Out Of Context D&d Quotes

What about him?” she’d say, finding an attractive guy to point out while they were standing in the lunch line. “Do you want to kiss him?” “I don’t want to kiss a stranger,” Cath would answer. “I’m not interested in lips out of context.

I knew what I had to do—I just didn’t like it. I’d have to blow the remaining two at the same time. Please don’t quote that last sentence out of context.

I’d never ride a rocket into out space, so standing at the edge of the ocean was probably the closest I’d get to touching something boundless and greater than myself. For me, the ocean had a way of putting the rest of the world into context for a couple seconds.

It's a false premise to say that most monogamous people have chosen monogamy. Most people belong to the religion they were raised in...because that's what's familiar. That's the milieu they grew up in, and, for better or worse, they're just continuing the pattern. Until this traditionalist mindset is shaken loose, you would likely try from reflex to impose notions onto nonmonogamy that are not only untenable in the new context but spel sudden and messy doom even in situations that otherwise could be worked out.

(from A Love Story, Eight Takes) 

8
 As it turns out, there is a wrong way to tell this story.
 I was wrong to tell you how multi-true everything is,

 when it would be truer to say nothing. 
I've invented so much and prevented more.

 But I'd like to talk with you about other things,
 in absolute quiet. In extreme context.

 To see you again, isn't love revision? 
It could have gone so many ways. 

This just one of the ways it went.
 Tell me another.

It's like seeing your teacher outside school. It's them, but they're all wrong and out of context

And because I am an artist I find any passage of a novel interesting even when it is out of context. I find it interesting talking to you - so much so in fact that I'd like to talk to you every day while I'm here. I'll even fall in love with you if you'd like; that would be particularly interesting. But however deeply I were to fall in love with you it would not mean that we had to get married. If you think that marriage is the logical conclusion to falling in love, then it becomes necessary to read novels through from beginning to end.

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits.

I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached: MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about? WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.

The Count shifted his chair a little leftward in order to put the clock out of view, then he searched for the passage he’d been reading. He was almost certain it was in the fifth paragraph on the fifteenth page. But as he delved back into that paragraph’s prose, the context seemed utterly unfamiliar; as did the paragraphs that immediately preceded it. In fact, he had to turn back three whole pages before he found a passage that he recalled well enough to resume his progress in good faith.

Cathy, one of my roommates, would surface in the news many years later, describing with embarrassment something I hadn’t known when we lived together: Her mother, a schoolteacher from New Orleans, had been so appalled that her daughter had been assigned a black roommate that she’d badgered the university to separate us. Her mother also gave an interview, confirming the story and providing more context. Having been raised in a home where the n-word was a part of the family lexicon, having had a grandfather who’d been a sheriff and used to brag about chasing black people out of his town, she’d been “horrified,” as she put it, by my proximity to her daughter.

I do understand why women started to reject the word “feminism.” It ended up being invoked in so many bafflingly inappropriate contexts that—if you weren’t actually aware of the core aims of feminism and were trying to work it out simply from the surrounding conversation—you’d presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let’s face it, no fucking.

You know, Junie, you're fourteen now. I think you can certainly manage to put together a sandwich. ... The thing is, if my mother had any idea what I had in my backpack, she would have made me that sandwich. If she knew that I'd searched and searched the house until I finally found the little key to the fireproof box buried in the bottom of her underwear drawer, if she knew that I'd unlocked the box and taken my passport out, that I had it with me right that very second in a Ziploc bag in the bottom of my backpack, if she knew why I had it there, if she knew even a bit of all that, she might have made me that PBJ. She wouldn't have said, "You're fourteen now," like she thought I was some kind of responsible adult. No. If she knew about my plan, she would have said, "you're only fourteen." She would have told me that I was crazy to think about going to England with I was only fourteen.

I was asked to talk to a roomful of undergraduates in a university in a beautiful coastal valley. I talked about place, about the way we often talk about love of place, but seldom how places love us back, of what they give us. They give us continuity, something to return to, and offer familiarity that allows some portion of our lives to remain collected and coherent. They give us an expansive scale in which our troubles are set into context, in which the largeness of the world is a balm to loss, trouble, and ugliness. And distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren't so deeply entrenched and we can imagine other stories, other selves, or just drink up quiet and respite. The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest. Being able to travel in both ways matters, and sometimes the way back into the heart of the question begins by going outward and beyond. This is the expansiveness that comes literally in a landscape or that tugs you out of yourself in a story..... I told the student that they were at an age when they might begin to choose the places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were much more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked each of them where they felt at home. They answered, each of them, down the rows, for an hour, the immigrants who had never stayed anywhere long or left a familiar world behind, the teenagers who'd left the home they'd spent their whole lives in for the first time, the ones who loved or missed familiar landscapes and the ones who had not yet noticed them. I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world [of my family], everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world.

That dream I had about the boss last night," she leaned closer. "It was dirty. Giggling at the shock on Tatianna's face Evie spun back around, only to halt immediately in her tracks. Swallowing a lump in her throat, her eyes as wide as saucers, Evie said, "Hello Sir! Any chance you'd like to add my head to the entryway?

It goes something like this: I am one person among 6.5 billion people on Earth at the moment. That's one person among 6,500,000,000 people. That'a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently the standard British measurements for size). And we live on an Earth that is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour through space around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 mph). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you'd have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us. And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths - just like ours - in other universes. And that's just space. Have a look at time, too. If you're in for a good run, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you're going to spend just 0.00085 percent of man's history living on this Earth. And Man's stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the life of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn't turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we've only been around for the last two seconds. A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you'll be gone (relatively) soon. So, with just the briefest look at the spatial and temporal context of our lives, we are utterly insignificant. As the Perspective Machine lifts up so far above the woods that we forget what the word means, we see just one moving light. It is beautiful. A small, gently glowing light. It is a firefly lost somewhere in the cosmos. And a firefly - on Earth - lives for just one night. It glows beautifully, then goes out. And up there so high in our Perspective Machine we realize that our lives are really just like that of the firefly. Except the air is full of 6.5 billion fireflies. They're glowing beautifully for one night. Then they are gone. So, Fuck It, you might as well REALLY glow.

I’d have to blow the remaining two at the same time. Please don’t quote that last sentence out of context.

Anger is an energy. It really bloody is. It’s possibly the most powerful one-liner I’ve ever come up with. When I was writing the Public Image Ltd song ‘Rise’, I didn’t quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone who’s ever heard it since. I wrote it in an almost throwaway fashion, off the top of my head, pretty much when I was about to sing the whole song for the first time, at my then new home in Los Angeles. It’s a tough, spontaneous idea. ‘Rise’ was looking at the context of South Africa under apartheid. I’d be watching these horrendous news reports on CNN, and so lines like ‘They put a hotwire to my head, because of the things I did and said’, are a reference to the torture techniques that the apartheid government was using out there. Insufferable. You’d see these reports on TV and in the papers, and feel that this was a reality that simply couldn’t be changed. So, in the context of ‘Rise’, ‘Anger is an energy’ was an open statement, saying, ‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it – use it to be creative.’ I combined that with another refrain, ‘May the road rise with you’. When I was growing up, that was a phrase my mum and dad – and half the surrounding neighbourhood, who happened to be Irish also – used to say. ‘May the road rise, and your enemies always be behind you!’ So it’s saying, ‘There’s always hope’, and that you don’t always have to resort to violence to resolve an issue. Anger doesn’t necessarily equate directly to violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one positive move to change things for the better. When I came to record the song properly, the producer and I were arguing all the time, as we always tend to do, but sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in. When it was released in early 1986, ‘Rise’ then became a total anthem, in a period when the press were saying that I was finished, and there was nowhere left for me to go. Well, there was, and I went there. Anger is an energy. Unstoppable.

My thoughts keep vacillating between the draft that feels more like a gust in this sizes-too-big hospital gown, and Dr. Milligan's proposal that I'll live to be a 175 years old. This is getting a little weird, even under the circumstances. I'm hundreds of miles from home, half naked in a room with two guys I barely know. Taken out of context, I'd have to question my common sense. Heck, even in context.

*Terminal* is a harsh word when used in the context of death and not one we'd ever uttered aloud. But according to Webster's, it's also a place people pass through on their way to somewhere else. Deborah knew her "somewhere else" was heaven. She was just hoping the rain was delayed. I scooped a tear off her cheek and tried to slip around her question. "We're all terminal," I said, smiling gently. "None of us makes it out of here alive.

Did I read The New Yorker? This question had a dangerous urgency. It wasn't any one writer or article he was worried about, but the font. The meaning embedded, at a preconscious level, by the look of the magazine; the seal, as he described it, that the typography and layout put on dialectical thought. According to Perkus, to read The New Yorker was to find that you always already agreed, not with The New Yorker but, much more dismayingly, with yourself. I tried hard to understand. Apparently here was the paranoia Susan Eldred had warned me of: The New Yorker's font was controlling, perhaps assailing, Perkus Tooth's mind. To defend himself he frequently retyped their articles and printed them out in simple Courier, an attempt to dissolve the magazine's oppressive context. Once I'd enter his apartment to find him on his carpet with a pair of scissors, furiously slicing up and rearranging an issue of the magazine, trying to shatter its spell on his brain.

My sense of narrative structure was shaped by ROM (Spaceknight) comics. I'd find random issues at the flea market and read them out of order with no context. The entire series was based on a toy I never owned. None of this made any difference.

Americans, too belong to a class—one responsible for and intrinsically tied to a history of torture, bombings, and coups d’état carried out in our name. And Trump has only heaped more upon the burden. In the global context, perhaps, we Americans are all white.

Some people today claim that cultures rooted in oral tradition are far more careful to make certain that traditions that are told and retold are not changed significantly. This turns out to be a modern myth, however. Anthropologists who have studied oral cultures show that just the opposite is the case. Only literary cultures have a concern for exact replication of the facts “as they really are.” And this is because in literary cultures, it is possible to check the sources to see whether someone has changed a story. In oral cultures, it is widely expected that stories will indeed change—they change anytime a storyteller is telling a story in a new context. New contexts require new ways of telling stories. Thus, oral cultures historically have seen no problem with altering accounts as they were told and retold.3

Milch had a bigger cast, a bigger set (on the Melody Ranch studio, where Gene Autry had filmed very different Westerns decades earlier), and more creative freedom than he’d ever had before. There were no advertisers to answer to, and HBO was far more hands-off than the executives at NBC or ABC had been. And as a result, there was even less pretense of planning than there had been on NYPD Blue, and more improvisation. There were scripts for the first four episodes of Season 1, and after that, most of the series was written on the fly, with the cast and crew often not learning what they would be doing until the day before (if that). As Jody Worth recalls, the Deadwood writers would gather each morning for a long conversation: “We would talk about where we were going in the episode, and a lot of talk that had nothing to do with anything, a lot of Professor Milch talk, all over the map talk, which I enjoyed.” Out of those daily conversations came the decisions on what scenes to write that day, to be filmed the day after. There was no system to it, no order, and the actors would be given scenes completely out of context from the rest of the episode.

It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts. LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short. SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc. LIKE A FABLE. (Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.') Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete (for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow') that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation. ("Introduction")

How can [people] be expected to take in a totally unfamiliar line of thought, which goes against all their deepest prejudices? … [S]uch philosophizing [which says what it thinks irrespective of circumstances] would be completely out of place. But there is a more civilized form of philosophy which knows the dramatic context, so to speak, tries to fit in with it, and plays an appropriate part in the current performance. … [D]o the best you can to make the present production a success – don’t spoil the entire play just because you happen to think of another one that you’d enjoy rather more. … If you can’t completely eradicate wrong ideas, or deal with inveterate vices as effectively as you could wish, that’s not reason for turning your back on public life altogether. You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn’t control the winds.

and hearing him claim me as his, bypassed every instinct in my body that had pushed me to succeed on my own. It didn’t make me feel like I was worth more, but it gave me a turbo boost regardless of how stupid it was for me to take his statement out of context. It was useless to hope. Useless to love him. Care about him, sure. I’d cared about him for years. Had a massive crush on him during that time too. But this… It made me want to hope, and that was the last fucking thing I needed.

We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? These days, however, I am much calmer-since I realized that it's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor-biting down on a wooden spoon so as not to disturb the men's card game-before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail-giving daily wail against feminism-amuse me. They paid you 1,600 pounds for that, dear, I think. And I bet it' going into your bank account and not your husband's. The more women argue, loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges. Because for all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it, "feminism" is still the word we need...We need the only word we have ever had to describe "making the world equal for men and women". Women's reluctance to use it sends out a really bad signal. Imagine if, in the 1960's, it had become fashionable for black people to say they "weren't into" civil rights. "No, I'm not into Civil Rights! That Martin Luther King is too shouty. He just needs to chill out, to be honest." But then, I do understand why women started to reject the word feminism. It ended up being invoked in so many baffling inappropriate contexts that you'd presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let's face it, no fucking...Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.

We took the kids to see Chris’s body the next day. He’d been cleaned up a lot. Leanne had suggested that we have a photo book with pictures of Chris; it was a brilliant idea, a way of putting their good-byes in a better, if not exactly happy, context. Before going in, I told them they were going to see their father’s body without his soul. Their dad was now in heaven; all they were going to see was the body God had loaned him for this world. How much comfort that was, I don’t know. Bubba stood near him for a bit, then decided he was done. At some point he told me he didn’t like to cry. “It hurts too much when I cry.” Instead, he would run hard, play hard. The thing about grief is, we all do it in our own way, in our own time, kids included. He went out with V and they sat together on a couch, looking at the book. Within a few moments I heard V’s deep voice boom; laughter echoed in the hall. Bubba was telling him stories about his father, reminding him and all of us who Chris really was. Angel and I stayed with Chris. “Can I touch his hand?” she asked. “Yes.” There was a flower in the room. She put it on him.

As we’ve seen, one of the most frequently pursued paths for achievement-minded college seniors is to spend several years advancing professionally and getting trained and paid by an investment bank, consulting firm, or law firm. Then, the thought process goes, they can set out to do something else with some exposure and experience under their belts. People are generally not making lifelong commitments to the field in their own minds. They’re “getting some skills” and making some connections before figuring out what they really want to do. I subscribed to a version of this mind-set when I graduated from Brown. In my case, I went to law school thinking I’d practice for a few years (and pay down my law school debt) before lining up another opportunity. It’s clear why this is such an attractive approach. There are some immensely constructive things about spending several years in professional services after graduating from college. Professional service firms are designed to train large groups of recruits annually, and they do so very successfully. After even just a year or two in a high-level bank or consulting firm, you emerge with a set of skills that can be applied in other contexts (financial modeling in Excel if you’re a financial analyst, PowerPoint and data organization and presentation if you’re a consultant, and editing and issue spotting if you’re a lawyer). This is very appealing to most any recent graduate who may not yet feel equipped with practical skills coming right out of college. Even more than the professional skill you gain, if you spend time at a bank, consultancy, or law firm, you will become excellent at producing world-class work. Every model, report, presentation, or contract needs to be sophisticated, well done, and error free, in large part because that’s one of the core value propositions of your organization. The people above you will push you to become more rigorous and disciplined, and your work product will improve across the board as a result. You’ll get used to dressing professionally, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing official correspondence, and so forth. You will be able to speak the corporate language. You’ll become accustomed to working very long hours doing detail-intensive work. These attributes are transferable to and helpful in many other contexts.

Ebstein's original study has been corroborated by several other groups. Interestingly, as one might suspect from the Minnesota twin studies, D4DR does not "cause" a personality or temperament. Instead, it causes a propensity toward a temperament that seeks stimulation or excitement-the first derivative of impulsivity. The precise nature of stimulation varies from one context to the next. It can produce the most sublime qualities in humans-exploratory drive, passion, and creative urgency-but it can also spiral toward impulsivity, addiction, violence, and depression. The D4DR-7 repeat variant has been associated with bursts of focused creativity, and also with attention deficit disorder-a seeming paradox until you understand that both can be driven by the same impulse. The most provocative human studies have cataloged the geographic distribution of the D4DR variant. Nomadic and migratory populations have higher frequencies of the variant gene. And the farther one moves from the original site of human dispersal from Africa, the more frequently the variant seems to appear as well. Perhaps the subtle drive caused by the D4DR variant drove the "out-of-Africa" migration, by throwing our ancestors out to sea. Many attributes of our restless, anxious modernity, perhaps, are products of a restless, anxious gene.

I’m always talking about the internet and what’s happening now, so cancel culture is something I’m interested in as a phenomenon, but I don’t want it to come across like I’m butt-hurt about it because, honestly, I don’t really care. Because what is cancelling? People start a social media account and once they get more than 300 followers they can’t see their audience as anything but an audience, something to be performed to — which is why you get the weird thing of your mate who works in a brewery talking on Facebook like he’s talking to a packed convention centre. When you’re performing to an audience, the only human inclination is to be the benevolent protagonist. You’d never assume the role of the antagonist — that’s why trolls exist with anonymity. People who actually put themselves out there, online, their role is to be the good guy. We’re not aware of the solipsism of this behaviour because we’re all doing it. So once a week, culture generates a baddie so all the good guys can go: ‘Look how good I am in opposition to how bad he is.’ And the reason we forget about whatever morally [dubious] thing that person has done a week later is because we don’t care. It’s all literally a performance. There’s a purposeful removal of context in order to seem virtuous that happens so constantly that people can’t even be arsed.

Sometimes silences are pregnant and sometimes not. It is hard to know what to make of the silence of much of the New Testament about the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps it is simply an accident of time and circumstance. There was not a felt need to address the matter. What we should not likely conclude is that it was not seen as an important matter in the latter part of the first century A.D. What we can observe is that the Lord’s Supper continued to be an in-home ceremony taken in the context of a fellowship meal. We also now know it was important in both Gentile and Jewish contexts in the church in the second half of the first century, and beyond. We see no evidence anywhere in this material that clerics of any kind are in charge of the meal and its distribution. Even in the Didache, prophets, who were mouthpieces for God, are only allowed to say the thanksgiving prayer as often as they like. The low ecclesiology, coupled with the ever-present eschatology, suggest that the Didache does indeed go back to the end of the first century A.D. But one precedent in the Didache does stand out: the Lord’s Supper is for baptized Christians, and in particular for those who repent of their sins. We are on the way to the church of the Middle Ages in some respects, but we have not begun to localize or confine grace to the elements of the Lord’s Supper itself and then have it controlled by clerics.

Of course, no china--however intricate and inviting--was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home. We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch--his taste was surprisingly eclectic--and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner. We were already a married couple--well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway--a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city--and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that--a thousand and one times. Going out and panting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together. This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before--girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west. If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.

The game within the game is the game that only the players see. They experience it in relation to one another on the floor at a particular time and in the middle of the action. It is one of the nuances of the game of basketball. As Knick teammates during those years, we knew what a teammate was going to do almost before he did it. We helped one another on defense and shared the ball on offense. We made room for each of us to be his best within the context of the team. For example, I often would see Clyde come down the floor with the ball. I'd catch his eye. I knew he wanted to go down my side of the floor. In order to give him a little more room to move, I would clear out. That way I didn't clog up his space. Or, when I had the ball on the side and he was at the top of the key, waiting to go backdoor, our center knew he had to move to the other side of the floor to create the room for the backdoor bounce pass from me to Clyde who was moving down the lane toward the basket. That was the game within the game. On one level, the game within the game was a matter of mechanics but is also operated on a psychological level in that we truly were all for one and one for all. We challenged one another in practice to become better. We helped one another come back from defeat. We inspired one another to reach our peak team performance. None of us felt we could be as good alone as all of us could be together. Our unity came sometimes with laughs, sometimes with conflicts, sometimes with moments of collective insight, but it was that spirit of camaraderie which brought us together in a way that allowed the fans to see something very special.

There was a time when my life seemed so painful to me that reading about the lives of other women writers was one of the few things that could help. I was unhappy, and ashamed of it; I was baffled by my life. For several years in my early thirties, I would sit in my armchair reading books about these other lives. Sometimes when I came to the end, I would sit down and read the book through from the beginning again. I remember an incredible intensity about all this, and also a kind of furtiveness—as if I were afraid that someone might look through the window and find me out. Even now, I feel I should pretend that I was reading only these women's fiction or their poetry—their lives as they chose to present them, alchemized as art. But that would be a lie. It was the private messages I really liked—the journals and letters, and autobiographies and biographies whenever they seemed to be telling the truth. I felt very lonely then, self-absorbed, shut off. I needed all this murmured chorus, this continuum of true-life stories, to pull me through. They were like mothers and sisters to me, these literary women, many of them already dead; more than my own family, they seemed to stretch out a hand. I had come to New York when I was young, as so many come, in order to invent myself. And, like many modern people—modern women, especially—I had catapulted out of my context; in important ways, the life of my mother, in her English village, was not much help. I remember reading in those dark years a review by John Updike in which he smoothly compared the lives of Jean Rhys and Colette. The first was in the end a failure, the second a triumph, he said. I took it personally, felt a stab in the heart. And poor Jane Bowles, said someone else, in the Times—you'd have to admit that hers was a desperate life. The successes gave me hope, of course, yet it was the desperate bits I liked best. I was looking for directions, gathering clues...

Tanya Latty and Madeleine Beekman of the University of Sydney were studying the way slime molds handled tough choices. A tough choice for a slime mold looks something like this: On one side of the petri dish is three grams of oats. On the other side is five grams of oats, but with an ultraviolet light trained on it. You put a slime mold in the center of the dish. What does it do? Under those conditions, they found, the slime mold chooses each option about half the time; the extra food just about balances out the unpleasantness of the UV light. If you were a classical economist of the kind Daniel Ellsberg worked with at RAND, you’d say that the smaller pile of oats in the dark and the bigger pile under the light have the same amount of utility for the slime mold, which is therefore ambivalent between them. Replace the five grams with ten grams, though, and the balance is broken; the slime mold goes for the new double-size pile every time, light or no light. Experiments like this teach us about the slime mold’s priorities and how it makes decisions when those priorities conflict. And they make the slime mold look like a pretty reasonable character. But then something strange happened. The experimenters tried putting the slime mold in a petri dish with three options: the three grams of oats in the dark (3-dark), the five grams of oats in the light (5-light), and a single gram of oats in the dark (1-dark). You might predict that the slime mold would almost never go for 1-dark; the 3-dark pile has more oats in it and is just as dark, so it’s clearly superior. And indeed, the slime mold just about never picks 1-dark. You might also guess that, since the slime mold found 3-dark and 5-light equally attractive before, it would continue to do so in the new context. In the economist’s terms, the presence of the new option shouldn’t change the fact that 3-dark and 5-light have equal utility. But no: when 1-dark is available, the slime mold actually changes its preferences, choosing 3-dark more than three times as often as it does 5-light!

For Dylan, this electric assault threatened to suck the air out of everything else, only there was too much radio oxygen to suck. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the giant, all-consuming anthem of the new “generation gap” disguised as a dandy’s riddle, a dealer’s come-on. As a two-sided single, it dwarfed all comers, disarmed and rejuvenated listeners at each hearing, and created vast new imaginative spaces for groups to explore both sonically and conceptually. It came out just after Dylan’s final acoustic tour of Britain, where his lyrical profusion made him a bard, whose tabloid accolade took the form of political epithet: “anarchist.” As caught on film by D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, the young folkie had already graduated to rock star in everything but instrumentation. “Satisfaction” held Dylan back at number two during its four-week July hold on Billboard’s summit, giving way to Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” come August, novelty capstones to Dylan’s unending riddle. (In Britain, Dylan stalled at number four.) The ratio of classics to typical pop schlock, like Freddie and the Dreamers’ “I’m Telling You Now” or Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” suddenly got inverted. For cosmic perspective, yesterday’s fireball, Elvis Presley, sang “Do the Clam.” Most critics have noted the Dylan influence on Lennon’s narratives. Less space gets devoted to Lennon’s effect on Dylan, which was overt: think of how Dylan rewires Chuck Berry (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) or revels in inanity (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). Even more telling, Lennon’s keening vocal harmonies in “Nowhere Man,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Dr. Robert” owed as much to the Byrds and the Beach Boys, high-production turf Dylan simply abjured. Lennon also had more stylistic stretch, both in his Beatle context and within his own sensibility, as in the pagan balalaikas in “Girl” or the deliberate amplifier feedback tripping “I Feel Fine.” Where Dylan skewed R&B to suit his psychological bent, Lennon pursued radical feats of integration wearing a hipster’s arty façade, the moptop teaching the quiet con. Building up toward Rubber Soul throughout 1965, Beatle gravity exerted subtle yet inexorable force in all directions.

The centre of the conception of wisdom in the Bible is the Book of Ecclesiastes, whose author, or rather, chief editor, is sometimes called Koheleth, the teacher or preacher. Koheleth transforms the conservatism of popular wisdom into a program of continuous mental energy. Those who have unconsciously identified a religious attitude either with illusion or with mental indolence are not safe guides to this book, although their tradition is a long one. Some editor with a “you’d better watch out” attitude seems to have tacked a few verses on the end suggesting that God trusts only the anti-intellectual, but the main author’s courage and honesty are not to be defused in this way. He is “disillusioned” only in the sense that he has realized that an illusion is a self-constructed prison. He is not a weary pessimist tired of life: he is a vigorous realist determined to smash his way through every locked door of repression in his mind. Being tired of life is in fact the only mental handicap for which he has no remedy to suggest. Like other wise men, he is a collector of proverbs, but he applies to all of them his touchstone and key word, translated in the AV [the Authorized Version] as “vanity.” This word (hebel) has a metaphorical kernel of fog, mist, or vapour, a metaphor that recurs in the New Testament (James 4:14). It this acquires a derived sense of “emptiness,” the root meaning of the Vulgate’s vanitas. To put Koheleth’s central intuition into the form of its essential paradox: all things are full of emptiness. We should not apply a ready-made disapproving moral ambience to this word “vanity,” much less associate it with conceit. It is a conception more like the shunyata or “void” of Buddhist though: the world as everything within nothingness. As nothing is certain or permanent in the world, nothing either real or unreal, the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal. All goals and aims may cheat us, but if we run away from them we shall find ourselves bumping into them. We may feel that saint is a “better” man than a sinner, and that all of our religious and moral standards would crumble into dust if we did not think so; but the saint himself is most unlikely to take such a view. Similarly Koheleth went through a stage in which he saw that wisdom was “better” than folly, then a stage in which he saw that there was really no difference between them as death lies in wait for both and finally realized that both views were equally “vanity”. As soon as we renounce the expectation of reward, in however, refined a guise, for virtue or wisdom, we relax and our real energies begin to flow into the soul. Even the great elegy at the end over the failing bodily powers of old age ceases to become “pessimistic” when we see it as part of the detachment with which the wise man sees his life in the context of vanity. We take what comes: there is no choice in the matter, hence no point in saying “we should take what comes.” We soon realize by doing so that there is a cyclical rhythm in nature. But, like other wheels, this is a machine to be understood and used by man. If it is true that the sun, the seasons, the waters, and human life itself go in cycles, the inference is that “there is a time for all things,” something different to be done at each stage of the cycle. The statement “There is nothing new under the sun” applies to wisdom but not to experience , to theory but not to practice. Only when we realize that nothing is new can we live with an intensity in which everything becomes new.

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali

The influence of the langues d’oc and d’oïl produced a situation in which French had started exporting itself even before it had become a fully developed language with a coherent writing system. Between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, Romance impressed itself on Europe as the language of worldly business, helping to relegate Latin to the religious sphere, although the latter did remain a language of science and philosophy for many more centuries. In the Mediterranean region, fishermen, sailors and merchants used a rudimentary version of langue d’oc mixed with Italian that people called the lingua franca (“Frankish language”), and over time this spoken language soaked up influences from Italian, Spanish and Turkish. (Today a lingua franca is any common language used in economics, diplomacy or science, in a context where it is not a mother tongue.) The Mediterranean lingua franca never evolved into anyone’s mother tongue, which is why there are very few written traces of it. A rare rendition of it appears in a seventeenth-century comedy by the French playwright Molière, who had been a wandering actor before he entered Louis XIV’s Court. In his Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman), Molière creates the character of a fake Turk who speaks in lingua franca (for obvious comical effect): Se ti sabir, / Ti respondir; se non sabir, / Tazir, Tazir. Mi star Mufti / Ti qui star ti? Non intendir, / Tazir, tazir. If you know, / you must respond. If you don’t know, / you must shut up. I am the Mufti, / who are you? I don’t understand; / shut up, shut up.2 It was the Crusades, which were dominated by the French, that turned lingua franca into the dominant language in the Mediterranean. More than half a dozen Crusades were carried out over nearly three centuries. Many Germans and English also participated, but the Arabs uniformly referred to the Crusaders as Franj, caring little whether they said oc, oïl, ja or yes. Interestingly, Arabic, the language of the common enemy, gave French roughly a thousand terms, including amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrup). The great prevalence of Arabic words in French scientific language—terms such as algèbre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero)—underlines the fact that the Arabs were definitely at the cutting edge of knowledge at the time.

Thomas Grantham (1634–92) stood out as a major theological writer for the General Baptists later in the seventeenth century. The General Baptists believed that Christ died for the sins of all (“general atonement”), not that all would believe.

Time froze, every detail searing itself into memory. Loren’s tie tack was a little crooked, and the gel that kept his blonde hair immaculate was losing its hold. He didn’t look as though he’d just held a long, suspicious meeting so much as just awakened from a nap. In any other context, Buster might have found it funny, but here, in an empty conference room, with the sudden fluorescent lights stabbing at his eyes, the effect was terrifying. Any words he could have knitted together fled for the dark corners of the room, hiding under his spilled papers, in the spaces between the furniture and the floorboards, behind the heavy maroon drapes at the windows. He opened his mouth anyway, and even the start of a stammer died in his throat as his breath stalled out.

John defined a society as “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other work out their salvation.

during the years 1797–98. In the 1790s, revivals (led by Reformed pastors) also broke out in the Connecticut Valley in the United States. They became early manifestations of the so-called “Second Great Awakening” (late 1780s – early 1840s). This awakening encompassed multiple disparate elements: the widespread distribution of Christian literature; Reformed preaching in Connecticut by theological descendants of Jonathan Edwards; the faithful gospel witness of Methodist circuit riders; the occurrence of emotionally high-octane camp

I thoroughly enjoy writing the type of ‘avant-garde’ novels I strongly believe no else would remotely write, and which possess an energetic ‘c-i-n-e-m-a-t-i-c’ quality that makes them not only intriguingly suspenseful and ‘audiovisually’ unique, but offer modern readers involving, sophisticated stories with a distinct, atmospheric style that justifies my ‘christening’ these beautiful volumes… ‘Cotayesque.’ What does that term actually signify in the ‘artistic’ context of my books? I cordially and wholeheartedly invite readers to find out, to ‘discover’ what I sincerely hope will be unanimously perceived as ‘aesthetically conscious,’ genuinely enthralling literary entertainment by a nouveau author of wide-canvassed tales in diverse genres that I’d absolutely recommend (and I’ve always been extremely selective about the n-o-v-e-l-s I read and, of course, the m-o-v-i-e-s I see) to a… family member, to a… friend. Thank you!

More often than I’d like, I’m told we are executing a certain way “because Marissa said so.” This explanation leaves out valuable context. There was probably a good reason for the decision, but that’s absent from this pat answer. Can we ban the practice of “because [executive] said so” and encourage people to explain why a specific choice was made when relaying those decisions to others?

Was it possible, she wondered, to have solitude together? She tried to imagine what he would do if after dinner she went to his study back home with her book or her laptop, and sat on the couch there instead of in the living room as they had in the early years. He might glance over the top of his computer with a look of surprise and then a smile of welcome. Hey there. Or there might be a moment's hesitation. She'd sit quietly nearby, each of them feeling the weight of the other int he room and a dampening of his or her own thoughts, each looking up expectantly when the other shifted in a chair or looked off into the middle distance. She might offer a snippet of commentary about something she was reading, but it would not be easily understood out of context. After an hour or so she would stand and stretch, murmur that sh though she'd call it a night, and the following night she'd go back to the living room. It was a gift, solitude. But solitude with another person, that was an art.

He’d been punished so frequently that he’d lived in a state of being perpetually grounded. Every little thing he’d said and done had been cause for a put down, a punishment or a scripture quote ripped out of context to impress upon him what a shitty person he was.

Reading Group Guide  1.   The river town of Hobnob, Mississippi, is in danger of flooding. To offset the risk, the townspeople were offered the chance to relocate in exchange for money. Some people jumped at the opportunity (the Flooders); others (the Stickers) refused to leave, so the deal fell through. If you lived in Hobnob, which choice would you make and why? If you’d lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, would you have fled the storm or stayed to protect your house? Did the two floods remind you of each other in terms of official government response or media coverage?  2.   How are the circumstances during the Prohibition era (laws against consuming or selling alcohol, underground businesses that make and sell booze on the black market, corruption in the government and in law enforcement) similar to what’s happening today (the fight to legalize and tax marijuana, the fallout of the drug war in countries like Mexico and Colombia, jails filled with drug abusers)? How are the circumstances different? Do you identify with the bootleggers or the prohibitionists in the novel? What is your stance on the issue today?  3.   The novel is written in third person from two different perspectives—Ingersoll’s and Dixie Clay’s—in alternating chapters. How do you think this approach adds to or detracts from the story? Are you a fan of books written from multiple perspectives, or do you prefer one character to tell his/her side of the story?  4.   The Tilted World is written by two authors. Do you think it reads differently than a book written by only one? Do you think you could coauthor a novel with a loved one? Did you try to guess which author wrote different passages?  5.   Language and dialect play an important role in the book. Do you think the southern dialect is rendered successfully? How about the authors’ use of similes (“wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues”; “Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin.”). Do they provide necessary context or flavor?  6.   At the end of Chapter 5, when Jesse, Ham, and Ingersoll first meet, Ingersoll realizes that Jesse has been drinking water the entire time they’ve been at dinner. Of course, Ham and Ingersoll are both drunk from all the moonshine. How does this discovery set the stage for what happens in the latter half of the book?  7.   Ingersoll grew up an orphan. In what ways do you think that independence informed his character? His choices throughout the novel? Dixie Clay also became independent, after marrying Jesse and becoming ostracized from friends and family. Later, after Ingersoll rescues her, she reflects, “For so long she’d relied only on herself. She’d needed to. . . . But now she’d let someone in. It should have felt like weakness, but it didn’t.” Are love and independence mutually exclusive? How did the arrival of Willy prepare these characters for the changes they’d have to undergo to be ready for each other?  8.   Dixie Clay becomes a bootlegger not because she loves booze or money but because she needs something to occupy her time. It’s true, however, that she’s not only breaking the law but participating in a system that perpetrates violence. Do you think there were better choices she could have made? Consider the scene at the beginning of the novel, when there’s a showdown between Jesse and two revenuers interested in making an arrest. Dixie Clay intercepts the arrest, pretending to be a posse of gunslingers protecting Jesse and the still. Given what you find out about Jesse—his dishonesty, his drunkenness, his womanizing—do you think she made the right choice? If you were in Dixie Clay’s shoes, what would you have done?  9.   When Ham learns that Ingersoll abandoned his post at the levee to help Dixie Clay, he feels not only that Ingersoll acted

In Depth Types of Effect Size Indicators Researchers use several different statistics to indicate effect size depending on the nature of their data. Roughly speaking, these effect size statistics fall into three broad categories. Some effect size indices, sometimes called dbased effect sizes, are based on the size of the difference between the means of two groups, such as the difference between the average scores of men and women on some measure or the differences in the average scores that participants obtained in two experimental conditions. The larger the difference between the means, relative to the total variability of the data, the stronger the effect and the larger the effect size statistic. The r-based effect size indices are based on the size of the correlation between two variables. The larger the correlation, the more strongly two variables are related and the more of the total variance in one variable is systematic variance related to the other variable. A third category of effect sizes index involves the odds-ratio, which tells us the ratio of the odds of an event occurring in one group to the odds of the event occurring in another group. If the event is equally likely in both groups, the odds ratio is 1.0. An odds ratio greater than 1.0 shows that the odds of the event is greater in one group than in another, and the larger the odds ratio, the stronger the effect. The odds ratio is used when the variable being measured has only two levels. For example, imagine doing research in which first-year students in college are either assigned to attend a special course on how to study or not assigned to attend the study skills course, and we wish to know whether the course reduces the likelihood that students will drop out of college. We could use the odds ratio to see how much of an effect the course had on the odds of students dropping out. You do not need to understand the statistical differences among these effect size indices, but you will find it useful in reading journal articles to know what some of the most commonly used effect sizes are called. These are all ways of expressing how strongly variables are related to one another—that is, the effect size. Symbol Name d Cohen’s d g Hedge’s g h 2 eta squared v 2 omega squared r or r 2 correlation effect size OR odds ratio The strength of the relationships between variables varies a great deal across studies. In some studies, as little as 1% of the total variance may be systematic variance, whereas in other contexts, the proportion of the total variance that is systematic variance may be quite large,

Philosophers in the scholastic tradition have usually defined intellectual certitude as a proposition in which we have no reasonable 'fear' of the opposite proposition turning out to be the truth. But this "fear" of which the medieval scholastics spoke does not convey their teaching to a mind trained in the proper formalities of the English language. A lack of fear, in this context, means that we cannot judge the opposite to be possible and that we are fully conscious of the reasons why we cannot. We have no reason permitting us to withhold assent to the proposition at hand. "lack of fear, " in this context, is something intellectual; it is not really a "lack of fear," in the emotional sense at all, and "fear" —in English - connotes the emotional. A man can possess intellectual certitude about a proposition and still fail to possess subjective or emotional certitude. He can emotionally fear the opposite, even though he cannot think the opposite to be a possibility. A man ca be absolutely certain that a God exists and still feel His absence. pg 172

For several years, I taught Sunday school in my church. As an object lesson, I distributed several excerpts from recent news articles. I had students read the excerpt and then explain to the class what they believed was happening. One news excerpt stated: The huge black triangular-shaped flying object came silently out of nowhere over the treetops and was gone in seconds. The lights – three on each side – were huge, seemingly as big as cars and bright yellow…. After the craft flew over the Laurie area around 8:30 p.m. Oct. 5, a handful of Laurie area residents questioned what this unidentified object flying in the night sky could be. A second excerpt from another article read: The UFO was spotted by hundreds of witnesses with many believing it was the work of an ‘alien’ craft. One saw orangey-yellow spheres skimming across the sky. Another reported a ‘massive ball of light’ with ‘tentacles going right down to the ground.’ Then witnesses told of an ear splitting bang at 4 a.m. Come dawn the plot thickens. At the nearby wind farm one of the 60ft blades from a 200ft turbine was found ripped off. Another had been left twisted and useless.…the strange goings on at a wind farm in Conisholme, Lincolnshire, can be explained by a flying saucer crashing into the turbine in a close encounter that could, at last, provide the evidence of other life forms they have been waiting for all their lives. After reading the excerpts, I asked the students to explain what the article was about. Hesitantly, the students said the articles were about a UFO sighting and crash; after all, that is specifically what the excerpt said. I then held up a printout of the actual news articles, which were titled respectively, “UFO over Laurie ID’d as stealth bomber” and “Unmanned Stealth Bomber Could Have Been UFO Responsible for Destroying Wind Turbine.” The whole article described a US military exercise with the Stealth bomber. The aircraft crashed into a turbine on the wind farm. The local residents were unfamiliar with the Stealth Bomber and some believed it to be a UFO. The problem in accurately interpreting the news excerpts, for my students, was that I did not give them the full article. They did not understand the background or the whole story so they were left to fill in the gaps with their own ideas and interpretations. Sadly, we often do this same thing when interpreting the Bible. Very few of us are well versed in the customs and traditions of the ancient Jews during Jesus’ time. That background provides a context in which the books of the Bible were written. It is a context that shaped the very foundation of Christianity and it is a context that without, we cannot possibly hope to truly understand what the Bible’s authors were trying to teach us.

She sat on the wall, opened her book, and paid him no mind. After a few minutes the sounds of clipping stopped, and she felt his gaze on her. She turned a page. “Jane,” he said with a touch of exasperation. “Shh, I’m reading,” she said. “Jane, listen, someone warned me that another fellow heard my telly playing and told Mrs. Wattlesbrook, and I had to toss it out this morning. If they spot me hanging around you..” “You’re not hanging around me, I’m reading.” “Bugger, Jane…” “Martin, please, I’m sorry about your TV but you can’t cast me away now. I’ll go raving mad if I have to sit in that house again all afternoon. I haven’t sewn a thing since junior high Home Ec when I made a pair of gray shorts that ripped at the butt seam the first time I sat down, and I haven’t played pianoforte since I quit from boredom at age twelve, and I haven’t read a book in the middle of the day since college, so you see what a mess I’m in.” “So,” Martin said, digging in his spade. “You’ve come to find me again when there is no one else to flirt with.” Huh! thought Jane. He snapped a dead branch off the trunk. Huh! she thought again. She stood and started to walk away. “Wait.” Martin hopped after her, grabbing her elbow. “I saw you with those actors, parading around the grounds this morning. I hadn’t seen you with them before. In the context. And it bothered me. I mean, you don’t really go in for this stuff, do you?” Jane shrugged. “You do?” “More than I want to, though you’ve been making it seem unnecessary lately.” Martin squinted up at a cloud. “I’ve never understood the women who come here, and you’re one of them. I can’t make sense of it.” “I don’t think I could explain it to a man. If you were a woman, all I’d have to say is ‘Colin Firth in a wet shirt’ and you’d say, ‘Ah.’” “Ah. I mean, aha! is what I mean.” Crap. She’d hoped he would laugh at the Colin Firth thing. And he didn’t. And now the silence made her feel as though she were standing on a seesaw, waiting for the weight to drop on the other side. Then she smelled it. The musty, acrid, sour, curdled, metallic, decaying odor of ending. This wasn’t just a first fight. She’d been in this position too many times not to recognize the signs. “Are you breaking up with me?” she asked. “Were we ever together enough to require breaking up?” Oh. Ouch. She took a step back on that one. Perhaps it was her dress that allowed her to compose herself more quickly than normal. She curtsied. “Pardon the interruption, I mistook you for someone I knew.” She turned and left, wishing for a Victorian-type gown so she could have whipped the full skirts for a satisfying little cracking sound. She had to satisfy herself with emphatically tightening her bonnet ribbon as she marched. You stupid, stupid girl, she thought. You were fantasizing again. Stop it! It had all been going so well. She’d let herself have fun, unwind, not plague a new romance with constant questions such as, What if? And after? And will he love me forever? “Are you breaking up with me…?” she muttered to herself. He must think she was a lunatic. And really, he’d be right. Here she was in Pembrook Park, a place where women hand over scads of dough to hook up with men paid to adore them, but she finds the one man on campus who’s in a position to reject her and then leads him into it. Typical Jane.

There was Customer Service, a chirpy brunette with a permanent smile behind the desk. And there was someone waiting there, someone dressed in jeans and a sweater, devilishly normal in the twenty-first-century crowd. He saw her, and he straightened, his eyes hopeful. Apparently, Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s barrister hadn’t been in his office to assure her that being a magazine writer doesn’t nullify a confidentially agreement. “Jane.” “Martin. You whistled?” She laid the rancor on thick. No need to tap dance around. “Jane, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you today. Or tonight. The point is, I was going to tell you, and then we could still see if you and I--” “You’re an actor,” Jane said as though “actor” and “bastard” were synonymous. “Yes, but, but…” He looked around as though for cue cards. “But you’re desperately in love with me,” she prompted him. “I’m unbelievably beautiful, and I make you feel like yourself. Oh, and I remind you of your sister.” The chirpy brunette behind the counter furiously refused to look up from her monitor. “Jane, please.” “And the suddenly passionate feelings that sent you running after me at the airport have nothing to do with Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s fear that I’ll write a negative review of Pembrook Park.” “No! Listen, I know I was a cad, and I lied and was misleading, and I’ve never actually been an NBA fan--go United--but romances have bloomed on stonier ground.” “Romances…stonier ground…Did Mrs. Wattlesbrook write that line?” Martin exhaled in exasperation. Thinking of Molly’s dead end on the background check, she asked, “Your name’s not really Martin Jasper, is it?” “Well,” he looked at the brunette as though for help. “Well, it is Martin.” The brunette smiled encouragement. Then, impossibly, another figure ran toward her. The sideburns and stiff-collared jacket looked ridiculous out of the context of Pembrook Park, though he’d stuck on a baseball cap and trench coat, trying to blend. His face was flushed from running, and when he saw Jane, he sighed with relief. Jane dropped her jaw. Literally. She had never, even in her most ridiculous daydreaming, imagined that Mr. Nobley would come after her.

Then, impossibly, another figure ran toward her. The sideburns and stiff-collared jacket looked ridiculous out of the context of Pembrook Park, though he’d stuck on a baseball cap and trench coat, trying to blend. His face was flushed from running, and when he saw Jane, he sighed with relief. Jane dropped her jaw. Literally. She had never, even in her most ridiculous daydreaming, imagined that Mr. Nobley would come after her. She took a step back, hit something slick with her boot heel, and tottered almost to the ground. Mr. Nobley caught her and set her back up on her feet. Is this why women wear heels? thought Jane. We hobble ourselves so we can still be rescued by men? She annoyed herself by having enjoyed it. Briefly. “You haven’t left yet,” Nobley said. He seemed reluctant to let go of her, but he did and took a few steps back. “I’ve been panicked that…” He saw Martin. “What are you doing here?” The brunette was watching with hungry intensity, though she kept tapping at a keyboard as though actually very busy at work. “Jane and I got close these past weeks and--” Martin began. “Got close. That’s a load of duff. It’s one thing when you’re toying with the dowagers who guess what you are, but Jane should be off limits.” He took her arm. “You can’t believe a word he says. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier, but you must know now that he’s an actor.” “I know,” Jane said. Nobley blinked. “Oh.” “So, what are you doing here?” She couldn’t help it if her tone sounded a little tired. This was becoming farcical. “I came to tell you that I--” he rushed to speak, then composed himself, looked around, and stepped closer to her so he did not need to raise his voice to be heard. The brunette leaned forward just a tad. “I apologize for having to tell you here, in this busy, dirty…this is not the scene I would set, but you must know that I…” He took off his cap and rubbed his hair ragged. “I’ve been working at Pembrook Park for nearly four years. All the women I see, week after week, they’re the same. Nearly from the first, that morning when we were alone in the park, I guessed that you might be different. You were sincere.” He reached for her hand. He seemed to gain confidence, his lips started to smile, and he looked at her as though he never wished to look away.

needed to tell my own story, as cheesy as that might sound. The more time I spent out on the campaign trail reflecting on my own life and seeing myself in other people’s stories, the more I realized that the experiences and memories I was scared of, embarrassed of, or keeping hidden weren’t as weird, mockable, or inappropriate to discuss in the context of national politics as I’d assumed they were.

centered. That is more than a creedal commitment; it sets out Paul’s priorities, his lifestyle, and, in this context, his style of ministry. If he really holds that God has supremely disclosed himself in the cross and that to follow the crucified and risen Savior means dying daily, then it is preposterous to adopt a style of ministry that is triumphalistic, designed to impress, calculated to win applause.

Pak Yoo was a different person in English than in Korean. In a way, he supposed, it was inevitable for immigrants to become child versions of themselves, stripped of their verbal fluency and, with it, a layer of their competence and maturity. Before moving to America, he'd prepared himself for the difficulties he knew he'd experience: the logical awkwardness of translating his thoughts before speaking, the intellectual taxation of figuring out words from context, the physical challenge of shaping his tongue into unfamiliar positions to make sounds that didn't exist in Korean. But what he hadn't known, hadn't expected, was that this linguistic uncertainty would extend beyond speech and, like a virus, infect other parts: his thinking, demeanor, his very personality itself. In Korean, he was an authoritative man, educated and worthy of respect. In English, he was a deaf, mute idiot, unsure, nervous, and inept. A bah-bo.

have no hope for the church reforming or renewing. My only hope is that it collapses and dies soon, before it does too much more harm, so something new can be resurrected.” Others had hope for renewal but talked in terms of centuries, not years or even decades. Latter-Day Saints, Adventists, Unitarians, and many others have reached out to me about their similar spiritual frustrations in their unique contexts.

Slowly, I read the first page, having to pause now and then when a word didn’t make sense because I’d read the letters out of order. Any time that happened, I’d lose the context of the sentence completely and have to read it over. But I was used to this. It was just the way it was for me. Reading and comprehension took time and work. It was never going to be something that came easy to me, never going to be something I excelled at. And that was just fine.

A particular feature of Stevenson’s oeuvre is the way in which characters that appear in one book may crop up in another context in a quite different title. Readers like this because in a way it reflects the way the world is; our lives are not linear narratives–they are meandering stories that take place in diverse settings and that are peopled by characters who drop in and out at various stages.

certain written languages depend heavily on context. Languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are often written only in consonants, which means the reader must figure out what the vowel is by the surrounding concepts and ideas. In those languages, if you read the equivalent of “stmp n th bg,” you’d fill in different vowels depending on whether the phrase appeared in a pest control manual (“stomp on the bug”) or a short story about a trip to the post office (“stamp in the bag”). Unlike English, languages that require the reader to supply the vowels by discerning the context are usually written from right to left.11 And as we learned a few pages ago, moving one’s eyes in that direction depends on the brain’s right hemisphere.

Because we sit there in the gap for a long time saying [gasps]. And that’s when you begin to learn the meaning of ‘Lord Have Mercy’. I can’t do anything to raise my state but what I can do is stay honestly ahead of, in plain sight, what’s happened, acknowledging. Here I am. And I think it’s from that repeated acknowledgement of my own helplessness at that level, but refusing to simply hide from that helplessness, that gradually, gradually, gradually the energy that had originally gone into your, sort of, ego programmes gets recaptured to begin to hold this other kind of field of awareness, of attentiveness, that’s not identified with that small self acting out and can begin to become a nest for that deeper and fuller and truer wiser self to live in. And then we begin to Be. Then we begin to have Being. And it’s from that Being that sometimes we can pull ourselves out of that spiral we were heading into, and it’s from that Being that we can begin to offer our force of Being to the world as love, as assistance, as a shift in the energy field for someone else. ‘Baraka’ the Sufis call it. But it comes slowly, because you can’t just, kind of, click your heels together and have Being. It has to accumulate slowly in your being for a life of painfully bearing the crucifixion of inner honesty, and slowly it emerges. Interviewer: So that brings up the question in me, what is then freedom? Because you go on this journey. We start out on this journey to become free, which we call enlightenment. Cynthia: Well, you know, we have so many mixed metaphors as Western and Eastern ways of contexting reality come together like tectonic plates. And they don’t often match up. I think, in a very obvious way, freedom is easy. At the obvious level, what it means is what you’d call ‘freedom from the false self’. Most of us think we’re free, and yet we are not free at all because we are under the absolute compulsion of agendas, addictions and aversions that have been programmed into us from early life, and sometimes from the womb. We have our values, we have our triggers, we have our flash points, we have our agendas. And, as A.H. Almaas said so famously, “Freedom to be your ego is not freedom.” Because that’s slavery. You’re being pulled around by a bull ring in the nose. So part of the work of freedom begins when you can stabilise in yourself this thing that some of the Eastern traditions helpfully call ‘witnessing presence’, which is something deeper that’s not dependent on the pain-pleasure principle, that’s not attracted by attraction, or repulsed by aversion. You know, as my teacher Rafe, the hermit monk of Snowmass, Colorado, used to say, “I want to have enough Being to be nothing.” Which means he is not dependant on the world to give him his identity, because he’s learned his identity nests in something much deeper. [...] And as you finally become free to follow what you might call the ‘homing beacon of your own inner calling’, you realise that it’s only in that complete obedience that freedom lies. And, of course, the trick to that is the word ‘obedience’, which we usually thinks means knuckling under, or capitulating, really comes from the Latin ‘ob audire’, which means ‘to listen deeply’. So, as we listen deeply to the fundamental, what you might call the ‘tuning fork’ of our being – which is given to us not by ourself and is never about self-realisation because the self melts as that realisation comes closer – you find the only freedom is to be your own cell in the vast mystical body of God.

When someone ignores that word, ask yourself: Why is this person seeking to control me? What does he want? It is best to get away from the person altogether, but if that’s not practical, the response that serves safety is to dramatically raise your insistence, skipping several levels of politeness. “I said NO!” When I encounter people hung up on the seeming rudeness of this response (and there are many), I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached: MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about? WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.

FS: After they threw you out, that must have made things a bit difficult. SM:     I think they all hated my guts by the time they threw me out. But I’d been screaming to get out of the bloody thing for awhile, it had run its course. FS: It ended in Japan didn’t it, I heard you fell out of a … SM:     I fell out of the train. It was three hours after them bringing you around Saki after Saki after Saki. But anyhow I fell from the top step of the train. They’re very safety conscious and everything, but somehow I managed to break my head open on the platform. It just brought matters to a head. FS: It wasn’t moving, the train? SM:     I haven’t got a clue. I couldn’t tell you if it was moving or not. FS: It’s a bit harsh sacking a man for falling off of a train. SM: Well, it wasn’t the first incident of that nature.

Anderson’s use of the word ‘grotesque’ is quite important in this context. In its usual sense in reference to human beings it connotes disgust or revulsion, but Anderson’s use is quite different. To him a grotesque is, as he points out later, like the twisted apples that are left behind in the orchards because they are imperfect. These apples, he says, are the sweetest of all, perhaps even because of the imperfections that have caused them to be rejected. He approaches the people in his stories as he does the apples, secure in his knowledge that the sources or natures of their deformities are unimportant when compared to their intrinsic worth as human beings needing and deserving of understanding. This approach is based on intuition rather than objective knowledge, and it is the same sort of intuition with which one approaches the twisted apples; he believes that one dare not reject because of mere appearance, either physical or spiritual; that appearance may mask a significant experience made more intense and more worthwhile by the deformity itself. In the body of the work proper, following this introductory sketch, Anderson has set up an organizational pattern that no only gives partial unity to the book but explores systematically the diverse origins of the isolation of his people, each of whom is in effect a social displaced person because he is cut off from human intercourse with his fellow human beings. In the first three stories Anderson deals with three aspects of the problem of human isolation. The first story, ‘Hands,’ deals with the inability to communicate feeling; the second, ‘Paper Pills,’ is devoted to the inability to communicate thought; and the third, ‘Mother,’ focuses on the inability to communicate love. This three-phased examination of the basic problem of human isolation sets the tone for the rest of the book because these three shortcomings, resulting partially from the narrowness of the vision of each central figure but primarily from the lack of sympathy with which the contemporaries of each regard him, are the real creators of the grotesques in human nature. Each of the three characters has encountered one aspect of the problem: he has something that he feels is vital and real within himself that he wants desperately to reveal to others, but in each case he is rebuffed, and, turning in upon himself, he becomes a bit more twisted and worn spiritually. But, like the apples left in the orchards, he is the sweeter, the more human for it. In each case the inner vision of the main character remains clear, and the thing that he wishes to communicate is in itself good, but his inability to break through the shell that prevents him from talking to others results in misunderstanding and spiritual tragedy. David D. Anderson “Sherwood Anderson’s Moments of Insight

I don’t know what made me think of this…oh, oh, I actually do know. My mom and I got here a little early tonight, so I went over to the, uh…the Foot Locker, just to look around, kill time…and you know how they have all the different sections for the different kinds of sneakers, like a running section, a basketball section, etc.…So I saw this sign for cross-training sneakers, and that’s what made me think of this…I don’t know if you guys have ever run into people who do this cute sort of thing when you’re talking to them, where if you say, “XYZ,” they’ll say, “You’re XYZ”…I knew this girl who used to do it all the time…like I’d say something like “There’s a hegemonic imperative in cross-training,” and she’d say, “You’re a hegemonic imperative in cross-training.” Or we’d be out at a restaurant, and I’d say, “That pasta looks like a bowl of infant foreskins,” and she’d say, “You’re a bowl of infant foreskins.” So once, the Imaginary Intern said to me—and I don’t remember what the context was—but he said that “memory (and, in a sense, autobiography) is like a rash that blossoms and fades,” and I said to him, “You’re like a rash that blossoms and fades.” And then, after he was gone, I realized that he actually was like a rash that had blossomed and faded…an ache that time won’t assuage.

For example, consider the case of global warming. People from the 2-D world assume mass delusions are rare, and they apply that assumption to every topic. So when they notice that most scientists are on the same side, that observation is persuasive to them. A reasonable person wants to be on the same side with the smartest people who understand the topic. That makes sense, right? But people who live in the 3-D world, where persuasion rules, can often have a different view of climate change because we see mass delusions (even among experts) as normal and routine. My starting bias for this topic is that the scientists could easily be wrong about the horrors of climate change, even in the context of repeated experiments and peer review. Whenever you see a situation with complicated prediction models, you also have lots of room for bias to masquerade as reason. Just tweak the assumptions and you can get any outcome you want. Now add to that situation the fact that scientists who oppose the climate change consensus have a high degree of career and reputation risk. That’s the perfect setup for a mass delusion. You only need these two conditions: Complicated prediction models with lots of assumptions Financial and psychological pressure to agree with the consensus In the 2-D world, the scientific method and peer review squeeze out the bias over time. But in the 3-D world, the scientific method can’t detect bias when nearly everyone including the peer reviewers shares the same mass delusion.

Eighteen months into the COVIDcrisis, many people suddenly realized that Dr. Anthony Fauci, longstanding director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was not the benign, selfless, fatherly protector of public health that corporate media had made him out to be. I had known for decades of his failure to follow the clinical research standards that should apply to scientists. I had lived through the consequences of his aggressive moves to gather power and money at the expense of other scientists and federal agencies. My decades of professional experience in dealing with the NIAID in the context of grant and contract peer review, combined with Jill’s PhD research project concerning the NIH peer review system, had left me with little respect for Dr. Fauci’s professional integrity.

As the next page loaded with another set of 25 emails, his eyes were drawn to the bottom of the screen, where for the first time previously-read messages stood out beneath the bold-type unread ones.  There was something powerfully sentimental, almost tangible, about the realization that his dad had sat before a computer somewhere ten years earlier and had clicked on these same messages.  The most recent one, received just hours before his parents’ death, was from his mom with the subject line, “re: Li’l Ryan’s Bday”. With a lump developing in his throat, he clicked on the message.  His mom had written: “That’s something dads should talk to their sons about ;)”  Hmm.  Didn’t make sense without context. Below the end of the message he found the option to “show quoted text,”  which he clicked on to reveal the entire exchange in reverse chronological order.  She had been responding to his dad’s message: “I’m sure he’ll get it.  I like the idea, but you better be prepared to have a discussion about the birds and bees.  You know how his mind works.  He’ll want to know how that baby got in there.” Ryan’s palms grew sweaty as he began to infer what was coming next.  Not entirely sure he wanted to continue, but certain he couldn’t stop, he scrolled to the end. The thread had started with his mother’s message, “I’m already showing big-time.  Sweaters only get so baggy, and it’s going to be warming up soon.  I think tonight would be the perfect time to tell Ryan.  I wrapped up a T-shirt for him in one of his presents that says ‘Big Brother’ on it.  A birthday surprise!  You think he’ll get it?” Having trouble taking in a deep breath, he rose to a stand and slowly backed away from his computer.  It wasn’t his nature to ask fate “Why?” or to dwell on whether or not something was “fair.”  But this was utterly overwhelming – a knife wound on top of an old scar that had never sufficiently healed. ~~~ Corbett Hermanson peered around the edge of Bradford’s half-open door and knocked gently on the frame.  Bradford was sitting at his desk, leafing through a thick binder.  He had to have heard the knock, Corbett thought, peeking in, but his attention to the material in the binder remained unbroken. Now regretting his timid first knock, Corbett anxiously debated whether he should knock again, which could be perceived as rude, or try something else to get Bradford’s attention.  Ultimately he decided to clear his throat loudly, while standing more prominently in the doorway. Still, Bradford kept his nose buried in the files in front of him. Finally, Corbett knocked more confidently on the door itself. “What!” Bradford demanded.  “If you’ve got something to say, just say it!” “Sorry, sir.  Wasn’t sure you heard me,” Corbett said, with a nervous chuckle. “Do you think I’m deaf and blind?” Bradford sneered.  “Just get on with it already.” “Well sir, I’m sure you recall our conversation a few days back about the potential unauthorized user in our system?  It turns out...” “Close the door!” Bradford whispered emphatically, waving his arms wildly for Corbett to stop talking and come all the way into his office. “Sorry, sir,” Corbett said, his cheeks glowing an orange-red hue to match his hair.  After self-consciously closing the door behind him, he picked up where he’d left off.  “It turns out, he’s quite good at keeping himself hidden.  I was right about his not being in Indiana, but behind that location, his IP address bounces

But how could anybody of her generation pull all those hours of recorded history up, and listen to all of it, and understand it? You’d have to live all the hours of all those negotiations, and all the simultaneous other hours of every other record, and you still wouldn’t get the gestalt of having grown up in it. You knew more, viewing it from the perspective of another generation, because the hidden things came out, but you knew less, too, because the context that made it all make sense had gone away.

The two airmen stared at the dead body. Both had seen a great deal of death, and seen it in horrific form, and they were not sickened by what they witnessed in the Abort. The sensation both men felt in that second was different, it was a shock of context. They had both seen men ripped asunder by bullets, explosions, and shrapnel; eviscerated, decapitated, and burned alive by the vagaries of battle. Both men had seen the viscera and other bloody remains of turret gunners actually hosed out of the Plexiglas cocoons where they'd died. But all those deaths came within the context of battle, where they both expected to see death at its most brutal. In the Abort it was different; here a man who should have been alive was dead. To die violently on the toilet was something altogether shocking and genuinely frightening. "Jesus is right," Hugh said.

Find the loyal. Punish the wicked. I had a standard way of approaching the topic. I'd tell a joke about the king, something a little bawdy. Having to do with the rumors that the firstprince was sired by the king's sister and not the reverendmother. Those who go along with the humor reveal themselves to be unknowingly awaiting eventual execution. Your father actually didn't laugh, much to his credit. Instead he objected forcefully. He screamed at me for my rudeness on his land. He did not like the content or context and asked me to immediately apologize for the blasphemy and walk away from the home of his family. And I stood there looking at this small man, this farmer of rocks. Screaming at me about his service to the king and my betrayal of our sacred nation. Him making demands of me. knowing nothing of my life! my sacrifices for my king, my duty served so often. I wasn't on that field anymore. Instead I saw him in my mind's eye, years after this, bending down day after day, clearing the fields of their hard seeds. And all the while imagining himself my better. Because he didn't like a joke I told. I was lost in this vision, and when I found my way out, my sword was in his gut.

Now Where Do You Find Customers? When novice entrepreneurs search for opportunities, they too often look beyond their Zone of Influence. They think the action is happening somewhere else, in some other location or industry. But seasoned entrepreneurs almost always find and create opportunities within the context of who they are, what they know, and especially who they know. In each of the examples above, the business validation process begins with potential customers in the entrepreneur’s orbit. Actual people with names. Tribes you belong to or are interested in, most of whom are already self-organized online. People you know how to reach, today. Though it’s rarely a part of their official origin stories, the biggest companies in the world—even the viral apps now worth billions—started through personal networks and real human connections. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in a weekend by emailing friends to use it. Version 1 did well, validating it. And Microsoft started with Bill Gates building software for a guy in Albuquerque. He had a CUSTOMER FIRST. In the beginning, founders should reach out to their friends, their former colleagues, their communities. You may think your business is unique, but trust me, it’s not. Every successful business can start this way. For example, Anahita loves her dogs and wanted healthier snacks for them. She started taking her homemade organic dog treats to her local dog park. She would sell out every time. A year later she now has a store called the Barkery, a dog bakery. Before you even think about picking a business idea, make sure you have easy access to the people you want to help. An easy way to do this is to think about where you have easy access to a targeted group of people whom you really want to help—like, say, new moms in Austin, cyclists, freelance writers, and taco obsessives (like me!). CHALLENGE Top three groups. Let’s write out your top three groups to target. Who do you have easy access to that you’d be EXCITED to help? This can be your neighbors, colleagues, religious friends, golf buddies, cooking friends, etc. The better you understand your target group, the better you can speak to them. The more specifically you can speak to their problems, the better and easier you can sell (or test products). Note how this process prioritizes communication with people, through starting (taking the first iteration of your solution straight to customers) and asking (engaging them in a conversation to determine how your solution can best fix their problem). Business creation should always be a conversation! Nearly every impulse we have is to be tight with our ideas by doing more research, going off alone to build the perfect product—anything and everything to avoid the discomfort of asking for money. This is the validation shortcut. You have to learn to fight through this impulse. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.

MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about? WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.

Such “trained intuition” is a large part of what distinguishes experts from amateurs in most fields. We don’t always consciously know what it is that doesn’t fit, but somewhere our brain recognizes that part of the puzzle is missing, and it sends up a signal that something’s askew. (This “gut feeling” is actually a low-level activation of the stress response system, which is acutely attuned to combinations of incoming signals that are out of context or novel.)

Out of chaos comes order. And order is supplied by the ego with the help of dopamine suppression in the context of our spiffy new operating system. When order is lost, the chaos of entropy -which lurks behind this process, seeking disorganization and lower energy states - again reigns. All of this goes along with dopamine de-suppression as the fulcrum of organized thinking painfully reverses.

Took me a long time, a lot of years, to put the past where it belonged so it didn’t screw with my present every day anymore.” She looked over at him. “How’d you do it?” “I decided to focus only on what was right in front of me at that moment rather than putting it in the context of what’d happened before. Not sure that makes sense…” “No, it does, but I still don’t see how you can just do that.” “You make up your mind to look ahead, not back. There’s not one damned thing you can change about the past, but the future is yours to map out as you see fit.” “That sounds great, but how?” “You wake up every day with a choice about how you want to live. Do you want to be mired in a past you can’t change or focused on a future that you direct?” “You make it sound so simple.” “It is once you get the hang of it. You ever heard the saying that it takes three weeks to create a habit, whether it’s a good habit or a bad one?” “Yes, I’ve read about that.” “Usually, they’re talking about going to the gym or starting to walk or dieting or whatever. In this case, you wake up and decide to focus on all the positive things you can think of. You give them your full attention for all your waking hours. Whether it’s your work or your child or your garden or whatever brings you peace, pleasure and prosperity. I love my job. I love my studio and the people who work with me there. I love doing things to grow the business, such as partnering with the McCarthys to offer weekend getaways that include a tattoo. That was my idea, by the way. Brings in some business in the off-season. It gives me a kick to think of stuff like that. I love my art and my cross-stitching, my garden and puttering around my house. Those things bring me joy.

Claire duBois’s prostrating herself to an arrogant chauvinist like Graham was bitterly hard for her, especially since her star shone a thousand times brighter than his. But I’d remembered what Abe Fallow had told me. Keeping people safe is a business, like any other. You ask yourself, What’s my goal and what’s the most efficient way to go about achieving it? If that means you beg, you beg. Grovel, you grovel. If that means you bust heads, get out the brass knuckles. Cry if you need to. A shepherd doesn’t exist outside the context of his mission. So

Newsmen went after any man named in the diary. No stud was left unturned. The press even dug up Bennett Cerf, who had barely been mentioned. He laughed when told in what context his name appeared. “Well, well! So she broke that date with me to go out with George, did she? In the light of everything that’s happened since, it would appear a broken date made that one of the luckiest days of my life.” Lest anyone think he’d fallen on the wrong side of Mary’s love ledger, he added, “Our meetings were always casual, and we were never alone.

The absence of failure was taken as positive indication that hazards are not present or that countermeasures are effective. In this context, it is very difficult to gather or see if evidence is building up that should trigger a re-evaluation and revision of the organization’s model of vulnerabilities. If an organization is not able to change its model of itself unless and until completely clear-cut evidence accumulates, that organization will tend to learn late, that is, it will revise its model of vulnerabilities only after serious events occur. On the other hand, high-reliability organizations assume their model of risks and countermeasures is fragile and even seek out evidence about the need to revise and update this model (Rochlin, 1999). They do not assume their model is correct and then wait for evidence of risk to come to their attention, for to do so will guarantee an organization that acts more riskily than it desires. The

Before moving on, I want to pause to point out that a lot of what search candidates call “illegal” questions may not technically be illegal. But they are absolutely inappropriate, and may well be ambiguous enough that they could lead to lawsuits alleging discrimination, and often do in hiring contexts that are more litigious than the academy. Not every grossly inappropriate and discomfiting question necessarily falls into the illegality. I am no lawyer and no expert, so beyond this I direct you to investigate further with human resources at your institution. In the meantime, master the art of redirection, as with toddlers.

up at Athena’s statue, which proudly stands atop the Capitol Dome in DC, and every hair on your back will likely stand erect. It appears that Aeneas finally declared this new world empire when Bush stuck that, ‘Out of Context’ Virgil quote on the side of the Ishtar-gate-blue wall, deep within the bowels of ‘One World’ trade center. Having seen this Apollonian complex with my own eyes, I gotta say that Aeneas gave the destroyer more than he’d bargained for.

During: ●   Meals: Fundraising in the time of Zoom is an even more intense experience. It can be difficult to carve out enough time to get out of your house, or even away from your computer, for a proper meal. I suggest doing meal prep or planning every Sunday. Meals should be light and calorically restricted to keep your mind and body active — you shouldn’t bring any afternoon grogginess to a pitch because you ate a burger for lunch. ●    Exercise: Add blocks to your calendar to carve out exercise time. Getting your blood pumping and providing an alternative to staring at your own face on Zoom is key to providing context and awareness. Exercise helps reset the body and the mind. ●    Emotional support: A great fundraise is still an experience in rejection (seriously, most meetings result in a “no”). Make sure you have a weekly check-in with someone (not your cofounder) who can help rationalize and normalize this crazy process. ●        Breaks: Schedule time to take breaks. Watch a movie. Take a hike. Go swimming. Do something to get your mind off the fundraise for at least 30 minutes every day. ●      Meditating: There is nothing in this world that I believe in more than meditation. I started meditating twelve months ago, and since then have nearly 10X’d our business. It’s never too late to start!

He smirked. “Communism? Of course not. The Soviet Union fell because communism did not understand human nature. People act in their self-interest. When there is too little self-interest the economy sputters. Now America is failing because it also stopped understanding human nature. When there is too much self-interest, people just start voting themselves money or skimming it off others by any means possible. Deep inside, we are all little Robin Hoods. I think your founders understood this. That’s why democracies flame out: people will vote for those who promise them more for less, and politicians will say and do what they have to in order to get elected and re-elected. That’s how it’s been throughout history. You have to find the right balance between giving people some measure of self-interest, but within the context of a strong state that keeps those Robin Hood-ish tendencies in check. That’s what I believe in: my country with a strong state.

For the most part, food plays a very functional role in American culture. We eat to work. If Aini was visiting in my home, I'd tell her, “Don't eat anything you don't like. We don't care.” And we really wouldn't for the most part. But in many parts of the world, food is deeply rooted in the life of people. Sometimes I've had Indian hosts prepare meals for me that used spices grown on their homestead for hundreds of years. The best Indian meals take days to prepare. So to pass on eating dishes prepared for you in that context could be far more insulting than passing on a dish you just don't care for. It can be seen as an all-out rejection. And as for eating with utensils versus eating with our hands, one of my Indian friends puts it this way: “Eating with utensils is like making love through an interpreter!” That says it all when it comes to the affection most Indians have for their cuisine. To reject the food of an Indian colleague can be extremely disrespectful and can erode any possibility of a business partnership. Who would have thought food could play such a strong role in successful global performance? Edwin,

After I have demonstrated how ancient Egypt is connected with Mecca, let's look at the phrase 'Sema Tawy': It was not meant originally to be a reference to 'The Two Lands' because Sema as a noun means transcendence/elevation/sky, and as a verb it means to soar/rise/transcend; and Tawy as a noun is constructed from the verb which means to plummet/fall/descend and also to pleat/fold. Therefore, both words are references to the (Upper and/or Lower) Heavens and Earth/Land. However, trying to connect that which is above with that which is below should originally be observed on the Benben itself (aka, pyramidion) for that it resembled the mound that arose from the primordial waters 'Nu'; now one can appreciate with awe the repeating syllable of 'Ben' after I have proven the connection with Mecca, for that the water spring there (which saved the prophet Ishmael and his mother by God's order unto Gabriel to force its water gushing out of Earth to guarantee the survival of Noah's heir upon whom the tidings are yet to come) is called 'ZamZam'. Replacing 'Z' with 'S' takes place in non-Semitic and non pure Semitic tongues alike'; for example it even exists today in Italian when 'S' comes between vowels or before b, d, g, l, m, n, r, and v. In other words, that is a recurring theme which when applied to the word 'Sema', it shows how it is derived from 'Zam' = زم which means: 'tuck,tighten'. Therefore, not only the theme of the black cornerstone along with the Bennu bird were taken from Arabia's heritage, but even the creation story of the pyramidion is built upon that important site in Mecca which is a valley, or better said, a Tawy. Putting the capstone above it to lift it high into the sky thereby (while operating as a portal to the Upper Heavens as I have shown earlier) directly points to the fact that ancient Egypt was yearning to receive Noah's heritage for herself and it devised a whole tradition to reproduce Arabia's theme for that zeal. If 'Sema Tawy' later on came to mean 'Union of the Two Lands', then its context is now clear that: as in Mecca, so is in Egypt. Note that the word 'ZamZam' (bring together, collect) was that action which Ishmael's mother was doing once she saw water coming out of the ground as the sources tell us, for that she was afraid that what happened before her eyes was coincidental rather than being brought up from a well beneath her.

That is more than a creedal commitment; it sets out Paul’s priorities, his lifestyle, and, in this context, his style of ministry. If he really holds that God has supremely disclosed himself in the cross and that to follow the crucified and risen Savior means dying daily, then it is preposterous to adopt a style of ministry that is triumphalistic, designed to impress, calculated to win applause.

In ancient times, people having this experience entered protected environments such as monasteries—places where those around them would understand. They’d be put in a nice little cell and left alone to let the process happen. They were fortunate to experience awakening in a context in which it was understood, seen as normal, and given the space it required. In today’s society, most of us having these realizations are not living in monasteries; we are not in a particularly supportive environment. In fact, in our society it is possible to have an amazing realization on Saturday and be back in the office on Monday morning. If your mind is still blown out in bliss, this can be very disorienting! Yet it’s the reality of the situation we live in. Most modern people do not have the luxury of sitting in a cave for a few months and letting things shake down naturally. This is the state of our world, and it can be a challenge for some people.

Sometimes people tell me they don’t want to label themselves by their sexual orientation. I used to reject my gay identity. In fact I did everything to try and annihilate it. The last thing I would ever do would be to say...... “I’m gay”. Taking ownership of that was a terrifying thought and I believed it had tragic long-term as well as eternal consequences. The closest I ever got to acknowledging my true orientation was admitting I had “a homosexual problem”. Accepting who I was, was a loooong journey. And once I’d accepted then learning to embrace and celebrate being gay. We have multi identities. We can have different identities in different contexts. In some contexts some identities are paramount and others irrelevant. The highly self-aware person is conscious of the various identities but manages them wisely, recognizing each one is a part of the whole. Personally, I’m proud to be a homosexual. No more shame, denial or secrecy. The shame has been washed away by self-acceptance and self-hatred replaced with self-love. I am gay. Always have been gay. Always will be.

He’d known these men’s intentions, but it didn’t hurt to have it spelled out with bullets.  It removed those remaining barriers in James’s head; allowed him to go where he needed to go.  Put this in its proper context of black and white.  He wasn’t a big fan of capital punishment.  He thought it unnecessarily cruel, but he acknowledged that killing did have its place.  There were evil people out there.  These people certainly fit that bill.

Essay on Submission" Having ebbed in the disbelief of it instead of its weight. Stone-tiled the floor the blood a trickling fire confessional. Here the ocean metaphor refused. He tore me shut & seeping no vastness. To marvel or hide in. Being told i don’t exist i laugh with wounded teeth into. The folds of his larynx a choir of bees rattle me. Into myth less the mechanics of. Throat than the usage the context neither divorced from combustion. Of birth more or less i forgave him before. He entered because he swelled for me i could never trust. Myself in his hands but i did want. Him. Knocking leaning into the sliver of light he. Missed the wastebasket he couldn’t bear. The sight of me i never slept. With the lights off i don’t know that. History. But i named it so it can’t be. Holy. Or rather question. Of distance my skin. And cold waters my skin and woundless. Skin i wade in the contradiction. After i wanted only to be. Held. No. Distance his hand & the small of my. Back his hand & the lip. Of a waterfall here i reject the landscape. Its vastness i don’t think. We’re looking for the same thing you. And i you’d think olympus. Would dethrone itself of goldenrod leaves i told you it was. Blood did i claim it. Mine i am built of avoidable. Violences with one drop apocalypse. The burning wilderness you can see yourself. Out now histories like this cannot. Be known let alone escaped even the one. Where i set fire to my colonizer i can afford neither. Reclamation nor reconciliation. No. Unfragmented i cannot give you an ending. That isn’t body lunar. And concave staining instead. The bathroom floor.

At our church, there’s a saying, “you got the wrong vision,” which basically means you can’t see how good God is being because you’re too busy out there sinning. It also means, depending on the context, to shut the hell up talking to me like you’re crazy. No matter how you use the phrase, it really does have a way of getting the point across. For example: if a woman asked you for some money when she knows you got a house full of kids, an out-of-work husband, and a greedy, pedophile-looking landlord snipping at your heels, that’s when you hit them with, “Girl, you got the wrong vision.” As crazy as it sounds, it really is the nicest way to tell someone to fuck off.

A group of researchers some time ago did an experiment in which they read the parable of the prodigal son to groups in various places around the world: Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North America. The researchers would then ask people in each of these settings to recount back for them the story. There was one detail that people in the developing world always mentioned that those in the developed nations always left out: the famine. The son, you will remember, took his inheritance, went to the far country where he spent and squandered it. He only “came to himself” and came home after, Jesus said, “a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need” (Luke 15:14). Those in affluent contexts didn’t remember this part of the story because it seemed to them to be a minor detail. For those who lived regularly with the threat of famine, this seemed to be a major part of the story.56 It is indeed. When dealing with those who are wandering away from the faith, we must recognize that sometimes they will not start evaluating the deep questions of their lives until they find themselves in a situation in which they don’t know what to do. We must be the sort of parents and grandparents and churches that have kept open every possible connection: so that our prodigals will know how to get back home, and know that we will meet them at the road, already planning a homecoming party.

To go back to the game metaphor from before, there exists a component of storytelling where it is you and the reader (or viewer, or whoever) sitting on opposite sides of a chessboard. You’re always trying to outwit each other. And sometimes you need them to outwit you—the audience needs that power, needs to be invested. They want to do work, and they want (sometimes) to be victorious. Other times, they want the shock of loss, the joy at being outplayed. And at those times you misdirect and distract, and as they’re thinking you’re moving your piece one way, you move it another and shock them with your prowess. But the trick is making all of this organic. It has to unfold naturally from the story—it’s not JUST you screwing with them. It’s you fucking with them within a framework that you built and agreed upon, a framework you’ve shown them, a place of rules and decorum. In this context, consider the game space. Like, say, a chessboard, or a D&D dungeon. The game space is an agreed-upon demesne. It has rules. It has squares. Each piece or character moves accordingly within those squares. It has a framework that everyone who has played the game understands. And yet, the outcome is never decided. The game is forever uncertain even within established parameters. Surprises occur. You might win. Maybe I win. That’s how storytelling operates best—we set up rules and a storyworld and characters, and you try to guess what we’re going to do with them. We as storytellers shouldn’t ever break the rules. Note: Breaking the rules in this context might mean conveniently leaving out a crucial storyworld rule (“Oh, vampires don’t have to drink blood; they can drink Kool-Aid”), or solving a mystery with a killer who the audience couldn’t ever have guessed (“It was the sheriff from two towns over who we have never before discussed or even mentioned”), or invoking a deus ex machina (“Don’t worry, giant eagles will save them. It’s cool”). You can still have chaos and uncertainty within the parameters—creating a framework, like building a house, doesn’t mean it cannot contain secrets and surprises—but you stay within the parameters that you created. Again, it’s why stage magic works as a metaphor when actual wizard magic does not. With stage magic—tricks and illusions!—you can’t really violate the laws of reality. But it damn sure feels like you do. Stories make you believe in wizard magic, but really it’s just a clever, artful trick. The storyworld is bent and twisted, but never broken. And, of course, your greatest touchstone for all of this is the characters, and their problems and places inside the storyworld. The characters will forever be your guide, if you let them. They are the tug-of-war rope, the chess pieces, the D&D characters that exist as a connection between you and the audience. They are your glorious leverage.

the old church where generations of my ancestors may have worshipped, where prayers had been spoken and hearts broken and healed, it all made sense for a small moment. Religion made sense, if only to add context to the struggle of life and death. The church was a monument to what had been, a connection to the past that comforted those in the present, and it comforted me. I climbed the slope beyond the church to where the cemetery stretched. It overlooked the spires and the winding road I’d just traveled. Some of the stones were tipped or sunken; some were so covered with lichen and time that I couldn’t make out names or dates. Other plots were new, lined by rocks and filled in with mementos. The newer plots,

Soon after the news broke about these published conclusions [regarding the evidence of a Palaeolithic human presence on Malta] and their stark contradiction of the orthodox view on Malta's prehistory, the Italian team distanced itself from its initial Palaeolithic leanings and claimed instead that the depictions in Ghar Hasan are 'out of context' -- which indeed they are if one is only prepared to countenance a Neolithic context for the earliest human presence in Malta. Another development at about the same time was that the Ghar Hasan cave began to be vandalized, and the paintings defaced or completely removed, a process that continued over a long period. The result, which would have caused an international furore anywhere else but Malta, is that today: 'The only depictions which have survived, unless more are obscured by stalagmitic material on the cavern walls, are the two handprints in red pigment in Gallery D ... Vandalism not of the popular type has destroyed and obscured the entire repertoire of images on the accessible areas.