Share A Thought Short Quotes

I’ve just never met someone like you," as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

There were people thrice her size on the Trenton platform and she looked admiringly at one of them, a woman in a very short skirt. She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts--it was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved--but the fat woman's act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see.

In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.

He didn't object as she took up a place at the head of the tub and dumped some of the tonic into his short hair. The sweet, night-filled scent of jasmine floated up, caressing and kissing her. Even Rowan breathed it in as she scrubbed the tonic into his scalp. "I could still probably braid this," she mused. "Very teensy-tiny braids, so - " He growled, but leaned back against the tub, his eyes closed. "You're no better than a house cat," she said, massaging his head. He let out a low noise in his throat that might have very well have been a purr. Washing his hair was intimate-a privilege she doubted he'd ever allowed many people; something she'd never done for anyone else. But lines had always been blurred for them, and neither of them had particularly cared. He'd seen every inch of her several times, and she'd seen most of him. They'd shared a bed for months. On top of that, they were carranam. He'd let her inside his power, past his inner barriers, to where half a thought from her could have shattered his mind. So washing his hair, touching him... it was an intimacy, but it was essential, too.

Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one’s threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you’ve got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility...

This is a world where things move at their own pace, including a tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly man with whom Fortey chatted genially and familiarly as we proceeded upwards at about the rate that sediments are laid down. When the man departed, Fortey said to me: "That was a very nice chap named Norman who's spent forty-two years studying one species of plant, St. John's wort. He retired in 1989, but he still comes in every week." "How do you spend forty-two years on one species of plant?" I asked. "It's remarkable, isn't it?" Fortey agreed. He thought for a moment. "He's very thorough apparently." The lift door opened to reveal a bricked over opening. Fortey looked confounded. "That's very strange," he said. "That used to be Botany back there." He punched a button for another floor, and we found our way at length to Botany by means of back staircases and discreet trespass through yet more departments where investigators toiled lovingly over once-living objects.

Tearing out a sheet, she wrote her address on it and froze as she considered a pen name. Something starting with her first initial, the one she shared with Judy. What should it be? She thought about her usual nicknames, Jesster and Jess. But those were what her family called her. Too special to give to a stranger. Maybe something starting with a J and an e? The word came to her in a flash. Jem. Unlike anything she’d ever read or heard before, short and easy to write, and still a little bit close to her real name.

From a philosophical point of view, Leibniz's most interesting argument was that absolute space conflicted with what he called the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII). PII says that if two objects are indiscernible, then they are identical, i.e. they are really one and the same object. What does it mean to call two objects indiscernible? It means that no difference at all can be found between them--they have exactly the same attributes. So if PII is true, then any two genuinely distinct objects must differ in at least one of their attributes--otherwise they would be one, not two. PII is intuitively quite compelling. It certainly is not easy to find an example of two distinct objects that share all their attributes. Even two mass-produced factory goods will normally differ in innumerable ways, even if the differences cannot be detected with the naked eye. Leibniz asks us to imagine two different universes, both containing exactly the same objects. In Universe One, each object occupies a particular location in absolute space.In Universe Two, each object has been shifted to a different location in absolute space, two miles to the east (for example). There would be no way of telling these two universes apart. For we cannot observe the position of an object in absolute space, as Newton himself admitted. All we can observe are the positions of objects relative to each other, and these would remain unchanged--for all objects are shifted by the same amount. No observations or experiments could ever reveal whether we lived in universe One or Two.

the whole process and state of alienation could be short-circuited by appealing to empathy, shared knowledge, and most people’s desire to talk about themselves.

One by one our skies go black. Stars are extinguished, collapsing into distances too great to breach. Soon, not even the memory of light will survive. Long ago, our manifold universes discovered futures would only expand. No arms of limit could hold or draw them back. Short of a miracle, they would continue to stretch, untangle and vanish – abandoned at long last to an unwitnessed dissolution. That dissolution is now. Final winks slipping over the horizons share what needs no sharing: There are no miracles. You might say that just to survive to such an end is a miracle in itself. We would agree. But we are not everyone. Even if you could imagine yourself billions of years hence, you would not begin to comprehend who we became and what we achieved. Yet left as you are, you will no more tremble before us than a butterfly on a windless day trembles before colluding skies, still calculating beyond one of your pacific horizons. Once we could move skies. We could transform them. We could make them sing. And when we fell into dreams our dreams asked questions and our skies, still singing, answered back. You are all we once were but the vastness of our strangeness exceeds all the light-years between our times. The frailty of your senses can no more recognize our reach than your thoughts can entertain even the vaguest outline of our knowledge. In ratios of quantity, a pulse of what we comprehend renders meaningless your entire history of discovery. We are on either side of history: yours just beginning, ours approaching a trillion years of ends. Yet even so, we still share a dyad of commonality. Two questions endure. Both without solution. What haunts us now will allways hunt you. The first reveals how the promise of all our postponements, ever longer, ever more secure – what we eventually mistook for immortality – was from the start a broken promise. Entropy suffers no reversals. Even now, here, on the edge of time’s end, where so many continue to vanish, we still have not pierced that veil of sentience undone. The first of our common horrors: Death. Yet we believe and accept that there is grace and finally truth in standing accountable before such an invisible unknown. But we are not everyone. Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts. There are some who reject such an outcome. There are some who still fight for an alternate future. No matter the cost. Here then is the second of our common horrors. What not even all of time will end. What plagues us now and what will always plague you. War.

7. Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment. If you make disciplined, caring choices, you are slowly engraving certain tendencies into your mind. You are making it more likely that you will desire the right things and execute the right actions. If you make selfish, cruel, or disorganized choices, then you are slowly turning this core thing inside yourself into something that is degraded, inconstant, or fragmented. You can do harm to this core thing with nothing more than ignoble thoughts, even if you are not harming anyone else. You can elevate this core thing with an act of restraint nobody sees. If you don’t develop a coherent character in this way, life will fall to pieces sooner or later. You will become a slave to your passions. But if you do behave with habitual self-discipline, you will become constant and dependable. 8. The things that lead us astray are short term—lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things we call character endure over the long term—courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.

The best description of this book is found within the title. The full title of this book is: "This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me and Dora J. Arod, who sometimes shares my pen, paper, thoughts, mind, body, and soul, because Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome that can be read forwards or backwards no matter if you are an upright man in the eyes of God or you are upside down in a tank of water wearing purple goggles and grape jelly discussing how best to spread your time between your work, your wife, and the toasted bread being eaten by the man you are talking to who goes by the name of Dendrite McDowell, who is only wearing a towel on his head and has an hourglass obscuring his “time machine”--or the thing that he says can keep him young forever by producing young versions of himself the way I avert disaster in that I ramble and bumble like a bee until I pollinate my way through flowery situations that might otherwise have ended up being more than less than, but not equal to two short parallel lines stacked on top of each other that mathematicians use to balance equations like a tightrope walker running on a wire stretched between two white stretched limos parked on a long cloud that looks like Salt Lake City minus the sodium and Mormons, but with a dash of pepper and Protestants, who may or may not be spiritual descendents of Mr. Maynot, who didn’t come over to America in the Mayflower, but only because he was “Too lazy to get off the sofa,” and therefore impacted this continent centuries before the first television was ever thrown out of a speeding vehicle at a man who looked exactly like my great-grandfather, who happens to look exactly like the clone science has yet to allow me to create

This sense of ‘knows’ has an interesting feature: there’s a word for it in all of the world’s 6,000+ human languages (‘think’ shares this feature). This status is surprisingly rare: an educated person has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words, but fewer than 100 of these are thought to have precise translations in every other language.

Mr. Brock’s account of his adventure in London has given the reader some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one period, held such a rank in the army, but pawned his half-pay for drink and play; and for many years past had lived, one of the hundred thousand miracles of our city, upon nothing that anybody knew of, or of which he himself could give any account. Who has not a catalogue of these men in his list? who can tell whence comes the occasional clean shirt, who supplies the continual means of drunkenness, who wards off the daily-impending starvation? Their life is a wonder from day to day: their breakfast a wonder; their dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence. If you and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us? Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe us in clean linen? — not a bone or a rag. Standing as we do (may it be ever so) somewhat removed from want,[*] is there one of us who does not shudder at the thought of descending into the lists to combat with it, and

His own life on earth was short, limited; the beauty and splendor of Mount Fuji eternal. Annoyed and a little depressed, he asked himself how he could possibly attach any importance to his accomplishments with the sword. There was an inevitability in the way nature rose majestically and sternly above him; it was in the order of things that he was doomed to remain beneath it. He fell on his knees before the mountain, hoping his presumptuousness would be forgiven, and clasped his hands in prayer—for his mother’s eternal rest and for the safety of Otsū and Jōtarō. He expressed his thanks to his country and begged to be allowed to become great, even if he could not share nature’s greatness. But even as he knelt, different thoughts came rushing into his mind. What had made him think man was small? Wasn’t nature itself big only when it was reflected in human eyes? Didn’t the gods themselves come into existence only when they communicated with the hearts of mortals? Men—living spirits, not dead rock—performed the greatest actions of all. “As a man,” he told himself, “I am not so distant from the gods and the universe. I can touch them with the three-foot sword I carry. But not so long as I feel there is a distinction between nature and humankind. Not so long as I remain distant from the realm of the true expert, the fully developed man.

Ildiko shuddered.  Her hope to never again see or eat the Kai’s most beloved and revolting delicacy had been in vain.  When Brishen informed her that the dish was one of Serovek’s favorites, she resigned herself to another culinary battle with her food and put the scarpatine on the menu.  She ordered roasted potatoes as well, much to the head cook’s disgust. When servants brought out the food and set it on the table, Brishen leaned close and whispered in her ear.  “Revenge, wife?” “Hardly,” she replied, keeping a wary eye on the pie closest to her.  The golden top crust, with its sprinkle of sparkling salt, pitched in a lazy undulation.  “But I’m starving, and I have no intention of filling up on that abomination.” Their guest of honor didn’t share their dislike of either food.  As deft as any Kai, Serovek made short work of the scarpatine and its whipping tail, cleaved open the shell with his knife and took a generous bite of the steaming gray meat. Ildiko’s stomach heaved.  She forgot her nausea when Serovek complimented her.  “An excellent choice to pair the scarpatine with the potato, Your Highness.  They are better together than apart.” Beside her, Brishen choked into his goblet.  He wiped his mouth with his sanap.  “What a waste of good scarpatine,” he muttered under his breath. What a waste of a nice potato, she thought.  However, the more she thought on Serovek’s remark, the more her amusement grew. “And what has you smiling so brightly?”  Brishen stared at her, his lambent eyes glowing nearly white in the hall’s torchlight. She glanced at Serovek, happily cleaning his plate and shooting the occasional glance at Anhuset nearby.  Brishen’s cousin refused to meet his gaze, but Ildiko had caught the woman watching the Beladine lord more than a few times during dinner. “That’s us, you know,” she said. “What is us?” “The scarpatine and the potato.  Better together than alone.  At least I think so.” One of Brishen’s eyebrows slid upward.  “I thought we were hag and dead eel.  I think I like those comparisons more.”  He shoved his barely-touched potato to the edge of his plate with his knife tip, upper lip curled in revulsion to reveal a gleaming white fang. Ildiko laughed and stabbed a piece of the potato off his plate.  She popped it into her mouth and chewed with gusto, eager to blunt the taste of scarpatine still lingering on her tongue.

If you are going to start psychoanalyzing me, Legna, just stop it right now,” Noah warned her. “You have had my undivided love and attention practically since the day I was born, Noah. Has it never occurred to you that you are simply unwilling to share me with anyone else? You joke about it, but there are reasons why you are not interested in finding a companion of your own. Why should you? You have a perfectly kept home, a beautiful hostess to manage your social affairs, and she is pretty much emotionally maintenance free. I give you completely unconditional love, respect, and admiration. I keep you company when there are so many around, but none are really close enough to your heart to safely be a King’s confidant. There is only one thing I cannot do for you, and I already know you have your ways of obtaining that.” “Legna,” he protested, his face flushing. “That is not true.” “Which part?” she countered, raising a single brow. “I . . .” He hesitated, looking away from her penetrating gaze, realizing that she saw so much more than he had ever given her credit for. “Well, for one, the rafters of my ‘perfectly kept home’ are full of cobwebs,” he said sheepishly. Legna suddenly, gratefully, found herself laughing. It was a short burst of amusement that instantly defused the painful tension between them. “As if it would kill you to spare a thought to giving them a two-second toasting and getting rid of them yourself?

[Teaching] was hard. Some of the kids were needy and vulnerable and depressed, with faces of dubious, aged concern, rumpled foreheads, downcast or shuttered eyes. Some were wild. We did not exclude anyone, because Jesus didn't. On bad days, I could not imagine what he had been thinking. I could always feel Jesus in the room, encouraging us in every way, although maybe he would have stopped short of sharing Doritos with us.

Addiction, OCD, and mood disorders like depression and anxiety share a central feature: a narrow self-focus and intrusive rumination. For addiction, that rumination is cyclical, quieted only temporarily by the object of the given addiction—whether it is a substance or a behavior—and then it is set in motion again as soon as the object fades from focus. For OCD and eating disorders, that rumination manifests in uncontrollable compulsive behavior. For depression, it manifests as a sense of failing, catastrophization, and guilt. Hendricks sees this short-circuiting of rumination as the most significant potential benefit of psychedelics. “You think of somebody who’s addicted to a drug, and they’re almost spinning their wheels, thinking about how am I going to get it next? And if you can have an experience in which you’re suddenly thinking outside of yourself, you break from these self-nagging thoughts. Suddenly, you’re not even thinking about your desire, your craving, for that

Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way. Entrepreneurs must love what they do to such a degree that doing it is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable. In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we’re made of. Effective leaders share two intertwined attributes: an unbridled level of confidence about where their organizations are headed, and the ability to bring people along. Fixing moments, like mopping a dirty floor, only provides short-term satisfaction. But take the time to understand the cause of the problem—like how to keep a floor from getting so dirty in the first place—solves, and maybe eliminates, a problem. How leaders embody the values they espouse sets a tone, an expectation, that guides their employees’ behaviors. While I would not want to constantly battle against the odds, the raw feeling of accomplishing something that others did not think possible, or leading people beyond where they thought they could go, is extremely gratifying.

He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. He hadn't disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were forsooth "unsettled." If they were as unsettled as he was—he who had never been settled for an hour in his life—they would know what it meant. Yet it wasn't, all the same, for him to make them, and he listened to them civilly enough. This was why he had such good—though possibly such rather colourless—manners; this was why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as decently—as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely—unselfish. Our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite sufficiently to measure his present danger of letting it lapse, against which he promised himself to be much on his guard. He was quite ready, none the less, to be selfish just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him. "Just a little," in a word, was just as much as Miss Bartram, taking one day with another, would let him. He never would be in the least coercive, and would keep well before him the lines on which consideration for her—the very highest—ought to proceed. He would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her requirements, her peculiarities—he went so far as to give them the latitude of that name—would come into their intercourse. All this naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for granted. There was nothing more to be done about that. It simply existed; had sprung into being with her first penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, his apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt. Such was the image under which he had ended by figuring his life.

Shortly after becoming a Christian, I counseled a woman who was in a closeted lesbian relationship and a member of a Bible-believing church. No one in her church knew. Therefore, no one in her church was praying for her. Therefore, she sought and received no counsel. There was no “bearing one with the other” for her. No confession. No repentance. No healing. No joy in Christ. Just isolation. And shame. And pretense. Someone had sold her the pack of lies that said that God can heal your lying tongue or your broken heart, even cure your cancer if he chooses, but he can’t transform your sexuality. I told her that my heart breaks for her isolation and shame and asked her why she didn’t share her struggle with anyone in her church. She said: “Rosaria, if people in my church really believed that gay people could be transformed by Christ, they wouldn’t talk about us or pray about us in the hateful way that they do.” Christian reader, is this what people say about you when they hear you talk and pray? Do your prayers rise no higher than your prejudice? I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin. I think that many of us have a hard time believing the God we believe in, when the going gets tough. And I suspect that, instead of seeking counsel and direction from those stronger in the Lord, we retreat into our isolation and shame and let the sin wash over us, defeating us again. Or maybe we muscle through on our pride. Do we really believe that the word of God is a double-edged sword, cutting between the spirit and the soul? Or do we use the word of God as a cue card to commandeer only our external behavior?

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

Muhammad had become the head of a collection of tribal groups that were not bound together by blood but by a shared ideology, an astonishing innovation in Arabian society. Nobody was forced to convert to the religion of the Quran, but Muslims, pagans and Jews all belonged to one ummah, could not attack one another, and vowed to give each other protection. News of this extraordinary new ‘supertribe’ spread, and though at the outset nobody thought that it had a chance of survival, it proved to be an inspiration that would bring peace to Arabia before the death of the Prophet in 632, just ten years after the hijrah.

For all their shared boundaries, the experiences of fiction and nonfiction are fundamentally different. In the traditional short story or novel, a fictive space is opened up that allows you the reader to disappear into the action, even to the point of forgetting you are reading. In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you’re always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out. This is certainly true for the essay, but it is also true, I think, for classic nonfiction in general, be it Thucydides or Pascal or Carlyle, which follows an organizing principle that can be summarized as “tracking the consciousness of the author.” What makes me want to keep reading a nonfiction text is the encounter with a surprising, well-stocked mind as it takes on the challenge of the next sentence, paragraph, and thematic problem it has set for itself. The other element that keeps me reading nonfiction happily is an evolved, entertaining, elegant, or at least highly intentional literary style. The pressure of style should be brought to bear on every passage. “Consciousness plus style equals good nonfiction” is one way of stating the formula.

Hooke, who was well known for taking credit for ideas that weren’t necessarily his own, claimed that he had solved the problem already but declined now to share it on the interesting and inventive grounds that it would rob others of the satisfaction of discovering the answer for themselves. He would instead “conceal it for some time, that others might know how to value it.” If he thought any more on the matter, he left no evidence of it. Halley, however, became consumed with finding the answer, to the point that the following year he traveled to Cambridge and boldly called upon the university’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Isaac Newton, in the hope that he could help.

What about you, Mr. Shaw?" she asked. "Are your affections engaged by someone back home?" He shook his head at once. "I'm afraid that I share McKenna's rather skeptical view of the benefits of marriage." "I think you will fall in love someday." "Doubtful. I'm afraid that particular emotion is unknown to me..." Suddenly his voice faded into silence. He set his cup down as he stared off into the distance with sudden alertness. "Mr. Shaw?" As Aline followed his gaze, she realized what he had seen- Livia, wearing a pastel flower-printed walking dress as she headed to one of the forest trails leading away from the manor. A straw bonnet adorned with a sprig of fresh daisies swung from her fingers as she held it by the ribbons. Gideon Shaw stood so quickly that his chair threatened to topple backward. "Pardon," he said to Aline, tossing his napkin to the table. "The figment of my imagination has reappeared- and I'm going to catch her." "Of course," Aline said, struggling not to laugh. "Good luck, Mr. Shaw." "Thanks." He was gone in a flash, descending one side of the U-shaped stone staircase with the ease of a cat. Once he reached the terraced gardens, he cut across the lawn with long, ground-eating strides, just short of breaking into a run. Standing to better her view of his progress, Aline couldn't suppress a mocking grin. "Why, Mr. Shaw... I thought there was nothing in life you wanted badly enough to chase after it.

But its other characteristic it shares with almost anything Martian. It can last long periods in hibernation, or if that isn't necessary, in a state of lowered vitality and activity—say when there is no food available. But with any increase in the food supply, then at once—almost like throwing a switch—it expands, multiplies to the full extent of the food supply." "I'll say it does!" "Cut off the food supply and it simply waits for more good times. Pure theory, of course, since I am reasoning by analogy from other Martian life forms—but that's why I'm going to have to disappoint Lowell. Fuzzy Britches will have to go on very short rations." Her husband frowned. "That won't be easy; he feeds it all the time. We'll just have to watch him—or there will be more little visitors from heaven. Honey, let's get busy. Right now." "Yes, dear. I just had to get my thoughts straight." Roger called them all to general quarters; Operation Roundup began. They shooed them aft and into the hold; they slithered back, purring and seeking companionship. Pollux got into the hold and tried to keep them herded together while the others scavenged through the ship. His father stuck his head in; tried to make out his son in a cloud of flat cats. "How many have you got so far?" "I can't count them—they keep moving around. Close the door!" "How can I keep the door closed and still send them in to you?" "How can I keep them in here if you keep opening the door?

Pleased to meet y’all,” said the short villager to Porkins and Carl. They were gathered outside, by the stable. “I’m Biff, the leader of our little group.” He pointed at the fat villager. “This here is Boff, my deputy, and those other two are Boof and Bop.” “So your names are Biff, Boff, Boof and Bop?” said Carl. “That’s correct,” said Biff. “Doesn’t that get confusing?” “No, sir.” “Riiiiight,” said Carl. The Ender Hunters only had two spare horses, so Porkins took one and Dave shared the other with Carl. “I don’t think you’d be able to ride too well with them tiny little legs, anyway,” Boff said to Carl. “Whatever you say, Boof,” said Carl. “I’m Boff,” said Boff. “Wait a minute,” said Boof, “I thought I was Boff.” “No,” said Bop, “you’re Bop.” Carl rolled his eyes. “Let’s just get moving, shall we,” he said.

If mind belongs to humans alone, then stones, trees, and streams become mere objects of human tinkering. We can plunder the earth's resources with impunity, treating creeks and mountaintops in Kentucky or rivers in India or forests in northwest America as if they existed only for economic development. Systems of land and river become inert chunks of lifeless mud or mechanical runs of H2O rather than the living, breathing bodies upon which we and all other creatures depend for our very lives. Not to mention what 'nature as machine' has done to our emotional and spiritual well-being. When we regard nature as churning its way forward mindlessly through time, we turn our backs on mystery, shunning the complexity as well as the delights of relationship. We isolate ourselves from the rest of the creatures with whom we share this world. We imagine ourselves the apex of creation -- a lonely spot indeed. Human minds become the measure of creation and human thoughts become the only ones that count. The result is a concept of mind shorn of its wild connections, in which feelings become irrelevant, daydreams are mere distractions, and nighttime dreams -- if we attend to them at all -- are but the cast-offs of yesterday's overactive brain. Mind is cut off from matter, untouched by exingencies of mud or leaf, shaped by whispers or gales of wind, as if we were not, like rocks, made of soil. And then we wonder at our sadness and depression, not realizing that our own view of reality has sunk us into an unbearable solipsism, an agony of separateness -- from loved ones, from other creatures, from rich but unruly emotions, in short, from our ability to connect, through senses and feeling and imagination, with the world that is our home.

On the first day of his duel with the bears, Saunders, operating behind his mask of brokers, bought 33,000 shares of Piggly Wiggly, mostly from the short sellers; within a week he had brought the total to 105,000—more than half of the 200,000 shares outstanding. Meanwhile, ventilating his emotions at the cost of tipping his hand, he began running a series of advertisements in which he vigorously and pungently told the readers of Southern and Western newspapers what he thought of Wall Street. “Shall the gambler rule?” he demanded in one of these effusions. “On a white horse he rides. Bluff is his coat of mail and thus shielded is a yellow heart. His helmet is deceit, his spurs clink with treachery, and the hoofbeats of his horse thunder destruction. Shall good business flee? Shall it tremble with fear? Shall it be the loot of the speculator?” On Wall Street, Livermore went on buying Piggly Wiggly.

Have you found it different having girls in the house?” He cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah.” “Would you care to elaborate?” “Nope.” I looked up from my writing. “If you don’t elaborate, it’s going to be a very short article.” “Look, I’ve already gotten into it once tonight--” “Are you implying I’m hard to live with? Is that why you won’t comment further? Because you think I’ll be offended? I won’t be.” “No further comment.” I sighed, tempted to toss the recorder at him. “Okay, then, we’ll move on. What’s been the most difficult aspect of living with us?” There was silence, but it was the kind where you can sense someone wants to speak but doesn’t. Jason was so incredibly still, as though he was weighing consequences. “Not kissing you,” he finally said, quietly. My heart did this little stutter. I just stared at him as the recorder continued to run, searching for sound. My hand was shaking when I reached over and turned it off. “But you did kiss me, and you said it was a mistake.” “Because getting involved with you is a bad idea, on so many levels.” “Care to share one of those levels?” “I’m living in your house. Your parents are giving me a roof over my head. Your mom brings home extra takeout. I’m here only for the summer. Then I’m back at school.” He reached up, removed the ice pack from around his shoulder, and set it on the table. “And Mac? After we went to Dave and Bubba’s, he comes out to the mound and tells me he thinks you’re hot. And I know you like him, so I was willing to bunt.” “Bunt?” “Willing to sacrifice my happiness.” “You thought you’d be happy being with me?” “Are you kidding? You’re cute, easy to talk to. You love baseball. You make me smile, make me laugh. And we won’t even mention how much I liked kissing you.” Only he had mentioned it. And now I was thinking about it when I really shouldn’t be.

The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself most, or some one else. People criticize those who love themselves most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace, and a bad man seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so the more wicked he is — and so men reproach him, for instance, with doing nothing of his own accord — while the good man acts for honour's sake, and the more so the better he is, and acts for his friend's sake, and sacrifices his own interest. Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase 'lover of self', the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too, why they become objects of competition. So those who are grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used as it is — it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one); it is just, therefore, that men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so. That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a lover of self or blame him. Therefore the good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil passions. For the wicked man, what he does clashes with what he ought to do, but what the good man ought to do he does; for reason in each of its possessors chooses what is best for itself, and the good man obeys his reason. It is true of the good man too that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good to himself. The same too is true of honour and office; all these things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself. In all the actions, therefore, that men are praised for, the good man is seen to assign to himself the greater share in what is noble. In this sense, then, as has been said, a man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men are so, he ought not.

You know what I realized? I’ve just never met someone like you.” I’ve just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

As arrogant as I may be in general, I am not sufficiently doltish or vainglorious to imagine that I can meaningfully address the deep philosophical questions embedded within this general inquiry of our intellectual ages—that is, fruitful modes of analysis for the history of human thought. I shall therefore take refuge in an escape route that has traditionally been granted to scientists: the liberty to act as a practical philistine. Instead of suggesting a principled and general solution, I shall ask whether I can specify an operational way to define “Darwinism” (and other intellectual entities) in a manner specific enough to win shared agreement and understanding among readers, but broad enough to avoid the doctrinal quarrels about membership and allegiance that always seem to arise when we define intellectual commitments as pledges of fealty to lists of dogmata (not to mention initiation rites, secret handshakes and membership cards—in short, the intellectual paraphernalia that led Karl Marx to make his famous comment to a French journalist: “je ne suis pas marxiste”).

Shortly after we returned from the Platte River in Nebraska, I scouted a few of our duck holes on my dad’s property. I wanted to see what kind of ducks had gathered on our land while we were gone. On this particular day, it was cool and crisp as it got close to sunset. As I sat in a deer stand waiting for nightfall, I was counting mallard ducks that flew over my head. Meanwhile, there were fox squirrels scurrying in the trees around me looking for acorns, while groups of wood ducks waited in the water for the squirrels to drop acorns. A few minutes later, fifteen wild turkeys walked in front of me. I thought to myself, Man, this is paradise. As I soaked in my surroundings, I heard the sounds of footsteps in shallow water. A majestic eight-point buck walked right in front of me. I raised my rifle and fired. The buck hit the ground. My dad was in the woods with me and heard me shoot. As we loaded up the deer, I shared the details of what I had seen with my dad. We both agreed that there is nothing better than the beauty of the outdoors. It was about as perfect a day as I’ve ever had in the woods.

In “Internet of Stings,” Jennifer Howard began one of the more disconcerting essays about some of these issues that came up in interviews with one of the purveyors of false news: As one master of the fake-news genre told the Washington Post55: “Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore.” Separating truth from fiction takes time, information literacy, and an open mind, all of which seem in short supply in a distracted, polarized culture. We love to share instantly—and that makes us easy to manipulate. There are many tough issues here for students, teachers, parents, and the members of our republic. How our citizens think, decide, and vote depends on their collective ability to navigate the complex realities of a digital milieu with intellects not just capable of, but accustomed to higher-level understanding and analysis. It is no longer only a matter of which medium is better for what; it is a question of how the optimal mode of thought in our children and our young adults and ourselves can be fostered in this moment of history. These are hardly new thoughts either for

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Prithee, sir,” Ian said, controlling his impatience, “tell us what Dougal said.” “He said he’d tell the world that he’s had his way with our Lina, even shared her with his men. Och, but I wanted to hang him from the tree outside me gate right then! In short, if Dougal canna have her, he’ll murder her reputation. So, in my fury, I’ve condemned my daughter to the sad future of an unmarried, unwanted woman. A future in which others will revile her, if Dougal has his say. Och, I’m a villain m’self to do such a vile thing. Mayhap I should think more on it, unless . . .” He looked at Rob, who stared silently, blankly back at him. After a glance at Ian, Andrew chose a point midway between the two men and said with a slight, self-deprecating shrug, “I dinna suppose ye’d . . . either o’ ye . . . be willing to marry the poor lassie and save her from such a dreadful fate.” Ian saw the pit yawning before him, but he barely heeded it. Having saved Lina from one wretched fate, he did not want to watch her fall victim to another. Impulsively, he said, “I . . . I’d be willing to give the idea some thought, sir.” “Good lad,” Andrew said cheerfully. “I’ll let ye have her.

were more than mere insects. Over time I realized the bees could tell my emotional or energetic state. When I embodied kindness around them, they treated me with the same. A cloud of exuberance surrounded us, as though the bees were templating euphoria into the air. I want you to know I didn’t just tear off my bee suit one day and “become one with the bees.” That took years. But eventually I did retire my bee suit. The first time I walked right up to the hives wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, I felt a bit anxious and self-absorbed, but then I remembered to turn my thoughts away from myself, to open myself to the bees and let them feel me out — which they did. They landed on my bare arms and licked my skin for the salty minerals. When I held a finger next to the entrance, a sweet little bee delicately walked onto my fingertip and faced me. She looked right into my eyes, and for the first time, we saw each other. And so I became part of bee life. Becoming Kin I soon found myself having more intuition about the hives. One morning in early spring, before the flowers had come into bloom, I suddenly had the idea that I should check one of my hives. I found the bees unexpectedly out of food; so I fed them honey saved from the year before. That call I intuitively heard from the hive likely saved its life. Another time I had the feeling that a distant hive in the east pasture was on the verge of swarming. When I walked up to see, sure enough, they were. Events like this taught me to trust my intuition more, and listening to my intuition continues to bring me into a closer relationship with all the hives. In my sixth year with bees, something new happened. I had begun a morning practice of contemplation, quieting my mind and opening my heart. I entered this prayerful state, asking for guidance, direction, courage, and truth. Even though I didn’t mention honeybees, they immediately began appearing in my thoughts and passing me information I had never read or learned from other sources. I believe the sincerity of my questions opened a door. When the information began coming to me, I listened with attentiveness, respect, and gratitude. The more I listened, the more information they shared. Since my first intuitive conversation with the bees, I have had many others. At first I didn’t know how to explain where the information came from, and that bothered me. I told my husband’s

The Garden" How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wond’rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walk’d without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gard’ner drew Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

There are hundreds of examples of highly functioning commons around the world today. Some have been around for centuries, others have risen in response to economic and environmental crises, and still others have been inspired by the distributive bias of digital networks. From the seed-sharing commons of India to the Potato Park of Peru, indigenous populations have been maintaining their lands and managing biodiversity through a highly articulated set of rules about sharing and preservation. From informal rationing of parking spaces in Boston to Richard Stallman’s General Public License (GPL) for software, new commons are serving to reinstate the value of land and labor, as well as the ability of people to manage them better than markets can. In the 1990s, Elinor Ostrom, the American political scientist most responsible for reviving serious thought about commoning, studied what specifically makes a commons successful. She concluded that a commons must have an evolving set of rules about access and usage and that it must have a way of punishing transgressions. It must also respect the particular character of the resource being managed and the people who have worked with that resource the longest. Managing a fixed supply of minerals is different from managing a replenishing supply of timber. Finally, size and place matter. It’s easier for a town to manage its water supply than for the planet to establish water-sharing rules.78 In short, a commons must be bound by people, place, and rules. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, it’s not an anything-goes race to the bottom. It is simply a recognition of boundaries and limits. It’s pooled, multifaceted investment in pursuit of sustainable production. It is also an affront to the limitless expansion sought by pure capital. If anything, the notion of a commons’ becoming “enclosed” by privatization is a misnomer: privatizing a commons breaks the boundaries that protected its land and labor from pure market forces. For instance, the open-source seed-sharing networks of India promote biodiversity and fertilizer-free practices among farmers who can’t afford Western pesticides.79 They have sustained themselves over many generations by developing and adhering to a complex set of rules about how seed species are preserved, as well as how to mix crops on soil to recycle its nutrients over centuries of growing. Today, they are in battle with corporations claiming patents on these heirloom seeds and indigenous plants. So it’s not the seed commons that have been enclosed by the market at all; rather, the many-generations-old boundaries have been penetrated and dissolved by disingenuously argued free-market principles.

The next morning, I went over to pick them up. I’d spent the night thinking of more things I should tell them--everything about Chris I thought they needed to know. It was all too much. “I don’t know how to tell you everything,” I confessed to Bradley as he got into the car. I started to cry. “There’s so many things and we have such a short amount of time.” “Just being here is all we need,” he said. “I’m not an impersonator. I’m just here to feel Chris’s life--I feel him here with me right now.” Bradley put me at ease and I calmed down. Back at the house, he and Clint became almost like family. Little bits of their personality came out as well--and I saw a glimmer of Clint’s famous Dirty Harry character later on in the day when I had to leave to go to Bubba’s basketball game. They’d talked about coming with me--which frankly would have created an impossible circus. But I did give them the option. As they stood trying to make up their minds, I snapped into anxious mom mode. “All right,” I told them both. “You’re welcome to come. But if you’re coming, we’re leaving now.” I guess my tone was a little too strident. “So you want to get tough with me, huh, lady?” said Clint in his best Dirty Harry voice as he raised his eyebrow. It’s amazing how threatening a simple facial tic can be. I left them home to study some of Chris’s replica guns and gear. Our own already had its ample share of lawmen.

To be one with Christ — that meant to have become, like Him, the destroyer of the Law; to be dead with Him — that meant likewise to be dead to the Law. Even if it were still possible to sin, it would not at any rate be possible to sin against the Law: “I am above the Law,” thinks Paul; adding, “If I were now to acknowledge the Law again and to submit to it, I should make Christ an accomplice in the sin”; for the Law was there for the purpose of producing sin and setting it in the foreground, as an emetic produces sickness. God could not have decided upon the death of Christ had it been possible to fulfill the Law without it; henceforth, not only are all sins expiated, but sin itself is abolished; henceforth the Law is dead; henceforth “the flesh” in which it dwelt is dead — or at all events dying, gradually wasting away. To live for a short time longer amid this decay! — this is the Christian's fate, until the time when, having become one with Christ, he arises with Him, sharing with Christ the divine glory, and becoming, like Christ, a “Son of God.” Then Paul's exaltation was at its height, and with it the importunity of his soul — the thought of union with Christ made him lose all shame, all submission, all constraint, and his ungovernable ambition was shown to be reveling in the expectation of divine glories. Such was the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity! Before him there were only a few Jewish sectaries.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty; he would like to fly away, but he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below; and he is therefore thought to be mad. And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. For, as has been already said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty.

The depressed person shared that she could remember, all too clearly, how at her third boarding school, she had once watched her roommate talk to some boy on their room's telephone as she (i.e., the roommate) made faces and gestures of entrapped repulsion and boredom with the call, this popular, attractive, and self-assured roommate finally directing at the depressed person an exaggerated pantomime of someone knocking on a door until the depressed person understood that she was to open their room's door and step outside and knock loudly on it so as to give the roommate an excuse to end the call. The depressed person had shared this traumatic memory with members of her Support System and had tried to articulate how bottomlessly horrible she had felt it would have been to have been that nameless pathetic boy on the phone and how now, as a legacy of that experience, she dreaded, more than almost anything, the thought of ever being someone you had to appeal silently to someone nearby to help you contrive an excuse to get off the phone with. The depressed person would implore each supportive friend to tell her the very moment she (i.e., the friend) was getting bored or frustrated or repelled or felt she (i.e., the friend) had other more urgent or interesting things to attend to, to please for God's sake be utterly candid and frank and not spend one moment longer on the phone than she was absolutely glad to spend. The depressed person knew perfectly well, of course, she assured the therapist;' how such a request could all too possibly be heard not as an invitation to get off the telephone at will but actually as a needy, manipulative plea not to get off-never to get off-the telephone.

She stole surreptitious glances at Christopher, as she had been doing all evening, mesmerized by the sight of him. He was tawny and sun glazed, the candlelight finding threads of gold in his hair. The yellow glow struck sparkling glints in the new growth of bristle on his face. She was fascinated by the raw, restless masculinity beneath his quietness. She wanted to revel in him as one might dash out-of-doors in a storm, letting the elements have their way. Most of all she longed to talk with him…to pry each other open with words, share every thought and secret. “My sincere thanks for your hospitality,” Christopher finally said at the conclusion of the meal. “It was much needed.” “You must return soon,” Cam said, “especially to view the timber yard in operation. We have installed some innovations that you may want to use at Riverton someday.” “Thank you. I would like to see them.” Christopher looked directly at Beatrix. “Before I depart, Miss Hathaway, I wonder if you would introduce me to this notorious mule of yours?” His manner was relaxed…but his eyes were those of a predator. Beatrix’s mouth went dry. There would be no escaping him. That much was clear. He wanted answers. He would have them either now or later. “Now?” she asked wanly. “Tonight?” “If you don’t mind,” he said in a far too pleasant tone. “The barn is but a short walk from the house, is it not?” “Yes,” Beatrix said, rising from her chair. The men at the table stood obligingly. “Excuse us, please. I won’t be long.” “May I go with you?” Rye asked eagerly. “No, darling,” Amelia said, “it’s time for your bath.” “But why must I wash if I can’t see any dirt?” “Those of us who have a difficult time with godliness,” Amelia replied with a grin, “must settle for cleanliness.

The seventh day, and no wind—the burning sun Blister’d and scorch’d, and, stagnant on the sea, They lay like carcasses; and hope was none, Save in the breeze that came not; savagely They glared upon each other—all was done, Water, and wine, and food,—and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise (Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes. At length one whisper’d his companion, who Whisper’d another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew, ’Twas but his own, suppress’d till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be his fellow’s food. But ere they came to this, they that day shared Some leathern caps, and what remain’d of shoes; And then they look’d around them and despair’d, And none to be the sacrifice would choose; At length the lots were torn up, and prepared, But of materials that much shock the Muse— Having no paper, for the want of better, They took by force from Juan Julia’s letter. The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed, In silent horror, and their distribution Lull’d even the savage hunger which demanded, Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution; None in particular had sought or plann’d it, ’Twas nature gnaw’d them to this resolution, By which none were permitted to be neuter— And the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor. He but requested to be bled to death: The surgeon had his instruments, and bled Pedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath, You hardly could perceive when he was dead. He died as born, a Catholic in faith, Like most in the belief in which they’re bred, And first a little crucifix he kiss’d, And then held out his jugular and wrist. The surgeon, as there was no other fee, Had his first choice of morsels for his pains; But being thirstiest at the moment, he Preferr’d a draught from the fast-flowing veins: Part was divided, part thrown in the sea, And such things as the entrails and the brains Regaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo. The sailors ate him, all save three or four, Who were not quite so fond of animal food; To these was added Juan, who, before Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could Feel now his appetite increased much more; ’Twas not to be expected that he should, Even in extremity of their disaster, Dine with them on his pastor and his master. ’Twas better that he did not; for, in fact, The consequence was awful in the extreme; For they, who were most ravenous in the act, Went raging mad—Lord! how they did blaspheme! And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d, Drinking salt water like a mountain-stream, Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing, And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing. Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction, And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows; And some of them had lost their recollection, Happier than they who still perceived their woes; But others ponder’d on a new dissection, As if not warn’d sufficiently by those Who had already perish’d, suffering madly, For having used their appetites so sadly. And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be, Remember Ugolino condescends To eat the head of his arch-enemy The moment after he politely ends His tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea ’Tis surely fair to dine upon our friends, When shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty, Without being much more horrible than Dante.

How come I wasn’t riding around in his middle seat? Was I supposed to initiate this? Was this expected of me? Because I probably should know early on. But wouldn’t he have gestured in that direction if he’d wanted me to move over and sit next to him? Maybe, just maybe, he’d liked those girls better than he liked me. Maybe they’d had a closeness that warranted their riding side by side in a pickup, a closeness that he and I just don’t share? Please don’t let that be the reason. I don’t like that reason. I had to ask him. I had to know. “Can I ask you something?” I said as we drove down the road separating a neighboring ranch from his. “Sure,” Marlboro Man answered. He reached over and touched my knee. “Did you ever used to drive around in your pickup with a girl sitting in the middle seat right next to you?” I tried not to sound accusatory. A grin formed in the corner of Marlboro Man’s mouth. “Sure I did,” he said. His hand was still on my knee. “Why?” “Oh, no reason. I was just curious,” I said. I wanted to leave it at that. “What made you think of that?” he said. “Oh, I was really just curious,” I repeated. “Growing up, I’d sometimes see boys and girls riding right next to each other in pickups, and I just wondered if you ever did. That’s all.” I stopped short of telling him I never understood the whole thing or asking him why he loved Julie more than me. “Yep. I did,” he said. I looked out the window and thought for a minute. What am I? Chopped liver? Is there some specific reason he never pulls me over close to him as we drive around the countryside? Why doesn’t he hook his right arm affectionately around my neck and claim me as the woman of his pickup? I never knew I had such a yearning to ride next to a man in a pickup, but apparently it had been a suppressed lifelong dream I knew nothing about. Suddenly, sitting in that pickup with Marlboro Man, I’d apparently never wanted anything so badly in my life.

If Jim was back at the imaginary dinner party, trying to explain what he did for a living, he'd have tried to keep it simple: clearing involved everything that took place between the moment someone started at trade — buying or selling a stock, for instance — and the moment that trade was settled — meaning the stock had officially and legally changed hands. Most people who used online brokerages thought of that transaction as happening instantly; you wanted 10 shares of GME, you hit a button and bought 10 shares of GME, and suddenly 10 shares of GME were in your account. But that's not actually what happened. You hit the Buy button, and Robinhood might find you your shares immediately and put them into your account; but the actual trade took two days to complete, known, for that reason, in financial parlance as 'T+2 clearing.' By this point in the dinner conversation, Jim would have fully expected the other diners' eyes to glaze over; but he would only be just beginning. Once the trade was initiated — once you hit that Buy button on your phone — it was Jim's job to handle everything that happened in that in-between world. First, he had to facilitate finding the opposite partner for the trade — which was where payment for order flow came in, as Robinhood bundled its trades and 'sold' them to a market maker like Citadel. And next, it was the clearing brokerage's job to make sure that transaction was safe and secure. In practice, the way this worked was by 10:00 a.m. each market day, Robinhood had to insure its trade, by making a cash deposit to a federally regulated clearinghouse — something called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, or DTCC. That deposit was based on the volume, type, risk profile, and value of the equities being traded. The riskier the equities — the more likely something might go wrong between the buy and the sell — the higher that deposit might be. Of course, most all of this took place via computers — in 2021, and especially at a place like Robinhood, it was an almost entirely automated system; when customers bought and sold stocks, Jim's computers gave him a recommendation of the sort of deposits he could expect to need to make based on the requirements set down by the SEC and the banking regulators — all simple and tidy, and at the push of a button.

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There was worse. Philosophers needed to be able to think freely and to follow their ideas wherever they might lead. There was a kind of sociopathic madness to their endeavor. They were the ultimate iconoclasts, subversive by their very nature, because social and political activity was based on popular opinion, public dogma, and unexamined tradition, whereas philosophy existed to scrutinize all opinions, dogmas, and traditions. For those bounded by a belief in common morality, which is to say just about everyone, philosophers were immoralists or, at best, amoralists. These suspicions of the general public were not unfounded. Philosophers really were subversive! (Here, too, Strauss and Arendt shared a common—one might say Nietzschean—perspective. “Thinking,” Arendt wrote, “inevitably has a destructive, undermining effect on all established criteria, values, measurements for good and evil, in short on those customs and rules of conduct we treat of in morals and ethics.”) To survive in a world intrinsically hostile to freethinking, philosophers had to employ “esoteric writing” while presenting a public face of moderation and quiescence, whatever radical ideas they might be harboring. “Thought must be not moderate, but fearless, not to say shameless. But moderation is a virtue controlling the philosopher’s speech.” Or as Strauss also put it: “In political things it is a sound rule to let sleeping dogs lie.” The best hope for the preservation of freedom of thought was to remain inconspicuous. The wise knew not to poke the beast. Inconspicuousness was not always possible. Constantly vulnerable to tyrants and to tyrannical majorities, philosophers were in need of friends, not only other philosophers with whom they could exchange ideas but also more practical people who could mediate between the contemplative elite and the vulgar masses. The philosophers’ best friends in the ordinary world were the people Strauss called “gentlemen.” Philosophers were not equipped to plunge into the political world, which consisted of “very long conversations with very dull people on very dull subjects.” Neither did they have the power to impose their will on the majority even if they had wanted to, which they didn’t. Instead, they needed the help of gentlemen who appreciated the value of freedom of thought yet could function among the ignorant populace. Philosophers, who were disinterested by definition, could instruct these gentlemen to shun private advantage and personal gain for the common good—and it would help if the gentlemen were wealthy so that the prospect of acquiring riches at the public expense would be less enticing—but it was up to the gentlemen to act as the bridge between the pure thinking of the minority and the material self interest of the majority and to win the support of the citizenry at large.

Several teams of German psychologists that have studied the RAT in recent years have come up with remarkable discoveries about cognitive ease. One of the teams raised two questions: Can people feel that a triad of words has a solution before they know what the solution is? How does mood influence performance in this task? To find out, they first made some of their subjects happy and others sad, by asking them to think for several minutes about happy or sad episodes in their lives. Then they presented these subjects with a series of triads, half of them linked (such as dive, light, rocket) and half unlinked (such as dream, ball, book), and instructed them to press one of two keys very quickly to indicate their guess about whether the triad was linked. The time allowed for this guess, 2 seconds, was much too short for the actual solution to come to anyone’s mind. The first surprise is that people’s guesses are much more accurate than they would be by chance. I find this astonishing. A sense of cognitive ease is apparently generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine, which “knows” that the three words are coherent (share an association) long before the association is retrieved. The role of cognitive ease in the judgment was confirmed experimentally by another German team: manipulations that increase cognitive ease (priming, a clear font, pre-exposing words) all increase the tendency to see the words as linked. Another remarkable discovery is the powerful effect of mood on this intuitive performance. The experimenters computed an “intuition index” to measure accuracy. They found that putting the participants in a good mood before the test by having them think happy thoughts more than doubled accuracy. An even more striking result is that unhappy subjects were completely incapable of performing the intuitive task accurately; their guesses were no better than random. Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. Here again, as in the mere exposure effect, the connection makes biological sense. A good mood is a signal that things are generally going well, the environment is safe, and it is all right to let one’s guard down. A bad mood indicates that things are not going very well, there may be a threat, and vigilance is required. Cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling.

There is a discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; and millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich; and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. "These are differing evils, but they are common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows. "But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. "Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. "Our answer is to rely on youth - not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress. It is a revolutionary world we live in; and this generation at home and around the world, has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. "Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. "Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

A few years back, I had a long session with a psychiatrist who was conducting a study on post-traumatic stress disorder and its effects on reporters working in war zones. At one point, he asked me: “How many bodies have you seen in your lifetime?” Without thinking for too long, I replied: “I’m not sure exactly. I've seen quite a few mass graves in Africa and Bosnia, and I saw a well crammed full of corpses in East Timor, oh and then there was Rwanda and Goma...” After a short pause, he said to me calmly: “Do you think that's a normal response to that question?” He was right. It wasn't a normal response. Over the course of their lifetime, most people see the bodies of their parents, maybe their grandparents at a push. Nobody else would have responded to that question like I did. Apart from my fellow war reporters, of course. When I met Marco Lupis nearly twenty years ago, in September 1999, we were stood watching (fighting the natural urge to divert our gaze) as pale, maggot-ridden corpses, decomposed beyond recognition, were being dragged out of the well in East Timor. Naked bodies shorn of all dignity. When Marco wrote to ask me to write the foreword to this book and relive the experiences we shared together in Dili, I agreed without giving it a second thought because I understood that he too was struggling for normal responses. That he was hoping he would find some by writing this book. While reading it, I could see that Marco shares my obsession with understanding the world, my compulsion to recount the horrors I have seen and witnessed, and my need to overcome them and leave them behind. He wants to bring sense to the apparently senseless. Books like this are important. Books written by people who have done jobs like ours. It's not just about conveying - be it in the papers, on TV or on the radio - the atrocities committed by the very worst of humankind as they are happening; it’s about ensuring these atrocities are never forgotten. Because all too often, unforgivably, the people responsible go unpunished. And the thing they rely on most for their impunity is that, with the passing of time, people simply forget. There is a steady flow of information as we are bombarded every day with news of the latest massacre, terrorist attack or humanitarian crisis. The things that moved or outraged us yesterday are soon forgotten, washed away by today's tidal wave of fresh events. Instead they become a part of history, and as such should not be forgotten so quickly. When I read Marco's book, I discovered that the people who murdered our colleague Sander Thoenes in Dili, while he was simply doing his job like the rest of us, are still at large to this day. I read the thoughts and hopes of Ingrid Betancourt just twenty-four hours before she was abducted and taken to the depths of the Colombian jungle, where she would remain captive for six long years. I read that we know little or nothing about those responsible for the Cambodian genocide, whose millions of victims remain to this day without peace or justice. I learned these things because the written word cannot be destroyed. A written account of abuse, terror, violence or murder can be used to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice, even though this can be an extremely drawn-out process during and after times of war. It still torments me, for example, that so many Bosnian women who were raped have never got justice and every day face the prospect of their assailants passing them on the street. But if I follow in Marco's footsteps and write down the things I have witnessed in a book, people will no longer be able to plead ignorance. That is why we need books like this one.

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We must rediscover the structure of the perceived world through a process similar to that of an archaeologist. For the structure of the perceived world is buried under the sedimentations of later knowledge. Digging down to the perceived world, we see that sensory qualities are not opaque, indivisible "givens," which are simply exhibited to a remote consciousness—a favorite idea of classical philosophy. We see too that colors (each surrounded by an affective atmosphere which psychologists have been able to study and define) are themselves different modalities of our co-existence with the world. We also find that spatial forms or distances are not so much relations between different points in objective space as they are relations between these points and a central perspective—our body. In short, these relations are different ways for external stimuli to test, to solicit, and to vary our grasp on the world, our horizontal and vertical anchorage in a place and in a here-and-now. We find that perceived things, unlike geometrical objects, are not bounded entities whose laws of construction we possess a priori, but that they are open, inexhaustible systems which we recognize through a certain style of development, although we are never able, in principle, to explore them entirely, and even though they never give us more than profiles and perspectival views of themselves. Finally, we find that the perceived world, in its turn, is not a pure object of thought without fissures or lacunae; it is, rather, like a universal style shared in by all perceptual beings. While the world no doubt coordinates these perceptual beings, we can never presume that its work is finished. Our world, as Malebranche said, is an "unfinished task." If we now wish to characterize a subject capable of this perceptual experience, it obviously will not be a self-transparent thought, absolutely present to itself without the interference of its body and its history. The perceiving subject is not this absolute thinker; rather, it functions according to a natal pact between our body and the world, between ourselves and our body. Given a perpetually new natural and historical situation to control, the perceiving subject undergoes a continued birth; at each instant it is something new. Every incarnate subject is like an open notebook in which we do not yet know what will be written. Or it is like a new language; we do not know what works it will accomplish but only that, once it has appeared, it cannot fail to say little or much, to have a history and a meaning. The very productivity or freedom of human life, far from denying our situation, utilizes it and turns it into a means of expression.

No one cares if you are a people person. Have a point of view, and share it meaningfully, thoughtfully, and with conviction.

When, in Being and Time,Heidegger insists that death is the onlyevent which cannot be taken over by another subject for me—an-other cannot die for me, in my place—the obvious counterexampleis Christ himself: did he not, in the extreme gesture of interpassiv-ity, take over for us the ultimate passive experience of dying? Christdies so that we are given a chance to live forever....The problemhere is not only that, obviously, we don’tlive forever (the answer tothis is that it is the Holy Spirit, the community of believers, whichlives forever), but the subjective status of Christ: when he was dyingon the Cross, did he know about his Resurrection-to-come? If he didthen it was all a game, the supreme divine comedy, since Christ knewhis suffering was just a spectacle with a guaranteed good outcome—in short, Christ was faking despair in his “Father, why hast thou for-saken me?” If he didn’t, then in what precise sense was Christ (also)divine? Did God the Father limit the scope of knowledge of Christ’smind to that of a common human consciousness, so that Christ ac-tually thought he was dying abandoned by his father? Was Christ, ineffect, occupying the position of the son in the wonderful joke aboutthe rabbi who turns in despair to God, asking Him what he shoulddo with his bad son, who has deeply disappointed him; God calmlyanswers: “Do the same as I did: write a new testament!”What is crucial here is the radical ambiguity of the term “the faithof Jesus Christ,” which can be read as subjective or objectivegenitive: it can be either “the faith ofChrist” or “the faith / of us, be-lievers / inChrist.” Either we are redeemed because of Christ’s purefaith, or we are redeemed by our faith in Christ, if and insofar as webelieve in him. Perhaps there is a way to read the two meanings to-gether: what we are called to believe in is not Christ’s divinity as suchbut, rather, his faith, his sinless purity. What Christianity proposes isthe figure of Christ as our subject supposed to believe:in our ordinary lives,we never truly believe, but we can at least have the consolation thatthere is One who truly believes (the function of what Lacan, in hisseminar Encore,called y’a de l’un).The final twist here, however, is thaton the Cross, Christ himself has to suspend his belief momentarily.So maybe, at a deeper level, Christ is, rather, our (believers’) subject supposed NOTto believe: it is not our belief we transpose onto others, but,rather, our disbelief itself. Instead of doubting, mocking, and ques-tioning things while believing through the Other, we can also trans-pose onto the Other the nagging doubt, thus regaining the abilityto believe. (And is there not, in exactly the same way, also the func-tion of the subject supposed not to know? Ta ke little children who are sup-posed not to know the “facts of life,” and whose blessed ignorancewe, knowing adults, are supposed to protect by shielding them frombrutal reality; or the wife who is supposed not to know about herhusband’s secret affair, and willingly plays this role even if she re-ally knows all about it, like the young wife in The Age of Innocence;or, inacademia, the role we assume when we ask someone: “OK, I’ll pre-tend I don’t know anything about this topic—try to explain it to mefrom scratch!”) And, perhaps, the true communion with Christ, thetrue imitatio Christi,is to participate in Christ’s doubt and disbelief.There are two main interpretations of how Christ’s death dealswith sin: sacrificial and participatory.4In the first one, we humansare guilty of sin, the consequence of which is death; however, Godpresented Christ, the sinless one, as a sacrifice to die in our place—through the shedding of his blood, we may be forgiven and freedfrom condemnation. In the second one, human beings lived “inAdam,” in the sphere of sinful humanity, under the reign of sin anddeath. Christ became a human being, sharing the fate of those “inAdam” to the end (dying on the Cross), but...

Almost any positive good [positive liberty] can be described in terms of freedom from something [negative liberty]. Health is freedom from disease; happiness is a life free from flaws and miseries; equality is freedom from advantage and disadvantage.. Faced with this flexibility, the theorist will need to prioritize some freedoms and discount others. At its extreme we may get the view that only some particular kind of life makes for ‘real freedom’. Real freedom might, for instance, be freedom the bondage of desire, as in Buddhism and Stoicism. Or it might be a kind of self-realization or self-perfection only possible in a community of similarly self-realized individuals, pointing us towards a communitarian, socialist, or even communist ideal. To a laissez-faire capitalist, it is freedom from more than minimal necessary political and legal interference in the pursuit of profit. But the rhetoric of freedom will typically just disguise the merits or demerits of the political order being promoted. The flexibility of the term ‘freedom’ undoubtedly plays a huge role in the rhetoric of political demands, particularly when the language of rights mingles with the language of freedom. ‘We have a right to freedom from…’ is not only a good way, but the best way to start a moral or political demand. Freedom is a dangerous word, just because it is an inspirational one. The modern emphasis on freedom is problematically associated with a particular self-image. This is the 'autonomous' or self-governing and self-driven individual. This individual has the right to make his or her own decisions. Interference or restraint is lack of respect, and everyone has a right to respect. For this individual, the ultimate irrationality would be to alienate his freedom, for instance by joining a monastery that requires unquestioning obedience to a superior, or selling himself into slavery to another. The self-image may be sustained by the thought that each individual has the same share of human reason, and an equal right to deploy this reason in the conduct of his or her own life. Yet the 'autonomous' individual, gloriously independent in his decision-making, can easily seem to be a fantasy. Not only the Grand Unifying Pessimisms, but any moderately sober reflection on human life and human societies, suggest that we are creatures easily swayed, constantly infected by the opinions of others, lacking critical self-understanding, easily gripped by fantastical hopes and ambitions. Our capacity for self-government is spasmodic, and even while we preen ourselves on our critical and independent, free and rational decisions, we are slaves of fashion and opinion and social and cultural forces of which we are ignorant. A little awareness of ethics will make us mistrustful of sound-bite-sized absolutes. Even sacred freedoms meet compromises, and take us into a world of balances. Free speech is sacred. Yet the law does not protect fraudulent speech, libellous speech, speech describing national secrets, speech inciting racial and other hatreds, speech inciting panic in crowded places, and so on. In return, though, we gain freedom from fraud, from misrepresentation of our characters and our doings, from enemy incursions, from civil unrest, from arbitrary risks of panic in crowds. For sure, there will always be difficult cases. There are websites giving people simple recipes on how to make bombs in their kitchens. Do we want a conception of free speech that protects those? What about the freedom of the rest of us to live our lives without a significant risk of being blown up by a crank? It would be nice if there were a utilitarian calculus enabling us to measure the costs and benefits of permission and suppression, but it is hard to find one.

The mixture of displeasure and relief is so overpowering my mind. I knew that I would pick to have that pleasure if he kept being so passionate and felt right. I look down the tunneling hallway my eyes feel like kaleidoscopes, yet I can figure there are kids with sparklers and the firecrackers the sounds are going off within all the colors I see. He has to hold me with my back against the walls or I am sure I would fall, I see Justen feeling the left of a rail of the stairs, walking over the entryway into their room feather down that hallway, up above me, me like they’re going to slip away any second, and share the rest of the night cuddling in bed. Is tonight the night I follow him to his room and crawl in with him, or isn’t tonight the night, maybe hold back until tomorrow? That kept running through my head. Tonight, or tomorrow? Tomorrow I’ll wake up and be the same, regardless if I am in his bed or not. This earth will look the same, and everything will feel and taste and smell the same. What am I rushing it for, he’s going to love me the same if not more is, I hold out? Maybe play that three-date rule. My throat gets taut, just thinking about what we could be doing right now, also I have to think about what Ray and Justen are doing, and my eyes start to tingle in ire, and all I can think at that moment is that it’s all Ray’s fault, that my sis has gone home broken-hearted. Yet I don’t want her spending the night here anyway, with him of all boys. It’s funny how you can go from love to hate in seconds. Half an hour later the party starts to wind down. Inside, everyone is just about passed out, at this point, I need to find a place to crash too. Then I thought, should I, or shouldn’t I? My sis is one of those shy ones around cute boys, and those are the ones you have to worry about because they are freaks between the sheets. I can see that somebody pulled the drooping icicle lights off the wall there getting crouched on by the others passing by. They are getting tangled up in my feet, as I move. There twanging and shorting out from the broken blabs, in sparks lighting up the grime corners, like cups and broken beer bottles. You have to be careful like I see a lot of girls with flip-flops on or barefoot running around not a good idea. I think that I’m feeling better now until I move away from the walls, but I’m starting to feel more like the girl I should be around all my friends. ‘There’s always tomorrow,’ Jenny walked up to me and said before going up to her bed when I told her about Ray, yet she seemed not suppressed and I ran the phrase over and over in my head like a chant: There’s always tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow. So that is what I went with thinking… I am going to be with him tomorrow night. I see myself in the ornate hall mirror in the makeup that I replayed, thinking- ‘God Marcel loves this face.’ Every time I put on makeup it reminds me of my mom, I used to watch me bowed over her vanity, getting ready for dates with my father-daughter dates-and it calms me down.

Isn't it nice how we actually enjoy talking to each other now?" I said to her once on a trip home from college, after the bulk of the damage done in my teenage years had been allayed. "It is," she said. "You know what I realised? I've just never met someone like you." I've just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault like—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other's expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

Last night, when he had been showing her how to refasten the bowline, she had feigned incompetence at the simple knot. It was a schoolgirl’s trick, but the poor, honest man had been completely deceived. He’d stood behind her, with her in the circle of his arms and take her hands to guide them through the easy motions. Heat had flushed through her, and her knees had actually trembled at his closeness. A wave of dizziness had washed through her; she had wanted to collapse on the deck and pull him down on top of her. She’d gone still in his loose embrace, praying to every god she’d ever heard of that he would know what she so hotly desired and act on it. This, this was what she was supposed to feel about the man she was joined to, and had never felt at all! “Do you understand it now?” he’d asked her huskily. His hands on hers pulled the knot firm. “I do,” she’d replied. “I understand it completely now.” She hadn’t been speaking of knots at all. She’d dared herself to take half a step backward and press her body to his. She dared herself to turn in the circle of his arms and look up into his whiskery beloved face. Cowardice paralyzed her. She could not even form words. For a time that was infinitely brief and forever, he stood there, enclosing her in a warm, safe place. All around her, the night sounds of the Rain Wilds made a soft music of water and bird and insect calls. She could smell him, a male musky smell, “sweaty” as Sedric would have mocked it, but incredibly masculine and attractive to her. Enclosed by his embrace, she felt a part of his world. The deck under her feet, the railing of the ship, the night sky above her, and the man at her back connected her to something big and wonderful, something that was untamed and yet home to her. Then he had dropped his arms and stepped back from her. The night was warm and muggy, the insects chirred and buzzed, and she heard the night call of a gnat-chaser. But it had all seemed separate from her then. Last night, as now, she knew herself for the mousy, scholarly little Bingtown woman she undoubtedly was. She’d sold herself to Hest, prostituted out her ability to bear a child for the security and position that he had offered. She’d made the deal and signed on it. A Trader was only as good as his word, so the saying went. She’d given her word. What was it worth? Even if she took it back now, even if she broke it faithlessly, she’d still be a mousy, little Bingtown woman, not what she longed to be. She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed a childishly extravagant dream. In the dark circle of her arms, she closed her eyes and thought of Althea, wife to the captain of the Paragon. She’d seen that woman dashing about the deck barefoot, wearing loose trousers like a man. She’d seen her standing by her ship’s figurehead, the wind stirring her hair and a smile curving her lips as she exchanged some sort of jest with the ship’s boy. And then Captain Trell had bounded up the short ladder to the foredeck to join them there. She and the captain had moved without even looking at each other, like a needle drawn to a magnet, their arms lifting as if they were the halves of the god Sa becoming whole again. She’d thought her heart would break with envy. What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man who had to embrace you when he saw you, even if you’d just risen from a shared bed a few hours earlier? She tried to imagine herself as free as that Althea woman, running barefoot on the decks of the Tarman.

I suppose my unwavering devotion and love for my girlfriends motivated me to delve deeper into the realm of psychopathy and uncover the truth of what I experienced and managed to survive. And remember. Speelwalking. I can see myself wandering around on Barcelona streets, aware of danger but still unaware how large their web was and is. Infinite. Growing. Like Space. I feel compelled to share it with others. Timothy. Cannot. Timothy is dead. Age 16. In the Cagmayer house on the Prairie. What can I do? I tried my best and even more than I could. Devoted. Hoping in her return home. It seems that the three people I met in three consecutive years were all psychopaths from broken families, from psychopath parents. Perhaps nazi grandparents. Most likely. Fascist. Criminals. Juicy or not. This is the 21 ST century. “United colors.” “Of Benetton.” All the colors and all the “fasc-ion.” The mafia of short and evil people wasn’t only international as I thought. It is global. I only sensed it yet before. I survived a pandemic of Evil Eyes in Spain, in Europe. So far. On this planet.

Italians, he concluded, didn’t want their share of the cut for being white. They seemed not to care. They were looking to get to the next day. No wonder their music was so good, he thought, all that yelling and passion, all that opera. They got it, he thought. They understood it. Love. Food. Passion. Life’s short. Pass me a cigarette. Gimme that grappa.

Newton was a decidedly odd figure – brilliant beyond measure, but solitary, joyless, prickly to the point of paranoia, famously distracted (upon swinging his feet out of bed in the morning he would reportedly sometimes sit for hours, immobilized by the sudden rush of thoughts to his head), and capable of the most riveting strangeness. He built his own laboratory, the first at Cambridge, but then engaged in the most bizarre experiments. Once he inserted a bodkin – a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather – into his eye socket and rubbed it around ‘betwixt my eye and the bone as near to [the] backside of my eye as I could’ just to see what would happen. What happened, miraculously, was nothing – at least, nothing lasting. On another occasion, he stared at the Sun for as long as he could bear, to determine what effect it would have upon his vision. Again he escaped lasting damage, though he had to spend some days in a darkened room before his eyes forgave him. Set atop these odd beliefs and quirky traits, however, was the mind of a supreme genius-though even when working in conventional channels he often showed a tendency to peculiarity. As a student, frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics, he invented an entirely new form, the calculus, but then told no one about it for twenty-seven years. In like manner, he did work in optics that transformed our understanding of light and laid the foundation for the science of spectroscopy, and again chose not to share the results for three decades.

There is nothing quite like a real political whiz. Some adopt an inscrutable, almost somnolent demeanour and make you beg for their wisdom, while others come at you like a whirlwind. The effect in both cases is the same: even when you think they must be extracting certitude from guesses or cucumbers from sunbeams, you are captive, not only to the verbal artistry but to the weight of the movement, the sense that on these matters to which you are now privy the course of history depends, Politics being civil war by other means, it is fought with the same volumes of smoke and passion and ruthless brutality, and it leaves some of the same psychic wounds. All political environments - democratic, republican and monarchical - have this much in common: it is never more than a short walk in any direction to find someone who disagrees with the last person you spoke to, or who envies or disapproves or wants to thwart him, or who feels thwarted, threatened or misused by him. As our conversation in the Four Seasons concluded, my friend stubbed out the butt of his cigar. I still had three inches to smoke. I left with it and later that evening I met a consultant, also from the Democratic side, who tried to put me wise to the first man’s failings. To be frank, I was left not knowing whom to believe. The consultant told me that these days he thinks it impossible for the US political system to throw up people or parties of true character, vision or integrity. (A businessman from the Republican side once told me the same thing.) Rather, the system is now ideal for hacks, ‘yes men’ and fodder for lobbyists. Political thinking has become institutionalised and incapable of solving the country’s problems. The press has lost character in proportion to the politician, and accepts their values and arguments almost without question. He thought universal national service with a non-military option might be one way to spread the burden and rekindle a sense of shared responsibility.

Hello, ladies, I’m your uncle Devlin. Has Westhaven scared you witless with his fuming and fretting?” This fellow looked to be great fun, with a nice smile and kind green eyes. “Mama and Papa didn’t say anything about getting uncles for Christmas,” Amanda observed, but she was smiling back at the big uncle. The biggest uncle—they were all as tall as Papa. “Well, that’s because we’re a surprise,” the other dark-haired fellow said. “I’m your uncle Valentine, and we have an entire gaggle of aunties waiting out in the coach to spoil you rotten. Westhaven here is just out of sorts because Father Christmas gave him a headache for being naughty yesterday.” “I was not naughty.” The other two uncles thought this was quite funny, judging by their smiles. “There’s your problem,” said Uncle Devlin. “I’m thinking it’s a fine day for a pair of ladies to join their aunts for a ride in the traveling coach.” Uncle Gayle—it didn’t seem fair to call him by the same name as Fleur’s puppy—appeared to consider this. “For what purpose?” “To keep the peace. Emmie and I never haul out our big guns around the children,” said Uncle Devlin, which made no sense. “Do you like to play soldiers?” Fleur asked. Amanda appeared intrigued by the notion. She was forever galloping up hills and charging down banisters in pursuit of the French. Uncle Devlin’s brows knitted—he had wonderful dark eyebrows, much like Papa’s. “As a matter of fact, on occasion, if I’ve been an exceedingly good fellow, my daughter lets me join her in a game of soldiers.” “I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the business myself,” said Uncle Valentine. “I excel at the lightning charge and have been known to take even the occasional doll prisoner.” “Missus Wolverhampton would not like being a prisoner,” Fleur said, though Uncle Valentine was teasing—wasn’t he?” “Perhaps you gentlemen can arrange an assignation to play soldiers with our nieces on some other day,” Westhaven said. He sounded like his teeth hurt, which Fleur knew might be from the seasonal hazard of eating too much candy. “You can play too,” Fleur allowed, because it was Christmas, and one ought to be kind to uncles who strayed into one’s nursery. “We’ll let you be Wellington,” Amanda added, getting into the spirit of the day. “Which leaves me to be Blucher’s mercenaries,” Uncle Devlin said, “saving the day as usual.” “Oh, that’s brilliant.” Uncle Valentine wasn’t smiling now. “Leave your baby brother to be the infernal French again, will you? See if I write a waltz for your daughter’s come out, St. Just.” Uncle Gayle wasn’t frowning quite so mightily. In fact, he looked like he wanted to smile but was too grown-up to allow it. “Perhaps you ladies will gather up a few soldiers and fetch a doll or two. We’re going on a short journey to find your mama and papa, so we can all share Christmas with them.” Fleur noticed his slip, and clearly, Amanda had too—but it was the same slip Amanda had made earlier, and one Fleur was perfectly happy to let everybody make. Uncle Gayle had referred to their papa’s new wife not as their stepmama, but as their mama. What a fine thing that would be, if for Christmas they got a mama again for really and truly. Amanda fetched their dolls, Fleur grabbed their favorite storybook, and the uncles herded them from the nursery, all three grown men arguing about whose turn it was to be the blasted French. ***

Now they were lawyers and investment bankers, with faces creased and drawn by the skirmish of daily life. Others I’d known well, and as we inched perilously closer to the casket, our talk evidenced a shared fondness for Rob but also something else shared in our own receding dreams. There was Ty and his dermatology career, me and my struggles to publish a second novel, former history majors who were doing their best to remain in school forever. Nobody, it seemed, was making the money he’d thought he would make, inhabiting the home he’d thought he would inhabit, doing the thing he’d thought he would do in life. Nobody was fulfilling the dreams harbored on graduation day almost ten years earlier.

she looked admiringly at one of them, a woman in a very short skirt. She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts—it was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved—but the fat woman’s act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see.

Feelings and emotions as well as thoughts and opinions are evanescent; they change over time because they reflect our transient being. Feelings and emotions are judgments that spring from the hidden source of the unconscious mind, and only take on power whenever the conscious mind acknowledges them, and then chooses to convey an idea in some format that shares the rhythm of a person’s own being with another person. Unuttered thoughts and inexpressible feelings experience a short half-life. Without proper nourishment, voiceless thoughts wither and indefinable feelings wane. Lucid thoughts and inexpressible feelings form imperceptible currents that propel us along in our inimitable journey exploring the tributaries of the stream of life.

In the dim light he could see tears shimmering on her pale cheeks. He bent his head to catch their saltiness with the tip of his tongue. “Ah, Blue Eyes, ka taikay, ka taikay, don’t cry. Has my hand upon you ever brought pain?” “No,” she whispered brokenly. Determined to finish what he had begun, Hunter swept her slender body into his arms and strode to the bed. Lowering her gently onto the fur, he stretched out beside her and gathered her close, his manhood throbbing with urgency against the confining leather of his pants. He half expected her to struggle, and perhaps if she had, he could have continued, his one thought to consummate their marriage, to put her fears behind them and ease the ache in his loins. But instead of fighting him, she wrapped her slender arms around his neck and clung to him, so rigid with fear that she felt brittle, her limbs quivering almost uncontrollably. In a voice thick with tears, she said, “Hunter--would you do one thing for me? Just one small thing. Please?” He splayed a hand on her back and felt the wild hammering of her heart. “What thing, Blue Eyes?” “Would you get it over with quickly? Please? I won’t ever ask again, I swear it. Just this time, please?” Hunter buried a smile in her hair and closed his eyes, tightening his arms around her. His father’s voice whispered. Fear is not like dust on a leaf that can be washed away by a gentle rain. The words no sooner came to him than a dozen forgotten memories did as well. For an instant the years rolled away, and Hunter saw himself running hand in hand with Willow by the Stream through a meadow of red daisies, their laughter ringing across the windswept grass, their eyes shining with love as they drank in the sight of one another. He remembered so many things in that instant--the love, yes, but mostly he remembered the friendship he and Willow had shared, the trust, the silliness, the laughter. Ah, yes, the laughter…He and his little blue-eyes had laughed together so few times that Hunter had difficulty recalling when they had. Suddenly he knew that without the laughter, their loving would fall far short of what it should be. Especially for her. In a voice that rasped with frustration as well as tender amusement, Hunter said, “You have such a great want for me that we must hurry, yes?

But surely, if Fergus had actually spoken to Cooper, he wouldn’t have kept mum on that little detail. Who are you kidding? The man thrived on meddling, especially where his beloved McCrae girls were concerned. That would also explain why he’d so conveniently disappeared once Cooper had taken the floor. And why he hadn’t come back out carrying the shotgun they kept handy in the back. “Uncle Gus” was all she said. He smiled briefly. “I thought that was a better bet than your chief-of-police brother. I’ve already guessed Fergus didn’t tell you about our little conversation.” She shook her head. “How long ago?” “A week. Not so long as all that.” Long enough, she thought, already mentally rehearsing the conversation she’d be having with her uncle the minute she got back to the pub. “We only had the one chat.” “One was apparently all that was needed. What else did he share with you?” She immediately held up her hand. “On second thought, don’t tell me. I’ll have that little chat with him directly.” “He wants you to be happy,” Cooper said. “And he thought encouraging a man I haven’t seen in over a year, a man who was my former employer and nothing more, to hop on a plane and bop on up this side of the equator to see me was what would make me happy?” Cooper’s smile deepened, and that twinkle sparked to life in his eyes again, making them so fiercely blue it caught at her breath. “He might have mentioned that you’d be less than welcoming of a surprise visit. He also said if I had a prayer of your still being here when I arrived, a surprise visit was pretty much my only shot. And how the frosty reception I was sure to receive was simply your automatic defense system, and how I should just ignore all that and ‘press my suit’ anyway, as I believed he called it.” Kerry closed her eyes, willed her short fuse to wink out before it had the chance to get dangerously lit up. Yep, too late. She turned abruptly and moved to go around Cooper, aiming herself back toward the lot where the truck was parked. Cooper’s hand shot out and took hold of her arm, releasing it the moment she stopped and turned to look at him, her balance intact. “His heart was in the right place, Starfish. He warned me. It was my choice to come here and risk it anyway. Don’t go unloading all the frustration you’re feeling about my unexpected arrival, not to mention the unfortunate public spectacle I made of this whole thing, on your poor uncle.

A filmmaker made a short documentary about this happy-go-lucky teenager on death row, called My Last Days. It showed Zach living happily, hanging out with his family, and playing music. Everybody loved Zach. When you see the footage, you can’t help but like him. As you watch him laugh and love and sing, you catch yourself forgetting: this kid is about to die. Zach’s family tells the camera how knowing he would die has helped them realize what matters in life and to find true meaning. “It’s really simple, actually,” Zach says. “Just try and make people happy.” As the 22-minute film closes, Zach looks into the camera, smiling, and says, “I want to be remembered as the kid who went down fighting, and didn’t really lose.” Not long after he said those words, Zach passed away. When Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley of Upworthy saw the film, they thought, This is a story that needs to be heard. Now just over a year old, Upworthy has become quite popular. In fact, it recently hit 30 million monthly visitors, making it, according to the Business Insider, the fastest-growing media company in history.* (Seven-year-old BuzzFeed was serving 50 million monthly visitors at the time.) The Zach Sobiech story illustrates how Upworthy used rapid feedback to do it: According to Upworthy’s calculations, My Last Days had the potential to reach a lot of people. But so far, few had seen it. The filmmaker had posted the documentary under the headline, “My Last Days: Meet Zach Sobiech.” Though descriptive, it was suboptimal packaging. In the ADD world of Facebook and Twitter, it’s no surprise that few people clicked. Upworthy reposted the video with a new title: “We Lost This Kid 80 Years Too Early. I’m Glad He Went Out with a Bang,” and shared it with a small number of its subscribers, then waited to see who clicked.

an attractive middle-aged school teacher who was taking time out after a few hours gardening and who, even in these relaxed, unguarded moments was never far from that school-marmish neatness which she carried from her classroom and which, in the early years of our marriage, we made good use of when she would play the role of the prim schoolteacher taking it from the rough-hewn but sensitive laggard at the back of the class, bent over the table, in the hallway, wherever – neither of us claiming there was anything original about the fantasy but both of us stepping into our roles with such gusto that our energies carried us into a place where we found ourselves overtaken with a greedy appetite for each other, sometimes so intense that Mairead said she thought there was something cosmic about it and that she felt capable of fucking the world into redemption her own words fucking our way past the pettiness and desperation which sometimes overcame us in our day-to-day lives, so that twisted together in the act of love we found our way towards that one molten moment in which only that which was true and unsullied in us would survive, everything else burned away, leaving us truly naked with all our senses open to giving the best of ourselves to each other and to the world we had created around us, something which thankfully, happened often enough back then to allow us now, in middle age to sit across the table from each other and reflect that we’d had our proper share of such passion, we had not short-changed that part of ourselves while all this comes to me now in such an unbroken torrent sitting here at this table

As I get older and navigate the ups and downs of life, I’m constantly rendered speechless when I think about the sacrifices my parents made. My father came to the United States to help my grandmother; he knew nothing about this new land and had to start his life all over. He used to share stories of those first few months in the states, and there are a couple I always remember when I’m confronted with moments of confusion and uncertainty.

He was presented to her as Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister of England. Kassandra stiffened as he bent over her hand. Mercifully, he released her swiftly but then proceeded to speak with exaggerated enunciation as though he presumed “foreign” and “slow” were synonymous. “I do hope your stay will be pleasant, Your Highness.” “Thank you, Prime Minister, I am quite assured that it will be. England is a delightful conjunction of seeming conflicts and contradictions, don’t you think?” Perceval frowned, taken by surprise and unsure how to respond. “Well, as to that-“ “After all, the culture that has produced that astonishing novel Sense and Sensibility and Lord Byron’s…ummm…affecting work within the space of just a few short months can hardly be considered merely> a self-aggrandizing island with delusions of empire, can it?” “I suppose not; that is to say?” “Do excuse us, Prime Minister,” Alex interjected smoothly. “I am sure you will understand there are so many waiting to meet Her Highness.” As he guided her toward the next eager greeter, Alex murmured, “Pray do try to remember we are not actually attempting to incite war with England.” Kassandra shrugged, feeling better since she had set down that vile Perceval. “Didn’t you suspect the Prime Minister of plotting an invasion of Akora just last year?” Her brother cast her a sharp look. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.” “For pity’s sake…” “All right, yes I did, but he was soundly discouraged by the Prince Regent himself. There is no reason to have any further concern in that regard.” Kassandra did not answer. She had her own thoughts on the subject and was not ye ready to share them. The introductions continued. Too soon, her head throbbed and the small of her back ached, but she kept her smile firmly in place. When the gong sounded for dinner, she resisted the urge to sag with relief.

He was presented to her as Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister of England. Kassandra stiffened as he bent over her hand. Mercifully, he released her swiftly but then proceeded to speak with exaggerated enunciation as though he presumed “foreign” and “slow” were synonymous. “I do hope your stay will be pleasant, Your Highness.” “Thank you, Prime Minister, I am quite assured that it will be. England is a delightful conjunction of seeming conflicts and contradictions, don’t you think?” Perceval frowned, taken by surprise and unsure how to respond. “Well, as to that-“ “After all, the culture that has produced that astonishing novel Sense and Sensibility and Lord Byron’s…ummm…affecting work within the space of just a few short months can hardly be considered merely a self-aggrandizing island with delusions of empire, can it?” “I suppose not; that is to say?” “Do excuse us, Prime Minister,” Alex interjected smoothly. “I am sure you will understand there are so many waiting to meet Her Highness.” As he guided her toward the next eager greeter, Alex murmured, “Pray do try to remember we are not actually attempting to incite war with England.” Kassandra shrugged, feeling better since she had set down that vile Perceval. “Didn’t you suspect the Prime Minister of plotting an invasion of Akora just last year?” Her brother cast her a sharp look. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.” “For pity’s sake…” “All right, yes I did, but he was soundly discouraged by the Prince Regent himself. There is no reason to have any further concern in that regard.” Kassandra did not answer. She had her own thoughts on the subject and was not ye ready to share them. The introductions continued. Too soon, her head throbbed and the small of her back ached, but she kept her smile firmly in place. When the gong sounded for dinner, she resisted the urge to sag with relief.

Your thoughts are like broken stars, it appears for short period of time. So note them and share with the intellectuals who cut and polish them like diamonds.

Sean checked his watch, grimaced, and lengthened his stride down the hallway. He’d make it to the high school—but only if he skirted around town instead of cutting through. It was 12:40 p.m. and the downtown streets would be clogged with motorists battling for lunch hour parking. He was halfway down the granite steps when he spotted Dave and Evelyn standing beside his car in the lot reserved for official use. He raised an eyebrow at the twin smiles of angelic innocence on their faces. “What are you two doing, camped out here?” “That should be obvious,” his secretary replied. “You tipped your hand when you canceled your lunch with Ferrucci and the oh-so-friendly developers. So Dave and I decided we might as well share the ride. No point in taking separate cars when we can carpool.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “You want a lift to the deli for sandwiches? Fine, hop on in.” Evelyn made a clucking noise with her tongue. Her pink curls shook slightly. “Sean, we’re your friends. If we’re willing to admit to unholy curiosity, then you should, too.” Dave merely nodded in agreement, wisely holding his tongue. A good thing, too. These days, Sean’s temper had a real short fuse, wired to explode. He didn’t want to throttle his best friend in the town hall parking lot. Sean had thought it would be easier not to see Lily, but he’d been wrong. Just knowing she was near had him craving even a glimpse of her. It was a gnawing hunger that nothing could appease . . . except her.

He thought of partners as people who had come together out of a complex set of shared values and interests, not out of short-term economic convenience.

A typical Celestine will devote a large proportion of their time to passing through the inscribed sectors of the planet studying the writings, either alone or accompanied by companions with whom to share comments. This is a favourite pastime among them, and as they travel towards the boundaries of the inscribed regions they can watch the ongoing work of those Celestines that have been chosen to record their ideas – tirelessly twisting, pausing to gather energy, then exerting themselves again; painstakingly working the same patch of dust several thousand times over to shape each individual furrow; to capture, symbol by symbol, the knowledge they have contributed to the Celestine corpus. There is great pride and precision, as well as immense labour, in their toil. Before they commence work, the piece of ground that will house the writing will be chosen very carefully for its aspect. Then, the most favourable angle to the light will be calculated, for the orientation of the wording. The language used is of the most poetic and grandiose sort, quite different from the vernacular, and the symbols themselves are embellished with flourishes, extravagances and curlicues that are unique to the creator. Celestines love to observe this work, which constitutes the pinnacle of their art and of their ceaseless thought-endeavours, and embodies their very reason for being.

WHAT IS IT, exactly, that people are really afraid of when they say they don’t like change? There is the discomfort of being confused or the extra work or stress the change may require. For many people, changing course is also a sign of weakness, tantamount to admitting that you don’t know what you are doing. This strikes me as particularly bizarre—personally, I think the person who can’t change his or her mind is dangerous. Steve Jobs was known for changing his mind instantly in the light of new facts, and I don’t know anyone who thought he was weak. Managers often see change as a threat to their existing business model—and, of course, it is. In the course of my life, the computer industry has moved from mainframes to minicomputers to workstations to desktop computers and now to iPads. Each machine had a sales, marketing, and engineering organization built around it, and thus the shift from one to the next required radical changes to the organization. In Silicon Valley, I have seen the sales forces of many computer manufacturers fight to maintain the status quo, even as their resistance to change caused their market share to be gobbled up by rivals—a short-term view that sank many companies. One good example is Silicon Graphics, whose sales force was so accustomed to selling large, expensive machines that they fiercely resisted the transition to more economical models. Silicon Graphics still exists, but I rarely hear about them anymore.

The hand that touched my shoulder was my anchor, and I gladly turned into his embrace. He too understood the grief of loss, with his father’s death occurring shortly before my arrival. He didn’t ask what I’d been doing. He looked around at the tidy room and at the words on the page and silently sat down beside me, wrapping me in his arms.  He held me without saying a word, silently stroking my back, bending occasionally to plant a gentle kiss on the top of my head, letting me know that he was there for as long as I needed him.  Eventually I pulled away and managed a smile to reassure him that I wasn’t re-thinking my decision. He smiled back and reached for my hand.  “I know it may no be customary. My parents kept separate bedchambers throughout their marriage, but how would ye feel about moving into my bedchamber? I doona like the thought of ye being so far away. I want to fall asleep each night with ye next to me, wrapped in my arms.” I stood and pulled him toward the doorway. “I would love to. I’d already asked Mary this morning if she would have someone move my belongings across the hall. In my time, it would be uncustomary for us not to share a room. Besides, I don’t want to be alone tonight.

Wherein do evangelical Churchmen fall short of their great predecessors in the last century I Let us look this question fairly in the face. Let us come to particulars. They fall short in doctrine. They are neither so full nor so distinct, nor so bold, nor so uncompromising. They are afraid of strong statements. They are too ready to fence, and guard, and qualify all their teaching, as if Christ’s gospel was a little baby, and could not be trusted to walk alone. They fall short as preachers. They have neither the fervour, nor fire, nor thought, nor illustration, nor directness, nor holy boldness, nor grand simplicity of language which characterized the last century. Above all, they fall short in life. They are not men of one thing, separate from the world, unmistakable men of God, ministers of Christ everywhere, indifferent to man’s opinion, regardless who is offended, if they only preach truth, always about their Father’s business, as Grimshaw and Fletcher used to be. They do not make the world feel that a prophet is among them, and carry about with them their Master’s presence, as Moses when he came down from the mount. I write these things with sorrow. I desire to take my full share of blame. But I do believe I am speaking the truth.

By Thursday the news had leaked out and a group of photographers waited for her outside the hospital. “People thought Diana only came in at the end,” says Angela. “Of course it wasn’t like that at all, we shared it all.” In the early hours of Thursday, August 23 the end came. When Adrian died, Angela went next door to telephone Diana. Before she could speak Diana said: “I’m on my way.” Shortly after she arrived they said the Lord’s Prayer together and then Diana left her friends to be alone for one last time. “I don’t know of anybody else who would have thought of me first,” says Angela. Then the protective side of Diana took over. She made up a bed for her friend, tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. While she was asleep Diana knew that it would be best if Angela joined her family on holiday in France. She packed her suitcase for her and telephoned her husband in Montpellier to tell him that Angela was flying out as soon as she awoke. Then Diana walked upstairs to see the baby ward, the same unit where her own sons were born. She felt that it was important to see life as well as death, to try and balance her profound sense of loss with a feeling of rebirth. In those few months Diana had learned much about herself, reflecting the new start she had made in life. It was all the more satisfying because for once she had not bowed to the royal family’s pressure. She knew that she had left Balmoral without first seeking permission from the Queen and in the last days there was insistence that she return promptly. The family felt that a token visit would have sufficed and seemed uneasy about her display of loyalty and devotion which clearly went far beyond the traditional call of duty. Her husband had never known much regard for her interests and he was less than sympathetic to the amount of time she spent caring for her friend. They failed to appreciate that she had made a commitment to Adrian Ward-Jackson, a commitment she was determined to keep. It mattered not whether he was dying of AIDS, cancer or some other disease, she had given her word to be with him at the end. She was not about to breach his trust. At that critical time she felt that her loyalty to her friends mattered as much as her duty towards the royal family. As she recalled to Angela: “You both need me. It’s a strange feeling being wanted for myself. Why me?” While the Princess was Angela’s guardian angel at Adrian’s funeral, holding her hand throughout the service, it was at his memorial service where she needed her friend’s shoulder to cry on. It didn’t happen. They tried hard to sit together for the service but Buckingham Palace courtiers would not allow it. As the service at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge was a formal occasion, the royal family had to sit in pews on the right, the family and friends of the deceased on the left. In grief, as with so much in Diana’s life, the heavy hand of royal protocol prevented the Princess from fulfilling this very private moment in the way she would have wished. During the service Diana’s grief was apparent as she mourned the man whose road to death had given her such faith in herself. The Princess no longer felt that she had to disguise her true feelings from the world. She could be herself rather than hide behind a mask. Those months nurturing Adrian had reordered her priorities in life. As she wrote to Angela shortly afterwards: “I reached a depth inside which I never imagined was possible. My outlook on life has changed its course and become more positive and balanced.

These are questions I tell my students to ask themselves as they set out on their path in the “real” world: Am I spending enough time on looking for, finding, and working toward winning a great job? Am I constantly refining and improving my skills? What can I continue to get better and more competitive at? Do I believe that I am working harder than everyone else? If not, what else can I be doing? What are the people who are competing with me doing that I am not doing? Am I doing everything I can—every single day—to stay in “career shape”? If not, what else should I be doing? One piece of advice I think they should ignore is the value of being a “people person.” No one cares if you are a people person. Have a point of view, and share it meaningfully, thoughtfully, and with conviction.

In addition to improving R&D and engineering processes, we pushed hard for our business leaders to treat R&D more strategically. Our individual business units used to decide how much to spend on R&D based on previous budgets and what they thought their proper “share” of available money was, regardless of the impact on current and future projects. We centralized R&D budgeting at the business level, analyzing potential projects and channeling more funds to those we thought would yield the biggest business impact. In our Aerospace business, we also began choosing new projects in ways that would balance long- and short-term growth. Most new product development had entailed what we called “long-cycle” projects. We’d invest in designing a revolutionary new cockpit design, but it might be six to eight years before the project was finished and sales started coming in. Beginning around 2005, we balanced these kinds of projects with new, “short-cycle” ones—products that customers might purchase within months, not years (incremental enhancements to existing aircraft, for instance, rather than entirely new platforms for new aircrafts). Then we started adding the salespeople to support it, giving it an even bigger boost in 2010. Together, the combination of short- and long-cycle projects would allow us to realize steadier, more predictable growth. Over the years, our shorter-cycle products have grown, and today they are a highly profitable, $1 billion business.

the data was plotted on mathematical diagrams that I invented. These revealed favorable situations and let me quickly specify the appropriate trades. Each day’s closing prices for a convertible and its stock were plotted as a color-coded dot on that particular convertible’s diagram. The diagrams were prepared with curves that were drawn by a computer from my formula and showed the “fair price” of the convertible. The beauty of this was that I could immediately see from the picture whether we had a profitable trading opportunity. If the dot representing the data was above the curve it meant the convertible was overpriced, leading to a possible hedge: Short the convertible, buy the stock. A data point close to or on the curve indicated the price was fair, which meant liquidate an existing position, do not enter a new one. Below the curve meant buy the convertible, short the stock. The distance of the dot from the curve showed me how much profit was available. If we thought it met our target, we tried to put on the trade the next day. The slope of the curve near the data point on my diagram gave me the hedge ratio, which is the number of shares of common stock to use versus each convertible bond, share of preferred, warrant, or option.

Only a few short weeks ago, we shared the glory of man's first sight of the world as God sees it, as a single sphere reflecting light in the darkness. ... In that moment of surpassing technological triumph, men turned their thoughts toward home and humanity, seeing in that far perspective that man's destiny on earth is not divisible.

The Test of Death -Would you believe someone you trust and swear to tell you the truth? -No -Why? -He may say what he thinks is the truth, which is not so, and I believe that the truth is not given, but taken, snatched, you have to fight to get it, the truth is not free. – We sent you to carry out a dangerous, sensitive task, a matter of life or death, and we sent someone you know is a deceiver and a liar to share it with you, we do not trust him either, but we need him? Do you accept it with him? -Maybe yes and maybe no -How? -Trust here has no place, even if I trust him, I may not implement it with him, and I may implement it with someone I do not trust, everyone in a certain circumstance has the ability of betrayal and treachery, as they have the capacity for honesty and sincerity, I will not trust anyone with a dangerous operation like this, but I will trust the plan; if the plan had taken all possibilities into consideration, including the possibilities of treachery, and if we put alternative plans in case of emergency, I would trust the plan itself, and implement it with those whose presence is required. -What is brainwashing? -It is a radical transformation of ideas in a short period of time, without a convincing reason or explanation. – How does the process work? -The primitive method is by coercive means, such as physical or psychological torture, to implant thoughts directly into the victim’s head. -What is the most advanced method? -By manipulating the surrounding environment of the victim, and passing ideas into his brain indirectly, to convince him that it is the product of chance, or for supernatural reasons such as your pre-written destiny, or that God has chosen you for this moment, and the more convincing the environment, and the more serendipitous, the quality of the process better. -How do you know you are being brainwashed? -I watch my thoughts, if I suddenly decide to switch them without a clear and convincing reason, and within a short period of time, then I have to study the changes in the environment around me, new people, targeted ads on social media, random videos, and everything around me seem to happen by chance It is directly or indirectly related to new ideas. Then research and focus, analyze and elicit, to try and discover the process. -What is long-term brainwashing? -A traditional brainwashing process, but it takes a relatively long time, such as repeating the idea to be cultivated weekly instead of repeating it daily, and this happens if the victim is intelligent and careful observation, so the process is done carefully and slowly so as not to discover it. -Which is more powerful, short-term or long-term brainwashing? -The short; the mind quickly ignores, when passing the idea in separate periods of time, it ignores the old ones, and buries them away in its memory, thus their impact decreases, so we are forced to plant the idea a thousand times instead of a hundred, to increase the momentum and compensate for the lack of influence of the old ideas, and with the presence of spaced periods of time when the process takes a long time, and the chance of discovering the target becomes greater. -What is a mind injection, and how is it done? -It is the process of implanting the ideas that are required to be implanted in it, in direct or indirect ways, and each has its own method and method of injection, some of them rush and some of them take longer than the necessary time, and in both cases, the injection does not take its desired effect, but it is possible that the effect is completely reversed. -How do you know that the injection process is going well? -The new and reprehensible reactions of the victim, especially the spontaneous ones. Which is issued near the end of the injection process.

A memoir in which the author shares his impressive journey of emigrating to the United States to escape a difficult life in an impoverished Nigerian village. Born into an extremely poor family in Nigeria, ‘Deji Ayoade had early memories of wanting to come to America to do better for himself. For years, he dreamed about having a bright future in the United States. At seven, he promised his mother that one day he would be a doctor in America and take her and his siblings away from their dangerous and impoverished existence. By the age of thirty-three, ‘Deji had been in the United States for five years and was living his dream. He had earned a master’s degree, married and had a child, been recruited into the Navy, and become a US citizen. He makes good on the promise to his mother and brings her, his sister, and his sister’s baby to the United States. UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream is a well-structured, compelling memoir written by a determined man with big dreams, ambitious goals, and the strength to never lose sight of where he is headed. Commitment, intelligence, and drive contribute to his fulfilling what he deems to be his purpose in life. His accomplishments in the armed services are nothing short of admirable. Ayoade draws readers into the 1980s culture of the poorer regions of Nigeria with vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of areas in which they lived. His credible recreation of scenes reveals insight into the civilization that had considerable influence on him. Family dynamics also play a significant role in Ayoade’s life. His recollection of his father’s contradictory behaviors both confuse and enlighten him. His fond memories of his grandmother—the family member he trusted the most—are heartfelt and touching. While coming to the United States offers many positive experiences for Ayoade, it doesn’t come without problems, and one that the author talks about with deep emotion and candidness is racism. Thoughtful in the way he acknowledges possible differences of perspectives, he describes how it feels to be looked at differently. One scene in particular demonstrates just how prejudiced and insensitive people can be when it comes to racial biases. Ayoade writes from the heart with emotion and honesty that demonstrate his passion for what he does in life. His ability to weave together a cohesive story from so many disparate fragments is remarkable. His religious faith and commitment to never-ending improvement for himself are inspiring and a basis for being a role model for others. UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream–author ‘Deji Ayoade’s reflections on overcoming enormous obstacles and emigrating from Nigeria to the United States–is candid, heartwarming, and inspirational.

I’ve just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

I want to share with you the thought that chemistry provides the infrastructure of the modern world. There is hardly an item of everyday life that is not furnished by it or based on the materials it has created. Take away chemistry and its functional arm the chemical industry and you take away the metals and other materials of construction, the semiconductors of computation and communication, the fuels of heating, power generation, and transport, the fabrics of clothing and furnishings, and the artificial pigments of our blazingly colourful world. Take away its contributions to agriculture and you let people die, for the industry provides the fertilizers and pesticides that enable dwindling lands to support rising populations. Take away its pharmaceutical wing and you allow pain through the elimination of anaesthetics and deny people the prospect of recovery by the elimination of medicines. Imagine a world where there are no products of chemistry (including pure water): you are back before the Bronze Age, into the Stone Age: no metals, no fuels except wood, no fabrics except pelts, no medicines except herbs, no methods of computation except with your fingers, and very little food.

In a short essay called ‘Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution’, Öcalan (2013) outlines the core tenets of his sociological/historico-philosophical writings. Öcalan’s fundamental claim is that ‘mainstream civilisation’, commences with the enslavement of ‘Woman’, through what he calls ‘Housewifisation’ (2013). As such, it is only through a ‘struggle against the foundations of this ruling system’ (2013), that not only women, but also men can achieve freedom, and slavery can be destroyed. Any liberation of life, for Öcalan, can only be achieved through a Woman’s revolution. In his own words: ‘If I am to be a freedom fighter, I cannot just ignore this: woman’s revolution is a revolution within a revolution’ (2013). For Öcalan, the Neolithic era is crucial, as the heyday of the matricentric social order. The figure of the Woman is quite interesting, and is not just female gender, but rather a condensation of all that is ‘equal’ and ‘natural’ and ‘social’, and its true significance is seen as a mode of social governance, which is non-hierarchical, non-statist, and not premised upon accumulation (2013). This can only be fully seen, through the critique of ‘civilisation’ which is equally gendered and equated with the rise of what he calls the ‘dominant male’ and hegemonic sexuality. These forms of power as coercive are embodied in the institution of masculine civilisation. And power in the matriarchal structures are understood more as authority, they are natural/organic. What further characterised the Neolithic era is the ways through which society was based upon solidarity and sharing – no surplus in production, and a respect for nature. In such a social order, Öcalan finds through his archaeology of ‘sociality’ the traces of an ecological ontology, in which nature is ‘alive and animated’, and thus no different from the people themselves. The ways in which Öcalan figures ‘Woman’, serves as metaphor for the Kurdish nation-as-people (not nation-state). In short, if one manages to liberate woman, from the hegemonic ‘civilisation’ of ‘the dominant male’, one manages to liberate, not only the Kurds, but the world. It is only on this basis that the conditions of possibility for a genuine global democratic confederalism, and a solution to the conflicts of the Middle East can be thinkable. Once it is thinkable, then we can imagine a freedom to organise, to be free from any conception of ownership (of property, persons, or the self), a freedom to show solidarity, to restore balance to life, nature, and other humans through ‘love’, not power. In Rojava, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Öcalan’s political thoughts are being implemented, negotiated and practised. Such a radical experiment, which connects theory with practice has not been seen on this scale, ever before, and although the Rojava administration, the Democratic Union Party, is different from the PKK, they share the same political leader, Öcalan. Central to this experiment are commitments to feminism, ecology and justice.

Keith was sophisticated enough to understand the inherent risk of options; buying options wasn't as dangerous as short selling, because your potential for loss was capped, because you could always let the options expire. You paid a fee for the right to buy a certain number of shares of a stock at a certain price by a certain date. Sold in 100-share blocks, the fee was based on demand, which related to where people thought the stock price was going. Because the fee you paid for those 100-share blocks was a fraction of the pegged price, you could leverage yourself into a very large position with a relatively small amount of money. If the price went up, you could make a lot; if it went down, your options were worthless, but you only lost what you initially paid. A full 80 percent of the options bought by retail traders like him expired worthless; but when you only had a little to work with, there was no better way to shoot for the moon. Fifty-three thousand dollars was a lot, considering he had a two-year-old, a house, a wife. It was as much money as his dad earned in a year when he was younger. But Keith was that sure, even when the stock was hovering around $5 a share, that he had found value that others had missed.

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