Horns Related Quotes

[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.

It was the first time I thought of the devil in relation to him. A quick flash of horns.

It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the "Giulia" blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water. People shouted farewells, waved furiously, held up babies for last looks they wouldn't remember. Propellers churned; handkerchiefs fluttered, and, up on deck, the balls of yarn began to spin. Red, yellow, blue, green, they untangled toward the pier, slowly at first, one revolution every ten seconds, then faster and faster as the boat picked up speed. Passengers held the yarn as long as possible, maintaining the connection to faces disappearing onshore. But finally, one by one, the balls ran out. The strings of yarn flew free, rising on the breeze.

Of the myriad impressive notables related to Dio's passing, perhaps foremost is the fact the man was 67 years old and was still making quality hard rock records, still touring with a new (old) version of Black Sabbath, still singing his absolute heart out about dragons and rainbows, making the infamous devil horns hand gesture he swiped from his Italian grandmother and which has since became the universal, undeniable, completely badass symbol for true metal across all galaxies everywhere, and for which Dio deserves to be ensconced in the heavens forevermore.

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play. I find this a little exasperating, but I'm a lot more experienced now, and understand that probably less than 2 percent of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas, and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes, if the changes are completely modern. Dixie is different - it's easier to follow, and rock is even simpler than Dixie, except for the music of a few really fine rock musicians (or variations thereof)...

It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the Giulia blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water.

The way we behave today is directly related to our belief in the future.

Solo For Ear-Trumpet The carriage brushes through the bright Leaves (violent jets from life to light); Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves Between the showers of bright hot leaves The window-glasses glaze our faces And jar them to the very basis — But they could never put a polish Upon my manners or abolish My most distinct disinclination For calling on a rich relation! In her house — (bulwark built between The life man lives and visions seen) — The sunlight hiccups white as chalk, Grown drunk with emptiness of talk, And silence hisses like a snake — Invertebrate and rattling ache…. Then suddenly Eternity Drowns all the houses like a sea And down the street the Trump of Doom Blares madly — shakes the drawing-room Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn As dank dark nettles. Down the horn Of her ear-trumpet I convey The news that 'It is Judgment Day!' 'Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear.' I roared: 'It is the Trump we hear!' 'The What?' 'THE TRUMP!' 'I shall complain! …. the boy-scouts practising again.

Well done. Amon is indeed represented as a man with a ram’s head, and his promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang “horny”.’ ‘No shit!’ ‘No shit,’ Langdon said. ‘And do you know who Amon’s counterpart was? The Egyptian goddess of fertility?

Why?” Mrs. Hogendobber might preach about evil, but when confronted with it she was at a loss. She expected the Devil with green horns or a human being with a snarling face. It had never once occurred to her in her long and relatively happy life that evil is ordinary.

The unicorns, led by costumed grooms, were behaving well about their horns, and the painted rhapsodies all round the cart were more than flattering while the pseudo-king, sceptred in ermine, was positively handsome, as well as resembling the real one quite a lot. The small boy acting as the Dauphin, was obviously his son. It was easy to guess that the angel and the other three children, demure on tasselled cushions, were also related. Reminded by the red heads before her, the Queen Dowager spoke absently to Margaret Erskine. ‘I must tell your mother to destroy that marmoset. Mary teases it, and it bites.

Why had they strung it up like a lynch victim, why didn’t they just throw it away like the trash? To prove they could do it, they had the power to kill. Otherwise it was valueless; beautiful from a distance but it couldn’t be tamed or cooked or trained to talk, the only relation they could have to a thing like that was to destroy it. Food, slave or corpse, limited choices; horned and fanged heads sawed off and mounted on the billiard room wall, stuffed fish, trophies

There is an uncomfortable willingness among privacy campaigners to discriminate against mass surveillance conducted by the state to the exclusion of similar surveillance conducted for profit by large corporations. Partially, this is a vestigial ethic from the Californian libertarian origins of online pro-privacy campaigning. Partially, it is a symptom of the superior public relations enjoyed by Silicon Valley technology corporations, and the fact that those corporations also provide the bulk of private funding for the flagship digital privacy advocacy groups, leading to a conflict of interest. At the individual level, many of even the most committed privacy campaigners have an unacknowledged addiction to easy-to-use, privacy-destroying amenities like Gmail, Facebook, and Apple products. As a result, privacy campaigners frequently overlook corporate surveillance abuses. When they do address the abuses of companies like Google, campaigners tend to appeal to the logic of the market, urging companies to make small concessions to user privacy in order to repair their approval ratings. There is the false assumption that market forces ensure that Silicon Valley is a natural government antagonist, and that it wants to be on the public’s side—that profit-driven multinational corporations partake more of the spirit of democracy than government agencies. Many privacy advocates justify a predominant focus on abuses by the state on the basis that the state enjoys a monopoly on coercive force. For example, Edward Snowden was reported to have said that tech companies do not “put warheads on foreheads.” This view downplays the fact that powerful corporations are part of the nexus of power around the state, and that they enjoy the ability to deploy its coercive power, just as the state often exerts its influence through the agency of powerful corporations. The movement to abolish privacy is twin-horned. Privacy advocates who focus exclusively on one of those horns will find themselves gored on the other.

The Pyrenean ibex, an extinct form of wild mountain goat, was brought back to life in 2009 through cloning of dna taken from skin samples. This was followed in June of 2010 by researchers at Jeju National University in Korea cloning a bull that had been dead for two years. Cloning methods are also being studied for use in bringing back Tasmanian tigers, woolly mammoths, and other extinct creatures, and in the March/April 2010 edition of the respected Archaeology magazine, a feature article by Zah Zorich (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”) called for the resurrection via cloning of what some consider to be man’s closest extinct relative, the Neanderthals. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient dna who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore.… This is going to happen.

The central ceremony of Ritual Witchcraft was the so-called "Sabbath" - a word of unknown origin having no relation to its Hebrew homonym. Sabbaths were celebrated four times a year - on Candlemass Day, February 2nd, on Rood Mass Day, May 1st, on Lammas Day, August 1st, and on the eve of All Hallows, October 31st. These were great festivals, often attended by hundreds of devotees, who came from considerable distances. Between Sabbaths there were weekly "Esbats" from small congregations in the village where the ancient religion was still practiced. At all high Sabbaths the devil himself was invariably present, in the person of some man who had inherited, or otherwise acquired, the honor of being the incarnation of the two-faced god of the Dianic cult. The worshipers paid homage to the god by kissing his reverse face - a mask worn, beneath an animal's tail, on the devil's backside. There was then, for some at least of the female devotees, a ritual copulation with the god, who was equipped for this purpose with an artificial phallus of horn or metal. This ceremony was followed by a picnic (for the Sabbaths were celebrated out of doors, near sacred trees or stones), by dancing and finally by a promiscuous sexual orgy that had, no doubt, originally been a magical operation for increasing the fertility of the animals on which primitive hunters and herdsmen depend for their livelihood. The prevailing atmosphere at the Sabbaths was one of good fellowship and mindless, animal joy. When captured and brought to trial, many of the who had taken part in the Sabbath resolutely refused, even under torture, even at the stake, to abjure the religion which had brought them so much happiness.

Simon laughs when I audibly exhale. “Relieved she’s not here yet?” I roll my suitcase into one of the barren bedrooms and then plunk down on the rock-hard, hideous orange sofa in the lounge. Simon takes a swivel chair from my room and slides it in front of me, where he then plants himself. “Why are you so worried?” I cross my arms and look around the concrete room. “I’m not worried at all. She’s probably very nice. I’m sure we’ll become soul mates, and she’ll braid my hair, and we’ll have pillow fights while scantily clad and fall into a deep lesbian love affair.” I squint my eyes at a cobweb and assume there are spider eggs preparing to hatch and invade the room. “Allison?” Simon waits until I look at him. “You can’t do that. You can’t become a lesbian.” “Why not?” “Because then everyone will say that your adoptive gay father magically made you gay, and it’ll be a big thing, and we’ll have to hear about nature versus nurture, and it’ll be soooooo boring.” “You have a point.” I wait for spider eggs to fall from the sky. “Then I’ll go with assuming she’s just a really sweet, normal person with whom I do not want to engage in sexual relations.” “Better,” he concedes. “I’m sure she’ll be nice. This kind of strong liberal arts college attracts quality students. There’re good people here.” He’s trying to reassure me, but it’s not working. “Totally,” I say. My fingers run across the nubby burned-orange fabric covering the couch, which is clearly composed of rock slabs. “Simon?” “Yes, Allison?” I sigh and take a few breaths while I play with the hideous couch threads. “She probably has horns.” He shrugged. “I think that’s unlikely.” Simon pauses. “Although . . .” “Although what?” I ask with horror. There’s a long silence that makes me nervous. Finally, he says very slowly, “She might have one horn.” I jerk my head and stare at him. Simon claps his hands together and tries to coax a smile out of me. “Like a unicorn! Ohmigod! Your roommate might be a unicorn!” “Or a rhinoceros,” I point out. “A beastly, murderous rhino.” “There is that,” he concedes. I sigh. “In good news, if I ever need a back scratcher, I have this entire couch.” I slump back against the rough fabric and hold out my hands before he can protest. “I know. I’m a beacon of positivity.” “That’s not news to me.

Our relations seemed poor to me, and I wasn't surprised that the US intelligence picture in the Horn of Africa was weak. Much of what I read consisted of recycled news headlines repackaged as intelligence. Real, valuable intelligence only came from real people, yet we hadn't done much to meet and work with the people.

A related character approach that operates under the trade name Brainology claims that one thousand schools are now using its “growth mind-set” based on Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset (2006). Dweck’s work is included on the suggested reading list used by Levin and Duckworth for their online course mentioned above. Brainology cites unpublished research that shows teaching the growth mind-set “boosts motivation and achievement

While Dominion theology may sound like an outlier in modern Christianity, this relatively small group wields a surprising amount of influence with the conservative right in America. Elements of Dominionist doctrine have found their way into such mainstream evangelical events as the National Day of Prayer.

Gene Patents Aren’t Benign and Never Will Be,” in which he claimed that people could die in the future from not being able to afford medical treatment as a result of medicines owned by patent holders of specific genes related to the genetic makeup of those persons. Former special counsel for President Richard Nixon, Charles Colson,

Not long ago, a serious ISIS threat-video was released called See You in Dabiq, relating imagery of this upcoming war. Since the war has not yet

buildings erected to face their respective counterparts and whose cornerstones—including the US Capitol dome—were dedicated during astrological alignments related to the zodiacal constellation Virgo (Isis) as required for the magic

I was just sitting here when this freaking huge bird came swooping out of nowhere." Hal was attempting to use his charisma to talk his way out of trouble, only because he was on drugs, he derailed quickly into incoherence. "At least I think it was a bird. Might have been a superhero. I am Batman! Only more like Hawkman – without the goofy cow." He meant cowl. He put his fingers to his head to make odd points on Hawkman's cowl. Obviously he hadn't seen himself in the mirror yet; he already was masked by deep purple bruises. "Cow. Cow. Mooo." He noticed Taggart for the first time and he went wide-eyed. He tilted his head, still making horns. "My god! You're Taggart with the unpronounceable first name." "Yes, I am." Taggart rubbed at his face to cover a smile. "And you're Hal Rogers from Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden.

political theory, this also relates to the term “Year Zero” reflected in such historical events as the 1975 takeover of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge and to the “Year One” of the French Revolutionary calendar.

the demon of fear of events, with its fur bristling in anticipation of a caress; the demon of worldly piety, which lifts itself up by creeping like ivy; the demon of proud science, hiding its horns beneath a university mortarboard; the demon of quick-tempered strength that is incapable of enduring the least vexation; the demon of bad counsel, that tells you all the tricks by which to climb the rungs of hell; the demon of artificial intelligence, that believes that thought is perfected not in praise but in calculation; the demon of the wisdom of spirituality websites, which provide you with “well-being, interior freedom, harmony, and serenity in everyday life” by assuring you that you are the reincarnation of an empress and that your boss is only an illusion. Our Mary, who is neither a saint nor a virgin, had all it would take to succeed in high society. No such luck, or perhaps by the grace of God, whichever you prefer: there she was, deprived of the seven keys to success and commanded by the Risen Lord to relate an impossible story to a bunch of dullards. To

Deeply ambivalent also is the image of fire in carnival. It is a fire that simultaneously destroys and renews the world. In European carnivals there was almost always a special structure (usually a vehicle adorned with all possible sorts of gaudy carnival trash) called "hell," and at the close of carnival this "hell" was triumphantly set on fire (sometimes this carnival "hell" was ambivalently linked with a horn of plenty). Characteristic is the ritual of "moccoli" in Roman carnival: each participant in the carnival carried a lighted candle ("a candle stub"), and each tried to put out another's candle with the cry "Sia ammazzato!" ("Death to thee!"). In his famous description of Roman carnival (in Italienische Reise)h Goethe, striving to uncover the deeper meaning behind carnival images, relates a profoundly symbolic little scene: during "moccoli" a boy puts out his father's candle with the cheerful carnival cry: "Sia ammazzato il Signore Padre!" [that is, "death to thee, Signor Father!"]

The decorative arms race finally caved in under the sheer absurdity of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733), the Elector of Saxony who, with money pouring in from his hideous porcelain factory and from defrauding the Poles (whose king through chicanery he had become), decided to go for broke. When many of his contemporaries were sharpening up and reforming their armies, he spent much of his revenue on mistresses, lovely palaces and daft trinkets. He was aided in this last aim by the services of the great Badenese goldsmith Johann Melchior Ding-linger, who blew astounding sums making such monstrosities as a giant cup made from a block of polished chalcedony, dripping with coloured enamels and metals and balanced on stag horns, or creating repulsive little statues of dwarves by decorating mutant pearls, or a mad but magnificent object called The Birthday of the Grand Mogul Aurangzeb in which dozens of tiny figures made from precious stones and metals fill the tiny court of the Mogul, itself made from all kinds of spectacular and rare stuff. This delirious thing (not paid for by Augustus for many years as the money sort of ran out when a Swedish invasion swept through a virtually undefended Saxony) simply ended the tradition. Looking at it today in the head-spinning Green Vault in Dresden, Dinglinger’s fantasy seems a long way from the relative, bluff innocence of a yellowy whale tooth in a little display box – but it was the same tradition endlessly elaborated. Aside

Obviously, under primitive planetary conditions — finite space and finite resources — the illth was perceived as necessary to protect the wealth. Territorial politics are much the same among domesticated primates as among other mammals; the primates are just smarter at building more omni-lethal weapons faster. This was originally a survival trait, an Evolutionary Relative Success, because primates are born without the physiological, inbuilt weaponry (lethal teeth, claws, horns etc.) of other mammals.

The townspeople, having survived the bombing, now had first contact with their attackers. For some of them it was a surprise. Boris Stepanov, a young boy at the time, related in later life . . . They had broad shoulders, they walked upright. They didn’t have horns, as we kids thought they would. They were just nice, ordinary lads.

The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds. –Abraham Lincoln

People with wombs have always known that bodies and consciousness are cyclical, tied to a rhythm that is larger than the individual. The cycle is twenty-eight days, full moon to full moon. Moon sounds like a name or a noun. But let us remember that moon is a gerund. Always moving. Always moon-ing. It is time to give the masculine back its lunar knowledge. Wombs swell, yearn, mulch, and release in twenty-eight days. But a womb is not just an organ. It is an invitation that anyone of any physicality and any gender expression can accept. It is an invitation to dance inside change for twenty-eight days. To practice softness for a cycle. The masculine has a womb, too. A moon. All it need do is look up at the night sky. What is lunar wisdom? Even on a new moon night, the moon is still present: replete and whole, while also void and occluded. This is a completion that holds loss tenderly inside its body. It is neatly summed up by Octavia Butler’s powerful words: “God is change.”1 The moon is every gender, every sexuality, mostly both, always trans: waxing and waning. The moon only ever flirts with fullness or emptiness for a brief, tenuous moment before slipping into change. Here is our blended, androgynous Dionysus. Wine-drunk, love-swollen, wind-swept, in ecstatic union with the holy, the moon encourages us to dissolve our edges rather than affirm them. Lunar knowledge keeps us limber. Keeps us resilient. Awe, whether somatic or spiritual, transforms us. The alternative to patriarchy and sky gods is not equal and opposite. It is not a patriarchy with a woman seated on a throne. The Sacred Masculine isn’t a horned warrior bowing down to his impassive empress. The divine, although it includes us, is mostly inhuman. Mutable. Mostly green. Often microscopic. And it is everything in between. Interstitial and relational. The light and the dark. Moonlight on moving water. The lunar bowl where we all mix and love and change.

The biblical King David was also a sacred shepherd. His sensual and ecstatic songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible, derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Goddess—her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte, Ashtoreth. The settled people of the Old Testament, like everyone else in the Near East, practiced Goddess worship. The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess. The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte. As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.” In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves. This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal). The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts. We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess. Her universality has been duly noted by everyone who has ever studied the matter. “Monotheism, once thought to have been the invention of Moses or Akhnaton, was worldwide in the prehistoric and early historic world,” i.e., throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. As E. O. James wrote in The Cult of the Mother Goddess, “It seems that Evans was correct when he affirmed that it was a ‘monotheism in which the female form of divinity was supreme.” The original monotheism of the Goddess is perhaps most clearly shown by the fact that, in Elizabeth Gould Davis’s words, “Almighty Yahweh, the god of Moses and the later Hebrews, was originally a goddess.” His name, Iahu ’anat, derives from that of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna.

Few could dispute Esther Ross’s claim that the Arizona was a cutting-edge weapon of its day. The behemoth was built to project American power and counter any aggressor on the high seas. Battleships made completely of steel were themselves relatively new. America’s earliest were the Texas and the Maine, commissioned within a month of each other in 1895. Barely over three hundred feet in length and displacing only sixty-seven hundred tons, they in retrospect have been termed coastal defense battleships or, in the case of the Maine, a mere armored cruiser. The Maine blew up under mysterious circumstances in Havana Harbor, Cuba, in February 1898, and its sinking became a rallying cry during the subsequent Spanish-American War. Short-lived though the war was, it underscored the importance of a battleship Navy. In one storied episode, the two-year-old battleship Oregon raced from the Pacific coast of California all the way around Cape Horn and into the Atlantic to take part in the Battle of Santiago off Cuba. It was a bold display of sea power, but the roundabout nature of the voyage set thirty-nine-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt to thinking about the need for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. By 1900, the United States Navy floated five battleships and had seven more under construction. Beginning with the Indiana (BB-1), commissioned at the end of 1895, they were each given the designation “BB” for battleship and a number, usually in chronological order from the date when their keels were laid down. Save for the anomaly of the Kearsarge (BB-5), all bore the names of states.

A tangent that departs from the real to the imaginary: pure consciousness does and does not transcend the body, and I believe this after hearing that my mother felt suicidal after she took her medicines for weight loss and her biggest regrets in life came crushing down on her for three days in a row. This is the best of what I have learnt in my years of fascination for science and knowledge, and to make you grasp this takes fullness of life: in hydrology, the wet and the dry, and the hot and the cold always co-exist, but they are also in flux and are also stable: all depending on the reference point of analysis. Consciousness beyond matter, and consciousness tied to matter co-exist in everyplace at different scales, and sometimes even in the same scale. Tao te ching (the way and its power) that fascinated Lao Tzu; the calculus of infinitesimals; the wonderful infinity of the number line and fractals that fascinated Ramanujan and Mandelbrot; the horn of the rhinoceros that fascinated Dali, thermodynamic and hydrodynamic equilibriums that fascinate all scientists, the surety of a fading perfume smell or the permanence of a shattered mirror that is easy to understand to anyone; the concepts of anti-fragility, entropy, volatility, randomness, disorder are all intimately tied to this. Consciousness is constantly attainted and broken all around us all the time, and we rarely stop to think about this because it infinitesimally evades us. Here is where I begin to stretch this and I can't understand it and it is very discouraging -- prudence, temperance and courage -- some of the highest virtues may also be related to this. When you are prepared, it is consciousness. When we are unprepared for it, and this hits you without hurting you, it is magic and strength. Else, perhaps death.

Humans are not generally spontaneous or random. This principle is related to the second principle above. As much as we think we are unpredictable and random, we really are very predictable and follow regular patterns. A study that tracked 10,000 people via cell phone concluded that people display a very high degree of regularity when they travel, because they return to only a few, very frequented locations.43 A more mundane example is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Research shows that, even in games that rely on being unpredictable, humans are, in fact, very predictable and not at all random. We involuntarily mimic others, and we predictably attempt to come back from losses—at least in Rock, Paper, Scissors—by doing whatever beat us in the last round.44 This means that our enemy will set patterns that, if we take the time to analyze,

Humans are not good at multitasking. In general, humans only look natural when naturally focused on doing one thing. Furthermore, multitasking is a myth. This relates to the principle above that humans have significant cognitive limitations. People can only do one thing at a time well; when they attempt to do more than one thing at a time, focus, ability, and productivity suffer. When your attention is divided, and you’re concentrating on doing more than one thing, your behavior and speech will appear unnatural. For instance, if someone is actually reading a paper, then their attention and mental energy will be focused on reading the paper. If, however, that person is only acting as if they are reading the paper and instead is attempting to conduct surveillance, then that person’s behavior will not look natural. Or imagine, for instance, conversing with someone attempting to discreetly watch someone in the crowd of people around you to get some type of subtle direction from that person. The person to whom you are talking will not be focused on the conversation. Instead, his mental energy will be divided. His action will be jerky, and his speech will seem choppy, broken, or slower than normal. His brain will have to switch back and forth between activities.

horns

The natives started their trek to the village and the bus followed slowly. No one saw any lions, but Butubu pointed out graceful elands and kudus. They resembled American deer but their horns were quite different. Those of the elands were long and straight and pointed slightly backwards. The kudus’ rose straight up from the forehead and curved in such a way that from a distance they resembled snakes. Suddenly Butubu stopped the bus. “Look!” he said, pointing toward a tree-shaded area. “There’s a family of hyrax. In Africa we call them dassies.‘” “Aren’t they cute?” Bess exclaimed. “Are they some kind of rabbit?” “No,” Butubu replied. “If you will look closely, you will see that they have no tails. People used to think they belonged to the rat family. But scientists made a study of their bodies and say their nearest relatives are the elephants.” “Hard to believe,” said Burt. “Think of a rabbit-sized elephant!” The small, dark-brown animals were sunning themselves on an outcropping of rocks. Three babies were hopping about their mother. Butubu explained that they were among the most interesting African animals. “The babies start walking around within a few minutes of their birth and after the first day they’re on their own. They return to the mother only long enough to be fed, but they start eating greens very quickly.” Butubu drove on but continued to talk about the dassies. “There is an amusing folk tale about these little animals. It was said that in the days when the earth was first formed and animals were being put on it, the weather was cold and rainy. ”When all the animals were called to a certain spot to be given tails, the dassie did not want to go. As other kinds passed him, he begged them to bring him back a tail.“ Nancy laughed. “But none of them did.” “That is right,” Butubu answered. “And so to this day they have no tails that they can use to switch flies.” Everyone in the bus thanked him for relating the charming little legend, then looked out the windows. They were approaching a village of grass-roofed huts. The small homes were built in a semicircle.

yowbel was the Hebrew word for a ram’s horn trumpet. The first occurrence of the word in the Scripture was when YHWH shouted out the Ten Commandments verbally to Israel in the wilderness. That was before he wrote the law on the tables of stone. The next thirteen occurrences of the word were in relation to the Jubilee cycle as given to Moses in Leviticus 25. This was, as he had already learned, a cycle of fifty years which ended in the release of slaves and the forgiveness of debts. How could the Jubilee be connected to the 13th Enumeration?

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

the relation between crime and poverty is no more essential than between crime and wealth.” Where were the standing armies of police to monitor the crimes of the elite?

There’s no way to tell from one Marine to the next who will have the keenness of intellect to make good decisions on the battlefield and who will fail. Currently, it’s not entirely based on the training they receive. A Marine’s ability to make decisions is mostly due to his or her life and experiences. The Marine cannot control much of this. Some Marines can quickly identify certain patterns in Afghanistan because they have, for instance, experiences staying safe in dangerous areas of New York or L.A. They have what we call “thick file folders,” a significant amount of relatable experiences they can quickly access in similar situations abroad. But certain Marines having these experiences is simply coincidental—they just happened to have grown up in a dangerous environment. Other Marines aren’t so lucky and do not have the experiences needed to make the same decisions driven by intuition.