Home Survey Quotes

Cosmo never speaks to my life. Its surveys always ask questions like How would you react if your lover announced he was taking a job in Alaska? and jumping for joy is never one of the options. Move to Alaska? Hell, my lover was thirty-seven and hadn't moved away from home yet. Where were the questions relevant to my life?

Charles sat in lone splendor on a huge couch in the middle of Angus's spacious living room--while the other ten or twelve people present made themselves at home on the other side of the room. Anna surveyed the scene. "Okay," she said. "Who's been being a grouch?

The Viscount stepped into the room. "Came to see if you was dead," he said. "Laid Pom odds you weren't." Lethbridge passed his hand across his eyes. "I'm not," he replied in a faint voice. "No. I'm sorry," said the Viscount simply. He wandered over to the table and sat down. "Horry said she killed you, Pom said So she might, I said No. Nonsense." Lethbridge still holding a hand to his aching head tried to pull himself together. "Did you?" he said. His eyes ran over his self invited guest. "I see. Let me assure you once more that I am very much alive." "Well I wish you'd put your wig on," complained the Viscount. "What I want to know is why did Horry hit you on the head with a poker?" Lethbridge gingerly felt his bruised scalp. "With a poker was it? Pray ask her, though I doubt if she will tell you." "You shouldn't keep the front door open," said the Viscount. "What's to stop people coming in and hitting you over the head? It's preposterous." "I wish you'd go home," said Lethbridge wearily. The Viscount surveyed the supper-table with a knowing eye. "Card-party?" he inquired.

the nation's young men have been proved by surveys to be completely unmarriageable, and as a result there's a whole generation of single girls like me with their own incomes and homes who have lots of fun and don't need to wash anyone else's socks.

Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.

Petra Ral, 10 kills, 48 assists. Oluo Bozado, 39 kills, 9 assists. Eld Jinn, 14 kills, 32 assists. Gunther Schultz, 7 kills, 40 assists. "Come back home alive, and you're a full-fledged member," is the common view in the Survey Corps... but *those people* have lived through hell again and again, producing results all the way. They've learned how to live... When facing a titan, you never know enough. Think all you want. A lot of the time, you're going into a situation you know nothing about. So what you need is to be quick to act... and make tough decisions in worst-case scenarios. Still, that doesn't mean they've got no heart. Even when they had their weapons pointed at you, they had strong feelings. However... they have no regrets.

Surveys have shown that ranking very close to the fear of death is the fear of public speaking. Why would someone feel profound fear, deep in his or her stomach, about public speaking, which is so far from death? Because it isn’t so far from death when we link it. Those who fear public speaking actually fear the loss of identity that attaches to performing badly, and that is firmly rooted in our survival needs. For all social animals, from ants to antelopes, identity is the pass card to inclusion, and inclusion is the key to survival. If a baby loses its identity as the child of his or her parents, a possible outcome is abandonment. For a human infant, that means death. As adults, without our identity as a member of the tribe or village, community or culture, a likely outcome is banishment and death. So the fear of getting up and addressing five hundred people at the annual convention of professionals in your field is not just the fear of embarrassment—it is linked to the fear of being perceived as incompetent, which is linked to the fear of loss of employment, loss of home, loss of family, your ability to contribute to society, your value, in short, your identity and your life. Linking an unwarranted fear to its ultimate terrible destination usually helps alleviate that fear. Though you may find that public speaking can link to death, you’ll see that it would be a long and unlikely trip.

I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence—the error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.

Surveys suggest that about one third of all women worldwide face beatings in the home. Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.

A 1968 survey asking young men how they spent their free time within the last three months was topped by “reading,” followed by “drinking at home.

I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence—the error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset.

Then he says, “I once read a story about three brothers who washed up on an island in Hawaii. A myth. An old one. I read it when I was a kid, so I probably don’t have the story exactly right, but it goes something like this. Three brothers went out fishing and got caught in a storm. They drifted on the ocean for a long time until they washed up on the shore of an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, ‘A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he likes. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, the more of the world you will be able to see from your home. It’s entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder.’” The young man takes a drink of water and pauses for a moment. Mari looks bored, but she is clearly listening. “Okay so far?” he asks. Mari nods. “Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop.” “If it’s not too long.” “No, it’s not too long. It’s a pretty simple story.” He takes another sip of water and continues with his story. “So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the god told them to. Now these were huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, ‘Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It’s close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, ‘Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not quit. He had great powers of perseverance, and he wanted to see as much of the world as he possibly could, so he kept rolling the boulder with all his might. He went on for months, hardly eating or drinking, until he had rolled the boulder to the very peak of the high mountain. There he stopped and surveyed the world. Now he could see more of the world than anyone. This was the place he would live—where no grass grew, where no birds flew. For water, he could only lick the ice and frost. For food, he could only gnaw on moss. Be he had no regrets, because now he could look out over the whole world. And so, even today, his great, round boulder is perched on the peak of that mountain on an island in Hawaii. That’s how the story goes.

Romano Guardini, surveying the moral and intellectual ruin that was Europe after the Second World War, wrote that we had entered the era of “mass man,” that the individual was being submerged beneath phenomena of the masses, which did not rise to the status of a true culture. Mass man has no culture, no real home, no transcendent object of devotion, no aim but what is given to him in and through mass education, mass entertainment, and mass politics. He floats on the seas willy-nilly, like a jellyfish, without a mind and a North Star to guide him. He gives in, he goes along. He lives, easily and uneventfully, Life Under Compulsion. Submerged

The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.” The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at least 41,000 seriously; a million in all lost their homes. Two thousand tons of incendiaries delivered that punishment—in the modern notation, two kilotons. But the wind, not the weight of bombs alone, created the conflagration, and therefore the efficiency of the slaughter was in some sense still in part an act of God.

Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband’s dark and glittering hand and pulls the seeds into her open, laughing mouth; she eats only six seeds because her mother knocks it out of her hand before she can swallow the whole sparkling red cluster. “We have to get home,” Ceres says. “I am home,” her daughter says.

We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help. . . . When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life. —ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO ABOLITIONIST UNITARIAN MINISTERS, 18624 PERHAPS THE MOST telling criticism Frances FitzGerald made in her 1979 survey of American history textbooks, America Revised, was that they leave out ideas.

On the last Sunday of March 1851, the Church of England conducted a national survey to see how many people actually attended church that day. The results were a shock. More than half the people of England and Wales had not gone to church at all, and only 20 percent had gone to an Anglican service.

They suspected that children learned best through undirected free play—and that a child’s psyche was sensitive and fragile. During the 1980s and 1990s, American parents and teachers had been bombarded by claims that children’s self-esteem needed to be protected from competition (and reality) in order for them to succeed. Despite a lack of evidence, the self-esteem movement took hold in the United States in a way that it did not in most of the world. So, it was understandable that PTA parents focused their energies on the nonacademic side of their children’s school. They dutifully sold cupcakes at the bake sales and helped coach the soccer teams. They doled out praise and trophies at a rate unmatched in other countries. They were their kids’ boosters, their number-one fans. These were the parents that Kim’s principal in Oklahoma praised as highly involved. And PTA parents certainly contributed to the school’s culture, budget, and sense of community. However, there was not much evidence that PTA parents helped their children become critical thinkers. In most of the countries where parents took the PISA survey, parents who participated in a PTA had teenagers who performed worse in reading. Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children, too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs.

Then, sometimes a game of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching, head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying high, Nelson on his column surveying the horizon, and the world our ship.

Almost certainly the most memorable finding of recent years with respect to microbes was when an enterprising middle school student in Florida compared the quality of water in the toilets at her local fast-food restaurants with the quality of the ice in the soft drinks, and found that in 70 percent of outlets she surveyed the toilet water was cleaner than the ice.

University of Otago social historian Hera Cook provides a beautiful illustration of exactly this point in her rich account of the sexual revolution.49 Cook notes that in eighteenth-century England, women were assumed to be sexually passionate. But drawing on economic and social changes, fertility-rate patterns, personal accounts, and sex surveys and manuals, Cook charts the path toward the sexual repression of the Victorian era. This was a time of reduced female economic power, thanks to a shift from production in the home to wage earning, and there was less community pressure on men to financially support children fathered out of wedlock. And so, in the absence of well-known, reliable birth control techniques, “women could not afford to enjoy sex. The risk made it too expensive a pleasure.”50

Nearly everyone who is asked where they want to spend their final days says at home, surrounded by people they love and who love them. That's the consistent finding of surveys and, in my experience as a doctor, remains true when people become patients. Unfortunately, it's not the way things turn out. At present, just over one-fifth of Americans are at home when they die. Over 30 percent die in nursing homes, where, according to polls, virtually no one says they want to be. Hospitals remain the site of over 50 percent of deaths in most parts of the country, and nearly 40 percent of people who die in a hospital spend their last days in ICU, where they will likely be sedated or have their arms tied down so they will not pull out breathing tubes, intravenous lines, or catheters. Dying is hard, but it doesn't have to be this hard.

Twenty years ago we began studying how people become wealthy. Initially, we did it just as you might imagine, by surveying people in so-called upscale neighborhoods across the country. In time, we discovered something odd. Many people who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars do not actually have much wealth. Then, we discovered something even odder: Many people who have a great deal of wealth do not even live in upscale neighborhoods.

Drawing from 1.7 million Gallup surveys collected between 2008 and 2012, researchers Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone found that parents with children at home age fifteen or younger experience more highs, as well as more lows, than those without children... And when researchers bother to ask questions of a more existential nature, they find that parents report greater feelings of meaning and reward -- which to many parents is what the entire shebang is about.

Every year, Gallup releases a wide-ranging study of the effects of “lack of engagement,” which it measures through a twelve-question survey asking employees to gauge their agreement with various statements, from “I know what is expected of me at work” to “At work, my opinions seem to count.” Within Gallup’s conception, “engagement” is a measurement of how much employees themselves are invested in the work but also of how much their managers and leaders are investing in them.

Surveying the daybreak sky, I spot a flock of birds flying low in the milky clouds, wings extended in perfect formation, mimicking each other’s flight pattern, a silent communication amongst them along the wind. The sight of it makes me envious. This. This is what was missing in the order back home. Frères du Corbeau (Brothers of the Raven) was my stepfather’s pipe dream. A dream to lead the revolt against the greedy leaders of corporate America—namely Roman Horner—to fight for the good of the common man.

In a recent survey of selected urban communities in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, up to 60 percent of all households were just one person. Add to this the impact of screen time. At home, at work, at school, we spend hours and hours in front of a screen—on average, over 11 hours a day. We are having far fewer family meals; our conversational skills are fading. The art of storytelling and the capacity to listen are on the decline. The result is a more self-absorbed, more anxious, more depressed—and less resilient—population.

One summer in Peter’s home state, Minnesota, he worked as a puppeteer with a mobile puppet stage. He’d hitch the puppet wagon to his car and drive from park to park, entertaining kids. One day the hitch came loose and the wagon tipped over, scattering puppets all across County Road C. The police arrived to survey the scene. “The paperwork on this is going to take a while,” one of them said. Peter, nervous he was going to be late to his next gig, asked why. The cop nodded at the scattered puppet bodies. “We’ve got a lot of casualties here,” he deadpanned.

Do you really not think sad things can be beautiful?” I say as Jamie drives me home. He isn’t shallow; surely he has felt what I’m talking about. His favorite song was on the radio when we got in and I wasn’t allowed to speak until now. I’ve been thinking of examples to make him understand. Jamie doesn’t take his eyes off the road, doesn’t look at me. “Nope,” he says. “You’re just weird.” “Why does that make me weird?” I say. I momentarily forget my arguments and examples. “Just because I think something different from you doesn’t make me weird.” “I bet if we took a survey, everybody would agree with me.” “That doesn’t make you right,” I say. “And you’re supposed to be against being just like everybody else.” “It’s not about being like everybody else. When someone dies, it’s bad,” Jamie says. “That’s just something everybody knows.” “You don’t understand,” I say. “I do understand,” he says. He pulls the car into my driveway. “You just see things differently and that’s okay, because I like you weird. You’re my weird, morbid pretty girl.” I let him kiss me good night. I sigh. “Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I say. “What?” he asks. “What about Romeo and Juliet?” I say. “That’s beautiful and sad.” “But that’s not real life.” “So?” “There’s real life and then there are books, Autumn,” Jamie says. “In real life, it would just be sad and stu pid.” “How could two people dying for love be stupid?” I say. We are sitting in the dark facing each other in the seats, our seatbelts off. “It’s stupid to kill yourself,” Jamie says. “That’s what cowards do.” “I think it’s brave,” I say. “And I think it’s beautiful that they loved each other so much that they couldn’t live without the other one.

As he surveyed the world being remade by Silicon Valley, and especially what was once called the sharing economy, he began to see through the fantasy-speak. Here were a handful of companies thriving by serving as middlemen between people who wanted rides and people who offered them, people who wanted their Ikea furniture assembled and people who came over to install it, people who defrayed their costs by renting out a room and people who stayed there. It was no accident, Scholz believed, that these services had taken off at the historical moment that they had. An epic meltdown of the world financial system had cost millions of people their homes, jobs, and health insurance. And as the fallout from the crash spread, many of those cut loose had been drafted into joining a new American servant class. The precariousness at the bottom, which had shown few signs of improving several years after the meltdown, had become the fodder for a bounty of services for the affluent—and, Scholz noted, for the “channeling of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.” Somehow, the technologies celebrated by the Valley as leveling playing fields and emancipating people had fostered a slick new digitally enabled upstairs-downstairs line in American social life.

Having to remind your partner to do something doesn’t take that something off your list. It adds to it. And what’s more, reminding is often unfairly characterized as nagging. (Almost every man interviewed in connection with this project said nagging is what they hate most about being married, but they also admit that they wait for their wives to tell them what to do at home.) It’s not a partnership if only one of you is running the show, which means making the important distinction between delegating tasks and handing off ownership of a task. Ownership belongs to the person who first off remembers to plan, then plans, and then follows through on every aspect of executing the plan and completing the task without reminders. A survey conducted by Bright Horizons—an on-site corporate childcare provider—found that 86 percent of working mothers say they handle the majority of family and household responsibilities, “not just making appointments, but also driving to them and mentally calendaring who needs to be where, and when.” In order to save us from big-time burnout, we need our partners to be more than helpers who carry out instructions that we’ve taken time and energy to think through (and then who blame us when things fall through the cracks). We need our partners to take the lead by consistently picking up a task, or “card”—week after week—and completely taking it off our mental to-do list by doing every aspect of what the card requires. Otherwise we still worry about whether the task is being done as we would do it, or done fully, or done at all—which leaves us still shouldering the mental and emotional load for the “help” or the “favor” we had to ask for. But how do we get our partners to take that initiative and own every aspect of a household or childcare responsibility without being (nudge, nudge) told what to do? Or, to simply figure it out?

We invariably come back to testing as a means of understanding drug use, even though assuming these tests lead to truth puts one on shaky ground. You simply can't prove something to be true or false if the means of confirmation are easily questioned. Consider how the National Survey on Drug Use and Health concludes every four years how many meth addicts there are in the United States. First, surveyors ask employers to give their employees a questionnaire on drug use. The survey asks employees whether they have done amphetamines (not specifically methamphetamines) in their lifetime, in the last year, and/or in the last six months. First, it seems unlikely that drug addicts will take this completely optional test; will answer truthfully if they do take it; and will even be at work in the first place--as opposed to home cooking meth. Further, since methamphetamine is just one of a broad class of stimulants in the amphetamine family, an answer of yes to the question about using one amphetamine can't be taken as an answer of yes to using another. And yet, for the study's purposes, anyone who says they've done any kind of amphetamine in the last six months is considered "addicted to amphetamines," and--in a way that is impossible to understand--a certain percentage of these responders is deemed addicted to crank.

When we survey the wretched conditions of man, under the monarchical and hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is necessary. What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only, and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition and happiness. the romantic and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and his obedience can be only to the laws.

The ruined island contains special markers around the borders, to trick the radiation detectors the Silvers use to survey the old battlefields. This is how they protect it, the home of the Scarlet Guard. In Norta, at least. That’s what Farley said, hinting at more bases across the country. And soon, it will be the sanctuary of every Red refugee fleeing the king’s new punishments. Every building we pass looks decrepit, coated in ash and weeds, but upon closer inspection, there’s something much more. Footprints in the dust, a light in a window, the smell of cooking wafting up from a drain. People, Reds, have a city of their own right here, hiding in plain sight. Electricity is scarce but smiles are not.

The rise of loneliness as a health hazard tracks with the entrenchment of values and practices that supersede any notion of "individual choices." The dynamics include reduced social programs, less available "common" spaces such as public libraries, cuts in services for the vulnerable and the elderly, stress, poverty, and the inexorable monopolization of economic life that shreds local communities. By way of illustration, let's take a familiar scenario: Walmart or some other megastore decides to open one of its facilities in a municipality. Developers are happy, politicians welcome the new investment, and consumers are pleased at finding a wide variety of goods at lower prices. But what are the social impacts? Locally owned and operated small businesses cannot compete with the marketing behemoth and must close. People lose their jobs or must find new work for lower pay. Neighborhoods are stripped of the familiar hardware store, pharmacy, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. People no longer walk to their local establishment, where they meet and greet one another and familiar merchants they have known, but drive, each isolated in their car, to a windowless, aesthetically bereft warehouse, miles away from home. They might not even leave home at all — why bother, when you can order online? No wonder international surveys show a rise in loneliness. The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as lonely has doubled from 20 to 40 percent since the 1980s, the New York Times reported in 2016. Alarmed by the health ravages, Britain has even found it necessary to appoint a minister of loneliness. Describing the systemic founts of loneliness, the U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy wrote: "Our twenty-first-century world demands that we focus on pursuits that seem to be in constant competition for our time, attention, energy, and commitment. Many of these pursuits are themselves competitions. We compete for jobs and status. We compete over possessions, money, and reputations. We strive to stay afloat and to get ahead. Meanwhile, the relationships we prize often get neglected in the chase." It is easy to miss the point that what Dr. Murthy calls "our twenty-first-century world" is no abstract entity, but the concrete manifestation of a particular socioeconomic system, a distinct worldview, and a way of life.

Two months before the funeral, the real estate website Redfin looked at the statistics and concluded that 83 percent of California's homes, and 100 percent of San Francisco's, were unaffordable on a teacher's salary. What happens to a place where the most vital workers cannot afford to live in it? Displacement has contributed to deaths, particularly of the elderly - and many in their eighties and nineties have been targeted with eviction from their homes of many decades. In the two years since Nieto's death, there have been multiple stories of seniors who died during or immediately after their eviction. A survey reported that 71 percent of the homeless in San Francisco used to be housed there. Losing their homes makes them vulnerable to a host of conditions, some of them deadly. Gentrification can be fatal.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to your new home.’ He gestured to the stone walls of the cavern that surrounded them. ‘Your lives as you once knew them are over,’ he continued. ‘You have been selected, all of you, the worst, the most cunning, the most mischievous minds from around the world . . . selected to become part of an institution like no other. You have all exhibited certain unique abilities, abilities that set you apart from the mediocrity of the teeming masses and which mark you out as the leaders of tomorrow. Here, in this place, you will be furnished with the knowledge and experience to best exploit your own natural abilities, to hone your craft to a cutting edge.’ He paused and slowly surveyed the pale, wide-eyed faces before him. ‘Each of you has within you a rare quality, a gift if you will, a special talent for the supremely villainous. Society would have us believe that this is an undesirable characteristic, something that should be subdued, controlled, destroyed. But not here . . . no, here we want to see you blossom into all that you can be, to see your innate wickedness flourish, to make you the very worst that you can be.’ He stepped out from behind the lectern and walked to the edge of the raised platform. As he loomed over them he seemed to grow taller and some of those at the front of the group edged backwards nervously. ‘For today all of you have the unique honour and privilege of becoming the newest students of the world’s first and only school of applied villainy.’ He spread his arms, gesturing to the walls around them. ‘Welcome to H.I.V.E., the Higher Institute of Villainous Education.

And so I learned things, gentlemen. Ah, one learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs. One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition. My ape nature fled out of me, head over heels and away, so that my first teacher was almost himself turned into an ape by it and was taken away to a mental hospital. Fortunately he was soon let out again. But I used up many teachers, several teachers at once. As I became more confident of my abilities, as the public took and interest in my progress and my future began to look bright, I engaged teachers for myself, engaged them in five communicating rooms, and took lessons from all at once by dint of leaping from one room to the other. That progress of mine! How the rays of knowledge penetrated from all sides into my awakening brain? I do not deny it: I found it exhilarating. But I must also confess: I did not overestimate it, not even then, much less now. With an effort which up till now has never been repeated I managed to reach the cultural level of an average European. In itself that might be nothing to speak of, but it is something insofar as it has helped me out of my cage and opened a special way out for me, the way of humanity. There is an excellent idiom: to fight one’s way through the thick of things; that is what I have done, I have fought through the thick of things. There was nothing else for me to do, provided that freedom was not to be my choice. As I look back on my development and survey what I have achieved so far, I do not complain, but I am not complacent either. With my hands in my trouser pockets, my bottle of wine on the table, I half lie and half sit in my rocking chair and gaze out of the window: If a visitor arrives I receive him with propriety. My manager sits in the anteroom; when I ring, he comes and listens to what I have to say. Nearly every evening I give a performance, and I have a success that could hardly be increased. When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific receptions, from social gatherings, there sits waiting for me a half-trained chimpanzee and I take comfort from her as apes do. By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye, no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it. On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I have set out to achieve. But do not tell me that it was not worth the trouble. In any case, I am not appealing to any man’s verdict. I am only imparting knowledge, I am only making a report. To you also, honored Members of the Academy, I have only made a report.

This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.

Size Matters. A lot. How much you have and more importantly how much space it will take up in a movingtruck are the first things you need to know when planning a long distance move. Professional movers charge by weight because it is an easier and more uniform way to determine exactly how much you have. They literally drive the truck onto a large scale before loading your goods to get a light weight and return after loading your stuff to get a heavy weight, with the difference being the weight of your shipment. The moving company’s estimate, however, is based on coming to your home and surveying the total cubic feet, or estimated size of all your household goods. They then convert that figure into a weight estimate by multiplying the cubic feet (cubes) by the average density of 6.5 pounds per cubic foot. A small 2-bedroom house for example might have 1,000 cubic feet which when multiplied by a density of 6.5 (lbs) would equal 6,500 lbs. If this sounds like brain surgery then I would ask you to try and remember the last furniture mover you met who struck you as brain surgeon-ish.

They’ll also have an extensive amount of makeup work to tackle during the midterm break—and no, that option is not available to you, so don’t ask and don’t test my patience. I can become very creative with my punishments if you force me to.” “See, but now you’ve got me curious,” Keefe told him. “Uh-uh,” Ro jumped in. “I have to suffer through this stuff with you.” “You do,” Magnate Leto agreed. “And I found an entire room filled with recordings of speeches from the Ancient Councillors that I think you’ll find particularly enjoyable.” Ro grabbed Keefe’s arm and hauled him toward the door. “We’re going to your session, and you’re acing that test and taking lots of notes or I will hang a banner in the middle of this campus—and we both know what I will have that banner say!” “Bo and Ro 4 Eva?” Keefe guessed, because he clearly had a death wish. “That’s it!” Ro picked him up, hefting him over her shoulder and trudging toward the door. “We’ll be back after study hall.” “You’ll be back tomorrow,” Magnate Leto corrected. “Lord Cassius is expecting you both to be home immediately after school—and I wouldn’t recommend disobeying.” “Why not?” Sophie asked. “He was in . . . a mood.” “Goody! Raise your hand if you’re jealous of my life!” Keefe said, twisting in Ro’s grasp to survey the room. “No takers?” “Don’t worry,” Ro told him, patting his back as she carried him into the hall. “I’ll sneak your dad some amoebas tonight.

The most celebrated germ expert in the world is almost certainly Dr. Charles P. Gerba of the University of Arizona, who is so devoted to the field that he gave one of his children the middle name Escherichia, after the bacterium Escherichia coli. Dr. Gerba established some years ago that household germs are not always most numerous where you would expect them to be. In one famous survey he measured bacterial content in different rooms in various houses and found that typically the cleanest surface of all in the average house was the toilet seat. That is because it is wiped down with disinfectant more often than any other surface. By contrast the average desktop has five times more bacteria living on it than the average toilet seat. The dirtiest area of all was the kitchen sink, closely followed by the kitchen counter, and the filthiest object was the kitchen washcloth. Most kitchen cloths are drenched in bacteria, and using them to wipe counters (or plates or breadboards or greasy chins or any other surface) merely transfers microbes from one place to another, affording them new chances to breed and proliferate. The second most efficient way of spreading germs, Gerba found, is to flush a toilet with the lid up. That spews billions of microbes into the air. Many stay in the air, floating like tiny soap bubbles, waiting to be inhaled, for up to two hours; others settle on things like your toothbrush. That is, of course, yet another good reason for putting the lid down.

The summer king customarily delivers a brief poem or statement before he convenes the special sessions. Enki gives them quite a bit more than that. “In the verde,” says Enki, as serious as I’ve ever seen him, “we love the storms. Sometimes, when we see one come in, the blocos will set up in the terraces and play until the rain drives us inside.” He pauses here, as though considering his next words, though I can tell he’s just savoring the moment. My last present from the verde must have gone through. Everyone in the audience shuffles uncomfortably. Nostrils flair, discreet coughs echo through the chamber. Some look at Enki, others at one another or the doorways. Enki takes a deep breath, as though he doesn’t notice a thing. “We have a saying,” he says as murmurs from his audience rise to a wave, “you can’t smell the catinga until it comes back home.” In the background, I can just make out several guards hurrying through the doors. Enki surveys his work and smiles, a sun breaking through clouds. “I hereby convene parliament.” As he saunters back to his seat, Auntie Isa rushes the podium with a handkerchief covering her nose and murder in her eyes. People stand up and hurry to the doors. They don’t know the smell will be even worse in the hallway. Our transport pods are all connected to the ventilation system. It’s meant to help refresh the air supply in the tunnels, but it can go the other direction. It can carry the fetid stink of the verde straight to the noses of people who pretend it doesn’t exist.

Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated ghetto communities--the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods. According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of prisoners returning home to "core counties"--those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area--tripled. The effects are felt throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of two Tallahassee, Florida communities, researchers found that nearly every one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a family member from prison. Similarly, a survey of families living in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or expected one to return from prison within the next two years. Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life with a criminal record. The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses. These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, "It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.

According to Bartholomew, an important goal of St. Louis zoning was to prevent movement into 'finer residential districts . . . by colored people.' He noted that without a previous zoning law, such neighborhoods have become run-down, 'where values have depreciated, homes are either vacant or occupied by color people.' The survey Bartholomew supervised before drafting the zoning ordinance listed the race of each building's occupants. Bartholomew attempted to estimate where African Americans might encroach so the commission could respond with restrictions to control their spread. The St. Louis zoning ordinance was eventually adopted in 1919, two years after the Supreme Court's Buchanan ruling banned racial assignments; with no reference to race, the ordinance pretended to be in compliance. Guided by Bartholomew's survey, it designated land for future industrial development if it was in or adjacent to neighborhoods with substantial African American populations. Once such rules were in force, plan commission meetings were consumed with requests for variances. Race was frequently a factor. For example, on meeting in 1919 debated a proposal to reclassify a single-family property from first-residential to commercial because the area to the south had been 'invaded by negroes.' Bartholomew persuaded the commission members to deny the variance because, he said, keeping the first-residential designation would preserve homes in the area as unaffordable to African Americans and thus stop the encroachment. On other occasions, the commission changed an area's zoning from residential to industrial if African American families had begun to move into it. In 1927, violating its normal policy, the commission authorized a park and playground in an industrial, not residential, area in hopes that this would draw African American families to seek housing nearby. Similar decision making continued through the middle of the twentieth century. In a 1942 meeting, commissioners explained they were zoning an area in a commercial strip as multifamily because it could then 'develop into a favorable dwelling district for Colored people. In 1948, commissioners explained they were designating a U-shaped industrial zone to create a buffer between African Americans inside the U and whites outside. In addition to promoting segregation, zoning decisions contributed to degrading St. Louis's African American neighborhoods into slums. Not only were these neighborhoods zoned to permit industry, even polluting industry, but the plan commission permitted taverns, liquor stores, nightclubs, and houses of prostitution to open in African American neighborhoods but prohibited these as zoning violations in neighborhoods where whites lived. Residences in single-family districts could not legally be subdivided, but those in industrial districts could be, and with African Americans restricted from all but a few neighborhoods, rooming houses sprang up to accommodate the overcrowded population. Later in the twentieth century, when the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) developed the insure amortized mortgage as a way to promote homeownership nationwide, these zoning practices rendered African Americans ineligible for such mortgages because banks and the FHA considered the existence of nearby rooming houses, commercial development, or industry to create risk to the property value of single-family areas. Without such mortgages, the effective cost of African American housing was greater than that of similar housing in white neighborhoods, leaving owners with fewer resources for upkeep. African American homes were then more likely to deteriorate, reinforcing their neighborhoods' slum conditions.

Rhys laughed, finally sauntering toward the other end of the hall, which ended in a veranda open to the stars. 'I'm willing to accept your thanks at any time, you know,' he called to me without looking back. Red exploded in my vision, and I couldn't breathe fast enough, couldn't think above the roar in my head. One heartbeat, I was staring at him- the next, I had my shoe in a hand. I hurled it at him with all my strength. All my considerable, immortal strength. I barely saw my silk slipper as it flew through the air, fast as a shooting star, so fast that even a High Lord couldn't detect it as it neared- And slammed into his head. Rhys whirled, a hand rising to the back of his head, his eyes wide. I already had the other shoe in my hand. Rhys's lip pulled back from his teeth. 'I dare you.' Temper- he had to be in some mood today to let his temper show this much. Good. That made two of us. I flung my other shoe right at his head, as swift and hard as the first one. His hand snatched up, grabbing the shoe mere inches from his face. Rhys hissed and lowered the shoe, his eyes meeting mine as the silk dissolved to glittering black dust in his fist. His fingers unfurled, the last of the sparkling ashes blowing into oblivion, and he surveyed my hand, my body, my face. 'Interesting,' he murmured, and continued on his way. I debated tackling him and pummelling that face with my firsts, but I wasn't stupid. I was in his home, on top of a mountain in the middle of absolutely nowhere, it seemed. No one would be coming to rescue me- no one was even here to witness my screaming. So I turned toward the doorway he'd indicated, heading for the dim stairwell beyond. I'd nearly reached it, not daring to breathe too loudly, when a bright, amused female voice said behind me- far away, from wherever Rhys had gone to at the opposite end of the hall, 'So, that went well.' Rhys's answering snarl sent my footsteps hurrying away.

Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code—known internally as the “Guest ID number”—that kept tabs on how each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target, visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company’s computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that shopper’s Guest ID number along with information on everything else they’d ever bought. Also linked to that Guest ID number was demographic information that Target collected or purchased from other firms, including the shopper’s age, whether they were married and had kids, which part of town they lived in, how long it took them to drive to the store, an estimate of how much money they earned, if they’d moved recently, which websites they visited, the credit cards they carried in their wallet, and their home and mobile phone numbers. Target can purchase data that indicates a shopper’s ethnicity, their job history, what magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy, the year they bought (or lost) their house, where they went to college or graduate school, and whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, toilet paper, cereal, or applesauce. There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that “listen” to shoppers’ online conversations on message boards and Internet forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.

While I was deep in my fantasy, in yet another episode of perfect timing, Marlboro Man called from the road. “Hey,” he said, the mid-1990s spotty cell phone service only emphasizing the raspy charm of his voice. “Oh! Just the person I want to talk to,” I said, grabbing paper and a pen. “I have a question for you--” “I bought your wedding present today,” Marlboro Man interrupted. “Huh?” I said, caught off guard. “Wedding present?” For someone steeped in the proper way of doing things, I was ashamed that a wedding gift for Marlboro Man had never crossed my mind. “Yep,” he said. “And you need to hurry up and marry me so I can give it to you.” I giggled. “So…what is it?” I asked. I couldn’t even imagine. I hoped it wasn’t a tennis bracelet. “You have to marry me to find out,” he answered. Yikes. What was it? Wasn’t the wedding ring itself supposed to be the present? That’s what I’d been banking on. What would I ever get him? Cuff links? An Italian leather briefcase? A Montblanc pen? What do you give a man who rides a horse to work every day? “So, woman,” Marlboro Man said, changing the subject, “what did you want to ask me?” “Oh!” I said, focusing my thoughts back to the reception. “Okay, I need you to name your absolute favorite foods in the entire world.” He paused. “Why?” “I’m just taking a survey,” I answered. “Hmmm…” He thought for a minute. “Probably steak.” Duh. “Well, besides steak,” I said. “Steak,” he repeated. “And what else?” I asked. “Well…steak is pretty good,” he answered. “Okay,” I responded. “I understand that you like steak. But I need a little more to work with here.” “But why?” he asked. “Because I’m taking a survey,” I repeated. Marlboro Man chuckled. “Okay, but I’m really hungry right now, and I’m three hours from home.” “I’ll factor that in,” I said. “Biscuits and gravy…tenderloin…chocolate cake…barbecue ribs…scrambled eggs,” he said, rattling off his favorite comfort foods. Bingo, I thought, smiling. “Now, hurry up and marry me,” he commanded. “I’m tired of waiting on you.” I loved it when he was bossy.

Why should he treat Elizabeth as if he harbored any feelings for her, including anger? Elizabeth sensed that he was wavering a little, and she pressed home her advantage, using calm reason: “Surely nothing that happened between us should make us behave badly to each other now. I mean, when you think on it, it was noting to us but a harmless weekend flirtation, wasn’t it?” “Obviously.” “Neither of us was hurt, were we?” “No.” “Well then, there’s no reason why we should not be cordial to each other now, is there?” she demanded with a bright, beguiling smile. “Good heavens, if every flirtation ended in enmity, no one in the ton would be speaking to anyone else!” She had neatly managed to put him in the position of either agreeing with her or else, by disagreeing, admitting that she had been something more to him than a flirtation, and Ian realized it. He’d guessed where her calm arguments were leading, but even so, he was reluctantly impressed with how skillfully she was maneuvering him into having to agree with her. “Flirtations,” he reminded her smoothly, “don’t normally end in duels.” “I know, and I am sorry my brother shot you.” Ian was simply not proof against the appeal in those huge green eyes of hers. “Forget it,” he said with an irritated sigh, capitulating to all she was asking. “Stay the seven days.” Suppressing the urge to twirl around with relief, she smiled into his eyes. “Then could we have a truce for the time I’m here?” “That depends.” “On what?” His brows lifted in mocking challenge. “On whether or not you can make a decent breakfast.” “Let’s go in the house and see what we have.” With Ian standing beside her Elizabeth surveyed the eggs and cheese and bread, and then the stove. “I shall fix something right up,” she promised with a smile that concealed her uncertainty. “Are you sure you’re up to the challenge?” Ian asked, but she seemed so eager, and her smile was so disarming, that he almost believed she knew how to cook. “I shall prevail, you’ll see,” she told him brightly, reaching for a wide cloth and tying it around her narrow waist. Her glance was so jaunty that Ian turned around to keep himself from grinning at her. She was obviously determined to attack the project with vigor and determination, and he was equally determined not to discourage her efforts. “You do that,” he said, and he left her alone at the stove.

PATTERNS OF THE “SHY” What else is common among people who identify themselves as “shy?” Below are the results of a survey that was administered to 150 of my program’s participants. The results of this informal survey reveal certain facts and attitudes common among the socially anxious. Let me point out that these are the subjective answers of the clients themselves—not the professional opinions of the therapists. The average length of time in the program for all who responded was eight months. The average age was twenty-eight. (Some of the answers are based on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.) -Most clients considered shyness to be a serious problem at some point in their lives. Almost everyone rated the seriousness of their problem at level 5, which makes sense, considering that all who responded were seeking help for their problem. -60 percent of the respondents said that “shyness” first became enough of a problem that it held them back from things they wanted during adolescence; 35 percent reported the problem began in childhood; and 5 percent said not until adulthood. This answer reveals when clients were first aware of social anxiety as an inhibiting force. -The respondents perceived the average degree of “sociability” of their parents was a 2.7, which translates to “fair”; 60 percent of the respondents reported that no other member of the family had a problem with “shyness”; and 40 percent said there was at least one other family member who had a problem with “shyness.” -50 percent were aware of rejection by their peers during childhood. -66 percent had physical symptoms of discomfort during social interaction that they believed were related to social anxiety. -55 percent reported that they had experienced panic attacks. -85 percent do not use any medication for anxiety; 15 percent do. -90 percent said they avoid opportunities to meet new people; 75 percent acknowledged that they often stay home because of social fears, rather than going out. -80 percent identified feelings of depression that they connected to social fears. -70 percent said they had difficulty with social skills. -75 percent felt that before they started the program it was impossible to control their social fears; 80 percent said they now believed it was possible to control their fears. -50 percent said they believed they might have a learning disability. -70 percent felt that they were “too dependent on their parents”; 75 percent felt their parents were overprotective; 50 percent reported that they would not have sought professional help if not for their parents’ urging. -10 percent of respondents were the only child in their families; 40 percent had one sibling; 30 percent had two siblings; 10 percent had three; and 10 percent had four or more. Experts can play many games with statistics. Of importance here are the general attitudes and patterns of a population of socially anxious individuals who were in a therapy program designed to combat their problem. Of primary significance is the high percentage of people who first thought that “shyness” was uncontrollable, but then later changed their minds, once they realized that anxiety is a habit that can be broken—without medication. Also significant is that 50 percent of the participants recognized that their parents were the catalyst for their seeking help. Consider these statistics and think about where you fit into them. Do you identify with this profile? Look back on it in the coming months and examine the ways in which your sociability changes. Give yourself credit for successful breakthroughs, and keep in mind that you are not alone!

Thai, like Vega, is Asian and openly gay. Before he died, Vega told police he’d been “attacked by three African-American males, all around 18 years of age.” It was the tenth such attack in that area in two months, all near the corner of Martin Luther King Way and Othello Street.11 After the attack, Thai went door to door to find out how widespread the problem was. He was conducting his own crime survey. Thai knocked on 49 doors. 32 people were home. How many of them had been victims of a crime since moving to the neighborhood? All but three. Many victims told Thai they’d never reported the crimes to police. “It happens to them so often that after 2 or 3 times they stopped reporting because they didn’t see any progress,” said Thai. Thai’s survey was clearly unscientific, but it does raise the question--is crime going unreported in the south end?12 Thai learned that many in his neighborhood were victims, but most were not statistics. No arrests. No reports. It never happened.

The survey of the time spent in the home by most housewives established that, on average, they worked 75 hours a week, with overtime on Saturdays and Sundays. This did not take into account that a number of women were also doing part or full-time work outside the home.

The Great Revolt Survey found that the one demographic group among Rust Belt Trump voters most likely to agree with the notion that “every American has a fundamental right to self-defense and a right to choose the home defense firearm that is best for them” is women under age forty-five.

A brief survey of Mere Christianity supplies the following list: becoming a Christian (passing over from life to death) is like joining a campaign of sabotage, like falling at someone’s feet or putting yourself in someone’s hands, like taking on board fuel or food, like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, saying sorry, laying yourself open, turning full speed astern; it is like killing part of yourself, like learning to walk or to write, like buying God a present with his own money; it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, like a tin soldier or a statue coming alive, like waking after a long sleep, like getting close to someone or becoming infected, like dressing up or pretending or playing; it is like emerging from the womb or hatching from an egg; it is like a compass needle swinging to north, or a cottage being made into a palace, or a field being plowed and resown, or a horse turning into a Pegasus, or a greenhouse roof becoming bright in the sunlight; it is like coming around from anesthetic, like coming in out of the wind, like going home.

The language of medicine, with its priorities of safety and survival, was taking over, again. Wilson pointed out angrily that even children are permitted to take more risks than the elderly. They at least get to have swings and jungle gyms. A survey of fifteen hundred assisting living facilities published in 2003 found that only 11 percent offered both privacy and sufficient services to allow frail people to remain in residence. The idea of assisted living as an alternative to nursing homes had all but died. Even the board of Wilson’s own company—having noted how many other companies were taking a less difficult and less costly direction—began questioning her standards and philosophy. She wanted to build smaller buildings,

According [to] the Pew Research Center, American Community Survey (ACS), and Decennial Census data, less than half of the kids in the United States live at home with mom and dad. Only 46 percent of children in the U.S. under the age of eighteen live in a home with two married heterosexual parents who are in their first marriage. In 1960, that number was 73 percent. The trend is far, far worse among the African-American population.

One reason why fundamentalists have such high ACR scores may be due to church doctrine. Many of the fundamentalist theologians who espouse supernatural interpretations of scripture are often the same ones who advocate strict child-rearing practices.20 For example, Rev. James Dobson’s best-selling book, Dare to Discipline, explicitly links its fundamentalist beliefs to having obedient and well-mannered children. And upon reflection, this connection between strict child rearing and fundamentalism is not at all surprising. Many fundamentalist sects demand submission and obedience to the strict will of God. It’s no surprise, then, that obedience and respect are regarded as desirable traits among people who see them as pathways to salvation. That noted, it’s also important to recognize that not all authoritarians are fundamentalists. Indeed, 45 percent of strong authoritarians do not hold fundamentalist beliefs. And some of this difference may have to do with another factor emphasized by the original authors of The Authoritarian Personality: childhood experience. By their account, being raised in an overly harsh or punitive social environment contributes to authoritarianism. These same factors might also contribute to magical thinking. Our research suggests that this is plausible. In our surveys, we asked respondents to describe their childhood in very general terms. Did they grow up in a •  very strict house where all rules had to be followed (31 percent); •  moderate house where only some rules were strictly enforced (59 percent); •  relaxed house where my parents largely let me alone (10 percent). Not surprisingly, these items are correlated with ACR scores. Authoritarians are far more likely to report being raised in strict homes; for example, 42 percent of people raised in strict homes are strong authoritarians, compared with only 23 percent of people from relaxed homes. More important, however, is that the type of home you were raised in is also a big predictor of your Intuitionism score. People from strict homes score four points higher on our Intuitionism scale than people from either moderate or relaxed homes, even when we take their ACR scores into account.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

In 2020, 92.6 percent of CEOs on the Fortune 500 were white.36 A survey conducted that same year of more than forty thousand workers at 317 companies found that while white men make up just 35 percent of the entry-level workforce, they compose 66 percent of the C-suite.37 For every one hundred men who were promoted to manager, only fifty-eight black women and seventy-one Latina women were promoted. Only 38 percent of respondents in entry-level management positions were women of any race.

By the grace of the Mother, she was paranoid enough about any new allies or companions that she hid the Horn and Harp. She created a pocket of nothingness, she told me, and stashed them there. Only she could access that pocket of nothingness—only she could retrieve the Horn and Harp from its depths. But she remained unaware that Pelias had already told the Daglan of their presence. She had no idea that she was allowed to live, if only for a time, so they might figure out where she’d concealed them. So Pelias, under their command, might squeeze their location out of her. Just as she had no idea that the gate she had left open into our home world … the Daglan had been waiting a long, long time for that, too. But they were patient. Content to let more and more of Theia’s forces come into the new world—thus leaving her own undefended. Content to wait to gain her trust, so she might hand over the Horn and Harp. It was a trap, to be played out over months or years. To get the instruments of power from Theia, to march back into our home world and claim it again … It was a long, elegant trap, to be sprung at the perfect moment. And, distracted by the beauty of our new world, we did not consider that it all might be too easy. Too simple. Midgard was a land of plenty. Of green and light and beauty. Much like our own lands—with one enormous exception. The memory spanned to a view from a cliff of a distant plain full of creatures. Some winged, some not. We were not the only beings to come to this world hoping to claim it. We would learn too late that the other peoples had been lured by the Daglan under similarly friendly guises. And that they, too, had come armed and ready to fight for these lands. But before conflict could erupt between us all, we found that Midgard was already occupied. Theia and Pelias, with Helena and Silene trailing, warriors ten deep behind them, stood atop the cliff, surveying the verdant land and the enormous walled city on the horizon. Bryce’s breath caught. She’d spent years working in the company of the lost books of Parthos, knowing that a great human civilization had once flourished within its walls, but here, before her, was proof of the grandeur, the human skill that had existed on Midgard. And had been entirely wiped away.

Whoa, what?" His gravelly voice kicked up a notch at my accusation. "She's right here; I'm staring right at her. What the hell is going on?" My heart stopped a second, then beat twice as fast as those words sunk in and confused the fuck out of me. "Here where? Where are you?" He made a sound like he was walking while he spoke to me. "The frozen yogurt shop down the street. Apparently, she needed sugar for her period or some shit." I swallowed heavily, my free hand balled into a fist as my eyes surveyed the mess in my home. "Put her on, Cass. Put her on the phone." "Two seconds," he replied, and the sound of his boots on the pavement traveled down the phone, followed by the chime of a shop door opening. Then came the best sound I'd ever heard in my entire damn life. "Dare? What's up? Cass looks like he's ready to murder something.

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I slowed my steps as I started up the path toward the front entrance, feeling like I was about to walk on smoldering embers. Had the fire burned down enough that it couldn’t harm me? Or would I be scorched? Reaching the front door, I took a deep breath, aware of the importance of what I was about to do and fearful that I would not succeed. Then I rapped firmly upon the dark wood. This was not the time to practice timidity. Grayden opened the door himself and our eyes met. For a moment, neither of us moved, equally flustered--he was stunned to find me on his stoop, while I had expected a servant to answer my knock. “May I come in, my lord?” I inquired, sounding more nervous than I would have liked. “As you wish.” He leaned back against the door frame and gestured for me to enter, his manner not entirely hospitable. I stepped inside and glanced around the spacious foyer, then cleared my throat, ready to begin a short, but well-rehearsed, statement of contrition. “I owe you an apology, Lord Grayden. I’m sorry for failing to attend the dinner to which you were invited at my family’s home. While I do not deserve your kind regard, I hope you will be gracious enough to forgive me.” “That depends on what you were doing instead.” “Excuse me?” I squeaked, for this was an unexpected reaction. My mind spun, trying to decide what to do. Did I need to apologize better? Or should I just leave? He laughed, and I felt even more flustered. “Your mother and sisters kept changing their stories. Makes me think they didn’t know what you were doing. I’d like the mystery solved.” Taken aback, I surveyed him, noting his dark brown hair that made his skin appear all the more fair, his perfectly proportioned nose, his gorgeous green eyes and his inviting smile. He wanted me to be honest. I decided to risk it, for nothing worse could come of his knowing the truth. “I forgot you were coming.” He straightened and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “At least I know you’re not a liar.” “Not usually,” I blurted, and he laughed once more. “Well then, I accept your apology.” “That’s very considerate of you.” I hesitated then gave him another curtsey. “Good day to you, my lord.” His eyebrows rose in surprise. “You’re leaving so soon?” “Yes,” I replied, a grin playing at the corners of my mouth. “You see, I haven’t been invited to stay.” Before he could respond, I slipped past him and out the door, pleased at his befuddled expression. All in all, things had gone well--I had accomplished my appointed task; at the same time, I was certain I could cross another suitor off the list. After all, even the best impressions Lord Grayden had of me left much to be desired. But I didn’t feel as happy about that outcome as I had expected. Strangely, the young man held more appeal for me now than he had before. I sighed, for my nature did indeed appear to be a fickle one.

Over the years, the gaze of entomologists gradually magnified, each generation scrutinizing what the previous one hadn’t bothered with or noticed. By the time Powell was surveying the dunes in the late seventies and early eighties, the insects he was bringing home included the minuscule and the nocturnal—because that’s what a scientist of his generation was accustomed to collecting, and what was left to be caught. The biodiversity of the dunes hadn’t expanded. But people’s perception of it had. —

Surveys clearly show that most Americans place high importance on family and fatherhood. Those among us who have had the blessing of a loving father must reach out to the four in ten children in our society who come home each day from school to fatherless homes. In fact, each of us at this moment might well ask ourselves this question: Is there a child out there somewhere who deserves the same blessings I received from a father and who needs someone to walk alongside him or her through the travails of youth? Shouldn’t we all be mentors of one kind or another? If we do not reach out to the fatherless children in our nation, we can count on confronting severe societal problems for years to come. More importantly, as people who have experienced the love of an earthly father, and the love of God of the universe, can we do less?

Mary and Joseph, then, would have been the guests of family or friends, but their home would have been so overcrowded that the baby was placed in a feeding trough.”36 One apocryphal tradition even speaks of Jesus being born in a cave (Protevangelium of James 18-19).

Mark was the person whose mother's home was one of the meeting places for the early church in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12), so the family may have been relatively well off.

I could hear talking, singing, shouting, crying, and other sounds, and I noticed everybody wore different clothes on that day. Men and women with fine clothes were going down there, and soon two or three men wearing long black coats passed me and followed the crowd. Everybody respected those fellows, and I decided they were the medicine men. I resolved to see what was going on down there, so I slipped through the bushes and watched them. I saw one of the men whom I thought was a medicine man get up and read something out of a book; occasionally he would look at his congregation and then up, and I wondered why he did not smoke; then I concluded it was a council of war, but there were too many squaws there for that. The audience rose and sang, then they all got down on their knees and covered up their faces; some groaned while others wept, and one man mumbled a lot of words; then they all got up and sang a song. The medicine man came to the front and went through a long talk and gesticulations and everybody watched him. The sober-looking man with the long coat mumbled something at first, but gradually grew louder and began singing off his speech, while the tear drops trickled down his cheeks and his face wore a sad expression. His audience seemed to lean forward and drink in every word he said. He kept talking and all the people arose and commingled their voices in a mighty chorus, while the melodious strains floated on the zephyr breeze and reached my ears and seemed as a balm to the aching pains of my breaking heart. Then shouts of laughter, shrill screams, merry faces, sad-eyed spectators, some shouted, others rushed to the center and began dancing, shaking hands and general confusion reigned supreme. It was a sure-enough old fashion Methodist shouting meeting, but of course I did not know this. I thought it must be a new kind of a war dance, rain dance or some kind of a religious ceremony, so I rushed in, gave the Comanche yell, cleared several benches and landed in the midst of the revival. My manner of worship did not suit those white people and they stampeded, leaving me “monarch of all I surveyed.” I gave a few more whoops and a little dance anyway, and looked around to see what had become of all the council, and I saw the big medicine man tearing along with his coat tails flapping as he headed for my mother’s home. My people never permitted me to go to another Methodist revival until I could understand English and knew how to behave myself. True, I broke up the meeting that day, but I was just as earnest, just as fervent, just as candid and sincere as the most sanctified among them, only my mode did not conform to their theories. I have seen just as much earnestness and less hypocrisy among the Indians in their worship as I ever have seen since I came among the whites.

The DA, however, was left with the toxic stink of the party of apartheid despite the fact that the NP had found its home in the warm bosom of the ANC. The DA has never been able to shake off this stink, hence the general perception that it was the party of privilege and of apartheid. Incredibly, survey respondents still express a fear that, if elected, the DA would ‘bring back apartheid’. Even the powerful memory of Helen Suzman – for years the lone voice of opposition in the apartheid parliament – cannot wipe this perception away.25 In the run-up to the 2014 election, the ANC was faced with a massive problem. Its president, Zuma, was discredited and was and remains by all accounts a liability.26 Its deployed cadres in government were mired in one scandal after another. Service delivery protests were spreading while Cosatu was imploding. Yet the party had its ‘shy voters’. It merely slipped from 65.9 per cent to 62 per cent of the vote. Given its problems and the bad press it received, the ANC fooled many among us. One London-based analyst had doggedly predicted that the ANC would fall to 55 per cent of the vote.27 He was wrong.

Conflict is ubiquitous. Workplaces, homes, and communities are riddled with it. The trouble is, not nearly enough people understand what to do about it. The 2013 Executive Coaching Survey published by Stanford University, for example, reveals that company CEOs feel a greater need to improve their conflict management skills than skills of any other type.

The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers.

Lui did not get that idea out of the air; though whether it was true or not remains a subject of debate. "The supermom is fading fast—doomed by anger, guilt, and exhaustion," Newsweek reported in 1988. "A growing number of mothers" believe "that they can't have it all." Yet in her book Backlash, Susan Faludi points out that the survey on which Newsweek based the article revealed nothing of the sort. It found that 71 percent of mothers at home would prefer to work and 75 percent of the working mothers would go on working even if their financial needs could be otherwise met. Faludi also reports that Good Housekeeping's 1988 "New Traditionalist" ad campaign, which featured born-again housewives happily recovering from the horrors of the workplace, was based on neither hard facts nor even opinion polls. The two opinion studies by the Yankelovich organization, which had allegedly buttressed Good Housekeeping's position, had, in fact, showed no evidence that women were either leaving work or wanted to leave.

The sound of Alex revving his motorcycle brings my attention back to him. “Don’t be afraid of what they think.” I take in the sight of him, from his ripped jeans and leather jacket to the red and black bandana he just tied on top of his head. His gang colors. I should be terrified. Then I remember how he was with Shelley yesterday. To hell with it. I shift my book bag around to my back and straddle his motorcycle. “Hold on tight,” he says, pulling my hands around his waist. The simple feel of his strong hands resting on top of mine is intensely intimate. I wonder if he’s feeling these emotions, too, but dismiss the thought. Alex Fuentes is a hard guy. Experienced. The mere touch of hands isn’t going to make his stomach flutter. He deliberately brushes the tips of his fingers over mine before reaching for the handlebars. Oh. My. God. What am I getting myself into? As we speed away from the school parking lot, I grab Alex’s rock-hard abs tighter. The sped of the motorcycle scares me. I feel light-headed, like I’m riding a roller coaster with no lap bar. The motorcycle stops at a red light. I lean back. I hear him chuckle when he guns the engine once more as the light turns green. I clutch his waist and bury my face in his back. When he finally stops and puts the kickstand down, I survey my surroundings. I’ve never been on his street. The homes are so…small. Most are one level. A cat can’t fit in the space between them. As hard as I try to fight it, sorrow settles in the pit of my stomach. My house is at least seven, maybe even eight or nine times Alex’s home’s size. I know this side of town is poor, but… “This was a mistake,” Alex says. “I’ll take you home.” “Why?” “Among other things, the look of disgust on your face.” “I’m not disgusted. I guess I feel sorry--” “Don’t ever pity me,” he warns. “I’m poor, not homeless.” “Then are you going to invite me in? The guys across the street are gawking at the white girl.” “Actually, around here you’re a ‘snow girl.’” “I hate snow,” I say. His lips quirk up into a grin. “Not for the weather, querida. For your snow-white skin. Just follow me and don’t stare at the neighbors, even if they stare at you.

A few hours later I realize the quarterly meeting is still dull, but it’s moving in the right direction. It’s only been three months since the last meeting, but Gabe’s already implemented a few changes to make it more useful for everyone. We don’t have any surveys to fill out today—thank goodness—so I’m taking my usual notes and following along. Even Preston is awake and paying attention. Sort of. “I have to pee, Sandy. I’m not gonna make it till the lunch break,” Preston whispers. He’s been fidgeting for ten minutes. I wish he’d just go already. “So go,” I say in a low whisper. “We’re not captives.” “You know I hate doing the walk of shame during a meeting,” he whispers disdainfully. I shake my head. “For the hundredth time, that is not what ‘walk of shame’ means.” “No one should be ashamed of getting it on with a hot stranger, Sandy. That is not shameworthy.” He shakes his head in disgust. “People should high-five in the morning and go home with their heads held high.” “What do you suggest it be called then? If we as a society should be proud of our one-night stands we need to have a term for it.” “I’m trying to get ‘walk of satisfaction’ to catch on, but it’s hard to make something go viral.” “Uh-huh

my motor home yesterday, and I think he may come back.”               “No kidding? Well, I can see why you would be on edge. He must still be looking for those stupid coins.”               “Evidently. He broke into Megan’s two days ago, looking for them. Why he thinks I would have them is anybody’s guess,” I answered. “I was just about to make a pot of coffee. Would you like a cup?”               Hal surveyed my one room cabin, then sat down on the couch. “Taylor told me about the incident at your sister’s. I’m glad she’s okay.” Then, as he got up and went to the sliding door leading to the deck, he changed the subject.               “Fantastic view you have. I can’t believe there’s snow on that mountain already,

Do I look okay?” She ran her hands over the pale blue blouse and jeans she wore, worried that it was too informal. When she’d shoved things in her bag, she hadn’t thought about dinner like this. Chad’s bright blue eyes drifted over her slowly and Lora forced herself to stand still, though his appreciative survey was making her prickle. His gaze slowed at her hands on her hips, drifted down to her socked feet, then back up to meet her eyes. “I think you look perfect.” Lora had to look away then because the sincerity in his expression was enough to make her tear up.

There is a clear consensus among economists about self-defense, gun-free zones, firearms and suicide, and concealed handgun laws. Among North American economists:          •    Eighty-eight percent say that guns are more frequently “used in self-defense than they are used in the commission of crime.”          •    Ninety-one percent believe that gun-free zones are “more likely to attract criminals than they are to deter them.”          •    Seventy-two percent do not agree that “a gun in the home causes an increase in the risk of suicide.”          •    Ninety-one percent say that “concealed handgun permit holders are much more law-abiding than the typical American.”          •    Eighty-one percent say that permitted concealed handguns lower the murder rate. After including all those who have published worldwide, these percentages fall by between three and eight percentage points. But the numbers are still quite high, and largely mirror the literature surveys on concealed carry laws.15

End June 2012 In response to Dr. Arius’ questions for his research, I wrote: Dr. A.S., As always it is a delight to receive your emails. I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions. I’ll respond to them one at a time. Please bear with me if my answers are lengthy at times. If I veer off into a tangent, please feel free to eliminate or edit my response. I’m eager to find out the results your research will yield when you are done with the survey. I’m ready to begin. Question one: * In “Initiation,” you said that as far as you can remember, even as a baby, you disliked your father. What was it that you didn’t like about the man? Did he have a certain smell that repelled you or something conscious or subconscious that blocked your connection towards him? Answers: Although I cannot provide you with definitive answers, I’ll do my best to remember how I felt when I was with my dad. a) Mr. S.S. Foong was a heavy smoker since the day I was born. I presume as a baby, the cigarette smell on his person repelled me. His aggressively loud booming voice did nothing to my gentle ears, either. Although he never shouted at me when I was a child, his stern demeanor deterred me from wanting to be near him. Moreover, his angry reprimands toward his subordinates when they had done nothing wrong challenged my respect for the man I called Father. b) Maybe unconsciously I was imbued with a glamorized portrayal of the “ideal” family from western magazines, movies, and periodicals of the mid-20th century. I wanted a father whom I could look up to: a strong, kind man who understands the needs of his family and children. But this was a Hollywood invention. It doesn’t exist, or it exists empirically in a small sector of the global population. c) Since my dad was seldom at home (he was with his mistress and their children), it was difficult to have a loving relationship with the man, especially when he roared and rebuked me for my effeminate behavior over which I had no control. I was simply being who I was. His negative criticisms damaged my ego badly. d) I could not relate to his air of superiority toward my mother. I resented that aspect of my father. I swore to myself that I would not grow up to be like my old man.

A national survey ongoing since 1974 has shown that Americans have never been less likely to be friends with their neighbors as they are now. The lowest levels of neighborliness were recorded in the suburbs.33

While the churchless continue to show some openness to high-touch, relational connections—pastoral home visits (27 percent), a phone call from a church (24 percent), a survey conducted with them about their interests (21 percent)—they are also increasingly resistant to other forms of outreach.

The earl narrowed his eyes as he hopped off his bay gelding and surveyed the deep green expanse of lawn surrounding the ancestral home. The graceful house, built atop and around an ancient abbey, wore its centuries of accretion with aplomb, as if it had always perched atop this gentle slope. In the slanting late afternoon sun, the fading red-brick walls glowed. “My God, I hate the country,” he said.

In 1944 sociologist Mirra Komarovsky called standards for women “a veritable crazy quilt of contradiction.” Half of the young college women questioned in her survey of their expectations for the future said they expected to stop work permanently when they married, and only 10 percent said they hoped to combine marriage and a career. (The war experience did not seem to have altered basic assumptions about women’s roles.) Dr. Komarovsky campaigned for greater freedom: “The girl who wishes to marry and have five children should be permitted to do so, and likewise it should be made possible for those who wish to combine marriage and careers to achieve this. At present, the latter path is fraught with difficulties and cruel dilemmas, but it needn’t be.” On the same page in The New York Times in which Komarovsky’s survey was reported, Senator Taft of Ohio was quoted as supporting reduced funds for Lanham Act Centers lest they be carried over, surreptitiously, for use after the war and encourage women to leave home.

In a survey of mayors of major cities, 83 percent said there was not enough funding to meet the additional child care costs of work requirements. Places are limited and waiting lists are long. But a study published in 2004 found that when it was available, good quality, center-based care for the one- to two-year-old children of poor mothers who have to work had a positive effect on the children’s social and intellectual development. Most of them spent at least thirty-four hours a week in day care, and they did better than comparable children cared for at home.

National Institute of Justice survey found that 74 percent of the convicts who had committed a burglary or violent crime agreed: “One reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot.

When she’s in a courtroom, Wendy Patrick, a deputy district attorney for San Diego, uses some of the roughest words in the English language. She has to, given that she prosecutes sex crimes. Yet just repeating the words is a challenge for a woman who not only holds a law degree but also degrees in theology and is an ordained Baptist minister. “I have to say (a particularly vulgar expletive) in court when I’m quoting other people, usually the defendants,” she admitted. There’s an important reason Patrick has to repeat vile language in court. “My job is to prove a case, to prove that a crime occurred,” she explained. “There’s often an element of coercion, of threat, (and) of fear. Colorful language and context is very relevant to proving the kind of emotional persuasion, the menacing, a flavor of how scary these guys are. The jury has to be made aware of how bad the situation was. Those words are disgusting.” It’s so bad, Patrick said, that on occasion a judge will ask her to tone things down, fearing a jury’s emotions will be improperly swayed. And yet Patrick continues to be surprised when she heads over to San Diego State University for her part-time work of teaching business ethics. “My students have no qualms about dropping the ‘F-bomb’ in class,” she said. “The culture in college campuses is that unless they’re disruptive or violating the rules, that’s (just) the way kids talk.” Experts say people swear for impact, but the widespread use of strong language may in fact lessen that impact, as well as lessen society’s ability to set apart certain ideas and words as sacred. . . . [C]onsider the now-conversational use of the texting abbreviation “OMG,” for “Oh, My God,” and how the full phrase often shows up in settings as benign as home-design shows without any recognition of its meaning by the speakers. . . . Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert in San Antonio, in a blog about workers cleaning up their language, cited a 2012 Career Builder survey in which 57 percent of employers say they wouldn’t hire a candidate who used profanity. . . . She added, “It all comes down to respect: if you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, you shouldn’t say it to your client, your boss, your girlfriend or your wife.” And what about Hollywood, which is often blamed for coarsening the language? According to Barbara Nicolosi, a Hollywood script consultant and film professor at Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian school, lazy script writing is part of the explanation for the blue tide on television and in the movies. . . . By contrast, she said, “Bad writers go for the emotional punch of crass language,” hence the fire-hose spray of obscenities [in] some modern films, almost regardless of whether or not the subject demands it. . . . Nicolosi, who noted that “nobody misses the bad language” when it’s omitted from a script, said any change in the industry has to come from among its ranks: “Writers need to have a conversation among themselves and in the industry where we popularize much more responsible methods in storytelling,” she said. . . . That change can’t come quickly enough for Melissa Henson, director of grass-roots education and advocacy for the Parents Television Council, a pro-decency group. While conceding there is a market for “adult-themed” films and language, Henson said it may be smaller than some in the industry want to admit. “The volume of R-rated stuff that we’re seeing probably far outpaces what the market would support,” she said. By contrast, she added, “the rate of G-rated stuff is hardly sufficient to meet market demands.” . . . Henson believes arguments about an “artistic need” for profanity are disingenuous. “You often hear people try to make the argument that art reflects life,” Henson said. “I don’t hold to that. More often than not, ‘art’ shapes the way we live our lives, and it skews our perceptions of the kind of life we're supposed to live." [DN, Apr. 13, 2014]

The optimistic, prosperous spirit of the time further advanced Friedan's message. Relatively few of the women who responded to The Feminine Mystique, surveys suggested, were from minority groups or the blue-collar classes. Many of these people, after all, had always worked outside the home, ordinarily in low-paid and sex-segregated jobs, and they found little that was liberating in her talk about careers.

A survey of 348 male managers at twenty Fortune 500 companies found that fathers from dual-career families put in an average of two fewer hours per week – or about 4 percent less – than men whose wives were at home. That was the only difference between the two groups of men. But the fathers with working wives, who presumably had a few more domestic responsibilities, earned almost 20 percent less.

priorities of safety and survival, was taking over, again. Wilson pointed out angrily that even children are permitted to take more risks than the elderly. They at least get to have swings and jungle gyms. A survey of fifteen hundred assisting living facilities published in 2003 found that only 11 percent offered both privacy and sufficient services to allow frail people to remain in residence. The idea of assisted living as an alternative to nursing homes had all but died. Even the board of Wilson’s own company—having noted how many other companies were taking a less difficult and less costly direction—began questioning her standards and philosophy. She wanted to build smaller buildings, in smaller towns where elderly people had no options except nursing homes, and she wanted units for low-income elderly on Medicaid. But the more profitable direction was bigger buildings, in bigger cities,

she surveyed the chaos of her apartment and told herself, as she had almost every morning for the past two years, that she would start unpacking when she got home.

Essentially those with an external locus think the outside world controls their destiny, and that they are almost powerless to change their fate. No Zer says outright, “I feel as though there is an external locus of control over my life.” Instead, the thinking develops on a much deeper level due to the struggles currently enveloping society. One small example of this is McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey, which shows generation Z’s financial trepidation. Nearly 23% of the ~25,000 respondents queried say they don’t expect ever to retire. Only 41% ever hope to own a home15

Wardell surveys the living room, scowling like one of the bad guys that gets killed at the end of every episode of Bonanza or Gunsmoke. “What do you think happened here, professor?” he asks. I swear I’m looking forward to his retirement as eagerly as a nun getting ready to leave the convent. “Something … else.” I wander outside to check the exterior of the home. I recall seeing it under construction, wondering who would want a place this far out in the sticks, set in front of the vast Big Rocks

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The first hints of this emerged in the early and mid-1990s, at the tail end of the crack epidemic. Suniya Luthar is now sixty-two, with an infectious smile, bright brown eyes, and short snow-white hair. Back then, she was a fledgling psychologist working as an assistant professor and researcher in the department of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She was studying resiliency among teenagers in low-income urban communities, and one of her early findings was that the most popular kids were also among the most destructive and aggressive at school. Was this a demographic phenomenon, she wondered, or merely an adolescent one, this tendency to look up to peers who acted out? To find out, she needed a comparison group. A research assistant suggested they recruit students from his former high school in an affluent suburb. Luthar’s team ultimately enlisted 488 tenth graders—about half from her assistant’s high school and half from a scruffy urban high school. The affluent community’s median household income was 80 percent higher than the national median, and more than twice that of the low-income community. The rich community also had far fewer families on food stamps (0.3 percent vs. 19 percent) and fewer kids getting free or reduced-price school lunches (1 percent vs. 86 percent). The suburban teens were 82 percent white, while the urban teens were 87 percent nonwhite. Luthar surveyed the kids, asking a series of questions related to depression and anxiety, drug use ranging from alcohol and nicotine to LSD and cocaine, and participation in delinquent acts at home, at school, and in the community. Also examined were grades, “social competence,” and teachers’ assessments of each student. After crunching the numbers, she was floored. The affluent teens fared poorly relative to the low-income teens on “all indicators of substance use, including hard drugs.” This flipped the conventional wisdom on its head. “I was quite taken aback,” Luthar recalls.

I am often intrigued by the coupling between pet and human. What was it about this particular cat? Why a mouse and not a gerbil? What did this puppy do that stopped you in your tracks and made you say, “Come home with me”? Unlike choosing a human partner, pet owners aren’t usually set up by well-meaning friends. They haven’t filled out a detailed online survey that ascertains compatibility. Rather they rely on instant attraction and trust a gut feeling, an intangible instinct that more often then not ends up being exactly right.

When villagers in Third World countries are asked in surveys, “What is the most important problem in your life?” they consistently respond, “Water.” Typically, village families walk several miles to obtain a reliable source of water, and three to four hours per day are spent by water-gatherers in carrying the water to their home.

A January 2020 Gallup survey on remote work found that people working off-site 60–80 percent of the time were more likely than other workers to feel engaged, and to feel that someone was watching out for their development.

A survey of National Merit scholars—exceptionally successful eighteen-year-olds crossing all lines of ethnicity, gender, geography, and class—turned up a common thread in their lives: the habit of sitting down to a family dinner table. It’s not just the food making them brilliant. It’s probably the parents—their care, priorities, and culture of support. The words: “I’ll expect you home for dinner.