smashed into a hundred pieces against the wall behind him. Leaping to his feet, he laughed. "Now, that's the Willie we know and love." "Enough! Dammit, Gavin, you got more lip than a muley cow," Owen growled.

Tell me you showered before you came over,” Bird said. “Most definitely,” Brandon said, picking up a pickle and dipping it into the Ranch dressing. “You could come work for me,” Bird said. Three years ago, Bird had started her own business: Scoopin’ Poopin’. She’d gone to dog owners in her neighborhood and offered to clean out their backyards each week for a monthly fee. Once she’d turned sixteen and could drive, she’d expanded her business beyond the neighborhood. “It’s still shoveling--” Brandon began. “It’s not the same,” Bird said. “I do it really early in the morning before it gets hot, and I have a long-handled scooper.” Brandon grinned. “Thanks, babe, but we’ll find something.

Oh, and just an aside here, but it drives me nuts when I hear the current federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, say that the people who benefited from free university education in the 1970s were almost all from the ranks of the better off. What he doesn’t say is that they were also mostly women who had been denied the chance of a university education by their fathers, who had preferred to pay the fees for their sons rather than their daughters. Whitlam’s higher education reforms were hugely important for women from the generations before mine and that has had equally important positive results for them, their daughters and our whole society. We should not forget that. Rant over. As

The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself: a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies; a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure; a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation; a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself; a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:3).

by letting them return items long after the normal thirty-day grace period. Rental-car companies and hotels have learned to combat sticker shock by warning customers in advance of all the taxes and fees that will be added to the bill. But some businesses remain stubbornly oblivious to the peak-end rule. Why do so many shopping expeditions end with a long line at the checkout counter, and so many airline flights end with a half-hour wait at baggage claim? Why do so many online newspaper articles end with a correction informing the reader of some trivial mistake made in an earlier version? In the print era, running corrections was the only way to set the record straight once the paper had come off the presses, but today any error

I think the purpose of government is for a population to accomplish its mutually agreed-upon goals without every citizen having to accomplish those goals for him- or herself. Some examples: we have a police force so we don’t need to have vigilante mobs. We have a post office so we don’t need to deliver our own mail across the entire nation. We have a fire department so we don’t have to put out our own fires. In return for the services we agree on, we pay a fee. We just don’t all agree on what the services and what the fees should be. I personally think it’s sad we don’t all agree on single-payer health care. We agree on paying taxes to save a house from fire but not a body from cancer? Why do we care more about our property than about ourselves?

Mmph,” the officer glanced up from their South African passports, green mambas, her best friend Keletso called them, because they’d bite you with visa fees for all the countries you’re not allowed to sommer just go to. “And you’re returning to South Africa after your vacation?” “Yes, that’s where we live,” proud of the hard fact of it. Away from everyday Nazis and school shootings so regular they were practically part of the academic calendar along with prom and football season, away from the slow gutting of democracy, trigger-happy cops, and the terror of raising a black son in America. But how can you live there, people would ask her (and Devon, her American husband, especially), meaning Johannesburg. Isn’t it dangerous? And she wanted to reply, how can you live here?

What Ethereum Is Good For Ethereum is suited to building economic systems in pure software. In other words, it’s software for business logic, wherein people (users) can move money (data representing value) around with the speed and scale that we normally get with data.12 Not the three- to seven-day floating period you get with the commercial banking system. Or the fees associated with vendors such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal. With a simple Ethereum application, for example, it is fairly trivial to pay hundreds of thousands of people, in hundreds of countries, small amounts every few minutes, whereas in the legacy banking system you would need an entire payroll department working overtime to constantly rebalance your account ledgers and deal with the cross-border issues.

Or take school attendance. Everybody seems to have different ideas on how to raise it. We should pay for uniforms. Advance school fees on credit. Offer free meals. Install toilets. Raise public awareness of the value of education. Hire more teachers. And on and on. All of these suggestions sound perfectly logical. Thanks to RCTs, however, we know that $100 worth of free meals translates into an additional 2.8 years of educational attainment – three times as much as free uniforms. Speaking of proven impact, deworming children with intestinal complaints has been shown to yield 2.9 years of additional schooling for the absurdly small investment of $10 worth of treatment. No armchair philosopher could have predicted that, but since this finding was revealed, tens of millions of children have been dewormed.

Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair." "And you are comparatively large but fair." "I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good." he looked at his watch. "I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain." And away he went, humming.

Andy smiled and tapped the side of my head. “Not bad. There’s more up there than marshmallows, I guess. But we took care of the possibility that Jim might die while I was in the slam. The box is in the Peter Stevens name, and once a year the firm of lawyers that served as Jim’s executors sends a check to the Casco to cover the rental of the Stevens box. “Peter Stevens is inside that box, just waiting to get out. His birth certificate, his Social Security card, and his driver’s license. The license is six years out of date because Jim died six years ago, true, but it’s still perfectly renewable for a five-dollar fee. His stock certificates are there, the tax-free municipals, and about eighteen bearer bonds in the amount of ten thousand dollars each.” I whistled. “Peter Stevens is locked in a safe deposit box at the Casco Bank in Portland and Andy Dufresne is locked in a safe deposit box at Shawshank,” he said.

We will be evaluating some nasty oils. You will have to put them in your mouth.* For the good of science. For the good of olive oil. We are here to help the producers, to tell them, What attributes does the oil have, does it have defects, what can they do differently next year—treat the olives better, pick them at a different time, et cetera.” There will be no pay. No one will reimburse for the seven-dollar parking-garage fee. The existing panelists are known to have some prickle, to borrow an official olive-oil sensory descriptor. “You may be thinking, wow, I really don’t want to be on this thing.” The faint of heart are invited to pack up and go. No one moves. “All right then.” Langstaff surveys the room. “Shields up.” She is referring to removable panels used to partition the room’s long tables into private tasting booths. This way, you aren’t influenced by the facial expressions (or test answers) of the people seated next to you.

Generally, when we speak of freedom or liberation or spiritual understanding, we think that to attain these things we need do nothing at all, that someone else will take care of us. “You are all right, don’t worry, don’t cry, you’re going to be all right. I’ll take care of you.” We tend to think that all we have to do is make a commitment to the organization, pay our initiation fee, sign the register, and then follow the instructions given us. “I am firmly convinced that your organization is valid, it answers all my questions. You may program me in any way. If you want to put me into difficult situations, do so. I leave everything to you.” This attitude supplies the comfort of having to do nothing but follow orders. Everything is left to the other person, to instruct you and relieve you of your shortcomings. But to our surprise things do not work that way. The idea that we do not have to do anything on our own is extremely wishful thinking.

We often think the purpose of criticism is to nail things down. During my years as an art critic, I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists love deer, and something of that desire to secure, to stabilize, to render certain and definite the open-ended, nebulous, and adventurous work of artists is present in many who work in that confinement sometimes called the art world. A similar kind of aggression against the slipperiness of the work and the ambiguities of the artist's intent and meaning often exists in literary criticism and academic scholarship, a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain. What escapes categorization can escape detection altogether. There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeing the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself great art. This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.

The law isn’t supposed to be about unspoken excuses and behind-the-scenes calculations. The beauty of the system is that judges and juries are allowed to consider only what is seen and heard in open court. In between the white lines of this arena, it’s all supposed to make sense. This is where we all get to be equal again. In the defendant’s chair, rich and poor ride the same roller coaster, face the same music. Case has to match case. Sentence should match sentence. But they don’t match anymore. They probably never did, and probably it was never even close. But at least there was the illusion of it. What’s happened now, in this new era of settlements and non prosecutions is that the state has formally surrendered to its own excuses. It has decided just to punt from the start and take the money which doesn’t become really wrong until it turns around the next day and decides to double down on the less-defended, flooring it all the way to trial against a welfare mom or some joker who sold a brick of dope in the projects. Repeat the same process a few million times, and that’s how the jails in American get the population they have. Even if every single person they sent to jail were guilty, the system would still be an epic fail—it’s the jurisprudential version of Pravda, where the facts int he paper might have all been true on any given day, but the lie was all in what was not said. That’s what nobody gets, that the two approaches to justice may individually make a kind of sense. but side by side they’re a dystopia, here common city courts become factories for turning poor people into prisoners, while federal prosecutors on the white-collar beat turn into overpriced garbage men, who behind closed doors quietly dispose of the sins of the rich for a fee. And it’s evolved this way over time and for a thousand reasons, so that almost nobody is aware of the whole picture, the two worlds so separate that they’re barely visible to each other. The usual political descriptors like “unfairness” and “injustice” don’t really apply. it’s more like a breakdown into madness.

For members of a particular religious community, the sense of obligation takes a specific form when it comes to their commitment to each other. In the movie Shall We Dance?, Richard Gere plays a bored middle-aged attorney who surreptitiously takes up ballroom dancing. His wife, played by Susan Sarandon, becomes suspicious at his renewed energy and vitality. She hires a private detective, who discovers the dance studio and reports the news. She decides to let her husband continue dancing undisturbed. In the scene where she meets the private detective in a bar to pay his fee and end the investigation, they linger over a drink and discuss why people marry in the first place. The detective, whose countless investigations into infidelity have rendered him cynical about marriage, suggests that the desire to marry has something to do with hormones and passing fancy. She disagrees. The reason we marry, she insists, is that “we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. . . . I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things . . . all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ ” The sacramental bond that unites two people in a marriage or committed relationship is known as a covenant. A covenant—the word means mutual agreement—is a promise to bear witness to the life of another: the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. At its heart, the relationship among members of a religious community is covenantal as well. As with marriage, the relationship also includes other dimensions, such as friendship and perhaps financial and/or legal partnership. But the defining commitment that members of a religious community make to each other arises from their calling—their covenantal duty—to bear witness to each other’s lives: the lives they now lead and the lives they hope to lead in the future, and the world they now occupy and the world they hope to occupy in the future.

Whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.

In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty and—unless you are a danger to others or highly likely to flee the jurisdiction—you shouldn’t have to sit in jail waiting for your court date. This is the basic premise of due process: you get to hold on to your liberty unless and until a jury convicts you and a judge sentences you. It’s why the Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits excessive bail. That’s what justice is supposed to look like. What it should not look like is the system we have in America today. The median bail in the United States is $10,000. But in American households with an income of $45,000, the median savings account balance is $2,530. The disparity is so high that at any given time, roughly nine out of ten people who are detained can’t afford to pay to get out. By its very design, the cash bail system favors the wealthy and penalizes the poor. If you can pay cash up front, you can leave, and when your trial is over, you’ll get all of your money back. If you can’t afford it, you either languish in jail or have to pay a bail bondsman, which costs a steep fee you will never get back.

The Sun ran a correction for their porn story. In a tiny box, on page two, where no one would see it. What did it matter? The damage had been done. Plus it cost Meg tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. I rang Pa yet again. Don’t read it, darling— I cut him off. I wasn’t about to hear that nonsense again. Also, I wasn’t a boy anymore. I tried a new argument. I reminded Pa that these were the same shoddy bastards who’d been portraying him as a clown all his life, ridiculing him for sounding the alarm about climate change. These were his tormentors, his bullies, and now they were tormenting and bullying his son and his son’s girlfriend—did that not inspire his outrage? Why have I got to beg you, Pa? Why is this not already a priority for you? Why is this not causing you anguish, keeping you up at night, that the press are treating Meg like this? You adore her, you told me so yourself. You bonded over your shared love of music, you think she’s funny and witty, and impeccably mannered, you told me—so why, Pa? Why? I couldn’t get a straight answer. The conversation went in circles and when we hung up I felt—abandoned.

A display cake read JUNETEENTH! in red frosting, surrounded by red, white, and blue stars and fireworks. A flyer taped to the counter above it encouraged patrons to consider ordering a Juneteenth cake early: We all know about the Fourth of July! the flyer said. But why not start celebrating freedom a few weeks early and observe the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation! Say it with cake! One of the two young women behind the bakery counter was Black, but I could guess the bakery's owner wasn't. The neighborhood, the prices, the twee acoustic music drifting out of sleek speakers: I knew all of the song's words, but everything about the space said who it was for. My memories of celebrating Juneteenth in DC were my parents taking me to someone's backyard BBQ, eating banana pudding and peach cobbler and strawberry cake made with Jell-O mix; at not one of them had I seen a seventy-five-dollar bakery cake that could be carved into the shape of a designer handbag for an additional fee. The flyer's sales pitch--so much hanging on that We all know--was targeted not to the people who'd celebrated Juneteenth all along but to office managers who'd feel hectored into not missing a Black holiday or who just wanted an excuse for miscellaneous dessert.

FOCUS ON GENERATING REVENUE THE DOJ FOUND THAT virtually every branch and tributary of the city’s bureaucracy—the mayor, city council, city manager, finance director, municipal court judge, municipal court prosecutor, court clerk, assistant clerks, police chief—all were enmeshed in an unending race to raise revenue through municipal fines and fees:            City officials routinely urge Chief [Tom] Jackson to generate more revenue through enforcement. In March 2010, for instance, the City Finance Director wrote to Chief Jackson that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year. . . . Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, it’s not an insignificant issue.” Similarly, in March 2013, the Finance Director wrote to the City Manager: “Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5%. I did ask the Chief if he thought the PD [police department] could deliver 10% increase. He indicated they could try.” The importance of focusing on revenue generation is communicated to FPD officers. Ferguson police officers from all ranks told us that revenue generation is stressed heavily within the police department, and that the message comes from City leadership. The evidence we reviewed supports this perception.

We got it on file,” Van Dyne said. Vince could not believe what he had heard. “I thought people in your line of work didn't keep records? Safer for you and essential for your clients.” Van Dyne shrugged. “Fuck the clients. Maybe one day the feds or the locals hit us, put us out of business. Maybe I find myself needing a steady flow of cash for lawyers' fees. What better than to have a list of a couple of thousand bozos living under phony names, bozos who'd be willing to be squeezed a little rather than have to start all over again with new lives.” “Blackmail,” Vince said. “An ugly word,” Van Dyne said. “But apt, I'm afraid. Anyway, all we care about is that we are safe, that there aren't any records here to incriminate us. We don't keep the data in this dump. Soon as we provide someone with a new ID, we transmit the record of it over a safe phone line from the computer here to a computer we keep elsewhere. The way that computer is programmed, the data can't be pulled out of it from here; it's a one-way road; so if we are busted, the police hackers can't reach our records from these machines. Hell, they won't even know the records exist.” This new high-tech criminal world made Vince woozy. Even the don, a man of infinite criminal cleverness, had thought these people kept no records and had not realized how computers had made it safe to do so

Emergency food has become very useful indeed, and to a very large assortment of people and institutions. The United States Department of Agriculture uses it to reduce the accumulation of embarrassing agricultural surpluses. Business uses it to dispose of nonstandard or unwanted product, to protect employee morale and avoid dump fees, and, of course, to accrue tax savings. Celebrities use it for exposure. Universities and hospitals, as well as caterers and restaurants, use it to absorb leftovers. Private schools use it to teach ethics, and public schools use it to instill a sense of civic responsibility. Churches use it to express their concern for the least of their brethren, and synagogues use it to be faithful to the tradition of including the poor at the table. Courts use it to avoid incarcerating people arrested for Driving While Intoxicated and a host of other offense. Environmentalists use it to reduce the solid waste stream. Penal institutions use it to create constructive outlets for the energies of their inmates, and youth-serving agencies of all sorts use it to provide service opportunities for young people. Both profit-making and nonprofit organizations use it to absorb unneeded kitchen and office equipment. A wide array of groups, organizations, and institutions benefits from the halo effect of 'feeding the hungry,' and this list does not even include the many functions for ordinary individuals--companionship, exercise, meaning, and purpose. . .If we didn't have hunger, we'd have to invent it.

The expression "fee thulumaatin thalaathin," translated into English as "a threefold darkness," indicates three dark regions involved during the development of the embryo. These are: a) The darkness of the abdomen b) The darkness of the womb c) The darkness of the placenta As we have seen, modern biology has revealed that the embryological development of the baby takes place in the manner revealed in the verse, in three dark regions. Moreover, advances in the science of embryology show that these regions consist of three layers each. The lateral abdominal wall comprises three layers: the external oblique, the internal oblique, and transverses abdominis muscles.91 Similarly, the wall of the womb also consists of three layers: the epimetrium, the myometrium and the endometrium.92 Similarly again, the placenta surrounding the embryo also consists of three layers: the amnion (the internal membrane around the foetus), the chorion (the middle amnion layer) and the decidua (outer amnion layer.)93 It is also pointed out in this verse that a human being is created in the mother's womb in three distinct stages. Indeed, modern biology has also revealed that the baby's embryological development takes place in three distinct regions in the mother's womb. Today, in all the embryology textbooks studied in departments of medicine, this subject is taken as an element of basic knowledge. For instance, in Basic Human Embryology, a fundamental reference text in the field of embryology, this fact is stated as follows: The life in the uterus has three stages: pre-embryonic; first two and a half weeks, embryonic; until the end of the eight week, and fetal; from the eight week to labor.

History favors the bold. Compensation favors the meek. As a Fortune 500 company CEO, you’re better off taking the path often traveled and staying the course. Big companies may have more assets to innovate with, but they rarely take big risks or innovate at the cost of cannibalizing a current business. Neither would they chance alienating suppliers or investors. They play not to lose, and shareholders reward them for it—until those shareholders walk and buy Amazon stock. Most boards ask management: “How can we build the greatest advantage for the least amount of capital/investment?” Amazon reverses the question: “What can we do that gives us an advantage that’s hugely expensive, and that no one else can afford?” Why? Because Amazon has access to capital with lower return expectations than peers. Reducing shipping times from two days to one day? That will require billions. Amazon will have to build smart warehouses near cities, where real estate and labor are expensive. By any conventional measure, it would be a huge investment for a marginal return. But for Amazon, it’s all kinds of perfect. Why? Because Macy’s, Sears, and Walmart can’t afford to spend billions getting the delivery times of their relatively small online businesses down from two days to one. Consumers love it, and competitors stand flaccid on the sidelines. In 2015, Amazon spent $7 billion on shipping fees, a net shipping loss of $5 billion, and overall profits of $2.4 billion. Crazy, no? No. Amazon is going underwater with the world’s largest oxygen tank, forcing other retailers to follow it, match its prices, and deal with changed customer delivery expectations. The difference is other retailers have just the air in their lungs and are drowning. Amazon will surface and have the ocean of retail largely to itself.

For fifteen years, John and Barbara Varian were furniture builders, living on a ranch in Parkfield, California, a tiny town where the welcome sign reads “Population 18.” The idea for a side business came about by accident after a group of horseback riding enthusiasts asked if they could pay a fee to ride on the ranch. They would need to eat, too—could John and Barbara do something about that? Yes, they could. In the fall of 2006, a devastating fire burned down most of their inventory, causing them to reevaluate the whole operation. Instead of rebuilding the furniture business (no pun intended), they decided to change course. “We had always loved horses,” Barbara said, “so we decided to see about having more groups pay to come to the ranch.” They built a bunkhouse and upgraded other buildings, putting together specific packages for riding groups that included all meals and activities. John and Barbara reopened as the V6 Ranch, situated on 20,000 acres exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Barbara’s story stood out to me because of something she said. I always ask business owners what they sell and why their customers buy from them, and the answers are often insightful in more ways than one. Many people answer the question directly—“We sell widgets, and people buy them because they need a widget”—but once in a while, I hear a more astute response. “We’re not selling horse rides,” Barbara said emphatically. “We’re offering freedom. Our work helps our guests escape, even if just for a moment in time, and be someone they may have never even considered before.” The difference is crucial. Most people who visit the V6 Ranch have day jobs and a limited number of vacation days. Why do they choose to visit a working ranch in a tiny town instead of jetting off to lie on a beach in Hawaii? The answer lies in the story and messaging behind John and Barbara’s offer. Helping their clients “escape and be someone else” is far more valuable than offering horse rides. Above all else, the V6 Ranch is selling happiness.