Pole Position Quotes

Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.

The dream has a very striking way of dealing with the category of opposites and contradictions. This is simply disregarded. To the dream 'No' does not seem to exist. In particular, it prefers to draw opposites together into a unity or to represent them as one. Indeed, it also takes the liberty of representing some random element by its wished-for opposite, so that at first one cannot tell which of the possible poles is meant positively or negatively in the dream-thoughts.

Neither Tiphys nor Argus nor old Nauplius (whose great-grandfather and namesake had been the first Greek ever to steer by the Pole Star) could calculate their position with certainty.

the North Pole, but to someone looking from the equator, it appears to lie just at the horizon. From the difference in the apparent position of the North Star in Egypt and Greece, Aristotle even quoted an estimate that the distance

To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move my itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous, independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and feeble human being.

In that memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.

But the Hermetists go still further in this matter. They teach that before one is able to enjoy a certain degree of pleasure, he must have swung as far, proportionately, toward the other pole of feeling. They hold, however, that the Negative is precedent to the Positive in this matter, that is to say that in experiencing a certain degree of pleasure it does not follow that he will have to "pay up for it" with a corresponding degree of pain; on the contrary, the pleasure is the Rhythmic swing, according to the Law of Compensation, for a degree of pain previously experienced

The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general ; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.

Foreword: Life is tension or the result of tension: without tension the creative impulse cannot exist. If human life be taken as the result of tension between the two polarities night and day, night, the negative pole, must share equal importance with the positive day. At night, under the influence of cosmic radiations quite different from those of the day, human affairs are apt to come to a crisis. At night most human beings die and are born. Sleep Has His House describes in the night-time language certain stages in the development of one individual human being. No interpretation is needed of this language we have all spoken in childhood and in our dreams; but for the sake of unity a few words before every section indicate the corresponding events of the day.

Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.

Lao Tzu's first paragraph in the book "Tao Te Ching" is that the Tao that can be told is not the absolute Tao. Lao Tzu has his own logic, the logic of paradoxes, the logic of life. To understand Tao, you will have to create eyes. Lao Tzu believes in the unity of opposites, because that is how life is. The Tao can be communicated, but it can only be communicated from heart to heart, from being to being, from love to love, from silence to silence. Truth is always realized in silence. In silence, the truth is realized. You reach to truth through silence. All spiritual books tries to say something that can not be said in the hope that a thirst, a longing, is created in your heart to know the truth. Tao is totality. Life exists through the tension of the opposites, the meeting of the opposites. Lao Tzu says that the opposite poles of life are not really opposites, but complementaries. Thinking is always of opposites. Lao Tzu says: drop the split attitude. Be simple. And when you are simple, you do not choose. Lao Tzu says: be choiceless, let life flow. Enjoy both poles in life, and then your life becomes a symphony of opposites. How to drop the mind: do not choose. If you do not choose, the mind drops. Live life as it comes - float. Float with life. Enjoy the moment in its totality, It is to live as part of the whole, to live as part of existence. If you become silent and empty, everything will come on it's own accord. When you live without any desire for power, position, fame or success, the whole existence pours down into your emptiness.

order to reclaim your joy. Set Your Intention Having a clear, positive intention for your day is the easiest way to raise your vibration. Make sure that your intention is clear, but don’t feel guilty if you don’t manifest it. Just like a pole jumper who fails to clear the bar, dust yourself off and try again. Your intention can be general, like I want to be less judgmental today, or it can be specific if you’re concerned about a confrontation or decision that is in the offing. Always envision the outcome as a happy ending.

The attitudes of humility, supplicancy, innocence and insignificance create a vacuum in the heart, so that the current from the Source flows in and enlivens the connection, just as electrical current flows from the positive to the negative pole in an electrical wire.

recovery will be tied to routine; risk of relapse tied to noise. God is hard enough to find in the quietness. In the noise, it seems an impossibility. And the specter of this impossibility brings epiphany: the bottle is a negative pole and I am positive; I cannot control the attraction.

Recognising such dimensions implicit to the reading experience can distract from the immediacy of our response; it can substitute literary archaeology for novelistic reality. That is one pole. But the other extreme is equally limiting. By failing to realise the issues involved in communicating with fictional modes that are different to our own, in effect we do not read in the fullest sense. Between intellectual pedantry and cultivated ignorance I would pose a third approach to reading—that of the informed imagination. After occupying this position true evaluation can begin.

A classic illustration of this difficulty is that countries with more telephone poles often have a higher incidence of heart disease, and many other diseases. Therefore, telephone poles and heart disease are positively correlated. But this does not prove that telephone poles cause heart disease. In effect, correlation does not equal causation.

Ma'am," he said, reaching for the door. He held it open, his posture as erect and sturdy as a pole. I eyed the man's uniform, the pins and badges that signified his military rank and position. At that moment I felt opposing forces wash over me, clashing internally like a cold and warm front meeting in the air. At first I was hit by a burning sense of respect and gratitude. How privileged a person I was to have this soldier unbar the way for me, maintaining a clear path that I might advance unhindered. The symbolism marked by his actions did strike me with remarkable intensity. How many virtual doors would be shut in my face if not for dutiful soldiers like him? As I went to step forward, my feet nearly faltered as if they felt unworthy. It was I who ought to be holding open the door for this gentleman—this representative of great heroes present and past who did fight and sacrifice and continue to do so to keep doors open, paths free and clear for all of humanity. I moved through the entrance and thanked him. "Yes, ma'am," he said. How strange that I should feel such pride while passing through his open door.

The latest word of science is that the atom is composed of a multitude of corpuscles, electrons, or ions (the various names being applied by different authorities) revolving around each other and vibrating at a high degree and intensity. But the accompanying statement is made that the formation of the atom is really due to the clustering of negative corpuscles around a positive one — the positive corpuscles seeming to exert a certain influence upon the negative corpuscles, causing the latter to assume certain combinations and thus "create" or "generate" an atom. This is in line with the most ancient Hermetic Teachings, which have always identified the Masculine principle of Gender with the "Positive," and the Feminine with the "Negative" Poles of Electricity (so-called).

We are leading as thorough a study of 'alienation's positive pole' as of its negative pole. As a consequence of our diagnosis of the poverty of wealth, we are able to establish the world map of the extreme wealth of poverty. These speaking maps of a new topography will be in fact the first realization of 'human geography.' On them we will replace oil-deposits with the contours of layers of untapped pedestrian consciousness.

Our human perception of reality is made up by binary electromagnetic energy in the form of separated polarities: negative-positive, male-female, dark-light. Ordinary reality is a mono-dimensional arbitrary setting, which means that in order to be officially operative in this configuration, we need to release our multidimensional nature. This practically implies to let go of one polarity, so that one pole is allowed circulation in ordinary reality while the other is out of bound and remains in the non-ordinary or unconscious reality.

Especially important are the political implications of the idea that the new possibilities opened by a certain act are part of its content - this is the reason why, to the consternation of many of my friends (who, of course, are no longer my friends), I claimed apropos the US 2016 presidential elections that Trump's victory would be better than Clinton's for the future of progressive forces. Trump is highly dubious, of course, but his election may open possibilities and move the liberal-Left pole to a new more radical position. I was surprised to learn that David Lynch adopted the same position: in an interview in June 2018, Lynch (who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary) said that Trump 'could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.' While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. 'Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.

What are the inner man and woman? Our being consists of two energies: the male and female aspect. Irrespective of if we are a man or a woman, we have both a male and female side. Life develops through opposite poles and tendencies for example yes and no, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, positive and negative, day and night and life and death. Just as electricity needs both a negative and positive pole for a spark to arise, the human consciousness has also two poles. These two poles are the male and female side. The right side of the body represents the male side and the left side of the body represents the female side. We all have both a male and female side, which is represented by the right and left side of the body.

Sensitive But Unclassified” cable to Washington titled “A KEY STRATEGIC TIPPING-POINT GAME-CHANGER.” It posited: The primary challenge in Afghanistan has become the ability to get fidelity on the problem set. Secondarily, we need to shape the battlefield and dial it in. Whether or not we can add this to a stairway to heaven remains to be seen, but the importance of double tapping it cannot be overlooked. After getting smart so that we do not lose the bubble, the long pole in the tent needs to be identified. Once we have pinned the rose on someone, then we must send them downrange. Then we must define the delta so it can be lashed up. This can be difficult, as there are a lot of moving parts; in the end, it is all about delivery.

Meanwhile the revolt of Russian officers in the so-called Decembrist movement of 1825 owed much to injured Russian national pride at the Poles being given freedoms denied to the Russian elites. In the century which followed 1815 the Poles contributed much to the Russian Empire’s economy. In political terms, however, both the Polish and Jewish populations of the former Duchy of Warsaw caused the Russian government many problems. Nor was it even clear that the annexation of the Duchy had strengthened Russia’s strategic position. On the contrary, by 1900 it could be seen as a potential trap for the Russian army. By then the German settlement of 1815 also looked a mistake from the perspective of Russian interests. A France bordering on the Rhine would have eased many Russian concerns about the challenge of Germany’s growing power.

That,” he said, as they turned out into the broad main road, with its long vista of telegraph poles, “is because you have been neglecting the real for the sham, flowers themselves for their artificially distilled perfume. What I was going to try and put into words without sounding too priggish, Lady Cynthia,” he went on, “is this. It is just you people who are cursed with a restless brain who are in the most dangerous position, nowadays. The things which keep us healthy and normal physically—games, farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise — are the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the person with imagination. You want more out of life, always the something you don’t understand, the something beyond. And so you keep on trying new things, and for every new thing you try, you drop an old one. Isn’t it something like that?

The perplexed man cried out within the clergyman, and pressed for some acknowledgment from God of the being he had made. But—was it strange to tell? or if strange, was it not the most natural result nevertheless?—almost the same moment he began to pray in this truer fashion, the doubt rushed up in him like a torrent-spring from the fountains of the great deep—Was there—could there be a God at all? a real being who might actually hear his prayer? In this crowd of houses and shops and churches, amidst buying and selling, and ploughing and praising and backbiting, this endless pursuit of ends and of means to ends, while yet even the wind that blew where it listed blew under laws most fixed, and the courses of the stars were known to a hair's-breadth, —was there—could there be a silent invisible God working his own will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there—could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him—poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to undertake a work he neither could perform nor had the courage to forsake, when out of the misery of the grimy little cellar of his consciousness he cried aloud for light and something to make a man of him? For now that Thomas had begun to doubt like an honest being, every ugly thing within him began to show itself to his awakened probity.

What I cannot understand is how your uncle could consider these two men suitable when they aren’t. Not one whit!” “We know that,” Elizabeth said wryly, bending down to pull a blade of grass from between the flagstones beneath the bench, “but evidently my ‘suitors’ do not, and that’s the problem.” As she said the words a thought began to form in her mind; her fingers touched the blade, and she went perfectly still. Beside her on the bench Alex drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped short, and in that pulsebeat of still silence the same idea was born in both their fertile minds. “Alex,” Elizabeth breathed, “all I have to-“ “Elizabeth,” Alex whispered, “it’s not as bad as it seems. All you have to-“ Elizabeth straightened slowly and turned. In that prolonged moment of silence two longtime friends sat in a rose garden, looking raptly at each other while time rolled back and they were girls again-lying awake in the dark, confiding their dreams and troubles and inventing schemes to solve them that always began with “If only…” “If only,” Elizabeth said as a smile dawned across her face and was matched by the one on Alex’s, “I could convince them that we don’t suit-“ “Which shouldn’t be hard to do,” Alex cried enthusiastically, “because it’s true!” The joyous relief of having a plan, of being able to take control of a situation that minutes before had threatened her entire life, sent Elizabeth to her feet, her face aglow with laughter. “Poor Sir Francis,” she chuckled, looking delightedly from Bentner to Alex as both grinned at her. “I greatly fear he’s in for the most disagreeable surprise when he realizes what a-a” she hesitated, thinking of everything an old roué would most dislike in his future wife-“a complete prude I am!” “And,” Alex added, “what a shocking spendthrift you are!” “Exactly!” Elizabeth agreed, almost twirling around in her glee. Sunlight danced off her gilded hair and lit her green eyes as she looked delightedly at her friends. “I shall make perfectly certain to give him glaring evidence I am both. Now then, as to the Earl of Canford…” “What a pity,” Alex said in a voice of exaggerated gloom, “you won’t be able to show him what a capital hand you are with a fishing pole. “Fish?” Elizabeth returned with a mock shudder. “Why, the mere thought of those scaly creatures positively makes me swoon!” “Except for that prime one you caught yesterday,” Bentner put in wryly. “You’re right,” she returned with an affectionate grin at the man who’d taught her to fish. “Will you find Berta and break the news to her about going with me? By the time we come back to the house she ought to be over her hysterics, and I’ll reason with her.” Bentner trotted off, his threadbare black coattails flapping behind him.

The method he adopted in building the bridge was as follows. He took a pair of piles a foot and a half thick, slightly pointed at the lower ends and of a length adapted to the varying depth of the river, and fastened them together two feet apart. These he lowered into the river with appropriate tackle, placed them in position at right angles to the bank, and drove them home with pile-drivers, not vertically, as piles are generally fixed, but obliquely, inclined in the direction of the current. Opposite these, forty feet lower down the river, another pair of piles was planted, similarly fixed together, and inclined in the opposite direction to the current. The two pairs were then joined by a beam two feet wide, whose ends fitted exactly into the spaces between the two piles forming each pair. The upper pair was kept at the right distance from the lower pair by means of iron braces, one of which was used to fasten each pile to the end of the beam. The pairs of piles being thus held apart, and each pair individually strengthened by a diagonal tie between the two piles, the whole structure was so rigid, that, in accordance with the laws of physics, the greater the force of the current, the more tightly were the piles held in position. A series of these piles and transverse beams was carried right across the stream and connected by lengths of timber running in the direction of the bridge; on these were laid poles and bundles of sticks. In spite of the strength of the structure, additional piles were fixed obliquely to each pair of the original piles along the whole length of the downstream side of the bridge, holding them up like a buttress and opposing the force of the current. Others were fixed also a little above the bridge, so that if the natives tried to demolish it by floating down tree-trunks or beams, these buffers would break the force of the impact and preserve the bridge from injury.

First, to map out the boundaries within which all discussion must go on, I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homo-sexual desires is sin. This leaves the homo, no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying. Second, our speculations on the cause of the abnormality are not what matters and we must be content with ignorance. The disciples were not told why (in terms of efficient cause) the man was born blind (Jn. IX 1-3): only the final cause, that the works of God shd. be made manifest in him. This suggests that in homosexuality, as in every other tribulation, those works can be made manifest: i.e. that every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, wh. will ‘turn the necessity to glorious gain.’ Of course, the first step must be to accept any privations wh., if so disabled, we can’t lawfully get. The homo, has to accept sexual abstinence just as the poor man has to forego otherwise lawful pleasures because he wd. be unjust to his wife and children if he took them. That is merely a negative condition. What shd. the positive life of the homo, be? I wish I had a letter wh. a pious male homo., now dead, once wrote to me—but of course it was the sort of letter one takes care to destroy. He believed that his necessity could be turned to spiritual gain: that there were certain kinds of sympathy and understanding, a certain social role which mere men and mere women could not give. But it is all horribly vague— too long ago. Perhaps any homo, who humbly accepts his cross and puts himself under Divine guidance will, however, be shown the way. I am sure that any attempt to evade it (e.g. by mock-or quasi-marriage with a member of one’s own sex even if this does not lead to any carnal act) is the wrong way. Jealousy (this another homo, admitted to me) is far more rampant and deadly among them than among us. And I don’t think little concessions like wearing the clothes of the other sex in private is the right line either. It is the duties, the burdens, the characteristic virtues of the other sex, I expect, which the patient must try to cultivate. I have mentioned humility because male homos. (I don’t know about women) are rather apt, the moment they find you don’t treat them with horror and contempt, to rush to the opposite pole and start implying that they are somehow superior to the normal type. I wish I could be more definite. All I have really said is that, like all other tribulations, it must be offered to God and His guidance how to use it must be sought.

Few grown humans can normally survive a fall of much more than twenty-five or thirty feet, though there have been some notable exceptions—none more memorable perhaps than that of a British airman in World War II named Nicholas Alkemade. In the late winter of 1944, while on a bombing run over Germany, Flight Sergeant Alkemade, the tail gunner on a British Lancaster bomber, found himself in a literally tight spot when his plane was hit by enemy flak and quickly filled with smoke and flames. Tail gunners on Lancasters couldn’t wear parachutes because the space in which they operated was too confined, and by the time Alkemade managed to haul himself out of his turret and reach for his parachute, he found it was on fire and beyond salvation. He decided to leap from the plane anyway rather than perish horribly in flames, so he hauled open a hatch and tumbled out into the night. He was three miles above the ground and falling at 120 miles per hour. “It was very quiet,” Alkemade recalled years later, “the only sound being the drumming of aircraft engines in the distance, and no sensation of falling at all. I felt suspended in space.” Rather to his surprise, he found himself to be strangely composed and at peace. He was sorry to die, of course, but accepted it philosophically, as something that happened to airmen sometimes. The experience was so surreal and dreamy that Alkemade was never certain afterward whether he lost consciousness, but he was certainly jerked back to reality when he crashed through the branches of some lofty pine trees and landed with a resounding thud in a snowbank, in a sitting position. He had somehow lost both his boots, and had a sore knee and some minor abrasions, but otherwise was quite unharmed. Alkemade’s survival adventures did not quite end there. After the war, he took a job in a chemical plant in Loughborough, in the English Midlands. While he was working with chlorine gas, his gas mask came loose, and he was instantly exposed to dangerously high levels of the gas. He lay unconscious for fifteen minutes before co-workers noticed his unconscious form and dragged him to safety. Miraculously, he survived. Some time after that, he was adjusting a pipe when it ruptured and sprayed him from head to foot with sulfuric acid. He suffered extensive burns but again survived. Shortly after he returned to work from that setback, a nine-foot-long metal pole fell on him from a height and very nearly killed him, but once again he recovered. This time, however, he decided to tempt fate no longer. He took a safer job as a furniture salesman and lived out the rest of his life without incident. He died peacefully, in bed, aged sixty-four in 1987. —

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes. I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame. Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away. Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand. 'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away. I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up. When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake. Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.

We tend to be unaware that stars rise and set at all. This is not entirely due to our living in cities ablaze with electric lights which reflect back at us from our fumes, smoke, and artificial haze. When I discussed the stars with a well-known naturalist, I was surprised to learn that even a man such as he, who has spent his entire lifetime observing wildlife and nature, was totally unaware of the movements of the stars. And he is no prisoner of smog-bound cities. He had no inkling, for instance, that the Little Bear could serve as a reliable night clock as it revolves in tight circles around the Pole Star (and acts as a celestial hour-hand at half speed - that is, it takes 24 hours rather than 12 for a single revolution). I wondered what could be wrong. Our modern civilization does not ignore the stars only because most of us can no longer see them. There are definitely deeper reasons. For even if we leave the sulphurous vapours of our Gomorrahs to venture into a natural landscape, the stars do not enter into any of our back-to-nature schemes. They simply have no place in our outlook any more. We look at them, our heads flung back in awe and wonder that they can exist in such profusion. But that is as far as it goes, except for the poets. This is simply a 'gee whiz' reaction. The rise in interest in astrology today does not result in much actual star-gazing. And as for the space programme's impact on our view of the sky, many people will attentively follow the motions of a visible satellite against a backdrop of stars whose positions are absolutely meaningless to them. The ancient mythological figures sketched in the sky were taught us as children to be quaint 'shepherds' fantasies' unworthy of the attention of adult minds. We are interested in the satellite because we made it, but the stars are alien and untouched by human hands - therefore vapid. To such a level has our technological mania, like a bacterial solution in which we have been stewed from birth, reduced us. It is only the integral part of the landscape which can relate to the stars. Man has ceased to be that. He inhabits a world which is more and more his own fantasy. Farmers relate to the skies, as well as sailors, camel caravans, and aerial navigators. For theirs are all integral functions involving the fundamental principle - now all but forgotten - of orientation. But in an almost totally secular and artificial world, orientation is thought to be un- necessary. And the numbers of people in insane asylums or living at home doped on tranquilizers testifies to our aimless, drifting metaphysic. And to our having forgotten orientation either to seasons (except to turn on the air- conditioning if we sweat or the heating system if we shiver) or to direction (our one token acceptance of cosmic direction being the wearing of sun-glasses because the sun is 'over there'). We have debased what was once the integral nature of life channelled by cosmic orientations - a wholeness - to the ennervated tepidity of skin sensations and retinal discomfort. Our interior body clocks, known as circadian rhythms, continue to operate inside us, but find no contact with the outside world. They therefore become ingrown and frustrated cycles which never interlock with our environment. We are causing ourselves to become meaningless body machines programmed to what looks, in its isolation, to be an arbitrary set of cycles. But by tearing ourselves from our context, like the still-beating heart ripped out of the body of an Aztec victim, we inevitably do violence to our psyches. I would call the new disease, with its side effect of 'alienation of the young', dementia temporalis.

It was a soft, quiet kiss, that much more startling for its gentleness from this big, rough man. No big clacking together of positive and negative poles—a simple brush of lips, but more than that. Something that had been building between them for two days now, ever since she’d tripped over him on her way out of the building.

Kara fully accepted that her conscience might burst through the wall later in life, bearded, emaciated, and ready to wreak havoc on whatever successful position in life lacking a conscience had elevated her to. But as she gripped the pole, she had to admit it was a lot easier to focus on sports when you didn’t give a damn about anything in life that was actually important.

The lion's share of individuals who are thinking about a story covering or paint for their carport, for the most part, envision an exhausting ship dark shading. On the off chance that you need to have a carport that looks better since you need to offer it quicker or you truly get a kick out of the chance to claim decent things, at that point this dim shading can't do anything for you. The uncovered cement is as of now dim so why considerably try touching it up? All things considered, if this is your state of mind, at that point you are in awesome good fortune. Presently, you can have an epoxy floor paint in a greater number of hues than you at any point thought conceivable. In actuality, you can have any shading you wish in the event that you are sufficiently quiet to look at all potential outcomes. Presently, what are the things you ought to recollect when you pick? There are three boss approaches to coordinate hues that individuals need to make as they paint their floor. To start with, they will get a shading that would match be able to or compliment the house paint. This can truly enhance the controlling claim each time the carport entryway is opened. Many individuals will go for a shading that matches their vehicle. This is extremely unsurprising for individuals who possess a show auto or only an auto that they are exceptionally pleased with. A complimentary shading can really make your "road pole" seem like it just fell off the showroom floor. At last, in settling on the shade of your epoxy carport floor covering, many individuals pick a shading that would cover be able to up stains and earth. Cases of these hues are earth tones or shading that they might be inclined toward. Regardless, it's your own inclination for your carport since you claim it. On the off chance that you have any arrangements to chip away at your autos or whatever else inside the carport at that point consider my recommendation. Lift a shading that will appear any nuts or fasteners you drop regardless of how little. More often than not, this is a light shading. As you end up plainly more seasoned and your visual perception has debased, you will be grateful to me for this wisdom. Any shade of your decision would make be able to this venture an extraordinary movement this mid-year. When you prepare to do this venture make sure you invest the required measure of the energy of the prep work for the floor. Like all paint extends, the fallen angel is in the arrangement with regards to landing a position that looks extraordinary as well as keeps going quite a while. Invest the energy in the prep and you will be content with the outcomes.

The date was October 27, 1915. The name of the ship was Endurance. The position was 69°5´ South, 51°30´ West—deep in the icy wasteland of the Antarctic’s treacherous Weddell Sea, just about midway between the South Pole and the nearest known outpost of humanity, some 1,200 miles away. Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected. They were for all practical purposes alone in the frozen Antarctic seas. It had been very nearly a year since they had last been in contact with civilization. Nobody in the outside world knew they were in trouble, much less where they were. They had no radio transmitter with which to notify any would-be rescuers, and it is doubtful that any rescuers could have reached them even if they had been able to broadcast an SOS. It was 1915, and there were no helicopters, no Weasels, no Sno-Cats, no suitable planes. Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out. Shackleton

We have never solved the mystery of ice ages in the tropics, nor the equally strange mystery of the growth of corals and warm-climate flora in the polar zones. [...] It became obvious to me, as I reviewed these problems, and went back over the controversies that had marked their consideration, that a sort of common denominator was present. [...] [S]omebody usually tried to explain the particular problem in terms of changes in the position of the poles. This, I found, was the common denominator. The authors of such theories, unfortunately, were never able to prove their assumptions. The opponents of the notion of polar change always managed to point out fallacies that seemed decisive. At the same time, no one was able to reconcile all the evidence in the different fields with the idea that the poles have always been situated where they are now on the earth's surface. The theory here presented would solve these problems by supposing changes in the positions of the poles. Campbell has suggested that the changes have occurred not by reason of changes in the position of the earth's axis, but simply through a sliding of its crust.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says, “Give a man a pole, and he’ll catch a fish a week. Tell him what bait to use, and he’ll catch a fish a day. Show him how and where to fish, and he’ll have fish to eat for a lifetime.” The flipside to that proverb is that the man or woman without a pole, without bait, and without knowledge of the how and the where runs a serious risk of famine. Similarly, emotionally ignorant people with little understanding of how and where emotions affect their lives will have an exceedingly difficult time reeling in success. On the other hand, those who use the right tools and strategies for harnessing their emotions put themselves in a position to prosper. That same truth applies to individuals, organizations, and even entire countries.

…the end of the Cold War has brought not prosperity for all but a pitiless economic struggle for pole-position on the food chain of information capitalism. The neoliberalism and neocolonialism of the 1990s are the direct heir of the Manchester liberalism and colonialism of the 1890s, the only difference being that whereas Victorian rentiers extracted their Imperial textile-rents from the labor of the Great Unwashed, their postmodern analogues on Wall Street speculate on the viewing-rents of the Great Unwatched.

the greatest secret and the greatest gift any of us can be offered is the chance for two ‘similar’ people to meet. It happens so rarely—it must be because nature uses all its force and cunning to prevent such harmony—perhaps it’s that creation and the renewal of life need the tension that is generated between two people of opposite temperaments who seek each other out. Like an alternating current . . . an exchange of energy between positive and negative poles, think of all the despair and the blind hope that lie behind this duality.

Behind the poster wall a ferocious battle was happening in the cloud, in utter silence. The two sides were GAN’s positive and negative poles, the detective network and the forger network. The goal of the forger network was to retrain and upgrade itself to generate more realistic images that could fool the anti-fake detectors, based on feedback from the detective network, in order to minimize the loss function value of the generated image. Conversely, the detective network strived to maximize the loss function value. This contest, with the stakes rising every millisecond, would repeat itself millions of times until both sides reached a certain balance.

Musical ideas opposed first to intellectual ideas: veiled in shadow, opaque to the intellect (to the light). They have an 'obscure surface' (Proust), yet they are resistant in their own manner: distinct, unequal value and signification--less identical to themselves than non-different. Selfsame and not sameness; consistent, 'differentiated'... This conceptualization of the idea applies to notions of the sensible: like music, the sensible gives 'notions without equivalent': light, sound, relief, sensuousness... These ideas exist without intelligible sunlight and are related to visible light: a frame [membrure] of the visible. Secret, unveiled and veiled, 'alogical' (Scheler) essences, some addressing the aesthesiological body, others the libidinal body... What is fundamental: under any intellectual idea, penetrable, graspable by the intuitus mentis, there is one of those entities that is not a matter of positives but differences, 'differentiated' and collectively hidden from the night or from the void of the soul--i.e., their consistency, the possibility of identifying each one, is primarily due to their non-difference with themselves because they are poles of carnal life = invisible frame or structure of the visible--vision participates in these cogitatio caeca [blind thoughts], entails a secret, more than empirical visibility.

Brother, there’s reason to,” the friar returned. “Think—Jacek wished to send his son away To join the army—then he had him stay In Lithuania. Why? He’s needed here At home! You’ve heard the widespread talk, I’m sure— That I’ve brought fitful news about. Well, brother, It’s time to say it all to one another. This is momentous! War is here! A war For Poland! War, yes! We’ll be Poles once more! When I arrived here on my secret mission The vanguard was already in position Over the Niemen. Napoleon has grown A host such as the world has never known! And with the French there is a Polish force! Our Józef, our Dąbrowski, and of course All our white eagles! At the Emperor’s sign They’ll cross the river—and Poland lives again!

The most a historian can do is to take the particular processes of the historical world which he is supposed to elucidate, and let these events be seen in the light of higher and more general forces which are present behind and develop in these events; his task is to show the concrete sub specie aeterni. But he is not in a position to determine the essence of this higher and eternal force itself or to determine the relationship it bears to concrete reality. Thus he can only say that in historical life he beholds a world which, though unified, is bipolar: a world which needs both poles to be as it appears to us. Physical nature and intellect, causality according to law and creative spontaneity, are these two poles, which stand in such sharp and apparently irreconcilable opposition. But historical life, as it unfolds between them, is always influenced simultaneously by both, even if not always by both to the same degree. The historian’s task would be an easy one if he could content himself with this straightforward dualistic interpretation of the relationship between physical nature and intellect, as it corresponds to the Christian and ethical tradition of earlier centuries. Then he would have nothing more to do than describe the struggle between light and darkness, between sin and forgiveness, between the world of intellect and that of the senses. He would be a war-correspondent; and taking up his position (naturally enough) in the intellectual camp he would be able to distinguish friend from foe with certainty.

The roadside vendors had taken up their positions, tent poles dug in and World War II parachutes strung over them.

The ethnics caught up in the racial struggies oi the post-war period in Chicago were in the unenviable position of people who had the rules changed on them in mid-game. The Poles who settled Calumet Park as Sobieski Park had created their neighborhood enclaves under certain assumptions, all of which got changed when the environmentalist East Coast WASP internationalist establishment took power in 1941. Not only hadn’t they been informed of the rule change, they were doubly vulnerable because compared to their opponents who were further along on the scale of assimilation, they didn’t have a clear sense of themselves as Poles or Catholics or Americans or “white” people. They also feared the sexual mores of the invading black hordes but could not articulate this fear in polite language. As a result, each attempt to explain their position drove them further beyond the pale of acceptable public discourse. More often than not, the only people who were articulating their position were the American Civil Liberties Union and American Friends Service Committee agents sent into their neighborhoods to spy on them. One AFSC spy reported that fear of intermarriage “caused the intensity of feelings” in Trumbull Park.* Black attempts to use the community swimming pool were similarly seen in a sexual light. The ACLU agent who was paid to infiltrate bars in South Deering reported that the real motivation behind Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision mandating desegregation of Southern schools, was to move “niggers into every neighborhood” to intermarry and thereby send the “whole white race . . . downhill.” Deprived of their ethnic designation as Catholic by a Church that was either hostile (as in the case of Catholic intellectuals) or indifferent (as in the case of the bishops and their chancery officials), Chicago ethnics, attempting to be good Americans, chose to become “white” instead, a transformation that not only guaranteed that they would lose their battle in the court of public opinion, but one which also guaranteed that they would go out of existence as well, through the very assimilation process being proposed by their enemies.

Note: Dr. Lawrence Polinkis who analyzed clinical data from American men and women at Antarctica's Mcmurdo station Amundsen Scott's South Pole station posits specifically that the memory loss and other cognitive impairments he observed were related to a decline in levels of the thyroid hormone T3, which helps determine how the body uses energy. Thyroid hormones help the body regulate temperature and set its circadian rhythms. It's not difficult to see how extreme cold and the prolonged absence of sunshine might throw a system off. This is just a hypothesis - the causes of the syndrome remain puzzling more the a century after Cook first described it.

FROM OTHER SOURCES Pre–race and Venue Homework Get hold of any history of past events at the venue, plus any information that the conducting club may have about weather and expected conditions. Go to the weather bureau and get history for the area. Speak to sailors from your class who have this venue as their home club or who have sailed there on a number of occasions. Boat, Sails, Gear Preparation Checklist Many times the outcome of a race is as dependent on what you have done prior to the race as to what you do out on the course. Sometimes no matter how good your tactics and strategy are a simple breakage could render all that useless. Hull – make sure that your hull is well sanded and polished, centreboard strips are in good condition, venturis if fitted are working efficiently, buoyancy tanks are dry and there are no extraneous pieces of kit in your boat which adds unwanted weight. Update any gear that looks tired or worn especially control lines. Mast, boom and poles – check that all halyards, stays and trapeze wires are not worn or damaged and that pins are secure, knots tight and that anything that can tear a sail or injure flesh is taped. Mark the full hoist position on all halyards. Deck hardware – check all cam cleats for spring tension and tape anything that may cause a sail tear or cut legs hands and arms. Check the length of all sheets and control lines and shorten anything that is too long. This not only reduces weight but also minimises clutter. Have marks on sheets and stick or draw numbers and reference scales for the jib tracks, outhaul and halyards so that you can easily duplicate settings that you know are fast in various conditions. Centreboard and rudder – ensure that all nicks and gouges are filled and sanded and the surfaces are polished and most importantly that rudder safety clips are working. Sails – select the correct battens for the day’s forecast. Write on the deck, with a china graph pencil, things like the starting sequence, courses, tide times and anything else that will remind you to sail fast. Tools and spares – carry a shackle key with screwdriver head on your person along with some spare shackles and short lengths of rope or different diameters. A tool like a Leatherman can be very useful to deal with unexpected breakages that can occur even in the best prepared boat.

Based on my theory, the Absolute, Supreme Being consists of the Being and the Nonbeing. The Being is part of the Absolute and is not absolute, but the Being is that which was traditionally considered God. The creation of the World is almost equally contingent upon the Being as it is upon the Nonbeing (nothingness). Not only can God not be omnipotent without the Nonbeing or absolute void, but the World’s creation depends almost equally upon these two poles of the Absolute. The Being is the positive pole of the Absolute, and the Nonbeing is the negative. Zero (0) is the wormhole between the Absolute immaterial realm of reality and material reality or the Universe. The Zero, as such, is the Source of Potential Infinity, the Perpetual Motion Machine of Existence, and, in a way, the Absolute itself.

The imperial Russian government's ineffectiveness in World War I had forced the tsar to abdicate in 1917. Following the February Revolution in that year the Provisional Government replaced the tsarist regime, but as a result of the October Revolution the Bolsheviks seized power, executing the tsar and his family, and the Russian Empire collapsed. The Ukrainian Central Rada, or governing council, proclaimed Ukraine an autonomous republic, but meanwhile the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, still at war with Russia, drove out the Russian army and occupied Ukraine. The Germans supported a coup led by Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945), who in April 1918 declared himself the Hetman of All Ukraine, a position he held until the following December, when, following the end of the war and the withdrawal of the German army, he was deposed and fled. It is here, in December 1918, that the novel White Guard begins, in a Ukraine damaged by World War I and engulfed in the Russian Civil War, with all of its confusion, violence, and chaos. As the novel unfolds, the Germans have mostly withdrawn and the hetman, essentially a German puppet, is under siege by Ukrainian nationalist and socialist forces led by Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura (1879-1926), who fought unsuccessfully for Ukraine's independence following the Revolution of 1917. Petlyura's nationalism made him an enemy of the Bolsheviks, and his socialist ideas made him an enemy of the Whites, who were opposed to the Communists. The Russian forces (both political and military) who became known as the Whites fought against the Red Army in the Civil War from 1918 to 1921. Their military arm was known as the White Army, or White Guard. Ideologically quite diverse, the Whites were not so much a single army as a confederation of counterrevolutionary forces loosely united by their anti-bolshevism, and to a lesser extent by the idea of preserving and restoring the Russian monarchy and Russian Empire, as well as by their anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism. After the events described in the novel, the Soviet army recaptured Ukraine, driving Petlyura out, and held Kiev in 1919 from February 6 until August 31. From August 31 until about December 16, forces under Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947), a general in the imperial Russian army before the Revolution and one of the leaders of the Whites in the Civil War, were in charge. Then, from December 16 the Soviet government was back in the city until May 6, 1920, when it was occupied by the Poles, who on June 11 were forced out by the Red Army. Three centers of power, revealing the basic vectors of all the coups, had taken shape in Kiev: the military district headquarters (which included counterrevolutionaries, monarchists, and White Guards), the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (Bolsheviks and other Communists), and the Ukrainian Central Rada (national-ist, independence-oriented, and Petlyurist).

No Need for Time Before the Creation of the World Here is one more quotation representative of the way Stephen Hawking thought: “The role played by time at the beginning of the Universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a grand designer and revealing how the Universe created itself. As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole Universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in. People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect the answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the Universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the Universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth—the Earth is a sphere that doesn’t have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.” In its absolute state, beyond the World, the Being is immaterial, and the Nonbeing is an absolute vacuum, nothingness, or emptiness. In the primordial state of the Absolute, the Being and the Nonbing become the same—the Nonbeing. There is no time or space in the absolute realm beyond the World. Timeless “time” is the potential for Eternity. Eternity is beyond time because it is all time, past and future. Spaceless “space” or nothingness is the infinite potential for space. Infinity is beyond space because infinity is all space, past and future. Creation or recreation of the World (Universe) activates the two poles of the Absolute. Creation of the World is the salvation of the Absolute. Absolute is absolute potential. The activity of the Being enveloping the Nonbeing (Nothingness) transforms the Being and the Nonbeing into the World (Universe). When the Absolute transforms into the World, the Being becomes positive, and the Nonbeing becomes negative. The Being is positive “energy.” The Nonbeing is negative “energy.” Zero is the point of equilibrium between the Being and the Nonbeing. Zero is the passage (wormhole) between the primordial state of the Absolute and the World or Universe. Before the spacetime continuum, plus and minus are the same: + = – Before the creation, Absolute is 0 (+ – = 0) At the point of the World Creation, the Being envelopes the Nonbeing: + 0 – The Being cannot envelop the whole of the Nonbeing because Nothingness is infinite in its potential. The Being is infinite in its potential, too. (+ [plus] is the Being; – [minus] the Nonbeing; 0 [Zero] is the Absolute) The primordial state of the Absolute is immaterial, spaceless, and timeless. The primordial state of the Absolute is absolute potential. In its potential, the Absolute is infinite and eternal. Absolute can only exercise its potential and power in the infinite number of possibilities and universes or worlds it can transform into.

deep--Was there--could there be a God at all? a real being who might actually hear his prayer? In this crowd of houses and shops and churches, amidst buying and selling, and ploughing and praising and backbiting, this endless pursuit of ends and of means to ends, while yet even the wind that blew where it listed blew under laws most fixed, and the courses of the stars were known to a hair's-breadth, --was there--could there be a silent invisible God working his own will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there--could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him--poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to undertake a work he neither could perform nor had the courage to forsake, when out of the misery of the grimy little cellar of his consciousness he cried aloud for light and something to make a man of him? For now that Thomas had begun to doubt like an honest being, every ugly thing within him began to show itself to his awakened probity.

concentrates on the positive, rather than the negative, pole. Insofar as that is so, it mainly constitutes a relabeling. Instead of studying the risks associated with family conflict, the protective effects of family harmony can be the focus.

Jewish intellectual and cultural activities also flourished under the monarchs. The Jewish astronomer Abraham Zacuto won an appointment to a chair in astronomy and astrology at the University of Salamanca, the oldest and most respected university in Spain and normally closed to Jews. His astronomical studies contributed to the voyages of discovery of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, among others. He personally consulted with Columbus and advised the monarchs on the advantages of the voyage. In 1497 Zacuto created the first mariner’s astrolabe. Astrolabes that allowed for measurements of latitude by sighting the pole star at night had long been in use. Such astrolabes, however, became ineffective near or below the equator and could not be used at night. Zacuto’s astrolabe allowed for measurements to be made using the position of the sun. The device he designed was the first one small and sturdy enough to be used abroad ships. He personally handed one to Vasco da Gama, who used it on his first voyage to India.5 After the expulsion Zacuto would become court astronomer to the king of Portugal. The twentieth-century Portuguese monarch Manoel II said of him: “Truly the great astrologer . . . gave grand, enormous service to Portugal, his knowledge. Zacuto’s science served not only the Portuguese, but also Spain, beginning with Columbus, who possessed a copy of Almanach Perpetuum.”6 Zacuto managed to evade the 1497 Portuguese mass conversions of Jews. He and his son escaped to North Africa, where they reached Tunis in 1504 after twice being imprisoned by pirates. He died in 1515 in Jerusalem, where he had taught in a rabbinical seminary.7

I earned good money,’ he said. ‘I was driving in good teams, I was winning races, I had pole positions … basically, not a lot to prove. So what is the point to take still the risk? That was my question to myself last week. But the other side is, what is the rest of your life?

I’ve known Danny all my life.” She spoke slowly, as though she was working out what to say. “I’ve known you for less than a month. Are you asking me to choose between you?

Loving you, Jon, is like having an illness. It swept across me like a fever, burning me up. When I’m with you, I can’t think about anything else, you consume my every thought and waking moment. But I can’t live like this. It’s either the heights of ecstasy or the depths of hell, and I go seesawing between them.

Lying in bed next to the wrong woman is a million times lonelier than lying in bed alone.

In endeavoring to answer the question, "Is Life Worth Living?" William James pointed out that the psychological conditions that supplement the biologists' observations upon parasitism show that organic activities of the highest sort oscillate between two poles: positive and negative, pleasure and pain, good and bad; and that an attempt to live in terms of the positive, the pleasurable, and the plentiful alone destroys the very polarity needed for the full expression of life. "It is, indeed, a remarkable fact," observed James, "that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate love of life; they seem on the contrary to give it a keener zest. The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite us; our hour of triumph is what brings a void. Not the Jews of the Captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.

Unthinking aggression was genetically positive for clawing humanity to the top of the ecological totem pole, except that it ended up destroying that totem pole. With high technology, strike-first aggression proved unworkable.

The first experimental determination that the speed of light was not infinite was made by the seventeenth-century Danish astronomer, Ole Romer. In 1676, Romer was attempting to solve one of the great scientific and engineering challenges of the age; telling the time at sea. Finding an accurate clock was essential to enable sailors to navigate safely across the oceans, but mechanical clocks based on pendulums or springs were not good at being bounced around on the ocean waves and soon drifted out of sync. In order to pinpoint your position on Earth you need the latitude and longitude. Latitude is easy; in the Northern Hemisphere, the angle of the North Star (Polaris) above the horizon is your latitude. In the Southern Hemisphere, things are more complicated because there is no star directly over the South Pole, but it is still possible with a little astronomical know-how and trigonometry to determine your latitude with sufficient accuracy for safe navigation.

Work-life balance is not something we can find. That’s because we use words as if this balance were a noun when in reality it’s an action verb. We cannot find balance because it’s a continual action with ongoing adjustments, just like the tightrope walker who constantly moves his pole to keep from falling

Research has linked such feelings of powerlessness to the kinds of health problems plaguing Bayview and many other communities around the world. This research shows that members of poor communities do not merely experience higher levels of violence; they are also more likely to have high blood pressure and frequent periods of increased heart rate, which contribute to a higher mortality rate. What’s more, similar health problems have been shown to afflict the least powerful members of nonhuman primate species. Taken together, these and other findings suggest that the psychology of powerlessness can wreak havoc on people who sit low on the totem pole of any social structure. “Poverty, and the poor health of the poor, is about much more than simply not having enough money,” says Robert M. Sapolsky, professor of neurology at Stanford University. “It’s about the stressors caused by a society that tolerates leaving so many of its members so far behind.

Did you know that when you hold up a compass and the arrow points north, it’s not really pointing to the North Pole? The North Pole is the geographic top of the earth. It’s a fixed position that never changes. That’s why it is called “true north.” And it is from this fixed position that mapmakers draw their maps. Your compass, on the other hand, does not point to True North. Rather, it points to a magnetic field that is roughly 1,300 miles away from the North Pole. This is called “Magnetic North.

that the B 2 charges both its wing leading edge and jet exhaust stream to a high voltage. Positive ions emitted from its wing leading edge would produce a positively charged parabolic ion sheath ahead of the craft while negative ions injected into its exhaust stream would set up a trailing negative space charge with a potential difference in excess of 15 million volts. According to electrogravitic research carried out by Tesla and T. Townsend Brown, such a differential space charge would set up an artificial gravity field that would induce a reactionless force on the aircraft in the direction of the positive pole. An electrogravitic drive of this sort could allow the B 2 to function with over unity propulsion efficiency when cruising at supersonic velocities. On March 9, 1992, Aviation Week And Space Technology magazine made a surprising disclosure that the B 2 electrostatically charges its exhaust stream and the leading edges of its wing like body.

The Hermetic Masters long since discovered that while the Principle of Rhythm was invariable, and ever in evidence in mental phenomena, still there were two planes of its manifestation so far as mental phenomena are concerned. They discovered that there were two general planes of Consciousness, the Lower and the Higher, the understanding of which fact enabled them to rise to the higher plane and thus escape the swing of the Rhythmic pendulum which manifested on the lower plane. In other words, the swing of the pendulum occurred on the Unconscious Plane, and the Consciousness was not affected. This they call the Law of Neutralization. Its operations consist in the raising of the Ego above the vibrations of the Unconscious Plane of mental activity, so that the negative-swing of the pendulum is not manifested in consciousness, and therefore they are not affected. It is akin to rising above a thing and letting it pass beneath you. The Hermetic Master, or advanced student, polarizes himself at the desired pole, and by a process akin to "refusing" to participate in the backward swing, or, if you prefer, a "denial" of its influence over him, he stands firm in his polarized position, and allows the mental pendulum to swing back along the unconscious plane. All individuals who have attained any degree of self-mastery, accomplish this, more or less unknowingly, and by refusing to allow their moods and negative mental states to affect them, they apply the Law of Neutralization. The Master, however, carries this to a much higher degree of proficiency, and by the use of his Will he attains a degree of Poise and Mental Firmness almost impossible of belief on the part of those who allow themselves to be swung backward and forward by the mental pendulum of moods and feelings.

Never Let Me Down" (feat. Jay-Z, J-Ivy) [Intro:] Yeah Grandmama Told you I won't let you down Told you I won't let this rap game change me, right? [Chorus:] When it comes to being true, at least true to me One thing I found,one thing I found Oh no you'll neva let me down, Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) [Jay-Z:] Yo, yo first I snatched the street then I snatched the charts, First had they ear now I hav they're heart, Rappers came and went, I've been hear from the start, Seen them put it together Watch them take it apart, See the Rovers roll up wit ribbons I've seen them re-poed, re-sold and re-driven So when I reload, he holds #1 position When u hot I'm hot And when your feet cold, mines is sizzelin It's plain to see Nigga's can't f*** wit me Cuz ima be that nigga fo life This is not an image This is God given This is hard liven Mixed wit crystal sipping It's the most consistent Hov Give you the most hits you can fit inside a whole disc and Nigga I'm home on these charts, y'all niggaz visitin It's Hov tradition, Jeff Gordan of rap I'm back to claim pole position, holla at ya boy [Chorus] [Kanye West:] I get down for my grandfather who took my momma Made her sit that seat where white folks ain't wanna us to eat At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in With that in my blood I was born to be different Now niggas can't make it to ballots to choose leadership But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership That's why I hear new music And I just don't be feeling it Racism still alive they just be concealing it But I know they don't want me in the damn club They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam's club I did dirt and went to church to get my hands scrubbed Swear I've been baptised at least 3 or 4 times But in the land where nigga's praise Yukons and getting paid It gon' take a lot more than coupons to get us saved Like it take a lot more than do-rags to get your waves Noting sadder than that day my girl father past away So I promised to Mr Rany I'm gonna marry your daughter And u know I gotta thank u for they way that she was brought up And I know that u were smiling when u see that car I bought her And u sent tears from heaven when u seen my car get balled up But I can't complaint what the accident did to my Left Eye Cuz look what a accident did to Left Eye First Aaliyah and now romeo must die I know a got angels watching me from the other side

Every office is political. For years, I naively thought I worked at a place that wasn’t. I saw our office as more or less fair, more or less healthy, and highly inclusive—perhaps overly so—in decision making. People competed with themselves, I’d proudly tell prospective recruits, not with one another. And I meant it. All those good things I believed? They were true—but only to a point, I realize with hindsight. We competed with ourselves, but also with one another. Our bosses had favorites, and we noticed. We grumbled about promotions that didn’t seem deserved, assignments that didn’t seem fair. People subtly found ways to elbow one another out of pole position for C-suite attention. Our office was political. Of course it was.

PART1: To say Sean felt stressed was a huge understatement. Give him a cliff to scale or a bar brawl to break up. Hell, give him a freight train to try to outrun, anything but having to pull off being the best man for his brother Finn’s wedding—including but not limited to keeping said brother from losing his collective shit. It’s not like Sean didn’t understand. Getting married was a big deal. Okay, so he didn’t fully understand, not really, but he wanted to. He really did. And how funny was that? Sean O’Riley, younger brother, hook-up king extraordinaire, was suddenly tired of the game and found himself aching for his own forever after. “We almost there?” Finn asked him from the backseat of the vehicle Sean was driving. “Yep.” “And you double checked on our reservations?” “Yep.” “No, I’m serious, man,” Finn said. “Remember when you took me to Vegas and when we got there, every hotel was booked and we had to stay at the Magic-O motel?” “Man, a guy screws up one time . . .” “We had a stripper pole in our rooms, Sean.” Sean sighed. “Okay, but to be fair, that was back when I was still in my stupid phase. I promise you that we have reservations—no stripper poles. I even double and triple checked, just like you asked me a hundred and one times. Pru, I hope you realize you’re marrying a nag.” Pru, Finn’s fiancée, laughed from the shotgun position. “Hey, one of us has to be the nag in this relationship, and it isn’t me.” Sean held up a palm and Pru leaned over the console to give him a high-five. “Just so you know,” Sean said to Finn, “I didn’t pick this place, your woman did.” “True story,” Pru said. “The B&B’s closed to the public this entire weekend. Sean booked the whole place for our bachelor/bachelorette party weekend extravaganza.” “I superheroed this thing,” Sean said. Finn snorted and let loose of a small smile because they both knew that for most of Sean’s childhood, that’s what he’d aspired to be, a superhero—sans tights though. Tights had never been Sean’s thing, especially after suffering through them for two seasons in high school football before he’d mercifully cracked his clavicle.

Mesmerizing. Briony is blinding me with her raw sexuality. Owning every bit I’ve ever attempted to embody her with as she slides across that stage, gripping that pole while her tight little body drops to a split. Her hips roll, an intoxicating swirl of pure sex, before her cat-like prowl focuses on me. Her body is liquid desire as she moves. Waves of delicious art penetrating the confines of the room, stunning them into her trance. There’s nothing refined about it. Her sexuality is primal and overtly obvious. Nothing subdued by the confines of social norms. Here, in this club, she can be exactly who she needs to be, with no inhibitions. She marches confidently down the stage to the thumping bass of the erotic notes that reverberate within my chest. As she gains ground on me, my gaze quickly falls over to the men. Pools of saliva might as well be beneath their positions. They’re fixated on her. Her sexual aura captivating every set of eyes. All but one. Cal takes a step back, his hand reaching into his pocket when his phone lights up in his dress pants. His slicked back hair falls onto his forehead like angry daggers as the wrinkles there form hard, harsh lines. His eyes narrow in on his screen as a grin grows wild on my face. The crusted blood coated with fresh rolls of oozing red, painting me as the madman I truly am at the delightful realization. It’s out.

I was chuckling with glee at how mad he was going to be, but, sitting here now, the only one who’s being tortured is me.

He’s like four seasons in one day, a force of nature that contains both chaos and calm in one bright, beautiful shell.

Why, then, should a story as absurd as Pizzagate prove so ‘sticky’? Quite simply, it ticked all the conspiracy theory boxes, and in so doing ticked many of the boxes for a great story. It evoked strong emotion through a narrative of supposedly suffering children. It posited a world clearly divided between good and evil. And in triggering fear in an environment dominated by social and political uncertainty it played on people’s natural tendency to pay more attention to negative coverage in the media when faced with news that induces anxiety, whether a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a financial crash – or an evil conspiracy.

So instead, we started having conversations where we entered with the intention just to learn from the other side. And we found that in doing so, it made our own positions better, and our own views stronger, more reasoned and nuanced. Second, we realised that a lot of our assumptions about the other side turned out to be wrong.

One final way to counter polarisation is to formulate a markedly different position from our usual one and come up with reasons for it. Can we understand why someone would hold such a view? It may be different from ours, but is it genuinely worse – or perhaps better

Mood-swing always oscillates between positive and negative poles.

When the sun came up fully, the ice field began to glow in mauves and corals, a breathtaking sight. There was one iceberg with a double peak about two hundred feet high. To Lucy Duff Gordon the illuminated bergs looked like giant opals, and May Futrelle noted how they glistened like rock quartz, though one of them, she thought, was doubtless the murderer. The scene reminded Hugh Woolner of photographs of an Antarctic expedition. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden raised a few smiles in Boat 3 by exclaiming to his nurse, “Oh Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it!” Daisy Spedden recorded in her diary that as their boat was rowed toward rescue, “the tragedy of the situation sank deep into our hearts as we saw the Carpathia standing amidst the few bits of wreckage with the pitifully small number of lifeboats coming up to her from different directions.” After racing through the night to the Titanic’s distress position, the Carpathia had spotted Fourth Officer Boxhall’s green flares and had headed for them. “Shut down your engines and take us aboard,” Boxhall shouted up as the Carpathia drew alongside Boat 2 at 4:10 a.m. “I have only one sailor,” he added, as the boat tossed on the choppy swells. “All right,” came back the voice of the Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron.

It has to be for whiteness, at any point in time or space, to enact its ultimate expression: elasticity. Whiteness, the idea, the identity tethered to no nation of origin, no place, no gods, exists only if it can expand enough to defend its position over every group that challenges the throne. White is being European until it needs to also be Irish because of the Polish who can eventually be white if it means that Koreans cannot. For that situational dominance to reproduce itself, there must be a steady pole. That pole is blackness.

On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.

Polish Approach” to World Cups and Euros: A theory posited by a Polish waiter in London who once told us: “We Poles always have a defined rhythm to the three group stage games we play at every major tournament in which we are inevitably eliminated. They even have ritualistic names: Match day one: “The opening game in which everything is possible.” Match day two: “The must-win game in which our team’s survival is on the line.” Match day three: “A dead rubber Game of Honor in which the result is irrelevant because the team is already eliminated.

Let’s go, I’ll walk you down and get you cleaned up.” “You will?” He slanted me a look before picking up his trekking poles and backpack, slipping the straps on, then maneuvering the two sticks through crisscrossing cords on his back, leaving his arms free. Finally aiming his body back up the trail toward me, he held out his hand. I hesitated but set my forearm into his open palm, and I watched as some emotion I didn’t initially recognize slid over his face. “I meant your backpack, angel. I’ll take it for you. The trail’s not wide enough for both of us to go down at the same time,” he said, his voice sounding oddly hoarse. Maybe if I hadn’t been in so much pain, and been so damn cranky, I would’ve been embarrassed. But I wasn’t, so I nodded, shrugged, and gingerly tried to take my backpack off. Luckily, I just started to shimmy a strap off when I felt the weight leave my shoulders as he tugged it away. “Are you sure?” “Positive” was all he replied with. “Come on. We’ve got half an hour to get back to the trailhead.” My whole body slumped. “Half an hour?” I’d thought I had… ten minutes max. My landlord pressed his lips together and nodded. Was he trying not to laugh? I wasn’t sure because he turned around and started heading down the path ahead of me. But I was pretty sure I saw his shoulders shaking a little. “Let me know when you want water” was one of the only two things he said on the way down. The other being, “Are you humming what I think you’re humming?” And me replying with “Yes.” “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” I had no shame. I tripped twice, and he turned around both times, but I gave him a tight smile and acted like nothing had happened. Like he predicted, thirty minutes later, when I was basically wheezing and he was acting like this was a stroll down a paved path, I spotted the parking lot and almost cried. We’d made it. I’d made it. And my hands hurt even worse from how dry the cuts were, and my elbows felt the same way, and I was sure my knees would too, but their joints were so bad, they didn’t have room to wonder about any other pain. But just as I started heading toward my car, Rhodes slipped his fingers around my biceps and steered me toward his work truck. He didn’t say another word as he unlocked it and dropped the tailgate, shooting me a look over his shoulder as he patted it briefly before heading around to the passenger door. I went straight for the tailgate and eyed it, trying to figure out how to sit on it without using my hands to boost myself up. That was how he found me: staring at it and trying to decide if I went face-first and shimmied up on my stomach, I could wiggle around and sit up on my butt eventually. “I’m trying to figure out how to—okay.” He scooped me up, one arm under the backs of my knees, the other around my lower back, and planted me on the truck. In a sitting position. Like it was no big deal. I smiled at him. “Thanks.” I would’ve figured it out, but it was the thought that counted.

Consciously or unconsciously, social dominance is always on our minds. We display typical primate facial expressions, such as retracting our lips to expose our teeth and gums when we need to clarify our social position. The human smile derives from an appeasement signal, which is why women generally smile more than men. In myriad ways our behavior, even at its friendliest, hints at the possibility of aggression. We bring flowers or a bottle of wine when invading other peoples’ territories, and we greet each other by waving an open hand, a gesture thought to originate from showing the absence of weapons. We formalize our hierarchies’ through body postures and tone of voice to the point that an experienced observer can tell in only a few minutes who is high or low on the totem pole. We talk about human behaviors such as “ass-kissing,” ”groveling,” and “chest-pounding” that constitute official behavioral categories in my field of study, suggesting a past in which hierarchies were acted out more physically.

a sufficient number of people believe that men make better leaders than women, they will behave towards men in ways that make it easier for them to lead, and to women in ways that hamper their chances of doing likewise. Men will therefore find it easier to excel in leadership positions, while women will have to work hard to overcome the false beliefs about their lack of leadership abilities.53 Expectations drive behaviour.

Before you commit yourself to a position or a policy, ask yourself to explain mechanistically how you think it will bring about its intended outcome. Pick a topic you feel strongly about: climate change, immigration, taxation, gun laws, euthanasia. Then don’t simply justify it: write down or explain to someone else step-by-step how your thinking operates and why therefore it will succeed.

Leah and Craig were able to activate their other identities – as parents, as people who valued education, as people who cared about sharing the reality of the situation with a wider group of people – which meant they could treat each other with kindness, explore each other’s views in more depth and, in the process, move from a winning position to an understanding one in which they could establish a shared goal.

if we first think about our own positive attributes (attributes not connected with our group), the boost we receive in self-esteem neutralises the negativity we would usually experience from a dalliance with ‘them’. Self-affirmation, it seems, gives people the inner security they need to accept new ideas that they would otherwise reject, and to abandon old ideas to which they would otherwise cling.

there are common themes to many accounts of their journeys and those highlighted by academic studies: rethinking and/or getting to know the ‘enemy’ (in other words, who the ‘them’ is); seeking to establish a shared identity; moving from a winning to an understanding mindset; being presented with a route to change that made it less costly; rethinking a position in the face of kindness; identifying a common goal rather than a ‘winning’ position; listening to a trusted ‘messenger’; letting go of a belief if a mechanistic attempt to justify it failed or if presented with overwhelming contrary evidence.

Lab studies33 have shown that when people are asked to reflect on their own positive attributes – for example, by writing them down – they react more open-mindedly to information that goes against their partisan identity.

In most large high-tech and near-tech B2B companies today, research and development (R&D) and sales own the two top “heads” of the totem pole (see Figure 1.6). Which one is on top and which one is in second position on any given decision is not what is critical.

The most a historian can do is to take the particular processes of the historical world which he is supposed to elucidate, and let these events be seen in the light of higher and more general forces which are present behind and develop in these events; his task is to show the concrete sub specie aeterni. But he is not in a position to determine the essence of this higher and eternal force itself or to determine the relationship it bears to concrete reality. Thus he can only say that in historical life he beholds a world which, though unified, is bipolar: a world which needs both poles to be as it appears to us. Physical nature and intellect, causality according to law and creative spontaneity, are these two poles, which stand in such sharp and apparently irreconcilable opposition. But historical life, as it unfolds between them, is always influenced simultaneously by both, even if not always by both to the same degree. The historian’s task would be an easy one if he could content himself with this straightforward dualistic interpretation of the relationship between physical nature and intellect, as it corresponds to the Christian and ethical tradition of earlier centuries. Then he would have nothing more to do than describe the struggle between light and darkness, between sin and forgiveness, between the world of intellect and that of the senses. He would be a war-correspondent; and taking up his position (naturally enough) in the intellectual camp he would be able to distinguish friend from foe with certainty.

Caitlin felt a surge of excitement. But five minutes later, Rainey read through the records and shook her head. “Eight years’ active duty, multiple deployments, Purple Heart, honorable discharge—he’s not the UNSUB.” “Why not?” Caitlin said. “The UNSUB loves violence. Multiple deployments to active war zones would give him cover to commit atrocities.” “Our UNSUB loves violence he can control. And war is never controllable.” Rainey’s voice had a harsh edge. “He loves violence he can inflict, against people who are in no position to fight back. The United States has a volunteer army—people join knowing they might go into harm’s way. The UNSUB wouldn’t touch that with a tent pole.

Throughout this book, I frequently compare Black women’s experiences with those of White women. These groups’ struggles are connected by gender and yet are divided by different racial histories and privileges. I do not intend to imply that White women are primarily to blame for the oppression of Black women, or that I have forgotten the existence of Latina, Native American, Asian, and Pacific Islander women. It is simply that, in Western society, Black and White women have been placed in binary positions. White women have been idealized (through the lens of sexism), and Black women have commonly been denigrated as their opposite. Non-Black women of color tend to be racialized relative to the Black-White binary, placed in a hierarchy between the poles.22

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, ”You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, "You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

Amara and Silver Streak gallop toward the jump—Amara in a two-point position, hovering just above his back. She gathers her reins and leans into his neck, the thoroughbred gracefully lifts his legs in the air, and she sinks closer to him as they float . . . majestically . . . magically . . . effortlessly . . . through the air. Everyone in the stable stares, spellbound. I hold my breath. The world seems to slow down as I, too, lean forward and shift in my own saddle—soaring vicariously with them. Except I am now moving. And it is not vicarious. “Aaaaaahhhhhh!” Clyde takes off, bounding after Silver Streak. Apparently energized by a serious case of FOMO, Clyde decides he won’t be left behind at the boring ground poles. He strides closer and closer to the oxer as I jostle in my seat, barely clinging to the reins as one of my clumsy feet slips out of its stirrup. I slide off-kilter, slithering down the saddle leather. Suddenly the arena is zipping past me sideways as Clyde’s medium-pizza hooves gallop away. Galumph-galumph-galumph! “Whoa!” I yell, tightening my abs and attempting to grip the reins from my diagonal, half-upside-down position. And just as he’s beginning to stretch his neck into a gigantic leap, snatching us both into the Air o’ Doom, Clyde—for once—listens to me. Swooosh! He slams on the brakes, stopping short and veering left. My body, still screaming along at full speed, misses the memo, flipping above the saddle and then—wheeeeeeeee!—straight over the top rail of the oxer. And into the dirt. Thud. . . . My first jump!

Consider an ordinary flashlight battery. Look at or visualize one. Can you imagine if the battery only had a positive end, but not a negative end? What good would it be if it had only a positive pole, but not a negative pole? It wouldn't be functional. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't even be a battery. Most importantly of all, from a magickal point of view, it wouldn't be charged!

Now it is claimed that it is by means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal year) that the approximate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. "Assuming that the long narrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of the pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that . . . . Alpha Draconis, the then pole-star, was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170 B.C. (Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) But we are also told that "this relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an extraordinary one . . it could not occur again for a whole sidereal year" (ibid). This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal years, the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C. Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far

polarity, which describes a feature that has only two possible values. A magnet has a north and south pole. An electric charge can be positive or negative.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative, but in this story the two poles had become dissociated and ascribed separate, warring identities.

If you truly intend to do this to Helen, then you’re as cold-hearted as I first thought you were.” “Do what? Help to secure a match that will give her wealth, status in society, and a family of her own?” “Status in his society, not ours. You know quite well that the peerage will say she’s lowered herself.” “Most of the people who will say that are the same ones who would refuse to touch her with a barge pole if she decided to take part in the season.” Devon went to the fireplace and braced his hands on the marble mantel. Firelight played over his face and dark hair. “I’m aware that this isn’t an ideal match for Helen. But Winterborne isn’t as objectionable as you’ve made him out to be. Helen may even come to love him in time.” “Given enough time,” she said scornfully, “Helen could convince herself to love a plague-infested rat or a toothless leper. That doesn’t mean she should marry him.” “I’m positive that Helen would never marry a rat,” West said.