Mariner Short Quotes

Our opportunities to give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved. As we remember that “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” (Mosiah 2:17) we will not find ourselves in the unenviable position of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who spoke to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s immortal "Christmas Carol." Marley spoke sadly of opportunities lost. Said he: 'Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!' Marley added: 'Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!' Fortunately, as we know, Ebenezer Scrooge changed his life for the better. I love his line, 'I am not the man I was.' Why is Dickens’ "Christmas Carol" so popular? Why is it ever new? I personally feel it is inspired of God. It brings out the best within human nature. It gives hope. It motivates change. We can turn from the paths which would lead us down and, with a song in our hearts, follow a star and walk toward the light. We can quicken our step, bolster our courage, and bask in the sunlight of truth. We can hear more clearly the laughter of little children. We can dry the tear of the weeping. We can comfort the dying by sharing the promise of eternal life. If we lift one weary hand which hangs down, if we bring peace to one struggling soul, if we give as did the Master, we can—by showing the way—become a guiding star for some lost mariner.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? I’m probably hopelessly out of date but my advice is get real-world experience: Be a cowboy. Drive a truck. Join the Marine Corps. Get out of the hypercompetitive “life hack” frame of mind. I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends “beating” you or “getting somewhere” ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want? Get out there and fail and find out.

Nothing any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments. The Genius who wrote The Ancient Mariner is no less sublime than he who wrote The Tempest; but Coleridge had some incapacity to catch and express the thoughts of his genius - was ever such wooden stuff as his conscious work? - while Shakespeare had the knack of acquiring the knowledge necessary to the expression of every conceivable harmony, and his technique was sufficiently fluent to transcribe with ease.

...that's the nature of marine life and the inland bays I grew up on. You'd have to be a scientist, a poet and a comedian to hope to describe it all accurately, and even then you'd often fall short.

Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States.

Just watch me. Do what I do. These guys will tell you that I am a monster, but I'm the only grunt in this squad that doesn't have his head up his ass. In this world of shit, monsters live forever and everybody else dies. If you kill for fun, you're a sadist. If you kill for money, you're a mercenary. If you kill for both, you're a Marine.

VJ had gone to the Naval Academy, where he competed as a powerlifter and developed a distaste for military customs such as short hair and addressing people by rank.

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

As a writer, I marinate, speculate, and hibernate.

A quick check on the platoon showed everyone more or less enjoying the flight. "Whatever it is you're eating, Ressk, swallow it before we land," [said Staff Sergeant Kerr]. "No problem, Staff." "More like whoever he's eating," Binti muttered beside him. "You ought to count your fingers," he suggested. "You're too serley stupid to notice one missing." "Maybe you ought to gren sa talamec to." "That's enough, people." When the Confederation first started integrating the di'Taykan and the Krai into what was predominantly a human military system, xenopsychologists among the elder races expected a number of problems. For the most part, those expectations fell short. After having dealt with the Mictok and the H'san, none of the younger races - all bipedal mammals - had any difficulty with each other's appearance. Cultural differences were absorbed into the prevailing military culture and the remaining problems were dealt with in the age-old military tradition of learning to say "up yours" in the other races' languages. The "us against them" mentality of war made for strange bedfellows.

... I spent most of my [33 years in the Marine Corps] being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for [crony] capitalism.

I’ll give you one chance to run, but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear… “It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

Orange roughy, a sluggish but delicious ocean fish, were caught in vast numbers before marine biologists realized how desperately susceptible to extinction they were.

Life is short. Read good books only.

I restrained the urge to slam my door. On the right stood a teenage guy with thick chestnut hair, chocolatey brown eyes, and the kind of perfectly square jaw I thought only existed on models. He wore khaki pants and a white shirt - classic preppy gear, though on him it looked incredibly hot. The man on the left had black hair with wings of pure white at the temples, and unbelievable blue eyes the color of the Caribbean. Not that I've ever seen the Caribbean, but I swear you could have cut and pasted his eyes right into an ad for the Bahamas. Meanwhile, I looked like I didn't know how to operate a washing machine. My shorts had a glob of strawberry jelly on them from breakfast, my wrinkled gray T-shirt looked like it had been slept in (which it had), and my Seattle Mariners baseball hat had a dark ring around the brim. Grandma practically winced as her gaze traveled up and down my outfit. Her taste runs toward matching velour tracksuits, so I don't usually worry about her opinion much. Still, this time I think she was right.

I tell the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors. His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good. One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question mark. If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this...

Like all limestones, the famous White Cliffs of Dover, on England’s south coast, are made from numberless trillions of tiny marine organisms compressed over time into stone, and exist now as huge reservoirs of carbon. (credit 17.13)  

When I entered the service, the regulations stated that the object of all military training is “success in battle.” This short sentence has been rewritten on three pages and I defy anyone to read it over three or more times and then explain what the object of military training is.

You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a daughter is? You have no idea what a daughter is. You think you know what this country is? You have no idea what this country is. You have a false image of everything. All you know is what a fucking glove is. This country is frightening. Of course she was raped. What kind of company do you think she was keeping? Of course out there she was going to get raped. This isn't Old Rimrock, old buddy - she's out there, old buddy, in the USA. She enters that world, that loopy world out there, with whats going on out there - what do you expect? A kid from Rimrock, NJ, of course she didn't know how to behave out there, of course the shit hits the fan. What could she know? She's like a wild child out there in the world. She can't get enough of it - she's still acting up. A room off McCarter Highway. And why not? Who wouldn't? You prepare her for life milking the cows? For what kind of life? Unnatural, all artificial, all of it. Those assumptions you live with. You're still in your olf man's dream-world, Seymour, still up there with Lou Levov in glove heaven. A household tyrannized by gloves, bludgeoned by gloves, the only thing in life - ladies' gloves! Does he still tell the one about the woman who sells the gloves washing her hands in a sink between each color? Oh where oh where is that outmoded America, that decorous America where a woman had twenty-five pairs of gloves? Your kid blows your norms to kingdom come, Seymour, and you still think you know what life is?" Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive. Meredith Levov, 1964. "You wanted Ms. America? Well, you've got her, with a vengeance - she's your daughter! You wanted to be a real American jock, a real American marine, a real American hotshot with a beautiful Gentile babe on your arm? You longed to belong like everybody else to the United States of America? Well, you do now, big boy, thanks to your daughter. The reality of this place is right up in your kisser now. With the help of your daughter you're as deep in the sit as a man can get, the real American crazy shit. America amok! America amuck! Goddamn it, Seymour, goddamn you, if you were a father who loved his daughter," thunders Jerry into the phone - and the hell with the convalescent patients waiting in the corridor for him to check out their new valves and new arteries, to tell how grateful they are to him for their new lease on life, Jerry shouts away, shouts all he wants if it's shouting he wants to do, and the hell with the rules of hte hospital. He is one of the surgeons who shouts; if you disagree with him he shouts, if you cross him he shouts, if you just stand there and do nothing he shouts. He does not do what hospitals tell him to do or fathers expect him to do or wives want him to do, he does what he wants to do, does as he pleases, tells people just who and what he is every minute of the day so that nothing about him is a secret, not his opinions, his frustrations, his urges, neither his appetite nor his hatred. In the sphere of the will, he is unequivocating, uncompromising; he is king. He does not spend time regretting what he has or has not done or justifying to others how loathsome he can be. The message is simple: You will take me as I come - there is no choice. He cannot endure swallowing anything. He just lets loose. And these are two brothers, the same parents' sons, one for whom the aggression's been bred out, the other for whom the aggression's been bred in. "If you were a father who loved your daughter," Jerry shouts at the Swede, "you would never have left her in that room! You would have never let her out of your sight!

Prior to the attack on Betio, photo analysts counted the number of privies (benjo) built on short piers extending into the water on both the southern and northern shores. Knowing the maximum number of bottoms per outhouse specified by Japanese naval regulations, they were able to make a surprisingly accurate estimate of the number of defenders.

It was the start of a remarkable career. Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering fossils, which she sold to visitors. (She is commonly held to be the source for the famous tongue twister “She sells seashells on the seashore.”) She would also find the first plesiosaurus, another marine monster, and one of the first and best pterodactyls.

As one observer told the Economist: “We’re still in the Dark Ages. We just drop a net down and see what comes up.” Perhaps as much as twenty-two million metric tons of such unwanted fish are dumped back in the sea each year, mostly in the form of corpses. For every pound of shrimp harvested, about four pounds of fish and other marine creatures are destroyed.

The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will take it away from them. The weak exist to be devoured by the strong. Every Marine must pack his own gear. Every Marine must be the instrument of his own salvation. It's hard, but there it is.

Reah, you may leave work early if you'd like to come walking with me," Neidles gave his mouth a perfunctory swipe before grinning at me. I wanted to cringe. "While that sounds tempting, I have to put the marinade together for tomorrow's fowl dish," I said. Neidles left shortly after. "Are we having fowl marinated in something for tomorrow?" Plovel chuckled and pushed his plate over. "We are now," I muttered.

Right up to the closing years of the eighteenth century... scientists everywhere searched for, and sometimes believed they had actually found, things that just weren't there: vitiated airs, dephlogisticated marine acids, phloxes, calxes, terraqueous exhalations and, above all, phlogiston, the substance that was thought to be the active agent in combustion. Somewhere in all this, it was thought, there also resided a mysterious élan vital, the force that brought inanimate objects to life.

THE PRE-TRIAL CONFINEMENT OF PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING To drive a man to suicide you put Him on suicide watch, you take away His sheet and pillow, all his clothes except His underwear, you shine a light in day And night, you confiscate his eyeglasses, Then you deny that he’s in solitary. You say he lives in his own cell. Sightless. Each day he gets to walk around an empty Room for an hour. No pushups, no jogging in place. He’s not the first one held as an example. Amnesty reports it seeks redress As month by month both mind and body crumple. The Marines treat every detainee Firmly, fairly, and with dignity.

His father, a civil servant, had raised him and his sister singlehanded after their mother’s death; the sickly old man had worked overtime in order to send Ryuji to school; despite everything, Ryuji had grown up into a strong, healthy man; late in the war his home had been destroyed in an air raid and his sister had died of typhus shortly after; he had graduated from the merchant-marine high school and was just starting on his career when his father died too; his only memories of life on shore were of poverty and sickness and death, of endless devastation; by becoming a sailor, he had detached himself from the land for ever. ... It was the first time he had talked of these things at such length to a woman.

At the same time that he was devising a response to the Afghanistan incursion, Carter had to confront a much more acute crisis in Iran, where he had brought the greatest disaster of his presidency down upon himself. In November 1977, he welcomed the shah of Iran to the White House, and on New Year’s Eve in Tehran, raising his glass, he toasted the ruler. Though the shah was sustained in power by a vicious secret police force, Carter praised him as a champion of “the cause of human rights” who had earned “the admiration and love” of the Iranian people. Little more than a year later, his subjects, no longer willing to be governed by a monarch imposed on them by the CIA, drove the shah into exile. Critically ill, he sought medical treatment in the United States. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned that admitting him could have repercussions in Iran, and Carter hesitated. But under pressure from David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the head of the National Security Council, Zbigniew Brzezinski, he caved in. Shortly after the deposed shah entered the Mayo Clinic, three thousand Islamic militants stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and seized more than fifty diplomats and soldiers. They paraded blindfolded US Marine guards, hands tied behind their backs, through the streets of Tehran while mobs chanted, “Death to Carter, Death to the Shah,” as they spat upon the American flag and burned effigies of the president—scenes recorded on camera that Americans found painful to witness.

What’s on your mind, doc?” he asked as he flashed his ID at the staff duty sergeant. “Just wondering why the driver didn’t make conversation,” she said after a moment, following him down the hallway and trying not to feel like she was rushing to keep up. “We don’t take warm showers together, if that’s what you’re asking.” Emily laughed quietly. “Was that a line from Heartbreak Ridge?” “You didn’t strike me as a war movie kind of girl.” Reza stopped short, studying her. “Are you honestly telling me you’ve watched that movie?” Heat crept up her neck. “Before I signed up for the army, I needed to know what I was getting myself in for. I watched every war movie I could find.” Reza simply stared at her, his dark eyes glittering. She was sure he was laughing at her. “You know those were Marines in Heartbreak Ridge, right?” “Of course.” He cracked the barest grin. She supposed it was better than yelling at her, so there was that.

Sometimes you characters give me a pain in the back of my lap,” said Manuel abruptly. “I hang around with you and listen to simple-minded gobbledegook in yard-long language, if it’s you talking, Dran, and pink-and-purple sissification from the brat here. Why I do it I’ll never know. And it goes that way up to the last gasp. So you’re going to leave. Dran has to make a speech, real logical. Vaughn has to blow out a sigh and get misty-eyed.” He spat. “How would you handle it?” Dran asked, amused. Vaughn stared at Manuel whitely. “Me? You really want to know?” “This I want to hear,” said Vaughn between her teeth. “I’d wait a while—a long while—until neither of you was talking. Then I’d say, ‘I joined the Marines yesterday.’ And you’d both look at me a little sad. There’s supposed to be something wrong with coming right out and saying something. Let’s see. Suppose I do it the way Vaughn would want me to.” He tugged at an imaginary braid and thrust out his lower lip in a lampoon of Vaughn’s full mouth. He sighed gustily. “I have felt …” He paused to flutter his eyelashes. “I have felt the call to arms,” he said in a histrionic whisper. He gazed off into the middle distance. “I have heard the sound of trumpets. The drums stir in my blood.” He pounded his temples with his fists. “I can’t stand it—I can’t! Glory beckons. I will away to foreign strands.” Vaughn turned on her heel, though she made no effort to walk away. Dran roared with laughter. “And suppose I’m you,” said Manuel, his face taut with a suppressed grin. He leaned easily against the base of the statue and crossed his legs. He flung his head back. “Zeno of Miletus,” he intoned, “in reflecting on the cromislon of the fortiseetus, was wont to refer to a razor as ‘a check for a short beard.’ While shaving this morning I correlated ‘lather’ with ‘leather’ and, seeing some of it on my neck, I recalled the old French proverb, ‘Jeanne D’Arc,’ which means: The light is out in the bathroom. The integration was complete. If the light was out I could no longer shave. Therefore I can not go on like this. Also there was this matter of the neck. I shall join the Marines. Q. E. D., which means thus spake Zarathusiasm.” Dran chuckled. Vaughn made a furious effort, failed, and burst out laughing. When it subsided, Manuel said soberly, “I did.” “You did what?” “I joined the Marines yesterday.

Oh doors of your body There are nine and I have opened them all Oh doors of your body There are nine and for me they have all closed again At the first door Clear Reason has died It was do you remember? the first day in Nice Your left eye like a snake slides Even my heart And let the door of your left gaze open again At the second door All my strength has died It was do you remember? in a hostel in Cagnes Your right eye was beating like my heart Your eyelids throbbed like flowers beat in the breeze And let the door of your right gaze open again At the third door Hear the aorta beat And all my arteries swollen from your only love And let the door of your left ear be reopened At the fourth gate They escort me every spring And listening listening to the beautiful forest Upload this song of love and nests So sad for the soldiers who are at war And let the door of your right ear reopen At the fifth gate It is my life that I bring you It was do you remember? on the train returning from Grasse And in the shade, very close, very short Your mouth told me Words of damnation so wicked and so tender What do I ask of my wounded soul How could I hear them without dying Oh words so sweet so strong that when I think about it I seem to touch them And let the door of your mouth open again At the sixth gate Your gestation of putrefaction oh War is aborting Behold all the springs with their flowers Here are the cathedrals with their incense Here are your armpits with their divine smell And your perfumed letters that I smell During hours And let the door on the left side of your nose be reopened At the seventh gate Oh perfumes of the past that the current of air carries away The saline effluvia gave your lips the taste of the sea Marine smell smell of love under our windows the sea was dying And the smell of the orange trees enveloped you with love While in my arms you cuddled Still and quiet And let the door on the right side of your nose be reopened At the eighth gate Two chubby angels care for the trembling roses they bear The exquisite sky of your elastic waist And here I am armed with a whip made of moonbeams Hyacinth-crowned loves arrive in droves. And let the door of your soul open again With the ninth gate Love itself must come out Life of my life I join you for eternity And for the perfect love without anger We will come to pure and wicked passion According to what we want To know everything to see everything to hear I gave up in the deep secret of your love Oh shady gate oh living coral gate Between two columns of perfection And let the door open again that your hands know how to open so well

He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favorable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only conduce to the honor and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. [8] The causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank, ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, be was never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction. [9] Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short, what was nominally a democ racy was becoming in his hands government by the first citizen.9a [10] With his successors it was different. More on a level with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.

Shortly before our CFO’s pep talk, another high-level executive at the bank stopped me in the hall to give me what he considered some critical advice. “A lot of smart kids like you come through the bank, and they use it for a stepping stone,” he said. “They stay for a year or two and then they leave. I think that’s a huge mistake. Look at me: I’ve been here forever and I’m happier than anyone I know. This place rewards loyalty, and I’m good at my job because I’ve got my finger right on the pulse of the company. I know everything that’s going on.” A week later, I saw two workmen hauling boxes out of his office. He was a victim of the bank’s first-ever round of layoffs. I’m not trying to put this man down for his faith in the bank or make light of his unemployment. I want to use his story to make another point about failure in business. That chat reinforced something else I was beginning to learn: people in management positions, even very senior management positions, are often completely wrong about the fortunes of their own companies. More important, in making these misjudgments, they almost always err on the side of excessive optimism. They think their businesses are in much better shape than they actually are. Jerry’s rig utilization chart at Global Marine and our own CFO’s boasts about Joe DiMaggio only underscored this lesson for me at the time. And, three decades and over 1,400 meetings with other executives later, I can say this tendency is as pronounced as ever.

Er, hello, Chewie," he said politely. "Woof," the dog said back. "Chewie is a Newfoundland," Beka explained. "They're great water dogs. They swim better than we do, and even have webbed feet. They're often used for water rescue, and the breed started out as working dogs for fishermen." "Uh-huh... Chewie - I guess you named him for Chewbacca in Star Wars. I can see why; they're both gigantic and furry." Beka giggled. "I never thought of that. Actually, Chewie is short for Chudo-Yudo. Also, he chews on stuff a lot, so it seemed fitting." "Chudo what?" Marcus said. The dog made a snuffling sound that might have been canine laughter. "Chudo-Yudo," Beka repeated. "He's a character out of Russian fairy tales, the dragon that guards the Water of Life and Death. You never heard of him?" Marcus shook his head. "My father used to tell the occasional Irish folk tale when I was a kid, but I'm not familiar with Russian ones at all. Sorry." "Oh, don't be," she said cheerfully. "Most of them were pretty gory, and they hardly ever had happy endings." "Right." Marcus looked at the dog, who gazed alertly back with big brown eyes, as if trying to figure out if the former Marine was edible or not. "So, you named him after a mythical dragon from a depressing Russian story. Does anyone get eaten in that story, just out of curiosity?" Chewie sank down onto the floor with a put-upon sigh, and Beka shook her head at Marcus. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course people got eaten. But don't worry. Chewie hasn't taken a bite out of anyone in years. He's very mellow for a dragon.

It is worth nothing that their neologisms, pronounciations and simplified grammar was quickly adopted by both the simplest people in the ports and by the so-called best people; and from the ports this way of speaking spread out into the newspapers and was soon in general use. Even many humans stopped attending to grammatical gender, word endings were dropped, declinations disappeared; our golden youth neglected to say r properly and learned to lisp; few educated people were any longer certain what was meant by 'indeterminism' or 'transcendent', simply because these words, even for human beings, were too long and too hard to pronounce. In short, for good or for ill, the newts became able to speak almost every language of the world according to what coast they lived on. About this time, some of the Czech national newspapers began to complain bitterly, no doubt with good reason, that none of the newts could speak their language. If there were salamanders who could speak Portuguese, Dutch and the languages of other small nations why were there none that could speak Czech? It was true, they conceded in regretful and learned terms, that Czechoslovakia had no sea coasts, and that means there will be no marine newts here, but that does not mean that Czechs should not play the same part in the culture of the world as many of the other nations whose language was being taught to thousands of newts, or perhaps even a greater part. It was only right and proper that the newts should also have some knowledge of Czech culture; but how were they to be informed about it if none of them knew the Czech language? It was not likely that someone somewhere in the world would acknowledge this cultural debt and found a chair in Czech and Czechoslovak literature at one of the newt universities. As the poet puts it, 'Trust no-one in the whole wide world, we have no friends out there'.

The newspapers, according to their political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective measures of this sort. People began frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was simply the more worrying and dangerous than it had been at any time over the previous three or four months. But this was when the minister for agriculture, Monsieur Monti, stepped dexterously in. He gave orders that several hundred loads of apples for the newts should be discharged into the sea twice a week along the French coasts, at government cost, of course. This measure was remarkably successful in pacifying both the newts and the villagers in Normandy and elsewhere. But Monsieur Monti went even further: there had long been deep and serious disturbances in the wine-growing regions, resulting from a lack of turnover, so he ordered that the state should provide each newt with a half litre of white wine per day. At first the newts did not know what to do with this wine because it caused them serious diarrhoea and they poured it into the sea; but with a little time they clearly became used to it, and it was noticed that from then on the newts would show a lot more enthusiasm for sex, although with lower fertility rates than before. In this way, problems to do with the newts and with agriculture were solved in one stroke; fear and tension were assuaged, and, in short, the next time there was another government crisis, caused by the financial scandal around Madame Töppler, the clever and well proven Monsieur Monti became the minister for marine affairs in the new cabinet.

On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part: I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. . . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents. . . . We don’t want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won’t be any more of them. I am a peace-loving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we’re ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all. . . . There is no use talking about abolishing war; that’s damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn’t have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us. . . . No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

In short, it was entirely natural that the newts stopped being a sensation, even though there were now as many as a hundred million of them; the public interest they had excited had been the interest of a novelty. They still appeared now and then in films (Sally and Andy, the Two Good Salamanders) and on the cabaret stage where singers endowed with an especially bad voice came on in the role of newts with rasping voices and atrocious grammar, but as soon as the newts had become a familiar and large-scale phenomenon the problems they presented, so to speak, were of a different character. (13) Although the great newt sensation quickly evaporated it was replaced with something that was somewhat more solid - the Newt Question. Not for the first time in the history of mankind, the most vigorous activist in the Newt Question was of course a woman. This was Mme. Louise Zimmermann, the manager of a guest house for girls in Lausanne, who, with exceptional and boundless energy, propagated this noble maxim around the world: Give the newts a proper education! She would tirelessly draw attention both to the newts' natural abilities and to the danger that might arise for human civilisation if the salamanders weren't carefully taught to reason and to understand morals, but it was long before she met with anything but incomprehension from the public. (14) "Just as the Roman culture disappeared under the onslaught of the barbarians our own educated civilisation will disappear if it is allowed to become no more than an island in a sea of beings that are spiritually enslaved, our noble ideals cannot be allowed to become dependent on them," she prophesied at six thousand three hundred and fifty seven lectures that she delivered at women's institutes all over Europe, America, Japan, China, Turkey and elsewhere. "If our culture is to survive there must be education for all. We cannot have any peace to enjoy the gifts of our civilisation nor the fruits of our culture while all around us there are millions and millions of wretched and inferior beings artificially held down in the state of animals. Just as the slogan of the nineteenth century was 'Freedom for Women', so the slogan of our own age must be 'GIVE THE NEWTS A PROPER EDUCATION!'" And on she went. Thanks to her eloquence and her incredible persistence, Mme. Louise Zimmermann mobilised women all round the world and gathered sufficient funds to enable her to found the First Newt Lyceum at Beaulieu (near Nice), where the tadpoles of salamanders working in Marseilles and Toulon were instructed in French language and literature, rhetoric, public behaviour, mathematics and cultural history. (15) The Girls' School for Newts in Menton was slightly less successful, as the staple courses in music, diet and cookery and fine handwork (which Mme. Zimmermann insisted on for primarily pedagogical reasons) met with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm, if not with a stubborn hostility among its young students. In contrast with this, though, the first public examinations for young newts was such an instant and startling success that they were quickly followed by the establishment of the Marine Polytechnic for Newts at Cannes and the Newts' University at Marseilles with the support of the society for the care and protection of animals; it was at this university that the first newt was awarded a doctorate of law.

Forget persistence hunting: salmon eaters need only sit at streamside and rake it in, literally tons of high-quality protein. But each of those salmon, one of the world’s most peripatetic species, has ranged thousands on thousands of miles across diverse marine and aquatic environments during its short life cycle. That is, each fish has sampled and bioaccumulated a diverse collection of micronutrients lacking in a terrestrial diet. Remember the value of diversity realized by nomads hunting across diverse environments. Nomads eating a nomadic marine species takes that idea up a notch: nomadism squared.

William March (1893–1954), born William Edward March Campbell in Mobile, Alabama, was an American novelist and short-story writer. He served in the Marines during World War I and was recognized with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and the Croix de Guerre. His first novel, Company K, was based largely on his wartime experiences. A prolific writer of short stories, he was a four-time winner of the O. Henry Prize. The Bad Seed was an immediate critical and commercial success, the source for a Tony Award–winning Broadway play, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Sadly, March died of a heart attack just weeks after publication.

Hillary served as a U.S. senator from New York but did not propose a single important piece of legislation; her record is literally a blank slate. Liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas admits that she “doesn’t have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name.”2 Despite traveling millions of miles as secretary of state, Hillary negotiated no treaties, secured no agreements, prevented no conflicts—in short, she accomplished nothing. Lack of accomplishment is one thing; deceit is quite another. Everyone who has followed her career knows that Hillary is dishonest to the core, a “congenital liar” as columnist William Safire once put it. The writer Christopher Hitchens titled his book about the Clintons No One Left to Lie To. Even Hollywood mogul David Geffen, an avid progressive, said a few years ago of the Clintons, “Everybody in politics lies but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”3 She said her mother named her after the famed climber Sir Edmund Hillary, until someone pointed out that Hillary was born in 1947 and her “namesake” only became famous in 1953. On the campaign trail in 2008, Hillary said she had attempted as a young woman to have applied to join the Marines but they wouldn’t take her because she was a woman and wore glasses. In fact, Hillary at this stage of life detested the Marines and would never have wanted to join. She also said a senior professor at Harvard Law School discouraged her from going there by saying, “We don’t need any more women.”4 If this incident actually occurred one might expect Hillary to have identified the professor. Certainly it would be interesting to get his side of the story. But she never has, suggesting it’s another made-up episode.

Since Americans embraced manifest destiny, it has fought wars both great and small. In each one the nation’s leaders have invoked God’s blessing. Sometimes the United States stood for righteous causes, especially in World War II. However, many were no less than the criminal exploitation of weak nations. Marine general Smedley Butler, a veteran of many small wars, spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

But then that raises the question for you as the leader: What are you willing to do to accomplish what you set out to do? What are you willing to accept? Know that, and then you will understand and your core is hardened to the point your people need it to be to follow where you go. Not because they believe in you, but because they trust that you are going where they already wish to go, but need your help to get there. Not everyone is in this life only for themselves. They want to be part of something larger and if that means they become a programmer, marine, cook, janitor, whatever the hell it is so that the goal which is bigger than themselves is accomplished, then they are satisfied with their efforts and they have done something amazing. As a leader, you have to accept the hurt, the pain, and the deaths that your choices will cause. This is your task: Focus on the totem (the goal, if you will), lead your team with empathy, never wavering from balancing life against the short term needs, and allowing those around you to help advise, but always be steadfast, especially in times of greatest sorrow.

. . . Wasted. . . . Breakfast with the Great Judge was uneventful. They did not talk of the Jorgian war. Shortly after breakfast Marin winged away from the Judge’s Court. As he removed the Marin disguise from the face and body of Wade Trask, he could mentally list only two things that had occurred during his visit. The Great Judge had listened to his plea on behalf of Wade Trask. And Delindy had secretly come to him to arrange the details of her going with him to Asia. It seemed to him, who could leave nothing to chance, that either event could have been the main reason for his being invited to Court. He could well imagine that the conversation of the previous evening had been promoted by the Great Judge himself, and not by Edmund Slater. And Delindy’s coming to him had three possible explanations. On the one hand the Great Judge might be coolly using his own mistress to spy on her former lover, clearly confident that she would be loyal to the ruler of a planet rather than to some underling. On the other hand, Delindy herself might be a Jorgian spy using her body, first to ensnare a Group Master, and then the dictator, for her own country. The third possibility was that she loved David Marin. There was actually, Marin realized, a fourth consideration that he could have. She was a pawn of the Brain, unconsciously doing that mechanical being’s work and consciously just being whatever she normally was. Uneasily, Marin put that thought away from him. Not that it didn’t have substance or meaning. It was simply too bizarre and out of his control.

He came forward. “Mr. Trask,” he said. “My name is Martin Carroll. I expect shortly to receive orders to obtain from you, by any means, a full account of your activities.” Marin studied the man’s face. He was remembering Carroll. He had seen him once or twice with Slater, he recalled. Carroll was a type. Strongly dedicated to duty, he was a dangerous adversary because he had no doubt about the rightness of the work he did. Marin had only a passing interest in the man. He knew his own needs in what was developing here. Only hate in all its violence could maintain the muscles and nerves of any living creature against torture. He had no time for kind thoughts or for reason—except at the far edge of his mind.

Agent Briggs had led that team. Shortly thereafter, he’d started using Dean—the son of a notorious serial killer—to get inside the head of other killers. Eventually, the FBI had discovered what Briggs was doing and, instead of firing him, they’d made it official. Dean had been moved into an old house in the town outside of Marine Corps Base Quantico. Briggs had hired a man named Judd to act as Dean’s guardian. Over time, Briggs had begun recruiting other teenagers with savant-like skills. First Lia, with her uncanny ability to lie and to spot lies when they exited the mouths of others. Then Sloane and Michael, and finally me.

This is beef short ribs marinated in miso. First you mix hatchō miso and Sendai's red miso with sake. Then you place the short ribs in the mixture; they should be left to marinate for a day or so. Then you take the ribs out and grill them over a charcoal fire." "Miso and beef are a great match, aren't they? It's a pity that people in other countries don't know about miso.

The more recent, historic waves of extinctions of megafauna and other ecologically naive wildlife on oceanic islands followed the tract of colonizations by Pacific Islanders—ultimately exterminating at least seventeen of Madagascar’s largest lemurs and all of the ten or so species of New Zealand’s giant flightless birds—the moas. The saga of anthropogenic extinctions was repeated countless times across the marine realm as hundreds, and possibly thousands of species of flightless birds and other insular endemics suffered extinctions at the hands, teeth, and claws of our colonizing populations and the legion of rats, mice, cats, weasels, goats, and other species we introduced to even the most remote islands. Not only did we severely reduce the distinctiveness of oceanic islands by driving thousands of endemic species to extinction, but we compounded this by introducing a redundant suite of commensal species to these islands. The result was a global-scale homogenization of nature; a dissolution of biogeography’s most fundamental pattern, Buffon’s Law—the biological distinctiveness of place.

Yes, yes, I was thinking. This is the way to live, perfect for my short attention span. I could easily imagine doing this with chef friends in New York, ricocheting from tapas bar to tapas bar, drinking and eating and eating and drinking, terrorizing one place after another. If only New York had an entire neighborhood of tapas bars. The whole idea of the poteo wouldn't work if you had to take a cab from place to place. And the idea of sitting down at a table for pinchos, having to endure a waiter, napkins, a prolonged experience, seems all wrong. Another joint, then another, the red wine flowing, the girls getting looser and louder. I don't know how one would translate 'Uh-oh, here comes trouble' but I'm sure we heard it in our rounds as our crew swept into one tiny bar after another. I remember anchovies marinated in olive oil, tomato, onion, and parsley, cured anchovies, grilled anchovies, fried sardines, a festival of small tasty fish. More wine, more toasts. I recall stumbling through an old square that had once been a city bullring, apartments now overlooking the empty space. Past old churches, up cobblestone steps, down others, lost in a whirlwind of food.

Meanwhile, Travis was making another visit to the East Coast, for the christening of his niece, Maggie Rose Borek, in Avalon, New Jersey. Travis had first met Maggie shortly after her June 16, 2006, birth, but getting the chance to hold his sister’s daughter was always special.

Janes: The short name for a civilian database of all things military. They often have more quality information on unit weapons and equipment than government intelligence agencies.

Isn’t Gresham on the route to get to Colton and the Association’s farm is just down the road from there?” Lt. Vincent rubbed his hand over his face. “Yes, figured you would think of that. But it’s not enough.” “Not for a warrant, but it’s an indicator.” They stared at each other. “My captain just assigned two three-man detective teams to the murder.” “You must have more. What about descriptions of the men? Didn’t the people in the bank give you anything on them?” “Not much. One army sergeant said that four of them were young, moved quickly. The fifth one seemed older, a little heavier, maybe overweight. Only one man spoke, the old guy. The rest of them just waved guns and pointed to put the tellers and the customers down on the floor. “Oh, the first robbery was just before opening. They grabbed an employee who had just unlocked the front door, pushed her inside, all five rushed in and they locked the door behind them. So no customers to deal with. “The second robbery was just before closing time. Again they locked the front door then put everyone on the floor. Two of the men vaulted over the counter so quickly that the workers didn’t have time to press the alarm buttons. So there was no rush to finish the job.” “With military precision?” Matt asked. “Sounds like it. They left both banks by rear doors that are always locked so nobody saw them make their getaway except one guy in the alley who was painting the rear of his store. He was the one who got the plate on the Lincoln.” “You knew the dead guard?” “Yes. He had retired from the PD before I came, but that was my bank and I always talked to him when I went in there. A nice guy. Good cop. Damned sorry that he’s gone.” “What about this lady cop?” “She’s off at four. I’ll ask her if she can have a cup of coffee with us here about four fifteen. Her name is Tracy Landower. She’s barely big enough to be a cop. She stretches to make five-four, and must weigh about a hundred and ten. She’s strong as an anvil tester. Strong hands and arms, good shoulders and legs like a Marine drill sergeant. She runs marathons for fun.” “I won’t try to out run her.” “Good. She has short dark hair, a cute little pixie face, and eyes that can stare you right into the pavement.” “Sounds like a good cop. I’m anxious to meet her.”   CHAPTER FOUR   Anthony J. Carlton was an only child of parents who were comfortably fixed for money and lived in a modest sized town near Portland called Hillsboro. His father was a lawyer who had several clients on retainer, who took on some of the toughest defense cases in the county, and some in Portland. He was a no nonsense type of dad who had little time for his son who had a good school and a car of his own when he turned sixteen.

Quickly, reality set in. It was obvious that we had suffered heavy casualties, but I still did not know exactly what caused the attack. Shortly thereafter, someone reported to me that a large truck had penetrated our perimeter south of the BLT’s headquarters from the direction of the airport’s main terminal. The driver had rammed through the sergeant of the guard’s post in front of the BLT building’s entrance and detonated the truck’s payload in the lobby. The explosive force of the blast caused the concrete, steel-reinforced four-story structure, which was considered one of the strongest buildings in Lebanon, to completely collapse. Its total devastation was astounding. I took in this carnage as cries for help pierced the air.

In their important masterpiece entitled When the Earth Nearly Died, Allan and Delair write: In Europe immense herds of diverse animals utterly vanished off the face of the earth for no obvious biological reason Coincident with this dreadful slaughter upon the land was the deposition of myriads of contemporary marine shells, and the stranding at great elevations of marine mammals, porpoises, walruses and seals In Siberia, the picture is everywhere one of appalling disorder, carnage and wholesale destruction, with countless animals and plants frozen in positions of death ever since the day they perished. As a result, their remains are amazingly fresh-looking and are frequently indistinguishable from those of animals and plants that have died mere weeks ago The magnitude of the biological extinctions achieved by the Deluge almost transcends the imagination. It annihilated literally billions of biological units of both sexes and every age indiscriminately. Only incredibly powerful flood waters operating world-wide could have achieved such results, and only a flood produced by the means previously suggested could have operated globally They comment on the preposterous Ice Age theories of their predecessors. Although these theories hold little water, they are accepted by supposedly intelligent people. ...it is astonishing that such an unscientific explanation ever came to be formulated, yet in a short time both it and the concept of immense thick ice-sheets descending from a hypothetical northern mountain system, to cover all of northern and eastern North America and western and northern Eurasia, was enthusiastically embraced...as virtually established fact The evidence is perfectly unambiguous. Along with the removal of an “Ice Age” like that which has been hitherto commonly envisaged, the evidence suggests that there is something seriously amiss with the last phases of standard geological chronology Evidence thus converges from numerous directions to support the conclusion that, on the testimony of radio-carbon and other dating techniques, immense physical and climatic changes occurred on earth some 11,000 years or so ago – when an Ice Age that probably never existed came to an end, and an apparently uniformitarian regime was abruptly terminated The gigantic worldwide tectonic disturbances of the ‘late Pleistocene’ times occurred almost simultaneously on a nearly unimaginable scale – precisely what could be expected from a powerful external influence but not from the ‘Ice Age’ conditions conventionally believed to have existed then They note the change in the magnetic fields that occurred during the cataclysmic period of Earth’s recent history: Significantly, a drop in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field appears to have occurred sometime between 13,750 and 12,350 years ago...attended by various other important changes, including earthquakes, vulcanism, water table fluctuations and large scale climatic variations. Of these, severe earthquakes in particular may even induce axial wobble, and polarity reversals

shorts didn’t have a scratch on him except for a single

I made a date with her for the following week.  Mid-week, I went for a ride in a T-28.  The engine failed, the pilot slid the plane into the sand of the Mojave out near El Centro, and I slid into a hospital bed for about ten days at North Island Naval Air Station.  While I was in the hospital, the CARDIV left for WestPac.  I called Marguerite and told her what happened and that I wanted to see her again.  I’m not sure she believed me, but agreed to another date.  Unfortunately it had to be a short date because I had to head for Norton Air Force base to catch a flight for Hawaii, to meet up with the CARDIV.

With one minute to spare, Madison arrived at the Space Needle. Her rose was hastily clipped into her short dark hair. Her cheeks were red from all of the mad rushing around. But she had made it on time. So had Jeremy. Once again he was waiting by the elevator that rode up to the top of the Space Needle. A somewhat faded blue carnation was pinned to the lapel of his jacket. Madison, who usually overplanned everything, hadn’t taken one second to plan what she would say when she finally met “Blue” face-to-face. A man with a bouquet of balloons passed by, and she ducked out of sight behind them. As she ran alongside the vendor, she hastily tried to collect her thoughts. So much was riding on this meeting, and she didn’t want to blow it. When the balloon man got close to the elevator tower, Madison jumped out from behind the balloons and hid by a corner of the tower. Her mind was still a complete blank. But she couldn’t leave Jeremy standing there for another minute. So she inched her way along the wall until she was safely hidden behind the post he was leaning against. Madison checked the TechnoMarine watch she’d borrowed from Piper. It was nearly five minutes after four. Time was running out! She had to say something. But what? Barely a foot away, she heard Jeremy exhale in frustration, and her heart sank. When he made a move to leave, her hand shot out from behind the pillar and caught hold of his. “Blue?” she whispered. “Please don’t turn around.” Jeremy didn’t move. “Okay,” he said warily. “I’m trying to find the words to tell you what our letters have meant to me,” she whispered. “And how much your friendship means to me.” Jeremy nodded. “It’s been important to me, too.” He started to turn around, but Madison tugged his arm, hard. “Don’t look, yet. Please!” Jeremy quickly turned his head away. “All right, but--” Madison didn’t let him finish. She squeezed her eyes shut and started babbling. “I didn’t know who you were until last Friday--which, incidentally, turned out to be about the most important day of my life. And when I knew it was you, I just didn’t know how to tell you that I was me. You once told me I was cold and heartless, and I just couldn’t bear it if you said it again. Everything has been so perfect, I just don’t want to blow it, and now that we’re standing here holding hands, I don’t want to let go--” “So don’t,” a voice whispered, very close to her cheek.

Life is too short to marinate in mediocrity. Become the leader you were made to be.

What’s your name?” he asked again. She pursed her lips tight, shaking her head. Her eyes welled up again. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Really.” “Paige,” she whispered, a tear running down her cheek. “Paige,” she repeated in a small voice. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s a pretty name. You can say your name around here without being afraid.” “Your name?” “John,” he said, then wondered why he had done that. Something about her, he guessed. “John Middleton. No one calls me John, though. I’m known as Preacher.” “You’re a preacher?” “No,” he said with a short laugh. “Way far from it. The only one ever to call me John was my mother.” “What did your father call you?” she asked him. “Kid,” he said, and smiled. “Hey, kid,” he emphasized. “Why do they call you Preacher?” “Aw,” he said, ducking shyly. “I don’t know. I got the nickname way back, when I was just a kid in the Marine Corps. The boys said I was kinda straitlaced and uptight.” “Really? Are you?” “Nah, not really,” he said. “I never used to curse at all. I used to go to mass, when there was a mass. I grew up around priests and nuns—my mother was real devout. None of the boys ever went to mass, that I remember. And I kind of hung back when they went out to get drunk and look for women. I don’t know...I never felt like doing that. I’m not good with women.” He smiled suddenly. “That should be obvious right away, huh? And getting drunk never really appealed to me.” “But you have a bar?” she asked. “It’s Jack’s bar. He watches over people real good. We don’t let anybody out of here if they’re not safe, you know? I like a shot at the end of the day, but no reason to get a headache over it, right?” He grinned at her. “Should I call you John?” she asked him. “Or Preacher?” “Whatever you want.” “John,” she said. “Okay?” “If you want. Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I like that. Been a while since anyone called me that.” She

She traced the dragon’s body on his biceps where it transitioned into rope. “I just thought it would be more difficult. After all this time, the heartache, the waiting, the despairing and giving up, the pure pissed-offness of dealing with near misses…" She blew out a breath. “And there it is. With you, easy as breathing. ‘I’m in love with you.’ You said it and meant it. It changes the universe, but the way throwing a stone in a pond does. All those ripples. It's…amazing.” She frowned and cocked her head. “There should at least be dramatic music.” "I can retract it if you want. Brood for a while, play commitment paranoia games, alienate you so we break up, sort of, and then I chase you down before you make some monumental decision, like moving back to New York, or signing up for a three year stint in the merchant marines. Then we can have a big makeup scene.“ She pursed her lips. "Complete with dramatic music.” "Absolutely. If I could afford it, I’d hire John Williams to come up with the score.“ "You’d do all that for me?” "Hell, no.” He snorted, puffing a short, playful breath against her. “I’d tie you up and keep you in my basement until you contracted Stockholm syndrome and couldn’t breathe without me.“ She tipped her head back, sobering. "Sometimes, it feels like I can’t. Crazy, right?” He put his mouth on hers and took her air in the best kind of way, all while giving it back to her. at her, boyishly appealing, but then sobered. "We’re normal, extraordinary people,” he said. “It took us a while, but we always knew what it would look like when it happened. The simplicity of it is what makes it extraordinary. A tadpole gets legs and walks on land, and evolution begins. All in a simple blink, the whole world changes.

Our only landing aid was a human T made up of Royal Marines lying on the flight deck holding torches.  The theory being that if, as the pilot, if you got the descent angle correct, then the visual aid would look like a lighted T on the flight deck.  The correct angle would be about a 3 degree glide slope and the aircraft should arrive just short of the T in a hover.  Once in the hover the pilot would detach the under slung load, or land vertically to discharge passengers.       This didn’t work real well on the first couple of tries because our human T didn’t have quite the confidence in the pilots that was required for this, and as we drew close, and were at the very critical stages of our approach, our human T landing aid would appear to move or disintegrate completely.      We shut down for a while and after a “quiet word” from either the Commando Sergeant Major or one of the Colour Sergeants, our human landing aids quit moving and things worked out well.

I see rather than hear a guy in a suit and tie knocking on my door.  I wave him in, he opens the door and starts strolling toward my desk, he’s followed by two long haired, bearded, overweight, scruffy looking assholes both wearing glasses, short sleeved white shirts with their shirt breast pocket full of pens and little ruler looking things, complete with pocket protectors.       He’s wearing a really cheap looking blue suit, that’s been worn shiny slick and had to be right out of the 50’s.  The suit is adorned with a greasy looking; really wide tie that had more soup stains than Campbell’s.  To complete his ensemble he’s chosen a pair of shit brown shoes that hadn’t seen polish since they were new, which had to be a long time ago.  To top it all off, he’s sporting the most massive “Comb Over” on his head I’ve ever seen.  On the left side of his head was a “Tuft” of very thin gray hair.  He’d allowed this to grow until he could comb it all the way over the top of his bald head and down to his right ear.  I couldn’t help but stare.      Marines are first impression people and if you present a poor one, they generally will turn you off immediately. 

the President asked the Admiral if he could smoke out here.  This was normally never done.  No one would even think to smoke on the flight deck.  Today, the rules were different.  The Admiral said, “Well sir, that’s not normally done, but we aren’t fueling any aircraft and nothing’s going to take place out here while you are on deck.  So yes, I guess you can smoke out here.”      With that answer, the President reached into his jacket pocket and produced a metal tin that held very short little cigars called “Between the Acts”.  He started fumbling through his pockets, obviously looking for a light.  The Admiral began checking his pockets and then gave me a panicked look.  I reached into my pocket and handed the Admiral my prized Zippo lighter, the one with the Marine Corps emblem.  The Admiral immediately gave it to the President, who flicked it open and lighted his little cigar.  When he finished the lighting process he snapped the lid shut, rolled the lighter around in his right hand, paused for a second to notice the emblem, and promptly put the lighter into his right coat pocket.  The Admiral looked at me as if to say, “We will work it out later

SpottieOttieDopaliscious [Hook] Damn damn damn James [Verse 1: Sleepy Brown] Dickie shorts and Lincoln's clean Leanin', checking out the scene Gangsta boys, blizzes lit Ridin' out, talkin' shit Nigga where you wanna go? You know the club don't close 'til four Let's party 'til we can't no more Watch out here come the folks (Damn - oh lord) [Verse 2: André 3000] As the plot thickens it gives me the dickens Reminiscent of Charles a lil' discotheque Nestled in the ghettos of Niggaville, USA Via Atlanta, Georgia a lil' spot where Young men and young women go to experience They first li'l taste of the night life Me? Well I've never been there; well perhaps once But I was so engulfed in the Olde E I never made it to the door you speak of, hardcore While the DJ sweatin' out all the problems And the troubles of the day While this fine bow-legged girl fine as all outdoors Lulls lukewarm lullabies in your left ear Competing with "Set it Off," in the right But it all blends perfectly let the liquor tell it "Hey hey look baby they playin' our song" And the crowd goes wild as if Holyfield has just won the fight But in actuality it's only about 3 A.M And three niggas just don' got hauled Off in the ambulance (sliced up) Two niggas don' start bustin' (wham wham) And one nigga don' took his shirt off talkin' 'bout "Now who else wanna fuck with Hollywood Courts?" It's just my interpretation of the situation [Hook] [Verse 3: Big Boi] Yes, when I first met my SpottieOttieDopalicious Angel I can remember that damn thing like yesterday The way she moved reminded me of a Brown Stallion Horse with skates on, ya know Smooth like a hot comb on nappy ass hair I walked up on her and was almost paralyzed Her neck was smelling sweeter Than a plate of yams with extra syrup Eyes beaming like four karats apiece just blindin' a nigga Felt like I chiefed a whole O of that Presidential My heart was beating so damn fast Never knowing this moment would bring another Life into this world Funny how shit come together sometimes (ya dig) One moment you frequent the booty clubs and The next four years you & somebody's daughter Raisin' y'all own young'n now that's a beautiful thang That's if you're on top of your game And man enough to handle real life situations (that is) Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money Might not always be sufficient but the United Parcel Service & the people at the Post Office Didn't call you back because you had cloudy piss So now you back in the trap just that, trapped Go on and marinate on that for a minute

Greece can balance its books without killing democracy Alexis Tsipras | 614 words OPINION Greece changes on January 25, the day of the election. My party, Syriza, guarantees a new social contract for political stability and economic security. We offer policies that will end austerity, enhance democracy and social cohesion and put the middle class back on its feet. This is the only way to strengthen the eurozone and make the European project attractive to citizens across the continent. We must end austerity so as not to let fear kill democracy. Unless the forces of progress and democracy change Europe, it will be Marine Le Pen and her far-right allies that change it for us. We have a duty to negotiate openly, honestly and as equals with our European partners. There is no sense in each side brandishing its weapons. Let me clear up a misperception: balancing the government’s budget does not automatically require austerity. A Syriza government will respect Greece’s obligation, as a eurozone member, to maintain a balanced budget, and will commit to quantitative targets. However, it is a fundamental matter of democracy that a newly elected government decides on its own how to achieve those goals. Austerity is not part of the European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are. If the Greek people entrust us with their votes, implementing our economic programme will not be a “unilateral” act, but a democratic obligation. Is there any logical reason to continue with a prescription that helps the disease metastasise? Austerity has failed in Greece. It crippled the economy and left a large part of the workforce unemployed. This is a humanitarian crisis. The government has promised the country’s lenders that it will cut salaries and pensions further, and increase taxes in 2015. But those commitments only bind Antonis Samaras’s government which will, for that reason, be voted out of office on January 25. We want to bring Greece to the level of a proper, democratic European country. Our manifesto, known as the Thessaloniki programme, contains a set of fiscally balanced short-term measures to mitigate the humanitarian crisis, restart the economy and get people back to work. Unlike previous governments, we will address factors within Greece that have perpetuated the crisis. We will stand up to the tax-evading economic oligarchy. We will ensure social justice and sustainable growth, in the context of a social market economy. Public debt has risen to a staggering 177 per cent of gross domestic product. This is unsustainable; meeting the payments is very hard. On existing loans, we demand repayment terms that do not cause recession and do not push the people to more despair and poverty. We are not asking for new loans; we cannot keep adding debt to the mountain. The 1953 London Conference helped Germany achieve its postwar economic miracle by relieving the country of the burden of its own past errors. (Greece was among the international creditors who participated.) Since austerity has caused overindebtedness throughout Europe, we now call for a European debt conference, which will likewise give a strong boost to growth in Europe. This is not an exercise in creating moral hazard. It is a moral duty. We expect the European Central Bank itself to launch a full-blooded programme of quantitative easing. This is long overdue. It should be on a scale great enough to heal the eurozone and to give meaning to the phrase “whatever it takes” to save the single currency. Syriza will need time to change Greece. Only we can guarantee a break with the clientelist and kleptocratic practices of the political and economic elites. We have not been in government; we are a new force that owes no allegiance to the past. We will make the reforms that Greece actually needs. The writer is leader of Syriza, the Greek oppositionparty

When the British attacked Havana in 1762, Admiral de Hevia failed to scuttle the ships under his command. Thus, his ships fell into the hands of the British. The Admiral was returned to Spain where he was court-martialed, stripped of his titles and sentenced to house arrest for 10 years. Fortunately, he was pardoned three years later, on September 17, 1765. Reinstated he returned to active duty as the commander of the Marine Corps in Cadiz. He died seven years later on December 2, 1772, at Isla de León, Spain. Havana being under the rule of the British governor Sir George Keppel, the 3rd Earl of Albemarle, the British opened trade with their North American and Caribbean colonies, causing a dramatic transformation in the culture of Cuba, as well as bringing an increase to the population. Thousands of additional slaves were brought to the island under British rule, ostensibly to work on the new sugar plantations. The British occupation, however, didn’t last long, since the Seven Years’ War ended less than a year after the British arrived, and with the signing of the Peace of Paris Treaty the English agreed to surrender Cuba in exchange for Florida. In Britain, many people believed they could have done better, had they included Mexico and some of the colonies in South America, as part of the deal. The Florida Keys, not being directly connected to the Florida mainland, also remained in dispute, but it was not contested as long as free trade was permitted. After the deal was made with the British, Spain retained control of Cuba until after the secessionist movements were ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898. The United States Senate ratified the treaty on February 6, 1899. In 1793, many more slaves were imported into Cuba when French slave owners fled from Haiti during the Slave Rebellion, also known as the Haitian Revolution. This brought 30,000 white refugees and their slaves into Cuba. With their knowledge of coffee and sugar processing, they founded many new plantations. This period of the English occupation and French influx, although chronologically short, was when the floodgates of slavery were opened wide. It was at this time that the largest numbers of black slaves ever, were imported into the country.

Benzer and I talked one afternoon in the spring of 1971, at Caltech, where he had moved six years before. His office was small, bright with daylight, crowded with bookshelves and files all stowed with a mariner’s sort of compulsive comfortable neatness. On a shelf was a photograph, enormously enlarged, of nerve connections in the eye of a fly. Benzer was medium dark, medium short, as neat and compact as the room. He was wearing a lightweight tan cardigan over a shirt and tie. The photo, he said, was an electron micrograph: he was presently mapping the genetics of mutations that affected the nervous systems—the behavior—of fruit flies. Half a dozen of the early molecular biologists were then moving into neurobiology; Benzer brought out a cartoon that one of them had sketched, a jokey ancestral tree with the faces of molecular neurobiologists pasted in according to the organisms they were working with. “It’s a new phase,” he said. “I feel that, y’know, when I came into molecular biology it was a pioneering science. But when a science becomes a discipline, which is essentially true of molecular biology now, when you can buy a textbook, take a course— There’s no question there are many surprises left … but a field to work in, to me personally, when it becomes a discipline, becomes less attractive. I find it more fun to be striking out in something which is more on the amorphous side. Which was true of molecular biology when I started. Another thing that becomes unpleasant is the redundancy of effort, a number of people doing the same thing—so that even when you make a discovery, six different guys discover it in the same week. You begin to feel that if it’s five guys instead of six guys it doesn’t make any difference. But still, my change was not so much to escape from that, as just following my own interests; I’ve got interested in behavior and I want to look at it.

The first really organized investigation of the seas didn’t come until 1872, when a joint expedition between the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the British government set forth from Portsmouth on a former warship called HMS Challenger. For three and a half years they sailed the world, sampling waters, netting fish, and hauling a dredge through sediments. It was evidently dreary work. Out of a complement of 240 scientists and crew, one in four jumped ship and eight more died or went mad- "driven to distraction by the mind-numbing routine o f years of dredging" in the words of the historian Samantha Weinberg. But they sailed across almost 70,000 nautical miles of sea, collected over 4,700 new species of marine organisms, gathered enough information to create a fifty-volume report (which took nineteen years to put together), and gave the world the name of a new scientific discipline: oceanography. They also discovered, by means of depth measurements, that there appeared to be submerged mountains in the mid-Atlantic, prompting some excited observers to speculate that they had found the lost continent of Atlantis.

On the first run, two bombs landed within fifty yards of the target. We were shocked but still unbelieving. Someone else chose another target, and on this run the bombs made a direct hit! After three more runs, all with similar results, there was no doubt: all-weather bombing had arrived in the Marine Corps. On that day, Dalby earned a chorus of supporters. The support was not, however, universal. In the audience was a brigadier general from Washington. After the demonstration, he examined the equipment and was repelled by its obvious tentative condition. He commented that it had no real combat application, that "rain would short out this maze of wires in nothing flat." I heard Dalby declare that he would "never let a general behind the scenes again until I have it packaged up like a box of candy.

The Admiralty commissioned John Byron to command a ship to do some preliminary exploration in the South Pacific while monitoring the effects of fresh provisions on the incidence of scurvy in his crew. It proved to be a short voyage returning in under two years, in April 1766—and Byron’s conclusions regarding antiscorbutics were sketchy and unreliable. The men had suffered terrible ravages from the disease, but owing to the Admiralty’s instructions for Byron to purchase and outfit the ship with fresh vegetables whenever convenient, there were not a large number of deaths. Byron ordered scurvy grass and coconuts for his men, and while he claimed that the scurvy grass was of “infinite service” it was the coconuts that saved them from certain death. “It is astonishing the effect these nuts alone had on those afflicted … . Many in the most violent pain imaginable … and thought to be in the last stage of that disorder, were in a few days by eating those nuts (tho’ at sea) so far relieved as to do their duty, and even to go aloft as well as they had done before.” For the return voyage, Byron stocked up on more than two thousand coconuts and kept scurvy blessedly at bay. Byron’s unscientific opinion that coconuts were a useful antiscorbutic was of little practical value to the Admiralty, however, as coconuts were not readily available in England. All in all, it was not a very illuminating trial.

On the afternoon of Saturday, August 4, 1934, Alagna approached a number of the crew and junior officers an hour before sailing time. He urged them to walk off. Clutching a copy of the Marine Workers’ Voice, the official organ of the Marine Workers International Union, the radioman tried to duplicate the success of the Diamond Cement’s crew. But by the time he had walked the length of the ship he had earned the enmity of Captain Wilmott and every senior officer. They looked on him as a saboteur, a dangerous radical willing to risk their livelihoods in an era when ships’ officers would sign on as watchmen to make a living. The deck crew was not much more sympathetic. Alagna’s conditions on board were undoubtedly better than theirs; most of them had nothing in common with the well-spoken college graduate and his talk of a confrontation with the men who paid their wages. The call to strike was a total failure. Captain Wilmott wanted to fire Alagna at once, but Ferson and Rogers intervened. They argued they could not work a constant radio watch between them. The Radiomarine Corporation said it was impossible to find a replacement at such short notice. So George Alagna was temporarily reprieved. But he was shunned by virtually all the officers and crew. The only exception was George White Rogers. The radio shack continued to be a center of ferment.

Most comb jellies have little direct effect on humans, except through a minor role in marine food webs. One species, however, stands apart as the villain of the basal invertebrates. In the 1980s, the Atlantic comb jelly Mnemiopsis was accidentally introduced into the Black Sea, probably in ballast water carried by commercial shipping. Once in its new environment, away from natural competitors and predators, it reproduced rapidly – all the while consuming vast quantities of larval fish and crustaceans. Some (controversial) estimates placed the total seething mass of diminutive comb jellies in the Black Sea at over half a billion tonnes. The local anchovy fishery, already under heavy fishing pressure, was decimated. While ecologists debated what to do, a possible solution arrived, unplanned, in the shape of another accidental introduction. The newcomer was a second comb jelly, this time the voracious Beroe. Fortuitously, Beroe does not eat fish or crustaceans, but is instead a specialist predator of other comb jellies and nothing else. As the invading Beroe now feast on the Mnemiopsis, the fish stocks are showing gradual and welcome signs of recovery.

The first is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps: Semper Fi. This is short for semper fidelis, a Latin phrase that means “Always faithful

The Martian Marine was like one of those cute little beach bunnies that someone had used editing software on and blown up to 150 percent normal size. The proportions, the black hair, the dark eyes, everything was the same. Only, giant. It short-circuited his neural wiring. The lizard living at the back of his brain kept jumping back and forth between Mate with it! and Flee from it! What was worse, she knew it. She seemed to have sized him up and decided he was only worth a tired smirk within moments of their meeting.

So living, they stood out among their neighbors, friends, and business colleagues, and they began to gain followers. While the early Christians were often accused of being subversive or seditious (like their Master), upon scrutiny, their way of life regularly proved wholesome. In short, the Christians were good—with a goodness that sprang from their devotion to Jesus and issued in lives that were notable for their integrity and generosity toward outsiders. Toward the end of the second century, the church father Tertullian remarked that followers of Jesus made manifest their difference in the care they showed not only their own vulnerable members but any “boys and girls who lack property and parents . . . for slaves grown old and ship-wrecked mariners . . . for any who may be in mines, islands or prisons,” resulting in their pagan neighbors saying, “Look!”[5] The world, whether it knew it or not, saw the Lord Jesus in the faithful witness of the church. A few short decades later, when plague began to ravage the Roman Empire, leaving masses of people dead or dying, Cyprian of Carthage could be heard exhorting God’s people not to try to explain the plague but to instead respond to it in a manner worthy of their calling: namely by doing works of justice and mercy for those affected by the plague—and this during a time of intense persecution for the church![6]

Spices" The scents of spices are sad whether at home or in foreign lands ... At home, they passes through the nose to give a ray of hope, a breathing space that make us forget – albeit for a short while – all about the chains of religions, gossip, the absurdity of politics, and the cruelty of the ruling classes … At home, spices help us cope with the heavy weight of the backbreaking customs and traditions … You see everyone excited to have a meal that help them forget about the hardships, the crises, and the unsuitability of life at home … In alienating foreign lands, The scent of spices awakens everything that was lost, including the lost lands and homes… There is something unbearably sad about the image of a woman Standing in a kitchen filled with scents of spices reminding her of all that happened, all that was possible, all that should never have happened, and of all the irreplaceable losses … So many are the societies that have been completely destroyed, and of which nothing remains but scents of spices that add flavor to foods and marinate the wounds … Could spices be like old songs? We love them at home because they touch wounds we wish we could heal from, the same old songs break our hearts in foreign lands, because by then we have finally learned that exile doesn’t heal wounds, but rather pushes the knife deeper into them … And like the alienating foreign lands, the scents of spices declare that there is much more to the story of the wound; a story that kills if untold, and doesn’t heal when narrated … [Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]

To its acolytes, the Marine Corps was no less than a secular religion-Jesuits with guns-grounded in a training regimen and an ethos that relied on a historical narrative of comradeship and brotherhood in arms stretching over 150 years. In short, if a man wanted to be part of America's toughest lineup, he had best join the institution that had fought at the Halls of Montezuma and Tripoli, Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

Bone beds turn up sporadically elsewhere, with spectacular examples in the Dinosaur National Monument in the USA and in Mongolia’s Gobi desert. In eastern England there are several within the early Cretaceous strata, which include, as well as bones, structures termed coprolites, some of which represent the petrified faeces of dinosaurs or marine reptiles. In the middle of the 19th century, when England’s population was booming and the farmers were struggling to feed everybody, it was discovered that these fragments (which, being bone, are phosphate-rich) made a superb fertilizer when crushed and acid-treated. A thriving and highly profitable industry formed to quarry away these ‘coprolite beds’. Some considerable figures were involved in this industry. John Henslow, Charles Darwin’s beloved mentor of his time at Cambridge, seems to have first encouraged the farmers of eastern England to use such fossil manure. William Buckland also became involved. An extraordinary combination of early savant of geology at Oxford and Dean of Westminster, he was the first to scientifically describe a dinosaur ( Megalosaurus); carried out his fieldwork in academic gown; reputedly ate his way through the entire animal kingdom; and coined the term ‘coprolite’, using these petrified droppings to help reconstruct the ecology of ancient animals. Later, he energetically collaborated with the celebrated German chemist Justus Liebig (who had worked out how to chemically treat these fossil phosphates to make fertilizer) to show how they could be used by agriculturalists, once demonstrating their efficacy by exhibiting, in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, a turnip, a yard in circumference, that he had grown with such prehistoric assistance. It is related strata (geologically rare phosphate-rich deposits, usually biologically formed) that are still a mainstay—if a rapidly depleting one—of modern agriculture. In a very real sense, these particular rocks are keeping us all alive.

Go with me on this. Imagine knowing you’re only going to be somewhere for a short time, so you’re forced to notice and appreciate all of the little things that make it beautiful right away. You don’t have time to soak it in slowly. Your priority is to experience your surroundings to the fullest, then move on to something totally new. How cool would life be if you always had that sense of urgency?

Ignorance about sharks and their important role is remarkable: even at a marine science conference in China, I was served shark-fin soup (and my refusal, as a guest of honour, caused bafflement as much as consternation).

Why do we expend so much time and money preserving the memory of the short-duration wars in which European powers were involved; and so little, relatively speaking, remembering the kind of wars Butler fought—protracted, decades-long conflicts in the Americas, Asia, and Africa that have been the most common mode of warfare throughout U.S. history? And why does America celebrate its generals who oversaw death and destruction on a massive scale, while forgetting the exceptional few who spent their later years trying to stop them?

Sabrina surely had one dead ex-boyfriend on her record. But did Martina have a deceased ex-boyfriend in her past too? Biggie’s words swirled in my head, mixing with the reality I faced: ’Sabrina reminding me of Lil Cease with her crocodile teeth, the warpath we rode apart and together, our laughter, our tears—my tears, their laughter—the player haters, the cocaine-snorting bitches, the cats with no dough, try to play me at my show, pull up and crack doors, short-change bitches with 5 to 20 euro notes not enough to powder their beak and nose. They still tickle me, Sabrina and them midgets cripple me, make me as hard as Martina's nipples be, I'm sour like a pickle be. You disobey the rules. Now the year’s new and I want my spot back; fake two, all the planes I flew, all the bitches I went through, mothersnuggers mad, cause I’m blue, bitches envy us, too many bitches in my club guard your dogs before I stick you for your re-up, maniacs put my name in raps, living by hugs from fake friends, your whole life you live sneaky, you burn when you creep me, you slipping try to break me, living by my love, hating me, they like to hustle backward, Acid rain, Cadillac Fleetwood look what you made me do, you made me and my girl Marine blue make you, open the safe too’ Della Reese had been on my mind since a while as if she wanted to tell me something a wisdom she wanted to share with me. The lyrics and the words the bad people played mindgames with me kept mixing up in my head. ’Maniacs put my name in raps; the club is dead without me they can hustle only backwards with all the beef against me. Blunt wraps and Dutchies, all the smoking accessories; they can't touch me. One third is on me. Martina's butt a public touchy-touchy. My enemies holding their cats shaky. Sabrina is dead or alive, her ghost is under me.

The marine plastic debris crisis has been largely addressed thanks to a groundswell of community concern that galvanized governments and industry to take appropriate measures. Governments, particularly in poorer nations, have funded improved waste collection systems that stem the loss of plastics from the land to the oceans via rivers. The demand for plastics has been greatly reduced because of global bans on single use plastic bags and reduced use of plastic in packaging. Furthermore, efficient systems are in place to collect and recycle plastic into new products thus greatly reducing the amount of virgin plastic being manufactured. After some initial teething problems effective systems to remove plastic debris from the oceanic gyres are in operation and the amount of plastic in the gyres has been reduced by three-quarters, reducing harm to marine organisms and reducing the source of much of the microplastics in the oceans. Shorelines and seascapes around the world are now much cleaner and there are much reduced levels of microplastics in seafood.

As a result of human-induced climate change, the Arctic region is warming, and it is doing so at a rate faster than the rest of the planet. This is having a great impact on the Arctic Ocean ice cap. One stark trend is that the overall thickness of the sea ice is decreasing rapidly—it declined from a mean of 3.64 metres in 1980 to 1.89 metres in 2008. Prior to the late 1970s, sea ice typically extended over close to 15.6 million square kilometres in late winter in the Arctic. However, the maximum winter extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been decreasing by an average of 3 per cent per decade since 1979 and in recent years at a much faster rate than this; it is now down to about 14.4 million square kilometres. The extent of minimum summer ice cover is decreasing at an even faster rate. Sea ice typically extended over about 7 million square kilometres at summer’s end in the Arctic. Over the past decade, though, the minimum sea ice extent has been only 3.5 to 5 million square kilometres. At this rate, the Arctic Ocean will become nearly or completely ice free for several months a year before 2040, and possibly within the next decade.

Coral reefs provide food for hundreds of millions of people, with reef fish species comprising about one-quarter of the total fish catch in less developed countries. They serve as natural protective barriers, sheltering coastal communities from the waves generated by hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones. They are also the basis of employment through tourism for millions of people in the many regions with reefs in their coastal waters. Apart from these ecosystem services, valued in many billions of dollars, coral reefs have tremendous intrinsic value that is impossible to quantify as anyone who has snorkelled or dived on a healthy reef can attest—without coral reefs our planet and human society would be infinitely poorer.

We hump, werewolves in the jungle, sweating 3.2 beer, ready, willing, and able to grab wily Uncle Ho by his inscrutable balls and never let go. But our real enemy is the jungle. God made this jungle for Marines. God has a hard-on for Marines because we kill everything we see. No slack. He plays his games; we play ours. To show our appreciation for so much omnipotent attention we keep Heaven packed with fresh souls.

We could see the colonel approaching, a short, balding man with flinty eyes and a brief black mustache. He was trussed up tightly in his flak jacket, and as he came toward us small groups of Marines broke and ran to get their flak jackets on too, before the colonel could have the chance to tell them about it. The colonel leaned over and looked hard at the unconscious Marine, who was lying now in the shade of a poncho being held over him by two corpsmen, while a third brushed his chest and face with water from a canteen. Well hell, the colonel was saying, there’s nothing the matter with that man, feed some salt into him, get him up, get him walking, this is the Marines, not the goddamned Girl Scouts, there won’t be any damned chopper coming in here today. (The four of us must have looked a little stricken at this, and Dana took our picture. We were really pulling for the kid; if he stayed, we stayed, and that meant all night.) The corpsmen were trying to tell the colonel that this was no ordinary case of heat exhaustion, excusing themselves but staying firm about it, refusing to let the colonel return to the CP. (The four of us smiled and Dana took a picture. “Go away, Stone,” Flynn said. “Hold it just like that,” Stone said, running in for a closeup so that his lens was an inch away from Flynn’s nose. “One more.”) The Marine looked awful lying there, trying to work his lips a little, and the colonel glared down at the fragile, still form as though it was blackmailing him. When the Marine refused to move anything except his lips for fifteen minutes, the colonel began to relent. He asked the corpsmen if they’d ever heard of a man dying from something like this. “Oh, yes Sir. Oh, wow, I mean he really needs more attention than what we can give him here.” “Mmmmmm …” the colonel said. Then he authorized the chopper request and strode with what I’m sure he considered great determination back to his CP. “I think it would have made him feel better if he could have shot the kid,” Flynn said. “Or one of us,” I said.

Contamination from plastic pollution is a terrestrial problem as much as it is a marine problem. Humans have altered the earth with roads, mines, buildings, ditches, dams, and dumps to the degree that our era deserves a name--the Anthropocene. Natural history is punctuated by changes in life, due either to rapid evolution or catastrophic extinction, and evidence of change is sometimes marked by well-preserved, widely distributed fossils. What is our fossil equivalent? Some suggest it's black carbon from the Industrial Revolution, which shows up in the seafloor and ice caps, or it's radioactive isotopes from the mid-twentieth-century nuclear tests. Now, with evidence of plastic, transported by wind and waves, blanketing Earth from the seafloor to the tops of mountains, it is arguable that plastic is the best index fossil that represents us. Even if we stop polluting the planet with plastic today, we will have to live with a layer of microplastics that will represent this moment in natural history, when a single species so deeply affected the planet for a short while.

In a study conducted by Northeastern University network scientists, it was determined that human behavior, regarding patterns of movement and mobility, is 93 percent predictable. By using information collected from cell phones, physics professor Albert-Laszlo Barabási determined that human movement patterns are predictable regardless of distance traveled or demographic categories (such as age, gender, urban versus rural, etc.).37 In short, “humans follow simple reproducible patterns.”38 Not only do people follow patterns, but also humans are reluctant to change those patterns until the behavior becomes unproductive.39 In fact, even if faced with clear failure, people often follow the same behavioral patterns in the hopes they will work again.

Humans have significant cognitive limitations. It has been shown that imposing cognitive load can help uncover liars. A liar must create a story and monitor the fabrication to ensure it sounds believable while attempting to maintain a believable appearance. While telling a lie, the liar must monitor the interviewer’s reaction to assess how he or she is doing; the liar is also taxed mentally because a lie requires continuous effort whereas telling the truth is automatic. So as thoughtful questions are brought to the table, forcing the liar to spend more mental energy creating a lie and keeping the lies straight, the liar becomes vulnerable to leaking emotions and other indicators that can alert us to deception.40 Additionally, humans cannot divide their attention well. The more tasks a person divides his attention between, the poorer he will perform any of those tasks. Another example is short-term memory. Humans can only remember, on average, between five to nine items using their short-term memory. All of this is important

The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride. With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that earlier era since they were not considered cost or energy efficient. Led by German ships, diesel driven vessels, they are now the most popular engines in use. The NS Savanna was the only nuclear merchant ship, ever built. Launched in July 21 1959, at a cost of $46.9 million, the NS Savannah was a demo-project for the potential use of nuclear energy. She was deactivated in 1971, and is now located at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland.

I smiled and we both just stood there. Neither one of us made a move to go, even though it was late. A mischievous grin crept across her face. “Are you tired?” I liked the glint in her eye and I had no intention of ending this night if she didn’t want to, no matter how tired I was. “No.” “Do you want to go TP Sloan and Brandon’s house?” My laugh made her eyes dance. “I know it’s a little tenth-grade retro,” she said. “But I’ve always wanted to do it. And you can’t TP a house alone—it’s a rule.” “We’ll have to show up there tomorrow and help them clean it up. Pretend it’s just a lucky coincidence,” I said. “Can you borrow a tool from Brandon? I can text Sloan in the morning to tell her we’re going to pick it up. She’ll cook if she knows we’re coming. Then we’ll get breakfast and atone for our sins.” She grinned. A half an hour later I was crouched behind my truck two houses down from Brandon’s, game-planning with Kristen. She still hadn’t taken out her curlers. “If they wake up,” she whispered, “we scatter and reconvene at the donut place on Vanowen.” “Got it. If you’re captured, no matter what they do to you, don’t break under interrogation.” She scoffed quietly. “As if. I can’t be broken.” She snatched her roll and darted from behind the truck. We made short work of it. Operation TP Sloan and Brandon’s was completed in less than five minutes. No casualties. We got back into the truck laughing so hard it took me three tries to get the key in the ignition. Then I noticed she’d lost a curler. I got unbuckled. “No curlers left behind. It’s Marine Corps policy.” We got out for a recon mission on Brandon’s lawn. I located the fallen curler under a pile of TP by the mailbox. “Hey,” I whispered, holding it up. “Found it.” She beamed and jogged across the toilet-papered grass, but when she reached for the curler, I palmed it. “You’re injured,” I whispered. “You’ve lost a curler. The medics can reattach it, but I’ll need to carry you out. Get on my back.” I was only about 50 percent sure she would go for this. I banked on her not wanting to break character. She didn’t skip a beat. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Man down. Good call.” She jumped up and I piggybacked her to the truck, laughing the whole way. Those thirty seconds of her arms around my neck made my entire night.

In the West, however, climatic differences far more striking than these may occur within the same state, even within the same county. In the Willamette Valley of Oregon, a farmer can raise a number of different crops without irrigation; there is usually a summer drought, but it is short, and even if he decides not to depend entirely on rainfall, a few inches of irrigation water—instead of the hundred inches used by some farmers in California and Arizona—will usually do. Two hours away, on the east side of the Cascades, rainfall drops to a third of what the Willamette Valley ordinarily receives; not only that, but the whole of eastern Oregon is much higher than the section west of the Cascades, and lacks a marine influence, so the climate is far colder as well. It can be forty above zero in Eugene and ten below zero in Bend, a two-hour drive to the east.

Semper Fi is short for Semper Fidelis—which means “always faithful”—it’s the motto of the Marines.

if my billboard were in Marin County (or another big cycling destination) it would just say, “When my legs hurt, I say, ‘Shut up, legs! Do what I tell you to do!’” This gem is from Jens Voigt, a legendary cyclist who is famous for his willingness to work extra hard for his team, no matter how fatigued or injured. Building a startup is very much an endurance sport, and cycling never fails to provide an inspirational anecdote, quote, or metaphor. Another Voigt favorite is, “If it hurts me, it must hurt the other ones twice as much.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? During my second tour in Iraq, I was commander of SEAL Team Three, Task Unit Bruiser. We were deployed to the war-torn city of Ramadi, the epicenter of the insurgency at the time. Only a few weeks into the deployment, we conducted a large operation in conjunction with U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. Marines, and friendly Iraqi Army soldiers. There were multiple elements on the battlefield, all engaged in heavy enemy contact. In the fog of war, mistakes were made. Bad luck emerged. Things went wrong. There ended up being a vicious firefight between one of my SEAL elements and a friendly Iraqi unit. An Iraqi soldier was killed and several others were wounded, including one of my SEALs. It was a nightmare. While there was plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of people who had made mistakes, I realized there was only one person to blame: me. I was the commander. I was the senior man on the battlefield, and I was responsible for everything that happened. Everything. As a leader, there is no one else to blame. Don’t make excuses. If I don’t take ownership of problems, I can’t solve them. That’s what a leader has to do: take ownership of the problems, the mistakes, and the shortfalls, and take ownership of creating and implementing solutions to get those problems solved. Take ownership.