Number Plates Quotes

Persephone said, “What an unpleasant young man.” Calla let the curtains drift shut. She remarked, “I got his license plate number.” “I hope he never finds what he’s looking for,” Maura said. Retrieving her two cards from the table, Persephone said, a little regretfully, “He’s trying awfully hard. I rather think he’ll find something.” Maura whirled toward Blue. “Blue, if you ever see that man again, you just walk the other way.” “No,” Calla corrected. “Kick him in the nuts. Then run the other way.

The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night.

Listen, Tiny Bartender.' He grabbed the plate of nachos and slid it in front of her, because they both knew she loved selecting the first chip. 'You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love you three times. Please tell me my hands are cold so we can get on with our lives already.

While we’re driving, the passengers like to blather on and on about God knows what, unaware that I’m busy grouping and transforming numbers on license plates into letters

I want to see you tomorrow, but I don't know what this thing with my parents is going to be like. When you go to lunch, sit so you can see into the Men's section. If my back is turned, I can't meet you. If I'm facing you, I can meet you and the number of plates on my tray is the time I'll be here. What if you can't come till midnight? Then I'm going to look like a fucking idiot.

I just wish that you had made it beyond the bounds of this cold little radius, that when the archaeologists brush off this layer of our world in a million years and string off the boundaries of our rooms and tag and number every plate and table leg and shinbone, you would not be there; yours would not be the remains they would fine and label juvenile male; you would be a secret, the existence of which they would never even be aware to try to solve.

There are thousands of talented writers at work in America, and only a few of them (I think the number might be as low as five per cent) can support their families and themselves with their work. There’s always some grant money available, but it’s never enough to go around. As for government subsidies for creative writers, perish the thought. Tobacco subsidies, sure. Research grants to study the motility of unpreserved bull sperm, of course. Creative-writing subsidies, never. …America has never much revered her creative people; as a whole, we’re more interested in commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint and Internet greeting-cards. And if you don’t like it, it’s a case of tough titty, said the kitty, ‘cause that’s just the way things are. Americans are a lot more interested in TV quiz shows than in the short fiction of Raymond Carver.

...no matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She's taught you that people who shine more lavishly that everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as if they're being punished for craving a brighter life. I've been knocked down so many times I can't remember the number plates, she said once.

Operating by trial and error mostly, we've evolved a tacitly agreed upon list of the elements that make for a good fantasy. The first decision the aspiring fantasist must make is theological. King Arthur and Charlemagne were Christians. Siegfried and Sigurd the Volsung were pagans. My personal view is that pagans write better stories. When a writer is having fun, it shows, and pagans have more fun than Christians. Let's scrape Horace's Dulche et utile off the plate before we even start the banquet. We're writing for fun, not to provide moral instruction. I had much more fun with the Belgariad/Malloreon than you did, because I know where all the jokes are. All right, then, for item number one, I chose paganism. (Note that Papa Tolkien, a devout Anglo-Catholic, took the same route.)

Did you give the HSC ten thousand dollars?" Ah, there it was, he thought, swallowing. He'd been hoping she wouldn't find out, but he supposed that was unrealistic in a town like Lucky Harbor. Taking his time, he ate cookie number two, then reached for a third. She held the plate out of his reach. "Did you?" she asked. He eyed her for a long moment. "Which answer will get me the rest of the cookies?" "Oh, Ty," she breathed, looking worried as she lowered the plate. Worried for him, he realized. -Mallory and Ty

They're headed for some place called the Great Barrier." "A place that doesn't exist." Liv was shaking her head, checking the rotating dials on her wrist. Link pushed away his plate, still covered with food. "So let me get this straight. We're gonna go down into the Tunnels and find this moon outta time with Liv's fancy watch?" "Selenometer." Liv didn't look up from copying numbers from the dials into her red notebook.

I try to explain how people react when overwhelmed by confusion and negative emotions. Some drink too much. Others overeat or beat their wives or kick the cat. And a surprising number hold their hands against a hot plate or slice open their skin with a razor blade. It's an extreme coping mechanism. They talk about their inner pain being turned outward. By giving it a physical manifestation they find it easier to deal with. (35)

Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation that I was feeling could be. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had come to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlor, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red—my hand, the plate, the table, the world—as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained—and would forever remain—unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, all-but-seared-in longing: forgotten for years to remember what such feelings had ever existed inside of me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something—anything—to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in her life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.

There was a moment of sorrow, disappointment, and deep love for his son, whom he at that second wished had had a chance of real escape. Never mind why or whether or who or what consequence or ramification--the wake of sorrow and bitterness and resentment you would trail behind you, probably mostly for me--I just wish that you had made it beyond the bounds of this cold little radius, that when the archaeologists brush off this layer of our world in a million years and string off the boundaries of our rooms and tag and number every plate and table leg and shinbone, you would not be there; yours would not be the remains they would find and label juvenile male.

New Hampshire is guys in hunting caps and pickup trucks with number plates bearing the feisty slogan ‘Live Free or Die.

Starvation was the first indication of my self-discipline. I was devoted to anorexia. I went the distance of memorizing the calorie content within every bite of food while calculating the exact amount of exercise I needed to burn double my consumption. I was luckily young enough to mask my excessive exercise with juvenile hyperactivity. Nobody thought twice about the fact that I was constantly rollerblading, biking, and running for hours in stifling summer humidity. I learned to cut my food into tiny bites and move it around my plate. I read that standing burned more calories than sitting, so I refused to watch television without doing crunches, leg lifts, or at least walking in place. When socially forced to soldier through a movie, I tapped my foot in desperation to knock out about seventy-five extra calories. From age eleven to twelve, I dropped forty pounds and halted the one period I’d had.

It is a cherished dream of most Bullet owners to do the classic Manali to Leh ride. A sort of pilgrimage or initiation into the cult that is ‘Bulleting’. So there are plenty of Bullets in Manali during these months, some with number plates from as far away as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa and Kerala. The local mechanics are experts in servicing Bullets and preparing them for the arduous road ahead, and I got my bike serviced here. The rear brakes had taken a fair share of wear and tear, and the setting of the clutch had to be readjusted.

When he was finished, he set his plate down, looked at me, and raised an eyebrow. I leaned forward and whispered angrily, “I am not going to sit on your lap, so don’t get your hopes up, Mister.” He still waited until I picked up a fork and took a few bites. I speared a bite of macadamia nut crusted ruby snapper and said, “Whew. Time’s up. Isn’t it? The clock is ticking. You must be sweating it, huh? I mean, you could turn any second.” He just took a bite of curried lamb and then some saffron rice and sat there chewing as cool as a cucumber. I watched him closely for a full two minutes and then folded up my napkin. “Okay, I give. Why are you acting so smug and confident? When are you going to tell me what’s going on?” He wiped his mouth carefully and took a sip of water. “What’s going on, my prema, is that the curse has been lifted.” My mouth dropped open. “What? If it was lifted, why were you a tiger for the last two days?” “Well, to be clear, the curse is not completely gone. I seem to have been granted a partial removal of the curse.” “Partial? Partial meaning what, exactly?” “Partial, meaning a certain number of hours per day. Six hours to be exact.” I recited the prophecy in my mind and remembered that there were four sides to the monolith, and four times six was…”Twenty-four.” He paused. “Twenty-four what?” “Well, six hours makes sense because there are four gifts to obtain for Durga and four sides of the monolith. We’ve only completed one of the tasks, so you only get six hours.” He smiled. “I guess I get to keep you around then, at least until the other tasks are finished.” I snorted. “Don’t hold your breath, Tarzan. I might not need to be present for the other tasks. Now that you’re a man part of the time, you and Kishan can resolve this problem yourselves, I’m sure.” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t underestimate your level of…involvement, Kelsey. Even if you weren’t needed anymore to break the curse, do you think I’d simply let you go? Let you walk out of my life without a backward glance?” I nervously began toying with my food and decided to say nothing. That was exactly what I’d been planning to do. Something had changed. The hurt and confused Ren that made me feel guilty for rejecting him in Kishkindha was gone. He was now supremely confident, almost arrogant, and very sure of himself.

Generally speaking, Americans cussed, smoke, and drank, and the Shamys had it on good authority that a fair number of them used drugs. Americans dated and fornicated and committed adultery. They had broken families and lots of divorces. Americans were not generous or hospitable like Uncle Abdulla and Aunt Fatma; they invited people to their houses only a few at a times, and didn't even let them bring their children, and only fed them little tiny portions of food they called courses on big empty plates they called good china. Plus, Americans ate out wastefully often... Americans believed the individual was more important than the family, and money was more important than anything. Khadra's dad said Americans threw out their sons and daughters when they turned eighteen unless they could pay rent--to their own parents! And, at the other end, they threw their parents into nursing homes when they got old. This, although they took slavish care of mere dogs. All in all, Americans led shallow, wasteful, materialistic lives.

In a nightstand drawer are a car key labeled with a license plate number,

Any strategy for limiting your work in progress will help here (here), but perhaps the simplest is to keep two to-do lists, one “open” and one “closed.” The open list is for everything that’s on your plate and will doubtless be nightmarishly long. Fortunately, it’s not your job to tackle it: instead, feed tasks from the open list to the closed one—that is, a list with a fixed number of entries, ten at most. The rule is that you can’t add a new task until one’s completed. (You may also require a third list, for tasks that are “on hold” until someone else gets back to you.)

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

Border to border, from sea to shining sea, police cars and other government vehicles had for some time been equipped with 360-degree license-plate-scanning systems that recorded the numbers of the vehicles around them, whether parked or in motion, transmitting them 24/7 to regional archives, which in turn shared the information with the National Security Agency’s vast intelligence troves in its million-square-foot Utah Data Center.

There is a big difference between religion and spirituality. If you’re walking a spiritual path, it is because you’re trying to help yourself or others for the greater good. You’re trying to become a more conscious being through your actions and by understanding what motivates you. Religion, on the other hand, is basically a marketing plan. There is a middleman involved, and somewhere along the line someone is going to ask you for your credit-card number. They’re going to pass a plate in front of you, trick you into giving ten per cent of your income to some child-molesting fuckhead, or worse, trick you into giving up your civil rights over some storybook.

Beaumont's intention was to promote the virtue and nutritional value of fruit-bearing trees. Fifteen different genera of fruit and a number of their different species are described in the work: almonds, apricots, a barberry, cherries, quinces, figs, strawberries, gooseberries, apples, a mulberry, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, and raspberries. Each colored plate illustrates the plant's seed, foliage, blossom, fruit, and sometimes cross sections of the species.

He is the same chap who informed me that there are unusually high numbers of Mennonites who suffer from depression but nobody knows why. I said, Well, thank you for that! As cheerfully as if I was accepting a plate of homemade Christmas cookies from one of my students.

It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop. I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.

Eli left her there. In the kitchen he found the pomegranate he’d bought for her and quartered it quickly on a pale blue plate. He thought the contrast between the shades of the pomegranate and the blue might please her. Any one of a number of details can prevent a ship from sinking.

Tell me!” Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms. “Cut it out, you’ll dismember me,” Colby said, chuckling. She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. “I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You’re just a stand-in!” “I promised I wouldn’t tell.” “You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota.” He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon. “We’ll need the license plate number,” she said. “It can be traced. “Oh, of course,” he said facetiously. “They’ll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!” “Damn!” He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta’s small house. Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she’d known him, she’d very rarely seen his hair down. “All you need is the war paint,” Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. “Go ahead. I like matching scars.” Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. “Holden won’t tell me a damned thing. I want answers.” “Come inside, then,” Cecily replied. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.

At the airport they were loaded into planes or helicopters from which, dazed but conscious, they were pushed out into the Atlantic or the estuary of the River Plate. This was done in such numbers that eventually the friendly military dictatorship in neighbouring Uruguay complained about the number of bodies being washed up on its shores.

even when a political truth is enshrined in written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a radiographic plate on which the layman imagines that the patient’s disease is inscribed in so many words, whereas in fact the plate furnishes simply one piece of material for study, to be combined with a number of others on which the doctor’s reasoning powers will be brought to bear and on which he will base his diagnosis.

Footsteps from the stairwell startle him out of the past. He turns around as Emma's mother takes the last step into the dining area, Emma right behind her. Mrs. McIntosh glides over and puts her arm around him. The smile on her face is genuine, but Emma's smile is more like a straight line. And she's blushing. "Galen, it's very nice to meet you," she says, ushering him into the kitchen. "Emma tells me you're taking her to the beach behind your house today. To swim?" "Yes, ma'am." Her transformation makes him wary. She smiles. "Well, good luck with getting her in the water. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I can't follow you over there, so I just need to see your driver's license while Emma runs outside to get your plate number." Emma rolls her eyes as she shuffles through a drawer and pulls out a pen and paper. She slams the door behind her when she leaves, which shakes the dishes on the wall. Galen nods, pulls out his wallet, and hands over the fake license. Mrs. McIntosh studies it and rummages through her purse until she produces a pen-which she uses to write on her hand. “Just need your license number in case we ever have any problems. But we’re not going to have any problems, are we, Galen? Because you’ll always have my daughter-my only daughter-home on time, isn’t that right?” He nods, then swallows. She holds out his license. When he accepts it, she grabs his wrist, pulling him close. She glances at the garage door and back to him. “Tell me right now, Galen Forza. Are you or are you not dating my daughter?” Great. She still doesn’t believe Emma. If she won’t believe them anyway, why keep trying to convince her? If she thinks they’re dating, the time he intends to spend with Emma will seem normal. But if they spend time together and tell her they’re not dating, she’ll be nothing but suspicious. Possibly even spy on them-which is less than ideal. So, dating Emma is the only way to make sure she mates with Grom. Things just get better and better. “Yes,” he says. “We’re definitely dating.” She narrows her eyes. “Why would she tell me you’re not?” He shrugs. “Maybe she’s ashamed of me.” To his surprise, she chuckles. “I seriously doubt that, Galen Forza.” Her humor is short lived. She grabs a fistful of his T-shirt. “Are you sleeping with her?” Sleeping…Didn’t Rachel say sleeping and mating are the same thing? Dating and mating are similar. But sleeping and mating are the same exact same. He shakes his head. “No, ma’am.” She raises a no-nonsense brow. “Why not? What’s wrong with my daughter?” That is unexpected. He suspects this woman can sense a lie like Toraf can track Rayna. All she’s looking for is honesty, but the real truth would just get him arrested. I’m crazy about your daughter-I’m just saving her for my brother. So he seasons his answer with the frankness she seems to crave. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughter, Mrs. McIntosh. I said we’re not sleeping together. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” She inhales sharply and releases him. Clearing her throat, she smoothes out his wrinkled shirt with her hand, then pats his chest. “Good answer, Galen. Good answer.” Emma flings open the garage door and stops short. “Mom, what are you doing?” Mrs. McIntosh steps away and stalks to the counter. “Galen and I were just chitchatting. What took you so long?” Galen guesses her ability to sense a lie probably has something to do with her ability to tell one. Emma shoots him a quizzical look, but he returns a casual shrug. Her mother grabs a set of keys from a hook by the refrigerator and nudges her daughter out of the way, but not before snatching the paper out of her hand.

By giving objective body to intentions of the heart (himma, W6V1.111a1S), this creativity fulfils the first aspect of its function. This aspect comprises a large number of phenomena designated today as extrasensory perception, telepathy, visions of syn- chronicity, etc. Here Ibn Arabi contributes his personal testi- mony. In his autobiography ( Risiilat al-Quds), he tells how he was able to evoke the spirit of his shaikh, Yusuf al-Kumi, when- ever he needed his help, and how Yusuf regularly appeared to him, to help him and answer his questions. Sadruddin Qunyawi, the disciple whom Ibn Arabi instructed in Qunya, also speaks of his gift: "Our shaikh Ibn Arabi had the power to meet the spirit of any Prophet or Saint departed from this world, either by making him descend to the level of this world and contem- plating him in an apparitional body ( surat mithaliya ) similar to the sensible form of his person, or by making him appear in his dreams, or by unbinding himself from his material body to rise to meet the spirit.

The number they tabulated was food that has about five hundred sixty-seven calories per pound. The exactitude of the number is meaningless. But the practical takeaway is important: A person should mostly be eating unprocessed whole grains*7 and tubers, fruits and vegetables, and lowish-fat animal protein.” These foods lead us to the sweet spot where we find a healthy weight and keep meal satisfaction high, he said. “An average plate could be a quarter animal protein, a quarter whole grains or tubers, and half vegetables or fruit.

It happened a long time ago,” she said quietly. Wells nodded. The words I know formed in his brain but got lost somewhere on the way to his mouth. His eyes began to prickle and he turned away quickly. Eight billion. That’s how many people had died during the Cataclysm. It’d always seemed as abstract as any huge figure, like the age of Earth, or the number of stars in the galaxy. Yet now, he’d give anything to know that the people who’d eaten dinner together in this kitchen, with those plates, had somehow made it off the burning planet. “Wells,

MRS. BENTLEY’S CHORIZO BREAKFAST BURRITOS Servings: 4 INGREDIENTS FOR THE AVOCADO-TOMATO SALSA 1 large avocado, peeled, pitted, and diced ½ cup diced seeded tomatoes, from 1 to 2 tomatoes 1 small shallot, minced (about 2 tablespoons) 1 clove garlic, minced 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice, from 1 lime ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon ground cumin ¼ cup fresh chopped cilantro FOR THE BURRITOS 4 large eggs ¼ teaspoon smoked paprika ¼ teaspoon salt ½ lb spicy chorizo removed from casings 1⅓ cups (6 oz) shredded Monterey Jack cheese 4 (10-in) burrito-size flour tortillas Vegetable oil INSTRUCTIONS Make the Avocado-Tomato Salsa: Place all of the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix to combine. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs with the smoked paprika and salt. Set aside. Heat a large nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring frequently, until browned, 4 to 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the sausage from the pan to a plate, leaving the drippings in the pan. Reduce the heat to low. Add the eggs and scramble until just cooked

What about death?” she asked Gérard, who was doing justice to a plate of cheese. “Suppose death is even drearier than life?” “Who can say,” Gérard retorted, chewing despondently, “whether life is not a punishment we must endure for a crime we committed in another world? Perhaps this is hell and not what the Church foretells for us after death.” “It also foretells heaven.” “Then perhaps we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth.” “We can shorten the sentence if we want to.” “Suicide!” Gérard nodded enthusiastically. “And we shrink from it. Yet it is liberation! If life were fire, we’d know what to do. Jump out of it! The irony—

What about death?” she asked Gérard, who was doing justice to a plate of cheese. “Suppose death is even drearier than life?” “Who can say,” Gérard retorted, chewing despondently, “whether life is not a punishment we must endure for a crime we committed in another world? Perhaps this is hell and not what the Church foretells for us after death.” “It also foretells heaven.” “Then perhaps we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth.” “We can shorten the sentence if we want to.” “Suicide!” Gérard nodded enthusiastically. “And we shrink from it. Yet it is liberation! If life were fire, we’d know what to do. Jump out of it! The irony—

It is especially true of the seven decades that have elapsed since the end of World War Two. During this period humankind has for the first time faced the possibility of complete self-annihilation and has experienced a fair number of actual wars and genocides. Yet these decades were also the most peaceful era in human history – and by a wide margin. This is surprising because these very same decades experienced more economic, social and political change than any previous era. The tectonic plates of history are moving at a frantic pace, but the volcanoes are mostly silent. The new elastic order seems to be able to contain and even initiate radical structural changes without collapsing into violent conflict.3

It's only second period, and the whole school knows Emma broke up with him. So far, he's collected eight phone numbers, one kiss on the cheek, and one pinch to the back of his jeans. His attempts to talk to Emma between classes are thwarted by a hurricane of teenage females whose main goal seems to be keeping him and his ex-girlfriend separated. When the third period bell rings, Emma has already chosen a seat where she'll be barricaded from him by other students. Throughout class, she pays attention as if the teacher were giving instructions on how to survive a life-threatening catastrophe in the next twenty-four hours. About midway through class, he receives a text from a number he doesn't recognize. If you let me, I can do things to u to make u forget her. As soon as he clears it, another one pops up from a different number. Hit me back if u want to chat. I'll treat u better than E. How did they get my number? Tucking his phone back into his pocket, he hovers over his notebook protectively, as if it's the only thing left that hasn't been invaded. Then he notices the foreign handwriting scribbled on it by a girl named Shena who encircled her name and phone number with a heart. Not throwing it across the room takes almost as much effort as not kissing Emma. At lunch, Emma once again blocks his access to her by sitting between people at a full picnic table outside. He chooses the table directly across from her, but she seems oblivious, absently soaking up the grease from the pizza on her plate until she's got at least fifteen orange napkins in front of her. She won't acknowledge that he's staring at her, waiting to wave her over as soon as she looks up. Ignoring the text message explosion in his vibrating pocket, he opens the contain of tuna fish Rachel packed for him. Forking it violently, he heaves a mound into his mouth, chewing without savoring it. Mark with the Teeth is telling Emma something she thinks is funny, because she covers her mouth with a napkin and giggles. Galen almost launches from his bench when Mark brushes a strand of hair from her face. Now he knows what Rachel meant when she told him to mark his territory early on. But what can he do if his territory is unmarking herself? News of their breakup has spread like an oil spill, and it seems as though Emma is making a huge effort to help it along. With his thumb and index finger, Galen snaps his plastic fork in half as Emma gently wipes Mark's mouth with her napkin. He rolls his eyes as Mark "accidentally" gets another splotch of JELL-O on the corner of his lips. Emma wipes that clean too, smiling like she's tending to a child. It doesn't help that Galen's table is filling up with more of his admirers-touching him, giggling at him, smiling at him for no reason, and distracting him from his fantasy of breaking Mark's pretty jaw. But that would only give Emma a genuine reason to assist the idiot in managing his JELL-O.

In summer, most ramen restaurants in Tokyo serve hiyashi chūka, a cold ramen noodle salad topped with strips of ham, cucumber, and omelet; a tart sesame- or soy-based sauce; and sometimes other vegetables, like a tomato wedge or sheets of wakame seaweed. The vegetables are arranged in piles of parallel shreds radiating from the center to the edge of the plate like bicycle spokes, and you toss everything together before eating. It's bracing, ice-cold, addictive- summer food from the days before air conditioning. In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyōza, a young lifestyle reporter wants to write an article about hiyashi chūka. "I'm not interested in something like hiyashi chūka," says my alter ego Yamaoka. It's a fake Chinese dish made with cheap industrial ingredients, he explains. Later, however, Yamaoka relents. "Cold noodles, cold soup, and cold toppings," he muses. "The idea of trying to make a good dish out of them is a valid one." Good point, jerk. He mills organic wheat into flour and hires a Chinese chef to make the noodles. He buys a farmyard chicken from an old woman to make the stock and seasons it with the finest Japanese vinegar, soy sauce, and sake. Yamaoka's mean old dad Kaibara Yūzan inevitably gets involved and makes an even better hiyashi chūka by substituting the finest Chinese vinegar, soy sauce, and rice wine. When I first read this, I enjoyed trying to follow the heated argument over this dish I'd never even heard of. Yamaoka and Kaibara are in total agreement that hiyashi chūka needs to be made with quality ingredients, but they disagree about what kind of dish it is: Chinese, Japanese, or somewhere in between? Unlike American food, Japanese cuisine has boundary issues.

Back in the twentieth century, American girls had used baseball terminology. “First base” referred to embracing and kissing; “second base” referred to groping and fondling and deep, or “French,” kissing, commonly known as “heavy petting”; “third base” referred to fellatio, usually known in polite conversation by the ambiguous term “oral sex”; and “home plate” meant conception-mode intercourse, known familiarly as “going all the way.” In the year 2000, in the era of hooking up, “first base” meant deep kissing (“tonsil hockey”), groping, and fondling; “second base” meant oral sex; “third base” meant going all the way; and “home plate” meant learning each other’s names. Getting to home plate was relatively rare, however. The typical Filofax entry in the year 2000 by a girl who had hooked up the night before would be: “Boy with black Wu-Tang T-shirt and cargo pants: O, A, 6.” Or “Stupid cock diesel”—slang for a boy who was muscular from lifting weights—“who kept saying, ‘This is a cool deal’: TTC, 3.” The letters referred to the sexual acts performed (e.g., TTC for “that thing with the cup”), and the Arabic number indicated the degree of satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. In the year 2000, girls used “score” as an active verb indicating sexual conquest, as in: “The whole thing was like very sketchy, but I scored that diesel who said he was gonna go home and caff up [drink coffee in order to stay awake and study] for the psych test.” In the twentieth century, only boys had used “score” in that fashion, as in: “I finally scored with Susan last night.” That girls were using such a locution points up one of the ironies of the relations between the sexes in the year 2000. The continuing vogue of feminism had made sexual life easier, even insouciant, for men. Women had been persuaded that they should be just as active as men when it came to sexual advances. Men were only too happy to accede to the new order, since it absolved them of all sense of responsibility

It baffled me that so many students disliked math and struggled with it. I figured they had either a parent who didn’t like math and told them it was hard or a teacher who didn’t have the passion or the patience to make math relevant to their lives. At home I never let my girls tell me math or any other subject was difficult. From the time they were very young, I always tried to incorporate learning, whether it was math, spelling, or creative activities, such as sewing and working puzzles, into their lives. I tried to show them how what they were learning in school connected to our lives outside school. Of course, I had them counting everything—the stars in the sky, the steps from the bottom to the top of the Carson mansion, or the people in church on any given Sunday. On road trips I’d have them add the numbers on the license plates of cars traveling in front of us. Or I’d have them cover their eyes and spell the state. If they were helping in the kitchen, I might write out a recipe, give it to them, and ask them to figure out how much of each ingredient we would need if I wanted to make half of that batch of cookies or biscuits.

I used to believe, bless my naive little heart, that I had something to offer the robbed dead. Not revenge—there’s no revenge in the world that could return the tiniest fraction of what they’ve lost—and not justice, whatever that means, but the one thing left to give them: the truth. I was good at it. I had one, at least, of the things that make a great detective: the instinct for truth, the inner magnet whose pull tells you beyond any doubt what’s dross, what’s alloy and what’s the pure, uncut metal. I dug out the nuggets without caring when they cut my fingers and brought them in my cupped hands to lay on graves, until I found out—Operation Vestal again—how slippery they were, how easily they crumbled, how deep they sliced and, in the end, how very little they were worth. In Domestic Violence, if you can get one bruised girl to press charges or go to a shelter, then there’s at least one night when her boyfriend is not going to hit her. Safety is a small debased currency, copper-plated pennies to the gold I had been chasing in Murder, but what value it has it holds. I had learned, by that time, not to take that lightly. A few safe hours and a sheet of phone numbers to call: I had never been able to offer a single murder victim that much.

The music still came from the house. It was past midnight. What kind of old lady plays rock music after midnight? One who still plays old vinyl records. One who keeps a weird tombstone in her wooded backyard. One who has strange visitors in a black car with a license plate number engraved on that same weird tombstone. One who told a teenage boy that his dead father was still alive. “What’s this?” Ema asked. I snapped back to the present. “What?” “Behind here.” She was pointing to the back of the tombstone. “There’s something carved into the back.” I walked over slowly, but I knew. I just knew. And when I reached the back of the tombstone and shined the light on it, I was barely surprised. A butterfly with animal eyes on its wings. Ema gasped. The music in the house stopped. Just like that. Like someone had flicked the off switch the moment my eyes found that dang symbol. Ema looked up at my face and saw something troubling. “Mickey?” Nope, there was no surprise. Not anymore. There was rage now. I wanted answers. I was going to get them, no matter what. I wasn’t going to wait for Mr. Shaved Head with the British accent to contact me. I wasn’t going to wait for Bat Lady to fly down and leave me another cryptic clue. Heck, I wasn’t even going to wait until tomorrow. I was going to find out now. “Mickey?

For the briefest of seconds, it was like he looked back into the stands, like maybe he spotted me, shaking my rattle, giving him all the encouragement I could. I could have sworn I saw a corner of his mouth curl up. Then he did the whole Velcro batting glove thing and stepped up to the plate. The pitch came. He swung. Crack! He hit it! He hit it! I jumped up and started shouting. I had a second to see the stunned look on his face, like maybe he’d never hit the ball before, but that couldn’t be… And then I realized what it was. As he started running, he turned his head, his gaze following the ball… The ball that went out of the ballpark! Right over the Backyard Mania billboard! Home run! My boyfriend had hit a home run! I jumped around, pointing at the number on my jersey, hugging Bird, hugging Tiffany, watching Jason slapping his coach’s hand as he rounded third. I watched him cross home plate, wearing the biggest grin on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?” Bird said. “That we’re ahead two to nothing?” “It means he’ll insist you sit in this exact spot for every game. He’ll think this is the good luck spot.” “No way.” “Either that, or he’ll ask you not to wash your underwear.” “Ew! That’s so not happening. Maybe I can convince him it was wearing the jersey.” Yeah, I thought. That’s the ticket.

I was here. I was fine. It was a beautiful day, and I was around people who gave me more love and happiness in a month than I’d had for seventeen years. I would never have to see those jerks again. And today was going to be a good day, damn it. So I got it together and finally looked back down at my best friend to ask, “Did I tell you I stole a bottle of Visine once because I wanted to put a few drops into my dad’s coffee, but I always chickened out?” Lenny snickered. “No. Psycho. Did I tell you that one time I asked Santa to bring my mom back?” I made a face. “That’s sad, Lenny.” I blinked. “I pretty much did the same thing.” “Uh-huh.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Did I ever tell you that I wanted to have like ten kids when I was younger?” The laugh that came out of her wasn’t as strong as it usually was, but I was glad she let it out anyway. It sounded just like her, loud and direct and so full of happiness it was literally infectious. “Ten? Jesus, why?” I wrinkled my nose at her. “It sounded like a good number.” The scoff that came out of her right then was a little louder. “You’re fucking nuts, Luna. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-ten?” “That’s what ten means.” I grinned at her. “I said that was back when I was younger, not any time recently. I can’t afford ten kids.” “Still. How about… none?” I glanced down the table again when I heard Thea’s sharp laugh. “Okay, Only Child.” I laughed. “I think four’s a good number now.” My friend beside me groaned before reaching forward to grab a chip, dipping it into the tiny bowl of guacamole beside it. “Look, Grandpa Gus was basically my brother, my dad, my uncle, and my grandpa all rolled into one, and I had a bunch of kids to play with,” she claimed. “Whatever makes you happy, but I think I’m fine with zero kids in my future.” I reached over and grabbed one of the pieces of fajita from her plate and plopped it into my mouth. “Watch, you’ll end up with two,” I told her, covering my mouth while I chewed the meat. “You’ve already got that ‘mom’ vibe going on better than anyone I know.” That had her rolling her eyes, but she didn’t argue that she didn’t, because we both knew it was true. She was a twenty-seven-year-old who dealt with full-grown man babies daily. She had it down. I was friends with my coworkers. Lenny was a babysitter for the ones she was surrounded with regularly. “Like you’re one to talk, bish,” she threw out in a grumpy voice that said she knew she couldn’t deny it. She had a point there. She picked up a piece of fajita and tossed it into her mouth before mumbling, “For the record, you should probably get started on lucky number four soon. You aren’t getting any younger.” I rolled my eyes, still chewing. “Bish.” “Bish.

One early terracotta statuette from Catal Huyuk in Anatolia depicts an enthroned female in the act of giving birth, supported by two cat-like animals that form her seat (Plate 1). This figure has been identified as a 'birth goddess' and it is this type of early image that has led a number of feminist scholars to posit a 'reign of the goddess' in ancient Near Eastern prehistory. Maria Gimbutas, for whom such images are proof of a perfect matriarchal society in 'Old Europe' , presents an ideal vision in which a socially egalitarian matriarchal culture was overthrown by a destructive patriarchy (Gimbutas 1991). Gerda Lerner has argued for a similar situation in the ancient Near East; however, she does not discuss nude figurines at any length (Lerner 1986a: 147). More recently, critiques of the matriarchal model of prehistory have pointed out the flaws in this methodology (e.g. Conkey and Tringham 1995; Meskell 1995; Goodison and Morris 1998). In all these critiques the identification of such figures as goddesses is rejected as a modern myth. There is no archaeological evidence that these ancient communities were in fact matriarchal, nor is there any evidence that female deities were worshipped exclusively. Male gods may have worshipped simultaneously with the 'mother goddesses' if such images are indeed representations of deities. Nor do such female figures glorify or show admiration for the female body; rather they essentialise it, reducing it to nothing more nor less than a reproductive vessel. The reduction of the head and the diminution of the extremities seem to stress the female form as potentially reproductive, but to what extent this condition was seen as sexual, erotic or matriarchal is unclear. ....Despite the correct rejection of the 'Mother Goddess' and utopian matriarchy myths by recent scholarship, we should not loose track of the overwhelming evidence that the image of female nudity was indeed one of power in ancient Mesopotamia. The goddess Ishtar/Inanna was but one of several goddesses whose erotic allure was represented as a powerful attribute in the literature of the ancient Near East. In contact to the naked male body which was the focus of a variety of meanings in the visual arts, female nudity was always associated with sexuality, and in particular with powerful sexual attraction, Akkadian *kuzbu*. This sexuality was not limited to Ishtar and her cult. As a literary topos, sensuousness is a defining quality for both mortal women and goddesses. In representational art, the nude woman is portrayed in a provocative pose, as the essence of the feminine. For femininity, sexual allure, *kuzbu*, the ideal of the feminine, was thus expressed as nudity in both visual and verbal imagery. While several iconographic types of unclothed females appear in Mesopotamian representations of the historical period - nursing mothers, women in acts of sexual intercourse, entertainers such as dancers and musicians, and isolated frontally represented nudes with or without other attributes - and while these nude female images may have different iconographic functions, the ideal of femininity and female sexuality portrayed in them is similar. -Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia

We debated this point until the skull was clear of the bulk of its flesh. As I began sketching again, he asked me, “What do you think? Taxonomically.” “It’s difficult,” I admitted. By then my hand was capable of going about its work without demanding all of my attention; I could ponder issues of classification at the same time. “The dentition bears some similarities to those reported or observed in other breeds, at least in number and disposition of teeth … though of course baleen plates are not a usual feature. The vertebrae certainly pose a problem. This creature has quite a lot of them, and we do not usually consider animals to be close cousins who differ so greatly in such a fundamental characteristic.” Tom nodded, wiping his hands clean—or at least less filthy—with a cloth. “Not to mention the utter lack of hind limbs. I saw nothing in the dissection, not even anything vestigial. The closest thing it has to forelimbs are some rather inadequate fins.” “And yet there are similarities. The generally reptilian appearance, and more significantly, the degradation of the bones.” I thought of the six criteria customarily used to distinguish “true dragons” from draconic creatures: quadripedalism, flight-capable wings, a ruff or fan behind the skull, bones frangible after death, oviparity, and extraordinary breath. We might, if we were very generous, count the serpent’s supraorbital tendrils (presuming it had once possessed them) as the ruff, and Tom had just confirmed that the creatures laid eggs. Together with the bones—which decayed more slowly than those of terrestrial dragons, but did become frangible quite rapidly—that made three of six. But was there any significance to the distinction between “true dragons” and their mere cousins? What if there was only one characteristic that mattered?

HISTORICAL NOTE There are no nuclear power stations in Belarus. Of the functioning stations in the territory of the former USSR, the ones closest to Belarus are of the old Soviet-designed RBMK type. To the north, the Ignalinsk station, to the east, the Smolensk station, and to the south, Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The catastrophe at Chernobyl became the largest technological disaster of the twentieth century. For tiny Belarus (population: 10 million), it was a national disaster. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages along with their inhabitants. As a result of Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been forever buried underground. During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As a result of the accident, 50 million Ci of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of these descended on Belarus; fully 23% of its territory is contaminated by cesium-137 radionuclides with a density of over 1 Ci/km2. Ukraine on the other hand has 4.8% of its territory contaminated, and Russia, 0.5%. The area of arable land with a density of more than 1 Ci/km2 is over 18 million hectares; 2.4 thousand hectares have been taken out of the agricultural economy. Belarus is a land of forests. But 26% of all forests and a large part of all marshes near the rivers Pripyat, Dniepr, and Sozh are considered part of the radioactive zone. As a result of the perpetual presence of small doses of radiation, the number of people with cancer, mental retardation, neurological disorders, and genetic mutations increases with each year. —“Chernobyl.” Belaruskaya entsiklopedia On April 29, 1986, instruments recorded high levels of radiation in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Romania. On April 30, in Switzerland and northern Italy. On May 1 and 2, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and northern Greece. On May 3, in Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey. . . . Gaseous airborne particles traveled around the globe: on May 2 they were registered in Japan, on May 5 in India, on May 5 and 6 in the U.S. and Canada. It took less than a week for Chernobyl to become a problem for the entire world. —“The Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in Belarus.” Minsk, Sakharov International College on Radioecology The fourth reactor, now known as the Cover, still holds about twenty tons of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it. The sarcophagus was well made, uniquely constructed, and the design engineers from St. Petersburg should probably be proud. But it was constructed in absentia, the plates were put together with the aid of robots and helicopters, and as a result there are fissures. According to some figures, there are now over 200 square meters of spaces and cracks, and radioactive particles continue to escape through them . . . Might the sarcophagus collapse? No one can answer that question, since it’s still impossible to reach many of the connections and constructions in order to see if they’re sturdy. But everyone knows that if the Cover were to collapse, the consequences would be even more dire than they were in 1986. —Ogonyok magazine, No. 17, April 1996

The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire. ...Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700")... It was joined by a half-suit, a North Italian Morion of "Spanish" form, circa 1570-80, and a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads... There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. ... Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mache and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough." said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone - a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another. In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table - "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.)...

do you think Jesus would do if he came back to earth tonight in Bremerton?” C asked, as he spooned some rice onto his plate. “I don’t know,” I said, savoring a mouthful of Mongolian beef. “Would he come in a white robe and sandals, or the dress of this time?” C pressed on. I shrugged my shoulders, forking in the fried rice. “Would he be white, black, Asian, or maybe look like Saddam Hussein instead of Kevin Costner or Tom Cruise? What if he didn’t fit our image of him? What if he was bald? Or, for God’s sake, what if he was gay? “He wouldn’t have any cash, no MasterCard, Visa, Discover Card, or portfolio of any kind. If he went to a bank and said, ‘Hello. I’m Jesus, the son of God. I need some of those green things that say “In God We Trust” on them to buy some food and get a place to stay,’ the bank manager would say, ‘I’m sorry, but I looked in my computer and without a social security number, local address, and credit history, I can’t do anything for you. Maybe if you show me a miracle or two, I might lend you fifty dollars.’ “Where would he stay? The state park charges sixteen dollars a night. Could he go to a church and ask, ‘May I stay here? I am Jesus’? Would they believe him?” As I took a sip of my drink, I wondered just who this character was sitting across from me. Was he some angel sent to save me? Or was he, as the Rolling Stones warned in their song, Satan himself here to claim me for some sin of this life or a past life of which I had no recollection? Or was he an alien? Or was he Jesus, the Christ himself, just “messing” with me? Was I in the presence of a prophet, or just some hopped-up druggie? “‘Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’ That’s what Jesus said. What doors would be opened to him?” he asked. “The Salvation Army—Sally’s?” I guessed. “That’s about all,” C said. “Unless he saw Tony Robbins’ TV formula to become a millionaire and started selling miracles to the rich at twenty-thousand dollars a pop. He could go on Regis, Oprah, maybe get an interview with Bill Moyers, or go on Nightline. Or joust with the nonbelievers on Jerry Springer! Think of the book deals! He

You need to make sure you always have a reserve of willpower available for the on-the-fly decision making and controlling your reactions. If you run your willpower tank too low, you’ll end up making poor choices or exploding at people. The following are some ways of making more willpower available to you: --Reduce the number of tasks you attempt to get done each day to a very small number. Always identify what your most important task is, and make sure you get that single task done. You can group together your trivial tasks, like replying to emails or paying bills online, and count those as just one item. --Refresh your available willpower by doing tasks slowly. My friend Toni Bernhard, author of How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow, recommends doing a task 25% slower than your usual speed. I’m not saying you need to do this all the time, just when you feel scattered or overwhelmed. Slowing down in this way is considered a form of mindfulness practice. --Another way to refresh your willpower is by taking some slow breaths or doing any of the mindfulness practices from Chapter 5. Think of using mindfulness as running a cleanup on background processes that haven’t shut down correctly. By using mindfulness to do a cognitive cleanup, you’re not leaking mental energy to background worries and rumination. --Reduce decision making. For many people, especially those in management positions or raising kids, life involves constant decision making. Decision making leeches willpower. Find whatever ways you can to reduce decision making without it feeling like a sacrifice. Set up routines (like which meals you cook on particular nights of the week) that prevent you from needing to remake the same decisions over and over. Alternatively, outsource decision making to someone else whenever possible. Let other people make decisions to take them off your plate. --Reduce excess sensory stimulation. For example, close the door or put on some dorky giant headphones to block out noise. This will mean your mental processing power isn’t getting used up by having to filter out excess stimulation. This tip is especially important if you are a highly sensitive person.

Argentine national football player from FC Barcelona. Positions are attacks. He is the greatest player in the history of the club, as well as the greatest player in the history of the club, as well as the greatest player in history, most of whom are Pele and Diego Maradona [9] Is one of the best players in football history. 저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 신용과 신뢰의 거래로 많은VIP고객님들 모시고 싶은것이 저희쪽 경영 목표입니다 믿음과 신뢰의 거래로 신용성있는 비즈니스 진행하고있습니다 비즈니스는 첫째로 신용,신뢰 입니다 믿고 주문하시는것만큼 저희는 확실한제품으로 모시겠습니다 제품구입후 제품이 손상되거나 혹은 효과못보셨을시 저희가 1차재배송 2차 100%환불까지 해드리고있습니다 후회없는 선택 자신감있는 제품으로 언제나 모시겠습니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 ◀경영항목▶ 수면제,여성최음제,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,드래곤,99정,바오메이,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,꽃물,남성조루제,네노마정 등많은제품 판매중입니다 2. Childhood [edit] He was born on June 24, 1987 in Rosario, Argentina [10] [11]. His great-grandfather Angelo Messi moved to Argentina as an Italian, and his family became an Argentinean. His father, Jorge Orashio Messi, was a steel worker, and his mother, Celia Maria Quatini, was a part-time housekeeper. Since he was also coach of the local club, Gland Dolley, he became close to football naturally since he was a child, and he started playing soccer at Glendale's club when he was four years old. In 1995, he joined Newsweek's Old Boys Youth team at age six, following Rosario, and soon became a prospect. However, at the age of 11, she is diagnosed with GHD and experiences trials. It took $ 90 to $ 100 a month to cure it, and it was a big deal for his parents to make a living from manual labor. His team, New Wells Old Boys, was also reluctant to spend this amount. For a time, even though the parents owed their debts, they tried to cure the disorder and helped him become a football player, but it could not be forever. [12] In that situation, the Savior appeared. In July 2000, a scouting proposal came from FC Barcelona, ​​where he saw his talent. He was also invited to play in the Argentinian club CA River Plate. The River Plate coach who reported the test reported the team to the club as a "must-have" player, and the reporter who watched the test together was sure to be talented enough to call him "the new Maradona." However, River Plate did not give a definite answer because of the need to convince New Wells Old Boys to recruit him, and the fact that the cost of the treatment was fixed in addition to lodging. Eventually Messi and his father crossed to Barcelona in response to a scouting offer from Barcelona. After a number of negotiations between the Barcelona side and Messi's father, the proposal was inconceivable to pay for Meshi's treatment.

Hyphen This word comes from two Greek words together meaning ‘under one’, which gets nobody anywhere and merely prompts the reflection that argument by etymology only serves the purpose of intimidating ignorant antagonists. On, then. This is one more case in which matters have not improved since Fowler’s day, since he wrote in 1926: The chaos prevailing among writers or printers or both regarding the use of hyphens is discreditable to English education … The wrong use or wrong non-use of hyphens makes the words, if strictly interpreted, mean something different from what the writers intended. It is no adequate answer to such criticisms to say that actual misunderstanding is unlikely; to have to depend on one’s employer’s readiness to take the will for the deed is surely a humiliation that no decent craftsman should be willing to put up with. And so say all of us who may be reading this book. The references there to ‘printers’ needs updating to something like ‘editors’, meaning those who declare copy fit to print. Such people now often get it wrong by preserving in midcolumn a hyphen originally put at the end of a line to signal a word-break: inter-fere, say, is acceptable split between lines but not as part of a single line. This mistake is comparatively rare and seldom causes confusion; even so, time spent wondering whether an exactor may not be an ex-actor is time avoidably wasted. The hyphen is properly and necessarily used to join the halves of a two-word adjectival phrase, as in fair-haired children, last-ditch resistance, falling-down drunk, over-familiar reference. Breaches of this rule are rare and not troublesome. Hyphens are also required when a phrase of more than two words is used adjectivally, as in middle-of-the-road policy, too-good-to-be-true story, no-holds-barred contest. No hard-and-fast rule can be devised that lays down when a two-word phrase is to be hyphenated and when the two words are to be run into one, though there will be a rough consensus that, for example, book-plate and bookseller are each properly set out and that bookplate and book-seller might seem respectively new-fangled and fussy. A hyphen is not required when a normal adverb (i.e. one ending in -ly) plus an adjective or other modifier are used in an adjectival role, as in Jack’s equally detestable brother, a beautifully kept garden, her abnormally sensitive hearing. A hyphen is required, however, when the adverb lacks a final -ly, like well, ill, seldom, altogether or one of those words like tight and slow that double as adjectives. To avoid ambiguity here we must write a well-kept garden, an ill-considered objection, a tight-fisted policy. The commonest fault in the use of the hyphen, and the hardest to eradicate, is found when an adjectival phrase is used predicatively. So a gent may write of a hard-to-conquer mountain peak but not of a mountain peak that remains hard-to-conquer, an often-proposed solution but not of one that is often-proposed. For some reason this fault is especially common when numbers, including fractions, are concerned, and we read every other day of criminals being imprisoned for two-and-a-half years, a woman becoming a mother-of-three and even of some unfortunate being stabbed six-times. And the Tories have been in power for a decade-and-a-half. Finally, there seems no end to the list of common phrases that some berk will bung a superfluous hyphen into the middle of: artificial-leg, daily-help, false-teeth, taxi-firm, martial-law, rainy-day, airport-lounge, first-wicket, piano-concerto, lung-cancer, cavalry-regiment, overseas-service. I hope I need not add that of course one none the less writes of a false-teeth problem, a first-wicket stand, etc. The only guide is: omit the hyphen whenever possible, so avoid not only mechanically propelled vehicle users (a beauty from MEU) but also a man eating tiger. And no one is right and no-one is wrong.

anti-abortion websites that have also published information about her and her family, such as their names and license plate numbers.

each other. No words were needed, they both felt the same. What a load of bollocks. They’d known each other two minutes. How could they be in love? Joan was just going over the top. The four glasses clinked together. “Tuck in guys. This is one of my better dishes. My mam helped with it too so I know it’s going to be top notch.” Trevor rubbed his hands together and grabbed his fork. There were no flies on him he was tucking in. Food was his comfort and now Joan was off the market he needed it more than ever. Mabel picked at the food on her plate, nibbling, watching everyone else around her. Patrick sat next to Joan and every chance he got he kissed her, held her hand. He knew he was on show here tonight and he was making sure he ticked all the boxes. * Cath and Katrina were chatting in the yard. The winds were blowing with force. They both looked freezing as they marched around the concrete yard. There were high steel fences with barbed wire on the top of it. There was no way out. Katrina needed a friendly ear, some advice, someone to ease her heavy heart. Once she’d filled Cath in on everything that had happened they both sat on a bench not far from the fence.  The screws watched them with caution and never took their eyes from them. They were high-risk prisoners. Cath let out a laboured breath and bit down hard on her bottom lip. “For crying out loud didn’t I tell you to keep away from that prick. Look what’s happened now. You’ve fucking blown it. You were getting out of this shit-hole in a few more months and you’ve gone and fucked it all. Where is your head at woman, you should of steered well clear of any trouble?” Katrina snivelled, her eyes flooding with tears. “I know, I just wanted to hurt him like he’s hurt me. I loved that man with all my heart and he just fucked off and left me. I’ve lost it all Cath. My kids, my home, everything I ever loved. How can I tell my kids I’m not coming home? It will break their hearts. I’ve made promises to them. A better life, no more trouble. Their mother home for good.” “They’ve not charged you yet. Wait until it’s set in stone and then you know what you’re dealing with.” Cath held her in her arms and squeezed her tight. She knew as much as the other person that she wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon. The crime she’d committed would be all over the news soon and the public would know who she was. She’d seen it so many times before. Once an offender was named, the nation would be all over it. No doubt Norman would be made out to be the hero too. There would be no story about the way he treated this woman, no mention of all the women he’d abused in the past. Maybe someone should have grassed him up. Katrina had warned him if he she got her collar felt there would be repercussions. Why hadn’t she put his name in the picture yet? Now was the time to put her cards on the table and look after number one. Maybe if she turned Queen’s evidence she could get a deal with the prosecution. A lesser sentence, a few years knocked off. Cath was aware of this but to be a Judas was another matter. Katrina would have to

UV/IR vision: use AI to make sense of light invisible to humans • Perfect sound memory: every sound you hear is catalogued forever and searchable with a query • Sound triangulation: when you hear a boom or a pop, your visor or glasses will light up and tell you exactly where it is happening • Perfect recall of imagery: when you take a passing glance at a license plate, its numbers and letters will be permanently captured and searchable • Prompting: AI is always in your head suggesting ideas and integrated into a device like a Fitbit to augment physical goals • “God’s Eye” view: satellite imagery and completely autonomous pocket drones that can feed images directly to your headset, effectively giving you a pair of disembodied eyes in motion • LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensing: remote-sensing methods that can use light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges • Ability to predict exact motion and speed of any object nearby • Ability to see and detect radio waves: pull a radio wave that you perceive out of the ether with the gesture of a swipe and then decode it and catalog it permanently • X-ray vision: Look inside a building through the eyes of your autonomous robotic appendage to see if there is a leak or other technical malfunction

The last thing I want to give to the Great Master is a wooden plate inscribed with the word million . This word has been created all these years of my service with the Great Khan. Recounting to the Great Khan about his Great Empire I lacked a word which would at the same time represent a number, and yet so big to stand for the countless values of his Great Empire.

The classic recipes are goat, lamb, vegetable, and/or chicken biriyani. But when I was in New Orleans, at this restaurant, they served Louisiana barbecue shrimp, which was simply delicious. When I asked the waiter what was in the shrimp sauce, he rattled off a number of spices (rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, et cetera) and so, I went with memory. I marinated the raw prawns in mashed garlic, rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, paprika, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, and onion powder, along with a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I decided to cook the rice in the pressure cooker, added crushed cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon, and a bay leaf for a minute or so. Then I added some onions and fried until the onions became golden brown. Then went in the rice, and enough water, and I closed the pressure cooker. The rice was ready in ten minutes. In a separate pan, I sautéed the marinated prawns in butter, along with extra chopped garlic and the marinade, and added them to the cooked rice. I garnished it with chopped fresh coriander and voilà, Cajun prawn biriyani. I served it with some regular cucumber raita. Mama had been so sure that Daddy would hate prawns but I saw him clean out each one on his plate and even get a second helping. Sometimes we forget why we don't like some things and then when we try them again, we realize that we had been wrong.

At the peripheral end of these parallel circuits, the motor nerve axon attaches to a muscle cell by a motor end plate, creating a neuromuscular synapse. Each muscle cell receives one, and only one, end plate. Each motor axon, on the other hand, has a number of branches and attaches end plates to several different muscle cells in the same area. So each muscle cell receives commands from one nerve cell only, while each nerve cell stimulates several muscle cells. A single motor neuron with its group of attached muscle cells is called a motor unit.

We planned an Utsunomiya gyōza crawl, but when we emerged from the train station into 92-degree weather, we abandoned the idea and just went to the place with (Iris counted) seventy-four types of gyōza, including yogurt, coffee, tea, chocolate, liver, mochi, squid-octopus, sausage, curry, and whale. You can order a whole plate of your favorite variety or a sampler platter; we ordered a sampler (no whale) with a small order of regular pork gyōza as insurance. The dumplings didn't come with labels, so we were left to guess at their identities. The salted fish roe and curry were easy to pick out, as was the sausage, which had a tiny hot dog inside. After polishing off the sampler, we asked for a plate of yuba gyōza, filled with the tofu skin Iris and I like to make at home. I went spelunking inside the dumplings and found that the pork filling was wrapped in yuba; the snap of fresh yuba was missing, but the dumplings were excellent. I regret missing out on the chocolate gyōza. I don't regret missing out on the whale, yogurt, or Doritos Locos gyōza.

Of course, I myself had ordered the barbecue and links and ribs from the guys at Pink Pig- ten pounds of just the smoky brisket itself- and, of course, nothing would do but for Mama to serve them on her silver-plated platters somebody had given her when she and Daddy got married. But every single other dish on that huge table was Mama's handiwork. There were the collards she'd mentioned, but also her red cabbage coleslaw, and barbecued pintos, and big bowls of okra and tomatoes, and corn pudding, and potato salad made with potatoes boiled in water spiced with Texas Pete, and baskets of jalapeño cornbread, and not only two pans of her rich banana pudding but also two sticky cherry cobblers. Must have been twenty different items on that buffet- enough to feed double the number of guests.

arranging for the delivery, she browsed around—twice telling the overbearing clerk she didn’t have any questions. Well, she did, but the salesman couldn’t tell her where Logan had rushed off to. Fists clenched at his sides and chest heaving, Logan stood at the end of an alley as the black Ford F-250 with dark tinted windows sped away. Damn it to hell. If he’d been just a few seconds faster, he would’ve had the license plate number.

Pike made the Corolla for an early ’90s model. It was dark brown in color with mismatched wheels and rusty acne on the trunk. Pike copied the plate number. He stayed between three and four cars behind, only tightening up when the Corolla beat him through an intersection and traffic began to slow.

I’ll do the dishes.” He replied, “Later.” Sin number one. Everyone knew you cleaned the kitchen right away. If you didn’t, the gunk would solidify on the plates and skillets and it would take ages to soak it away

Home run! My boyfriend had hit a home run! I jumped around, pointing at the number on my jersey, hugging Bird, hugging Tiffany, watching Jason slapping his coach’s hand as he rounded third. I watched him cross home plate, wearing the biggest grin on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?” Bird said. “That we’re ahead two to nothing?” “It means he’ll insist you sit in this exact spot for every game. He’ll think this is the good luck spot.” “No way.” “Either that, or he’ll ask you not to wash your underwear.” “Ew! That’s so not happening. Maybe I can convince him it was wearing the jersey.” Yeah, I thought. That’s the ticket.

chuckled as I swung my nasty locker open. The number on the silver plate at the top was crusted over and hanging by a single nail, hammered directly above the number 108.

Yes, Pilcher was a money-man. They were a type. It was easy to spot them. You could always tell one by that cold fire in his eyes. It was not the hot fire of the man who would never interrupt a dream to calculate the risk, but the cold fire of the man whose mind was geared to the rules of the money game. It was a game that was played with numbers on pieces of paper … common into preferred, preferred into debentures, debentures into dollars, dollars into long-term capital gains. It was the net dollars after tax that were important. They were the numbers on the scoreboard, the runs that crossed the plate, the touchdowns, the goals. Net dollars were the score markers of the money-man’s game. Nothing else mattered. A factory wasn’t a living, breathing organism. It was only a dollar sign and a row of numbers after the Plant & Equipment item on the balance sheet. Their guts didn’t tighten when they heard a big Number Nine bandsaw sink its whining teeth into hard maple. Their nostrils didn’t widen to the rich musk of walnut or the sharply pungent blast from the finishing room. When they saw a production line they looked with blind eyes, not feeling the counterpoint beat of their hearts or the pulsing flow of hot blood or the trigger-set tenseness of lungs that were poised to miss a breath with every lost beat on the line

In 2013, one of the Cardinals’ rival scouting departments commissioned a study that examined draft outcomes more deeply still. The study, which extended back to 1990, found that if a club’s draft produces nine players who appear in the majors for even a single game, it ranks in the 95th percentile. The 95th percentile for number of everyday players—defined as those who go on to accumulate 1,500 big league plate appearances or batters faced—is four. The 95th percentile for number of firmly above-average players—that is, those who produce a cumulative Wins Above Replacement above 6.0 in their six cost-controlled, pre–free agency seasons—is three.

I noticed, before we left, a metal plate attached to the fence around the tower. On it was a Federal Communications Commission license number: 1215095. The number, along with an Internet connection, was enough to lead an inquisitive person to the story behind the tower. The application to use the tower to send a microwave signal had been filed in July 2012, and it had been filed by . . . well, it isn’t possible to keep any of this secret anymore. A day’s journey in cyberspace would lead anyone who wished to know it into another incredible but true Wall Street story, of hypocrisy and secrecy and the endless quest by human beings to gain a certain edge in an uncertain world. All that one needed to discover the truth about the tower was the desire to know it.

The desk clerk, whose name plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of statistics, eradicated by sheer weight of numbers. They came and went, ate, drank, were happy, sad, thin, fat, stole towels and left behind toothbrushes, books, girdles, jewelry, burned holes in the furniture, slipped in bathtubs, jumped out windows. They were all alive. swarming around the hive, and Mr. Horner wore a protective net of indifference over his head and shoulders.

Exposure of either one could spell disaster. He covered the tracks of his double infidelity with precision and care. Every few days, he would send a disguised message to Leila, and commit adultery in a different Copenhagen hotel; every four weeks, he would make his way to an unremarkable flat in a boring Danish suburb, and commit treason. Over the course of a year, he established a system of evasion, eluding both Soviet surveillance and the suspicions of his wife. His relationships, with both Leila and MI6, were deepening. He felt safe. Which he was not. One winter evening, a young Danish intelligence officer was heading home to Ballerup when he spotted a car with diplomatic number plates parked in a side street, far from the diplomatic enclaves. The young man was curious. He was also trained, and mustard keen. On closer inspection, he recognized the car as belonging to the Soviet embassy. What was a Soviet diplomat doing in the suburbs, at 7 p.m. on a weekend? A dusting of snow had fallen, and fresh footprints led away from the car. The PET officer followed them for about 200 yards, to an apartment block. A Danish couple were leaving as he approached, and obligingly held the front door open for him. Wet footprints crossed the marble floor to the stairs. He followed them to the door of a flat on the second floor. From

At first, the Other Side will use what I call default signs to communicate with us: objects, animals, or events that jolt us into seeing a meaning that might otherwise escape us. Default signs might be coins, birds, butterflies, deer, numbers, and electrical disturbances, such as empty cellphone messages, among other things. You find a dime standing on its edge in the dryer just as you are thinking of and missing someone (this very thing happened to me). A butterfly lands on your arm for an instant on your birthday. A car drives past with a license plate that has the birthdate of a loved one who has crossed, who was just on your mind. You get blank cellphone messages on the anniversary of a loved one’s crossing.

Day 8 after coming home from the hospital The classic recipes are goat, lamb, vegetable, and/or chicken biriyani. But when I was in New Orleans, at this restaurant, they served Louisiana barbecue shrimp, which was simply delicious. When I asked the waiter what was in the shrimp sauce, he rattled off a number of spices (rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, et cetera) and so, I went with memory.  I marinated the raw prawns in mashed garlic, rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, paprika, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, and onion powder, along with a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I decided to cook the rice in the pressure cooker, always quick and easy. I heated some ghee in the pressure cooker, added crushed cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon, and a bay leaf for a minute or so. Then I added some onions and fried until the onions became golden brown. Then went in the rice, and enough water, and I closed the pressure cooker. The rice was ready in ten minutes. In a separate pan, I sautéed the marinated prawns in butter, along with extra chopped garlic and the marinade, and added them to the cooked rice. I garnished it with chopped fresh coriander and voila, Cajun prawn biriyani. I served it with some regular cucumber raita. Mama had been so sure that Daddy would hate prawns but I saw him clean out each one on his plate and even get a second helping. Sometimes we forget why we don’t like some things and then when we try them again, we realize that we had been wrong. Giving Serious Though to Adultery Girish was a classical music buff and in the beginning of their marriage, Shobha joined him for a few musical events and lectures.

Hereupon there was appointed an able and faithful committee of gentlemen, who printed, from copper-plates, a just number of bills, and flourished, indented, and contrived them in such a manner, as to make it impossible to counterfeit any of them, without a speedy discovery of the counterfeit: besides which, they were all signed by the hands of three belonging to that committee. These bills being of several sums, from two shillings to ten pounds, did confess the Massachuset-colony to be endebted unto the person in whose hands they were, the sums therein expressed; and provision was made, that if any particular bills were irrecoverably lost, or torn, or worn by the owners, they might be recruited without any damage to the whole in general. The publick debts to the sailors and soldiers, now upon the point of mutiny, (for, Arma Tenenti, Omnia dat, qui Justa negat!)[161] were in these bills paid immediately: but that further credit might be given thereunto, it was ordered that they should be accepted by the treasurer, and all officers that were subordinate unto him, in all publick payments, at five per cent, more than the value expressed in them. The people knowing that the tax-act would, in the space of two years at least, fetch into the treasury as much as all the bills of credit thence emitted would amount unto, were willing to be furnished with bills, wherein it was their advantage to pay their taxes, rather than in any other specie; and so the sailors and soldiers put off their bills, instead of money, to those with whom they had any dealings, and they circulated through all the hands in the colony pretty comfortably.

In 2009, at the invitation of President Obama, Sunstein went to work at the White House. There he oversaw the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and made scores of small changes that had big effects on the daily lives of all Americans. The changes Sunstein made had a unifying theme: They sprang directly or indirectly from the work of Danny and Amos. You couldn’t say that Danny and Amos’s work led President Obama to ban federal employees from texting while driving, but it wasn’t hard to draw a line from their work to that act. The federal government now became sensitive to both loss aversion and framing effects: People didn’t choose between things, they chose between descriptions of things. The fuel labels on new automobiles went from listing only miles per gallon to including the number of gallons a car consumed every hundred miles. What used to be called the food pyramid became MyPlate, a graphic of a dinner plate with divisions for each of the five food groups, and it was suddenly easier for Americans to see what made for a healthy diet. And so on. Sunstein argued that the government needed, alongside its Council of Economic Advisers, a Council of Psychological Advisers.

And so, in 1991, he created an experiment. He arranged for large numbers of college students who wanted to become doctors to be given hospital greens and a place to sleep near the emergency room. Their job was to serve as concierges to the homeless. When a homeless person entered the emergency room, they were to tend to his every need. Fetch him juice and a sandwich, sit down and talk to him, help arrange for his medical care. The college students worked for free. They loved it: They got to pretend to be doctors. But they serviced only half of the homeless people who entered the hospital. The other half received the usual curt and dismissive service from the nursing staff. Redelmeier then tracked the subsequent use of the Toronto health care system by all the homeless people who had visited his hospital. Unsurprisingly, the group that received the gold-plated concierge service tended to return slightly more often to the hospital where they had received it than the unlucky group. The surprise was that their use of the greater Toronto health care system declined. When homeless people felt taken care of by a hospital, they didn’t look for other hospitals that might take care of them. The homeless said, “That was the best that can be done for me.” The entire Toronto health care system had been paying a price for its attitude to the homeless.

She’s seated on the ground with her back pressed against a bench and a long barbell resting across her waist. When my gaze traces down to the end of it, my eyes bulge. The number of plates she has stacked there seems, well, almost impossible for a woman her size.

ALPR is?” she asked. “Automated license-plate recognition,” Evan said, relieved to be back on familiar turf. “Police cruisers have sensors embedded in the light bars that scan the plates of all surrounding vehicles. They can swallow numbers eight lanes across on cars going in either direction up to eighty miles per hour.

ANNE THORNDIKE, A primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had a crazy idea. She believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way. In fact, she didn’t plan on talking to them at all. Thorndike and her colleagues designed a six-month study to alter the “choice architecture” of the hospital cafeteria. They started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room. Originally, the refrigerators located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda. The researchers added water as an option to each one. Additionally, they placed baskets of bottled water next to the food stations throughout the room. Soda was still in the primary refrigerators, but water was now available at all drink locations. Over the next three months, the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4 percent. Meanwhile, sales of bottled water increased by 25.8 percent. They made similar adjustments—and saw similar results—with the food in the cafeteria. Nobody had said a word to anyone eating there. BEFORE AFTER FIGURE 8: Here is a representation of what the cafeteria looked like before the environment design changes were made (left) and after (right). The shaded boxes indicate areas where bottled water was available in each instance. Because the amount of water in the environment was increased, behavior shifted naturally and without additional motivation. People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. If I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, I’ll pick up half a dozen and start eating, even if I hadn’t been thinking about them beforehand and didn’t necessarily feel hungry. If the communal table at the office is always filled with doughnuts and bagels, it’s going to be hard not to grab one every now and then. Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.

Our solar system, in turn, is just one tiny corner of the Milky Way galaxy, that thick band of stars visible in the darkest night skies stretching far over our heads. We’re about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the rotating galaxy, which astronomers estimate contains somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars—and at least that number of planets—and stretches across some 87,400 light-years. What we see in our skies from Earth is the equivalent of staring at the side of the Milky Way stretching off before us, as if we’re looking at the edge of a plate or a Frisbee. It is spiral-shaped, like an enormous spinning pinwheel, first mentioned, as far as we know, by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in AD 964, recorded in his The Book of the Fixed Stars. In 1610, Galileo was the first astronomer to piece together, using a telescope, that the Milky Way visible in our skies was a collection of faint stars; a century later, Immanuel Kant surmised that it was a rotating body of stars, and over the next two hundred years, astronomers came to begin to grasp how enormous the universe truly is.

Our solar system, in turn, is just one tiny corner of the Milky Way galaxy, that thick band of stars visible in the darkest night skies stretching far over our heads. We’re about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the rotating galaxy, which astronomers estimate contains somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars—and at least that number of planets—and stretches across some 87,400 light-years. What we see in our skies from Earth is the equivalent of staring at the side of the Milky Way stretching off before us, as if we’re looking at the edge of a plate or a Frisbee. It is spiral-shaped, like an enormous spinning pinwheel, first mentioned, as far as we know, by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in AD 964, recorded in his The Book of the Fixed Stars. In 1610, Galileo was the first astronomer to piece together, using a telescope, that the Milky Way visible in our skies was a collection of faint stars; a century later, Immanuel Kant surmised that it was a rotating body of stars, and over the next two hundred years, astronomers came to begin to grasp how enormous the universe truly is. Now we understand that our Milky Way is about 2.5 million light-years from the next closest galaxy, known as Andromeda. Together, these two massive galaxies—and all the stuff in between them, including a number of so-called dwarf galaxies and satellite galaxies, as well as a third large galaxy known as Triangulum—make up what astronomers call the “Local Group,” which is one corner of a larger cosmic structure known as a “supercluster.”II For most of the last fifty years, our particular galactic neighborhood was believed to be part of the “Virgo Supercluster,” a gathering of about one hundred galaxies, but in 2014 a team of astronomers led by Hawaii’s R. Brent Tully realized we were more connected to our neighbors than anyone had realized; they redrew the boundaries of the galactic map after realizing that our supercluster was far more vast and in fact consisted of what had been four separate superclusters that all moved in the same gravitational rhythm. They dubbed the new supercluster “Laniakea,” Hawaiian for “immense heaven,” and we now believe it encompasses about one hundred thousand other galaxies that astronomers define as “nearby,” despite the fact that they stretch across more than 520 million light-years of outer space. Laniakea, in turn, is now understood to be part of the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, an enormous structure of about sixty superclusters that together stretch across a billion light-years. The Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex is what’s known as a “galaxy filament,” the largest structures known to exist in our universe, in which NASA now estimates there are about 200 billion galaxies stretching across 46 billion light-years.III (Each of those galaxies is estimated to have perhaps 100 million stars—although the largest, known as supergiants, can contain 100 trillion.)

Where are your plates, Frank?” “Plates?” he said. “In the kitchen. What’s that got to do with anything?” “Number plates, for the car.” “On the fucking car!” he said. “Hey, what’s he doing?

Where are your plates, Frank?” “Plates?” he said. “In the kitchen. What’s that got to do with anything?” “Number plates, for the car.” “On the fucking car!” he said.

It's a long shot but we can't leave any stone unturned. Cloughie, you get onto the number plate.' It's an odd phrase, thinks Nelson, as he runs the CCTV footage one more time. He thinks of the tunnel that morning, the journey below the stones of the city. Nothing good ever comes of turning over a stone.

Hey!” she says. He gives her a salute. “Too slow, Captain. Which is why I always win.” “You do not.” “Say that to the wine barrels. And the fight circle matches. My numbers are far superior.” “You padded those numbers.” “And I’m the one with the longest running barrel time, and you fucking know it!

The Germans had a family of three main battle tanks. The Mark IV, which received its first real combat test in May 1940, weighed twenty-seven tons, had somewhat less armor than the Sherman, about the same maximum road speed, and a tank gun comparable in weight of projectile and muzzle velocity to the 76-mm. American tank gun but superior to the short-barreled 75-mm. The Panther, Mark V, had proved itself during 1944 but still was subject to mechanical failures which were well recognized but which seemingly could not be corrected in the hasty German production schedules. This tank had a weight of fifty tons, a superiority in base armor of one-half to one inch over the Sherman, good mobility and flotation, greater speed, and a high-velocity gun superior even to the new American 76-mm. tank gun. The Tiger, Mark VI, had been developed as an answer to the heavy Russian tank but had encountered numerous production difficulties (it had over 26,000 parts) and never reached the field in the numbers Hitler desired. The original model weighed fifty-four tons, had thicker armor than the Panther, including heavy top armor as protection against air attack, was capable of a speed comparable to the Sherman, and mounted a high-velocity 88-mm. cannon. A still heavier Mark VI, the King Tiger, had an added two to four inches of armor plate. Few of this model ever reached the Ardennes, although it was commonly reported by American troops. Exact figures on German tank strength are not available, but it would appear that of the estimated 1,800 panzers in the Ardennes battle some 250 were Tigers and the balance was divided equally between the Mark IV and the Panther. Battle experience in France, which was confirmed in the Ardennes, gave the Sherman the edge over the Mark IV in frontal, flank, and rear attack. The Panther often had been beaten by the Sherman during the campaign in France, and would be defeated on the Ardennes battleground, but in nearly all cases of a forthright tank engagement the Panther lost only when American numerical superiority permitted an M4 to get a shot at flank or tail. Insofar as the Tiger was concerned, the Sherman had to get off a lucky round or the result would be strictly no contest.

distress, M’lady,” I answered, although the thought did cross my mind. “No, Fred and I will sleep in the motor home.” She smiled flirtatiously and reached for her cup. “In that case, Sir Lancelot, I will have more of this wonderful wine.” She lifted the cup to her lips without taking her eyes from mine. I refilled her cup when she set it back on the table, then as nonchalantly as I could, changed the subject. “Any way to get a number off that plate?” I asked while pointing to her computer screen. She had won her staring game and

seventy-five Michelin inspectors cover all of Europe and many fewer the rest of the world. They eat out on 240 days a year, file more than 1,000 reports, and must order the maximum number of courses and always clear their plates. To remain anonymous they never return to the same place for several years, and never reveal what they do—even to their parents.

If you have a quiet half hour with one of your dear companions like peason or gillibrand what is nicer than a game of snakes and ladders? Aktually quite a number of things are nicer like a film of marilyn monroe a quiet cig or a plateful of roast turkey but you do not get these things at skool chiz so it have to be snakes and laders.

They call me and tell me that if you keep working at the archdiocese, something’s going to happen to you. They say they know your license plate numbers, that they know your every move, that they’re going to search our house . . . They say I should convince you to leave your work or . . .” “Or what . . . ?

I have nothing again,” she said. “A little suitcase, a car with stolen license plates on it, a child and one on the way...” “You have everything,” he said. “A car with stolen license plates, a son, a baby on the way, friends...” “I had friends before,” she whispered. “They were scared of him. He ran them off and I lost them forever.” “Do I look like the kind of friend he can scare? Run off?” He pulled her gently onto his lap and she rested her head against his chest. “I don’t know why I stay so crazy,” she said softly. “He’s not anywhere near. He’ll never guess this place. But I’m still scared.” “Yeah, that happens.” “You’re never scared,” she said. He chuckled softly, stroked her back. He was scared of a bunch of things, number one being the day she got these problems managed and left with Christopher. “That’s what you think,” he said. “In the Marines, they used to say everyone’s afraid, so you have to learn to use fear to your advantage. Man, if you ever figure out how you do that, let me know. Okay?” “What did you do when you were scared?” she asked. “One of two things,” he said. “I’d either pee myself, or I’d get mad.” She lifted her head off his chest, looked at him and laughed a little. “That’s a girl,” he said, wiping off her cheeks.

In 1956 a rather delicate assignment came my way. I visited Switzerland at the invitation of Nestle but with a very specific brief from the Ministry of Industries, Government of India. Industries and Commerce Minister, Manubhai Shah, wanted me to ask the executives at Nestle what they were up to in our country. Under the excuse of producing condensed milk, they were importing not just milk powder, but also sugar and the tin plate for the cans! On my arrival at the airport at Nestle’s headquarters at Vevey, a Nestle car, about a mile long, was waiting to whisk me off to the best hotel in town where they put me up. I met with Kreeber, one of their two managing directors, and some other officers. The discussions turned pretty heated. I told them that my government had given them a licence to set up a plant in India so that they would produce condensed milk from Indian milk, not from imported ingredients. The Managing Director told me that it was not possible to produce condensed milk from buffalo milk, which was available in India. I said to him, ‘If you don’t know how to make it, come to me. I will teach you because I believe we can make it out of buffalo milk. I know it is more complicated than making it from cow’s milk and there are problems, but they are not insurmountable problems.’ When I assured them that it could be done, they said that their experts would have to come and set up their plant. Then they wanted the entire share capital in their hands. In those days government allowed only 49 per cent share capital to foreigners; 51 per cent had to be Indian. Kreeber said they could not agree to that. So I showed them a way out of that too. I said that 49 per cent could be with Nestle Alimentana and 51 per cent could be owned by Nestle India and in this way the entire project could stay in their hands. I was, in fact, facilitating their entry here. Ultimately, the Director agreed to set up a plant in India. At this point I told him that they could bring in any number of foreign experts they liked but my government hoped that, in five years, Indians who would be trained for the purpose would replace these experts. Kreeber’s response to this was that the production of condensed milk was an extremely delicate procedure and they ‘could not leave it to the natives to make’. At this, I lost my temper. Getting to my feet, I thumped the table loudly and said: ‘Please remember that you are speaking to a damned “native”. If you are suggesting that even after five years of training, the “natives” are not fit to occupy any position of authority in Nestle you are insulting my country. My country knows how to do without you.’ And I stormed out of the meeting – which I hope was what any self-respecting Indian would have done.

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

He had worked his way back to food, real food, with taste and texture and heat, and while his stomach had learned to reaccommodate it, the rest of him was having more difficulty. There were any number of reasons for it - obvious reasons such as memory and shame - but the simplest was that to savor a plate was to recognize his own worth and that was something not so easily restored.

This story created a sensation when it was first told. It appeared in the papers and many big Physicists and Natural Philosophers were, at least so they thought, able to explain the phenomenon. I shall narrate the event and also tell the reader what explanation was given, and let him draw his own conclusions. This was what happened. A friend of mine, a clerk in the same office as myself, was an amateur photographer; let us call him Jones. Jones had a half plate Sanderson camera with a Ross lens and a Thornton Picard behind lens shutter, with pneumatic release. The plate in question was a Wrattens ordinary, developed with Ilford Pyro Soda developer prepared at home. All these particulars I give for the benefit of the more technical reader. Mr. Smith, another clerk in our office, invited Mr. Jones to take a likeness of his wife and sister-in-law. This sister-in-law was the wife of Mr. Smith's elder brother, who was also a Government servant, then on leave. The idea of the photograph was of the sister-in-law. Jones was a keen photographer himself. He had photographed every body in the office including the peons and sweepers, and had even supplied every sitter of his with copies of his handiwork. So he most willingly consented, and anxiously waited for the Sunday on which the photograph was to be taken. Early on Sunday morning, Jones went to the Smiths'. The arrangement of light in the verandah was such that a photograph could only be taken after midday; and so he stayed there to breakfast. At about one in the afternoon all arrangements were complete and the two ladies, Mrs. Smiths, were made to sit in two cane chairs and after long and careful focussing, and moving the camera about for an hour, Jones was satisfied at last and an exposure was made. Mr. Jones was sure that the plate was all right; and so, a second plate was not exposed although in the usual course of things this should have been done. He wrapped up his things and went home promising to develop the plate the same night and bring a copy of the photograph the next day to the office. The next day, which was a Monday, Jones came to the office very early, and I was the first person to meet him. "Well, Mr. Photographer," I asked "what success?" "I got the picture all right," said Jones, unwrapping an unmounted picture and handing it over to me "most funny, don't you think so?" "No, I don't ... I think it is all right, at any rate I did not expect anything better from you ...", I said. "No," said Jones "the funny thing is that only two ladies sat ..." "Quite right," I said "the third stood in the middle." "There was no third lady at all there ...", said Jones. "Then you imagined she was there, and there we find her ..." "I tell you, there were only two ladies there when I exposed" insisted Jones. He was looking awfully worried. "Do you want me to believe that there were only two persons when the plate was exposed and three when it was developed?" I asked. "That is exactly what has happened," said Jones. "Then it must be the most wonderful developer you used, or was it that this was the second exposure given to the same plate?" "The developer is the one which I have been using for the last three years, and the plate, the one I charged on Saturday night out of a new box that I had purchased only on Saturday afternoon." A number of other clerks had come up in the meantime, and were taking great interest in the picture and in Jones' statement. It is only right that a description of the picture be given here for the benefit of the reader. I wish I could reproduce the original picture too, but that for certain reasons is impossible. When the plate was actually exposed there were only two ladies, both of whom were sitting in cane chairs. When the plate was developed it was found that there was in the picture a figure, that of a lady, standing in the middle. She wore a broad-edged dhoti (the reader should not forget that all the characters are Indians), only the upper half of her

Throw a diamond onto a weighted pressure plate and let it sink down. You can use this to power any number of traps. Then, when someone comes along to steal your precious diamond, it’ll turn off the signal and release whatever trap you have set up. Perhaps flooding the room with lava? The choice is yours!

It's not a disability, it's life. We are complicated creatures with larger matters on our plate than tip calculation. I grew up watching TV with my mother while she diagnosed the characters as having hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder. I rolled my eyes and wondered why there weren't any stupid kids anymore. Why did there have to be something to explain everyone? Were the cave people on Ritalin? I didn't think so.

Hipster Chick personally brings it to the table, and there’s a phone number written in ketchup on his plate. He looks at her. Looks at the plate. Dips a fry in it. She bites her lip so hard I think she draws blood, and somewhere in Hollywood Johnny Depp wakes up in a cold sweat.