Pointing Out Flaws Quotes

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

I don't want to point out her flaws, but if I see her going on a self-destructive path, isn't it up to me as her friend to stop her?

I'd never taken to four foot creatures who had the uncanny ability to point out all my flaws in thirty second flat. And just for the record, I can too read without moving my lips.

When pointing out the flaws in others, people always end up talking about themselves.

Even if you think you're doing well and have it all figured out, there is a voice you will always inevitably hear at some point which nags at you and says "but wait..." Don't ever dismiss it, listen to what it has to say. Life will never be close enough to perfect, and listening to that voice means stepping outside of yourself and considering your own wrongdoings and flaws.

It's easy to point out other people flaws, but it takes TRUE courage and strength take a look in the mirror, admit personal flaws AND strive to do and be better. That's growth!

When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.

I make a point to never, ever point out my physical flaws… this is advice I give to women as often as I can. People don’t notice the things we see in ourselves that we hate, so why direct them to it?

Admire other people's beauty and talent without questioning your own. Let people live their truth without it threatening yours. Be truly happy when others are blessed. Learn from everyone, but compare yourself to no-one. Stop striving to be better than others and just work toward being better than who you were yesterday. Don't waste time pointing out other people's flaws or you won't have enough time to focus on all of yours.

In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out percieved flaws in God's art.

Sorry,” Kiersten says to Lake and I. “Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cusswords just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cusswords anymore and no one would ever be offended by them” This kid is hard to keep up with! “Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says. Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed up letters. Like, take the word “butterfly” for example. What if someone decided one day that butterfly is a cussword? People would eventually start using butterfly as an insult, and to emphasize things in a negative way. The actual WORD doesn’t mean anything. It’s the negative association people give these words that make them cusswords. So if we all just decided to keep saying butterfly all the time, eventually people would stop caring. The shock value would subside…and it would just become another word again. Same with every other so-called bad word. If we would all just start saying them all the time, They wouldn’t be bad anymore. That’s what my mom says anyway.” “Kiersten?” Eddie says. “Will you be my new best friend?” Lake grabs a french fry off her plate and throws it at Eddie, hitting her in the face with it. “That’s Bullshit,” Lake says. “Oh, go BUTTERFLY yourself,” Eddie says. She returns a fry in Lakes direction.

What are you, my fucking critic or my friend?” “Both most of the time,” he joked. “Well right now I just want a friend. Stop pointing out my flaws and just agree with me while I rant about the situation.

Mother’s Day is coming up soon. If you’re lucky enough to still have your mother, tell her you’re grateful to her […] at some point, we must forgive each other for being flawed human beings. Many of us have trouble putting love or gratitude into words, but keep in mind that out actions always reveal our feelings. Always.

But all I said, as I dug a five from my pocket to pay for my soda, was, "You have a friend?" Tod scowled. "Well, I wouldn't call him a friend according to the traditional definition, but in the sense that he imposes on me constantly and isn't afraid to point out my flaws, I'd say he qualifies." "Sounds more like a cousin.

Go ahead and point out my flaws and weaknesses to me. In doing so it's just something to get excited about! Knowing there's a flaw that my Heavenly Daddy wants to make beautiful is rather exciting!

Emotion. It's a lethal weakness of our kind. A sickness that inhibits logic and eventually drives our minds toward the breaking point. It's our kryptonite – our fatal flaw and our saving grace. After all, emotions make us who we are. They make us capable of love and compassion and selflessness, bring out the best in us. At the same time, they ruin us. Make us feel hatred and pain and guilt. Cause our muscles to lock, our pulses to spike, our hearts to split in half. These things called…feelings…could break every single one of us, if we let them.

The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry.

Hypocrites are rather easy to recognize. They spend most of their time pointing out the flaws in others, and the rest of the time trying to flaunt their perfection.

I wish you could see what I see when I look at you. You point out all of your flaws like they’re a bad thing, when in reality they are the best parts of you.

They had stumbled either upon a serious flaw in modern financial markets or into a great gambling run. Characteristically, they were not sure which it was. As Charlie pointed out, “It’s really hard to know when you’re lucky and when you’re smart.

This one has a bruise.” It looks fine to me, but Charlotte is like that fairy tale about the princess and the pea—always pointing out flaws that nobody else notices.

Remember: you’re a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your belief or in your actions, they’re not criticizing you. They’re presenting a better alternative. Accept it!

Instead of being groomed for her future husband and/or career, a young lady should be first taught to love herself. I am a firm believer that if you put yourself first and find out who you are as a person, everything else will fall into place. Sadly, that is not what a young lady is taught. We are taught to love others and to put everyone’s needs before our own. We are taught to make sacrifices at an early age to the point where we do not know any better as we age. The edges of our life are rough because we do not know who we are as a person.

It wasn't always the easiest conversation, having someone else point out your flaws, but it was a necessary evil if we wanted to improve. Better to hear truth, a certain someone had said, than false flattery.

It seems like such a waste of time to expend all that energy trying to convince the world you're better than everyone else. I can't understand it.” ''Of course you can't. You like nothing better than to point out all your character flaws to everyone who'll listen." She must have found his exasperation amusing because she smiled. “They'll discover those flaws for themselves if they're around me long enough. I just save them the effort.

And Neverfell started to understand the beauty of flaws, those places where up and down secretly gave up their argument and shook hands, where compass points spun like a dervish and where space itself was twisted like a wrung-out flannel. These places were the dimples for Caverna’s glittering smile, her foibles, her signature. To understand them was to steal a smile, a twisted rose from her hand, a bone from between her thousand teeth.

Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a pack between his lips. “Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.” “Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth. “The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that, oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.” “A hamartia?” he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately. “A fatal flaw,” I explained, turning away from him.

undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word.

That hard exterior hides the kind of man I’m honored to be with. A man I trust enough to show every ounce of vulnerability to. A man who hears me when I gently point out a flaw and tries to alter his behavior. A man who makes me desperately happy even when I’m feeling sad.

Everyone’s parents have fucked them up in one way or another. This is part of the natural order. It’s the circle of life. Mothers are people—not angels from heaven or Ex Machina error-free service bots. Just because they pushed you out of their vaginal canals does not mean they have all (or any) of the answers. Before they had you, they were flailing around like idiots, just like you are right now. My point is, they are just people. Most likely extraordinarily flawed people.

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis. It does not follow that one should always go against the prevailing trend. On the contrary, most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis. ... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it. Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend. Only at an inflection point are we rewarded.

Most men are eager to point out their neighbors’ flaws, he said, whether we ask them to or not. So instead of resenting it, we should welcome criticism from others as one of life’s inevitabilities and turn it to our advantage by making all men into our teachers. Galen therefore says that if we desire to learn wisdom, we must be ready to listen to anyone we encounter and show gratitude “not to those who flatter us but to those who rebuke us.”14

On top of his grudge holding, he had a reputation for impatience. Like so many brilliant people, Calvin just couldn’t understand how no one else got it. He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness. Worst of all, he was a rower. As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing. Get two or more rowers in a room and the conversation goes from normal topics like work or weather to long, pointless stories about boats, blisters, oars, grips, ergs, feathers, workouts, catches, releases, recoveries, splits, seats, strokes, slides, starts, settles, sprints, and whether the water was really “flat” or not. From there, it usually progresses to what went wrong on the last row, what might go wrong on the next row, and whose fault it was and/or will be. At some point the rowers will hold out their hands and compare calluses. If you’re really unlucky, this could be followed by several minutes of head-bowing reverence as one of them recounts the perfect row where it all felt easy.

The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories--mad wives in the attic, strange apparitions in Belgium--are a representation of the life she could not face; these gothic subterfuges represent the mind at a breaking point, frantic to find any way out. If the flaws are only to be attributed to the practicce of popular fiction of the time, we cannot then explain the large amount of genuine feeling that goes into them. They stand for the hidden wishes of an intolerable life.

I’m sorry he won’t talk to you. And I’m sorry that he keeps hurting you. I really am. I don’t know how to fix things between you two, but I think a place to start would be for you to stop pointing out how flawed he is and start looking for the good in him.

Oh, those lapses, darling. So many of us walk around letting fly with “errors.” We could do better, but we’re so slovenly, so rushed amid the hurly-burly of modern life, so imprinted by the “let it all hang out” ethos of the sixties, that we don’t bother to observe the “rules” of “correct” grammar. To a linguist, if I may share, these “rules” occupy the exact same place as the notion of astrology, alchemy, and medicine being based on the four humors. The “rules” make no logical sense in terms of the history of our language, or what languages around the world are like. Nota bene: linguists savor articulateness in speech and fine composition in writing as much as anyone else. Our position is not—I repeat, not—that we should chuck standards of graceful composition. All of us are agreed that there is usefulness in a standard variety of a language, whose artful and effective usage requires tutelage. No argument there. The argument is about what constitutes artful and effective usage. Quite a few notions that get around out there have nothing to do with grace or clarity, and are just based on misconceptions about how languages work. Yet, in my experience, to try to get these things across to laymen often results in the person’s verging on anger. There is a sense that these “rules” just must be right, and that linguists’ purported expertise on language must be somehow flawed on this score. We are, it is said, permissive—perhaps along the lines of the notorious leftist tilt among academics, or maybe as an outgrowth of the roots of linguistics in anthropology, which teaches that all cultures are equal. In any case, we are wrong. Maybe we have a point here and there, but only that.

But then, I daresay that tearing down other women is usually based on something no less frivolous than the insecurities of our fourteen-year-old selves. Why do we do it, ladies? Why do we gossip? Why do we rag on each other? Why do we say hello on Sunday mornings with the same tongues we use to lash others behind their backs a few days later? Does it make us feel better about ourselves? Does it make us feel safer to mock someone who has stepped outside of the parameters we deem acceptable? If we can point out their flaws, does doing so diminish our own? Of course it doesn’t. In fact, the stones we most often try and fling at others are the ones that have been thrown at us.

Honestly, Ada Lop was the best interviewer I ever met. She got you off your guard. She asked things nobody asked. You never got to know her, but she'd get every last drop out of you and in her cup. I always wear her wedding ring when I interview somebody. It has a black amber stone in it with a gold flaw, like an eye. And she did exactly like I asked. Whatever my father failed to do, she picked up; taught me how to fix a cannon and do my own taxes and do a perfect plié and that to perform, to really perform, you have to make yourself ugly at some point. Nothing real is pretty, she said. Only a doll is pretty. And a pretty doll drinks out of a tiny cup forever. A woman wants a big cup.

I long for the days when my dreams were believed And wonder was met with applause before life's unyielding critical gaze Stepped in to point out all my flaws...

Unlike the world that points out your flaws to ridicule you, when GOD point out your flaws, it's because He want to walk you out of it.

In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out perceived flaws in God's art.

God is not out to point out your flaws or tell you how bad you messed up.

the way I point out my flaws like I'm trying to convince you of them.

The plant and animal kingdoms (excluding humans) offered some pleasant surprises. Organisms from these realms are much simpler to figure out. Their behaviours are not muddied by personality factors or flawed belief systems. If an insect smells like a fart, you can be sure that the stench has a genetic basis. It is neither trying to make a lofty point, nor is it suffering from an inferiority complex.

Reason is up to these demands because it is an open-ended combinatorial system, an engine for generating an unlimited number of new ideas. Once it is programmed with a basic self-interest and an ability to communicate with others, its own logic will impel it, in the fullness of time, to respect the interests of ever-increasing numbers of others. It is reason too that can always take note of the shortcomings of previous exercises of reasoning, and update and improve itself in response. And if you detect a flaw in this argument, it is reason that allows you to point it out and defend an alternative.

There are people out there who don't have the energy to help people get better. They just accept the other person's flaws, and sure, there's less conflict to deal with, but it's almost like living out a lie. Then there are people who aren’t afraid to point out something’s wrong—even something as little as a typo. In the end, you’re making something better, and that’s more than other people are willing to do.

Let me tell you something about women, Tigernan,” Ruari offered, stretching his legs and holding up his empty ale bowl to attract the innkeeper’s attention. “I’ve given a bit of thought to them, having lived more years than you. Women are something a man requires, as necessary as air to breathe and ale to drink. I cannot boast of understanding them, mind you, but I suspect nature designed them for a specific purpose, and it would be a mistake to try to change them. “Women render men an invaluable service that may not at first be apparent. They are born to be responsible, to caretake. It is in them to probe their men as they would examine an old cloak, looking for holes that could let the wind through. Women understand survival better than we do, I think. They will nag and probe and provoke until they find a lowered defense, even the smallest hole, then they poke their fingers through and shout, ‘Aha!’ “In this way they force their men to keep their cloaks mended and their weapons in repair, and ultimately this helps them survive. With a woman treading on his heels a man must stay alert and in the proper frame of mind to go out and slay dragons. Never provoke a quarrel with a man who has just had his flaws pointed out to him by some woman.

…the matter was new to me, and I had no material for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly pointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been down in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs my lap full, and shred them green into the pot.

A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded.

Can you imagine what you would be like if you didn't have anyone close who was capable of influencing you? Anyone to point out your flaws, to confront you when you went too far, to correct you when you did something wrong?

Do you mean to dissuade me? Point out the flaws in my plan? Express your objections with vehemence and eloquence?" He tipped his head. "Actually, no." "Are you entirely well? Have you a fever? Should I palpate something?

We will at points be tricky to live with, we will never add self-righteousness and defensiveness to our list of flaws. The easiest people to live with turn out to be those with the keenest awareness that they might not be any such thing.

But if you haven't figured it out by now, then let me assure you, Lula - nobody's normal. And pretty much everybody you meet in life is trying to figure out how to be a so-called 'normal person'. As if it's some fixed point that you reach, like zero degrees Celsius. But everybody's just who they are. Weird, flawed, good at some things, bad at others. There's no single person who's doing everything right all the time. Trust me on that. There is no such thing as normal" -Sam

That’s a good idea,” Boudreaux said, catching Amelia glaring at him. “You stand in your house shoes out there in the flooded yard and start shooting your Taser around.” “You makin’ fun of me, then,” she said. “No, I’m simply pointing out a gaping flaw in your offense,” he said. “Stop talkin’ to her,” Amelia said, and Boudreaux winked at her, then gave Miss Evangeline a sly smile. “Smile at me again,” she said. “I come there and slap your head right off your neck.” Boudreaux

It is never your job to point out the flaws of your spouse; it’s only your job to be the best husband or wife that you can be. You must take full responsibility for your role in the relationship, and serve your spouse even when you feel they don’t “deserve it.

Most people have no understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgment of chronically traumatized people therefore tends to be extremely harsh. The chronically abused person's apparent helplessness and passivity, her entrapment in the past, her intractable depression and somatic complaints, and her smoldering anger often frustrate the people closest to her. Moreover, if she has been coerced into betrayal of relationships, community loyalties, or moral values, she is frequently subjected to furious condemnation. Observers who have never experienced prolonged terror and who have no understanding of coercive methods of control presume that they would show greater courage and resistance than the victim in similar circumstances. Hence the common tendency to account for the victim's behavior by seeking flaws in her personality or moral character. ... The propensity to fault the character of the victim can be seen even in the case of politically organized mass murder. The aftermath of the Holocaust witnessed a protracted debate regarding the 'passivity' of the Jews and their 'complicity' in their fate. But the historian Lucy Dawidowicz points out that 'complicity' and 'cooperation' are terms that apply to situations of free choice. They do not have the same meaning in situations of captivity.

I can’t count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

If you see yourself as the kind of person who owns Apple computers, or who drives hybrids, or who smokes Camels, you’ve been branded. And once a person is branded, that person will defend the brand by finding flaws in the alternative choice and pointing out benefits in his or her own.

Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cuss words just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cuss words anymore, and no one would ever be offended by them.” This kid is hard to keep up with! “Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says. Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed-up letters.

Every business needs a loyal skeptic who isn’t afraid to ask hard questions or point out the flaws in a plan. A room full of overcaffeinated, risk-tolerant entrepreneurs may not like it when a Six asks a question that pops the balloon on their big idea, but someone has to be the voice of anxiety!

Each one of us is more likely to believe someone when they point out our flaws and can connect what we know to be true about our character defects with their complaints of us. It is the perfect set up for the survivor to take the responsibility and allow the abuser to be completely off the hook.   Almost

there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the “idea protectors” saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper—not eviscerating it.

My mother’s problem is that she can’t submit to any authority. She lost her parents years ago, and she lost her husband. She takes no account of her relatives’ views—she never has—and especially not her children’s. There’s no human or spiritual discipline to which she’ll subject her will. She just has her own opinions, and they’re the only tribunal that’s permitted to judge her when she makes a mistake. Can you imagine what you would be like if you didn’t have anyone close who was capable of influencing you? Anyone to point out your flaws, to confront you when you went too far, to correct you when you did something wrong?” Miss

Is seven-thirty okay?” Was seven-thirty okay? Fuck yeah! “Okay, seven-thirty it is then.” “Oh shit, I said that out loud didn’t I?” “Yeah, darlin’ you did.” Dex let out his rumbling laugh again. “But something you should know, Katie.” “Yes.” “I’m just as eager to see you too.” It was at that point I did a little jig on the spot.

When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members. Another useful point to bear in mind: What qualities has nature given us to counter that defect? As an antidote to unkindness it gave us kindness. And other qualities to balance other flaws. And when others stray off course, you can always try to set them straight, because every wrongdoer is doing something wrong—doing something the wrong way. And how does it injure you anyway? You’ll find that none of the people you’re upset about has done anything that could do damage to your mind. But that’s all that “harm” or “injury” could mean. Yes, boorish people do boorish things. What’s strange or unheard-of about that? Isn’t it yourself you should reproach—for not anticipating that they’d act this way? The logos gave you the means to see it—that a given person would act a given way—but you paid no attention. And now you’re astonished that he’s gone and done it. So when you call someone “untrustworthy” or “ungrateful,” turn the reproach on yourself. It was you who did wrong. By assuming that someone with those traits deserved your trust. Or by doing them a favor and expecting something in return, instead of looking to the action itself for your reward. What else did you expect from helping someone out? Isn’t it enough that you’ve done what your nature demands? You want a salary for it too? As if your eyes expected a reward for seeing, or your feet for walking. That’s what they were made for. By doing what they were designed to do, they’re performing their function. Whereas humans were made to help others. And when we do help others—or help them to do something—we’re doing what we were designed for. We perform our function.

When predictions of apocalyptic resource shortages repeatedly fail to come true, one has to conclude either that humanity has miraculously escaped from certain death again and again like a Hollywood action hero or that there is a flaw in the thinking that predicts apocalyptic resource shortages. The flaw has been pointed out many times.

The "friend" who consistently points out the flaws in your plan, or uses a magnifying glass to find the defect in your product, or constantly searches for the chink in your armor, is the "friend" praying for your downfall. Watch and listen for the signs. Know your circle. Real ones are cheering from the sidelines, not wishing it was them in the game.

Loud listening—stating a point of view strongly—offers a quick way to expose opposing points of view or flaws in reasoning. It also prevents people from wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what the boss thinks. Assuming that you are surrounded with people who don’t hesitate to challenge what you say, stating it clearly can be the fastest way to get to the best answer.

An old Buddhist parable illustrates the challenge—and the value—of letting go of the past. Two monks were strolling by a stream on their way home to the monastery. They were startled by the sound of a young woman in a bridal gown, sitting by the stream, crying softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed across the water. She needed to cross to get to her wedding, but she was fearful that doing so might ruin her beautiful handmade gown. In this particular sect, monks were prohibited from touching women. But one monk was filled with compassion for the bride. Ignoring the sanction, he hoisted the woman on his shoulders and carried her across the stream—assisting her journey and saving her gown. She smiled and bowed with gratitude as the monk splashed his way back across the stream to rejoin his companion. The second monk was livid. ‘How could you do that?’ he scolded. ‘You know we are forbidden to touch a woman, much less pick one up and carry her around!’ The offending monk listened in silence to a stern lecture that lasted all the way back to the monastery. His mind wandered as he felt the warm sunshine and listened to the singing birds. After returning to the monastery, he fell asleep for a few hours. He was jostled and awakened in the middle of the night by his fellow monk. ‘How could you carry that woman?’ his agitated friend cried out. ‘Someone else could have helped her across the stream. You were a bad monk.’ ‘What woman?’ the sleepy monk inquired. ‘Don’t you even remember? That woman you carried across the stream,’ his colleague snapped. ‘Oh, her,’ laughed the sleepy monk. ‘I only carried her across the stream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery.’ The learning point is simple: When it comes to our flawed past, leave it at the stream. I am not suggesting that we should always let go of the past. You need feedback to scour the past and identify room for improvement. But you can’t change the past. To change you need to be sharing ideas for the future.

Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all. And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage. Why would I give a fuck about the original public meaning of the words written by these men? Conservatives will tell you that the text of laws explicitly passed in response to growing political, social, or economic power of nonwhite minorities should be followed to their highest grammatical accuracy, and I’m supposed to agree the text of this bullshit is the valid starting point of the debate? Nah. As Rory Breaker says in the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: “If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain’t the kind of pussy to drink it.” The Constitution was so flawed upon its release in 1787 that it came with immediate updates. The first ten amendments, the “Bill of Rights,” were demanded by some to ensure ratification of the rest of the document. All of them were written by James Madison, who didn’t think they were actually necessary but did it to placate political interests.

Writer Camille Paglia offers a refreshing exception to this disparagement of men, as pointed out by Christina Hoff Sommers: For Paglia, male aggressiveness and competitiveness are animating principles of creativity: “Masculinity is aggressive, unstable, and combustible. It is also the most creative cultural force in history.” Speaking of the “fashionable disdain for ‘patriarchal society’ to which nothing good is ever attributed,” she writes, “But it is the patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.” “Men,” writes Paglia, “created the world we live in and the luxuries we enjoy”: “When I cross the George Washington Bridge or any of America’s great bridges, I think—men have done this. Construction is a sublime male poetry.”1 Our society has become the angry leered-at woman who doesn’t care that men can build buildings or do amazing things like be good dads, husbands and sons. She focuses instead on the small flaws that some men have and extrapolates to all men; they are all dogs, rapists, perverts, deadbeats and worthless. Who needs them? We

We want to change our surroundings, but we don't want to change ourselves. We are so quick to point out others' flaws, but can't admit our own. We complain about the problems with society, but don't offer a solution or acknowledge that we could be a part of the problem. And once we feel like we've outgrown a problem, instead of sharing what we've learned from our experience, we act so enlightened and better than the next man.

Granny writes down things she needs to remember directly on the wall. And not only when she’s at home, but on any wall, wherever she is. It’s not a perfect system, because in order to remember a particular task she needs to be in exactly the same place where she wrote it down. When Elsa pointed out this flaw, Granny replied indignantly, “There’s still a smaller risk of me losing a kitchen wall than your mother losing that poxy telephone!

Communities can thereby come up with rules that allow true beliefs to emerge from the rough-and-tumble of argument, such as that you have to provide reasons for your beliefs, you’re allowed to point out flaws in the beliefs of others, and you’re not allowed to forcibly shut people up who disagree with you. Add in the rule that you should allow the world to show you whether your beliefs are true or false, and we can call the rules science.

emerge from the rough-and-tumble of argument, such as that you have to provide reasons for your beliefs, you’re allowed to point out flaws in the beliefs of others, and you’re not allowed to forcibly shut people up who disagree with you. Add in the rule that you should allow the world to show you whether your beliefs are true or false, and we can call the rules science. With the right rules, a community of less than fully rational thinkers can cultivate rational thoughts.31

I've overheard the way men gossip at dances or parties. They point out all a girl's physical flaws and debate whether she's too tall or short, or if her complexion is smooth enough, or whether her bosom is adequate." Pandora scowled. "Why don't they have to be perfect?" "Because they're men." Pandora looked disgusted. "That's the London Season for you: Casting girls before swine." Turning to her husband, she asked, "Do men really talk about women that way?" "Men, no," Gabriel said. "Arsewits, yes.

Indeed. But what is sane? Especially here in ‘our own country’––in this doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consciousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him…but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create…a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody––or at least some force––is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel. This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic…a blind faith in some higher and wiser ‘authority.’ The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister…all the way up to “God”.

I don’t want someone constantly pointing out my flaws. That’s toxic. But you get it right. What’s the old saying? Have the serenity to accept the things you can’t change, the courage to change what you can, and the wisdom to know the difference?” His brow furrowed as if he was trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about. “You do that,” I said. “You accept what I can’t change, and you push me to do the things I can.” “All right…” “Don’t ever stop doing that. Please. I want to be better. Be stronger.

Idealists mature badly. If they can’t outgrow their idealism, they become hypocrites or blind. Liv has chosen blindness, fixating so much on the Chromeria’s flaws that she believes those who oppose us must be paragons. That we’re not perfect says nothing about our enemies, Kip. Nothing. As it turns out, they’re mostly bad. Bad enough that their rule would be a cataclysm, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some good points about us. It doesn’t mean that every fool who works for them is evil. It simply means they have to be stopped.

Stop staring at Kevin so much. You're making me fear for your life over here." "What do you mean?" "Andrew is scary territorial of him. He punched me the first time I said I'd like to get Kevin too wasted to be straight." Nicky pointed at his face, presumably where Andrew had decked him. "So yeah, I'm going to crush on safer targets until Andrew gets bored of him. That means you, since Matt's taken and I don't hate myself enough to try Seth. Congrats." "Can you take the creepy down a level?" Aaron asked. "What?" Nikcy asked. "He said he doesn't swing, so obviously he needs a push." "I don't need a push," Neil said. "I'm fine on my own." "Seriously, how are you not bored of your hand by now?" "I'm done with this conversation," Neil said. "This and every future variation of it. [...]" The stadium door slammed open as Andrew showed up at last. He swept them with a wide-eyed look as if surprised to see them all there. "Kevin wants to know what's taking you so long. Did you get lost?" "Nicky's scheming to rape Neil," Aaron said. "There are a couple flaws in his plan he needs to work out first, but he'll get there sooner or later." [...] "Wow, Nicky," Andrew said. "You start early." "Can you really blame me?" Nicky glanced back at Neil as he said it. He only took his eyes off Andrew for a second, but that was long enough for Andrew to lunge at him. Andrew caught Nicky's jersey in one hand and threw him hard up against the wall. [...] "Hey, Nicky," Andrew said in stage-whisper German. "Don't touch him, you understand?" "You know I'd never hurt him. If he says yes-" "I said no." "Jesus, you're greedy," Nicky said. "You already have Kevin. Why does it-" He went silent, but it took Neil a moment to realize why. Andrew had a short knife pressed to Nicky's Jersey. [...] Neil was no stranger to violence. He'd heard every threat in the book, but never from a man who smiled as bright as Andrew did. Apathy, anger, madness, boredom: these motivators Neil knew and understood. But Andrew was grinning like he didn't have a knife point where it'd sleep perfectly between Nicky's ribs, and it wasn't because he was joking. Neil knew Andrew meant it. If Nicky so much as breathed wrong right now, Andrew would cut his lungs to ribbons, any and all consequences be damned. Neil wondered if Andrew's medicine would let him grieve, or if he'd laugh at Nicky's funeral too. Then he wondered if a sober Andrew would act any different. Was this Andrew psychosis or his medicine? Was he flying too high to understand what he was doing, or did his medicine only add a smile to Andrew's ingrained violence? [...] Andrew let go of Nicky and spun away. [...] Aaron squized Nicky's shoulder on his way out. Nicky looked shaken as he stared after the twins, but when he realized Neil was watching him he rallied with a smile Neil didn't believe at all. "On second thought, you're not my type after all,” Nicky said [...]. "Don't let him get away with things like that." Nicky considered him for a moment, his smile fading into something small and tired. "Oh, Neil. You're going to make this so hard on yourself. Look, [...] Andrew is a little crazy. Your lines are not his lines, so you can get all huff and puff when he tramps across yours but you'll never make him understand what he did wrong. Moreover, you'll never make him care. So just stay out of his way." "He's like this because you let him get away with it," Neil said. [...] "That was my fault. [...] I said something I shouldn't have, and got what I deserved.

Calvin was a brilliant man, but if he had one flaw, it was his ability to hold a grudge. On top of his grudge holding, he had a reputation for impatience. Like so many brilliant people, Calvin just couldn’t understand how no one else got it. He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness. Worst of all, he was a rower. As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing. Get two or more rowers in a room and the conversation goes from normal topics like work or weather to long, pointless stories about boats, blisters, oars, grips, ergs, feathers, workouts, catches, releases, recoveries, splits, seats, strokes, slides, starts, settles, sprints, and whether the water was really “flat” or not. From there, it usually progresses to what went wrong on the last row, what might go wrong on the next row, and whose fault it was and/or will be. At some point the rowers will hold out their hands and compare calluses. If you’re really unlucky, this could be followed by several minutes of head-bowing reverence as one of them recounts the perfect row where it all felt easy.

There’s no one but you, Bran,” Ryder began, his chest puffed out. “I never thought I’d be the type to settle down and get married until you, quite literally, fell into my life. I never thought I’d want a wife, a family, and someone to love me as much as you do until you smiled in my direction and took my breath away. I never thought, after everything I’ve been through in my life, that someone as beautiful, smart and selfless as you would stick by my side through thick and thin, but you have. I’m not perfect, and I have my flaws, but you love me in spite of that. You have changed me, and my entire life for the better. You love my brothers, like they are your own, and you made us part of your family. You’ve given me purpose. Will you do me the greatest of honour of being my wife?” It took the might of God and willpower I never knew I had not to burst into tears there and then. I squeezed his hand to the point of pain and said, “Yes!” Ryder’s shoulders sagged with relief, and I heard practically everyone release a shaky breath. I looked to my family and friends and raised a brow, “You all thought after six years I was lettin’ him out of this church without puttin’ a ring on me finger, really?

Buddhism offers a basic challenge to this cultural worldview. The Buddha taught that this human birth is a precious gift because it gives us the opportunity to realize the love and awareness that are our true nature. As the Dalai Lama pointed out so poignantly, we all have Buddha nature. Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion. In stark contrast to this trust in our inherent worth, our culture’s guiding myth is the story of Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden. We may forget its power because it seems so worn and familiar, but this story shapes and reflects the deep psyche of the West. The message of “original sin” is unequivocal: Because of our basically flawed nature, we do not deserve to be happy, loved by others, at ease with life. We are outcasts, and if we are to reenter the garden, we must redeem our sinful selves. We must overcome our flaws by controlling our bodies, controlling our emotions, controlling our natural surroundings, controlling other people. And we must strive tirelessly—working, acquiring, consuming, achieving, e-mailing, overcommitting and rushing—in a never-ending quest to prove ourselves once and for all.

Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl, "UNFAIR!" but we women will create our own Mr. Darcy's and Mr. Knightley's and defy anyone who would point out their unrealistic points. The men aren't the ones crazy about Pride and Prejudice. Obviously they don't find perfect men realistic and honest enough to bother reading about. We don't write perfect women characters, do we? No. Our women all have bad tempers, or resentful hearts, or scabby pasts, or hidden fears--things that make them real. It's because we're easy on ourselves and aren't trying to boast perfection because we know we don't measure up. Then why do we hold men to a different standard?..... I'd caution all writers to make sure that your male "hero" in your story has his own flaws. You don't want a one-dimensional character. You don't want a perfect man that will drive away other men from reading the book. Look to the men in your life. The men around you. Look to your brothers and fathers and pastors and neighbors. Your uncles and the guy down the street. Goodness--look to Taylor the Latte Boy if you must, but let's cast aside the Perfect-Man syndrome.

few years later, Demeter took a vacation to the beach. She was walking along, enjoying the solitude and the fresh sea air, when Poseidon happened to spot her. Being a sea god, he tended to notice pretty ladies walking along the beach. He appeared out of the waves in his best green robes, with his trident in his hand and a crown of seashells on his head. (He was sure that the crown made him look irresistible.) “Hey, girl,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “You must be the riptide, ’cause you sweep me off my feet.” He’d been practicing that pickup line for years. He was glad he finally got to use it. Demeter was not impressed. “Go away, Poseidon.” “Sometimes the sea goes away,” Poseidon agreed, “but it always comes back. What do you say you and me have a romantic dinner at my undersea palace?” Demeter made a mental note not to park her chariot so far away. She really could’ve used her two dragons for backup. She decided to change form and get away, but she knew better than to turn into a snake this time. I need something faster, she thought. Then she glanced down the beach and saw a herd of wild horses galloping through the surf. That’s perfect! Demeter thought. A horse! Instantly she became a white mare and raced down the beach. She joined the herd and blended in with the other horses. Her plan had serious flaws. First, Poseidon could also turn into a horse, and he did—a strong white stallion. He raced after her. Second, Poseidon had created horses. He knew all about them and could control them. Why would a sea god create a land animal like the horse? We’ll get to that later. Anyway, Poseidon reached the herd and started pushing his way through, looking for Demeter—or rather sniffing for her sweet, distinctive perfume. She was easy to find. Demeter’s seemingly perfect camouflage in the herd turned out to be a perfect trap. The other horses made way for Poseidon, but they hemmed in Demeter and wouldn’t let her move. She got so panicky, afraid of getting trampled, that she couldn’t even change shape into something else. Poseidon sidled up to her and whinnied something like Hey, beautiful. Galloping my way? Much to Demeter’s horror, Poseidon got a lot cuddlier than she wanted. These days, Poseidon would be arrested for that kind of behavior. I mean…assuming he wasn’t in horse form. I don’t think you can arrest a horse. Anyway, back in those days, the world was a rougher, ruder place. Demeter couldn’t exactly report Poseidon to King Zeus, because Zeus was just as bad. Months later, a very embarrassed and angry Demeter gave birth to twins. The weirdest thing? One of the babies was a goddess; the other one was a stallion. I’m not going to even try to figure that out. The baby girl was named Despoine, but you don’t hear much about her in the myths. When she grew up, her job was looking after Demeter’s temple, like the high priestess of corn magic or something. Her baby brother, the stallion, was named Arion. He grew up to be a super-fast immortal steed who helped out Hercules and some other heroes, too. He was a pretty awesome horse, though I’m not sure that Demeter was real proud of having a son who needed new horseshoes every few months and was constantly nuzzling her for apples. At this point, you’d think Demeter would have sworn off those gross, disgusting men forever and joined Hestia in the Permanently Single Club. Strangely, a couple of months later, she fell in love with a human prince named Iasion (pronounced EYE-son, I think). Just shows you how far humans had come since Prometheus gave them fire. Now they could speak and write. They could brush their teeth and comb their hair. They wore clothes and occasionally took baths. Some of them were even handsome enough to flirt with goddesses.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who in 1998 reacted to the growth of the internet, and the hype of the dotcom boom, with an article in Red Herring magazine entitled ‘Why Most Economists’ Predictions are Wrong’. He then proceeded to give a dramatic demonstration of his point by making what turned out to be a very wrong prediction himself: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ – which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants – becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy will have been no greater than the fax machine’s.

The art show at the new branch of the Whitney met Eph’s exceedingly low expectations. One artist made small Lucite cubes filled with garbage purloined right from New York City trash bins. There were cigarette butts and fast-food wrappers and even blobs of moldy food. Eph could hear one nearby aesthete gush about the artist’s “urban truthfulness.” Another artist featured a painting of a rose done entirely in menstrual blood. The flaw, Eph thought, was that blood dried brown, not red, but nobody seemed to be pointing that out. He also wondered what it had to do with the “New Urban.” “There are no words,” said Eph, sotto voce in case the artist was lurking among the people nearby. “Art is meant to provoke,” said D’Arcy. “If you have a reaction, even a negative one, then the artist has succeeded

June has always been wrong in her assumptions about love--so wrong, in fact, that at this point she should assume the opposite of what she believes and then be right for once in her life. The most ridiculous, looking back, was her assumption that true love bestowed a contentment that blotted out all else. June blamed her assumption on the books she had read from ages ten to sixteen, even though she could blame herself for not noticing what the books showed bore no resemblance to her firsthand experience of matrimony, her parents. June had figured the problems lay in her parents as human beings and not some defect of love. She hadn't yet learned that since love was the creation of two people, and people were always defective in one way or another, then the love itself was necessarily flawed. She knew that now, definitively.

What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christshaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. So the key I propose for translating Jesus’ unique message to the Israel of his day into our message to our contemporaries is to grasp the parallel, which is woven deeply into both Testaments, between the human call to bear God’s image and Israel’s call to be the light of the world. Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it. “As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive sins and they are forgiven, retain them and they are retained.” That last double command belongs exactly at this point. We are to go out into the world with the divine authority to forgive and retain sins. When Jesus forgave sins, they said he was blaspheming; how then can we imagine such a thing for ourselves? Answer: because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. God intends to do through us for the wider world that for which the foundation was laid in Jesus. We are to live and tell the story of the prodigal and the older brother; to announce God’s glad, exuberant, richly healing welcome for sinners, and at the same time God’s sorrowful but implacable opposition to those who persist in arrogance, oppression and greed. Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice and greed.

At each of the meetings, I was struck that there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the “idea protectors” saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper—not eviscerating it. Interestingly, the “paper killers” were not aware that they were serving some other agenda (which was often, in my estimation, to show their colleagues how high their standards were). Both groups thought they were protecting the proceedings, but only one group understood that by looking for something new and surprising, they were offering the most valuable kind of protection. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.

Let’s take a look at one couple. Carol and Jim have a long-running quarrel over his being late to engagements. In a session in my office, Carol carps at Jim over his latest transgression: he didn’t show up on time for their scheduled movie night. “How come you are always late?” she challenges. “Doesn’t it matter to you that we have a date, that I am waiting, that you always let me down?” Jim reacts coolly: “I got held up. But if you are going to start off nagging again, maybe we should just go home and forget the date.” Carol retaliates by listing all the other times Jim has been late. Jim starts to dispute her “list,” then breaks off and retreats into stony silence. In this never-ending dispute, Jim and Carol are caught up in the content of their fights. When was the last time Jim was late? Was it only last week or was it months ago? They careen down the two dead ends of “what really happened”—whose story is more “accurate” and who is most “at fault.” They are convinced that the problem has to be either his irresponsibility or her nagging. In truth, though, it doesn’t matter what they’re fighting about. In another session in my office, Carol and Jim begin to bicker about Jim’s reluctance to talk about their relationship. “Talking about this stuff just gets us into fights,” Jim declares. “What’s the point of that? We go round and round. It just gets frustrating. And anyway, it’s all about my ‘flaws’ in the end. I feel closer when we make love.” Carol shakes her head. “I don’t want sex when we are not even talking!” What’s happened here? Carol and Jim’s attack-withdraw way of dealing with the “lateness” issue has spilled over into two more issues: “we don’t talk” and “we don’t have sex.” They’re caught in a terrible loop, their responses generating more negative responses and emotions in each other. The more Carol blames Jim, the more he withdraws. And the more he withdraws, the more frantic and cutting become her attacks. Eventually, the what of any fight won’t matter at all. When couples reach this point, their entire relationship becomes marked by resentment, caution, and distance. They will see every difference, every disagreement, through a negative filter. They will listen to idle words and hear a threat. They will see an ambiguous action and assume the worst. They will be consumed by catastrophic fears and doubts, be constantly on guard and defensive. Even if they want to come close, they can’t. Jim’s experience is defined perfectly by the title of a Notorious Cherry Bombs song, “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.

Like so many brilliant people, Calvin just couldn’t understand how no one else got it. He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness. Worst of all, he was a rower. As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing. Get two or more rowers in a room and the conversation goes from normal topics like work or weather to long, pointless stories about boats, blisters, oars, grips, ergs, feathers, workouts, catches, releases, recoveries, splits, seats, strokes, slides, starts, settles, sprints, and whether the water was really “flat” or not. From there, it usually progresses to what went wrong on the last row, what might go wrong on the next row, and whose fault it was and/or will be. At some point the rowers will hold out their hands and compare calluses. If you’re really unlucky, this could be followed by several minutes of head-bowing reverence as one of them recounts the perfect row where it all felt easy.

breaking things off, convinced that our partner’s psychological issues are making things impossible, or that we’re not as compatible as we’d believed. Either of these might conceivably be true in certain cases; people are sometimes guilty of spectacularly bad choices in love, and in other domains as well. But more often, the real problem is just that the other person is one other person. In other words, the cause of your difficulties isn’t that your partner is especially flawed, or that the two of you are especially incompatible, but that you’re finally noticing all the ways in which your partner is (inevitably) finite, and thus deeply disappointing by comparison with the world of your fantasy, where the limiting rules of reality don’t apply. The point that Bergson made about the future—that it’s more appealing than the present because you get to indulge in all your hopes for it, even if they contradict each other—is no less true of fantasy romantic partners, who can easily exhibit a range of characteristics that simply couldn’t coexist in one person in the real world. It’s common, for example, to enter a relationship unconsciously hoping that your partner will provide both an unlimited sense of stability and an unlimited sense of excitement—and then, when that’s not what transpires, to assume that the problem is your partner and that these qualities might coexist in someone else, whom you should therefore set off to find. The reality is that the demands are contradictory. The qualities that make someone a dependable source of excitement are generally the opposite of those that make him or her a dependable source of stability. Seeking both in one real human isn’t much less absurd than dreaming of a partner who’s both six and five feet tall. And not only should you settle; ideally, you should settle in a way that makes it harder to back out, such as moving in together, or getting married, or having a child. The great irony of all our efforts to avoid facing finitude—to carry on believing that it might be possible not to have to choose between mutually exclusive options—is that when people finally do choose, in a relatively irreversible way, they’re usually much happier as a result.

The new black conservatives claim that transfer payments to the black needy engender a mentality of dependence which undercuts the value of self-reliance and of the solidity of the black poor family. They fail to see that the welfare state was a historic compromise between progressive forces seeking broad subsistence rights and conservative forces arguing for unregulated markets. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the welfare state possesses many flaws. The reinforcing of 'dependent mentalities' and the unsettling of the family are two such flaws. But simply to point out these rather obvious shortcomings does not justify cutbacks in the welfare state. In the face of high black unemployment, these cutbacks will not promote self-reliance or strong black families but will only produce even more black cultural disorientation and more devastated black households. This is so because without jobs or incentives to be productive citizens the black poor become even more prone toward criminality, drugs, and alcoholism- the major immediate symptoms of the pervasive black communal and cultural chaos.

Managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talent are all necessary, but they can be applied only to goals that have already been defined by military policies, broad and narrow. And those policies can be only as good as strategy, operational art of war, tactical thought, and plain military craft that have gone into their making. At present, the defects of structure submerge or distort strategy and operational art, they out rightly suppress tactical ingenuity, and they displace the traditional insights and rules of military craft in favor of bureaucratic preferences, administrative convenience, and abstract notions of efficiency derived from the world of business management. First there is the defective structure for making of military decisions under the futile supervision of the civilian Defense Department; then come the deeply flawed defense policies and military choices, replete with unnecessary costs and hidden risks; finally there come the undoubted managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talents, all applied to achieve those flawed policies and to implement those flawed choices. By this same sequence was the fatally incomplete Maginot Line built, as were all the Maginot Lines of history, each made no better by good government, technical talent, careful accounting, or sheer hard work. Hence the futility of all the managerial innovations tried in the Pentagon over the years. In the purchasing of weapons, for example, “total package” procurement, cost plus incentive contracting, “firm fixed price” purchasing have all been introduced with much fanfare, only to be abandoned, retried, and repudiated once again. And each time a new Secretary of Defense arrives, with him come the latest batch of managerial innovations, many of them aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and mismanagement-the classic trio endlessly denounced in Congress, even though they account for mere percentage points in the total budget, and have no relevance at all to the failures of combat. The persistence of the Administrator’s Delusion has long kept the Pentagon on a treadmill of futile procedural “reforms” that have no impact at all on the military substance of our defense. It is through strategy, operational art, tactical ingenuity, and military craft that the large savings can be made, and the nation’s military strength greatly increased, but achieving long-overdue structural innovations, from the central headquarters to the combat forces, from the overhead of bases and installations to the current purchase of new weapons. Then, and only then, will it be useful to pursue fraud, waste, and mismanagement, if only to save a few dollars more after the billions have already been saved. At present, by contrast, the Defense Department administers ineffectively, while the public, Congress, and the media apply their energies to such petty matters as overpriced spare parts for a given device in a given weapon of a given ship, overlooking at the same time the multibillion dollar question of money spent for the Navy as a whole instead of the Army – whose weakness diminishes our diplomatic weight in peacetime, and which could one day cause us to resort to nuclear weapons in the face of imminent debacle. If we had a central military authority and a Defense Department capable of strategy, we should cheerfully tolerate much fraud, waste, and mismanagement; but so long as there are competing military bureaucracies organically incapable of strategic combat, neither safety nor economy will be ensured, even if we could totally eliminate every last cent of fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

FOR MANY YEARS, I was on a committee that read and selected papers to be published at SIGGRAPH, the annual computer graphics conference I mentioned in chapter 2. These papers were supposed to present ideas that advanced the field. The committee was composed of many of the field’s most prominent players, all of whom I knew; it was a group that took the task of selecting papers very seriously. At each of the meetings, I was struck that there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the “idea protectors” saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper—not eviscerating it. Interestingly, the “paper killers” were not aware that they were serving some other agenda (which was often, in my estimation, to show their colleagues how high their standards were). Both groups thought they were protecting the proceedings, but only one group understood that by looking for something new and surprising, they were offering the most valuable kind of protection. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.

LEADING LESSONS Criticism can be useful. I’ve taken a beating from the DWTS judges on many occasions. Most of the time, because I’m always aware of the cameras in my face, I just suck it up and take it. Here’s the thing: I realize that maybe they’re seeing something I’m not. Sometimes you’re too close to a situation, too connected to it, to be 100 percent honest with yourself. Or your ego gets in the way and won’t let you improve, because that would mean changing course and admitting you were wrong. I tell my partners to listen carefully when Len, Carrie Ann, or Bruno has a constructive criticism for us. Yes, sometimes it boils down to taste and opinion (and I don’t always agree), but often it’s a valid point. They want us to succeed. The way I see it, you have lots of choices on how to handle it: the first is to lose your temper, get defensive, and spend the rest of the night beating yourself up about it. The second--a natural reaction for most people--is to mentally shut down when someone points out your flaws. Who wants to hear that? Let me just drown it out and ignore it. The third option is your best: keep your mind and your ears open. You can learn about your weaknesses and how you can improve them. A leader is never scared of criticism, but instead knows there is always room to grow and improve. So bring it on.

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

Yes, he admitted, if gravity is always attractive, and never repulsive, then the stars in the universe might be unstable. But there was a loophole in this argument. Assume that the universe is, on average, totally uniform and infinite in all directions. In such a static universe, all the forces of gravity cancel one another out, and the universe becomes stable once again. Given any star, the forces of gravity acting on it from all the distant stars in different directions eventually sum to zero, and hence the universe does not collapse. Although this was a clever solution to this problem, Newton realized there was still a potential flaw to his solution. The universe might be uniform on average, but it cannot be exactly uniform at all points, so there must be tiny deviations. Like a house of cards, it appears to be stable, but the tiniest flaw will cause the entire structure to collapse. So Newton was clever enough to realize that a uniform infinite universe was indeed stable but was always teetering on the edge of collapse. In other words, the cancellation of infinite forces must be infinitely precise or else the universe will either collapse or be ripped apart. Thus, Newton’s final conclusion was that the universe was infinite and uniform on average, but occasionally God has to tweak the stars in the universe, so they do not collapse under gravity. Why Is the Night Sky Black? But this raised another problem. If we start with a universe that is infinite and uniform, then everywhere we look into space our gaze will eventually hit a star. But since there are an infinite number of stars, there must be an infinite amount of light entering our eyes from all directions. The night sky should be white, not black. This is called Olbers’ paradox. Some of the greatest minds in history have tried to tackle this sticky question. Kepler, for example, dismissed the paradox by claiming that the universe was finite, and hence there is no paradox. Others have theorized that dust clouds have obscured starlight. (But this cannot explain the paradox, because, in an infinite amount of time, the dust clouds begin to heat up and then emit blackbody radiation, similar to a star. So the universe becomes white again.) The final answer was actually given by Edgar Allan Poe in 1848. Being an amateur astronomer, he was fascinated by the paradox and said that the night sky is black because, if we travel back in time far enough, we eventually encounter a cutoff—that is, a beginning to the universe. In other words, the night sky is black because the universe has a finite age. We do not receive light from the infinite past, which would make the night sky white, because the universe never had an infinite past. This means that telescopes peering at the farthest stars will eventually reach the blackness of the Big Bang itself. So it is truly amazing that by pure thought, without doing any experiments whatsoever, one can conclude that the universe must have had a beginning.

[...] Kevin had grown up playing left-handed. Seeing him take on Andrew right-handed was ballsy enough, seeing him actually score was surreal. Kevin kicked them off the court [...], but instead of following [...] he stayed behind with Andrew to keep practicing. Neil watched them over his shoulder. "I saw him first," Nicky said. "I thought you had Erik," Neil said. "I do, but Kevin's on the List," Nicky said. When Neil frowned, Nicky explained. "It's a list of celebrities we're allowed to have affairs with. Kevin is number three." Neil pretended to understand and changed the topic. "How does anyone lose against the Foxes with Andrew in your goal?" "He's good, right? [...] Coach bribed Andrew into saving our collective asses with some really nice booze." "Bribed?" Neil echoed. "Andrew's good," Nicky said again, "but it doesn't really matter to him if we win or lose. You want him to care, you gotta give him incentive." "He can't play like that and not care." "Now you sound like Kevin. You'll find out the hard way, same as Kevin did. Kevin gave Andrew a lot of grief this spring [...]. Up until then they were fighting like cats and dogs. Now look at them. They're practically trading friendship bracelets and I couldn't fit a crowbar between them if it'd save my life." "But why?" Neil asked. "Andrew hates Kevin's obsession with Exy." "The day they start making sense to you, let me know," Nicky said [...]. "I gave up trying to sort it all out weeks ago. [...] But as long as I'm doling out advice? Stop staring at Kevin so much. You're making me fear for your life over here." "What do you mean?" "Andrew is scary territorial of him. He punched me the first time I said I'd like to get Kevin too wasted to be straight." Nicky pointed at his face, presumably where Andrew had decked him. "So yeah, I'm going to crush on safer targets until Andrew gets bored of him. That means you, since Matt's taken and I don't hate myself enough to try Seth. Congrats." "Can you take the creepy down a level?" Aaron asked. "What?" Nikcy asked. "He said he doesn't swing, so obviously he needs a push." "I don't need a push," Neil said. "I'm fine on my own." "Seriously, how are you not bored of your hand by now?" "I'm done with this conversation," Neil said. "This and every future variation of it [...]." The stadium door slammed open as Andrew showed up at last. [...] "Kevin wants to know what's taking you so long. Did you get lost?" "Nicky's scheming to rape Neil," Aaron said. "There are a couple flaws in his plan he needs to work out first, but he'll get there sooner or later." [...] "Wow, Nicky," Andrew said. "You start early." "Can you really blame me?" Nicky glanced back at Neil as he said it. He only took his eyes off Andrew for a second, but that was long enough for Andrew to lunge at him. Andrew caught Nicky's jersey in one hand and threw him hard up against the wall. [...] "Hey, Nicky," Andrew said in stage-whisper German. "Don't touch him, you understand?" "You know I'd never hurt him. If he says yes-" "I said no." "Jesus, you're greedy," Nicky said. "You already have Kevin. Why does it-" He went silent, but it took Neil a moment to realize why. Andrew had a short knife pressed to Nicky's Jersey. [...] Neil was no stranger to violence. He'd heard every threat in the book, but never from a man who smiled as bright as Andrew did. Apathy, anger, madness, boredom: these motivators Neil knew and understood. But Andrew was grinning like he didn't have a knife point where it'd sleep perfectly between Nicky's ribs, and it wasn't because he was joking. Neil knew Andrew meant it. [...] "Hey, are we playing or what?" Neil asked. "Kevin's waiting." [...] Andrew let go of Nicky and spun away. [...] Nicky looked shaken as he stared after the twins, but when he realized Neil was watching him he rallied with a smile Neil didn't believe at all. "On second thought, you're not my type after all [...].