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Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.
The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them.
When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication.
In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’
And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such ‘wisdom’, why not allow him to rule the country?
The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.
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Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
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My heart is a Latin American food stall and your love is a health inspector from Zurich.
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Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All)
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He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one's guardian angel. And he resumed the climb.
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Andrea Camilleri (Rounding the Mark (Inspector Montalbano, #7))
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It wasn’t all about the Benjamimics. Sometimes, they were just random people. Sometimes, they were locals. Even one guy pretending to be a “health inspector.” Not always adults, either. It was the kids that were the hardest to kill (figuratively speaking, of course—in practice, they were the easiest).
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Jack Townsend (Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Three (Tales from the Gas Station, #3))
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In a life filled with great good fortune of health, of creativity, of friends, living in safety and privilege with the loving partner. There was just one bit of misfortune in his life and that was that Peter Morrow seemed to have no idea how very fortunate he was.
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Louise Penny (The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #10))
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…walked deep into the shadow, deep into the longhouse where all his experiences and memories lived…
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Louise Penny (A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4))
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Most émigrés arrived at Ellis Island in New York, invariably confused and exhausted from an unpleasant and dangerous voyage. Health inspectors checked every immigrant, and while the inspections were not particularly rigid, people were routinely refused entry. Often it was a child, leaving the mother with a sort of Sophie’s choice—whether to go back to Europe with the rejected son or daughter or stay with her husband and other children.
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Gail Collins (America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines)
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I once saw a woman wearing a low-cut dress; she had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was walking the streets of Ljubljana when it was five degrees below zero. I thought she must be drunk, and I went to help her, but she refused my offer to lend her my jacket. Perhaps in her world it was summer and her body was warmed by the desire of the person waiting for her. Even if that person only existed in her delirium, she had the right to live and die as she wanted, don’t you think?”
Veronika didn’t know what to say, but the madwoman’s words made sense to her. Who knows; perhaps she was the woman who had been seen half-naked walking the streets of Ljubljana?
“I’m going to tell you a story,” said Zedka. “A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.
“The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them.
“When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.
“In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’
“And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?
“The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.”
Veronika laughed.
“You don’t seem crazy at all,” she said.
“But I am, although I’m undergoing treatment since my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. While I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?”
“People who have all drunk from the same well.”
“Exactly,” said Zedka. “They think they’re normal, because they all do the same thing. Well, I’m going to pretend that I have drunk from the same well as them.
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Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
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Grant paused in the act of turning the thing over, to consider the face a moment longer. A judge? A soldier? A prince? Someone used to great responsibility, and responsible in his authority. Someone too-conscientious. A worrier; perhaps a perfectionist. A man at ease in a large design, but anxious over details. A candidate for gastric ulcer. Someone, too, who had suffered ill-health as a child. He had that incommunicable, that indescribable look that childhood suffering leaves behind it; less positive than the look on a cripple’s face, but as inescapable. This the artist had both understood and translated into terms of paint. The slight fullness of the lower eyelid, like a child that has slept too heavily; the texture of the skin; the old-man look in a young face.
He turned the portrait over to look for a caption.
On the back was printed: Richard the Third. From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Artist Unknown.
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Josephine Tey (The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5))
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But China’s mandatory household registration system, the hukou, presents a significant barrier for this type of match. Citizens from the countryside are not allowed to move to urban areas without state approval. The prospect of more desirable employment lures many to cities anyway, but even if they find a good job, they are barred from accessing urban health care, education, and housing benefits. And since children inherit their mother’s hukou status, no self-respecting urban bachelor wants to marry a poor girl from the sticks—unless they are truly in love, and in which case, everyone lives happily ever after. Except for the woman and her children, who, because of their hukou, are essentially illegal aliens in their own country.
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Brian Klingborg (Wild Prey (Inspector Lu Fei, #2))
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The true index of a man’s character is the health of his wife
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Colin Dexter (The Daughters Of Cain (Inspector Morse, #11))
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It’s a putrid den, one cockroach away from being shut down after an inspection by Health and Safety. Kitchen Nightmares would refuse to record here, thinks Jon. But then their order arrives, and so much for prejudices. Inspector Gutiérrez is served a bottle of beer and a pepper steak—big enough to have its own zip code—that reconcile him to mankind. Antonia makes do with a tenderloin sandwich with cheese and a stale wedge of Spanish omelet reheated in the microwave. My God, how badly this girl eats. I don’t know how she’s so thin. Her brain must consume a lot of gas.
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Juan Gómez-Jurado (Red Queen (Antonia Scott, #1))
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He took advantage of his ability to fill positions temporarily while waiting for Senate confirmations. Saying he liked the flexibility to move people in and out of office quickly, he relied on “acting” officials (who needed no confirmation) rather than nominating permanent appointees. In April and May 2020, Trump slashed oversight of his administration. He fired the inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Transportation—all of whom were “acting”—and of the State Department and the Intelligence Community.
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Heather Cox Richardson (Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America)
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It was the feel of the cigarette between his fingers he wanted, the sharp intake of tobacco smoke into the lungs, not some slow oozing of poison through his skin into his blood. Pity about the health problems. He felt rather like St. Augustine must have felt when he wrote in his Confessions: “Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!
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Peter Robinson (Final Account (Inspector Banks, #7))
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Why do national reform priorities keep getting misinterpreted on the ground? The federal Department of Education has no power over state legislatures or education departments. There are no federal inspectors of local schools to make sure principals, superintendents, and school boards understand how to use complex new tools like value-added measurement of teachers. Unique among Western nations, our national government does not produce or select high-quality tests, textbooks, or reading lists for teachers to use. Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—we consistently expect teachers and schools to close achievement gaps and panic when they fail to do so. But we do not provide families with the full range of social supports children need to thrive academically, including living-wage employment and stable and affordable child care, housing, higher education, and vocational training, in addition to decent nutrition and health care.
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Dana Goldstein (The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession)
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The last time the Right Honourable Gentleman raised the accusation about the policies of this government forcing his constituents to resort to inedible foods—in that case, as I remember, it was ants, earwigs, and glowworms—the National Health looked very seriously into the matter, and their inspectors. . . .” “Division! Division!” cried out some who had got the scent of blood, and Mallet Scuffs himself, successfully diverted, cried out, “Weevils, too! Weevils and grubs!” “Their inspectors. . . .” “Weevils, too, weevils and grubs! Weevils, too, weevils and grubs!” chanted a Marxist anti-missile faction.
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Mark Helprin (Freddy and Fredericka)
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Industrial eggs are washed in a chlorine bath. Since the shells are permeable, some of that chlorine enters the egg. This is standard food safety protocol. In fact, some health department inspectors believe an egg not washed
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Joel Salatin (Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World)
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Industrial eggs are washed in a chlorine bath. Since the shells are permeable, some of that chlorine enters the egg. This is standard food safety protocol. In fact, some health department inspectors believe an egg not washed in chlorine is not fit for human consumption.
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Joel Salatin (Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World)
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The police had assumed that Tony Samples had murdered the health inspector for some reason given that the murder method, which was rather unusual, matched the one used on his father.
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Chloe Kendrick (Murder to Go (Food Truck Mysteries #1))
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Jones had a dog; it had a chain;
Not often worn, not causing pain;
But, as the I.K.L. had passed
Their 'Unleashed Cousins Act’ at last,
Inspectors took the chain away;
Whereat the canine barked ‘Hooray!’
At which, of course, the S.P.U.
(Whose Nervous Motorists’ Bill was through)
Were forced to give the dog in charge
For being Audibly at Large.
None, you will say, were now annoyed,
Save, haply, Jones - the yard was void.
But something being in the lease
About ‘alarms to aid the police,’
The U.S.U. annexed the yard
For having no sufficient guard.
Now if there’s one condition
The C.C.P. are strong upon
It is that every house one buys
Must have a yard for exercise;
So Jones, as tenant, was unfit,
His state of health was proof of it.
Two doctors of the T.T.U.'s
Told him his legs, from long disuse,
Were atrophied; and saying ‘So
From step to higher step we go
Till everything is New and True.’
They cut his legs off and withdrew.
You know the E.T.S.T.'s views
Are stronger than the T.T.U.'s:
And soon (as one may say) took wing
The Arms, though not the Man, I sing.
To see him sitting limbless there
Was more than the K.K. could bear.
'In mercy silence with all speed
That mouth there are no hands to feed;
What cruel sentimentalist,
O Jones, would doom thee to exist -
Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet?
Weak one! Such reasoning might upset
The Pump Act, and the accumulation
Of all constructive legislation;
Let us construct you up a bit - '
The head fell off when it was hit:
Then words did rise and honest doubt,
And four Commissioners sat about
Whether the slash that left him dead
Cut off his body or his head.
An author in the Isle of Wight
Observed with unconcealed delight
A land of just and old renown
Where Freedom slowly broadened down
From Precedent to Precedent.
And this, I think, was what he meant.
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G.K. Chesterton (Poems By G. K. Chesterton)
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I’m pretty sure it’s a health and safety violation for us to have a being that tries to kill people and eat their souls on the premises. Although, silver lining, it’s unlikely the inspector will ever notice and file a report about it.
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Louisa Masters (Spirited Situation (Ghostly Guardians #1))
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Jules popped up next to him to pour a cup of coffee and kiss him on the cheek. “The puppies are fine with Hugh. We trust him to babysit the kids. The health inspector might close the viner down, but the puppies will be okay.”
“I thought you weren’t going to let me babysit the kids anymore after the cat incident,” Hugh said.
“That’s Otto,” Jules corrected before rushing off to serve another table.
“Hey,” Otto said mildly. “I didn’t find the cat. If I hadn’t gotten it down, Dee would’ve climbed up herself.”
Theo shrugged slightly as he took a drink of his coffee. “She’s just kidding. You’re still our second pick after Grace.”
“What about me?” Hugh complained.
After giving Hugh a flat look, Theo turned back to Otto. “Like I said, you’re still our second pick.
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Katie Ruggle (Survive the Night (Rocky Mountain K9 Unit, #3))
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the lab’s essential public health functions could be compromised during the move and if the lab had fewer employees.
The lab, now at a former Devon Energy Corp. field office building next to a cow pasture in Stillwater, has struggled to keep its top director and other key employees. Delays to get test results for basic public health surveillance for salmonella outbreaks and sexually transmitted infections have shaken the confidence of lab partners and local public health officials. As a new coronavirus emerges going into winter, the lab ranks last in the nation for COVID-19 variant testing.
Many employees, who found out about the lab’s move from an October 2020 press conference, didn’t want to relocate to Stillwater. Those who did make the move in the first few months of 2021 found expensive lab equipment in their new workplace but not enough electrical outlets for them. The lab’s internet connection was slower than expected and not part of the ultra-fast fiber network used across town by Oklahoma State University. A fridge containing reagents, among the basic supplies for any lab, had to be thrown out after a power outage.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a correction plan after federal inspectors, prompted by an anonymous complaint, showed up unannounced at the lab in late September. “Although some aspects of the original report were not as favorable as we would have liked, the path of correction is clear and more than attainable,” Secretary of Health and Mental Health Kevin Corbett said Tuesday in a statement about the inspection. “We are well on our way to fully implementing our plan. (The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services) has confirmed we’ve met the requirements of being in compliance. We are looking forward to their follow-up visit.”
In an earlier statement, the health department said the Stillwater lab now “has sufficient power outlets to perform testing with the new equipment, and has fiber connection that exceeds what is necessary to properly run genetic sequencing and other lab functions.” The department denied the lab had to throw out the reagents after a power outage.
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Devon Energy
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I’m sorry about the way it looks. . . People often said that when they let him in, as if he were a health inspector instead of a sheriff. He had once gone to arrest a murderer who had let him in with just those words. The only remorse she’d shown, in fact.
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Sharyn McCrumb (If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O (Ballad #1))
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They got it into their heads that he was a health inspector, come to close down their malarial wells, slaughter their trichinoidal hogs, and vaccinate their scabrous children.
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Robert Sheckley (Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley)
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My company, Lit Happens, has one location, five employees, and “assets” that include an assortment of feral cats that wander in and out and an ancient espresso machine possessed by a fire demon that once burst into flames just as the city health inspector arrived to conduct the annual inspection on the tiny café inside the store.
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J.T. Geissinger (Liars Like Us (Morally Gray, #1))
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The inspector will examine the property for code violations, such as ADA, fire and safety. This will potentially include code issues that were previously grandfathered in but will need to be fixed moving forward. The inspector should be able to tell you the number of years remaining on the roof and give you a status report on the heating and cooling systems, as well as the condition of the plumbing, electrical wiring, foundation, and other key structural elements. In addition, make sure your inspector looks for asbestos and mold, which are both considered health hazards and can be expensive to address. If your inspector recommends a specialist to deal with the asbestos or mold, make sure to follow through on the recommendation.
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Manny Khoshbin (Manny Khoshbin's Contrarian PlayBook)
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It would be a cull.” “Culls happen for the health of the community. They’re unfortunate, but necessary
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Louise Penny (The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #17))
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Graded products may bear the appropriate grade mark: USDC grade A, B, or C. The grade stamp signifies that the product meets the following criteria:Δ The product, by type, is clean, safe, and wholesome. The specified quality standard as indicated by grade designation has been achieved. The condition of the establishment in which the fish was processed was acceptable as required by food control authorities. The product was processed under supervision of federal food inspectors and was packed under sanitary conditions. The common or usual name is accurately reflected on the label. Market form—whole, eviscerated; seafood, alive, whole shucked, and so on.Δ
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Ruby Parker Puckett (Foodservice Manual for Health Care Institutions (J-B AHA Press Book 150))