Numbers That Text You Quotes

He texts back: I love you. I'm starting to text back, I love you, too, when my phone rings. It's Peter's house number, and I answer it eagerly. "I love you, too," I say. There is surprised silence on the other end, then a little laugh to cover it up. "Hi, Lara Jean. This is Peter's mom.

At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V. I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy. Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him. I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time? I texted back: How'd you get my number? Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers!

When you read my texts, you saw a curt, miserable git. And you told me so. Maybe you're right. But you know what I saw when I read yours? - Sam No. And I don't want to know. - Poppy I saw a girl who races to help others but doesn't help herself. And right now you need to help yourself. No one should walk up the aisle feeling inferior or in a different league or trying to be something they're not. - Sam

Because we’ve transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance: Drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . the increased numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.

I thought you weren’t allowed to have a phone,” he says. “Or was that a really pathetic excuse to avoid giving me your number?” “I’m not allowed. My best friend gave it to me the other day. It can’t do anything but text.” He turns the screen around to face me. “What the hell kind of texts are these?” He turns the phone around and reads one. “Sky, you are beautiful. You are possibly the most exquisite creature in the universe and if anyone tells you otherwise, I’ll cut a bitch.” He arches an eyebrow and looks up at me, then back down to the phone. “Oh, God. They’re all like this. Please tell me you don’t text these to yourself for daily motivation.

To be clear, conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. If you adopt this philosophy, you’ll almost certainly reduce the number of people with whom you have an active relationship. Real conversation takes time, and the total number of people for which you can uphold this standard will be significantly less than the total number of people you can follow, retweet, “like,” and occasionally leave a comment for on social media, or ping with the occasional text. Once you no longer count the latter activities as meaningful interaction, your social circle will seem at first to contract.

The special knowledge you are about to learn will reveal a “letter theory” that was set into motion from the very first verse in your Bible. It is as though the divine author is telling the reader to expect Hebrew letters and numbers to weave messages, in the sub-text, through the rest of the Bible—starting with verse one.

Three days later, just as I set off for work, the postman handed me a letter. I opened it on the bus, thinking it might be an early birthday card from some distant cousin. It read, in computer- ized text: Dear Clark, This is to show you that I am not an entirely selfish arse. And I do appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Will I laughed so hard the bus driver asked me if my lottery numbers had come up.

Hey," she said understandably surprised. "Hey, can I send a text from your phone?" I didn't want to commandeer her phone with a conversation, and besides, Lissa might just hang up on me. My neighbour shrugged, stepped into the room, and returned with the phone. I had Lissa's number memorised and sent her the following note: 'I know what you're going to do, and its a BAD idea. I'm going to kick both your asses when I find you.

Being less available over text, in other words, has a way of paradoxically strengthening your relationship even while making you (slightly) less available to those you care about. This point is crucial because many people fear that their relationships will suffer if they downgrade this form of lightweight connection. I want to reassure you that it will instead strengthen the relationships you care most about. You can be the one person in their life who actually talks to them on a regular basis, forming a deeper, more nuanced relationship than any number of exclamation points and bitmapped emojis can provide.

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.)

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?

You’re my mate. I’m naturally going to want to know everything about you.” He shrugged; it was simple. “That includes your address, where you work, and your cell number—just thought you should know so you won’t be surprised if a text message from me arrives.” She gaped, both offended and shocked. “You can’t just pry into people’s lives like that and find out all their personal details. And how did you find them out anyway?” He shrugged again. “I have contacts in the right places.” “So, what, you’re a stalker now?” “I prefer the term ‘intense investigator.

Please delete my number – because I’m deleting yours. And you can find someone new to text your maybes to.

It should be noted that before phones had every letter displayed on their touch screens, you had to press the number-pad buttons. To text, you had to use a system called T9 texting--with the letters being evenly divided among all the numbers. I would explain the process in more depth, but those were dark times and I'd rather not go down that rabbit hole, even mentally.

I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the dispoisiton, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We le death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions. […] In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. - Murray (WN 290)

Indy, to make this clear, I don’t want a single daily update tomorrow!” Stevie announces from the couch. “I’ll text you in the morning with details!”  “I’m getting a new number.” “Aren’t we the cutest family foursome you’ve ever seen?” Zanders pitches in.

It is no different in sales. Elite salespeople, like elite athletes, track everything. You will never reach peak performance until you know your numbers and use those numbers to make directional corrections.

You make out with a boy because he’s cute, but he has no substance, no words to offer you. His mouth tastes like stale beer and false promises. When he touches your chin, you offer your mouth up like a flower to to be plucked, all covered in red lipstick to attract his eye. When he reaches his hand down your shirt, he stops, hand on boob, and squeezes, like you’re a fruit he’s trying to juice. He doesn’t touch anything but skin, does not feel what’s within. In the morning, he texts you only to say, “I think I left the rest of my beer at your place, but it’s cool, you can drink it. Last night was fun.” You kiss a girl because she’s new. Because she’s different and you’re twenty two, trying something else out because it’s all failed before. After spending six weekends together, you call her, only to be answered by a harsh beep informing you that her number has been disconnected. You learn that success doesn’t come through experimenting with your sexuality, and you’re left with a mouth full of ruin and more evidence that you are out of tune. You fall for a boy who is so nice, you don’t think he can do any harm. When he mentions marriage and murder in the same sentence, you say, “Okay, okay, okay.” When you make a joke he does not laugh, but tilts his head and asks you how many drinks you’ve had in such a loving tone that you sober up immediately. He leaves bullet in your blood and disappears, saying, “Who wants a girl that’s filled with holes?” You find out that a med student does. He spots you reading in a bar and compliments you on the dust spilling from your mouth. When you see his black doctor’s bag posed loyally at his side, you ask him if he’s got the tools to fix a mangled nervous system. He smiles at you, all teeth, and tells you to come with him. In the back of his car, he covers you in teethmarks and says, “There, now don’t you feel whole again.” But all the incisions do is let more cold air into your bones. You wonder how many times you will collapse into ruins before you give up on rebuilding. You wonder if maybe you’d have more luck living amongst your rubble instead of looking for someone to repair it. The next time someone promises to flood you with light to erase your dark, you insist them you’re fine the way you are. They tell you there’s hope, that they had holes in their chest too, that they know how to patch them up. When they offer you a bottle in exchange for your mouth, you tell them you’re not looking for a way out. No, thank you, you tell them. Even though you are filled with ruins and rubble, you are as much your light as you are your dark.

After about a minute, I received a text back. Beck: I know A few seconds later, a smiley face came through, and I had to laugh. A week or so ago, I’d told him that his texts were always so short and blunt. “Couldn’t you add a smiley face or something?” I’d asked. He actually listened! A smug sense of victory swirled through me. He could be so stubborn about things that I could hardly believe it, even as the emoticon smiled up at me.

I feel a hotness behind my eyes. I have no idea why. I don't know why I suddenly feel affected. I want to type I admire you, but I can't bring myself to. Not even by text. Instead, after a moment's hesitation, I type: I understand you.

Why are Muslims being “preserved” in some time capsule of centuries gone by? Why is it okay that we continue to live in a world where our women are compared to candy waiting to be consumed? Why is it okay for women of the rest of the world to fight for freedom and equality while we are told to cover our shameful bodies? Can’t you see that we are being held back from joining this elite club known as the 21st century? Noble liberals like yourself always stand up for the misrepresented Muslims and stand against the Islamophobes, which is great but who stands in my corner and for the others who feel oppressed by the religion? Every time we raise our voices, one of us is killed or threatened. . . . What you did by screaming “racist!” was shut down a conversation that many of us have been waiting to have. You helped those who wish to deny there are issues, deny them. What is so wrong with wanting to step into the current century? There should be no shame. There is no denying that violence, misogyny and homophobia exist in all religious texts, but Islam is the only religion that is adhered to so literally, to this day. In your culture you have the luxury of calling such literalists “crazies.” . . . In my culture, such values are upheld by more people than we realise. Many will try to deny it, but please hear me when I say that these are not fringe values. It is apparent in the lacking numbers of Muslims willing to speak out against the archaic Shariah law. The punishment for blasphemy and apostasy, etc, are tools of oppression. Why are they not addressed even by the peaceful folk who aren’t fanatical, who just want to have some sandwiches and pray five times a day? Where are the Muslim protestors against blasphemy laws/apostasy? Where are the Muslims who take a stand against harsh interpretation of Shariah?7

There are hidden meanings in equations, just as there are in poetry. If you are a novice looking at an equation in physics, and you’re not taught how to see the life underlying the symbols, the lines will look dead to you. It is when you begin to learn and supply the hidden text that the meaning slips, slides, then finally leaps to life.

Rule one: Make them curious, slightly jealous. Rule two: Don’t appear too interested. Always be polite. Rule three: Give them a method of contact, but keep the ball in your court. Rule four: Never answer the first text, call, e-mail, etc. For some reason, the brain picks up on the number three as being the final try before you look desperate.

Who’s to say I’m going to see you again?” “Me.” I take out my phone, unlock it, and hand it to her. “Enter your phone number so I can bug you with texts.

If you have a problem with me, text me. And if you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me.

He flaunted obnoxious feats of memory by quoting page numbers and passages back in class and correcting his teachers on their text citations.14 “You forgot the comma,” he said to one.15

Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low. Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts. “How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus. “Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.” “I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.” There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn. “Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?” Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother. Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back. Ragnor Fell. Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back. There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends. “I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.” Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile. “Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?” Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.” “I’m undead,” said Raphael. “What about joie de unvivre?” Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed. “Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.” “What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus. “Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.” “Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus. Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do.

After a long and happy life, I find myself at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for “pearl” in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century: “Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?” Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, “Look, lady, I’ve got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We’ll talk after dinner.” As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter’s attention. He has located a “red letter Bible,” which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Qur’an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is frenetically pointing at v. 6: “Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I’ve seen this woman on television (actually, she’s thinner in person). She’s not Christian; she’s not baptized - she shouldn’t be here!” “Oy,” says Peter, “another one - wait here.” He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten. “What is it, my son?” he asks. The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, “I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?” “Well,” responds Jesus, “John does have me saying this.” (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus’s phrasing; a number of them remain convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They’ll have to make the inquiry on their own time.) “But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you’ll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison . . . ” Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, “But, but, that’s works righteousness. You’re saying she’s earned her way into heaven?” “No,” replies Jesus, “I am not saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John’s Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?” The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.

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

I feel a hotness behind my eyes. I have no idea why. I don't know why I suddenly feel affected. I want to type I admire you, but I can't bring myself to. Not even by text. Instead, after a moment's hesitation, I type: I understand you.

Of course this happens when a classic text ‘works’ as a classic, that is when it establishes a personal relationship with the reader. If there is no spark, the exercise is pointless: it is no use reading classics out of a sense of duty or respect, we should only read them for love. Except at school: school has to teach you to know, whether you like it or not, a certain number of classics amongst which (or by using them as a benchmark) you will later recognise ‘your’ own classics

As Page puts it, “Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.” It’s a principle he’s tried to apply at Google. When Page and Sergey Brin began wondering aloud about developing ways to search the text inside of books, all of the experts they consulted said it would be impossible to digitize every book. The Google cofounders decided to run the numbers and see if it was actually physically possible to scan the books in a reasonable amount of time. They concluded it was, and Google has since scanned millions of books. “I’ve learned that your intuition about things you don’t know that much about isn’t very good,” Page said. “The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There’s this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that, and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues.

The point is, your style guide-or any given "rule" you learned in school-was created so you would do something the same way every time for the sake of consistency, for the reader's sake. It's less distracting that way. You learn style rules so you don't have to stop and ponder every time you, say, come to a number in the text: "Hmm. Here's a number. Shall I spell it out? Use numerals?" You know your chosen style by heart, so you just flybywith confidence. Style rules aren't used because they're "correct." They're used for your convenience in serving the reader.

My phone buzzes and I fish it from my pocket, expecting Tacey or maybe my parents checking in to make sure I’m okay. But it’s an unfamiliar number. Do you blame yourself? I read the words once. Twice. I see Stella’s locker door swinging open and I hear a train whistle, but neither are happening. It’s all in my head. I force myself to take a breath and head outside. This text is a wrong number. It’s not for me, and it’s definitely not about Stella. And then another message. Do you wish you’d done something? What if you still could? I text back quickly. I think you have the wrong number. I don’t have the wrong number, Piper.

It’s just that it’s a good idea not to let him have your phone number unless you possess an industrial-grade answering machine.” “What? Why’s that?” “Well, he’s one of those people who can only think when he’s talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well. He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder.

They had found out. Before I could panic, I made myself stretch my fingers wide and take a calming breath. You already knew this was bound to happen. At least that’s what I told myself. The more I thought about it, the more I should have been appreciative that the people at the chapel in Las Vegas hadn’t recognized him. Or that people on the street had been oblivious and hadn’t seen us going in and out of there. Or that the receptionist at the acupuncturist hadn’t snapped a picture on her phone and posted it online. Because I might not understand all people, much less most of them, but I understood nosey folks. And nosey folks would do something like that without a second thought. Yet, I reminded myself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about. It would be fine. So, one gossip site posted about us getting married. Whoop-de-do. There was probably a thousand sites just like it. I briefly thought about Diana hearing about it, but I’d deal with that later. There was no use in getting scared now. She was the only one whose reaction I cared about. My mom and sisters’ opinions and feelings weren’t exactly registering at the top of my list now… or ever. I made myself shove them to the back of my thoughts. I was tired of being mad and upset; it affected my work. Plus, they’d made me sad and mad enough times in my life. I wasn’t going to let them ruin another day. Picking my phone up again, I quickly texted Aiden back, swallowing my nausea at the same time. Me: Who told you? Not even two minutes passed before my phone dinged with a response. Miranda: Trevor’s blowing up my phone. Eww. Trevor. Me: We knew it was going to happen eventually, right? Good luck with Trev. I’m glad he doesn’t have my number. And I was even gladder there wasn’t a home phone; otherwise, I’m positive he would have been blowing it up too. I managed to get back to looking at images on the screen for a few more minutes—a bit more distracted than usual—when the phone beeped again. It was Aiden/Miranda. I should really change his contact name. Miranda: Good luck? I’m not answering his calls. What? Me: That psycho will come visit if you don’t. Was that me being selfish? Yes. Did I care? No. Aiden: I know. Uh. Me: You’re always at practice… Aiden: Have fun. This asshole! I almost laughed, but before I could, he sent me another message. Aiden: I’ll get back to him in a couple days. Don’t worry. Snorting, I texted back. Me: I’m not worried. If he drops by, I’ll set him up in your room. Aiden: You genuinely scare me. Me: You don’t know how many times you barely made it through the day alive, for the record. He didn’t text me back after that

I try to understand you. You look so civilized. Not a hint of the criminal in you. Perhaps, though, something of the Nazi criminal. That super honest, loyal citizen who checked the number of soap boxes. He would take great care not to make mistakes in figures (four, less than four), but he does not question whether the soap is made from human fat.

As you’re saving her number in your phone, I want you to smile and say, “Are you going to be jumping with excitement when I contact you?” She’ll likely laugh. Then say, “When I text you, your reply has to be bursting with exclamation points or smiley face emoticons, like the president of France is contacting you.” She’ll laugh again and probably say, “Okay.

Zach: Are you close with your brother? He’s partially to blame for the wrong number thing, isn’t he? * * * Me: Kind of. Yeah, we’re close. My mom worked at the hospital so it was usually just us two fending for ourselves. * * * Me: Okay, so I shouldn’t say fending for ourselves. That makes me sound like a dick and unappreciative of all my mom did. We just spent many nights just the two of us because my mom was a hardworking single lady and she wasn’t searching for a man to put a ring on it because she. Is. Fierce. * * * Zach: I bet your mom is the shit. * * * Me: She really is. You should meet her sometime. * * * Me: Oh, awkward…I’m talking about meeting the family and we’re not even officially a couple. * * * Zach: We’re not? * * * Me: We are? My phone lights up with a call from Zach. “Are you saying we aren’t dating?” he says before I can say anything. “We are…” “Are you saying you’re wanting to see other people?” “No…” “So then we’re a couple.” I’m quiet, unsure what to say. I’m so scared to label this, which is stupid, I know. “Delia?” “Yes, Zach?” “Do you not want to be?” I take a deep breath and push out the answer I know is right, even though my head is saying otherwise. “No. I want to be a couple.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. I’m just…scared. I know I shouldn’t put that all on you, but you’re kind of the reason I’m scared. I like you, Zach—a lot—but what if this doesn’t work out? What if we jump in too soon?” He sighs. “Remember when we were talking about our exes? About the lack of fireworks?” “Yeah.” “I swear to god, someone is going to swoop in and take my man card for this shit, but I felt them with you. When we first kissed, I knew right then you were worth jumping in with both feet and taking a risk.” I don’t let myself overthink his words, wanting to keep my head level and clear. “What if I’m not worth the risk?” “We’ll never know if we don’t take it.” “Say you’re a couple already, Dalilah!” Robbie’s voice comes loud through the speaker. “He paused the movie during an epic scene!” “How many times have I told you that her name is Delia. Deal-ya. Get it?” “You talk about me with Robbie?” I ask. “Sometimes.” “Say yes! He looks like someone kicked his goat!” “Shut the fuck up, Robbie!” I laugh. “If I say yes, will he stop shouting?” “YES!” Robbie shouts again. “I’ll take the risk, Zach, but you better be worth it.” “You’ve seen my Harry Potter underwear—you know I’m worth it.” Then he whispers, “Wink.

She sniffs and shakes off her tears, then turns to me with an eager look. “So what’s the deal with him? How did you meet? You just tricked me to the worst snot-fest in the history of me. I demand this as repayment.” She has a point. I fiddle with my phone. “It started out as a wrong number, actually. Like you know those Buzzfeed articles where people text the wrong number while going into labor and then these randos show up with diapers and baby formula and they become besties?” “No, but I’ll take your word that it happened.” “Yeah, so, it’s kind of like that. He just texted the wrong number—I think he was looking for my dad because I inherited his phone. But then we just…I don’t know, we just kept talking and—” “So you legit don’t know him,” she interrupts. “I do know him.” “Have you talked, though?” I hold up my brick phone. “How do you think we’re communicating? Smoke signals?” She waves away my sarcasm. “No, I mean actually talked. Like,” she holds her hand up like a phone, “here’s my number, call me maybe talked.” I squirm. “Not exactly.” Sage rolls her eyes. “Elle! He could be a sixty-year-old with a collection of American Girl Dolls in his basement for all you know.” “He isn’t!” I cry. “He’s our age. And besides, I like texting him. It feels more, I don’t know, You’ve Got Mail-y.

Tugging her purse strap up on her arm, she headed for the door. “You have my cell number. I’ll text you. If something goes wrong and he pulls an axe, you’ll be the first person I call.” Michelle groaned. “See, this is why I worry. The first person you call is the police. Then you call me and tell me the authorities are on their way and you’re hiding in a closet.” “Yeah, ancient wooden closet door versus axe? And you call me the illogical one?

Your phone’s vibrating,” Scottie says. She takes my cell phone out of her pocket, the phone she has stolen from me to text her friend. She doesn’t even care that she has disobeyed. She doesn’t care that she said “finger-fucked” in front of me. It’s as though I’m not a father. I don’t recognize the number, so I don’t answer. I like to let people leave messages, and then I’ll call back after I rehearse what to say. “You never answer your phone,” Scottie says. “What if someone needs help?” “Then they can leave a message and I’ll call right back.” Alex takes the phone out of my hands. “Hello?” she says. “What the—? Do I not exist, girls? Do you realize I’m in charge here?” Scottie whispers, “Who is it?” “Oh, no,” Alex says. “This is the right number. This is his assistant…Sharon.” Scottie opens her mouth, delighted. I’ve always been impressed by Alex’s effortless ability to lie. “That sounds nice,” Alex says, then punches me lightly on the arm. “Where? Great. And for how long? Okay. Well, thanks. Maybe we’ll peek in on Sunday. Thanks so much. Okay.” She closes the phone. “Well?” “That was a Realtor, Dad, from Brian’s office. She says she’d be happy to show you the house you called about. Well done, Dad. Very clever.” “Good one, King,” Sid says. “What about Brian?” I ask. I feel strange talking about this with Joanie in the room. I position myself so that I face away from her.

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.

Homework _Yes _No 1. Did you make a serious effort to understand the text? (Just hunting for relevant worked-out examples doesn’t count.) _Yes _No 2. Did you work with classmates on homework problems, or at least check your solutions with others? _Yes _No 3. Did you attempt to outline every homework problem solution before working with classmates? Test Preparation The more “Yes” responses you recorded, the better your preparation for the test. If you recorded two or more “No” responses, think seriously about making some changes in how you prepare for the next test. _Yes _No 4. Did you participate actively in homework group discussions (contributing ideas, asking questions)? _Yes _No 5. Did you consult with the instructor or teaching assistants when you were having trouble with something? _Yes _No 6. Did you understand ALL of your homework problem solutions when they were handed in? _Yes _No 7. Did you ask in class for explanations of homework problem solutions that weren’t clear to you? _Yes _No 8. If you had a study guide, did you carefully go through it before the test and convince yourself that you could do everything on it? _Yes _No 9. Did you attempt to outline lots of problem solutions quickly, without spending time on the algebra and calculations? _Yes _No 10. Did you go over the study guide and problems with classmates and quiz one another? _Yes _No 11. If there was a review session before the test, did you attend it and ask questions about anything you weren’t sure about? _Yes _No 12. Did you get a reasonable night’s sleep before the test? (If your answer is no, your answers to 1–11 may not matter.) _Yes _No TOTAL

After Tom leaves for work, I take Evie to the park, we play on the swings and the little wooden rocking horses, and when I put her back into her buggy she falls asleep almost immediately, which is my cue to go shopping. We cut through the back streets towards the big Sainsbury’s. It’s a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but it’s quiet, with very little traffic, and in any case we get to pass number thirty-four Cranham Road. It gives me a little frisson even now, walking past that house—butterflies suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour to my cheeks. I remember hurrying up the front steps, hoping none of the neighbours would see me letting myself in, getting myself ready in the bathroom, putting on perfume, the kind of underwear you put on just to be taken off. Then I’d get a text message and he’d be at the door, and we’d have an hour or two in the bedroom upstairs.

As mentioned above, when it comes to teaching history, including what happened before, during, and after the period of World War I is not being done enough in schools for students to have a full understanding of the events. When asked about this war, students who are clever but are not interested in the subject of a class nonetheless learn a number of phrases and code words – just enough to keep the teacher satisfied or off their back. As both a student and a teacher, I know this all too well. One of the most frequent questions heard in middle and high school history classes is “Name one prime reason for the start of World War One.” If a student is clever and has paid just enough attention, he or she will answer “The Alliance System”, or something similar. The teacher will then say “Good, I can see you've been paying attention.”, and the student can then go back to sleeping, or texting or whatever it is that they do these days.

Before talking to my mom about how out of control I felt, I'd spent the night crying alone in the park I grew up going to, chain smoking, because the guy that I liked hadn't texted me back. And even amidst my tears and Camels and repeated utterings of "I'm going to die alone," I knew I looked fucking crazy. I knew if the guy could see me reacting this way, he'd block my number. But I still couldn't stop, and that's what scared me. My emotions had become all-encompassing. Like the night I'd given my landlord notice, I couldn't see or feel anything other than the most extreme version of the worst-case scenario. Because here's the thing: in those polarizing moments of ups or downs, what you're feeling in that moment can't be reasoned with or told to slow down, let alone stop. I looked across the park at the swings my friends and I used to hang out on and wondered what the fuck was wrong with me. Why couldn't I feel the way I used to, once upon a time? I wanted to feel invincible the way I sometimes did -- or better yet, I wanted no feeling at all.

The earliest memory treatises described two types of recollection: memoria rerum and memoria verborum, memory for things and memory for words. When approaching a text or a speech, one could try to remember the gist, or one could try to remember verbatim. The Roman rhetoric teacher Quintilian looked down on memoria verborum on the grounds that creating such a vast number of images was not only inefficient, since it would require a gargantuan memory palace, but also unstable. If your memory for a speech hinged on knowing every word, then not only did you have a lot more to remember, but if you forgot a single word, you could end up trapped in a room of your memory palace staring at a blank wall, lost and unable to move on. Cicero agreed that the best way to memorize a speech is point by point, not word by word, by employing memoria rerum. In his De Oratore, he suggests that an orator delivering a speech should make one image for each major topic he wants to cover, and place each of those images at a locus. Indeed, the word “topic” comes from the Greek word topos, or place. (The phrase “in the first place” is a vestige from the art of memory.)

The encyclopedia wand’s a theoretical puzzle, like Zeno’s paradox. The idea is t’engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a single toothpick. Know how you do it?” “You tell me.” “You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you’ve lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you’ve got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631 … Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick. If 0.50000’s your exact middle on the toothpick, then 0.3333’s got t’be a third of the way from the tip. You follow?” “Sure.” “That’s how you can fit data of any length in a single point on a toothpick. Only theoretically, of course. No existin’ technology can actually engrave so fine a point. But this should give you a perspective on what tautologies are like. Say time’s the length of your toothpick. The amount of information you can pack into it doesn’t have anything t’do with the length. Make the fraction as long as you want. It’ll be finite, but pretty near eternal.

A text comes from Wallace. An actual text too, not a message through the forum app. I gave him my number awhile back, before Halloween, but not because I wanted him to call me or anything. I wrote it on the edge of our conversation paper in homeroom and slid it over to him because sometimes I see something and think, Wallace would laugh at that, I should send him a picture of it, but the messaging app is terrible with pictures and texting is way better. So he texts me now, and it’s a picture. A regular sweet potato pie. Beneath the picture, he says, I really like sweet potato pie. I text back, Yeah, so do I. Then he sends me a picture of his face, frowning, and says, No, you don’t understand. Then another picture, closer, just his eyes. I REALLY like sweet potato pie. A series of pictures comes in several-second intervals. The first is a triangular slice of pie in Wallace’s hand. Then Wallace holding that slice up to his face—it’s soft enough to start collapsing between his fingers. The next one has him stuffing the slice into his mouth, and in the final one it’s all the way in, his cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and he’s letting his eyes roll back like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. I purse my lips to keep my laugh in, but my parents are fine-tuned to the slightest hint of amusement from me, and they both look up. “What’s so funny, Eggs?” Dad says. “Nothing,” I reply. Nothing makes a joke less funny than someone wanting in on it, especially parents. Wow, I say to Wallace. You really like sweet potato pie. He sends one more picture, this one with him embracing the pie pan, gazing lovingly at it. We’re to be married in the spring. An actual laugh escapes me. I really hope Wallace is having a better Thanksgiving than I am. It seems like he is. I take a picture of myself pouting and send it to him, saying, Aw, the cutest of cute couples. ... Another picture from Wallace waits for me. In this one, an empty pie pan littered withcrumbs sits on the floor beside a large knife. Wallace kneels next to it with morecrumbs on his sweater, expression horrified. NOOOO WHAT HAVE I DONE MY LOVE OUR MARRIAGE ’TIS ALL FOR NAUGHT I text back: Oh no!! Not sweet potato bride! Another picture comes: Wallace sprawled on the floor beside the pie pan, one arm thrown over his eyes. Let me only be accused of loving her too much. Wallace is definitely having a better Thanksgiving than me.

Even harder to solve is the translation of ‘virtù’, together with a number of other words that cluster round it. It would be so easy to write the English cognate ‘virtue’, meaning the opposite of vice, but this is not what Machiavelli was talking about. He was not interested in the polarity ‘good’/‘evil’, but in winning and losing, strength and weakness, success and failure. For Machiavelli ‘virtù’ was any quality of character that enabled you to take political power or to hold on to it; in short, a winning trait. It could be courage in battle, or strength of personality, or political cunning, or it might even be the kind of ruthless cruelty that lets your subjects know you mean business. But one can hardly write ‘cunning’ or ‘cruelty’ for ‘virtù’, even if one knows that in this context that is what the text means; because then you would lose the sense that although Machiavelli is not talking about the moral virtues he nevertheless wants to give a positive connotation to the particular qualities he is talking about: this cruelty is aimed at solving problems, retaining power, keeping a state strong, hence, in this context it is a ‘virtù’. Ugly though it may sound, then, I have sometimes been obliged to translate ‘virtù’ as ‘positive qualities’ or ‘strength of character’, except of course on those occasions - because there are some - when Machiavelli does mean ‘virtues’ in the moral sense: in which case he’s usually talking about the importance of faking them even if you may not have them

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy. See, I’ve got this coping mechanism thing where, when I’m feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. . . . In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. I confess I preened it. I scoffed at the idea of being taught or led. Deconstructing was so much safer than trusting, so much easier than letting people in. I knew exactly what type of Christian I didn’t want to be, but I was too frightened, or too rebellious, or too wounded, to imagine what might be next. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the worst and smirked when I found it. So many of our sins begin with fear . . .

Dehumanization But despite it all, they were people like you and me. Who are you? The living thrown into the madness, Killed with clubs and stabbed, Here crucified and no cross for you. But O, you humans, Your bones in the bottomless pit, They were people like you and me, Killed in the golden freedom. As you pass by, stop for a while, Think of your wrists bleeding in the dark night, Barbed wire wrapped around them, As they, cursing, goad you on, Beaten, naked, a corpse still living, You can hear the blows of the rifle butts, The screams, the groans, the terror turning into the sweetness Of approaching death. The fear, the pain, are vanishing, The footsteps echoing towards the void. In the bottomless pit countless numbers of them lie, But despite it all: they were people like you and me. PS: A curse be upon anyone who might attempt to erase this record. Imagine yourself as victim, the poem orders its readers. Think yourself into the skin of another human, for then – sunk into a different being – you will surely find yourself unable to inflict suffering. It is as unsettling a text as I know: the vividness of the scene of execution it conjures, the curse it threatens as protection against its own erasure. The poem at once challenges and charges its reader, both forbidding and demanding response. Above all, it is a poem about compassion – about feeling as another feels. To the poem’s author, the darkness of the ‘bottomless pit’ represents the utter failure of empathy that characterized the war in those regions, as it must of necessity characterize war at all times and in all places.

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable. One evening, I get back from a run and am doubled over, recovering and panting in front of my building. The entrance opens and a woman pops out, taking out her rubbish. ‘I’m not loitering,’ I tell her when she gives me a funny look. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were loitering,’ she says. ‘I thought you lived here.’ ‘Oh. I do. I do live here. On the third floor.’ We introduce ourselves. Her name is Hannah and she’s from the Netherlands. As she turns to go back inside, I say, ‘Hey! Do you want to swap numbers? Just in case … there’s a fire or something?’ I can tell my year is already changing me. Talking to strangers has made me less shy and even though I still had to make it a bit weird with the whole fire thing. A few weeks later, Hannah and her husband have Sam and me over for dinner in their flat because we stored a package for them when they were on holiday. Hannah has hundreds of books and I leave her flat with an armful to borrow. A few months later Hannah texts out of the blue, saying, ‘Want to grab a coffee with me right now?’ And I do. The elusive perfect friend-date: spontaneous, with good coffee, great conversation and no commute. We’d also had the spark, both having read several of the same books, both of us the same age, both of us struggling with similar things. She’d been living downstairs the entire time. But if I hadn’t gone through so many friend-dates and false starts, I know I would have asked for her number when we met. In fact, given how I normally treated my neighbours in London and how insular I was before all this began, I probably would have just pretended to be loitering.

Okay.” The leader stood on the bed of his truck and clapped his hands over his head. “Listen up, everyone.” No one was really listening, though they had dressed right. Everyone was all in black. A few guys wore ski masks, and others had black marks on their cheeks like football players. Personally, I didn’t understand the need for the black camouflage. Caden had explained that the cops had already been looped in on the operation. A few of the lawns getting flocked tonight actually belonged to cops, and anyway the whole blending-with-the-night effect didn’t work when you were carrying a bright neon-pink flamingo. Still, I couldn’t deny the little spark of excitement building in my stomach. We were all standing in some guy’s driveway, and as I looked around, I seemed to be the only girl. These guys meant business. I was in the middle of a real life Call of Duty operation. The leader began speaking, his voice booming. “This is going to happen with precision and professionalism. No lingering, loitering, acting like stupid shits, and definitely no joking around. We’re not ladies. This isn’t going to be run like a bunch of pansy-shopping, pink-nail-polish pussies. You got that?!” I frowned, tucking my nails inside my jacket. “Every vehicle’s been filled with birds. The driver should have a text with all the locations, and the number of birds for each target. Pull up, find the group of birds labeled for that house, and work together. Take one bird a trip, two if you can manage, and ram those suckers down in the grass. Hurry back to the truck and keep going until all the birds for that location are in the ground. Shotgun Sally is in charge of hanging the sign on the bird closest to the street. Once the sign is hung, get back in the truck, and move to the next target. NO TALKING! This mission is all radio silent. Communicate with signals, and if you don’t know the appropriate signals, just SHUT THE HELL UP! Okay? Now, go flock some fuckers!

Drawing aside so as not to impede passersby, he answered. “Oggy?” said his ex-colleague’s voice. “What gives, mate? Why are people sending you legs?” “I take it you’re not in Germany?” said Strike. “Edinburgh, been here six weeks. Just been reading about you in the Scotsman.” The Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police had an office in Edinburgh Castle: 35 Section. It was a prestigious posting. “Hardy, I need a favor,” said Strike. “Intel on a couple of guys. D’you remember Noel Brockbank?” “Hard to forget. Seventh Armoured, if memory serves?” “That’s him. The other one’s Donald Laing. He was before I knew you. King’s Own Royal Borderers. Knew him in Cyprus.” “I’ll see what I can do when I get back to the office, mate. I’m in the middle of a plowed field right now.” A chat about mutual acquaintances was curtailed by the increasing noise of rush-hour traffic. Hardacre promised to ring back once he had had a look at the army records and Strike continued towards the Tube. He got out at Whitechapel station thirty minutes later to find a text message from the man he was supposed to be meeting. Sorry Bunsen cant do today ill give you a bell This was both disappointing and inconvenient, but not a surprise. Considering that Strike was not carrying a consignment of drugs or a large pile of used notes, and that he did not require intimidation or beating, it was a mark of great esteem that Shanker had even condescended to fix a time and place for meeting. Strike’s knee was complaining after a day on his feet, but there were no seats outside the station. He leaned up against the yellow brick wall beside the entrance and called Shanker’s number. “Yeah, all right, Bunsen?” Just as he no longer remembered why Shanker was called Shanker, he had no more idea why Shanker called him Bunsen. They had met when they were seventeen and the connection between them, though profound in its way, bore none of the usual stigmata of teenage friendship.

I am assured that this is a true story. A man calls up his computer helpline complaining that the cupholder on his personal computer has snapped off, and he wants to know how to get it fixed. “Cupholder?” says the computer helpline person, puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m confused. Did you buy this cupholder at a computer show or receive it as a special promotion?” “No, it came as part of the standard equipment on my computer.” “But our computers don’t come with cupholders.” “Well, pardon me, friend, but they do,” says the man a little hotly. “I’m looking at mine right now. You push a button on the base of the unit and it slides right out.” The man, it transpired, had been using the CD drawer on his computer to hold his coffee cup. I bring this up here by way of introducing our topic this week: cupholders. Cupholders are taking over the world. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of cupholders in automotive circles these days. The New York Times recently ran a long article in which it tested a dozen family cars. It rated each of them for ten important features, among them engine size, trunk space, handling, quality of suspension, and, yes, number of cupholders. A car dealer acquaintance of ours tells us that they are one of the first things people remark on, ask about, or play with when they come to look at a car. People buy cars on the basis of cupholders. Nearly all car advertisements note the number of cupholders prominently in the text. Some cars, like the newest model of the Dodge Caravan, come with as many as seventeen cupholders. The largest Caravan holds seven passengers. Now you don’t have to be a nuclear physicist, or even wide awake, to work out that that is 2.43 cupholders per passenger. Why, you may reasonably wonder, would each passenger in a vehicle need 2.43 cupholders? Good question. Americans, it is true, consume positively staggering volumes of fluids. One of our local gas stations, I am reliably informed, sells a flavored confection called a Slurpee in containers up to 60 ounces in size. But even if every member of the family had a Slurpee and a personal bottle of

You want to kiss her, right?” “What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic. “Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again. “Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?” “I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.” My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work. “So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired. “I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.” “And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.” “What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.” “Please stop saying that word.” “What word? Penis?” “Yes.” “Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?” “I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.” “Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.” “Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to. “Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke. “Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to

A folded triangle of paper landed in the center of his notebook. Normally he’d unfold it discreetly, but Beamis was so clueless that the note could have hit him in the head and he wouldn’t notice. Loopy script in purple pen. The paper smelled like her. What’s your #? Wow. Hunter clicked his pen and wrote below her words. I have a theory about girls who ask for your number before asking for your name. Then he folded it up and flicked it back. It took every ounce of self-control to not watch her unfold it. The paper landed back on his desk in record time. I have a theory about boys who prefer writing to texting. He put his pen against the paper. I have a theory about girls with theories. Then he waited, not looking, fighting the small smile that wanted to play on his lips. The paper didn’t reappear. After a minute, he sighed and went back to his French essay. When the folded triangle smacked him in the temple, he jumped a mile. His chair scraped the floor, and Beamis paused in his lecture, turning from the board. “Is there a problem?” “No.” Hunter coughed, covering the note with his hand. “Sorry.” When the coast was clear, he unfolded the triangle. It was a new piece of paper. My name is Kate. Kate. Hunter almost said the name out loud. What was wrong with him? It fit her perfectly, though. Short and blunt and somehow indescribably hot. Another piece of paper landed on his notebook, a small strip rolled up tiny. This time, there was only a phone number. Hunter felt like someone had punched him in the stomach and he couldn’t remember how to breathe. Then he pulled out his cell phone and typed under the desk. Come here often? Her response appeared almost immediately. First timer. Beamis was facing the classroom now, so Hunter kept his gaze up until it was safe. When he looked back, Kate had written again. I bet I could strip na**d and this guy wouldn’t even notice. Hunter’s pulse jumped. But this was easier, looking at the phone instead of into her eyes. I would notice. There was a long pause, during which he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Then a new text appeared. I have a theory about boys who picture you na**d before sharing their name. He smiled. My name is Hunter. Where you from? This time, her response appeared immediately. Just transferred from St. Mary’s in Annapolis. Now he was imagining her in a little plaid skirt and knee-high socks. Another text appeared. Stop imagining me in the outfit. He grinned. How did you know? You’re a boy. I’m still waiting to hear your theory on piercings. Right. IMO, you have to be crazy hot to pull off either piercings or tattoos. Otherwise you’re just enhancing the ugly. Hunter stared at the phone, wondering if she was hitting on him—or insulting him. Before he could figure it out, another message appeared. What does the tattoo on your arm say? He slid his fingers across the keys. It says “ask me about this tattoo.” Liar. Mission accomplished, I’d say. He heard a small sound from her direction and peeked over. She was still staring at her phone, but she had a smile on her face, like she was trying to stifle a giggle. Mission accomplished, he’d say.

Bailey,” I say, my voice carrying easily across the marble floor. “Wait.” She turns back and rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed to see me coming her way. She quickly wipes at her cheeks then holds up her hand to wave me off. “I’m off the clock. I don’t want to talk to you right now. If you want to chew me out for what happened back there, you’ll have to do it on Monday. I’m going home.” “How?” Her pretty brown eyes, full of tears, narrow up at me in confusion. “How what?” “How are you getting home? Did you park on the street or something?” Her brows relax as she realizes I’m not about to scold her. “Oh.” She turns to the window. “I’m going to catch the bus.” The bus? “The stop is just down the street a little bit.” “Don’t you have a car?” She steels her spine. “No. I don’t.” I’ll have to look into what we’re paying her—surely she should have no problem affording a car to get her to and from work. “Okay, well then what about an Uber or something?” Her tone doesn’t lighten as she replies, “I usually take the bus. It’s fine.” I look for an umbrella and frown when I see her hands are empty. “You’re going to get drenched and it’s freezing out there.” She laughs and starts to step back. “It’s not your concern. Don’t worry about me.” Yes, well unfortunately, I do worry about her. For the last three weeks, all I’ve done is worry about her. Cooper is to blame. He fuels my annoyance on a daily basis, updating me about their texts and bragging to me about how their relationship is developing. Relationship—I find that laughable. They haven’t gone on a date. They haven’t even spoken on the phone. If the metric for a “relationship” lies solely in the number of text messages exchanged then as of this week, I’m in a relationship with my tailor, my UberEats delivery guy, and my housekeeper. I’ve got my hands fucking full. “Well I’m not going to let you wait out at the bus stop in this weather. C’mon, I’ll drive you.” Her soft feminine laugh echoes around the lobby. “Thank you, but I’d rather walk.” What she really means is, Thank you, but I’d rather die. “It’s really not a request. You’re no good to me if you have to call in sick on Monday because you caught pneumonia.” Her gaze sheens with a new layer of hatred. “You of all people know you don’t catch pneumonia just from being cold and wet.” She tries to step around me, but I catch her backpack and tug it off her shoulder. I can’t put it on because she has the shoulder straps set to fit a toddler, so I hold it in my hand and start walking. She can either follow me or not. I tell myself I don’t care either way. “Dr. Russell—” she says behind me, her feet lightly tap-tap-tapping on the marble as she hurries to keep up. “You’re clocked out, aren’t you? Call me Matt.” “Doctor,” she says pointedly. “Please give me my backpack before I call security.” I laugh because really, she’s hilarious. No one has ever threatened to call security on me before. “It’s Matt, and if you’re going to call security, make sure you ask for Tommy. He’s younger and stands a decent chance of catching me before I hightail it out of here with your pink JanSport backpack. What do you have in here anyway?” It weighs nothing. “My lunchbox. A water bottle. Some empty Tupperware.” Tupperware. I glance behind me to check on her. She’s fast-walking as she trails behind me. Am I really that much taller than her? “Did you bring more banana bread?” She nods and nearly breaks out in a jog. “Patricia didn’t get any last time and I felt bad.” “I didn’t get any last time either,” I point out. She snorts. “Yeah well, I don’t feel bad about that.” I face forward again so she can’t see my smile.

A school bus is many things. A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.

PART 1-Introduction I:1 A theoretical foundation such as the text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth. 2 The exercises are very simple. They do not require more than a few minutes, and it does not matter where or when you do them. They need no preparation. They are numbered, running from 1 to 365. The training period is one year. Do not undertake more than one exercise a day. 3 The purpose of these exercises is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now and the second with the restoration of sight. It is recommended that each exercise be repeated several times a day, preferably in a different place each time and, if possible, in every situation in which you spend any long period of time. The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another. 4 Unless specified to the contrary, the exercise should be practiced with the eyes open, since the aim is to learn how to see. The only rule that should be followed throughout is to practice the exercises with great specificity. Each one applies to every situation in which you find yourself and to everything you see in it. Each day’s exercises are planned around one central idea, the exercises themselves consisting of applying that idea to as many specifics as possible. Be sure that you do not decide that there are some things you see to which the idea for the day is inapplicable. The aim of the exercises will always be to increase the application of the idea to everything. This will not require effort. Only be sure that you make no exceptions in applying the idea. 5 Some of the ideas you will find hard to believe, and others will seem quite startling. It does not matter. You are merely asked to apply them to what you see. You are not asked to judge them nor even to believe them. You are asked only to use them. It is their use which will give them meaning to you and show you they are true. Remember only this—you need not believe them, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter nor decrease their efficacy. But allow yourself to make no exceptions in applying the ideas the exercises contain. Whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than this is required.   Lesson 1 - Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything. 1 Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see: 2 This table does not mean anything. This chair does not mean anything. This hand does not mean anything. This foot does not mean anything. This pen does not mean anything. 3 Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range: 4 That door does not mean anything. That body does not mean anything. That lamp does not mean anything. That sign does not mean anything. That shadow does not mean anything. 5 Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement is merely applied to anything you see. As you practice applying the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned.

Maximize the amount of exposure you get to the language. Remember, as discussed above, that language ability directly correlates with how many sentences the brain has had to process. Spend as much time as possible reading and listening to the target language, and refer to your native language only when necessary. At the beginning you will, of course, need your native language in order to make sense of the dialogue or text, but your goal should always be to maximize the number of sentences that you process.

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy.

I almost always use dark grey for the graph title. This ensures that it stands out, but without the sharp contrast you get from pure black on white (rather, I preserve the use of black for a standout color when I’m not using any other colors). A number of preattentive attributes are employed to draw attention to the “Progress to date” trend: color, thickness of line, presence of data marker and label on the final point, and the size of the corresponding text.

I took your phone one night last week and put this number on your contacts under his name, he says, almost proudly. So when I text you, it looks like it’s from him. I’ve deleted the messages now, of course. And this is a pay-as-you-go phone, so it can’t be traced

In 1913, on the eve of World War I, the Russian mathematician Andrei Markov published a paper applying probability to, of all things, poetry. In it, he modeled a classic of Russian literature, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, using what we now call a Markov chain. Rather than assume that each letter was generated at random independently of the rest, he introduced a bare minimum of sequential structure: he let the probability of each letter depend on the letter immediately preceding it. He showed that, for example, vowels and consonants tend to alternate, so if you see a consonant, the next letter (ignoring punctuation and white space) is much more likely to be a vowel than it would be if letters were independent. This may not seem like much, but in the days before computers, it required spending hours manually counting characters, and Markov’s idea was quite new. If Voweli is a Boolean variable that’s true if the ith letter of Eugene Onegin is a vowel and false if it’s a consonant, we can represent Markov’s model with a chain-like graph like this, with an arrow between two nodes indicating a direct dependency between the corresponding variables: Markov assumed (wrongly but usefully) that the probabilities are the same at every position in the text. Thus we need to estimate only three probabilities: P(Vowel1 = True), P(Voweli+1 = True | Voweli = True), and P(Voweli+1 = True | Voweli = False). (Since probabilities sum to one, from these we can immediately obtain P(Vowel1 = False), etc.) As with Naïve Bayes, we can have as many variables as we want without the number of probabilities we need to estimate going through the roof, but now the variables actually depend on each other.

7 Outstanding Tips for Banner Printing Choosing to produce a printed banner is a fantastic way to maximize your promotional requirements, it helps you to give maximum stand out and showcase your brand. There are a range of options from large PVC banners to simple roller banner solutions to suit all purposes of banner printing. Let’s look at some important points that can help you to make the most out of your printed banner. 1. Use High resolution images While going for banner printing, having good quality images is imperative. If you carry your own camera, then your camera should be able to take decent quality images, but be careful with images from the internet. Not only could you infringe copyright law but the quality is usually quite poor. 2. Clever use of color Your banner printing should be such that maximizes the use of color. Imagine the environment, where will your banner be positioned? What does your competition look like? Then, you can use color to ensure that you stand out from the crowd. If you are an established business, be sure to use your brand colors and clearly position your logo towards the top of the banner, this will make sure you develop a consistent brand identity throughout your marketing material. 3. Count your words Using a large amount of written text can look busy, messy and be off putting to your audience. Try to work out on your key message or brand values and make the banner big and bold. A short & striking message or a graphic will work a hundred times better than a hundred words. The banner printing is meant to grab attention of the viewer, not bore them. 4. Reveal your benefit Succinctly convey your key benefit in your banner headline. Do you have the best price? The best service? The best quality product? Whatever it is, make your banner printing known, specific to your audience and make it centralized. 5. Include an offer Make a time – limited offer to motivate customers to respond quickly. Your offer might even be included in your headline to simplify your banner. 6. Create a memorable call to action Make it clear what customers should do next in order to take advantage of your special offer. Your call to action should be succinct as well as memorable, such as an easy-to-remember URL or phone number. Remember that potential customers will only have a few seconds to digest your banner, so they must be able to retain the action step at a glance. 7. Less is more It is a simple rule but one that makes all the difference. It is very tempting to use a banner to get across every possible message and cram it full of content and images, however from an end user perspective big, bold and simple messaging and graphics is the most effective way to grab attention as well as looking professional and confident.

DURING THE RIDE back up to Telluride, among tablelands and cañons and red-rock debris, past the stone farmhouses and fruit orchards and Mormon spreads of the McElmo, below ruins haunted by an ancient people whose name no one knew, circular towers and cliffside towns abandoned centuries ago for reasons no one would speak of, Reef was able finally to think it through. If Webb had always been the Kieselguhr Kid, well, shouldn’t somebody ought to carry on the family business—you might say, become the Kid? It might’ve been the lack of sleep, the sheer relief of getting clear of Jeshimon, but Reef began to feel some new presence inside him, growing, inflating—gravid with what it seemed he must become, he found excuses to leave the trail now and then and set off a stick or two from the case of dynamite he had stolen from the stone powder-house at some mine. Each explosion was like the text of another sermon, preached in the voice of the thunder by some faceless but unrelenting desert prophesier who was coming more and more to ride herd on his thoughts. Now and then he creaked around in the saddle, as if seeking agreement or clarification from Webb’s blank eyes or the rictus of what would soon be a skull’s mouth. “Just getting cranked up,” he told Webb. “Expressing myself.” Back in Jeshimon he had thought that he could not bear this, but with each explosion, each night in his bedroll with the damaged and redolent corpse carefully unroped and laid on the ground beside him, he found it was easier, something he looked forward to all the alkaline day, more talk than he’d ever had with Webb alive, whistled over by the ghosts of Aztlán, entering a passage of austerity and discipline, as if undergoing down here in the world Webb’s change of status wherever he was now. . . . He had brought with him a dime novel, one of the Chums of Chance series, The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth, and for a while each night he sat in the firelight and read to himself but soon found he was reading out loud to his father’s corpse, like a bedtime story, something to ease Webb’s passage into the dreamland of his death. Reef had had the book for years. He’d come across it, already dog-eared, scribbled in, torn and stained from a number of sources, including blood, while languishing in the county lockup at Socorro, New Mexico, on a charge of running a game of chance without a license. The cover showed an athletic young man (it seemed to be the fearless Lindsay Noseworth) hanging off a ballast line of an ascending airship of futuristic design, trading shots with a bestially rendered gang of Eskimos below. Reef began to read, and soon, whatever “soon” meant, became aware that he was reading in the dark, lights-out having occurred sometime, near as he could tell, between the North Cape and Franz Josef Land. As soon as he noticed the absence of light, of course, he could no longer see to read and, reluctantly, having marked his place, turned in for the night without considering any of this too odd. For the next couple of days he enjoyed a sort of dual existence, both in Socorro and at the Pole. Cellmates came and went, the Sheriff looked in from time to time, perplexed.

I don't even care about what other would think about me at all. I am not searching for girlfriend in order to explain, I am a science lover and I see everything in terms of science i have explanations for anything through science. I know traditional and so called highly respectful spiritualism with Vedas and all religious texts, But If i choose that path many of you will not exist at all. That is the fact and I don't want to end the universe with so many beautiful stories to hear, although this world is filled with bad people there are N number of good people also there, so If I choose completely traditional spiritual path many will die, this world population will become half. For example If i enter Nalanda again think about the consequences but I love Nalanda always. I will definitely enter science but where? I will think about it after 20th march. My reputation starts only if I meet a right girl then If she is correct always and even sit and talk with me at least, then I will stop watching porn. But you know what so far only few girls were able to sit and talk with me directly all other girls I have seen so far, are just they look at me and terrify and fly away. So first sit and talk with me if you can. Be ready to answer my questions, if you want me to be your friend. You can not even handle 5 minutes. That is why I am saying this it is better that I am being single and go to science.

Oh, and can you just text me from a normal fucking number? I know it’s you now. Quit trying to be cute.

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.

The thirty-day no-contact rule Recovering from a breakup on a more practical basis can be likened to getting over an addiction. You go through periods of major withdrawal where you become overwhelmed by a cocktail of emotions, including guilt, fear, randomly missing him, and suddenly feeling like what he did to you ‘wasn’t that bad’. You start to play the mental showreel of all your good times (even if you only had a few), and suddenly you can’t remember why you left. Feeling this cluster of imbalanced emotions can be very confusing and irritating, but all hope is not lost. Contrary to popular belief, breakups don’t actually have to be hard. We assign so much spiritual and emotional value to these men, that by the time we finally distance ourselves from them, we feel distant from ourselves. And that’s really heartbreaking, because no man is worth losing yourself over. Ever. They say it takes about thirty days to break a habit. Texting your ex, stalking his profile from your second account, deliberately asking your mutual friends certain questions to get updates on his life and his new girl – it all needs to stop. So right now, go cold turkey, block his number on whatever messaging app you use, remove him from all your social media. Maintaining little corridors of access to him means he’s still on a pedestal. It also means your value system when it comes to men is warped, because naturally you’re going to keep comparing new guys to him as long as he holds this much space in your head. You want to evict him from that space so that someone new can blow you away when the time is right! This guy is not the be-all and end-all of your experiences with men, and the outcome of your situation with him really doesn’t have to define your future relationships. This thirty-day period of making yourself the centre of your world has a 100 per cent success rate, because by the time you get to day thirty, if it’s done honestly and correctly, you will have either a) met a new guy or b) found a whole heap of new reasons to love your healing self. But the thirty-day no-contact rule must be adhered to strictly, and if you break the pact with yourself, you must start all the way from the beginning – which might feel like torture.

Please delete my number because I’m not going to settle for your maybes. I want concrete. I want definite. I want people who call when they say they will and show up when they plan to. I don’t want to spend my life waiting for and wasted on a person who can only love halfway. I do not want your texts, late at night that say, “I miss you” or “I’m sorry” or “I just need a little bit more time.” Please delete my number – because I’m deleting yours. And you can find someone new to text your maybes to.

Catalina: I need your help. I don’t have anyone else I can ask. I was sitting at my desk in my room trying to work on a Numerology assignment but since that message had come through, I hadn’t been able to think of anything else. Because it came down to this – was I going to help Mommy Acrux with her little problem? I hadn’t even replied yet so I had no idea what she wanted my help with, but I needed to make a decision before I did. Did I trust her? And how far was I willing to go for her? I tapped my pen against my lips as I wondered. Catalina had been messaging me every day since we’d swapped numbers. She gave me information on Lionel and Clara’s comings and goings and revealed anything they’d let slip but there hadn’t been a single, solid thing that she’d told me which would make any real difference to us. I understood that Lionel kept her out of his plans, but still, she hadn’t exactly given me any irrefutable evidence that she was actually on my side. ... I reached out and took a biscuit from the little stand and devoured it in two bites as Catalina watched me. It was fucking delicious. Going hungry in the mortal world had definitely left me with a taste for good food and there was no way I’d be letting those little treats go to waste. “Have you seen much of Darius?” she asked and I stilled. We talked a lot via text, but there was an unspoken rule that we didn’t discuss him, and I would have preferred to stick to it. “Every day,” I admitted. “Meals, classes, the common room. It’s kinda like getting punched in the heart every other hour.” I wasn’t really sure why I’d admitted to that and I looked away from her before she could get a read on the pain it caused me. Because I didn’t have a right to be hurting over it, did I? It had been my choice that put us in this position after all. The door opened before she could push me on the subject and I looked around with a smile as Xavier stepped into the room. He fell still as he spotted me. His dark hair was a mess, he was barefoot and the grey sweatpants he wore had a stain on the leg. He was also shirtless which gave me a look at the lean muscle lining his frame and the defined V which dipped beneath his waistband. “Well shit, Xavier, have you spent the last two months working out or something?” I teased and a faint blush lined his cheeks as he stared between me and his mother. “What…why are you here?” he asked, not seeming to know if he should be pleased to see me or not. She seemed to be waiting for me to make the move though so I beckoned Xavier closer and pointed to the chair beside me. He approached, his eyes narrowed suspiciously as he lowered himself into the seat and pushed a hand through his hair self consciously. “Did I interrupt your nap?” I teased. “No. I just…didn’t really expect to see anyone today so I didn’t exactly bother getting dressed.” There was a hollow tone to his voice which made me frown and my heart twisted painfully as I wondered how many days he spent alone like that. (Tory POV)

The I Ching is an ancient Chinese text. The Book of Changes, it is called. It contains 64 oracular readings, all highly metaphorical. You ask the I Ching a question and throw three coins three times and come up with a hexagram and a number that points to one of the passages. It “answers” your question … yes;

For [The Hobbit] is a children’s story. Despite the fact that it had been drawn into his mythology, Tolkien did not allow it to become overwhelmingly serious or even adult in tone, but stuck to his original intention of amusing his own and perhaps other people’s children. Indeed he did this too consciously and deliberately at times in the first draft, which contains a large number of ‘asides’ to juvenile readers, remarks such as ‘Now you know quite enough to go on with’ and ‘As we shall see in the end’. He later removed many of these, but some remain in the published text – to his regret, for he came to dislike them, and even to believe that any deliberate talking down to children is a great mistake in a story. ‘Never mind about the young!’ he once wrote. ‘I am not interested in the “child” as such, modern or otherwise, and certainly have no intention of meeting him/her half way, or a quarter of the way. It is a mistaken thing to do anyway, either useless (when applied to the stupid) or pernicious (when inflicted on the gifted).’ But when he wrote The Hobbit he was still suffering from what he later called ‘the contemporary delusions about “fairy-stories” and children’ – delusions that not long afterwards he made a conscious decision to renounce.

Modern culture treats sex outside of marriagea as being no big deal. It’s considered completely normal and not something to be ashamed of; if anything, people brag about it and argue that it’s a positive good. It’s described as being a “casual” activity; something you can do with “no strings attached.” You can supposedly have meaningless “hookups,” “one-night stands,” or text your “friends with benefits” to set up a “booty call,” which is probably the most unromantic thing I can even think of. This idea that sex outside of marriage is OK is probably the biggest lie we are told, and the biggest source of our problems—not just in dating, but in all of life. I know that is a bold statement, but consider the evidence: after the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, divorce rates doubled, followed by an ongoing decline in marriage rates.1 Currently, 40 percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, without a stable, married, two-parent family; in the 1960s, at the start of the sexual revolution, that number was just 7 percent.2 Besides those births, there have been 60 million US children killed before birth via abortion since 1973.3 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which would be almost nonexistent if all people were monogamous,b are instead at record highs,4 with something like 20 million new infections in the country each year.5 Pornography use has become so common that it’s just kind of assumed for men but is also regularly consumed by at least a third of all women.6 And then you have all the ways people use and abuse sex as a way to use and abuse other people through either harassment or assault, which is a huge problem: it’s estimated that one in five women are raped at some point in their lives,7 while the majority are either harassed or assaulted in some form.8 Go beyond the statistics and think about how all these things would affect the actual people involved, and all the various costs associated with each one. Add it all up, and the impact both on society and on individual relationships is ridiculously massive.

By chance – but it is not by chance – I open the preface to the Veda of my friend and master and ask whoever will listen to me: What would you save from a house in flames? A precious, irreplaceable manuscript containing a message of salvation for the human race or a small number of people threatened by that fire? The dilemma is real and not only for the writer: how can one only be an ‘intellectual, interested in the truth, or only a ‘spiritual person’ engaged in goodness, when people desperately beg for food and justice? How can one follow a contemplative, philosophical or even religious path when the world requires action, commitment and politics? Vice versa, how can one act to make a better world or an indispensable revolution when what one needs is a serene intuition and a just evaluation? It should be clear to all who share life on our planet that the house in flames is not a fact that involves only one individual. Why was I created? Why, having been saved, do I still exist? How must I live and what can I do? My reader said: If I am not ready to save the manuscript from the fire, if I don’t take my intellectual vocation seriously, placing it before everything else – even at the risk of appearing inhuman –, then I am also incapable of helping people in a more serious and immediate manner. Vice versa, if I am not attentive and ready to save people from a outbreak of fire, which means, if I don’t consider my spiritual calling with total honesty, sacrificing all the rest for it, even my own life, then I will be incapable of saving the manuscript. If I let myself be involved in the solid problems of my times and if I don’t open my home to all of the winds of the world, then whatever I produce from an ivory tower will be sterile and cursed. Also, if I don’t close the doors and windows in order to concentrate on this work, I will not be able to offer anything of value to my neighbour. I hear each book on my shelves shouting in silence: In truth, the manuscript can come out of the flames charred and people burned, but the intensity of one preoccupation has helped me with the other. The dilemma is not to choose the monastery or the disco, Harvard or Chanakyapuri (the Vatican or the Quirinal), tradition or progress, politics or academia, the Church or the State, justice or truth. In a word, reality is not a matter of ‘either...or’, it is not a matter of choosing between spirit and matter, contemplation and action, written message and living persons, East and West, theory and approach or even between divine and human.1 My sense and destiny are inscribed in these words. I am a library, thus I exist in the world and thanks to men who have written, printed, bought and guarded my texts, I exist for them and in their world. I exist also because a man has existed. 1

He said that it was strange it had taken us so long to meet: in fact it was almost exactly a year to the day since we had been – albeit briefly – introduced by a mutual friend. Since then, he had asked the mutual friend several times for my number; he had attended parties and dinners where he had been told I would be present, only to find that I wasn’t there. He didn’t know why the mutual friend resisted putting him directly in touch with me, if it was anything so deliberate as resistance. But one way or another, he had been obstructed; until – again without knowing why – be had recently asked the mutual friend once more for my number and promptly been given it. I said that my current feelings of powerlessness had changed the way I looked at what happens and why, to the extent that I was beginning to see what other people called fate in the unfolding of events, as though living were merely an act of reading to find out what happens next. That idea – of one’s own life as something that had already been dictated – was strangely seductive, until you realised that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerless. For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only though absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.

I realised I had, for over twenty years now, been sending out and receiving signals with large numbers of people all throughout the day. Texts, Facebook messages, phone calls - they were all little ways in which the world seemed to say: I see you. I hear you. We need you. Signal back. Signal more. Now the signals were gone, and it felt like the world was saying - you don't matter. ...I would often start conversations with people - on the beach, in bookstores, in cafes - and they were often friendly, but the conversations seemed to have a low social temperature compared to the web-based ones I had lost. No stranger is going to flood you with hearts and tell you you're great. For years I had derived a large part of my meaning in life from the thin, insistent signals of the web. Now they were gone, and I could see how paltry and lacking in substance they were. But, still, I missed them.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

I find it curious that the Bible allowed so many authors in a collection so important to setting the trajectory of a people. In my Protestant tradition, we acknowledge sixty-six books of the Bible. Within those sixty-six writings, who would dare to venture counting the number of fingerprints on those pages? In the collection known as the Psalms alone, a whole gang of psalmists are identified as contributors. That’s to say nothing of letters like Hebrews, where no author is identified. And let’s not get started on books where biblical scholars aren’t so convinced that the author named in the book actually owned the hand moving the quill. I won’t lie to you: I feel like God chose an awfully sloppy process if the goal was for us to receive each and every single word as though it were spoken by the mouth of the same God. God could’ve given it all to Moses on Sinai that first time and provided a little more uniformity to all of this. But that is not what happened. Instead, we are left with a collection of various writings: wisdom literature, poems, songs, letters, teachings, sermons—and even some stories that seem a lot like what we’d now consider folktales. We even have some writings put in there twice. Either God is a sloppy editor, or the voice of the people was preserved in the text on purpose. If God is a sloppy editor, then the Bible is of marginal value. If the voice of the people is preserved in this text, then the Bible is an invitation to seek God in our history, present, and future.

I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How?. By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand 'Here is one hand' and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left 'and here is another.' And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things. And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there is no need to multiply examples. But did I prove just now that two human hands were then in existence? I do want to insist that I did; that the proof which I gave was a perfectly rigorous one; and that it is perhaps impossible to give a better or more rigorous proof of anything whatever.

Give me your phone number and I’ll text you a pic when I find them.

Joey was fed, clean, growing, and cared for. She didn’t need more than she had, but I roamed my broken house for hours while she slept, racked with guilt over bringing her into the situation and terrified of what would happen if I couldn’t fix it soon. I was completely on my own in finding a solution. Liam, my best friend for years, partner, father of my child, had ghosted me. He hadn’t responded to Joey’s birth announcement. Not even a “she’s so cute.” And when I’d texted him about the money he’d stolen from me—I’d finally accepted that was what he’d done—he blocked me. Not just my number but every social media. Liam wasn’t coming back. Not ever. This was my problem to solve.

The destruction of Jerusalem serves as the apex of suffering for God’s people. The last stronghold for a formerly great nation fell, inaugurating the exilic period for God’s people. When this tragedy occurs, the people of God tumble to the depth of despair. In Jeremiah 29, we are given a glimpse of two possible responses to the national tragedy of exile. On the one hand, God’s people were tempted to withdraw from the world. On the other, they were tempted to return to their idolatrous ways. Lamentations 1:1-3 reminds us of the tragic set of circumstances that confronts God’s people. They have fallen from the heights. A vibrant city filled with people now lies deserted. A noble queen has now become a slave (v. 1). How will the people of God respond to this tragedy? Although the proper response to the historical reality of this text is the lament offered in Lamentations, Jeremiah 29 presents two unacceptable options available to God’s people sent away into exile. Jeremiah responds to the situation described in Lamentations 1:1-3 by sending a letter “from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jer 29:1). Jeremiah 29:4-7 reveals YHWH’s command for the exiles when they are tempted to withdraw from the world: This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

can you imagine how insane that must have been—to get the first text of all time? When no one knew what a text was? It would have been like “WHY ARE THERE WORDS ON MY PHONE??? PHONES ARE FOR NUMBERS!!

DEL, SHRAKE, AND JENKINS watched Lucas make notes, and five minutes later call Carver. Carver came up on the phone almost instantly. He said, “Yeah.” “This is Davenport, the cop that’s been following you around.” “How’d you get this number?” “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you right away, and somewhere private, where Dannon and Grant aren’t around.” “I don’t think I want to do that,” Carver said, and the line went dead. “Well, shit,” Lucas said. “You’re a smooth talker,” Del said. “I wonder if he’s got a smartphone,” Lucas said. He sent a text: “Six executed in Afghanistan. Want to hear the governor talking about it on TV? Take the call.” He sent it, and got back “delivered” a second later. Ten seconds after that, Carver took the second voice call and said, “What kind of bullshit is this?” “You know what kind of bullshit it is. It’s Leavenworth bullshit,” Lucas said. “Now, you need to take a little time off this afternoon, go out for a cup of coffee. There’s an obscure Caribou Coffee a couple miles from Grant’s house. Give me a time.” After a moment of silence, Carver said, “Three o’clock.

1.1M    ./scripts 58M     ./cloud9 74M     . You can also use tee to write the output to several files at the same time, as shown in this example: root@beaglebone:/opt# du ‐d1 ‐h | tee /tmp/1.txt /tmp/2.txt /tmp/3.txt Filter Commands (from sort to xargs) There are filtering commands, each of which provides a useful function: sort: This command has several options, including (‐r) sorts in reverse; (‐f) ignores case; (‐d) uses dictionary sorting, ignoring punctuation; (‐n) numeric sort; (‐b) ignores blank space; (‐i) ignores control characters; (‐u) displays duplicate lines only once; and (‐m) merges multiple inputs into a single output. wc (word count): This can be used to calculate the number of words, lines, or characters in a stream. For example: root@beaglebone:/tmp# wc < animals.txt  4  4 18 This has returned that there are 4 lines, 4 words, and 18 characters. You can select the values independently by using (‐l) for line count; (‐w) for word count; (‐m) for character count; and (‐c) for the byte count (which would also be 18 in this case). head: Displays the first lines of the input. This is useful if you have a very long file or stream of information and you want to examine only the first few lines. By default it will display the first 10 lines. You can specify the number of lines using the ‐n option. For example, to get the first five lines of output of the dmesg command (display message or driver message), which displays the message buffer of the kernel, you can use the following: root@beaglebone:/tmp# dmesg | head ‐n5   [    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu   [    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct   [    0.000000] Linux version 3.13.4-bone5(root@imx6q-sabrelite-1gb-0) tail: This is just like head except that it displays the last lines of a file or stream. Using it in combination with dmesg provides useful output, as shown here: root@beaglebone:/tmp# dmesg | tail ‐n2   [   36.123251] libphy: 4a101000.mdio:00 - Link is Up - 100/Full   [   36.123421] IPv6:ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0:link becomes ready grep: A very powerful filter command that can parse lines using text and regular expressions. You can use this command to filter output with options, including (‐i) ignore case; (‐m 5) stop after five matches; (‐q) silent, will exit with return status 0 if any matches are found; (‐e) specify a pattern; (‐c) print a count of matches; (‐o) print only the matching text; and (‐l) list the filename of the file containing the match. For example, the following examines the dmesg output for the first three occurrences of the string “usb,” using ‐i to ignore case: root@beaglebone:/tmp# dmesg |grep ‐i ‐m3 usb   [    1.948582] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs   [    1.948637] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub   [    1.948795] usbcore: registered new device driver usb You can combine pipes together. For example, you get the exact same output by using head and displaying only the first three lines of the grep output: root@beaglebone:/tmp# dmesg |grep ‐i usb |head ‐n3   [    1.948582] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs   [    1.948637] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub   [    1.948795] usbcore: registered new device driver usb xargs: This is a very powerful filter command that enables you to construct an argument list that you use to call another command or tool. In the following example, a text file args.txt that contains three strings is used to create three new files. The output of cat is piped to xargs, where it passes the three strings as arguments to the touch command, creating three new files a.txt, b.txt,

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won’t be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may “hit” you—but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God’s voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise “divine reading” of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading “not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you.” This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it.

Mind Reading: Yeah, I’m talking to you. This is one that MANY of us are guilty of. Mind reading is very much what it sounds like. You assume that you know a person’s thoughts or internal motives, even though in reality you are just taking guesses.   Example: You text your significant other saying how much you love them and that you are really happy that things have been great lately. You ask them if they want to go to a movie later. I’m talking super cutesy with emojis and everything. Five minutes later, you get the response, “K.” That’s it, just… K. When you see your partner later you say, “So you don’t want to go to the movies?” You’re already pissed because you assume that they don’t care as much as you given their lackluster response. If they cared as much, they would have used an equivalent number of emojis… duh. In reality, they were just driving on the freeway and cared enough about you to not get killed by texting while driving.

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tiny seed of doubt sprouting inside her gut. Could this life-altering affair be nothing more than a one-sided mirage? She couldn’t keep her journalistic instincts from attempting to connect dots. She recalled every possible aversion of her lover’s eyes, each word of affirmation that may not have been as sincere and heartfelt as the previous. And now this. Karina released an audible breath and brought her hand to her head. She felt the sharp edge of her one-quarter-karat, pear-shaped diamond engagement ring, and thought about Reinaldo, her Brazilian husband of the last ten years. There had been some good times … moments she’d always remember. But as she recalled the hikes up Pikes Peak, the mountainous bike rides, and games of pool while drinking a few beers, she admitted that Reinaldo had been nothing more than a friend—a convenient friend at that. But one who had helped her produce two kids, two adorable little rug rats. Would they ever look at Mommy the same way, if they found out who the real Karina was? When they found out. Karina couldn’t let her insecurities question her new path in life—a path she’d ignored far too long. Determined to make this relationship work, her mind sharpened, and she leaned over the side of the bed and snatched her smartphone from the back pocket of her khakis. No sweet text messages. She licked her lips, then scrolled to her contacts and tapped the cell number. “Hi, Karina. Miss me already?” the voice on the other end asked. Karina couldn’t help but smile. “I just wanted to hear your voice again before I packed up my things and strolled back into my old life.” “I know what you mean,” Karina’s lover said. “You don’t have a spouse and two kids,” Karina said with a tone more harsh than she’d intended. “Oh, sorry.” “Not a problem. I get it. I really do.” A wave of emotion overcame Karina. A single tear bubbled out of the corner of her eye and she sniffled. “Are you okay, dear?” “I …” “You can tell me, Karina. We share everything.” “I just wanted our evening together to be special. You mean so much to me … how I see myself. How I see our future.” “I’m so sorry my work got in our way. Just know that you hold a special place in my heart.” Karina could hear sincerity, which warmed her heart. “I love you.” “I love you too, Karina.” Muffled sounds broke Karina’s concentration. Was that another person’s voice? “What was that noise? Where are you?” Tension rippled up her spine. “Oh, I just walked in my door. I’m exhausted, dear. Let’s make plans for early next week. We can both relax and have some fun at my new place. We can talk about our future.” The pressure in Karina’s head eased. They kissed into

Grab your phone from the truck before you go in,” he said. “Why?” “So I can send you suggestive and encouraging texts when you take too long with the party planning of course.” “Of course,” she said. “I really might have to revamp my whole not-thinking plan and put you in charge.” He lifted his hands. “I’m willing and able,” he said, then sketched a bow. When he stood, he slid his phone out and handed it to her. “To put in your number,” he said when she looked confused. “Oh, right.” She did as he asked, then that mischievous light sparkled in her eyes as she took a moment and typed in a little more before turning it off and handing it back to him. “What was that last bit?” “Just helping to get that encouraging conversation going.” She left him standing there, looking down at his phone then at her retreating back as she headed back around to the parking lot and her truck. He pocketed the phone without reading the message, thinking he should probably be alone when that happened. And possibly naked. “Yes, much better when we don’t think.” He planned to do his best to keep them both not thinking for at least the remainder of that day and, if he was lucky, all of the night, too.

In my mind, the sexiest thing in the world is the feeling that you’re wanted. The slightly nervous asking of your phone number. The text message asking you to dinner. The simple overture of wanting me can satisfy my ego for a good long time.

A Complete Guide to Conduct A Backlinks Audit Google's web spam team is very pro-active today to detect spam at maximum lowest degree in order to give spam-free search results to its viewers. In this regard, Google is making their algorithm strong to block the spammers from search results and attacking on each and every websites having un-natural or spam link profiles. If your website has large number of low quality backlinks OR exceeding 3% backlinks with exact match anchor texts then you should consider reviewing your website's link profile. If you are victim of Google penguin penalty then you have to evaluate your website's link profile to clean it from low quality or over-optimized backlinks. Building backlinks for a single or multiple websites can be a easy task while evaluating backlinks quality can be a challenging. In this regard, you should conduct a detailed backlinks analysis in order clean-up your website from low quality or un-natural backlinks. You should consider the following points while analyzing backlinks profile of a website: 1: Total number of backlinks 2: Total number of referring domains 3: Anchor text distribution ratio 4: Quality of backlinks 1: Number of backlinks This is the 1st main point to review while checking the link profile. You have to download the list of all backlinks to check each and every backlinks. Google Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, MajesticSEO and Opensiteexplore are some important tools can help you to get the list of backlinks attached with your website. Now, check each and every backlinks from the list you download and see if these are on Google's webmaster quality guidelines or not. 2: Referring Domains You should check the quality also for TLDs linked with your website. Check the PA and DA of each domain and see if these are relevant to your website niche to get backlinks. If linked domains have high external backlinks and not relevant to your website niche then try to remove these domains from your website. 3: Anchor test distribution This is the most important thing to consider while doing backlinks analysis of any website. Most of SEOs prefer to build backlinks with exact match anchor text only and ignoring Brand, Generic, LSI as well as other types of anchor text. Google penguin heavily attack on website having over-optimized exact match anchor text backlinks profile. Review all exact-match anchor text backlinks and remove it if found not-relevant or from low quality websites. 4: Quality of backlinks Backlinks quality really matters while doing backlinks analysis. If your website is full of linked with low quality and irrelevant websites then you should immediately try to remove these from your website. These low quality backlinks might be reason for your web penalization from search results.

This is nothing special but a simple short 5 or 6 digit phone number that is allotted particularly to a business to send out text messages to their target peoples who have previously opted into to receive these text messages from their own will. The benefit of this is that it is a quit handy service where you can ask the clients to send feedback by typing back a message to the same number

That said, can you imagine how insane that must have been—to get the first text of all time? When no one knew what a text was? It would have been like “WHY ARE THERE WORDS ON MY PHONE??? PHONES ARE FOR NUMBERS!!