Positive Rat Quotes

Life is full of surprises, so you may as well get used to it.

If I am ever in the position where I wish to seduce someone I will simply assure her it’s better than rats.

Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain. And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

I'm fairly certain our gardens are rat-free." "I don't know. Rats are pretty sneaky. Sometimes they even make it into elected positions. Sometimes if you let them get out of control they even become mayor.

Let me be frank," Joe's voice pulls me back. "You seem like a nice girl. So why the hell are you chasing down a rat bastard like Blake?" I smile at the description. "I thought you were his friend." "Can't help liking the son of a bitch." He squirms in the seat, trying to find a comfortable position. "Pardon me for saying so. You don't seem like his type." What is that suppose to mean? So I'm not dumb, snobby or slutty ... Oh.

Even if I be likened to a rat, I do not care, provided that that particular rat be wanted by you, and be of use in the world, and be retained in its position, and receive its reward. But what a rat it is!

You will never get to see fifty foot statues of warlords and emperors or feel the triumph of conquest. You will never see man live as the ancients dreamed he would, all because a couple of rats tunneled their way into positions of power. They said the past is wrong. They said invaders should have your land. They said its ok to embrace apathy. You are a victim of the technocracy, of an abuse named 'civility'. You have been robbed of a fulfilling earnest life.

Scientists induced Parkinson’s in rats by killing the dopamine cells in their basal ganglia, and then forced half of them to run on a treadmill twice a day in the ten days following the “onset” of the disease. Incredibly, the runners’ dopamine levels stayed within normal ranges and their motor skills didn’t deteriorate. In one study on people with Parkinson’s, intensive activity improved motor ability as well as mood, and the positive effects lasted for at least six weeks after they stopped exercising.

A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.     Gotanda

The child was left alone to die in the hallway. Here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with Peter. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be. The old man said, "Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, or the position of the electron. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain. And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is. Everything that ever will be, is. In all possible combinations. Though we imagine that it is in motion and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. So any event is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible. And, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

Qhuinn dived into the plane, pulled himself into the pilot’s seat, and tried to make sense of all the…fucking hell, there were a lot of dials. The only saving grace he had was that he’d— Rat-tat-tat-tat! —watched enough movies to know that the lever with the grip was the gas and the bow tie–shaped wheel was the thing you pulled up to go up, and pushed down to go down. “Fuck,” he muttered as he stayed in a tuck position as much as he could.

The sad truth is that Trump owes his victory to a very dark turn in American conservatism. Unlike right wing ideologues of old, who at least tried to portray themselves as stabilizing and constructive, the right in the era of Trump is a movement of annihilation. They are bigoted, sexist, and mean, and often don;t even try to dress these destructive impulses up in the garb of tradition or religion. They delight in cruelty for its own sake. Building something positive has no real value in this new right wing. Pissing off perceived enemies, such as feminists and liberals, is the only real political goal worth fighting for. They are, in other words, a nation of trolls.

And proceeded past Trevor Williams, former hunter, seated before the tremendous heap of all the animals he had dispatched in his time: hundreds of deer, thirty-two black bear, three bear cubs, innumerable coons, lynx, foxes, mink, chipmunks, wild turkeys, woodchucks, and cougars; scores of mice and rats, a positive tumble of snakes, hundreds of cows and calves, one pony (carriage-struck), twenty thousand or so insects, each of which he must briefly hold, with loving attention, for a period ranging from several hours to several months, depending on the quality of loving attention he could muster and the state of fear the beast happened to have been in at the time of its passing.

Rats! It's rainy outside, And to be a good fella Invite a smile so wide Nobody needs umbrella!

My archive project is a multiedged sword. It is something I love doing, but it raises some questions about my motives in doing it. A writer accused me of building my archives just to further my own legend, whatever that is. I hope you don't believe that. What a shallow existence that would be! I remember reading that article saying that about me. It pissed me off. It's my life, and I am a collector. I collect everything: cars, trains, manuscripts, photographs, tape recordings, records, memories and clothes, to name a few. The fact that I want to create a chronological history of my recordings and supporting work is proof positive that I am an incurable collector, confronted with an amazingly detailed array of creations that I have painstakingly rat-holed over the years.

The world is mediocre. About that there is no mistake. Well then, has the world been mediocre since time immemorial? No. In the beginning, the world was chaos, and chaos is not mediocre. The mediocratization began when people separated the means of production from daily life. For when Karl Marx posited the proletariat, he thereby cemented their mediocrity. And precisely because of this, Stalinism forms a direct link with Marxism. I affirm Marx. He was one of those rare geniuses whose memory extended back to primal chaos. And by the same token, I have high regard for Dostoyevsky. Nonetheless, I do not hold with Marxism. It is far too mediocre.

The sight of her child smiling, or the sound of her kitten purring, is rewarding to a mother, in the same sense as food in the stomach is rewarding to a rat in a maze. But once it becomes true that a sweet smile or a loud purr are rewarding, the child is in a position to use the smile or the purr in order to manipulate the parent, and gain more than its fair share of parental investment.

You hwill follow me!” You did not disobey someone who added h’s to their w’s. Clara and Nutcracker hurried after Mother Svetlana, who could glide down the hall with extreme grace for someone her size. Nuns rushed past them in frocks of beige, their starched wimples brushing Clara. Mother Svetlana parted them like the Red Sea. Something flashed in one of their hands—a butcher knife? “How dare these ungodly creatures assault a house of the Lord!” Mother Svetlana’s voice filled to the arches. “Hwe are hwomen of peace!” “Yes…” Nutcracker eyed a short nun who scampered past with an ax. She looked positively gleeful. “Hwe hwill hold the rats off, with God’s help,” Mother Svetlana continued. Down the hall, gunshots sounded, echoing through the gardens. A nun rushed past, carrying an eye-stinging bucket of lye. Another feeble old woman scuttled past with a huge rifle, gleefully squeaking: Lawks, lawks, I’m just a little old nun!

Concerning Man--he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view--this premise: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn't served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably matter of surprise and regret to the Creator. . . . For his history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice.   That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by our hero Remy, a rat. Voiced by the great Peter O’Toole, Ego says that Remy’s talents have “challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking … [and] have rocked me to my core.” His speech, written by Brad Bird, similarly rocked me—and, to this day, sticks with me as I think about my work. “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.

The waiting room, like most waiting rooms, was deserted and unremarkable. The benches were miserably uncomfortable, the ashtrays swollen with waterlogged cigarette butts, the air stale. On the walls were travel posters and most-wanted lists. The only other people there were an old man wearing a camel-color sweater and a mother with her four-year-old son. The old man sat glued in position, poring through a literary magazine. He turned the pages as slowly as if he were peeling away adhesive tape. Fifteen minutes from one page to the next. The mother and child looked like a couple whose marriage was on the rocks.

I was twenty-nine years old. In six months my twenties would be over. A whole decade since living here. One big blank. Not one thing of value had I gotten out of it, not one meaningful thing had I done. Boredom was all there was. How were things before? Surely there had to have been something positive. Had there been anything that really moved me, anything that really moved anyone? Maybe, but still it was all gone now. Lost, perhaps meant to be lost. Nothing I can do about it, got to let it go. At least I was still around. If the only good Indian is a dead Indian, it was my fate to go on living. What for? To tell tales to a stone wall? Really, now.

It took the rats a long time to realize they were better off not sprinting straight into the courtyard—rats are not known for their tactical sense. Really rats aren’t known for much, except for being numerous and dying easily. Or at least they died easily that day, even after they started taking cover in the surrounding buildings and trying to snipe at Barley. He was well positioned in the dark, and at this point the mounds of corpses he had made acted as cover. It took twenty minutes for one of the cleverer rodents to remember the heavy artillery, and another twenty to wheel one out from its position on the battlements. They wasted a lot of ammo finding the proper range, though they did a good job of destroying large sections of the castle. And in the meantime Barley continued his work, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat. And to find an equal to his tally, to do that bloody arithmetic—if one was inclined to do so, if one’s mind ran in that sort of direction—one would have needed to compare him against disease, and time, and heartbreak.

The experience of stress has three components. The first is the event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor. The second element is the processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain. The final constituent is the stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioural adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat. We see immediately that the definition of a stressor depends on the processing system that assigns meaning to it. The shock of an earthquake is a direct threat to many organisms, though not to a bacterium. The loss of a job is more acutely stressful to a salaried employee whose family lives month to month than to an executive who receives a golden handshake. Equally important is the personality and current psychological state of the individual on whom the stressor is acting. The executive whose financial security is assured when he is terminated may still experience severe stress if his self-esteem and sense of purpose were completely bound up with his position in the company, compared with a colleague who finds greater value in family, social interests or spiritual pursuits. The loss of employment will be perceived as a major threat by the one, while the other may see it as an opportunity. There is no uniform and universal relationship between a stressor and the stress response. Each stress event is singular and is experienced in the present, but it also has its resonance from the past. The intensity of the stress experience and its long-term consequences depend on many factors unique to each individual. What defines stress for each of us is a matter of personal disposition and, even more, of personal history. Selye discovered that the biology of stress predominantly affected three types of tissues or organs in the body: in the hormonal system, visible changes occurred in the adrenal glands; in the immune system, stress affected the spleen, the thymus and the lymph glands; and the intestinal lining of the digestive system. Rats autopsied after stress had enlarged adrenals, shrunken lymph organs and ulcerated intestines.

Story time. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd: Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation. ... Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent? The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers. ... Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson? This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can? And that brings us to the door you’re standing in front of right now. What does all this have to do with what you’re going to find on the other side? Nothing!

Don’t just make statements. Just look. There are two million years of inheritance, thousands and thousands of experiences, impressions, conditions, knowledge. All that is my background, and I want to learn about it, open it all up and be free of it, because those things are controlling my present and shaping the future, and so I continue to live in a cage. So I say to myself: ‘This is terrible. I must get rid of it.’ I do not know what to do. I do not know. Then I ask myself: what is the state of my mind when I say I really do not know? You and I are the result of two million years of conditioning. Right? In that two million years there is not only the animal inheritance but the human endeavour to grow, to become – hundreds of things. We are that. And all that is operating in the present and the future. This is the rat race I have lived in. So I look at this rat race, and I say: ‘I must get rid of it.’ I ask you about it, and you do not know: I ask the Pope, dozens of people, and they do not know. They know only according to their terminology; that is, if you believe in Jesus, if you believe in God, you think you know according to that. So I am now in a position to find out what is the state of my mind when I say: I really do not know.

The rats that Marian Diamond studied had either an enriched or an impoverished environment. That changed their brain state. If you’re surrounded by a nurturing physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual environment, you’re in one brain state. If you’re surrounded by danger, uncertainty, and hostility, you’re in a quite different brain state. Brain states, along with mental, emotional, and spiritual states, run the gamut. When the brain’s Enlightenment Circuit is turned on, you’re in a happy and positive state. When the Default Mode Network (DMN) of Chapter 2 predominates, you’re in a negative and stressed state. State Progression Cognitive psychologist Michael Hall has been fascinated by human potential for over 40 years. He has studied the most advanced methods, authored more than 30 books on the topic, and mapped the stages by which people change. Unpleasant experiences are what usually motivate us to change. These involve mental, emotional, or spiritual states. Examples of such states are despair, stagnation, anger, or resentment. Hall calls these “unresourceful” states. We can cultivate resourceful states, such as joy, empowerment, mastery, and contentment. To describe the movement of a person from an unresourceful to a resourceful state, Hall uses the term “state progression.” Hall’s “state progression” model has several steps: Identify the unresourceful state. Identify the desired state. Countercondition dysfunctional behavioral patterns that maintain the unresourceful state. Activate change toward the desired state. Experience the target state. Repeat the experience of the desired state. Condition new behaviors that reinforce the desired state. That’s the promise of directing your attention consciously rather than defaulting to the brain’s negativity bias. Attention sustained over time produces state progression and triggers neural plasticity. If you focus on positive beliefs and thoughts repeatedly, bringing your mind and focus back to the good, you then use attention in the service of positive neural plasticity. When we have practiced sufficiently to be able to maintain this focus, we achieve a condition that Hall calls positive state stability. Our minds become stable in that new state. Their default setting is no longer to focus on the negative. The brain’s negativity bias is no longer hijacking our attention and directing it toward the negative things that are happening, either in our own lives or in the world. We have moved through the stages of state progression to positive state stability.

Frodo indeed 'failed' as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say 'simple minds' with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead to the use of two different scales of 'morality'. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by 'mercy': that is, since we can with good will do this without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another's strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances. I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum – impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed. We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached. Nonetheless, I think it can be observed in history and experience that some individuals seem to be placed in 'sacrificial' positions: situations or tasks that for perfection of solution demand powers beyond their utmost limits, even beyond all possible limits for an incarnate creature in a physical world – in which a body may be destroyed, or so maimed that it affects the mind and will. Judgement upon any such case should then depend on the motives and disposition with which he started out, and should weigh his actions against the utmost possibility of his powers, all along the road to whatever proved the breaking-point.

First, he’s a billionaire, and a seventy-year-old man. Meaning, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass anymore about anything other than what matters. He’s lived a wild life already—so he doesn’t care who his casual comments offend. When he makes a joke it’s like when a baby farts. It’s nothing personal, the baby’s forgotten it, while everyone is choking out in the room. But the baby doesn’t care. I also had to admit that he’s never been in public office, so he doesn’t know how to be that particular kind of phony. I mean the phony that we all accept—which I call the “mandatory fake.” The mandatory fake is the married news anchor who condemns unseemly sexual behavior while banging Dalmatians in a nearby hotel. Being an old rich uncle who’s never been in politics, Trump has no familiarity with mandatory fake. There is, however, a different kind of fakery in Trump’s world of real estate fibbery. But such lies—salesman’s lies—are deliberately obvious by their excess. You know a salesman is lying when he tells you the car you’re buying from him was only driven by a little old lady once a week to church, which is great because she lives in the attic above the church! A salesman’s lie is done with a wink and an exaggeration (“This is the biggest crowd ever!”). A politician’s lie is a promise that could very well be true, but never is (“Read my lips, no new taxes”). You see the difference? Trump’s lies are common and do not insult us, because he assumes we’re all in on the joke. Politicians are daring you to go against your own innate skepticism (which is always a mistake). Am I “Trump-splaining”? Yes, I am. For now that he’s our president and up against so much, it’s no longer fealty to do so. It’s actually fairness. Anyway, as a Holmes, I’ve since reevaluated some positions that I’ve taken for granted. I’ve looked at the research on illegal immigration and its effects on unemployment. I’ve also looked harder at crime numbers, legal vs. illegal offenders. I’ve pretty much stuck to my original precepts, but I realize that ideology ultimately helps no one in that debate.

It is within this network of intermediary neurons, arranged end-to-end and side-by-side between our sensory nerve endings and our motor units, that all of our tone levels, reflexes, gestures, habits, tendencies, feelings, attitudes, postures, styles have their genesis. It is called the internuncial net, and it has come into its fullest flower in the human being. [Internuncios were official messengers for the Pope, taking information and bringing back responses from the various courts of Europe.) This net composes roughly ninety percent of our nervous systems, including the entire spinal cord and the brain. It is nothing less than the total activity of this internuncial net which influences the responses of the motor units. Let us recall our stiff old man who was anaesthetized for surgery. The anaesthesia had no direct effect on either sensory endings or motor units; rather, it interrupted the normal flow of signals in the internuncial network in the brain. The result was flaccid, unresponsive muscles, and a blanking out of all sensation produced by the scalpel and the probe. It is only by influencing the flow of impulses through the vast internuncial net that we can have any effect upon tone, habit, and behavior. The conditions which direct that flow into specific patterns have been evolved through the handling of particular qualities and amounts of sensory experience and the repetitions of specific appropriate motor responses. One of the readiest means we have of actually influencing—rather than just temporarily interrupting—the conditions within the net is the introduction of more and more positive sensory experience, which elicits new kinds of motor responses, and can thus form the basis for the development of new habits, new conditions, new patterns of neural flow. The complexities of the internuncial net are forbidding. The suggestion that bodywork might in some way make significant and lasting changes in its function may sound like the ravings of a necromancer turned amateur neurosurgeon. We know so very little, and would presume to do so much. And yet we do know that very simple means can produce remarkable and demonstrably repeatable results in this fantastically complicated network. Infants who do not receive adequate physical stimulation die or are dwarfed and deformed. Laboratory rats who are handled on a daily basis develop markedly stronger resistance to fatal diseases, even to the loss of vital organs. Between these two extremes is a wide spectrum of quantity and quality of touching, all of which must certainly affect the health of the organism if touch in the orphanage and in the laboratory can be proven to be so crucial.

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person-a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief-you may begin to feel less trust worthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. To draw for a moment from an entirely different corner of my life, that part of me still attached to the biological sciences, there is ample evidence that animals-rats and monkeys, for example-that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming "depressed" in humanlike ways. Their behavior is anxious and withdrawn; the level of serotonin (the neurotransmitter boosted by some antidepressants) declines in their brains. And-what is especially relevant here-they avoid fighting even in self-defense. Humans are, of course, vastly more complicated; even in situations of extreme subordination, we can pump up our self-esteem with thoughts of our families, our religion, our hopes for the future. But as much as any other social animal, and more so than many, we depend for our self-image on the humans immediately around us-to the point of altering our perceptions of the world so as to fit in with theirs. My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers - the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being "reamed out" by managers - are part of what keeps wages low. If you're made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you're paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done.

In-laws-to . . . ?” Kareen’s lips parted in thrilled delight. “Oh, Ekaterin, good! Miles, you—you rat! When did this happen?” Miles grinned, a real grin this time, not playing to the house. “She asked me, and I said yes.” He glanced up more slyly at Ekaterin, and went on, “I had to set her a good example, after all. You see, Ekaterin, that’s how a proposal should be answered—forthright, decisive, and above all, positive!” “I’ll keep it in mind,” she told him. She was poker-faced, but her eyes were laughing as he led her off toward the library.

Kushner considered one of Trump’s greatest skills “figuring out how to trigger the other side by picking fights with them where he makes them take stupid positions.” He recalled Trump’s July 27, 2019, tweets about the district represented by the late Black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, which included Baltimore. “Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump had tweeted. “No human being would want to live there.” Kushner saw this as baiting the Democrats. “When he did the tweet on Elijah Cummings, the president was saying, this is great, let them defend Baltimore,” Kushner told an associate. “The Democrats are getting so crazy, they’re basically defending Baltimore. When you get to the next election, he’s tied them to all these stupid positions because they’d rather attack him than actually be rational.” Cummings’s former district is in the top half of congressional districts in median household income, home prices and education levels. It has the second-highest income of any majority-Black congressional district in the country. Chris Wallace had Mick Mulvaney, then the acting White House chief of staff, on his Sunday show the next day. “This seems, Mick,” Wallace said, “to be the worst kind of racial stereotype—” Mulvaney tried to interrupt. “Let me finish,” Wallace said, “Racial stereotyping. Black congressman, majority-Black district—I mean, ‘No human being would want to live there’? Is he saying people that live in Baltimore are not human beings?” “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines,” Mulvaney said. “I’m not reading between the lines,” Wallace replied. “I’m reading the lines.

To successfully pay yourself first, keep the following in mind: 1.​Don’t get into large debt positions that you have to pay for. Keep your expenses low. Build up assets first. Then buy the big house or nice car. Being stuck in the Rat Race is not intelligent. 2.​When you come up short, let the pressure build and don’t dip into your savings or investments. Use the pressure to inspire your financial genius to come up with new ways of making more money, and then pay your bills. You will have increased your ability to make more money as well as your financial intelligence.

This rat was not just eating the sugar. He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table.

So I’m curious, how far does the Pope think we should go in the direction of respecting and correcting the natural world and it’s wild inhabitants. Before I arrived the PIL media manager sent me a copy of Francis’s rather beautiful and cyclical ‘On Care For Our Common Home’. “Each creature has its own purpose” he writes “none is superfluous." He describes how Saint Francis would burst into song when he gazed at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals. I read these passages to Father Carlo. He listens, nodding. “Saint Francis began a new relationship between nature and humanity. If you read his poems you find the expressions ‘Sister Water’, ‘Brother Sun’, ‘Sister Moon’.” “Would Saint Francis include brother rat?” I ask “Sister Boll Weevil, Uncle Blackbird who devours 2% of the North Dakota sunflower crop?”. Father Carlo says "Yes, Yes he would. He includes even death” he says.“Did saint Francis say anything specifically about rodents?”I hear myself say. “No, he didn’t. but the point is, brotherhood is not a simple relationship. with your brothers and sisters, normally you fight. You cannot think that there is an idillic way of being in a relationship with someone. Every relationship among humans and the earth is not only connotated with positive aspects. At the same time you also have negative aspects. The point is how do you deal with those aspects?” He’s good, this guy. “Yes” I say, “and how should we deal? It’s well and good to say these things, but how do we act in a way that serves both human and animal fairly? Let’s take the example of Canada Geese on gold courses. What is their crime? Befouling the turf, littering. For this should we be allowed to call someone in to round them up and gas them? Do they deserve to die because a few well-heeled humans want to hit a ball into hole and they need an obsessively tidy playing surface the size of the holy sea? Think of all the Sister Water that gets wasted watering the greens. Maybe it’s time to eliminate gold, not geese.” Father Carlos collects his thoughts. Among them, surely, ‘who let her in?’.

So I’m curious, how far does the Pope think we should go in the direction of respecting and correcting the natural world and it’s wild inhabitants. Before I arrived the PIL media manager sent me a copy of Francis’s rather beautiful and cyclical ‘On Care For Our Common Home’. “Each creature has its own purpose” he writes “none is superfluous." He describes how Saint Francis would burst into song when he gazed at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals. I read these passages to Father Carlo. He listens, nodding. “Saint Francis began a new relationship between nature and humanity. If you read his poems you find the expressions ‘Sister Water’, ‘Brother Sun’, ‘Sister Moon’.” “Would Saint Francis include brother rat?” I ask “Sister Boll Weevil, Uncle Blackbird who devours 2% of the North Dakota sunflower crop?”. Father Carlo says "Yes, Yes he would. He includes even death” he says.“Did saint Francis say anything specifically about rodents?”I hear myself say. “No, he didn’t. but the point is, brotherhood is not a simple relationship. with your brothers and sisters, normally you fight. You cannot think that there is an idillic way of being in a relationship with someone. Every relationship among humans and the earth is not only connotated with positive aspects. At the same time you also have negative aspects. The point is how do you deal with those aspects?” He’s good, this guy. “Yes” I say, “and how should we deal? It’s well and good to say these things, but how do we act in a way that serves both human and animal fairly? Let’s take the example of Canada Geese on gold courses. What is their crime? Befouling the turf, littering. For this should we be allowed to call someone in to round them up and gas them? Do they deserve to die because a few well-heeled humans want to hit a ball into hole and they need an obsessively tidy playing surface the size of the holy sea? Think of all the Sister Water that gets wasted watering the greens. Maybe it’s time to eliminate golf, not geese.” Father Carlos collects his thoughts. Among them, surely, ‘who let her in?’.

Proposed in 1998, it posits that females who step out of the reproductive rat race mid-life and focus their energies on supporting their children (and grandchildren), instead of squeezing out yet more babies, significantly increase their offspring’s chances of survival and, in turn, their own genetic legacy.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice. Quitting a high-paying position, if it is your decision, will seem a better payoff than the utility of the money involved (this may seem crazy, but I’ve tried it and it works). This is the first step toward the stoic’s throwing a four-letter word at fate. You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself. Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop’s fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic prior disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts. It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself. In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what you do; so make this your end.

Goliath said with somber voice, “Since it is our custom to grant defeated deities some amount of vassal-like privilege, the Lord of Ashdod, Mutallu, thought it only gracious to allow this Yahweh an audience in Dagon’s presence. But the next morning when the priests opened the temple, the image of Dagon was on the floor, face down before the Israelite ark.” Lahmi and Ittai gasped. Warati sighed. Ishbi said, “That is only the beginning of the pranks that malevolent deity has pulled.” Goliath said, “They returned Dagon to his position, but the very next morning, he was prostrate before the ark yet again. Only this time, Dagon’s head and hands had been cut off lying on the threshold.” “Holy father of Ba’al,” whispered Warati. The cutting off of heads and hands of enemy combatants was a peculiar tactic of victory in war. It was a denigration of one’s conquered foes into complete powerlessness. Warati continued, “It would take great strength to cut through that diorite. No one was seen in or near the temple?” “It was locked and guarded,” said Goliath. “The guards never even heard the sound of the fall or the breaking.” Ishbi added, “That abomination was followed by an infestation of rats as well as a plague of boils, tumors, and hemorrhoids.

You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.’ ‘But still, the Fire of Life … it is just a fairy tale,’ insisted Dog the bear and Bear the dog, together. Nobodaddy drew himself up indignantly. ‘Do I look,’ he demanded, ‘like a fairy to you? Do I resemble, perhaps, an elf? Do gossamer wings sprout from my shoulders? Do you see even a trace of pixie dust? I tell you now that the Fire of Life is as real as I am, and that only that Unquenchable Blaze will do what you all wish done. It will turn bear into Man and dog into Dog-Man, and it will also be the End of Me. Luka! You little murderer! Your eyes light up at the very thought! How thrilling! I am amongst assassins! What are we waiting for, then? Are we starting now? Let’s be off! Tick, tock! There is no time to lose!’ At this point Luka’s feet began to feel as if somebody was gently tickling their soles. Then the silver sun rose above the horizon, and something quite unprecedented began to happen to the neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that wasn’t Luka’s real neighbourhood, or not quite. Why was the sun silver, for one thing? And why was everything too brightly coloured, too smelly, too noisy? The sweetmeats on the street vendor’s barrow at the corner looked like they might taste odd, too. The fact that Luka was able to look at the street vendor’s barrow at all was a part of the strange situation, because the barrow was always positioned at the crossroads, just out of sight of his house, and yet here it was, right in front of him, with those oddly coloured, oddly tasting sweetmeats all over it, and those oddly coloured, oddly buzzing flies buzzing oddly all around it. How was this possible? Luka wondered. After all, he hadn’t moved a step, and there was the street vendor asleep under the barrow, so the barrow obviously hadn’t moved either; and how did the crossroads arrive as well, um, that was to say, how had he arrived at the crossroads?

And proceeded past Trevor Williams, former hunter, seated before the tremendous heap of all the animals he had dispatched in his time: hundreds of deer, thirty-two black bear, three bear cubs, innumerable coons, lynx, foxes, mink, chipmunks, wild turkeys, woodchucks, and cougars; scores of mice and rats, a positive tumble of snakes, hundreds of cows and calves, one pony (carriage-struck), twenty thousand or so insects, each of which he must briefly hold, with loving attention, for a period ranging from several hours to several months, depending on the quality of loving attention he could muster and the state of fear the beast happened to have been in at the time of its passing. Being thus held (the product of time and loving attention and being found sufficient, that is), that particular creature would heave up, then drive or fly or squirm away, diminishing Mr. Williams heap by one.

The privacy issue was reignited in early 2014, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had conducted a massive social-science experiment on nearly seven hundred thousand of its users. To determine whether it could alter the emotional state of its users and prompt them to post either more positive or negative content, the site’s data scientists enabled an algorithm, for one week, to automatically omit content that contained words associated with either positive or negative emotions from the central news feeds of 689,003 users. As it turned out, the experiment was very “successful” in that it was relatively easy to manipulate users’ emotions, but the backlash from the blogosphere was horrendous. “Apparently what many of us feared is already a reality: Facebook is using us as lab rats, and not just to figure out which ads we’ll respond to but to actually change our emotions,” wrote Sophie Weiner on AnimalNewYork.com.

I knew we’d be accused of rewarding incompetence, of throwing public money down a rat hole. But I believed we had gotten taxpayers a reasonable deal, not just in the financial terms of the loan, but by avoiding even more severe damage to the economy. I’d soon get some early validation of that when Hank Greenberg, AIG’s hard-driving former chief executive and a major shareholder in the firm, visited me to complain that the Fed had been given too much equity in AIG, too much of the upside. I was a bit shocked by the audacity; basically, he wanted us to give back a big chunk of the company. I told him we hadn’t done the deal to make money, and we’d be happy to sell him back some of the equity if he’d be willing to take some of the risk. But what interested me was Greenberg’s confidence that we’d get a positive return from AIG, rather than the tens of billions in losses that everyone else seemed to expect. He’d be right about that, but only because of the force of the government’s actions to stabilize the company and the broader financial system over the next few years. He and other AIG shareholders would end up suing the federal government, claiming that we had been unjustly harsh to the firm we rescued.

If a stranger saying we are "dependable" activates the reward system, imagine what praise from a boss, a parent, or even an unaccomplished slightly older graduate student will do. Of course, we all know that praise is a good thing, as long as it isn't too unconditional, but until very recently, we had no idea that praise taps into the same reinforcement system in the brain that enables cheese to help rats learn to solve mazes. And positive social regard is a renewable resource. Rather than having less of something after using it, when we let others know we value them, both parties have more.

Ask any single parent whether they’d like an extra set of hands around the house and they’d take it.” They’d take it if it weren’t the set of hands belonging to the rat bastard who asked for a divorce the same day the pregnancy test read positive.

Convenience, by definition, means you are paying a premium for an aspirational product, only putting yourself further and further behind in achieving positive cash-flow and ensuring you will only work harder and find yourself more exhausted in the future, extending the rat race of consumerism.

Toxic stress is defined as frequent or prolonged activation of the stress system in the absence of support. Toxic stress is either severe, such as witnessing an assault, or recurs day in and day out, in which case it is chronic. Supportive adults—who minimize exposure to things that a child isn’t developmentally ready to handle—aren’t readily available. The child perceives that he or she has little control over what happens. There seems to be no reprieve, no cavalry coming, no end in sight. This is the space many kids live in today, whether they are obviously at-risk students like Adam, or seemingly high-functioning kids like Zara. Toxic stress does not prepare kids for the real world. It damages their ability to thrive.13 To return to rat studies for a moment, when rat pups were taken from their mothers not for fifteen minutes but for three hours a day, the experience was so stressful that when they were returned to their mothers, the rat pups didn’t interact with them. They remained easily stressed for the rest of their lives.14 So how do you capitalize on positive or tolerable stress while avoiding the bad kind? It is simple in theory, but tricky in execution: kids need a supportive adult around, they need time to recover from the stressful event, and they need to have a sense of control over their lives.

The Rat has the “General Star”, bringing out your inner leadership. You can be more influential, obtain promotion, higher positions or a rise in rank. You have the ability and grit to hold fast to your goals. Your survival instinct will be at an all-time high.

I’m talking about people who live in some of our most affluent cities,’ says O’Casey, ‘but they’re driven to live below the earth. People who—for whatever reason—aren’t welcome on the surface: homeless people, addicts, the HIV positive. There are subterranean communities all over the world, in catacombs, sewers and abandoned metros. The Tunnel People in Las Vegas, the Empire of the Dead in Paris, the Rat Tribe in Beijing. A lot of them are proper societies, with electricity and phone lines, even churches and restaurants sometimes. The Rat Tribe in Beijing are mostly migrant workers, some of them brought in to build for the Olympics. The only place they can afford to live is underground, in tunnels and old air-raid shelters.

14 – Would anyone like to have a little look down into the secret of how ideals are fabricated on this earth? Who has enough pluck? . . . Come on! Here we have a clear glimpse into this dark workshop. Just wait one moment, Mr Nosy Daredevil: your eyes will have to become used to this false, shimmering light . . . There! That’s enough! Now you can speak! What’s happening down there? Tell me what you see, you with your most dangerous curiosity – now I am the one who’s listening. – – ‘I cannot see anything but I can hear all the better. There is a guarded, malicious little rumour-mongering and whispering from every nook and cranny. I think people are telling lies; a sugary mildness clings to every sound. Lies are turning weakness into an accomplishment, no doubt about it – it’s just as you said.’ – – Go on! – ‘and impotence which doesn’t retaliate is being turned into “good- ness”; timid baseness is being turned into “humility”; submission to people one hates is being turned into “obedience” (actually towards someone who, they say, orders this submission – they call him God). The 27 On the Genealogy of Morality inoffensiveness of the weakling, the very cowardice with which he is richly endowed, his standing-by-the-door, his inevitable position of having to wait, are all given good names such as “patience”, also known as the virtue; not-being-able-to-take-revenge is called not-wanting-to-take-revenge, it might even be forgiveness (“for they know not what they do – but we know what they are doing!”).33 They are also talking about “loving your enemies” – and sweating while they do it.’ – Go on! – ‘They are miserable, without a doubt, all these rumour-mongers and clandestine forgers, even if they do crouch close together for warmth – but they tell me that their misery means they are God’s chosen and select, after all, people beat the dogs they love best; perhaps this misery is just a preparation, a test, a training, it might be even more than that – some- thing that will one day be balanced up and paid back with enormous inter- est in gold, no! in happiness. They call that “bliss”.’ – Go on! – ‘They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority)34 – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.’ – No! Wait a moment! You haven’t said anything yet about the master- pieces of those black magicians who can turn anything black into white- ness, milk and innocence: – haven’t you noticed their perfect raffinement, their boldest, subtlest, most ingenious and mendacious stunt? Pay atten- tion! These cellar rats full of revenge and hatred – what do they turn revenge and hatred into? Have you ever heard these words? Would you suspect, if you just went by what they said, that the men around you were nothing but men of ressentiment? . . .

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.

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.

n the 20th century, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner performed a famous set of experiments in which he tested different methods of introducing new behaviours in rats. These experiments brought to light how “the powers that be” can condition humans to love their servitude. In one set of experiments, Skinner attempted to cultivate new behaviours via positive reinforcement; he provided the rat with food anytime it performed the desirable behavior. In another set of experiments, he attempted to weaken or eliminate certain behaviours via punishment; he triggered a painful stimulus when the rat performed the behavior Skinner wished to eliminate. Skinner discovered that punishment temporarily put an end to undesirable behaviours, but it did not remove the animal’s motivation to engage in such behaviors in the future. “Punished behavior”, writes Skinner, “is likely to reappear after the punitive consequences are withdrawn.” (B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism) Behaviors that were conditioned via positive reinforcement, on the other hand, were more enduring and led to long-term changes in the animal’s behavioural patterns.

If you store too much grains and don't use it, rats can come and so many things can happen and it can become poison. Same way, fat, undigested food, if you don't eat, use it up, or flush it out, it can become poison. Best thing is: allow your body to eat itself, everything it has collected, accumulated and kept inside and whatever it can’t eat / digest / make part of itself, let it send it out, flush it out.

In the meantime, the Germans established numerous bridgeheads on the south bank of the Somme, to be used when the southward advance began. Panzers invested Boulogne on May 22nd, and on May 23rd, the British evacuated their troops at midnight. The French garrison surrendered at noon two days later on May 25th, recognizing their utterly hopeless position. The British government ordered an evacuation of Dunkirk on May 26th, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French forces accompanying them could not escape that easily, however. Near catastrophe struck on May 28th when the Belgians surrendered to Germany, opening a colossal gap in the Allied lines. King Leopold III, showing consistency of character at least if not moral courage, informed the British and French of his planned capitulation only hours prior to the actual surrender, leaving them with practically no time to prepare for its disastrous military consequences. The action earned Leopold III such sobriquets as “King Rat” and “the Traitor King,” nicknames he did little to disprove when he evinced more willingness to negotiate with Hitler for restoration of Belgian independence than he had shown in dealing with France and Britain, which sought to defend Belgium's freedom in the first place. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill blasted the Belgian monarch's abrupt surrender in a detailed speech summarizing the repercussions: “The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army.” (Churchill, 2013, 174).

that they were no different than the beetle or the rat. Their arrogance would not survive his determination. He noticed that his hands were shaking. He took a deep breath. He would focus on the positive. He was alive. Amelia was alive. The planet was crippled but not dead. And most importantly, he had a plan. A plan that would change the course of history. A plan that would save Earth. He could live with the casualties, he told himself. He shivered and withdrew to the safety of the tower.

I am in no position to judge, but I think he hit some nail or other right on the head. Towards the end of your run, if you’ve got your wits about you, you may well become impatient with the conventions you grew up with – or quite a few of them at least – and start shucking them off. You’ll know a freedom, if you’re growing old well, of a kind you’ve never enjoyed before in your life. At a certain point towards the end, if you have all your faculties intact, you’re unlikely to give a rat’s arse about anything very much at all (except, just possibly, global warming).

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. Devon picked up a fire iron and poked at the blaze on the grate, stirring up a storm of dancing sparks. “Until now, Helen never had a chance of making any kind of match.” He sent Kathleen a hard glance over his shoulder. “What you seem unwilling to accept is that no gentleman of stature is going to choose a future of poverty with a girl he loves over wealth with a girl he merely tolerates.” “There might be a few.” At his derisive glance, she said defensively, “There might be one.

It was West’s misfortune to have gone to the study at the same time that Kathleen and Devon went there to do battle. “What’s happening?” West asked, glancing from one set face to the other. “Helen and Winterborne,” Devon said succinctly. Glancing at Kathleen’s accusing face, West winced and tugged at his necktie. “There’s no need for me to take part in the discussion, is there?” “Did you know about the courtship?” Kathleen demanded. “Might have,” he muttered. “Then yes, you will stay and explain why you didn’t talk him out of this appalling idea.” West looked indignant. “When have I ever been able to talk either of you out of anything?” Kathleen turned to glare at Devon. “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.

Page 3: My family is part of the Philippines’ tiny but entrepreneurial, economically powerful Chinese minority. Just 1 percent of the population, Chinese Filipinos control as much as 60 percent of the private economy, including the country’s four major airlines and almost all of the country’s banks, hotels, shopping malls, and major conglomerates. ... Since my aunt’s murder, one childhood memory keeps haunting me. I was eight, staying at my family’s splendid hacienda-style house in Manila. It was before dawn, still dark. Wide awake, I decided to get a drink from the kitchen. I must have gone down an extra flight of stairs, because I literally stumbled onto six male bodies. I had found the male servants’ quarters. My family’s houseboys, gardeners, and chauffeurs—I sometimes imagine that Nilo Abique [the chauffeur that murdered her aunt] was among those men—were sleeping on mats on a dirt floor. The place stank of sweat and urine. I was horrified. Later that day I mentioned the incident to my Aunt Leona, who laughed affectionately and explained that the servants—there were perhaps twenty living on the premises, all ethnic Filipinos—were fortunate to be working for our family. If not for their positions, they would be living among rats and open sewers without even a roof over their heads. A Filipino maid then walked in; I remember that she had a bowl of food for my aunt’s Pekingese. My aunt took the bowl but kept talking as if the maid were not there. The Filipinos, she continued—in Chinese, but plainly not caring whether the maid understood or not—were lazy and unintelligent and didn’t really want to do much else. If they didn’t like working for us, they were free to leave any time. After all, my aunt said, they were employees, not slaves.