Reign Show Quotes

I gave myself permission to care, because there are a lot of people in this world who are afraid of caring, who are afraid of showing they care because it’s uncool. It’s uncool to have passion. It’s so much easier to lose when you’ve shown everyone how much you don’t care if you win or lose. It’s much harder to lose when you show that you care, but you’ll never win unless you also stand to lose. I’ve said it before. Don’t be afraid of your passion, give it free reign, and be honest and work hard and it will all turn out just fine.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

For the admirable gift of himself, and for the magnificent service he renders humanity, what reward does our society offer the scientist? Have these servants of an idea the necessary means of work? Have they an assured existence, sheltered from care? The example of Pierre Curiee, and of others, shows that they have none of these things; and that more often, before they can secure possible working conditions, they have to exhaust their youth and their powers in daily anxieties. Our society, in which reigns an eager desire for riches and luxury, does not understand the value of science. It does not realize that science is a most precious part of its moral patrimony. Nor does it take sufficient cognizance of the fact that science is at the base of all the progress that lightens the burden of life and lessens its suffering. Neither public powers nor private generosity actually accord to science and to scientists the support and the subsidies indispensable to fully effective work.

It is estimated that Josef Stalin killed more than twenty million people during his reign of terror. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia lost more than a third of their population during the Soviet genocide. The deportations reached as far as Finland. To this day, many Russians deny they ever deported a single person. But most Baltic people harbor no grudge, resentment, or ill will. They are grateful to the Soviets who showed compassion. Their freedom is precious, and they are learning to live within it. For some, the liberties we have as American citizens came at the expense of people who lie in unmarked graves in Siberia. Like Joana for Lina, our freedom cost them theirs. Some wars are about bombing. For the people of the Baltics, this war was about believing. In 1991, after 50 years of brutal occupation, the three Baltic countries regained their independence, peacefully and with dignity. They chose hope over hate and showed the world that even through the darkest night, there is light. Please research it. Tell someone. These three tiny nations have taught us that love is the most powerful army. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy - love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.

The sun still rises and sets, like it always has. It seems cruel that it wouldn’t stop, just for a little while, to show how much darker the world is without them in it.

Francis stared down at the Duchess of York's letter. He swallowed, then read aloud in a husky voice, "It was showed by John Sponer that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was through great treason piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City." As Margaret listened, the embittered grey eyes had softened, misted with sudden tears. "My brother may lie in an untended grave," she said, "but he does not lack for an epitaph.

Three kings protested to me, that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again: and they showed, with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public business.

when you know that you’ve failed, what you do need is for the Holy Spirit to convict you of your righteousness. You need Him to show you that even though you have failed, you are still the righteousness of God in Christ.

It’s a tendency that reflects the age-old understanding that (white) men can contain multitudes, while members of every other group are pitted against themselves, as if there can be only one show about black families, or queer dudes, or, in the case of Broad City and Girls, young women. Jacobson

We are apt to overshoot, in the days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be when the trying day is upon us . . . We could not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winter” (Seasonable Counsel, 694). In the days of pain, the Lord showed me how much flesh I still retain –– how prone I am to fear, sadness, worry, agitation, frustration, and doubt. Yet through it all, how wondrously beautiful are the reign of God over sin through the cross and all the gospel fruits that flow from it toward me: forgiveness, reconciliation, life, righteousness, help, true hope, peace, resolute joy, persevering strength, ears to hear the word and a heart to believe it, transformed desires that compel me and my family to follow God.

Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me—or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea. I go back to the cabin, take my compass out of my backpack, and check that the needle’s showing north.

The good news is not preached to show you what is wrong with you. It is preached to show you what is right with you because of Jesus’ work at Calvary, in spite of what is wrong with you!

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going.

I’ve heard so many people, particularly people of faith, say they could look past his wrongdoings. When they’re pressed further, the reply is always some variation of “He doesn’t mean what he says,” “It’s just to get a rise out of people,” or “It’s all for show.” When you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and say nothing, you are in fact saying everything. You are telling others you approve of immorality and injustice. You are telling them you support the marginalization and vilification of those who are different from you. You are telling them that fear reigns supreme and that you will tolerate nefarious behavior. As President John F. Kennedy said in a speech: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.” - Amy Erickson

But experience shows that in spite of our infinite care in choosing our successors the mediocre emperors will always outnumber the wise, and that at least one fool will be reign per century. In time of crisis these bureaus, if well organized, will go on with what must be done, filling the interim between two good rulers. Some emperors like to parade behind them whole lines of barbarians, bound at the neck, those interminable processions of the conquered.

And I thought how many satisfied, happy people really do exist in this world! And what a powerful force they are! Just take a look at this life of ours and you will see the arrogance and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak. Everywhere there's unspeakable poverty, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy and stupid lies... And yet peace and quiet reign in every house and street. Out of fifty thousand people you won't find one who is prepared to shout out loud and make a strong protest. We see people buying food in the market, eating during the day, sleeping at night-time, talking nonsense, marrying, growing old and then contentedly carting their dead off to the cemetery. But we don't hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics - and they can't talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died from malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It,s obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis. Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at that time, sooner or later life will show him its claws and disaster will overtake him in the form of illness, poverty, bereavement and there will be no one to hear or see him. But there isn't anyone holding a hammer, so our happy man goes his own sweet way and is only gently ruffled by life's trivial cares, as an aspen is ruffled by the breeze. All's well as far as he's concerned

NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago... So the next time you hear someone say that the system is "broken," that American students aren't as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts.

an enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm; monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie down slavishly under the male’s imperial embrace, inert, impatient, shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated

Women suppress a lot of their sides. It's a form of "code-switching"--a term to describe how one speaks and behaves differently in order to match an intended audience. Code switching is, at heart, a survival mechanism: a way of showing, at any particular moment, that you fit in, you're not a threat, you belong.

Wake up, wake up!' He said to me 'No, I'm still sleepy, do not disturb me' Wake up me child, see the beauty Don't cry, wipe your tears, He said to me 'No, I'm so lonely, Nobody understands me' Don't cry my child, embrace the beauty Don't panic, be calm, He said to me 'No, you don't understand, I need to earn money' Don't struggle my child, connect to the beauty Don't blame or attach, He said to me 'How can I be loving, When they hurt me?' Don't retaliate my child, show them the beauty Don't withhold your love, He said to me 'How can I give Father When they only take from me?' Don't fear my child, I replenish the beauty

It is estimated that Josef Stalin killed more than twenty million people during his reign of terror. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia lost more than a third of their population during the Soviet annihilation. The deportations reached as far as Finland. To this day, many Russians deny they ever deported a single person. But most Baltic people harbor no grudge, resentment, or ill will. They are grateful to the Soviets who showed compassion. Their freedom is precious, and they are learning to live within it. For some, the liberties we have as American citizens came at the expense of people who lie in unmarked graves in Siberia.

Dear New Orleans, What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed. Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night. Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down. You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin? You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways. Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power. You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix. —June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.

began to wonder whether originality really shows that great writers are gods, each of them reigning over a kingdom which is his alone, whether misleading appearances might not play a role in this, and whether the differences between their books might not be the result of hard work, rather than the expression of a radical difference in essence between distinct personalities.

The Atonist nobility knew it was impossible to organize and control a worldwide empire from Britain. The British Isles were geographically too far West for effective management. In order to be closer to the “markets,” the Atonist corporate executives coveted Rome. Additionally, by way of their armed Templar branch and incessant murderous “Crusades,” they succeeded making inroads further east. Their double-headed eagle of control reigned over Eastern and Western hemispheres. The seats of Druidic learning once existed in the majority of lands, and so the Atonist or Christian system spread out in similar fashion. Its agents were sent from Britain and Rome to many a region and for many a dark purpose. To this very day, the nobility of Europe and the east are controlled from London and Rome. Nothing has changed when it comes to the dominion of Aton. As Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe have proven, the Culdean monks, of whom we write, had been hired for generations as tutors to elite families throughout Europe. In their book The Knights Templar Revealed, the authors highlight the role played by Culdean adepts tutoring the super-wealthy and influential Catholic dynasties of Burgundy, Champagne and Lorraine, France. Research into the Templars and their affiliated “Salt Line” dynasties reveals that the seven great Crusades were not instigated and participated in for the reasons mentioned in most official history books. As we show here, the Templars were the military wing of British and European Atonists. It was their job to conquer lands, slaughter rivals and rebuild the so-called “Temple of Solomon” or, more correctly, Akhenaton’s New World Order. After its creation, the story of Jesus was transplanted from Britain, where it was invented, to Galilee and Judea. This was done so Christianity would not appear to be conspicuously Druidic in complexion. To conceive Christianity in Britain was one thing; to birth it there was another. The Atonists knew their warped religion was based on ancient Amenism and Druidism. They knew their Jesus, Iesus or Yeshua, was based on Druidic Iesa or Iusa, and that a good many educated people throughout the world knew it also. Their difficulty concerned how to come up with a believable king of light sufficiently appealing to the world’s many pagan nations. Their employees, such as St. Paul (Josephus Piso), were allowed to plunder the archive of the pagans. They were instructed to draw from the canon of stellar gnosis and ancient solar theologies of Egypt, Chaldea and Ireland. The archetypal elements would, like ingredients, simply be tossed about and rearranged and, most importantly, the territory of the new godman would be resituated to suit the meta plan.

think about it. you're playing survivor with all the people you love. some, by sheer luck of genetic lottery, end up on the right team. this team simply knows how to dominate the game. this team understands there is no referee or rules. in fact, this team is so good at the game, they made up invisible referees and rules for other teams to find. they simply do what they want because they understand there is no such things as rights. how do you win if you're not on this team? you don't. however, the consolation prize for knowing the campground is puppet-stringed by a small herd of psychopaths is there is no one for them to pass the reigns on to. in the end, any evil there is in the universe dies, too. i recommend not making any more players and enjoying ice cream while you watch the firework show we tend to call: sun set.

This is family. It’s love. It’s hate. It’s an unimaginable amount of patience. It’s peace with a little havoc, fury with a smidge of mischief, screaming when being silenced, and finally a little chaos when we reign. We perform crazy acts in front of strangers, dress up like little monsters after the clock strikes twelve, but at the end of the night, when the curtains close and the show is over, we’re just this. Midnight Mayhem.

In the nights, which he could create by turning the handle of a door, he lay for hours in contemplation of the skylight. The Earth’s disk was nowhere to be seen, the stars, thick as daisies on an uncut lawn, reigned perpetually with no cloud, no moon, no sunrise, to dispute their sway. There were planets of unbelievable majesty, and constellations undreamed of: there were celestial sapphires, rubies, emeralds and pin-pricks of burning gold. far out on the left of the picture hung a comet, tiny and remote: and between all and behind all, far more emphatic and palpable than it showed on Earth, the undimensioned, enigmatic blackness. The lights trembled: they seemed to grow brighter as he looked. Stretched naked on his bed, a second Dana, he found it night by night more difficult to disbelieve in old astrology: almost he felt, wholly he imagined, 'sweet influence' pouring or even stabbing into his surrendered body.

Authority does not have to be a person or institution which says: you have to do this, or you are not allowed to do that. While this kind of authority may be called external authority, authority can appear as internal authority, under the name of duty, conscience, or super-ego. As a matter of fact, the development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Kant's philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man's own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of his natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, his nature, by another, his reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issued by man's conscience are ultimately not governed by demands of the individual self but by social demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be his own; how can he rebel against himself? In recent decades "conscience" has lost much of its significance. It seems as though neither external nor internal authorities play any prominent role in the individual's life. Everybody is completely "free", if only he does not interfere with other people's legitimate claims. But what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. Instead of overt authority, "anonymous" authority reigns.It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion. Whether a mother says to her daughter, "I know you will not like to go out with that boy", or an advertisement suggests, "Smoke this brand of cigarettes--you will like their coolness", it is the same atmosphere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole social life. Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop.But whereas in internalized authority the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible.It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against.

Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness...

Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.

Years ago, I happened upon a television program of a “prosperity gospel” preacher, with perfectly coiffed mauve hair, perched on a rhinestone-spackled golden throne, talking about how wonderful it is to be a Christian. Even if Christianity proved to be untrue, she said, she would still want to be a Christian, because it’s the best way to live. It occurred to me that that is an easy perspective to have, on television, from a golden throne. It’s a much more difficult perspective to have if one is being crucified by one’s neighbors in Sudan for refusing to repudiate the name of Christ. Then, if it turns out not to be true, it seems to be a crazy way to live. In reality, this woman’s gospel—and those like it—are more akin to a Canaanite fertility religion than to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the kingdom she announces is more like that of Pharaoh than like that of Christ. David’s throne needs no rhinestone. But the prosperity gospel proclaimed in full gaudiness in the example above is on full display in more tasteful and culturally appropriate forms. The idea of the respectability of Christian witness in a Christian America that is defined by morality and success, not by the gospel of crucifixion and resurrection, is just another example of importing Jesus to maintain one’s best life now. Jesus could have remained beloved in Nazareth, by healing some people and levitating some chairs, and keeping quiet about how different his kingdom is. But Jesus persistently has to wreck everything, and the illusions of Christian America are no more immune than the illusions of Israelite Galilee. If we see the universe as the Bible sees it, we will not try to “reclaim” some lost golden age. We will see an invisible conflict of the kingdoms, a satanic horror show being invaded by the reign of Christ. This will drive us to see who our real enemies are, and they are not the cultural and sexual prisoners-of-war all around us. If we seek the kingdom, we will see the devil. And this makes us much less sophisticated, much less at home in modern America.

THE FOURTH KEY The Fourth Enochian Key refers to the cycling of the ages of time. ... THE FOURTH KEY (English) I have set my feet in the South, and have looked about me, saying: Are not the thunders of increase those which reign in the second angle? Under whom I have placed those whom none hath yet numbered, but One; in whom the second beginnings of things are and wax strong, successively adding the numbers of time, and their powers doth stand as the first of the nine! Arise!, you sons of pleasure, and visit the Earth; for I am the Lord, your God, which is and liveth forever! In the name of Satan, Move!, and show yourselves as pleasant deliverers, that you may praise Him among the sons of men!

Demographer Jean-Paul Sanderson, estimated the decline of the Congolese population during the reign of Leopold II and after, between 1885 and 1920 at several hundred thousand, and there were several reasons for this: diseases, malnutrition (including because men worked in the rubber harvest rather than farming), fewer births. Professor Anatole Romaniuk of the University of Alberta in Canada wrote a study on this, showing that almost half of the women in Congo in the second half of the 19th century suffered from Afro-Arab slavery and did not give birth to a single living child because of 'une stérilité massive pathologique d'origine vénérienne', i.e. because of massive infertility due to venereal disease. This factor trumped all other causes.

The final match-up of the round was by far the most satisfying for Rezkin. It was against the mace wielding Sandman who had murdered the young stave-master. The beast had already attempted to end the life of another competitor that morning. Dark Tidings did not even give the man a chance to put on a show. As soon as the announcer finished speaking, he drew the black blade, strode forward with purpose and disarmed the man, literally. After losing both appendages, the brute fell to his knees in shock. While the healers were running to treat the man before he bled out, Dark Tidings stood over the Sandman and said, 'Bracken Freedon of the Isle of Sand. You have been judged and found guilty. Bring nigh to thee, King's Dark Tidings.' The black blade came down in one fell swoop and took the man's head clean from his body. Green lighting crackled within the black swords length...

The other approach, probably more widely appealing in contemporary Western culture, is so to fix on the painful circumstances of life that one gives up on faith. The harsh realities of life show that Christian (or other) faith in God is no longer tenable. It might have been once, when one was a child, perhaps in Sunday school. But when one grows up and acquires scientific understanding of how the world works, together with an awareness of increasingly uncertain general prospects—global warming, continuing wars, terrorism, famines, growing disparities between rich and poor, transience of romantic relationships, familial instabilities, social anomie, disillusionment with grand claims about the world, or just existential moments of “Why?” when confronted by needless and innocent suffering—then it becomes clear that “Our God reigns” is empty language that trivializes the realities of the world.

So what was the hidden divine purpose in this seemingly strange story? As we saw, from Romans 5:12 on Paul has referred to “Sin” in the singular, “Sin” as a force or power that is let loose in the world and that ultimately rules the world (“Sin reigned in death,” 5:21). “Sin” here seems to be the accumulation not just of human wrongdoings, but of the powers unleashed by idolatry and wickedness—the powers that humans were supposed to have, but that, through idolatry, they had handed over to nongods. Paul then uses the word “Sin” as a personification for all this. Sometimes it seems as though, in 7:7–12 at least, Paul says “Sin” where he might have said “the satan,” or at least the serpent in Genesis 3. In any case, in Romans 7 Paul is telling two stories, the story of Adam and the story of Israel, weaving them together to show—as in much Jewish tradition—just how closely that they resonated with one another. His main point is that, through the Torah, Israel recapitulated the sin of Adam.

Under Louis XIV., not to go any further back, the king rightly desired to create a fleet. The idea was a good one. But let us consider the means. There can be no fleet, if, beside the sailing ship, that plaything of the winds, and for the purpose of towing it, in case of necessity, there is not the vessel which goes where it pleases, either by means of oars or of steam; the galleys were then to the marine what steamers are to-day. Therefore, galleys were necessary; but the galley is moved only by the galley-slave; hence, galley-slaves were required. Colbert had the commissioners of provinces and the parliaments make as many convicts as possible. The magistracy showed a great deal of complaisance in the matter. A man kept his hat on in the presence of a procession—it was a Huguenot attitude; he was sent to the galleys. A child was encountered in the streets; provided that he was fifteen years of age and did not know where he was to sleep, he was sent to the galleys. Grand reign; grand century.

-Eternal Life- I had a dream of a place where everything was at peace. There was no more pain, no hurting or crying, A place where death forever ceased. There was no more hunger or disease Nor, nations rising up against each other. All pride and jealousy were swallowed up in the final battle. The King has returned, so let us all rejoice. We all gathered there to meet As people assembled to pay homage at His feet. Even the creatures on earth and in heaven came to proclaim His eternal, sweet and precious name. There we will reign with Him forevermore, As we crowned Him King of kings and Lord of lords. I am surrounded by thousands and thousands Of angelic hosts singing His praises. Oh, what a sweet sound which will continue throughout the ages. I turned to see our loved ones who had gone on before us We rejoiced with each other as we joined the endless chorus. Our new bodies, how perfect we are designed. Oh, the wisdom and knowledge of God How unsearchable are His ways, There will be joy and peace throughout the eternal days. There in that holy place forever we will be, The earth shall be full of His knowledge and glory As waters that cover the sea. When I woke up from that beautiful dream I gave thanks to Jesus Christ my Savior, Who will forever reign supreme. So, read to me the Word of Life page by page God’s eternal love will never age. I Corinthians 15: 51-55 Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Romans 8: 18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Obviously there are quite a few factors that determine personality, including a person’s upbringing and experiences,” David continues, “but despite the peace and prosperity that had reigned in this country for nearly a century, it seemed advantageous to our ancestors to reduce the risk of these undesirable qualities showing up in our population by correcting them. In other words, by editing humanity. “That’s how the genetic manipulation experiment was born. It takes several generations for any kind of genetic manipulation to manifest, but people were selected from the general population in large numbers, according to their backgrounds or behavior, and they were given the option to give a gift to our future generations, a genetic alteration that would make their descendants just a little bit better.” I look around at the others. Peter’s mouth is puckered with disdain. Caleb is scowling. Cara’s mouth has fallen open, like she is hungry for answers and intends to eat them form the air. Christina just looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised, and Tobias is staring at his shoes.

The communists believe that they have found the path to deliverance from our evils. According to them, man is wholly good and is well-disposed to his neighbour; but the institution of private property has corrupted his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and with it the temptation to ill-treat his neighbour; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against his oppressor. If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone’s needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary.I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother’s relation to her male child). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature, will follow it there.

My people!" he shouted in the stentorian voice. "I shall speak now of us! Who are we? We are an articulate people, yet a people of few words. We feel deeply, yet refrain from embarrassing displays of emotion. Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent. Our national collaboration, though varied, is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be, for example, we can be excessive when excess is called for, and yet, even in our excess we show good taste, although never is our taste so refined as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are moderate is moderate, except when we have decided to be immoderately moderate, or even shockingly flamboyant, at which time our flamboyance is truly breathtaking in a really startling way, and when we decide to make mistakes, our mistakes are as big and grand and irrevocable as any nation's colossal errors, and when we decide to deny our mistakes, we sound just as if we are telling the truth, and when we decide to admit our errors, we do so in a way that is truly moving in its extreme frankness! Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?

FUCK IT, I’M BORED.” “Here he comes.” Theo didn’t even look up when Miles rounded the corner and tossed his notebook onto the counter. “I don’t think cursing is going to help,” she told him. “Maybe it fucking will.” Miles seethed. “I hate everyone in that gym. Pick someone.” “No, I don’t want to play.” “It won’t take that long.” “That’s why I don’t want to play.” “Can I do one?” I raised my hand. “It might actually take you more than five questions, too.” Miles quirked his eyebrow. “Oh, you think so?” “If you get this in five, I’ll be thoroughly impressed.” He leaned over the counter, looking eager. Weirdly, weirdly eager. Not like he wanted to rub my face into the floor. Not like he knew he was going to beat me. Just . . . excited. “Okay,” he said. “Are you fictional?” Broad question. He didn’t know me as well as he knew Theo, so it was to be expected. “No,” I said. “Are you still alive?” “No.” “Are you a leader?” “Yes.” “Was your civilization conquered by a European nation?” “Yes.” “Are you . . . a leader of the Olmec?” “How’d you get there?” Theo blurted out, but Miles ignored her. “No,” I said, trying not to let him see how close he’d come. “And the Olmec weren’t conquered by the Europeans. They died out.” Miles frowned. “Mayan?” “No.” “Incan.” “No.” “Aztec.” “Yes.” The corners of his lips twisted up, but he said, “Shouldn’t have taken so many guesses for that one.” Then he said, “Did you found the Tlatocan?” “No.” “Did you reign after 1500?” “No.” Theo watched the conversation like a tennis match. “Are you Ahuitzotl?” “No.” I smiled. This kid knew his history. “Tizoc?” “No.” “Axayacatl?” “No.” “Moctezuma I?” “Nope.” “Itzcoatl?” “No.” “Chimalpopoca?” “No.” “Huitzilihuitl?” “What the hell are you saying?” Theo cried. He’d cut off a chunk of the Aztec emperors and whittled them down until there was only one remaining. But now he had three questions left—two he didn’t need. Why hadn’t he cut it down again? Surely he could have shortened his options and not guessed his way through all the emperors. Was this some kind of test? Or was . . . was he showing off? “You’re Acamapichtli.” There was a fanatical gleam in his eye, another smile playing on his lips. Both were gone as soon as I said, “Almost twenty. Not quite, but I almost had you.” “I’m never playing this game again,” said Theo, sighing and returning to her homework.

The stranger drew the curtains round the bed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with sketches of equal skill,—but these last were mostly subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the human figure in every variety of suffering,—the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in a large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, “The Future of the Aristocrats.” In a corner of the room, and close by an old bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time,—the philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God.

The lack of distinction between the real and the virtual is the obsession of our age. Everything in our current affairs attests to this, not to mention the big cinematic productions: The Truman Show, Total Recall, Existenz, Matrix, etc. This question has always been there behind literature and philosophy, but it has been present metaphorically, as it were, implicitly, through the filter of discourse. The 'encoding/decoding' of reality was done by discourse, that is to say, by a highly complex medium, never leaving room for a head-on truth. The encoding/decoding of our reality is done by technology. Only what is produced by this technical effect acquires visible reality. And it does so at the cost of a simplification that no longer has anything to do with language or with the slightest ambivalence and which, therefore, puts an end to this subtle lack of distinction between the real and the virtual, as subtle as the lack of distinction between good and evil. Through special effects, everything acquires an operational self-evidence, a spectacular reality that is, properly speaking, the reign of simulation. What the directors of these films have not realized (any more than the simulationist artists of New York in the eighties) is that simulation is a hypothesis, a game that turns reality itself into one eventuality among others.

I don't have a care what you want, you horrid little insect," she hissed through her smile. "The Crown chose you. You are Queen of Fairyland. It's about as appetizing to myself personally as a pie full of filthy, crawling worms, but it's a fact. You can pull and pry and blubber, but that Crown won't come off until you're dead or deposed. I could cut you down in a heart's-breadth, but the rest of these ruffians would have my head. They take regicide terribly personally. Make no mistake; this present predicament is entirely your fault, you and your wretched Dodo's Egg. You will want my help to sort it limb from limb. You are a stranger in Fairyland—oh, it's charming how many little vacations you take here! But this is not your home. You don't know these people from a beef supper. But I do. I recognize each and every one. And if you show them that you are a vicious little fool with no more head on her shoulders than a drunken ostrich, they will gobble you up and dab their mouths with that thing you call a dress. You may not like me, but I have survived far more towering acts of mythic stupidity than you. I am good. I know what power weighs. If you have any wisdom in your silly monkey head, from this moment until the end of your reign—which I do hope will come quickly—you and I shall become the very best of friends. After all, Queen September, a Prime Minister lives to serve.

Extract from 'Quixotic Ambitions': The crowd stared at Katy expectantly. She looked at them - old women in black, exhausted young women with pasty-faced children, youths in jeans and leather blousons chewing gum. She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she blurted out her short speech, thanking the people of Shkrapova for their welcome and promising that if she won the referendum she would work for the good of Maloslavia. There was some half-hearted applause and an old lady hobbled up to her, knelt down with difficulty, and kissed the hem of her skirt. She looked at Katy with tears rolling down her face and gabbled something excitedly. Dimitar translated: ‘She says that she remembers the reign of your grandfather and that God has sent you to Maloslavia.’ Katy was embarrassed but she smiled at the woman and helped her to her feet. At this moment the People’s Struggle Pioneers appeared on the scene, waving their banners and shouting ‘Doloy Manaheeyoo! Popnikov President!’ Police had been stationed at strategic points and quickly dispersed the demonstrators without any display of violence, but the angry cries of ‘Down with the monarchy!’ had a depressing effect on the entertainment that had been planned; only a few people remained to watch it. A group of children aged between ten and twelve ran into the square and performed a series of dances accompanied by an accordian. They stamped their feet and clapped their hands frequently and occasionally collided with one another when they forgot their next move. The girls wore embroidered blouses, stiffly pleated skirts and scarlet boots and the boys were in baggy linen shirts and trousers, the legs of which were bound with leather thongs. Their enthusiasm compensated for their mistakes and they were loudly applauded. The male voice choir which followed consisted of twelve young men who sang complicated polyphonic melodies with a high, curiously nasal tenor line accompanied by an unusually deep droning bass. Some of their songs were the cries of despair of a people who had suffered under Turkish occupation; others were lively dance tunes for feast days and festivals. They were definitely an acquired taste and Katy, who was beginning to feel hungry, longed for them to come to an end. At last, at two o’clock, the performance finished and trestle tables were set up in the square. Dishes of various salads, hors-d’oeuvres and oriental pastries appeared, along with casks of beer and bottles of the local red wine. The people who had disappeared during the brief demonstration came back and started piling food on to paper plates. A few of the People’s Struggle Pioneers also showed up again and mingled with the crowd, greedily eating anything that took their fancy.

the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother’s relation to her male child). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature, will follow it there.

Presentism, neglect of the future (along with forgetfulness and contempt for the past) is the paradoxical characteristic of a society and elites who have nothing but the words progress, innovation, modernity on their lips in every domain, including the economic. As soon as one is no longer ‘in love’ as depicted in television shows, as soon as sexual desire fades, one separates from one’s current partner. Marrying for superficial reasons, one separates for superficial reasons. Moreover, this compulsive and immature sort of behaviour is found not only in relationships but also in eroticism and sex in general, always under the sign of speed, immediacy, and instant gratification. Conjugal love and even sex are no longer savoured but consumed or indeed devoured, as if by fire. Despite a form of pseudo-maturity demanded in all domains, especially sexual, and an ideology of liberation, Westerners since the 1960s (the baby boom generation to which I belong) have had difficulty proceeding to the psychological stage of adulthood, that of building for the long-term. This is true even in fields very different to those of sex and relationships, and include those of politics and economics. It is the generalised reign of immaturity and improvidence. Marriage is then conceived as a sort of game, and it ends as soon as one blows the final whistle. Unrestrained enjoyment, the slogan of May ‘68,[27] inspired by a cheap, boorish hedonism, has actually passed into our mores.

Hoover fed the story to sympathetic reporters—so-called friends of the bureau. One article about the case, which was syndicated by William Randolph Hearst’s company, blared, NEVER TOLD BEFORE! —How the Government with the Most Gigantic Fingerprint System on Earth Fights Crime with Unheard-of Science Refinements; Revealing How Clever Sleuths Ended a Reign of Murder and Terror in the Lonely Hills of the Osage Indian Country, and Then Rounded Up the Nation’s Most Desperate Gang In 1932, the bureau began working with the radio program The Lucky Strike Hour to dramatize its cases. One of the first episodes was based on the murders of the Osage. At Hoover’s request, Agent Burger had even written up fictional scenes, which were shared with the program’s producers. In one of these scenes, Ramsey shows Ernest Burkhart the gun he plans to use to kill Roan, saying, “Look at her, ain’t she a dandy?” The broadcasted radio program concluded, “So another story ends and the moral is identical with that set forth in all the others of this series….[ The criminal] was no match for the Federal Agent of Washington in a battle of wits.” Though Hoover privately commended White and his men for capturing Hale and his gang and gave the agents a slight pay increase—“ a small way at least to recognize their efficiency and application to duty”—he never mentioned them by name as he promoted the case. They did not quite fit the profile of college-educated recruits that became part of Hoover’s mythology. Plus, Hoover never wanted his men to overshadow him.

Through Evernight he back was borne on black and roaring waves that ran o'er leagues unlit and foundered shores that drowned before the Days began, until he heard on strands of pearl where ends the world the music long, where ever-foaming billows roll the yellow gold and jewels wan. He saw the Mountain silent rise where twilight lies upon the knees of Valinor, and Eldamar beheld afar beyond the seas. A wanderer escaped from night to haven white he came at last, to Elvenhome the green and fair where keen the air, where pale as glass beneath the Hill of Ilmarin a-glimmer in a valley sheer the lamplit towers of Tirion are mirrored on the Shadowmere. He tarried there from errantry, and melodies they taught to him, and sages old him marvels told, and harps of gold they brought to him. They clothed him then in elven-white, and seven lights before him sent, as through the Calacirian to hidden land forlorn he went. He came unto the timeless halls where shining fall the countless years, and endless reigns the Elder King in Ilmarin on Mountain sheer; and words unheard were spoken then of folk of Men and Elven-kin, beyond the world were visions showed forbid to those that dwell therein. A ship then new they built for him of mithril and of elven-glass with shining prow; no shaven oar nor sail she bore on silver mast: the Silmaril as lantern light and banner bright with living flame to gleam thereon by Elbereth herself was set, who thither came and wings immortal made for him, and laid on him undying doom, to sail the shoreless skies and come behind the Sun and light of Moon.

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

Pretty soon, however, I noticed something familiar. Most books are also about the exceptional. The biggest history bestsellers are invariably about catastrophes and adversity, tyranny and oppression. About war, war, and, to spice things up a little, war. And if, for once, there is no war, then we’re in what historians call the interbellum: between wars. In science, too, the view that humanity is bad has reigned for decades. Look up books on human nature and you’ll find titles like Demonic Males, The Selfish Gene and The Murderer Next Door. Biologists long assumed the gloomiest theory of evolution, where even if an animal appeared to do something kind, it was framed as selfish. Familial affection? Nepotism! Monkey splits a banana? Exploited by a freeloader!31 As one American biologist mocked, ‘What passes for co-operation turns out to be a mixture of opportunism and exploitation. […] Scratch an “altruist” and watch a “hypocrite” bleed.’32 And in economics? Much the same. Economists defined our species as the homo economicus: always intent on personal gain, like selfish, calculating robots. Upon this notion of human nature, economists built a cathedral of theories and models that wound up informing reams of legislation. Yet no one had researched whether homo economicus actually existed. That is, not until economist Joseph Henrich and his team took it up in 2000. Visiting fifteen communities in twelve countries on five continents, they tested farmers, nomads, and hunters and gatherers, all in search of this hominid that has guided economic theory for decades. To no avail. Each and every time, the results showed people were simply too decent. Too kind.

Punish me for my awful pride," she said to him, clasping him in her arms so tightly as almost to choke him. "You are my master, dear, I am your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel." She left his arms to fall at his feet. "Yes," she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and with love, "you are my master, reign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her severely." In another moment she tore herself from his arms, and lit a candle, and it was only by a supreme effort that Julien could prevent her from cutting off a whole tress of her hair. "I want to remind myself," she said to him, "that I am your handmaid. If I am ever led astray again by my abominable pride, show me this hair and say, 'It is not a question of the emotion which your soul may be feeling at present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour.' As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and satisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt something fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's hair which she had cut off and thrown down to him. She was at the window. "That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a fairly loud voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I renounce the exercise of my reason, be my master." Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the ladder again and climbing back into her room. Finally reason prevailed. (A few days later...) In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity and wounding it cruelly. Hearing himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself, he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough. As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt some days previously. She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she addressed to him with so much gusto. Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm authoritatively. "Be good enough to remark," he said to her, "that you are talking very loud. You will be heard in the next room." "What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. "Who will dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable vanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my account." When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. "She does not love me any more," he repeated to himself... "Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so few days back?" Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she had been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so strong an inclination rendered her completely happy. "So this little gentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will never have, any dominion over me." She was so happy that in reality she ceased to love at this particular moment.

Baron, Baroness Originally, the term baron signified a person who owned land as a direct gift from the monarchy or as a descendant of a baron. Now it is an honorary title. The wife of a baron is a baroness. Duke, Duchess, Duchy, Dukedom Originally, a man could become a duke in one of two ways. He could be recognized for owning a lot of land. Or he could be a victorious military commander. Now a man can become a duke simply by being appointed by a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her husband Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and her son Charles the Duke of Wales. A duchess is the wife or widow of a duke. The territory ruled by a duke is a duchy or a dukedom. Earl, Earldom Earl is the oldest title in the English nobility. It originally signified a chieftan or leader of a tribe. Each earl is identified with a certain area called an earldom. Today the monarchy sometimes confers an earldom on a retiring prime minister. For example, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is the Earl of Stockton. King A king is a ruling monarch. He inherits this position and retains it until he abdicates or dies. Formerly, a king was an absolute ruler. Today the role of King of England is largely symbolic. The wife of a king is a queen. Knight Originally a knight was a man who performed devoted military service. The title is not hereditary. A king or queen may award a citizen with knighthood. The criterion for the award is devoted service to the country. Lady One may use Lady to refer to the wife of a knight, baron, count, or viscount. It may also be used for the daughter of a duke, marquis, or earl. Marquis, also spelled Marquess. A marquis ranks above an earl and below a duke. Originally marquis signified military men who stood guard on the border of a territory. Now it is a hereditary title. Lord Lord is a general term denoting nobility. It may be used to address any peer (see below) except a duke. The House of Lords is the upper house of the British Parliament. It is a nonelective body with limited powers. The presiding officer for the House of Lords is the Lord Chancellor or Lord High Chancellor. Sometimes a mayor is called lord, such as the Lord Mayor of London. The term lord may also be used informally to show respect. Peer, Peerage A peer is a titled member of the British nobility who may sit in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. Peers are ranked in order of their importance. A duke is most important; the others follow in this order: marquis, earl, viscount, baron. A group of peers is called a peerage. Prince, Princess Princes and princesses are sons and daughters of a reigning king and queen. The first-born son of a royal family is first in line for the throne, the second born son is second in line. A princess may become a queen if there is no prince at the time of abdication or death of a king. The wife of a prince is also called a princess. Queen A queen may be the ruler of a monarchy, the wife—or widow—of a king. Viscount, Viscountess The title Viscount originally meant deputy to a count. It has been used most recently to honor British soldiers in World War II. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was named a viscount. The title may also be hereditary. The wife of a viscount is a viscountess. (In pronunciation the initial s is silent.) House of Windsor The British royal family has been called the House of Windsor since 1917. Before then, the royal family name was Wettin, a German name derived from Queen Victoria’s husband. In 1917, England was at war with Germany. King George V announced that the royal family name would become the House of Windsor, a name derived from Windsor Castle, a royal residence. The House of Windsor has included Kings George V, Edward VII, George VI, and Queen Elizabeth II.

Oil “Soviet Russia cannot survive without Baku’s oil,” told comrade Vladimir Lenin. One of the plans was to drain the Caspian Sea: “Is it possible? Can you drain the Caspian Sea?” said the powerful Stalin. It was more an order than a question.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Azerbaijan - Oil Country). Mafia “With his wife Victoria, they reigned here for nineteen years. This period Georgians called ironically the Victorian Era, and his wife got the name Queen Victoria. Victoria created the system when all was for sale: state documents ten times the price; 5,000 roubles to enter the Communist party; 50,000 for the judge job, … “ (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Gruzia - Where Soviet Mafia Was Born). Smoking “Smoking breaks in the USSR were long and often—and became an official excuse not to work, causing huge damage to the already failing state economy. But on the other hand, with zero unemployment and prison terms, if you are not on a payroll, the state could not provide enough work for everybody. People had to show up every day in the workplace. Boredom from nothing-to-do turned into massive laziness and Soviet workers spent long hours in the smoke rooms. For some, it was a place to relax, for others, to provoke a frank conversation—because … Well, let’s talk about it later.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Litva - Friends and Rebels). God “The bus was driving slowly, just forty km an hour on the slippery winter road. Outside was a spectacular view of the Caucasus mountains. Here and there appeared churches: nearby and far away, but always on the top of the hill: “Closer to God, as high as possible,” crossed His mind. The bus stopped with a creaking sound, and He slowly got off: “For me, Khor Virap Monastery will be the resting place: from the Soviet life … from the communist lies … I shall spend here the rest of my life. And from here … I shall go to eternity …” these were His last thoughts before He entered the monastery gate. He was dead tired from all that happened, walking uphill closer to God.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Armenia - Road in the First Christian State).

... the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being ... True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in Heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

During [Erté]’s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century … In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company … It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an offspring of the brilliant foreign colony in the imperial capital. Before 1890 he formed a club of fellow-pupils who were called ‘The Nevsky Pickwickians’. They were joined by the young Jew, Leon Rosenberg, who later took the name of one of his grandparents, Bakst. Another member introduced his cousin to the group―Serge Diaghilev. From these origins emerged the Mir Iskustva (World of Art) society, the forerunner of the whole modern movement in Russia. Soon after its foundation in 1899 both Benois and Bakst produced their first work in the theatre, The infiltration of the members of Mir Iskustva into the Imperial theatre was due to the patronage of its director Prince Volkonsky who appointed Diaghilev as an assistant. But under Volkonsky’s successor Diagilev lost his job and was barred from further state employment. He then devoted his energies and genius to editing the Mir Iskustva magazine and to a series of exhibitions which introduced Russia to work of foreign artists … These culminated in the remarkable exhibition of Russian portraiture held at the Taurida Palace in 1905, and the Russian section at the salon d'Autumne in Paris the following year. This was the most comprehensive Russian exhibition ever held, from early icons to the young Larionov and Gontcharova. Diagilev’s ban from Russian theatrical life also led to a series of concerts in Paris in 1907, at which he introduced contemporary Russian composers, the production Boris Godunov the following year with Chaliapin and costumes and décor by Benois and Golovin, and then in 1909, on May 19, the first season of the ballet Russes at the Châtelet Theatre.

In Rome, the dense ruin of the Forum has a few unmistakable landmarks. Turning up a cobbled slope towards the green peace of the Palatine, the visitor immediately confronts one of them: an uncompromising, fairly well-preserved ceremonial arch. The Arch of Titus was erected posthumously to celebrate the eponymous prince’s triumphs in Judea during the reign of his father, Vespasian, and during the childhood of Hadrian. One of the relief carvings shows the removal of the sacred texts, trumpets and menorah of the Jewish Temple. They were not to return to Jerusalem for 500 years and the Temple itself was never rebuilt.

He was young, immature, with no father of his own to show him the way, and without the trials of maturity to show him how to control his emotions or reign in his temper. He had been impulsive, hasty, and quick to anger. He had been egotistical and sure of his infallibility, and in that egoism, he had created his beings as fractured images of himself.

Philosophical discussions of God’s existence and nature typically fail to ask, “If God exists, has he done anything to address this profound problem?” Unlike other religions, the Christian story emphatically answers, Yes! God’s existence and his concern for humanity go hand in hand; he gets his feet dirty and hands bloody in Jesus, bringing creation and redemption together. His ministry and the salvation event signaled a new exodus and a new creation. His miraculous resurrection from the dead in particular guarantees hope and restoration, and this cornerstone event is accompanied by many publicly accessible reasons—historical, theological, and philosophical.4 Divine miracles don’t guarantee belief, though: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Miracles can be rationalized away (see, e.g., John 12:29) or even suppressed by people who don’t want to believe anyway—such as Jesus’ enemies seeking to kill miraculous evidence—the resuscitated Lazarus (John 12:1, 10)! Miracles don’t compel belief, but for those willing to receive them, they do serve as sufficient indications of God’s activity and revelation. John calls them signs that point beyond themselves to Jesus’ significance: Jesus miraculously feeds bread to a crowd of more than five thousand and then declares, “I am the bread of life” (John 6); he says, “I am the light of the world,” illustrating it by healing a man born blind (John 8–9); he affirms, “I am the resurrection and the life” and shows it by raising Lazarus (John 11). No wonder Jesus says, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves” (John 14:11). His miracles, revealing the in-breaking reality of God’s reign, are available for public scrutiny.

The church has an eschatological horizon and is, as proleptic manifestation of God's reign, the beachhead of the new creation, the vanguard of God's new world, and the sign of the dawning new age in the midst of the old (cf Beker 1980:313; 1984:41). At the same time it is precisely as these small and weak Pauline communities gather in worship to celebrate the victory already won and to pray for the coming of their Lord (“Marana tha !”), that they become aware of the terrible contradiction between what they believe on the one hand and what they empirically see and experience on the other, and also of the tension in which they live, the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” “Christ the first fruits” has already risen from the dead (1 Cor 15:23) and the believers have been given the Spirit as “guarantee” of what is to come (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5), but there does not seem to be much apart from these “first fruits” and “pledge.” Like Abraham, they believe in hope against hope (Rom 4:18) and accept in faith the Spirit's witness that they are children and heirs of God and therefore fellow heirs with Christ—provided, says Paul, “we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17). God will triumph, notwithstanding our weakness and suffering, but also in the midst of and because of and through our weakness and suffering (cf Beker 1980:364f). Faith is able to bear the tension between the confession of God's ultimate triumph, and the empirical reality of this world, for it knows that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37) and that “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (8:28). Nowhere has Paul portrayed this unbearable (and precisely for this reason bearable!) tension more profoundly than in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. Our Christian life in this world thus involves an inescapable tension, oscillating between joy and agony. Whereas, on the one hand, suffering and weakness become all the more intolerable and our agonizing, because of the terrifying “not yet,” intensifies, we can, on the other hand, already “rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom 5:2). This means that our life in this world must be cruciform; Paul bears on his body “the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17; cf Col 1:24), he carries “in the body the death of Jesus,” and while he lives he is “always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:10f) (cf also Beker 1980:145f, 366f; 1984:120).

scientists claim that the Earth was warming because of human activity and Earth’s supposedly limited resources couldn’t handle the impending super heat wave. All he would need to do now was to have educators in liberal universities, the media, and politicians in key spots start showing this made-up data to the people to get them to believe it. He knew there would always be people who would believe everything the media, their teachers, or their government told them. The problem was the minority of people who always thought for themselves. Eventually, those free thinkers would have to be disposed of so Gregory and people like him would have free reign and no one would be questioning them.

[Christians] are commanded to love our neighbors, and the first step in doing this is to show a watching world that Christ reigns within us.

God ’s Superabundant Work Now to Him Who, by. . . the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. EPHESIANS 3:20-21 AMP God is a lavish God who delights in doing much more than the human mind can dream or hope for. A short time into his reign, King Solomon went to Gibeon to worship the Lord because the temple in Jerusalem wasn’t built yet. One night the Lord came to Solomon in a dream and said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” (1 Kings 3:5 NIV). Solomon didn’t hesitate: “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. . . . So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” (vv. 7–9). God was pleased with Solomon’s request and gladly granted it. But then He showed His superabundant nature. He gave Solomon wealth and honor and a long life (vv. 13–14). No other king in Solomon’s time or even after has ever surpassed God’s rich blessing on his life. Father, keep my eyes fixed on You so I don’t miss when You want to bless me in superabundant ways.

Lamentations The book of Lamentations in the English Bible takes its name from the Greek and Latin versions, which translate the Hebrew qinoth “dirges, laments.” The Hebrew Bible names a book by the first word or phrase. Lamentations is one of the “megilloth,” or five scrolls that are read during various of the annual festivals. Lamentations has traditionally been read in observation of Tish b’av (ninth of the month ‘Av), the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. While Tish b’av is a later development, it is a likely extension of the communal mourning over Jerusalem reflected in Jer 41:5; Zec 7:3–5; 8:19. Historical Setting Lamentations focuses on the trauma experienced by the kingdom of Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. In 604 BC Nebuchadnezzar’s military confronted the western states, and Babylonian power was brought to bear on Judah. In less than a decade the devastation of Judah had begun with the first deportation. Typical of ancient Near Eastern warfare, if time permitted, cities fortified as Jerusalem was were often “softened” by siege warfare. This protracted strangulation of a city deprived the defenders and citizenry of food and often of water. Thirst and starvation would decimate the besieged population. Though from an earlier period, the art and inscriptions of the Assyrian palaces provide insight into the horrors of the siege. They also show the intensity of devastation once the defenses were broken down. There was no theory of “separation of church and state” in the ancient Near East. The city-state was viewed as the realm of a patron deity. Palace and temple were intimately connected functionally and were often closely situated physically. One implication of this view is that in order to vanquish a city-state, not only must the military be defeated and the royal court put out of commission (either by killing the king or rendering him unfit to reign—often by mutilation), but the temple and its accoutrements were to be looted and put out of commission. Putting the god under submission was just as important as putting the king and his military under submission. When the kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire (586 BC), the temple and the palace were destroyed, along with the rest of the capital city, and the leadership and much of the population were carried away captive.

They arise quickly: “Witch-hunts seem to appear in dramatic outbursts; they are not a regular feature of social life. A community seems to suddenly find itself infested with all sorts of subversive elements which pose a threat to the collectivity as a whole. Whether one thinks of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, the Stalinist Show Trials, or the McCarthy period in the United States, the phenomenon is the same: a community becomes intensely mobilized to rid itself of internal enemies.”10 Crimes against the collective: “The various charges that appear during one of these witch-hunts involve accusations of crimes committed against the nation as a corporate whole. It is the whole of collective existence that is at stake; it is The Nation, The People, The Revolution, or The State which is being undermined and subverted.”11 Charges are often trivial or fabricated: “These crimes and deviations seem to involve the most petty and insignificant behavioral acts which are somehow understood as

The vultures came in shifts, sentinels to the requiem. The topmost ridges were first to welcome the daylight. A falcon swooped through the valley, scattering its benediction. I was mesmerized by the sentry duty of the carrion birds. They watched to see that all was well on earth: that death took its allotted share of animals and in return left provisions. Below, on the steep slopes that chamfered the gorge, the yaks grazed. Lying in the long grasses, cold, calm and watchful, Léo studied every crag through his binoculars. I was less conscientious. Patience has its limits, and I had come to the end of mine when we reached the canyon. I was busy assigning each animal a rung on the social ladder of the kingdom. The snow leopard was the regent; her status reinforced by her invisibility. She reigned, and therefore had no need to show herself. The prowling wolves were knavish princes; the yaks, richer burghers, warmly attired; the lynxes were musketeers; the foxes country squires; the blue sheep and the wild donkeys were the general populace. The raptors represented the priests, hieratic masters of the heavens and of death. These clerics in plumed livery were not against the idea that things might bode ill for us.

For today, thanks to recently discovered documents, the evidence shows that in the early days of their accession to power, the Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would seem never to have existed

We are taught the toxic, wicked belief that letting your light shine, that giving full reign to your talents and gifts is ‘showing off’. This is horrible, nasty, deceitful teaching that causes untold damage. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The papers were pleased. "She is kept by the nation as a spectacle," claimed the Penny Satirist, establishing a current of thought that would flow through Victoria's whole reign, "and it is right that she should be seen. In fact, it is her duty to come out and show herself, that we may have value for our money.

Detroit was ready to explode. On a Sunday afternoon marked by rising temperatures and short tempers, scuffles broke out between whites and blacks at a park called Belle Isle. A false rumor ricocheted among the African Americans that whites had thrown a black woman and child to their deaths off a bridge leading to the park. For the next thirty hours, until several thousand federal troops and tanks intervened, mobs raged through the city. “Race War in Detroit: Americans Maul and Murder Each Other as Hitler Wins a Battle in the Nation’s Most Explosive City,” bellowed Life magazine. Eight pages of disturbing pictures showed bloodied black men being chased, surrounded, and beaten by whites armed with lead pipes and bottles. In the end, twenty-five blacks and nine whites lay dead and six hundred injured. Seventeen of the black victims were killed by policemen. Of the fourteen hundred people arrested, twelve hundred were black, even though most of them reportedly had been attacked first. Despite the many problems in Detroit, bigotry did not reign in all quarters of the city. The United Automobile Workers union refused to tolerate whites who would not work with blacks on its assembly lines, and there were few problems. It was a lesson in what could happen when discipline was imposed. It is an example that another organization renowned for discipline

A few centuries ago, the government of this country became interested in enforcing certain desirable behaviors in its citizens. There had been studies that indicated that violent tendencies could be partially traced to a person’s genes—a gene called ‘the murder gene’ was the first of these, but there were quite a few more, genetic predispositions toward cowardice, dishonesty, low intelligence—all the qualities, in other words, that ultimately contribute to a broken society.” We were taught that the factions were formed to solve a problem, the problem of our flawed natures. Apparently the people David is describing, whoever they were, believed in that problem too. I know so little about genetics—just what I can see passed down from parent to child, in my face and in friends’ faces. I can’t imagine isolating a gene for murder, or cowardice, or dishonesty. Those things seem too nebulous to have a concrete location in a person’s body. But I’m not a scientist. “Obviously there are quite a few factors that determine personality, including a person’s upbringing and experiences,” David continues, “but despite the peace and prosperity that had reigned in this country for nearly a century, it seemed advantageous to our ancestors to reduce the risk of these undesirable qualities showing up in our population by correcting them. In other words, by editing humanity. “That’s how the genetic manipulation experiment was born. It takes several generations for any kind of genetic manipulation to manifest, but people were selected from the general population in large numbers, according to their backgrounds or behavior, and they were given the option to give a gift to our future generations, a genetic alteration that would make their descendants just a little bit better.” I look around at the others. Peter’s mouth is puckered with disdain. Caleb is scowling. Cara’s mouth has fallen open, like she is hungry for answers and intends to eat them from the air. Christina just looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised, and Tobias is staring at his shoes. I feel like I am not hearing anything new—just the same philosophy that spawned the factions, driving people to manipulate their genes instead of separating into virtue-based groups. I understand it. On some level I even agree with it. But I don’t know how it relates to us, here, now.

Bush was showing the Muslim world the America that bin Laden depicted: both a bloodthirsty oppresser and a vulnerable one. The United States looked like a rampaging tyrant, ruling through fear and coercion, yet one which Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan were demonstrating could be defeated. Bin Laden explained his strategy as simply provoking America into being itself. Much as the Soviet Union had collapsed after the Afghanistan insurgency—which he neglected to mention had aligned him with the CIA—bin Laden said, “We are continuing this policy, in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” A

Clouds had moved over the moon. Not even the bright sword in his hand could be seen as he moved it out into what had been moonlight. And then it came. A light more brilliant than the sun’s – a light like razors. It not only showed to the least minutiae the anatomy of masonry, pillars and towers, trees, grass-blades and pebbles, it conjured these things, it constructed them from nothing. They were not there before – only the void, the abactinal absences of all things – and then a creation reigned in a blinding and ghastly glory as a torrent of electric fire coursed across heaven. To Flay it seemed an eternity of nakedness; but the hot black eyelid of the entire sky closed down again and the stifling atmosphere rocked uncontrollably to such a yell of thunder as lifted the hairs on his neck. From the belly of a mammoth it broke and regurgitated, dying finally with a long-drawn growl of spleen. And then the enormous midnight gave up all control, opening out her cumulous body from horizon to horizon, so that the air became solid with so great a weight of falling water that Flay could hear the limbs of trees breaking through a roar of foam.

But, actually, the idea of a personal god or spirit who peevishly withholds food, or maliciously hurls lightning, gets a boost from the evolved human brain. People reared in modern scientific societies may consider it only natural to ponder some feature of the world—the weather, say—and try to come up with a mechanistic explanation couched in the abstract language of natural law. But evolutionary psychology suggests that a much more natural way to explain anything is to attribute it to a humanlike agent. This is the way we’re “designed” by natural selection to explain things. Our brain’s capacity to think about causality—to ask why something happened and come up with theories that help us predict what will happen in the future—evolved in a specific context: other brains. When our distant ancestors first asked “Why,” they weren’t asking about the behavior of water or weather or illness; they were asking about the behavior of their peers. That’s a somewhat speculative (and, yes, hard-to-test!) claim. We have no way of observing our prehuman ancestors one or two or three million years ago, when the capacity to think explicitly about causality was evolving by natural selection. But there are ways to shed light on the process. For starters, we can observe our nearest nonhuman relatives, chimpanzees. We didn’t evolve from chimps, but chimps and humans do share a common ancestor in the not-too-distant past (4 to 7 million years ago). And chimps are probably a lot more like that common ancestor than humans are. Chimps aren’t examples of our ancestors circa 5 million BCE but they’re close enough to be illuminating. As the primatologist Frans de Waal has shown, chimpanzee society shows some clear parallels with human society. One of them is in the title of his book Chimpanzee Politics. Groups of chimps form coalitions—alliances—and the most powerful alliance gets preferred access to resources (notably a resource that in Darwinian terms is important: sex partners). Natural selection has equipped chimps with emotional and cognitive tools for playing this political game. One such tool is anticipation of a given chimp’s future behavior based on past behavior. De Waal writes of a reigning alpha male, Yeroen, who faced growing hostility from a former ally named Luit: “He already sensed that Luit’s attitude was changing and he knew that his position was threatened.” 8 One could argue about whether Yeroen was actually pondering the situation in as clear and conscious a way as de Waal suggests. But even if chimps aren’t quite up to explicit inference, they do seem close. If you imagine their politics getting more complex (more like, say, human politics), and them getting smarter (more like humans), you’re imagining an organism evolving toward conscious thought about causality. And the causal agents about which these organisms will think are other such organisms, because the arena of causality is the social arena. In this realm, when a bad thing happens (like a challenge for Yeroen’s alpha spot) or a good thing happens (like an ally coming to Yeroen’s aid), it is another organism that is making the bad or good thing happen.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman found that when you survey people in the moment, their happiness levels are highest while with friends... To be fair, research by Beverley Fair shows that we're the absolute happiest when with both friends and spouses. But even within a marriage, friendship reigns. Work by Gallup found that 70 percent of marital satisfaction is due to the couple's friendship. Tom Rath says it's five times as critical to a good marriage as physical intimacy.

The historian, Josephus, explains how Cyrus arrived at this decision. In the first year of Cyrus’s reign, Daniel showed Cyrus the writings of Isaiah, addressing Cyrus by name. Written 120 years earlier, the prophecy is remarkable in its details, right down to Cyrus’s entering Babylon by drying up and crossing the Euphrates river. Isaiah even added a description of the famed “double doors” at the entrance of Babylon. The majestic entrance to the city was a massive double gate, flanked with bright towers of blue enameled brick. The prophecy was even more remarkable in light of the fact that at the time of Isaiah, Babylon did not have these doors and was not yet a world power. Neither did the majestic temple of Solomon and the city of Jerusalem need to be rebuilt. Put yourself in the seat of Cyrus, and imagine reading a letter from God written to you by name 120 years before you were born.

Immigrant. The word carries currency. Loaded. Weighed down by a politics of emotionality. Fear reigns and rules. It shrouds policy and reaches into these borders of manufactured fear where the walls are thick with America's rewritten history of immigration, featuring the accents of bigotry and unapologetic open political warfare turning small screens of news shows into horror movies where caged children are vilified and their proponent, America's forty-fifth president, is deified.

am often asked why, if UFOs and abductions are real, the spaceships do not show up in more obvious form. “Why don’t they land on the White House lawn?” is the reigning cliché.

As the social sciences became increasingly central to the formulation of public policy, this doctrine reinforced the political and legal drive for school desegregation. So powerful was the presumption that when Congress in 1964 ordered a survey on “the lack of availability of equal educational opportunity for individuals by reason of race, color, religion or national origin,” James Coleman, the study’s director, could tell an interviewer even before the field work was done: “… the study will show the difference in the quality of schools that the average Negro child and the average white child are exposed to. You know yourself that the difference is going to be striking.” So Coleman and most of the academic establishment were startled and dismayed eight months later by just how little difference his survey detected. When the results were in from this, the second-largest social science research project in history, they produced conclusions sharply at variance with the reigning doctrine. Popular impressions to the contrary, Coleman’s investigators found little difference between physical facilities and curricula at black and white schools. Moreover, the differences they did recognize had little effect on black and white performance. Even racial integration had relatively little impact on student achievement, as measured by standardized tests. The significant variables lay, not in the schools at all, but in the homes from which the children came and the cultural and class influences surrounding those homes. If the Coleman Report—as it came to be known—was a thunderclap in the cloistered world of social science research, its implications for public policy were even more earthshaking. Science magazine called it “a spear pointed at the heart of the cherished American belief that equality of educational opportunity will increase the equality of educational achievements.” But its implications went even deeper than that. For if the family, not the school, made the difference; if the poor, the black, and the disenfranchised were less susceptible to educational influence than hitherto believed; if differences between Americans were rooted in the bedrock of class—then social progress would be far more difficult to achieve than most people of goodwill had assumed.

This book is to inspire, to be a source of hope for the hopeless, and to show us all how the fantastic light of almighty God reigns regardless of horrible situations we encounter in life.

She said yes," I say, lifting her hand to show them her new jewelry. "Fuck. You proposed?" Alex barks, his eyes wide with shock. "Sure did. Every king needs a queen, don't you think?

How could such a woman as she was be permitted to draw so near to Christ? Certain captious spirits will demand, “How should Jesus give to such unworthy ones such acceptance, such manifestations of himself, such privileges?” Our Lord took upon himself to defend her, and therefore she might well afford to hold her tongue. So shall it be with you. If Satan accuse you, and your enemies with loud-mouthed accusations cry out against you, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who will certainly plead your cause and clear you. Jesus by his defensive parable shows that he was justified in letting the woman approach, because great love prompted her. There was no sin in her approach, but much to commend, since her motive was excellent, and the motive is the true measure of a deed. She felt intense love and gratitude towards the person who had forgiven her; therefore, her acts were not to be forbidden , but commended. He justifies her and incidentally justifies himself. Had he not done well in having won a sinner’s heart to penitence and love? Was not election justified in having chosen one to such holy devotedness and fervency? At the last great day, the Lord will justify his grace before the eyes of the whole universe, for he will allow the grace-wrought virtues of his chosen ones to be unveiled, and all eyes shall see that grace reigns through righteousness. Then shall they for ever be silenced who accused the grace of God of leading to licentiousness, for they shall see that in every case free forgiveness led to gratitude, and gratitude to holiness. Thechosen shall be made choice men. Grace chose them notwithstanding all their deformities; but when it has cast about thema supernal beauty, they shall be the wonder and admiration of the universe, evidently made to be the noblest and best of mankind. Show me where grace ever created sin! You cannot, but lo, in what a manner has grace created holiness! It is not ashamed to let its chosen sheep appear before the great dividing Shepherd’s throne, for of them all it shall be said, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.” Grace does not smuggle men into heaven, but brings them up to heaven’s requirements through the Spirit and the blood.

You're telling me you're dead here?" His grip tightens. "Maybe I should find out." "Show me your worst.

The Baldwin strategy was the best way to play the game when nothing was known about which cards had already been played. Their analysis was for a single deck because that was the only version played in Nevada at the time. The Baldwin group also showed that the advice of the reigning gambling experts was poor, unnecessarily giving the casinos an extra 2 percent advantage. Any strategy table for blackjack must tell the player how to act for each case that can arise from the ten possible values of the dealer’s upcard versus each of the fifty-five different pairs of cards that can be dealt to the player. To find the best way for the player to manage his cards in each of these 550 different situations, you need to calculate all the possible ways subsequent cards can be dealt and the payoffs that result. There may be thousands, even millions of ways each hand can play out. Do this for each of the 550 situations and the computations just for the complete deck become enormous. If you are dealt a pair, the strategy table must tell you whether or not to split it. The next decision is whether or not to double down, which is to double your bet and draw exactly one card to the first two cards of a hand. Your final decision is whether to draw more cards or to stop (“stand”). Once I had figured out a winning strategy, I planned to condense these myriad decisions onto tiny pictorial cards, just as I had with the Baldwin strategy. This would allow me to visualize patterns, making it much easier to recall what to do in each of the 550 possible cases.

In an Asiatic (Semitic) settlement (c. 1876–1560 B.C.) that was discovered at Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a), there is a monumental tomb where archaeologists found fragments of a colossal statue of an Asiatic dignitary that had been broken up. The statue had been deliberately destroyed and defaced. The original statue of the seated official was 150% of life size, approximately 2 m high, made of limestone and carved by Egyptian sculptors. This Asiatic man has a red mushroom-shaped hairstyle, yellow painted skin (traditional color of an Asiatic in Egyptian artwork), a long multi-colored cloak (red, white, and black stripes) which is non-Egyptian, and a throw stick (the Egyptian hieroglyph for a foreigner) held against his right shoulder. There is no name on the statue to identify the person, but the size of the statue indicates a person of great importance. Although some have suggested that this is Joseph, a more plausible explanation is that it is Jacob, the patriarch of the family. The clothing on the statue and its color are Asiatic; Joseph was clothed in Egyptian garments of fine linen (Genesis 41:42). The hairstyle on the statue is distinctly Asiatic; Joseph’s hairstyle would have almost certainly been Egyptian given that his brothers did not recognize him when they saw him (Genesis 42:8). Also, a fragment of the statue’s base shows that it was inscribed with the Egyptian word sntr = incense (a word used on funerary inscriptions), which signifies death. The statue was apparently built to commemorate a dead person. The style of the fragments that come from this statue are in harmony with statuary that came from a facility that produced statues during the reign of Amenemhat III, who came onto the throne the year Jacob died (1859 B.C.).34 It makes perfect sense that the statue is made to honor Jacob, who was not buried in Avaris but in Canaan (Genesis 47:29–30, 49:28–30).

You’re Brayshaw, Raven.” He pushes a finger in my chest and I glare at him. “You. Not Rolland, not the boys. Nobody... but you. Your mom is dead. You’re all that’s left. You’re strong, make them see. They think they can control you, decide for you, show them they can’t.” He gets in my face. “You want this world? You take it.

But pleas about cost savings don’t get people to change their behavior. Neither do voluntary assessments that are supposed to scare people straight. The people who’d be most scared don’t show up for the assessments, because they know the assessments will tell them things they don’t want to hear. And the people who show up, unless they’re told they’re going to keel over within a year, figure they can make marginal changes and be fine. It makes you wonder whether the conventional corporate drive toward “wellness” isn’t just ineffective, but also a huge missed opportunity. The reigning assumption in the world of HR managers, large insurers, and policy wonks is that changing behavior is hard, so people need to be nudged toward healthy behaviors by making that change seem easy and palatable. “Gamify” it. Give people points for reading informative online articles about nutrition. Count pedometer steps. Make the healthy choices seem just a little bit different than the choices that result in chronic disease. Make the change seem smaller, so that people can follow a bread crumb trail of small adjustments to a better life without really changing their perspective. There are a lot of snazzy mobile apps and candy-colored motivational posters that push this approach. There are a lot of single-serving snacks with low calorie counts, sold as healthier-but-you-wouldn’t-know-it. They’re packed with sugar, so they end up making people hungrier and fatter.

Donley made a mistake demanding me. Rolland made a mistake leaving me behind. I’ll show them all, I’m more than they can handle.

How else will I ever be able to show her I love her like to the depths of my soul love her? She’s my person. She always has been and I can’t—no, I won’t—let her go this time.

Damn. You’re getting tighter.” He slows down and teases me. “Then fuck me harder and stretch me open. Show me how bad you want me.

She was just slumming it until her white knight arrived to show her how a queen should really live.

Plus one. Plus one. What a fucking ridiculous way of putting it. Plus one? I’ll show them plus fucking one. I’ll show them plus fucking one and a half if they aren’t very careful.

Even Margaret’s beloved Wordsworth fell short on the issue; for him, she quoted ruefully, the ideal woman should not be “Too bright and good / For Human nature’s daily food.” Margaret drew on examples from ancient myth, wherein “the idea of female perfection is as fully presented as that of male,” to show that women had been accorded greater respect in earlier times. In Egyptian mythology, “Isis is even more powerful than Osiris,” and “the Hindoo goddesses reign on the highest peaks of sanctification.” In Greek myth, “not only Beauty, Health and the Soul are represented under feminine attributes, but the Muses, the inspirers of all genius,” and “Wisdom itself . . . are feminine.” Margaret’s dream was to bring the dispirited “individual man” together with the disempowered woman—unite the two sides of the Great Hall’s classroom—and create, by merging the best attributes of each, “fully” perfected souls. Then, a nation of men and women will for the first time exist, she might have said, amending Waldo Emerson’s visionary claim.

In Scripture the sea represents chaos, its churning, unpredictable waters teeming with monsters and demons, threatening death. So when Jesus rebukes the stormy sea, when he commands its fish and walks on its waves, he’s not just showing off; he’s making a statement about the God who reigns over even our most visceral, primal fears, the God who, in the words of the psalmist, “makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16 ESV). “Take courage!” Jesus tells the dumbfounded disciples as he walks across the sea. “It is I. Don’t be afraid” (Matthew 14:27).

Best fucking show in town.” He clinked his beer bottle to mine. “And you just let her have free reign with your girl. Good luck to you.

Nevertheless, during his short reign, King Lunalilo enacted laws that would change the course of Hawaiʻi’s history forever. In a move that was considered very divisive, King Lunalilo offered to exchange the lagoon of Pearl Harbor to the United States in exchange for the exemption of taxes on a number of Hawaiian goods that were exported to the United States, mainly sugar. However, the king withdrew the offer before it was deemed official due to significant pushback from the other aliʻi and the general public. This event showed that the people and rulers of Hawaiʻi harbored deep feelings of distrust, bitterness, and suspicion toward foreign involvement and land treaties. Additionally, King Lunalilo behaved contrary to King Kamehameha V’s example by electing three American ministers to seats of power and by cooperating and associating himself with the missionaries.

The new Mahāyāna sūtras show new forms of spiritual practice oriented around devotion to these new archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.112 The historical background to this period of the emergence of the Mahāyāna was one of political disturbance and turmoil in northern India. The persecutions of Buddhism by Puṣyamitra Śunga (183–147BCE) were followed by repeated invasions from the north-west, the first that of the Śakas (c.90BCE). The pro-Buddhist king, Kaniṣka, with whose reign several significant developments are associated, was himself a Kuṣāṇa king, who took control of a north-western empire created by a second wave of invasion beginning in the early 1st century CE. It seems likely that the insecurity and uncertainty of the period may have contributed to the emergence of the new religious forms characterized as the Mahāyāna, and it is probably significant that in places the practice of buddhānusmṛti, the recollection of the Buddha, is recommended as an antidote to fear.113

By the 2000s, however, popular culture and market interests wielded a certain control and power of their own. In showing and repeatedly setting examples of a standard Korean beauty ideal, media and marketing pushed an appearance regime that consumers learned to enforce on themselves. These days, consumer beauty culture has a way of convincing us that the reigning look is what we wanted all along. Women can conscript our bodies all on our own, no state intervention required.

attacked in the darkness by unknown assailants, directly leading to Punk pinning Rock; the announcers blamed the Shield for the attack. The match was later restarted with Rock winning. The next day on Raw, the Shield attacked and laid out John Cena; Sheamus and Ryback suffered the same fate when they attempted to save Cena. Later in the show, it was revealed through footage played by Vince McMahon that Punk and/or his manager Paul Heyman had been paying the Shield and Brad Maddox to work for them all along. This set up a six-man tag team match at Elimination Chamber, which the Shield won. At WrestleMania 29, The Shield made victims of Randy Orton, Sheamus & Big Show in what was The Show of Shows debut of "The Hounds of Justice." The following night on Raw, The Shield attempted to attack The Undertaker but were stopped by Team Hell No. This set up a six-man tag team match on the April 22 episode of Raw, where The Shield emerged victorious. Four days later on SmackDown, Ambrose made his singles debut against Undertaker but lost via submission, after which the Shield attacked Undertaker and triple-powerbombed him through the announcer's table. On the May 3 episode of SmackDown, Ambrose defeated Kane in a singles match. On May 19 at Extreme Rules, Ambrose defeated Kofi Kingston to win the WWE United States Championship, his first singles title in WWE, while Rollins and Reigns won the WWE Tag Team Championships later that night. Ambrose made his first televised title defense on the following episode of SmackDown, retaining his title when he was disqualified due to the rest of the Shield's interference. Three days later on Raw, Ambrose defeated Kingston again to retain his title. At WWE Payback, Ambrose defeated Kane via