Pose Series Quotes

Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.

Usually the term phobia refers to the psychological fear of the human mind from something that poses a threat. But when a species starts using the term fear against a biological portion of itself, there is nothing more demeaning than this.

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.1 It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share. Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them? Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems. What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

Yoga is a path of liberation from the attachment to both mind and matter. It is a door to the inner world and a life devoted to inner peace. Physical form and poses, although useful along the way, are not the end goal. It simply does not matter whether your hamstrings are long or your body is toned if you are not a nice person.

In the woods lay a bleeding angel in all her glory. Her arms posed gracefully above her head and her hair soaked in the mud, the blood and feces in which she lay. Dying, fading into the other realm, her form christened by the rain as though the trees had begun to weep upon her in sadness for the brutality she had endured. (The Children of Ankh series)

And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

From all walks of life, the characters depict real human experience and I found myself affirmed by the series (Pose Fx) in more ways than it just being pure entertainment.

Simplicity itself is the key. Education in ballet, dance, martial arts, etc., is done through poses, or to be more precise, through a countless series of poses. Perfection of movement is achieved through the flow of perfectly rehearsed poses.

Ultimately, Hausner’s efforts regarding the murder were thwarted when questions posed by both Servatius and the judges proved that Avraham Gordon, whom Hausner called as the witness to the murder, could not have observed it. -- The Eichmann Trial, page 99

Compared with the male benchmark, women are represented as more community minded and pacifist. When political women discuss why women are needed in politics in discourses that support the assumption that women are active primarily in these spheres, they contribute to the normalisation of dominant discourses of femininity. If women bring a 'women's perspective' to politics, what do men bring? This is a question that is rarely posed. Men are the norm, and women are the 'other'. Men do not need to justify their presence : it is taken for granted.

The next half hour was devoted to a series of painful yoga positions. Gwendolyn, for a woman in her sixties, was disturbingly limber. As the minute hand inched toward the nine, she straightened up from her King Pigeon Pose with an ecstatic sigh that must have made someone besides me uncomfortable.

I was working from home at the time and sometimes indulged in a little wander around my yard, a hard reset before I got back to work. Today, however, I had ignored the nice weather and instead put my head on my desk, forehead pressed to the Formica and arms covering my skull. I had joked with one of my yoga-loving co-workers that I was developing a series of poses that we could do at our desks. A head-in-hands slump over galleys called "Drudge's Hunch". The arms overhead seated stretch called "Fluorescent Salutation". The hand out position used to catch the fire door so it didn't slam and bother everyone. That was "Worrier's Pose". My current pose was called "Nuclear Fallout".

Your relationship having turned into a pantomime, a series of gestures in a well-worn scene, played out again and again, any underlying feeling having long since been obviated by emotional muscle memory, learning how to make the right faces, strike the right poses, not out of apathy or lack of sincerity, rather a need to preserve what was left of his pride.

the plant that is the park’s namesake. The Joshua trees look hilariously alien. Like Satan’s telephone poles. They’re primitive, irregularly limbed, their branches swooning up and down, sparsely covered with syringe-thin leaves—more like spines, Angie notes. Some mature trees have held their insane poses for a thousand years; they look as if they were on drugs and hallucinating themselves.

A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians. In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence.

Catharism was the greatest heretical challenge faced by the Catholic Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The attempt by the Cathars to find an answer to the fundamental religious and philosophical problems posed by the existence of evil, combined with their success in persuading large numbers of Christians in the West that they had solved these problems, shook the Catholic hierarchy to its very core, and provoked a series of reactions more extreme than any previously contemplated.

Pero los escritores mienten, aun los más sinceros. Los menos hábiles, carentes de palabras y frases capaces de encerrarla, retienen una imagen pobre y chata de la vida; algunos, como Lucano, la cargan y abruman con una dignidad que no posee. Otros como Petronio, la aligeran, la convierten en una pelota hueca que rebota, fácil de recibir y lanzar en un universo sin peso. Los poetas nos transportan a un mundo más vasto o más hermoso, más ardiente o más dulce que el que nos ha sido dado, diferente a él y casi inhabitable en la práctica. Los filósofos hacen sufrir a la realidad casi las mismas transformaciones que el fuego o el mortero hacen sufrir a los cuerpos; en esos cristales o en esas cenizas nada parece subsistir de un ser o de un hecho tales como los conocimos. Los historiadores nos proponen sistemas demasiado completos del pasado, series de causas y efectos harto exactas y claras como para que hayan sido alguna vez verdaderas. Mucho me costaría vivir en un mundo sin libros, pero la realidad no está en ellos, puesto que no cabe entera.

Along with maintaining the correct oral posture, Mike recommended a series of tongue-thrusting exercises, which he says can train us out of the “death pose” and make breathing easier. The tongue is a powerful muscle. If its force is directed at the teeth, it can throw them out of alignment; if it’s directed at the roof of the mouth, Mike believed it might help expand the upper palate of the mouth and open up the airways. The exercise, which Mike’s hordes of social media fans call “mewing,” has been popularly adopted as “a new health craze.

Propaganda is an important weapon of the fascist state. TV and the media are filled with clandestine agents, some posing as liberal writers, whose purpose is to break the credibility of researchers or discredit evidence that would confirm conspiracies.1 Colleges and academic institutions offer no courses on agents provocateurs or how to recognize covert operations.2 When an accurate history of the violence in the 1960’s and ’70’s is written, facts will reveal that government provocateurs created most of it. A series of our own Reichstag fires was the justification for a sweeping domestic operations program designed to deny liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.3

He struck a dramatic pose, hands on hips.  “Et tu, Judas?” Unfazed by the theatrics, Ayden said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Blake pointed an accusing finger. “I know you melted the wires in my engine. Think you’re so smart. But you’re not the only one with mechanical ability.” “You called Logan, didn’t you.” “Of course I called Logan. He’s my mechanical ability. But that’s not the point. The point is I got it fixed and I’m here in time to pick her up. So despite your backstabbing sabotage, I’m ready to take her to school. Aurora, please get out of the,” he eyed Ayden’s car, “super exotic sports car and into my…practical hybrid.” His face fell into misery. “Come on, dude, A & E Kirk (2012-01-07). Demons at Deadnight (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series Book 1) (pp. 209-210). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition.

My studio team and I approached the creation of this series with enthusiasm, wit, sincerity and sometimes more than a dash of humour. Is the result just another foray into the clichés of Orientalism? I think not. For the most part the people photographed became co-conspirators in our elaborate game of recreating reality. They enjoyed chai with us and a morning samosa (we most always shoot in the early morning since it is the best time to utilize available light). Our models were indeed “posed and paid”, but they cooperated by suggesting so many things themselves… eagerly grasping the process we were undertaking and joining in the creation of what generally became more than just a photo shoot. Each session in the studio became an “event”…an episode of manufactured expression in which all participated and all remembered.

Desde su aparición, la litografía ha demostrado ser muy apta para esta tarea enorme, aunque en apariencia frívola. Tenemos en ese género verdaderos monumentos. Con justicia se ha llamado a las obras de Gavarni y de Daumier complementos de La comedia humana. El mismo Balzac, estoy seguro, no habría rechazado la idea, que es tanto más justa por cuanto el artista que pinta costumbres posee un talento de naturaleza mixta, es decir que en él interviene en buena parte el espíritu literario. Observador, paseante, filósofo, llámenlo como quieran; pero, al caracterizar a este artista, se verán movidos a premiarlo con un epíteto que no prestarían al pintor de cosas eternas, o al menos de las más duraderas, las cosas religiosas o heroicas. A veces es poeta; más a menudo se acerca al novelista o al moralista; es el pintor de la circunstancia y de todo lo que esta sugiere de eterno.

Ronan's trying to wake up the world. I'm trying to think of how to talk him out of it, but what he's talking about is a world where she never fell asleep. A world where Matthew's just a kid. A world where it doesn't matter what Hennessy does, if something happens to her. A level playing field. I don't think it's a good idea, but it's not like I can't see the appeal, because now I'm biased, I'm too biased to be clear." Declan shook his head a little. "I said I would never become my father, anything like him. And now look at me. At us." Ah, there it was. It took no effort to remember the way he'd looked at her the first moment he realized she was a dream. "I'm a dream," Jordan said. "I'm not your dream." Declan put his chin in his hand and looked back out the window; that, too, would be a good portrait. Perhaps it was just because she liked looking at him that she thought each pose would make a good one. A series. What a future that idea promised, nights upon nights like this, him sitting there, her standing here. "By the time we're married," Declan said eventually, "I want you to have applied for a different studio in this place because this man's paintings are very ugly." Her pulse gently skipped two beats before continuing on as before. "I don't have a social security number of my own, Pozzi." "I'll buy you one," Declan said. "You can wear it in place of a ring." The two of them looked at each other past the canvas on her easel. Finally, he said, voice soft, "I should see the painting now." "Are you sure?" "It's time, Jordan." Putting his jacket to the side, he stood. He waited. He would not come around to look without an invite. It's time, Jordan. Jordan had never been truly honest with anyone who didn't wear Hennessy's face. Showing him this painting, this original, felt like being more honest than she had ever been in her life. She stepped back to give him room. Declan took it in. His eyes flickered to and from the likeness, from the jacket on Portrait Declan's leg to the real jacket he'd left behind on the chair. She watched his gaze follow the line edge she had taken such care to paint, that subtle electricity of complementary colors at the edge of his form. "It's very good," Declan muttered. "Jordan, it's very good." "I thought it might be." "I don't know if it's a sweetmetal. But you're very good." "I thought I might be." "The next one will be even better." "I think it might be." "And in ten years your scandalous masterpiece will get you thrown out of France, too," he said. "And later you can triumphantly sell it to the Met. Children will write papers about you. People like me will tell stories about you to their dates at museums to make them think they're interesting." She kissed him. He kissed her. And this kiss, too, got all wrapped up in the art-making of the portrait sitting on the easel beside them, getting all mixed in with all the other sights and sounds and feelings that had become part of the process. It was very good.

Sociological Explanations Sociologists theorize that people can live together in peace because of the development of a social hierarchy that ranges from dominant to submissive. Everyone in a group takes his or her place in the hierarchy. A certain degree of anxiety around others allows people to assess the level of threat that they pose, and helps maintain the balance between aggression and inhibition. However, people with social anxiety tend to misinterpret others’ behavior as more aggressive or powerful than it really is. As a result, a socially anxious person often will become overly submissive--blushing, not making eye contact, freezing, or withdrawing. Sociologists believe this response may be the result of a fundamental fear of rejection. In monkeys, apes, and humans, being left to fend for oneself usually is a threat to survival. In social anxiety, people may see being judged as a threat to their position in the group. To them, rejection means failure. Kyoto went through her day at school constantly apologizing to everyone. Whenever she walked down the hall, opened her locker, sat down in an empty seat, or got in line in the cafeteria, she always said “Excuse me” or “I’m sorry.” Most of the time, she didn’t know why she was apologizing. She always wanted to please others. Kyoto’s mother took her to see a psychologist because of Kyoto’s anxiety. The psychologist helped Kyoto see that she misinterpreted others’ behavior as being more aggressive than it was. Her constant need to apologize was meant to tell others “I’m not a threat.” Now, before she apologizes, Kyoto asks herself if it is really necessary. Usually, she finds that other people aren’t angry at all.

Laura stands, in another photograph, wearing a two-piece gown, bodice and skirt, from centuries ago. The scarlet material is trimmed in gold brocade. From her waist the skirt billows outward, broad as a spinnaker, and grazes the floor in a huge circle. It fastens in front by a series of cobalt buttons, and she is about to start closing it, but for the moment it gapes open: a vertical window, eight or ten inches wide, runs from her waist to the floor. The gold brocade lines the opening like a ceremonial decoration, a veneration of what lies within. But nothing lies within. Inside the vast regal tent of the garment is darkness. Because of the lighting and pose, Laura’s body seems to end at the belly, to have no stumps at all. The opening exposes a pure emptiness. It is unclear how she is standing, what keeps her upright. The cavern beneath the skirt is illumined just enough to suggest that she isn’t wearing her prosthetics. She stands on no legs, suspended, magical. And that magic, along with her strong jawline turned in profile, endows her with omnipotence. The cavern is at once a universe and a womb. The vertical opening is a vaginal slit, and to slip through it, to slide the body inside the scarlet walls of the tent, to wait inside while she fastens the skirt and encloses you, swallows you, would be to live out the primal fantasy of entering the vagina not only with the penis but with everything from the skull to the toes: to be ensconced, to be consumed. The photograph’s viewer, not its subject, is at risk of disintegrating, coming apart, deliquescing in the lightless world he has longed for, turning to liquid in the womb. Laura, with her half-body, will remain more than intact, more than whole.

During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king. However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431. In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc. Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose. In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play Saint Joan. More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God.

Two kinds of development help explain how a readiness built up to kill all Jews, including women and children. One is a series of “dress rehearsals” that served to lower inhibitions and provided trained personnel hardened for anything. First came the euthanasia of incurably ill and insane Germans, begun on the day when World War II began. Nazi eugenics theory had long provided a racial justification for getting rid of “inferior” persons. War provided a broader justification for reducing the drain of “useless mouths” on scarce resources. The “T-4” program killed more than seventy thousand people between September 1939 and 1941, when, in response to protests from the victims’ families and Catholic clergy, the matter was left to local authorities. Some of the experts trained in this program were subsequently transferred to the occupied east, where they applied their mass killing techniques to Jews. This time, there was less opposition. The second “dress rehearsal” was the work of the Einsatzgruppen, the intervention squads specially charged with executing the political and cultural elite of invaded countries. In the Polish campaign of September 1939 they helped wipe out the Polish intelligentsia and high civil service, evoking some opposition within the military command. In the Soviet campaign the Einsatzgruppen received the notorious “Commissar Order” to kill all Communist Party cadres as well as the Jewish leadership (seen as identical in Nazi eyes), along with Gypsies. This time the army raised no objections. The Einsatzgruppen subsequently played a major role, though they were far from alone, in the mass killings of Jewish women and children that began in some occupied areas in fall 1941. A third “dress rehearsal” was the intentional death of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. It was on six hundred of them that the Nazi occupation authorities first tested the mass killing potential of the commercial insecticide Zyklon-B at Auschwitz on September 3, 1941. Most Soviet prisoners of war, however, were simply worked or starved to death. The second category of developments that helped prepare a “willingness to murder” consisted of blockages, emergencies, and crises that made the Jews become a seemingly unbearable burden to the administrators of conquered territories. A major blockage was the failure to capture Moscow that choked off the anticipated expulsion of all the Jews of conquered eastern Europe far into the Soviet interior. A major emergency was shortages of food supplies for the German invasion force. German military planners had chosen to feed the invasion force with the resources of the invaded areas, in full knowledge that this meant starvation for local populations. When local supplies fell below expectations, the search for “useless mouths” began. In the twisted mentality of the Nazi administrators, Jews and Gypsies also posed a security threat to German forces. Another emergency was created by the arrival of trainloads of ethnic Germans awaiting resettlement, for whom space had to be made available. Faced with these accumulating problems, Nazi administrators developed a series of “intermediary solutions.” One was ghettos, but these proved to be incubators for disease (an obsession with the cleanly Nazis), and a drain on the budget. The attempt to make the ghettos work for German war production yielded little except another category of useless mouths: those incapable of work. Another “intermediary solution” was the stillborn plan, already mentioned, to settle European Jews en masse in some remote area such as Madagascar, East Africa, or the Russian hinterland. The failure of all the “intermediary solutions” helped open the way for a “final solution”: extermination.

Kaleidoscope Yoga: The universal heart and the individual self. We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form. A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other’s alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that’s for everyone to enjoy... Coming into a practice and an energy field of community yoga over and over, is a practice of returning, again and again, to the present moment, to the person in front of you, to the people around you, to your body, to others’ bodies, to your energy, to others’ energy, to your breath, to others’ breath. [...] community yoga practice can help us, in a very real, practical, grounded, felt, somatic way, to identify and be in harmony with all that is around us, which includes all of our fellow human beings.
 We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals. And to the extent that we practice this, somatically, we become more and more comfortable and fluid with this larger, more cosmic, more inter-related reality. We see and feel and breathe ourselves, more and more, as the open movement of energy, as open somatic possibility. As energy and breath. This is one of the many benefits of a community yoga practice. Kaleidoscope shows us, in a very practical way, how to allow universal patterns of wisdom and interconnectedness to filter through us. [...] One of the most interesting paradoxes I have encountered during my involvement with the community yoga project (and it is one that I have felt again and again, too many times to count) is the paradox that many of the most infinite, universal forms have come to me in a place of absolute solitude, silence, deep aloneness or meditation. And, similarly, conversely and complimentarily, (best not to get stuck on the words) I have often found myself in the midst of a huge crowd or group of people of seamlessly flowing forms, and felt simultaneously, in addition to the group energy, the group shape, and the group awareness, myself as a very cleanly and clearly defined, very particular, individual self. These moments and discoveries and journeys of group awareness, in addition to the sense of cosmic expansion, have also clarified more strongly my sense of a very specific, rooted, personal self. The more deeply I dive into the universal heart, the more clearly I see my own place in it. And the more deeply I tune in and connect with my own true personal self, the more open and available I am to a larger, more universal self. We are both, universal heart and universal self. Individual heart and individual self. We are, or have the capacity for, or however you choose to put it, simultaneous layers of awareness. Learning to feel and navigate and mediate between these different kinds and layers of awareness is one of the great joys of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga, and of life in general. Come join us, and see what that feels like, in your body, again and again. From the Preface of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga: The Art of Connecting: The First 108 Poses

We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form.

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other’s alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that’s for everyone to enjoy...

We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals.

They don’t want you to act a certain way. They want you to think a certain way. So you’re easy to understand. So you won’t pose a threat to them.

When people pose the question about the noble men and women who have sacrificed their lives for my freedom and yours, they almost inevitably leave out the fact that many of these very same men and women participated in killing other human beings. Yet, as the famous American general George Patton clearly and profoundly articulated, “The object of war is not to die for your country. It is to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his.

The political struggles of Ephesus can pose a problem for modernday believers. Even if denominations might differ on how difficult theological questions are resolved, it seems obvious that they should not be resolved the way that those at Ephesus were — with underhanded political tactics and a refusal to understand the points of the other side. The fact that one of the major councils of the church seems to depend just as much on politics as theology can be disturbing — can we be sure that the church made the right decision? Are the beliefs that we hold today the result of careful interpretation of Scripture, or the machinations of powerful figures? It is helpful to remember that the story of redemption in the Bible relies on people who deliberately did evil things — Samson, Saul, and David are excellent examples. When Jesus came, however, it became apparent that God not only had accounted for human failing but had even made it a part of his plan for the salvation of the world; as Joseph says to his brothers in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Because God is able to work through human failings as well as in spite of them, Christianity does not need to rely on a whitewashed version of history.

These riots are often blamed on the great Dominican preacher Vicente Ferrer (c. 1350-1419), afterwards canonized. But his role was much more subtle, and more sinister from the Jew’s point of view. Indeed he helped to develop a pattern of anti-Semitism which was to reverberate thunderously in the twentieth century. It is true that his public preachings were often associated with anti-Semitic hysteria and outrages. But he did not encourage rioting; on the contrary–he deplored it. He publicly condemned the 1391 riots. He thought it wicked and un-Christian that the mob should take the law into its own hands. Instead, it was the duty of the state to act, and proceed lawfully. The riots showed clearly that the Jews posed a ‘problem’ to society to which a ‘solution’ must be found. Hence Ferrer and his clerical colleagues were responsible for a series of anti-Jewish policies approved by the Spanish-favoured antipope Benedict XIII, and for the selection as King of Aragon of Ferdinand I, who began to implement them. The war against the Jews was taken out of the hands of the mob and made the official business of church and government.

Regardless of approach, the past holds something valuable for all of us. It is literally the root of who we are, physically through our actual ancestors and culturally in establishing the foundations for our current beliefs and practices in religious, social, domestic, and political arenas. The same ancients that we study were themselves drawn to their own pasts, often asking questions similar to the ones we pose today about our past.

January 19–22: Marilyn works with Milton Greene in his Lexington Avenue studio on an all white series, with poses in fur and terry cloth.

If God is Art, then what do we make of Jasper Johns?” One never knows what sort of question a patient will pose, or how exactly one should answer. Outside the window, snow on snow began to answer the ground below with nothing more than foolish questions. We were no different. I asked again: “Professor, have we eased the pain?” Eventually, he’d answer me with: “Tell me, young man, whom do you love?” “E," I’d say, “None of the Above," and laugh for lack of something more to add. For days he had played that game, and day after day I avoided your name by instinct. I never told him how we often wear each other’s clothes— we aren’t what many presuppose. Call it an act of omission, my love. Tonight, while walking to the car, I said your name to the evening star, clearly pronouncing the syllables to see your name dissipate in the air, evaporate. Only the night air carries your words up to the dead I watched them rise, become remote. Rapidly, yet without any sense of hurry, information about three people is conveyed in passing: not only profession (in the third line) , sexual orientation and educational level but also subtler matters of personality and humor. "In passing" -- well, not exactly: In a work of art, it may be that every moment is part of the destination. The end-rhyming of the second and third lines of each stanza and the banter of patient and doctor are part of the rich, ambiguous conclusion, where the intimacy of a spoken name rises toward the dead in the night air. The "foolish," solicitous and respectful question the doctor asks the patient becomes part of the implicit question of the final lines: In relation to the particular dead people in anyone's life, or in relation to mortality itself, have art and intimacy eased the pain?

You know I love you, and my past is just that—the past. I can only tell you that before you entered my life, I was a very lonely man. Oliver was my only reason to smile. To have you pose for me….” A smile curved his lips. “It would be an honor. A privilege.

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Prayer is conversation with God. ~ Shirley Tye         What Is A Prayer Partner?     “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).     As a teenager, I read Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People. His simple advice to win friends by becoming genuinely interested in them intrigued me. To show interest all you needed to do was to ask questions and listen to their responses.   But for me, even better than being listened to is being prayed for. I am delighted to have formal prayer partners and to be a member of prayer groups.   One such partner is JoAnn. We met briefly at a 3-day women’s conference. When we first arrived at this conference, the organizers took our photos. On the last day, we were given the picture of another woman – our prayer partner. I keep a picture of her beside my computer. She is posed in front of a stone fireplace with a shy smile. On the back of the photo, I have written her name and address with the names of her husband and two grown children. Although I have not talked to JoAnn in many years, I still pray for her and I am confident that she prays for me.   I am also a member of a Christian writers’ group, The Word Guild. I have joined a smaller team within this group, aptly called the Prayer Team. Members of the Guild submit their prayer requests via email, and we pray for these people. On top of that, the organizer picks four specific members to pray for each week. Many of these people I may never meet and may know nothing more than their names. But I pray for them regularly and I am confident that they pray for me.   Lastly, at my church, a program called Secret Sisters has been introduced. I filled out an information form, including my favourite scripture verse, and submitted it to the organizer. In return, I received the name of a church “sister” to pray for over the next year. At the end of the year, we will reveal ourselves to our secret sisters. I pray for my sister regularly and am confident that she prays for me.   I hold these partners in high esteem and count them as some of my best friends. There is power in prayer. If you are not already praying for someone specific, I challenge you to seek out a partner.       Prayer is talking to Him and listening to Him, too. Sweet communion! ~ Pat Gerbrandt        

What Is A Prayer Partner?     “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).     As a teenager, I read Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People. His simple advice to win friends by becoming genuinely interested in them intrigued me. To show interest all you needed to do was to ask questions and listen to their responses.   But for me, even better than being listened to is being prayed for. I am delighted to have formal prayer partners and to be a member of prayer groups.   One such partner is JoAnn. We met briefly at a 3-day women’s conference. When we first arrived at this conference, the organizers took our photos. On the last day, we were given the picture of another woman – our prayer partner. I keep a picture of her beside my computer. She is posed in front of a stone fireplace with a shy smile. On the back of the photo, I have written her name and address with the names of her husband and two grown children. Although I have not talked to JoAnn in many years, I still pray for her and I am confident that she prays for me.   I am also a member of a Christian writers’ group, The Word Guild. I have joined a smaller team within this group, aptly called the Prayer Team. Members of the Guild submit their prayer requests via email, and we pray for these people. On top of that, the organizer picks four specific members to pray for each week. Many of these people I may never meet and may know nothing more than their names. But I pray for them regularly and I am confident that they pray for me.  

It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors. 1.24 They discovered the habit loop.

like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody’s time. “If you can’t it get done in eight hours a day,” he said, “it’s not worth doing.” That’s been my philosophy ever since. Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification. To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid. In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization: experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.

Perhaps the greatest threat to any sense of coherence to reality is posed by the existence of pain and suffering. Christianity provides a series of mental maps that allow for illness and suffering to be seen as coherent, meaningful, and potentially positive in terms of fostering personal growth and development.

(The author would like caution here, however, about using the name of a creator god with no clear evidence that this god was benevolent before corruption. Research is of supreme importance because, many times, Satan poses as the creator god of all.)

A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. What is lighter than a feather? A woman. What is lighter than a woman? Nothing. Phrase found in a Latin satire. It means nothing more nothing less than this: women have always hated morality and seriousness, precise knowledge and deliberate wisdom, which in their eyes are merely silly and hypocritical pretensions that mark the class of professional phrase-mongers. Writers like Gorgias or Appolodorus, or orators like Hyperides, masters of the eloquence that thrills mankind. The Gown, whence springs the type of creatures that tear each other to pieces with tongue and pen. pg84 A kind o f a code of revenge, a guiding principle a point of honor that was held more sacred than life itself Vulsenade Pg94 Such extravagances were admitted by the principles of chivalry, an institution sane enough at its origins, but run mad before its end.” Dr Johannes Scheer, Society and Manners in Germany, Chivalry at Court Pg138 And many another indiscreet, prying teller of naughty tales, are far and away more instructive than formal history, which is either pedantic by convention or else dumb by constraint. In investigations of any kind details should be studied first, in order at a subsequent stage to elaborate the series of special observations made into a general survey of the subject. This is the only way to get good results pg154 A phrase well expressing an easiness of morals at once very frank and very French. Pg166 That treacherous gentleness women practice toward one another – every woman instinctively hates every other. pg164 A woman will allow herself to be told: you belong to a sex possessing a small brain and a half-developed organization; your disposition and instinctive are all disproportionate, inconsequent hypocritical, illogical and futile; your moral sense is deformed, your selfishness without a scruple and your vanity without a limit. All this will hardly so much as annoy her; but dare to say: you have short legs, and you have committed a dire offense woman’s nature can never forgive. Further on, Schopenhauer adds another curiously insulting passage: “The ancients,”he says, “would have laughed at our gallantry of the old French fashion and our stupid veneration for number two of the perfect realization of German-Christian silliness.” pg169 “A married woman’s first thought and care is to devise how to be a widow.” Brantley, Dames galantes, Fourth Discourse

Not so with a toddler. “Time for socks and shoes!” you say, eleven minutes before you need to leave the house. “NO! I don’t WANT socks! I don’t WANT them.” Foot stamping, face scrunched up. Arms may be folded in anger pose.

Next you will assume the position we call kneel forward. Keeping your legs spread wide, you basically assume a plank pose, but remain on your knees. It can be challenging to hold for an extended period of time.

the twelve basic sub positions that are used at the Masters Club. Wait and wait up are two basic standing poses. Wait means you stand with legs slightly apart, arms in box position behind your back. Wait up is similar, except you cross your wrists above your head so he has easier access to your body.

Position two. Submit.” He watched with pleasure as, remaining on her knees, she leaned forward, lowering her forehead until it touched the mat. She lifted her ass up, keeping her legs spread wide. Finally, she extended her arms along the mat, placing one hand over the other in a properly submissive pose. Cameron looked at the mirror on the wall behind her. It gave him an excellent view of her cunt and asshole.

expose. The pose looked deceptively simple—just kneeling with hands behind the head and knees spread wide, but it could be challenging to hold for long periods. It was a pleasing pose.

hands pose for now, which was an endurance pose, forcing the sub to hold their arms out in front of them, elbows bent and touching, palms upturned. Placing an object, like a book, on their palms, made it even more difficult. If they failed to maintain the position for the prescribed time period, they would, of course, be punished.

hands pose for now, which was an endurance pose, forcing the sub to hold their arms out in front of them, elbows bent and touching, palms upturned. Placing an object, like a book, on their palms, made it even more difficult. If they failed to maintain the position for the prescribed time period, they would, of course, be punished. “Floor,” he said instead. It took her a moment to react. Then, with a small nod, she lay face down on the mat and crossed her wrists behind her back. Satisfied, he took her through apology—which required her to turn her head so her forehead was touching the ground, and to spread her arms wide on either side of her body. It was a physical expression of total obedience and submission, perfect when a sub had something to apologize for. Cameron returned to the hands position, and then moved to wait and wait up, both standing positions, differentiated by arms in a box position behind the back versus wrists crossed overhead.

I also am a fan of the Medicare Rights Center (MRC), a nonprofit providing free consumer Medicare information and counseling. Its Medicare Interactive online service4 lets you pose specific questions or subject areas that will lead you to helpful information. And you can always pick up the phone and call its national helpline at 800-333-4114 if you have questions.

At his request--a Custer request was a command impossible to refuse--I produced a series of prints for the Centennial Expedition at Philadelphia: the general with Bloody Knife, his favorite Indian scout; with the Custers' pack of eighty dogs; with his junior officers, planning the destruction of the Lakota Sioux; with Libbie in the parlor of their quarters at the fort; and the general striking a pose that would become as recognizable as Napoléon's; arms folded across his chest, looking forward and slightly upward at his magnificent destiny.

Does it seem far-fetched, and wrong, to compare the core institution of Nazi eugenics to Planned Parenthood? Not at all. In some respects, Planned Parenthood’s conduct is worse. While the organization poses as a benign promoter of “birth control,” its modus operandi was confirmed by a series of undercover videos showing officials willing to sell fetal body parts resulting from the organization’s nationwide abortion industry. The officials represented in the videos showed no moral revulsion or compunction about the practice.

The noise of his zip was like the drag of a fingernail down her spine, and Juliet moaned, helpless to stop, as he pushed first his jeans, then his underwear, down and off. He stood tall and proud in front of her, his abs taut, his shoulders back, his stare still fixed between her legs, dark and hooded and intense. His nudity was breathtaking, his cock jutting out thick and hard as he shoved his hands on his hips. It was a thoroughly arrogant pose. Like a prince. Or a feudal Lord. And her body responded in kind, waiting with baited breath for his next royal command, his next move. Knowing she’d do just about anything for him in this moment with the wild beat of her pulse echoing though her ears and her gut and the slick heat at her heart. Open her mouth. Roll over. Get on all fours. Beg.

lo que la convivencia prolongada entre dos personas sobre todo segrega es una relación de dependencia entre ellas. Me digo también que muy pocas veces esa relación está basada en el amor, un sentimiento que, en el mejor de los casos, dura lo que dura una aparición (lo dijo La Rochefoucauld y lo repite Marcelo y es verdad: el amor es como los fantasmas: todo el mundo habla de él pero nadie lo ha visto); tampoco está basada, contra lo que suele pensarse, en el miedo a la soledad, porque la verdad es que casi siempre estamos solos. No: lo más probable es que esa relación de dependencia se funde en una serie de vínculos de apariencia insignificante pero de enorme poder, un sistema de signos que no está sujeto a nuestra voluntad ni a ninguna ley previsible sino a la química azarosa de dos idiosincrasias dispares, y que (como el acuario para el pez que vive en él) constituye una especie de ecosistema o de mundo en miniatura, un ecosistema que posee sus reglas, dimensiones y seguridades, regido por apelativos que sólo en la intimidad compartida no resultan ridículos y palabras de secreto significado y erizado de cotidianas incomodidades y obligaciones que también son ritos, ceremonias y gestos, hábitos y formas ocultas de complicidad. Lo curioso es que, mientras la convivencia dura, el desagrado pequeño pero permanente de estos vínculos parece el peaje que hay que pagar para instalarse en el matrimonio como en una casa a medida, razonablemente confortable y acogedora, pero, una vez que la convivencia se rompe, una nostalgia embrutecida por el desamparo suele convertirlos en condición sine qua non del matrimonio, de manera que abandonan su ingrata categoría de peajes para convertirse en los lugares preferidos de la casa y en la fuente de todas las felicidades que depara. Por eso, tal vez más difícil que prescindir de la persona amada es prescindir de esos vínculos, de ese sistema de signos, de ese mundo en miniatura sin sentir el mismo vértigo de orfandad, de intemperie y de asfixia que siente el pez cuando lo sacan del acuario.

Every mistake is a chance to reflect, analyze, and revise. Every mistake—and every success—makes me a better teacher. But I also know that I couldn’t have made it without a collective of students, teachers, parents, and community members, like Mrs. Leona Wallace, who encouraged me, nurtured me, challenged me, and taught me. And who pushed me to understand that no matter where we teach or who we teach, we are always teaching about race and class.

They remind all of us that teaching is not about following directions: it’s about listening to our students and paying attention to the social forces that shape their lives; about learning how to navigate department, school, district, and federal rules to benefit our students by “hacking” the system, so we can keep a job while we continue to honor our core beliefs about education.

Stieg Larsson’s three books—known as the Millennium Trilogy or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series—have sold more than eighty million copies, but his greatest achievement wasn’t writing thrillers. He devoted his entire adult life to fighting right-wing extremism. By the early 1990s, he was already warning about the threat posed by the newly started Sweden Democrats party, the very party that upended the status quo by garnering over 17 percent of the vote in the recent 2018 parliamentary elections, plunging parliamentary balance and the selection of a new prime minister into a period of months-long chaos.

light the night before. Downriver, I found the footprints of our mystery guests, but they were from the kind of hiking boot that pretty much everyone wore. I didn’t find anything new around the dig, not that I really expected to come across anything else as blatant as the Weems Aerospace pen. But it was still incredible to be in the middle of a real dinosaur dig, surrounded by honest-to-goodness tyrannosaur bones. We had to strike camp early. Sage needed to help out around the ranch, Dash and Ethan had to get to their summer jobs, and Summer had lined up more investigating for us to do. Once again, I hadn’t agreed to this so much as been thrust into it. I had turned off my phone when I went to sleep, and when I turned it back on, I found a long text chain from Summer saying that she was heading to Snakes Alive in the morning to question Rick, and she was doing it with or without me. I also found a series of e-mails that I had been included on between Summer and Tommy Lopez. Summer had written to Tommy with an update about what had happened at the Barksdales’ and our lead to Rick at Snakes Alive. Tommy had responded that this was great work, but then said he was still going to be out of town on business at least another day, at which point Summer had suggested approaching Rick with me, posing as normal kids who wanted to buy a snake. To my surprise, Tommy had been supportive. He even thought there might be an advantage

In a short while we drew up in front of Karnak Hall, a modest exhibition facility of some antiquity in a street just off Leicester Square. The Hall had been built in the style of its namesake temple, the edifice set with a series of recesses, each featuring a great statue of Ramses in a different pose. The rest of the façade was painted terra-cotta to resemble the walls of the temple and decorated with fanciful Egyptological friezes. We passed between the legs of one of the Ramses to enter, and I resisted the urge to look up.

Algunos chamanes consideran el estrabismo como signo de que se posee un don profético.

Robbie, at the moment, was very much full of hell. I was trying out a big Zoomar telescopic lens on my new Bell & Howell movie camera, holding on Robbie while she danced and pranced. She posed, flew around, wiggled a little. The word for it was: sensational.

Petipa responds with vigor equal to Ralph's robust song and flamboyant gestures. Once the energy level is raised, Ralph feels that his postures become imbued with an unconscious spiritual significance which Petipa affirms by countering with her own complementary moves. A hopping arabesque from Ralph may provoke a series of elegant stalking leaps from Petipa, while a fluttering of fingers may be countered with tiny aerial flurries. Poignant moments of unconcerned fur licking punctuate the patterns of the dance. Dancing with a tail of his own attached, Fred becomes a psychic extension of the cat. 'I share its grace, power, and oneness with the universe. I relate to Fluff and the whole spectrum of feline physicality on a profound level--I even regard birds differently.' Cat dancing is likely a complex vocabulary of gestures that we have yet to recognize and fully understand. Helen, along with others who share her covenant, has come to feel that Boot's studied poses communicate his inner thoughts and embody his souls unexpressed desires. But you have to be careful; sometimes the energy is so powerful I worry about overstimulating my aura. At those levels, an unstable etheric oscillation could collapse into an astral vortex and suck my spiritual reserves into a sate of negative sub-matter.

was no longer a child, afraid of the threat my terrifying father posed to my safety. I was a man, afraid of the threat he posed to my character, to my future, to my identity.

El momento más importante para Dios será aquel en que os deis cuenta de que no necesitáis a ningún Dios. Sí, ya lo sé... esto es la antítesis de todo lo que siempre habéis pensado. Pero vuestros maestros os han hablado de un Dios colérico y envidioso, de un Dios que necesita que le necesiten. Y eso no es un Dios en absoluto, sino un neurótico sustituto de lo que sería una deidad. Un autentico Maestro no es aquel que tiene más discípulos, sino aquel que crea más Maestros. Un auténtico líder no es aquel que cuenta con más seguidores, sino aquel que crea más líderes. Un auténtico rey no es aquel que tiene más súbditos, sino aquel que hace que la mayoría de ellos accedan a la realeza. Un auténtico profesor no es aquel que posee más conocimiento, sino aquel que logra que la mayoría de sus semejantes alcancen el conocimiento. Y un auténtico Dios no es Aquel que cuenta con el mayor número de siervos, sino Aquel que sirve al mayor número de ellos, haciéndoles, así, Dioses

Le coming out est une conversion. Mais s'il peut être décrit comme le geste d'un "instant", celui de la décision, il faut aussitôt ajouter que celle-ci doit être reconduite en permanence. Au fond, le coming out, c'est le projet de toute une vie : car la question se pose toujours de savoir où, quand et devant qui il est possible de ne pas cacher ce que l'on est. La nécessité de choisir réapparaît dans chaque nouvelle situation de l'existence : pour un enseignant qui se retrouve devant une nouvelle classe ou un nouvel amphi, pour un étudiant qui rencontre son directeur de thèse, pour tout gay ou toute lesbienne devant un nouveau médecin, un nouvel employeur, un nouvel environnement professionnel, ou tout simplement face au marchand de journaux ou au chauffeur de taxi qui tiennent des propos homophobes. (p. 173)

During the same time, it was faced with the first series of wars with Russia, as the new Tsar, Peter the Great implemented a new policy of “access to the sea.” This prevented the Ottoman’s Crimean allies, who usually sent cavalry reinforcements to fight alongside regular Ottoman troops, from supporting Ottoman forces in central Europe. Despite several Russian defeats, the conflict ended with the capture of Azov, the Ottoman’s stronghold in Crimea in 1696, and was a sign of the growing threat Russia posed to the Ottomans. Russia increasingly saw the Ottoman Empire as its objective rival in its quest to assert control over the Black Sea.

Take note of your body’s position in the morning. This is probably your most comfortable sleeping posture, so posing this way before bed can help you get to sleep more quickly. 430

Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

I commenced writing this scroll in a frenzied attempt to find myself. I wished to ascertain how the concertina wire that cinches the plasma pool of my biological capsule together stitches a person into the vacillating web of eternity. Instead of my wild ravings spooling out answers, the act of writing nonstop in the midst of my darkest hours triggered a torrent of questions to examine. Each adamant question posed led to a baffling string of insistent conundrums. I orchestrated an urgent caucus, and tenaciously conducted a fact-finding mission. I held a self-questioning klatch attempting to pierce a spool of secular inquiries, a series of pious and profane questions that compressed upon my confused mind. The resultant positive displacement and negative displacement of febrile energy generated from this disorientating and mind-numbing process of rigorous self-scrutiny spun me akin to a crazed top. Unsure of my destiny, I lunged into the unknown, diving headfirst into the indecipherable parts of my reeling existence. I asked questions and sought answers, examined a sundry of personal experiences, and listened to my inner vibrations. How does a person square their mystical self to the undulating camber of life? How does anyone face the deflating specter of the impending death of his or her beloved? I seek to develop a desirable quotient of self-confidence and gain the needed degree of brio to tackle life. I wish to learn how to savor every moment, come to terms with impairing personal fears, blighting uncertainty, and caustic self-doubt. I aspire to overcome the disfiguring emotional liabilities harvested during my troubled past, develop healthful new habits, and brace myself against the irreducible fact of human mortality.

From that standpoint, the greatest threat posed by GPS might be that we never do not know exactly where we are.

The question everyone asked me before I went to Birobidzhan and after I returned was: Are there any Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Region? I posed it to Valery Gurevich, the deputy governor responsible for everything Jewish in the region, from the children's song-and-dance ensemble to the statues of imaginary shtetl figures all over the city - a series of illustrations to Sholem Aleichem stories cast in bronze. I felt ridiculous asking a Jew in Birobidzhan if there were Jews in Birobidzhan, but was a master at answering this question. His answer was "Well . . ." He tried to avoid giving me any figures at all - I had to fill them in later - but the gist of his story was this: Before the Soviet Union collapsed, the census placed the percentage of Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Region at a bit over four, which was about four times the percentage of Jews in the general population of the Soviet Union. In absolute figures, that was about nine thousand Jews. But these figures were based on answers people gave to the census taker, an official, in a country where if one had a choice (for example, if one of one's parents was not Jewish), one did not choose to call oneself Jewish. Just ten years before the last Soviet census, the percentage of Jews in the region's population had been three times higher - suggesting that it had been diluted by intermarriage but the number of people who had some Jewish roots was a lot higher than the official nine thousand. So it should come as no surprise that the number of people who emigrated to Israel when this became possible, at the turn of the 1990s, far exceeded the official number of Jews in Birobidzhan. And there were still some Jews left - a couple thousand, give or take as many. Of them, roughly five people - including Iosif Bekerman, Maria Rak, and Valery Gurevich - were engaged on an ongoing basis with Jewish culture. Of them, only one - Bekerman - spoke Yiddish. There were no Yiddish writers left in the Jewish Autonomous Region.

Los problemas nunca se van, sólo mejoran”, dijo. Warren Buffet tiene problemas de dinero, el mendigo alcoholizado que se halla afuera del 7-Eleven tiene problemas de dinero. La diferencia es que Buffet posee mejores problemas de dinero que el indigente. Todo en la vida es así. “La vida es, en esencia, una serie interminable de problemas, Mark”, comentó el panda. Le dio un trago a su coctel y acomodó el pequeño paraguas rosa en la copa. “La solución de un problema es meramente la creación del siguiente.

Vinyasa is a fast-paced type of yoga. Its main aim is usually to link your movement and breath together with a series of yoga poses in a dance-like

briefly how she had managed to unlock the back door and why she should have seemed so resentful of him. She had, he decided, been musing and had made her way to this particular room for that purpose. Her pose over there by the window had betrayed as much and his sudden appearance breaking into her reflections, had startled her, so that, in a sense, her anger had been counterfeit. He remained standing where she had stood, wondering if she would circle the west wing and appear at the crest of the drive, but when he heard or saw something of her he fell to thinking about women in general and his relations with them in the past. His experience with women had been limited but although technically still a virgin he was not altogether innocent. There had been a very forward fourteen-year-old called Cherry, who had lived in an adjoining house in Croydon, when he came home for school holidays and Cherry had succeeded in bewitching but ultimately terrifying him, for one day when they were larking about in the stable behind her house, she had hinted at the mysterious differences between the sexes and when, blushing, he had encouraged her to elaborate, she had promptly hoisted her skirt and pulled down her long cotton drawers, whereupon he had fled as though the Devil was after him and had never sought her company again, although he watched her closely in church on successive Sundays, expecting any moment to see forked lightning descend on her in the middle of ‘For all the Saints’. Then there had been a little clumsy cuddling at Christmas parties, and after that a flaxen-haired girl called Daphne whom he had mooned over as an adolescent and had thought of a good deal in the Transvaal but now he had almost forgotten what Daphne looked like and had not recalled her name until now. Finally there had been an abortive foray

let's ask our systems how they might let us know when we are taking that step into left-hemisphere dominance ... Often, the respectful gesture of simply pausing to pose this curiosity is enough. Our systems will respond as and when they can.

Japan's largest Pokémon centre sells every piece of the series' merchandise. You can also pose with several large statues around the store, including the one that is the store's mascot: Pikachu riding on the back of a Mega Charizard Y.

The list of structures is pretty much the same list (racism, sexism, poverty, and the rest), but the implication is there could, for example, exist a system of patriarchy that operated in the total absence of domestic violence or sexual assault, or a system of racism that was in no way backed up by government-enforced property rights—despite the fact that, to my knowledge, no example of either has ever been observed.50 Once again, it’s puzzling why anyone would make such an argument, unless they were for some reason determined to insist that the physical violence isn’t the essence of the thing, that this isn’t what really needs to be addressed. To pose the question of violence directly would, apparently, mean opening a series of doors that most academics seem to feel would really better be left shut. Most of these doors lead directly to the problem of what we call “the state”—and the bureaucratic structures through which it actually exercises power. Is the state’s claim to a monopoly of violence ultimately the problem, or is the state an essential part of any possible solution? Is the very practice of laying down rules and then threatening physical harm against anyone who does not follow them itself objectionable, or is it just that the authorities are not deploying such threats in the right way? To talk of racism, sexism, and the rest as a bunch of abstract structures floating about is the best way to dodge such questions entirely.

There was something you said, Trinity, back in the first episode of the podcast series. You posed the question, ‘If it takes a village to raise a child, does it also take a village to kill one?’ You were right. It does. We all killed Leena Rai. We all turned away, looked away, one too many times. And if you ask me who started the fire last night . . . we all did.