Group Areas Act Quotes

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief. In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what? But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide. The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives. Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five. When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.

In the area of linguistics, there are major language groups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages but usually with much more effort. These become our secondary languages. We speak and understand best our native language. We feel most comfortable speaking that language. The more we use a secondary language, the more comfortable we become conversing in it. If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate. In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. My friend on the plane was speaking the language of “Affirming Words” to his third wife when he said, “I told her how beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her how proud I was to be her husband.” He was speaking love, and he was sincere, but she did not understand his language. Perhaps she was looking for love in his behavior and didn’t see it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.

The reason we haven’t solved the race problem in America after hundreds of years is that people apart from God are trying to create unity, while people under God who already have unity are not living out the unity we possess. The result of both of these conditions is disastrous for America. Our failure to find cultural unity as a nation is directly related to the church’s failure to preserve our spiritual unity. The church has already been given unity because we’ve been made part of the same family. An interesting point to note about family is that you don’t have to get family to be family. A family already is a family. But sometimes you do have to get family to act like family. In the family of God, this is done through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. A perfect example of spiritual unity came on the Day of Pentecost when God’s people spoke with other tongues (Acts 2:4). When the Holy Spirit showed up, people spoke in languages they didn’t know so that people from a variety of backgrounds could unite under the cross of Jesus Christ. The people who heard the apostles speak on the Day of Pentecost were from all over the world, representing at least sixteen different geographical areas, racial categories, or ethnic groups (Acts 2:8–11). But in spite of the great diversity, they found true oneness in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual oneness always and only comes to those who are under God’s authority because in that reality He enables them with the power of His Spirit.

Now sensitiveness to the state of mind of the public is a difficult thing to achieve or maintain. Any man can tell you with more or less accuracy and clearness his own reactions on any particular issue. But few men have the time or the interest or the training to develop a sense of what other persons think or feel about the same issue. In his own profession the skilled practitioner is sensitive and understanding. lhe lawyer can tell what argument will appeal to court or jury. “The salesman can tell what points to stress to his prospective buyers. The politician can tell what to emphasize to his audience, but the ability to estimate group reactions on a large scale over a wide geographic and psychological area is a specialized ability which must be developed with the same painstaking self-criticism and with the same dependence on experience that are required for the development of the clinical sense in the doctor or the surgeon. The significant revolution of modern times is not industrial or economic or political, but the revolution which is taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed. Within the life of the new generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the world alone, the only constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the cardinal dogma of democracy that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception and to farms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.

Come on, I want to take you around to the back, to see St. Anthony's Garden," he said. Delicate bell clangs marked the half hour, and a mockingbird called through the still air as the group entered the garden. The green space was dominated by the tall white statue of a man with arms raised in welcome. "St. Anthony is known as the protector of childless women and finder of lost things," explained Falkner. "This area has had many functions over the years. It was a place for gatherings, markets, meals---even a dueling ground. Père Antoine, one of the cathedral's popular pastors, used the space as a kitchen garden to feed his monks. He also worked with voodoo priestess Marie Laveau to assist the large slave population, especially women and children." "A Roman Catholic priest collaborating with a voodoo priestess?" asked one of the tourists, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Falkner nodded. "They had more in common than you may think. They both had a desire to heal, sooth, and do good works. They were both very spiritual people. Marie Laveau blended voodoo with Catholicism, especially regarding the saints.

I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatorial courtesy prevented other members from disputing with Senators Ted Stevens (Republican) and Mike Gravel (Democrat) over a matter involving their home state. Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, my secretary of interior, and I began to study the history of the controversy and maps of the disputed areas, and I flew over some of them a few times. Environmental groups and most indigenous natives were my allies, but professional hunters, loggers, fishers, and the Chambers of Commerce were aligned with the oil companies. All the odds were against us until Cecil discovered an ancient law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted a president to set aside an area for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” such as Indian burial grounds, artifacts, or perhaps an ancient church building or the site of a famous battle. We decided to use this authority to set aside for preservation large areas of Alaska as national monuments, and eventually we had included more than 56 million acres (larger than the state of Minnesota). This gave me the bargaining chip I needed, and I was able to prevail in the subsequent debates. My efforts were extremely unpopular in Alaska, and I had to have extra security on my visits. I remember that there was a state fair where people threw baseballs at two targets to plunge a clown into a tank of water. My face was on one target and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s on the other, and few people threw at the Ayatollah’s.

What is ADHD, anyway? For those still wondering what ADHD is, here’s the briefest summary I can muster: ADHD shows up in two areas of our brain function: working memory and executive functioning.[7] Working memory allows us to hold more than one thing in our brains at once. If you’ve ever run up the stairs, only to find yourself standing in your bedroom wondering what you came for, you’ve experienced a failure of working memory. Again, everyone experiences this from time to time. People with ADHD experience it nonstop, to the point where it impairs our ability to function normally. Working memory holds onto information until we’re able to use it.[8] In addition to forgetting why we opened the refrigerator, having a leaky working memory means we lose information before our brains can move it to long-term storage. We forget a lot of things before we have a chance to act on them or write them down. Our executive functions, on the other hand, give us the power to delay gratification, strategize, plan ahead, and identify and respond to others’ feelings.[9] That’s some list, isn’t it? In the same way a diabetic’s body cannot effectively regulate insulin, imagine your brain being unable to control these behaviors. This explains why ADHDers’ behavior so often defies norms and expectations for their age group — and this persists throughout their lifespan, not just grade school. ADHD isn’t a gift. It isn’t a sign of creativity or intelligence, nor is it a simple character flaw. And it’s more than eccentric distractibility, forgetfulness, and impulsivity. ADHD is a far-reaching disorder that touches every aspect of our lives. If we leave it unchecked, it will generate chaos at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

FASCIA: THE TIES THAT BIND Imagine a collagen-rich, stretchy slipcover for every organ, nerve, bone, and muscle in our bodies, and you start to get a sense of how fundamental connective tissue—specifically fascia—is to the entire body. Suspending our organs inside our torso, connecting our head to our back to our feet, fascia protects, supports, and literally binds our body together. Fascia can be gossamer-thin and translucent, like a spider web, or thick and tough like rope. Ounce for ounce, fascia is stronger than steel. Other specialized types of connective tissue include bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and fat (adipose) tissue. Even blood, strictly speaking, is considered connective tissue. But to me, the most exciting aspect of the latest research on connective tissue relates to fascia. Fascia is the stretchy tissue that forms an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web within our body. Our body has sheets, bags, and strings of fascia of varying thickness and size, some superficial and some deep. Fascia envelops both individual microscopic muscle filaments as well as whole muscle groups, such as the trapezius, pectorals, and quadriceps. For example, one of the largest fascia configurations in the body is known as the “trousers,” a massive sheet of fascia that crosses over the knees and ends near the waist, giving the appearance of short leggings. This fascia trouser is thicker around the knees and thinner as it continues up the legs and over the hips, thickening again near the waist. When the fascia trouser is healthy, supple, and resilient, it acts like a girdle, giving the body a firm shape. Fascia helps muscles transmit their force so we can convert that force into movement. The system of fascia is bound by tensile links (think of the structure of a geodesic dome, like the one at Epcot in Disney World), with space and fluid between the links that can help absorb external pressure and more evenly distribute force across the fascial structure. This allows our bodies to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area, which would lead to increased pain and injury. Fascia is also a second nervous system in and of itself, with almost 10 times the number of sensory nerve endings as muscle. Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done landmark studies on the function and importance of connective tissue and its impact on pain. One of the leading researchers in the field today, Langevin describes fascia as a “living matrix” whose health is essential to our well-being.

You have to realize that your family, your friends, and all of those people from the past have a predetermined state of consciousness of who they think you are and how you should act. They identify you within a program of their own personal expectations. When you have self-realization, sometimes you will find that your family will try to bring you back into their reality. They will try to draw you into the old design that you were rather than allow you to be who you are now. If you were never an intellectual person, whenever you try to express your thoughts they will dismiss them and start speaking over you. They won’t give your statement much credibility and the person who always was considered to be the intellectual will take over the conversation. Their opinion is suddenly more important. Everybody who’s within that family or group dynamic knows the process and will face the person who they think is more knowledgeable in that particular area. It’s part of being in the mechanism, and for you to bump that system takes a great deal of effort on your part. It’s not that you should focus on this scenario in particular; rather you should recognize the mechanisms that are shaping and molding how you think and how you are affected.

Perhaps the belief that the Indians were destined to vanish originated in early colonial times as a means of justifying the massacres of Indians by the Puritans. If, as the New England colonists believed, Indians were under a cosmic curse and in a state of rapid decline, killing a few was not really a criminal act and in some instances might actually be doing the Lord’s work. It was not all Thanksgiving dinners in those early days. No one questions that the Indian population in the East did decline precipitiously as whites settled the New England area. Many Ind­ians were killed, others hid in obscure places, and still other Indians moved west before the American Revolution. Many eastern Indians were allies of Great Britain in both the Revolution and the War of 1812. Believing they should not stay behind in the United States when their English friends fled to Canada after the Revolution, they left with the departing British troops, vanishing from the United States but remaining very much a part of things north of the border. The virtual disappearance of Indians east of the Mississippi can be traced directly to Andrew Jackson’s policy of removing the tribes of that region to Oklahoma and Kansas, not to some cosmic decree commanding their inevitable extinction. Even then only the largest and most threatening tribes were removed. Smaller tribal groups simply remained in the backwaters of the eastern United States where they had always lived.

I recommend you do a detailed time study for yourself to see where you spend your time. Make an estimate of how many hours each week you take for the major activities of your life: work, school, rest, entertainment, hobbies, spouse, children, commuting, church, God, friends, and so on. Then, over a typical period of your life, take two weeks and do a detailed time study. Keep track of how you spend your time, using fifteen- to thirty-minute increments. After you have gathered the raw data, categorize them carefully into the major groups: rest, work/school, church/God, family, and recreation. Create subcategories as appropriate for anything that might consume multiple hours per week, like listing commuting under work or TV under recreation. Finally, with the summary in hand, make the difficult assessments about how you are using your time. Ask yourself: • Any surprises? Areas where I just couldn’t imagine I was wasting—er, uh, um, spending—so much of my time? • Is this where I want my time to go? • Am I putting as much time as I’d like into the areas I want as the priorities in my life? • How much time am I really spending with my spouse? Children? Friends? • Did I realize how much time I was spending at work? • If I wanted to spend more time on XYZ or ABC, in what areas would I consciously choose to spend less time?

The gang leader in each area, known as a “don,” maintained a group of armed followers or “shooters” who acted as enforcers, kept down petty crime, and enforced a strict normative system of punishment and reward upon the population. The don acted as a mediator and resolver of disputes, liaised with police and city authorities to manage violence and crime, and became an intermediary for the distribution of government handouts—jobs, housing, welfare benefits, contracts—to the population.

change. I’m sure we’ll need your help from time to time, and maybe one of these days we’ll be able to return the favor.” Higgins felt that bubble of word vomit rise in his throat and spill out of his mouth before he could help himself. “Beirut,” he said. There was a change in the atmosphere as soon as the word slipped out, but he hammered on. “You lost a lot of Marines.” “Higgins.” Zyga’s voice was sharp. Stokes’ voice was colored with sadness as he said, “I keep telling myself we could’ve done something to prevent it.” “That’s why you’re here,” Higgins said. “When Director Thatcher told me about this program, I jumped at the chance to help build a better relationship between the Marine Corps and the CIA. My colleagues aren’t thrilled at the idea of getting into bed with your lot, but I have a great deal of respect for what you do. That’s why I’m here. Like the CIA, some of us in the Marine Corps are planning for the future. Terrorism will only grow in the coming years. Beirut was just the beginning. Lucky for me, your bosses and I agree.” He looked from one team member to another. “I heard about your first mission, and I’m glad it was a success. I’m glad you all made it out of there alive.” “Major Stokes will be stopping by every so often to check on our progress and offer additional advice and support,” Decker said. “I know it’s a bit unorthodox, but this man has seen it all. Don’t let his dumb grunt act fool you. His help will be invaluable to us as we move forward.” “Now we just need to get the Feds on board.” Stokes laughed, and the room joined him. “Good luck with that,” Abrams called out. “They hate us more than you do.” “That they do,” Stokes said. “They’ve been working on their program since the late ‘70s. Same sort of deal. If you can get into the mind of a killer, really understand how your enemy works, then you have a better chance of catching him before he hurts anyone else. We’re usually sent in after it’s too late. I want to change that.” “Might put you out of a job,” Higgins joked. Stokes laughed again. “Honestly, I don’t think that’d be so bad. Maybe I’ll join up with you. Maybe in a perfect world.” “In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for any of us,” Higgins said. “You’re exactly right, Mr. Higgins.” “Doctor,” Higgins corrected automatically. His face flushed. “Ignore him,” Abrams said, reaching across Spencer to whack Higgins in the stomach. “He thinks just because he has two doctorates that he’s better than us.” “I do not,” Higgins mumbled. He felt his face grow even hotter. Stokes held up a hand in surrender. “You earned those degrees, Dr. Higgins. Wear them with pride.” Higgins shot a look at Abrams while the rest of the room continued to chuckle. Thatcher looked down at his watch. “It seems my time is up here,” he said. “I assume you can find your way back, Major?” “I’ll try not to steal any secrets on the way out.” “See that you don’t,” Thatcher said, shaking Stokes’s hand again before exiting the room. Everyone took their turn introducing themselves to Major Stokes, except Higgins, who hung back to observe how this new player interacted with everyone in the room. Where Higgins lacked interpersonal skills, Stokes excelled in the area. He could joke with Abrams in one breath and rein it in to speak in serious undertones with Spencer in the next. He and Johnson exchanged battle scars, and when it came to York, Stokes found a fellow intellectual to converse with. Higgins detected no condescension or disrespect in his voice even though she was the only woman in the room. As the personal introductions were finishing up, Stokes broke off from the group and walked over to where Higgins was still seated at the front of the room and sat down next to him. “More of an observer than a talker, right?” “You could say that.” “Should I be worried?” Higgins smiled.

The Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act (PL 100–297) was passed in 1988. The Javits Act states that “gifted and talented students are a national resource vital to the future of the Nation and its security and well-being” [Sec. 4102 (a) (1)]. This legislation reestablished the Office of the Gifted and Talented (originally created in 1974) and founded a national research center focusing on gifted children, demonstration projects in gifted education, and efforts aimed at identifying and serving pupils with gifts and talents from traditionally underrepresented groups. In the early 1990s, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education issued National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent (Ross, 1993), the second national report on gifted children. The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented generated research that was used by decision makers to design and implement policy and enact legislation. The demonstration projects focused on developing talents in areas with a large percentage of children who have been underrepresented in gifted services.

Alain de Botton: And there are areas like self-confidence, you know the placebo effect, there is this capacity to give people confidence, they didn’t know they had. How does that work, how can you make someone more confident? Derren Brown: I think stories are very interesting in life and very important in life. And if you go and see a film and it says at the beginning: “based on a true story” you know when you see those words that what you are going to see is not a perfect telling of the events that happened; you’re going to see a neatened version with a beginning, middle and an end. Perhaps some characters might sort of conflated into one and there will be a clear hero and the rest of it, so you have the natural sort of scepticism that comes into play. Likewise if somebody tells you a story of what happened the other night or an argument they got into or some outrageous behaviour … you know there’s another side to that story. You apply a natural sort of scepticism. We very rarely think of applying the same scepticism to ourselves and the stories that we tell ourselves about our own lives, which of course are the most important stories that we have. And I did a program on placebo where we set up a whole elaborate thing to make people think they were getting a super drug that would do various things depending on the group they’re in, so there was one group, they were told “removes the experience of fear” and so the other group was told that it would stop them smoking and so on. And it was really interesting to me, because what it became clear is that irrespective of what group it is whether it’s about smoking or people with terrible crippling anxieties, or allergies - was another one that responded very well to it- that these things are really tied in with the stories we tell ourselves and if you give yourself permission or sometimes, it’s easier if someone gives you permission, to just change the story, to act out of character, to act as if the thing is no longer a problem, it’s a very simple shift, and with that the people that give up smoking in an instant, and never go back to it, never have any trouble with it, other people decide I am gonna be a non-smoker, so they change their story, they change that sort of identity, that label as opposed to “alright I must not smoke, I must try not to smoke” which of course is stressful and you fail, you give up and when you do eventually have one they are “I failed, it’s all gone wrong. ” Magic is about stories we tell ourselves.

Let us turn now to a study of a small Newfoundland fishing village. Fishing is, in England at any rate – more hazardous even than mining. Cat Harbour, a community in Newfoundland, is very complex. Its social relationships occur in terms of a densely elaborate series of interrelated conceptual universes one important consequence of which is that virtually all permanent members of the community are kin, ‘cunny kin’, or economic associates of all other of the 285 permanent members. The primary activity of the community is cod fishing. Salmon, lobster, and squid provide additional sources of revenue. Woodcutting is necessary in off-seasons. Domestic gardening, and stints in lumber camps when money is needed, are the two other profitable activities. The community's religion is reactionary. Women assume the main roles in the operation though not the government of the churches in the town. A complicated system of ‘jinking’ – curses, magic, and witchcraft – governs and modulates social relationships. Successful cod fishing in the area depends upon highly developed skills of navigation, knowledge of fish movements, and familiarity with local nautical conditions. Lore is passed down by word of mouth, and literacy among older fishermen is not universal by any means. ‘Stranger’ males cannot easily assume dominant positions in the fishing systems and may only hire on for salary or percentage. Because women in the community are not paid for their labour, there has been a pattern of female migration out of the area. Significantly, two thirds of the wives in the community are from outside the area. This has a predictable effect on the community's concept of ‘the feminine’. An elaborate anti-female symbolism is woven into the fabric of male communal life, e.g. strong boats are male and older leaky ones are female. Women ‘are regarded as polluting “on the water” and the more traditional men would not consider going out if a woman had set foot in the boat that day – they are “jinker” (i.e., a jinx), even unwittingly'. (It is not only relatively unsophisticated workers such as those fishermen who insist on sexual purity. The very skilled technicians drilling for natural gas in the North Sea affirm the same taboo: women are not permitted on their drilling platform rigs.) It would be, however, a rare Cat Harbour woman who would consider such an act, for they are aware of their structural position in the outport society and the cognition surrounding their sex….Cat Harbour is a male-dominated society….Only men can normally inherit property, or smoke or drink, and the increasingly frequent breach of this by women is the source of much gossip (and not a negligible amount of conflict and resentment). Men are seated first at meals and eat together – women and children eating afterwards. Men are given the choicest and largest portions, and sit at the same table with a ‘stranger’ or guest. Women work extremely demanding and long hours, ‘especially during the fishing season, for not only do they have to fix up to 5 to 6 meals each day for the fishermen, but do all their household chores, mind the children and help “put away fish”. They seldom have time to visit extensively, usually only a few minutes to and from the shop or Post Office….Men on the other hand, spend each evening arguing, gossiping, and “telling cuffers”, in the shop, and have numerous “blows” (i.e., breaks) during the day.’ Pre-adolescents are separated on sexual lines. Boys play exclusively male games and identify strongly with fathers or older brothers. Girls perform light women's work, though Faris indicates '. . . often openly aspire to be male and do male things. By this time they can clearly see the privileged position of the Cat Harbour male….’. Girls are advised not to marry a fisherman, and are encouraged to leave the community if they wish to avoid a hard life. Boys are told it is better to leave Cat Harbour than become fishermen....

Most of the theaters in Jersey City and the surrounding area have been closed, demolished, renovated or restored, but nothing remained the same. The Stanley Theatre still stands in Journal Square, completely restored as a Jehovah’s Witnesses Assembly Hall. Originally built as a vaudeville and movie theater, having 4,300 seats, it opened on March 22, 1928 as the second largest theater in the United States. With only Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan across the Hudson River being larger, many celebrities attended the gala occasion. The well liked but notorious Mayor Hague was present to cut the ribbon. Famous and not-so-famous headline acts performed here, including the Three Stooges, Jimmy Durante, Tony Bennett and Janis Joplin. It was here at the Stanley Theatre that Frank Sinatra was inspired to become a professional performer. Being part of the audience, he watched Bing Crosby doing a Christmas performance. By the time the show was over, Sinatra had decided on the path he would follow. In 1933 Frank’s mother got him together with a group called the “Three Flashes.” They changed their name to the “Hoboken Four” and won first prize performing on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show. Frank worked locally until June of 1939, when Harry James hired him for a one-year contract, paying only $75 a week. That December, Sinatra joined Tommy Dorsey’s band as a replacement vocalist for Jack Leonard, and the rest is history!

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an official in the U.S. Department of Labor, called the inner cities after the arrival of the southern migrants “a tangle of pathology.” He argued that what had attracted southerners like Ida Mae, George, and Robert was welfare: “the differential in payments between jurisdictions has to encourage some migration toward urban centers in the North,” he wrote, adding his own italics. Their reputation had preceded them. It had not been good. Neither was it accurate. The general laws of migration hold that the greater the obstacles and the farther the distance traveled, the more ambitious the migrants. “It is the higher status segments of a population which are most residentially mobile,” the sociologists Karl and Alma Taeuber wrote in a 1965 analysis of census data on the migrants, published the same year as the Moynihan Report. “As the distance of migration increases,” wrote the migration scholar Everett Lee, “the migrants become an increasingly superior group.” Any migration takes some measure of energy, planning, and forethought. It requires not only the desire for something better but the willingness to act on that desire to achieve it. Thus the people who undertake such a journey are more likely to be either among the better educated of their homes of origin or those most motivated to make it in the New World, researchers have found. “Migrants who overcome a considerable set of intervening obstacles do so for compelling reasons, and such migrations are not taken lightly,” Lee wrote. “Intervening obstacles serve to weed out some of the weak or the incapable.” The South had erected some of the highest barriers to migration of any people seeking to leave one place for another in this country. By the time the migrants made it out, they were likely willing to do whatever it took to make it, so as not to have to return south and admit defeat. It would be decades before census data could be further analyzed and bear out these observations. One myth they had to overcome was that they were bedraggled hayseeds just off the plantation. Census figures paint a different picture. By the 1930s, nearly two out of every three colored migrants to the big cities of the North and West were coming from towns or cities in the South, as did George Starling and Robert Foster, rather than straight from the field. “The move to northern cities was dominated by urban southerners,” wrote the scholar J. Trent Alexander. Thus the latter wave of migrants brought a higher level of sophistication than was assumed at the time. “Most Negro migrants to northern metropolitan areas have had considerable previous experience with urban living,” the Taeuber study observed. Overall, southern migrants represented the most educated segment of the southern black population they left, the sociologist Stewart Tolnay wrote in 1998. In 1940 and 1950, colored people who left the South “averaged nearly two more years of completed schooling than those who remained in the South.” That middle wave of migrants found themselves, on average, more than two years behind the blacks they encountered

I have the greatest respect for conservation biologists. I care very much about conserving the rain forest and the wildlife in Indonesia, but I also found it disheartening. It often feels like you are fighting a losing battle, especially in areas where people depend so heavily on these natural resources for their own survival. After graduation, I decided to return to the original behavioral questions that motivated me. Although monogamy—both social and genetic—is rare in mammals, social monogamy is the norm in birds. Plus, birds are everywhere. I figured that if I turned my attention to studying our feathered friends, I wouldn’t have to spend months on end trying to secure research permits and travel visas from foreign governments. I wouldn’t even have to risk getting bitten by leeches (a constant problem in the Mentawais*). Birds seemed like the perfect choice for my next act. But I didn’t know anyone who studied birds. My PhD was in an anthropology department, without many links to researchers in biology departments. Serendipitously, while applying for dozens of academic jobs, I stumbled across an advertisement for a position managing Dr. Ellen Ketterson’s laboratory at Indiana University. The ad described Ketterson’s long-term project on dark-eyed juncos. Eureka! Birds! At the time, her lab primarily focused on endocrinology methods like hormone assays (a method to measure how much of a hormone is present in blood or other types of biological samples), because they were interested in how testosterone levels influenced behavior. I had no experience with either birds or hormone assays. But I had spent the last several years developing DNA sequencing and genotyping skills, which the Ketterson lab was just starting to use. I hoped that my expertise with fieldwork and genetic work would be seen as beneficial enough to excuse my lack of experience in ornithology and endocrinology. I submitted my application but heard nothing back. After a while, I did something that was a bit terrifying at the time. Of the dozens of academic positions I had applied to, this felt like the right one, so I tried harder. I wrote to Dr. Ketterson again to clarify why I was so interested in the job and why I would be a good fit, even though on paper I seemed completely wrong for it. I described why I wanted to work with birds instead of primates. I explained that I had years of fieldwork experience in challenging environments and could easily learn ornithological methods. I listed my laboratory expertise and elaborated on how beneficial it could be to her research group, and how easily I could learn to do hormone assays and why they were important for my research too. She wrote me back. I got the job.

In November of 1997, the New Jersey–based independent radio station WFMU broadcast a live forty-seven-minute interview with Ronald Thomas Clontle, the author of an upcoming book titled Rock, Rot & Rule. The book, billed as “the ultimate argument settler,” was (theoretically) a listing of almost every musical artist of the past fifty years, with each act designated as “rocking,” “rotting,” or “ruling” (with most of the research conducted in a coffeehouse in Lawrence, Kansas). The interview was, of course, a now semi-famous hoax. The book is not real and “Ronald Thomas Clontle” was actually Jon Wurster, the drummer for indie bands like Superchunk and (later) the Mountain Goats. Rock, Rot & Rule is a signature example of what’s now awkwardly classified as “late-nineties alt comedy,” performed at the highest possible level—the tone is understated, the sensibility is committed and absurd, and the unrehearsed chemistry between Wurster and the program’s host (comedian Tom Scharpling) is otherworldly. The sketch would seem like the ideal comedic offering for the insular audience of WFMU, a self-selecting group of sophisticated music obsessives from the New York metropolitan area. Yet when one relistens to the original Rock, Rot & Rule broadcast, the most salient element is not the comedy. It’s the apoplectic phone calls from random WFMU listeners. The callers do not recognize this interview as a hoax, and they’re definitely not “ironic” or “apathetic.” They display none of the savvy characteristics now associated with nineties culture. Their anger is almost innocent.

I’ve observed struggling teachers who seem to spend the entire lesson in a tiny area at the front of the room. By simply moving around the room more, walking to the back when addressing the group or spending a few moments offering friendly support and checking the work of students you normally avoid, you will be amazed how the atmosphere in the room changes. When you act as though you own the room – all of it – you will see an immediate and marked decrease in the amount of disruptive behaviour you have to deal with.

In chapter 1 we discussed how the human body could behave as a loose collection of small parts, or one large rigid object, depending on how relaxed or tight your muscles happen to be at the time. This same principle applies to getting your mass behind your punches, but with a few more eccentricities. The more rigid you are, the more difficult it is to move your muscles fast enough to throw a punch, but that rigidity is also what enables you to put more mass behind the punch. If you can get your timing just right, you can tighten your arm at the moment it becomes extended and continue the motion with your shoulders and hips, giving your punch the mass of your whole arm and even some of your body. Professional fighters can get as much as 10 percent of their body weight behind their punches, which is 10 to 20 times more momentum than throwing a fist by itself. It can take years of training to get to the point where you can put significant mass behind your punches, but we can get there a little quicker if we apply some of our knowledge of the center of mass from chapter 1. Since your center of mass lies just below your belly button, you will get the most mass behind your punch if you can make a continuous rigid path between your fist and your center of mass. Your rib cage does a good job of keeping your chest area rigid, but your lower abdomen is an entirely different story. Many martial artists yell or exhale (or hiss) while striking because the act of expelling air with the diaphragm provides the rigid path you need to get your mass behind your punches. You will also want to make sure to plant your center of mass firmly in the ground through your legs and hips, not only to include those muscle groups in your punches, but also to ensure your center of mass remains stationary as your punches push into your opponent.

Many reasons have been put forward by sociologists, historians, and psychologists to explain the undeviating worship of group living and group thinking in America. James Bryce credited American conformity to uniform political institutions in federal, state, and municipal government. Everywhere schools, libraries, clubs, amusements, and customs were similar. "Travel where you will," he wrote, "you feel that what you have found in one place that you will find in another." Above all, there was the rapid advance in industrial science. In America, an all-powerful technology, with its standardized techniques and methods of mass production, reached its zenith. As technology attracted larger numbers of people to urban centers, and compressed them into smaller areas, community living became a necessity. This, in turn, encouraged people to co-operate, and created relationships that invite similar activities and opinions. Gradually there emerged on the American scene, against all natural development of culture and against all individual traits inherent in every man, two striking attitudes that made American conformity broader, more unyielding, and more dangerous. The first attitude, assumed by the majority, was that the act of becoming average, of being normal, was more important than that of being distinct or superior. The second attitude, also assumed by the majority, was that the state of being well adjusted to the crowd and the community was more important than that of being a unique and original human being.

In her book Asperger Syndrome and Adolescence: Practical Solutions for School Success, Brenda Smith Myles identifies six areas of difficulty for adolescents with Asperger’s: • Lack of understanding that nonverbal cues express meaning and attitudes. Teens miss out on many social opportunities because they don’t understand that a smile and glances from another person could mean they like him, or that teachers give a “look” that is a warning and should be interpreted as meaning to calm down and get to work. • Problems with using language to initiate or maintain a conversation. AS teens will often start a conversation with a comment that seems irrelevant, or may walk up to a group of teens and want to join in, but does not because he doesn’t know how or when to join in. • Tendency to interpret words or phrases concretely. AS teens often only understand the literal meanings of words and phrases and not expressions such as “You’re pulling my leg” and “Pull yourself together.” Or, as in the example from Luke Jackson’s book quoted earlier, they will do exactly as told and will not understand the implied statement, which leads teachers to think the teen is a smart aleck. • Difficulty understanding that other people’s perspective in conversation need to be considered. This can lead to one-sided monologues, because the AS student is talking about his area of interest and is not monitoring whether or not the listener is interested. • Failure to understand the unspoken rules of the hidden curriculum or a set of rules everyone knows, but that has not been specifically taught. Things that are important to teens, such as how to dress, what to say to whom, how to act, and how to know the difference between gentle teasing and bullying. • Lack of awareness that what you say to a person in one conversation may influence how that individual relates to you in the future. A teen may make a candid remark to another teen, not realizing it was hurtful, and may be puzzled by the person’s lack of response later that day.