“
The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.
All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.
If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.
They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.
I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.
I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.
You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.
Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.
After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.
It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.
He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.
The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.
You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]
Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.
You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.
In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.
There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.
Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.
The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.
The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.
I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.
Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.
Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.
Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.
Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.
A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.
Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.
It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.
Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.
Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?
She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.
”
”
John Richard Spencer
“
I've survived beach bunny cheerleaders, a sluthunting , ex-boyfriend, and five years of cross-country camp. I'm not afraid of some throwback to ancient myth with astrocious highlights and a Barbra Streisand nose.
”
”
Tera Lynn Childs (Oh. My. Gods. (Oh. My. Gods., #1))
“
The theatrical performance of politicians who profess to speak for an "American People" do nothing to highlight the history of poverty.
”
”
Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
“
Sometimes I fantasize about getting my hands on my library records. . . my recurring bookworm dream is to peruse my personal library history like it's a historical document.
My bookshelves show me the books I've bought or been given. . . But my library books come into my house and go out again, leaving behind only memories and a jotted line in a journal (if I'm lucky). I long for a list that captures these ephemeral reads - all the books I've borrowed in a lifetime of reading, from last week's armful spanning back to when I was a seven-year-old kid with my first library card. I don't need many details - just the titles and dates would be fine - but oh, how I'd love to see them.
Those records preserve what my memory has not. I remember the highlights of my grade-school checkouts, but much is lost to time. How I'd love to see the complete list of what I chose to read in second grade, or sixth, or tenth.
”
”
Anne Bogel (I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life)
“
Gratitude highlights the good in what is.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
“
Oh, how clearly I see your faults! Such distinctly highlighted flaws; it's as if the sun and moon mean to keep them illuminated in my eyes. My mind is quick to spell out a simple remedy for those defects.
But alas, poor me! My own faults―which I only assume to have because all do―are blurred and obscured by a mental fog. I've no eyes with which to gaze back at myself. The sun and moon refuse their illumination, and my mind offers no sure elixir but a complex recipe scribbled in foreign words I scarcely comprehend.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
“
One of the reasons I wanted to write this column, I think, is because I assumed that the cultural highlight of my month would arrive in book form, and that’s true, for probably eleven months of the year. Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else…. Even if you love movies and music as much as you do books, it’s still, in any given four week period, way, way more likely you’ll find a great book that you haven’t read than a great movie you haven’t seen, or a great album you haven’t heard: the assiduous consumer will eventually exhaust movies and music… the feeling everyone has with literature: that we can’t get through the good novels published in the last six months, let alone those published since publishing began.
”
”
Nick Hornby (The Polysyllabic Spree)
“
Girls did not always organize their thinking about themselves around the physical. Before World War I, self-improvement meant being less self-involved, less vain: helping others, focusing on schoolwork, becoming better read, and cultivating empathy. Author Joan Jacobs Brumberg highlighted this change in her book The Body Project by comparing the New Year’s resolutions of girls at the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: “Resolved,” wrote a girl in 1892, “to think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self-restrained in conversations and actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.
”
”
Peggy Orenstein (Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape)
“
I wish to be remembered for my humor, and my passion, and above all, my ability to go from angel to asshole in 3.5 seconds, but always for something that I truly believe in. I will be one crazy ass grandma. I want you to picture this, I will have red highlights, I will have fuck me heels, I will have a really nice glass of wine that I will have made in my hand, and I will tell anyone who will listen how a smart ass from Doylsetown, Pennslyvania was gonna be a star, and the Billboard fucking Magazine made her woman of the year.
”
”
P nk
“
This highlights the single most important geopolitical fact in the world: the United States controls all of the oceans. No other power in history has been able to do this. And that control is not only the foundation of America’s security but also the foundation of its
”
”
George Friedman (The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century)
“
Another highlight was when I got to drive a battery-operated Barbie Jeep. This made a huge impression on me. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I loved it so much that it (unfortunately) influenced my taste in real cars when I finally got my driver's license more than 10 years later.
”
”
Naya Rivera (Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up)
“
We arrived at the police station and they parked and did the whole ‘hassle and grimace’ routine. I inwardly rolled my eyes. I mean really. ‘Hey Bob, looks like you had your hands full today.’ ‘Yeah Bill, she was a murderer; killed a boy.’ Oh geez, gimme a break. I’m fourteen years old and it was an accident. Yes, I’m totally the highlight of the day. I mean, lunatic Joe over there who murdered twelve people and committed burglary so isn’t important.
”
”
Bella Shadow (Assassin: The Beginning (The Assassin Series #3))
“
She pulls on her heavy boots and carries the water bucket past the rose bushes, past the herb garden, and back to the barn behind the house. Her steps kick up the scents of herbs: thyme, mint, and lemon balm. The plants send up new stems each year from the roots that survived the winter and grew up again along the path. The perfumed walk is a mystical part of her world. Walking here is her favorite part of mornings. Sometimes, this is the highlight of her day.
”
”
J.J. Brown (Brindle 24)
“
But he's right. It was a low point in both of our lives, but being with him was still somehow the highlight of my teenage years. I guess fun is the perfect way to describe what we made of it. And if we somehow had fun together at such a low point in both of our lives, it makes me wonder what we could be like at our highest.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Starts with Us (It Ends with Us #2))
“
Reformers will highlight one or two Joes a year, while thousands of Joes are left behind because they have to be extraordinary to be White ordinary.
”
”
Bettina L. Love (Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal)
“
I’ve only felt the soft curves of your body twice, but it’s been the highlight of my year, and I haven’t even seen all of you yet.
”
”
Victoria Aveline (Choosing Theo (Clecanian, #1))
“
Aren't you going to apologize?"
"I never apologize unless I mean it. And I'm not apologizing for this. It's been the highlight of my week. Possibly my year.
”
”
Samantha Young (On Dublin Street (On Dublin Street, #1))
“
No two generations in history have experienced such a highlighted cognitive dissonance, because never has change occurred at so rapid a pace. Look at the rate of penetration—the amount of time it takes for a new technology to be adopted by fifty million people. Radio took thirty-eight years to reach that mark; the telephone took twenty years; and television took thirteen. More recently, the World Wide Web took four years, Facebook took 3.6, Twitter took three, and the iPad took only two. Google Plus, which nobody even finds useful, took only eighty-eight days to be adopted by fifty million.
”
”
Michael Harris (The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection)
“
Hecate showed us a few other highlights of the polecat cave: the cardboard box where Gale liked to sleep, next to the expensive polecat habitat that had come in the box but Gale wouldn’t even look at.
”
”
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Wrath of the Triple Goddess: The Senior Year Adventures, Book 2)
“
It is with regret that I have to say that I am just so tired of being here. I am only fifteen years old, and already I am exhausted. There must be something better out there, don’t you think? I have so many minor wounds, little scrapes and bruises, that have become so large in my mind. I do not think I would ever be able to get over them. They say that time heals everything, but how do you erase loss?
”
”
Lynette Ferreira (Would You Remember Me?)
“
They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings. Over the past years without him, my memories of Jesse have become a copy of a copy of a copy. Without meaning to, I have highlighted the parts of him that stood out to me, and the rest have faded away.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
“
Unfortunately, we lived in a world where going deep wasn’t very common anymore. People lived on the surface level, showcasing the happy highlights of themselves. It sometimes took years to discover someone’s shadows, and most people didn’t stick around me long enough to go that deep.
”
”
Brittainy C. Cherry (The Mixtape)
“
Unable to bear the silence, she looked over her shoulder. Seth was leaning against the door, arms crossed, watching her, an enigmatic smile on his face. The golden glow of the lamplight washed over his face, highlighting his five o’clock shadow. She was suddenly aware that her hair had come loose from her ponytail. That her worn jeans and T-shirt were probably smudged with who-knew-what. This wasn’t how she’d imagined looking when Seth kissed her. Why hadn’t she done something with herself while he was gone? But judging by the look on his face, he didn’t care about any of that. No longer needing the fire’s warmth, she moved away, lifting her chin and tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. “What?” “I won,” he said quietly. “Won what?” Did he hear the tremor in her voice? His lips twitched. “Our deal . . . sleigh by midnight . . . the kiss . . . Ring any bells?
”
”
Denise Hunter (A December Bride (A Year of Weddings #1))
“
In the seven years I worked at the Tate Gallery in London about six and a half were spent discussing possible exhibition titles. “I Kid You Not,” “No Word of a Lie,” “It’s a Material World,” were all discussed at some time or another as potential names for a show. A typical “titles meeting” would involve about fifteen people, thirteen of whom remained mute, other than to say “no” or “absolutely not,” while a couple of optimistic individuals made suggestions. It was ridiculous, of course, but it does highlight a central tension in the art world: public engagement versus scholarship.
”
”
Will Gompertz (What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art)
“
Here’s how it usually goes: gays will start to wear something, it becomes a trend, and then ten years later, brosefs will co-opt it, and I’ll be like, “You’re behind the times.” Perhaps this is what will happen with cropped shirts. This is what happened with T-shirts. Gays started wearing tight T-shirts, but now meatheads have adopted that as their official uniform. Don’t get me wrong—they’re usually very buff and nice to look at from afar, but you wouldn’t want to date that. There is something about a supertight T-shirt that screams, “Look at me!” It’s a bit tool-y. Whenever I see people in tight T-shirts, it’s usually not forgiving. Gone are the days when sexy-sexy sells. I prefer a looser fit. I like when your features are highlighted, but don’t show it all off. Maybe show off one thing. That is all. Something loose and only slightly suggestive is much sexier than wearing skintight clothes.
”
”
Tan France (Naturally Tan)
“
Without the Oxford comma, you can give people the wrong idea. Famously, the London Times newspaper once ran a brief description of a television documentary featuring Peter Ustinov, promising: Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.
”
”
Gyles Brandreth (Have You Eaten Grandma?: Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English)
“
I hoped with every ounce of my being that he would have the pleasure of knowing love and heartache in the way that I did. It might sound strange me wanting my five-year-old son to experience heartache, but without it I wouldn't have met his mother - a wonderful woman who taught me just how uncomplicated falling in love can be when it is with the right person, as well as highlighting the notion that timing is everything. If I had met her earlier in life I've no doubt that I'd have made a complete mess of the whole thing. I wouldn't have been ready to receive her love or to give the love I'd spent year accumulating.
”
”
Giovanna Fletcher (You're the One That I Want)
“
Assessing Miller's rebuttal and the 1895 convention, W.E.B. Du Bois made a sobering observation. Miller had, on some fundamental level, misunderstood the aims of the white men who sought to destroy Reconstruction. From Du Bois's perspective, the 1895 constitutional convention was not an exercise in moral reform, or an effort to purge the state of corruption. These were simply bywords embraced to cover for the restoration of a despotic white supremacy. The problem was not that South Carolina's Reconstruction-era government had been consumed by unprecedented graft. Indeed, it was the exact opposite. The very success Miller highlighted, the actual record of 'Negro government' in South Carolina, undermined white supremacy. To redeem white supremacy, that record was twisted, mocked, and caricatured into something that better resembled the prejudices of white South Carolina. 'If there was one thing that South Carolina feared more than bad Negro government,' wrote Du Bois, 'it was good Negro government.
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
“
The Times once published an unintentionally humorous description of a Peter Ustinov documentary, noting that “highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector”. This is ambiguous as it stands, and would still be ambiguous if a serial comma were added, as Mandela could then be mistaken for a demigod.
”
”
Conor Lastowka ([Citation Needed]: The Best Of Wikipedia's Worst Writing)
“
Gareth is a few years older than me at twenty, broad and sturdy with dark green eyes and black hair like the rest of us. But there’s one notable difference: Gareth’s black hair has a trace of silver highlights in it—very unusual in Gardnerians, and read by many as a sign of his less-than-pure blood. It’s been the source of relentless teasing all throughout his life.
”
”
Laurie Forest (The Black Witch (The Black Witch Chronicles, #1))
“
I have been lying on my couch for thirteen, going on fourteen months. I have barely gone out. I have fed myself and made ends meet. I hope that’s not the proudest of me you could be. I hope surviving not being married to a doctor anymore is not the greatest thing you can imagine for me. I went to school. I’m going to live another fifty years probably. I hope this isn’t the highlight.
”
”
Linda Holmes (Evvie Drake Starts Over)
“
Only Barney supervised the handling of Dr. Lecter, because Barney never forgot what he was dealing with. His two assistants watched taped hockey highlights on television. Dr. Lecter amused himself—he has extensive internal resources and can entertain himself for years at a time. His thoughts were no more bound by fear or kindness than Milton’s were by physics. He was free in his head.
”
”
Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2))
“
Simply repeating one day after the next is the enemy of a fulfilling life. It’s the reason why months go by too quickly, or years, even, and it’s like there’s almost no memory of it—an overload of routine that the brain registers as unimportant. But a new experience is something special. A bookmark. A highlighted section in the pages of your life. It’s the reason why you can remember the exact way your shoes felt on your first day of first grade or the exact light of the room
”
”
Kelley McNeil (Mayluna)
“
Just then, I notice Mrs. Mulgrave giving the younger woman beside her a slight push in my direction.
"This is my daughter, Maisie. She will be your maid."
"Maisie?" I can't help blurting out in astonishment.
I hardly recognize her. The past seven years have transformed Maisie from a plain preteen into a beautiful young adult. I didn't expect her to be so... pretty. She wears a black tee with black pants, but the simple clothing and lack of makeup only enhances her looks. She has heavy-lidded deep brown eyes, clear skin with the hint of a tan, the kind of plush pink lips that housewives in my New York hometown would pay good money for, and long brown hair highlighted with strands of gold. Her only adornments are a thick wristwatch and a rectangular pendant hanging on a chain around her neck.
I feel a pang of sympathy as I look from mother to daughter. If Maisie's luck had been different---if she'd been born to parents like the Marinos---she could have had the world at her feet, instead of being shut up in a house working as a maid.
”
”
Alexandra Monir (Suspicion)
“
The following year, enrollment at Mizzou was down sharply, especially of Black students. This isn’t because Black prospective students disagreed with the protests. Black students who decided not to attend the previously well-respected school said that the racism highlighted on campus had turned them off. Some Jewish prospective students said that hearing about swastikas being painted on walls kept them away. And some white prospective students said they didn’t want to be associated with a university so widely known to be racist.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
“
Now he sat alone; on a disabled starship about fifty years from anywhere on conversion drive – assuming he still had that. Insurance was a good thing – a very good thing - but it wasn’t going to help him much out here. The highlight of his afternoon was going to be staring at the blinking bridge instrumentation – which just happened to be running on the emergency batteries and actually blinking, like for real. Moreover, since his mutinous crew had made off with the Short Shit, the ships only shuttle, he was facing quite a problem
”
”
Christina Engela (Blachart)
“
The main reason we don’t know as much about the modern human story in Africa is lack of research. Human history over the last tens of thousands of years in Africa is an integral part of the story of our species. Focusing on Africa as the place where our species originated, while it might seem to highlight the importance of Africa, paradoxically does Africa a disservice by drawing attention away from the question of how populations that remained in Africa got to be the way they are today. With ancient and modern DNA, we can rectify
”
”
David Reich (Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past)
“
They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings. Over the past years without him, my memories of Jesse have become a copy of a copy of a copy. Without meaning to, I have highlighted the parts of him that stood out to me, and the rest have faded away.
In the copy of a copy, what stood out to me about him was how much I loved him. What faded into the background was how much he loved me.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
“
Another result of amnesia is arrogance, and it is available in both conservative and progressive flavors. In the progressive version, our current mores are self-evidently correct, which means that anyone who thought differently a hundred years ago, or even ten years ago, must have been either stupid or evil (or both). In the conservative version, the only reasons for a person’s success are their own ability and effort, which means that anyone who highlights the importance of historical privileges, or oppression, must be either jealous or lazy (or both).
”
”
Andrew Wilson (Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West)
“
Of course, President Obama was correct that there has been positive, meaningful social change in our lifetimes—certainly in the years since I was born in 1954—but if we focus specifically on the twenty-year period from 1997 to 2017, we must acknowledge some setbacks beyond just the stubborn persistence of neighborhood and school segregation. There are three I want to highlight here: the anti–affirmative action backlash of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the economic collapse of 2008 known as the Great Recession, and the phenomenon known as mass incarceration.
”
”
Beverly Daniel Tatum (Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?)
“
Within a year or two of Partition – despite all the massacres that had attended it – Hindu–Muslim relations appeared, almost miraculously, to have returned to normal in India. This was highlighted by Pakistan’s maiden Test tour of India, in 1952. It was by far the most prominent interaction between the two countries since their bloody separation. It was also less than five years since their inaugural war, over the former princely state of Kashmir, which was divided in the process. Yet the visiting Pakistanis were feted by India’s government in Delhi (where they also visited the shrine in Nizamuddin) and by rapturous crowds.
”
”
James Astill (The Great Tamasha: Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India (Wisden Sports Writing))
“
The explosion was deafening; a huge cloud of fire rolled out the window after us, its immense heat brushing my face as we tumbled into the snow.
We hit the ground and rolled. Flaming debris from the house came down around us; Griffin shoved me flat on my back, covering us both with his heavy coat.
The echoes of the explosion reflected back across the river, then slowly dwindled away, like dying thunder. The leaping flames threw warm light onto the falling snow, turning it into a storm of sparks pouring down from the heavens.
Griffin started to push himself off of me, then stoped. His hands were braced on either side of my shoulders, his legs twined with mine. Mt heart pounded, my palms sweated, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of how close his face was to mine.
"You're a madman," he whispered. "An utter madman."
"Perhaps," I allowed. "But it worked."
The leaping light from the burning house painted his features in gold, highlighting his patrician nose and finding threads of brown and blue in his green eyes. His pupils widened, the irises contracting to silver. "Whatever am I going to do with you?" he murmured.
The warmth of his breath feathered over my skin. Heat collected in my groin, my lips. My mouth was dry, my voice hoarse, and perhaps he was right and it was madness when I whispered, "Whatever you want."
A shiver went through his body, perhaps because we were lying on the cold ground. But instead of getting up, he leaned closer, his overlong hair tumbling over his forehead. He paused, his mouth almost touching mine, his eyes seeming to ask a question.
It was madness; it was folly; it was sheer selfishness. I was delusional, misguided, wrong, out of control. I needed to pull back, to say something sane, to re-establish mastery over myself. I could not do this. I could not take the risk.
Later tonight, I'd relive this moment in my lonely bed and wonder if I'd done the right thing. But at least that would be familiar, would be something I knew how to cope with.
And yet the very thought felt like dying.
I surged forward, crossing the final, tiny gap and pressing my lips to his. It was awkward and desperate and frantic, but the feel of his mouth against mine sent a bolt of electricity straight down my spine. Just a moment, just this one kiss, surely that would be enough...
Then he kissed me back, and it would never be enough, a thousand years of this would not be enough. His mouth was hungry and insistent, his tongue probing my lips, asking for greater intimacy. I granted it, tongues swirling together, mine followed his when it retreated and tasting him in return.
There came the clanging of bells in the distance, the fire company alerted to the explosion. Griffin drew back a fraction. His breath was as raged as mine, which left me dazed with wonder.
"My dear," he whispered against my lips. Then he swallowed convulsively. "We should leave, before the fire companies come."
"Y-Yes." It was amazing I managed that much coherence.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling. "Will you come home with me?"
Was he asking...? "Yes." Oh, God, yes.
His lips curved into a smile.
”
”
Jordan L. Hawk (Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin, #1))
“
I had thought the Upper East Side could shield me from the beauty pageants and cockfights of the art scene in which I’d “worked” in Chelsea. But living uptown had infected me with its own virus when I first moved there. I’d tried being one of those blond women speed walking up and down the Esplanade in spandex, Bluetooth in my ear like some self-important asshole, talking to whom—Reva? On the weekends, I did what young women in New York like me were supposed to do, at first: I got colonics and facials and highlights, worked out at an overpriced gym, lay in the hammam there until I went blind, and went out at night in shoes that cut my feet and gave me sciatica.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
She imagined him leaning against the shuttle, entertaining thoughts of scolding her for dressing like a ragged commoner. Never mind that her present outfit was light years ahead in comfort.
(Actually, he’s wishing he had been less critical of you earlier. He feels bad that you won’t acknowledge his presence, and he blames himself.)
(Quit it, Ian. I’m not going to feel sorry for him.)
She caught her protector’s shrewd grin, highlighted by the fire’s glow. (You already do, Queenie.)
(This talent of yours is really annoying.)
He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “That’s not what you thought earlier when you wanted to get ahold of Efren.”
“One tiny rosebud in a handful of thorns,” she retorted.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Eena, The Curse of Wanyaka Cave (The Harrowbethian Saga #3))
“
As we strolled, I noticed the soft light and its effect on the buildings around us. Like an aging screen actress shot in soft light to conceal her age lines, this magical twilight softened the avenues of Paris and produced an elegant scene not unlike a movie. Lining the street ahead of us, the buildings were constructed of solid white stone and more than one hundred years old, but all traces of age or dirt were diffused by the twilight, while their classic French architecture was center stage and highlighted. Fifty Parisians, the bluish cobblestones of the sidewalk, glowing neon, and a colorful outdoor flower stand completed the scene in front of us. Overwhelmed and in awe of the setting, I stopped and stared silently ahead.
”
”
Michael Bowe (The Weight of a Moment)
“
Here I should issue a caveat. In origins-of-life research (and probably in most other disciplines as well), scientists gravitate to models that highlight their personal scientific specialty. Organic chemist Stanley Miller and his cohorts saw life’s origins as essentially a problem in organic chemistry. Geochemists, by contrast, have tended to focus on more intricate origins scenarios involving such variables as temperature and pressure and chemically complex rocks. Experts in membrane-forming lipid molecules promote the “lipid world,” while molecular biologists who study DNA and RNA view the “RNA world” as the model to beat. Specialists who study viruses, or metabolism, or clays, or the deep biosphere have their idiosyncratic prejudices as well. We all do it; we all focus
”
”
Robert M. Hazen (The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet)
“
Warren Bennis, one of today’s leading thinkers on the art of leadership, spent years studying groundbreaking groups such as the Walt Disney Studios (while Walt was still alive), Xerox PARC, and Lockheed’s Skunk Works. Here are some of the highlights from his study of groups: • Great groups believe they are on a mission from God. Beyond mere financial success, they genuinely believe they will make the world a better place. • Great groups are more optimistic than realistic. They believe they can do what no one else has done before. “And the optimists, even when their good cheer is unwarranted, accomplish more,” says Warren. • Great groups ship. “They are places of action, not think tanks or retreat centers devoted solely to the generation of ideas.” Warren characterized the successful collaborations he studied as “dreams with deadlines.” Part
”
”
Tom Kelley (Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All)
“
Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University, warned about the dangers of stress for a full decade before she realized that maybe it was her advice, rather than stress itself, that was sending people to their graves faster. “I’m converting a stimulus [stress] that could be strengthening people into a source of disease.” With a breakthrough in her thinking, and some powerful new research, McGonigal made a complete turnaround. Turns out, stress might just be our friend. Just as you put stress on a muscle to make it stronger (by lifting weights or running), emotional stress can make us physically and psychologically stronger too. McGonigal now highlights new research showing that when you change your mind about stress, you can literally change your body’s physical reaction to it. In an eight-year study, adults who experienced a “lot of stress” and who believed stress was harmful to their health had a 43% increase in their risk of dying. (That sure stressed me out.) However, people who experienced an equal amount of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die! McGonigal says that physical signs of stress (a pounding heart, faster breathing, breaking out in a sweat) aren’t necessarily physical evidence of anxiety or signs that we aren’t coping well with pressure. Instead, we can interpret them as indications that our body is energized and preparing us to meet the next challenge. The bottom line is, science has now proven that how you think about stress matters—the story you attach to stress. Telling yourself it’s good for you instead of harmful could mean the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at 50 or living well into your 90s.
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Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
“
You’re going to get an F.” Spencer shifted the papers on his school desk and looked for a hundredth time at the graffiti in the corner. Last year’s occupant of the desk must have spent hours etching the message into the wooden surface. Dummy, Spencer thought. Couldn’t even spell cabbage. Truth be told, Mrs. Natcher did smell a little like cabbage sometimes, but she was still tolerable. Today, however, a strong Bath and Body Works fragrance filled the sixth-grade classroom and Mrs. Natcher was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a thin, younger woman who had short, stylish hair streaked with pink highlights. She wore high-heeled red shoes and a skirt so short that Mrs. Natcher would have croaked. Turned out that Mrs. Natcher had croaked—well, almost—which was why Miss Leslie Sharmelle had been called to Welcher Elementary that morning. Spencer glanced at the clock on the wall.
”
”
Tyler Whitesides (Janitors (Janitors, #1))
“
Each bite is a tidal wave of savory, fatty eel juices...
... made fresh and tangy by the complementary flavors of olive oil and tomato!
...!
It's perfect!
This dish has beautifully encapsulated the superbness of Capitone Eel!"
"Capitone specifically means 'Large Female Eel'!
It's exactly this kind of eel that is served during Natale season from Christmas to New Year's.
Compared to normal eels, the Capitone is large, thick and juicy! In fact, it's considered a delicacy!"
"Yes, I've heard of them! The Capitone is supposed to be significantly meatier than the standard Anguilla."
*Anguilla is the Italian word for regular eels.*
"Okay. So the Capitone is special.
But is it special enough to make a dish so delicious the judges swoon?"
"No. The secret to the Capitone's refined deliciousness in this dish lies with the tomatoes.
You used San Marzanos, correct?"
"Ha Ragione! (Exactly!)
I specifically chose San Marzano tomatoes as the core of my dish!"
Of the hundreds of varieties of tomato, the San Marzano Plum Tomato is one of the least juicy.
Less juice means it makes a less watery and runny sauce when stewed!
"Thanks to the San Marzano tomatoes, this dish's sauce remained thick and rich with a marvelously full-bodied taste.
The blend of spices he used to season the sauce has done a splendid job of highlighting the eel's natural flavors as well."
"You can't forget the wondrous polenta either. Crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle.
There's no greater garnish for this dish."
*Polenta is boiled cornmeal that is typically served as porridge or baked into cakes.*
"Ah. I see. Every ingredient of his dish is intimately connected to the eel.
Garlic to increase the fragrance, onion for condensed sweetness...
... and low-juice tomatoes. Those are the key ingredients.
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 25 [Shokugeki no Souma 25] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #25))
“
But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
The clean smell of her childhood’s only untouched days. The music of the trees, too, tuning the wind. She remembers. Her nose slips into one of those dark fissures between the flat terra-cotta plates. She falls into the smell, a devastating whiff of two hundred million years ago. She can’t imagine what such perfume was ever meant to do. But it does something to her now. Mind control. It’s neither vanilla nor turpentine, but replete with highlights of each. A shot of spiritual butterscotch. A sprig of pineapple incense. It smells like nothing but itself, pungent and sublime. She breathes in, eyes closed, the tree’s real name. She stands with her nose in the bark, perversely intimate. She doses herself for a long time, like a hospice patient self-administering the morphine. Chemicals rush down her windpipe, through the bloodstream to her body’s provinces, across the blood-brain barrier and into her thoughts. The smell grips her brain stem until she and the dead man are fishing side by side again, under the pine shade where the fish hide, in the soul’s innermost national park.
”
”
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
“
Nykyrian stepped out of the shadows so that the dim light highlighted the white blond hair that was braided down his back—an assassin’s mark of honor. His solid, flat black battle suit hugged every sharp curve of his well-muscled body. The outline of daggers were embroidered in dark blood red down the sleeves—the only external designation an assassin bore. Nykyrian’s daggers held a crown above each hilt, letting the universe know he was the most lethal of his kind. A command assassin of the first rank. As always, Nykyrian was calm and watchful of the shadows as if expecting someone like him to come for him at any moment. Somber. Cold. Lethal. Traits that had been drilled into him as a child. In all the years Sheridan had known him, Nykyrian had never once smiled. Never once broken that staunch military training that had left him emotionally bankrupt. The most disturbing thing of all was the fact that his eyes were hidden behind a pair of opaque shades, a safeguard used by military assassins to keep those around them on edge, since there was no way of telling where they were looking or what they were thinking.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Night (The League, #1))
“
So Dad was a tedious, well-connected workaholic. But the other thing you need to understand is that Mom was a living wet dream. A former Guess model and Miller Lite girl, she was tall, curvy and gorgeous. At thirty-eight, she had somehow managed to remain ageless and maintained her killer body. She’s five-foot-nine with never-ending legs, generous breasts and full hips that scoop dramatically into her slim waist. People who say Barbie’s proportions are unrealistic obviously never met my stepmother. Her face is pretty too, with long eyelashes, sculpted cheekbones and big, blue eyes that tease and smile at the same time. Her long brown hair rests on her shoulders in thick, tousled layers like in one of those Pantene Pro-V commercials.
One memory seared in to my brain from my early teenage years is of Mom parading around the house one evening in nothing but her heels and underwear. I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching TV when a flurry of long limbs and blow-dried hair burst in front of the screen.
“Teddy-bear. Do you know where Silvia left the dry cleaning? I’m running late for dinner with the Blackwells and I can’t find my red cocktail dress.”
Mom stood before me in matching off-white, La Perla bra and panties and Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Some subtle gold hoop earrings hung from her ears and a tiny bit of mascara on her eye lashes highlighted her sparkling, blue eyes. Aside from the missing dress, she was otherwise ready to go.
“I think she left them hanging on the chair next to the other sofa,” I said, trying my best not to gape at Mom’s perfect body.
Mom trotted across the room, her heels tocking on the hard wood floor. I watched her slim, sexy back as she lifted the dry cleaning onto the sofa and then bent over to sort through the garments. My eyes followed her long mane of brown hair down to her heart-shaped ass. Her panties stretched tightly across each cheek as she bent further down.
“Found it!” She cried, springing back upright, causing her 35Cs to bounce up and down from the sudden motion. They were thrusting proudly off her ribcage and bulging out over the fabric of the balconette bra like two titanic eggs. Her supple skin pushed out over the silk edges. And then she was gone as quickly as she had arrived, her long legs striding back down the hallway.
”
”
C.R.R. Crawford (Sins from my Stepmother: Forbidden Desires)
“
It is ironic that Keynesianism originated as a weapon to combat depression, but became universally accepted and "successful" only during (and because of!) the postwar expansion. At the first sign of renewed world recession, Keynesian theory has proved itself to be a snare and a delusion that has gone into immediate bankruptcy. The resulting "post-Keynesian synthesis" is also the theoretical reason for the reactionary exhumation of the simplistic, neoclassical, and monetarist economic theory of the 1920s. This revival of old theory is highlighted by the award of Nobel prizes in economics to Friedrich von Hayek, whose theoretical work was done before the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman, whose lone voice echoed in the wilderness until the new world economic crisis put his unpopular and antipopulist theories on the agenda of business board rooms and government cabinet rooms in one capitalist country after another. The real reason for the recent interest in fifty-year-old theories is that capital now wants them to legitimize its attack on the welfare state and "unproductive" expenditures on social services, which capital claims to need for "productive" investment in industry, including armaments.
”
”
André Gunder Frank (Reflections on World Economic Crisis)
“
And in a few steps, she’s outside. The smell is on her before she reaches the trees—the scent of resin and wide western places. The clean smell of her childhood’s only untouched days. The music of the trees, too, tuning the wind. She remembers. Her nose slips into one of those dark fissures between the flat terra-cotta plates. She falls into the smell, a devastating whiff of two hundred million years ago. She can’t imagine what such perfume was ever meant to do. But it does something to her now. Mind control. It’s neither vanilla nor turpentine, but replete with highlights of each. A shot of spiritual butterscotch. A sprig of pineapple incense. It smells like nothing but itself, pungent and sublime. She breathes in, eyes closed, the tree’s real name. She stands with her nose in the bark, perversely intimate. She doses herself for a long time, like a hospice patient self-administering the morphine. Chemicals rush down her windpipe, through the bloodstream to her body’s provinces, across the blood-brain barrier and into her thoughts. The smell grips her brain stem until she and the dead man are fishing side by side again, under the pine shade where the fish hide, in the soul’s innermost national park.
”
”
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
“
But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.
As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.
In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: he never expresses his fears or misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfactions and doubts - as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves.
The different perspectives on expressing or concealing dissatisfactions and doubts may reflect a difference in men's and women's awareness of the power of their words to affect others. In repeatedly telling him what she feared about their relationship, she spoke as though she assumed he was invulnerable and could not be hurt by what she said; perhaps she was underestimating the power of her words to affect him. For his part, when he refrains from expressing negative thoughts or feelings, he seems to be overestimating the power of his words to hurt her, when, ironically, she is more likely to be hurt by his silence than his words.
Such impasses will perhaps never be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties, but understanding the differing views can help detoxify the situation, and both can make adjustments.
”
”
Deborah Tannen (You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation)
“
The Netherlands capital of Amsterdam amsterdam cruise is a thriving metropolis and one from the world's popular cities. If you are planning a trip to the metropolis, but are unclear about what you should do presently there, why not possess a little fun and spend time learning about how it's stereotypically known for? How come they put on clogs? When was the wind mill first utilised there? In addition, be sure to include all your feels on your journey and taste the phenomenal cheeses along with smell the stunning tulips. It's really recommended that you stay in a city motel, Amsterdam is quite spread out and residing in hotels close to the city-centre allows for the easiest access to public transportation.
Beyond the clichés
So that you can know precisely why a stereotype exists it usually is important to discover its source.
Clogs: The Dutch have already been wearing solid wood shoes, as well as "Klompen" as they are referred to, for approximately 700 years. They were originally made out of a timber sole along with a leather top or band tacked for the wood. Nevertheless, the shoes had been eventually created completely from wood to safeguard the whole base. Wooden shoe wearers state the shoes are usually warm during the cold months and cool during the warm months. The first guild associated with clog designers dates back to a number exceeding 1570 in Holland.
When making blockages, both shoes of a set must be created from the same kind of timber, even the same side of a tree, in order that the wood will certainly shrink in the same charge. While most blocks today are produced by equipment, a few shoemakers are left and they normally set up store in vacationer areas near any city hotel. Amsterdam also offers a clog-making museum, Klompenmakerij De Zaanse Schans, that highlights your shoe's history and significance.
Windmills: The first windmills have been demonstrated to have existed in Netherlands from about the year 1200. Today, there are eight leftover windmills in the capital. The most effective to visit is De Gooyer, which has been built in 1725 over the Nieuwevaart Canal. Their location in the east involving city's downtown area signifies it is readily available from any metropolis hotel. Amsterdam enjoys its beer and it actually has a brewery right on the doorstep to the wind generator. So if you are enjoying a historic site it's also possible to enjoy a scrumptious ice-cold beer - what more would you ask for?
Mozerella: It's impossible to vacation to Amsterdam without sampling several of its wonderful cheeses. In accordance with the locals, probably the most flavourful cheeses are available at the Wegewijs Emporium. With over 50 international cheese and A hundred domestic parmesan cheesse, you will surely have a wide-variety to pick from.
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Step Into the Stereotypes of Amsterdam
“
Launching “Buy It Now” was a large change that touched every transaction, but the eBay team also innovated across the experience for both sellers and buyers as well. With an initial success, we doubled down on innovation to drive growth. We introduced stores on eBay, which dramatically increased the amount of product offered for sale on the platform. We expanded the menu of optional features that sellers could purchase to better highlight their listings on the site. We improved the post-transaction experience on ebay.com by significantly improving the “checkout” flow, including the eventual seamless integration of PayPal on the eBay site. Each of these innovations supported the growth of the business and helped to keep that gravity at bay. Years later, Jeff became a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he would kick off the firm’s success in startups with network effects, investing in Airbnb, Instacart, Pinterest, and others. I’m lucky to work with him! He recounted in an essay on the a16z blog that his strategy was to grow eBay by adding layers and layers of new revenue—like “adding layers to the cake.” You can see it visually here: Figure 12: eBay’s growth layer cake As the core US business began to look more like a line than a hockey stick, international and payments were layered on top. Together, the aggregate business started to look like a hockey stick, but underneath it was actually many new lines of business.
”
”
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
“
Turing was offered a choice: imprisonment or probation contingent on receiving hormone treatments via injections of a synthetic estrogen designed to curb his sexual desires, as if he were a chemically controlled machine. He chose the latter, which he endured for a year. Turing at first seemed to take it all in stride, but on June 7, 1954, he committed suicide by biting into an apple he had laced with cyanide. His friends noted that he had always been fascinated by the scene in Snow White in which the Wicked Queen dips an apple into a poisonous brew. He was found in his bed with froth around his mouth, cyanide in his system, and a half-eaten apple by his side. Was that something a machine would have done? I. Stirling’s formula, which approximates the value of the factorial of a number. II. The display and explanations of the Mark I at Harvard’s science center made no mention of Grace Hopper nor pictured any women until 2014, when the display was revised to highlight her role and that of the programmers. III. Von Neumann was successful in this. The plutonium implosion design would result in the first detonation of an atomic device, the Trinity test, in July 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico, and it would be used for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, three days after the uranium bomb was used on Hiroshima. With his hatred of both the Nazis and the Russian-backed communists, von Neumann became a vocal proponent of atomic weaponry.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
The importance of ethical governance, exemplified by the Norwegian Pension Fund, is highlighted by a deplorable UK government proposal in 2016 to set up a Shale Wealth Fund.38 The fund would receive up to 10 per cent of the revenue generated by fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for shale gas, which could amount to as much as £1 billion over twenty-five years. This would be paid out to communities hosting fracking sites, which could decide to use the money for local projects or distribute it to households in cash. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a bribe to secure local approval of environmentally threatening fracking operations, to which there has been considerable public opposition. Beyond that, there are many equity questions. Why should only people who happen to live in areas with shale gas be beneficiaries? How would the recipient community be defined? Would the payments go only to those living in the designated community at the time the fracking started? Would they be paid as lump sums or on a regular basis, and how long would they last? What about future generations? Can cash payments compensate for the risk of harm to the air, water, landscape and livelihoods? All these questions cast doubt on the equity and ethics of any selective scheme. They underline the need for the principles of wealth funds and dividends from them to be established before they are implemented, and for a governance structure that is independent from government and business. But
”
”
Guy Standing (Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen)
“
For me, the biggest conflict with the surgery date was that it fell on the same day as Cole’s junior/senior formal at school. The formal had been a big night for Reed two years earlier, with the highlight being a special ring ceremony. Juniors receive their senior rings and ask two special people in their lives to turn the ring on their finger. Reed has asked me to be one of those two people for him, which was a special honor for me. If Cole wants me there, I will reschedule Mia’s surgery.
“Cole, who are you planning on having turn your ring?” I asked.
“I didn’t get a ring, Mom. I really don’t want one,” Cole replied.
Seriously? I thought. Boy, are you your father’s son or what?
“All I really care about is getting some really good pictures.”
I knew Cole was telling me the truth. He is not about fanfare or rituals. But he did want to remember the night.
“Absolutely! I’ll make sure we have plenty of pictures of you,” I exclaimed.
As it turned out, I think he was the most photographed student that night. Since I could not be there in person, people texted, e-mailed, and tagged me on Facebook with pictures of him. Again, my friends and Cole’s friends’ parents did what they could to help us through this difficult time. Something as simple as taking pictures was priceless to me. Yes, Cole was completely fine with my not being at the formal, but he was also sad that he could not be at the hospital for Mia. I assured him that there’s never a good time for surgery, and he shouldn’t feel guilty about attending his event--all of us wanted him to go and have a great time.
”
”
Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
“
So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Condé Nast hotshot—or at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (“This is . . . too shiny for me,” she’d explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicure—Versace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008—and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil. But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, you’d see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhausted—to conceal the exhaustion, you see—and my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadn’t slept without pills in years. So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourself—your hair, your skin, your nails—I was falling apart.
”
”
Cat Marnell (How to Murder Your Life)
“
As the men rode they saw for the first time the full grandeur of Hawaii, for they were to work on one of the fairest islands in the Pacific. To the left rose jagged and soaring mountains, clothed in perpetual green. Born millions of years before the other mountains of Hawaii, these had eroded first and now possessed unique forms that pleased the eye. At one point the wind had cut a complete tunnel through the highest mountain; at others the erosion of softer rock had left isolated spires of basalt standing like monitors. To the right unfolded a majestic shore, cut by deep bays and highlighted by a rolling surf that broke endlessly upon dark rocks and brilliant white sand. Each mile disclosed to Kamejiro and his companions some striking new scene. But most memorable of all he saw that day was the red earth. Down millions of years the volcanic eruptions of Kauai had spewed forth layers of iron-rich rocks, and for subsequent millions of years this iron had slowly, imperceptibly disintegrated until it now stood like gigantic piles of scintillating rust, the famous red earth of Kauai. Sometimes a green-clad mountain would show a gaping scar where the side of a cliff had fallen away, disclosing earth as red as new blood. At other times the fields along which the men rode would be an unblemished furnace-red, as if flame had just left it. Again in some deep valley where small amounts of black earth had intruded, the resulting red nearly resembled a brick color. But always the soil was red. It shone in a hundred different hues, but it was loveliest when it stood out against the rich green verdure of the island, for then the two colors complemented each other, and Kauai seemed to merit the name by which it was affectionately known: the Garden Island.
”
”
James A. Michener (Hawaii)
“
You see Matt and Anthony every week. You see everyone every week.”
“Not everyone, Nick,” his mother said pointedly. Then her voice changed and turned warmer. “Well, except for this upcoming weekend.”
Nick paused at this. It could’ve been a trap. Perhaps his mother suspected something was up with her birthday and was fishing for information. Although it was surprising that she’d come to him—she usually went after Anthony, who had the secret-keeping skills of a four-year-old.
“Why? What’s happening this weekend?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Oh, nothing much. I just heard something about a sixtieth birthday party your father and you boys are planning for me.”
Fucking Anthony.
“And don’t go blaming Anthony,” his mother said, quick to protect her youngest. “I’d already heard about it from your aunt Donna before he slipped.”
Nick knew what her next question would be before the words left her mouth.
“So? Are you bringing a date?” she asked.
“Sorry, Ma. It’ll just be me.”
“There’s a surprise.”
He pulled into the driveway that led to the parking garage of his condo building. “Just a warning, I’m about to pull into the garage—I might lose you.”
“How convenient,” his mother said. “Because I had a really nice lecture planned for you.”
“Let me guess the highlights: it involved me needing to focus on something other than work, and you dying heartbroken and miserable without grandchildren. Am I close?”
“Not bad. But I’ll save the rest of the lecture for Sunday. There’s going to be a lot of gesturing on my part, and the phone doesn’t quite capture the spirit.”
Nick smiled. “Shockingly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you Sunday, Ma.”
Her voice softened. “I know how busy you are, Nick. It means a lot to me that you’re coming home.”
He knew it did. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
”
”
Julie James (A Lot like Love (FBI/US Attorney, #2))
“
Jung’s remarks about how in North Africa he “felt cast back many centuries to an infinitely more naïve world of adolescents who were preparing, with the aid of a slender knowledge of the Koran, to emerge from their original state of twilight consciousness” may seem politically incorrect from our oversensitive perspective, but they highlight the core insight of the trip. Although Jung knew a great deal about mythology and mythological thinking, his own thinking was decidedly Western and rational—he described himself as a “thorough Westerner”26—and in many ways, Jung was a typical “left-brainer,” with his detestation of “fantasy,” his formality and punctuality, his precision and need to be “scientific.” In his travels in North Africa, and later Taos and Central Africa, Jung was looking for signs of a consciousness not as differentiated from the unconscious matrix—what in the Seven Sermons he called “the Pleroma”—as ours, with its sharp distinction between conscious and unconscious. What Jung found in places such as Tunis, Sousse, Sfax, and the oasis city of Tozeur was a completely different sense of time. Coming from the land of cuckoo clocks and appointment books, this must have been a shock. Jung had entered a “dream of a static, age-old existence,” a kind of perpetual now, a condition associated with the right brain, which lacks a sense of time; there was none of the incessant activity that characterized even a relatively small city like Zürich. Jung enjoyed the contrast, which gave him an opportunity to entertain criticisms of modernity, a practice that would become something of a habit in later years, but he also felt this timelessness was threatened. Thinking of his pocket watch, “the symbol of Europe’s accelerated tempo,” Jung worried that the “god of time” and its demon, progress, would soon “chop into bits and pieces”—hours, minutes, seconds—the “duration” he sensed here and which was the “closest thing to eternity.
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Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
Then it was time for dessert: another plate, full of big, white larvas from the palm nut tree. And I do mean big—each one was longer and thicker than my thumb, and had been lightly fried in its own fat. But I wondered, had they been too lightly fried? Because they seemed to be moving. The villagers were proud to offer us such a delicious treat.
Remember, I am a sword swallower. I should be able to push anything down my throat. And I am not usually a fussy eater: I had even once eaten porridge made from mosquitos. But no. This, I couldn’t do. The heads of the larvas looked like little brown nuts and their thick bodies like transparent wrinkled marshmallows, through which I could see their intestines. The villagers gestured that I should bite them in two and suck out the insides. If I tried I would puke the rat back up. I did not want to offend.
Suddenly, an idea. I smiled softly and said regretfully, “You know what, I am sorry, but I can’t eat larvas.”
Thorkild turned to me, surprised. He already had a couple of larvas hanging out of the corners of his mouth. He really loved those larvas. He had previously worked as a missionary in Congo, where they had been the highlight of every week for one whole year.
“You see, we don’t eat larvas,” I said, trying to look convincing. The villagers looked at Thorkild.
“But he eats them?” they asked. Thorkild stared at me.
“Ah,” I said. “You see, he comes from a different tribe. I come from Sweden, he comes from Denmark. In Denmark, they love eating larvas. But in Sweden it’s against our culture.” The village teacher went and got out the world map and I pointed out the water separating our two countries. “On this side of the water they eat larvas,” I said, “and on this side we don’t.” It’s actually one of the most blatant lies I have ever told, but it worked. The villagers were happy to share my dessert between them. Everyone, everywhere knows that people from different tribes have different customs.
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Hans Rosling (Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think)
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We still talk a lot about ‘authentic’ cultures, but if by ‘authentic’ we mean something that developed independently, and that consists of ancient local traditions free of external influences, then there are no authentic cultures left on earth. Over the last few centuries, all cultures were changed almost beyond recognition by a flood of global influences. One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is ‘ethnic’ cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss café is thick hot chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama. Hollywood films have perpetuated an image of the Plains Indians as brave horsemen, courageously charging the wagons of European pioneers to protect the customs of their ancestors. However, these Native American horsemen were not the defenders of some ancient, authentic culture. Instead, they were the product of a major military and political revolution that swept the plains of western North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a consequence of the arrival of European horses. In 1492 there were no horses in America. The culture of the nineteenth-century Sioux and Apache has many appealing features, but it was a modern culture – a result of global forces – much more than ‘authentic’.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion. The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are particularly notorious. All those involved accepted Christ’s divinity and His gospel of compassion and love. However, they disagreed about the nature of this love. Protestants believed that the divine love is so great that God was incarnated in flesh and allowed Himself to be tortured and crucified, thereby redeeming the original sin and opening the gates of heaven to all those who professed faith in Him. Catholics maintained that faith, while essential, was not enough. To enter heaven, believers had to participate in church rituals and do good deeds. Protestants refused to accept this, arguing that this quid pro quo belittles God’s greatness and love. Whoever thinks that entry to heaven depends upon his or her own good deeds magnifies his own importance, and implies that Christ’s suffering on the cross and God’s love for humankind are not enough. These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence. God
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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Of course, not everyone agreed with Professor Glaude’s assessment. Joel C. Gregory, a white professor of preaching at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary and coauthor of What We Love about the Black Church,8 took issue with Glaude’s pronouncement of the Black Church’s death. Gregory, a self-described veteran of preaching in “more than two hundred African-American congregations, conferences, and conventions in more than twenty states each year,” found himself at a loss for an explanation of Glaude’s statements. Gregory offered six signs of vitality in the African-American church, including: thriving preaching, vitality in worship, continuing concern for social justice, active community service, high regard for education, and efforts at empowerment. Gregory contends that these signs of life can be found in African-American congregations in every historically black denomination and in varying regions across the country. He writes: Where is the obituary? I do not know any organization in America today that has the vitality of the black church. Lodges are dying, civic clubs are filled with octogenarians, volunteer organizations are languishing, and even the academy has to prove the worth of a degree. The government is divided, the schoolroom has become a war zone, mainline denominations are staggering, and evangelical megachurch juggernauts show signs of lagging. Above all this entropy stands one institution that is more vital than ever: the praising, preaching, and empowering black church.9 The back-and-forth between those pronouncing death and those highlighting life reveals the difficulty of defining “the Black Church.” In fact, we must admit that speaking of “the Black Church” remains a quixotic quest. “The Black Church” really exists as multiple black churches across denominational, theological, and regional lines. To some extent, we can define the Black Church by referring to the historically black denominations—National Baptist, Progressive Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ), Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and so on. But increasingly we must recognize that one part of “the Black Church” exists as predominantly black congregations belonging to majority white denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention or even African-American members of predominantly white churches. Still, other quarters of “the Black Church” belong to nondenominational affinity groups like the many congregations involved in Word of Faith and “prosperity gospel” networks sponsored by leaders like Creflo A. Dollar Jr. and T. D. Jakes. Clearly “the Black Church” is not one thing. Black churches come in as many flavors as any other ethnic communion. Indeed, many African-Americans have experiences with many parts of the varied Black Church world.
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Thabiti M. Anyabwile (Reviving the Black Church)
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A True Story Let me tell you about Wendy. For more than ten years, Wendy struggled unsuccessfully with ulcerative colitis. A thirty-six-year-old grade school teacher and mother of three, she lived with constant cramping, diarrhea, and frequent bleeding, necessitating occasional blood transfusions. She endured several colonoscopies and required the use of three prescription medications to manage her disease, including the highly toxic methotrexate, a drug also used in cancer treatment and medical abortions. I met Wendy for an unrelated minor complaint of heart palpitations that proved to be benign, requiring no specific treatment. However, she told me that, because her ulcerative colitis was failing to respond to medications, her gastroenterologist advised colon removal with creation of an ileostomy. This is an artificial orifice for the small intestine (ileum) at the abdominal surface, the sort to which you affix a bag to catch the continually emptying stool. After hearing Wendy’s medical history, I urged her to try wheat elimination. “I really don’t know if it’s going to work,” I told her, “but since you’re facing colon removal and ileostomy, I think you should give it a try.” “But why?” she asked. “I’ve already been tested for celiac and my doctor said I don’t have it.” “Yes, I know. But you’ve got nothing to lose. Try it for four weeks. You’ll know if you’re responding.” Wendy was skeptical but agreed to try. She returned to my office three months later, no ileostomy bag in sight. “What happened?” I asked. “Well, first I lost thirty-eight pounds.” She ran her hand over her abdomen to show me. “And my ulcerative colitis is nearly gone. No more cramps or diarrhea. I’m off everything except my Asacol.” (Asacol is a derivative of aspirin often used to treat ulcerative colitis.) “I really feel great.” In the year since, Wendy has meticulously avoided wheat and gluten and has also eliminated the Asacol, with no return of symptoms. Cured. Yes, cured. No diarrhea, no bleeding, no cramps, no anemia, no more drugs, no ileostomy. So if Wendy’s colitis tested negative for celiac antibodies, but responded to—indeed, was cured by—wheat gluten elimination, what should we label it? Should we call it antibody-negative celiac disease? Antibody-negative wheat intolerance? There is great hazard in trying to pigeonhole conditions such as Wendy’s into something like celiac disease. It nearly caused her to lose her colon and suffer the lifelong health difficulties associated with colon removal, not to mention the embarrassment and inconvenience of wearing an ileostomy bag. There is not yet any neat name to fit conditions such as Wendy’s, despite its extraordinary response to the elimination of wheat gluten. Wendy’s experience highlights the many unknowns in this world of wheat sensitivities, many of which are as devastating as the cure is simple.
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William Davis (Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health)
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Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting (Druckerman, Pamela) - Your Highlight on page 255 | Location 3886-3889 | Added on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 11:12:50 PM This research also refutes the conventional American wisdom that when kids fail at something, parents should cushion the blow with positive feedback. A better tack is to gently delve into what went wrong, giving kids the confidence and the tools to improve. French schools may be a bit harsh, especially in the later years. But this is exactly what Bean’s French teachers were doing, and it certainly reflects what French parents believe. ==========
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Anonymous
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Singing a New Song He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD. PSALM 40:3 NLT For many, the New Year is a good time to reflect on the events of the past year, to review what God has done, to praise Him for deliverance and safety, and to thank Him for His provision—both individually and corporately. Some of the social networks online have software that will look at the posts and pictures an individual has made and put together a year in review, hitting the highlights and major events. But those “reviews” don’t always pick up on the praise and thanksgiving to God that should result from such an accounting. Take a moment to reflect on all that God has done in the previous months. Then proclaim the works of the Lord, be amazed at His outpouring of love, grace, and mercy. Break out in song, spontaneous and free. Praise God in hymns, praise songs, and scripture songs. Even those who can’t “carry a tune in a bucket,” as the saying goes, can praise God with a joyful noise. If God’s people don’t proclaim the glorious works of their God, how can they expect the world to ever have a right view of Him? Sing a new song of praise to God for His many and varied works, and renew your trust in Him for the new year ahead. Father, thank You for the new song of praise You have placed in my heart.
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Various (Daily Wisdom for Women 2015 Devotional Collection - January (None))
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Revival: A Novel (Stephen King) - Your Highlight on page 75 | location 1013-1015 | Added on Sunday, 7 December 2014 23:00:46 Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay in your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so—pardon the pun—so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist.
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Anonymous
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Come Clean with God It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. —1 TIMOTHY 1:15 NASB One of the most watched TV series in recent years has been Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. The highlight of the program is when Mr. Trump delights in saying, “You’re fired!” This format has been so well received in America that other networks quickly introduced their versions. While we never want to hear our bosses utter, “You’re fired!” it could happen. But thankfully, we will only hear Jesus say, “You’re hired.” He gives us new life. But in order for us to be hired, we must humble ourselves and come clean with God. The apostle Paul had the same dilemma when he was challenged to deal with God’s grace. Some of these struggles can be found in his writings: • 1 Corinthians 15:9—I am the least of all the apostles. • Ephesians 3:8—I am the least deserving Christian there is. • 1 Timothy 1:15—I am the worst sinner of all. Paul was humbled by his past and wanted to change his direction in life. At one time in my life I had to make a decision. I had to let old things pass away and then turn to eternal values. As I faced decisions about how I lived and what I wanted, I had to ask, How do I come close to God? Examine Paul’s challenge in 1 Timothy 2:1-4: Here are my directions: Pray much for others; plead for God’s mercy upon them; give thanks for all he is going to do for them. Pray in this way for kings and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quietness, spending our time in godly living and thinking much about the Lord. This is good and pleases God our Savior, for he longs for all to be saved (TLB). Paul gives us three very valuable challenges and instructions: (1) pray for your needs, (2) pray for others, and (3) pray for thanksgiving. Notice that we are instructed to go from our internal needs first and then move to prayers for others and then thanksgiving to God. We are a very narcissistic
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Emilie Barnes (Walk with Me Today, Lord: Inspiring Devotions for Women)
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The vision of 100% electronic cash has already been bounced around for many years but few people truly see this as a 2020 reality. In a workshop in India, it was highlighted that ‘people will always need cash for the black economy and in many countries that is significant’. In
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Tim Jones (Future Agenda: The World in 2020)
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X's death seemed imminent after his break with the NOI. X spoke out several times in support of Dr. King's non-violent methods by describing the alternative – aggressive factions willing to fight back physically and take power and control back through less peaceful means. His words were meant to highlight King's ideal peaceful methods, and to remind people that not everyone shared King's strong will for peace and love no matter what. X believed in defense and strength and he believed that the demonstration of blacks taking back power by responding in a similar way when aggressive actions were taken against blacks. But when he broke from the NOI he became the target of much of the violence and aggression that he had spent years espousing.
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Mark Black (Malcolm X and Martin Luther King: A Very Brief History)
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ahead of ICAO audit By Tarun Shukla | 527 words New Delhi: India's civil aviation regulator has decided to restructure its safety board and hire airline safety professionals ahead of an audit by the UN's aviation watchdog ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced its intent, and advertised the positions on its website. ICAO told the Indian regulator recently that it would come down to India to conduct an audit, its third in just over a decade, Mint reported on 12 February. Previous ICAO audits had highlighted the paucity of safety inspectors in DGCA. After its 2006 and 2012 audits, ICAO had placed the country in its list of 13 worst-performing nations. US regulator Federal Aviation Authority followed ICAO's 2012 audit with its own and downgraded India, effectively barring new flights to the US by Indian airlines. FAA is expected to visit India in the summer to review its downgrade. The result of the ICAO and FAA audits will have a bearing on the ability of existing Indian airlines to operate more flights to the US and some international destinations and on new airlines' ability to start flights to these destinations. The regulator plans to hire three directors of safety on short-term contracts to be part of the accident investigation board, according to the information on DGCA's website. This is first time the DGCA is hiring external staff for this board, which is critical to ascertain the reasoning for any crashes, misses or other safety related events in the country. These officers, the DGCA said on its website, must have at least 12 years of experience in aviation, specifically on the technical aspects, and have a degree in aeronautical engineering. DGCA has been asked by international regulators to hire at least 75 flight inspectors. It has only 51. India's private airlines offer better pay and perks to inspectors compared with DGCA. The aviation ministry told DGCA in January to speed up the recruitment and do whatever was necessary to get more inspectors on board, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. DGCA has also announced it will hire flight operations inspectors as consultants on a short-term basis for a period of one year with a fixed remuneration of `1.25 lakh per month. "There will be a review after six months and subsequent continuation will be decided on the basis of outcome of the review," DGCA said in its advertisement. The remuneration of `1.25 lakh is higher than the salary of many existing DGCA officers. In its 2006 audit, ICAO said it found that "a number of final reports of accident and serious incident investigations carried out by the DGCA were not sent to the (member) states concerned or to ICAO when it was applicable". DGCA had also "not established a voluntary incident reporting system to facilitate the collection of safety information that may not otherwise be captured by the state's mandatory incident reporting system". In response, DGCA "submitted a corrective action plan which was never implemented", said Mohan Ranganthan, an aviation safety analyst and former member of government appointed safety council, said of DGCA. He added that the regulator will be caught out this time. Restructuring DGCA is the key to better air safety, said former director general of civil aviation M.R. Sivaraman. Hotel industry growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16: Icra By P.R. Sanjai | 304 words Mumbai: Rating agency Icra Ltd on Monday said Indian hotel industry revenue growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16, driven by a modest increase in occupancy and small increase in rates. "Industry wide revenues are expected to grow by 5-8% in 2014-15. Over the next 12 months, Icra expects RevPAR (revenue per available room) to improve by 7-8% driven by up to 5% pickup in occupancies and 2-3% growth in average room rates (ARR)," Icra said. Further, margins are expected to remain largely flat for 2014-15 while
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Anonymous
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On the third day, Sunday, we were guests of Mrs. Roosevelt, in Hyde Park. She gave us a conducted tour through the house, the Museum, which houses all the presents that the president had received, while in office, and to the garden and we stopped at the grave of F.D.R. That remained a very special week-end, a memorable highlight during my two years as a student. I still possess a snapshot, which a Greek student took of me in front of the Roosevelt Estate in Hyde Park, New York.
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Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
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Designing financial products that share the commitment features of the microfinance contracts, without the interest that comes with them, could clearly be of great help to many people. A group of researchers teamed up with a bank that works with poor people in the Philippines to design such a product, a new kind of account that would be tied to each client’s own savings targets. This target could be either an amount (the client would commit not to withdraw the funds until the amount was reached) or a date (the client would commit to leave the money in the account until that date). The client chose the type of commitment and the specific target. However, once those targets were set, they were binding, and the bank would enforce them. The interest rate was no higher than on a regular account. These accounts were proposed to a randomly selected set of clients. Of the clients they approached, about one in four agreed to open such an account. Out of those takers, a little over two-thirds chose the date goal, and the remaining one-third, the amount goal. After a year, the balances in the savings accounts of those who were offered the account were on average 81 percent higher than those of a comparable group of people who were not offered the account, despite the fact that only one in four of the clients who had been offered the account actually signed on. And the effects were probably smaller than they could have been, because even though there was a commitment not to withdraw any money, there was no positive force pushing the client to actually save, and many of the accounts that were opened remained dormant.
Yet most people preferred not to take up the offer of such an account. They were clearly worried about committing themselves to not withdrawing until the goal was reached. Dumas and Robinson ran into the same problem in Kenya—many people did not end up using that accounts they were offering, some of the because the withdrawal fees were too high and they did not want to have their money tied up in the account. This highlights an interesting paradox: There are ways to get around self-control problems, but to make use of them usually requires an initial act of self-control.
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Esther Duflo (Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty)
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The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (Edward B. Burger;Michael Starbird) - Your Highlight on page 17 | location 251-270 | Added on Monday, 6 April 2015 03:03:56 Understand simple things deeply The most fundamental ideas in any subject can be understood with ever-increasing depth. Professional tennis players watch the ball; mathematicians understand a nuanced notion of number; successful students continue to improve their mastery of the concepts from previous chapters and courses as they move toward the more advanced material on the horizon; successful people regularly focus on the core purpose of their profession or life. True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. Trumpeting understanding through a note-worthy lesson. Tony Plog is an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, composer, and teacher. A few years ago we had the opportunity to observe him conducting a master class for accomplished soloists. During the class, each student played a portion of his or her selected virtuosic piece. They played wonderfully. Tony listened politely and always started his comments, “Very good, very good. That is a challenging piece, isn’t it?” As expected, he proceeded to give the students advice about how the piece could be played more beautifully, offering suggestions about physical technique and musicality. No surprise. But then he shifted gears. He asked the students to play a very easy warm-up exercise that any beginning trumpet player might be given. They played the handful of simple notes, which sounded childish compared to the dramatically fast, high notes from the earlier, more sophisticated pieces. After they played the simple phrase, Tony, for the first time during the lesson, picked up the trumpet. He played that same phrase, but when he played it, it was not childish. It was exquisite. Each note was a rich, delightful sound. He gave the small phrase a delicate shape, revealing a flowing sense of dynamics that enabled us to hear meaning in those simple notes. The students’ attempts did not come close—the contrast was astounding. The fundamental difference between the true master and the talented students clearly occurred at a far more basic level than in the intricacies of complex pieces. Tony explained that mastering an efficient, nuanced performance of simple pieces allows one to play spectacularly difficult pieces with greater control and artistry. The lesson was simple. The master teacher suggested that the advanced students focus more of their time on practicing simple pieces intensely—learning to perform them with technical efficiency and beautiful elegance. Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything. ==========
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Anonymous
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My Clippings - Your Highlight on Location 352-354 | Added on Friday, March 6, 2015 4:36:54 PM One of the strangest events, however, happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when “dyed Sir Thomas Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reported for a certain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an hour after he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive.
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Anonymous
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Our discussion is serious; if you do not deign to give me your attention, I am not going to bow and scrape before you. I have the underground. But so long as I live and desire - let my hand wither20 if I bring even one little brick for such a tenement house! Never mind that I myself have just rejected the crystal edifice, for the sole reason that one cannot taunt it with one's tongue. I said that not because I have such a love of putting out my tongue. Perhaps I was angry simply because such an edifice, at which it is possible not to put out one's tongue, has never yet been found among all your edifices. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off altogether, from sheer gratitude, if only it could be so arranged that I myself never felt like sticking it out again. What do I care that it's impossible to arrange it so, and one must content oneself with apartments? Why, then, have I been arranged with such desires? Can it be that I've been arranged simply so as to come to the conclusion that my entire arrangement is a hoax? Can that be the whole purpose? I don't believe it. You know what, though: I'm convinced that our sort, the underground ones, ought to be kept on a tether. Though we're capable of sitting silently in the underground for forty years, once we do come out and let loose, we talk, talk, talk... ========== Notes From Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Richard Pevear) - Your Highlight on Location 924-929 | Added on Monday, April 13, 2015 12:12:38 AM
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Anonymous
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The principle reason why the creation of the CIA within the framework of our free society has caused very serious problems is because the intelligence function, as it has been operating under the DCI and the rest of the community, almost inevitably leads to clandestine operations. The law intended otherwise, but general practice during the past twenty-five years has served to erode the barriers between Intelligence and clandestine operations to the point where today this type of thing, unfortunately, has become rather commonplace. And why has it become so commonplace? The most basic reason is because nations’ ills of all kinds are highlighted by instant global communications and then are generally attributed to the Communist bogeyman.
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L. Fletcher Prouty (The Secret Team: The CIA & its Allies in Control of the United States & the World)
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On August 5, the Standard & Poor’s rating agency—citing, among other factors, the prospect of future budget brinkmanship—downgraded U.S. government debt to one notch below the top AAA rating. The rating agency had made an egregious error that caused it to overstate the estimated ten-year deficit by $2 trillion, which the Treasury quickly pointed out. S&P acknowledged the error but asserted that the mistake did not affect its judgment of the government’s creditworthiness. I had the feeling that S&P wanted to show it was not intimidated. The episode highlighted the odd relationship between governments and rating agencies: Governments regulate the rating agencies, but the rating agencies have the power to downgrade governments’ debt.
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Ben S. Bernanke (The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath)
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In the years that followed the Harrison campaign, many candidates—from Colonel James 'Young Hickory' Polk in 1844 to Lieutenant John Kerry in 2004—had their 'humble origins' and/or 'war leadership' highlighted in political material. Often coupled with these tactics was a corollary, to create an image of the opposition candidate that was highly negative—from John Adams as a 'monarchist' to John Kerry as a 'flip-flopping, windsurfing elitist.
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Steven A. Seidman (Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History)
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Too common is the experience of a college professor answering a knock on her office door only to find a first-year student in distress, asking to discuss his low grade on the first test in introductory psychology. How is it possible? He attended all the lectures and took diligent notes on them. He read the text and highlighted the critical passages. How did he study for the test? she asks. Well, he’d gone back and highlighted his notes, and then reviewed the highlighted notes and his highlighted text material several times until he felt he was thoroughly familiar with all of it. How could it be that he had pulled a D on the exam? Had he used the set of key concepts in the back of each chapter to test himself? Could he look at a concept like “conditioned stimulus,” define it, and use it in a paragraph? While he was reading, had he thought of converting the main points of the text into a series of questions and then later tried to answer them while he was studying? Had he at least rephrased the main ideas in his own words as he read? Had he tried to relate them to what he already knew? Had he looked for examples outside the text? The answer was no in every case. He sees himself as the model student, diligent to a fault, but the truth is he doesn’t know how to study effectively.
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Peter C. Brown (Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning)
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The Bible says, "Be kind and compassionate to one another" (Ephesians 4:32). So be a blessing in someone's life today.
ur hearts will be found in the vicinity of our treasures." That's so true, isn't it? Over the years, I've asked hundreds of women to tell me the stories of their treasures. I've been treated to some incredible stories, from a loving grandmother to an inherited Bible, from a mysterious, closed-up room to antique furniture. I've learned about collections and great recipes. The stories are all about the special objects or people in our lives that speak to us about love and hope and memories. Listen carefully to these words from Psalm 119:16: "[LORD,] I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word." Now thats a treasure.
don't know what I'd do without friends. They cry with me, laugh with me-and, for sure-they're the ones who most often "speak truth" (whether I want to hear it or not). There's nothing that makes life better than friends. My advice? Do everything you can to nurture the special people in
your life. It sometimes takes extra thought and definitely precious time, but what joy is yours when you do! Every Saturday morning at seven, my friend Sharon spends a very special hour on the phone with her sister. It's the highlight of the week for both of them. They love and support one another, laugh, and share even the most mundane happenings of the week.
Enjoy and treasure your relationships!
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Emilie Barnes (365 Things Every Woman Should Know)
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I worked it all out in the bath. I’ve been blathering to the kids all these years about how if you look out for people and do the right thing it will all be okay. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Do the right thing. Somehow the universe will see you right. Well, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Nobody else thinks that way.’
Her voice was slightly slurred, its edges frayed with pain.
‘It’s not –’
‘No? Two years I’ve been flat broke. Two years I’ve been protecting him, not adding to his stress, not bothering him about his own children. And all the while he’s been living like that, in his executive home, with his highlights and his designer jeans and his new girlfriend.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘I didn’t suspect a thing. Not for one minute. And I worked it out, while I was in the bath … that whole “do as you would be done by” thing? Well, it only works if everyone else does it. And nobody does, any more. The world is basically full of people who couldn’t give a shit. They’ll tread all over you if it means they get what they want. Even if it’s their own kids they’re treading on.
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Jojo Moyes (One Plus One)
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In his review of Hacker's and Maxwell Bennett's 2003 book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Churchland argues that Hacker's and Bennett's criticisms of recent neurological theory:
do no more than highlight the independently obvious fact that the new theory violates some of the default conceptions of the average ten-year-old. But where is the crime in this? Why should we make those baseline expectations permanently critical for the meaningful use of the terms at issue? Were we permanently to cleave the standards of 'conceptual hygiene' thus imposed by [Bennett and Hacker], we would be doomed to only the most trivial of scientific advances. For our conceptual innovations would then be confined to what is currently taken, by the average ten-year-old, to define 'the bounds of sense.'
Churchland's charge is that Hacker and Bennett are simply imposing standards of conceptual hygiene that, if actually implemented, would hinder a sort of spontaneous linguistic imagination that is essential to scientific progress - and, I would add, to our everyday life with language as well.
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Martin Gustafsson (The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics)
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One of my top priorities as CEO was to eradicate the BS and reinvent planning. Every year, starting in 2003, I required teams presenting to me to write a three-to-four-page executive summary that highlighted the basic plan. That document would allow us to cut through the pages of obfuscating charts and bullet points.
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David Cote (Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term)
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Joy Reminiscing 15 MIN 1. Think of a joyful memory with your spouse from the previous year. 2 MIN 2. Before telling your story, write a few notes on the following details: 1 MIN My body: What was I feeling in my body? My emotions: What emotions were present? 3. While holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, briefly tell your stories and include the above details. 6 MIN 4. When finished, take turns highlighting and validating the emotional content from the story your partner shared. 3 MIN EXAMPLE: Our weekend getaway to the beach was a special time for you as you were feeling encouraged. Our time together helped you rest and relax so your body felt peaceful and your shoulders were no longer tense. 5. Discuss what you noticed from this exercise, then close with quiet cuddling and resting together. 3 MIN
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Marcus Warner (The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages: How 15 Minutes a Day Will Help You Stay in Love)
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But Larson was also more than even his combined, prolific creative output. While he was known for leaving parties to go home and fix songs, he would also charm the ladies, attend New York’s most exclusive nightclub, and obsessively follow the New York Mets. He was the man who called his friends in the middle of the day to play Frisbee, sent cards on every possible occasion, and hosted generous holiday meals. An awkward introvert who wanted to be a star. A self-confident composer who knew how good his work was - and how terrified he was of never being able to make a living from it. A broke waiter who produced some of the most advanced demo recordings of his day. A ladies’ man who became one of the gay community’s most important straight allies in the 1990s, as his work spread a message of tolerance around the world. A man who composed fun, catchy songs but rarely listened to music for pleasure as an adult. A performer who wanted to be Billy Joel but wrote lyrics like Harry Chapin. A driven creative who took as few shifts as possible to focus on his music, turning poverty into creativity: a simple 4th of July party meant a hand-coloured collage for an invitation, and Larson’s annual Peasant Feast pot-luck meals at Christmas were the season’s highlight for all attending. A passionate progressive who would be endlessly disappointed that RENT could still cause controversy after so many years.
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J. Collis (Boho Days: The Wider Works of Jonathan Larson)
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American writer and biologist Frederick Kenyon (1867-1941) was the first to explore the inner workings of the bee brain. His 1896 study, in which he managed to dye and characterize numerous types of nerve cells of the bee brain, was, in the words of the world's foremost insect neuroanatomist, Nick Strausfeld, 'a supernova.' Not only did Kenyon draw the branching patterns of various neuron types in painstaking detail, but he also highlighted, for the first time in any organism, that these fell into clearly identifiable classes, which tended to be found only in certain areas of the brain.
One such type he found in the mushroom bodies is the Kenyon cells, named in his honor. Their cell bodies -- the part of the neuron that contains the chromosomes and the DNA -- decoding machinery -- are in a peripheral area enclosed by the calyx of each mushroom body (the mushroom's 'head'), with a few additional ones on the sides of or underneath the calyces. A finely arbored dendritic tree (the branched structure that is a nerve cell's signal 'receiver') extends into the mushroom body calyx, and a single axon (the neuron's 'information-sending output cable') extends from each cell into the mushroom body pedunculus (the mushroom's 'stalk').
Extrapolating from just a few of these characteristically shaped neurons that he could see, Kenyon suggested (correctly) that there must be tens of thousands of such similarly shaped cells, with parallel outputs into each mushroom body pedunculus. (In fact, there are about 170,000 Kenyon cells in each mushroom body.) He found neurons that connect the antennal lobes (the primary relays processing olfactory sensory input) with the mushroom body input region (the calyces, where the Kenyon cells have the fine dendritic trees) -- and even suggested, again correctly, that the mushroom bodies were centers of multisensory integration.
Kenyon's 1896 brain wiring diagram [is a marvel]. It contains several classes of recognizable neuron types, with some suggestions for how they might be connected. Many neurons have extensions as widely branched as fullgrown trees -- only, of course, much smaller. Consider that the drawing only shows around 20 of a honey bee brain's ~850,000 neurons. We now know that each neuron, through its many fine branches, can make up to 10,000 connection points (synapses) with other neurons. There may be a billion synapses in a honey bee's brain -- and, since the efficiency of synapses can be modified by experience, near-infinite possibility to alter the information flow through the brain by learning and memory. It is a mystery to me how, after the publication of such work as Kenyon's, anyone could have suggested that the insect brain is simple, or that the study of brain size could in any way be informative about the complexities of information processing inside a brain.
Kenyon apparently suffered some of the anxieties all too familiar to many early-career researchers today. Despite his scientific accomplishments, he had trouble finding permanent employment, and moved between institutions several times, facing continuous financial hardship. Eventually, he appears to have snapped, and in 1899 Kenyon was arrested for 'erratic and threatening behavior' toward colleagues, who subsequently accused him of insanity. Later that year, he was permanently confined to a lunatic asylum, apparently without any opportunity ever to rehabilitate himself, and he died there more than four decades later -- as Nick Strausfeld writes, 'unloved, forgotten, and alone.'
It was not to be the last tragedy in the quest to understand the bee brain.
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Lars Chittka (The Mind of a Bee)
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Berning concluded that he couldn’t run the risk of using Ivar’s new numbers. He simply had to find a way to send the Wisconsin regulators something that added up at least $4,400,000, the amount Lee Higginson already had told investors was International Match’s income. In an extraordinary auditor-to-client letter, Berning wrote to Ivar on December 11, that “In view of the fact that the circular stated that the earnings for the first six months ‘were in excess of $4,400,000’, I thought it best to increase this amount slightly.” Increase this amount slightly? Yes, at Berning’s request, Ernst & Ernst reported net income for International Match of $4,475,000, a nice round number that was higher than the income Ivar and Lee Higginson previously had reported to investors. In a letter to Lee Higginson, Berning did not highlight the fact that he had adjusted the earnings. Instead, he merely noted, somewhat opaquely, that “the figures shown on the attached are subject to any necessary adjustment upon the final closing of the books of the various companies at the end of the fiscal year.”60 Meanwhile, Berning and Ivar still had not met in New York. Berning summed up his most recent work in a letter to Ivar: “It is therefore to be sincerely hoped that the enclosed will be the final chapter with respect to the State of Wisconsin.”61 Indeed, with the “adjusted” numbers, it was.
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Frank Partnoy (The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century)
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Poet Ayoade, the first African immigrant to serve as a nuclear missile operator in the United States Air Force, debuts with an inspirational memoir chronicling his childhood in Nigeria and journey to become a doctor and American citizen. Ayoade, who at the age of seven promised his mother “One day, I will take you far away from here,” details his upbringing with an abusive father and the many family tragedies he endured—along with his dedication to creating a different life: “Underground is my unusual journey from childhood poverty to where I am today. How the impossible became a reality.”
Readers will be swept into Ayoade’s vivid recollections of his early years, including his strict education, brushes with death, and a strained relationship with his father. He recounts the family’s passion for American movies that made “America seem like the perfect place,” sparking his desire for a better future, and details his decision to become a veterinarian and eventually pursue a career in the U.S. military to ensure the best life for his family (and future generations). Ayoade’s story is moving, particularly his reconciliation with his father and hard-earned American citizenship, and his message that it’s never too late to chase your dreams resonates.
That message will evoke strong emotions for readers as Ayoade highlights the importance of hard work and the benefit of a committed support system, alongside his constant “wishing, praying, and fighting to be free from all the sadness and injustice around me”—a theme that echoes through much of the book, including in his acknowledgement that the fear he experienced as a nuclear missile operator was a “cost of this freedom.” Ayoade’s poetry and personal photographs are sprinkled throughout, illuminating his deep love for family and his ultimate belief in liberty as “The reason for it all./ A foundation for a new generation,/ The best gift to any child.”
Takeaway: This stirring memoir documents an immigrant’s fight for the American dream.
Great for fans of: Ashley C. Ford’s Somebody's Daughter, Maria Hinojosa’s Once I Was You.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
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Booklife
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Story 12: Iatrogenesis Every year in the United States, 225,000 people die iatrogenic deaths. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, iatrogenesis is the third largest cause of death in the United States. Iatrogenic. What is that word? Is it a disease, an accident, or something you get from smoking? In fact, iatrogenic means inadvertent death caused by a doctor or a hospital. Why don’t they just say that? Because it isn’t exactly in medicine’s best interests to put it in simple language that anybody can understand. It’s like that in our industry… How to use this story
Usually when people use complex sentences and long words it’s because they have something to hide. Audiences know this, so this is a good story to highlight the fact that you’re ‘telling it straight’.
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Ian Harris (Hooked On You: The Genius Way to Make Anybody Read Anything)
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Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience.
I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent."
"That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman.
"That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them.
I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling.
Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement.
"We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door.
"We're making an orange cake, not chocolate."
"Chocolate is so much better."
"Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that."
"It's just a cake."
"It's never just a cake, Lizzy."
I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent.
I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.
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Katherine Reay (Lizzy and Jane)
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dramatically INCREASED the amount of absentee and mail-in ballots in the battleground states [while] Prong Two dramatically DECREASED the level of scrutiny of such ballots—effectively taking the election “cops” off the beat. This pincer movement resulted in a FLOOD of illegal ballots into the battleground states which was more than sufficient to tip the scales from a decisive legal win by President Trump to a narrow and illegitimate alleged “victory” by Joe Biden.7 In a landmark Time magazine cover story by Molly Ball, the Democrats have all but confessed to this Grand Stuff the Ballot Box Strategy. And Molly Ball is neither a right-wing hack nor a Fourth Estate slouch; she was the 2019 winner of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. In her “kiss and tell” article, Ball highlighted a long list of operatives who have openly boasted about how they gamed America’s election system to overthrow a sitting president. That she portrayed these smug zealots as saviors of the election rather than as thieves is yet another Big Reveal—not just of Ball’s own Progressive ideology but also of the much deeper rot eating away at our election system and our broader Republic. In this Big Reveal, we bare stark witness to an “ends justify the means” mentality that has gripped far too many Americans on the left. As Corey Lewandowski once put it, these Machiavellian cadres apparently hate Donald Trump more than they love their country.8 Memo number one to Molly’s Merry Band of Democrat Thieves: Destroying the integrity of our election system to topple a sitting president you loathe is no Devil’s bargain. It’s national suicide.
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Peter Navarro (In Trump Time: A Journal of America's Plague Year)
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You know,” I said as we trudged homeward, “this is an important occasion, and not just because of this great discovery. According to my calculations, tomorrow will be our second anniversary on the island “ “Is this really true?” Elizabeth asked. “I can hardly believe so much time has passed.” “It is true, my dear,” I said. Think of all of the adventures that we have had and that we are safe, well-fed and happy. I am going to declare tomorrow a special day of celebration.” “You mean that we are going to have a party?” cried Francis, jumping for joy. “Oh, I can hardly wait!” Actually, Francis did not have long to wait, for when the morning dawned, Elizabeth and I had the entire day’s festivities planned. Greeting my sons on the lawn beneath Falcon’s Nest, I said, “For the past two years, you boys have been practicing wrestling, running, swimming, shooting and horseback riding here on the island. Now, we are going to determine the champions of these feats.” So, the competitions began, with Elizabeth cheering the boys and Turk and Flora running alongside them. Unquestionably, the highlight of the day was the horseback-riding event. Fritz mounted Lightfoot and Ernest rode Grizzle, but they were no match for Jack’s skillful handling of the wild buffalo. A practiced groom could not have managed a thoroughbred horse with more grace and ease. “Jack, my boy,” I boomed, “I hereby declare you the winner of this contest.” “No, Papa.” interrupted Francis. “You haven’t seen what I can do yet.” Francis rode into the arena, mounted on his young buffalo bull, Broumm, which was just four months old. Elizabeth had made a saddle of kangaroo skin and stirrups that adjusted to Francis’s little legs.
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Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson)