Praise Report Quotes

Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them. [Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65]

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.

Men's lives are short . The hard man and his cruelties will be Cursed behind his back and mocked in death. But one whose heart and ways are kind - of him strangers will bear report to the whole wide world, and distant men will praise him. - Penelope in Robert Fitzgerald trans. THE ODYSSEY (364)

For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous impulses. While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those nineteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid fucking cow.

I write the truth because I love it and because there is no living creature whose anger I fear or whose praise I court." ~ Nellie Bly, The Evening World, 1895

a grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material.

Many of my clients have reported being surprised that their parents boasted about them to a friend, yet never told them directly they were proud of them. This can be confusing, but it makes sense because bragging to others allows EI parents to keep emotional distance while still claiming your accomplishment as social currency. This is emotionally safer for them than looking you in the eye and telling you how pleased they are. EI parents would find such direct, emotionally intimate praise intensely uncomfortable.

matter of consciousness: “It always makes me think of the great Harriet Tubman who said when she was praised for going into the dark of night in the South and helping to liberate hundreds and hundreds of slaves, ‘I could have liberated many more if only they knew they were slaves.’ We must always remember it is about consciousness.

To turn away from the lifeless preachers and publishers of the day—may involve a real cross. Your motives will be misconstrued, your words perverted, and your actions misinterpreted. The sharp arrows of false report will be directed against you. You will be called proud and self-righteous, because you refuse to fellowship empty professors. You will be termed censorious and bitter—if you condemn in plain speech—the subtle delusions of Satan. You will be dubbed narrow-minded and uncharitable, because you refuse to join in singing the praises of the “great” and “popular” men of the day. More and more, you will be made to painfully realize—that the path which leads unto eternal life is “narrow” and that FEW there are who find it. May the Lord be pleased to grant unto each of us—the hearing ear and obedient heart! “Take heed what you hear” and read!

Only two or three months ago, one of the Tokyo newspapers (I can’t remember which) admirably reported that a two hundred inch astronomical telescope in America was halfway toward completion. I should like to praise the editor of that newspaper. Articles about war, foreign affairs, and the stock market are not the only things that should be considered newsworthy. A two hundred inch lens can magnify our view of the cosmos considerably. The scope of human vision will expand tremendously. It will become possible to see what was once impossible to behold. It will be a momentous occasion, as though the whole human race, once blind, is granted the gift of sight. Its importance is unrivalled by any war.

I was extremely curious about the alternatives to the kind of life I had been leading, and my friends and I exchanged rumors and scraps of information we dug from official publications. I was struck less by the West's technological developments and high living standards than by the absence of political witch-hunts, the lack of consuming suspicion, the dignity of the individual, and the incredible amount of liberty. To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China. Almost every other day the front page of Reference, the newspaper which carded foreign press items, would feature some eulogy of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. At first I was angered by these, but they soon made me see how tolerant another society could be. I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protesters, that kept the West progressing. Still, I could not help being irritated by some observations. Once I read an article by a Westerner who came to China to see some old friends, university professors, who told him cheerfully how they had enjoyed being denounced and sent to the back end of beyond, and how much they had relished being reformed. The author concluded that Mao had indeed made the Chinese into 'new people' who would regard what was misery to a Westerner as pleasure. I was aghast. Did he not know that repression was at its worst when there was no complaint? A hundred times more so when the victim actually presented a smiling face? Could he not see to what a pathetic condition these professors had been reduced, and what horror must have been involved to degrade them so? I did not realize that the acting that the Chinese were putting on was something to which Westerners were unaccustomed, and which they could not always decode. I did not appreciate either that information about China was not easily available, or was largely misunderstood, in the West, and that people with no experience of a regime like China's could take its propaganda and rhetoric at face value. As a result, I assumed that these eulogies were dishonest. My friends and I would joke that they had been bought by our government's 'hospitality." When foreigners were allowed into certain restricted places in China following Nixon's visit, wherever they went the authorities immediately cordoned off enclaves even within these enclaves. The best transport facilities, shops, restaurants, guest houses and scenic spots were reserved for them, with signs reading "For Foreign Guests Only." Mao-tai, the most sought-after liquor, was totally unavailable to ordinary Chinese, but freely available to foreigners. The best food was saved for foreigners. The newspapers proudly reported that Henry Kissinger had said his waistline had expanded as a result of the many twelve-course banquets he enjoyed during his visits to China. This was at a time when in Sichuan, "Heaven's Granary," our meat ration was half a pound per month, and the streets of Chengdu were full of homeless peasants who had fled there from famine in the north, and were living as beggars. There was great resentment among the population about how the foreigners were treated like lords. My friends and I began saying among ourselves: "Why do we attack the Kuomintang for allowing signs saying "No Chinese or Dogs" aren't we doing the same? Getting hold of information became an obsession. I benefited enormously from my ability to read English, as although the university library had been looted during the Cultural Revolution, most of the books it had lost had been in Chinese. Its extensive English-language collection had been turned upside down, but was still largely intact.

Then came Eichmann’s last statement: His hopes for justice were disappointed; the court had not believed him, though he had always done his best to tell the truth. The court did not understand him: he had never been a Jew-hater, and he had never willed the murder of human beings. His guilt came from his obedience, and obedience is praised as a virtue. His virtue had been abused by the Nazi leaders. But he was not one of the ruling clique, he was a victim, and only the leaders deserved punishment.

Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration:—reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspirations Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space.

But if your language is intended to be the medium of an art; if you, its user, are an artist and not a reporter, a persuader, a raconteur; if you aren't writing principally to get praise or pay, but wish to avoid the busy avenues of entertainment, to traffic in the tragic maybe, dig down to the deeply serious; then (although there are a few exceptional and contrary cases) you will understand right away how blessed you are by the language you were born with, the language you began to amster in the moment you also started to learn about life, to read the lines on faces, the light in the window which meant milk, the door which deprived you of mother, the half-songs sung by that someone who lonaed you the breast you suckled - the breast you claimed as more than kin.

At some point, sisters began to talk about how unseen they have felt. How the media has focused on men, but it has been them - the sisters - who were there. They were there, in overwhelming numbers, just as they were during the civil rights movement. Women - all women, trans women - are roughly 80% of the people who were staring down the terror of Ferguson, saying “we are the caretakers of this community”. Is it women who are out there, often with their children, calling for an end to police violence, saying “we have a right to raise our children without fear”. But it is not women’s courage that is showcased in the media. One sister says “when the police move in we do not run, we stay. And for this, we deserve recognition”. Their words will live with us, will live in us, as Ferguson begins to unfold and as the national attention begins to really focus on what Alicia, Opal and I have started. The first time there’s coverage of Black Lives Matter in a way that is positive is on the Melissa Harris-Perry show. She does not invite us - it isn’t intentional, I’m certain of that. And about a year later she does, but in this early moment, and despite the overwhelming knowledge of the people on the ground who are talking about what Alicia, Opal and I have done, and despite of it being part of the historical record, that it is always women who do the work even as men get the praise. It takes a long time for us to occur to most reporters and the mainstream. Living in patriarchy means that the default inclination is to center men and their voices, not women and their work. The fact seems ever more exacerbated in our day and age, when presence on twitter, when the number of followers one has, can supplant the everyday and heralded work of those who, by virtue of that work, may not have time to tweet constantly or sharpen and hone their personal brand so that it is an easily sellable commodity. Like the women who organized, strategized, marched, cooked, typed up and did the work to ensure the civil rights movement; women whose names go unspoken, unknown, so too that this dynamic unfolds as the nation began to realize that we were a movement. Opal, Alicia and I never wanted or needed to be the center of anything. We were purposeful about decentralizing our role in the work, but neither did we want, nor deserved, to be erased.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are atrue, whatsoever things are bhonest, whatsoever things are cjust, whatsoever things are dpure, whatsoever things are elovely, fwhatsoever things are of good report; if there be any gvirtue, and if there be any praise, hthink on these things.

When my father died and was buried in a chapel overlooking Portsmouth—the same chapel in which General Eisenhower had prayed for success the night before D-Day in 1944—I gave the address from the pulpit and selected as my text a verse from the epistle of Saul of Tarsus, later to be claimed as “Saint Paul,” to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 8): Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. I chose this because of its haunting and elusive character, which will be with me at the last hour, and for its essentially secular injunction, and because it shone out from the wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying which surrounds it.

I hope that our descendants, insofar as they fear God, will find much material for the recognition of the wonderful and blessed ways that He has gone with us from the beginning from the printed reports of Ebenezer, . . . and that they will be thereby awakened to the praise of God and to faith in Him.

Parent and Teacher Actions: 1. Ask children what their role models would do. Children feel free to take initiative when they look at problems through the eyes of originals. Ask children what they would like to improve in their family or school. Then have them identify a real person or fictional character they admire for being unusually creative and inventive. What would that person do in this situation? 2. Link good behaviors to moral character. Many parents and teachers praise helpful actions, but children are more generous when they’re commended for being helpful people—it becomes part of their identity. If you see a child do something good, try saying, “You’re a good person because you ___.” Children are also more ethical when they’re asked to be moral people—they want to earn the identity. If you want a child to share a toy, instead of asking, “Will you share?” ask, “Will you be a sharer?” 3. Explain how bad behaviors have consequences for others. When children misbehave, help them see how their actions hurt other people. “How do you think this made her feel?” As they consider the negative impact on others, children begin to feel empathy and guilt, which strengthens their motivation to right the wrong—and to avoid the action in the future. 4. Emphasize values over rules. Rules set limits that teach children to adopt a fixed view of the world. Values encourage children to internalize principles for themselves. When you talk about standards, like the parents of the Holocaust rescuers, describe why certain ideals matter to you and ask children why they’re important. 5. Create novel niches for children to pursue. Just as laterborns sought out more original niches when conventional ones were closed to them, there are ways to help children carve out niches. One of my favorite techniques is the Jigsaw Classroom: bring students together for a group project, and assign each of them a unique part. For example, when writing a book report on Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, one student worked on her childhood, another on her teenage years, and a third on her role in the women’s movement. Research shows that this reduces prejudice—children learn to value each other’s distinctive strengths. It can also give them the space to consider original ideas instead of falling victim to groupthink. To further enhance the opportunity for novel thinking, ask children to consider a different frame of reference. How would Roosevelt’s childhood have been different if she grew up in China? What battles would she have chosen to fight there?

Step number four to receiving answered prayer is guard against every evil thought that comes into your mind to try to make you doubt God’s Word. Thoughts are governed by observation, association, and teaching. So this step is closely associated with step number three. The Bible says we are to cast down every imagination that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). That’s why you should stay away from all places and things that do not support your affirmation that God has answered your prayer. Your thoughts are governed and affected by observations, associations, and teaching. That means that sometimes you will have to stay away from the kind of churches that can put more unbelief in you than anything else. Also, be sure to enjoy fellowship with those who contribute to your faith.   2 CORINTHIANS 10:5 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.   PHILIPPIANS 4:8 8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are TRUE, whatsoever things are HONEST, whatsoever things are JUST, whatsoever things are PURE, whatsoever things are LOVELY, whatsoever things are OF GOOD REPORT; if there be ANY VIRTUE, and if there be ANY PRAISE, think on these things.   The Bible tells us in Philippians exactly what to think on. Many people are thinking on the wrong things, and they’re defeated in life as a result. But if you will guard against every evil thought and think only on those things which affirm that God has heard and answered your prayers, you will be cooperating with God in faith. You will have to guard your mind in order to develop in faith. And as you stand your ground firm in faith, your faith will see you through to victory.

One particularly profitable transaction with the president was to bring him new, ever harsher criticism of his chief strategist, or reports of other people criticizing him. It was important to know not to say anything positive to Trump about Bannon. Even faint praise before the “but”—“Steve is obviously smart, but…”—could produce a scowl and pout if you didn’t hurry to the “but.” (Then again, saying anyone was “smart” invariably incurred Trump’s annoyance.)

The promise is, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” In the original text, the word translated as meek is the opposite of the words – resentful – angry. It has the meaning of becoming “tamed” as a wild animal is tamed. After the mind is tamed, it may be likened to a vine, of which it may be said, “Behold this vine. I found it a wild tree whose wanton strength had swollen into irregular twigs. But I pruned the plant, and it grew temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and knotted as you see into these clean, full clusters to repay the hand that wisely wounded it.” A meek man is a self-disciplined man. He is so disciplined he sees only the finest, he thinks only the best. He is the one who fulfills the suggestion, “Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.

How many of these people rise to their feet or fall to their knees in cathedrals, temples, synagogues, mosques, reciting the word of their God by rote, all the while ignoring the living word of God just outside the window? How many read scriptures that praise their God’s creation but acquiesce when damage is done to it? Daily newspapers report on politicians, presidents, ayatollahs who righteously and regularly proclaim that they lead their nations in accordance with the word of their God; we hear of martyrs who have died because they have refused to repudiate their beliefs, of revolutions, civil wars, holy wars—all waged by people who are willing to fight for the right to believe what they choose. They choose to believe in a God who has issued divine commands; how many honor His divine commands to safeguard the environment? How many instead behave as latter-day Peters, vociferously attesting to their belief in God but denying Him when the opportunity arises to protect the environment as holy writings mandate?

but his discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments, or explications of the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforc'd, their aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good citizens. At length he took for his text that verse of the fourth chapter of Philippians, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things." And I imagin'd, in a sermon on such a text, we could not miss of having some morality. But he confin'd himself to five points only, as meant by the apostle, viz.: 1. Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the publick worship. 4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying a due respect to God's ministers. These might be all good things; but, as they were not the kind of good things that I expected from that text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more.

But the natures of mortals are different, and their manners are different, [40] but that which is clearly good is ever plain. And the education which trains [41] [men] up, conduces greatly to virtue, for to have reverence is wisdom, and it possesses an equivalent advantage, viz. to perceive what is fitting by one's mind, where report bears unwasting glory to life. [42] 'Tis a great thing to hunt for [the praise of] virtue, among women indeed, by a secret affection, [43] but among men, on the other hand, honor being inherent, [44] [bears that praise, honor,] which increases a state to an incalculable extent.

When did the Q-Anon ideology start to really infect the Republican base? One of the first times that Donald Trump officially interacted with Q-Anon supporters was when Q-Anon user @MAGAPILL posted a Trump “accomplishment” list. Trump responded in a November 25, 2017, tweet less than a month after the first Q drop: “Wow, even I didn’t realize we did so much. Wish the Fake News would report! Thank you.”10 Most important, the retweet contained a link to MagaPill, a site loaded with conspiracy theories associated with Q-Anon.11 Millions of Twitter users saw Trump’s praise and clicked the link. This introduced Q to the entire MAGA audience.

Goldman Sachs hoards rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock and jacks up commodity prices around the globe so that poor families can no longer afford basic staples and literally starve. Goldman Sachs is able to carry out its malfeasance at home and in global markets because it has former officials filtered throughout the government and lavishly funds compliant politicians—including Barack Obama, who received $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs in 2008 when he ran for president. These politicians, in return, permit Goldman Sachs to ignore security laws that under a functioning judiciary system would see the firm indicted for felony fraud. Or, as in the case of Bill Clinton, these politicians pass laws such as the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that effectively removed all oversight and outside control over the speculation in commodities, one of the major reasons food prices have soared. In 2008 and again in 2010 prices for crops such as rice, wheat and corn doubled and even tripled, making life precarious for hundreds of millions of people. And it was all done so a few corporate oligarchs, the 1 percent, could make personal fortunes in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite a damning 650-page Senate subcommittee investigation report, no individual at Goldman Sachs has been indicted, although the report accuses Goldman of defrauding its clients.319

But if your language is intended to be the medium of an art if you, its user, are an artist and not a reporter, a persuader, a raconteur; if you aren't writing principally to get praise or pay, but wish to avoid the busy avenues of entertainment, to traffic in the tragic maybe, dig down to the deeply serious; then (although there are a few exceptional and contrary cases) you will understand right away how blessed you are by the language you were born with, the language you began to amster in the moment you also started to learn about life, to read the lines on faces, the light in the window which meant milk, the door which deprived you of mother, the half-songs sung by that someone who lonaed you the breast you suckled - the breast you claimed as more than kin.

(Pericles:) For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. (Book 2 Chapter 41.3-4)

Tho' I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minister or meeting we had in Philadelphia. He us'd to visit me sometimes as a friend, and admonished me to attend his administrations, and I was now and then prevail'd on to do so, once for five Sundays successively. Had he been in my opinion a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued, [65] notwithstanding the occasion I had for the Sunday's leisure in my course of study; but his discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments, or explications of the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforc'd, their aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good citizens. At length he took for his text that verse of the fourth chapter of Philippians, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things." And I imagin'd, in a sermon on such a text, we could not miss of having some morality. But he confin'd himself to five points only, as meant by the apostle, viz.: 1. Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the publick worship. 4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying a due respect to God's ministers. These might be all good things; but, as they were not the kind of good things that I expected from that text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more.

To follow this thought a little further in order that we may get additional light upon it, turn to the letter of Paul to the Php 4:8: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." The Greek word translated "think" here is a word which means "Take an inventory." What are the things of which men, as a rule, take an inventory? Things which they value; and Paul, in writing, is practically saying, "Do not reckon as riches things perishing; but those things which make you rich indeed, the things which are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, take an inventory of these, keep your mind upon them, set a value upon them.

We cannot have a little bit of meditation in the morning, curse at noon, and do something else in the evening. We have to go on a mental diet, for a week we must completely change our mental food. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phil. 4:8 As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. If I could now single out the kind of mental food I want to express within my world and feast upon it, I would become it. […] Feast on the idea, become identified with the idea as though you were already that embodied state. Walk in the assumption that you are what you want to be. If you feast on that and remain faithful to that mental diet, you will crystallize it. You will become it in this world.

Dr. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing PCR, stated publicly numerous times that his invention should never be used for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. In July of 1997, during an event called Corporate Greed and AIDS in Santa Monica CA, Dr. Mullis explained on video, “With PCR you can find almost anything in anybody. It starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else, right? I mean, because if you can model amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there’s just very few molecules that you don’t have at least one single one of them in your body. Okay? So that could be thought of as a misuse of it, just to claim that it’s meaningful.” Mikki explained, “The major issue with PCR is that it’s easily manipulated. It functions through a cyclical process whereby each revolution amplifies magnification. On a molecular level, most of us already have trace amounts of genetic fragments similar to coronavirus within us. By simply over-cycling the process, a negative result can be flipped to a positive. Governing bodies such as the CDC and the WHO can control the number of cases by simply advising the medical industry to increase or decrease the cycle threshold (CT).” In August of 2020, the New York Times reported that “a CT beyond 34 revolutions very rarely detect live virus, but most often, dead nucleotides that are not even contagious. In compliance with guidance from the CDC and the WHO, many top US labs have been conducting tests at cycle thresholds of 40 or more. NYT examined data from Massachusetts, New York, and Nevada and determined that up to 90 percent of the individuals who tested positive carried barely any virus.”17 90 percent! In May of 2021, CDC changed the PCR cycle threshold from 40 to 28 or lower for those who have been vaccinated. This one adjustment of the numbers allowed the vaccine pushers to praise the vaccines as a big success.

Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Consider Shakespeare: we’re most familiar with a small number of his classics, forgetting that in the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Simonton tracked the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays, measuring how often they’re performed and how widely they’re praised by experts and critics. In the same five-year window that Shakespeare produced three of his five most popular works—Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello—he also churned out the comparatively average Timon of Athens and All’s Well That Ends Well, both of which rank among the worst of his plays and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development. In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose the 50 greatest pieces of classical music, the list included six pieces by Mozart, five by Beethoven, and three by Bach. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit. Picasso’s oeuvre includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries—only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim. In poetry, when we recite Maya Angelou’s classic poem “Still I Rise,” we tend to forget that she wrote 165 others; we remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and pay less attention to her other 6 autobiographies. In science, Einstein wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact. If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Across fields, Simonton reports that the most prolific people not only have the highest originality; they also generate their most original output during the periods in which they produce the largest volume.* Between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, Edison pioneered the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone. But during that period, he filed well over one hundred patents for other inventions as diverse as stencil pens, a fruit preservation technique, and a way of using magnets to mine iron ore—and designed a creepy talking doll. “Those periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the most major works appear,” Simonton notes. Edison’s “1,093 patents notwithstanding, the number of truly superlative creative achievements can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Sean Penn mourned the death of the fifty-eight-year-old socialist creep. Sean wrote in a statement sent to the Hollywood Reporter: “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” He added: “I lost a friend I was blessed to have.” Penn needs to tell you that he knew the guy. A world leader. That’s cool. I guess playing Jeff Spicoli and marrying Madonna wasn’t enough (one made your career, the other ruined your urinary tract). Yeah, this is the same chap who told Piers Morgan that Ted Cruz should be institutionalized. Talk about the pot calling the kettle batshit crazy. If Penn got any nuttier, he’d be a Snickers bar. Of course it would be uncool to point out to Penn that Chávez was no champion of the poor. Under his rule people became far poorer in Venezuela. And in the midst of an oil boom, Chávez engineered a murder boom. The murder rate in his country tripled during Chávez’s tyrannical tenure, hitting a high of 67 per 100,000 residents in 2011, compared with a murder rate of less than 5 per 100,000 in the United States (and that includes Baltimore). And about 10 or 20 less than the last Penn movie. Penn was joined, per usual, by director Oliver Stone, who said, solemnly, somewhere: “I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place.” He added: “Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chávez will live forever in history. “My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned.” This is from an adult, mind you. And no list of apologists for evil is complete without Michael Moore. This nugget comes from the Michigan Live website, which reports Moore praising Chávez in a feeble collection of Twitter messages, on the night the Venezuelan viper expired. Hugo Chávez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all. That made him dangerous. US

At first piecemeal, then point-blank, he let his attention be drawn to a little scene that was being acted out sublimely, unhampered by writers and directors and producers, five stories below the window and across the street. A fair-sized maple tree stood in front of the girls' private school--one of four or five trees on that fortunate side of the street--and at the moment a child of seven or eight, female, was hiding behind it. She was wearing a navy-blue reefer and a tam that was very nearly the same shade of red as the blanket on the bed in van Gogh's room at Aries. Her tam did, in fact, from Zooey's vantage point, appear not unlike a dab of paint. Some fifteen feet away from the child, her dog--a young dachshund, wearing a green leather collar and leash--was sniffing to find her, scurrying in frantic circles, his leash dragging behind him. The anguish of separation was scarcely bearable for him, and when at last he picked up his mistress's scent, it wasn't a second too soon. The joy of reunion, for both, was immense. The dachshund gave a little yelp, then cringed forward, shimmying with ecstasy, till his mistress, shouting something at him, stepped hurriedly over the wire guard surrounding the tree and picked him up. She said a number of words of praise to him, in the private argot of the game, then put him down and picked up his leash, and the two walked gaily west, toward Fifth Avenue and the Park and out of Zooey's sight. Zooey reflexively put his hand on a cross-piece between panes of glass, as if he had a mind to raise the window and lean out of it to watch the two disappear. It was his cigar hand, however, and he hesitated a second too long. He dragged on his cigar. "God damn it," he said, "there are nice things in the world--and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos." Behind him, just then, Franny blew her nose with guileless abandon; the report was considerably louder than might have been expected from so fine and delicate-appearing an organ. Zooey turned around to look at her, somewhat censoriously.

Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation,” Shultz told him. “I mean she really is trying to make the world better, and this is her way of doing it.” Mattis went out of his way to praise her integrity. “She has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics—personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated,” the retired general gushed. Parloff didn’t end up using those quotes in his article, but the ringing endorsements he heard in interview after interview from the luminaries on Theranos’s board gave him confidence that Elizabeth was the real deal. He also liked to think of himself as a pretty good judge of character. After all, he’d dealt with his share of dishonest people over the years, having worked in a prison during law school and later writing at length about such fraudsters as the carpet-cleaning entrepreneur Barry Minkow and the lawyer Marc Dreier, both of whom went to prison for masterminding Ponzi schemes. Sure, Elizabeth had a secretive streak when it came to discussing certain specifics about her company, but he found her for the most part to be genuine and sincere. Since his angle was no longer the patent case, he didn’t bother to reach out to the Fuiszes. — WHEN PARLOFF’S COVER STORY was published in the June 12, 2014, issue of Fortune, it vaulted Elizabeth to instant stardom. Her Journal interview had gotten some notice and there had also been a piece in Wired, but there was nothing like a magazine cover to grab people’s attention. Especially when that cover featured an attractive young woman wearing a black turtleneck, dark mascara around her piercing blue eyes, and bright red lipstick next to the catchy headline “THIS CEO IS OUT FOR BLOOD.” The story disclosed Theranos’s valuation for the first time as well as the fact that Elizabeth owned more than half of the company. There was also the now-familiar comparison to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This time it came not from George Shultz but from her old Stanford professor Channing Robertson. (Had Parloff read Robertson’s testimony in the Fuisz trial, he would have learned that Theranos was paying him $500,000 a year, ostensibly as a consultant.) Parloff also included a passage about Elizabeth’s phobia of needles—a detail that would be repeated over and over in the ensuing flurry of coverage his story unleashed and become central to her myth. When the editors at Forbes saw the Fortune article, they immediately assigned reporters to confirm the company’s valuation and the size of Elizabeth’s ownership stake and ran a story about her in their next issue. Under the headline “Bloody Amazing,” the article pronounced her “the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire.” Two months later, she graced one of the covers of the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 issue on the richest people in America. More fawning stories followed in USA Today, Inc., Fast Company, and Glamour, along with segments on NPR, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, and CBS News. With the explosion of media coverage came invitations to numerous conferences and a cascade of accolades. Elizabeth became the youngest person to win the Horatio Alger Award. Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. President Obama appointed her a U.S. ambassador for global entrepreneurship, and Harvard Medical School invited her to join its prestigious board of fellows.

Philippians 4:8. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

They continued smoking until coffee was brought in. Adams wrote Jefferson that he “alternately sipped at his coffee and whiffed at his tobacco.”96 One of the two standing secretaries, reported the American, “appeared in raptures,” over Adams’s behavior until “the superior of them who speaks a few words of French cryed out in extacy, ‘Monsieur votes etes un Turk,’ ” or “Mr., you are a Turk!”97 This was meant as the highest form of praise for the American, but one wonders whether Adams appreciated the attendant irony of what was a common pejorative in early American political rhetoric being turned on its head in his honor. With the serving of tobacco and coffee, products from the New World and the Old, “the necessary civilities” had concluded.98 It was time to negotiate.

attack and denying involvement. It will take weeks for the remnants of the US intelligence community to assess that one of these three governments is probably lying, but even then the US government won’t have irrefutable evidence of complicity. Unlike a ballistic missile or bomb delivered by enemy land-, air-, or seacraft, the origin of what analysts will call a “container-based improvised nuclear device” is difficult to determine and impossible to prove. Nuclear forensics will ultimately provide strong evidence that the fissile material used in the device originated from the country under suspicion. Signals intelligence will record celebrations and praise of the attack by midlevel officials in that country’s military and intelligence establishment. However, the intelligence reporting taken as a whole will

Then the opinion of these deceived souls about others is expressed as: “despisers of those that are good.”[44] They are against, even despise, those who live godly in Christ Jesus, who take seriously and desire to put into practice the things spoken of in Philippians 4:8, “Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Yes, it is strange but true: those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And from whom?—from religious professors who have never been saved, but have only a form of godliness. Do you know why? because the life of a godly man or woman condemns the ungodly; the mere sight of them becomes a rebuke to their ungodliness. Sinfulness cannot abide such saintliness. This hatred of the good is born within them, and can only be removed by the new birth.

Although NBC took a one-year option on the show, and Danny Thomas’s production company agreed to finance the pilot, the network decided not to air what appeared to be a poor prospect. When ABC finally broadcast the show, it seemed doomed from the start, since it was in the same time slot as two popular dramatic programs, Climax! and Dragnet. The first review, in Variety (October 7, 1957), seemed to confirm Brennan’s original misgivings: “‘The Real McCoys’ is a cornball, folksy-wolksy situation comedy series destined to find the going tough.” The Variety critic called the humor “forced,” the pacing “sluggish,” and the characters’ adventures “only lightly amusing.” And too many lovable characters! Brennan received due praise as a “fine actor,” but the rest of the cast was just “okay.” And yet, by the third week the show was number one in its time slot, compelling the Variety skeptic to allow, “It’s all so hokey that it can’t be taken seriously, and for that reason this quarter can’t see any really strong reason why cityfolk shouldn’t appreciate and enjoy it for what it is. The show is already big in the hinterlands.” By December 2, 1957, the critic was obliged to report that the “laughs come freely.” And then, for season after season, the praise escalated. The show began with an audience of ten million, but within a year the

They were divided into four categories that are described below along with examples of the motivational behaviours included within each. 1     Teacher discourse: arousing curiosity or attention, promoting autonomy, stating communicative purpose/utility of activity 2     Participation structure: group work/pair work 3     Activity design: individual competition, team competition, intellectual challenge, tangible task product 4     Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation and activity design: effective praise, elicitation of self/peer correction session, class applause. In each lesson, the learners’ motivation was measured in terms of their level of engagement. The proportion of students who paid attention, who actively participated, and who eagerly volunteered during activities was calculated. A three-level scale was used to measure engagement in each observed lesson: very low (a few students), low (one third to two thirds of the students) and high (more than two thirds of the students). Learners also completed a questionnaire about their motivation levels specifically related to their EFL class. The researchers found significant positive correlations between the teachers’ motivational practices, the learners’ engagement behaviours, and the learners’ self-reports on the questionnaire. The researchers acknowledge that correlation results do not indicate cause–effect relationships. Nevertheless, the findings are important because this is the first study to provide ‘any empirical evidence concerning the concrete, classroom-specific impact of language teachers’ motivational strategies’ (Guilloteaux and Dörnyei 2008: 72).

At this time, Snowden, a thirty-one-year-old man without a country, remains in Russia under temporary asylum, recently joined by his girlfriend, regularly interviewed by visiting reporters, and broadcasting his story and viewpoints to audiences worldwide over the Internet. His residence permit recently was extended for three more years, as he negotiates safe harbor in other countries, evading extradition and facing an indictment in the United States for espionage and theft of government property for which he faces thirty years in prison. Reviled for recklessness and praised for self-sacrifice, his actions already have generated the beginnings of reforms.

Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance...Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are identical...There is not help or healing in appraising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present." p543 (From a 1922 Report on the 1919 Chicago Riots)

Poetry and Genre The hallmark of rhetoric in ancient Near Eastern literature is repetition; in poetry, this takes the form of what scholars call “parallelism.” Frequently, the first line of a verse is echoed in some way by the second line. The second line might repeat the substance of the first line with slightly different emphasis, or perhaps the second line amplifies the first line in some fashion, such as drawing a logical conclusion, illustrating or intensifying the thought. At times the point of the first line is reinforced by a contrast in the second line. Occasionally, more than two lines are parallel. Each of these features, frequently observed in Biblical psalms, is represented in songs from Egypt, Mesopotamia and Ugarit. Unlike English poetry, which often depends on rhyme for its effect, these ancient cultures attained impact on listeners and readers with creative repetition. Psalms come in several standard subgenres, each with standard formal elements. Praise psalms can be either individual or corporate. Over a third of the psalms in the Psalter are praise psalms. Corporate psalms typically begin with an imperative call to praise (e.g., “Shout for joy to the LORD” [Ps 100:1]) and describe all the good things the Lord has done. Individual praise often begins with a proclamation of intent to praise (e.g., “I will praise you, LORD” [Ps 138:1]) and declare what God has done in a particular situation in the psalmist’s life. Mesopotamian and Egyptian hymns generally focus on descriptive praise, often moving from praise to petition. Examples of the proclamation format can be seen in the Mesopotamian wisdom composition, Ludlul bel nemeqi. The title is the first line of the piece, which is translated “I will praise the lord of wisdom.” As in the individual praise psalms, this Mesopotamian worshiper of Marduk reports about a problem that he had and reports how his god brought him deliverance. Lament psalms may be personal statements of despair (e.g., Ps 22:1–21, dirges following the death of an important person (cf. David’s elegy for Saul in 2Sa 1:17–27) or communal cries in times of crisis (e.g., Ps 137). The most famous lament form from ancient Mesopotamia is the “Lament Over the Destruction of Ur,” which commemorates the capture of the city in 2004 BC by the Elamite king Kindattu. For more information on this latter category, see the article “Neo-Sumerian Laments.” In the book of Psalms, more than a third of the psalms are laments, mostly by an individual. The most common complaints concern sickness and oppression by enemies. The lament literature of Mesopotamia is comprised of a number of different subgenres described by various technical terms. Some of these subgenres overlap with Biblical categories, but most of the Mesopotamian pieces are associated with incantations (magical rites being performed to try to rid the person of the problem). Nevertheless, the petitions that accompany lament in the Bible are very similar to those found in prayers from the ancient Near East. They include requests for guidance, protection, favor, attention from the deity, deliverance from crisis, intervention, reconciliation, healing and long life. Prayers to deities preserved

Before five hundred spectators, Seabiscuit breezed an easy mile under Woolf. He didn’t show a trace of lameness, prompting Smith to announce that the horse was ready to run in the Gold Cup. But no one was ready to believe that things were as they appeared. The rumors about Seabiscuit’s bad-leggedness continued to circulate, and the stewards’ anxiety escalated. Two days later Smith stacked Seabiscuit with 133 pounds, including Woolf, and turned them loose for another workout. With Woolf pulling hard on the reins, Seabiscuit went smoothly and soundly, looking so fit that even the clockers were singing his praises. The pair of workouts should have been enough to dispel the rumors. They weren’t. As Smith led the horse back to the barn, someone gave him an incredible piece of news. The stewards had commissioned a veterinarian to go over to the Howard barn, pull Seabiscuit out, examine him, and determine whether or not Smith was lying about his horse’s condition. The action was unprecedented; no one had ever seen stewards treat a trainer with such blatant distrust.4 It was all the more extraordinary given the record of the trainer in question; aside from Fair Knightess, Tom Smith had reportedly never had a horse in his care suffer a serious injury.5 But Smith had played around with his pursuers for too

Whatsoever things are true, whatoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Philippians 4:8

Soon after he fired Comey, however, the President became aware that investigators were conducting an obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his own conduct. That awareness marked a significant change in the President’s conduct and the start of a second phase of action. The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation. For instance, the President attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government. Judgments about the nature of the President’s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.

I knew that Teacher Liao was only telling the truth: virtually everything I did with the language was budui. I was an adult, and as an adult I should be able to accept criticism where it was needed. But that wasn't the American way; I was accustomed to having my ego soothed; I wanted to be praised for my effort. I didn't mind criticism as long as it was candy-coated. I was caught in the same trap that I had heard about from some of my Chinese-American friends, who as children went to school and became accustomed to the American system of gentle correction, only to return home and hear the Chinese-minded parents say, simply, budui. That single B on the report card matters much more than the string of A's that surrounds it. Keep working; you haven't achieved anything yet

John Ringelspaugh of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, used this in dealing with his children. It seemed that, as in so many families, mother and dad’s chief form of communication with the children was yelling at them. And, as in so many cases, the children became a little worse rather than better after each such session—and so did the parents. There seemed to be no end in sight for this problem. Mr. Ringelspaugh determined to use some of the principles he was learning in our course to solve this situation. He reported: “We decided to try praise instead of harping on their faults. It wasn’t easy when all we could see were the negative things they were doing; it was really tough to find things to praise. We managed to find something, and within the first day or two some of the really upsetting things they were doing quit happening. Then some of their other faults began to disappear. They began capitalizing on the praise we were giving them. They even began going out of their way to do things right. Neither of us could believe it. Of course, it didn’t last forever, but the norm reached after things leveled off was so much better. It was no longer necessary to react the way we used to. The children were doing far more right things than wrong ones.” All of this was a result of praising the slightest improvement in the children rather than condemning everything they did wrong.

Reducing whingeing, complaining, pestering and arguing First, let’s remember that it rarely helps to reason with an immature child. Often he does not quite understand our adult reasons, or possibly he does understand but does not really care. So don’t bother trying to reason with your son when he is being unreasonable. A much more useful strategy is to look at him as he is whingeing or arguing, but bite your tongue and say nothing. This takes self-control! Wait a few seconds for a pause in the whingeing or arguing. Then you can say, ‘You’re not whingeing now,’ or ‘You stopped saying you want another ice cream.’ He might start whingeing or complaining or pestering again straightaway because he knows that usually gets a rise out of you, and he’s thinking there’s a chance you might give in. These annoying habits have been his way of getting your attention and, up until now, it has been pretty foolproof. So it is understandable that he may test you for a while before he realises that the old way of getting your attention is no longer working. If you have accepted my challenge and are making a point of Descriptively Praising your son ten or more times a day, he will soon see, probably within the first week, that now he is getting attention for the sensible behaviour. Here are some examples of Descriptive Praises for little bits of self-control:   You were so brave at the doctor’s. You didn’t make a fuss. You just sat there quietly while she gave you the injection.   I can see you’re upset, but you’re remembering not to shout.   You’re waiting patiently. (Say this after one or two minutes of waiting patiently. If you delay this praise, he will probably reach the end of his tether and start misbehaving; then you won’t be able to praise him for being patient.)   The Descriptive Praises will sink in and start to change how your son views himself. So whenever your son is doing something annoying, think ‘I’ll wait for a pause and then Descriptively Praise the absence of the negative.’ Parents report that at first they focused their Descriptive Praises on their son’s three or four most annoying habits. Within a few weeks or months, those habits had improved so much that they hardly happened any more.

A Signal” Stealing an Election For a second time, Batista made a bid for the presidency of Cuba. Losing in the opinion polls, Batista, with military support and a still loyal labor force backing him, overthrew the legitimate government. On March 10, 1952, Batista forced President Carlos Prío Socarrás out of office, blatantly taking the seat of the presidency for himself and declaring himself the Provisional President. Shortly after the coup, the United States government officially accepted Batista as an ally, and officially recognized his new régime. Although he made many promises, Batista did not continue the progressive social policies of his first term as President of Cuba. Instead, he quickly turned democratic Cuba into a “Police State.” According to some perhaps questionable reports, Batista was accused of murdering 20,000 Cubans during the following seven years, thereby destroying individual liberty for the people. The Eisenhower Administration, influenced by “Special Interest Groups,” sent aid to his régime. To a great extent, it was American politics that enabled Batista, who had come to power illegally, to get financial support for his “Reign of Terror.” Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista, hailing him as a strong ally and a good friend to America!

Really, anyone can have a good attitude when everything is going well. We can all celebrate and be grateful when we’re on the mountaintop, but where are the people who give God praise even as the bottom falls out? Where are the people who rise up each morning and prepare for victory and increase in spite of all the news reports predicting doom and gloom? Where are the people who say, “God, I still praise You even though the medical report wasn’t good” or “God, I still thank You even though it didn’t turn out my way”? I believe you are one of those people. I believe you are of great faith. Your roots go down deep. You could be complaining. You could be discouraged. You could have a chip on your shoulder, but instead you just keep giving God praise. You’ve got that smile on your face. You’re doing the right thing even though the wrong thing is happening. That’s why I can tell you with confidence that you are coming into greater victories. Enlarge your vision. Take the limits off God. You have not seen your best days. God has victories in your future that will amaze you. He will show up and show out in unusual ways. You may be in a tough time right now, but remember this: The enemy always fights you the hardest when he knows God has something great in store for you. You are closest to your victory when it is the darkest. That is the enemy’s final stand. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t start complaining. Just keep offering up that sacrifice of praise.

Hoover had also created a Division of Simplified Practices, whose job it was to standardize and harmonize the distressinly fractious and unresponsible manufacturing and construction sectors. In those days roads were often still paved in brick, and brick was a typical example: sixty-six different sizes were being produced by manufacturers when Hoover ordered research on the topic. This was sheer waste, as far as the utilitarian Hoover was concerned. He therefore pulled the nation's paving-brick firms into a room and settled the matter; the range of sizes dropped from sixty-six to eleven. Emboldened, Hoover also looked into brick for homes; here he claimed victoryoutright, for the number of sizes went "from forty-four to one," the praiseful Irvin reported. Then there were beds. Seventy-four different sizes were available; as a result of encouragement from Hoover, the figure went down to four" (page 37)

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. - Philippians 4:5-9

its ombudsman Liz Spayd, while praising the paper’s reporting, worried about “a slide toward coverage that can be misperceived as rooting for Trump’s demise.” That is sometimes how it looked. (The paper soon abolished her job.)

Darla, a third grader, was overweight, awkward, and a “crybaby.” She was such a prime target that half of the class bullied her, hitting her and calling her names on a daily basis—and winning one another’s approval for it. Several years later, because of Davis’s program, the bullying had stopped. Darla had learned better social skills and even had friends. Then Darla went to middle school and, after a year, came back to report what had happened. Her classmates from elementary school had seen her through. They’d helped her make friends and protected her from her new peers when they wanted to harass her. Davis also gets the bullies changing. In fact, some of the kids who rushed to Darla’s support in middle school were the same ones who had bullied her earlier. What Davis does is this. First, while enforcing consistent discipline, he doesn’t judge the bully as a person. No criticism is directed at traits. Instead, he makes them feel liked and welcome at school every day. Then he praises every step in the right direction. But again, he does not praise the person; he praises their effort. “I notice that you have been staying out of fights. That tells me you are working on getting along with people.” You can see that Davis is leading students directly to the growth mindset. He is helping them see their actions as part of an effort to improve. Even if the change was not intentional on the part of the bullies, they may now try to make it so.

think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8.

Wharton frowned cutely. After pondering for a moment, he excitedly reported, “Today I learned how to use rags!” “Rags?” Linley’s face broke into an uncontrollable smile. “What did you use the rags to wipe?” Counting on his fingers, little Wharton said, “First I used the rags to wipe the floors, then the chamber pots, and then I wiped…wiped…right! I wiped the plates!” He looked at Linley enthusiastically, awaiting his praise. “You wiped the chamber pots, then the plates?” Linley’s eyes widened. “What, did I do it wrong? I wiped them really clean.” Confusion filled little Wharton’s eyes as he stared at his big brother.

I think each of us who deals in any way with things which are creative and things which are going to be read or looked at or heard by the public, needs always to test himself by the eighth verse in the fourth chapter of Philippians: ‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Appoint an accountability partner—someone whom you report to regarding your chosen goals and keep updated with your progress in achieving them. An accountability partner sees to it that you are on track to fulfill your commitments. This offers you the hugely effective combo of positive support and praise when you retain self-discipline, along with social pressure and the risk of disappointing someone important to you when you don’t keep your commitments. The Hawthorne effect is a phenomenon in which people change their behavior to be more pleasing and positive when they know they are being observed. You can take advantage of this tendency to improve your own self-discipline by making your behavior more observable to others, thus giving you that extra push to do what you promised you would so that you impress others or at least don’t let them down. Seek out a role model or mentor whose qualities and behaviors you can emulate. As you get to know your role model better and observe their methods more closely, you become more inspired and informed as to how you can apply their strategies in building your own habits of self-discipline.

The self-destruction of a group always follows the same patterns. You only need to introduce some viruses to the group and poof, it’s all gone. These viruses come in the form of very ignorant narcissists that nobody has the courage to kick off of the group. Quite often, the group even promotes itself as being against the personalities that are in front of their eyes every day, people they praise and even lead them. And well, that’s how you know a group is truly finished. Scientology is a very interesting example of this, because of how clear their books are. For example, they claim to love artists but end up insulting real artists. Scientologists are so obsessed with being perceived as artists, that they downgrade real art in the process. You have many scientologists, for example, that think splashing a random amount of ink into a white board is art. They all want to be artists, and that’s fine, but they are too lazy to see how real art is made, and so, they downgrade the value of art. And in doing this, they actually distort the meaning of art and decrease the value of the real artists. And so, a group that promotes itself as being uplifting and positive, ends up being offensive and destructive. They have all these books on moral codes and moral behavior, and dozens of courses on the same topic, and if you report a scientologist for criminal behavior, they ignore you and deem you an attacker of the group. And there goes the level of sanity of this group down the scale, while they themselves invert the scale and tell you the opposite story. It would be like looking at your mental health through someone suffering with poor mental health. They are as aware of what I am saying as any mentally ill person is aware of his mental illnesses. If anyone confronts them with the facts, they themselves get offended, and then proceed to attack, because that’s what they think their founder told them to do. Except that the founder was talking about attacking insanity and not people. In other words, they should use these facts to look further into their books and their own misinterpretations, and which they don’t. Those people that splash random colors into a white board, will then tell you, the one who has been using techniques, and winning awards, and creating something unique, that you don’t understand art. They remind me of the writers with one book that doesn't sell, trying to tell me how they are better than me, with more than 100 books in best selling charts. How delusional, arrogant and stupid has one to be to not see this? The level of awareness of such individual is comparable to a drunk person going to a Jujitsu dojo, asking the instructor to fight him because he is convinced he can beat anyone with all that alcohol in his head. That, however, is not the cherry on top of the cake. The cherry on top of the cake, is when a religious group listens to a psychopath talking against psychopaths. You can write many academic papers on this topic and never reach a conclusion, because it's really hard to make conclusions on stupidity. So what’s wrong with religion? Why are some religious groups persecuted and attacked? The answer to these questions isn’t as relevant as what we can observe people doing, when denying the most obvious writings, inverting them and distorting the meanings. Christians have already mastered this art.

My piece was ten minutes long. It took him an hour and a half to play through it, and he spent the entire time telling me I was deaf. He seemed surprised when I fled the room, crying. After that day, this boss seemed to determine I was incompetent. Whenever I said anything in meetings, he ignored me or snapped that I was wrong, and the other producers would look at me sympathetically as I bit my lip and shrunk in my seat. It took so much courage to speak, but if I was quiet, he’d ask why I didn’t have an opinion, or if I waffled around a point nervously, he’d sigh exasperatedly and interrupt me to ask one of his favorite reporters, “What about you?” Sometimes they echoed me, and then he’d praise them for being so incisive. Did I not communicate as well as they did? I wondered. Did I not use big enough words? Was I not witty enough? I tried to emulate them—Ivy League–educated journalists who came from brilliant stock. But I was unsuccessful. A year in, I started being excluded from group edits on important stories.

Then the retributive machinery clanks into action and a flawless career spent garnering nothing but praise is trashed at the stroke of a pen, because it all has to be somebody’s fault. Shit happens, but never in an official inquiry commission’s final report.

Some examples of chips that you can give and/or receive at work include: • Encouraging words, including authentic praise and the specifics of what was done well. • Supportive words, including genuine empathy for difficult situations. • Small talk, including asking personal (but not private) questions about family members, pets, recent personal events, etc. • Sincere compliments on clothing, professional skills, or business sense. • Sharing personal (but not private) details from your own life. • Asking for the other person’s input, opinion, advice. • Little gifts, like a cup of coffee. • Thank-you notes. [...] everyone with whom you interact keeps a chip bankbook on you. All day long you are gaining and losing chips with your direct reports, peers, and higher-ups. They know where you stand with them at any given moment, and you know where they stand with you. . . . One of the most important rules . . . is that we always make it equal in the end— that is, if someone tries to take away our chips, we will find a way to even the score. [...] To manage your relationships in a savvy manner at work, find out who values what kind of chips, and then stockpile those particular types of chips with others who can help you be more productive and successful.

Coming so soon after the King’s broadcast praising the ARP, this speech by Mr Churchill was a tonic to the fainthearted, the weary, and the pessimistic, as were all his speeches. They did something for me which is indescribable. The reports from neutral papers at this time that the evacuation of school-children from Berlin had already begun did much to strengthen the statement that we were battering the Germans. The children were being sent to Austria and East Prussia.

Aristotle said that the best activities are the most useless. This is because such things are not simply means to a further end but are done entirely for their own sake. Thus watching a baseball game is more important than getting a haircut, and cultivating a friendship is more valuable than making money. The game and the friendship are goods that are excellent in themselves, while getting a haircut and making money are in service of something beyond themselves. This is also why the most important parts of the newspaper are the sports section and the comics, and not, as we would customarily think, the business and political reports. In this sense, the most useless activity of all is the celebration of the Liturgy, which is another way of saying that it is the most important thing we could possibly do. There is no higher good than to rest in God, to honor him for his kindness, to savor his sweetness—in a word, to praise him. As we have seen in chapter three, every good comes from God, reflects God, and leads back to God, and, therefore, all value is summed up in the celebration of the Liturgy, the supreme act by which we commune with God. This is why the great liturgical theologian Romano Guardini said that the liturgy is a consummate form of play. We play football and we play musical instruments because it is simply delightful to do so, and we play in the presence of the Lord for the same reason. In chapter one I spoke of Adam in the garden as being the first priest, which is another way of saying that his life, prior to the fall, was entirely liturgical. At play in the field of the Lord, Adam, with every move and thought, effortlessly gave praise to God. As Dietrich von Hildebrand indicated, this play of liturgy is what rightly orders the personality, since we find interior order in the measure that we surrender everything in us to God. We might say that the Liturgy bookends the entire Scripture, for the priesthood of Adam stands at the beginning of the sacred text and the heavenly Liturgy of the book of Revelation stands at the end. In the closing book of the Bible, John the visionary gives us a glimpse into the heavenly court, and he sees priests, candles, incense, the reading of a sacred text, the gathering of thousands in prayer, prostrations and other gestures of praise, and the appearance of the Lamb of God. He sees,

8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. 9 The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

Then one day in biology class the students were dissecting frogs and the teacher, Mrs. Joan Thomas, watched him and said, “Kermit, you’re doing an excellent job.” He was terribly embarrassed and he was sure that she was making fun of him. All the other kids began to laugh too, sure that she was mocking him. After all, Kermit was the boy who had never been praised before and who was often the butt of a teacher’s frustrated criticism. “No,” she corrected them, “I mean it. Kermit is doing an excellent job.” That was the first time that anyone had ever told him that he was good at anything in his entire life. With that he began to feel confident in biology and he began to study and get good marks. Soon he had good marks in biology and poor marks in everything else. Then Mrs. Thomas became his homeroom teacher and she looked at his report card and told him that he ought to try to do better in other courses too. “You know, Kermit,” she said, “you’re intelligent and you could get good marks if you wanted to.” He was stunned by that, by the idea that she thought he was intelligent. In his last year at Calvin Coolidge he made the honor roll. He was very proud of that.

What you think upon grows. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Philippians 4:8).

THINGS I LEARNED FROM DAVID CARR: A LIST Listen when you enter a room. Don’t buy into your myth. Don’t be the first one to talk, but if you do talk first, say something smart. Speak and then stop; don’t stutter or mumble; be strong in what you have to say. Be defiant. You have to work the phones. Call people. Don’t rely on emails. Ask questions but ask the right questions. Ask people what mistakes they’ve made so you can get their shortcuts. Know when enough is enough. Make eye contact with as many people as possible. Don’t be in shitty relationships because you are tired of being alone. Be grateful for the things you have in this life. You are lucky. Practice patience even though it’s one of the hardest things to master. Failure is a part of the process, maybe the most important part. Alcohol is not a necessary component of life. Street hotdogs are not your friend. Remind yourself that nobody said this would be easy. If more negative things come out of your mouth than positive, then Houston, we have a problem. We contain multitudes. Always love (See band: Nada Surf). Have a dance move and don’t be afraid to rock it. Don’t go home just because you are tired. Don’t take credit for work that is not yours. If your boss does this, take note. Be generous with praise and be specific in that praise: “That line was killer.” Cats are terrible; they poop in your house. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do the next right thing. Our dogs are us. Only cuter. And finally: You are loved and you belong to me, the world, and yourself. BOOKS I READ WHILE WRITING THIS BOOK The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life—His Own by David Carr The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Gilded Razor: A Memoir by Sam

whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8.

Be confident in your abilities The most important truth to embrace at the very start is this: You are already wired with everything you need to be a great mom to your son. If I could take an X-ray of you as a mom, I would see a picture of bones and tissue laced with an intricate set of muscles and nerves. At various times, some of those nerves and muscles are dormant, and some are ignited and on fire. You have a complete set of worry neurons that ignite when your son gets in someone’s car. There are others that ignite when you watch him play football or when he brings you his report card. These are your very own, unique wires, reserved only for you and your son. Along with those that fire on a regular basis are thousands of others that are cool and quiet. They are waiting for your brain to send them signals to kick into gear. If someone hurts your son, your protective wiring ignites. If someone praises your son, your set of encouragement wires flare. If your son fails in school, your empathy wires fire up. In every situation in which your son needs your help, you

Back in Mantua, Isabella’s visit had reportedly caused her to lose weight, but not enough to prevent the makeshift stage erected outside the convent at Porta Pradella, where Isabella attended a play about Mary Magdalene, from collapsing under the burden of her bulk. Unfortunately the stage had been built over a lake, though Isabella reported cheerfully that no one had been killed. The lake was shallow, but Isabella’s presence in it may have made alarming waves as, despite her attendants’ oliginous praises, she was now quite obese-so much so that when she was obliged to vacate her apartments in widowhood, she prudently moved to the ground floor. No staircase was safe from the mighty Marchioness.

SHANNON TRIED to rest in Tolovana, but he had the fate of Cub, Jack, Jet, and now Bear on his mind. In a few days, he would return to Nenana with all four dogs in his sled. Cub, Jack, and Jet would die not long after his return. Shannon’s own frostbite had been so severe that it would be weeks before he would once again be able to touch his own face with a razor and shave. Even then, it was a painful experience. He told a reporter that he had done nothing out of the ordinary, that his animals deserved all the praise.

When the tower had been partially completed, a portion of it was occupied as a dwelling place for the builders; other apartments, splendidly furnished and adorned, were devoted to their idols. The people rejoiced in their success, and praised the gods of silver and gold, and set themselves against the Ruler of heaven and earth. Suddenly the work that had been advancing so prosperously was checked. Angels were sent to bring to naught the purpose of the builders. The tower had reached a lofty height, and it was impossible for the workmen at the top to communicate directly with those at the base; therefore men were stationed at different points, each to receive and report to the one next below him the orders for needed material or other directions concerning the work. As messages were thus passing from one to another the language was confounded, so that material was called for which [120] was not needed, and the directions delivered were often the reverse of those that had been given. Confusion and dismay followed. All work came to a standstill.

All through the summer, the curfew went on. At 7 p.m. nobody was supposed to be outdoors, all windows were blacked out, since the war proceeded in full swing towards the West, through Poland, Romania and the Baltic region. The Russians kept the town informed about the course of the war and their advance in Western Europe, by issuing every evening a military report direct from Moscow. It always started the same way: the national anthem, then the victories of the day and the praise of the supreme commander Iosif Visarionovich Stalin. That same daily report was heard all over the Soviet Union.

Be sure that you think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8.

A 2014 Gallup report of worker satisfaction found that as many as 70 percent of Americans don’t feel engaged by their current job. Hunnicutt told me that if a cashier’s work were a video game—grab an item, find the bar code, scan it, slide the item onward, and repeat—critics of video games might call it mindless. But when it’s a job, politicians praise its intrinsic dignity. “Purpose, meaning, identity, fulfillment, creativity, autonomy—all these things that positive psychology has shown us to be necessary for well-being are absent in the average job,” he said. The post-workists

A 2014 Gallup report of worker satisfaction found that as many as 70 percent of Americans don’t feel engaged by their current job. Hunnicutt told me that if a cashier’s work were a video game—grab an item, find the bar code, scan it, slide the item onward, and repeat—critics of video games might call it mindless. But when it’s a job, politicians praise its intrinsic dignity. “Purpose, meaning, identity, fulfillment, creativity, autonomy—all these things that positive psychology has shown us to be necessary for well-being are absent in the average job,” he said.

PHi4.6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHi4.7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. PHi4.8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Ananias had come with money from the sale of property. He had presented it to Peter, claiming it to be the full amount of the sale. Instead of praising him, Peter had condemned him. Not for his generosity, which was commendable, but for his lie. “The land was yours,” Peter had told Ananias, his eyes flashing fire. “The money was your right to keep. But you have lied to the Holy Spirit.” And right on the spot, Ananias had collapsed on the cobblestones. They could not revive him, and he was dead. The women struggled to accept what they were hearing. But Philip was not finished with his report. Even more frightening, when Sapphira had arrived, the whole scene was repeated. They were gone. Both of them. In only the matter of a few hours. Peter had ordered some of the men to take them out of the compound and bury them.

Hitting the misbehavers was unthinkable. Removing the bad apples from class every day was unprofessional. Reporting the children to the parents was tantamount to hitting them. Failure to do so meant a never-ending parade of misdeeds. Detention would extend my time with the miscreants, threatening to unravel that last precious thread of sanity. I had no physical items with which to reward good behavior, and praise was futile. Attempting to explain to the offenders the value of respect—to engage their conscience, to make them behave well not to win a prize but because it was the right thing to do—was fruitless, for the simple reason that the worst misbehavers were incapable of embarrassment. They could feel fear but not shame.

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. — ECCLESIASTICUS 44:8–9 Barn

HIDDEN POLYTHEISM: MAKING A DISPLAY OF PRAYERS The second kind of polytheism is hidden polytheism, such as making a display of our prayers or other forms of obedience to Allah. The difference between this polytheism and polytheism in prayers is that in the case of polytheism in prayers we associate some other thing or being with Allah. If someone directs his attention towards anything other than Allah, in the ritual prayer, or if, by the suggestion of shaitan, he has a picture of a false deity in his mind, or if his guide is the center of his attention, then he is a polytheist. Nothing except Allah, should be the object of attention in our worship. The Prophet said that if someone does a good deed and makes someone else a partner with Allah in it, then his whole deed is for the partner. Allah hates that action as well as its doer. It has also been reported that the Holy Prophet said that if someone offers the ritual prayer, observes a fast, or performs the Pilgrimage and has the idea that by his doing so the people will praise him, "then verily, he has made a partner with Allah in his action.

A good rule, for this job and many others: give praise publicly and criticism privately. The

She knows she is right, but to say she is right is wrong, in this case. To be correct and say so is wrong, in certain cases. She may be correct, and she may say so, in certain cases. But if she insists too much, she becomes wrong, so wrong that even her correctness becomes wrong, by association. It is right to believe in what she thinks is right, but to say what she thinks is right is wrong, in certain cases. She is right to act on her beliefs, in her life. But she is wrong to report her right actions, in most cases. Then even her right actions become wrong, by association. If she praises herself, she may be correct in what she says, but her saying it is wrong, in most cases, and thus cancels it, or reverses it, so that although she was for a particular act deserving of praise, she is no longer in general deserving of praise.

This is an egregious breach of journalistic ethics. It’s absolutely inappropriate, whether they consider themselves “journalists” or not. You don’t “act” the part of an independent, objective host and secretly rehearse your exchanges with a candidate. Ever. If neither gifts nor praise worked, Trump would use insults or threats. Commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Brit Hume, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Dana Perino, Rich Lowry, Steve Hayes, Marc Thiessen, and Chris Stirewalt were derided as “dummies” or “losers” or “lightweights” or “failures” for offering their honest, albeit unflattering, analysis of Trump. Anyone who didn’t fall under the Trump spell was fair game. Plenty of straight news reporters were hit too. The Des Moines Register’s journalists were banned from Trump’s campaign events because the paper’s editorial board had harshly criticized him. The Washington Post was later banned for similar reasons. So were Univision, the Daily Beast, and others. The message was clear: cover Trump “nicely,” and good things happen. Hit him too hard, and suffer the consequences. He’d been laying the groundwork for that basic strategy for months before he launched his campaign.   In

This woman discovered that the treasure house was within her. Her prayer was felt as true in her heart, and her affirmation sank down by osmosis into her subconscious mind, which is the creative medium. The moment she succeeded in bringing about a subjective embodiment, her subconscious mind brought about the answer through the law of attraction. Her deeper mind, full of wisdom and intelligence, brought both of them together in divine order. Be sure that you think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8.

Parents always have the best of intentions when they wish not to impose too much on their children, but in the absence of a normative standard, something else always fills the vacuum. Today, for instance, we flatter ourselves that we are morally neutral, that we can’t comment on a girl’s behavior for fear of crushing her “sexuality,” and yet we are constantly negatively judging a girl’s body rather than praising her internal qualities. The reality is that we haven’t moved away from judgment at all; it’s just that we judge girls now for their superficial “deficiencies.” Think of the alarming increase in the number of parents who buy their thirteen-to-eighteen-year-old daughters breast implants despite the high risk of surgical complications, or consider eleven-year-old Lilly Grasso, an athletic girl of normal weight who came home from school toting a so-called “fat letter” warning her mother that her BMI put her at risk. (Twenty-one out of fifty states now mandate BMI testing in schools, with dubious results.) Then there is the large number of boys who report that they are “revolted” by girls whose privates do not resemble those of the porn stars they view online, and in 2013, a student body president at the University of Texas–Austin even felt free to share his views about how to judge a woman’s private parts, and whether they will prove to be “gross,” based on her general appearance. Is encountering such negative judgments directed against a young woman’s body and most private areas empowering? Is such an attitude enlightened for either party? Or is it more empowering to praise a young woman for her internal qualities of character? I personally feel that it is the latter.

So Stockdale asked Johnson, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “Do you really think that he deserves that illustrious theatrical character, and that prodigious fame, which he has acquired?” He hastened to report to Garrick what Johnson replied: “Oh, Sir, he deserves everything that he has acquired, for having seized the very soul of Shakespeare; for having embodied it in himself; and for having expanded its glory over the world.” Garrick exclaimed in tears, “Oh, Stockdale! Such praise from such a man! This atones for all that has passed.”53

Oddly, as I look back on Jesus' time from the present perspective, it is the very ordinariness of the disciples that gives me hope. Jesus does not seem to choose his followers on the basis of native talent or perfectibility or potential for greatness. When he lived on earth he surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren. Three followers in particular (the brothers James and John, and Peter) Jesus singled out for his strongest reprimands—yet two of these would become the most prominent leaders of the early Christians. I cannot avoid the impression that Jesus prefers working with unpromising recruits. Once, after he had sent out seventy-two disciples on a training mission, Jesus rejoiced at the successes they reported back. No passage in the Gospels shows him more exuberant. “At that time139 Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said,‘ I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

The spirit ought to be brought up for examination daily. It was the custom of Sextius when the day was over, and he had betaken himself to rest, to inquire of his spirit: “What bad habit of yours have you cured to-day? What vice have you checked? In what respect are you better?” Anger will cease, and become more gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before the judgment seat. What can be more admirable than this fashion of discussing the whole of the day’s events? How sweet is the sleep which follows this self-examination? How calm, how sound, and careless is it when our spirit has either received praise or reprimand, and when our secret inquisitor and censor has made his report about our morals? I make use of this privilege, and daily plead my cause before myself: when the lamp is taken out of my sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done: I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing: for why should I be afraid of any of my shortcomings, when it is in my power to say, “I pardon you this time: see that you never do that anymore”?… A good man delights in receiving advice: all the worst men are the most impatient of guidance.

The counterinsurgency campaign is out of control,” a US intelligence report acknowledged in 1967. At the same time, a State Department official praised the Guatemalan military for its “successful use of terror” in disappearing “real and alleged communists.