Hooked Short Quotes

Thorne blinked at her, then down at the sewage he could barely make out in the darkness. "Don't you have some tool in that fancy hand of yours that can get us across?" Cinder glared, light-headed from her body's instinctively short breaths. "Oh, wow, how could I have forgotten about my grappling hook?

…when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence…in love, never settle…value yourself first and this will help you to value others…life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest…everyone in the world is different, and that’s ok…

So, what you're saying is that I bring out your book - wielding, short tempered side?" He hooked his foot through the straps of my backpack and brought in front of him. "Removing temptation." I gave him a look that communicated he should wither and die.

Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion, however short- lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place. That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains.

Today...no performance can be without its control screen video...its goal is to be hooked up to itself...the mirror phase has given way to the video phase. What develops around the video or stereo culture is not a narcissistic imaginary, but an effect of frantic self-referentiality, a short-circuit which immediately hooks up like with like, and, in doing so, emphasizes their surface intensity and deeper meaninglessness.

It surprises me, though it shouldn't, how short the memories of these politicians are. They forget the brutal lengths women have gone to in order to terminate pregnancies when abortion was illegal or when abortion is unaffordable. Women have thrown themselves down stairs and otherwise tried to physically harm themselves to force a miscarriage. Dr. Waldo Fielding noted in the New York Times, "Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion—darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off." Women have tried to use soap and bleach, catheters, natural remedies. Women have historically resorted to any means necessary. Women will do this again if we are backed into that terrible corner. This is the responsibility our society has forced on women for hundreds of years.

When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues. Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap. (A Study Of Reading Habits)

He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do.

It’s not as if he’s good-looking, because he’s not. Sometimes he’s so plain that he looks bland. But it’s his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter.

Getting in touch with the lovelessness within and letting that lovelessness speak its pain is one way to begin again on love's journey. In relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the partner who is hurting often finds that their mate is unwilling to 'hear' the pain. Women often tell me that they feel emotionally beaten down when their partners refuse to listen or talk. When women communicate from a place of pain, it is often characterized as 'nagging.' Sometimes women hear repeatedly that their partners are 'sick of listening to this shit.' Both cases undermine self-esteem. Those of us who were wounded in childhood often were shamed and humiliated when we expressed hurt. It is emotionally devastating when the partners we have chosen will not listen. Usually, partners who are unable to respond compassionately when hearing us speak our pain, whether they understand it or not, are unable to listen because that expressed hurt triggers their own feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Many men never want to feel helpless or vulnerable. They will, at times, choose to silence a partner with violence rather than witness emotional vulnerability. When a couple can identify this dynamic, they can work on the issue of caring, listening to each other's pain by engaging in short conversations at appropriate times (i.e., it's useless to try and speak your pain to someone who is bone weary, irritable, reoccupied, etc.). Setting a time when both individuals come together to engage in compassionate listening enhances communication and connection. When we are committed to doing the work of love we listen even when it hurts.

His voice was oily and slick as it poured from his mouth like liquid acid, threatening to hook onto the woman's hair like a fishing hook and drag her back to death.

Bad habits are spiraling slides that drag you round and round down the narrowing end of a cone that eventually ends up in a dark, tight, confining spot. Good habits are hooked wings that steadily grow in girth and strength. At first, they grasp and climb until those beautiful wings can lift the bearer out of the darkness and above the clouds to heights few ever experience.

You used to say you would never forget me. That made me feel like the cherry blossom, here today and gone tomorrow; it is not the kind of thing one says to a person with whom one proposes to spend the rest of one's life, after all. And, after all that, for three hundred and fifty-two in each leap year, I never think about you, sometimes. I cast an image into the past, like a fishing line, and up it comes with a gold mask on the hook, a mask with real tears at the ends of its eyes, but tears that are no longer anybody's tears. Time has drifted over your face.

In short, when we read a story, we really do slip into the protagonist’s skin, feeling what she feels, experiencing what she experiences. And what we feel is based, 100 percent, on one thing: her goal, which then defines how she evaluates everything the other characters do. If we don’t know what she wants, we have no idea how, or why, what she does helps her achieve it. As Pinker is quick to point out, without a goal, everything is meaningless.6 It

Joan and the Judge had gone to a Sunday brunch with friends. They would be home shortly, in good spirits probably, unless of course they saw their boy frozen to the mailbox. So Claire and Maggie had no choice. They each grabbed a shoulder and hooked under an elbow and yanked suddenly without warning. Scotty brought his hands quickly to his mouth. All three stood quietly staring at the miniature pink circle of flesh still stuck on the mailbox. "It looks like a little pizza," said Maggie without thinking.

Back in high school, I never understood how Amy could enjoy getting with guys just for the short haul. In a way, though, making out like this is more enjoyable because there’s no pressure for me to not do or say anything stupid. What’s the worst that can happen if I do? So I’m freer to focus on what I’m feeling, not what he feels about me.

ALWAYS hook a reader. If a detail is unnecessary, it doesn't belong in your work, long or short! Make everything intriguing. If you have to describe a desk, make it awesome.

Life's like a book: What matters is the hook. Be it short or long, just live it strong. Whether it's five stars, or how near or far, just soar!

The classroom is one of the most dynamic work settings precisely because we are given such a short amount of time to do so much.

Imagine a reader you can trust. This sounds like a simple imperative. But the difference between writing for the reader implicit in your education And writing for one you trust is the difference between writing clumsily, Using all the grappling hooks of transition and false logic, And writing well, able to move briskly and freely, Going anywhere from anywhere almost instantly. All your life you’ve been reading books that trusted you, Trusted your intelligence, your keenness, Your ability to feel an invisible wink, To follow any trail, Even while you were learning in school not to trust the reader.

new behaviors have a short half-life, as our minds tend to revert to our old ways of thinking and doing. Experiments show that lab animals habituated to new behaviors tend to regress to their first learned behaviors over time.

So it came as something of a shock when just a decade later Hooke and the other members of London’s Royal Society began to receive drawings and reports from an unlettered linen draper in Holland employing magnifications of up to 275 times. The draper’s name was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek

When creating a Hook, focus on the primary benefit or value your offer provides. Emphasize what’s uniquely valuable about your offer and why the prospect should care. Brainstorm a list of words and phrases related to your primary benefit, then experiment with different ways to connect them in a short phrase.

Gator, go wake that woman of yours. I need some answers. We need her to run the computers for us.” “Tonight, Boss?” Gator complained. “I had other ideas.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “We all did. Hop to it.” “What about Sam?” Tucker asked. “His woman is the one who got us into this.” “I’m wounded.” Sam clutched his abdomen dramatically and staggered with quick, long strides so that he made it to the doorway in three quick steps. Jonas coughed, sounding suspiciously like he’d muttered “bullshit” under his breath. Kyle threw a peanut at him and Jeff surfed across the table in his bare socks to try to catch him before he bolted. “He’s in love, boys, let him go. He’ll probably just get laughed at,” Tucker said. “Do you really think Azami’s brothers are going to allow her to hook up with Sam? She’s fine and he’s . . . well . . . klutzy.” “That hurt,” Sam said, turning back. “Did you get a good look at those boys? I thought Japanese men were supposed to be on the short side, but Daiki was tall and all muscle. His brother moves like a fucking fighter,” Tucker added. “They might just decide to give you a good beating for having the audacity to even think you could date their sister, let alone marry her.” “Fat help you are,” Sam accused. “I could use a little confidence here.” Kyle snorted. “You don’t have a chance, buddy.” “Goin’ to meet your maker,” Gator added solemnly. Jeff crossed himself as he hung five toes off the edge of the table. “Sorry, old son, you don’t have a prayer. You’re about to meet up with a couple of hungry sharks.” “Have you ever actually used a sword before?” Kadan asked, all innocent. Jonas drew his knife and began to sharpen it. “Funny thing about blade men, they always like to go for the throat.” He grinned up at Sam. “Just a little tip. Keep your chin down.” “You’re all a big help,” Sam said and stepped out into the hall. This was the biggest moment of his life. If they turned him down, he was lost.

She begins to strip like a roommate and climb into bed. They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there. Her hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs. He lies still as a dog beneath it, still as an idiot. The next morning she is recovered. His prick is hard. She takes it in her hand. They always sleep naked. Their flesh is innocent and warm. In the end she is arranged across the pillows, a ritual she accepts without a word. It is half an hour before they fall apart, spent, and call for breakfast. She eats both her rolls and one of his. “There was a lot,” she says. She glistens with it. The inside of her thighs is wet. “How long does it take to make again?” she asks. Dean tries to think. He is remembering biology. “Two or three days,” he guesses. “Non, non!” she cries. That is not what she meant. She begins to make him hard again. In a few minutes he rolls her over and puts it in as if the intermission were ended. This time she is wild. The great bed begins creaking. Her breath becomes short. Dean has to brace his hands on the wall. He hooks his knees outside her legs and drives himself deeper. “Oh,” she breathes, “that’s the best.

It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.

they’re selling is not real sex. It lacks connection, respect, and vulnerability, which is what makes sex sexy. “This kind of porn is sold by people who are like drug dealers. They sell a product that fills people with a rush that feels like joy for a short while but then becomes a killer of real joy. Over time people prefer the rush of drugs to the real joy of life. Many who start watching porn very young will get hooked on the rush. Eventually they will find it hard to enjoy real sex with real human beings. “Trying to learn about sex from porn is like trying to learn about the mountains by sniffing one of those air fresheners they sell at the gas station. When you finally get to the real mountains and breathe in that pure, wild air—you might be confused. You might wish it smelled like that fake, manufactured air-freshener version. “We don’t want you to stay away from porn while you’re young because sex is bad. We want you to stay away from porn because real sex—with humanity and vulnerability and love—is indescribably good. We don’t want fake sex ruining

W—what are you doing?” I stammer. I never fucking stammer. I’m a lawyer. I’m endlessly articulate. But as Raylan unzips his jeans, I couldn’t form a sentence to save my life. “I’m gonna cool off in the water.” His mouth quirks up in a half smile. “Care to join me?” He drops his jeans. Then, keeping his brilliant blue eyes fixed on mine, he hooks his thumbs in his boxer shorts and pulls those down, too.

The porn kids come across on the internet, is misogynistic poison. We have to explain that to them so they don't think sex is about violence. Sex is a wonderful and exciting thing about being human. It is natural to be curious about sex and when we are curious about things, we turn to the internet for information. But here's the problem with using the internet to learn about sex: you cannot know who is doing the teaching. There are people who have taken sex and sucked all the life out of it to package it and sell it on the internet. What they’re selling is not real sex. It lacks connection, respect, and vulnerability, which is what makes sex sexy. This kind of porn is sold by people who are like drug dealers. They sell a product that fills people with a rush that feels like joy for a short while but then becomes a killer of real joy. Over time people prefer the rush of drugs to the real joy of life. Many who start watching porn very young will get hooked on the rush. Eventually, they will find it hard to enjoy real sex with real human beings. Trying to learn about sex from porn is like trying to learn about the mountains by sniffing one of those air fresheners they sell at the gas station. When you finally get to the real mountains and breathe in that pure, wild air—you might be confused. You might wish it smelled like that fake, manufactured air freshener version. We don’t want you to stay away from porn while you’re young because sex is bad. We want you to stay away from porn because real sex—with humanity and vulnerability and love—is indescribably good. We don’t want fake sex ruining real sex for you.

Where the typical conservative argument on poverty falls short is that it often stops right there: Character matters . . . and that’s it. There’s not much society can do until poor people shape up and somehow develop better character. In the meantime, the rest of us are off the hook. We can lecture poor people, and we can punish them if they don’t behave the way we tell them to, but that’s where our responsibility ends.

I respond with a regal wave to his face and a right hook to his jaw. See? Lesson learned. I didn’t slap him once. Ugeen falls on his ass, as per usual, smacking the hands of the guards who try to help him up. He lunges at me but is cut short when the guards assigned to me swarm him with their swords out. “Uh, uh, uh,” I say. “Mustn’t attack the queen. Her royal guards don’t like it.” Ugeen no longer has anything to say.

It’s like this for all of us initially. We can contact our inner strength, our natural openness, for short periods before getting swept away. And this is excellent, heroic, a huge step in interrupting and weakening our ancient habits. If we keep a sense of humor and stay with it for the long haul, the ability to be present just naturally evolves. Gradually we lose our appetite for biting the hook. We lose our appetite for aggression. If

In short: all the woo is keeping us from dealing with our poo. Instead of medicating with Marlboros and martinis, we might be doing it with metaphysics and macrobiotics. And unlike boozing it up to drown our pain, the side effects of neurotic psychoanalyzing or forced flexibility are difficult to spot. We don't end up in rehab from too much meditation or therapy -- we just end up in more workshops. Think of that friend you have who has a not-so-loving relationship with her body, but because she eats "health foods" and talks a good "body positive" talk about just wanting to be strong, we cheer her on. But really, she's got self-destructive motivations and a mild eating disorder disguised as a holistic wellness routine. On the surface, positivity and wellness goalkeeping present so nicely that it can be hard to see when healthy actions are hooked to unhealthy ambitions. Like too much of anything, spiritual bypassing can numb us out from our Truth -- which is where the healing answers wait to be found.

Footsteps from the stairwell startle him out of the past. He turns around as Emma's mother takes the last step into the dining area, Emma right behind her. Mrs. McIntosh glides over and puts her arm around him. The smile on her face is genuine, but Emma's smile is more like a straight line. And she's blushing. "Galen, it's very nice to meet you," she says, ushering him into the kitchen. "Emma tells me you're taking her to the beach behind your house today. To swim?" "Yes, ma'am." Her transformation makes him wary. She smiles. "Well, good luck with getting her in the water. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I can't follow you over there, so I just need to see your driver's license while Emma runs outside to get your plate number." Emma rolls her eyes as she shuffles through a drawer and pulls out a pen and paper. She slams the door behind her when she leaves, which shakes the dishes on the wall. Galen nods, pulls out his wallet, and hands over the fake license. Mrs. McIntosh studies it and rummages through her purse until she produces a pen-which she uses to write on her hand. “Just need your license number in case we ever have any problems. But we’re not going to have any problems, are we, Galen? Because you’ll always have my daughter-my only daughter-home on time, isn’t that right?” He nods, then swallows. She holds out his license. When he accepts it, she grabs his wrist, pulling him close. She glances at the garage door and back to him. “Tell me right now, Galen Forza. Are you or are you not dating my daughter?” Great. She still doesn’t believe Emma. If she won’t believe them anyway, why keep trying to convince her? If she thinks they’re dating, the time he intends to spend with Emma will seem normal. But if they spend time together and tell her they’re not dating, she’ll be nothing but suspicious. Possibly even spy on them-which is less than ideal. So, dating Emma is the only way to make sure she mates with Grom. Things just get better and better. “Yes,” he says. “We’re definitely dating.” She narrows her eyes. “Why would she tell me you’re not?” He shrugs. “Maybe she’s ashamed of me.” To his surprise, she chuckles. “I seriously doubt that, Galen Forza.” Her humor is short lived. She grabs a fistful of his T-shirt. “Are you sleeping with her?” Sleeping…Didn’t Rachel say sleeping and mating are the same thing? Dating and mating are similar. But sleeping and mating are the same exact same. He shakes his head. “No, ma’am.” She raises a no-nonsense brow. “Why not? What’s wrong with my daughter?” That is unexpected. He suspects this woman can sense a lie like Toraf can track Rayna. All she’s looking for is honesty, but the real truth would just get him arrested. I’m crazy about your daughter-I’m just saving her for my brother. So he seasons his answer with the frankness she seems to crave. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughter, Mrs. McIntosh. I said we’re not sleeping together. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” She inhales sharply and releases him. Clearing her throat, she smoothes out his wrinkled shirt with her hand, then pats his chest. “Good answer, Galen. Good answer.” Emma flings open the garage door and stops short. “Mom, what are you doing?” Mrs. McIntosh steps away and stalks to the counter. “Galen and I were just chitchatting. What took you so long?” Galen guesses her ability to sense a lie probably has something to do with her ability to tell one. Emma shoots him a quizzical look, but he returns a casual shrug. Her mother grabs a set of keys from a hook by the refrigerator and nudges her daughter out of the way, but not before snatching the paper out of her hand.

And I’ve stayed hooked on campaigns to this day. Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself. Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.

Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain’t going to blow.” “If I was a strong man, I couldn’t get up hook and get out fast enough,” the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. “Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You’ll all stay, I wouldn’t advise you if I thought you’d go, You can’t drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp.

Best Of Friends [Verse 1] I see Alaina in the distance Shouting out a word And she runs through persistence Oh, her mind is so absurd Oh love, oh love Jumping jolly until the end I wanna be your friend [Hook] I wanna be your best friend I don't want you to be my girl I wanna be your best friend I don't want you to be my… I don't want you to be my… [Verse 2] Well well well… I see witness Wendy Her short hair and her pistol boots Oh man, she's always ready To take that line and finally shoot Oh lord, oh lord Jumping jolly until the end I wanna be your friend [Hook x2]

Hooke, who was well known for taking credit for ideas that weren’t necessarily his own, claimed that he had solved the problem already but declined now to share it on the interesting and inventive grounds that it would rob others of the satisfaction of discovering the answer for themselves. He would instead “conceal it for some time, that others might know how to value it.” If he thought any more on the matter, he left no evidence of it. Halley, however, became consumed with finding the answer, to the point that the following year he traveled to Cambridge and boldly called upon the university’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Isaac Newton, in the hope that he could help.

Robert Hooke, who is perhaps best remembered now as the first person to describe a cell, and the great and stately Sir Christopher Wren, who was actually an astronomer first and architect second, though that is not often generally remembered now. In 1683, Halley, Hooke, and Wren were dining in London when the conversation turned to the motions of celestial objects. It was known that planets were inclined to orbit in a particular kind of oval known as an ellipse—“a very specific and precise curve,” to quote Richard Feynman—but it wasn’t understood why. Wren generously offered a prize worth forty shillings (equivalent to a couple of weeks’ pay) to whichever of the men could provide a solution.

Worse and somehow embarrassing affair are "ghost" dreams, from which the dreamer only remembers fragments, and very short snippets of events, after which the next morning is left only a vague feeling of a messaged received. If the "ghost" is repeated several times, it is certain that it is a dream which is important for some reason. Then the dreamer, through concentration and auto-suggestion tries to force the dream again, this time a more specific "ghost". The best result are to force oneself to dream again immediately after waking up - called "hooking". If the dream does not produce a "hook" they try and produce a vision during one of the following session by concentration and meditation prior to going to sleep. Such pressure programming is called "anchoring".

The first person to describe a cell was Robert Hooke, whom we last encountered squabbling with Isaac Newton over credit for the invention of the inverse square law. Hooke achieved many things in his sixty-eight years—he was both an accomplished theoretician and a dab hand at making ingenious and useful instruments—but nothing he did brought him greater admiration than his popular book Microphagia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Miniature Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, produced in 1665. It revealed to an enchanted public a universe of the very small that was far more diverse, crowded, and finely structured than anyone had ever come close to imagining. Among the microscopic features first identified by Hooke were little chambers in plants that he called “cells” because they reminded

Also, it must be kept in mind at all times that the women we are concerned with conducted their lives, had thoughts, went traveling, ate dinner, and fell in love while entirely encased beneath their gowns in the following articles of clothing: a chemise, a corset, a camisole over the corset, up to six petticoats—beginning with a short, stiff one, one or two flannel ones for warmth, a plain one and then some embroidered ones—a vest or undershirt, stockings, garters, and, depending on the decade, a whalebone crinoline or bustle. And all of these things were held on and together with strings, and tapes, and innumerable buttons and hooks.11 Whatever we are able to make of Mary Ellen’s adulterous behavior, we will not be able to excuse it on the grounds of impulse; there could hardly have been such a thing as an impulsive sexual irregularity for women so encumbered.

Like charges, charges of the same sign, strongly repel one another. We can think of it as a dedicated mutual aversion to their own kind, a little as if the world were densely populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons. So how can a nucleus stick together? Why does it not instantly fly apart? Because there is another force of nature: not gravity, not electricity, but the short-range nuclear force, which, like a set of hooks that engage only when protons and neutrons come very close together, thereby overcomes the electrical repulsion among the protons. The neutrons, which contribute nuclear forces of attraction and no electrical forces of repulsion, provide a kind of glue that helps to hold the nucleus together. Longing for solitude, the hermits have been chained to their grumpy fellows and set among others given to indiscriminate and voluble amiability.

Sometimes,” she told me, “a girl will give a guy a blow job at the end of the night because she doesn’t want to have sex with him and he expects to be satisfied. So if I want him to leave and I don’t want anything to happen . . .” She trailed off, leaving me to imagine the rest. There was so much to unpack in that short statement: why a young man should expect to be sexually satisfied; why a girl not only isn’t outraged, but considers it her obligation to comply; why she doesn’t think a blow job constitutes “anything happening”; the pressure young women face in any personal relationship to put others’ needs before their own; the potential justification of assault with a chaser of self-blame. “It goes back to girls feeling guilty,” Anna said. “If you go to a guy’s room and are hooking up with him, you feel bad leaving him without pleasing him in some way. But, you know, it’s unfair. I don’t think he feels badly for you.” In their research on high school girls and oral sex, April Burns, a professor of psychology at City University of New York, and her colleagues found that girls thought of fellatio kind of like homework: a chore to get done, a skill to master, one on which they expected to be evaluated, possibly publicly. As with schoolwork, they worried about failing or performing poorly—earning the equivalent of low marks. Although they took satisfaction in a task well done, the pleasure they described was never physical, never located in their own bodies. They were both dispassionate and nonpassionate about oral sex—socialized, the researchers concluded, to see themselves as “learners” in their encounters rather than “yearners.” The concern with pleasing, as opposed to pleasure, was pervasive among the girls I met, especially among high schoolers, who were just starting sexual experimentation.

She held up three hangers inside a vinyl garment bag and hooked them sideways on the coatrack to unzip. "Raw silk. Vintage. Sort of a purple-black." "Aubergine," he declared and cracked the opening wider. "I love a man who can make colors sound dirty." She grinned. "Cross-dyed." He wondered if Trip had helped pick this out, if he'd seen her model it and convinced her to splurge. "Great suit." "I gotta stand next to J.R. Ward. Feel me?" She fluttered her short nails at him. "Baby, I went and bought a pair of Givenchy boots I cannot even afford because the Warden is gonna be there in full effect, and you know what that means!" He didn't really, but he got the gist. "So you want nighttime for daytime." "Extra vampy, hold the trampy. Like, more Lust For Dracula than Breaking Dawn." Rina squeezed her shoulders together to amp her cleavage. "If I'm hauling the girls out, no way can I do sparkly anorexia.

In the year 2000, it was standard practice for the successful chief executive officer of a corporation to shuck his wife of two to three decades’ standing for the simple reason that her subcutaneous packing was deteriorating, her shoulders and upper back were thickening like a shot-putter’s—in short, she was no longer sexy. Once he set up the old wife in a needlepoint shop where she could sell yarn to her friends, he was free to take on a new wife, a “trophy wife,” preferably a woman in her twenties, and preferably blond, as in an expression from that time, a “lemon tart.” What was the downside? Was the new couple considered radioactive socially? Did people talk sotto voce, behind the hand, when the tainted pair came by? Not for a moment. All that happened was that everybody got on the cell phone or the Internet and rang up or E-mailed one another to find out the spelling of the new wife’s first name, because it was always some name like Serena and nobody was sure how to spell it.

I left Patrick coloring in his room and darted to the living room, but then I stopped short. Because William and Sean weren’t alone. “Bryan,” I said on a gasp, drawing three sets of eyes to me. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were wide and surprised as he took in my appearance, trailing over my high heels, bare legs, and form-fitting silk dress. Self-consciously, I glanced at myself again, tugging on the hem. Bryan’s voice was distracted; as though he were talking to himself, he began, “Holy sh—” “You look great.” William stepped in front of his teammate and gave me a warm, if sedate, smile. I frowned at William, then at Bryan—or what I could see of him behind William—then at Sean, who was inspecting my ceiling. My frown deepened. “What’s going on?” “Oh,” Sean chirped, imbuing his tone with forced lightness, “I just thought since you were going out, Patrick, Bryan, and I could have a men’s night in. You know, go through the latest Dolce & Gabbana catalogue, play a friendly game of Mario Kart, teach Patrick how to hook in a scrum. The usual.

In solitude, the mind and body Are not troubled by distraction. Therefore, leave this worldly life And totally abandon mental wandering. With this verse, Shantideva begins a discussion on the need for solitude. In contemplating this section, it is helpful to remember three topics: dunzi, or wasting our lives with useless distractions; shenpa, the experience of being hooked; and heartbreak or nausea with samsara. When Shantideva tells us to leave this worldly life, he’s addressing how hooked we become by the things of this world, and how we need to find time to be free of distractions. After a while, nausea with getting hooked becomes like an ache in the heart that never goes away. Shantideva is not making an ultimate statement about how to live one’s life. He’s just saying that in order for the mind to become steady, we’ll need to remove ourselves from dunzi, at least for short periods of time. Outer solitude is a support for inner solitude. This is his point. We can’t kid ourselves: if we never take a break from our busy lives, it’s going to be extremely difficult to tame our minds.

Hope there isn’t anyone below us.” “If so, they’re already asleep. I mean, I’d already be asleep if you weren’t licking my ear. Why are you licking my ear?” Lex retrieved her tongue. “Because I feel like something awful is going to happen tomorrow. And I’m really hoping it doesn’t involve my grisly demise, or an even grislier demise for you than your last one, but—” She swallowed. “I want this night to be a happy one, because I think they’re going to be in short supply from now on.” “Yeah, but—” He glanced behind them. “With four friends, one uncle, one Pandora, and a comatose museum curator within hearing range?” “Good point.” Lex nodded thoughtfully, as if they were debating tax reform. “However: this.” She grabbed his hands and slapped them onto her chest. His eyes bulged, then met hers. “Compelling rebuttal.” Lex grinned and dove back into his face while Driggs’s hands reached around her back. “Ah, the over-shoulder boulder holder,” he said in a sneering voice, picking at her bra. “My old nemesis.” “Okay, don’t panic,” Lex said. “Do it just like we practiced.” “Right. The hook faces out.” “The hook faces in.” “DAMMIT.

I'm anxious for you to meet my new boarder," Miriam said as they headed down the street. "He's such a handsome, well-mannered young man. I think you would like each other." Willow stopped short. "Wait a minute . You aren't thinking of doing some matchmaking, are you? Criminey, all I need is another man to take care of. Listen, if I wanted a beau that bad, I could hook one easy all on my own." "Oh? Then why haven't you?" "I just told you why. I don't need another man to do for. All a miner wants is a hard-working woman to slave for 'im while he chases dreams of gold and silver. Gamblers ain't much different, 'cept they're smoother talkers. They want a pretty mistress, one who don't mind working on her backside when her man's down on his luck." After a whole afternoon in Willow's company, Miriam was becoming shockproof. She merely raised a disapproving brow at this last statement. "I see your point, Willow, but has a real gentleman ever asked to court you?" "I suppose that depends on your definition of a gentleman." "Humph! I thought as much." Miriam sashayed on down the boardwalk. "You never did anwer my question," Willow reminded her, hurrying to catch up. "Are you matchmaking?" "Oh,look, we're here at the ice-cream parlor already. What flavor are you going to have?

That man,” she announced huffily, referring to their host, “can’t put two words together without losing his meaning!” Obviously she’d expected better of the quality during the time she was allowed to mix with them. “He’s afraid of us, I think,” Elizabeth replied, climbing out of bed. “Do you know the time? He desired me to accompany him fishing this morning at seven.” “Half past ten,” Berta replied, opening drawers and turning toward Elizabeth for her decision as to which gown to wear. “He waited until a few minutes ago, then went of without you. He was carrying two poles. Said you could join him when you arose.” “In that case, I think I’ll wear the pink muslin,” she decided with a mischievous smile. The Earl of Marchman could scarcely believe his eyes when he finally saw his intended making her way toward him. Decked out in a frothy pink gown with an equally frothy pink parasol and a delicate pink bonnet, she came tripping across the bank. Amazed at the vagaries of the female mind, he quickly turned his attention back to the grandfather trout he’d been trying to catch for five years. Ever so gently he jiggled his pole, trying to entice or else annoy the wily old fish into taking his fly. The giant fish swam around his hook as if he knew it might be a trick and then he suddenly charged it, nearly jerking the pole out of John’s hands. The fish hurtled out of the water, breaking the surface in a tremendous, thrilling arch at the same moment John’s intended bride deliberately chose to let out a piercing shriek: “Snake!” Startled, John jerked his head in her direction and saw her charging at him as if Lucifer himself was on her heels, screaming, “Snake! Snake! Snnnaaaake!” And in that instant his connection was broken; he let his line go slack, and the fish dislodged the hook, exactly as Elizabeth had hoped. “I saw a snake,” she lied, panting and stopping just short of the arms he’d stretched out to catch her-or strangle her, Elizabeth thought, smothering a smile. She stole a quick searching glance at the water, hoping for a glimpse of the magnificent trout he’d nearly caught, her hands itching to hold the pole and try her own luck. Lord Marchman’s disgruntled question snapped her attention back to him. “Would you like to fish, or would you rather sit and watch for a bit, until you recover from your flight from the serpent?” Elizabeth looked around in feigned shock. “Goodness, sir, I don’t fish!” “Do you sit?” he asked with what might have been sarcasm. Elizabeth lowered her lashes to hide her smile at the mounting impatience in his voice. “Of course I sit,” she proudly told him. “Sitting is an excessively ladylike occupation, but fishing, in my opinion, is not. I shall adore watching you do it, however.” For the next two hours she sat on the boulder beside him, complaining about its hardness, the brightness of the sun and the dampness of the air, and when she ran out of matters to complain about she proceeded to completely spoil his morning by chattering his ears off about every inane topic she could think of while occasionally tossing rocks into the stream to scare off his fish.

In July 2018, a safety crisis rocked the global drug supply—and seemed to prove Baker’s point. Regulators in Europe announced a harrowing discovery: the widely used active ingredient for valsartan, a generic version of the blood pressure drug Diovan, contained a cancer-causing toxin known as NDMA (once used in liquid rocket fuel). The drug had been made by the Chinese company Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest manufacturer of valsartan active ingredients. In the United States, over a dozen drug manufacturers, all of which used the Chinese ingredient, recalled their products, as did dozens more manufacturers around the world. The Chinese company tried to defend itself by explaining that it had altered its production process in 2012 to increase yields of the drug, a change that had been approved by regulators. In short, the change had been made to maximize profit. Some patients had been consuming the toxin for six years. As the FDA tried to reassure consumers that the risk of developing cancer, even from daily exposure to the toxin, was extremely low, a second cancer-causing impurity was detected in the ingredients. Though the valsartan catastrophe seemed to take the FDA by surprise, it shouldn’t have. In May 2017, an FDA investigator had found evidence at the plant in Linhai, China, that the company was failing to investigate potential impurities in its own drugs, which showed up as aberrant peaks in its test results. The investigator designated the plant as Official Action Indicated, but the agency downgraded that to VAI. In short, the company was let off the hook—only to wind up in the middle of a worldwide quality scandal less than a year later. By

Can a reasonable man ever truly question the nobility of the heat engine he calls his body? What option does he have but to heap praise on his form, to self-adore, to admire, and to hold it up as the greatest statement of beauty in a beautiful garden? What, though, is to be admired in such a frighteningly fragile machine; a perilously needy contraption laced with kilometres of liquid and electrical conduits prone to leaks, rot, clogs, and short-circuits? What is there to be proud of in a machine that has an eight hour battery life and is predetermined to spend half its existence in a defenceless, catatonic coma? What is to be revered in a mechanism let loose in a sealed off room where almost everything—including its single source of light and warmth—makes it sick, but whose immune system functions by late entry crisis-response imitation? Where is the awe in a contrivance that freezes and dies if placed a little over here, or overheats and dies if placed a little over there? Where is the wonder in an instrument that is crushed to a pulp if dropped a little down there, or boiled away to nothing if lifted a little up there? Where is the marvel in an appliance where three-quarters of the planet’s surface will drown it, and three-quarters of the atmosphere will asphyxiate it? What is there to be cherished in a machine born innately greedy and so utterly useless that it has to wait three years for its neural networks to hook-up and come online before it even begins to get a hint of who or even what it is, and only then can it start to relearn absolutely everything its forebears had already bothered to learn? Where is the artistry in a thinking engine whose sweetest fuel can only be embezzled from other thinking engines?

In his job as a financial educator, Keith had spent a fair amount of time breaking down the act — and sometimes art — of short selling, in a way that less savvy customers could understand. When a trader believed a company was in trouble, and its stock was overvalued, they could 'borrow' shares, sell them, and then when the stock went down as they'd predicted, rebuy the shares at a lower price, return them to whoever they'd borrowed them from, and pocket the difference. If GameStop was trading at 5, you could borrow 100 shares, sell them for $500; when the stock hit 1, you bought back the 100 shares for $100, returned them, pocketing $400 for yourself. You paid a little fee to the lender for their trouble and came out with a tidy profit. But what happened if the stock went up instead of down? What happened if GameStop figured out how to capitalize on its millions of nostalgic customers, who spent billions on video games every year? What if the stock went to 10 instead of 1? What happened was, the short seller was royally screwed. He'd borrowed those 100 shares and sold them at 5. Now the stock was at 10, but he still needed to return his 100 shares. Buying them on the market at 10 meant spending $1000. And what was worse, when he'd borrowed the shares, he'd agreed on a timeline to return them. There was a ticking clock hanging over his head, so he had a choice — buy the shares back at 10 now, losing $500 on the deal — or wait a little longer, hoping the stock went back down before his time limit was up. And what if he waited, and the stock kept going up? Sooner or later, he had to buy those shares back. Even if the stock went to 15, 20 — he was on the hook for those 100 shares. Theoretically, there was no limit to how much he could lose.

Pat and I smiled to see a small evening bag with a short handle hooked over her left elbow. We wondered why she would carry a handbag in her own home. What would she possibly need from it? I was longing to walk over to Her Majesty, the Queen, and tell her, mother to mother, “Your Majesty, we’ve known Lady Diana quite well for the past year and a half. We’d like you to know what a truly lovely young woman your son is about to marry.” A sincere and uncontroversial prewedding remark. Unfortunately, this was not only the groom’s mother but also Her Majesty, the Queen of England. Protocol prevented our approaching her, since we had not been personally introduced. I toyed briefly with the idea of walking up to her anyway and pretending that, as an American, I didn’t know the rules. But I was afraid of a chilling rebuff and did not want to embarrass Diana, who had been kind enough to invite us. Pat did not encourage me to plunge ahead. In fact, this time he exclaimed, “Have you lost your mind?” Maybe I should have taken a chance. Too timid again! Our next glimpse of the royal family was Prince Philip, socializing a room or two away from the queen and surrounded by attractive women. He was a bit shorter than he appears in photographs, but quite handsome with a dignified presence and a regal, controlled charm. Pat was impressed by how flawlessly Prince Philip played his role as host, speaking graciously to people in small groups, then moving smoothly on to the next group, unhurried and polished. I thought he had an intimidating, wouldn’t “suffer fools gladly” air—not a person with whom one could easily make small talk, although his close friends seemed relaxed with him. It was easy to believe that he had been a stern and domineering father to Prince Charles. The Prince of Wales had seemed much warmer and more approachable.

How come I wasn’t riding around in his middle seat? Was I supposed to initiate this? Was this expected of me? Because I probably should know early on. But wouldn’t he have gestured in that direction if he’d wanted me to move over and sit next to him? Maybe, just maybe, he’d liked those girls better than he liked me. Maybe they’d had a closeness that warranted their riding side by side in a pickup, a closeness that he and I just don’t share? Please don’t let that be the reason. I don’t like that reason. I had to ask him. I had to know. “Can I ask you something?” I said as we drove down the road separating a neighboring ranch from his. “Sure,” Marlboro Man answered. He reached over and touched my knee. “Did you ever used to drive around in your pickup with a girl sitting in the middle seat right next to you?” I tried not to sound accusatory. A grin formed in the corner of Marlboro Man’s mouth. “Sure I did,” he said. His hand was still on my knee. “Why?” “Oh, no reason. I was just curious,” I said. I wanted to leave it at that. “What made you think of that?” he said. “Oh, I was really just curious,” I repeated. “Growing up, I’d sometimes see boys and girls riding right next to each other in pickups, and I just wondered if you ever did. That’s all.” I stopped short of telling him I never understood the whole thing or asking him why he loved Julie more than me. “Yep. I did,” he said. I looked out the window and thought for a minute. What am I? Chopped liver? Is there some specific reason he never pulls me over close to him as we drive around the countryside? Why doesn’t he hook his right arm affectionately around my neck and claim me as the woman of his pickup? I never knew I had such a yearning to ride next to a man in a pickup, but apparently it had been a suppressed lifelong dream I knew nothing about. Suddenly, sitting in that pickup with Marlboro Man, I’d apparently never wanted anything so badly in my life.

The pink?" she suggested, holding the shimmering rose-colored satin in front of Sara's half-clad figure. Sara held her breath in awe. She had never worn such a sumptuous creation. Silk roses adorned the sleeves and hem of the gown. The short-waisted bodice was finished with a stomacher of silver filigree and a row of satin bows. Lily shook her head thoughtfully. "Charming, but too innocent." Sara suppressed a disappointed sigh. She couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than the pink satin. Busily Monique discarded the gown and sorted through the others. "The peach. No man will be able to keep his eyes from her in that. Here, let us try it, chérie." Raising her arms, Sara let the dressmaker and her assistant Cora pull the gauzy peach-hued gown over her head. "I think it will have to be altered a great deal," Sara commented, her voice muffled beneath the delicate layers of fabric. The gowns had been fitted for Lily's lithe, compact lines. Sara was more amply endowed, with a generous bosom and curving hips, and a tiny, scoped-in waist... a figure style that had been fashionable thirty years ago. The current high-waisted Grecian mode was not particularly flattering to her. Monique settled the gown around Sara's feet and then began to yank the back of it together. "Oui, Lady Raiford has the form that fashion loves." Energetically, she hooked the tight bodice together. "But you, chérie, have the kind that men love. Draw in your breath, s'il vous plaît." Sara winced as her breasts were pushed upward until they nearly overflowed from the low-cut bodice. The hem of the unusually full skirt was bordered with three rows of graduated tulip-leaves. Sara could hardly believe the woman in the mirror was herself. The peach gown, with its transparent layers of silk and shockingly low neckline, had been designed to attract a man's attention. It was too loose at the waist, but her breasts rose from the shallow bodice in creamy splendor pushed together to form an enticing cleavage.

At last Angela turned in to the space between the pews. She picked her way around Solembum--who crouched next to the novitiate he had killed, every hair on his body standing on end--and then carefully made her way over the corpses of the three novitiates Eragon had slain. As she approached, the High Priest began to thrash like a hooked fish in an attempt to push itself farther up the pew. At the same time, the pressure on Eragon’s mind lessened, although not enough for him to risk moving. The herbalist stopped when she reached the High Priest, and the High Priest surprised Eragon by giving up its struggle and lying panting on the seat of the bench. For a minute, the hollow-eyed creature and the short, stern-faced woman glared at each other, an invisible battle of wills taking place between them. Then the High Priest flinched, and a smile appeared on Angela’s lips. She dropped her poniard and, from within her dress, drew forth a tiny dagger with a blade the color of a ruddy sunset. Leaning over the High Priest, she whispered, ever so faintly, “You ought to know my name, tongueless one. If you had, you never would have dared oppose us. Here, let me tell it to you… Her voice dropped even lower then, too low for Eragon to hear, but as she spoke, the High Priest blanched, and its puckered mouth opened, forming a round black oval, and an unearthly howl emanated from its throat, and the whole of the cathedral rang with the creature’s baying. “Oh, be quiet!” exclaimed the herbalist, and she buried her sunset-colored dagger in the center of the High Priest’s chest. The blade flashed white-hot and vanished with a sound like a far-off thunderclap. The area around the wound glowed like burning wood; then skin and flesh began to disintegrate into a fine, dark soot that poured into the High Priest’s chest. With a choked gargle, the creature’s howl ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The spell quickly devoured the rest of the High Priest, reducing its body to a pile of black powder, the shape of which matched the outline of the priest’s head and torso. “And good riddance,” said Angela with a firm nod.

Enjoy Your Friends’ Criticism A man’s capacity to receive another man’s direct criticism is a measure of his capacity to receive masculine energy. If he doesn’t have a good relationship to masculine energy (e.g., his father), then he will act like a woman and be hurt or defensive rather than make use of other men’s criticism. About once a week, you should sit down with your closest men friends and discuss what you are doing in your life and what you are afraid of doing. The conversation should be short and simple. You should state where you are at. Then, your friends should give you a behavioral experiment, something you can do that will reveal something to you, or grant more freedom in your life. “I want to have an affair with Denise, but I don’t want to hurt my wife. I’m afraid of her finding out,” you might say. “You’ve been talking about Denise now for six months. You are wasting your life energy on this fantasy. You should either have sex with her by tomorrow night, or drop the whole thing and never talk about it again,” your friends might say, challenging your hesitation and mediocrity. “OK. I know I’m not going to do it. I see now that I am too afraid of ruining my marriage to have an affair with Denise. My marriage is more important than my desire for Denise. I’ll drop it and refocus on the priorities in my life. Thanks.” Your close men friends should be willing to challenge your mediocrity by suggesting a concrete action you can perform that will pop you out of your rut, one way or the other. And you must be willing to offer them your brutal honesty, in the same way, if you are all to grow. Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another. If you are at your edge, your men friends should respect that, but not let you off the hook. They should honor your fears, and, in love, continue to goad you beyond them, without pushing you. If you merely want support from your men friends without challenge, it bespeaks an unresolved issue you may have with your father, whether he is alive or dead. The father force is the force of loving challenge and guidance. Without this masculine force in your life, your direction becomes unchecked, and you are liable to meander in the mush of your own ambiguity and indecision. Your close men friends can provide the stark light of love—uncompromised by a fearful Mr. Nice act—by which you can see the direction you really want to go. Choose men friends who themselves are living at their edge, facing their fears and living just beyond them. Men of this kind can love you without protecting you from the necessary confrontation with reality that your life involves. You should be able to trust that these friends will tell you about your life as they see it, offer you a specific action which will shed light on your own position, and give you the support necessary to live in the freedom just beyond your edge, which is not always, or even usually, comfortable.

A stranger. Young, well-dressed, pale and visibly sweaty, as if he’d endured some great shock and needed a drink. West would have been tempted to pour him one, if not for the fact that he’d just pulled a small revolver from his pocket and was pointing it in his direction. The nose of the short barrel was shaking. Commotion erupted all around them as patrons became aware of the drawn pistol. Tables and chairs were vacated, and shouts could be heard among the growing uproar. “You self-serving bastard,” the stranger said unsteadily. “That could be either of us,” Severin remarked with a slight frown, setting down his drink. “Which one of us do you want to shoot?” The man didn’t seem to hear the question, his attention focused only on West. “You turned her against me, you lying, manipulative snake.” “It’s you, apparently,” Severin said to West. “Who is he? Did you sleep with his wife?” “I don’t know,” West said sullenly, knowing he should be frightened of an unhinged man aiming a pistol at him. But it took too much energy to care. “You forgot to cock the hammer,” he told the man, who immediately pulled it back. “Don’t encourage him, Ravenel,” Severin said. “We don’t know how good a shot he is. He might hit me by mistake.” He left his chair and began to approach the man, who stood a few feet away. “Who are you?” he asked. When there was no reply, he persisted, “Pardon? Your name, please?” “Edward Larson,” the young man snapped. “Stay back. If I’m to be hanged for shooting one of you, I’ll have nothing to lose by shooting both of you.” West stared at him intently. The devil knew how Larson had found him there, but clearly he was in a state. Probably in worse condition than anyone in the club except for West. He was clean-cut, boyishly handsome, and looked like he was probably very nice when he wasn’t half-crazed. There could be no doubt as to what had made him so wretched—he knew his wrongdoings had been exposed, and that he’d lost any hope of a future with Phoebe. Poor bastard. Picking up his glass, West muttered, “Go on and shoot.” Severin continued speaking to the distraught man. “My good fellow, no one could blame you for wanting to shoot Ravenel. Even I, his best friend, have been tempted to put an end to him on a multitude of occasions.” “You’re not my best friend,” West said, after taking a swallow of brandy. “You’re not even my third best friend.” “However,” Severin continued, his gaze trained on Larson’s gleaming face, “the momentary satisfaction of killing a Ravenel—although considerable—wouldn’t be worth prison and public hanging. It’s far better to let him live and watch him suffer. Look how miserable he is right now. Doesn’t that make you feel better about your own circumstances? I know it does me.” “Stop talking,” Larson snapped. As Severin had intended, Larson was distracted long enough for another man to come up behind him unnoticed. In a deft and well-practiced move, the man smoothly hooked an arm around Larson’s neck, grasped his wrist, and pushed the hand with the gun toward the floor. Even before West had a good look at the newcomer’s face, he recognized the smooth, dry voice with its cut-crystal tones, so elegantly commanding it could have belonged to the devil himself. “Finger off the trigger, Larson. Now.” It was Sebastian, the Duke of Kingston . . . Phoebe’s father. West lowered his forehead to the table and rested it there, while his inner demons all hastened to inform him they really would have preferred the bullet.

In the early 1680s, at just about the time that Edmond Halley and his friends Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were settling down in a London coffee house and embarking on the casual wager that would result eventually in Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hemy Cavendish’s weighing of the Earth, and many of the other inspired and commendable undertakings that have occupied us for much of the past four hundred pages, a rather less desirable milestone was being passed on the island of Mauritius, far out in the Indian Ocean some eight hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar. There, some forgotten sailor or sailor’s pet was harrying to death the last of the dodos, the famously flightless bird whose dim but trusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a rather irresistible target for bored young tars on shore leave. Millions of years of peaceful isolation had not prepared it for the erratic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings. We don’t know precisely the circumstances, or even year, attending the last moments of the last dodo, so we don’t know which arrived first a world that contained a Principia or one that had no dodos, but we do know that they happened at more or less the same time. You would be hard pressed, I would submit to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being-a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as we did it. Indeed, dodos were so spectacularly short on insight it is reported, that if you wished to find all the dodos in a vicinity you had only to catch one and set it to squawking, and all the others would waddle along to see what was up. The indignities to the poor dodo didn’t end quite there. In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire. This was a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise. A passing employee, aghast tried to rescue the bird but could save only its head and part of one limb. As a result of this and other departures from common sense, we are not now entirely sure what a living dodo was like. We possess much less information than most people suppose-a handful of crude descriptions by "unscientific voyagers, three or four oil paintings, and a few scattered osseous fragments," in the somewhat aggrieved words of the nineteenth century naturalist H. E. Strickland. As Strickland wistfully observed, we have more physical evidence of some ancient sea monsters and lumbering saurapods than we do of a bird that lived into modern times and required nothing of us to survive except our absence. So what is known of the dodo is this: it lived on Mauritius, was plump but not tasty, and was the biggest-ever member of the pigeon family, though by quite what margin is unknown as its weight was never accurately recorded. Extrapolations from Strickland’s "osseous fragments" and the Ashmolean’s modest remains show that it was a little over two and a half feet tall and about the same distance from beak tip to backside. Being flightless, it nested on the ground, leaving its eggs and chicks tragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeys brought to the island by outsiders. It was probably extinct by 1683 and was most certainly gone by 1693. Beyond that we know almost nothing except of course that we will not see its like again. We know nothing of its reproductive habits and diet, where it ranged, what sounds it made in tranquility or alarm. We don’t possess a single dodo egg. From beginning to end our acquaintance with animate dodos lasted just seventy years.

science-fiction short story set in the ATLAS universe. I will release ATLAS, a full-length military science-fiction

Just Another Day" is an 8,500 word military science-fiction short story set in the ATLAS universe. I will release

already laid out to get responses from “warm” e-mails. • Live and die by your Subject line. If you don’t, your e-mail may never get read. Focus on your strongest hook, either the contact you have in common or the specific value you have to offer. Make them curious. • Game the timing. There’s a lot of debate about the best time to e-mail, but I personally like to fire away when I think the person is apt to be spending time on e-mailing. Their morning, lunchtime, and the last hours of the workday are typical. • Be brief. Once you’ve written a draft, the “best” version of it is usually 50 percent shorter. Yes, we’re half as interesting as we think! Your e-mail should fit into a single screen. If I have to scroll to get to the point, I’ve already lost interest. • Have a clear call to action. What do you want them to do? Make your first request clear and easy. Request fifteen minutes on the phone, not just a vague phone call. Offer suggested dates and times, not just “a meeting sometime.” Short-circuit the process as much as you can, and don’t make them guess what you’re looking for. • Read it out loud. I had an assistant who would do this with every e-mail she wrote, and it always made me laugh when I caught her in the act. But she was smart. Listening to herself, she ensured that the language was clear and conversational, and she timed it, too, with a forty-five-second limit. • Spell-check. There’s no excuse for poor spelling and grammar in an e-mail. I’ve written two books and have a URL with my name in it, and I still get people e-mailing “Keith Ferazzi” with one “r.” I know you’ll do better.

A few weeks prior, I noticed a small cargo vessel at anchor on the northern end of the harbor. Every so often a stray yacht, sail boat or tramp steamer would mysteriously show up and stay a while before leaving again. Coming into Monrovia was always welcome. No one would ever pull into any of the open ports along the Liberian coast if they could help it. There was always the chance of trouble with pirates or the authorities and so it was strange for this small ship to be so far from its usual trading routes closer to Europe. The ship was beat up from years in the North Sea, with her ribs outlined through her rusted skin. Everyone had heard the rumor, that Franz Knupple came to Liberia on her but now she was quietly swinging from her hook, at the small designated anchorage near the fishing pier. Without anyone paying all that much attention to her she had become part of the landscape. Now the story continued… The vessel’s captain was inspecting the bilges for leaks, with a drop cord in his hand and as he stood ankle deep in water, a short or break in the wire, electrocuted him! Since the last time Knupple was seen in Harbel no one had seen him, but now after the death of the Zenit’s Captain, a new rumor was spawned. It didn’t sound reasonable to anyone that a seasoned seaman would be standing in water with a live electrical wire in his hand. One of the first rules of the sea was to stay away from electricity when you are wet or standing in water. Although anything is possible, no one could believe that he had electrocuted himself.

Feshbach and Singer were professors at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. Experimental ethics laws were lax then, so they devised an unpleasant experiment using electric shocks. One at a time, male psychology students watched a short video of a man completing mental and physical puzzles. A research assistant strapped a small electrode to each student’s ankles, which would administer a series of eight shocks as they watched the video. The assistant explained that the shocks would build in intensity, and that it was normal for the students to feel afraid. Half of them were told to express their fears—“to be aware of and admit your feelings.” The other half were told to suppress their fears—“to keep your mind off your emotional reactions and not think about them . . . to forget about your feelings . . .” When the video ended, they were asked whether the man they had seen on the video was afraid. As Freud had predicted twenty years earlier, the students who were asked to suppress their own fears believed the man was himself afraid. They were projecting the very emotions they had been asked to suppress onto the world around them. Those who were instead encouraged to express their fears were far less likely to believe the man in the video was afraid. By expressing their own fears, they were freed from the preoccupation with fear that plagued the suppressors.

It’s a modern version of the pagan Pantheon.” Willard spoke quickly with short, choppy breaths. He pulled his face around to Dale’s, inches apart, keeping Dale’s neck hooked in his elbow. “Masons use Pantheon structures as allusions to the Temple of Solomon. The Dome of the Rock. The Knights Templar knew the truth, that the Dome was the site of Solomon’s Temple. And that’s why Masons continue to use Pantheon domes in their buildings. This one here in the world’s capital is the perfect meeting place.

Every Wednesday Angela Belle came to town. And every Wednesday Dr. Montgomery "accidentally" ran into her. That Doc sat by the diner window for thirty minutes picking at a piece of pie until she rounded the corner did not go unnoticed. "Never seen a man so whupped," the Sheriff said, rolling a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. "Got him by the short hairs," Willie concurred. Naturally, every man in town thought Doc was getting some. Naturally, every woman in town knew better. "A dog don't dance for a bone he's already chewed," Dot said, sliding Ben Harrington's plate lunch in front of him. "Depends on the bone," the Sheriff said, as they watched Doc run across the street to catch up with Angela. "Depends on the dog," Dot countered, giving Willie a look that made his face burn.

Felix.” She let go, suddenly shy to speak. But that tense, tickly sensation running from her throat to her belly was giving her some kind of superhuman nerve. And besides, he wasn’t really Felix Callahan anymore, not in that ethereal, big-screen sense. So. She cleared her throat. “Felix, will you be my friend?” He did laugh at her, though he didn’t seem to mean it. “Yes, we’ll get matching lockets holding strands of each other’s hair.” “I wish the English language gave us a better option. ‘Pals,’ ‘chums,’ ‘buddies’ . . . but a word that implies the sudden and unusual nature—like ‘metabuddies.’ ” “ ‘Metabuddies.’ Wow. This is getting serious.” “So?” “So. Yes. Let’s be friends. That would solve some of this confused muss. Do we spit in our palms and shake?” “I think this calls for a pinky pledge.” She hooked her pinky around his. “I, Becky Jack, agree to be Felix Callahan’s pal, even though he’s way overrated as an actor and screen hunk and can be such a brat.” Felix cleared his throat. “I, world-famous and fabulously wealthy Felix Paul Callahan, agree to be mates with Becky, even though she wears grandmother shoes and insists on popping out children with reckless abandon and shows no remorse for her vicious right hook.” “That was very nice. I almost shed a tear.” “Apparently all it takes to make you weep is a singing puppet.” “Hey, don’t sell me short. I also cry at talking socks and animated washcloths.” “You cry in terror.” “Well, yeah, that’s true.

With a detonation that dashed rocks and huge sods of rain-sodden soil bursting in every direction, the ground behind the monastery seemed at first to be giving birth to some kind of rounded hill, as though I were witnessing in the short space of mere seconds the geological outcome of centuries: a small mountain emerging purposefully out of the ground. The next thing I noticed was the sides - the sides that were moving, heaving, breathing! Still, it wasn’t until the demonic face of it appeared that I realized I was seeing the humped, bristled back of that ungodly conjuration. The face it bore was that of a gargantuan hog! And yet, though that was my first thought upon seeing it, it was so much more than just that, so much worse! There were too many teeth, too many hooks and horns, its jaws bristled and barbed and jutted by tusks, its pallid, smoking snout writhing with black hair that seemed to be separately, insidiously alive and dancing in the deluging rain. Dark, scaly skin surrounded glowing eyes like obsidian-sloped volcanos in the face of an almighty Underworld Un-God. Over its shoulders sprouted and stretched black, web-skin wings more massive than the canvases a sail fleet could account for, and those wings extended to blot out all the heavy-keening heavens - all but for the Blood Cloud above the Beast which still floated halo-like above the Demons birthplace, and which seemed to me the volitant reservoir of every wound ever suffered in the world.

Would you two just kiss and be done with it already?” Darren and I gape at her. Fire creeps up my neck, and I press my body against the window, as far from Darren as possible. “I thought you were asleep,” Darren says to her. “With the both of you whining like children? Please,” she huffs. “I’m going to the little girl’s room.” She stands and her long legs step over Tate’s without waking him. “Fix this or we’re all going to be miserable,” she whispers to Darren loud enough for me to hear. I face the window, but my eyes focus on Darren’s reflection. He scratches the top of his head through his curls, then slides his hand down, pressing his thumb and fingers over his eyelids. I’ve lost my nerve to bring up Bruno again. “Pippa.” He sighs. “I don’t want to argue with you.” I reach to grip the armrest between us but his hand is already taking up half of it. I’m caught off guard and I can’t decide if it’s more awkward to jerk my hand away or leave it there. Electricity runs up my arm when he hooks my pinkie with his. “Still crooked,” he says. “I’m lucky it’s still there, actually.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, some guy tried to bite it off once.” He releases my pinkie and tugs at a loose string on his shorts. “He sounds like a real winner.” I pick at a ripple in the fabric of the armrest. “He’s all right.” “I’m sorry,” he says. I’m surprised by the tightness in my throat. This week is going to kill me. “It’s just the little finger,” I deflect. “I’m sure I’d have survived.” “That’s not what I meant.” I swallow down the lump. “I know. It’s fine.” We sit in silence a moment before he points his pinkie at me and wiggles it closer and closer to my face. We erupt into laughter and Tate jolts awake, giving us the stink eye, which makes us laugh even harder. I’m clutching my stomach when Nina plops back down in her seat. She appraises us with wide eyes until a smirk plays at the corners of her mouth. “Now,” she says, “that’s more like it.

Jillian had charged into the bathroom on seven, but she just shot straight to ten. Her nature may be reserved, but she didn’t take shit off anybody. “Don’t patronize me. And don’t you dare come down here and judge us!” She pointed her finger directly at AJ. “We’re the ones doing the heavy lifting, so people like you can come along at the very end and ride along on our coattails. You can act tough all you want, but it’s just an act, AJ. You, with your expensive suits and shiny shoes,” she sneered. “You wouldn’t survive one minute out there on those streets. You’re weak.” Before she realized what was about to happen, AJ seized her by the shoulders and threw her against the wall. Pinning her with her own body, she pressed her index finger over Jillian’s lips. “That’s enough.” Those glittering green eyes warned Jillian not to say another word. The impact had completely knocked the breath out of her. AJ pressed her body tighter into hers, preventing Jillian from taking a replenishing breath, so she breathed short shallow breaths through her nose. Her heart pounded. What was happening? She wasn’t in control of the situation, and oddly enough, for once she didn’t want to be. She had just been manhandled, yet she had no desire to fight back. Instead, she wanted to hook her leg around AJ’s waist and draw her closer to where AJ’s heat seared her core.

So...how the hell does a dominatrix from New Orleans hook up with a French farmer?” “Do you want the long version or the short version?” Nora asked. “Short version first,” Justine said. “I used to work for Nico’s father.” “As a…writer?” “As a dominatrix,” Nora said. Justine looked at Nico, and then back at Nora. “Yeah, I’m gonna need that long version.

Here is the story, which I have abridged (with acknowledgement to Sergey Parkhomenko, journalist and broadcaster, who reported it): The River Ob makes a turn at Kolpashevo, and every year it eats away a few feet of a sand cliff there. On April 30, 1979, the Ob's waters eroded another six-foot section of bank. Hanging from the newly exposed wall were the arms, legs and heads of people who had been buried there. A cemetery at least several yards wide had been exposed. The bodies had been packed in and layered tightly. Some of the skulls from the uppermost layer rolled out from the sandbank, and little boys picked them up and began playing with them. News of the burial spread quickly and people started gathering at the sandbank. The police and neighbourhood watch volunteers quickly cordoned off the whole thing. Shortly afterwards, they built a thick fence around the crumbling sandbank, warning people away. The next day, the Communist Party called meeting in the town, explaining that those buried were traitors and deserters from the war. But the explanation wasn't entirely convincing. If this were so, why was everyone dressed in civilian clothes? Why had women and children been executed as well? And from where, for that matter, did so many deserters come in a town of just 20,000 people? Meanwhile, the river continued to eat away at the bank and it became clear that the burial site was enormous; thousands were buried there. People could remember that there used to be a prison on these grounds in the late 1930s. It was general knowledge that there were executions there, but nobody could imagine just how many people were shot. The perimeter fence and barbed wire had long ago been dismantled, and the prison itself was closed down. But what the town's people didn't know was that Kolpashevo's prison operated a fully-fledged assembly line of death. There was a special wooden trough, down which a person would descend to the edge of a ditch. There, he'd be killed by rifle fire, the shooter sitting in a special booth. If necessary, he'd be finished off with a second shot from a pistol, before being added to the next layer of bodies, laid head-to-toe with the last corpse. Then they'd sprinkle him lightly with lime. When the pit was full, they filled in the hole with sand and moved the trough over a few feet to the side, and began again. But now the crimes of the past were being revealed as bodies fell into the water and drifted past the town while people watched from the shore. In Tomsk, the authorities decided to get rid of the burial site and remove the bodies. The task, it turned out, wasn't so easy. Using heavy equipment so near a collapsing sandbank wasn't wise and there was no time to dig up all the bodies by hand. The Soviet leadership was in a hurry. Then from Tomsk came new orders: two powerful tugboats were sent up the Ob, right up to the riverbank, where they were tied with ropes to the shore, facing away from the bank. Then they set their engines on full throttle. The wash from the ships' propellers quickly eroded the soft riverbank and bodies started falling into the water, where most of them were cut to pieces by the propellers. But some of the bodies escaped and floated away downstream. So motorboats were stationed there where men hooked the bodies as they floated by. A barge loaded with scrap metal from a nearby factory was moored near the boats and the men were told to tie pieces of scrap metal to the bodies with wire and sink them in the deepest part of the river. The last team, also composed of local men from the town, worked a bit further downstream where they collected any bodies that had got past the boats and buried them on shore in unmarked graves or sank them by tying the bodies to stones. This cleanup lasted almost until the end of the summer.

He kissed her long and hot, drinking in her taste and scent. Her hands went to his hips, her fingers hooking through the belt loops on his khaki shorts. She pulled him against her, arching her back, the fly of her jeans against his. Josh sucked in a deep breath and finally, reluctantly, lifted his head. “I’m so damned glad to see you.” “I’m so damned glad I got on that bus,” she said, her voice breathless, her smile wide. “I hope you’re planning to stay for a while. Like all day. And night. And then the next. Four or five.” Her eyes widened. “The next four or five days?” He lowered his head, brushing his lips over hers. “I was thinking more like months.” She laughed softly, her breath hot against his mouth. “So everything I remember feeling last year is still here.” “Definitely still here,” he agreed. And stronger. Absence did make the heart grow fonder. He also knew it made memories fade and fantasies grow. But it seemed that neither of those things had happened in regard to Tori. He remembered everything—the freckles on her nose, the length of her eyelashes, the reddish-gold highlights in her hair, the way her laugh punched him in the gut and made him hard as steel. “Thank God,” she said softly. “So that’s a yes to the four or five months?” She laughed again. “Part of me is a very definite yes.” “That’s the part I want.” “Well, I can definitely offer you a chance to hang out with me for a few days.” “Done.” “You don’t even want to know what for?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Wow,” she said again. Josh brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “That’s what I was thinking.” She blew out a little breath. “So how do you feel about weddings?” “Are you proposing?

D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review writes: "Sea Creatures and Poems: Plus Some Other Fish Rhymes illustrates the fun that poetry can embrace, providing a zany collection for all ages that is both ocean-focused and whimsical. The operative description for both poems and pictures is "silly," and the book fulfills this promise with a series of engaging observations that belay the usual staid approaches of too many poetry books. Art combined with poetry is "a delicious combination," as Richard Merritts reflects in the collection's introduction. The poems inspired the author to add illustrations which are just as whimsically touched...and, also, quite artistically rendered. These aren't demanding works. Take "Pompano Pompano Pompano," for example. Its very short observation concludes with an ironic twist after identifying the "flat fish from Florida" outside of its normal sea environment. Succinct? Yes. But the poem really...snags readers, landing a winning insight on both the pompano and its ultimate fate. Readers trawling for humor will find plenty in this book. Even the poetry titles present original, fun observations, as in "By Jove, I Hooked a Snook." Aside from its delightful observations, the poems represent diverse structures, from free verse to rhyme: "From the depths of the sea;/Came a fish that could be;/From a prison did flee;/Dressed in stripes, so you see..." From redfish and ahi to the anglers who long for them, Sea Creatures and Poems will appeal to a wide audience, especially those who do not view poetry as an opportunity for philosophical and psychological analysis alone. Its blend of natural history info, inviting color illustrations, and accompanying fun insights is recommended for those who fish to those who enjoy eating or studying them, as well as poetry lovers who will appreciate the very different approaches, poetic variety, and whimsical inspections within. Libraries catering to these audiences will want to include it in their collections, but Sea Creatures and Poems will prove a delightful choice for adults who seek to instill in the young an appreciation for poetry's capability for fun and its diverse structural representations.

Make your first sentence as short as possible, and put it on its own line.

2. Keep your column widths tight Great writers have a secret weapon: short column widths. Readers find it much easier to read something when their eye doesn’t have to make several ‘saccades’ back and forth across the text. Nobody realises this, of course. But short column widths definitely make your writing more likely to be read.

3. Keep your sentences short Favour short sentences over long sentences.

Nobody is exactly sure why EMDR works, which makes it easy to discredit. One theory is that EMDR mimics the way the brain processes memories during REM sleep. Other research suggests that these eye movements tax our short-term memory, dimming the painful vibrancy of past experiences and making them easier to revisit with a sense of clarity. Whether or not either of these theories is true, many studies keep showing real results: Somehow, this weird process is surprisingly effective in helping patients recover from trauma. In the years since Shapiro invented EMDR, technology has improved beyond the finger-waving. There are now EMDR light units that kind of look like the scrolling LED light-up signs advertising beer at corner stores. And for people like me—people who feel more comfortable keeping their eyes closed throughout the EMDR process—there are now little machines that hook up to vibrating bullets that you hold in your hands, with headphones that play sounds in one ear, then the other.

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga said it like this: Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live. . . . A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort . . . and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (. . . and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful . . . argument [for the reality of God].7 In short, the problem of tragedy, suffering and injustice is a problem for everyone. It is at least as big a problem for non-belief in God as for belief. It is therefore a mistake, though an understandable one, to think that if you abandon belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle. A woman in my church once confronted me about sermon illustrations in which evil events turned out for the good. She had lost a husband in an act of violence during a robbery. She also had several children with severe mental and emotional problems. She insisted that for every one story in which evil turns out for good there are one hundred in which there is no conceivable silver lining. In the same way, much of the discussion so far in this chapter may sound cold and irrelevant to a real-life sufferer. ‘So what if suffering and evil doesn’t logically disprove God?’ such a person might say. ‘I’m still angry. All this philosophising does not get the Christian God “off the hook” for the world’s evil and suffering!’ In response the philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself on the hook of human suffering. In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain. Therefore, though Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.

Shortly after the dust settled on everything, Wendy attempted to get her job back at the Vanilla Bean, but they said no, citing the multiple times she failed to show. Which was my fault, really. So I bought it for her.

Frame control creates power and power attracts. BY JOSH (JETSET) KING MADRID WHAT DO KANYE WEST AND ELON MUSK HAVE IN COMMON? When you put the two together, there may be few similarities, but I believe one trait they share is the ability to control their frame, also known as frame control. Frame control is a little-known underlying phenomenon that may be one of the reasons they are so influential and successful despite the controversy. Nonetheless, they maintain their status as some of our culture's most powerful figures. The power of how we frame our personal realities is referred to as frame control. A frame is a tool that you can use to package your power, authority, strength, information, and status. Standing firm in your beliefs can persuade and influence. I first discovered frame control in 2016 after coming across the book Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. I was hooked instantly. I was a freshman in college at UC Irvine at the time and was earning a few thousand dollars a month in my online business. In just a few short months after applying the concept of frame control in my life and business, everything changed — I started dating the girl of my dreams, cleared my first $27,000 in one month and dropped out of college to go all in on my business. Since then, I've read every book, watched every video, and studied every expert-written blog I can find on the subject. This eventually led me to obtain NLP and neuro-marketing certifications, both of which explain the underlying psychology of how our brains frame social interactions and provide techniques for controlling these frames in oneself and others in order to become more likable, influential, and lead a better life overall. Frame control is about establishing your own authority, but it isn't just some self-help nonsense. It is about true and verified beliefs. The glass half-empty or half-full frame is a popular analogy. If you believe the glass is half-empty, that is exactly what it will be. But someone with a half-full frame can come in and convince you to change your belief, simply by backing it up with the logic of “an empty glass of water would always be empty, but having water in an empty glass makes it half-full.” Positioning your view as the one that counts does take some practice because you first have to believe in yourself. You won’t be able to convince anyone of your authority if you are not authentic or if you don’t actually believe in what you’re trying to sell. Whether they realize it or not, public figures are likely to engage in frame control. When you're in the spotlight, you have to stay focused on the type of person you want the rest of the world to see you as. Tom Cruise, for example, is an example of frame control because of his ability to maintain dominance in media situations. In a well-known BBC interview, Tom Cruise assertively puts the interviewer in his place when he steps out of line and begins probing into his personal life. Cruise doesn't do it disrespectfully, which is how he maintains his own dominance, but he does it in such a way that the interviewer is held accountable. How Frame Control Positions the User as Influential or Powerful Turning toward someone who is dominant or who seems to know what they are doing is a natural occurrence. Generally speaking, we are hard-wired to trust people who believe in themselves and when they are put on a world stage, the effects of it can be almost bewildering. We often view comedians as mere entertainers, but in fact, many of them are experts in frame control. They challenge your views by making you laugh. Whether you want to accept their frame or not, the moment you laugh, your own frame has been shaken and theirs have taken over.

A team of scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) designed an ingenious experiment to determine if humans could detect energy fields similar to those of the earth. They hooked participants up to EEGs and confined them in a shielded room, screening out virtually all known sources of energy and radiation. They created a magnetic field generator that precisely mimicked the earth’s field. They then varied the direction of the magnetic field unpredictably, in very short bursts of one-tenth of a second. That’s too quick to be consciously detectable. The EEG recorded changes in brain wave amplitudes and frequencies throughout the experiment, which was repeated up to 100 times per subject. The investigators found drops in alpha waves of up to 60% whenever they changed the direction of the field. They conclude that “the human brain can detect Earth-strength magnetic fields, demonstrating that we have a sensory system that processes the geomagnetic field all around us.” The Caltech authors also noted: “We’ve known about the five basic senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste since ancient times, but this is the first discovery of an entirely new human sense in modern times.

But I think they’d appreciate some back-up… Shit.” “What is it?” “My phone is cracked. Must’ve happened when I almost…” Almost fell to her death. She swallowed hard and thumbed the black screen. Nothing. Dead. She wished she’d stop thinking about death. “And I wish you weren’t such a technophobe about phones. You like computers well enough.” “Because I can type, not talk. And anyway, I told you before, phones never work when you need them.” She hooked a thumb at Maddie’s high-tech coaster. “Exhibit A.” Maddie let out a short laugh. “Okay then.

Nah, she wasn’t going to be let off the hook so easily. I didn’t give a damn about the nigga she drug back here with her as a buffer. She wanted me to choose violence over the path of peace I was on, so be it. I wasn’t about to let her sleep without me. No, not tonight.

In many ways, Kaua‘i is the ultimate example of what a world would look like if plants were in charge. The whole island is covered in the surreal products of total floral freedom. When plants are allowed to evolve without fear, they get scrupulously and flamboyantly specific. Take the Hibiscadelphus genus, for example. Found only in Hawai‘i, these plants have long tubular flowers, custom-made to fit the hooked beak of the honeycreeper, the precise bird that pollinates them. Then there is the vulcan palm, Brighamia insignis, or ‘Ōlulu in Hawaiian, a short tree best described by its nickname, “cabbage on a stick.” Over tens of thousands of years, it has evolved to be pollinated only by the extremely rare fabulous green sphinx moth (its real name). The vulcan palm, still critically endangered in the wild, was saved from total extinction by Perlman’s work in the early days of the extinction prevention program, when he made his own harness out of knotted ropes and used it to hang over the Nā Pali Coast cliffs. There, four thousand feet in the air, he would use a small cosmetic brush borrowed from his wife to imitate the moth, carefully transferring the pollen from the males to the females. “You’d know if you did it well,” Perlman said. “When you’d go back, there’d be fruits just bursting open with seed.” (The vulcan palm is now cultivated as a houseplant in the Netherlands, where there are greenhouses full of them. I wonder if a person with a potted Vulcan palm on their Amsterdam windowsill knows of the drama it took to get it there.)

In Brain Rules, John Medina shares how he’s able to keep the attention of his students in classes that last more than an hour: he plans his class in modules that last no more than ten minutes. Each module starts with a Hook—an interesting story or anecdote, followed by a brief explanation of the key concept. Following this format ensures that his audience retains more information and doesn’t zone out. (That’s the primary reason this book is organized in short sections that take less than ten minutes to read.)

He was wearing white Adidas boxing shoes and long black satin shorts and another of his endless supply of “Black Mamba” T-shirts, this one with Kobe Bryant’s likeness on it. In comparison, I was the one who looked like the thug, in a Red Sox T-shirt cut to the shoulders and baggy gray sweatpants and sneakers to match. “Good news for you,” Hawk said, watching me move from side to side in front of the bag, “is that your workout clothes won’t never go out of fashion, on account of never having been in no fashion in the first place.” “You planning to review my workout along with my functional attire?” I said. “Don’t require much planning. You been letting your elbow fly out from underneath your shoulder lately when you throw your hook.” “You’re just pointing that out now?” “Been workin’ up to it, I know how sensitive you are ’bout what’s left of your form.

Monologue – A verbal exercise that characterizes the elicitation process, designed to keep the person in short-term thinking mode, dissuade him from expressing resistance or voicing a denial, and convince him of the acceptability of disclosing the information he had intended to withhold. Negative question – A question that is phrased in a way that negates an action. This question type is to be avoided because it conveys an expectation of a response that potentially lets the person off the hook. Example: “You didn’t flirt with her, did you?” Nonanswer statement – A verbal deceptive behavior in which a person responds to a question with a statement that does not answer the question, but rather buys him time to formulate a response that he hopes will satisfy the questioner. Example: “That’s a very good question.” Nonverbal deceptive indicator – A deceptive behavior that is exhibited in response to a question and that does not involve verbal communication. Open-ended question – A question that is asked as a means of establishing the basis for a discussion or to probe an issue. Example: “What were you doing in Las Vegas when you were supposed to be visiting your mother in Tampa?” Opinion question – A question that solicits a person’s opinion as a means of assessing his likely culpability in a given situation. The “punishment question” falls into this category. Example: “What do you think should happen to a person who dines in a restaurant and leaves without paying?” Optimism bias – A cognitive bias

May I sit down, please?” she asked mildly. “I’m tired of standing.” “There’s no place to sit.” “Yes there is.” Breaking away from him, Daisy went to the four-poster bed and tried to climb onto it. Unfortunately the bed was an antique Sheraton, built high to avoid winter drafts and allow for a trundle below. The top of the mattress was level with her breasts. Hoisting herself upward, she tried to lever her hips onto the mattress. Gravity defeated her. “Usually,” Daisy said, struggling and squirming with her feet dangling, “there’s a stair-step provided—” She grabbed handfuls of the counterpane. “— for beds this tall.” Straining to hook a knee over the edge of the mattress, she continued, “Good God… if someone fell out of this bed at night… it would be fatal.” She felt Matthew’s hands clamp around her waist. “The bed’s not that tall,” he said. Picking her up as if she were a child, he deposited her on the mattress. “It’s just that you’re short.” “I’m not short. I’m… vertically disadvantaged.” “Fine. Sit up.” His weight depressed the mattress behind her and his hands returned to the back of her dress.

Joey Capra was a zip. Short, wiry, always moving, blinking, smoking, chewing. A hook nose and bad posture made him look like a comma.

She sat on the wall, opened her book, and paid him no mind. After a few minutes the sounds of clipping stopped, and she felt his gaze on her. She turned a page. “Jane,” he said with a touch of exasperation. “Shh, I’m reading,” she said. “Jane, listen, someone warned me that another fellow heard my telly playing and told Mrs. Wattlesbrook, and I had to toss it out this morning. If they spot me hanging around you..” “You’re not hanging around me, I’m reading.” “Bugger, Jane…” “Martin, please, I’m sorry about your TV but you can’t cast me away now. I’ll go raving mad if I have to sit in that house again all afternoon. I haven’t sewn a thing since junior high Home Ec when I made a pair of gray shorts that ripped at the butt seam the first time I sat down, and I haven’t played pianoforte since I quit from boredom at age twelve, and I haven’t read a book in the middle of the day since college, so you see what a mess I’m in.” “So,” Martin said, digging in his spade. “You’ve come to find me again when there is no one else to flirt with.” Huh! thought Jane. He snapped a dead branch off the trunk. Huh! she thought again. She stood and started to walk away. “Wait.” Martin hopped after her, grabbing her elbow. “I saw you with those actors, parading around the grounds this morning. I hadn’t seen you with them before. In the context. And it bothered me. I mean, you don’t really go in for this stuff, do you?” Jane shrugged. “You do?” “More than I want to, though you’ve been making it seem unnecessary lately.” Martin squinted up at a cloud. “I’ve never understood the women who come here, and you’re one of them. I can’t make sense of it.” “I don’t think I could explain it to a man. If you were a woman, all I’d have to say is ‘Colin Firth in a wet shirt’ and you’d say, ‘Ah.’” “Ah. I mean, aha! is what I mean.” Crap. She’d hoped he would laugh at the Colin Firth thing. And he didn’t. And now the silence made her feel as though she were standing on a seesaw, waiting for the weight to drop on the other side. Then she smelled it. The musty, acrid, sour, curdled, metallic, decaying odor of ending. This wasn’t just a first fight. She’d been in this position too many times not to recognize the signs. “Are you breaking up with me?” she asked. “Were we ever together enough to require breaking up?” Oh. Ouch. She took a step back on that one. Perhaps it was her dress that allowed her to compose herself more quickly than normal. She curtsied. “Pardon the interruption, I mistook you for someone I knew.” She turned and left, wishing for a Victorian-type gown so she could have whipped the full skirts for a satisfying little cracking sound. She had to satisfy herself with emphatically tightening her bonnet ribbon as she marched. You stupid, stupid girl, she thought. You were fantasizing again. Stop it! It had all been going so well. She’d let herself have fun, unwind, not plague a new romance with constant questions such as, What if? And after? And will he love me forever? “Are you breaking up with me…?” she muttered to herself. He must think she was a lunatic. And really, he’d be right. Here she was in Pembrook Park, a place where women hand over scads of dough to hook up with men paid to adore them, but she finds the one man on campus who’s in a position to reject her and then leads him into it. Typical Jane.

The dynamic of addiction is that if you look to something that God created, to give you what it wasn’t intended to give you, either you get discouraged quickly, and wisely abandon those hopes, or you go back again and again, and in so doing, you begin to travel down addiction’s road. That created thing will give you a short-term buzz of euphoria, it will offer you temporary pleasure, it will provide a momentary sense of well-being, it will briefly make you feel that you’re something, and it may even make your problems seem not so bad for a bit. It’s all very intoxicating. It all feels great. The problem is that the created thing that you’re looking to has no capacity to satisfy your heart. It wasn’t designed to do that. It cannot give you inner peace. It cannot give you the heart rest of contentment. It cannot quiet your cravings. In a word, it cannot be your savior. And if you look outside of the Savior for something to be your savior, that thing will end up not being your savior but your master. You’ll love the short-term buzz, but you’ll hate how short it is. So you’ll have to go back again quickly to get another shot, and before long you’ve spent way too much time, energy, and money on something that can’t satisfy; but because of what it has briefly done for you each time, you’re convinced that you can’t live without it. You’re hooked and you may not know it. The thing you once desired, you’re now persuaded that you need, and once you’ve named it a need, it has you.

For one, new behaviors have a short half-life, as our minds tend to revert to our old ways of thinking and

In this instance, she’d not heard him count. He’d not hit a wall, unless the brick-headed stubbornness of Dmitri’s face counted. Thwack! “Yay.” Yes, that was her cheering for her Pookie aloud. Since it seemed he hadn’t heard, she said it louder, yodeled it as a matter of fact. “You get him, Pookie. Show him who’s the biggest, baddest pussy around.” Leo turned his head at that, narrowing his blue gaze on her. Totally annoyed. Totally adrenalized. Totally hot. “Vex!” How sexy her nickname sounded when he growled it. She could tell he totally dug the encouragement. She waggled her fingers at him and meant to say, “You’re welcome,” but instead shouted, “Behind you!” During that moment of inattention— which really Leo should have known better than to indulge in— Dmitri threw a mighty hook. Had she mentioned just how sigh-worthy big her Pookie was? The perfectly aimed blow hit Leo in the jaw, and the force snapped his head to the side. But it certainly didn’t fell him. Not even close. On the contrary, the punch brought the predator in him alive. As he rotated his jaw, Leo’s gaze flicked her way, his eyes lit with a wildness, his lip quirked, almost in amusement, and then he acted. His fist retaliated then his elbow, snapping Dmitri in the nose. Any other man, even shifter, might have quickly succumbed, but the Russian Siberian tiger was more than a match for the hybrid lion/ tiger. Put them in a ring and they’d have brought in a fortune. They certainly put on a good show. Blood trailed from Dmitri’s lip from where Leo’s fist struck him. However, that didn’t stop the Russian from giving as good as he got. Size-wise, Leo held a slight edge, but what Dmitri lacked in girth, he made up for in skill. Even if Meena wasn’t interested in marrying him, it didn’t mean she couldn’t admire the grace of Dmitri’s movement and his uncanny intuition when it came to dodging blows. Leo wasn’t too shabby either. While he’d obviously not grown up on the mean streets of Russia, he knew how to throw a punch, wrestle a man, and look totally hot in defense of his woman. Sigh. A man coming to her rescue. Just like one of those romance novels Teena likes to read. Luna sidled up alongside her. “What did you do this time?” Why did everyone assume it was her fault? “I didn’t do anything.” Luna snorted. “Sure you didn’t. And it also wasn’t you who put Kool-Aid in Arik’s mom’s shampoo bottle and turned her hair pink at the family picnic a few years ago.” “I thought the short spikes she sported after she got it shaved looked awesome.” “Never said the outcome wasn’t worth it. Just like I’m totally intrigued about what’s happening here. That is Leo laying a smackdown on that Russian diplomat, right? Since I highly doubt they’re sparring over who makes the better vodka or who deserved the gold medal in hockey at the last winter Olympics, then that leaves only one other possibility.” Luna fixed her with a gaze. “This is your fault.” Meena’s shoulders hunched. “Okay, so maybe I’m a teensy tiny bit responsible. Like maybe I made sure my ex-fiancé and current fiancé got to meet.” “Duh. I already knew about that part. What I’m talking about is, how the hell did you get Leo to lose his shit? I mean when he gets his serious on, you couldn’t melt an ice cube in his mouth. Leo never loses control because to lose control is to lose one’s way, or some such bullshit. He’s always spouting these funny little sayings in the hopes of curbing our wild tendencies.” Pookie had the cutest personality. “What can I say?” Meena shrugged. “I guess he got jealous. Totally normal, given we’re soul mates.

When World War One broke out in 1914, planes were initially used for intelligence gathering. The machines, which moved faster than any man made device had ever, flew at approximately 80 miles per hour. No plane in WWI flew faster than 145mph, and that was at the very end of the war.               Of course, neither side wanted the other to spy on its troop movements, so within a very short period of time, pilots were trying to bring each other down. Initially, the first dogfights, strange as it may seem, were fought with grappling hooks hanging below the plane, grenades, and ramming. This was both highly inefficient and highly dangerous (for everyone involved). The first plane-to-plane combat was on the Eastern Front where a Russian pilot, who probably meant to graze his enemy, crashed his plane into an Austro-Hungarian machine. He and the two man crew of the Austrian plane were killed.               Soon, pilots began shooting at each other with pistols and the single shot rifles of the time. You can guess how effective this was.

The blade was unsheathed. It had two cutting edges. The crossguard was short, meant to protect a much smaller hand than Arin’s, and was hooked in the Valorian style. Everything about the dagger was Valorian. The courtiers buzzed. His face. Who did it? That blade. Whose it it? That’s a lady’s dagger. How did he get it? Stole it, maybe. Or…could it have been a gift? Arin almost heard the whispered words. “Your welcome has been so much more than I could expect,” Arin said. The emperor smiled a little. His eyes didn’t leave Arin’s hand on the dagger’s hilt. Arin was glad. He thought that the emperor was quite pleased with his son’s engagement to the military’s favorite daughter. The marriage would make General Trajan part of the imperial family…and would renew the soldiers’ loyalty to the emperor. But there were those rumors. Even the minting of an engagement coin hadn’t laid them to rest. It was the first time that Arin thought of the rumors about him and Kestrel coldly. He thought about them as something he could use. Yes, Arin bargained that if he lifted his hand to reveal the hilt and seal of Kestrel’s dagger, it would be recognized. Courtiers would gasp. Arin could make rumor look real. A Valorian always wore her dagger, except in the bath or bed. Whether the courtiers judged it a theft or gift, they would think very hard about how close Arin must have been to Kestrel in order to take her blade.

I was trying to apologize,” she said, relief and humor easing into her eyes and curving her lips. “You didn’t answer my question.” He thought he might snap off the end of the pier, he was gripping it so hard. In response, she ducked her hand into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a folded and now somewhat crumpled piece of paper. “Here. Read for yourself.” He took the paper, realizing he was acting like a complete yobbo, and knew then that perhaps he wasn’t nearly so cool and levelheaded about this whole endeavor as he’d led her to believe. The truth of it being, he only really wanted her to figure out what would make her happy if what made her happy was him. Under her amused stare, he unfolded the paper and read: Dear Hook, I’m trying to be a good and supportive sister and help get Fiona and her ridiculously long veil down the aisle before I strangle her into submission with every hand-beaded, pearl-seeded foot of it. At the moment, sitting here knee-deep in crinolines and enough netting to outfit every member of Downton Abbey, I can’t safely predict a win in that ongoing effort. That said, I’d much rather be spending the time with you, sailing the high seas on our pirate ship. Especially that part where we stayed anchored in one spot for an afternoon and all the plundering was going on aboard our own boat. I’ve been thinking a lot about everything everyone has said and have come to the conclusion that the only thing I’m sure of is that I’m thinking too much. I’ve decided it was better when I was just feeling things and not thinking endlessly about them. I especially liked the things I was feeling on our picnic for two. So this is all to say I’d like to go, um, sailing again. Even if there’s no boat involved this time. I hope you won’t think less of me for the request, but please take seeing a whole lot more of me as a consolation prize if you do. Also? Save me. Or send bail money. Sincerely, Starfish, Queen of the High Seas, Plunderer of Pirates, especially those with a really clever right Hook. He was smiling and shaking his head as he folded the note closed and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “Well?” she said at length. “Apology accepted” was all he said. “And?” He slid a look her way. “And…what?” She’d made him wait three days, and punitive or not, he wasn’t in any hurry to put her out of her misery. Plus, when he did, it was likely to be that much more fun. “You’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you? Don’t you realize it was hard enough just putting it in writing?” “I accept your lovely invitation,” he said, then added, “I only have one caveat.” Her relief turned to wary suspicion as she eyed him. “Oh? And that would be?” “Will you wear the crinolines?

As me old granny used to say before they carried her home to glory, there's three parts to a good sermon. First The Hook, then lay on The Guilt, then you deliver The Sting. I'll be sending the collection plate round shortly.