Sailors Positive Quotes

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God.

And a variety of more colorful names. Hypothetically.” The privateer cast him an assessing glance. “Just how did you know I wasn’t who I claimed to be, Mister Brekker?” Kaz shrugged. “You speak Kerch like a native—a rich native. You don’t talk like someone who came up with sailors and street thugs.” The privateer turned slightly, giving Kaz his full attention. His ease was gone, and now he looked like a man who might command armies. “Mister Brekker,” he said. “Kaz, if I may? I am in a vulnerable position. I am a king ruling a country with an empty treasury, facing enemies on all sides. There are also forces within my country that might seize any absence as an opportunity to make their own bid for power.” “So you’re saying you’d make an excellent hostage.” “I suspect that the ransom for me would be considerably less than the price Kuwei has on his head. Really, it’s a bit of a blow to my self-esteem.” “You don’t seem to be suffering,” said Kaz. “Sturmhond was a creation of my youth, and his reputation still serves me well. I cannot bid on Kuwei Yul-Bo as the king of Ravka. I hope your plan will play out the way you think it will. But if it doesn’t, the loss of such a prize would be seen as a humiliating blunder diplomatically and strategically. I enter that auction as Sturmhond or as no one at all. If that is a problem—” Kaz settled his hands on his cane. “As long as you don’t try to con me, you can enter as the Fairy Queen of Istamere.

Oldendorf’s fleet would hold its position astride the northern end of the strait and devour Nishimura’s column like a log thrust into the business end of a U.S. Navy wood chipper.

Doesn’t it follow that a ship’s captain or ruler won’t seek and order what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to a sailor? He reluctantly agreed. So, then, Thrasymachus, no one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them.

Just like a sailor who knows before reaching land that it is nearing, life too gives certain signals which indicate how closer you are to manifesting.

There is an art to facing difficulties in ways that lead to effective solutions and to inner peace and harmony. When we are able to mobilize our inner resources to face our problems artfully, we find we are usually able to orient ourselves in such a way that we can use the pressure of the problem itself to propel us through it, just as a sailor can position a sail to make the best use of the pressure of the wind to propel the boat. You can’t sail straight into the wind, and if you only know how to sail with the wind at your back, you will only go where the wind blows you. But if you know how to use the wind’s energy and are patient, you can sometimes get where you want to go. You can still be in control.

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment. I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives.

One story clearly illustrates Anne Bonny's particular mix of comedy and ingenuity. She'd heard of a French Merchantman, loaded down with silks and satins, and decided to attack it. Her plan was quite nuts. She got the crew to smear the sails and the deck of the ship with turtle blood, covered most of the crew with the same blood, dressed one of Bouspeut’s dressmaker dummies in women’s clothing and stood it in the bow of the ship, likewise splashed with blood, and positioned the crew around it like corpses. She then lobbed her tits out and, brandishing a blood-soaked boarding axe, stood quite still over this horrific scene as they sailed out to meet the Merchantman. Sailors are profoundly superstitious and once the Frenchmen caught sight of this demonic ship with the bare-breasted maniac lit by a raging moon, the Frenchmen were so repelled that they gave up without a fight. What theatre!

After Eratosthenes’ discovery, many great voyages were attempted by brave and venturesome sailors. Their ships were tiny. They had only rudimentary navigational instruments. They used dead reckoning and followed coastlines as far as they could. In an unknown ocean they could determine their latitude, but not their longitude, by observing, night after night, the position of the constellations with respect to the horizon. The familiar constellations must have been reassuring in the midst of an unexplored ocean. The stars are the friends of explorers, then with seagoing ships on Earth and now with spacefaring ships in the sky.

Maryland was a slave state with considerable support for the Confederacy at the onset of the war. But Maryland held for the Union and sent thousands of soldiers to defend Washington. What happened next provides a “positive” example of the effects of cognitive dissonance: for Maryland whites to fight a war against slave owners while allowing slavery within their own state created a tension that demanded resolution. In 1864 the increasingly persuasive abolitionists in Maryland brought the issue to a vote. The tally went narrowly against emancipation until the large number of absentee ballots were counted. By an enormous margin, these ballots were for freedom. Who cast most absentee ballots in 1864 in Maryland? Soldiers and sailors, of course.

MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AFTER BEING ORDAINED as a pastor almost finished me. I was called to be the assistant pastor in a large and affluent suburban church. I was glad to be part of such an obviously winning organization. After I had been there a short time, a few people came to me and asked that I lead them in a Bible study. “Of course,” I said, “there is nothing I would rather do.” We met on Monday evenings. There weren’t many—eight or nine men and women—but even so that was triple the two or three that Jesus defined as a quorum. They were eager and attentive; I was full of enthusiasm. After a few weeks the senior pastor, my boss, asked me what I was doing on Monday evenings. I told him. He asked me how many people were there. I told him. He told me that I would have to stop. “Why?” I asked. “It is not cost-effective. That is too few people to spend your time on.” I was told then how I should spend my time. I was introduced to the principles of successful church administration: crowds are important, individuals are expendable; the positive must always be accented, the negative must be suppressed. Don’t expect too much of people—your job is to make them feel good about themselves and about the church. Don’t talk too much about abstractions like God and sin—deal with practical issues. We had an elaborate music program, expensively and brilliantly executed. The sermons were seven minutes long and of the sort that Father Taylor (the sailor-preacher in Boston who was the model for Father Mapple in Melville’s Moby Dick) complained of in the transcendentalists of the last century: that a person could no more be converted listening to sermons like that than get intoxicated drinking skim milk.[2] It was soon apparent that I didn’t fit. I had supposed that I was there to be a pastor: to proclaim and interpret Scripture, to guide people into a life of prayer, to encourage faith, to represent the mercy and forgiveness of Christ at special times of need, to train people to live as disciples in their families, in their communities and in their work. In fact I had been hired to help run a church and do it as efficiently as possible: to be a cheerleader to this dynamic organization, to recruit members, to lend the dignity of my office to certain ceremonial occasions, to promote the image of a prestigious religious institution. I got out of there as quickly as I could decently manage it. At the time I thought I had just been unlucky. Later I came to realize that what I experienced was not at all uncommon.

The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.

All wore coronets of some kind and many had chains of pearls. They wore no other clothes. Their bodies were the color of old ivory, their hair dark purple. The King in the center (no one could mistake him for anything but the King) looked proudly and fiercely into Lucy’s face and shook a spear in his hand. His knights did the same. The faces of the ladies were filled with astonishment. Lucy felt sure they had never seen a ship or a human before--and how should they, in seas beyond the world’s end where no ship ever came? “What are you staring at, Lu?” said a voice close beside her. Lucy had been so absorbed in what she was seeing that she started at the sound, and when she turned she found that her arm had gone “dead” from leaning so long on the rail in one position. Drinian and Edmund were beside her. “Look,” she said. They both looked, but almost at once Drinian said in a low voice: “Turn round at once, your Majesties--that’s right, with our backs to the sea. And don’t look as if we were talking about anything important.” “Why, what’s the matter?” said Lucy as she obeyed. “It’ll never do for the sailors to see all that,” said Drinian. “We’ll have men falling in love with a sea-woman, or falling in love with the under-sea country itself, and jumping overboard. I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening before in strange seas. It’s always unlucky to see these people.

But I had no need to suppose anything of the sort, she might well have disdained the use of her eyes to ascertain what her instinct must have adequately enough detected, for, throughout her service with me and my parents, fear, prudence, alertness and cunning had finally taught her that instinctive and almost divinatory knowledge of us that the sailor has of the sea, the quarry of the hunter, and if not the doctor then often the patient of the disease. All the knowledge she was in the habit of acquiring would have astounded anyone for as good a reason as the advanced state of certain areas of knowledge among the ancients, given the almost negligible means of information at their disposal (hers were no less so: a handful of chance remarks forming barely a twentieth part of our conversation at dinner, gleaned in passing by the butler and inaccurately transmitted to the staff quarters). Even her mistakes resulted, like theirs, like the fables in which Plato believed, from a false conception of the world and from preconceived ideas rather than from an inadequacy of material resources... But if the drawbacks of her position as a servant had not prevented her from acquiring the learning indispensable to the art which was its ultimate goal – the art of confounding us by communicating the results of her discoveries – the constraints on her time had been even more effective; here hindrance had not merely been content not to paralyse her enthusiasm, it had powerfully fired it. And of course Françoise neglected no auxiliary stimulant, like diction and attitude for instance. While she never believed anything we said to her when we wanted her to believe it, and since she accepted beyond a shadow of doubt the absurdest things anyone of her own status told her which might at the same time offend our views, in the same way that her manner of listening to our assertions pointed to her incredulity, so the tone she used to report (indirection enabling her to fling the most offensive insults at us with impunity) a cook’s account of threatening her employers and forcing any number of concessions out of them by treating them like dirt in public, indicated that she treated the story as gospel truth. Françoise even went so far as to add: ‘If I’d been the mistress, I’d have been very put out, I can tell you.’ However much, despite our initial dislike of the lady on the fourth floor, we might shrug our shoulders at this unedifying tale as if it were an unlikely fable, its teller knew just how to invest her tone with all the trenchant punch of the most unshakeable and infuriating confidence in what she was saying. But above all, just as writers, when their hands are tied by the tyranny of a monarch or of poetic convention, by the strict rules of prosody or state religion, often achieve a power of concentration they would not have done under a system of political freedom or literary anarchy, so Françoise, by not being free to respond to us in an explicit manner, spoke like Tiresias and would have written like Tacitus.5 She knew how to contain everything she could not express directly in a sentence we could not denounce without casting aspersions on ourselves, in less than a sentence in fact, in a silence, in the way she placed an object.

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

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.

Perhaps that distance also “opened up a space” that allowed sailors who were primarily homosexual in orientation to reevaluate their own position vis à vis their country, and to consider embracing a culture that they had been taught to disdain. Sailors who were attractive physical specimens were given a choice early in their captivity: arduous labor or sexual submission. Given what has been discussed regarding the social marginalization of American sailors, given the relaxed attitude toward discreet male-male sexuality aboard ship, given the likelihood that a portion of a ship’s population were endowed with a sexual orientation that inclined them more towards homosexuality, would it not be likely that some of those men might choose a life of sexual servitude to a Muslim master over near certain death working in the quarries or the slave galleys?

Also it should be noted how frequently the person involved, either as aggressor or as victim, is a person of color.9 On many occasions the accusations fell on the cook or on his assistant, the steward — two positions frequently filled by African Americans.10 On whaling ships the assailant or the victim is frequently Portuguese. Cooks and stewards “became the special objects of torture and harassment as sailors reaffirmed their maleness by maligning the masculinity of these glorified maidservants.

I realized that I'd never thought passed the moment when I stood face to face with him again. I was a skilled sailor. I'd crossed the great oceans, but when it came to this, I felt like a newcomer to the world - not because I didn't know its busy, overcrowded ports, its palm-fringed coasts and wind-lashed rocks, but because I understood so little of my own soul. I could navigate from a chart; I could determine my position using a sextant. I was in an unknown place in the Pacific on a ship with no captain and I could still find my way. But I had no way of mapping my own mind or the course of my life.

It’s useful to contrast the missileers’ dysfunctional culture with that of their navy counterparts who work in nuclear submarines. At first glance, the two groups seem roughly similar: Both spend vast amounts of time isolated from the rest of society, both are tasked with memorizing and executing tedious protocols, and both are oriented toward Cold War nuclear deterrence missions whose time has passed. Where they differ, however, is in the density of the belonging cues in their respective environments. Sailors in submarines have close physical proximity, take part in purposeful activity (global patrols that include missions beyond deterrence), and are part of a career pathway that can lead to the highest positions in the navy. Perhaps as a result, the nuclear submarine fleet has thus far mostly avoided the kinds of problems that plague the missileers, and in many cases have developed high-performing cultures.

I'm not going to Wichita,' Vladimir said, the word 'Wichita' rendered by his accent as the most foreign word imaginable in the English language. 'I’m going to live with Fran and it’s going to be all right. You’re going to make it all right.' But even as he was laying down the law, his hands were shaking to the point where it was hard to keep the shabby pay-phone receiver properly positioned between his mouth and ear. Teardrops were blurring the corners of his eyes and he felt the need to have Baobab hear him burst out in a series of long, convulsive sobs, Roberta-style. All he had wanted was twenty thousand lousy dollars. It wasn’t a million. It was how much Dr. Girshkin made on average from two of his nervous gold-toothed patients. 'Okay,' Baobab said. 'Here’s how we’re going to do it. These are the new rules. Memorize them or write them down. Do you have a pen? Hello? Okay, Rule One: you can’t visit anyone—friends, relatives, work, nothing. You can only call me from a pay phone and we can’t talk for more than three minutes.' He paused. Vladimir imagined him reading this from a little scrap of paper. Suddenly Baobab said, under his breath: 'Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.' 'The two of us can never meet in person,' he was saying loudly now. 'We will keep in touch only by phone. If you check into a hotel, make sure you pay cash. Never pay by credit card. Once more: Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.' Tree. Their Tree? The Tree? And nine-thirty? Did he mean in the morning? It was hard to imagine Baobab up at that unholy hour. 'Rule Five: I want you to keep moving at all times, or at least try to keep moving. Which brings us to…' But just as Rule Six was about to come over the transom, there was a tussle for the phone and Roberta came on the line in her favorite Bowery harlot voice, the kind that smelled like gin nine hundred miles away. 'Vladimir, dear, hi!' Well, at least someone was enjoying Vladimir’s downfall. 'Say, I was thinking, do you have any ties with the Russian underworld, honey?' Vladimir thought of hanging up, but the way things were going even Roberta’s voice was a distinctly human one. He thought of Mr. Rybakov’s son, the Groundhog. 'Prava,' he muttered, unable to articulate any further. An uptown train rumbled beneath him to underscore the underlying shakiness of his life. Two blocks downtown, a screaming professional was being tossed back and forth between two joyful muggers. 'Prava, how very now!' Roberta said. 'Laszlo’s thinking of opening up an Academy of Acting and the Plastic Arts there. Did you know that there are thirty thousand Americans in Prava? At least a half dozen certified Hemingways among them, wouldn’t you agree?' 'Thank you for your concern, Roberta. It’s touching. But right now I have other… There are problems. Besides, getting to Prava… What can I do?… There’s an old Russian sailor… An old lunatic… He needs to be naturalized.' There was a long pause at this point and Vladimir realized that in his haste he wasn’t making much sense. 'It’s a long story…' he began, 'but essentially… I need to… Oh God, what’s wrong with me?' 'Talk to me, you big bear!' Roberta encouraged him. 'Essentially, if I get this old lunatic his citizenship, he’ll set me up with his son in Prava.' 'Okay, then,' Roberta said. 'I definitely can’t get him his citizenship.' 'No,' Vladimir concurred. 'No, you can’t.' What was he doing talking to a sixteen-year-old? 'But,' Roberta said, 'I can get him the next best thing…

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

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

The kings, who are the most set on destroying the feudal baronies, are also the best friends of the merchants, the bankers and the master manufacturers. A shipowner is not the chieftain of a gang of sailors whom he abstracts from Power's clutch, but rather an employer of labour who on the contrary, makes them available to power when the time comes for it to require them; In this way, it is explained the favour shown by Francis I, to take one instance towards, Ango. A banker is not after political power - he is after wealth. His function is to build a sort of store-house on which, when the when the time is ripe, Power will draw to transmute this wealth into strength. A mercantile aristocracy, then, so far from abstracting anything from the state's resources, makes potential additions to them which will, when circumstances so require, be realized. This is the only aspect under which, for many years, Power saw the money power. But in the end the overthrow of every other social domination of whatever kind left financial domination master of the field. At that stage it was seemed to be the formative source of fresh cells. That showed itself clearly enough in the case of the industrial employers. Not only was the employer the law in his factory, but quite often he would put up nearby a township for his workers in which he had the position of prince. A point was reached at some of the states of the USA, at which the manufacturer, owning as he did the land on which the factory had been built, allowed on it no other police than his own. In its jealousy of any and every command, however small, which was not its own, Power could not tolerate such independence. Moreover, as in every other battle which it had fought with aristocratic formations, it soon found itself appealed to by the underlings. Then it made its way not only into the employer's township but into his workshop as well; there it introduced its own law, its own police and its own factory regulations. If its earlier aggressions against closed aristocratic formations were not our old friends, we might be tempted to see in this one nothing more than a result of the popular character of the modern state, and of socialist ideas. These factors played, no doubt, their part, but no more was needed, than that Power should be itself - a thing naturally tending to shut out the intervention of all other authorities. The financial cell is less visible to the eye than the industrial cell. But its hold on money, and above all by its disposal of vast amounts of private savings, finance has been able to build up a vast structure and impose on the ever growing number of its subjects and authority which is ever plainer on the planer to the view on the empires of finance, also, power made war. The signal for battle was not given by a socialist state, the natural enemy of the barons of capital. It came from Theodore Roosevelt, himself a man of Power, and therefore the enemy of all private authorities. In this way, a new alliance was sealed - an alliance no less natural than that of the Power of early days with the prisoners of the clan-cells, than that of the monarchy with the subjects of the feudal barons - that of the modern state with the men exploited by capitalist industry, with the men dominated by the financial trusts. The state has often waged this particular war half-heartedly, thereby making the extent to which it has turned its back on itself and has renounced its role of Power. And renunciation was in this case favoured by the internal weakness of modern Power; the precariousness of its tenure encouraged its phantom tenants to betray it in favor of the financial aristocracies. But Power has natural charms for those who desire it for its use. It was a certain that anti-capitalists would come to occupy the public offices of the bourgeois state, as it was certain that anti-feudalists would come to occupy those of the monarchial state.

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

It seemed to me that the two remaining masts almost leaned forward, out of the vertical, so great was the pressure of wind in sails. Nothing broke, nothing tore—so beautiful was our position and so constant the current of air. It made the blood sing in my veins, and I knew I could be a sailor for life, if I chose. Yes, I could gladly wait a lifetime, a full sixteen years more, for such a sensation again. Without our effort, grace moved us forward.

The fleet sailed into harbor on Friday, December 5, and tugboats helped position the ships so they could tie up to their respective quays, which were concrete structures built in the water close to shore, to which ships fastened their mooring lines. It took the better part of the day to get all the ships moored.

The powerful blast first entered the director through the starboard hatchway, where Dvorak sat—in a direct line with the incoming fireball—hands tight on his steering wheel’s brodie knobs. The concussion and fireball hit him first—full force—while it raced starboard to port. As if a rag doll, Dvorak was at once lifted from his position, and slammed back, hard, against his fixed metal seat. The force then caught Stratton in the face and chest; grabbed and slammed him against the bulkhead and, according to Stratton, “…rattled me around like a piñata.” “I thought I was going blind, from the fire”, Stratton would tell Lauren, years later. On the platform, Zeke had already decided to head back inside. He managed to grab hold of the hatchway handles just as the blast raced through and circumnavigated the director. The force of the concussion hit him in the back, and face-on. As if a spirit’s presence had seized his body, it grabbed at Zimmerman’s torso and bent him forward, then backwards. The impact ripped his grip from the door handles, sucked him into the flames, and dispatched him, hard, against the platform’s railing. Inside, Hollowell was propelled backwards, across the steel cube. His head slammed against the range finder with a forceful blow, and his body was dumped next to Lott—who had pulled Lauren’s blanket tighter across his own head. The hellish fireball had sucked oxygen from the cube, shot across the steel shell, and merged with a second blast of flames through the port and rear hatchways. As if in a boxing match—in a futile attempt to protect his face from being hit by the fire and heat—Lauren held tight to the range finder. Instinct caused him to raise his right arm around the viewport, for protection.

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God.

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God.

When I was a child, I just assumed that in order for a sailboat to go, say, east, the wind had to be blowing from the west to the east. I was amazed to learn that, no matter which way the wind blew, a sailboat could always get to where it wanted to go—if it had a skilled sailor at the helm. To me, the five forces are kind of like the wind, the direction that competition within an industry is moving. Strategy is about positioning the firm relative to the prevailing winds in a way to make sure that the firm gets to where it wants to go, no matter what direction the wind is blowing.” {...]. “In fact,” added Gordon, “some of the most successful firms in the world are successful precisely because they have figured how to use very unfavorable industry winds—high rivalry, high threat of entry, and so forth—to their advantage. Look at Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Nucor Steel, Toyota, Starbucks. These firms have played in some pretty unattractive industries—at least according to a five forces analysis—and still they have been successful.

When I was a child, I just assumed that in order for a sailboat to go, say, east, the wind had to be blowing from the west to the east. I was amazed to learn that, no matter which way the wind blew, a sailboat could always get to where it wanted to go—if it had a skilled sailor at the helm. To me, the five forces are kind of like the wind, the direction that competition within an industry is moving. Strategy is about positioning the firm relative to the prevailing winds in a way to make sure that the firm gets to where it wants to go, no matter what direction the wind is blowing.” [...]. “In fact,” added Gordon, “some of the most successful firms in the world are successful precisely because they have figured how to use very unfavorable industry winds—high rivalry, high threat of entry, and so forth—to their advantage. Look at Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Nucor Steel, Toyota, Starbucks. These firms have played in some pretty unattractive industries—at least according to a five forces analysis—and still they have been successful.

The company from Phantra was entirely female. The Salt Queen’s kingdom was matriarchal: the sailors, soldiers, and laborers were commonly men, while women formed the core of the merchant class and held most of the senior positions in both the government and the military.

To the delight of visiting American sailors, the British still had a military base there, Changi, and shared it with those stout lads from Down Under, the Australians, who naturally came supplied with Down Under lassies. Australian women were the glory of Singapore. These tall, lithe creatures with tanned, muscular legs and striking white teeth that were forever being displayed in dazzling smiles somehow completed the picture, made it whole. You ran into them at Raffles, the old hotel downtown with ceiling fans and rattan chairs and doddery old gentlemen in white suits sipping gin. You ran into them in the lobbies and restaurants of the new western hotels and in the bazaars and emporiums. You saw them strolling the boulevards and haggling with small Chinese women in baggy trousers for sapphires and opals. You saw them everywhere, young, tan, enjoying life, the center of attention wherever they were. It helped that their colorful tropical frocks contrasted so vividly with the drab trousers and white shirts that seemed to be the Singaporean national costume. They were like songbirds surrounded by sparrows. “If Qantas didn’t bring them here, the United Nations should supply them as a gesture of good will to all human kind.” Flap Le Beau stated this conclusion positively to Jake Grafton and the Real McCoy as they stood outside Raffles Hotel surveying the human parade on the sidewalk. “I think I’m in love,” the Real McCoy told his companions. “I want one of those for my very own.