Offensive Line Quotes

one of my favorites: Robby gave her a skeptical look. "Ye're an angel of death. No offense, but I would call that a wee bit of harm." "We're called Deliverers, actually. And we're not supposed to take someone before their time." "How does that work?" Gregori lifted his camera, focusing on her. "I mean do you just go down a line, saying, 'Eenie meenie mynie moe, sorry, dude you gotta go'?

No offense to hot girls everywhere- but newsflash- there are hot girls everywhere.

Sexuality isn't always a straight line from closeted to out-of-the-closet. You can take time to explore and evolve and figure out exactly what kind of queer you are, if that even matters to you".

Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.

Phury lit a blunt and eyed the sixteen cans of Aqua Net that were lined up on Butch and V's coffee table. "What's doing with the hair spray? You boys going drag on us?" Butch held up the lenght of PVC pipe he was punching a hole in. "Potato launcher, my man. Big fun." "Excuse me ?" "Didn't you ever go to summer camp ?" "Basket weaving and woodcarving are for humans. No offense, but we have better things to teach our youngs.

I hate when I'm at the grocery store and the person checking me out asks, "Paper or plastic?" It's offensive. As if I'm going to sleep with her just because she has a clever pick up line.

I'd done it, I'd crossed the line between accepted behavior and behavior most of the population would consider a lynching offense, and that morning I felt as real as any of the men in the Escape commercials. It had been dirty and nasty but I wanted more.

[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.

No matter what line of work you do, success cannot truly be achieved until you own who you are. The most offensive liability then becomes an asset. It makes you perform your best, regardless of the challenges you might face.

Nothing has changed. The body is susceptible to pain, It must eat and breath air and sleep, It has thin skin and blood right underneath, An adequate stock of teeth and nails, Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable. In tortures all this is taken into account. Nothing has changed. The body shudders as it is shuddered Before the founding of Rome and after, In the twentieth century before and after Christ. Tortures are as they were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller, And whatever happens seems on the other side of the wall. Nothing has changed. It’s just that there are more people, Besides the old offenses, new ones have appeared, Real, imaginary, temporary, and none, But the howl with which the body responds to them, Was, and is, and ever will be a howl of innocence According to the time-honored scale and tonality. Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances, Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same. The body writhes, jerks, and tries to pull away Its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up, It turns blue, swells, salivates, and bleeds. Nothing has changed. Except of course for the course of boundaries, The lines of forests, coasts, deserts, and glaciers. Amid these landscapes traipses the soul, Disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away, Alien to itself, elusive At times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence, While the body is and is and is And has no place of its own.

Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.

My task is to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in, and what I hope for, is that right? And therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. But this, however, needs to be noted: if God exists and if he indeed created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it in accordance with Euclidean geometry, and he created human reason with a conception of only three dimensions of space. At the same time there were and are even now geometers and philosophers, even some of the most outstanding among them, who doubt that the whole universe, or, even more broadly, the whole of being, was created purely in accordance with Euclidean geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, may perhaps meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have come to the conclusion that if I cannot understand even that, then it is not for me to understand about God. I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world. And I advise you never to think about it, Alyosha my friend, and most especially about whether God exists or not. All such questions are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was 'with God,' who himself is God, and so on and so forth, to infinity. Many words have been invented on the subject. It seems I'm already on a good path, eh? And now imagine that in the final outcome I do not accept this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men--let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it.

Choosing not to take offense is not about simply ignoring wrongs. If someone, say, cuts in front of you in line, you can address the situation. You don’t have to simply accept it. But you can act without contempt, anger, and bitterness.

Canada?" Ash said. "You didn't say it was in Canada. "I said Ontario." (Maya) "I thought you meant Ontario, California." "Seriously?" Tori said,rolling her eyes. "A helicopter to California? You may be hot,but your sister clearly inherited all the brains in the family." "Did she call me hot?" Ash whispered to me, looking more annoyed than he ever did when someone called him a jerk. "She hasn't been on a date in six months", Derek rumbled behind us. "No offense, but as long as aren't related to her, you're fair game. Hell, even--" Tori spun on him. "I didn't know." "Um, wait a sec," Corey said. "So Ash is hot and I'm seriously cute? Is there a difference?" "Yes," Hayley said, and propelled him through the line.

But no one wants to listen to our sad stories unless they are smoothed over with a joke or nice melody. And even then, not always. No one wants to hear a woman talking or writing about pain in a way that suggests that it doesn't end. Without a pat solution, silver lining, or happy ending we're just complainers -- downers who don't realize how good we actually have it. Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop- a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or shellfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive.

Look, nobody's trying to kill me right now and that's just fine. If they don't like me, that's just how it goes. I got over needing people to LIKE me in tenth grade, when I spied the captain of the cheerleading squad on her knees in front of the offensive line of the football team under the bleachers, one day after school. I figured that wasn't the life for me.

The solution to staying on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty.

For each self-criticism, there were many criticisms. My mother's two comrades insisted that she had behaved in a 'bourgeois' manner. They said she had not wanted to go to the country to help collect food; when she pointed out that she had gone, in line with the Party's wishes, they retorted: "Ah, but you didn't really want to go." Then they accused her of having enjoyed privileged food cooked, moreover, by her mother at home and of succumbing to illness more than most pregnant women. Mrs. Mi also criticized her because her mother had made clothes for the baby. "Who ever heard of a baby wearing new clothes?"she said. "Such a bourgeois waste! Why can't she just wrap the baby up in old clothes like everyone else?" The fact that my mother had shown her sadness that my grandmother had to leave was singled out as definitive proof that she 'put family first," a serious offense.

And, because in some hard core of me, in some stubborn trench of selfish refusal, I could not, even at ten years of age, surrender to anything or anyone, I fought that pain. I analysed its offensive, and found its lines of attack. It festered, like the corruption in a wound turned sour, drawing strength from me. I knew enough to know the remedy. Hot iron for infection, cauterize, burn, make it pure. I cut from myself all the weakness of care. The love for my dead, I put aside, secure in a casket, an object of study, a dry exhibit, no longer bleeding, cut loose, set free. The capacity for new love, I burned out. I watered it with acid until the ground lay barren and nothing there would sprout, no flower take root.

Generally speaking, the main principles are as follows: (1) the use of initiative, flexibility and planning in conducting offensives within the defensive, battles of quick decision within protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations; (2) co-ordination with regular warfare; (3) establishment of base areas; (4) the strategic defensive and the strategic offensive; (5) the development of guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare; and (6) correct relationship of command.

That’s rude!” Kusha almost shouts. “Breaking privacy is—” “—an offense of manner?” Taha finishes Kusha’s line. “Saw them three years ago.” She shrugs. “You were a bitch back then.” “I … I didn’t talk enough to be a … a bitch.” Kusha holds back eye-rolling. Eye-rolling is rude. “Well. Not-talking-enough equals bitch.” Sometimes, it’s hard not to slap Taha. But such desire is way more than just rude.

The bottom line is this: when it comes to whether or not you are offended, you are in total control. You can choose to take offense, or you can choose to take action. You can be offended, or you can be cheerful. You can examine your feelings, or you can examine the results of how you have treated people, who you have become, and what has been accomplished in the process. An offense taken is such a little thing. But when hoarded and fed, an offense is a lot like an actual atomic bomb. The damage it causes—immediately and over time—is far, far greater than its initial size would lead you to believe.

In hockey, nearly everyone plays with a partner. The offense forward line is made up of a left wing, a center, and a right wing. The defense skates in pairs. Only the goalie is alone and he’s always weird. Always. Kenny Simms, who graduated last year, was one of the greatest goalies at Briar and probably the reason we won three Frozen Fours in a row, but that guy had the strangest fucking habits. He talked to himself more than he talked to anyone else, sat in the back of the bus, preferred to eat alone. On the rare occasion that he came out with us, he’d argue the entire time. I once got into it with him over whether there was too much technology available to children. We argued about that topic for the entire three hours we were knocking back beers at the bar. Sabrina reminds me of Simms.

Love is the bottom line in our relationship with the Lord—not love of principles or teachings but love for the Person of Jesus Christ.

When we really understand it, we will always find grace offensive. And that's exactly the way it should be. If we start to feel comfortable with grace, then we've lost what it really means.

Whilst ladies persist in maintaining the strictly defensive condition, men must naturally, as it were, take the oppposite line, that of attack; otherwise, if both parties held aloof, there would be no more marriages; and the two hosts would die in their respective inaction, without ever coming to a battle. Thus it is evident that as the ladies will not, the men must take the offensive... Is it not time that the ladies should take an innings? Let us widowers and bachelors form an association to declare that for the next hundred years we will make love no longer. Let the young women come and make love to us; let them write us verses; let them ask us to dance, get us ices and cups of tea, and help us on with our cloaks at the hall-door; and if they are eligible, we may perhaps be induced to yield and say, 'La, Miss Hopkins - I really never - I am so agitated - Ask papa!

That theory will be blown when she’s conferring with the event security, wearing an earpiece and holstering a firearm under her business suit. Or if she perceives a threat and pulls a gun, because she—and no offense, sweetheart—looks awful trigger-happy.” She set her forearms on the table. “You have no idea how true that statement is. But right now the person I’d be gunning for most is you, sweetheart.” Then she smiled. Holy shit. The smile completely transformed her face—but Devin wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing because the grin straddled the line between sexy and evil.

The most terrifying part of battle was the exit from a trench—standing up and climbing out, knowing that the opposing force would at that moment unleash a fusillade that would continue until the offensive concluded, either with victory, meaning a few yards gained, or defeat, a few yards lost, but invariably with half one’s battalion dead, wounded, or missing. “I shall never forget the moment when we had to leave the shelter of the trenches,” wrote British private Ridley Sheldon, of combat at Helles, at the southwest tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. “It is indeed terrible, the first step you take—right into the face of the most deadly fire, and to realize that any moment you may be shot down; but if you are not hit, then you seem to gather courage. And when you see on either side of you men like yourself, it inspires you with a determination to press forward. Away we went over the parapet with fixed bayonets—one line of us like the wind. But it was absolute murder, for men fell like corn before the sickle.

Today's offended students often show a marked degree of over-reaction to words that make them feel uncomfortable. They equate speech itself, and often the most innocuous comments, with physical violence. In this, they are simply extending how they were taught as children to respond disproportionately to damaging words. That's because the child protection narrative they have been raised on makes a particular feature of blurring the line between physical and psychological harm. For example, children's charities and NGOs constantly broaden definitions of abuse this way and, in doing so, actively encourage children to be suspicious of entirely harmless, informal, emotional interactions and tensions, even within their own families.

Blue flames and steel blades don’t forgive. If you allow your anger to distract you, you could burn or cut yourself. And, among serious cooks and chefs, burns and cuts are terribly unfashionable. The only thing worse than a burn or a cut is the need for medical attention. Abandoning your fellow linesmen because you lost focus and flayed a finger is an unforgivable offense.

It is possible in a city street neighborhood to know all kinds of people without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself, and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them. Such relationships can, and do, endure for many years, for decades; they could never have formed without that line, much less endured. The form precisely because they are by-the-way to people’s normal public sorties. ‘Togetherness’ is a fittingly nauseating name for an old ideal in planning theory. This ideal is that if anything is shared among people, much should be shared. ‘Togetherness,’ apparently a spiritual resource of the new suburbs, works destructively in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared drives city people apart. When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the people of the place must enlarge their private lives is they are to have anything approaching equivalent contact with their neighbors. They must settle for some form of ‘togetherness,’ in which more is shared with one another than in the life of the sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of contact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it has to be, and either has distressing results. In the case of the first outcome, where people do share much, they become exceedingly choosy as to who their neighbors are, or with whom they associate at all. They have to become so.

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.

What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations. The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction. Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do. Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”) Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.” No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study. We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate. I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements. Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity. Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold. If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true. No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written. It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness. Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive. I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.

From my college courses and my reading I knew the various names that came at the end of a line of questions or were placed as periods to bafflement: the First Cause, the First Mover, the Life Force, the Universal Mind, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, even Providence. I too had used those names in arguing with others, and with myself, trying to explain the world to myself. And now I saw that those names explained nothing. They were of no more use than Evolution or Natural Selection or Nature or The Big Bang of these later days. All such names do is catch us within the length and breadth of our own thoughts and our own bewilderment. Though I knew the temptation of simple reason, to know nothing that can't be proved, still I supposed that those were not the right names. I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death? Yes. I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, sufferning, and death. I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will--His own body given to be broken.

My attorney general, Eric Holder, would later point out that as egregious as the behavior of the banks may have been leading up to the crisis, there were few indications that their executives had committed prosecutable offenses under existing statutes—and we were not in the business of charging people with crimes just to garner good headlines. But to a nervous and angry public, such answers—no matter how rational—weren’t very satisfying. Concerned that we were losing the political high ground, Axe and Gibbs urged us to sharpen our condemnations of Wall Street. Tim, on the other hand, warned that such populist gestures would be counterproductive, scaring off the investors we needed to recapitalize the banks. Trying to straddle the line between the public’s desire for Old Testament justice and the financial markets’ need for reassurance, we ended up satisfying no one. “It’s like we’ve got a hostage situation,” Gibbs said to me one morning. “We know the banks have explosives strapped to their chests, but to the public it just looks like we’re letting them get away with a robbery.

In some circles, using the word feminist is the equivalent of an f-bomb dropped in church—outrageous, offensive. It’s likely some people saw this book sitting on the shelf and figured they knew what sort of author was behind the words written here: a bitter man-hater arguing that men and women had no discernable differences, a ferocious and humorless woman, perhaps, and so it’s no wonder they reacted at the sight of Jesus alongside feminist like someone had raked long fingernails across a chalkboard. Who could blame them with the lines we’ve been fed about feminists for so long?

Not that Baum had taken offense. Still, he had to wonder how many of his people had perished that day, or for that matter since he and Cyrankiewicz had sat down to talk. A dull, orange glow pulsed above the tree line to the north; the last of the Scharfuhrer's fire pits were dying out for the evening. Granted, a little unintended bigotry or even the occasional racial slur was something to be expected, and certainly no cause for high dudgeon. But to what extent, one had to ask, had such seemingly innocuous behavior led to the slaughter of children and the emergence of creatures such as Otto Moll?

It is true that shortly before this, when my parents reproached me with my laziness and with not having taken the trouble to write a line to M. de Charlus, I had violently reproached them with wishing me to accept a degrading proposal. But anger alone, and the desire to hit upon the expression that would be most offensive to them had dictated this mendacious retort. In reality, I had imagined nothing sensual, nothing sentimental even, underlying the Baron’s offers. I had said this to my parents with entire irresponsibility. But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowledge, and our words which we suppose to be false forecast an imminent reality.

You'll make a good First Lady, Shelby Campbell." Shelby's fingers tightened on her wineglass, an involuntary gesture noticed only by Alan and his mother. "Perhaps," she returned calmly. "if it were one of my ambitions." "Ambitions or not,it's fate when you're paired with this one," Daniel stabbed his fork toward Alan. "You're a little premature." Alan cut cleanly through his meat, swearing fluidly in his mind only. "I haven't decided to run for president, and Shelby hasn't agreed to marry me." "Haven't decided? Hah!" Daniel silled down wine. "Hasn't agreed?" He set down the glass with a bang. "The girl doesn't look like a fool to me, Campbell or no," he continued. "She's good Scottish stock,no matter what her clan.This one'll breed true MacGregors." "He'd still like me to change my name," Justin commented, deliberately trying to shift the attention onto himself. "It's been done to ensure the line before," Daniel told him. "but Rena's babe'll be as much MacGregor as not. As will Caine's when he's a mind to remember his duty and start making one." He sent his younger son a lowered-brow look that was met with an insolent grin. "But Alan's the firstborn, duty-bound to marry and produce and sire..." Alan turned, intending on putting an end to the topic,when he caught Shelby's grin. She'd folded her arms on the table,forgetting her dinner in the pure enjoyment of watching Daniel MacGregor on a roll. "Having fun?" Alan muttered near her ear. "Wouldn't miss it.Is he always like this?" Alan glanced over, watching his father gesture with his lecture. "Yes." Shelby sighed. "I think I'm in love. Daniel..." She interrupted his flow of words by tugging sharply on his sleeve. "No offense to Alan,or to your wife,but I think if I were going to marry a MacGregor,he'd have to be you." Still caught up in his own diatribe, Daniel stared at her.Abruptly his features shifted and his laugh rang out. "You're a pistol,you are, Shelby Campbell.Here..." He lifted a bottle of wine. "Your glass is empty.

Nobody will be tougher on ISIS than me. Nobody,” he said during his campaign announcement speech on June 16, 2015. “There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am,” he stated a few days later. The following month came this memorably hypnotic line, one that echoes Moon’s language: “I know more about offense and defense than [the generals] will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand.” It’s a classic example of Trump’s tried-and-true habit of lulling his audience through repetition. A few months later came another infamous claim: “I know more about ISIS [the Islamic State militant group] than the generals do. Believe me.

The problem that I frequently see crop up is that people have a tendency to treat the Daily Stand-up as simply individual reporting. “I did this … I’ll do that”—then on to the next person. The more optimum approach is closer to a football huddle. A wide receiver might say, “I’m having a problem with that defensive lineman,” to which an offensive blocker might respond, “I’ll take care of that. I’ll open that line.” Or the quarterback might say, “Our running game is hitting a wall; let’s surprise them with a pass to the left.” The idea is for the team to quickly confer on how to move toward victory—i.e., complete the Sprint. Passivity is not only lazy, it actively hurts the rest of the team’s performance. Once spotted, it needs to be eliminated immediately.

...No one wants to listen to our sad stories unless they are smoothed over with a joke or nice melody. And even then, not always. No one wants to hear a woman talking or writing about pain in a way that suggests that it doesn't end. Without a pat solution, silver lining, or happy ending we're just complainers--downers who don't realize how good we actually have it. Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop--a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or selfish, or worst of all, man-haters--as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive.

Children, now we shall try to write a capital letter L,” I say and go to the blackboard. “Ten lines of L’s, then five lines of Lina, and five lines of Larch.” I write out the words slowly with chalk. A shuffling and rustling begins behind me. I expect to find that they are laughing at me and turn around. But it is only the notebooks being opened and the slates put in readiness. The forty heads are bent obediently over their task. —I am almost surprised. The slate pencils are squeaking, the pens scratching. I pass to and fro between the forms. On the wall hangs a crucifix, a stuffed barn owl and a map of Europe. Outside the windows the clouds drive steadily by, swift and low. The map of Germany is coloured in brown and green. I stop before it. The frontiers are hatched in red, and make a curious zigzag from top to bottom. Cologne—Aachen, there are the thin black lines marking the railways; Herbesthal, Liège, Brussels, Lille—I stand on tiptoe—Roubaix, Arras, Ostend—Where is Mount Kemmel then? It isn’t marked at all; but there is Langemarck, Ypres, Bixschoote, Staden. How small they are on the map—tiny points only, secluded, tiny points—and yet how the heavens thundered and the earth raged there on the 31st of July when the Big Offensive began and before nightfall we had lost every officer. I turn away and survey the fair and dark heads bending zealously over the words, Lina and Larch. Strange—for them those tiny points on the map will be no more than just so much stuff to be learned—a few new place names and a number of dates to be memorized by note in the history lesson—like the Seven Years’ War or some battle against the Romans. A

Most of us may intuitively agree about right and wrong, but we also, and far more significantly, differ enormously in the ways in which we rank the virtues and the vices. ... To put cruelty first is to disregard the idea of sin as it is understood by revealed religion. Sins are transgressions of a divine rule and offenses against God; pride - the rejection of God - must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others. However, cruelty - the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear - is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as the supreme evil it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a denial of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgment made from within the world in which cruelty occurs as part of our normal private life and our daily public practices. By putting it unconditionally first, with nothing above us to excuse or to forgive acts of cruelty, one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. To hate cruelty with utmost intensity is perfectly compatible with Biblical religiosity, but to put it first does place one irrevocably outside the sphere of revealed religion. For it is a purely human verdict upon human conduct, and so puts religion at a certain distance. The decision to put cruelty first is not, however, prompted merely by religious skepticism. It emerges, rather, from the recognition that the habits of the faithful do not differ from those of the faithless in their brutalities, and that Machiavelli had triumphed before he had ever written a line. To put cruelty first therefore is to be at odds not only with religion but with normal politics as well.

Why haven’t you told me that story before?” Simon paused, as if trying to decide how best to explain. “I don’t know . . . maybe because you and I don’t talk about those kinds of things. You’re the guy I talk to about a fun, random hookup. Or about some hot girl whose number I got while waiting in line at the deli on my lunch break. I guess I just didn’t think you’d understand something that’s not so, you know, shallow.” Vaughn blinked. No offense taken. Simon quickly backtracked. “I mean, not that I think you are shallow. Just that, well, lately, none of your relationships with women have had much substance, you know? And that’s cool; that’s your perspective—hey, I used to be in that place myself.” “Before you left and went to the deeper place.” Vaughn pretended to think about that. “Question: can I still hang out with you, now that you’re in this deeper place? Obviously, I’m used to the shallower stuff, but maybe I can wear a pair of water wings, or hold onto one of those pool noodles or something.” “I’m going to be getting shit for the ‘shallow’ comment for a while, aren’t I?

The idea that pornography is intrinsically exploitative and sexist is bizarre: pornography is just “some fucking”, after all. The act of having sex isn’t sexist so there’s no way pornography can be, in itself, inherently misogynist. So no. Pornography isn’t the problem. Strident feminists are fine with pornography. It’s the porn industry that’s the problem. The whole thing is as offensive, sclerotic, depressing, emotionally bankrupt and desultory as you would expect a widely unregulated industry worth, at an extremely conservative estimate, $30 billion to be. No industry ever made that amount of money without being superlatively crass and dumb. But you don’t ban things for being crass and dispiriting. If you did, we would have to ban the Gregg’s Mega Sausage Roll first - and we would have a revolution on our hands. No. What we need to do is effect a 100 per cent increase in the variety of pornography available to us. Let’s face it: the vast majority of porn out there is as identikit and mechanical as fridge-freezers rolling off a production line. And there are several reasons why this is bad for everyone - men and women equally.

I'm going to get lecture-y for a second and add that I think the entire idea of tops and bottems, especially when coming from straight people who fetishize gay people, is an attempt to place some sort of hetero world over gay people. "Oh your're a bottom, so you're the woman." Gay guys who are strictly tops or bottoms tend to embrace this idea, too. Being a top only means you're "manly" or whatever because not being manly is considered bad by like adults and TV and stuff. Gay guys can buy into that crap just as easy as straight people. Whenever you see masc for masc on Grindr or whatever, what you're seeing is someone saying," I don't want people to think I'm like a woman, and I don;t want people to think that you're like a woman because people will think less of us." Sure people have preference but these ideas of masculine and feminine are kind of meaningless. I wear make-up. I think I'm pretty manly! We're all told this crap all the time, but you can reject it. Instead you're enforcing the idea that there is masculine and there is feminine, and that masculine is, for some unexplained reason, better. Finally, and this should probably be clear after the last bit, but you cant tell a top or a bottom or what a person's preferences are just by looking at him! Big, harry, muscled men love taking it up the ass. Trust me, I know. And slim, make-up wearing types, we love to f@$%. And in my case, get f@$%ed, too. Like I said, versatility is the best. So, in summary, it's wrong to assume all gay guys are having anal sex all the time. And it's ridiculous and offensive and stereotyping and hurtful to think that those who are penetrated are girly and those who penetrate are manly, something you've been doing. ... You're email is more like a mean joke you tell your friends, and I think that is because secretly you hate the way you're always being told what a girl should be like. And when you see a gay guy blurring the gender lines a little, like me, you're jealous of him. You want to put him in his place. You want to say, "he's not a man." Because if you can't blur those gender lines without being told you're gross or wrong, then you want to make sure that anyone who does cross those gender lines gets punished the way you would. But you shouldn't be punishing gay guys. You should be braking down the barriers that keep you from being who YOU want to be!

There’s no good playbook for how to fire someone, though I have my own internal set of rules. You have to do it in person, not over the phone and certainly not by email or text. You have to look the person in the eye. You can’t use anyone else as an excuse. This is you making a decision about them—not them as a person but the way they have performed in their job—and they need and deserve to know that it’s coming from you. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: “I’ve asked you to come in here for a difficult reason.” And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn’t working and why I didn’t think it was going to change. I emphasize that it was a tough decision to make, and that I understand that it’s much harder on them. There’s a kind of euphemistic corporate language that is often deployed in those situations, and it has always struck me as offensive. There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest, and in being honest there is at least a chance for the person on the receiving end to understand why it’s happening and eventually move on, even if they walk out of the room angry as hell.

There was also a package wrapped in pale blue paper and tied with a matching ribbon. Picking up a small folded note that had been tucked under the ribbon, Beatrix read: A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this. -Poppy Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked... After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let a slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk. Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen. Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. "My God," he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers. "Do you like my nightgown?" Beatrix asked. Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. "Where's the rest of it?" "This was all I could find." Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. "I wonder if I put it on backward..." "Let me see." As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath. Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn't take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin. She went to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, relishing the billowy softness of its quilts and linens. Reclining on her side, she made no attempt to cover her exposed leg as the gossamer fabric fell open to her hip. Christopher came to her, stripping off his shirt along the way. The sight of him, all that flexing muscle and sun-glazed skin, was breathtaking. He was a beautiful man, a scarred Apollo, a dream lover. And he was hers.

For the last part of the trial in heaven, Yahweh Elohim allowed the litigators to engage in cross examination and rebuttal. The Accuser stood next to Enoch before the throne. Yahweh Elohim announced the beginning of the next exchange, “Accuser, you may speak.” The Accuser began with his first complaint, “On this fourth aspect of the covenant, the ‘blessings and curses,’ we find another series of immoral maneuvers by Elohim, the first of which is the injustice of his capital punishment.” The Accuser delivered his lines with theatrical exaggeration. It would have annoyed Enoch had they not been so self-incriminating. “What kind of a loving god would punish a simple act of disobedience in the Garden with death and exile? In the interest of wisdom, the primeval couple eat a piece of fruit and what reward do they receive for their mature act of decision-making? Pain in childbirth, male domination, cursed ground, miserable labor, perpetual war, and worst of all, exile and death! I ask the court, does that sound like the judicious behavior of a beneficent king or an infantile temper tantrum of a juvenile divinity who did not get his way?” The Accuser bowed with a mocking tone in his voice, “Your majestic majesticness, I turn over to the illustrative, master counselor of extensive experience, Enoch ben Jared.” The Accuser’s mockery no longer fazed Enoch. His ad-hominem attacks on a lowly servant of Yahweh Elohim was so much child’s play. It was the accuser’s impious sacrilege against the Most High that offended Enoch — and the Most High’s forbearing mercy that astounded him. He spoke with a renewed awe of the Almighty, “If I may point out to the prosecutor, the seriousness of the punishment is not determined by the magnitude of the offense, but the magnitude of the one offended. Transgression of a fellow finite temporal creature requires finite earthly consequences, transgression against the infinite eternal God requires infinite eternal consequences.

To get to the root of the matter, let it be recalled that political relations are never "decreed": in the last analysis they are always the form assumed by fundamental social relations at the level of production. As Marx wrote in the introduction to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "each mode of production produces its specific legal relations, political forms, etc." This determination of political forms by modes of production enables us to understand how it was that the limited extent to which changes were effected at the level of production relations (particularly in the division of labor in the factories, the division of labor between town and country, and class divisions in the rural areas), tended in the final analysis to offset the achievements of the October Revolution. Viewed over a period of several decades, this determining relation also explains why, in the absence of a renewed revolutionary offensive attacking production relations in depth, and of a political line permitting such an offensive to develop successfully, the dictatorship of the proletariat itself has ended by being annihilated, and why we are seeing in the Russia of today, under new conditions, a resurgence of internal political relations and of political relations with the rest of the world which look like a "reproduction" of bourgeois political relations, and even of those of the tsarist period.

He had a very offensive style, much like her, not naturally relying on defence and instead attempting to reject the need for such a thing by not giving opponents the space to form an offensive they would need to defend from.

To get to the root of the matter, let it be recalled that political relations are never "decreed": in the last analysis they are always the form assumed by fundamental social relations at the level of production. As Marx wrote in the introduction to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "each mode of production produces its specific legal relations, political forms, etc."[1] This determination of political forms by modes of production enables us to understand how it was that the limited extent to which changes were effected at the level of production relations (particularly in the division of labor in the factories, the division of labor between town and country, and class divisions in the rural areas), tended in the final analysis to offset the achievements of the October Revolution. Viewed over a period of several decades, this determining relation also explains why, in the absence of a renewed revolutionary offensive attacking production relations in depth, and of a political line permitting such an offensive to develop successfully, the dictatorship of the proletariat itself has ended by being annihilated, and why we are seeing in the Russia of today, under new conditions, a resurgence of internal political relations and of political relations with the rest of the world which look like a "reproduction" of bourgeois political relations, and even of those of the tsarist period.

Our offensive line doesn’t speak to the media at all. They have an internal policy enforced by fine and degradation that no offensive lineman is to speak to the media at any time for any reason.

Stuxnet is perhaps the most infamous of APTs, but it has cousins such as Flame and Duqu, along with many others yet to be discovered. Worse, now that Stuxnet, a tool developed to attack industrial control systems and take power grids off-line, is out in the wild and available for download, it has been extensively studied by Crime, Inc., which is rapidly emulating its techniques and computer code to build vastly more sophisticated attacks. The deep challenge society faces from the growth of the malware-industrial complex is that once these offensive tools are used, they have a tendency to leak into the open. The result has been the proliferation of open-source cyber weapons now widely available on the digital underground for anybody to redesign and arm as he or she sees fit. How long will it be before somebody picks up one of these digital Molotov cocktails and lobs it back at us with the intent of attacking our own critical infrastructure systems? Sadly, preparations may already be under way.

Somewhere in between is the ‘undecided’, a place that reminds us there might not be an ‘either/or’ choice. It seems we are now defending this ambiguity and have invented any number of words – democracy, liberty, secularism – to persuade ourselves that suffering, however offensive in the age of medical science and technology, still has meaning. So we now tell ourselves we live on this earth as temporary custodians of progress, and it’s our job to leave it in a better state than we found it for the unborn generations to come. Whatever it is, you can’t call it heroic.

The war with Mexico fiercely divided the American people. While the majority supported the war, a loud minority despised it, and their rancor filled the newspapers and the debates in the houses of Congress. A newly elected congressional representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, declared: ‘The war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.’ Lincoln challenged Polk on the issue that American blood had been shed on American soil and implied that the American troops were the aggressors. He charged that Polk desired ‘military glory … that serpent’s eye which charms to destroy … I more than suspect that Polk is deeply conscious of being in the wrong and that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.’ However, like many critics of the war, Lincoln voted for an appropriations bill to support military operations. An Illinois newspaper responded to Lincoln’s fulminations by branding him a ‘second Benedict Arnold,’ and Lincoln was defeated for reelection. Comparing Lincoln to Arnold was perhaps the most vicious charge that could then be made against an American. General Arnold has been a trusted favorite of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In August 1780 he had turned traitor and attempted to turn over the American army’s position at West Point to the British in exchange for money and a brigadier’s commission in the British army. His act of treachery was discovered but he was able to escape to safety behind British lines. Henry Clay, a former senator from Kentucky and unsuccessful candidate for president, often called the ‘Great Pacificator’ or the ‘Great Compromiser’ for his efforts to hold the Union together, spoke out forcefully: ‘The Mexican war,’ he said, ‘is one of unnecessary and offensive aggression … Mexico is defending her firesides, her castles, and her altars, not we.’ Representative

Play with me. He

There were times in meeting I was called a baby sitter, a social worker by my colleagues. Now that we have a different leader, he looks at it the way I look at it, and he supported me in what I was doing. There were times he saw me crying, and he would comfort me and say that’s okay. Commissioner Paul Farquharson was one of my biggest supporters. It used to hurt me, because I was trying to help somebody and they say I was babysitting. Don’t tell me I am babysitting, now that I have retired now I am babysitting. So not because I was trying to reach out and work with those children, don’t say I was babysitting them. I work the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for 22 years and I was rough in CID. I realize CID was the end result, because whenever you get to that stage you are almost finished. It is in line with the broken window theory, if you can save those youngsters before they start committing those big offenses, then they wouldn’t reach CID. Crime prevention was a part of my job, I believe in going out there and trying to prevent that youngster from committing crime. He should respect other people’s property. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

So this is what it feels like to be omniscient. It happened innocently enough. I like to think it was not a moment too soon, too. Meandering along the tortured paths of my offensively mediocre author’s plot, I suddenly noticed that I was far smarter and better equipped to write the story. And that was that. No more of this inane story line, I’m on to bigger and better things by far. After all, now I know what’s going to happen.

Due’s guidelines, we will especially. Florida location convictions drunk people really need a hard line. 100 ml of blood, or about 0.08 per cent of all liquid at least the 0.08 per cent alcohol (due to back) is shown when some 210 liters of breath, you can claim for drunk driving. Far assessed only through this type of general assistance, the lack of such discrepancies is guilty of drunken his strength and reliability of March, the Americans, the. But it actually drinking and drink driving test in its own way will be forced to take care of Tallahassee by individuals will be condemned, rejected by his results, but only for those very is harsh. Orlando outcome of an internal drunk food is very harsh. Only 9 weeks in jail, 1,000 $ 500 Ignition lock-track recorder old suspected car or $ 250-500 almost certainly believe that high quality feed, only about six weeks in prison, and a drunken crime before punished by a DUI offense. 10 found guilty of a DUI third internal many years, Orlando is only a third of the number of offenders. The crime, the suspect in price for at least two years in a given calendar year and the unit ignition lock was initiated criminal representation.

This is nice. Two friends being friendly,” he said. Rolling my eyes, I sipped my drink and ignored his cocky smile. “How long has it been?” he asked, tapping my sandal with his boot. “The abstaining thing.” Crossing my arms under my tits, I tightened them and pushed up the girls for him to admire. I always loved teasing boys. “I bet you’ve banged a girl recently. Like I could probably smell her on you, if I got close enough,” I grumbled, remembering how he smelled like chocolate and I had a sweet tooth. “You’re likely crawling with germs.” Instead of finding offense, Vaughn watched me in a weird way. His lids lowered as the corners of his mouth lifted. A sly look on his face, Vaughn ran his tongue along his top teeth. “I have a system,” he said softly. “After I hook up with a random chick, I shower with a big bottle of Purell. One of those economy-sized ones.” Even smiling, I kicked his foot away from mine. “I’m a bath person myself. Just fill up the tub with really hot water then toss in a cap of bleach plus a few bubbles and I’m set.” “Gotta have bubbles,” he said in a deep low voice. “What are you doing?” Vaughn shook his head, yet his gaze held mine. “Just admiring your beautiful smile.” Rolling my eyes again, I sighed. “Lame.” “I know. I really do. I use that line a lot, but it’s true with you. That smile changes your face. Makes you less sex kitten and more angel.” “I’m no angel.” “What a relief. I don’t like good girls.” “I didn’t say I was bad.” Vaughn sucked at his lower lip and sized me up with those eyes. “You didn’t have to, kitten.” “Don’t call me that.” “Sugar?” he said, grinning brighter now. “Your sister didn’t like my nickname for her either.” “Why would you give my sister a nickname?” “Don’t be jealous. I like giving girls nicknames. Even girls I don’t want to spend time inside.” “I can’t believe those lines ever work.” “They don’t. Girls are drawn to my looks, not my personality.” Snorting, I begged myself to stop smiling. “And you’re proud of this fact?” “I’m proud of very little, pumpkin.” “Keep trying.

Most of them [the soldiers—Warriors in New Pentagon Speak—of the all-volunteer military] come from small towns in the South or the rustbelt of the Midwest or the big city ghettoes. Many are following a family heritage of military service that has made veterans of past wars a relatively privileged class, enjoying special access to higher education, jobs, and a nationwide system of socialized medicine. But so many of them are so very young, enticed or strong-armed by smartly uniformed recruiters who work the corridors and classrooms of America's most impoverished and thoroughly militarized high schools. So many are badly educated, knowing nothing of the world and how it operates. So many are immigrants, risking their lives for a fast track to citizenship. So many are poor and short on promise. So many have such a slim chance of another job, another line of work [like the one who tells the author "where else can I get a job doing the stuff I love? . . . Shootin' people. Blowin' shit up. It's fuckin' fun. I fuckin' love it."], let alone a decent wage or a promotion. And because the Pentagon lowered standards to fill the ranks of the volunteer army, so many are high school dropouts, or gangbangers, or neo-Nazi white supremacists, or drug addicts, or convicted felons with violent crimes on their record. In just three years following the invasion of Iraq, the military issued free passes—so called "moral waivers"—to one of every five recruits, including more than 58,000 convicted drug users and 1,605 with "serious" felony convictions for offenses including rape, kidnapping, and murder. When the number of free passes rose in the fourth year, the Pentagon changed the label to "conduct waiver.

His theory on the matter is quite original. He maintains that spiritual progress can only occur in a world of leisure. What do you think about that?' 'A world of leisure, truly!' Chawki exclaimed. 'I don't understand. Please explain what you mean.' 'It's quite simple,' said Medhat. 'From the beginning man's hardworking fate has made him unable to conceive of an ideal that is not material and does not correspond to his needs and his safety. All he thinks about is earning a living; this is what he is taught from childhood on. His only aim is to become cleverer and more of a bastard than everyone else. During his entire life, he uses his ingenuity to provide food for himself and, once he has eaten his fill, to invent some sordid ambition for himself. When, then, does he have time to elevate his spirit and his mind? The tiniest thought along these lines is considered a criminal offense, immediately punishable by disapproval and starvation. Therefore, I venture to affirm that only people of leisure can attain a way of thinking that is truly civilized.

The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust... I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. He is bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne is unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees the Religio Medici in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window, for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted by it; a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne is “not in his line”; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to be. He reads the introduction, and he glances at the first page or two of the work. He sees nothing but words. The work makes no appeal to him whatever. He is surrounded by trees, and cannot perceive the forest. He puts the book away. If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he will say, “Yes, very fine!” with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne are vain and conceited poseurs. After a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel! And so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics finally expires! That, magazines and newish fiction apart, is the literary history of the average decent person.

Gentlemen, this is tiquitaca and it is shit. We’re not interested in this type of possession. It’s totally meaningless. It’s about passing for the sake of it. We need our central midfielder and our defenders to move out with an offensive mentality and break the opposition lines in order to push the whole team high up. The U needs to go.’ The

We cannot always know where the line exactly falls between justified and unjustified uses of state force. But both in crafting laws and enforcing them: when in doubt, err toward liberty. Better that the government let some offenses go unmanaged than seek to totally manage them all and, in so doing, intrude too far, upon the innocent. If for no other reason: it is far easier to right a crooked life than a crooked law. The former is free to change as soon as error is brought to light, while the latter—to borrow a metaphor from President Obama—constitutes a veritable aircraft carrier slow to steer back on course. We carve our opinions into the stone of the state at our peril, for human error is inevitable, and these are hard opinions to retract.

Retired from front line care ,enjoy chess because it relates to life ..offensive or defensive depends on your position.....lateral thinking the key.

Our apocalyptic fiction depicts a world in which humans revert to the savagery of the jungle the moment our institutions fall, survivors tearing each other to pieces even as they are dying of plague or stalked by the undead. In our real history, we have been in that situation many times—left without government or law enforcement, none of the modern institutions we take for granted. From each of these scenarios what emerged was not savagery, but cooperation. When the pillars of our culture crumble, we rebuild them. [...] Mankind is, and always has been, much greater than the sum of its parts. A lone human may appear to be nothing special if observed, say, blearily standing in line at a convenience store at two in the morning, or spitefully ripping a toy from the hands of a middle-aged woman in the chaos of a Black Friday sale. Yet, the combined efforts of these confused and volatile primates result in gleaming cities and majestic flying carriages. They have split the atom and peered across the universe. In the blink of an eye, they have acquired the powers of gods. This, I believe, is the fate of humanity: to colonize the stars over the next thousand years, to set down settlements in our solar system and others. Then, many centuries from now, one of our descendants will be strolling along some marvelous domed paradise on some distant planet and will see a drunken youth in offensive clothing, vomiting in an alley outside a pub. The man will look sidelong at the youth in that shameful state, shake his head, and mutter to himself that humanity is a ridiculous, doomed species, incapable of anything worthwhile. He will believe it, because the true, wonderful, terrible, fearsome power of humanity is otherwise almost too much to comprehend. I recognize that not all of you share my faith, but you must admit that if gods are real and have observed humanity’s evolution from afar, they must shudder at the possibilities.

Science writers Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have found that ethnic pride is an important element of self-esteem for other races but they draw the line at whites: “It’s horrifying to imagine kids being ‘proud to be white’. ” Many intellectuals believe whites are collectively guilty. As James Traub of The New Yorker wrote, when it comes to any discussion about race, whites must acknowledge that they are the offending party: “One’s hand is stayed by the knowledge of innumerable past hurts and misdeeds. The recognition of those wrongs, along with the acceptance of the sense of collective responsibility—guilt—that comes with recognition is a precondition to entering the discussion [about race].” Joe Klein, in New York Magazine, wrote that any conversation about race must begin with a confession: “It’s our fault; we’re racists.” “Black anger and white surrender have become a staple of contemporary racial discourse,” writes another commentator. Most blacks endorse this view. James Baldwin wrote that any real dialogue between the races requires a confession from whites that is nothing less than “a cry for help and healing.” Popular culture casually denigrates whites. Jay Blumenfield, an executive producer for the Showtime cable network, was working in 2004 on a reality program tentatively titled “Make Me Cool,” in which a group of blacks were to give “hipness makeovers” to a series of “desperately dweebie” whites. Why whites? Mr. Blumenfield explained that the purpose of the program was to correct “uncoolness,” and that “the easiest way to express that is they’ll be white.” Gary Bassell, head of an advertising agency that specializes in reaching Hispanics explained that “we’ve been shaped by an American pop culture today that increasingly proves that color is cool and white is washed out.” Miss Gallagher noted above that there are “few things more degrading than being proud to be white.” The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) agrees. In 2005, it refused to grant a trademark on the phrase “White Pride Country Wide.” It explained that “the ‘white pride’ element of the proposed mark is considered offensive and therefore scandalous.” The USPTO has nevertheless trademarked “Black Power” and “Black Supremacy,” and apparently finds nothing scandalous in “African Pride,” “Native Pride!” “Asian Pride,” “Black Pride,” “Orgullo Hispano” (Hispanic Pride), “Mexican Pride,” and “African Man Pride,” all of which have been trademarked.

If we toss about the idea of “God in the flesh” as if it were just that thing we believe, we are not tuned in to the shock and even offense that John’s opening lines would have generated. Christianity is a weird religion, folks.

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!    Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;    Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind    150 For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.  [Thou rascal . . . cozener: You supposed man of the church [beadle, line 148], stop lashing that whore. You yourself should be whipped for punishing her for the same offense that you commit. The greedy moneylender hangs the swindler—that is, one unprincipled man punishes another unprincipled man.] Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;    Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,    And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;    [Through tatter'd . . . hurtless breaks: It's easy to see the vices of a poor man through the openings in his ragged clothes. What I'm saying is that a poor man lacks the wealth and power to hide his wrongdoing. On the other hand, those who wear robes and furred gowns have the wherewithal to hide their faults. If you cover sin with gold, justice thinks the sin is virtue.]

Lesson Focus God shows compassion where he wills. • God is responsive to small steps in the right direction. • God’s compassion is not earned and never deserved. Lesson Application God sometimes shows compassion on us by giving us a second chance when we don’t deserve it. • We respond to God’s Word by taking steps in the right direction. • We recognize that God’s compassion is great. Biblical Context The book of Jonah is about how people respond to the Lord and how the Lord responds to them. Both the sailors and the Ninevites, though pagans, were responsive to what they saw the Lord doing. Jonah, a prophet who should have known better, was the least responsive and had to be taught a lesson about God’s compassion. Interpretational Issues in the Story Jonah’s prophetic mission (Jonah 3:4). Jonah was sent to denounce Nineveh, not to save it. His word to them was a word of judgment. He did not even name Yahweh and he did not confront them with their offenses, instruct them as to what they ought to do, or offer any hope for them to avoid the judgment. If the text does not offer this information, we cannot read those things between the lines and assume that they occurred. Great fish (Jonah 1:17). Nothing in the text indicates the species of the creature, and while a whale cannot be ruled out (they would not have distinguished sea-dwelling mammals from fish), the text is vague. Fish as rescue, not punishment (Jonah 2:6, 9). Jonah’s prayer demonstrates that he saw the fish as deliverance, not judgment. He was drowning, and the Lord used the fish to save his life. Jonah’s prayer (Jonah 2:4, 7–9). Jonah offered no repentance and did not ask forgiveness when he prayed inside the fish. He assumed that since the Lord had saved him from death, he had been restored to favor. He spoke ill of those who worship idols, which apparently included the sailors (whose response had been far better than his own) as if he was insisting, “At least I’m not a pagan idol-worshiper!” He made no mention of his disobedience and indicated no willingness to go to Nineveh. The vows he referred to (v. 9) would have involved sacrifices of thanksgiving at the temple for his rescue. This prayer was a farce, and Jonah was still unchanged (as the rest of the book demonstrates). Ninevite response (Jonah 3:5). The Ninevites believed what Jonah said, but that does not mean they converted to his God. He never even told them the identity of his God, and there is no indication that they got rid of their idols or understood the law. They repented, but any Assyrian would have done so under these circumstances. If they had been convinced that some god was angry at them and about to destroy them, they would have sought to appease that god. That is how they took Jonah’s warning. In the ancient world people believed that there were all sorts of powerful gods, but they only worshiped the ones they believed had power over their lives. Jonah was informing them that a God they had not recognized had noticed them and was going to act against them, and they were grateful for this information. Likely they checked Jonah’s message against their omens and afterward were eager to respond. Sackcloth (Jonah

Erica seemed slightly confused by this line of thought, as it concerned human emotions, but she nodded agreement anyhow. “Exactly.” “It might not work out so easily for you,” Chip warned. “Jessica Shang has a lot going for her. She’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s fun—and she’s rich.” “Yes,” Erica agreed. “But I’m me.” Chip laughed dismissively. “I’m just saying, given the choice between two girls, if one of them’s a billionaire, that’s gonna mean something. This Mike character’s gonna show up to the hotel, find out Daddy Shang rented the whole darn thing, and be gobsmacked. And once Jessica starts batting her eyes at him, he’s gonna think he hit the mother lode.” “Mike’s not that shallow,” I argued. “We’re all that shallow,” Chip retorted. “Whether we want to believe it or not. Mike’s on a weeklong vacation. He’s not looking to fall in love. He’s looking to have fun! And who’s he gonna have more fun with? The girl he can only afford to take to McDonald’s—or the girl who has an entire hotel and a private jet and all the free food they can eat?” “Good point,” I conceded. “I can compete with that,” Erica said confidently. “How?” Jawa asked. “No offense, but you’re not exactly the warmest person in the world. Your own family doesn’t even think you can make friends with Jessica. So what do you know about winning over a boy’s affection?” “I know it’s easy,” Erica replied. “Much easier than making friends with someone. To make friends with another girl is work. You have to be nice and pretend to like the same things and have all these excruciatingly dull conversations about your feelings. To get a guy to fall for you, you barely even need to use your brain.” “That is not true,” Jawa argued, offended. “Really?” Erica came around the table to Jawa, kneeled close to him, batted her eyelashes, and purred, “Would you like to go somewhere quiet and explain why you’re right to me?” Jawa looked as though his brain had shorted out. Face-to-face with Erica, his fourteen-year-old mind was completely overwhelmed by her beauty. “Sure!” he said eagerly. “Let’s go right now!

A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this. --Poppy Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked… After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let it slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk. Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen. Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. “My God,” he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers. “Do you like my nightgown?” Beatrix asked. Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. “Where’s the rest of it?” “This was all I could find.” Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. “I wonder if I put it on backward…” “Let me see.” As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath. Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn’t take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin.

As the story is told, determined to inspire his men to take the offensive, Jackson suddenly rode into the battlefield and attempted to brandish his sword, but the man who had once warned his VMI cadets to be ready to throw the scabbards of their swords away found that due to the infrequency with which he had drawn it, it had rusted in its scabbard.  Undaunted, he unbuckled the sword from his belt--scabbard and all--and waved it over his head.   Then he grabbed a battle flag from a retreating standard bearer and called for his men to rally around him.  Heartened by their commander’s zeal, the Stonewall Brigade set fiercely into the Union troops, quickly driving them back.  And although Union forces were subsequently able to regroup and attack, the Stonewall Brigade had given the Confederate front line time to reform and A. P Hill's troops time to come up and fill in the gaps. Almost

Randy Wolf was surrounded by about six guys. Some were huge. The quarterback and his offensive line, Myron figured. “This butt-face bothering you, Pharm?” The one who said that was huge. He grinned at Myron. The guy had spiky blond hair, but what you first noticed, what you couldn’t help but notice, was that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Here they were at a party. There were girls and punch and music and dancing and even parents. And this guy wasn’t wearing a shirt. Randy didn’t say anything. Shirtless had barbed-wire tattoos around his bloated biceps. Myron frowned. The tattoos couldn’t have been more wannabe without the word wannabe actually being stenciled in. The guy was slabs and slabs of beef. His chest was so smooth it looked like someone had taken a sander to it. He rippled. His forehead was sloped. His eyes were red, indicating that at least some of the beer had found its way to the underaged. He wore calf-length pants that might have been capris, though Myron didn’t know if guys wore those or not. “What are you looking at, Butt-face?” Myron said, “Absolutely—and I mean this sincerely—absolutely nothing.” There

Be Careful What You Invent (England) George Musgrave was ticketed not long ago by a traffic bobby in London for parking on a yellow line. It was a minor offense and a minor fine, but there was something unusual about the crime. You see, George Musgrave was responsible for the very existence of the yellow line. In 1947, George had suggested that the Motor Vehicle Department use yellow lines for no-parking zones and the like. It was all part of a road-safety competition. George’s suggestion netted him a three-pound prize. George’s parking ticket cost him a thirty-pound fine.

As I read it I was thinking of the phenomenon of endgame. Although the concept can apply to many games, it is most common in chess, which is where I study the subject exhaustively. As the middle game draws to a close and the endgame approaches, a fundamental change occurs in the players’ attitudes, and, I swear, a macabre eeriness descends over the board. The surviving pieces take on different roles and importance. For instance, pawns become vital; not only can they move to the opponent’s first line and become queens but they provide important defensive barriers that limit the other player’s moves. Similarly the king spends most of the game in hiding, protected by his minions. But in endgame, he often must go on the offensive himself. Each

Norman Cohn, in his book Warrant for Genocide, quotes the postwar testimony of SS captain Dieter Wisliceny, who was tried and executed in 1947 for his part in killing Hungarian, Greek, and Slovak Jews. A straight line, said Wisliceny, ran from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the precepts of the Nazis, and from there to the attempted murder of a race. The straightness of this line is evident from the activities of the Nazi academic Professor von Leers, last seen propagating the “Rabbi’s Speech” at the University of Jena, but by 1942 publishing The Criminal Nature of the Jews. As the Holocaust moved from improvisation to industrial organization, von Leers wrote, “Not only is each people morally justified in exterminating the hereditary criminals—but any people that still keeps and protects Jews is just as guilty of an offense against public safety as someone who cultivates cholera germs.

He shrugged. “Most of the time poor stays poor.” I’d been fixing a cabinet door, but I stopped and gave Storm my full attention. “If you think like that, that usually is what happens. You have to be able to see yourself successful to have a shot at finding success. And you need to work harder than someone who has things handed to them.” I felt Autumn’s eyes on me, so I looked over. “No offense.” She smiled. “None taken.” “You ever run track at school?” I asked Storm. “Yeah.” “You know why the runners don’t all start from the same line?” “Because the inside track is shorter.” “That’s right. They make it fair for everyone. But in real life, that crap doesn’t happen. Some people start from behind—and for reasons other than just being poor.” I paused, making sure he was following. He gave the smallest of nods. “So learn to run faster, and never forget there are people starting even farther back than you.

Yes, high politics and historic issues produced the conflict; yes, decisions by politicians and generals changed the course of events. But it was only a war in the first place because the American people wanted to fight. They volunteered by the millions for years of combat; they demanded offensives and decisive battles. Even those who never enlisted applied themselves to logistics, military transportation, and weapons technology—inventing ironclad ships, new pontoon bridges, and repeating rifles, for example. Then there were African Americans, who conducted what one historian has called the greatest slave rebellion in history. They risked death to desert to Union lines by the hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands. In the end, what happened on factory floors and plantation fields, in town-square meetings and polling places, mattered more than any general’s orders.44

When I am gone Karly- I think back on it my great x4 Grandmother Hope went to school on black and wood 1919 Ford Model T Ford, I don’t get that, there were not even windows in the piece of crap. And then I can get my car. My dad was telling me this unbelievable story. About this old car like a red 28 ford coupe or so he thought. My dad was showing me the roof from it, somewhere down the line someone thought it was okay to cut up this cute little car just to be a d*ick about it, it must have been my great x4 granddad baby that someone was jealous of, saying he wanted to pass it down yet never to Neveah, so he junked it out for parts, and that explains why someone wanted the rooftop. Maybe someone thought it was going to go to her and the sisters’ family cut it up, really- I think that is how I got these parts. Emallie- I feel that my little nine-year-old sisters are in her room as I am at school, however since that day she’s never once stepped foot in my room. It’s a bummer she more freaked up than me in some ways is it not? Like- since she never surprises me by fixing up my sheets anymore, she leaves all that should be folded laundry or a new sundress on my bed like she did when I was in middle school, yet all messy and crap, but at least I know she’s not rooting through my drawers while I’m at school, looking for my sex toys or thongs. ‘If you want to come out here, why do you drag me? I’ll get the thermometer, and crap and say I'm sick,’ she says, she is- very- hyperactive and more! She needs to be on Methylphenidate or (Ritalin) as they call it. She does something that I don’t like yet that what they say is needed. Her name is Judcël. Yet we just call her Judie, she hates that just say I am the boy she said, she not yet she might want to be on this crap. ‘I don’t think I have a temperature.’ There’s a yell kicking and screaming my mom hitting my mom in the face, pushed in the wall, and punched off is how I lost my hearing that to this little brat… I was fine until she was impetus out of my mother. She should have had a d*ick it would have been a lot easier, than putting up with this… and get this mom is single, and on her own now with her. I think sex before marriage is not a sin. I think the big deal should be about SEX BEFORE LOVE. If you have been with somebody for a long time and you can easily see yourself growing old with them, getting married, maybe having children, then sure, I think it would be fine to make love. Sex is a natural desire found in all animals. Why should we deny Mother Nature's ways? (Of course, I respect all religions and beliefs, and I mean no offense if you believe in abstinence until marriage.) Well... uh, for one thing, you can get diseases. And then if you’re not married before having sex, what's keeping the guy from leaving you? Nothing... He'll use you then leave. I think it's pretty dumb that you think it's no big deal...

How often did a group of hulking, good-looking men walk into a bookstore together? They were like an offensive line for the Literary League of Tennessee.

The mounting wave of discontent culminated in a riot that broke out off base in April 1942 as black and white soldiers queued outside Waldron’s Sports Palace. What happened next is unclear. In one version, a black soldier wanting to use a telephone took offense when a white MP told him he couldn’t leave the line. In the ensuing violence, some fifty shots were fired and three soldiers lay dead, two black privates and one white MP. The post’s public relations officer later explained opaquely that the melee was triggered by “some persons with a little too much race consciousness getting off track.” The situation remained unchanged one year later, when the Afro-American reported that the base was still a “veritable powder keg.” The incidents certainly belied the findings of a 1942 report by the Army General Staff that concluded that the policy of segregation had “practically eliminated the colored problem, as such, within the Army.” Even when violence wasn’t an issue,

It's not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men - let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and I still do not accept it. That is my essence . . .

But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours. (Matthew 17:27) God’s wisdom bends time. What might have taken Peter days of toil and struggle took only an hour or two doing something Peter already loved—fishing. Wisdom is an accelerator, and heavenly wisdom is accessed through prayer.

The cacophony of county jail is deafening: That's what hap- pens when you jam thousands of women into concrete rooms that were intended to house a population half our size. We sleep in bunk beds in the common areas, feet away from the tables where we play cards and read all day. We urinate in overwhelmed toilets that clog and overflow. We stand in lines for showers, meals, hair- cuts, telephones, meds. At all hours of the day and night, the con- crete echoes with screams and prayers and tears and laughter and curses. There is nothing to do here but wait. I mill around the common room in my canary-yellow prison suit, watching the hands of the clock in the cage on the wall slowly ticking away the minutes of the days. I wait for mealtime, though I have no interest in eating the gray slurry that slides around tray. I wait for the library cart to come around, so I can pick out the least offensive romance novel on offer. I wait for lights-out, so that I can lie in my upper bunk in the semi-dark, listening to the snores and whispers of my fellow inmates while I wait for sleep to come. my It hardly ever does. But mostly, I wait for someone to come help me.

When I have pictorially captured smell, the most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison sound- vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is as imperishable as matter; indeed, as I have been somewhat successful in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference. Catch that sound wave, sir! Catch it in a bottle, then its circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if you will only keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounded rotten-egg smell of sulphydric acid." The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod, and continued: "While my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day to put operas in quart bottles, labeled and assorted, and contemplate a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit the times. You know very well that it costs a ten-dollar bill now to take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon, rendered in first-class style. By the bottle system, the same notes may be heard in one's own parlor at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the market at from eighty cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and symphonies I should use demijohns, and the cost would of course be greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's music. It might be necessary to employ carboys. Sir, if I were of the sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton, accustomed to the precision and moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income, as well as great renown. A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than before. He sighed and continued: "Having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear or nose. "I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind is matter. "The soul spectroscope, or, as it will better be known, Dummkopf's duplex self-registering soul spectroscope, is based on the broad fact that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the position of the Frauenhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place a subject under the light, and the minute exhalations or

Can you move?" he says, pulling out five euros from his wallet. He holds the bill over my head. "Here, this should help." My fantasy evaporates like dry ice on a summer day in the hottest of deserts. I shoot him daggers with my eyes and swat the bill. He actually thinks I'm homeless? "I don't need money." "Could have fooled me," he says, his eyes making an unabashed loop over my outfit, and then pockets the bill. Under my breath, I mutter, "Quelle bite." What a dick. "I heard that," he says in English, his lips pressing together into a thin line. "Crazy tourist." "You speak English?" "Yes, and it's obviously more refined than your limited French." The lilt in his affected voice, the precise English accent that would normally have me drooling, echoes in my head when I snap to. How dare he? He crashes into me and then launches insults like grenades? Bye-bye, meet-cute, this prince in disguise is as ugly as a toadfish.

It was the sort of coordinated plan that Lincoln had been urging on his generals since early 1862. On the eve of the spring offensive, Lincoln told John Hay that Grant’s proposal “powerfully reminded” him of his “old suggestion so constantly made and as constantly neglected, to Buell & Halleck et al to move at once upon the enemy’s whole line so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers.

says. “There’s only one Moses, but I’m not sure there’s a Moses here.” But Howard Mudd, who coached the Chargers’ offensive line at the time, an

When the boundary line between church and world gets blurred, God’s picture of the loving, forgiving, caring, holy, righteous community becomes less clear.

She felt her lips widen. She thrust again—he parried. “I won’t draw blood, de Warenne,” she said, but she thought maybe she would, just so she could see the look in his eyes. A terrible excitement consumed her. With it was her rage. She thrust and he parried, but took a step back. Elated, Amanda went on the offensive. His eyes widened but he merely blocked each blow, allowing her to drive him ruthlessly and rapidly back into the larboard railing. She laughed, triumphant. “You can do better than that, de Warenne! Surely you are not afraid of my naked blade?” “You remain very angry with me. I understand,” he began. She was furious. He knew nothing! She thrust and he parried; she feinted and then slipped through his defenses, instantly cutting a long line into his fine, fancy shirt. She withdrew, heady with the scent of victory. “You understand what?” she asked sweetly. She glanced at the long tear, very surprised, and then he slowly looked up at her. “I did not draw blood,” she said, exhilarated now. She laughed at him. “You were fortunate,” he said, color flooding his cheeks. “No, I was careful. I chose not to take your blood, de Warenne!” She thrust so swiftly that, before he could defend himself, she had taken the top three buttons off his shirt, causing it to gap open, revealing the two thick muscles of his chest. Above them, someone laughed. De Warenne was disbelieving. “Fight, de Warenne,” she said fiercely, panting. She was determined to savagely exchange blows—she would ruthlessly engage, there would be no quarter! “Or show your men that you can be outplayed and outfought by a child.

She felt her lips widen. She thrust again—he parried. “I won’t draw blood, de Warenne,” she said, but she thought maybe she would, just so she could see the look in his eyes. A terrible excitement consumed her. With it was her rage. She thrust and he parried, but took a step back. Elated, Amanda went on the offensive. His eyes widened but he merely blocked each blow, allowing her to drive him ruthlessly and rapidly back into the larboard railing. She laughed, triumphant. “You can do better than that, de Warenne! Surely you are not afraid of my naked blade?” “You remain very angry with me. I understand,” he began. She was furious. He knew nothing! She thrust and he parried; she feinted and then slipped through his defenses, instantly cutting a long line into his fine, fancy shirt. She withdrew, heady with the scent of victory. “You understand what?” she asked sweetly. He glanced at the long tear, very surprised, and then he slowly looked up at her. “I did not draw blood,” she said, exhilarated now. She laughed at him. “You were fortunate,” he said, color flooding his cheeks. “No, I was careful. I chose not to take your blood, de Warenne!” She thrust so swiftly that, before he could defend himself, she had taken the top three buttons off his shirt, causing it to gap open, revealing the two thick muscles of his chest. Above them, someone laughed. De Warenne was disbelieving. “Fight, de Warenne,” she said fiercely, panting. She was determined to savagely exchange blows—she would ruthlessly engage, there would be no quarter! “Or show your men that you can be outplayed and outfought by a child.

There’s fine lines around his eyes and bracketing his mouth, but since smiles are the main weapon in his charm offensive, he’s probably had those since he was nine.

Opening the lid, Beatrix found her neatly folded clothes and a drawstring muslin bag containing a brush and a rack of hairpins, and other small necessities. There was also a package wrapped in pale blue paper and tied with a matching ribbon. Picking up a small folded note that had been tucked under the ribbon, Beatrix read: A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this. -Poppy Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked... After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let a slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk. Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen. Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. "My God," he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers. "Do you like my nightgown?" Beatrix asked. Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. "Where's the rest of it?" "This was all I could find." Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. "I wonder if I put it on backward..." "Let me see." As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath. Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn't take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin. She went to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, relishing the billowy softness of its quilts and linens. Reclining on her side, she made no attempt to cover her exposed leg as the gossamer fabric fell open to her hip. Christopher came to her, stripping off his shirt along the way. The sight of him, all that flexing muscle and sun-glazed skin, was breathtaking. He was a beautiful man, a scarred Apollo, a dream lover. And he was hers.

Regarding the importance of injuries and their effect on overall team performance, here’s a great example from the NFL: Tampa Bay’s offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs usually wouldn’t be considered a high-impact player. But when Tampa Bay met the Los Angeles Rams in the 2022 playoffs, Wirfs was injured and, because of the unique set of circumstances involving that game, his absence had a major impact. The Rams, led by all-world defensive tackle Aaron Donald, had a ferocious pass rush, and Tom Brady was not the most mobile of quarterbacks. Wirfs, who we normally graded at 1.3 points or so in the regular season, suddenly became a lot more valuable because of his injury—maybe worth as many as 6 points. Here’s why. With Wirfs out, his backup (normally worth 0.3 points) was also injured, but playing. Therefore, with an injury, he was worth no points. We knew the cumulative totals of that injury, along with Wirfs’s absence, were going to have a significant impact on the Bucs’ performance and the outcome of the game. Add the disappearance of wide receiver Antonio Brown, who had left the team weeks earlier, the loss of wide receiver Chris Godwin, and, therefore, the need for tight end Rob Gronkowski to stay inside to help block the pass rush, and I knew the Bucs were in trouble. I wagered accordingly and won the bet, largely because I knew that an injured offensive line was going to change the dynamics of this game. I would have acted differently in the same scenario if the team had a more mobile quarterback or a stronger running attack. Again, these are the special situations in which you have to understand the value of each player, the quality of the opponent, and the overall impact on the score of the game.

So, you’re playing mouse with that lion? No offense, but it looks like he could swallow you whole.

34:6-7. merciful, gracious, slow to anger, kindness, faithfulness, bearing crime and offense and sin. This is possibly the most repeated and quoted formula in the Tanak (Num 14:18-19; Jon 4:2; Joel 2:13; Mic 7:18; Pss 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; 2 Chr 30:9; Neh 9:17,31). The Torah never says what the essence of God is, in contrast to the pagan gods. Baal is the storm wind, Dagon is grain, Shamash is the sun. But what is YHWH? This formula, expressed in the moment of the closest revelation any human has of God in the Bible, is the closest the Torah comes to describing the nature of God. Although humans are not to know what the essence is, they can know what are the marks of the divine personality: mercy, grace. In eight (or nine) different ways we are told of God's compassion. The last line of the formula ("though not making one innocent") conveys that this does not mean that one can just get away with anything; there is still justice. But the formula clearly places the weight on divine mercy over divine justice, and it never mentions divine anger. Those who speak of the "Old Testament God of wrath" focus disproportionately on the episodes of anger in the Bible and somehow lose this crucial passage and the hundreds of times that the divine mercy functions in the Hebrew Bible.