More Than Blood Relation Quotes

The Darkling's gray eyes studied Mal with more interest than he'd ever shown before. "I understand we're blood related." Mal shrugged. "We all have relatives we don't like.

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost... [Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]

Dear Juliet. I could relate to her pain. Black misery painted on a blood red heart. Death would be more bearable than life without Romeo.

They say blood is thicker than water. It's also more treacherous, prone to betrayal, full of shit and quite honestly, I wouldn't put much weight into it at all.

Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.

Class never runs scared. It is sure-footed and confident. It can handle anything that comes along. Class has a sense of humor. It knows a good laugh is the best lubricant for oiling the machinery of human relations. Class never makes excuses. It takes its lumps and learns from past mistakes. Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices. Class bespeaks an aristocracy that has nothing to do with ancestors or money. Some wealthy “blue bloods” have no class, while individuals who are struggling to make ends meet are loaded with it. Class is real. It can’t be faked. Class never tried to build itself by tearing others down. Class is already up and need not strive to look better by making others look worse. Class can “walk with kings and keep it’s virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.” Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class because that person is comfortable with himself. If you have class, you’ve got it made. If you don’t have class, no matter what else you have, it doesn’t make any difference.

Rose, I’m sorry I had to leave so quickly, but when the Alchemists tell me to jump … well, I jump. I’ve hitched a ride back to that farm town we stayed in so that I can pick up the Red Hurricane, and then I’m off to Saint Petersburg. Apparently, now that you’ve been delivered to Baia, they don’t need me to stick around anymore. I wish I could tell you more about Abe and what he wants from you. Even if I was allowed to, there isn’t much to say. In some ways, he’s as much a mystery to me as he is to you. Like I said, a lot of the business he deals in is illegal—both among humans and Moroi. The only time he gets directly involved with people is when something relates to that business—or if it’s a very, very special case. I think you’re one of those cases, and even if he doesn’t intend you harm, he might want to use you for his own purposes. It could be as simple as him wanting to contract you as a bodyguard, seeing as you’re rogue. Maybe he wants to use you to get to others. Maybe this is all part of someone else’s plan, someone who’s even more mysterious than him. Maybe he’s doing someone a favor. Zmey can be dangerous or kind, all depending on what he needs to accomplish. I never thought I’d care enough to say this to a dhampir, but be careful. I don’t know what your plans are now, but I have a feeling trouble follows you around. Call me if there’s anything I can help with, but if you go back to the big cities to hunt Strigoi, don’t leave any more bodies unattended! All the best, Sydney P.S. “The Red Hurricane” is what I named the car. P.P.S. Just because I like you, it doesn’t mean I still don’t think you’re an evil creature of the night. You are.

An Albanian’s house is the dwelling of God and the guest.’ Of God and the guest, you see. So before it is the house of its master, it is the house of one’s guest. The guest, in an Albanian’s life, represents the supreme ethical category, more important than blood relations. One may pardon the man who spills the blood of one’s father or of one’s son, but never the blood of a guest.

They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers. "Where does she get all them theories?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!

love that doesn’t last is still important / not everyone is meant to stay forever / love teaches lessons / love is more than the lessons it teaches / it does not have to be heavy / it does not have to be requited to be worthwhile / no one owes you their time or their affection / cherish your friends and the family you find with them / love has little to do with blood relations / and more to do with who you choose to bleed for / it’s okay to walk away from things that don’t feel right

We have made mistakes. We haven’t always used our power wisely. We have abused it sometimes and we’ve been arrogant. But, as often as not, we recognized those wrongs, debated them openly, and tried to do better. And the good we have done for humanity surpasses the damage caused by our errors. We have sought to make the world more stable and secure, not just our own society. We have advanced norms and rules of international relations that have benefited all. We have stood up to tyrants for mistreating their people even when they didn’t threaten us, not always, but often. We don’t steal other people’s wealth. We don’t take their land. We don’t build walls to freedom and opportunity. We tear them down. To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is unpatriotic. American nationalism isn’t the same as in other countries. It isn’t nativist or imperial or xenophobic, or it shouldn’t be. Those attachments belong with other tired dogmas that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history. We live in a land made from ideals, not blood and soil. We are custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad.

Though Kurt and Jimmy were not “family,” I invited them to be, and that invitation can sometimes be even more intimate than the connection to any blood relative. There was no biological obligation here; we were bonded for other reasons: our parallel spirits, our love of music, and our mutual appreciation. You cannot choose family, and when you lose family, there is a biological imperative that implies a built-in type of mourning. But with friends, you design your own relationship, which in turn designs your grief, which can be felt even deeper when they are gone. THOSE CAN BE ROOTS THAT ARE MUCH HARDER TO PULL.

Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy—cruelty . . . Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed. They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me: "We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.

I can't rest with you so close to me. I feel more alive than ever.

But it's usually misquoted. Are you familiar with the phrase 'blood is thicker than water'?" I ask. He nods, curious eyes watching me. "The real quote is 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,’" I say. And it means the exact opposite of what people assume. It means that the family they choose, the bonds a person makes in life is stronger than that of the connection of blood relatives. Because in the end, the family that a person is born with doesn't always necessarily see you as anything more than a possession or a meal ticket.

Iris wonders sometimes how she would explain Alex, if she needed to. How would she begin? Would she say, we grew up together? Would she say, but we’re not related by blood? Would she say that in her bag she carries a pebble he gave her more than twenty years ago? And that he doesn’t know this?

With the evolution of Us came the evolution of Them. The original Them was anyone who wasn’t blood related — Them was pretty much everyone. Over time, as the number of people in Us got bigger, Them got smaller. Them now might mean anyone in any other country. This is a common Them in America, and a Them that only (light use of this word) consists of 95% of the world. Another common Them in America is anyone who isn’t Christian, which is a measly 68% of the world, or roughly 4.8 Billion Thems. In a relatively short amount of time, Us went from being a fraction of a percent of humanity and Them the rest, to some people experiencing an Us of more than two billion other people, far more than were ever alive at the onset of Us and Them.

He reached for me, and fast as lightning, he boxed my ears. All I remember is the world exploding. Cassandra says she helped me back to our room, and there was blood coming from my left ear. My right ear mended in a day or two, but I could only hear a little out of the left one, and there was a beating pain deep down. Soon I took ill with fever. Mama said that had nothing to do with the ear, but I think it did." Pandora paused, unwilling to relate any of the distasteful details of her ear suppurating and draining. She glanced cautiously at Gabriel, whose face was averted. He was no longer playing with her braid. His hand had clenched around it until the muscles of his forearms and wrist stood out. "Even after I recovered from the fever," Pandora said, "the hearing didn't come back all the way. But the worst part was that I kept losing my balance, especially at night. It made me afraid of the dark. Ever since then-" She stopped as Gabriel lifted his head. His face was hard and murderous, the hellfrost in his eyes frightening her more than her father's fury ever had. "That bloody son of a bitch," he said softly. "If he were still alive, I'd beat him with a thresher's flail." Pandora reached out with a fluttering motion, patting the air near him. "No," she said breathlessly, "no, I wouldn't want that. I hated him for a long time, but now I feel sorry for him." Gabriel caught her hand in midair, swift but gentle, as if it were a bird he wanted to hold without injuring. His eyes had dilated until she could see reflections of herself in the dark centers. "Why?" he whispered after a long moment. "Because hurting me was the only way to hide his own pain.

The real quote is 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,’" I say. And it means the exact opposite of what people assume. It means that the family they choose, the bonds a person makes in life is stronger than that of the connection of blood relatives. Because in the end, the family that a person is born with doesn't always necessarily see you as anything more than a possession or a meal ticket.

and I shivered as I thought once again how inexpressibly sad it was that the ending of a whole human life, from birth and childhood, through adult maturity to extreme old age, should here be marked by no blood relative or heart’s friend, but only by two men connected by nothing more than business, one of whom had never so much as set eyes upon the woman during her life, besides those present in an even more bleakly professional capacity.

67 percent of the women told the researchers that they didn’t exercise regularly, and 37 percent said they didn’t get any exercise. After this initial assessment, Crum and Langer divided the maids into two groups. They explained to the first group how their activity related to the number of calories they burned and told the maids that just by doing their jobs, they got more than enough exercise. They didn’t give any such information to the second group (who worked in different hotels from the first group and so wouldn’t benefit from conversations with the other maids). One month later, the researchers found that the first group lost an average of two pounds, lowered their percentage of body fat, and lowered their systolic blood pressure by an average of 10 points—even though they hadn’t performed any additional exercise outside of work or changed their eating habits in any way. The other group, doing the same job as the first, remained virtually unchanged. This

The saturated fats in dairy appear to be healthier than those in red meat.34 Shorter chain saturated fatty acids, such as the kind found in coconut, are metabolized quickly and don’t stick around long enough to cause much trouble. And to make matters even more complicated, the amount and type of carbohydrate in the diet influences how dietary fat affects blood lipids, with saturated fat and processed carbohydrate being an especially dangerous combination.35 So without bread, butter may be relatively benign.

Two weeks ago, our flat purchase fell through. It seems that, with a total disregard for my blood pressure and a relationship slightly fraying at the edges, the owners have decided not to sell it after all. I rather suspect they’ve merely decided not to sell it to us, probably because someone else had offered them a bit more money. Luckily, we’ve only spent a couple of thousand fucking pounds on solicitors and surveys and whatnot. I know more about this flat – that I will now never set foot in again – than I do about any of my closest blood relations.

So people feel tired, wired, and stressed at the same time. In one group of patients with rapid cycling bipolar disorder, more than 50 percent had hypothyroidism. Experts conservatively estimate that one-third of all depressions are directly related to thyroid imbalance. More than 80 percent of people with low-grade hypothyroidism have impaired memory function. Low thyroid is associated with a host of symptoms and problems, such as: Feeling cold when others are hot Weight gain Constipation Fatigue High cholesterol High blood pressure Dry, thinning, or losing hair, especially the eyebrows, where the outer third are often missing

Myth #3: Fasting Causes Low Blood Sugar Sometimes people worry that blood sugar will fall very low during fasting and they will become shaky and sweaty. Luckily, this does not actually happen. Blood sugar level is tightly monitored by the body, and there are multiple mechanisms to keep it in the proper range. During fasting, our body begins by breaking down glycogen (remember, that’s the glucose in short-term storage) in the liver to provide glucose. This happens every night as you sleep to keep blood sugars normal as you fast overnight. FASTING ALL-STARS AMY BERGER People who engage in fasting for religious or spiritual purposes often report feelings of extreme clear-headedness and physical and emotional well-being. Some even feel a sense of euphoria. They usually attribute this to achieving some kind of spiritual enlightenment, but the truth is much more down-to-earth and scientific than that: it’s the ketones! Ketones are a “superfood” for the brain. When the body and brain are fueled primarily by fatty acids and ketones, respectively, the “brain fog,” mood swings, and emotional instability that are caused by wild fluctuations in blood sugar become a thing of the past and clear thinking is the new normal. If you fast for longer than twenty-four to thirty-six hours, glycogen stores become depleted. The liver now can manufacture new glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis, using the glycerol that’s a by-product of the breakdown of fat. This means that we do not need to eat glucose for our blood glucose levels to remain normal. A related myth is that brain cells can only use glucose for energy. This is incorrect. Human brains, unique amongst animals, can also use ketone bodies—particles that are produced when fat is metabolized—as a fuel source. This allows us to function optimally even when food is not readily available. Ketones provide the majority of the energy we need. Consider the consequences if glucose were absolutely necessary for brain function. After twenty-four hours without food, glucose stored in our bodies in the form of glycogen is depleted. At that point, we’d become blubbering idiots as our brains shut down. In the Paleolithic era, our intellect was our only advantage against wild animals with their sharp claws, sharp fangs, and bulging muscles. Without it, humans would have become extinct long ago. When glucose is not available, the body begins to burn fat and produce ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed the brain cells. Up to 75 percent of the brain’s energy requirements can be met by ketones. Of course, that means that glucose still provides 25 percent of the brain’s energy requirements. So does this mean that we have to eat for our brains to function?

The ambition of domineering over the mind, is one of the strongest passions. A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan of any description, is always for conquering like a prince, and there are many more sects than there are sovereigns in the world…. I conclude, that every sensible man, every honest man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. ‘The great name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere,’ is the only name we ought to adopt. The only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with his own seal. The only religion we ought to profess is, 'to adore God, and act like honest men.’ It would be as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce evil, as it would be impossible for Christian fanaticism not to produce it…. But what shall we substitute in its place? say you. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place! Is it you that put this question to me? Then you are a hundred times more odious than the Pagan Pontiffs, who permitted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their ceremonies and sacrifices, who did not attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the powers of the magistrates, and who introduced no discord among mankind. You have the face to ask what you must substitute in the place of your fables!

About a month later, we left for our final training exercise, maneuvers on the planet Charon. Though nearing perihelion, it was still more than twice as far from the sun as Pluto. The troopship was a converted “cattlewagon” made to carry two hundred colonists and assorted bushes and beasts. Don’t think it was roomy, though, just because there were half that many of us. Most of the excess space was taken up with extra reaction mass and ordnance. The whole trip took three weeks, accelerating at two gees halfway, decelerating the other half. Our top speed, as we roared by the orbit of Pluto, was around one-twentieth of the speed of light—not quite enough for relativity to rear its complicated head. Three weeks of carrying around twice as much weight as normal…it’s no picnic. We did some cautious exercises three times a day and remained horizontal as much as possible. Still, we got several broken bones and serious dislocations. The men had to wear special supporters to keep from littering the floor with loose organs. It was almost impossible to sleep; nightmares of choking and being crushed, rolling over periodically to prevent blood pooling and bedsores. One girl got so fatigued that she almost slept through the experience of having a rib push out into the open air. I’d been in space several times before, so when we finally stopped decelerating and went into free fall, it was nothing but relief. But some people had never been out, except for our training on the moon, and succumbed to the sudden vertigo and disorientation. The rest of us cleaned up after them, floating through the quarters with

When we lose our fucking minds on a regular basis, we are wiring our brains into a constantly heightened state that eventually fries our circuits (and pushes away everyone we love in the process). We program ourselves to always be on the alert. So we react with far greater speed than we used to, and perceive more situations as being dangerous, hostile, or threatening. We are constantly jumping at shadows. Our brains never get to rest and recharge and we start struggling with many other conditions associated with this wiring change. Added up, those conditions are known as autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Many common health problems (heart disease, high blood pressure, food allergies) as well as many common mental health issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD) are related to a continued heightened response.

Cordelia – “Why so rough?” Aral – “It’s very poor. It was the town center during the time Isolation. And it hasn’t been touched by renovation, minimal water, no electricity choked with refuse.” “Mostly human,” added Peoter tartly. “Poor?” Asked Cordelia bewildered. “No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?” “It’s not of course,” answered Vorkosigan. “Then how can anyone get their schooling?” Cordelia “They don’t.” Cordelia stared. “I don’t understand, how do they get their jobs?” “A few escape to the service, the rest prey on each other mostly.” Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. “Have you no poverty on Beta colony?” “Poverty? Well some people have more money than others, but no comm consuls…?” Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. “Is not owning a comm consul the lowest standard of living you can imagine?” He said in wonder. “It’s the first article in the constitution! ‘Access to information shall not be abridged.’” “Cordelia, these people barely have access to food, clothing and shelter. They have a few rags and cooking pots and squat in buildings that aren’t economical to repair or tear down yet with the wind whistling through the walls.” “No air conditioning?” “No heat in the winter is a bigger problem here.” “I suppose so. You people don’t really have summer. How do they call for help when they are sick or hurt?” “What help?” Vorkosigan was growing grim. “If they’re sick they either get well or die.” “Die if we’re lucking” muttered Veoter. “You’re not joking.” She stared back and forth between the pair of them. “Why, think of all the geniuses you must missing!” “I doubt we must be missing very many from the Caravanceri.” Said Peoter dryly. “Why not? They have the same genetic compliment as you.” Cordelia pointed out the – to her -obvious. The Count went rigid. “My dear girl, they most certainly do not. My family has been Vor for nine generations.” Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “How do you know if you didn’t have the gene-typing until 80 years ago?” Both the guard commander and the footman were acquiring peculiar stuffed expressions. The footman bit his lip. “Besides,” she pointed out reasonably, “If you Vor got around half as much as those histories I’ve been reading imply. 90% of the people on this planet must have Vor blood by now. Who knows who your relatives are on your father’s side. Vorkosigan bit his napkin absently. His eyes gone crinkly with much the same expression as the footman and muttered, “Cordelia, you really can’t sit at the breakfast table and imply my ancestors were bastards. It’s a mortal insult here.” “Where should I sit? Oh I’ll never understand.

An impressive gentleman,” he remarked casually. “The general’s kinsman, I mean. Wouldn’t think they were related to look at, would you?” Caught up in dying hope and tearing grief, William had barely noticed Colonel Fraser before the latter had so suddenly given him the hat—and been too startled to notice much about him then. He shook his head in agreement, though, having a vague recollection of a tall figure kneeling down by the bed, the firelight touching the crown of his head briefly with red. “Looks more like you than like the brigadier,” Grant added offhandedly, then laughed, a painful creak. “Sure you haven’t a Scottish branch in your family?” “No, Yorkshiremen back to the Flood on both sides, save one French great-grandmother,” William replied, grateful for the momentary distraction of light conversation. “My stepfather’s mother is half Scotch—that count, do you think?

Situated in the center of family values debates is an imagined traditional family ideal. Formed through a combination of marital and blood ties, "normal" families should consist of heterosexual, racially homogeneous couples who produce their own biological children. Such families should have a specific authority structure, namely, a father-head earning an adequate family wage, a stay-at-home wife and mother, and children. Idealizing the traditional family as a private haven from a public world, family is seen as being held together through primary emotional bonds of love and caring. assuming a relatively fixed sexual division of labor, wherein women's roles are defined as primarily in the home with men's in the public world of work, the traditional family ideal also assumes the separation of work and family. Defined as a natural or biological arrangement based on heterosexual attraction, instead this monolithic family type is actually supported by government policy. It is organized not around a biological core, but a state-sanctioned, heterosexual marriage that confers legitimacy not only on the family structure itself but on children born in this family. In general, everything the imagined traditional family ideal is thought to be, African-American families are not. Two elements of the traditional family ideal are especially problematic for African-American women. First, the assumed split between the "public" sphere of paid employment and the "private" sphere of unpaid family responsibilities has never worked for U.S. Black women. Under slavery, U.S. Black women worked without pay in the allegedly public sphere of Southern agriculture and had their family privacy routinely violated. Second, the public/private binary separating the family households from the paid labor market is fundamental in explaining U.S. gender ideology. If one assumes that real men work and real women take care of families, then African-Americans suffer from deficient ideas concerning gender. in particular, Black women become less "feminine," because they work outside the home, work for pay and thus compete with men, and their work takes them away from their children. Framed through this prism of an imagined traditional family ideal, U.S. Black women's experiences and those of other women of color are typically deemed deficient. Rather than trying to explain why Black women's work and family patterns deviate from the seeming normality of the traditional family ideal, a more fruitful approach lies in challenging the very constructs of work and family themselves. Understandings of work, like understandings of family, vary greatly depending on who controls the definitions.

In fact, there did not seem to be any limit to what Grof's LSD subjects could tap into. They seemed capable of knowing what it was like to be every animal, and even plant, on the tree of evolution. They could experience what it was like to be a blood cell, an atom, a thermonuclear process inside the sun, the consciousness of the entire planet, and even the consciousness of the entire cosmos. More than that, they displayed the ability to transcend space and time, and occasionally they related uncannily accurate precognitive information. In an even stranger vein they sometimes encountered nonhuman intelligences during their cerebral travels, discarnate beings, spirit guides from "higher planes of consciousness, " and other suprahuman entities. On occasion subjects also traveled to what appeared to be other universes and other levels of reality. In one particularly unnerving session a young man suffering from depression found himself in what seemed to be another dimension. It had an eerie luminescence, and although he could not see anyone he sensed that it was crowded with discarnate beings. Suddenly he sensed a presence very close to him, and to his surprise it began to communicate with him telepathically. It asked him to please contact a couple who lived in the Moravian city of Kromeriz and let them know that their son Ladislav was well taken care of and doing all right. It then gave him the couple's name, street address, and telephone number. The information meant nothing to either Grof or the young man and seemed totally unrelated to the young man's problems and treatment. Still, Grof could not put it out of his mind. "After some hesitation and with mixed feelings, I finally decided to do what certainly would have made me the target of my colleagues' jokes, had they found out, " says Grof. "I went to the telephone, dialed the number in Kromeriz, and asked if I could speak with Ladislav. To my astonishment, the woman on the other side of the line started to cry. When she calmed down, she told me with a broken voice: 'Our son is not with us any more; he passed away, we lost him three weeks ago.

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village. I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print. When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or relate to. The idea of placing it on the border of Elfland came from the fact that I'd just re-read a fantasy classic called The King of Elfland's Daughter by the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. I love stories that take place on the borderlands between two different worlds...and so I borrowed this concept, but adapted it to a modern, punky, urban setting. I drew upon elements of the various cities I knew best -- New York, Boston, London, Dublin, maybe even a little of Mexico City, where I'd been for a little while as a teen -- and scrambled them up and turned them into Bordertown. There actually IS a Mad River in southern Ohio (where I went to college) and I always thought that was a great name, so I imported it to Bordertown. As for the water being red, that came from the river of blood in the Scottish folk ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," which Thomas must cross to get into Elfland. [speaking about the Borderland series she "founded" and how she came up with the setting. Link to source; Q&A with Holly, Ellen & Terri!]

then you should consider reducing or eliminating the following foods in addition to eliminating wheat. • Cornstarch and cornmeal—cornmeal products such as tacos, tortillas, corn chips, and corn breads, breakfast cereals, and sauces and gravies thickened with cornstarch • Snack foods—potato chips, rice cakes, popcorn. These foods, like foods made of cornstarch, send blood sugar straight up to the stratosphere. • Desserts—Pies, cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, sherbet, and other sugary desserts all pack too much sugar. • Rice—white or brown; wild rice. Modest servings are relatively benign, but large servings (more than ½ cup) generate adverse blood sugar effects. • Potatoes—White, red, sweet potatoes, and yams cause effects similar to those generated by rice. • Legumes—black beans, butter beans, kidney beans, lima beans; chickpeas; lentils. Like potatoes and rice, there is potential for blood sugar effects, especially if serving size exceeds ½ cup. • Gluten-free foods—Because the cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch used in place of wheat gluten causes extravagant blood sugar rises, they should be avoided. • Fruit juices, soft drinks—Even if they are “natural,” fruit juices are not that good for you. While they contain healthy components such as flavonoids and vitamin C, the sugar

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flintyhearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that "pure and undefiled religion" which is from above, and which is "first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation - a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, "Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting…. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down.8 The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: "But these matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words." So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea. Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter9 and all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an Antony.10 When be had cut away these ulcers11 together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.

Factors Influencing Us as Empaths There are a number of factors affecting how we pick up energy from other people: ● Receiving Our sensitivity as receivers will factor into how much energy we pick up. ● Sending Some people transmit their energy more strongly than others, and the depth of the emotions that they are experiencing will also turn up the volume that they are sending out. ● Awareness The unaware person may be just as sensitive as the aware person. The latter will understand why they have mood swings; the former will not. ● Bloodline Blood relatives will affect us regardless of where in the world we are and whether we are thinking about them or not. The link between sender and receiver is often stronger where there is a blood connection. Often, empath children may process the emotions of their parents or siblings long into adulthood. ● Emotional Connection Friends and acquaintances will impact us primarily based on the strength of the emotional connection we have to them, largely without regard to physical proximity. The stronger the emotional connection is, the less important the physical proximity is. Having worked from home for many years with teams spread all over the country, I have picked up energy from managers and teammates regardless of location. ● Physical Proximity Neighbors and strangers will influence us based on physical proximity. This is true for the people living in our neighborhood and the strangers we brush up against in the shopping mall.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

As the pumping engines for the circulatory system, ventricles must have a particular ovoid, lemonlike shape for strong, swift ejection of blood. If the end of the left ventricle balloons out, as it does in takotsubo hearts, the firm, healthy contractions are reduced to inefficient spasms—floppy and unpredictable. But what’s remarkable about takotsubo is what causes the bulge. Seeing a loved one die. Being left at the altar or losing your life savings with a bad roll of the dice. Intense, painful emotions in the brain can set off alarming, life-threatening physical changes in the heart. This new diagnosis was proof of the powerful connection between heart and mind. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy confirmed a relationship many doctors had considered more metaphoric than diagnostic. As a clinical cardiologist, I needed to know how to recognize and treat takotsubo cardiomyopathy. But years before pursuing cardiology, I had completed a residency in psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Having also trained as a psychiatrist, I was captivated by this syndrome, which lay at the intersection of my two professional passions. That background put me in a unique position that day at the zoo. I reflexively placed the human phenomenon side by side with the animal one. Emotional trigger … surge of stress hormones … failing heart muscle … possible death. An unexpected “aha!” suddenly hit me. Takotsubo in humans and the heart effects of capture myopathy in animals were almost certainly related—perhaps even the same syndrome with different names.

Hello,” she says. “My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know. I am the leader of an organization fighting for justice and peace. This fight has become increasingly more important--and consequently, nearly impossible--in the past few decades. That is because of this.” Images flash across the wall, almost too fast for me to see. A man on his knees with a gun pressed to his forehead. The woman pointing it at him, her face emotionless. From a distance, a small person hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. A hole in the ground the size of a house, full of bodies. And there are other images too, but they move faster, so I get only impressions of blood and bone and death and cruelty, empty faces, soulless eyes, terrified eyes. Just when I have had enough, when I feel like I am going to scream if I see any more, the woman reappears on the screen, behind her desk. “You do not remember any of that,” she says. “But if you are thinking these are the actions of a terrorist group or a tyrannical government regime, you are only partially correct. Half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbors. Your relatives. Your coworkers. The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself--or at least what it has become.” This is what Jeanine was willing to enslave minds and murder people for--to keep us all from knowing. To keep us all ignorant and safe and inside the fence. There is a part of me that understands. “That is why you are so important,” Amanda says. “Our struggle against violence and cruelty is only treating the symptoms of a disease, not curing it. You are the cure. “In order to keep you safe, we devised a way for you to be separated from us. From our water supply. From our technology. From our societal structure. We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost. Over time, we hope that you will begin to change as most of us cannot. “The reason I am leaving this footage for you is so that you will know when it’s time to help us. You will know that it is time when there are many among you whose minds appear to be more flexible than the others. The name you should give those people is Divergent. Once they become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so that you may emerge from your isolation.” And that is what my parents wanted to do: to take what we had learned and use it to help others. Abnegation to the end. “The information in this video is to be restricted to those in government only,” Amanda says. “You are to be a clean slate. But do not forget us.” She smiles a little. “I am about to join your number,” she says. “Like the rest of you, I will voluntarily forget my name, my family, and my home. I will take on a new identity, with false memories and a false history. But so that you know the information I have provided you with is accurate, I will tell you the name I am about to take as my own.” Her smile broadens, and for a moment, I feel that I recognize her. “My name will be Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.” Prior. The video stops. The projector glows blue against the wall. I clutch Tobias’s hand, and there is a moment of silence like a withheld breath. Then the shouting begins.

Sexual reproduction is thus a costly investment that has to pay for itself in the short run. The details of theory and experiment on this topic are fascinating (see, e.g., Maynard Smith, 1978; Ridley, 1993), but for our purposes a few highlights from the currently front-running theory are most instructive: sex (in vertebrates like us, at least) pays for itself by making our offspring relatively inscrutable to the parasites we endow them with from birth. Parasites have short lifespans compared with their hosts, and typically reproduce many times during their host’s lifetime. Mammals, for instance, are hosts to trillions of parasites. (Yes, right now, no matter how healthy and clean you are, there are trillions of parasites of thousands of different species inhabiting your gut, your blood, your skin, your hair, your mouth, and every other part of your body. They have been rapidly evolving to survive against the onslaught of your defenses since the day you were born.) Before a female can mature to reproductive age, her parasites evolve to fit her better than any glove. (Meanwhile, her immune system evolves to combat them, a standoff—if she is healthy—in an ongoing arms race.) If she gave birth to a clone, her parasites would leap to it and find themselves at home from the outset. They would be already optimized to their new surroundings. If instead she uses sexual reproduction to endow her offspring with a mixed set of genes (half from her mate), many of these genes—or, more directly, their products, in the offspring’s internal defenses—will be alien or cryptic to the ship-jumping parasites. Instead of home sweet home, the parasites will find themselves in terra incognita. This gives the offspring a big head start in the arms race.

But how did proteins make physiological reactions possible? Hemoglobin, the oxygen carrier in blood, for instance, performs one of the simplest and yet most vital reactions in physiology. When exposed to high levels of oxygen, hemoglobin binds oxygen. Relocated to a site with low oxygen levels, it willingly releases the bound oxygen. This property allows hemoglobin to shuttle oxygen from the lung to the heart and the brain. But what feature of hemoglobin allows it to act as such an effective molecular shuttle? The answer lies in the structure of the molecule. Hemoglobin A, the most intensively studied version of the molecule, is shaped like a four-leaf clover. Two of its “leaves” are formed by a protein called alpha-globin; the other two are created by a related protein, beta-globin.II Each of these leaves clasps, at its center, an iron-containing chemical named heme that can bind oxygen—a reaction distantly akin to a controlled form of rusting. Once all the oxygen molecules have been loaded onto heme, the four leaves of hemoglobin tighten around the oxygen like a saddle clasp. When unloading oxygen, the same saddle-clasp mechanism loosens. The unbinding of one molecule of oxygen coordinately relaxes all the other clasps, like the crucial pin-piece pulled out from a child’s puzzle. The four leaves of the clover now twist open, and hemoglobin yields its cargo of oxygen. The controlled binding and unbinding of iron and oxygen—the cyclical rusting and unrusting of blood—allows effective oxygen delivery into tissues. Hemoglobin allows blood to carry seventyfold more oxygen than what could be dissolved in liquid blood alone. The body plans of vertebrates depend on this property: if hemoglobin’s capacity to deliver oxygen to distant sites was disrupted, our bodies would be forced to be small and cold. We might wake up and find ourselves transformed into insects.

It may seem paradoxical to claim that stress, a physiological mechanism vital to life, is a cause of illness. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we must differentiate between acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the immediate, short-term body response to threat. Chronic stress is activation of the stress mechanisms over long periods of time when a person is exposed to stressors that cannot be escaped either because she does not recognize them or because she has no control over them. Discharges of nervous system, hormonal output and immune changes constitute the flight-or-fight reactions that help us survive immediate danger. These biological responses are adaptive in the emergencies for which nature designed them. But the same stress responses, triggered chronically and without resolution, produce harm and even permanent damage. Chronically high cortisol levels destroy tissue. Chronically elevated adrenalin levels raise the blood pressure and damage the heart. There is extensive documentation of the inhibiting effect of chronic stress on the immune system. In one study, the activity of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells were compared in two groups: spousal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and age- and health-matched controls. NK cells are front-line troops in the fight against infections and against cancer, having the capacity to attack invading micro-organisms and to destroy cells with malignant mutations. The NK cell functioning of the caregivers was significantly suppressed, even in those whose spouses had died as long as three years previously. The caregivers who reported lower levels of social support also showed the greatest depression in immune activity — just as the loneliest medical students had the most impaired immune systems under the stress of examinations. Another study of caregivers assessed the efficacy of immunization against influenza. In this study 80 per cent among the non-stressed control group developed immunity against the virus, but only 20 per cent of the Alzheimer caregivers were able to do so. The stress of unremitting caregiving inhibited the immune system and left people susceptible to influenza. Research has also shown stress-related delays in tissue repair. The wounds of Alzheimer caregivers took an average of nine days longer to heal than those of controls. Higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output via the HPA axis, and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing. Dental students had a wound deliberately inflicted on their hard palates while they were facing immunology exams and again during vacation. In all of them the wound healed more quickly in the summer. Under stress, their white blood cells produced less of a substance essential to healing. The oft-observed relationship between stress, impaired immunity and illness has given rise to the concept of “diseases of adaptation,” a phrase of Hans Selye’s. The flight-or-fight response, it is argued, was indispensable in an era when early human beings had to confront a natural world of predators and other dangers. In civilized society, however, the flight-fight reaction is triggered in situations where it is neither necessary nor helpful, since we no longer face the same mortal threats to existence. The body’s physiological stress mechanisms are often triggered inappropriately, leading to disease. There is another way to look at it. The flight-or-fight alarm reaction exists today for the same purpose evolution originally assigned to it: to enable us to survive. What has happened is that we have lost touch with the gut feelings designed to be our warning system. The body mounts a stress response, but the mind is unaware of the threat. We keep ourselves in physiologically stressful situations, with only a dim awareness of distress or no awareness at all.

Reflection A child needs the affirmation of their father. But many times that affirmation is not there. The father may be absent or it may be that their father never told them how proud he was of them. He was quick to criticize, but slow to affirm. When that child grows older, they will continue to search for the blessing of their father. They may become a work-a-holic, believing that through accomplishment they can finally find the fulfillment they are looking for. But they continue to live with a void. In another scenario, it might happen that feelings of unworthiness and self-doubt would be so pervasive that they never pursue God’s calling on their life and settle for less. Maybe you can relate. You desire love, respect, acceptance, or approval. But you don’t feel worthy. You believe you are not accomplished enough. You believe you are not beautiful enough. You believe you are not able enough. You believe you are not __________ (You fill in the blank). But these are lies that come straight out of the pit of hell. You are worthy enough because Jesus died for you. He accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished. He makes you beautiful. His Holy Spirit gives you the ability to accomplish all things (see Philippians 4:13). Before Jesus began his ministry, he was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. And when Jesus was baptized, the voice of the Heavenly Father spoke from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 5:17 ESV The ministry of Jesus had yet to begin. He had not yet healed anyone. He had not yet preached any sermons of note. He had not accomplished anything worthy to be recorded in the Scriptures. But still the Father expresses his approval. Why? It was because of the relationship of the Father to the Son. The Father’s love and approval of the Son was not based on accomplishment. He loved the Son for no other reason than the fact that he was his son. You are so important to your Heavenly Father that he sent Jesus for you. The Heavenly Father made you and created you. He gave you your life and your being. He loved you so much that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for you. It is not about anything you have accomplished. You need to know that you are the most beautiful, the most precious, and the most prized part of his creation. Your Heavenly Father is proud of you. More than you realize! You are worthy because you are his precious child, redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

FASCIA: THE TIES THAT BIND Imagine a collagen-rich, stretchy slipcover for every organ, nerve, bone, and muscle in our bodies, and you start to get a sense of how fundamental connective tissue—specifically fascia—is to the entire body. Suspending our organs inside our torso, connecting our head to our back to our feet, fascia protects, supports, and literally binds our body together. Fascia can be gossamer-thin and translucent, like a spider web, or thick and tough like rope. Ounce for ounce, fascia is stronger than steel. Other specialized types of connective tissue include bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and fat (adipose) tissue. Even blood, strictly speaking, is considered connective tissue. But to me, the most exciting aspect of the latest research on connective tissue relates to fascia. Fascia is the stretchy tissue that forms an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web within our body. Our body has sheets, bags, and strings of fascia of varying thickness and size, some superficial and some deep. Fascia envelops both individual microscopic muscle filaments as well as whole muscle groups, such as the trapezius, pectorals, and quadriceps. For example, one of the largest fascia configurations in the body is known as the “trousers,” a massive sheet of fascia that crosses over the knees and ends near the waist, giving the appearance of short leggings. This fascia trouser is thicker around the knees and thinner as it continues up the legs and over the hips, thickening again near the waist. When the fascia trouser is healthy, supple, and resilient, it acts like a girdle, giving the body a firm shape. Fascia helps muscles transmit their force so we can convert that force into movement. The system of fascia is bound by tensile links (think of the structure of a geodesic dome, like the one at Epcot in Disney World), with space and fluid between the links that can help absorb external pressure and more evenly distribute force across the fascial structure. This allows our bodies to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area, which would lead to increased pain and injury. Fascia is also a second nervous system in and of itself, with almost 10 times the number of sensory nerve endings as muscle. Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done landmark studies on the function and importance of connective tissue and its impact on pain. One of the leading researchers in the field today, Langevin describes fascia as a “living matrix” whose health is essential to our well-being.

Revolt of solitary instincts against social bonds is the key to the philosophy, the politics, and the sentiments, not only of what is commonly called the romantic movement, but of its progeny down to the present day. Philosophy, under the influence of German idealism, became solipsistic, and self-development was proclaimed as the fundamental principle of ethics. As regards sentiment, there has to be a distasteful compromise between the search for isolation and the necessities of passion and economics. D. H. Lawrence's story, 'The Man Who Loved Islands', has a hero who disdained such compromise to a gradually increasing extent and at last died of hunger and cold, but in the enjoyment of complete isolation; but this degree of consistency has not been achieved by the writers who praise solitude. The comforts of civilized life are not obtainable by a hermit, and a man who wishes to write books or produce works of art must submit to the ministrations of others if he is to survive while he does his work. In order to continue to feel solitary, he must be able to prevent those who serve him from impinging upon his ego, which is best accomplished if they are slaves. Passionate love, however, is a more difficult matter. So long as passionate lovers are regarded as in revolt against social trammels, they are admired; but in real life the love-relation itself quickly becomes a social trammel, and the partner in love comes to be hated, all the more vehemently if the love is strong enough to make the bond difficult to break. Hence love comes to be conceived as a battle, in which each is attempting to destroy the other by breaking through the protecting walls of his or her ego. This point of view has become familiar through the writings of Strindberg, and, still more, of D. H. Lawrence. Not only passionate love, but every friendly relation to others, is only possible, to this way of feeling, in so far as the others can be regarded as a projection of one's own Self. This is feasible if the others are blood-relations, and the more nearly they are related the more easily it is possible. Hence an emphasis on race, leading, as in the case of the Ptolemys, to endogamy. How this affected Byron, we know; Wagner suggests a similar sentiment in the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Nietzsche, though not scandalously, preferred his sister to all other women: 'How strongly I feel,' he writes to her, 'in all that you say and do, that we belong to the same stock. You understand more of me than others do, because we come of the same parentage. This fits in very well with my "philosophy".

The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.

To wit, researchers recruited a large group of college students for a seven-day study. The participants were assigned to one of three experimental conditions. On day 1, all the participants learned a novel, artificial grammar, rather like learning a new computer coding language or a new form of algebra. It was just the type of memory task that REM sleep is known to promote. Everyone learned the new material to a high degree of proficiency on that first day—around 90 percent accuracy. Then, a week later, the participants were tested to see how much of that information had been solidified by the six nights of intervening sleep. What distinguished the three groups was the type of sleep they had. In the first group—the control condition—participants were allowed to sleep naturally and fully for all intervening nights. In the second group, the experimenters got the students a little drunk just before bed on the first night after daytime learning. They loaded up the participants with two to three shots of vodka mixed with orange juice, standardizing the specific blood alcohol amount on the basis of gender and body weight. In the third group, they allowed the participants to sleep naturally on the first and even the second night after learning, and then got them similarly drunk before bed on night 3. Note that all three groups learned the material on day 1 while sober, and were tested while sober on day 7. This way, any difference in memory among the three groups could not be explained by the direct effects of alcohol on memory formation or later recall, but must be due to the disruption of the memory facilitation that occurred in between. On day 7, participants in the control condition remembered everything they had originally learned, even showing an enhancement of abstraction and retention of knowledge relative to initial levels of learning, just as we’d expect from good sleep. In contrast, those who had their sleep laced with alcohol on the first night after learning suffered what can conservatively be described as partial amnesia seven days later, forgetting more than 50 percent of all that original knowledge. This fits well with evidence we discussed earlier: that of the brain’s non-negotiable requirement for sleep the first night after learning for the purposes of memory processing. The real surprise came in the results of the third group of participants. Despite getting two full nights of natural sleep after initial learning, having their sleep doused with alcohol on the third night still resulted in almost the same degree of amnesia—40 percent of the knowledge they had worked so hard to establish on day 1 was forgotten.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lost his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves. the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under out knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves" It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to always have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?

The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child’s emotions, behaviour and physiology. The child’s biological status would be vastly different under the circumstances of parental presence or absence. Her neurochemical output, the electrical activity in her brain’s emotional centres, her heart rate, blood pressure and the serum levels of the various hormones related to stress would all vary significantly. Life is possible only within certain well-defined limits, internal or external. We can no more survive, say, high sugar levels in our bloodstream than we can withstand high levels of radiation emanating from a nuclear explosion. The role of self-regulation, whether emotional or physical, may be likened to that of a thermostat ensuring that the temperature in a home remains constant despite the extremes of weather conditions outside. When the environment becomes too cold, the heating system is switched on. If the air becomes overheated, the air conditioner begins to work. In the animal kingdom, self-regulation is illustrated by the capacity of the warm-blooded creature to exist in a broad range of environments. It can survive more extreme variations of hot and cold without either chilling or overheating than can a coldblooded species. The latter is restricted to a much narrower range of habitats because it does not have the capacity to self-regulate the internal environment. Children and infant animals have virtually no capacity for biological self-regulation; their internal biological states—heart rates, hormone levels, nervous system activity — depend completely on their relationships with caregiving grown-ups. Emotions such as love, fear or anger serve the needs of protecting the self while maintaining essential relationships with parents and other caregivers. Psychological stress is whatever threatens the young creature’s perception of a safe relationship with the adults, because any disruption in the relationship will cause turbulence in the internal milieu. Emotional and social relationships remain important biological influences beyond childhood. “Independent self-regulation may not exist even in adulthood,” Dr. Myron Hofer, then of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote in 1984. “Social interactions may continue to play an important role in the everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life.” Our biological response to environmental challenge is profoundly influenced by the context and by the set of relationships that connect us with other human beings. As one prominent researcher has expressed it most aptly, “Adaptation does not occur wholly within the individual.” Human beings as a species did not evolve as solitary creatures but as social animals whose survival was contingent on powerful emotional connections with family and tribe. Social and emotional connections are an integral part of our neurological and chemical makeup. We all know this from the daily experience of dramatic physiological shifts in our bodies as we interact with others. “You’ve burnt the toast again,” evokes markedly different bodily responses from us, depending on whether it is shouted in anger or said with a smile. When one considers our evolutionary history and the scientific evidence at hand, it is absurd even to imagine that health and disease could ever be understood in isolation from our psychoemotional networks. “The basic premise is that, like other social animals, human physiologic homeostasis and ultimate health status are influenced not only by the physical environment but also by the social environment.” From such a biopsychosocial perspective, individual biology, psychological functioning and interpersonal and social relationships work together, each influencing the other.

Hello,” she says. “My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know. I am the leader of an organization fighting for justice and peace. This fight has become increasingly more important—and consequently, nearly impossible—in the past few decades. That is because of this.” Images flash across the wall, almost too fast for me to see. A man on his knees with a gun pressed to his forehead. The woman pointing it at him, her face emotionless. From a distance, a small person hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. A hole in the ground the size of a house, full of bodies. And there are other images too, but they move faster, so I get only impressions of blood and bone and death and cruelty, empty faces, soulless eyes, terrified eyes. Just when I have had enough, when I feel like I am going to scream if I see any more, the woman reappears on the screen, behind her desk. “You do not remember any of that,” she says. “But if you are thinking these are the actions of a terrorist group or a tyrannical government regime, you are only partially correct. Half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbors. Your relatives. Your coworkers. The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself—or at least what it has become.” This is what Jeanine was willing to enslave minds and murder people for—to keep us all from knowing. To keep us all ignorant and safe and inside the fence. There is a part of me that understands. “That is why you are so important,” Amanda says. “Our struggle against violence and cruelty is only treating the symptoms of a disease, not curing it. You are the cure. “In order to keep you safe, we devised a way for you to be separated from us. From our water supply. From our technology. From our societal structure. We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost. Over time, we hope that you will begin to change as most of us cannot. “The reason I am leaving this footage for you is so that you will know when it’s time to help us. You will know that it is time when there are many among you whose minds appear to be more flexible than the others. The name you should give those people is Divergent. Once they become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so that you may emerge from your isolation.” And that is what my parents wanted to do: to take what we had learned and use it to help others. Abnegation to the end. “The information in this video is to be restricted to those in government only,” Amanda says. “You are to be a clean slate. But do not forget us.” She smiles a little. “I am about to join your number,” she says. “Like the rest of you, I will voluntarily forget my name, my family, and my home. I will take on a new identity, with false memories and a false history. But so that you know the information I have provided you with is accurate, I will tell you the name I am about to take as my own.” Her smile broadens, and for a moment, I feel that I recognize her. “My name will be Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.” Prior.

Gout Every single year, thousands upon thousands of people are diagnosed with, and suffer from a condition known as gout. Gout is basically a form of severe arthritis, in various joints on the body. The ankle for instance, is especially susceptible to gout, making it a very painful condition to have to deal with. It is brought on by elevated levels of uric acid levels in the blood stream. This acid actually crystallizes, forming crystal deposits on the various joints in the body. Kind of like lime scale affects shower heads, and heating elements. There are pharmaceutical medicines and lotions etc out there, many of which are basically useless and only mildly effective at best. Many of these medicines are based on pain relief, meaning that they only mask the problems, rather than curing them. The good news is that natural remedies have been proven to be especially effective when treating gout, specifically, apple cider vinegar. A normal and perfectly healthy range of uric acid in the blood should be between 3.6 mg/dL and 8.3 mg/dL. This uric acid is perfectly normal, and all bodies produce it, the problems occur when the body can no longer remove excess levels of the acid, once it is produced. Apple cider vinegar is a proven natural remedy for a whole host of other health and beauty related conditions, and gout is no exception. With its anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal properties, it is being hailed by some people as a medical wonder. Apple cider vinegar helps to increase your PH levels, making your body more alkaline, this makes it especially effective at eliminating uric acid, which can lead to gout. The Malic acid contained in apple cider vinegar, helps to dissolve sodium urate crystals, the same crystals responsible for gout. To help rid you of painful gout like symptoms, how about you: Drink the water and vinegar solution at least three times daily - Simply mix three table spoons full of vinegar, with a glass of water, or even apple juice if you wish, and chug it down. Try

Cornstarch and cornmeal—cornmeal products such as tacos, tortillas, corn chips, and corn breads, breakfast cereals, and sauces and gravies thickened with cornstarch • Snack foods—potato chips, rice cakes, popcorn. These foods, like foods made of cornstarch, send blood sugar straight up to the stratosphere. • Desserts—Pies, cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, sherbet, and other sugary desserts all pack too much sugar. • Rice—white or brown; wild rice. Modest servings are relatively benign, but large servings (more than ½ cup) generate adverse blood sugar effects. • Potatoes—White, red, sweet potatoes, and yams cause effects similar to

February 16 A Love both Tough and Tender God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.—Psalm 68:6 This beautiful passage holds three keys on how God deals with His creation. The first is an image of God constructing a home for each of us. Not only has he given us a dwelling in heaven, but the Bible says that He gives us families right here. Our own expectations can keep us from recognizing this gift. God has given us more than blood relatives; He has given us relatives by His blood. If we feel displaced, we should look around for the family that we have been failing to see. The second phrase tells us that he leads forth the prisoners with singing. God has designed abundant life for us and sent His Son to set us free (John 10:10, 8:36). He has given us the gift of song to celebrate our freedom. We return the gift by praising his name. We are encouraged by song when the world around us is harsh and lonely. The third word picture is that of a sun-scorched land. Obedient sheep follow their shepherd into abundance. The rebellious sheep insist that Jesus is unworthy to lead, nibbling instead at whatever leftovers he or she can find. God’s ultimate goal is that all His sheep would come into His fold (2 Peter 3:9), but He allows us independence. If your life is barren right now, why not turn around and seek the excellent grazing land that God has set aside for you? God also wants us to thrive for His glory. He is tender enough to meet our needs and give us families, tough enough to break the chains that bind us, and gracious enough to let us wander until we recognize our need for Him. Lord, thank You for Your great love and wisdom. You are so good! Please teach me to be grateful, and let me never forget that Your plans are always better than mine.

SCIENTISTS HAD KNOWN since the late nineteenth century that tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide. Victorian scientists had even been able to calculate the amount of gas in the smoke: up to 4 percent in cigarette smoke, and in Gettler’s own choice of tobacco, the cigar, between 6 and 8 percent. Gettler’s latest work theorized that chain smokers might suffer from low-level carbon monoxide poisoning. He speculated in a 1933 report that “headaches experienced by heavy smokers are due in part to the inhalation of carbon monoxide.” But his real interest lay less in their symptoms than in how much of the poison had accumulated in their blood, and how that might affect his calculations on cause of death. He approached that problem in his usual, single-minded way. To get a better sense of carbon monoxide contamination from smoking tobacco, Gettler selected three groups of people to compare: persons confined to a state institution in the relatively clean air of the country; street cleaners who worked in a daily, dusty cloud of car exhaust; and heavy smokers. As expected, carboxyhemoglobin blood levels for country dwellers averaged less than 1 percent saturation. The levels for Manhattan street cleaners were triple that amount, a solid 3 percent. But smokers came in the highest, higher than he’d expected, well above the nineteenth-century calculations. Americans were inhaling a lot more tobacco smoke than they had once done, and their saturation levels ranged from 8 to 19 percent. (The latter was from a Bronx cab driver who admitted to smoking six cigarettes on his way to Gettler’s laboratory, lighting one with the stub of another as he went.) It was safe to assume, Gettler wrote with his usual careful precision, that “tobacco smoking appreciably increases the carbon monoxide in the blood and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of laboratory results.”     THE OTHER NOTABLE poison in tobacco smoke was nicotine.

However, the most interesting property of your spacetime tube isn't its bulk shape, but its internal structure, which is remarkably complex. Whereas the particles that constitute the Moon are stuck together in a rather static arrangement, many of your particles are in constant motion relative to one another. Consider, for example, the particles that make up your red blood cells. As your blood circulates through your body to deliver the oxygen you need, each red blood cell traces out its own unique tube shape through spacetime, corresponding to a complex itinerary through your arteries, capillaries and veins with regular returns to your heart and lungs. These spacetime tubes of different red blood cells are intertwined to form a braid pattern (Figure 11.4, middle panel) which is more elaborate than anything you'll ever see in a hair salon: whereas a classic braid consists of three strands with perhaps thirty thousand hairs each, intertwined in a simple repeating pattern, this spacetime braid consists of trillions of strands (one for each red blood cell), each composed of trillions of hairlike elementary-particle trajectories, intertwined in a complex pattern that never repeats. In other words, if you imagine spending a year giving a friend a truly crazy hairdo, braiding his hair by separately intertwining not strands but all the individual hairs, the pattern you'd get would still be very simple in comparison. Yet the complexity of all this pales in comparison to the patterns of information processing in your brain. As we discussed in Chapter 8 and illustrated in Figure 8.7, your roughly hundred billion neurons are constantly generating electric signals ("firing"), which involves shuffling around billions of trillions of atoms, notably sodium, potassium and calcium ions. The trajectories of these atoms form an extremely elaborate braid through spacetime, whose complex intertwining corresponds to storing and processing information in a way that somehow gives rise to our familiar sensation of self-awareness. There's broad consensus in the scientific community that we still don't understand how this works, so it's fair to say that we humans don't yet fully understand what we are. However, in broad brushstrokes, we might say this: You're a pattern in spacetime. A mathematical pattern. Specifically, you're a braid in spacetime-indeed one of the most elaborate braids known.

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Just a negative attitude, you understand. growing up in alt geld, i'd soaked up all the poison the white man feeds us. see, the folks you're working with got the same problem, even though they dont realize it yet. they spend half they lives worrying about what the white folks think. start blaming themselves for the shit they see every day, thinking they cant do no better till the white man decides they all right. but deep down they know that ain't right. they know what this country has dont to their momma, their daddy, their sister. so the truth is they hate their folks, but they cant admit it to themselves, keep it all bottled up, fighting themselves. waste a lot of energy that way. i tell you one thing i admire about the white folks, they know who they are. look at the italians. they didn't care about the American flag and all that when they got here. first thing they did is to put together the mafia to make sure their intrests were met. the irish they took the city hall and found their boys jobs. the Jews the same thing.. you telling me they care more about some black kid in the south side than they do about they relatives in isarel? shit!> its about blood, Barack, looking after your own. period. black people the only ones stupid enough to worry about their enemies.

Of the rise of this singular people few authentic records appear to exist. It is, however, probable that they represent a later wave of that race, whether true Sudras, or a later wave of immigrants from Central Asia, which is found farther south as Mahratta; and perhaps they had, in remote times, a Scythian origin like the earlier and nobler Rajputs. They affect Rajput ways, although the Rajputs would disdain their kinship; and they give to their chiefs the Rajput title of "Thakur," a name common to the Deity and to great earthly lords, and now often used to still lower persons. So much has this practice indeed extended, that some tribes use the term generically, and speak of themselves as of the "Thakur" race. These, however, are chiefly pure Rajputs. It is stated, by an excellent authority, that even now the Jats "can scarcely be called pure Hindus, for they have many observances, both domestic and religious, not consonant with Hindu precepts. There is a disposition also to reject the fables of the Puranic Mythology, and to acknowledge the unity of the Godhead." (Elliot's Glossary, in voce "Jat.") Wherever they are found, they are stout yeomen; able to cultivate their fields, or to protect them, and with strong administrative habits of a somewhat republican cast. Within half a century, they have four times tried conclusions with the might of Britain. The Jats of Bhartpur fought Lord Lake with success, and Lord Combermere with credit; and their "Sikh" brethren in the Panjab shook the whole fabric of British India on the Satlaj, in 1845, and three years later on the field of Chillianwala. The Sikh kingdom has been broken up, but the Jat principality of Bhartpur still exists, though with contracted limits, and in a state of complete dependence on the British Government. There is also a thriving little principality — that of Dholpur — between Agra and Gwalior, under a descendant of the Jat Rana of Gohad, so often met with in the history of the times we are now reviewing (v. inf. p. 128.) It is interesting to note further, that some ethnologists have regarded this fine people as of kin to the ancient Get¾, and to the Goths of Europe, by whom not only Jutland, but parts of the south-east of England and Spain were overrun, and to some extent peopled. It is, therefore, possible that the yeomen of Kent and Hampshire have blood relations in the natives of Bhartpur and the Panjab. The area of the Bhartpur State is at present 2,000 square miles, and consists of a basin some 700 feet above sea level, crossed by a belt of red sandstone rocks. It is hot and dry; but in the skilful hands that till it, not unfertile; and the population has been estimated at near three-quarters of a million. At the time at which our history has arrived, the territory swayed by the chiefs of the Jats was much more extensive, and had undergone the fate of many another military republic, by falling into the hands of the most prudent and daring of a number of competent leaders. It has already been shown (in Part I.) how Suraj Mal, as Raja of the Bhartpur Jats, joined the Mahrattas in their resistance to the great Musalman combination of 1760. Had his prudent counsels been followed, it is possible that this resistance would have been more successful, and the whole history of Hindustan far otherwise than what it has since been. But the haughty leader of the Hindus, Sheodasheo Rao Bhao, regarded Suraj Mal as a petty landed chief not accustomed to affairs on a grand scale, and so went headlong on his fate.

Young and old dropped. Someone laughed. “Useless animals. Now they will not eat the grass my cows need.” The rumbling sounds of big creatures came to a stop before the once-beautiful animals that now lie mangled in blood. “Dog food factory, here we come!” A scream tore from Shining Light’s mouth. “No! What is this horrible thing you show me? This is not right. What is this, I ask? What are cows? What is dog food factory? Why can they not share the land? Is this the future, or some nightmare I cannot push away? Blue Night Sky, why do you do this?” His body shook violently. He lost the food his belly held. “Sandstone. Where is Sandstone? She has taught me how smart her kind is, how much they understand humans and can love us, guide us. Sandstone!” ‘Be at peace, little one. This has not happened... yet. You think your destiny only lies in saving people? Telling stories of the grey dust that will choke future humans? You will tell the Peoples you go to meet of what I have shown you. This is their destiny... and your daughter’s. Yours... is what you choose it to be. Your daughter’s children’s children will have children who will become guardians of the Mustang Peoples, of the young four-leggeds yet unborn. ‘There will be a future where humans only think of themselves, what they can gain by having more things than others have. Some of these people may be our own. Some of these future humans will kill for what they can gain from it. Animals will be pounded into the grey dust because of human greed. Humans will even kill their own kind and take what they wish from them. Entire Peoples will vanish from our Mother. ‘Many animals will be thought of as wasting the land that humans could have. They will be killed. If our own people think of the mustang this way, they will lose their way. ‘The stories of our mustang relatives must be told. If the stories are lost, our people will forget the gifts the Mustang People give to them. As many times as Father Sun rises the stories must be told. Shining Light, you must help save the mustangs. You must help save

Greed is a nice, sterile motivation. If the money’s right, you don’t need to know someone to take advantage of them. You don’t have to hate them, or love them, or be related to them. You don’t even have to know who they are. You just have to want money more than you want them to keep on breathing, and if history is any indicator, that isn’t a terribly uncommon frame of mind.

Just as calories differ according to how they affect the body, so too do carbohydrates. All carbohydrates break down into sugar, but the rate at which this occurs in the digestive tract varies tremendously from food to food. This difference forms the basis for the glycemic index (GI). The GI ranks carbohydrate-containing foods according to how they affect blood glucose, from 0 (no affect at all) to 100 (equal to glucose). Gram for gram, most starchy foods raise blood glucose to very high levels and therefore have high GI values. In fact, highly processed grain products – like white bread, white rice, and prepared breakfast cereals – and the modern white potato digest so quickly that their GI ratings are even greater than table sugar (sucrose). So for breakfast, you could have a bowl of cornflakes with no added sugar, or a bowl of sugar with no added cornflakes. They would taste different but, below the neck, act more or less the same. A related concept is the glycemic load (GL), which accounts for the different carbohydrate content of foods typically consumed. Watermelon has a high GI, but relatively little carbohydrate in a standard serving, producing a moderate GL. In contrast, white potato has a high GI and lots of carbohydrate in a serving, producing a high GL. If this sounds a bit complicated, think of GI as describing how foods rank in a laboratory setting, whereas GL as applying more directly to a real-life setting. Research has shown that the GL reliably predicts, to within about 90 percent, how blood glucose will change after an actual meal – much better than simply counting carbohydrates as people with diabetes have been taught to do.

isn’t a blood relative, but she’s absolutely a member of the family, because family is more than blood.

At the second hospital he was intubated to save him from suffocation. That is, a flexible tube was inserted deep into his mouth, past his glottis, and down his windpipe into his lungs, to help with breathing. This event represents another important clue toward explaining how SARS spread so effectively through hospitals around the world. Intubation is a simple procedure, at least in theory, but it can be difficult to execute amid the gag reflexes, sputters, and expectorations of the patient. The task was especially hard with Zhou, a portly man, sedated and feverish, and though his disease hadn’t yet been identified, the attending doctors and nurses seem to have had some sense of the danger to which they were being exposed. They knew by then that this atypical pneumonia, this whatever, was more transmissible and more lethal than pneumonias of the common sort. “Each time they began to insert the tube,” according to an account by Thomas Abraham, a veteran foreign correspondent based in Hong Kong, there was “an eruption” of bloody mucus. Abraham continues: It splashed on to the floor, the equipment and the faces and gowns of the medical staff. They knew the mucous [sic] was highly infectious, and in the normal course of things, they would have cleaned themselves up as quickly as possible. But with a critically ill patient kicking and heaving around, a tube half-inserted into his windpipe and mucous and blood spurting out, there was no way any of them could leave. At that hospital, twenty-three doctors and nurses became infected from Zhou, plus eighteen other patients and their relatives. Nineteen members of his own family also got sick. Zhou himself would eventually become known among medical staff in Guangzhou as the Poison King. He survived the illness, though many people who caught it from him—directly, or indirectly down a long chain of contacts—did not.

The study was done in a relatively small town in Kyoto named Kyotango.  What makes this town special and a very good place to conduct the study was the fact that its population of people above 100 years old was the highest in Japan - 3 times more than the average for any town in the country.  The program - Takeshi no katei no igaku - specifically wanted to find out what these very old - but very joyful - bunch of people in Kyotango had in common when it comes to living their daily lives.  The program followed 7 people who were already in their late 90s and early 100s from sunrise to sunset.  The program also subjected them to health checkups such as blood tests, among others.  One of the interesting findings of the study was that all of the 7 subjects had very high levels of DHEA, which is a steroid hormone produced by the body's adrenal glands.  DHEA has a solid reputation of being a miracle hormone that's highly associated with longevity.  And as the study continued following the 7 super senior citizens, they discovered another commonality:  they all did things that they really enjoyed.  Each of them had different hobbies they passionately practiced every day such as painting, fishing and making traditional Japanese masks, among others. Given these findings, is it possible then that doing something you really love to do, something you're very passionate about, is the key to higher levels of DHEA and, therefore, a much longer life?  The science on this relationship hasn't been established yet, but the program concluded that regularly doing something that you're very interested in, passionate about, and focused on can give you a long-lasting and deep sense of personal satisfaction in life, which in turn can help elevate your DHEA levels.  And when such levels are very high, a long and joyful life isn't far behind.  And guess what, the program repeatedly made mention of Ikigai in discussing this concept of conclusion.

Fascist regimes could not settle down into a comfortable enjoyment of power. The charismatic leader had made dramatic promises: to unify, purify, and energize his community; to save it from the flabbiness of bourgeois materialism, the confusion and corruption of democratic politics, and the contamination of alien people and cultures; to head off the threatened revolution of property with a revolution of values; to rescue the community from decadence and decline. He had offered sweeping solutions to these menaces: violence against enemies, both inside and out; the individual’s total immersion in the community; the purification of blood and culture; the galvanizing enterprises of rearmament and expansionist war. He had assured his people a “privileged relation with history.” Fascist regimes had to produce an impression of driving momentum—“permanent revolution”—in order to fulfill these promises. They could not survive without that headlong, inebriating rush forward. Without an ever-mounting spiral of ever more daring challenges, fascist regimes risked decaying into something resembling a tepid authoritarianism. With it, they drove toward a final paroxysm of self-destruction. Fascist or partly fascist regimes do not inevitably succeed in maintaining momentum. Several regimes sometimes considered fascist deliberately took the opposite tack of damping down excitement. They “normalized” themselves—and thereby became more authoritarian than fascist.

Not every time the ' Blood Bonding ' is Genetical or in Relations ; Sometimes it's Love ; Sometimes it's more than Emotions.

When I went into the attic to find the veil for Rose, I discovered this painting,” she began. “This is your great-grandfather, the third Earl of Ashton.” He wasn’t certain what to make of it, but then the weight of her words struck him. She’d said it was his great-grandfather. “He had green eyes,” Moira whispered. “You can see it for yourself.” Iain accepted the portrait, and when he took a closer look at the man, his blood ran cold. It was like looking into a mirror. There was no doubt at all that he was a blood relation to this man. He set down the portrait, and the hair stood up on his arms. Moira spoke first. “You have to understand how broken I was after I was violated by a man who was not my husband. And because Aidan sought revenge, he died. I found myself with a living reminder of that night.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Every time I looked at you, I could only think of the violence. I couldn’t see that you were a gift that Aidan left to me, so I wouldn’t be alone.” Moira turned away, her shoulders slumped forward. He couldn’t answer her, though he knew what she was saying. She finished with, “There is nothing I can say to undo the years I mistreated you. I neglected the only son remaining to me. The last piece of my husband, because I was too blind to see the truth.” For a time, he was frozen, not knowing how to respond. He was the Earl of Ashton in truth. By blood and by birthright. “I will leave, if you ask it of me,” she whispered. “I deserve to be cast out for what I did.” A part of him wanted to lash out at her, for the years she’d made him feel like a shadow worth nothing at all. But what good would it do? She had aged into a fragile shell of a woman who had based her life upon misery and bitterness. He had Rose now, the woman he loved more than life itself. He had brought her here to help him rebuild Ashton . . . but perhaps she could help him rebuild more than the estate. With a heavy sigh, he placed his hand upon his mother’s shoulder. “Will you walk with me when I meet my bride?” Moira took his hand and pressed it to her forehead. Against his fingers, he felt the wetness of her tears. “I will, yes. Thank you.” It would take time to let go of the past. But it would begin with a single step.

Snorting, Maris swept his gaze over some of the handful of people who meant everything to him. No, they weren’t related by blood. But they were bound by something a lot stronger, and more powerful. Mutual love and respect. And that was the only thing in the universe that was truly indestructible. He’d spent the whole of his life trying to find someplace he belonged. Now he had it, and it was so much better than any of his dreams. No, the people around him weren’t perfect. Neither was he. But they tried and they loved him. Just as he loved them. That was all that really mattered. It was the best anyone could hope for and right now, he knew one undeniable truth…. He really was the luckiest bitch in the universe. And as long as he had Ture and their son with him, nothing else would ever matter more.

Dependence upon the blood relatives or others is even more painful than the cancer diseases.

LESSONS FROM A WHEAT-FREE EXPERIMENT An interesting fact: Whole wheat bread (glycemic index 72) increases blood sugar as much as or more than table sugar, or sucrose (glycemic index 59). (Glucose increases blood sugar to 100, hence a glycemic index of 100. The extent to which a particular food increases blood sugar relative to glucose determines that food’s glycemic index.) So when I was devising a strategy to help my overweight, diabetes-prone patients reduce blood sugar most efficiently, it made sense to me that the quickest and simplest way to get results would be to eliminate the foods that caused their blood sugar to rise most profoundly: in other words, not sugar, but wheat.

in the Bree-land, at any rate, the hobbits were decent and prosperous, and no more rustic than most of their distant relatives Inside. It was not yet forgotten that there had been a time when there was much coming and going between the Shire and Bree. There was Bree-blood in the Brandybucks by all accounts. The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west. On that side, running in more than half a circle from the hill and back to it, there was a deep dike

an individual's social identity is defined more by direct ties of blood, marriage, and residence, than by membership in an entity as abstract as a non-localized, corporate descent group, such as a clan. Corresponding with these social features, ritual life would have tended to be relatively small in scale: local “family” observances marking birth, puberty, marriage, and death; shamanic appeals to supernatural agencies to heal the sick or fertilize the plants and animals that are important to human life.

Only a month before Americans were due to go to the polls, the UAE—and later joined by a coalition of Islamic countries—gave Kushner the greatest gift of his four years as advisor to the president by agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. Behind the scenes, the leaders of the UAE and Israel had developed strong intelligence and security ties over more than a decade, but this was a public coming-out ceremony that put Abu Dhabi in the hot seat as far as much of the Arab world was concerned.

If, as Hamilton’s theory suggests, helping blood relatives increases an individual’s inclusive fitness, then altruism toward kin should be particularly forthcoming from individuals in their postreproductive years. “The behaviour of a post-reproductive animal,” Hamilton argued, “may be expected to be entirely altruistic,”53 since aiding even distant relatives provides some inclusive benefits—the only fitness benefits postreproductive individuals can accrue. To test this idea, Hamilton turned to A. D. Blest’s work on saturnid moths. Blest had studied cryptic and aposematic coloration in moths. Cryptically colored species of moths use their coloration to blend into their environment and make themselves less obvious to predators. Moths that rely on aposematic coloration use their colors to warn predators that they contain noxious substances and hence would make for a bad meal. Hamilton argued that inclusive fitness thinking makes very different predictions with respect to the postreproductive behavior of individuals from cryptic versus aposematic species. In the case of cryptic coloration, if individuals live in the vicinity of kin, then, Hamilton argued, inclusive fitness theory predicts that “it is altruistic to die immediately after reproduction.”54 T o see why, imagine a postreproductive cryptic moth. If such an individual is spotted and eaten by a predator, that predator is more likely to learn what all cryptic moths look like and is then more likely to eat the nearby kin of the deceased. In such a case, the postreproductive moth’s inclusive fitness would have been higher if it had simply died after its last bout of reproduction, rather than lived and potentially drawn an experienced predator to the area containing its kin. In the case of aposematic species, intense coloration is almost always associated with a noxious taste, and so inclusive fitness thinking led Hamilton to a very different conclusion regarding postreproductive behavior. A predator who eats a postreproductive individual in an aposematic species will be less likely to eat the deceased individual’s relatives, since it will have learned that aposematically colored individuals taste terrible. A postreproductive individual in an aposematic species may raise its inclusive fitness by being eaten, and hence selection should favor life after reproduction. To Hamilton’s delight, the postreproductive life of cryptic and aposematic species matched that predicted by inclusive fitness models—with postreproductive life spans significantly shorter in cryptically colored moth species.

The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. The reason for this was that the gas first inundated the lower layers of air and rose slowly towards the ceiling. This forced the victims to trample one another in a frantic effort to escape the gas. Yet a few feet higher up the gas reached them. What a struggle for life there must have been! Nevertheless it was merely a matter of two or three minutes' respite. If they had been able to think about what they were doing, they would have realized they were trampling their own children, their wives, their relatives. But they couldn't think. Their gestures were no more than the reflexes of the instinct of self-preservation. I noticed that the bodies of the women, the children, and the aged were at the bottom of the pile; at the top, the strongest. Their bodies, which were covered with scratches and bruises from the struggle against each other, were often interlaced. Blood oozed from their noses and mouths; their faces, bloated and blue, were so deformed as to be almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless some of the Sonderkommando often did recognize their kin.The encounter was not easy, and I dreaded it myself. I had no reason to be there, and yet I had come down to be among the dead. I felt it my duty to my people and to the entire world to be able to give an accurate account of what I had seen if ever, by some miraculous whim of fate, I should escape.

Part Two: When St. Kari Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  “What are those?” Kari shouted grasping Luke’s arm as her eyes jolted nervously into the air. “I’ve never seen such pretty planets before.” Luke tracked her line of vision and grimmed as he spotted three Corellian Imperial Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace into the same vortex that his own damaged ship was whirlpooled into. They appeared to be stabilizing the vortex opening by their anti-gravity wells maintaining their relative positional orbit. “Hey’st, what are those white things? They look like men. Surely they are not ghosters, are they?” pawed Kari at Luke to get him to see. “Imperial troopers,” shot Luke, grabbing her arm back. “There’s too many of them C’mon, we got to hide.” “What’s does that mean? And what are those red light-thingy’s coming toward us?” Instantly Kari and Luke were inundated by a barrage of suppressing E-11 blaster rifle fire. Luke flinched out of reaction while Kari stood upright seemingly oblivious to the inherent danger. He was struck to see the girl-entity pluck a laser bolt out of the air and examine it with an other worldly look, as if it were a rare flower in a garden. “I like this,” she smiled. “I’ll pin it to my cloak.” And doing so she did, it maintaining its fiery penetrating redness that did nothing more than to adorn the girl’s wardrobe for quite some time momentarily puzzling Luke. Usually they burnt out quickly. “Can I get some more of these?” she politely asked Luke. “Not right now,” drawled Luke peering over a boulder. “If they capture us we’ve had it.” “Had what?” asked Kari naïvely. “Them ghost-men you mean’st? Oh, don’t worry, Walker of the Skies, just leave it to me,” and with that Kari pulled her blade and sashayed toward the Imperial clones humming her favorite Top 10 battle hymns. “Wait!” Luke shouted trying to snatch her back but it was too late. Luke never saw anything such as this. Like Han, he had seen a lot of strange galactic stuff in his time. Kari had become a misty blur and was skipping across the battlefield as some sort of sword-brandishing luminescence, hovering for a short time over those she slain. “Hey, Walkersky, these spirits don’t have any souls,” she yelled looking up from her blood soaked garments. What do you want me to do with the rest, kill ’em?” “I, uh ,” was all he managed to get out of his mouth as he rubbed his jaw. Kari shrugged and went back to work, picking off the whole brigade by herself. “See’st? I told’st thou not to worry” Kari said panting, coming up to Luke and sitting besides him. “What now?” “We gotta get outta here before more Imperials arrive.” “Untruth oats?” (Nether Trans. “art thou nuts?”) “Run from battle?—is that that what means?” “It means Vader’s coming—.” go to part ii con't

queer communities often function in ways that mimic my grandmother’s generation, or my great-grandmother’s before it: with a group of people, not always related by blood, working together communally to take care of one another. For those generations, it meant people who didn’t have a lot giving what they could. It was collective more than it was insular,

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

I needed to master one more concept essential to understanding derivatives, and closely related to the calculations the BT trader had asked me to perform: present value. “Present value” is the value of a payment, expressed in today’s dollars. For example, the present value of $100 to be received today is $100. However, the present value of $100 to be received in a year is less than $100. In general, the present value of an amount to be received in the future is less than the present value of the same amount to be received today.

. "But black people are racist too." Because of course we’re all prejudiced (I can’t even stand some of my blood relatives, grasping, selfish folks), but racism is about the power of a group and in America it’s white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don’t get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don’t get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don’t give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don’t stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don’t choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don’t tell white kids that they’re not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don’t try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don’t say they can’t use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered “aspirational” by the “mainstream.” So after this listing of don’ts, what’s the do? I’m not sure. Try listening, maybe. Hear what is being said. And remember that it’s not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what is. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

."But black people are racist too.” Because of course we’re all prejudiced (I can’t even stand some of my blood relatives, grasping, selfish folks), but racism is about the power of a group and in America it’s white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don’t get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don’t get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don’t give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don’t stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don’t choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don’t tell white kids that they’re not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don’t try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don’t say they can’t use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered “aspirational” by the “mainstream.” So after this listing of don’ts, what’s the do? I’m not sure. Try listening, maybe. Hear what is being said. And remember that it’s not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what is. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.

You were expecting me to embrace a family I have no connection with. I understand you reasoning, but family to me is more than blood relation. Family is people who love you and support you through highs and lows of your life. They are the ones you want to share things with and the ones you turn to when you need encouragement. My family is important to me when I say family I mean my mother and my sister. They are what matters." - James,Chapter 10 - Breaking her no dates rules

The split in Islam began with the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 AD. The divide is more about politics than theology. Shiites believe Muhammad appointed his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor. Shiites hold that only blood relatives of Muhammad can lead the faith. Sunnis, on the other hand, believe Muhammad died without appointing a successor so any learned and righteous member can be appointed leader. A decisive battle was fought in 680 AD near the town of Karbala in present-day Iraq. The Shiite forces were massacred and the Shiite leader was killed.27 Despite their defeat, today in Iraq, about 65 percent of Muslims are Shiites, only 30 percent belong to the victorious Sunni sect.28 And therein lies the animosity. From the creation of modern-day Iraq, the minority Sunnis have held power.

Family” included Natalie, who was the sort of aunt every kid wanted, the sort of sister every woman should have, related by something much more potent than blood.

The Holocaust was not the result of Christianity; it is important to state this categorically at the outset. As Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi pointed out, Christianity had an interest in the preservation of Jews, not their destruction.9 The history of Christian–Jewish relations is not one of unrelieved darkness.10 There were bishops who defended Jews at times of persecution, and popes who rejected anti-Jewish myths like the Blood Libel. And though there were massacres, there were also times when Jews flourished under Christian rulers. While the Holocaust was taking place, there were Christians who saved Jews, among them the members of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who, under the inspiration of Lutheran pastor André Trocmé, gave shelter to five thousand Jews. Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses helped Jews to safety. There were Christian opponents of Hitler like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller. There were the more than twenty-five thousand individual heroes, memorialised in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, who saved lives. There were collective acts of heroism like the members of the Danish Resistance who saved most of Danish Jewry from death. And it is important to note also that many Jews were saved by Muslims during these years, a story told by Robert Satloff in his book Among the Righteous.11

In the same year, Musashi adopted another son, but this time it was a blood relative. Iori was the second son of Tahara Hisamitsu, Musashi’s older brother by four years, and he was retained to serve the Akashi daimyō, Ogasawara Tadazane. With his newly adopted son gainfully employed, Musashi became a “guest” of Tadazane and moved to Akashi. Iori was clearly a gifted young man, and five years later, at the age of twenty, was promoted to the distinguished position of “elder” of the domain. As a guest in the Honda house in Himeji and then the Ogasawara house, Musashi cultivated his artistic expression. He started studying Zen, painting, sculpture and even landscape design, and fraternized with distinguished artists and scholars such as Hayashi Razan. He had a free hand to do as he liked, and he liked to be creative. Having just emerged from an era of incessant warfare, proficiency in the more refined arts had become once again a desirable attribute in high society. It was during this period that Musashi realized how the various arts had much in common in terms of the search for perfection. He understood that the arts and occupations were “Ways” in their own right, by no means inferior to the Way of the warrior. This attitude differs from writings by other warriors, which are typically underpinned by hints of exclusivity, even arrogance, toward those not in “Club Samurai.” That said, the ideal of bunbu ryōdō (the two ways of brush and sword in accord) had long been a mainstay of samurai culture. Samurai literature from the fourteenth century onwards exhibits a concern for balancing martial aptitude with the refinement in the genteel arts and civility; namely an equilibrium between bu (martial) and bun (letters or the arts). For example, Shiba Yoshimasa’s Chikubasho (1383) admonishes the ruling class to pay attention to matters of propriety, self-cultivation, and attention to detail. “If a man has attained ability in the arts, it is possible to ascertain the depth of his mind, and the demeanor of his clan can be ascertained. In this world, honour and reputation are valued above all else. Thus, a man is able to accrue standing in society by virtue of competence in the arts and so should try to excel in them too, regardless of whether he has ability or not… It goes without saying that a man should be dexterous in military pursuits using the bow and arrow…” This was easier said than done in times of constant social turmoil and the chaos of war, but is exactly what Musashi turned his attention to as he entered the twilight years of his life. His pursuit for perfection in both military arts and other artistic Ways is perhaps why he is so revered to this day.

Glucose monitoring device A glucose monitoring device is a medical device that measures the amount of glucose in the blood. This information can be used to help people with diabetes manage their condition. There are two main types of glucose monitoring devices: blood glucose meters and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). Blood glucose meters are the most common type of glucose monitoring device. They require a fingerstick to obtain a blood sample, which is then analyzed by the meter. Blood glucose meters are relatively inexpensive and easy to use. However, they only provide a snapshot of blood sugar levels at a particular time. CGMs are more advanced than blood glucose meters. They measure glucose levels continuously and provide real-time updates to a receiver or smartphone. CGMs can be more expensive than blood glucose meters, but they can provide valuable information about blood sugar trends that can help people with diabetes make better treatment decisions. Med Supply US offers a variety of glucose monitoring devices, including blood glucose meters and CGMs. The company's blood glucose meters are affordable and easy to use, while its CGMs provide accurate and real-time glucose readings. Med Supply US also offers a variety of accessories for glucose monitoring devices, such as lancets, test strips, and infusion sets.

After Kim started swimming in the cold waters of the bay, she noticed a change in her severely nerve-damaged right leg: it had more feeling in it. She had a theory that she ran by her physicians in those early days. “All the blood is sucked from your extremities to protect your organs when you get in that cold water,” she explains, in her lilting New Zealand accent, during one of our marathon phone calls after work one evening. (When she’s not training or traveling the world for swims, she has until recently been working as a director of community engagement for Adobe, the software company.) “Couldn’t it be possible that when the blood rushes back into those extremities after you warm up again, that you’re getting a kind of oxygen therapy? That there’s a higher rate of it being flushed around your body?” Her doctors said they could see the validity in it, with oxygen circulating at a much faster rate than if Kim were sedentary or even exercising on land. The result: her nerves were regenerating at a swifter pace relative to that of the previous two years.

It didn’t take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure, he hated to smoke a nickel’s worth of tobacco or chew a stick of gum, worrying whether somebody had more need for that nickel. He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary night of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat, to be a sucker, but not a blood-sucker. He wouldn’t marry, he wouldn’t help his folks back home, he wouldn’t put an extra burden on ‘the family.’ Besides, if he still had some sort of sense of responsibility, he couldn’t marry or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, promise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble, they dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra ‘disability allowance, ’ they got more sicknesses than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes—what the hell, ‘the family’ was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in ‘need’ than the rest of us could ever imagine—they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed.

And, even more important for our purposes, these facts are sturdy enough that we can build a sensible diet upon them. Here they are: FACT 1. Populations that eat a so-called Western diet—generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of the cardiovascular disease, and more than a third of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. The arguments in nutritional science are not about this well-established link; rather, they are all about identifying the culprit nutrient in the Western diet that might be responsible for chronic diseases. Is it the saturated fat or the refined carbohydrates or the lack of fiber or the transfats or omega-6 fatty acids—or what? The point is that, as eaters (if not as scientists), we know all we need to know to act: This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem. FACT 2. Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat, and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick! (While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.) There is actually a third, very hopeful fact that flows from these two: People who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health. We have good research to suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back, and relatively quickly.

Her daughter was not related in blood to Ellony Leckery, yet it seemed as if she’d somehow managed to inherit her namesake’s rather fey nature. Pharinet, Valraven’s sister, insisted young Ellony was far stronger, braver, and more robust than the original, but there was no doubt she was highly sensitive, and sometimes this affected her badly.

Yehuda discovered similar low cortisol levels in war veterans, as well as in pregnant mothers who developed PTSD after the World Trade Center attacks, and in their children. Not only did she find that the survivors in her study produced less cortisol, a characteristic they can pass on to their children, she notes that several stress-related psychiatric disorders, including PTSD, chronic pain syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome, are associated with low blood levels of cortisol.2 Interestingly, 50 to 70 percent of PTSD patients also meet the diagnostic criteria for major depression or another mood or anxiety disorder.3 Yehuda’s research demonstrates that you and I are three times more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD if one of our parents had PTSD, and as a result, we’re likely to suffer from depression or anxiety.4 She believes that this type of generational PTSD is inherited rather than occurring from our being exposed to our parents’ stories of their ordeals.5 Yehuda was one of the first researchers to show how descendants of trauma survivors carry the physical and emotional symptoms of traumas they have not directly experienced.

Now if one notices carefully one will see that between these two worlds, despite much physical contact and daily intermingling, there is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other. Before and directly after the war, when all the best of the Negroes were domestic servants in the best of the white families, there were bonds of intimacy, affection, and sometimes blood relationship, between the races. They lived in the same home, shared in the family life, often attended the same church, and talked and conversed with each other. But the increasing civilization of the Negro since then has naturally meant the development of higher classes: there are increasing numbers of ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants, mechanics, and independent farmers, who by nature and training are the aristocracy and leaders of the blacks. Between them, however, and the best element of the whites, there is little or no intellectual commerce. They go to separate churches, they live in separate sections, they are strictly separated in all public gatherings, they travel separately, and they are beginning to read different papers and books. To most libraries, lectures, concerts, and museums, Negroes are either not admitted at all, or on terms peculiarly galling to the pride of the very classes who might otherwise be attracted. The daily paper chronicles the doings of the black world from afar with no great regard for accuracy; and so on, throughout the category of means for intellectual communication,—schools, conferences, efforts for social betterment, and the like,—it is usually true that the very representatives of the two races, who for mutual benefit and the welfare of the land ought to be in complete understanding and sympathy, are so far strangers that one side thinks all whites are narrow and prejudiced, and the other thinks educated Negroes dangerous and insolent. Moreover, in a land where the tyranny of public opinion and the intolerance of criticism is for obvious historical reasons so strong as in the South, such a situation is extremely difficult to correct. The white man, as well as the Negro, is bound and barred by the color-line, and many a scheme of friendliness and philanthropy, of broad-minded sympathy and generous fellowship between the two has dropped still-born because some busybody has forced the color-question to the front and brought the tremendous force of unwritten law against the innovators. It is hardly necessary for me to add very much in regard to the social contact between the races. Nothing has come to replace that finer sympathy and love between some masters and house servants which the radical and more uncompromising drawing of the color-line in recent years has caused almost completely to disappear. In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,—one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.

Blood is no longer ticker than water Nowadays strangers even help people more than relatives Relatives only accept you when you are successful

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, "You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, ”You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

Even if atheists were right--that prayer is wishful thinking--they are right only in relation to God, not in relation to wishing. The importance of prayer is that it is an expression of our spiritual nature, and when we wish for love, peace,for our own good and the good of others we define ourselves as more than flesh and blood. We define ourselves as hoping, loving, and imagining beings who crave to know the source of our being.