Flood Affected Quotes

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.

A flood of tenderness and affection, gentle, yet powerful enough to swallow entire cities whole. Familiar, but magnified. Known, but intense. The sort of love you read about in books.

Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally, he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person, male or female, has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, he or she naturally feels a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.

There is not a moment but preys upon you,—and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.

How do you feel, Georgie?’ whispered Mrs Weasley. George’s fingers groped for the side of his head. ‘Saint-like,’ he murmured. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ croaked Fred, looking terrified. ‘Is his mind affected?’ ‘Saint-like,’ repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. ‘You see … I’m holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?’ Mrs Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Colour flooded Fred’s pale face. ‘Pathetic,’ he told George. ‘Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humour before you, you go for holey?’ ‘Ah well,’ said George, grinning at his tear-soaked mother. ‘You’ll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum.’ He looked round. ‘Hi Harry – you are Harry, right?’ ‘Yeah, I am,’ said Harry, moving closer to the sofa. ‘Well, at least we got you back OK,’ said George. ‘Why aren’t Ron and Bill huddled round my sickbed?

All languages that derive fromLatin form the word 'compassion' by combining the prefix meaning 'with' (com-) and the root meaning 'suffering' (Late Latin, passio). In other languages- Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance- this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefixcombined with the word that means 'feeling' (Czech, sou-cit; Polish, wsspół-czucie; German, Mit-gefühl; Swedish, medkänsla). In languages that derive from Latin, 'compassion' means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, 'pity' (French, pitié; Italian, pietà; etc.), connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. 'To take pity on a woman' means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower ourselves. That is why the word 'compassion' generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered an inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love. In languages that form the word 'compassion' not from the root 'suffering' but from the root 'feeling', the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion- joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion (in the sense of soucit, współczucie, Mitgefühl, medkänsla) therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, 'Throw me out!' But instead of throwing her out, he seized her and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain. Anyone who has failed to benefit from the the Devil's gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas's fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina's letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.

...As I lie there in this position, letting my eyes wander down my breast and legs, I notice the twitching motion made by my foot at each beat of my pulse. I sit up halfway and look down at my feet, and at this moment I experience a fantastic, alien state I’d never felt before; a delicate, mysterious thrill spreads through my nerves, as though they were flooded by surges of light. When I looked at my shoes, it was as though I had met a good friend or got back a torn-off part of me: a feeling of recognition trembles through all my sense, tears spring to my eyes, and I perceive my shoes as a softly murmuring tune coming toward me. Weakness! I said harshly to myself, and I clenched my fists and said: Weakness. I mocked myself for these ridiculous feelings, made fun of myself quite consciously; I spoke very sternly and reasonably, and I fiercely squeezed my eyes shut to get rid of my tears. Then I begin, as though I’d never seen my shoes before, to study their appearance, their mimicry when I move my feet, their shape and the worn uppers, and I discover that their wrinkles and their white seams give them an expression, lend them a physiognomy. Something of my own nature had entered into these shoes --- they affected me like a breath upon my being, a living, a breathing part of me…

River, the word, contains within it all rivers, which flow like tributaries into it. And this word contains not only all rivers, but more important all my rivers: every accesible experience of every river I've seen, swum in, fished, heard about, felt directly or been affected by in any other manner oblique, secondhand or otherwise. These "rivers" are infinitely tessellating rills and affluents that feed fiction's ability to spur the imagination. I read the word river and, with or without context, I'll dip beneath its surface. (I'm a child wading in the moil and suck, my feet cut on a river's rock-bottom; or the gray river just out the window, now, just to my right, over the trees of the park-spackled with ice. Or-the almost seismic eroticism of a memory from my teens-of the shift of a skirt on a girl in spring, on a quai by an arabesque of a river, in a foreign city...) This is a word's dormant power, brimming with pertinence. So little is needed from the author, when you think of it. (We are already flooded by river water, and only need the author to tap this reservoir.

Violet,' Xaden groans against my mouth. The plea in his tone floods my veins with a whole different form of power. Knowing he's just as affected by our attraction as I am is a rush. 'This isn't what you want.' 'It's exactly what I want,' I counter. I want to replace the anger with lust, the death of the day with the pulse-pounding assurance of my own life, and I know he's capable of delivering all that and more. 'You said to do whatever I need.' I arch my back, pressing the tips of my breasts against his chest. His breathing changes, and there's a war in his eyes that I'm determined to win. It's time to stop dancing around this unbearable tension and break it. He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. 'And I'm telling you that I'm the last thing you need.' The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. 'Are you suggesting someone else?' My heart races as I chance calling his bluff. 'Fuck no.' The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes for a heartbeat before his hips pin mine to the door, and my instant relief at his answer is replaced by a jolt of pure lust. I can see that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife. All he needs is one. Little. Push. And I'm about to shamelessly shove. 'Good.' I tilt my head up to his and draw his bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping him with my teeth. 'Because I only want you, Xaden.' The words breach something within him, and he gives. Finally. One mouths collide, and the kiss is hot and hard and completely out of our control.

The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion—joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion (in the sense of souc/r, wspofczucie, Mitgefuhl, medkansia) therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme".

Trauma is a flooding of dysregulated affective experience that, if it cannot be relationally processed, destabilizes a person’s perceptual experience of his or her own existence and creates an escalating dread of depersonalization that must be stopped at any cost. The brain then takes over.

When the genetic code was solved, in the early 1960s, it turned out to be full of redundancy. Much of the mapping from nucleotides to amino acids seemed arbitrary—not as neatly patterned as any of Gamow’s proposals. Some amino acids correspond to just one codon, others to two, four, or six. Particles called ribosomes ratchet along the RNA strand and translate it, three bases at a time. Some codons are redundant; some actually serve as start signals and stop signals. The redundancy serves exactly the purpose that an information theorist would expect. It provides tolerance for errors. Noise affects biological messages like any other. Errors in DNA—misprints—are mutations.

She’s my mom and she’s never seen me this happy before. Of course, she thinks I love you.” I braved a look at him. “And do you?” “If I deny it, will you be able to get through dinner?” I nodded, ignoring the thin veil of his words over the truth I didn’t want to accept. “Then I don’t love you. You’re the most aggravating woman I’ve ever met. I can barely tolerate you.” “And my kids?” “Oh, no,” he chuckled. “I definitely love them.” “You do?” An aching affection flooded my body, filling in all of the cracks that fear and uncertainty had left me with. An emotional heat bubbled in my chest and wrapped my stiff limbs with something like hope. “Yes, I do. But they agree with me about you. You aggravate us all.

See them in their golden hour, a flood of girls high on the ecstasy of the final bell, tumbling onto the city bus, all gawky limbs and Wonderbra cleavage, chewed nails picking at eruptive zits, lips nibbling and eyes scrunching in a doomed attempt not to cry. Girls with plaid skirts tugged unfathomably high above the knee, girls seizing the motion of the bus to throw themselves bodily into their objects of affection.

Stress affects each gender differently. In a kind of tragic misalignment, during a fight men tend to get “flooded” with stress hormones in a way that leads them to long to shut down, withdraw, and detach—the “flight or fight” response to adrenaline—in order to regain neuroendocrine equilibrium; whereas women react to the same stress by needing to talk more and connect more—the “tend and befriend” response, which lowers their own stress levels.

Nintendo not letting itself make a browser Mario game has not stopped a flash flood of in-browser Mario games. Super Mario Flash, New Super Mario Bros. Flash, Infinite Mario, and the amazing Super Mario Crossover, which lets you play the original SMB games using characters from Castlevania, Excitebike, Ninja Gaidan, and more. (If you like that, try Abobo's Big Adventure.) There are free (and unlicensed) Mario games where he rides a motorbike, takes a shotgun to the Mushroom Kingdom, decides to fight with his fists, is replaced by Sonic, replaces Pac-Man in a maze game, and plays dress-up. They receive no admonition from Nintendo's once-ferocious legal department. Why not? Iwata's explanation is commonsensical: "[I]t would not be appropriate if we treated people who did someone based on affection for Nintendo as criminals." This is also why no one has been told by lawyers to stop selling Wario-as-a-pimp T-shirts.

The Alchemy of Affection by Stewart Stafford The language of Aphrodite, Rendering words as liquid gold. To flood the heart's chambers, Setting them in gilded aurum bold. When this opulent heart beats, Minted blood in golden boughs flows, In possession of treasure most precious, Whose true worth none of us knows. Magnates and moguls may scheme to buy, The devotion that is never truly theirs, Count your kisses instead of fortunes, To bequeath to your loving, rightful heirs. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

And then she was hugging him, and his arms were around her, and she smelled of wildflowers and sunshine, and she was soft against his chest, but he hoped she would stop jumping because "highly aroused" wasn't a good look for him in a public place. His lips found hers and he kissed her softly and thoroughly. When she trembled in his arms, returning his kiss with passion and abandon, a rush of something sweet and innocent flooded his senses. He'd kissed dozens of women and none had ever affected him this way. None had never tasted of sunshine. None had made him question what was real.

I’ll prove who I am, Kingsley, after I’ve seen my son, now back off if you know what’s good for you!” Harry had never heard Mr. Weasley shout like that before. He burst into the living room, his bald patch gleaming with sweat, his spectacles askew, Fred right behind him, both pale but uninjured. “Arthur!” sobbed Mrs. Weasley. “Oh thank goodness!” “How is he?” Mr. Weasley dropped to his knees beside George. For the first time since Harry had known him, Fred seemed to be lost for words. He gaped over the back of the sofa at his twin’s wound as if he could not believe what he was seeing. Perhaps roused by the sound of Fred and their father’s arrival, George stirred. “How do you feel, Georgie?” whispered Mrs. Weasley. George’s fingers groped for the side of his head. “Saintlike,” he murmured. “What’s wrong with him?” croaked Fred, looking terrified. “Is his mind affected?” “Saintlike,” repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. “You see…I’m holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?” Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Color flooded Fred’s pale face. “Pathetic,” he told George. “Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?” “Ah well,” said George, grinning at his tear-soaked mother. “You’ll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum.

Speaking of… I gotta go. I need to be at the field.” His voice rumbled through his chest and against my ear as he spoke. I sighed and stepped out of his arms. I was sad that our couple days together were over and I would be here tonight without him. Classes started tomorrow, and I knew we were going to see a lot less of each other now that the semester was starting. “I’ll walk you out,” I said and followed him to the door. Ivy was still digging through my clothes and called out a good-bye. “Just stay inside,” he said, palming the handle. “It’s cold and slippery out there. You’ll be safer in here.” I grimaced. “You’re probably right.” He grinned. “I’ll call you later, ‘kay?” I nodded. He released the door handle and closed the distance between us with one step. The toes of his shoes bumped against my boots and the front of his jacket brushed against me. My stomach fluttered and my heart rate doubled. The effect he had on me was nothing short of amazing. I tipped my head back so I could look up into his eyes, and the corner of his mouth lifted. He looked at me with so much affection in his gaze that emotion caught in my throat. He didn’t have to say anything because I heard everything just by looking in his eyes. My fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and tangled in the cotton fabric, and at the same time I stretched up, he bent down. The feel of his lips against me was my favorite sensation. Nothing compared to the way his mouth owned mine. His tongue stretched out, sweeping through my mouth with gentle pressure, and I sighed into him and sagged forward. A low laugh vibrated his chest and he pulled back. “Be careful walking to class tomorrow, huh? Don’t fall and hurt yourself.” I nodded, barely comprehending his words. He slipped out the door before reality came flooding back. I rushed forward, caught the closing door, and called out his name. He stopped and turned. The lopsided, knowing smile on his face was smug. “Good luck at practice,” I called, ignoring the few girls who stopped to watch us. “Thanks, baby.” I swear every girl within earshot sighed. I couldn’t even blame them. I shut the door and leaned against it. Ivy put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “I’m gonna need a mega supply of barf bags to put up with you two this semester.” I smiled.

Have you every thrown one stone after another into a tranquil surface of water? The waves spread out in all directions. They collide with each other and all things that get in their way. In the same manner, this is the affect that thoughts have on our state of presence. The baseline (being present) is calm. ‘But, one thought after the other results in turbulence. What happens to a calm lake when you throw one stone after the other into it? The waves from each stone collide into each other without flowing their nature course. Similarly, the mind throws countless thoughts and feelings into our state of conscious living. ‘This is because we unconsciously attempt to focus on the majority of these passing thoughts. Hence, the torment of thought waves flood over the serenity of aware presence. Practice letting each thought flow without attaching anything to it. No labels, no judgement, and no anxiety.

I was nineteen at the time, and like any other besotted teenage girl, I was desperately eager to please the object of my affections. I didn’t argue the point, but set to work producing the desired loaf. The result was barely chewable when it emerged hot from the oven. By the time it cooled, it seemed significantly more resistant to fire, flood, or earthquakes than my dormitory’s concrete walls. After a brief discussion, Gabriel and I both decided that this rye-brick was more appropriate food for crows than for humans. I carried the slab to the balcony of my eighth-floor dormitory apartment, expecting that a fall from that height would smash it to crumbs. I peered over the edge to make sure no one was below me; I didn’t want to drop the hardened mass onto someone’s head and make a murderess of myself. After verifying that the concrete walkway below was clear, I dropped the rye-brick over the side of the balcony. Down, down, it plummeted—past the seventh floor, the sixth, the fifth … Nearly a hundred feet below, and traveling somewhere around eighty feet per second, the rye-brick finally hit the ground—and didn’t break. Despite an eight-story drop onto concrete, the rye-brick maintained its integrity. One of my roommates inspected the situation and expressed surprise that the stones of the walkway itself remained unscathed. I didn’t try making any wheat-free loaves for a while after that.

The next morning was the second time Kate awoke in Rohan's bed since her arrival at the castle. But unlike that first bewildering day, this time, when she opened her eyes to the morning sunlight flooding his chamber, he was the first lovely thing she saw, right there beside her. In no hurry to arise, they stayed peacefully abed together. She passed a dreamy spell stroking her drowsing lover's bare back in tender affection. What a long, majestic line it was that flowed from the bulky ridge of his shoulder down to the sleek, lean curve of his lower back. Of course, he had more scars on him than one body ought to bear, she thought, but he was not inclined to answer her mild inquiries about them. "What happened here?" she murmured, tracing what appeared to be a saber scar along his rib cage. Lying on his stomach, his face resting on his folded arms, he feigned an in-between state of sleepy inattention, though he was clearly enjoying her touch. "Hm?" She saw through his evasion but forgave him with a knowing smile. Whatever trouble he had been in, it hadn't killed him. That was all that mattered. She leaned closer and kissed all his old hurts. Her light kisses soon followed the same path her admiring hands had taken, until at length, he rolled onto his backhand showed her the regal evidence of her effect on him. He drew her closer, wanting to make love again, but she was still sore from her first time and softly pleaded his forbearance. With a husky chuckle at her reluctant denial, he stole a kiss, gave her a ruefully doting look, then arose in all his magnificent naked glory to order a bath for both of them.

What else do you want to know?’ he asked. Possessed by morbid curiosity, her eyes darted to the scar that cut just over his ear. She’d found it shortly after they met, while he lay unconscious in the grass. He didn’t need to ask what had caught her attention. ‘I got that in a fight against imperial soldiers. Ask me why.’ She shook her head, unable to bring herself to do it. The cocoon of warmth that had enveloped the entire afternoon unwound itself in an instant. ‘Are you having second thoughts about being here with me?’ He planted a hand into the grass, edging closer. ‘No. I trust you.’ He was giving her all the time in the world to shove him away, to rise, to flee. Her heartbeat quickened as she watched him. Moving ever so slowly, he braced an arm on either side of her, his fingers sinking into the moss. ‘I asked you to come with me.’ Despite her words, she dug her heels into the ground and inched backwards. ‘I feel safe with you.’ ‘I can see that.’ He affected a lazy smile as she retreated until her back pressed against the knotted roots that crawled along the ground. His boldness was so unexpected, so exciting. She held her breath and waited. Her pulse jumped when he reached for her. She’d been imagining this moment ever since their first duel and wondering whether it would take another swordfight for him to come near her again. His fingers curled gently against the back of her neck, giving her one last chance to escape. Then he lowered his mouth and kissed her. It was as natural as breathing to wrap his arms around her and lower her to the ground. He settled his weight against her hips. The perfume of her skin mixed with the damp scent of the moss beneath them. At some point, her sense of propriety would win over. Until then he let his body flood with raw desire. It felt good to kiss her the way he wanted to. It felt damn good. He slipped his tongue past her lips to where she was warm and smooth and inviting. Her hands clutched at his shirt as she returned his kiss. A muted sound escaped from her throat. He swallowed her cry, using his hands to circle her wrists: rough enough to make her breath catch, gentle enough to have her opening her knees, cradling his hips with her long legs. He stroked himself against her, already hard beyond belief. He groaned when she responded, instinctively pressing closer. ‘I need to see you,’ he said. The sash around her waist fell aside in two urgent tugs while his other hand stole beneath her tunic. She gasped when his fingers brushed the swath of cloth at her breasts. The faint, helpless sound nearly lifted him out of the haze of desire. He didn’t want to think too hard about this. Not yet. He felt for the edge of the binding. ‘In back.’ She spoke in barely a whisper, a sigh on his soul. She peered up at him, her face in shadow as he parted her tunic. She watched him in much the same way she had when they had first met: curious, fearless, her eyes a swirl of green and gold. He pulled at the tight cloth until Ailey’s warm, feminine flesh swelled into his hands. He soothed his palms over the cruel welts left by the bindings. She bit down against her lip as blood rushed back into the tortured flesh. With great care, he stroked her nipples, teasing them until they grew tight beneath his roughened fingertips. God’s breath. Perfect. He wanted his mouth on her and still it wouldn’t be enough. Her heart beat out a chaotic rhythm. His own echoed the same restless pulse. ‘I knew it would be like this.’ His words came out hoarse with passion. At that moment he’d have given his soul to have her. But somewhere in his thick skull, he knew he had a beautiful, vulnerable girl who trusted him pressed against the bare earth. He sensed the hitch in her breathing and how her fingers dug nervously into his shoulders, even as her hips arched into him. He ran his thumb gently over the reddened mark that ran just below her collarbone and felt her shiver beneath him.

Get used to it. The weather may feel like science fiction, but the science underlying it is very real and mundane. It takes only a small increase in global average temperatures to have a big effect on weather, because what drives the winds and their circulation patterns on the surface of the earth are differences in temperature. So when you start to change the average surface temperature of the earth, you change the wind patterns—and then before you know it, you change the monsoons. When the earth gets warmer, you also change rates of evaporation—which is a key reason we will get more intense rainstorms in some places and hotter dry spells and longer droughts in others. How can we have both wetter and drier extremes at the same time? As we get rising global average temperatures and the earth gets warmer, it will trigger more evaporation from the soil. So regions that are already naturally dry will tend to get drier. At the same time, higher rates of evaporation, because of global warming, will put more water vapor into the atmosphere, and so areas that are either near large bodies of water or in places where atmospheric dynamics already favor higher rates of precipitation will tend to get wetter. We know one thing about the hydrologic cycle: What moisture goes up must come down, and where more moisture goes up, more will come down. Total global precipitation will probably increase, and the amount that will come down in any one storm is expected to increase as well—which will increase flooding and gully washers. That’s why this rather gentle term “global warming” doesn’t capture the disruptive potential of what lies ahead. “The popular term ‘global warming’ is a misnomer,” says John Holdren. “It implies something uniform, gradual, mainly about temperature, and quite possibly benign. What is happening to global climate is none of those. It is uneven geographically. It is rapid compared to ordinary historic rates of climatic change, as well as rapid compared to the adjustment times of ecosystems and human society. It is affecting a wide array of critically important climatic phenomena besides temperature, including precipitation, humidity, soil moisture, atmospheric circulation patterns, storms, snow and ice cover, and ocean currents and upwellings. And its effects on human well-being are and undoubtedly will remain far more negative than positive. A more accurate, albeit more cumbersome, label than ‘global warming’ is ‘global climatic disruption.’ 

The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.

Eighteen centuries have now passed away since God sent forth a few Jews from a remote corner of the earth, to do a work which according to man's judgment must have seemed impossible. He sent them forth at a time when the whole world was full of superstition, cruelty, lust, and sin. He sent them forth to proclaim that the established religions of the earth were false and useless, and must be forsaken. He sent them forth to persuade men to give up old habits and customs, and to live different lives. He sent them forth to do battle with the most grovelling idolatry, with the vilest and most disgusting immorality, with vested interests, with old associations, with a bigoted priesthood, with sneering philosophers, with an ignorant population, with bloody-minded emperors, with the whole influence of Rome. Never was there an enterprise to all appearance more Quixotic, and less likely to succeed! And how did He arm them for this battle? He gave them no carnal weapons. He gave them no worldly power to compel assent, and no worldly riches to bribe belief. He simply put the Holy Ghost into their hearts, and the Scriptures into their hands. He simply bade them to expound and explain, to enforce and to publish the doctrines of the Bible. The preacher of Christianity in the first century was not a man with a sword and an army, to frighten people, like Mahomet,—or a man with a license to be sensual, to allure people, like the priests of the shameful idols of Hindostan. No! he was nothing more than one holy man with one holy book. And how did these men of one book prosper? In a few generations they entirely changed the face of society by the doctrines of the Bible. They emptied the temples of the heathen gods. They famished idolatry, or left it high and dry like a stranded ship. They brought into the world a higher tone of morality between man and man. They raised the character and position of woman. They altered the standard of purity and decency. They put an end to many cruel and bloody customs, such as the gladiatorial fights.—There was no stopping the change. Persecution and opposition were useless. One victory after another was won. One bad thing after another melted away. Whether men liked it or not, they were insensibly affected by the movement of the new religion, and drawn within the whirlpool of its power. The earth shook, and their rotten refuges fell to the ground. The flood rose, and they found themselves obliged to rise with it. The tree of Christianity swelled and grew, and the chains they had cast round it to arrest its growth, snapped like tow. And all this was done by the doctrines of the Bible! Talk of victories indeed! What are the victories of Alexander, and Cæsar, and Marlborough, and Napoleon, and Wellington, compared with those I have just mentioned? For extent, for completeness, for results, for permanence, there are no victories like the victories of the Bible.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory.  In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me.  There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The hollow sensation she felt when she knew without him saying a word that Hugo was displeased, and the disproportionate joy she experienced when he smiled at her with some degree of affection. Actions and attitudes that would seem normal in most relationships took on a significance of monumental importance and flooded her with hope. But the master puppeteer knew just when her desperation point had been reached, and always rewarded her with nothing more than a kind word or a gentle kiss. And of course, over time these moments became rarer and therefore infinitely more precious.

I sensed that this was a small part of what contributed to the passivity with regard to the Three Gorges Project in Fuling. The vast majority of the people would not be directly affected by the coming changes, and so they weren’t concerned. Despite having large sections of the city scheduled to be flooded within the next decade, it wasn’t really a community issue, because there wasn’t a community as one would generally define it. There were lots of small groups, and there was a great deal of patriotism, but like most patriotism anywhere in the world, this was spurred as much by fear and ignorance as by any true sense of a connection to the Motherland. And you could manipulate this fear and ignorance by telling people that the dam, even though it might destroy the river and the town, was of great importance to China.

He and others have interpreted contemporary accounts in terms of a succession of impacts, too small to have a global impact but quite sufficient to cause mayhem in the ancient world, largely through generating destructive atmospheric shock waves, earthquakes, tsunamis, and wildfires. Many urban centres in Europe, Africa, and Asia appear to have collapsed almost simultaneously around 2350 BC, and records abound of flood, fire, quake, and general chaos. These sometimes fanciful accounts are, of course, open to alternative interpretation, and hard evidence for bombardment from space around this time remains elusive. Having said this, seven impact craters in Australia, Estonia, and Argentina have been allocated ages of 4,000–5,000 years and the search goes on for others. Even more difficult to defend are propositions by some that the collapse of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages may somehow have been triggered by increased numbers of impacts when the Earth last passed through the dense part of the Taurid Complex between 400 and 600 AD. Hard evidence for these is weak and periods of deteriorated climate attributed to impacts around this time can equally well be explained by large volcanic explosions. In recent years there has, in fact, been a worrying tendency amongst archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians to attempt to explain every historical event in terms of a natural catastrophe of some sort –whether asteroid impact, volcanic eruption, or earthquake –many on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence. As the aim of this volume is to shed light on how natural catastrophes can affect us all, I would be foolish to argue that past civilizations have not suffered many times at the hands of nature. Attributing everything from the English Civil War and the French Revolution to the fall of Rome and the westward march of Genghis Khan to natural disasters only serves, however, to devalue the potentially cataclysmic effects of natural hazards and to trivialize the role of nature in shaping the course

This is how it goes in life: sometimes you’re born with a cleft palette or rickets, like my bow-legged Granddaddy, or a touch short on brains, like my Great Aunt Cal who everyone called ‘Stool.’ Me? I’m a double hitter. In addition to being what folks call “large boned,” I came into this world with homosexual tendencies—though back then I thought of it only as my strange, strong affections for some female friends, having no such notion of “homosexual tendencies” as a thing, at least not in Midland, Texas. Notions of this nature found footing in me eight months before I ran away to work in the kitchen at Sugarland Prison, when I got a job at the egg store. The egg store was all wood. Wood floors, wood ceiling beams, wood shelves—that rugged, knotty, reddish wood. The simple kind of wood they used to bury folks in before the floods, when rotting coffins popped from the ground like splinters and dead bodies dropped out in maggoty heaps. The egg store smelled like wood, too, which I liked. That and just the tiniest hint of smoke from Bibby’s metal pork smoker two streets over. I swear he ran that thing day and night, crazy redneck. And that’s where I fell in love for the first time, there in the egg store that smelled like wood and smoked pig fat.

Tonight, after a day full of bad vibrations and thick, dark energy swirling its negative spiral throughout my world, affecting those around me – I could not hold it in any longer. So I cried. I cried for every being on this planet who has ever thought of them self as a victim. I felt the victim consciousness flood my mind tonight, but I knew I was not experiencing it as a personal lesson – it was so that I could hear and feel all of them. I heard their cries, their prayers, and I felt their hopelessness. And after I cried for them – for us, I sent them all my love… for that is what I Am.

Big stress or little stress—your body reacts the same way. The human body doesn’t differentiate between a major or minor stress. Regardless of the catalyst, a typical stress reaction floods the body with a wave of 1,400 biochemical events. If this happens too frequently, we age prematurely, our cognitive function is affected, and we are drained of energy and clarity.8

The CBT model is based on the premise that our thoughts affect our emotions and ultimately our behaviors. When we change our relationship with our thoughts, we change the cascade of emotions that floods our bodies and persuades us to act in certain ways, which is a cornerstone of the work in this book.

All languages that derive from Latin form the word “compassion” by combining the prefix meaning “with” (com-) and the root meaning “suffering” (Late Latin, passio). In other languages—Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance—this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means “feeling” (Czech, sou-cit; Polish, współ-czucie; German, Mit-gefühl; Swedish, med-känsla). In languages that derive from Latin, “compassion” means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, “pity” (French, pitié; Italian, pietà; etc.), connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. “To take pity on a woman” means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower ourselves. That is why the word “compassion” generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered an inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love. In languages that form the word “compassion” not from the root “suffering” but from the root “feeling,” the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other’s misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion—joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion (in the sense of soucit, współczucie, Mitgefühl, medkänsla) therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme.

the AIDS pandemic is a disaster with few parallels, because it is so easy to make it invisible or to pretend it is something else. an earthquake, flood or famine is dramatically visible and politically salient, because it affects entire communities in a spectacular fashion, including their leaders and spokespeople. AIDS is more like climate change, an incremental process manifest in a quickening drumbeat of ‘normal’ events.

We must not, however, think that the anima is “good.” The anima is neither good nor bad; she just is. She wants life, and so she seems to want both good and bad, or, rather, she is not concerned with these moral categories. That is why working with the anima is always a delicate matter. One can no more deliver oneself over to the anima lock stock and barrel than one can surrender the whole of oneself to any particular psychological functions or quality. It is also the anima who seems to arouse a man’s capacity for love. When we first fall in love we are flooded with powerful, life-giving emotions. This is why the anima can be best described poetically and not scientifically, dramatically and not concretely. Yet, as we have seen, a man’s relationship with her must develop beyond the mere sensation of falling or being in love, as he must come to perceive that the life-giving feminine soul is within himself. He cannot afford to let his anima live only in projection onto a woman, but most reach beyond this projection to search for the soul within himself.

The usual Form of baptism was immersion. This is inferred from the original meaning of the Greek baptivzein and baptismov";678 from the analogy of John’s baptism in the Jordan; from the apostles’ comparison of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, with the escape of the ark from the flood, with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and with burial and resurrection; finally, from the general custom of the ancient church which prevails in the East to this day.679  But sprinkling, also, or copious pouring rather, was practised at an early day with sick and dying persons, and in all such cases where total or partial immersion was impracticable. Some writers suppose that this was the case even in the first baptism of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost; for Jerusalem was poorly supplied with water and private baths; the Kedron is a small creek and dry in summer; but there are a number of pools and cisterns there. Hellenistic usage allows to the relevant expressions sometimes the wider sense of washing, bathing, sprinkling, and ceremonial cleansing.680  Unquestionably, immersion expresses the idea of baptism, as a purification and renovation of the whole man, more completely than pouring or sprinkling; but it is not in keeping with the genius of the gospel to limit the operation of the Holy Spirit by the quantity or the quality of the water or the mode of its application. Water is absolutely necessary to baptism, as an appropriate symbol of the purifying and regenerating energy of the Holy Spirit; but whether the water be in large quantity or small, cold or warm, fresh or salt, from river, cistern, or spring, is relatively immaterial, and cannot affect the validity of the ordinance.

Add together the collective global impact of population, consumption, the global economy, and technology and it is clear how we have become a geological force. Human activity has so disrupted processes on the planet with consequences that what were once called "acts of god" or "natural disasters" now carry the undeniable imprint of our species. We have become almost like gods as we affect natural events such as weather and climate, earthquakes, floods, drought, mega-fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Once, our fear of gods acted to restrain human excesses, but now we have ourselves become the gods.

Before the time of Allan and Delair, Comyns Beaumont reviewed the work of Establishment geologists, Charles Lyell, Louis Agassiz and James Geikie. He exposed their scientific palaver for the nonsense it is, and wrote of the Ice Age theory in these words: What! No Ice Age which came and went, spreading over hundreds of thousands of years as all good geologists proclaim? No smothering ice sheets which enveloped the British Isles and much of the northern parts of the continent, changed the climate to Arctic conditions – although, strangely enough, much of our fauna and flora survived despite it – and compelled all the survivors to flee? No lengthy periods of ice alternated with warm and even sub-tropical climatic interludes? No. Nothing of the sort. There was admittedly a tremendous convulsion of nature, which had the most direful effect upon the inhabitants of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and those in Northern Asia. It resulted in giving us, it is true, bitter cold, tremendous floods, and cruel dampness. That it affected the climate in the north adversely and permanently cannot be denied. It did other things as well. But no Ice Age – (Riddle of Prehistoric Britain) It was an event…sudden, rapid, devastating, and appalling in its magnitude, and destructiveness. It was a celestial impact of an immense cometary body…It rained or distributed rocks, stones, boulder clay, till, gravel, sand, and other material over great areas, utterly obliterating certain parts, elevating others, and entirely missing some regions. It created islands, drowned others, caused immense tidal waves which swallowed up coastal lands, consumed huge spaces with electric waves, set up volcanoes, and swept away cities and largely populated districts almost in a flash

A hypocrite may have some transitory pleasure in religion from a land-flood of sensible affections, yet he does not have the least taste of the “river of God’s pleasures” (Psalm 36:8).

Open your eyes,” he said. “I want you to know it’s me.” She obeyed, looking up at him. “As if it could be anyone else.” God, the unabashed affection in her gaze . . . It punctured all the defenses he’d built around his heart. A flood of emotions swamped him: anger, confusion, fear. And beneath it all, a foolish, sentimental sort of yearning. He hadn’t known he still was capable of yearning, for anything. She made him feel almost human again. He sank to his knees, pressing his cheek to the cool silk of her inner thigh. “Cecy, my darling. I could kiss you for that.” And he did. Spreading his fingers to frame the slit of her drawers, he pressed his mouth to her core. She bucked against him, and he clutched her hips tight, pinning her to the wall as he teased and tasted her flesh. Her gasp of delight made his pulse stutter. Slowly now. Don’t rush. Yes, he meant to give Cecily an indelible memory, but he was also taking one for himself. He drank in her intoxicating perfume— the scents of clean linen and soap, mingling with the sweet musk of her arousal. He stroked her languidly with his tongue, wanting to memorize her shape, her texture, her taste. Most of all, he took his time learning her, delighting in the smallest discoveries: a caress just so made her moan; a kiss to this spot made her hips convulse. Be it four years or forty— this would be a kiss to remember.

Caleb was captivated by its beauty. He had never seen anything so colorful and artistic since he left Egypt so many years ago. Desert living was not conducive to the fragility of beauty. And yet, in this somber justice before him, that beauty became hideously ugly. It was like a smooth and graceful serpent that reared its head to bare its fangs and bite. A flood of terror came over him and he understood, like he had never before, the true nature of beauty without holiness. It was the seduction of the gods. It was the lie of the Garden. And it was evil. Monstrous evil. The meaning of the tragedy before him became clear. The judgment Achan received was not an extreme punishment for a minor misdemeanor. It was not the significance of the criminal act that warranted the consequences. It was the significance of the one against whom the act was committed that made it so serious. This puny created man defied the everlasting Creator of the heavens and earth, and threatened the lives of thousands of his countrymen, and the existence of his nation. The final thought that struck Caleb was that humanity does not consist of isolated autonomous individuals unconnected to others. We are all connected to our communities in inextricable consequences. Our choices and actions affect not only ourselves but also all those around us. It was time to get back to camp. Joshua had planned an immediate second attack on Ai.

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I am with you always." Matthew 28:20 It is well there is One who is ever the same, and who is ever with us. It is well there is one stable rock amidst the billows of the sea of life. O my soul, set not thine affections upon rusting, moth-eaten, decaying treasures, but set thine heart upon him who abides forever faithful to thee. Build not thine house upon the moving quicksands of a deceitful world, but found thy hopes upon this rock, which, amid descending rain and roaring floods, shall stand immovably secure. My soul, I charge thee, lay up thy treasure in the only secure cabinet; store thy jewels where thou canst never lose them. Put thine all in Christ; set all thine affections on his person, all thy hope in his merit, all thy trust in his efficacious blood, all thy joy in his presence, and so thou mayest laugh at loss, and defy destruction. Remember that all the flowers in the world's garden fade by turns, and the day cometh when nothing will be left but the black, cold earth. Death's black extinguisher must soon put out thy candle. Oh! how sweet to have sunlight when the candle is gone! The dark flood must soon roll between thee and all thou hast; then wed thine heart to him who will never leave thee; trust thyself with him who will go with thee through the black and surging current of death's stream, and who will land thee safely on the celestial shore, and make thee sit with him in heavenly places forever. Go, sorrowing son of affliction, tell thy secrets to the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Trust all thy concerns with him who never can be taken from thee, who will never leave thee, and who will never let thee leave him, even "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." "Lo, I am with you alway," is enough for my soul to live upon, let who will forsake me.

am with you always." Matthew 28:20 It is well there is One who is ever the same, and who is ever with us. It is well there is one stable rock amidst the billows of the sea of life. O my soul, set not thine affections upon rusting, moth-eaten, decaying treasures, but set thine heart upon him who abides forever faithful to thee. Build not thine house upon the moving quicksands of a deceitful world, but found thy hopes upon this rock, which, amid descending rain and roaring floods, shall stand immovably secure. My soul, I charge thee, lay up thy treasure in the only secure cabinet; store thy jewels where thou canst never lose them. Put thine all in Christ; set all thine affections on his person, all thy hope in his merit, all thy trust in his efficacious blood, all thy joy in his presence, and so thou mayest laugh at loss, and defy destruction. Remember that all the flowers in the world's garden fade by turns, and the day cometh when nothing will be left but the black, cold earth. Death's black extinguisher must soon put out thy candle. Oh! how sweet to have sunlight when the candle is gone! The dark flood must soon roll between thee and all thou hast; then wed thine heart to him who will never leave thee; trust thyself with him who will go with thee through the black and surging current of death's stream, and who will land thee safely on the celestial shore, and make thee sit with him in heavenly places forever. Go, sorrowing son of affliction, tell thy secrets to the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Trust all thy concerns with him who never can be taken from thee, who will never leave thee, and who will never let thee leave him, even "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." "Lo, I am with you alway," is enough for my soul to live upon, let who will forsake me.

Wait until I am stronger and can go with you to protect you. She shook her head. “You keep getting mixed up. I’m supposed to be protecting you. I’m your doctor.” You are my lifemate. There is only one. You are mine. Only one. She lifted her head, green eyes searching his face. “You’ve never lived with a woman? You must have had sex.” Carpathians do not live with any other than their lifemate. Sex is a simple sharing of the body, a pleasure that fades along with emotions after two hundred years if we do not find our lifemate. “I don’t understand. Without a lifemate, Carpathians feel nothing?” Nothing, Shea. Not affection or remorse, not right or wrong. Certainly not desire. After two hundred years Carpathian males cannot feel. Color flooded her face. “You feel desire when you’re with me. I may not be experienced, but I do have medical training.” His fingers tightened around hers, his breath warm along her knuckles. I want you with every cell in my body, with my mind and my heart. Your soul is the other half of mine. When you are with me, I feel. Joy, desire, anger, even laughter. You are my lifemate. I have waited over eight hundred years to find you. I could not see color until you came into my life. His black eyes, worn with suffering, fastened on her green ones. I cannot lose you. I can never be alone again. Mortals and immortals alike would be in danger should I lose you. She didn’t want to touch that. She murmured his name softly, brushed a kiss against his temple almost without knowing it. I cannot exist without you, little red hair. There is darkness in me. The beast is strong. I struggle every moment against loss of control. My lifemate is my anchor. Only you can save me, keep me from walking in complete madness.

My lover’s alluring propensities took on a vivacity I had difficulty conceding. His passion magnified a thousand-fold within my consciousness as I closed my eyes to this wanton dexterity. I desired him, and he wanted me. Under this euphoric ecstasy, I relinquished my person to his coveted demands.               My Apollo, my Phoebus, who never failed to brighten my person and radiate my soul, had coiled me into his solicitous web of ardent devotion. My coverings fell away with every inhalation of his loving elixir. My lover had exposed my nakedness to the gazing eyes of the unseen voyeur and stalker. They alone were granted dispensation to witness the audacity between my lover and me.               Our fiery gazes never left or strayed from each other. Bewitched by his blueish-green eyes, my soul was bare to him. His oral stimulation had fostered me to arch my back in a balletic pose as his hands supported the small of my back. Watched through the submerged glass, we felt like Poseidon’s pleasure slaves, performing solely for his gratification. I was awed by our agility and reminded of a supple aquatic dance performance I had witnessed during my extensive travels. My former ballet training surged through me as I saw myself swirling and pirouetting across the room, and Andy’s thickness gyrated within the core of my being. The ecstasy and the agony of my dance pedagogy had transformed into the art of intercourse. The grace of movement and the beauty of love had merged into a seraphic epiphany – a unity of the Godhead within and without.               At the precise moment of our orgasmic exultations, I finally grasped my chaperone’s universal knowledge: that the divine and I are but one and the same. It was then I comprehended my guardian’s god-like comportment. Andy knew his birth-right, and he wore his divinity with pride and honour. All of that I saw in him as it came gushing to the forefront. He was indeed a Phoebus Apollo, a sun god beheld in a darkened chamber. There and then, I made a secret covenant to myself, like an apostle to the Son of God - I would follow in his footsteps.               My Valet’s sanctity swirled within me, flooding my kernel with beatific sows of celestial grace. Overjoyed by his tokens of affection, I too released my passion into his garnering gulf. Streams of my succulent splendour oozed from his enticing lips. It was only when we shared the final droplets of my luscious deposits that he liberated his engorgement from my sopping honeycomb. I supped at his dripping remains before sharing my fill with him, so we could both partake in this sexual liturgy of heavenly Eucharist.               We did not relinquish our performance after the lights and music had disappeared, but remained entwined in darkness, savouring the inseparable devotion that had once been the domain of Apollo and his beloved Hyacinth.

•A candidate running for president in 2012 referred to higher education as “mind control” and “indoctrination.” He ran again in 2016.         •A former Governor and 2012 presidential contender blamed the separation of church and state on Satan. He also sought to solve his state’s drought problem by asking its citizens to pray for rain. He ran again in 2016.         •A 2012 presidential contender claimed, “there’s violence in Israel because Jesus is coming soon.”         •A Georgia congressman claimed that evolution and the Big Bang Theory were “lies straight from the pit of Hell,” adding “Earth is about 9,000 years old and was created in six days, per the Bible.” He’s a physician, and a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee.         •From another member of the House Science Committee: “Prehistoric climate change could have been caused by dinosaur flatulence.”         •From the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “Global warming isn’t real, God is in control of the world.”         •A former Speaker of the House -- a born-again Christian, and convicted felon – declared, “One thing Americans seem to forget is that God wrote the Constitution.”         •The Lt. Governor of a southern state claimed that Yoga may result in satanic possession.         •A Southern senator claimed, “video games represent a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people.”         •A California state representative proudly stated: “Guns are used to defend our property and our families and our freedom, and they are absolutely essential to living the way God intended for us to live.”         •Another California representative suggested that abortion was to blame for the state’s drought.         •From a Texas representative: “The great flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn’t because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”         •An Oklahoma representative said: “Just because the Supreme Court rules on something doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s constitutional.”         •From another Texas representative: “We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border. We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.”         •A South Carolina State representative, commenting on the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage said, “The devil is taking control of this land and we’re not stopping him!

River, the word, contains within it all rivers, which flow like tributaries into it. And this word contains not only all rivers, but more important all my rivers: every accesible experience of every river I've seen, swum in, fished, heard about, felt directly or been affected by in any other manner oblique, secondhand or otherwise. These "rivers" are infinitely tessellating rills and affluents that feed fiction's ability to spur the imagination. I read the word river and, with or without context, I'll dip beneath its surface. (I'm a child wading in the soil and muck, my feet cut on a river's rock-bottom; or the gray river just out the window, now, just to my right, over the trees of the park-spackled with ice. Or-the almost seismic eroticism of a memory from my teens-of the shift of a skirt on a girl in spring, on a quai by an arabesque of a river, in a foreign city...) This is a word's dormant power, brimming with pertinence. So little is needed from the author, when you think of it. (We are already flooded by river water, and only need the author to tap this reservoir.)

Yes, your personality and choices in this life are affected by your childhood upbringing and your environment, but your past lives can point to fears, longings, phobias, obstacles and patterns. Although you’ve had many past lives, not all of them will affect your current behavior or personality.   As you can imagine, you’ve suffered greatly in some of your past lives. You’ve died young, you’ve endured wounds and illnesses, heartache and abandonment, abuse and neglect, poverty and pain. You’ve been the good guy and the bad guy. Rich and poor. Famous and common. Male and female. Some of that can carry over into your present life and color portions of it or flood every corner. 

Why do I love Italy? Do not a hundred answers present themselves to you on the instant? I love Italy because my mother is an Italian; because the blood that flows in my veins is Italian; because the soil in which are buried the dead whom my mother mourns and whom my father venerates is Italian; because the town in which I was born, the language that I speak, the books that educate me, because my brother, my sister, my comrades, the great people among whom I live, and the beautiful nature which surrounds me, and all that I see, that I love, that I study, that I admire, is Italian. Oh, you cannot feel that affection to the full! You will feel it when you become a man; when, returning from a long journey, after a prolonged absence, you step up in the morning to the bulwarks of the vessel and see on the distant horizon the lofty blue mountains of your country; you will feel it then in the impetuous flood of tenderness which will fill your eyes with tears and will wrest a cry from your heart. You will feel it in some great and distant city, in that impulse of the soul which will draw you from the strange throng towards a working man from whom you have heard in passing a word.

Also, the Bible does not explicitly say that it was only due to the water’s recession (which all sides agree is indeed a factor) as to why mountaintops were seen. The text says “the tops of the mountains were seen” (Genesis 8:5). This involves two things: water level (1) and visibility (2). This second factor that is often overlooked is the conditions that may affect visibility. The warmer ocean water (which is expected from the Flood with continental shifting, rising basalts from the mantle, and possibly some nuclear decay would surely generate heat and volcanism) gives off vapors and mists that form low-lying fog and clouds. Hence, visibility would likely be rather low. Genesis 8:5 may well be discussing the state of visibility and atmospheric condition regarding clouds and fog from the heated ocean just as much at it discusses water level.

Ever the curious scientist, Pavlov spent months studying how the flood changed his dogs’ behavior. Many were never the same—they had completely different personalities after the flood, and learned behavior that was previously ingrained vanished. He summed up what happened, and how it applies to humans: Different conditions productive of extreme excitation often lead to profound and prolonged loss of balance in nervous and psychic activity . . . neuroses and psychoses may develop as a result of extreme danger to oneself or to near friends, or even the spectacle of some frightful event not affecting one directly. People tend to have short memories. Most of the time they can forget about bad experiences and fail to heed lessons previously learned. But hard-core stress leaves a scar.

According to the dominant view, Christians will be “raptured” off the earth and the rest of the world will experience seven years of intense tribulation under the Antichrist. Then Jesus will come back with all his saints and fight the battle of Armageddon, culminating in a millennium of Christ’s rule on Earth. Finally, all will be judged and either go to heaven or burn in the lake of fire. The frightening part is that the first event will happen suddenly, “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Anticipating the rapture can create intense anxiety for the believer who is not absolutely sure of salvation. The other metaphor in the Bible is that of the Flood in Noah’s day. In that story, people were busy making merry when they were suddenly swept away. The implication is that you must not relax. You should live in fear about being right with God at all times. Especially for a small child, this can be terrifying. Another unfortunate aspect of this end-times focus is its effect on thinking about the future. The impact on political issues, such as environmental concern and peace making, is profound. Fundamentalists are generally unmotivated to better the world because they see it as doomed. In fact, believers are often excited when war breaks out, particularly in the Middle East, because it could mean “the end” at last. For an individual, personal life planning can be negatively affected. As Cindy expressed it: I was always lonely and afraid because I believed doomsday was coming any moment that within the twinkling of an eye the world would end because Christ was coming back. I never thought about a future, or saving money, or getting an education, because I didn’t think I would reach old age.

I thought about it, and I came up with the perfect way to raise her awareness. I wrote her a bedtime story, a disarming blend of humor and affection, and I called it: The Book of Oogenesis In the beginning were the gametes. And though there was sex, lo, there was no gender, and life was in balance. And God said, “Let there be Sperm”: and some seeds did shrivel in size and grow cheap to make, and they did flood the market. And God said, “Let there be Eggs”: and other seeds were afflicted by a plague of Sperm. And yea, few of them bore fruit, for Sperm brought no food for the zygote, and only the largest Eggs could make up the shortfall. And these grew yet larger in the fullness of time. And God put the Eggs into a womb, and said, “Wait here: for thy bulk has made thee unwieldy, and Sperm must seek thee out in thy chambers. Henceforth shalt thou be fertilized internally.” And it was so. And God said to the gametes, “The fruit of thy fusion may abide in any place and take any shape. It may breathe air or water or the sulphurous muck of hydrothermal vents. But do not forget my one commandment unto you, which has not changed from the beginning of time: spread thy genes.” And thus did Sperm and Egg go into the world. And Sperm said, “I am cheap and plentiful, and if sowed abundantly I will surely fulfill God’s plan. I shall forever seek out new mates and then abandon them when they are with child, for there are many wombs and little time.” But Egg said, “Lo, the burden of procreation weighs heavily upon me. I must carry flesh that is but half mine, gestate and feed it even when it leaves my chamber,” for by now many of Egg’s bodies were warm of blood, and furry besides. “I can have but few children, and must devote myself to those, and protect them at every turn. And I will make Sperm help me, for he got me into this. And though he doth struggle at my side, I shall not let him stray, nor lie with my competitors.” And Sperm liked this not. And God smiled, for Its commandment had put Sperm and Egg at war with each other, even unto the day they made themselves obsolete.

Madame Egloff, who stood, hands held out in front of her, expressing her admiration. ‘Please make the alterations, Madame, and have the gowns sent round to Brown’s Hotel by the weekend.’ Half an hour later, when they left Madame Egloff’s salon, Sophie had been dressed and pinned into each of the garments Matty had chosen, and promises had been made to deliver the clothes to the hotel by Saturday morning at the latest. * Monday morning saw them at Paddington Station being conducted to a private compartment on the train. Sophie had never travelled in such style before, being more used to the uncomfortable rowdiness of a third-class carriage, but Matty had insisted. ‘I always travel this way,’ she said. ‘The journey is quite tiring enough without being crammed in next to crying children and shrill women.’ Having directed the porter to place their luggage in the guard’s van, Matty had settled herself into their compartment with a copy of the new Murray’s Magazine, which she had bought from a news-stand at the station. Beside her on the seat was a hamper, provided by Brown’s, with the food and drink they would need for the journey. As the train drew out of the station and started its long journey west, Sophie felt keyed up with anxious anticipation and was grateful for the comforting presence of Hannah, ensconced on the other side of the compartment. Dressed in her new plaid travelling dress, with a matching hat perched on her head, Sophie knew she was a different person from the one who had sat at her dying mother’s bedside, holding her hand. No longer a young girl on the brink of adulthood... but who? There had been too much change in her life in the past weeks that she still had to come to terms with. Who am I? she wondered. I don’t feel like me! She looked across at Hannah, so familiar, so safe, huddled in a corner, her eyes shut as she dozed, and Sophie felt a wave of affection flood through her. Dear Hannah, she thought, I’m so glad you came too. When they had left Madame Egloff, Matty had taken Sophie for afternoon tea at Brown’s. Looking round the famous tea room, with its panelled walls, its alcoved fireplace and its windows giving onto Albemarle Street, Sophie

Perhaps a gay affair? We haven’t had one of those at Coopers Chase yet, and I think everyone would enjoy it. Maybe someone’s grandson could go to prison? Or a flood that doesn’t affect us? You know the sort of thing I mean.

But this work paled in comparison to the force and impact of A Monetary History of the United States. What had begun as a favor to Arthur Burns had become a book that would turn the conventional wisdom of academic economists, policy-makers, and politicians alike upside down. The American Historical Review put it simply: “This is one of the most important books of our time.”39 Friedman and Schwartz presented voluminous data on nearly a century of U.S. history; but beyond piling up facts, they also advanced a theory of how money worked in the economy. How did money affect business cycles? Friedman and Schwartz had an answer they considered definitive: money mattered. It was the hidden force behind the ups and downs, the breadlines and the bubbles. Friedman knew the book would make an impact. He knew it was the best work he had ever done, or would ever do. He knew that for all his deviationist politics, for all the force of Keynesian assumption, for all the habitual scorn heaped upon the quantity theory of money, their book would have to be answered. It would compel conversation. The book’s centerpiece was its stunning analysis of the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz’s data showed a precipitous 33 percent decline in the quantity of money during what they called “the great contraction.” They convincingly argued that this lack of money transformed an unremarkable dip in the business cycle into a crisis of global proportions. Here was a provocative new explanation for a disaster that continued to cast its shadow across the century. But threaded through the economic argument was another thesis. In 1914, the United States had created a central bank system designed expressly to stabilize the economy. As the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve Board could have opened the spigots and flooded the economy with cash. Why did it fail to do so?

I didn’t confront the Dominionists directly, instead choosing to minister to the sick and hungry New Orleanians who arrived in DeQuincy in Katrina’s wake. But inside, I fumed at the Dominionist faction at Grace. Katrina was not about God’s judgment; it was about a storm that started as a low-pressure zone that slowly, dangerously grew into a tropical wave of low pressure. Katrina had a natural cause, not a supernatural cause. What flooded New Orleans and sent its citizenry into exile was not, as the Dominionists at Grace argued, God running spiritually corrupt, lost souls out of town but rather a catastrophically flawed levee system constructed by human hands. Besides, I believed that what we did to help those affected by the storm—not why the storm or its destruction happened—was what mattered. My Katrina-era messages were just blandly positive—I preached that the storm was a moment to prove to God just how loving we could be to one another—but the Dominionists at Grace were furious nonetheless. “Are you really saying,” they chided me after Sunday services, “that it doesn’t matter how people in New Orleans live? That they can be saved if they’re alcoholics?” I was unflinching in my answer. “Yes, “ I replied sternly, “that’s exactly what I’m saying.” The Dominionists simply shook their heads in disgust at my apostasy.

It is good that there is one stable rock amidst the billows of the sea of life. Let us not set our soul’s affections upon rusting, moth-eaten, decaying treasures but set our hearts upon Him who remains faithful forever. Let us not build our house upon the moving quicksands of a deceitful world but base our hopes upon this rock that, amid descending rain and roaring floods, shall stand immovably secure.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

At 2°C “the ice sheets begin their collapse”.[13] Wallace-Wells says that while “most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving … most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them [to rising sea levels] within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade”. More than 600 million people live within 30 feet of sea level. At just 3°C sea levels would rise by 50 metres.[14] London, Brussels, New York, Buenos Aires and Mumbai, to name a few, would be permanently under water. The climate change crisis is an extremely serious existential threat. Before the IPCC’s 2018 report, it could feel as if the topic barely seemed to register with politicians, the media or the general public, either in collective denial or complacent about its supposedly distant effects. But now a collective eco-consciousness is taking hold – the effects are already being felt and can no longer be ignored. Since 2005, the number of floods has increased by a factor of 15, extreme temperature events by a factor of 20, and wildfires sevenfold; the 20 warmest years since records began have been in the past 22 years.[15] Since 1980, the planet has seen a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous or extreme heat.[16] The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans tripled in the past couple of years, having already jumped by more than 50% in the three decades to 2016, killing swathes of sea-life “like wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”, according to the Marine Biological Association.[17] This is adding to ocean acidification, whereby the CO2 in the oceans rises at the expense of oxygen, suffocating the coral reefs that support as much as a quarter of all marine life. Meanwhile, 95% of the world’s population is breathing dangerously polluted air, killing at least nine million people a year, damaging our cognitive ability and respiratory systems and even our DNA. Pollution itself “endangers the stability of the Earth’s support systems and threatens the continuing survival of human societies”, according to the Commission on Pollution and Health.[18

Try to fancy poor Jesus, for example, coming to life again (actually, not doctrinally), and learning that he was the founder, the teacher, the exemplar, the very God of Christendom; fancy him searching for some trait of his own life and ruling principles in the lives and ruling principles of the millions who call themselves Christians; fancy him in spiritual communion with the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops (though their lackeys would never admit him to the presence of any of these), the most prominent ministers of the various Christian sects. He would find himself an outcast in his nominal kingdom, denounced and reviled as a madman, an idiot, an impostor; the moral and intellectual life of Christendom would be as alien and bewildering to him as its steamboats and railways and telegraphs. Paul and the other early apostles, the ancient heathenisms of Greece and Rome, of the East and the West, old philosophies and older superstitions, national characteristics, physical and other circumstances, the growth of science, the ever-varying conditions of life and modes of thought; everything, in brief, affecting the character of the converts, has affected the religion. By the time a doctrine gets embodied in a Church or other institution, its original spirit has nearly vanished. Its progress may be well compared to the course of a great river, rivers being remarkably convenient things for all such analogies. Some remotest mountain–rill or rocky well–spring has the honour of being termed its source; and the name of this tiny trickling is borne triumphant down a thousand broadening leagues to the sea. The rill is soon joined by others, each very like itself. As it flows onward, ever descending (for this is the universal law), it is joined by streamlets and rivers more and more unlike itself, they having flowed through unlike soils and regions; and more than one may be greater than itself, as the Missouri is greater than the Mississippi; and its own original waters are more and more modified by the new and various districts they traverse. As it proceeds, growing deeper and wider, villages and towns arise on its banks, and it receives copious tribute not merely of natural streams, but likewise of sewage and the pestilent refuse abominations of manifold factories and wharves. When it is become a mighty river, crowded with ships and bordered by some wealthy and populous capital, it may be a mere open cloaca maxima; and at any rate it must be as dissimilar in the quality of its waters as in their quantity and surroundings from the pure rill of the mountain solitudes, from the pure brook of the woodland shadows and pastoral peace. The waters actually from the fountain-head are but an insignificant drop in the vast and composite volumes of the thick bronze or yellow flood which finally disembogues through fat flat lowlands, in several devious channels with broad stretches of marsh and lagoon, into the immense purifying laboratory of the untainted salt sea. The remote rill-source is Christ or Mohammed, the mighty river is the Christian or Mohammedan Church; the sea in all cases is the encompassing ocean of death and oblivion, which makes life possible by preserving the earth from putrefaction.

Saintlike,” he murmured. “What’s wrong with him?” croaked Fred, looking terrified. “Is his mind affected?” “Saintlike,” repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. “You see . . . I’m holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?” Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Color flooded Fred’s pale face. “Pathetic,” he told George. “Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?

How do you feel' Georgie?" whispered Mrs Weasley. George's fingers groped for the side of his head. "Saint-like," he murmured. "What's wrong with him?" croaked Fred, looking terrified. "Is his mind affected?" "Saint-like," repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. "you see ... I'm holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?" Miss Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Colour flooded Fred's pale face. "Pathetic," he told George. "pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humour before you, you go for holey?" "Ah well," said George, grinning at his tear-socked mother. "You'll be able to tell us apart now, anyway mum.

Much of the mapping from nucleotides to amino acids seemed arbitrary—not as neatly patterned as any of Gamow’s proposals. Some amino acids correspond to just one codon, others to two, four, or six. Particles called ribosomes ratchet along the RNA strand and translate it, three bases at a time. Some codons are redundant; some actually serve as start signals and stop signals. The redundancy serves exactly the purpose that an information theorist would expect. It provides tolerance for errors. Noise affects biological messages like any other.

between a quarter and a half of all those exposed to extreme weather events will experience them as an ongoing negative shock to their mental health. In England, flooding was found to quadruple levels of psychological distress, even among those in an inundated community but not personally affected by the flooding. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 62 percent of evacuees exceeded the diagnostic threshold for acute stress disorder; in the region as a whole, nearly a third had PTSD. Wildfires, curiously, yielded a lower incidence—just 24 percent of evacuees in the aftermath of one series of California blazes. But a third of those who lived through fire were diagnosed, in its aftermath, with depression.

Blood is mightier than flood because flood may affect life but blood is life.

Sometimes the experience of the voices was ecstatic, sometimes so much so that it was almost too intense for me—as when you first bite into an apple or a confection that tastes so delicious and causes such a flood of oral juices that there is a moment of intense pain in your mouth and glands—particularly in the late afternoons of spring and summer, when the sunlight on sunny days achieved moments of immanence and became the color of beaten gold and was itself (the light, as if it were taste) so delicious that it was almost too much to stand, and I would lie on the pile of large pillows in our living room and roll back and forth in an agony of delight and tell my mother, who always read on the couch, that I felt so good and full and ecstatic that I could hardly bear it, and I remember her pursing her lips, trying not to laugh, and saying in the driest possible voice that she found it hard to feel too much sympathy or concern for this problem and was confident that I could survive this level of ecstasy, and that I probably didn’t need to be rushed to the emergency room, and at such moments my love and affection for my mother’s dry humor and love became, stacked atop the original ecstasy, so intense that I almost had to stifle a scream of pleasure as I rolled ecstatically between the pillows and the books on the floor.

After the storm and Wes’s accident, we re-evaluated the safety procedures at the zoo. But the circumstances had been so unusual that night, there wasn’t anything we could have done differently. Wes wore the spectacular scars from Graham’s attack. The bond between Wes and Steve only grew stronger. I don’t think there is a similar concept in the rest of the world as the traditional Australian ideal of “mateship.” “Best friends” just doesn’t do it. Mateship is deeper. It’s someone who has your back, always and forever. If there’s a storm coming in on the horizon, your first thought is, I wonder how the heavy weather is going to affect my best mate? Your thoughts go to him no matter what happens. That’s how it was with Wes and Steve. Wes started working at the zoo when he was fourteen and Steve was already in his twenties. Wes backed him up on croc captures. It was a friendship tested and retested in the bush. Through the years both men had numerous opportunities to save each other’s lives. But nothing had ever happened as dramatically as that night during the flood.

The myth of Noah was taken from the ancient Sumerian story of the flood. In this tale, An and Enlil were like their forebear, Absu from Enuma Elish, sick of the noise that humans were making. The gods decided to cause a flood and get rid of man. The god Enki (Ea) took pity on man and told King Ziudsura to build a huge boat and gather animals upon it, which he did. After the flood came An granted the King eternal life in Dilmun or Edin. The Babylonians later adapted this myth to having Gilgamesh creating the boat. As you can see, the myth of Noah has no basis in literal truth as the original myth is evident to be older than the Biblical one. The reality of this myth may have developed from a super cyclone in the Indian Ocean which could have caused widespread damage in the Persian Gulf region, giving birth to the story based in some fact. Keep in mind that the gods are represented in natural forces and occurrences which often affect humanity.

But when relief flood his face, something cracked open inside me, the thing that happens when you love someone, and they are affected, and you can't help but be affected too.