Minus World Quotes

Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.

A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it.

A person's life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they're actually willing to sacrifice for it.

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight. The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall. They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it. It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time. Here's to them.

A smile is the most beautiful colour in the world.

It's funny. Friendships are Catch twenty-twos when you're single and in your thirties. Friends are your life rafts. You try to help each other meet people, you confide in each other, you spend Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, all those emotional land-mine holidays together. But sooner or later one of you is going to meet someone and be gone into the world of couples.

I’d once again see that bob of blonde hair back on my pillow, that pink hot smile beaming toward me as I heroically win her heart in some kind of Count of Monte Cristo or Great Gatsby-esque gesture… you know minus the long imprisonment or swimming pool death!

Before I knew it, my daily schedule had started to look a lot like this: Monday: Woke up, thought of Ryder; went to school, stared at Ryder; had lunch with J, gaped at Ryder; went to PE, brooded over Ryder's absence; went home, thought of Ryder; took a drive "accidentally" passing by Dave's Garage, spied on Ryder; came home, thought of Ryder; had dinner, no appetite due to lack-of Ryder; went to bed, tossed and turned thinking about Ryder. Tuesday: See above, with minor adjustments. Wednesday: Ryder wasn't in school, my world collapsed Thursday: Same as Monday and Tuesday Friday: See above. Saturday: Nightmarishly long, boring. Drove by Dave's Garage twice, hoping to see Ryder. Sunday: See above, minus the drive-by. But, yay, tomorrow I'll see Ryder in school! God bless Mondays.

From the standpoint of the world’s biota, global travel represents a radically new phenomenon and, at the same time, a replay of the very old. The drifting apart of the continents that Wegener deduced from the fossil record is now being reversed—another way in which humans are running geologic history backward and at high speed. Think of it as a souped-up version of plate tectonics, minus the plates. By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous supercontinent—what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea.

Twenty-two years eight months and four days from that moment, a promising young Alpha- Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis - the first case for over half a century. Sighing, Lenina went on with her work.

He’s an eternal child. Sees the world like it should be in a fairy tale, minus the evil characters. Everything is bright and beautiful and everyone is his friend.” Micky hesitated. “It’s a real shame that life isn’t like that. Because a world full of Flynns would be the one I wanna live in.

Most people operate within a margin of plus or minus several minutes.

I've noticed that most retired old men feel like that: the world simply cannot function minus their services. It's not that they feel useless; they feel unused.

It’s as if the world continues: a boring-ass play, minus one key actor. He disguises his role in my new life, but his interference is painfully clear.

Near Shepherd’s Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis.

We are taught to believe that total makeovers of house, body, and psyche are possible all in a 30-minute episode (minus commercials). But in the real world, this all-or-nothing mindset nearly guarantees failure.

A cornerstone of Jewish thought is that God created each of us to fulfill a specific purpose during life in this world. Each person is responsible for discovering and carrying out their divinely intended purpose.

She gave me that pert look of hers. "Would you like to know who I've invited to come help me with the wedding plans?" Drew:"Very much. Anyone I know? King George? Mrs. Hoover?" Madeline: "Don't be silly. George is one of your friends, not mine. And from what I hear, Mrs. Hoover is packing her things and preparing to move out of the White House." Drew: "Very well, that leaves us with just the population of the world minus two.

And that was how sin came into the world," he said, "sin and shame and death. It came the moment their daemons became fixed." "But..." Lyra struggled to find the words she wanted: "but it en't true, is it? Not true like chemistry or engineering, not that kind of true? There wasn't really an Adam and Eve? The Cassington Scholar told me it was just a kind of fairy tale." "The Cassington Scholarship is traditionally given to a freethinker; it's his function to challenge the faith of the Scholars. Naturally he'd say that. But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it. "Anyway, it's what the Church has taught for thousands of years. And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there was a physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience. "Incidentally, the Bible gave us the name Dust as well. At first they were called Rusakov Particles, but soon someone pointed out a curious verse toward the end of the Third Chapter of Genesis, where God's cursing Adam for eating the fruit." He opened the Bible again and pointed it out to Lyra. She read: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return...." Lord Asriel said, "Church scholars have always puzzled over the translation of that verse. Some say it should read not 'unto dust shalt thou return' but 'thou shalt be subject to dust,' and others say the whole verse is a kind of pun on the words 'ground' and 'dust,' and it really means that God's admitting his own nature to be partly sinful. No one agrees. No one can, because the text is corrupt. But it was too good a word to waste, and that's why the particles became known as Dust.

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, however, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime. In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years—the years during which young men enter their criminal prime—the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.

The sun shines every day without being told that it is brilliant. The mountains stand tall and majestic though no one informs them of their grandeur. The winds twirl and dance with clouds, minus cheers or compliments to inspire their moves. Flowers bloom, showing off colors, long before passing smiles acknowledge any beauty. The ocean claps at its own underwater chorus without topside ears listening. What is the world trying to tell you? Be wonderful because you are. Quit waiting to be told so first.

What a skeletal wreck of man this is. Translucent flesh and feeble bones, the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes. Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear. When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now. We all have a little sin that needs venting, virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails? Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve? When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned. For the rest of us, there is always Sunday. The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath, so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book. To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers. A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube, and hope you get a taste. WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP! I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we? Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do, and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs, haven’t felt like this in years. The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, and punch me into the dead spout again. That’s where you go when there’s no one else around, it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there? Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse, and a finger on the trigger. CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT! Government is another way to say better…than…you. It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick, it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food, but you can’t touch the silverware. Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for. Humph, isn’t that sweet? And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way, and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little, when your gaffer taped in the middle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening. SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I’m sorry, I could go on and on but their times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident. Forget the freak, your just nature. Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort, and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run. Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.

Minus: Papa, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality burst open. Do you understand? David: I do. Minus: Reality burst open, and I tumbled out. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything. David: I know. Minus: I can't live in this new world. David: Yes, you can. But you must have something to hold on to. Minus: What would that be? A god? Give me proof of God. You can't. David: Yes, I can. But you have to listen carefully. Minus: Yes, I need to listen. David: I can only give you a hint of my own hope. It is to know that love exists as something real in the human world. Minus: A special kind of love, I suppose? David: All kinds, Minus. The highest and the lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime. All kinds of love. Minus: And the longing for love? David: Longing and denial. Trust and distrust. Minus: Then love is the proof? David: I don't know if love is proof of God's existence, or if love is God himself. Minus: To you, love and God are the same thing. David: That thought helps me in my emptiness and despair. Minus: Tell me more, Papa. David: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. It's like a reprieve, Minus, from a death sentence. Minus: Papa... If it is as you say, then Karin is surrounded by God, since we love her. David: Yes. Minus: Can that help her? David: I believe so. Minus: ... Papa, would you mind if I go for a run? David: Off you go. I'll make dinner. See you in an hour. Minus: ... Papa spoke to me.

This was beyond freedom. Where this rocket would take her, there would be nothing but red dirt, ice and murderously thin air. No government. No police. No trees or animals. No streets, with or without names. Just a brand new, very old and very empty world, apathetic to the arrival of six human beings, one of whom remained an 11th-hour, L-minus-11 stranger to the other five. -- from the upcoming "NIKKI RED: MARS COLONY AGATHA" by Jack Chaucer

When the child separates from its parents to explore the new world, the parents can do one of two things. They can fight it with rules, pleading, tears and anger: 'Why do you want to go out in minus-fifteen-degree temperatures in that T-shirt when you could wear the wool I've warmed for you over the woodstove? It's so cosy.' Or they can admit the new world exists, dangerous and irresistible. Cosy is not what awakening youth wants Safety is not what it wants.

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight. The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall. They were rouge cops and shakedown artists. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it. It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time. Here's to them.

Ohio is a scale model of the entire country, jammed into 43,000 square miles. Cleveland views itself as the intellectual East (its citizens believe they have a rivalry with Boston and unironically classify the banks of Lake Erie as the North Coast). Cincinnati is the actual South (they fly Confederate flags and eat weird food). Dayton is the Midwest. Toledo is Pittsburgh, before Pittsburgh was nice. Columbus is a low-altitude Denver, minus the New World Order airport. Ohio experiences all possible US weather, sometimes simultaneously.

Huxley’s Brave New World is set in an indefinitely distant future: it will not be possible for many years to say that Huxley’s apprehensions have not proved justified. It is unlikely that populations will undergo genetic and environmental manipulation in the exact way that Huxley foresaw: there will never be a fixed number of predetermined strata, from Alpha Plus to Epsilon Minus Semi-Morons. But as an Italian scientist prepares to clone humans, and as reproduction grows as divorced from sex as sex is from reproduction, it is increasingly hard to regard Huxley’s vision as entirely far-fetched.

Parks waits a long while, until he’s absolutely certain that Justineau’s monologue is finished. The truth is, for most of the time he’s been trying to figure out what it is exactly that she’s trying to tell him. Maybe he was right the first time about where they were heading, and Justineau airing her ancient laundry is just a sort of palate-cleanser before they have sex. Probably not, but you never know. In any case, the countermove to a confession is an absolution, unless you think the sin is unforgivable. Parks doesn’t. “It was an accident,” he tells her, pointing out the obvious. “And probably you would have ended up doing the right thing. You don’t strike me as the sort of person who just lets shit slide.” He means that, as far as it goes. One of the things he likes about Justineau is her seriousness. He frigging flat-out hates frivolous, thoughtless people who dance across the surface of the world without looking down. “Yeah, but you don’t get it,” Justineau says. “Why do you think I’m telling you all this?” “I don’t know,” Parks admits. “Why are you telling me?” Justineau steps away from the parapet wall and squares off against him – range, zero metres. It could be erotic, but somehow it’s not. “I killed that boy, Parks. If you turn my life into an equation, the number that comes out is minus one. That’s my lifetime score, you understand me? And you … you and Caldwell, and Private Ginger f**king Rogers … my God, whether it means anything or not, I will die my own self before I let you take me down to minus two.” She says the last words right into his face. Sprays him with little flecks of spit. This close up, dark as it is, he can see her eyes. There’s something mad in them. Something deeply afraid, but it’s damn well not afraid of him. She leaves him with the bottle. It’s not what he was hoping for, but it’s a pretty good consolation prize.

In a moment a world will lose its focus and become a different place. They say that blind people have been struck by their affliction without warning, and that Helen Keller found language and light in a word. For me, I suddenly knew, viscerally at least, a number of things about my town that I’d only ever suspected. The dog was a girl. The dog was a native girl. I dug her out of the snow with more care than I’d ever lifted a porcupine or a snapping rat, and feeling that she was still somewhat warm, that her wrappings of rags had protected her from the cold of a Manitoba winter, I placed my jacket around her and covered her head with my hat. Then I set a pace back to the farm that left a taste of blood in my mouth, freezing my lungs by running at minus thirty.

Religion is another example of social contract disengagement. First, disengagement is often the result of leaders not living by the same values they’re preaching. Second, in an uncertain world, we often feel desperate for absolutes. It’s the human response to fear. When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into “compliance and consequences,” rather than teaching and modeling how to wrestle with the unknown and how to embrace mystery, the entire concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms. Faith minus vulnerability equals politics, or worse, extremism. Spiritual connection and engagement is not built on compliance, it’s the product of love, belonging, and vulnerability.

Very interesting, Miracolina, but you’ve left out one thing.” “What?” “Your soul,” he says. “Who gets your soul?” “My soul,” she tells him with confidence, “goes to God.” “Hmm . . .” He strokes some graying whisker stubble. “So it goes to God, even if every part of your body is still alive?” Miracolina stands firm against his questioning. “I have a right to believe that, if I want to.” “True, true. One problem with that, though. You’re Catholic, isn’t that right?” “Yes.” “And you want to be unwound voluntarily.” “So?” “Well . . . if your soul leaves this world, then voluntary unwinding is no different from assisted suicide—and in the Catholic religion, suicide is a mortal sin. Which means that by your own beliefs, you’d be going to hell.” Then he leaves her to stew with an A-minus on her essay. Minus, she assumes, due to the eternal damnation of her soul.

I, like most scientific types, came to believe in the possibility of a material conception of reality, an ultimately scientific worldview that would grant a complete metaphysics, minus outmoded concepts like souls, God, and bearded white men in robes. ... The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning—to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

I, like most scientific types, came to believe in the possibility of a material conception of reality, an ultimately scientific worldview that would grant a complete metaphysics, minus outmoded concepts like souls, God, and bearded white men in robes. I spent a good chunk of my twenties trying to build a frame for such an endeavor. The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning - to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, thay if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

Among the dead was Rob Hall, one of the most highly acclaimed mountaineers in the world. He ran out of oxygen attempting to rescue a stricken climber. He collapsed from a lethal combination of exhaustion, oxygen deprivation, and the cold. Somehow, as night fell and the thermostat plummeted, he managed to hold on. Rob endured a night at 28,700 feet with temperatures as low as minus fifty degrees centigrade. Then at dawn he spoke to his wife, Jan, from his radio, patched through to a satellite phone at base camp. She was pregnant with their first child, and those on the mountain sat motionless as he spoke to her. “I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.” They were his last ever words. The lessons were clear: Respect the mountain--and understand what altitude and bad weather can do to even the strongest of climbers. In addition, never tempt the wild, and know that money guarantees you nothing--least of all safety--when you climb a mountain as big as Everest.

The word ‘fleisch’, in German, provokes me to an involuntary shudder. In the English language, we make a fine distinction between flesh, which is usually alive and, typically, human; and meat, which is dead, inert, animal and intended for consumption. Substitute the word ‘flesh’ in the Anglican service of Holy Communion: ‘Take, eat, this is my meat which was given for you…’ and the sacred comestible becomes the offering of something less than, rather than more than, human. ‘Flesh’ in English carries with it a whole system of human connotations and the flesh of the Son of Man cannot be animalised into meat without an inharmonious confusion of meaning. But, because it is human, flesh is also ambiguous; we are adjured to shun the world, the flesh and the Devil. Fleshly delights are lewd distractions from the contemplation of higher, that is, of spiritual, things; the pleasures of the flesh are vulgar and unrefined, even with an element of beastliness about them, although flesh tints have the sumptuous succulence of peaches because flesh plus skin equals sensuality. But, if flesh plus skin equals sensuality, then flesh minus skin equals meat. The skin has turrned into rind, or crackling; the garden of fleshly delights becomes a butcher’s shop, or Sweeney Todd’s kitchen. My flesh encounters your taste for meat. So much the worse for me.

LITTLE IN FOREIGN POLICY is hard and fast, black and white. It’s almost always possible to find ambiguity, contingency, shades of gray, reasons for doubt or dispute. That said, for purposes of this discussion, there are certain outlooks that have to be considered out of bounds on the question of Chile and Allende—two in particular held by many of those passionately opposed to American intervention. The first outlook is propounded by people who don’t take the idea of American interests seriously. It includes the absolute pacifists who are opposed to the use of power in any case. More significant are those opposed to American interests as a matter of principle, who are, to put it as bluntly as possible, anti-American. Obviously, great numbers of non-Americans belong in this category, understandably, because the interests of the United States are not their concern. But it includes many Americans as well. Their thinking goes as follows: even if the United States makes a reasoned calculation about which policy better serves its national interests, those interests are necessarily illegitimate or malevolent; Washington will always act on behalf of American imperialism or to preserve the evil of capitalism. Policy for these people is a pseudo-Marxist zero-sum game in which the maintenance or increase in American influence and power is invariably a minus in any moral calculation and a reason for opposition.

The first cut at the problem—the simplest but still eye-opening—is to ask how much income would have to be transferred from rich countries to poor countries to lift all of the world’s extreme poor to an income level sufficient to meet basic needs. Martin Ravallion and his colleagues on the World Bank’s poverty team have gathered data to address this question, at least approximately. The World Bank estimates that meeting basic needs requires $1.08 per day per person, measured in 1993 purchasing-power adjusted prices. Using household surveys, the Ravallion team has calculated the numbers of poor people around the world who live below that threshold, and the average incomes of those poor. According to the Bank’s estimates, 1.1 billion people lived below the $1.08 level as of 2001, with an average income of $0.77 per day, or $281 per year. More important, the poor had a shortfall relative to basic needs of $0.31 per day ($1.08 minus $0.77), or $113 per year. Worldwide, the total income shortfall of the poor in 2001 was therefore $113 per year per person multiplied by 1.1 billion people, or $124 billion. Using the same accounting units (1993 purchasing power adjusted U.S. dollars), the income of the twenty-two donor countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2001 was $20.2 trillion. Thus a transfer of 0.6 percent of donor income, amounting to $124 billion, would in theory raise all 1.1 billion of the world’s extreme poor to the basic-needs level. Notably, this transfer could be accomplished within the 0.7 percent of the GNP target of the donor countries. That transfer would not have been possible in 1980, when the numbers of the extreme poor were larger (1.5 billion) and the incomes of the rich countries considerably smaller. Back in 1981, the total income gap was around $208 billion (again, measured in 1993 purchasing power prices) and the combined donor country GNP was $13.2 trillion. Then it would have required 1.6 percent of donor income in transfers to raise the extreme poor to the basic-needs level.

Tired of holding on yet? Stop striving and put God before the world. You'll have everything you want, minus the heartache. Don't fight the world. Don't try and overcome it. Forgive it.

The glass is half empty’ and ‘The glass is half full.’ ‘I’m so old that I can’t even do that kind of thing’ and ‘I’m not so old that I can’t do that.’ ‘These are the last days of my remaining life’ and ‘Today is the first day of my remaining life.’ ‘There’s no tomorrow’ and ‘There’s always tomorrow.’ ‘I have only ten years left in my life’ and ‘I have as many as ten years ahead of me.’ ‘My legs don’t move’ and ‘I can still use my hands.’ These two ways of expression refer to the same situations, yet they divide the world into light and dark, plus and minus, positive and negative.

Old Babylonian Period. Thanks substantially to the royal archives from the town of Mari, the eighteenth century BC has become thoroughly documented. As the century opened there was an uneasy balance of power among four cities: Larsa ruled by Rim-Sin, Mari ruled by Yahdun-Lim (and later, Zimri-Lim), Assur ruled by Shamshi-Adad I, and Babylon ruled by Hammurapi. Through a generation of political intrigue and diplomatic strategy, Hammurapi eventually emerged to establish the prominence of the first dynasty of Babylon. The Old Babylonian period covered the time from the fall of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2000 BC) to the fall of the first dynasty of Babylon (just after 1600 BC). This is the period during which most of the narratives in Ge 12–50 occur. The rulers of the first dynasty of Babylon were Amorites. The Amorites had been coming into Mesopotamia as early as the Ur III period, at first being fought as enemies, then gradually taking their place within the society of the Near East. With the accession of Hammurapi to the throne, they reached the height of success. Despite his impressive military accomplishments, Hammurapi is most widely known today for his collection of laws. The first dynasty of Babylon extends for more than a century beyond the time of Hammurapi, though decline began soon after his death and continued unabated, culminating in the Hittite sack of Babylon in 1595 BC. This was nothing more than an incursion on the part of the Hittites, but it dealt the final blow to the Amorite dynasty, opening the doors of power for another group, the Kassites. Eras of Mesopotamian History (Round Dates) Early Dynastic Period 2900–2350 BC Dynasty of Akkad 2350–2200 BC Ur III Empire 2100–2000 BC Old Babylonian Period 2000–1600 BC Go to Chart Index Eras of Egyptian History (Round Dates) Old Kingdom 3100–2200 BC First Intermediate Period 2200–2050 BC Middle Kingdom 2050–1720 BC Second Intermediate Period 1720–1550 BC Hyksos 1650–1550 BC Go to Chart Index Palestine: Middle Bronze Age Abraham entered the Palestine region during the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1550 BC), which was dominated by scattered city-states, much as Mesopotamia had been, though Palestine was not as densely populated or as extensively urbanized as Mesopotamia. The period began about the time of the fall of the dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia (c. 2200 BC) and extended until about 1500 BC (plus or minus 50 years, depending on the theories followed). In Syria there were power centers at Yamhad, Qatna, Alalakh and Mari, and the coastal centers of Ugarit and Byblos seemed to be already thriving. In Palestine only Hazor is mentioned in prominence. Contemporary records from Palestine are scarce, though the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe has Middle Bronze Age Palestine as a backdrop and therefore offers general information. Lists of cities in Palestine are also given in the Egyptian texts. Most are otherwise unknown, though Jerusalem and Shechem are mentioned. As the period progresses there is more and more contact with Egypt and extensive caravan travel between Egypt and Palestine.

A few years ago, I led an expedition to return to Mount Everest, the mountain I had climbed aged 23, a mountain where I had risked everything and survived - just. I had always held a secret dream to return and attempt to fly over the mountain in a small one-man paramotor - like a paraglider, only with a backpack engine strapped to your body. At the time, the highest altitude that one had been flown was around 17,000 feet (5,180 metres). But being an enthusiast (and an optimist!), I reckoned we shouldn’t just aim to break the record by a few feet, I thought we should go as high as it was possible to go, and in my mind that meant flying over the height of Mount Everest. This in turn meant we needed to build a machine capable of flying to over 29,000 feet (8,840 metres). Most of the people we spoke to about this thought a) we were crazy, and b) it was technically impossible. What those naysayers hadn’t factored in was the power of yes, and specifically the ability to build a team capable of such a mission. This meant harnessing the brilliance of my good friend Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor engineer, a born enthusiast, and a man who loves to break the rules - and to say yes. Gilo was - and is - an absolute genius aviation engineer who spends all his time in his factory, designing and testing crazy bits of machinery. When people told us that our oxygen would freeze up in minus 70°, or that at extreme altitudes we would need such a heavy engine to power the machine that it would be impossible to take off, or that even if we managed to do it, we would break our legs landing at such speed, Gilo’s response was: ‘Oh, it’ll be great. Leave it with me.’ No matter what the obstacle, no matter what the ‘problem’, Gilo always said, ‘We can do this.’ And after months in his workshop, he did eventually build the machine that took us above the height of Everest. He beat the naysayers, he built the impossible and by the Grace of God we pulled it off - oh, and in the process we raised over $2.5 million for children’s charities around the world. You see, dreams can come true if you stick to them and think big. So say yes - you never know where it will lead. And there are few limits to how high you just might soar.

Our job is to pile up yearly advantages over the performance of the Dow without worrying too much about whether the absolute results in a given year are a plus or a minus. I would consider a year in which we were down 15% and the Dow declined 25% to be much superior to a year when both the partnership and the Dow advanced 20%. I have stressed this point in talking with partners and have watched them nod their heads with varying degrees of enthusiasm. It is most important to me that you fully understand my reasoning in this regard and agree with me not only in your cerebral regions, but also down in the pit of your stomach. For

Messiahs don't drop from the sky, As mortal suffering jumps the fence. A messiah is just a mortal, Minus all the indifference. Peygambers don't jog down from jennet, As people are troubled by malice. A peygamber is just a regular person, Who has conquered their prejudice. Buddhas don't grow in a zen garden, As the world reeks of bigotry. A buddha is just an ordinary being, Minus all the self-centricity.

Amantes Assemble Sonnet 14 Messiahs don't drop from the sky, As mortal suffering jumps the fence. A messiah is just a mortal, Minus all the indifference. Peygambers don't jog down from jennet, As people are troubled by malice. A peygamber is just a regular person, Who has conquered their prejudice. Buddhas don't grow in a zen garden, As the world reeks of bigotry. A buddha is just an ordinary being, Minus all the self-centricity. Mind is the enemy, mind is the mate. To all wounds of society mind is ointment.

Europe’s total banking and trading revenues, $98 billion in 2005, have nearly pulled equal to U.S. revenues of $109 billion. In 2001, 57 percent of high-value IPOs occurred on American stock exchanges; in 2005, just 16 percent did. In 2006, the United States hosted barely a third of the number of total IPOs it did in 2001, while European exchanges expanded their IPO volume by 30 percent, and in Asia (minus Japan) volume doubled. IPOs are important because they generate “substantial recurring revenues for the host market” and contribute to perceptions of market vibrancy.

I’m going to stay small. I’m going to try to help people, and I’m going to try to not keep score of the world’s pluses and minuses. Just do my little it, in whatever little corner of the world I happen to be in, around whoever happens to be near me.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.

One day, I’ll come inside of you, lick both of our orgasms out of you, and then spit it into your mouth.” He gets up like he’d just said the most normal thing in the world and not the most salacious thing I’ve ever heard. Well, minus the whole ass eating thing.

No Need for Time Before the Creation of the World Here is one more quotation representative of the way Stephen Hawking thought: “The role played by time at the beginning of the Universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a grand designer and revealing how the Universe created itself. As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole Universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in. People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect the answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the Universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the Universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth—the Earth is a sphere that doesn’t have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.” In its absolute state, beyond the World, the Being is immaterial, and the Nonbeing is an absolute vacuum, nothingness, or emptiness. In the primordial state of the Absolute, the Being and the Nonbing become the same—the Nonbeing. There is no time or space in the absolute realm beyond the World. Timeless “time” is the potential for Eternity. Eternity is beyond time because it is all time, past and future. Spaceless “space” or nothingness is the infinite potential for space. Infinity is beyond space because infinity is all space, past and future. Creation or recreation of the World (Universe) activates the two poles of the Absolute. Creation of the World is the salvation of the Absolute. Absolute is absolute potential. The activity of the Being enveloping the Nonbeing (Nothingness) transforms the Being and the Nonbeing into the World (Universe). When the Absolute transforms into the World, the Being becomes positive, and the Nonbeing becomes negative. The Being is positive “energy.” The Nonbeing is negative “energy.” Zero is the point of equilibrium between the Being and the Nonbeing. Zero is the passage (wormhole) between the primordial state of the Absolute and the World or Universe. Before the spacetime continuum, plus and minus are the same: + = – Before the creation, Absolute is 0 (+ – = 0) At the point of the World Creation, the Being envelopes the Nonbeing: + 0 – The Being cannot envelop the whole of the Nonbeing because Nothingness is infinite in its potential. The Being is infinite in its potential, too. (+ [plus] is the Being; – [minus] the Nonbeing; 0 [Zero] is the Absolute) The primordial state of the Absolute is immaterial, spaceless, and timeless. The primordial state of the Absolute is absolute potential. In its potential, the Absolute is infinite and eternal. Absolute can only exercise its potential and power in the infinite number of possibilities and universes or worlds it can transform into.

Let's go old school to impress people. Wear a smile, rather than a branded dress. Crease out our differences with understanding. And, use empathy, care, and patience as accessories. Then, let's make a conversation, not talk. Ah, what a fine world it would be! Fine, pure and minus artifice.

Dr Victoria Kahn, Chief Medical Officer, Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, from her article The Virus: Humanity’s Natural Archenemy The most successful virus in the world will be one that keeps its host alive while simultaneously shutting down the body’s self-defences. It won’t be long before we have such a specimen on our hands.

According to the temperature records kept by the UK Met Office (and other series are much the same), over the past 150 years (that is, from the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution), mean global temperature has increased by a little under a degree centigrade—according to the Met Office, 0.8°C. This has happened in fits and starts, which are not fully understood. To begin with, to the extent that anyone noticed it, it was seen as a welcome and natural recovery from the rigours of the Little Ice Age. But the great bulk of it—0.5°C out of the 0.8°C—occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century. It was then that global warming alarmism was born. But since then, and wholly contrary to the expectations of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, who confidently predicted that global warming would not merely continue but would accelerate, given the unprecedented growth of global carbon dioxide emissions, as China’s coalbased economy has grown by leaps and bounds, there has been no further warming at all. To be precise, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a deeply flawed body whose nonscientist chairman is a committed climate alarmist, reckons that global warming has latterly been occurring at the rate of—wait for it—0.05°Cs per decade, plus or minus 0.1°C. Their figures, not mine. In other words, the observed rate of warming is less than the margin of error. And that margin of error, it must be said, is implausibly small. After all, calculating mean global temperature from the records of weather stations and maritime observations around the world, of varying quality, is a pretty heroic task in the first place. Not to mention the fact that there is a considerable difference between daytime and night-time temperatures. In any event, to produce a figure accurate to hundredths of a degree is palpably absurd.

This had been his world and he had been happy there. For all the inconveniences and hardships of military life, for all that he had emerged from the army minus half his leg, he did not regret a day of the time he had spent serving.

Among these have been an unhealthy number of near-death moments, many of which I look back on now and wince. But I guess our training in life never really ends--and experience is always the best tutor of all. Then there are the most bizarre: like jet-skiing around Britain in aid of the UK lifeboats. Day after day, hour after hour, pounding the seas like little ants battling around the wild coast of Scotland and Irish Sea. (I developed a weird bulging muscle in my forearm that popped out and has stayed with me ever since after that one!) Or hosting the highest open-air dinner party, suspended under a high-altitude hot-air balloon, in support of the Duke of Edinburgh’s kids awards scheme. That mission also became a little hairy, rappelling down to this tiny metal table suspended fifty feet underneath the basket in minus forty degrees, some twenty-five thousand feet over the UK. Dressed in full naval mess kit, as required by the Guinness Book of World Records--along with having to eat three courses and toast the Queen, and breathing from small supplementary oxygen canisters--we almost tipped the table over in the early dawn, stratosphere dark. Everything froze, of course, but finally we achieved the mission and skydived off to earth--followed by plates of potatoes and duck à l-orange falling at terminal velocity. Or the time Charlie Mackesy and I rowed the Thames naked in a bathtub to raise funds for a friend’s new prosthetic legs. The list goes on and on, and I am proud to say, it continues. But I will tell all those stories properly some other place, some other time. They vary from the tough to the ridiculous, the dangerous to the embarrassing. But in this book I wanted to show my roots: the early, bigger missions that shaped me, and the even earlier, smaller moments that steered me.

So why are we, any of us, still debating the reality of climate change? Why aren’t all of our political and business leaders joining the cry to rally the Next Greatest Generation to come up with some solutions? A key part of the problem is that many of our richest people made their fortunes in the fossil-fuel industry. To protect their wealth and businesses, they have turned to promoting denial. Conservative politicians get a great deal of their campaign contributions from fossil-fuel wealth, and they have been convinced to interchange the standard statements of scientific uncertainty (e.g. “plus-or-minus 3%”) to mean that we know nothing at all (i.e. “maybe the answer is minus 100%”). Conservative media outlets have obediently played along. This is wrong and dangerous.

You and I, in our quest for truth, must set ourselves on a higher level. If the worldly reasoner is like a butcher, we wish not to be found like them - minus fingers or thumbs. Spiritual reasoning can be a very sharp blade; it behooves us, then, to ‘rightly divide’.

specified confidence intervals (for example, the statement that 40 per cent of the balls in the jar are white, at a confidence interval of 95 per cent, implies that the precise value lies somewhere between 35 and 45 per cent - 40 plus or minus 5 per cent).

Original Design.’ The bell curve that we encountered in Chapter 3 represents the normal distribution, in which 68.2 per cent of outcomes are within one standard deviation (plus or minus) of the mean.

Nothing important in this world is measured by grades. Intelligence, character, integrity, success, happiness - do you want these things, or do you want to struggle with the arbitrary difference between an A minus and a B plus?

By practicing the strictest economy and because of his odd jobs, the Fremonts were able to put aside a dowry for Yvonne, from their dollar a day, minus dues to the union. In 1920 the nest egg amounted to 2,000 francs ($286) and in 1926, to 4,500 francs ($100). Of such mathematics are world disasters made.

Minus the Tresses..the World seems 100 grams lighter!! :-)

When is it considered a true desire of moksha (ultimate liberation)? When it remains a constant stream. But here, in one direction there is a desire for moksha and in the other direction, there are so many desires for worldly things. This creates a “plus-minus” effect and takes away the main desire [for liberation]. A desire must be constant in just one direction, only then will it be realized.

Bloodwraith the Corrupter, Bane of Worlds and Father to the Undead, turned and gave them his best heroic smile. "Yes. Yes, I am.

In February 1959, the Journal of Commerce, in a story headlined “Cargo Ship with Methane on High Seas,” announced that a converted World War II freighter, renamed the Methane Pioneer, had set sail from Louisiana for England. It carried a cargo that had never before been shipped over the seas—liquefied natural gas—LNG. Liquefied natural gas is the product of a complex process that refrigerates natural gas to extreme cold, down to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, thus compressing it into a liquid. Since in its liquid form the gas takes up only one six-hundredth of the space that it would in its gaseous state, it can be pumped into tanks on refrigerated ships and transported across oceans and then “regasified”—turned back into gas—at the other end and pumped into a pipeline system in the receiving country.

On April 26, 1956, cranes at the port of Newark, New Jersey, lifted up fifty-eight truck bodies, minus their wheels and cabins, and put them on a surplus World War II tanker bound for Texas. “We are convinced that we have found a way to combine the economy of water transportation with the speed and flexibility of overland shipment,” McLean announced.

Man minus the machine is a slave,” proclaimed Henry Ford, touting his new tractor. “Man plus the machine is a free man.

Obviously, in the final calculations there are "costs" and "benefits" which are associated with the various alternatives the person perceives possible in the situation. The final act or sequence of acts reflects what Hatfield (1980) considers the first principle of human social behavior. Proposition 1. Individuals will try to maximize their outcomes (where outcomes equal rewards minus costs.) (p. 2)

mad monk, minus the spiritual insight.

Among modern idols the worst is the homeland Its robe is the shroud of religion

In addition to casting our net for firms with a high ROIC, we are also looking for firms with a low Faustmann ratio, meaning a low market capitalization (of common equity) over net worth (or invested capital plus cash minus debt and preferred equity) ratio.

The big black face of the clock is all-important - the figures sitting roundly, the heavy hands laboriously moving every minute. Every minute is an hour waiting for the big black thing to say a new minute. One can’t push it or hurry it. Picking it up to smash it is futile – it will still be there, but by hell, when one is happy enjoying oneself, there it is, going faster than hell, menacing you – threatening the end. Always pushing, hurrying, never going slowly or giving you enough time. Time itself, the word I mean, is an ugly, unprepossessing little word with boundless, inconceivable meaning, for time curtails all but extends all into eternity. Man continually races against time, of time, be it seconds or eternity; there is always a quantity of time. Man may well run a mile in three minutes, but he will never run a mile in a minus quantity of time. He can never beat the clock. It ticks relentlessly on, second by second, bringing births and deaths. We are bound by time, shackled forever, yet time is relentless, apathetic and remorseless. It makes no distinction for the individual; for prince or pauper, time will bring each his death, time will make his tea grow cold. Time is night and day, black and white, day after day. Time is God striding hungrily around the world, killing and creating. Time is breaths per minute or sex per hour – time is the oak tree or the tortoise, time is the hawk beady watching fat pigeons – time is what I hate but no longer fight, for no man can destroy it or push it further on or hold it back. It is the strongest thing I know. It is stronger than love or hate, for time can heal them. It is stronger than God, for he cannot change it. Rise. Let us unite against time and be destroyed, for we beat our own brains out.

But she still didn’t get what the United States did either, in Wilf’s world. He made it sound like the nation-state equivalent of Conner, minus the sense of humor, but she supposed that might not be so far off, even today.

The stats in my model suggest that the US is roughly 70 percent through its Big Cycle, plus or minus 10 percent. The United States has not yet crossed the line into the sixth phase of a civil war/revolution, when the active fighting begins, but internal conflict is high and rising.

antibiotics—but absolutely no methods for increasing resistance, so that antibiotics won’t be necessary. Fantastic operations—but when it comes to teaching people the way of going through life without having to be chopped up, absolutely nothing. And it’s the same all along the line. Alpha Plus for patching you up when you’ve started to fall apart; but Delta Minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from sewerage systems and synthetic vitamins, you don’t seem to do anything at all about prevention. And yet you’ve got a proverb: prevention is better than cure.” “But cure,” said Will, “is so much more dramatic than prevention. And for the doctors it’s also a lot more profitable.” “Maybe for your doctors,” said the little nurse. “Not for ours. Ours get paid for keeping people well.” “How is it to be done?” “We’ve been asking that question for a hundred years, and we’ve found a lot of answers. Chemical answers, psychological answers, answers in terms of what you eat, how you make love, what you see and hear, how you feel about being who you are in this kind of world.” “And which are the best answers?” “None of them is best without the others.

The calendar gave him unmoving pools of quiet in which to rest. He spent hours looking at the calendar. It was time past and time to come, divided into neat little boxes, and the boxes named and numbered. He would look at a box ahead, say, February 25, 1917, and think, Inside that box, I and everyone else on earth, minus a few who will die before then and plus a few who will be born, will have our lives. Inside that box, each of my acts and feelings for that twenty-four hours awaits me. And because he was sick, there was not much he could do to prepare for or to control those acts which waited for him to become their center. . . . Most of the time, he was alone. He took deep breaths of the raw smell of seed potatoes, newly cut and bleeding their milky starch. He inhaled the sun-warmed scent of the creosote-stained redwood planks. The top quilt on his bed was pieced in a star design. Each star was made up of God knows how many pieces, and each piece was of a different color and design. The designs were a tanglewood maze of leaves and flowers and stars and branches. When he got tired of calendar quiet and of cataloging smells, he took up quilt-gazing. He didn't need a world a minute bigger than his room, an inch wider than his calendar, or an iota sweeter than his own breath. But he was the only one who knew this.

The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect, but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant, explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding. Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition, “With all your getting, get understanding.” Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitation of one’s own experience and of reason itself. The opposite of intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous.

In other words, lucky day, the Fae weren’t really in the mood for a fight. Sevana blessed the heavens for this mercy as if they had been in a feisty mood, the world would be minus one army right about now.