Length Of Service Quotes

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Length of service: one year or duration of war. Duration of war, of course. He didn't want to spend a whole year in the army.
Louisa Young (My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, #1))
It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body. After she unbuckled her seat belt, after she pulled a stick pen from the rubber band on the sun visor, after her long fingers brushed her hip to feel the comfort of her service piece, what she always did was pause. Not long. Just the length of a slow deep breath. That's all it took for her to remember the one thing she will never forget. Another body waited. She drew the breath. And when she could feel the raw edges of the hole that had been blown in her life, Detective Nikki Heat was ready. She opened the car door and went to work . . . Heat could have made it easier on herself by parking closer, but this was another of her rituals: the walk up. Every crime scene was a flavor of chaos, and these two hundred feet afforded the detective her only chance to fill the clean slate with her own impressions.
Richard Castle
The only criterion that matters in picking members for committee vacancies is their length of service in Congress. Congress calls it the seniority system. I call it the senility system.
Shirley Chisholm (Unbought And Unbossed)
What we do, and how well we control our attention in the service of our goals, becomes part of the environment that we help create and that in turn influences us. This mutual influence shapes who and what we become, from our physical and mental health to the quality and length of our life.
Walter Mischel (The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control)
As I am still on duty at this moment, is there anything else I can do for you?” he continues. Images of him kissing me, disrobing me and fondling my entire body fill my mind… I push them away, although I know my face has coloured at the thought. “I have a few suggestions…” I murmur quietly, staring into his smouldering blue eyes. “But I am not sure they fall into a butler’s remit.” “Perhaps you’d be surprised at the lengths I’m prepared to go to in order to keep you happy, madam,” he replies, winking at me.
Felicity Brandon (Erotic Fantasies)
I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way.
Henry David Thoreau
A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. (I was lucky to get there on my own, with the help of the women I met.) Instead, our system of “corrections” is about arm’s-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.
Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison)
While it is unlikely that the size of the Court will ever change again, some scholars, troubled by the increasing length of service on the Court and the advanced age at which justices retire, have recently put forward a proposal that would add new justices, move the oldest into a senior status, and assign the Court’s active work to the most junior nine.
Linda Greenhouse (The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
Right, then.” He pointed across to a bank of phones against the wall. “If you want to check your voice mail, now’s the time.” “Where’s my phone?” “Out of service.” “It was fine in the car.” “It’s not fine now.” “What’d you do to it?” “Put it out of our misery. I’m sorry, Kate. But every minute it’s on, you’re traceable to within the length of a football field, anywhere on the planet.
Jennifer Lee Carrell (Interred with Their Bones (Kate Stanley, #1))
Yet for the first time I really understood how my choices made me complicit in their suffering. I was the accomplice to their addiction. A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. (I was lucky to get there on my own, with the help of the women I met.) Instead, our system of “corrections” is about arm’s-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.
Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison)
He paused, then, I behind him, arms locked around the powerful ribs, fingers caressing him. To lie with him, to lie with him, burning forgetful in the delicious animal fire. Locked first upright, thighs ground together, shuddering, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, legs enmeshed, then lying full length, with the good heavy weight of body upon body, arching, undulating, blind, growing together, force fighting force: to kill? To drive into burning dark of oblivion? To lose identity? Not love, this, quite. But something else rather. A refined hedonism. Hedonism: because of the blind sucking mouthing fingering quest for physical gratification. Refined: because of the desire to stimulate another in return, not being quite only concerned for self alone, but mostly so. An easy end to arguments on the mouth: a warm meeting of mouths, tongues quivering, licking, tasting. An easy substitute for bad slashing with angry hating teeth and nails and voice: the curious musical tempo of hands lifting under breasts, caressing throat, shoulders, knees, thighs. And giving up to the corrosive black whirlpool of mutual necessary destruction. - Once there is the first kiss, then the cycle becomes inevitable. Training, conditioning, make a hunger burn in breasts and secrete fluid in vagina, driving blindly for destruction. What is it but destruction? Some mystic desire to beat to sensual annihilation - to snuff out one’s identity on the identity of the other - a mingling and mangling of identities? A death of one? Or both? A devouring and subordination? No, no. A polarization rather - a balance of two integrities, changing, electrically, one with the other, yet with centers of coolness, like stars. And there it is: when asked what role I will plan to fill, I say “What do you mean role? I plan not to step into a part on marrying - but to go on living as an intelligent mature human being, growing and learning as I always have. No shift, no radical change in life habits.” Never will there be a circle, signifying me and my operations, confined solely to home, other womenfolk, and community service, enclosed in the larger worldly circle of my mate, who brings home from his periphery of contact with the world the tales only of vicarious experience to me.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Light up the radiant flame of conscience, goodwill and compassion in your heart, and go over the length and breadth of your society in the pursuit of shedding light over the whole world. And in time, you’ll become a glorious sun that will shine over the entire human population.
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
Shakespeare’s oft-quoted advice, “To thine own self be true,” runs deep in our philosophical DNA. Many of us are uncomfortable with the idea of taking on a “false” persona for any length of time. And if we act out of character by convincing ourselves that our pseudo-self is real, we can eventually burn out without even knowing why. The genius of Little’s theory is how neatly it resolves this discomfort. Yes, we are only pretending to be extroverts, and yes, such inauthenticity can be morally ambiguous (not to mention exhausting), but if it’s in the service of love or a professional calling, then we’re doing just as Shakespeare advised.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
The same economic relationship is at work underground, where low-density land-use patterns require greater lengths of pipe and conduit to distribute municipal services. This high ratio of public to private expenditure helps explain why suburban municipalities are finding that new growth fails to pay for itself at acceptable levels of taxation.
Andrés Duany (Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream)
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you. I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.
William Shakespeare (Henry VIII)
India is a land where contradictions will continue to abound, because there are many Indias that are being transformed, with different levels of intensity, by different forces of globalization. Each of these Indias is responding to them in different ways. Consider these coexisting examples of progress and status quo: India is a nuclear-capable state that still cannot build roads that will survive their first monsoon. It has eradicated smallpox through the length and breadth of the country, but cannot stop female foeticide and infanticide. It is a country that managed to bring about what it called the ‘green revolution’, which heralded food grain self-sufficiency for a nation that relied on external food aid and yet, it easily has the most archaic land and agricultural laws in the world, with no sign of anyone wanting to reform them any time soon. It has hundreds of millions of people who subsist on less that a dollar a day, but who vote astutely and punish political parties ruthlessly. It has an independent judiciary that once set aside even Indira Gandhi’s election to parliament and yet, many members of parliament have criminal records and still contest and win elections from prison. India is a significant exporter of intellectual capital to the rest of the world—that capital being spawned in a handful of world class institutions of engineering, science and management. Yet it is a country with primary schools of pathetic quality and where retaining children in school is a challenge. India truly is an equal opportunity employer of women leaders in politics, but it took over fifty years to recognize that domestic violence is a crime and almost as long to get tough with bride burning. It is the IT powerhouse of the world, the harbinger of the offshore services revolution that is changing the business paradigms of the developed world. But regrettably, it is also the place where there is a yawning digital divide.
Rama Bijapurkar (We are like that only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India)
Many of us are uncomfortable with the idea of taking on a “false” persona for any length of time. And if we act out of character by convincing ourselves that our pseudo-self is real, we can eventually burn out without even knowing why. The genius of Little’s theory is how neatly it resolves this discomfort. Yes, we are only pretending to be extroverts, and yes, such inauthenticity can be morally ambiguous (not to mention exhausting), but if it’s in the service of love or a professional calling, then we’re doing just as Shakespeare advised.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
God is alive; Magic is afoot God is alive; Magic is afoot God is afoot; Magic is alive Alive is afoot..... Magic never died. God never sickened; Many poor men lied Many sick men lied Magic never weakened Magic never hid Magic always ruled God is afoot God never died. God was ruler Though his funeral lengthened Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live Though his words were twisted The naked Magic thrived Though his death was published Round and round the world The heart did not believe Many hurt men wondered Many struck men bled Magic never faltered Magic always led. Many stones were rolled But God would not lie down Many wild men lied Many fat men listened Though they offered stones Magic still was fed Though they locked their coffers God was always served. Magic is afoot. God rules. Alive is afoot. Alive is in command. Many weak men hungered Many strong men thrived Though they boasted solitude God was at their side Nor the dreamer in his cell Nor the captain on the hill Magic is alive Though his death was pardoned Round and round the world The heart did not believe. Though laws were carved in marble They could not shelter men Though altars built in parliaments They could not order men Police arrested Magic And Magic went with them, For Magic loves the hungry. But Magic would not tarry It moves from arm to arm It would not stay with them Magic is afoot It cannot come to harm It rests in an empty palm It spawns in an empty mind But Magic is no instrument Magic is the end. Many men drove Magic But Magic stayed behind Many strong men lied They only passed through Magic And out the other side Many weak men lied They came to God in secret And though they left him nourished They would not say who healed Though mountains danced before them They said that God was dead Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live This I mean to whisper to my mind This I mean to laugh with in my mind This I mean my mind to serve 'til Service is but Magic Moving through the world And mind itself is Magic Coursing through the flesh And flesh itself is Magic Dancing on a clock And time itself the magic length of God.
Leonard Cohen
I was drained of money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a-day. From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise, and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen; for the single meal, which I could venture to order, was coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn: and afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received, in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering.
Thomas de Quincey (De Quincey's Writings)
After all, a kiss between real lovers is not some type of contract, a neatly defined moment of pleasure, something obtained by greedy conquest, or any kind of clear saying of how it is. It is a grief-drenched hatching of two hearts into some ecstatic never-before-seen bird whose new uncategorizable form, unrecognized by the status quo, gives the slip to Death's sure rational deal. For love is a delicious and always messy extension of life that unfrantically outgrows mortality's rigid insistence on precise and efficient definition. Having all the answers means you haven't really ecstatically kissed or lived, thereby declaring the world defined and already finished. Loving all the questions on the other hand is a vitality that makes any length of life worth living. Loving doesn't mean you know all the notes and that you have to play all the notes, it just means you have to play the few notes you have long and beautifully. Like the sight of a truly beautiful young woman, smooth and gliding, melting hearts at even a distant glimpse, that no words, no matter how capable, can truly describe; a woman whose beauty is only really known by those who take a perch on the vista of time to watch the years of life speak out their long ornate sentences of grooves as they slowly stretch into her smoothness, wrinkling her as she glides struggling, decade by decade, her gait mitigated by a long trail of heavy loads, joys, losses, and suffering whose joint-aching years of traveling into a mastery of her own artistry of living, becomes even more than beauty something about which though we are even now no more capable of addressing than before, our admiration as original Earth-loving human beings should nonetheless never remain silent. And for that beauty we should never sing about, but only sing directly to it. Straightforward, cold, and inornate description in the presence of such living evidence of the flowering speech of the Holy in the Seed would be death of both the beauty and the speaker. Even if we always fail when we speak, we must be willing to fail magnificently, for even an eloquent failure, if in the service of life, feeds the Divine. Is it not a magical thing, this life, when just a little ash, cinder, and unclear water can arrange themselves into a beautiful old woman who sways, lifts, kisses, loves, sickens, argues, loses, bears up under it all, and, wrinkling, still lives under all that and yet feeds the Holy in Nature by just the way she moves barefoot down a path? If we can find the hearts, tongues, and brightness of our original souls, broken or not, then no matter from what mess we might have sprung today, we would be like those old-time speakers of life; every one of us would have it in our nature to feel obligated by such true living beauty as to know we have to say something in its presence if only for our utter feeling of awe. For, finally learning to approach something respectfully with love, slowly with the courtesy of an ornate indirectness, not describing what we see but praising the magnificence of her half-smiles of grief and persistent radiance rolling up from the weight-bearing thumping of her fine, well-oiled dusty old feet shuffling toward the dawn reeds at the edge of her part of the lake to fetch a head-balanced little clay jar of water to cook the family breakfast, we would know why the powerful Father Sun himself hurries to get his daily glimpse of her, only rising early because she does.
Martin Prechtel (The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive)
Gallic walls are always built more or less on the following plan. Balks of timber are laid on the ground at regular intervals of two feet along the whole line on which the wall is to be built, at right angles to it. These are made fast to one another by long beams running across them at their centre points, and are covered with a quantity of rubble; and the two-foot intervals between them are faced with large stones fitted tightly in. When this first course has been placed in position and fastened together, another course is laid on top. The same interval of two feet is kept between the balks of the second course, but they are not in contact with those of the first course, being separated from them by a course of stones two feet high; thus every balk is separated from each of its neighbours by one large stone, and so held firmly in position. By the addition of further courses the fabric is raised to the required height. This style of building presents a diversified appearance that is not unsightly, with its alternation of balks and stones each preserving their own straight lines. It is also very serviceable and well adapted for defending a town: the masonry protects it from fire, the timber from destruction by the battering-ram, which cannot either pierce or knock to pieces a structure braced internally by beams running generally to a length of forty feet in one piece.
Gaius Julius Caesar (The Conquest of Gaul)
No, Jackson, they’ve got a big ol’ reformed-slut alarm that sounds as soon as you step foot on the ground, and then a force field shoots up, separating us and catapulting you to purgatory for the length of the service. After your first six visits, they give you the option of walking there on your own while a sorcerer whispers arcane words and tries to set me up with a doctor, because that’s just how Jews roll.” “I can see your sarcasm is functioning well this morning. Isn’t that going to taint the pancakes?” Ellery struggled to keep his mouth firm. “I can make my pancakes both strawberry and sarcastic. But if you want whipped cream, you’re going to have to shut up, get dressed, and let me have this. Understand?
Amy Lane (A Few Good Fish (Fish Out of Water, #3))
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.
Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)
Dennis Tueller, a Salt Lake City police officer and firearms instructor (since retired), asked just this question.  Uniformed officers are routinely faced with impact weapon bearing suspects.  So it’s natural for Tueller to wonder how far away a suspect can be and still use an impact weapon against an officer before he could defend himself. To answer his question, Tueller ran a bunch of empirical studies.  Which is just a fancy way of saying he ran a bunch of students through the exercise that would later become the Tueller Drill. Tueller learned that most officers can get a service pistol out of a holster and engage a threat with center-mass hits within 1.5 seconds.  So the question then becomes, how much distance can a bad guy cross in 1.5 seconds?  Timing a great many students running from a standing start, Tueller learned that someone can go about 21 feet in 1.5 seconds.  So 21 feet became the “Tueller distance,” or the maximum distance from a police officer a person can use an impact weapon against the officer before the officer can shoot them.  The Tueller Drill is often referred to as the “21 foot rule,” or the “7 yard rule.”  This really obscures the real take-home message of the Tueller Drill.  The value is not some particular distance.  What matters is your “Tueller distance.” People’s draw speeds vary.  Your Tueller distance will be greater or less than 21 feet depending on your ability to get the gun unholstered and pointed center-mass. The real lesson of the Tueller Drill is that someone armed with an impact weapon has the opportunity to use it at a far greater distance than most think—and certainly much greater distances than a juror might have otherwise thought.  If you imagine the length of typical American parking space, and add another three paces, you’ll be right about at 21 feet.
Andrew F. Branca (The Law of Self Defense: The Indispensable Guide to the Armed Citizen)
At length, the traffic lights change. The bus coughs into movement, and trundles on its way to St. Paul’s. And in her last few seconds of viewing, our upstairs passenger might wonder what it’s like, working in these offices; might even conjure a brief fantasy in which the building, instead of a faltering legal practice, becomes an overhead dungeon to which the failures of some larger service are consigned as punishment: for crimes of drugs and drunkenness and lechery; of politics and betrayal; of unhappiness and doubt; and of the unforgivable carelessness of allowing a man on a tube platform to detonate himself, killing or maiming an estimated 120 people and causing £30m worth of actual damage, along with a projected £2.5 billion in lost tourist revenue—becomes, in effect, an administrative oubliette where, alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.
Mick Herron (Slow Horses (Slough House, #1))
In some cases the intelligence community could subsidize commercial and academic sources to ensure specialized or additional expertise for surge situations. The key challenge in these cases is that, although experts in academia and the media are likely to be eager to assist the government, they may be reluctant to have direct association with intelligence organizations. U.S. intelligence will need mechanisms that keep these experts at arm's length. One alternative could be to work through agencies such at the State Department and National Security Council, or private organizations such as the National Science Foundation. Moreover, these buffer mechanisms will need to be real, and not just a cover story. A few stories about how such-and-such organization is a 'front for U.S. intelligence' will ensure not only that the organization will lose its access to experts, but that the experts themselves will be less likely to offer their services to the government in the future.
Bruce D. Berkowitz (Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age)
Parenting pressures have resculpted our priorities so dramatically that we simply forget. In 1975 couples spent, on average, 12.4 hours alone together per week. By 2000 they spent only nine. What happens, as this number shrinks, is that our expectations shrink with it. Couple-time becomes stolen time, snatched in the interstices or piggybacked onto other pursuits. Homework is the new family dinner. I was struck by Laura Anne’s language as she described this new reality. She said the evening ritual of guiding her sons through their assignments was her “gift of service.” No doubt it is. But this particular form of service is directed inside the home, rather than toward the community and for the commonweal, and those kinds of volunteer efforts and public involvements have also steadily declined over the last few decades, at least in terms of the number of hours of sweat equity we put into them. Our gifts of service are now more likely to be for the sake of our kids. And so our world becomes smaller, and the internal pressure we feel to parent well, whatever that may mean, only increases: how one raises a child, as Jerome Kagan notes, is now one of the few remaining ways in public life that we can prove our moral worth. In other cultures and in other eras, this could be done by caring for one’s elders, participating in social movements, providing civic leadership, and volunteering. Now, in the United States, child-rearing has largely taken their place. Parenting books have become, literally, our bibles. It’s understandable why parents go to such elaborate lengths on behalf of their children. But here’s something to think about: while Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods makes it clear that middle-class children enjoy far greater success in the world, what the book can’t say is whether concerted cultivation causes that success or whether middle-class children would do just as well if they were simply left to their own devices. For all we know, the answer may be the latter.
Jennifer Senior (All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood)
At two hundred fifty feet in length with a surfaced displacement of 2,200 tons, the Samisho was not a small boat. Built to the 0+2+ (1) Yuushio-class standards at Kawasaki’s shipyards in Kobe, she’d begun service in 1992, and last year she’d been brought back to the yards for a retrofit. Now she was state of the art, an engineering and electronics marvel even by U.S. naval standards. She was a diesel boat, but she was fast, capable of a top speed submerged of more than twenty-five knots and a published diving depth in excess of one thousand feet. Her electronic detection systems and countermeasures by Hitachi were better than anything currently in use by any navy in the world, and her new Fuji electric motors and tunnel drive were as quiet as any nuclear submarine’s propulsion system, and much simpler to operate. The Samisho could be safely operated, even on war footing, with fifty men and ten officers—less than half the crew needed to run the Los Angeles-class boats, and one-fourth the crew needed for a sub-hunting surface vessel
David Hagberg (High Flight (Kirk McGarvey, #5))
We are experiencing an explosion of new products and services vying to help us make effort pacts with our digital devices. Whenever I write on my laptop, for instance, I click on the SelfControl app, which blocks my access to a host of distracting websites like Facebook and Reddit, as well as my email account. I can set it to block these sites for as much time as I need, typically in forty-five-minute to one-hour increments. Another app called Freedom is a bit more sophisticated and blocks potential distractions not only on my computer but also on mobile devices. Forest, perhaps my favorite distraction-proofing app, is one I find myself using nearly every day. Every time I want to make an effort pact with myself to avoid getting distracted on my phone, I open the Forest app and set my desired length of phone-free time. As soon as I hit a button marked Plant, a tiny seedling appears on the screen and a timer starts counting down. If I attempt to switch tasks on my phone before the timer runs out, my virtual tree dies. The thought of killing the little virtual tree adds just enough extra effort to discourage me from tapping out of the app—a visible reminder of the pact I’ve made with myself.
Nir Eyal (Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life)
Flattery was a prime department store strategy for cultivating customers, and men got a heavy dose. Males could expect to be treated like busy executives and discriminating men of the world. Men’s sections, floors, and entire stores were designed to resemble opulent clubs, often outfitted with wood-paneled grills that women customers were not permitted to enter. Vandervoort’s and Filene’s went to somewhat unusual lengths in furnishing a men’s lounge and smoking room, oddly working against the prevailing assumption that men had no time to spare. In Halle’s new men’s store of the late 1920s, dark mahogany paneling and carved marble detailing created the ambience of a priestly inner sanctum. Filene’s furnished an indoor putting green in its men’s store of 1928. Wanamaker’s outdid itself in 1932, the unlucky Depression year it opened its luxurious six-story men’s store in the Lincoln-Liberty building, with stocks of British imports and an equestrian shop too. Both Wanamaker’s and Marshall Field sold airplanes. Lord & Taylor reserved its tenth floor in New York City for men, with heman departments for cutlery, the home bar, and barbecue equipment. Gimbels, Macy’s, and Hearn’s stuck to more basic appeals, using their large liquor departments to attract men.
Jan Whitaker (Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class)
Ought one to remain in one’s country when under a tyrant? If one’s country is under a tyrant ought one to labour at all hazards for the abolition of the tyranny, even at the risk of the total destruction of the city? Or ought we to be on our guard against the man attempting the abolition, lest he should rise too high himself? Ought one to assist one’s country when under a tyrant by seizing opportunities and by argument rather than by war? Is it acting like a good citizen to quit one’s country when under a tyrant for any other land, and there to remain quiet, or ought one to face any and every danger for liberty’s sake? Ought one to wage war upon and besiege one’s native town, if it is under a tyrant? Even if one does not approve an abolition of a tyranny by war, ought one still to enroll oneself in the ranks of the loyalists? Ought one in politics to share the dangers of one’s benefactors and friends, even though one does not think their general policy to be wise? Should a man who has done conspicuous services to his country, and on that very account has been shamefully treated and exposed to envy, voluntarily place himself in danger for his country, or may he be permitted at length to take thought for himself and those nearest and dearest to him, giving up all political struggles against the stronger party?
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Then, on a left-hand curve 2.8 kilometres from the finish line, Marco delivers another cutting acceleration. Tonkov is immediately out of the saddle. The gap reaches two lengths. Tonkov fights his way back and is on Marco’s wheel when Marco, who is still standing on the pedals, accelerates again. Suddenly Tonkov is no longer there. Afterwards Tonkov would say he could no longer feel his hands and feet. ‘I had to stop. I lost his slipstream. I couldn’t go on.’ Marco told Romano Cenni he could taste blood. His performance on Montecampione was close to self-mutilation. Seven hundred metres from the finish line, the TV camera on the inside of the final right-hand bend, looking down the hill, picks Marco up over two hundred metres from the line and follows him for fifty metres, a fifteen-second close-up, grainy, pallid in the late-afternoon light. A car and motorbike, diffused and ghostlike, pass between the camera and Marco, emerging out of the gloom. The image cuts to another camera, tight on him as he swings round into the finishing straight, a five-second flash before the live, wide shot of the stage finish: Marco, framed between ecstatic fans on either side, and the finish-line scaffolding adorned with race sponsors‘ logos; largest, and centrally, the Gazzetta dello Sport, surrounded by branding for iced tea, shower gel, telephone services. Then we see it again in the super-slow-motion replay; the five seconds between the moment Marco appeared in the closing straight and the moment he crossed the finish line are extruded to fifteen strung-out seconds. The image frames his head and little else, revealing details invisible in real time and at standard resolution: a drop of sweat that falls from his chin as he makes the bend, the gaping jaw and crumpled forehead and lines beneath the eyes that deepen as Marco wrings still more speed from the mountain. As he rides towards victory in the Giro d‘Italia, Marco pushes himself so deeply into the pain of physical exertion that the gaucheness he has always shown before the camera dissolves, and — this must be the instant he crosses the line — he begins to rise out of his agony. The torso lifts to vertical, the arms spread out into a crucifix position, the eyelids descend, and Marco‘s face, altered by the darkness he has seen in his apnoea, lifts towards the light.
Matt Rendell
I returned to my daily routine of service in the board of war, and a punctual attendance in Congress, every day, in all their hours. I returned, also, to my almost daily exhortations to the institution of Governments in the States, and a declaration of independence. I soon found there was a whispering among the partisans in opposition to independence, that I was interested; that I held an office under the new government of Massachusetts; that I was afraid of losing it, if we did not declare independence; and that I consequently ought not to be attended to. This they circulated so successfully, that they got it insinuated among the members of the legislature in Maryland, where their friends were powerful enough to give an instruction to their delegates in Congress, warning them against listening to the advice of interested persons, and manifestly pointing me out to the understanding of every one. This instruction was read in Congress. It produced no other effect upon me than a laughing letter to my friend, Mr. Chase, who regarded it no more than I did. These chuckles I was informed of, and witnessed for many weeks, and at length they broke out in a very extraordinary manner. When I had been speaking one day on the subject of independence, or the institution of governments, which I always considered as the same thing, a gentleman of great fortune and high rank arose and said, he should move, that no person who held any office under a new government should be admitted to vote on any such question, as they were interested persons. I wondered at the simplicity of this motion, but knew very well what to do with it. I rose from my seat with great coolness and deliberation; so far from expressing or feeling any resentment, I really felt gay, though as it happened, I preserved an unusual gravity in my countenance and air, and said, “Mr. President, I will second the gentleman’s motion, and I recommend it to the honorable gentleman to second another which I should make, namely, that no gentleman who holds any office under the old or present government should be admitted to vote on any such question, as they were interested persons.” The moment when this was pronounced, it flew like an electric stroke through every countenance in the room, for the gentleman who made the motion held as high an office under the old government as I did under the new, and many other members present held offices under the royal government. My friends accordingly were delighted with my retaliation, and the friends of my antagonist were mortified at his indiscretion in exposing himself to such a retort.
John Adams (Autobiography)
A knock at the enameled door of the carriage altered them to the presence of a porter and a platform inspector just outside. Sebastian looked up and handed the baby back to Evie. He went to speak to the men. After a minute or two, he came back from the threshold with a basket. Looking both perturbed and amused, he brought it to Phoebe. “This was delivered to the station for you.” “Just now?” Phoebe asked with a nonplussed laugh. “Why, I believe it’s Ernestine’s mending basket! Don’t say the Ravenels went to the trouble of sending someone all the way to Alton to return it?” “It’s not empty,” her father said. As he set the basket in her lap, it quivered and rustled, and a blood-curdling yowl emerged. Astonished, Phoebe fumbled with the latch on the lid and opened it. The black cat sprang out and crawled frantically up her front, clinging to her shoulder with such ferocity that nothing could have detached her claws. “Galoshes!” Justin exclaimed, hurrying over to her. “Gosh-gosh!” Stephen cried in excitement. Phoebe stroked the frantic cat and tried to calm her. “Galoshes, how . . . why are you . . . oh, this is Mr. Ravenel’s doing! I’m going to murder him. You poor little thing.” Justin came to stand beside her, running his hands over the dusty, bedraggled feline. “Are we going to keep her now, Mama?” “I don’t think we have a choice,” Phoebe said distractedly. “Ivo, will you go with Justin to the dining compartment, and fetch her some food and water?” The two boys dashed off immediately. “Why has he done this?” Phoebe fretted. “He probably couldn’t make her stay at the barn, either. But she’s not meant to be a pet. She’s sure to run off as soon as we reach home.” Resuming his seat next to Evie, Sebastian said dryly, “Redbird, I doubt that creature will stray more than an arm’s length from you.” Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West’s handwriting. Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position To Whom It May Concern, I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred. Your servant, Galoshes the Cat Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents’ questioning gazes on her. “Job application,” she explained sourly. “From the cat.” “How charming,” Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder. “‘Personal companion,’ my foot,” Phoebe muttered. “This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin.” “I wonder,” Seraphina said thoughtfully. “If she were truly feral, she wouldn’t want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated.” Phoebe rolled her eyes. “It seems we’ll find out.” The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe’s lap and curled up with a sigh.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels, #5))
He recognized her deft hand and eye for detail immediately. He flipped through the pages, past vignettes of the dairymaid and her vague-featured gentleman engaged in a courtship of sorts: a kiss on the hand, a whisper in the ear. By the book’s midpoint, the chit’s voluminous petticoats were up around her ears, and the illustrations comprised a sequence of quite similar poses in varying locales. Not just the dairy, but a carriage, the larder, in a hayloft lit with candles and strewn with…were those rose petals? I’ll be damned. Gray was fast divining the true source of the French painting master’s mythic exploits. More unsettling by far, however, as he perused the book, he noted a subtle alteration in the gentleman lover’s features. With each successive illustration, the hero appeared taller, broader in the shoulders, and his hair went from a cropped style to collar length in the space of two pages. The more pages Gray turned, the more he recognized himself. It was unmistakable. She’d used him as the model for these bawdy illustrations. She’d sketched him in secret; not once, but many times. And here he’d nearly gone mad with envy over each scrap of foolscap she’d inked for once crewman or another. His emotions underwent a dizzying progression-from surprised, to flattered, to (with the benefit of one especially inventive situation in an orchard) undeniably aroused. But as he lingered over a nude study of this amalgam of the real him and some picaresque fantasy, he began to feel something else entirely. He felt used. She’d rendered his form with astonishing accuracy, given that it must have been drawn before she’d any opportunity to actually see him unclothed. Not that she’d achieved an exact likeness. Her virgin’s imagination was rather generous in certain aspects and somewhat stinting in others, he noted with a bitter sort of amusement. But she’d laid him bare in these pages, without his knowledge or consent. God, she’d even drawn his scars. All in service of some adolescent erotic fantasy. And now he began to grow angry. He had been handling the leaves of the book with his fingertips only, anxious he might smudge or rip the pages. Now he abandoned all caution and flipped roughly through the remainder of the volume. Until he came to the end, and his hand froze. There they were, the two of them. He and she fully clothed and unengaged in any physical intimacies-yet intimate, in a way he had never known. Never dreamed. Sitting beneath a willow tree, his head in her lap. One of her hands lay twined with his, atop his chest. The other rested on his brow. The sky soared vast and expansive above, gauzy clouds spinning into forever. The hot fist of desire that had gripped his loins loosened, moved upward through his torso, churning the contents of his gut along the way. Then it clutched at his heart and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, this illustration was the most dismaying of all. So naïve, so ridiculous. at least the bawdy situations were plausible, if sometimes physically improbable. This was utterly impossible. To her, he'd never been more than a fantasy. It occurred to Gray that more secrets might be packed within these trunks. If he sorted through her belongings, he might find the answers to all his questions. Perhaps answers to questions he'd never thought to ask. In spite of this, he let the lid of the trunk clap shut and fastened the strap with shaking fingers. He'd suffered as many of her fantasies as he could bear for one day. It was time to acquaint her with reality.
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
ADDRESSING DIVERSITY The way to reach the sheer diversity of the city is through new churches. New churches are the single best way to reach (1) new generations, (2) new residents, and (3) new people groups. Young adults have always been disproportionately located in newer congregations. Long-established congregations develop traditions (such as time of worship, length of service, emotional responsiveness, sermon topics, leadership styles, emotional atmosphere, and dozens of other tiny customs and mores) that reflect the sensibilities of longtime leaders who have the influence and resources to control the church life. These sensibilities often do not reach the younger generations. THE 1 PERCENT RULE Lyle Schaller talks about the 1 percent rule: “Each year any association of churches should plant new congregations at the rate of 1 percent of their existing total; otherwise, that association is in maintenance and decline. If an association wants to grow 50 percent plus [in a generation], it must plant 2 to 3 percent per year.”6 In addition, new residents are typically better reached by new churches. In older congregations, it may require years of tenure in the city before a person is allowed into a place of influence, but in a new church, new residents tend to have equal power with longtime area residents. Finally, new sociocultural groups in a community are generally better reached by new congregations. For example, if white-collar commuters move into an area where the older residents were farmers, a new church will probably be more receptive to the multiple needs of the new residents, while older churches will continue to be oriented to the original social group. And a new church that is intentionally multiethnic from the start will best reach new racial groups in a community. For example, if an all-Anglo neighborhood becomes 33 percent Hispanic, a new, deliberately biracial church will be far more likely to create “cultural space” for newcomers than will an older church in town. Brand-new immigrant groups can normally only be reached by churches ministering in their own languages. If we wait until a new group is sufficiently assimilated into American culture to come to our church, we will wait for years without reaching out to them. Remember that a new congregation for a new people group can often be planted within the overall structure of an existing church — perhaps through a new Sunday service at another time or a new network of house churches connected to a larger existing congregation. Though it may technically not be a new independent congregation, it serves the same function.
Timothy J. Keller (Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City)
Because of that, just days after taking office as prime minister, Churchill was preparing for the ultimate emergency – the potential loss of most of the British army. The War Minister Anthony Eden had already announced the formation of the Home Guard, and asked able-bodied men to come forward. A huge number did so. Later that same evening (14 May), the BBC had broadcast this announcement: “The Admiralty have made an order directing the owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between thirty and one hundred feet in length to send all particulars to the Admiralty within fourteen days from today, if they have not already been offered or requisitioned. By this day, five days later, retired Rear Admiral Alfred Taylor had been given powers to collect and pay crews of small craft which might be used by navy, and was gathering them at Sheerness in the Thames estuary. The man in charge of finding the ships, H. C. Riggs, was now sleeping at the offices of the Ministry of Shipping in Berkeley Square, one of the administrative heroes of Dunkirk, and was collecting information on small ships that might be available and holding them in port. The clerks at the Admiralty were printing copies of form T124, which signed people up for 90 days short service in the navy.
David Boyle (Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance (The Storm of War Book 2))
Get Noticed In Cyber Space With SEO Do you own a website or blog and want to get the most out of it by increasing your traffic without spending a dime? Then you should look into the world of search engine optimization! Search engine optimization gets more people to your site for free. Read on to learn how you, too, can do this! When designing your site for SEO, make sure to include relevant keywords in the title tag. Since these words will show up as the title to your page, it is the single most important place to put the relevant keywords. However, make sure your title tag is no more than six to seven words in length. Using flash files is not a good idea for search engine optimization. Be aware of using flash as it can be very slow to load, and users will get frustrated. In addition, search engine spiders will not read keywords that are found in flash files. When marketing a product online, make sure your site is as useable and accessible as possible. If your website has problems with the code or can't be viewed by certain browsers, you will lose visitors and therefore sales. Very few people will go to the trouble of switching browsers just to use your site. When optimizing your website, be sure to optimize your description meta tag as well. Some experts believe that keyword meta tags are nearly worthless today, as search engines no longer use them, but that descriptions will usually show up under your page title on the results page, and they are also involved in the indexing process. With search engine optimization, your blog or website can get way more traffic by appearing early on lists of search results for terms related to your business. Apply these easy, free, and effective techniques to maximize your traffic and use that traffic to maximize your profits. Why wait? Start now! Use these tips for successful SEO of any business online and try visit holisticmade.com
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One of Matsudaira Sagami no kami’s retainers went to Kyoto on a matter of debt collection and took up lodgings by renting living quarters in a townhouse. One day while standing out front watching the people go by, he heard a passerby say, “They say that Lord Matsudaira’s men are involved in a fight right now.” The retainer thought, “How worrisome that some of my companions are involved in a fight. There are some men to relieve those at Edo staying here. Perhaps these are the men involved.” He asked the passerby of the location, but when he arrived out of breath, his companions had already been cut down and their adversaries were at the point of delivering the coup de grace. He quickly let out a yell, cut the two men down, and returned to his lodgings. This matter was made known to an official of the shogunate, and the man was called up before him and questioned. “You gave assistance in your companions’ fight and thus disregarded the government’s ordinance. This is true beyond a doubt, isn’t it?” The man replied, “I am from the country, and it is difficult for me to understand everything that Your Honor is saying. Would you please repeat that?” The official got angry and said, “Is there something wrong with your ears? Didn’t you abet a fight, commit bloodshed, disregard the government’s ordinance, and break the law?” The man then replied, “I have at length understood what you are saying. Although you say that I have broken the law and disregarded the government’s ordinance, I have by no means done so. The reason for this is that all living things value their lives, and this goes without saying for human beings. I, especially, value my life. However, I thought that to hear a rumor that one’s friends are involved in a fight and to pretend not to hear this is not to preserve the Way of the Samurai, so I ran to the place of action. To shamelessly return home after seeing my friends struck down would surely have lengthened my life, but this too would be disregarding the Way. In preserving the Way, one will throw away his own precious life. Thus, in order to preserve the Way of the Samurai and not to disregard the Samurai Ordinances, I quickly threw away my life at that place. I beg that you execute me immediately.” The official was very impressed and later dismissed the matter, communicating to Lord Matsudaira, “You have a very able samurai in your service. Please treasure him.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai)
There was an electric bell push screwed to the counter. It had a thin wire that ran away to a nearby crack, and a handwritten sign that said If Unattended Ring For Service. The message was carefully lettered and protected by many layers of clear tape, applied in strips of generous length, some of which were curled at the corners, and dirty, as if picked at by bored or anxious fingers.
Lee Child (Past Tense (Jack Reacher, #23))
You poor, dear child,” Mrs. Wilkes said, after several restorative sips. “I can only begin to image the insults and humiliations you have been forced to endure, living among those…savages.” Tipsy, Livy wondered if she was referring to Lawson or the Gunns. “I can’t change what you have been through, but I can promise you this. You will never have to see the Gunns again. They were intolerably negligent in placing you in a situation where a savage could propose to make you his…his…wife.” Mrs. Wilkes mouth pursed, as if she’d gone for the snuff and mistakenly taken alum. She lay a hand over her heart. “You needn’t fear going back. You may stay with us for as long as you wish. I swear to you, there is nothing on heaven or earth that could ever persuade me to return you to that nest of vipers.” Mr. Wilkes came in carrying a shawl. “When I think of a child of her caliber being forced into such degraded association with those red instruments of Satan, it makes my blood boil.” He draped the shawl around Livy’s shoulders and patted her kindly. “Mr. Lawson may be a rascal,” Mr. Wilkes continued, “but we owe him a debt of gratitude for rescuing you. I cannot believe one of those creatures actually proposed marriage! To be honest, the mere thought of you with him makes me ill. You were fortunate, Deliverance. I mean to say, I am assuming that the savage did not actually act on his evil intentions?” Livy flinched at his words. Mrs. Wilkes looked sympathetic, but her eyes were bright with curiosity. Every grown person Livy’d been near lately seemed to have their minds stuck on Sodom and Gomorrah. They made her feel dirty. And they wanted to keep her here. To rescue her form Rising Hawk. From Rising Hawk! She looked into the fire. There were bright blue and white tiles the entire length of the hearth. A silver tea service sparkled on a walnut sideboard. This room, with its warm fire and pretty things, had seemed like a haven, peaceful and civilized, up to this moment. They watched her, her head down, studying the tabletop. Suddenly she stood up. “Mr. Wilkes, Mrs. Wilkes. You have both been so kind to me and Ephraim that I feel I owe you the truth.” She paused and put a corner of the shawl to her eyes. “The fact is, me and the Indian have been sinning together for, oh, I don’t know how long. And now here I am, a month gone already and nearly a widow before I’m married.” Mrs. Wilkes fainted with a loud thud. Livy took a certain satisfaction in the sound.
Betsy Urban (Waiting for Deliverance)
I cannot believe one of those creatures actually proposed marriage! To be honest, the mere thought of you with him makes me ill. You were fortunate, Deliverance. I mean to say, I am assuming that the savage did not actually act on his evil intentions?” Livy flinched at his words. Mrs. Wilkes looked sympathetic, but her eyes were bright with curiosity. Every grown person Livy’d been near lately seemed to have their minds stuck on Sodom and Gomorrah. They made her feel dirty. And they wanted to keep her here. To rescue her from Rising Hawk. From Rising Hawk! She looked into the fire. There were bright blue and white tiles the entire length of the hearth. A silver tea service sparkled on a walnut sideboard. This room, with its warm fire and pretty things, had seemed like a heaven, peaceful and civilized, up to this moment. They watched her, her head down, studying the tabletop. Suddenly she stood up. “Mr. Wilkes, Mrs. Wilkes. You have both been so kind to me and Ephraim that I feel I owe you the truth.” She paused and put a corner of the shawl to her eyes. “The fact is, me and the Indian have been sinning together for, oh, I don’t know how long. And now here I am, a month gone already and nearly a widow before I’m married.” Mrs. Wilkes fainted with a loud thud. Livy took a certain satisfaction in the sound.
Betsy Urban (Waiting for Deliverance)
Web Design - Give Your Brand Global Recognition Running a small business seems easy but actually, it is not. Surprised? Well, there’s a lot to look after and accomplish without violating the budget and resources. If you own a small business and planning to take it to new heights, you must begin with a professional web design company. Why? Because to let your audience know about your products and services, you got to make your online presence. To make a visible impact online, you need to give your organization a face, which is possible only with a well-designed website that’s professional yet user-friendly. When a website has to be designed, a number of factors are meant to be considered. Font, images, content, alignment, graphics, loading time and interface are the major factors to be careful about. What else? You need to ensure that your brand’s message is displayed the right way and at the right place. Call-to-action has to be there and the design must be in a way that attracts the audience. Want to know more? Length and number of pages also matter, as they play a great role in the presentation and are responsible to hold the audience. All this must be sounding like a lot of stuff and complicated but it is all easy with the right small business web design company by your side. It will understand your business, its needs, and goals for long-term and come with a website which is liked by the audience the moment they click it. All you need to be careful is finding the company that’s worth time and money you invest. The market is flooded with a number of web designers who boast a lot but are not worth what they say. Hiring the wrong designers may cause serious consequences for your website and eventually business. To stay away from coming across such ugly experiences, take enough time and settle for the best professionals. Check their previous work, feedback, price plan and expertise before finalizing anything. Keep this brief piece of information in mind and gift your small business the website it deserves. Good Luck!
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Bill Clinton was friendly and charming with just about everyone besides Hillary. He always seemed to want to give his company extra time. He was very generous that way. Like him or not, share his political ideas or not, find yourself in the same room with him, and you are hooked. You can’t help but like him. But that was not Hillary. She was clearly all business, 24/7. Her private leadership style was based on pure fear and loathing—and I never saw her that turn off. Even in the president’s presence, Mrs. Clinton operated at far greater than arm’s length—a cheerless grifter always on her scheming way to someone or something else more important than the person directly in front of her.
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
Donald was stunned. They must be making a sensaysh out of it, to sacrifice so much time from even their ten-minute condensed-news cycle! His Mark II confidence evaporated. Euphoric from his recent eptification, he had thought he was a new person, immeasurably better equipped to affect the world. But the implications of that expensive plug stabbed deep into his mind. If State were willing to go to these lengths to maintain his cover identity, that meant he was only the visible tip of a scheme involving perhaps thousands of people. State just didn’t issue fiats to a powerful corporation like English Language Relay Satellite Service without good reason. Meaningless phrases drifted up, dissociated, and presented themselves to his awareness, all seeming to have relevance to his situation and yet not cohering. My name is Legion. I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts. The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children. Say can you look into the seeds of time? Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Struggling to make sense of these fragments, he finally arrived at what his subconscious might be trying to convey. The prize, these days, is not in finding a beautiful mistress. It’s in having presentable prodgies. Helen the unattainable is in the womb, and every mother dreams of bearing her. Now her whereabouts is known. She lives in Yatakang and I’ve been sent in search of her, ordered to bring her back or say her beauty is a lie—if necessary to make it a lie, with vitriol. Odysseus the cunning lurked inside the belly of the horse and the Trojans breached the wall and took it in while Laocoön and his sons were killed by snakes. A snake is cramped around my forehead and if it squeezes any tighter it will crack my skull. When the purser next passed, he said, “Get me something for a headache, will you?” He knew that was the right medicine to ask for, yet it also seemed he should have asked for a cure for bellyache, because everything was confused: the men in the belly of the wooden horse waiting to be born and wreak destruction, and the pain of parturition, and Athena was born of the head of Zeus, and Time ate his children, as though he were not only in the wooden horse of the express but was it about to deliver the city to its enemy and its enemy to the city, a spiralling wild-rose branch of pain with every thorn a spiky image pricking him into other times and other places. Ahead, the walls. Approaching them, the helpless stupid Odysseus of the twenty-first century, who must also be Odin blind in one eye so as not to let his right hand know what his left was doing. Odinzeus, wielder of thunderbolts, how could he aim correctly without parallax? “No individual has the whole picture, or even enough of it to make trustworthy judgments on his own initiative.” Shalmaneser, master of infinite knowledge, lead me through the valley of the shadow of death and I shall fear no evil … The purser brought a white capsule and he gulped it down. But the headache was only a symptom, and could be fixed.
John Brunner (Stand on Zanzibar)
This raised the antennae of the House committee members and its counsel. Robert Kunzig paused to ask Gitlow if he was claiming that Dr. Ward had engaged in direct communist propaganda when he was in China in 1925. Gitlow responded emphatically in the affirmative: “Certainly. … All the lectures delivered in China by Dr. Ward had for its main purpose bolstering up the position of the Communist movement in China and winning support of the Chinese intellectuals and Christians in China for the Chinese Communist movement and for Soviet Russia.” Gitlow said that Ward’s lectures in China in 1925 were highly appreciated and “discussed at length in Moscow at the Comintern.” He said that Comintern officials judged that “clergymen with Dr. Ward’s point of view, using the cloak of religion, could render service of inestimable value to the Communist cause in China and to Soviet interests.
Paul Kengor (The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration)
From the beginning, the UX writer needs to know the business constraints, including resources available for localization and the timelines to coordinate engineering and UX content with content for marketing, sales, and support. We also need to know what languages the people using the experience are fluent in, on which devices, and in what contexts. As the experience develops, we need to know technical, display, and design constraints (like maximum URL lengths and text box sizes), which text needs to be coded before hardware is shipped, and which text can be updated from live services.
Torrey Podmajersky (Strategic Writing for UX: Drive Engagement, Conversion, and Retention with Every Word)
As we continued to meet with Jeff, we tried various kinds of spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to present and explore our ideas, none of which seemed to be particularly effective. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, Jeff suggested a different approach for the next meeting. Forget the spreadsheets and slides, he said. Instead, each team member would write a narrative document. In it, they would describe their best idea for a device or service for the digital media business. The next meeting arrived, and we all showed up with our narratives. (As mentioned, ours was one of several teams involved in the early experimentation with narratives at the company. They were not yet official Amazon policy.) We distributed them and read them to ourselves and then discussed them, one after another. One proposed an e-book reader that would use new E Ink screen technology. Another described a new take on the MP3 player. Jeff wrote his own narrative about a device he called the Amazon Puck. It would sit on your countertop and could respond to voice commands like, “Puck. Please order a gallon of milk.” Puck would then place the order with Amazon. The great revelation of this process was not any one of the product ideas. As we’ve described in chapter four, the breakthrough was the document itself. We had freed ourselves of the quantitative demands of Excel, the visual seduction of PowerPoint, and the distracting effect of personal performance. The idea had to be in the writing. Writing up our ideas was hard work. It required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why consumers would want it. Half-baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides. It could not be glossed over through personal charm in the presentation. After we started using the documents, our meetings changed. There was more meat and more detail to discuss, so the sessions were livelier and longer. We weren’t so focused on the pro forma P&L and projected market segment share. We talked at length about the service itself, the experience, and which products and services we thought would appeal most to the customer.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
the Saint Jacques Hotel. Revolving doors led into a stark white lobby with an artificial fireplace that took up almost the entire length of one wall; on the other wall a concierge desk stretched forever. Janice asked the doorman where the business service center was and disappeared, heels clattering, down
Brendan Slocumb (The Violin Conspiracy)
The bottom line, when it comes to rebooted retirement, is that it’s not just about a new “length of service.” It’s also a mindset shift, in which you’re only partially defined by what you do. Other criteria include how well you adapt to a variety of careers—ones that will hopefully give you a sense of purpose, satisfaction, and optimism. Some things to consider when it comes to a new approach to retirement: •   Zero in on the aspects of your work that you love and physically can do and focus on those. •   Examine educational opportunities to develop skills in new areas that will allow you to keep pursuing your passions. •   Assuming you’re financially stable, consider a second (or third or fourth) career in new areas in which you’re motivated by passion, rather than money.
Michael F. Roizen (The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow)
Worst of all were the length and conditions of the Russian church services which they, as visiting churchmen, were required to attend.
Robert K. Massie (Peter the Great: His Life and World)
It seemed to me that the precision required to play good golf demanded much greater mental discipline than was necessary for good tennis. The reason for the low margin of error was not hard to discover: the speed of the club head that is necessary to hit the ball a long distance. The speed of the golfer’s arms on the downswing is not much greater than the speed of the tennis player’s arm on the serve, but because of the greater length and flexibility of the golf club, the club-head speed is much greater than that of a racket. If a club head traveling over 100 mph contacts the ball with a face open a mere degree or two, the ball can be sent off target many tens of yards. With those odds, it’s amazing that the ball ever does go exactly where we want it to. In tennis, the serve is the only shot in which the player initiates the action, whereas in golf he does so on every shot. It is interesting to note that if you miss your first serve in tennis, you get another try. Golf is not so forgiving! Further, in tennis a much larger surface hits a much larger ball a much shorter distance. Moving from tennis to golf was definitely going to require some fine-tuning of my concentration. The greater precision required in golf is also reflected in the manner in which the player addresses the ball. A tennis player can be pretty casual, or even a little flamboyant, as he sets up the service line, bounces the ball a few times, and serves. Most professional golfers display much more self-discipline. They seem to approach the ball in the same controlled, almost ritualistic way every time. Even their dress seems more meticulous. (I’ve often felt I could pick out the golfers from the tennis players at a cocktail party.) Meticulousness has never been my strong suit. There isn’t a family picture of me as a boy in which at least one shoe wasn’t untied. I could usually solve
W. Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Golf)
HOW I BUSTED MY UNFAITHFUL WIFE WITH THE HELP OF GRAYHATHACKS CONTRACTOR My wife had become increasingly distant, her behavior erratic, and she would often go out with friends and return home at odd hours. Her phone was her sanctuary, which she guarded fiercely. I had a gut-wrenching feeling that she was being unfaithful, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch her in the act. That's when I stumbled upon Grayhathacks Contractor, a team of professional hackers who specialize in investigating matters of infidelity. The process was swift and straightforward. They requested some basic information about Rachel's phone and her daily routines, which I provided with a heavy heart. I had to be meticulous in my details, describing her habits such as her favorite coffee shop where she'd often go to 'work' on her laptop, the secret password she used for her phone among other details. Their service was impeccable. Within a few hours, they had infiltrated Rachel's phone and installed an undetectable spyware that would allow me to monitor her messages, calls, location, and even her social media accounts. The software was so sophisticated that it didn't drain her battery or cause any glitches that would raise suspicion. The first few days were agonizing as I waited for any signs of deceit, but the evidence I gathered was chilling. She had been meeting her ex-boyfriend, at a motel just outside of town. The spyware provided me with the exact dates, times, and even the exact location where they were staying. I could see their flirty texts, the lovey-dovey emojis, and the incriminating photos they exchanged. But what was most disturbing was Rachel's level of deception. She had gone to great lengths to cover her tracks. She would delete messages and call logs, and even change her phone's settings to prevent any notifications from her ex from reaching her lock screen. It was like watching a masterclass in infidelity, and she had done it all right under my nose. Grayhathacks Contractor also provided me with a detailed report of her whereabouts. I could see the exact moments she lied to me about her whereabouts, the hours she spent with Michael, and the clandestine meetings she arranged when she thought I was out of town. It was a crushing realization, but I needed to know the truth. When I finally gathered the courage to confront her, I had irrefutable proof of her betrayal. The look on her face said it all. She had been caught red-handed, and she knew it. The truth was out, and it was disgusting. She had betrayed me in the worst possible way. The service they provide is not for the faint of heart, but for those who suspect their partner of infidelity and need concrete evidence, I can't recommend Grayhathacks Contractor enough. They gave me the tools to uncover the harsh reality and, ultimately, make the right decision for my life. Contact Email grayhathacks@contractor.net
Renley Mellard
Washington, May 26—At the request of the Department of Justice, the United States Secret Service has undertaken the work of investigating the charge of peonage, or holding another in servitude to work out a debt, which has been made against persons living in the vicinity of Montgomery, Ala. The punishment provided by the statute for this crime is a fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $5,000 or imprisonment of not less than one year nor more than five. One man, named Robert N. Franklin, has already been indicted for keeping a negro in servitude for at least a year. Information in the hands of [Secret Service] chief Wilkie tends to show that a regular system has been practiced for a long time between certain magistrates and persons who want negro laborers. It is said the plan is to bring a poor negro before a magistrate on a flimsy charge. He is convicted and, having no money to pay a fine, the white man offers to advance him the money, provided the negro will make a labor contract with him for a length of time sufficient to reimburse him for the money and trouble he has taken to
Douglas A. Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)
It may have been only for a moment, it probably was; but I do know the silence was not broken till the aged minister, who stood at the head of the coffin, began his discourse. We stood with uncovered heads during the service, and when the old minister addressed us he spoke as though he might have been holding family worship and we had been his children. He invoked Heaven to comfort and sustain the mother when the news of her son's death reached her, as she would need more than human aid in that hour; he prayed that her faith might not falter and that she might again meet and be with her loved ones forever in the great beyond. He then took up the subject of life,—spoke of its brevity, its many hopes that are never realized, and the disappointments from which no prudence or foresight can shield us. He dwelt at some length on the strange mingling of sunshine and shadow that seemed to belong to every life; on the mystery everywhere, and nowhere more impressively than in ourselves. With his long bony finger he pointed to the cold, mute form that lay in the coffin before us, and said, "But this, my friends, is the mystery of all mysteries." The fact that life terminated in death, he said, only emphasized its reality; that the death of our companion was not an accident, though it was sudden and unexpected; that the difficulties of life are such that it would be worse than folly in us to try to meet them in our own strength. Death, he said, might change, but it did not destroy; that the soul still lived and would live forever; that death was simply the gateway out of time into eternity; and if we were to realize the high aim of our being, we could do so by casting our burdens on Him who was able and willing to carry them for us. He spoke feelingly of the Great Teacher, the lowly Nazarene, who also suffered and died, and he concluded with an eloquent description of the blessed life, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. After the discourse was ended and a brief and earnest prayer was covered, the two young girls sang the hymn, "Shall we meet beyond the river?" The services being at an end, the coffin was lowered into the grave.
Andy Adams (10 Masterpieces of Western Stories)
CARDINAL WOLSEY So farewell to the little good you bear me. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have: And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again
William Shakespeare
Messerschmitt Me 264 with steam turbine In August 1944, the firm of Osermaschinen G.m.b.H. founded by Professor Losel was commissioned to carry out the design and development of a steam turbine power unit for aircraft. The design called for 6000hp at 6000rpm with a weight/power ratio of 0.7kg/hp and a consumption of 190 grams/hp/hour. A Me 264 airframe was to have been placed at the disposal of the firm, but it was destroyed in an air raid. Two forms of propeller were envisaged, one of 17.5ft diameter and revolving at 400-500rpm and the other 6.5ft in diameter revolving at 600rpm. The whole system consisted of four boilers (capillary tube boilers of special design) boiler feed water pump and auxiliary turbine, main turbine, combustion air draught fan, condenser, controls and auxiliaries. At the time of the German collapse many components of the system had been produced, including the turbine blades, and auxiliaries such as the combustion air draught fan and condenser pump were ready for use. A start had been made with the assembly of the auxiliary and main turbine and one boiler had been manufactured in its entirety. The first system was designed to use 65% solid fuel (pulverised coal) and 35% liquid fuel (petrol) but it was intended to use liquid fuel only when it became available in quantity. The advantages claimed for the steam-turbine system are: 1)       Constant power at varying heights. 2)     Capacity for 100% overloading, even for long periods. 3)      Full steam output attained in 5-10 seconds. 4)     The system is not sensitive to low temperatures. 5)     Long life and simple servicing. 6)      Simple and rapid control. 7)      The system lends itself to incorporation in an airframe, since it can be broken down into separate components. The four main boilers are 3ft in diameter and 4ft high. The main turbine is 2ft in diameter and 6ft in length.     Messerschmitt Me 265     Messerschmitt Me 309 fighter A single-seat
Walter Meyer (Secret Luftwaffe Projects of the Nazi Era: From Arado to Zeppelin with Contemporary Drawings)
Traditionally, in the system that Augustus inherited from the Republic, the Roman command structure was class-based. As mentioned earlier, the officer class came from the narrow aristocracy of senators and equestrians. The great armies of the Republic were commanded by senators who had attained the rank of consul, the pinnacle of their society. Their training in military science came mainly from experience: until the later second century B.C., aspiring senators were required to serve in ten campaigns before they could hold political office 49 Intellectual education was brought to Rome by the Greeks and began to take hold in the Roman aristocracy sometime in the second century B.C.; thus it is the Greek Polybius who advocates a formal training for generals in tactics, astronomy, geometry, and history.50 And in fact some basic education in astronomy and geometry-which Polybius suggests would be useful for calculating, for example, the lengths of days and nights or the height of a city wall-was normal for a Roman aristocrat of the late Republic or the Principate. Aratus' verse composition on astronomy, several times translated into Latin, was especially popular.51 But by the late Republic the law requiring military service for office was long defunct; and Roman education as described by Seneca the Elder or Quintilian was designed mainly to produce orators. The emphasis was overwhelmingly on literature and rhetoric;52 one did not take courses, for example, on "modern Parthia" or military theory. Details of grammar and rhetorical style were considered appropriate subjects for the attention of the empire's most responsible individuals; this is attested in the letters of Pliny the Younger, the musings ofAulus Gellius, and the correspondence of Fronto with Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius.53
Susan P. Mattern (Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate)
On the King were two sinewy males actively servicing the strapping Italian. The strikingly handsome dancer was straddling the hairy photographer, his drumming hardness coddled inside the machismo’s mouth as Mario relished the protrusion with feverous gusto, wetting the throbbing length with salivary potency. Behind Jamal, Albert was suckling the Italian’s bulging protuberance and lapping at the plumpness below. The dancer’s seductive buttocks plummeted rhythmically as he fed his stiffness into the Count’s oral hollow. This homoeroticism had inflamed my libido. Transfixed on their erotic prowess, my palpitating puissance throbbed unceasingly within my trousers. I craved to partake in their uninhibited proclivities and be free of the constraints of my apparel.
Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
On the King were two sinewy males actively servicing the strapping Italian. The strikingly handsome dancer was straddling the hairy photographer, his drumming hardness coddled inside the machismo’s mouth as Mario relished the protrusion with feverous gusto, wetting the throbbing length with salivary potency. Behind Jamal, Albert was suckling the Italian’s bulging protuberance and lapping at the plumpness below. The dancer’s seductive buttocks plummeted rhythmically as he fed his stiffness into the Count’s oral hollow. This homoeroticism had inflamed my libido. Transfixed on their erotic prowess, my palpitating puissance throbbed unceasingly within my trousers. I craved to partake in their uninhibited proclivities and be free of the constraints of my apparel. Zac was the one who nudged me back to my photographic sorcery. I clicked away from left to right and from above to below, capturing the fiery intensity that prevailed throughout the course of my arousing mission.               When Jamal’s pulsating organ eased conspicuously down Albert’s throat and Mario’s hardness came close to impaling the boy’s silky bottom, Zac
Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
Considerations & Exceptions for Impressive Handshakes • Be mindful of a person’s age; be tender with arthritic hands. In that case, a loose and gentler handshake is a gesture of sensitivity and compassion. • Show interest; even if your right hand is full, offer your left hand. • Demonstrate respect when you are caught in an introduction while seated; try to stand. • Be instinctive about when to allow the length of your handshake to linger to express unity, connection, or sympathy.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
When I was a young and aspiring speaker, I sought mentorship from a man who had been a Dale Carnegie trainer for decades. Eagerly wanting to know how to improve my stage presence and build my career, I contacted Dr. Joe Carnley in Destin, Florida and invited him out to lunch. After we placed our order at the Harbor Docks Restaurant, he dove right in and gave me some of the best advice of my life. He said, “Susan, you have to make them laugh! When they leave your presentations, you want them to feel better and leave happier than when they came in. Help them enjoy your time together.” He continued to describe the magical power that humor has over the human spirit. When we craft humor into our speeches, we can take our audiences on a journey they will never forget. Immediately after our delightful lunch ended, I drove straight to a Books-a-Million store and headed for the humor section. Since I was not a particularly funny person, I needed all the help I could get. For over an hour I stood there reading titles, flipping through funny books, and enjoying outrageous belly laughs, giggles, and snorts. People were staring, and probably thinking, “I want what she is having!” The humor section was one of the smallest in the entire bookstore, but it may well have been the most important. When I turned around, I noticed the opposite aisle was the “Self-Improvement” section. It ran half the length of the store and displayed hundreds of books. At that cathartic moment, I had a huge "Ah-Ha" moment.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
Until that moment, Canada had been a secular and progressive nation that believed in transfer payments to better distribute the country’s wealth, the Westminster model of governance, a national medicare program, a peacekeeping role for the armed forces, an arm’s-length public service, the separation of church and state, and solid support for the United Nations. Stephen Harper believed in none of these things.
Michael Harris
The serviced apartment was advertised as a luxury penthouse, but the reality was very different; it looked like the set of a bad eighties TV show. White leather couches and lime-green linoleum tiles may have been fashionable thirty years ago, but now they were about as stylish as disco. For five hundred US a week, the place was a dump, but Bishop didn’t care. The apartment had the one redeeming feature the team needed: From the full-length balcony it offered a 270-degree panorama of downtown Kiev and perfect views of the Dostiger residence. Discreetly positioned
Jack Silkstone (PRIMAL Unleashed (PRIMAL #2))
railway carriage with Henry Sanford, the new American minister to Belgium. They talked at great length; Russell had no idea that he was conversing with the future head of the U.S. secret service in Europe. Sanford,
Anonymous
By the time the draft constitution for the expanded European Union was finished and ready to be submitted for ratification by the member states, "Europe" as a political entity resembled nothing so much as a teenager who had just gone through a tremendous physical growth spurt but without a parallel growth in intellectual and moral maturity: physically an adult but spiritually stuck in adolescence. . . . Connoisseurs of political texts will note that the European constitution approved in June 2004 contains some 70,000 words (almost ten times the length of the U.S. Constitution). Yet the one word that could not be fit into the constitution for the new Europe--"Christianity"--is the embodiment of a story that has arguably had more to do with "constituting" Europe than anything else. What is going on when this story can't be acknowledged? Is it a case, as suggested above, of an adolescent engaging in a typically adolescent rebellion against parents? Is that rebellion in service of a particular (and particularly adolescent) understanding of the freedom that Europe's new constitution is meant to celebrate and advance?
George Weigel (The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God)
In order for a person to work at a church legally as an independent contractor, we believe it is prudent to consider the following guidelines:   ·       The church cannot substantially direct the person’s duties; the church can only give them overall tasks to complete.   ·       The church cannot control or set their hours that they work.   ·       Since their “company” provides the service, they can send anyone to do the job.   ·       They cannot have an office at the church that is their primary office.   ·       It cannot be their only source of income.   ·       The church needs to have a written contract in place including cost, delivery of Services, duration (i.e. six months, one year, etc.) and a termination clause.   ·       They cannot participate in any employee benefits plans (insurance, retirement plans, etc).   ·       The contractor must provide annual proof of worker’s comp and liability insurance naming the church as additionally insured or the church could be held liable in the event of a claim.   ·       The church must issue a 1099 at the end of the year for all contract wages paid if the total amount for the year exceeds $600.00 to one contractor. We strongly recommend that no payments are made until an accurate and fully completed W-9 is completed by the contractor and on file at the church.        Given these requirements, many workers such as those in the nursery, kitchens, and other service areas are not 1099 contractors, but employees.     Regarding interim pastors, there is disagreement over whether they should receive a W-2 or 1099. Factors such as length of service, who supervises them, and whether they are a contractor, come into play in the decision on how to report their salary. For the best practice we recommend always using the W-2 to report salaries, but seeking tax and legal counsel would be wise to avoid any future IRS issues.      While there are advantages to the church to pay independent contractors who regularly work for the church such as avoiding the need to pay the employer's part of the FICA tax and the ease of terminating their services, we would recommend against their regular use.      We recommend against the use of independent contractors (that regularly work at the church) because we believe it can create the following problems for the church:   ·       Less control over the position   ·       Leaves the church open to an IRS challenge, which the church only has a 50/50 chance of defending, not to mention the cost and hassle of litigation   ·       In the event of insurance claims, the church may encounter issues with worker’s compensation coverage or liability insurance coverage such as sexual misconduct, etc.   ·       The church is open to contract disputes with the independent contractor   ·       Based on how the individual/company is filing their taxes, it could bring an unwanted tax audit to the church        Our conclusion is that we do not see enough cost-saving advantages for the church to move in this direction. It also creates unnecessary red flags for the IRS. The other looming question is, why is this such an important issue for such a small incremental (if any) tax break for the individual? Because the independent contractor will have to pay employer FICA, we don’t see any large tax advantage for this shift. They can claim mileage and some home office expense (maybe), but it just does not amount to enough to place the church at risk.      Here are some detailed guidelines
Jeffrey A. Klick (Pastoral Helmsmanship)
OldDominionTactical.com wants to earn your business long term. As such, we pride ourselves in offering excellent, personalized customer service, a friendly sales voice and a welcoming returns and exchange process. Quadrails, Handguards, Adapters, Risers, Picatinny & Weaver, QD Mounts, M-LOK, Skeletonized, KeyMod Rails, etc. NC Star MARK III Scope w/quick release mount, Reticle: P4 Sniper, Reticle Illumination: Green and Blue, Magnification: 4x, Objective Diameter: 32mm, FOV (feet at 100 yds): 27.3 ft., Eye Relief: 3", Exit Pupil: 8mm, Weight: 15.1 oz, Length: 6.6", Click Value: 1/2 M.O.A., Lens coating: Green, Matte Black finish. Trinity force scope with red dot is reticle illuminated in Red-green-blue, adjustable brightness.
Old Dominion Tactical
sounded like another language entirely. I felt relieved, momentarily, to be a relatively worldly Lubavitcher, even if I didn’t entirely fit in with the Crown Heights crowd. — Much to my disappointment, Miri was rarely to be seen. Most days she left the apartment around ten in a giddy rush and returned in the early evening with armloads of shopping bags, only to leave again for dinner with her friends. But one morning, when Leah was otherwise engaged, I was finally recruited for shomeres service. We were going to Ratfolvi’s, in Flatbush, to pick up the sheitel that Miri would be required to wear as a married woman. Pulling up to a residential building, we let ourselves into Mrs. Ratfolvi’s wig shop/apartment and sat down in the reception area, where four or five women were chatting away on a damask sofa and chairs. While we waited our turn, I examined the rows of wigs on display: there were various shades of brunette, blonde, and ginger; short, teased bouffants and glamorous, shoulder-length falls; wigs encased in rollers and wigs that were fully styled, needing nothing more than a final shpritz of hair spray. They were set upon Styrofoam heads complete with turned-up noses, high cheekbones, and luscious lips that looked like they could come alive at any moment. I longed to get my hands on a brush and a pair of scissors so that I could create my own visions of tonsorial loveliness. I did this from time to time to my dolls, to my mother’s great irritation, and here was a whole wall of victims. When Miri’s name was called, she plunked herself into the salon chair and pulled the silk scarf off her ponytail. I stood as close as I could without getting in the way. From conversations that I’d overheard between my mother and her sisters, I knew that Mrs. Ratfolvi was considered “the best,” and I was eager to watch her at work. The “rat” in her name had led me to expect someone old and unattractive, but she was actually a nicely put-together middle-aged woman. The receptionist brought over a plastic case about the size of a chubby toddler. In one expert motion, Mrs. Ratfolvi clicked it open, withdrew the fully styled wig on its Styrofoam head
Chaya Deitsch (Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family)
Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System (HERCULES) (M88A2) Mission Provide towing, winching, and hoisting to support battlefield recovery operations and evacuation of heavy tanks and other tracked combat vehicles. Entered Army Service 1997 Description and Specifications The M88A2 HERCULES is a full-tracked, armoured vehicle that uses the existing M88A1 chassis but significantly improves towing, winching, lifting, and braking characteristics. The HERCULES is the primary recovery support vehicle for the Abrams tank fleet, the heavy Assault Bridge, and heavy self-propelled artillery. Length: 338 in Height: 123 in Width: 144 in Weight: 70 tons Speed: 25 mph w/o load; 17 mph w/load Cruising Range: 200 miles Boom Capacity: 35 tons Winch Capacity: 70 tons/670 ft Draw Bar Pull: 70 tons Armament: One .50-calibre machine gun Power train: 12 cylinder, 1050 HP air-cooled diesel engine with 3-speed automatic transmission Crew: 3 Manufacturer
Russell Phillips (This We'll Defend: The Weapons & Equipment of the US Army)
Gradually, as Nero's excesses grew more unbridled, Seneca fell increasingly out of favour. At length he was accused, justly or unjustly, of complicity in a widespread conspiracy to murder Nero and place a new emperor—some said, Seneca himself—upon the throne. In view of his former services, he was graciously permitted to commit suicide (A.D. 65). His end was edifying. At first, on being informed of the Emperor's decision, he set about making a will. When told that there was no time allowed for such a lengthy business, he turned to his sorrowing family and said: 'Never mind, I leave you what is of far more value than earthly riches, the example of a virtuous life'—or
Anonymous
Specification   McDonnell F-110 Spectre (USN F-4B)   Engines: Two General Electric J79-GE-8A (or -8B) turbojets each rated at 17,900-lb thrust with afterburner Length: 58-ft 3-in Height: 16-ft 3-in Wingspan: 38-ft 4-in Weights: 54,600-lb maximum gross Maximum speed: 1,485-mph Cruising speed: 575-mph Service ceiling: 62,000-ft Range: 1,610-miles Armament: Around 16,000-lb of missiles, rockets and bombs. Air to air missiles included AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-7 Sparrow; air to surface missiles included AGM-12C Bullpup B and 2.75-in FFAR. A tactical nuclear free fall bomb could be carried and under wing external fuel tanks were sometimes carried depending on mission requirements Crew: Two
Hugh Harkins (F-4 Phantom II in USAF Service)
LOW: Sales Effort Sales effort is a measure of the length of your sales cycle and includes the number of touch points required to make the sale. Where CAC measures the amount of money you’re spending to get a new customer, sales effort measures the time and energy you’re spending. The best way to track sales effort is to look at both the average number of days from someone scheduling their first demo to closing and the number of calls it takes to close a deal. Your ability to keep sales effort low depends greatly on your industry and customer base. If you’re doing enterprise sales, your sales cycle will be long and require more effort than if you’re targeting solopreneurs and other small businesses with a single decision-maker. A three- or four-month sales cycle is reasonable in enterprise sales—and worth it because the ACV might be $50,000. If you’re spending that much time for $5,000 contracts, though, that’s rough. No matter what your sales process looks like, you want your sales effort to be as low as possible. Here are some ways to lower this number. Self-Serve Sign-up and Onboarding. Many inexpensive products can get away with low price points because they have a low-touch or no-touch sales process. They have a self-serve sign-up and onboarding process, which requires almost no sales effort. The higher your ARPA, the less likely they are to become customers without some sales effort. But finding places to offer self-service along the journey can reduce the amount of hand-holding your team has to do while making the process speedier for your customer. One-Call Close. Self-service isn’t going to work in a lot of spaces, but you can try to get to a point where the decision is made by a single person. You can do this by targeting a founder, a developer, or a single manager. You can also streamline the back-and-forth of providing more sales materials, getting on second calls, waiting for input from the committee—and on and on. Educate your customers as much as you can ahead of time so they have the information they need and develop checklists to gather the information you need to close the deal quickly.
Rob Walling (The SaaS Playbook: Build a Multimillion-Dollar Startup Without Venture Capital)
The purpose behind why one exists is the fundamental reason to justify one’s length of life. So, the higher one’s life-purpose, the more one may be able to extend one’s lifespan in service to that purpose.
Master Del Pe (Higher Science of Longevity)
There was a consultation held in our printing-house among his friends, what he should do in this case. Some proposed to evade the order by changing the name of the paper; but my brother, seeing inconveniences in that, it was finally concluded on as a better way, to let it be printed for the future under the name of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN; and to avoid the censure of the Assembly, that might fall on him as still printing it by his apprentice, the contrivance was that my old indenture should be return'd to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under my name for several months. At length, a fresh difference arising between my brother and me, I took upon me to assert my freedom, presuming that
Benjamin Franklin (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin)
Dear Friend, Your letter of 5th June…Now for your questions. 1.      Life for me is real as I believe it to be a spark of the Divine. 2.      Religion not in the conventional but in the broadest sense helps me to have a glimpse of the Divine essence. This glimpse is impossible without full development of the moral sense. Hence religion and morality are, for me, synonymous terms. 3. Striving for full realization keeps me going. 4.      This strife is the source of whatever inspiration and energy I possess. 5. The goal is already stated. 6.      My consolation and my happiness are to be found in service of all that lives, because the Divine essence is the sum total of all life. 7.      My treasure lies in battling against darkness and all forces of evil. You have asked me to write at leisure and at length if I can. Unfortunately I have no leisure and therefore writing at length is an impossibility. Yours sincerely, M.K. Gandhi
Will Durant (On the Meaning of Life)
Judith Rollins (1985) contends that what makes domestic work more "profoundly exploitative than other comparable occupations" is the precise element that makes it unique: the personal relationship between employer and employee. Rollins reports that employers do not rank work performance as their highest priority in evaluating domestic workers. Rather, the "personality of the worker and the kinds of relationships employers were able to establish with them were as or more important considerations". Deference mattered, and those women who were submissive or who successfully played the role of obedient servant were more highly valued by their employers, regardless of the quality of the work performed. When domestic worker Hannah Nelson reports, "Most people who have worked in service have to learn to talk at great length about nothing," she identifies the roles domestics must play in order to satisfy their employers' perceptions of a good Black domestic.
Patricia Hall Collins
First digital-only full-length album release. In 1999, four years before the launch of iTunes, the quirky rock band They Might Be Giants released Long Tall Weekend via the music-download service eMusic. While a handful of promotional copies were pressed on CD for the music press, downloading the album was the only way to get it—a first. The first album released in digital and on CD simultaneously was Mezzanine by the electronic music act Massive Attack in April 1998.
Bathroom Readers' Institute (Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, #26))
First digital-only full-length album release. In 1999, four years before the launch of iTunes, the quirky rock band They Might Be Giants released Long Tall Weekend via the music-download service eMusic. Though it was later released on CD, at the time, downloading the album was the only way to get it. The first album released in digital and CD formats simultaneously was Mezzanine by the electronic music act Massive Attack.
Bathroom Readers' Institute (Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, #26))
Even as this impressive armada returned to Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1909, its battleships were being surpassed by increasingly larger and heavier dreadnoughts packing ever more firepower. In 1916 alone, the United States Navy commissioned four newcomers: Nevada (BB-36) and Oklahoma (BB-37), measuring 583 feet in length and carrying ten fourteen-inch guns in two triple and two twin turrets, and Pennsylvania (BB-38) and Arizona (BB-39), 608 feet in length and mounting twelve fourteen-inch guns in four turrets of three each. Ships are usually built in classes of comparable specifications named after the lead ship, even if there are only two ships in the class. Hence, the Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class battleship. While there were small differences among the classes, pre–World War II battleships, beginning with Nevada, were “standard-type,” with generally the same top speed (21 knots), turning radius (700 yards), and armor, to facilitate steaming together. Arizona’s commissioning—its official acceptance into active service—occurred in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on October 17, 1916. Europe had been at war for two years, and it looked as if the United States would soon enter the conflict. The new ship and its sister, Pennsylvania, were, the New York Times reported, the “most powerful fighting craft afloat.” From keel laying to commissioning, Arizona’s construction had taken two and one-half years and cost $16 million (comparable to $369,000,000 in 2017 purchasing power). An initial complement of 1,034 officers and men took up their stations onboard.
Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
After the five Sullivan brothers were lost in November 1942, a long-standing misconception developed among the general public that the Navy absolutely forbid brothers from serving together and went to lengths to reassign them to other ships. This was never the case. Rather, a Bureau of Naval Personnel circular two full years after the Sullivan tragedy addressed the “Return to the United States of Sons of War-Depleted Families,” essentially a sole survivor policy. This recognized “the sacrifice and contribution made by a family which has lost two or more sons who were members of the armed forces and has only one surviving, and he is serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard.” In that case, consideration would be given “to his return to, or retention in, the continental limits of the United States, except when he is engaged in nonhazardous duties overseas.” None of this was automatic, however, and applications for such return or retention to duty within the United States had to be filed by the sailor himself or his immediate family. Out of a sense of service, many men never took advantage of these provisions in the final year of the war.
Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
Dividing the world between good and bad people misses the heart of what makes Christianity so revolutionary. Preferences about displays of emotion, song selection, and length of service can vary from culture to culture while still conveying the same Christian faith. But Christians often treat their preferences as absolute requirements for faithful practice.10 Revival, however, breaks down the world’s barriers, as Christians trust only in Jesus and not in their cultural preferences.
Collin Hansen (Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation)
Inclusion of women creates a segment of the military that is physically weaker, more prone to injury (both physical and psychological), less physically aggressive, able to withstand less pain, less willing to take physical risks, less motivated to kill, less likely to be available to deploy when ordered to, more expensive to recruit, and less likely to remain in the service even for the length of their initial contracts. Women are placed in units with men who do not trust them with their lives and who do not bond with them the way that they do with other men. The groups into which they are introduced become less disciplined and more subject to conflict related to sexual jealousy and sexual frustration, and men receive less rigorous training because of their presence. Officers and NCOs must divert attention from their central missions to cope with the “drama” that sexual integration brings, and they must reassign physical tasks (or do them themselves) because women cannot get them done fast enough, if at all. Men who have traditionally been drawn to the military because of its appeal to their masculinity now find that the military tries to cure them of it to make the environment more comfortable for women.
Kingsley Browne (Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars)
Age and Length of service are not qualifications.
Keith Hegarty
Over South Mountain, among the Springs that fall to Antietam Creek, on September 21st, they pause at 96 Miles, 3 Chains, near the House of Mr. Staphel Shockey, who tells them of a remarkable Cavern beneath the Earth, about six miles south of the Line. In the winter, English Church services are held in it. Mason’s Hat begins to move, as from some Agitation beneath it. Accordingly, the next day, Sunday, they pay a visit, in company with Mr. Shockey and his Children, whilst Mrs. Shockey remains at home with a thousand Chores that Sunday does not release her from. The entrance is an arch about 6 yards in length and four feet in height, when immediately there opens a room 45 yards in length, 40 in breadth and 7 or 8 in height. (Not one pillar to support nature’s arch) . . . On the Sidewalls are drawn by the Pencil of Time, with the tears of the Rocks: The imitation of Organ, Pillar, Columns and Monuments of a Temple; which, with the glimmering faint light; makes the whole an awful, solemn appearance: Striking its Visitants with a strong and melancholy reflection: that such is the abodes of the Dead: thy inevitable doom, O stranger; soon to be numbered as one of them.
Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)
Politicians, federal agents, pundits, and most Americans focus on the line with Mexico, even though its northern cousin is more than twice its length and many times more porous. The only known terrorists to cross overland into the US came from the north. Fifty-six billion dollars in smuggled drugs and ten thousand illegal aliens cross the US-Canada border every year. Two thousand agents watch the line. Nine times that number patrol the southern boundary. According to a 2010 Congressional Research Service report, US Customs and Border Protection maintains “operational control” over just sixty-nine miles of the northern border.
Porter Fox (Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border)
Art, let me say at the outset, since I shall deal with this at length some day, – art, in which lying sanctifies itself and the will to deception has good conscience on its side, is much more fun- damentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than science is: this was sensed instinctively by Plato, the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced. Plato versus Homer:119 that is complete, genuine antagonism – on the one hand, the sincerest ‘advocate of the beyond’, the great slanderer of life, on the other hand, its involuntary idolater, the golden nature. Artistic servitude in the service of the ascetic ideal is thus the specific form of artistic corruption, unfortunately one of the most common: for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.
nietsczhe
Father, we desire to know You in the fullness of Your glory. We don't want to be like a bride who holds her Groom at arm's length, allowing only service between them and never intimacy. Help us to see how much more we could have with You. Open our eyes to the joys that can be ours, if we would only place our hands in Yours and begin to walk where You lead us. Draw us, Father. We want to come closer.   In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Kay Nolte Smith (Pleasing God)
Erase all traces of the word patriotism from your psyche and saturate every pour of your mind with the word people - close your eyes, breathe in the word people - let it reach every corner of your soul - let it penetrate into the length and breadth of your entire being - fill your lungs with people, fill your heart with people, fill your veins with people - now open your eyes and look at the world - what do you see - do you see any separation - you don't, for you no longer exist as you, but every bit of your self has been saturated with an uncorrupted concern for the people - and that my friend is patriotism of a civilized world.
Abhijit Naskar (I Vicdansaadet Speaking: No Rest Till The World is Lifted)
The women in my family are bitches. Cranky bitches. Stuck up bitches. Customer service turned sour bitches. Can I help you? bitches. Next in line bitches. I like this purse 'cause it makes me look mean bitches. Can you take a picture of my outfit full length, get the heels in bitches. I always wear heels to la fiesta I never take them off bitches. All men will kill you bitches. All men will leave you anyway, bitches. You better text me when you get home okay bitches. Pray before the baby comes bitches. Pray before the plane takes off bitches. She has my eyes, my big mouth and my fight, bitches. Sing to the scabs on her knees when she falls down bitches. It's okay not to be liked bitches. Give abuelita bendiciones bitches. The vengeful, violent, pissed, prissed, and polished. Lipstick stained on an envelope, I'll be damned if I'm compliant bitches. The what did you call to us? What did you say to us? What's that kind of love called again? Bitches.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva (peluda (Button Poetry))