Man Made Disasters Quotes

After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?

Yeah, you almost got yourself killed, you idiot,” she said smiling. She was well aware of his daredevil tendencies and to the extent possible, comfortable with them. “No, it was something stranger than that. When I was underwater, my life did flash before my eyes. You know, just like everyone says it does. But there was . . . something else . . . something that wasn’t part of my life. It was like it was stuck right there at the end, just before I popped to the surface, and I can’t imagine what it was.” Val slowly turned her head back toward the road then asked, “Well, what was it you saw?

Cosby, 60. Weinstein, 87. Nassar, 169. The news used phrases like avalanche of accusations, tsunami of stories, sea change. The metaphors were correct in that they were catastrophic, devastating. But it was wrong to compare them to natural disasters, for they were not natural at all, solely man-made. Call it a tsunami, but do not lose sight of the fact that each life is a single drop, how many drops it took to make a single wave. The loss is incomprehensible, staggering, maddening—we should have caught it when it was no more than a drip. Instead society is flooded with survivors coming forward, dozens for every man, just so that one day, in his old age, he might feel a taste of what it was like for them all along.

Since that night a couple of weeks ago when Valerie had stayed with him, they had barely separated. The stories of Rabbit’s Revenge droned on and on talking of the impending doom of the planet and the international scientific community’s various attempts to determine a course of action to prevent it. For Jeremy, however, each passing day left him feeling more and more certain he was missing something. It was just a nagging little sensation that lingered like an itch on the back of his neck. With Valerie now firmly implanted in his life, it was a wonder he even thought about it at all, but during his quiet moments and when he awoke in the mornings or even during his more intense workouts, the sensation crept back up on him. It seemed to center around the experience of having his life pass before his eyes, but beyond that it was just nebulous. And annoying.

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.

Think about the world. War, violence, natural disasters, man-made disasters, corruption. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the number of poor just keeps increasing; and we will soon run out of resources unless we do something drastic. At least that’s the picture that most Westerners see in the media and carry around in their heads. I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population lives somewhere in the middle of the income scale. Perhaps they are not what we think of as middle class, but they are not living in extreme poverty. Their girls go to school, their children get vaccinated, they live in two-child families, and they want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees. Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.

Tommy removed his sunglasses and glanced back at me. He had tears in his eyes. He smiled, nodded, and turned toward the screen. It wasn’t often that you got to see a man whose dream was literally about to come true, but then the lights went down, and I couldn’t see him anymore.

Man-made disaster is here and upon us in multiple forms, each one its own earthquake, flood, fire, tsunami. And the repercussions keep coming. We can barely catch our breath...And yet there is still so much to be done, so much we can do, so much to care for and about. Is there a way through? We may not know, but the way through is also the way of surmounting suffering...

Christians must revive a centuries-old view of humankind as made in the image of God, the eternal Craftsman, and of work as a source of fulfillment and blessing not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

PTSD seems to have an even higher prevalence and greater severity following violence or disaster that is man-made; natural disasters, "acts of God," seem somehow easier to accept. (...). This is the case with acute stress reactions, too: I see it often with my patients in hospital, who can show extraordinary courage and calmness in facing the most dreadful diseases but fly into a rage if a nurse is late with a bedpan or a medication. The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessly to the will of others is not, for human behavior always carries (or is felt to carry) a moral charge.

We don’t even use the word terror anymore. There’s only ‘man-made disasters’ caused by disenfranchised groups who are really just ‘misunderstood.

You see," Tommy said. "You act like crazy man first in class and now on highway. It's midnight and you are lost like hell. But that's okay. Don't need to have panicky situation. No restrictions. Be yourself.

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.

what allows us to behave as humans are our clothes, our homes, our cities, our stuff, which we animate through our customs and language. (This becomes clear if you ever visit a disaster zone.) The material world is not just a display of our technology and culture, it is part of us. We invented it, we made it, and in turn it makes us who we are.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials—these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether

Our sensitivity to nature, and our humility within it, are essential to our physical and spiritual survival. Yet, our growing disconnection from nature dulls our senses, and eventually blunts even the sharpened sensory state created by man-made or natural disaster.

Our little town seemed different as it passed by, or maybe it was me that wasn’t the same. I wasn’t sure if it was being a married man that made me feel a little more relaxed—laid-back, even—or if I had finally settled into my own skin. I was now in a situation where I didn’t have to prove myself, because the one person that fully accepted me, my best friend, was now a permanent fixture in my life.

A good author, Mr. Minke, should be able to provide his readers with some joy, not a false joy, but some faith that life is beautiful. While suffering is man-made, and not some natural disaster, then it can surely be resisted by men. Give hope to your readers, to your fellow countrymen.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials—these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether.

Now that it has come, our doom hasn’t arrived from outer space, but inner space. No death star pulsing gamma rays or behemoth killer asteroid spells our demise; the Earth itself will see to that. Something stirs within the heart of this abused sphere, making all man-made disasters look like child’s play. Gaea is finally having her revenge.

This book is about what might be the world’s most improbable Hollywood success story. At its center is an enigmatic filmmaker who claims, among many other things, to be a vampire. This man speaks with a thick European accent, the derivation of which he won’t identify. He also refuses to reveal his age or the origins of his seemingly vast fortune. His name is Tommy Wiseau; and the film he wrote, directed, produced, starred in, and poured $6 million into is a disastrous specimen of cinematic hubris called The Room.

However, this is a man whose skin Occam’s Razor cannot cut. The enigma of Thomas P. Wiseau is that there never seems to be a simplest explanation.

The Fukushima nuclear complex went on to become the worst man-made engineering disaster in all of human history, outside of war.

By describing the collapse of the financial system as a natural disaster, rather than as a series of man-made errors, countless pros acted blameless and retained lucrative jobs.

Financial crises are not natural disasters. They are man-made disasters.

Q. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts concerning the future of Trantor? A. I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next three centuries. Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty." Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am. Q. On what basis? A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory. Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid? A. Only to another mathematician. Q. ( with a smile) Your claim then is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the mind. A. It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since the mythical ages, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. People of high intelligence, too. I doubt if the learned Commissioners— At this point, one of the Commissioners leaned toward the Advocate. His words were not heard but the hissing of the voice carried a certain asperity. The Advocate flushed and interrupted Seldon. Q. We are not here to listen to speeches, Dr. Seldon. Let us assume that you have made your point. Let me suggest to you that your predictions of disaster might be intended to destroy public confidence in the Imperial Government for purposes of your own! A. That is not so. Q. Let me suggest that you intend to claim that a period of time preceding the so-called ruin of Trantor will be filled with unrest of various types. A. That is correct. Q. And that by the mere prediction thereof, you hope to bring it about, and to have then an army of a hundred thousand available. A. In the first place, that is not so. And if it were, investigation will show you that barely ten thousand are men of military age, and none of these has training in arms. Q. Are you acting as an agent for another? A. I am not in the pay of any man, Mr. Advocate. Q. You are entirely disinterested? You are serving science? A. I am.

It is the dogma that is the drama -- not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death -- but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.

The most direct path to Party was raising pigs. The company had several dozen of these and they occupied an unequaled place in the hearts of the soldiers; officers and men alike would hang around the pigsty, observing, commenting, and willing the animals to grow. If the pigs were doing well, the swine herds were the darlings of the company, and there were many contestants for this profession. Xiao-her became a full-time swineherd. It was hard, filthy work, not to mention the psychological pressure. Every night he and his colleagues took turns to get up in the small hours to give the pigs an extra feed. When a sow produced piglets they kept watch night after night in case she crushed them. Precious soybeans were carefully picked, washed, ground, strained, made into 'soybean milk," and lovingly fed to the mother to stimulate her milk. Life in the air force was very unlike what Xiao-her had imagined. Producing food took up more than a third of the entire time he was in the military. At the end of a year's arduous pig raising, Xiao-her was accepted into the Party. Like many others, he put his feet up and began to take it easy. After membership in the Party, everyone's ambition was to become an officer; whatever advantage the former brought, the latter doubled it. Getting to be an officer depended on being picked by one's superiors, so the key was never to displease them. One day Xiao-her was summoned to see one of the college's political commissars. Xiao-her was on tenterhooks, not knowing whether he was in for some unexpected good fortune or total disaster. The commissar, a plump man in his fifties with puffy eyes and a loud, commanding voice, looked exceedingly benign as he lit up a cigarette and asked Xiao-her about his family background, age, and state of health. He also asked whether he had a fiance to which Xiao-her replied that he did not. It struck Xiao-her as a good sign that the man was being so personal. The commissar went on to praise him: "You have studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously. You have worked hard. The masses have a good impression of you. Of course, you must keep on being modest; modesty makes you progress," and so on. By the time the commissar stubbed out his cigarette, Xiao-her thought his promotion was in his pocket.

were exhibiting strong signs of a psychological phenomenon often associated with man-made disasters, known as groupthink. Described as ‘the desire for harmony or conformity in the group [which] results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome,

You know now how deeply unhappy your mother was, and you also know that in his own fumbling way your father loved her, that is, to the extent he was capable of loving anyone, but they made a botch of it, and to be a part of that disaster when you were a boy no doubt drove you inward, turning you into a man who has spent the better part of his life sitting alone in a room.

The people who are most discouraged and made despondent by the barbarity and stupidity of human behaviour at this time are those who think highly of Homo Sapiens as a product of evolution, and who still cling to an optimistic belief in the civilizing influence of progress and enlightenment. To them, the appalling outbursts of bestial ferocity in the Totalitarian States, and the obstinate selfishness and stupid greed of Capitalist Society, are not merely shocking and alarming. For them, these things are the utter negation of everything in which they have believed. It is as though the bottom had dropped out of their universe. The whole thing looks like a denial of all reason, and they feel as if they and the world had gone mad together. Now for the Christian, this is not so. He is as deeply shocked and grieved as anybody else, but he is not astonished. He has never thought very highly of human nature left to itself. He has been accustomed to the idea that there is a deep interior dislocation in the very centre of human personality, and that you can never, as they say, ‘make people good by Act of Parliament’, just because laws are man-made and therefore partake of the imperfect and self-contradictory nature of man. Humanly speaking, it is not true at all that ‘truly to know the good is to do the good’; it is far truer to say with St. Paul that ‘the evil that I would not, that I do’; so that the mere increase of knowledge is of very little help in the struggle to outlaw evil. The delusion of the mechanical perfectibility of mankind through a combined process of scientific knowledge and unconscious evolution has been responsible for a great deal of heartbreak. It is, at bottom, far more pessimistic than Christian pessimism, because, if science and progress break down, there is nothing to fall back upon. Humanism is self-contained - it provides for man no resource outside himself.

The realization of the fact that I didn’t need Clint to feel this happiness made me laugh. At first it came out in a soft giggle, followed by an honest deep belt of laughter. I would be okay. Simple as that, everything would be fine. Like the natural order of the elements, in their perfection and imperfections, like this sea in its ability to provide beauty and warmth and just as quickly create a natural disaster. Storms pass, winds die down, and rain stops falling eventually. I would be all right. Proud that I didn’t need to be the account manager at Donnely Kramer, proud that I didn’t need hair flowing down my back. All I needed was what I had, me. I was grateful for me. I had no right to depend on Clint to make me feel this way. Something so powerful weighing on one man’s shoulders. As

I brought all this on myself by telling Ramona the story of my life – how I rose from humble origins to complete disaster. But a man who has made so many mistakes can’t afford to ignore the corrections of his friends. Friends like Sandor, that humped rat. Or like Valentine, the moral megalomaniac and prophet in Israel. To all such, one is well advised to listen. Scolding is better than nothing. At least it’s company.

That feeling. That's the real difference in a life. People who live on solid ground, underneath safe skies, know nothing of this; they are like the English POWs in Dresden who continued to pour tea and dress for dinner, even as the alarms went off, even as the city became a towering ball of fire. Born of a green and pleasant land, a temperate land, the English have a basic inability to conceive of disaster, even when it is man-made.

Geuze compared sea-level rise to other transformative catastrophes, such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a partly man-made natural disaster that profoundly changed the geography of America and also expanded the role government plays in ensuring the long-term welfare of even the most vulnerable people. “We’re going to need a new New Deal,” Geuze argued. “It is going to require a rethinking of the social contract between governments and citizens.

I will only ask you to believe one thing. I have faith in myself. I believe that I am the man to guide England through the days of crisis that I see coming. If I did not honestly believe that I am needed by my country to steer the ship of state, I would not have done what I have done--made the best of both worlds--saved myself from disaster by a clever trick.' 'My lord, if you could not make the best of both worlds, you could not be a politician.

Too soon the two weeks were over and we were back in Lugano, and there we learned about Disaster. We weren’t completely ignorant. We knew about disaster from our previous schools and previous lives. We’d had access to televisions and newspapers. But the return to Lugano marked the beginning of Global Awareness Month, and in each of our classes, we talked about disaster: disaster man-made and natural. We talked about ozone depletion and the extinction of species and depleted rain forests and war and poverty and AIDS. We talked about refugees and slaughter and famine. We were in the middle school and were getting, according to Uncle Max, a diluted version of what the upper-schoolers were facing. An Iraqi boy from the upper school came to our history class and talked about what it felt like when the Americans bombed his country. Keisuke talked about how he felt responsible for World War II, and a German student said she felt the same. We got into heated discussions over the neglect of infant females in some cultures, and horrific cases of child abuse worldwide. We fasted one day each week to raise our consciousness about hunger, and we sent money and canned goods and clothing to charities. In one class, after we watched a movie about traumas in Rwanda, and a Rwandan student told us about seeing his mother killed, Mari threw up. We were all having nightmares. At home, Aunt Sandy pleaded with Uncle Max. “This is too much!” she said. “You can’t dump all the world’s problems on these kids in one lump!” And he agreed. He was bewildered by it all, but the program had been set up the previous year, and he was the new headmaster, reluctant to interfere. And though we were sick of it and about it, we were greedy for it. We felt privileged there in our protected world and we felt guilty, and this was our punishment.

First Lord of the Admiralty, long enough to engineer what an anti-Churchillian would say was an epic and unparalleled military disaster—a feat of incompetent generalship that made the Charge of the Light Brigade look positively slick. It was an attempt to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front that not only ended in humiliation for the British armed forces; it cost the lives of so many Australians and New Zealanders that to this day their 1915 expedition to Turkey is the number-one source of pom-bashing and general anti-British feeling among Antipodeans.

One long night that winter, lying on his hard bunk in the endless darkness, body failing him, London made a decision, a resolution even. No more jute mills or coal yards. No more pickle factories or dollar-a-day jobs. No more slaving for another man’s capital. He would do what he had long dreamed of. He would set his own way. London pulled out a pencil and, standing awkwardly on his weakened legs, wrote a message on the icy log next to his bed: “Jack London, Miner, author, Jan 27, 1898.” From then on, he was determined to be a writer. He had staked his claim.

Subject: SELF WORTH (Very Deep!!!) In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question: 'What kind of man are you looking for?' She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye & asking, 'Do you really want to know?' Reluctantly, he said, 'Yes. She began to expound, 'As a woman in this day & age, I am in a position to ask a man what can you do for me that I can't do for myself? I pay my own bills. I take care of my household without the help of any man... or woman for that matter. I am in the position to ask, 'What can you bring to the table?' The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought & stated, 'I am not referring to money. I need something more. I need a man who is striving for excellence in every aspect of life. He sat back in his chair, folded his arms, & asked her to explain. She said, 'I need someone who is striving for excellence mentally because I need conversation & mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man. I need someone who is striving for excellence spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked...believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster. I need a man who is striving for excellence financially because I don't need a financial burden. I need someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded. I need someone who has integrity in dealing with relationships. Lies and game-playing are not my idea of a strong man. I need a man who is family-oriented. One who can be the leader, priest and provider to the lives entrusted to him by God. I need someone whom I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy. And by the way, I am not looking for him...He will find me. He will recognize himself in me. Hey may not be able to explain the connection, but he will always be drawn to me. God made woman to be a help-mate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself. When she finished her spill, she looked at him. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face. He said, 'You are asking a lot. She replied, "I'm worth a lot". Send this to every woman who's worth a lot.... and every man who has the brains to understand!!

Again we see a failure in command, to put it simply, there was none. No overall Commander was appointed and because of this, many men died unnecessarily. In battle, someone has to have overall Command, the final decisions have to be made by one man, and to leave the seat empty will always lead to disaster. It is something we see again and again in the American defence and something that is rarely highlighted. Many historians will never accept it or draw attention to it. They will however, bring readers attentions to their Allies failings and often cite occasions when they came to the rescue of them. 

I’m so happy to be back here. You’re nice and quiet. Her waters stirred in something close to laughter. We don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to. I’m happy just to hold you. I sank down, resting on the sandy Ocean floor, legs crossed and arms behind my head. I watched the trails of boats crisscrossing and fading along the surface above me. Fish swam by in schools, not spooked by the girl on the ground. So, about six months? I asked, my stomach twisting. Yes, barring some natural disaster or man-made sinking. I can’t predict those things. I know. Don’t start worrying about that yet. I can tell you’re still hurting from the last time. She wrapped me in sympathy. I lifted my arms as if I was stroking Her, though of course my tiny body was unable to truly embrace Hers. I feel like I never have enough time to get over a singing before the next one comes. I have nightmares, and I’m a nervous wreck during the weeks leading up to it. My chest felt hollow with misery. I’m afraid I’ll always remember how it feels. You won’t. In all My years, I’ve never had a freed siren come back to Me demanding that I fix her memories. Do You hear from them at all? Not intentionally. I feel people when they’re in Me. It’s how I find new girls. It’s how I listen for anyone who might suspect the true nature of My needs. Sometimes a former siren will go for a swim or stick her legs off a dock. I can get a peek at their lives, and no one has remembered Me yet. I’ll remember You, I promised. I could feel Her embracing me. For all eternity, I’ll never forget you. I love you. And I love You. You can rest here tonight, if you like. I’ll make sure no one finds you. Can I just stay down here forever? I don’t want to worry about hurting people unintentionally. Or disappointing my sisters. Aisling has her cottage, so maybe I could build a little house down here out of driftwood. She ran a current down my back gently. Sleep. You’ll feel differently in the morning. Your sisters would be lost without you. Trust Me, they think it all the time. Really? Really. Thank You. Rest. You’re safe.

POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.

Catastrophic event? The plane was silent as people tried to grasp what this could possibly mean. Earthquake? Bomb? One man actually thought a meteor could have hit somewhere in America. And then, moments later, the stewardess made another announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “I will now tell you what has occurred….” And for reasons I will never understand, she told our planeload of terrified people exactly what was happening: that planes had been hijacked by terrorists and flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There could be other planes involved, she said. The disaster was still unfolding. An hour and a half later, we landed in London. Police escorted us into the chaotic airport. Somehow, I tracked down my husband. It wasn’t until late that night that we were able to get a

Here are some of the things I learned while living in New York: That you shouldn’t interpret direct and efficient communication as rudeness. That a sidewalk operates by the same rules as a highway: if you walk slow, walk in the right lane, and if you have to stop, pull over. I learned that once the late June sunshine hits the streets, pretty girls in summer dresses come out of the woodwork. I also learned that summer brings with it the inescapable smell of marinating garbage and human urine. In the city, you can get weed delivered to your front door by a hipster on a bicycle or pick up a screwdriver in the dead of the night at a twenty-four-hour hardware store. I learned that the city has resilience like no other city during natural (or man-made) disasters, and that the people of New York generally coexist peacefully, which is impressive, considering there are 27,352 people per square mile.

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom", the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign—how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the "teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.

In 1932, the combination of these intractable forces would result in widespread hardship for the agricultural provinces of old Russia, and death by starvation for millions of peasants in Ukraine.* [*While many of the young loyalists (like Nina) who joined the udarniks in the countryside would have their faith in the Party tested by what they witnessed, most of Russia, and for that matter the world, would be spared the spectacle of this man-made disaster. For just as peasants from the countryside were forbidden to enter the cities, journalists from the cities were forbidden to enter the countryside; delivery of personal mail was suspended; and the windows of passenger trains were blackened. In fact, so successful was the campaign to contain awareness of the crisis, when word leaked out that millions were starving in Ukraine, Walter Duranty, the lead correspondent for The New York Times in Russia (and one of the ringleaders in the Shalyapin Bar), would report that these rumors of famine were grossly exaggerated and had probably originated with anti-Soviet propagandists. Thus, the world would shrug. And even as the crime unfolded, Duranty would win the Pulitzer Prize.]

I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water." When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!

So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a monster.... He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Many men of honourable rank were first disfigured with the marks of branding-irons and then condemned to the mines, to work at building roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts; or else he shut them up in cages on all fours, like animals, or had them sawn asunder. Not all these punishments were for serious offences, but merely for criticising one of his shows, or for never having sworn by his genius. Having asked a man who had been recalled from an exile of long standing, how in the world he spent his time there, the man replied by way of flattery: "I constantly prayed the gods for what has come to pass, that Tiberius might die and you become emperor." Thereupon Caligula, thinking that his exiles were likewise praying for his death, sent emissaries from island to island to butcher them all. Wishing to have one of the senators torn to pieces, he induced some of the members to assail him suddenly, on his entrance into the House, with the charge of being a public enemy, to stab him with their styles, and turn him over to the rest to be mangled; and his cruelty was not sated until he saw the man's limbs, members, and bowels dragged through the streets and heaped up before him. He used to say that there was nothing in his own character which he admired and approved more highly than what he called his ἀδιατρεψία, that is to say, his shameless impudence. He seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his constant order, which soon became well-known, being: "Strike so that he may feel that he is dying." When a different man than he had intended had been killed, through a mistake in the names, he said that the victim too had deserved the same fate. He even used openly to deplore the state of his times, because they had been marked by no public disasters, saying that the rule of Augustus had been made famous by the Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae,​ while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity; and every now and then he wished for the destruction of his armies, for famine, pestilence, fires, or a great earthquake. While he was lunching or revelling capital examinations by torture were often made in his presence, and a soldier who was adept at decapitation cut off the heads of those who were brought from prison. At a public banquet in Rome he immediately handed a slave over to the executioners for stealing a strip of silver from the couches, with orders that his hands be cut off and hung from his neck upon his breast, and that he then be led about among the guests.

When he was gone the men on the bench began to laugh. One of them rose to better see the map. Es un fantasma, he said. Fantasma? Sí, sí. Claro. Cómo? Cómo? Porque el viejo está loco es como. Loco? Billy stood looking at the map. No es correcto? he said. The man threw up his hands. He said that what they beheld was but a decoration. He said that anyway it was not so much a question of a correct map but of any map at all. He said that in that country were fires and earthquakes and floods and that one needed to know the country itself and not simply the landmarks therein. Besides, he said, when had that old man last journeyed to those mountains? Or journeyed anywhere at all? His map was after all not really so much a map as a picture of a voyage. And what voyage was that? And when? Un dibujo de un viaje, he said. Un viaje pasado, un viaje antigun. He threw up one hand in dismissal. As if no more could be said. Billy looked at the other three men on the bench. They watched with a certain brightness of eye so that he wondered if he were being made a fool of. But the one seated at the right leaned forward and tapped the ash from his cigarette and addressed the man standing and said that as far as that went there were certainly other dangers to a journey than losing one's way. He said that plans were one thing and journeys another. He said it was a mistake to discount the good will inherent in the old man's desire to guide them for it too must be taken into account and would in itself lend strength and resolution to them in their journey. The man who was standing weighed these words and then erased them in the air before him with a slow fanning motion of his forefinger. He said that the jovenes could hardly be expected to apportion credence in the matter of the map. He said that in any case a bad map was worse than no map at all for it engendered in the traveler a false confidence and might easily cause him to set aside those instincts which would otherwise guide him if he would but place himself in their care. He said that to follow a false map was to invite disaster. He gestured at the sketching in the dirt. As if to invite them to behold its futility. The second man on the bench nodded his agreement in this and said that the map in question was a folly and that the dogs in the street would piss upon it. But man on the right only smiled and said that for that matter the dogs would piss upon their graves as well and how was this an argument? The man standing said that what argued for one case argued for all and that in any event our graves make no claims outside of their own simple coordinates and no advice as to how to arrive there but only the assurance that arrive we shall. It may even be that those who lie in desecrated graves-by dogs of whatever manner-could have words of a more cautionary nature and better suited to the realities of the world. At this the man at the left who'd so far not spoke at all rose laughing and gestured for the two boys to follow and they went with him out of the square and into the street leaving the disputants to their rustic parkbench tertulia.

As Allied forces moved into Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Roosevelt and his circle were confronted with new evidence of the Holocaust. In early 1942, he had been given information that Adolf Hitler was quietly fulfilling his threat to “annihilate the Jewish race.” Rabbi Stephen Wise asked the President that December 1942 to inform the world about “the most overwhelming disaster of Jewish history” and “try to stop it.” Although he was willing to warn the world about the impending catastrophe and insisted that there be war crimes commissions when the conflict was over, Roosevelt told Wise that punishment for such crimes would probably have to await the end of the fighting, so his own solution was to “win the war.” The problem with this approach was that by the time of an Allied victory, much of world Jewry might have been annihilated. By June 1944, the Germans had removed more than half of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews, and some Jewish leaders were asking the Allies to bomb railways from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In response, Churchill told his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, that the murder of the Jews was “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,” and ordered him to get “everything” he could out of the British Air Force. But the Prime Minister was told that American bombers were better positioned to do the job. At the Pentagon, Stimson consulted John McCloy, who later insisted, for decades, that he had “never talked” with Roosevelt about the option of bombing the railroad lines or death camps. But in 1986, McCloy changed his story during a taped conversation with Henry Morgenthau’s son, Henry III, who was researching a family history. The ninety-one-year-old McCloy insisted that he had indeed raised the idea with the President, and that Roosevelt became “irate” and “made it very clear” that bombing Auschwitz “wouldn’t have done any good.” By McCloy’s new account, Roosevelt “took it out of my hands” and warned that “if it’s successful, it’ll be more provocative” and “we’ll be accused of participating in this horrible business,” as well as “bombing innocent people.” McCloy went on, “I didn’t want to bomb Auschwitz,” adding that “it seemed to be a bunch of fanatic Jews who seemed to think that if you didn’t bomb, it was an indication of lack of venom against Hitler.” If McCloy’s memory was reliable, then, just as with the Japanese internment, Roosevelt had used the discreet younger man to discuss a decision for which he knew he might be criticized by history, and which might conceivably have become an issue in the 1944 campaign. This approach to the possible bombing of the camps would allow the President to explain, if it became necessary, that the issue had been resolved at a lower level by the military. In retrospect, the President should have considered the bombing proposal more seriously. Approving it might have required him to slightly revise his insistence that the Allies’ sole aim should be winning the war, as he did on at least a few other occasions. But such a decision might have saved lives and shown future generations that, like Churchill, he understood the importance of the Holocaust as a crime unparalleled in world history.*

This was the first time that Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club. Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled into the bank, and it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away. And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his stiffness. John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too convulsed with rage to speak. "If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say in a choking voice. p63

Jackson gaped at her, wondering how this had all turned so terrible wrong. But he knew how. The woman was clearly daft. Bedlam-witted. And trying to drive him in the same direction. "You can't be serious. Since when do you know anything about investigating people?" She planted her hands on her hips. "You won't do it, so I must." God save him, she was the most infuriating, maddening-"How do you propose to manage that?" She shrugged. "Ask them questions, I suppose. The house party for Oliver's birthday is next week. Lord Devonmont is already coming, and it will be easy to convince Gran to invite my other two. Once they're here, I could try sneaking into their rooms and listening in on their conversations or perhaps bribing their servants-" "You've lost your bloody mind," he hissed. Only after she lifted an eyebrow did he realize he'd cursed so foully in front of her. But the woman would turn a sane man into a blithering idiot! The thought of her wandering in and out of men's bedchambers, risking her virtue and her reputation, made his blood run cold. "You don't seem to understand," she said in a clipped tone, as if speaking to a child. "I have to catch a husband somehow. I need help, and I've nowhere else to turn. Minerva is rarely here, and Gran's matchmaking efforts are as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even if my brothers and their wives could do that sort of work, they're preoccupied with their own affairs. That leaves you, who seem to think that suitors drop from the skies at my whim. If I can't even entice you to help me for money, then I'll have to manage on my own." Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Hell and blazes, she was liable to attempt such an idiotic thing, too. She had some fool notion she was invincible. That's why she spent her time shooting at targets with her brother's friends, blithely unconcerned that her rifle might misfire or a stray bullet hit her by mistake. The wench did as she pleased, and the men in her family let her. Someone had to curb her insanity, and it looked as if it would have to be him. "All right!" he called out. "I'll do it." She halted but didn't turn around. "You'll find out what I need in order to snag one of my choices as a husband?" "Yes." "Even if it means being a trifle underhanded?" He gritted his teeth. This would be pure torture. The underhandedness didn't bother him; he'd be as underhanded as necessary to get rid of those damned suitors. But he'd have to be around the too-tempting wench a great deal, if only to make sure the bastards didn't compromise her. Well, he'd just have to find something to send her running the other way. She wanted facts? By thunder, he'd give her enough damning facts to blacken her suitors thoroughly. Then what? If you know of some eligible gentleman you can strong-arm into courting me, then by all means, tell me. I'm open to suggestions. All right, so he had no one to suggest. But he couldn't let her marry any of her ridiculous choices. They would make her miserable-he was sure of it. He must make her see that she was courting disaster. Then he'd find someone more eligible for her. Somehow. She faced him. "Well?" "Yes," he said, suppressing a curse. "I'll do whatever you want." A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "That I'd like to see." When he scowled, she added hastily, "But thank you. Truly. And I'm happy to pay you extra for your efforts, as I said." He stiffened. "No need." "Nonsense," she said firmly. "It will be worth it to have your discretion." His scowl deepened. "My clients always have my discretion.

But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a good deal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me.I was not so much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve’s action, for I saw in that merely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognizes its strength when it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to its spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed.I think she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's desire to bring him into the studio; I think she was frightened of him, though she knew not why; and I remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way the horror which she felt for him was a transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely troubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was aloofiness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big and strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element which had made me think of those wild beings of the world's early history when matter, retaining its early connection with the earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. lf he affected her at all. it was inevitable that she should love or hate him. She hated him. And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick man moved her strangely. She raised his head to give him food, and it was heavy against her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his sensual mouth and his red beard.She washed his limbs; they were covered with thick hair; and when she dried his hands, even in his weakness they were strong and sinewy. His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioning fingers of the artist; and I know not what troubling thoughts they excited in her. He slept very quietly, without movement, so that he might have been dead, and he was like some wild creature of the woods, resting after a long chase; and she wondered what fancies passed through his dreams. Did he dream of the nymph flying through the woods of Greece with the satyr in hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot and desperate, but he gained on her step by step, till she felt his hot breath on her neck; and still she fled silently. and silently he pursued, and when at last he seized her was it terror that thrilled her heart or was it ecstasy? Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind, and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad. She was desire.

Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!

Although the book considers the cause of the crash, this study is much more concerned with the human side of the tragedy and what can be learnt about Japanese society from looking at the responses to it. It is for that reason that the names of the crew and passengers are listed in the footer of pages of the book. This study is not about a lifeless mixture of metal and other man-made objects falling out of the sky, but about real people.

Communities that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters almost never lapse into chaos and disorder; if anything, they become more just, more egalitarian, and more deliberately fair to individuals. (Despite erroneous news reports, New Orleans experienced a drop in crime rates after Hurricane Katrina, and much of the “looting” turned out to be people looking for food.) The kinds of community-oriented behaviors that typically occur after a natural disaster are exactly the virtues that Paine was hoping to promote in his revolutionary tracts.

Think about the world. War, violence, natural disasters, man-made disasters, corruption. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the number of poor just keeps increasing; and we will soon run out of resources unless we do something drastic. At least that’s the picture that most Westerners see in the media and carry around in their heads. I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading.

awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States. My curtain call worked. Until it didn’t. Still speaking in his usual stream-of-consciousness and free-association cadence, the president moved his eyes again, sweeping from left to right, toward me and my protective curtain. This time, I was not so lucky. The small eyes with the white shadows stopped on me. “Jim!” Trump exclaimed. The president called me forward. “He’s more famous than me.” Awesome. My wife Patrice has known me since I was nineteen. In the endless TV coverage of what felt to me like a thousand-yard walk across the Blue Room, back at our home she was watching TV and pointing at the screen: “That’s Jim’s ‘oh shit’ face.” Yes, it was. My inner voice was screaming: “How could he think this is a good idea? Isn’t he supposed to be the master of television? This is a complete disaster. And there is no fricking way I’m going to hug him.” The FBI and its director are not on anyone’s political team. The entire nightmare of the Clinton email investigation had been about protecting the integrity and independence of the FBI and the Department of Justice, about safeguarding the reservoir of trust and credibility. That Trump would appear to publicly thank me on his second day in office was a threat to the reservoir. Near the end of my thousand-yard walk, I extended my right hand to President Trump. This was going to be a handshake, nothing more. The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn’t. I thwarted the hug, but I got something worse in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. “I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn’t get any worse. President Trump made a motion as if to invite me to stand with him and the vice president and Joe Clancy. Backing away, I waved it off with a smile. “I’m not worthy,” my expression tried to say. “I’m not suicidal,” my inner voice said. Defeated and depressed, I retreated back to the far side of the room. The press was excused, and the police chiefs and directors started lining up for pictures with the president. They were very quiet. I made like I was getting in the back of the line and slipped out the side door, through the Green Room, into the hall, and down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone say the score from the Packers-Falcons game. Perfect. It is possible that I was reading too much into the usual Trump theatrics, but the episode left me worried. It was no surprise that President Trump behaved in a manner that was completely different from his predecessors—I couldn’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush asking someone to come onstage like a contestant on The Price Is Right. What was distressing was what Trump symbolically seemed to be asking leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to do—to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring. To show their deference and loyalty. It was tremendously important that these leaders not do that—or be seen to even look like they were doing that. Trump either didn’t know that or didn’t care, though I’d spend the next several weeks quite memorably, and disastrously, trying to make this point to him and his staff.

Mankind willfully changing the global electromagnetic radiation environment has created what I expect will become known as the man-made evolution era.

These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People

As I approached the elevators, a familiar man passed me, pausing to say, "You will—" "Stop it right there!" I yelled, interrupting Paolo the Diviner before he could cause any more trouble for me. People in the area turned to look at us. I lowered the volume of my voice, but kept my tone as mean as I could. "I have no idea why you've decided to become my personal voice of doom, but I would appreciate it if you would stop telling me that I'm going to trip, or spill stuff on myself, or be arrested, or any of the thousand other disasters I'm sure you behold in my future, because frankly, I don't want to know. OK?" Paolo looked offended. His nostrils flared. He backed up a step, looking down his long nose at me, his lips pressed together tightly. "I'm sorry to be so brusque," I said, realizing I had insulted him. "And I want you to know that I appreciate your concern for my well-being"—a little white lie never hurt anyone—"but I will take my chances with life on my own." He said nothing, just raised a supercilious eyebrow at me. "Thank you," I said, figuring that he might leave me alone if I thanked him for his effort. "Uh ... have a nice day." Paolo continued to stare silently at me as I made a little good-bye wave and walked toward the elevator.

how else could you describe a guy who made the entire city? I was already very eager to meet this Major Creative. “We're here!” The Hummobile took a few more turns then finally made a stop at another tall building. Hum parked the car outside, and we entered the building. A guard let us in, and smiled at Hum. “Good morning, Hum! Come to see the big man himself?” the guard said. “Yeah! Just want to introduce my friend here to Major Creative!” Hum said. “He's upstairs. Go ahead.

30. Storms Make You Stronger A lot of the advice in this book is about how to cope when things don’t go well. You see, life is unpredictable, and as sure as eggs is eggs, it won’t always swing your way. But when those storms come I have a clear and simple mantra: The time to shine is when it is darkest. In other words: when it is all going wrong, step up to the plate, give it your all, heave hardest on that rope, and show that you are bigger than the obstacle. Nature has a way of rewarding that sort of attitude. Sometimes life tests us a little. Things we had banked on coming in just don’t work out. People let you down, one disaster follows another. You know the phrase: it never rains but it pours. When those times come we have a choice: do we cower and get beaten or do we stand tall and face it? I liken it to the school bully. When you stand up to them, they often stand down. They are testing you to see what you are made of. Man or mouse? So use those tough times as an opportunity to show the world and yourself what you are made of. Regardless of how you feel, how you see yourself, I have learnt one key lesson from mountains and the wild: that underneath it all, we humans are made strong. We all behave and act a little differently, depending on how we have been brought up and what has been thrown at us in our lives - but the underlying truth is that the real core of each of us is strong. I have seen incredible heroics from unlikely people on mountains. But it took exceptional circumstances for that bravery to emerge. You see, we are all a bit like grapes: when you squeeze us, you see what we are made of. And I believe that most people are far stronger than they ever imagine. It is refined within us from thousands of years of having to survive as a species. It might be dusty and hidden away, but it is there somewhere inside you: the heart of a survivor. Courage. Tenacity. Strength. So don’t shy away from hard times, they are your chance to shine. Write this on your bathroom mirror: Struggle develops strength and storms make you stronger.

It wasn’t often that you got to see a man whose dreams were literally about to come true, but then the lights went down, and I couldn’t see him anymore.

wealthy Georgian named Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, who bought the Wanderer, a luxury yacht, in New York and outfitted her for slaving. Around the time Meaher made his bet, Lamar was being lionized as a hero in newspapers across the nation as tales of the Africans he smuggled into the country spread. Relying on family money to make his start, Lamar was involved in horse racing, gold mining, road building, and the shipping of cotton. However, it appears he was not particularly good at any of those endeavors, and was repeatedly bailed out of financial disasters by his father, Gazaway. A family history going back three hundred years contains a small mention of Charles, describing him as “a dangerous man, and with all his apparent recklessness and lawlessness, a cautious man, too.” Perhaps not too cautious, as he was known to often resort to violence. While serving as an alderman on the Savannah City Council in 1853, he was arrested for “disorderly conduct and fighting in the streets.” In 1858, he shot out a friend’s eye while attempting to defend his uncle in a fight. Ultimately, he was the last person killed in the Civil War, in a small battle fought in Columbus, Georgia, seven days after the surrender at Appomattox.

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors—the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. “Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. “Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man.

As for those who reject the very idea that God will punish people with natural and "man-made" disasters, and kill thousands of people in the process, their problem is that they do not believe the Scripture at all,

Scripture tells us that God does punish sinners with both natural and "man-made" disasters, from the everyday mishaps and inconveniences to things like floods, earthquakes, plagues, famines, blizzards, and so on. All these things occur by God's sovereign decree and power.

Economic growth Stalin style was simple: develop industry by government command and obtain the necessary resources for this by taxing agriculture at very high rates. The communist state did not have an effective tax system, so instead Stalin “collectivized” agriculture. This process entailed the abolition of private property rights to land and the herding of all people in the countryside into giant collective farms run by the Communist Party. This made it much easier for Stalin to grab agricultural output and use it to feed all the people who were building and manning the new factories. The consequences of this for the rural folk were calamitous. The collective farms completely lacked incentives for people to work hard, so production fell sharply. So much of what was produced was extracted that there was not enough to eat. People began to starve to death. In the end, probably six million people died of famine, while hundreds of thousands of others were murdered or banished to Siberia during the forcible collectivization. Neither the newly created industry nor the collectivized farms were economically efficient in the sense that they made the best use of what resources the Soviet Union possessed. It sounds like a recipe for economic disaster and stagnation, if not outright collapse. But the Soviet Union grew rapidly. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. Allowing people to make their own decisions via markets is the best way for a society to efficiently use its resources. When the state or a narrow elite controls all these resources instead, neither the right incentives will be created nor will there be an efficient allocation of the skills and talents of people. But in some instances the productivity of labor and capital may be so much higher in one sector or activity, such as heavy industry in the Soviet Union, that even a top-down process under extractive institutions that allocates resources toward that sector can generate growth. As we saw in chapter 3, extractive institutions in Caribbean islands such as Barbados, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica could generate relatively high levels of incomes because they allocated resources to the production of sugar, a commodity coveted worldwide. The production of sugar based on gangs of slaves was certainly not “efficient,” and there was no technological change or creative destruction in these societies, but this did not prevent them from achieving some amount of growth under extractive institutions.

Like many people who became sick, I found that researching man-made radiation immersed me into a corporate world of lie, confuse and deny.

This is a disaster.” “Don’t clench your teeth, dearest.” Jenny’s pencil paused in its movement across the page. “What is a disaster?” Louisa stomped into Jenny’s drawing room—it really was a drawing room, not a withdrawing room—and tossed herself onto the sofa beside her sister. “I’m to be married tomorrow. What is the worst, most indelicate, inconvenient thing that could befall a woman as her wedding night approaches?” Maggie, arrived to Town for the wedding, took a pair of reading glasses off her elegant nose. “Somebody put stewed prunes on the menu for the wedding breakfast?” Louisa couldn’t help but smile at her oldest sister’s question. Since childhood, stewed prunes had had a predictable effect on Louisa’s digestion. “Eve made sure that wasn’t the case.” “We’re to have chocolate,” Eve said, “lots and lots of chocolate. I put everybody’s favorites on the menu too, and Her Grace didn’t argue with any of them.” She was on a hassock near the windows, embroidering some piece of white silk. Maggie had the rocking chair near the fireplace, where a cheery blaze was throwing out enough heat to keep the small room cozy. “It’s your monthly, isn’t it?” Sophie leaned forward from the hearth rug and lifted the teapot. “The same thing happened to me after the baby was born. Sindal looked like he wanted to cry when I told him. I was finally healed up after the birth, and the dear man had such plans for the evening.” An admission like that from prim, proper Sophie could not go unremarked. “You told him?” Louisa accepted the cup of tea and studied her sister’s slight smile. “Have the last cake.” Maggie pushed the tray closer to Louisa. “If you don’t tell him, then it becomes a matter of your lady’s maid telling his gentleman’s gentleman that you’re indisposed, and then your husband comes nosing about, making sure you’re not truly ill, and you have to tell him anyway.” Louisa looked from Maggie to Sophie. Maggie was the tallest of the five sisters, and the oldest, with flame-red hair and a dignity that suited the Countess of Hazelton well. Sophie was a curvy brunette who nonetheless carried a certain reserve with her everywhere, as befit the Baroness Sindal. They were married, and they spoke to their husbands about… things. “Why can’t a husband just understand that indisposed is one thing and ill is another?” Louisa thought her question perfectly logical. Sophie

I can make you a promise, Eve Windham. Several promises, in fact.” “Just not vows, please. I cannot abide the thought of vows.” “If we marry, we will consummate the union for legal purposes and to put the compulsory obligations behind us. Thereafter, I will not press you for your attentions until such time as you indicate you are willing to be intimate with me in a marital sense.” She peered over at him. His cheeks were the same color now. “You would leave me in peace after one night?” “Not entirely. For appearances, we will live together as man and wife, share chambers, and go down to breakfast together. We will dote and fawn in public and make calf eyes at each other across the ballrooms, but I will not importune you.” The small, guttering flame of hope burned a trifle brighter. His plan had potential to avoid disaster. She did not know what motivated his foolish generosity, but the plain fact was, after the wedding night, he might not want to have anything to do with her. “And if I never indicate that I’m interested in my conjugal duties?” “Never is a long time, and I am a very determined man who is quite attracted to you. Also a man in need of heirs, and I am confident you’ll not deny me those.” The flame nearly went out. Of course he’d need heirs. “Unfair, Lucas.” Except, he was compromising, while Eve was practically loading four sets of dueling pistols and aiming them at Deene’s chest. “You have an heir.” “Who is unmarried, older than me, and for reasons not relevant to the current discussion, not a good candidate for marriage. The succession is my obligation, Eve, and I’ve avoided it long enough.” She had at least ten childbearing years left, possibly twenty. That was a long time to muddle through with a man who had been nothing but considerate toward her. And an impossibly long time to mourn him, should the worst occur. “On the conditions you’ve stated—that following the wedding night you will not exercise your rights unless and until I’m comfortable with the notion, we can be married, but, Lucas, when you hate the choice you’ve made—when you hate me—don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “I will not hate you, I will not hate my choice. That I do vow.” His

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. From

So you understand about Steve?” she blurted into the darkness, unable to stop her confessions to this man she didn’t really know but somehow felt was integral to her life. “I wasn’t nice when I woke up from the coma: I cried uncontrollably. Raged. Had hysterical fits of temper. He didn’t even blink when I’d lashed out or yelled at him to go away. He just stayed right by my side. My whole world was in upheaval, my family in chaos, and he was like an unmovable rock.” Mitch’s fingers squeezed hers, but he said nothing, so she went on. “It endeared him to my family in a way nothing else could have. My mom, in particular, treated him like a son. Steve grew up in a very bad home. All he ever wanted was a normal family, so mine adopted him. I didn’t want to make them unhappy, not after . . .” She swallowed, unable to think about the rest. The real reason she was going straight to hell with no chance at redemption. Mitch pulled her closer. “So, can you see? Do you understand why I couldn’t leave him?” “I understand, Maddie.” His voice was a soft, sure whisper in the darkness. “Why couldn’t I love him the way I should?” It was the same question she’d asked herself millions of times. No matter how hard she’d tried, she’d been unable to talk herself into it. “Because life’s not that neat.” No, it wasn’t, which made her wonder what kind of disaster lurked around the corner.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials—these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. From

Suppose, instead, that a contrarian politics is not thought at all, and not even a rusty instinct, but simply an enormous irresponsibility, an irresponsibility towards politics itself? When, in 1943, Hamsun made his infamous visit to Hitler, the meeting was a farcical disaster. Hamsun showed no respect for Hitler. Almost completely deaf, he lectured the Führer in Norwegian, loudy complaining about Josef Terboven, Hitler’s representative in Norway, whose vicious administration Hamsun disliked. Hitler was furious. An aide later recalled that Knut Hamsun was the only man he had ever seen thwart Hitler.

This includes the Soviet Union, which will have a similar disaster in 1986, a year and a half from now, according to some of my sources. Occasionally, we Communists will cause a man-made natural disaster, so that the environmentalists can keep up the pressure for everyone to stop using fossil fuels, coal, wood, or whatever. Then, your people can claim that solar power and wind energy are the only power sources that are a good replacement. We regulate all the energy companies to the point where they can’t do anything without permission. I have even more ideas, but, what do you think so far, Ms. Altman?” “If you haven’t noticed, neither one of us are in power. So, how do you plan on convincing not only the entire Green movement, but the Democrats as well?

Earlier in the day, Coast Guard helicopters had arrived and volunteered to spend an hour transporting healthy people to safety (they didn’t have enough space for seriously ill patients on stretchers). “Part of the disaster was natural, but a big, big part of it was man-made and poor decision making,

Practice using these two unique human capacities: first, see yourself going to the office this afternoon, or home tonight, and finding it in a terrible situation. The house is a total disaster. No one has done his or her job; all the commitments made have been unfulfilled. And you’re tired and beat up. Now, imagine yourself responding to that reality in a mature, wise, self-controlled manner. See the effect that has on someone else. You didn’t confess their sins. You started to pitch in. You were cheerful, helpful, pleasant. And your behavior will prick the conscience of others and allow the consequences agreed upon to happen. You just used two unique human capacities: imagination and conscience. You didn’t rely on memory; if you had relied on memory or history, you might have lost your cool, made judgments of other people, and exacerbated conditions. Memory is built into your past responses to the same or similar stimuli. Memory ties you to your past. Imagination points you to your future. Your potential is unlimited, but to potentiate is to actualize your capabilities no matter what the conditions. In the book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany in World War II, tells how he exercised the power to choose his response to his terrible conditions. One day he was subjected to experiments on his body. And he discovered, “I have the power to choose.” And he looked for meaning. He believed that if you have a meaning (purpose or cause), if you have a why, you can live with any what. The development of his professional life came out of that one insight. He was raised in the Freudian tradition of psychic determinism. He learned it was a lie. It wasn’t based on science. It came from the study of sick people—neurotics and psychotics—not from the study of healthy, creative, effective people. He didn’t go to his memory, he went to his imagination and conscience. You, too, can progress along the continuum from futility and old habits to faith, hope, and inner security through the exercise of conscience and imagination.

Famines are not natural disasters. Famines are man-made. Droughts happen from time to time. But in this century, for any drought to metastasize into a famine, it takes a monumental breakdown in the economy, in relief efforts, in communication, and in the customs and traditions that usually keep places like Somalia from totally unraveling.

However, this is a man whose skin Occam’s Razor cannot cut.

Founded in 1917 by Peter Brandal, it was named Ny-Ålesund or New Ålesund. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognized Norwegian sovereignty and established Svalbard as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. It is only 769 miles from the North Pole on the island of Spitsbergen. Ny-Ålesund located at is on the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago and holds the distinction of being the northernmost permanent settlement in the world. Owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry and is not incorporated, however it does have a port which accommodates cruise ships, an airport, a post office, the Svalbard church and the Norwegian Seamen's church. Ny-Ålesund has an all-year permanent population of 30 to 35 which expands to about 120 people in the summer. For accommodations there is the Nordpolhotell, opened on 3 September 1939, and considered the oldest and perhaps the most expensive place to stay in Ny Ålesund. In the 17th and 18th centuries the island was first used as a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining was started at the end of the 19th century. Now there are fifteen permanent research stations run by agencies from ten countries. Perhaps the best known is the Global Seed Vault. Deep inside a mountain, it was built to stand the test of time and is considered a fail-safe seed storage facility strong enough to face most natural or man-made disasters. It is also the center for international arctic scientific research.

73 Years Later, the "A-Bomb" Ginkgo Trees Still Grow in Hiroshima On August 6, 1945, an Allied plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, creating a fireball 1,200 feet in diameter. Disaster rained down upon the city, killing an estimated 150,000 people and leveling both the biological and man-made landscape. Little was left standing, but somehow the ginkgo trees were able to weather one of the most destructive moments in human history.

Fortune, because of whom all good leaves us, was thereupon born, and was complicit in the whole affair. She did this because of her fickleness. And I believe her to be the daughter of the devil because I do not find any writing or text—not prose, not verse—that says or proves that God, who makes all good, beneficial works out of nothing, ever formed or loved Fortune. So I believe that the devil made her, so that she would undo all good and put man in servitude, because there is no shame, damage, or misfortune that does not come to man because of Fortune (may all remember that!). And she does even greater harm to the best than to the worst, night and day. Her disruptive influence will not be short-lived; rather, her control will last until Judgment Day

The second essay was in response to a letter from a student on how to overcome caste and communal distinctions. ‘I do not believe in caste in the modern sense,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘It is an excrescence and a handicap on progress. Nor do I believe in inequalities between human beings... Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil.’ That said, Gandhi continued to believe in varna in sofar as it defined and marked ‘four universal occupations—imparting knowledge, defending the defenceless, carrying on agriculture and commerce and performing service through physical labour. These occupations are common to all mankind, but Hinduism, having recognized them as the law of our being, has made use of it inregulating social relations and conduct.’ This system, believed Gandhi, had been corrupted over the years, resulting in ‘unnecessary and harmful restrictions’ on inter-dining and intermarriage. But as Gandhi understood it, the ‘law of varna has nothing to do with these restrictions. People of different varnas may intermarry and interdine.... [A] Brahmin who marries a Sudra girl or vice versa commits no offence against the law of varna.’ This was Gandhi’s first statement of support for inter-caste marriages, a considerable advance on his earlier position. However, he wasn’t prepared to go so far as to prescribe marriage between a Hindu and a Muslim. He saw ‘no moral objection to such unions’; yet, in the present atmosphere, he did not believe that ‘these unions can bring peace. They may follow peace. I see nothing but disaster following any attempt to advocate Hindu–Muslim unions so long as the relations between the two remain strained. That such unions may be happy in exceptional circumstances can be no reason for their general advocacy'.

When it opened an older man walked out. I thought he might be the store’s owner or manager–until he engaged Tommy. The man, it transpired, had a question for Tommy: Could he maybe sublet his space for a little while? Tommy and the man discussed the matter only briefly, but during the discussion, it came out that the man was one of the building’s tenants–a successful landscape architect–who was paying $ 8,000 a month for his space.

From the vantage point of creation, it was all very unthinkable. People living separate from God? This was like fish without water, honey that is not sweet, or a sun that provides no heat. Not only did it defy the logic and design of creation, it could not work. Human beings were not hardwired to live independently. We were not made to function on our own and to live based on our own wisdom. We were not created to live by our own limited resources. We were made to live in a constant, life-giving connection to God. People’s separation from God was a functional and moral disaster. So this disaster had to be addressed. The tragic gap between God and man had to be bridged, and there was only one way. Jesus would have to come to earth as the second Adam and live a perfect life in our place.

young loyalists (like Nina) who joined the udarniks in the countryside would have their faith in the Party tested by what they witnessed, most of Russia, and for that matter the world, would be spared the spectacle of this man-made disaster. For just as peasants from the countryside were forbidden to enter the cities, journalists from the cities were forbidden to enter the countryside; delivery of personal mail was suspended; and the windows of passenger trains were blackened. In fact, so successful was the campaign to contain awareness of the crisis, when word leaked out that millions were starving in Ukraine, Walter Duranty, the lead correspondent for The New York Times in Russia (and one of the ringleaders in the Shalyapin Bar), would report that these rumors of famine were grossly exaggerated and had probably originated with anti-Soviet propagandists. Thus, the world would shrug. And even as the crime unfolded, Duranty would win the Pulitzer Prize.]

No discussion of Britain's psychology would be complete unless some mention were made of the natural feeling of confidence, even of superiority, that every English man feels and to which many Americans object. This feeling, while it is an invaluable asset in bearing up under disaster, has had a great effect on the need Britain felt for rearming. The idea that Britain loses every battle except the last has proved correct so many times in the past that the average English man is unwilling to make great personal sacrifices until the danger is overwhelmingly apparent. This notion that God will make a special effort to look after England, and that she will muddle through, took a great toll of the British rearmament efforts of the thirties.

No discussion of Britain's psychology would be complete unless some mention were made of the natural feeling of confidence, even of superiority, that every English man feels and to which many Americans object. This feeling, while it is an invaluable asset in bearing up under disaster, has had a great effect on the need Britain felt for rearming. The idea that Britain loses every battle except the last has proved correct so many times in the past that the average Englishman is unwilling to make great personal sacrifices until the danger is overwhelmingly apparent. This notion that God will make a special effort to look after England, and that she will muddle through, took a great toll of the British rearmament efforts of the thirties.

The calculi of digit utopias and man-made disasters don't contradict each other. They can coexist. This is the heading of the darkest and funniest science fiction, such as the work of Philip K. Dick.

Maybe they had no faith, Tom thought. Maybe they were like me, always expecting disaster, surprised only when it doesn't hit. Maybe we are all, the killers and the killed, equally damned; not guilty, not somehow made wise by war, not heroes, just men who are either dead or convinced that the world is insane.

Turner, in Man-made Disasters, notes the tendency for a problem that was ill structured in an organization to become a well-structured problem after a disaster, as people look back and reinterpret information ignored or minimized at the time, that afterward takes on new significance as signals of danger.

These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People in low-lying areas get the floods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornados. I’m a college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name. These things don’t happen in places like Blacksmith.

Too true,” said the little man with a laugh. “Thank you for coming.” “Don’t thank me. Thank the United States government. Which reminds me. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an—” “Are you actually Mirandizing me?” Harvath shrugged. “It’s a service we provide everyone now.” “Even suspected terrorists?” “You’ve been living in the mountains too long, my friend. We declared defeat in the war on terror about two years ago. We don’t even use the word terror anymore. There’s only ‘man-made disasters’ caused by disenfranchised groups who are really just ‘misunderstood.

On December 6th, 1917, during the First World War, Halifax was devastated by one of the worst explosive disasters in history. At the time, Halifax’s harbour was crowded with Allied cargo and military vessels carrying weapons and explosives destined for the battlegrounds of Europe. On the morning of December 6th, a Norwegian ship collided with a French vessel filled with explosives in a body of water that connected the Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin. The collision sparked a fire on the French ship, that led to a massive explosion. The result was the biggest man-made explosion before the development of nuclear bombs. A large part of Halifax was devastated, with many people killed and buildings destroyed.

The Beginning Sergeant Smelly was a normal man. He lived in a normal village, full of normal people and had a normal address. He lived at 1 Normall Street in the village of Normall Normall. The village was so normal they named it twice. His first name was eighty-three percent normal—Norman. Most people knew him as Normal Norman from Normall Normall; a rotund and jolly man who lived an exceedingly normal life. Well, normal, if appearing in court on exploding fart charges was normal. Normal, if producing fire from your butt was normal. All of his body parts were normal. Apart from one: his butt. His butt was abnormal. It used to be a normal butt, but everything changed in the blink of a fart. Sergeant Smelly's face glistened with sweat and his heartbeats quickened as the judge read out the charge. "Sergeant Smelly, you are here today because you could not control your soldiers, not to mention your bottom. You are hereby charged with the crime of producing exploding fire-farts. How do you plead?" asked Army Judge Mental. The stout sergeant considered the question and his thoughts transported him back to the day it all went smelly. One fateful morning, Sergeant Smelly lay in bed suffering from a horrible cold. Empty boxes lay scattered across the floor, and the bin overflowed with used tissues. He groaned as he pulled the last tissue from the box. A passer-by in the street below jumped as he heard the foghorn sound. He inspected the contents of the tissue (Sergeant Smelly, not the passer-by) and wished he had not. It was time for action. The suffering soldier dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. He wore a waterproof jacket on top of his uniform, as his army blazer was not snot-proof. Not that any of his other clothes were snot-proof. He trudged downstairs and made himself a hot lemon with honey, then switched on his laptop. After an extensive internet search, he found the best remedy to fix the cold was to feed it, so he plodded into town and searched for a place to eat. The first eatery he found had a ridiculous name, but the café was almost full. He watched the customers from the window as they tucked into their food. The plain wooden tables and basic white tablecloths oozed simplicity, but the gorgeous grub eclipsed the plain interior. Silence filled the air as customers tucked into delectable dishes and drifted off to food heaven.  But an odorous pong emanated from the café, and it was not the food. Sergeant Smelly did not smell the malodorous stench due to his blocked nose and cold. The cold was so bad it came alive. Colin the Cold smelled the awful pong and begged his owner to reconsider. He tried in vain to turn his attention to the sandwich shop, but Sergeant Smelly did not hear him. Colin the Cold saw disaster around the corner. Major Disaster walked around the corner and greeted him in a bright and cheery fashion. "Morning, Smelly," said Major Disaster in a bright and cheery fashion. Colin the Cold was correct and sensed nothing good would come of Sergeant Smelly eating at Café McPoo. It had Disaster Area written all over it, but the police apprehended the graffiti artist, and he was hard at work wiping the words ‘Disaster Area’ from the front of the café. Colin the Cold frowned and prepared himself for the worst. And so it began.

I felt like I'd just asked a child what he wanted to be when he grew up. And a child had answered me, honestly, with no adult filter telling him what was and wasn't possible. "Your own planet," I said. I wanted to laugh but couldn't. In fact, I had goose bumps. This man sitting in front of me had no detectable talent, did everything wrong, wasn't comfortable saying how old he was or where he was from, and seemed to take an hour to learn what most people picked up in five seconds. Still, for that moment I believed him. I believed he could have his own planet. "Yeah," he said, looking up. "I see this big thing and big light and big events with stores and hotel and movie. All these things all together. It will be spectacular." He reached for his glass of hot water but hesitated before lifting it to his mouth. Tommy peered at me from beneath his large protruding brow. "And you can live in my planet, if you decide. Maybe I let you stay for little while." What did I think of living on Tommy's planet? I wasn't sure. What I was sure of was that Tommy had something I'd never seen in anyone else: a blind and unhinged and totally unfounded ambition. He was so out of touch, so lacking self-awareness, yet also weirdly captivating. That night there was this aura around Tommy—an aura of the possible. Stick with him, I thought, and something would happen, even if I had no idea what that something might be. Maybe that was it: Tommy made me listen to the right voices in my head. This big, childish vision of his—what was it if not every actor's secret dream?

You just have to do your best," I said. "No, I'm sorry, young man. May I correct you? You have to do more than that. You have to be the best.