Shock Absorber Quotes

People who love horror films are people with boring lives... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.

Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.

frog. It was this spongelike rubber cushion that absorbed the first terrific shock of a thousand-pound horse galloping over a hard surface at high speed.

When the gates of mockery and abuse is opened, the heart becomes a shock absorber

That is one great thing about having someone by your side. They are a shock absorber to the madness of experience.

Juliette," he says. He touches my hand so gently it startles me. "Did you notice? it seems I am immune to your gift." He studies my eyes. "Isn't that incredible? Did you notice"? he asks again. "When you tried to escape? did you feel it...? Warner who misses absolutely nothing. Warner who absorbs every single detail. Of course he knows. But I'm shocked by the tenderness in his voice. The sincerity with which he wants to know. He's like a feral dog, crazed and wild, thirsty for chaos, simultaneously aching for recognition and acceptance. Love.

See confusion as confusion. Acknowledge suffering as suffering. Feel pain and sorrow and divisiveness. Experience anger or fear or shock for what they are. But you don't have to think of them as evil - as intrinsically bad, as needing to be destroyed or driven from our midst. On the contrary, they need to be absorbed, healed, made whole. (15)

A fortunate birth, in other words, is a shock absorber." -The Thought Experiment

This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forward.

The kiss was so consuming that Nick got lost in it, all his senses absorbed by it. It was still crazy to think this was the Doc he was kissing, to think he was getting turned on just sitting here and kissing Kelly. He would have to pole-vault over that hurdle too, because this was too damn good to pass up just because it was weird.

For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.

Deep and liquid markets in a country’s domestic economy are the essential shock absorbers through which the perilous waters of international financial integration can be navigated.

Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.

A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. Mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness is not enough. Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence.

I was dizzy in that room. I felt faint with disbelief. I held on to the seat of my chair to stay upright. I knew what was going on, but I couldn’t absorb any of it.

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests… I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable). Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork. Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius… I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known. First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit

Basically people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over, you’re reassured to see that you’re still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That’s the real reason we have horror films—they act as shock absorbers—and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination. And I bet you’d see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news, right?

Memory, both individual and collective, turns out to be the greatest shock absorber of all.

On the road of life, God sometimes allows you to come upon a pothole. Your faith is your shock absorber.

SHOCK ABSORBERS Veterans scream in their dreams, reliving nightmares so that we can sleep peacefully

To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only "give," but also stability or "weight.

Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered. Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.

Often, it is this anguish of parting - the death of a loved one, the breaking apart of a deep relationship, even the growing up of our children - that propels us into the search for a reality that will never let us down; so this opening passage illustrates, through the experience of Maitreyi, the state of seriousness, of being shocked into alertness, that makes one ready to absorb spiritual insight.

At the same time, there’s no substitute for constant study to master one’s craft. Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems.

But while the residents were shocked by the violence, they were also often surprised by the mundaneness of it all. Discovered the extent of perversity the heart is capable of as they sat at home with nothing to do, and found that it was possible, faced with the stench of unimaginable evil, for a human being to grow bored, yawn, be absorbed by the problem of a missing sock, by neighborly irritations, to feel hunger skipping like a little mouse inside a tummy and return, once again, to the pressing matter of what to eat.... There they were, the most commonplace of them, those quite mismatched with the larger-than-life questions, caught up in the mythic battles of past vs. present, justice vs. injustice—the most ordinary swept up in extraordinary hatred, because extraordinary hatred was, after all, a commonplace event.

Both Nazi Germany and the United States reduced their out-groups, Jews and African-Americans, respectively, to an undifferentiated mass of nameless, faceless scapegoats, the shock absorbers of the collective fears and setbacks of each nation.

the brain doesn’t actually sit inside the skull; it floats, protected by a natural shock absorber called cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF for short. CSF is produced at a rate of about two cups per day from inside the brain’s deep, hidden chambers: the ventricles.

there’s no substitute for constant study to master one’s craft. Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead. History lights the often dark path ahead; even if it’s a dim light, it’s better than none. If you can’t be additive as a leader, you’re just like a potted plant in the corner of a hotel lobby: you look pretty, but you’re not adding substance to the organization’s mission.

I knew that they were about to attack the man and I was both afraid and angry, repelled and fascinated. I both wanted it and feared the consequences, was outraged and angered at what I saw and yet surged with fear; not for the man or of the consequences of an attack, but of what the sight of violence might release in me. And beneath it all there boiled up all the shock-absorbing phrases that I had learned all my life. I seemed to totter on the edge of a great dark hole.

I know that sometimes things should be left in the past, that knowing isn't always better. Sometimes the truth is so horrible that it must be uncovered in bits and pieces, snippets here and there, absorbed slowly, as the whole of it at once is simply too shocking to bear. And sometimes the truth changes everything...

Be a real friend to those you love. It will give you the absorbers to overcome the shocks of love when they come.

The relation between the white and black races in Africa in many ways resembles the relation between the two sexes. If the one of the two sexes were told that they did not play any greater part in the life of the other sex than this other sex plays within their own existence, they would be shocked and hurt. […] If they (white people) had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease. If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you. Probably in Natives circles, stories are passing about, and being repeated, which prove the all-absorbing interest of the white people in the Kikuyu or Kavirondo, and their complete dependence upon them.

You’re the shock absorber. From the Titans’ point of view, you stop the masses from realising the extent of their subjugation. You relieve them of the need to exercise raw financial and political power in the protection of their interests where those interests collide with the law. But…you also protect ordinary humans from the consequences of that subjugation as best you can. Yours is an equivocal profession. But I hear you’re not entirely an asshole.

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels the rage being taken in and pacified. She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly. - Black Cat

We live and work with a divided consciousness. It is a beautiful enough shock to fall in love with another adult, to feel the possibility of unbearable sorrow at the loss of that other, essential, personality, expressed just so, that particular touch. But love of an infant is of a different order. It is twinned love, all absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages. It is uncomfortably close to self-erasure, and in the face of it one's fat ambitions, desperations, private icons, and urges fall away into a dreamlike BEFORE that haunts and forces itself into the present with tough persistence.

When I saw them in Africa, I thought these birds were the greatest fliers of all. Hardly beating their wings, they fly for hours, swooping upwards on air currents with no sign of physical effort. But when they land, they pitch forward on their stubby legs without stopping. They skid along on their bellies, their necks straining to absorb the shock of the landing. Their beaks dig into the sand and they collide with anything in their path. Quite often they break their wings or beaks or spines and remain for the rest of their lives in the scrubby thickets not far from where they crash. The crippled birds sit there blind, paralyzed or in shock, and struggle slowly back and forth to their nests. Some hop on one leg, some drag their crippled wings behind them like broken umbrellas. I wonder whether they ever envy their brothers soaring in the air or if they're glad to be grounded and past their trial.

One should not grow attached to other people, Doctor,” said Margarete, when he came to the door, and he didn’t know if she was speaking for him or for herself. Her eyes were red, and he wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t think of what to say. He had thought he was inured to death by then, even prided himself on the calmness with which he absorbed the news of the most recent passing. He who had once stared in shock at the frozen soldier without a jaw. But the great Rzedzian’s body seemed horribly small, the stiffening fingers too familiar, and the way his lip drew back over his teeth reminded him of the corpse of an animal.

But derivatives did create new dangers. If you were making a loan, and you were confident you could hedge some of the credit risk of that loan, you might be tempted to make a larger and riskier loan. And the instruments themselves often had leverage embedded in them, so investors could be exposed to greater losses than they realized. Firms weren’t required by law to post any collateral (or “margin”) to make derivatives trades, and the market wasn’t requiring them to post much, either. This meant fewer shock absorbers for the system if those trades went bad. That’s why Warren Buffett had called derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.

Do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose? I always have, ever since I was a child. There are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucus in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts. Or a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucus, roll them round and jellylike between thumb and forefinger, and spread them on the under-surface of a desk or chair where they will harden into organic crusts. How many desks and chairs have I thus secretively befouled since childhood? Or sometimes there will be blood mingled with the mucus: in dry brown scabs, or bright sudden wet red on the finger that scraped too rudely the nasal membranes. God, what a sexual satisfaction! It is absorbing to look with new sudden eyes on the old worn habits: to see a sudden luxurious and pestilential “snot-green sea,” and shiver with the shock of recognition.

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression—Taoism—drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight.

Many systems require slack in order to work well. Old reel-to-reel tape recorders needed an extra bit of tape fed into the mechanism to ensure that the tape wouldn’t rip. Your coffee grinder won’t grind if you overstuff it. Roadways operate best below 70 percent capacity; traffic jams are caused by lack of slack. In principle, if a road is 85 percent full and everybody goes at the same speed, all cars can easily fit with some room between them. But if one driver speeds up just a bit and then needs to brake, those behind her must brake as well. Now they’ve slowed down too much, and, as it turns out, it’s easier to reduce a car’s speed than to increase it again. This small shock—someone lightly deviating from the right speed and then touching her brakes—has caused the traffic to slow substantially. A few more shocks, and traffic grinds to a halt. At 85 percent there is enough road but not enough slack to absorb the small shocks.

AMERICA™ always needs new Others to provide the cheapest labor, to absorb the racism, to shame older Others for not working hard enough and not singing loud enough in the American chorus. If Pryor’s language still shocks, still violates the border of the unspeakable, then perhaps that is because he refuses the piety of polite language or censored words to describe the inherent, fundamental, obscene violence and murderousness of American life, one that has always required both the death of Others and the disremembering of those deaths.

EFFERVESCE AND OBSESSION   Under the influence of this sensational climax I am reminded of the inundated calm before the storm as I find my mind to see through those same eyes that I have before. The curving slippage of her dynamic vehemence hums over me in a refreshing fixation that imbues this inseparable bond of the eternities. Her single touch sends shock waves down my entire vessel sending our bodies into a confluence of luscious allure. Her hips begin weaving in and out gently oscillating against me in a balmy nubile urge of effervesce and obsession. Again I occlude her recumbent orifice with the soft clasp of my wet lips, satiating my guest with an all-stimulating and interplanetary escape. In a largo samba-like motion I simultaneously absorb and alleviate the tension lingering beneath her plum fuselage as an overflowing ovulation of seismic and fulminating convulsage travels through the apex of her feminous core, following the crevice between her legs like the gentle waters that flow through the shaded gorge. As she levitates into a liberating reflex of celestial zest her panting grip begins to measure the odometer of our obsession.

Mankind can only now begin to hope again, now that I have lived. Thus I am necessarily a man of Destiny. For when Truth battles against the lies of millennia there will be shock waves, earthquakes, the transposition of hills and valleys such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept “politics” then becomes entirely absorbed into the realm of spiritual warfare. All the mighty worlds of the ancient order of society are blown into space—for they are all based on lies: there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only after me will there be grand politics on earth.

I am running out of space--the platform is ending--I seize the handle and swing myself in, my muscles absorbing the pull forward. Tris stands inside the car, wearing a small, crooked smile. Her black jacket is zipped up to her throat, framing her face in darkness. She grabs my collar and pulls me in for a kiss. As she pulls away, she says, “I always loved watching you do that.” I grin. “Is this what you had planned?” Caleb demands from behind me. “For her to be here when you kill me? That’s--” “Kill him?” Tris asks me, not looking at her brother. “Yeah, I let him think he was being taken to his execution,” I say, loud enough that he can hear. “You know, sort of like he did to you in Erudite headquarters.” “I…it isn’t true?” His face, lit by the moon, is slack with shock. I notice that his shirt’s buttons are in the wrong buttonholes. “No,” I say. “I just saved your life, actually.” He starts to say something, and I interrupt him. “Might not want to thank me just yet. We’re taking you with us. Outside the fence.” Outside the fence--the place he once tried so hard to avoid that he turned on his own sister. It seems a more fitting punishment than death, anyway. Death is so quick, so certain. Where we’re going now, nothing is certain.

Three Moonie 65-megaton hydrogen bombs exploded nearly simultaneously at very high altitude. With no air around the bombs to absorb the initial blast of the explosions, and convert the energy into mechanical shock waves——all the nuclear energy blasted out in its electromagnetic form. It was a brutally intense pulse of Compton recoil electrons and photoelectrons that created huge electric and magnetic fields that were MURDER on sensitive electronic equipment at tremendous distances. The electro-magnetic fields, coupled with electric and computer systems, producing huge voltage spikes in the circuits and damaging current surges along all signal paths, fusing precision engineered memory and micro-boards and virtual drives and CPUs into fried silicon laced junk! Nanobots to Nanoscrap in Nanoseconds!

Homer-Dixon says increasing complexity makes societies more resilient only up to a point. Connections between villages might mean one comes to the other’s aid in an attack. But as the villages become more tightly coupled, both may suffer when one is attacked. A loose network absorbs shock; a tightly coupled one transmits it. That is happening in the Covid-19 pandemic. Countries go into lockdown; people stop shopping, traveling, and producing; and the effects ricochet through a tightly coupled global economy. The global supply chains of money, materials, people, energy, and component parts that underpin industries falter and break. Airlines go under as they are not set up to weather even a temporary disappearance of travelers. Malaria worsens in Africa as insecticide and antimalarial bed net deliveries falter. Microcredit that underpins small businesses throughout the developing world defaults because payment collectors are locked down, causing ramifications throughout an economy.

His expression was perturbed, as if he’d been reminded of something he had wanted to forget. But as his gaze slid over her bewildered face, his mouth curved a little, and he settled into the cradle of her body with an insolent familiarity that temporarily robbed her of breath. “Mr. Rohan … how … why … what are you doing here?” He replied without moving, as if he were planning to lie there and converse all day. His infinitely polite tone was an unsettling contrast to the intimacy of their position. “Miss Hathaway. What a pleasant surprise. As it happens, I’m visiting friends. And you?” “I live here.” “I don’t think so. This is Lord Westcliff’s estate.” Her heart thundered in her breast as her body absorbed the details of him. “I didn’t mean precisely here, I meant over there, on the other side of the woods. The Ramsay estate. We’ve just taken up residence.” She couldn’t seem to stop herself from chattering in the aftermath of nerves and fright. “What was that noise? What were you doing? Why do you have that tattoo on your arm? It’s a pooka—an Irish creature—isn’t it?” That last question earned her an arrested stare. Before Rohan could reply, the other two men approached. From her prone position, Amelia had an upside-down view of them. Like Rohan, they were in their shirtsleeves, with waistcoats left unbuttoned. One of them was a portly old gentleman with a shock of silver hair. He held a small wood-and-metal sextant, which had been strung around his neck on a lanyard. The other, black-haired man looked to be in his late thirties. He wasn’t as tall as Rohan, but he had an air of authority tempered with aristocratic arrogance. Amelia made a helpless movement, and Rohan lifted away from her with fluid ease. He helped her stand, his arm steadying her. “How far did it go?” he asked the men. “Devil take the rocket,” came a gravelly reply. “What is the woman’s condition?” “Unharmed.” The silver-haired gentleman remarked, “Impressive, Rohan. You covered a distance of fifty yards in no more than five or six seconds.” “I would hardly miss a chance to leap on a beautiful woman,” Rohan said, causing the older man to chuckle.

He shoulders past me, pours himself a glass of milk from the fridge, and downs it. “Of course you don’t just get them, Mom. You have to earn them.” “I see. And how does that happen?” Another glass of milk disappears down Steven’s gullet. “Save some for cereal tomorrow,” I say. “You’re not the only human in this house.” “Maybe you should go out and get another carton, then. It’s your job, right?” My hand flies with a will of its own, makes contact; and a bright palm print blooms on the right side of Steven’s face. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t raise his own hand, doesn’t react at all, except to say, “Nice, Mom. Real nice. One day, that’s gonna be a crime.” “You little shit.” He’s smug now, which makes everything worse. “I’ll tell you how I earned the pin. I got recruited. Recruited, Mom. They needed volunteers from the boys’ school to make the rounds to the girls’ schools and explain a few things. I accepted. And for the past three days, I’ve been going out in the field and demonstrating how the bracelets work. Look.” He pushes up one sleeve and brandishes the burn mark around his wrist. “We go in pairs, and we take turns. All so girls like Sonia know what will happen.” As if to defy me once more, he drains his glass of milk and licks his lips. “By the way, I wouldn’t encourage her to pick the sign language back up.” “Why the hell not?” I’m still trying to absorb the fact that my son has purposefully shocked himself “so girls like Sonia know what will happen.” “Mom. Honestly. You of all people should get it.” His voice has taken on the timbre of someone much older, someone tired of explaining how things are. “Signing defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to do here.

Emerging from these predictable televised jousting matches, I thought I could do something different. I arranged an Israeli press conference for all the Arab journalists covering the conference. This was thoroughly unconventional at the time. Most of the journalists came, and I let them fire questions at me. One by one they leveled the usual vilifications, and one by one I rebuffed them with factual counterarguments. But I tried to do so in a noncombative way. Having met several Arab diplomats in the United Nations, I was shocked to discover a simple truth: They didn’t know even the most rudimentary facts about the history of our conflict or of our historic attachment to the contested land. For decades they had absorbed the lies of Arab propaganda and believed them to be true. The fact that this propaganda was taken for truth was typically explained away by American diplomats as deriving from different narratives, another piece of jargon used to denote that each side’s arguments are relative and beyond any objective examination of the facts. Competing “narratives” have been very much present in the Knesset, too. In a late-night debate in 2013, an Arab Knesset member was debating a Likud member about who preceded whom in what is now Israel. The historical facts are not that difficult to establish, since the Jews appeared in what became the Land of Israel roughly 3,500 years ago and the Arab conquest of this land occurred some two thousand years later, in the seventh century CE. The Arab member of the Knesset summed up his speech with a sharp, double-edged barb: “We were here before you, and we will be here after you.” At two in the morning I had had enough. I asked to use the prime minister’s prerogative to speak and gave my shortest speech in the Knesset: “To the Knesset member who just spoke, I say this: The first thing you said didn’t happen, and the second never will.” 13

Raging storm. The universe booms around me. She approaches. Frightfully, I stand. Yes. Stuck. Stuck in wonderment. Something so strong, so beautiful. Swirling around me. Will it absorb me? Maybe. Or might it pass by? It could. Rolling waves of rage and chaos. Cracks of thunder echo in my chest. I am in the storm now. How? Dancing in the wind. In her chaos. Can I become a part of her forever? I must be able to. This feeling, so wonderful. Maybe she will only pass me by. Leave me to fall from the sky? I hope not. This raging storm around me. So dangerous. So pure. Nothing but nature in her utter glory. Pushing me into motion. I spin in the midst of her, taking in the power. The walls of motion. Confusion surrounds me. Particles forcing together and cracking apart. I’m frightful again, the noise overpowering me. I hunch into a ball, scared of what will become of me. Still suspended in the air. But she silences. The sky clears around me. It must be the eye of the storm. The center of everything. The center of her. Yes. The sunshine blinds me. I raise my hand to shield my face. The silence a melody in my ear. Ah, finally soothed. How extraordinary this is, floating and rising. It overcomes me. This space. Joy? But then I feel the air shift. The power making my hair rise. And suddenly, I’m moving again. She moves along. This raging, rolling storm. The air sucking me up and down. Ripping me apart. Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. Fear consumes me again as the storm takes hold. Confusion. So much confusion. I cry, thinking I might die. But it’s over. I look at my hands. My feet. Back on the ground. She rolls away. Spinning beautifully onward. My, the power. But the question. Always the question. Do I love? Do I hate? Her beautiful, frightening glory. My dear raging storm. I drop the note into my lap. My hand comes up, covering my mouth in shock. I blink down at the note, trying to slow down my heart rate. Because Noah wrote this. He wrote all of this. And he wrote it about me. About how I make him feel. I think back to his project. How he told me it was about me. The eye of the storm. Chaos. Confusion. Awe.

You could see them tooling around the Strip in Cocoa Beach in their Ban-Lon shirts and baggy pants...They reminded you, in a way, of those fellows whom everyone growing up in America had seen at one time or another, those fellows from the neighborhood who wear sport shirts designed in weird blooms and streaks of tubercular blue and runny-egg yellow hanging out over pants the color of a fifteen-cent cigar, with balloon seats and pleats and narrow cuffs that stop three or four inches above the ground, the better to reveal their olive-green GI socks and black bulb-toed bluchers, as they head off to the Republic Auto Parts store for a set of shock-absorber pads so they can prop up the 1953 Hudson Hornet on some cinderblocks and spend Saturday and Sunday underneath it beefing up the suspension.

Conversational Shock Absorbers

I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time? ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave. om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me. I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion. four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart. it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes oh how i want italian to open itself up to me i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana dolce sitl nuovo Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines. lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle we are the masters of bel far niente larte darrangiarsi The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife, I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule. I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady. I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in

The thickness of the armor decking was increased by 1.75 inches, and giant torpedo bulges, or blisters, were added below the waterline on the exterior of each side of the hull. In theory, these bulges provided some measure of protection from torpedoes or near-miss bombs. They were filled with air in the outer half and water in the half next to the hull, and were designed to absorb the shock of an explosion and dissipate potential damage to the ship. Bulkheads bisecting the bulge limited flooding and damage to a particular section. All this meant more weight and new boilers and turbines were also installed to keep up Arizona’s speed, which peaked at 20.7 knots (23.8 mph) during post-overhaul sea trials. Returned to full commission on March 1, 1931, Arizona embarked President Herbert Hoover from Hampton Roads, Virginia, for a ten-day tour of the Caribbean, calling at Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It was the sort of low-key inspection of naval operations combined with a warm respite from wintry Washington that American presidents happily undertook in those years. Franklin Roosevelt would soon become a master of it.

You and I will last longer, and enjoy smoother riding, if we learn to absorb the shocks and jolts along the rocky road of life.

Mother Nature is not a living being, but she is a biogeophysical, rationally functioning, complex system of oceans, atmosphere, forests, rivers, soils, plants, and animals that has evolved on Planet Earth since the first hints of life emerged. She has survived the worst of times and thrived in the best of them for nearly four billion years by learning to absorb endless shocks, climate changes, surprises, and even an asteroid or two.

You can think of the snatch as a clean to the point above your head. Do not even think about taking it on until you have mastered one arm swings and cleans! Stand over a kettlebell, your feet about shoulder width apart, your weight on your heels. Inhale, arch your back, push your butt back, and bend your knees. Reach for the bell with one hand, the arm straight, while keeping the other arm away from your body (initially you may help yourself by pushing with the free hand against your thigh but it is considered ‘no class’ by most gireviks). Swing the bell back and whip it straight overhead in one clean movement. Note that the pulling arm will bend and your body will shift to the side opposite to the weight. But you do not need to worry about trying to do it that way; just pull straight up and your body will find an efficient path in a short while. Do not lift with your arm, but rather with your hips. Project the force straight up, rather than back—as in a jump. You may end up airborne or at least on your toes. It is OK as long as you roll back on your heels by the time the bell comes down. Dip under the K-bell as it is flipping over the wrist. Absorb the shock the same way you did for cleans. Fix the weight overhead, in the press behind the neck position for a second, then let it free fall between your legs as you are dropping into a half squat. Keep the girya near your body when it comes down. As an option, lower the bell to your shoulder before dropping it between the legs. Ease into the one arm power snatch because even a hardcore deadlifter’s hamstrings and palms are guaranteed to take a beating. Especially if your kettlebells are rusty like the ones I trained with at the ‘courage corner’. It was a long time after my discharge before my palms finally lost their rust speckled calluses. Unlike the deadlift, the kettlebell snatch does not impose prohibitively strict requirements on spinal alignment and hamstring flexibility. If you are deadlifting with a humped over back you are generally asking for trouble; KB snatches let you get away with a slightly flexed spine. It is probably due to the fact that your connective tissues absorb shock more effectively when loaded rapidly. Your ligaments have wavy structures. A ballistic shock—as long as it is of a reasonable magnitude—is absorbed by these ‘waves’, which straighten out like springs.

His Information presets had very little to tell him during his rural detour, except the occasional comment about the type of tree sliding by or when the road was constructed, and the rush of exposition in the airport comes as a shock, especially on such little sleep. Ken quickly learns, and completely fails to absorb, a great deal about the politicking involved in the airport’s initial construction and the decision on its location, as well as which airlines serve it and since when and to which connections, and its place in various ranking schemes (official associations, user-generated, statistically based), while bypassing reams on the sourcing of materials, the architecture firm, and the history of the land below it. Along the way, ads—flat and projected, still and animated—crowd his vision, all of them translated and most of them annotated by his Information: he learns that the company trying to sell him whiskey is a subsidiary of Coca-Cola (not surprising, since they are part of the corporate government that owns this airport) and sees the annual statement summary for a firm offering wealth management. Not having any wealth to speak of, he ignores both the ad and the background Information discrediting it.

The second way is dealing with the symptoms of friction troubles. This work includes the “therapy” that Sandra talked about: keeping others and yourself sane and motivated so that you can survive broken systems together and be fortified with the grit and gumption to repair them. Friction fixers also help others deal with symptoms by guiding them through the best—or least bad—paths through the muck. Friction fixers serve as shock absorbers, too: doing routine chores, dealing with reasonable and unreasonable demands and interruptions, and enduring unwarranted cruelty so that others don’t have to.

When I went to Passard's restaurant, the meal began with slices of raw scallop topped with caviar; that reminded me of how shocking it was when Django fed us raw fish all those years ago. Then there was a marvelous Saint-Pierre. Passard had peeled away the skin and prepared the fish with hundreds of bay leaves before covering it back up and steaming the fish until it had absorbed all the flavors of the herb. The man loves herbs and uses them in the most fascinating ways. That also reminded me of Django. There was a fat sweetbread skewered with a sprig of rosemary until it was nothing more than an herbal cloud. And the salad was the tiniest herbs, all different. Beautiful simplicity." Stella was tasting the flavors in her mind as he described them.

Looking back now, I don’t ever remember talking about it with anyone afterwards. We may have seen the shock and fear in each other’s eyes but there was never any discussion about what we’d experienced. This stunned silence is a feature of the Black experience in the UK, where we seem to have internalised our struggle for so long and our survival strategy is choosing not to speak. Some issues like mental health are often taboo in our community, as if we’ve somehow absorbed the British stiff upper lip culture, a culture of ‘just get on with it’. There’s even widespread denial that these experiences of racism exist. But I’m encouraged by the many older Black people who have approached me after Psychosis and Me aired to tell me: ‘Young man. Just want to say well done. Very important you talk ’bout dem tings deh, bout mental health, very important. Nice, yeah. Well done.

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24 NRSV). This radically upside-down statement would have shocked the original readers of Genesis and should shock us too. I don't know of any culture where men are depicted as clinging to their wives. Certainly within a patriarchal world, this is getting things backwards. There the wife leaves her parents and is absorbed into her husband's family.

Studies in psychoneuroimmunology show that if we plunge too quickly into any major change, even a good one, our bodies and minds can’t absorb the shock. We must give our psychological and physiological systems time to adjust. We do this by allowing something that neuroscientist and cultural anthropologist Mario Martinez calls “mourning the known misery.

HYPERINFLATED. This person is an upper-chest breather who tends to pull up into spinal extension for both respiration and stability. Their lumbar spine is in hyperextension, while their pelvis lives in anterior (forward) tilt, meaning their butt sticks out. They are always pulling up into themselves, trying to look like they are in charge. They have a limited sense of grounding in the feet, and limited ability to pronate to absorb shock (the feet turn outward, or supinate). All of the above makes them quite susceptible to lower back pain, as well as tightness in their calves and hips.

my head so it absorbs the shock of slamming against the roof.

I wished Karl was here so I could tell him about all this. That is one great thing about having someone by your side. They are a shock absorber to the madness of experience.

In the light of these principles, how does the mind absorb suffering? It discovers that resistance and escape—the “I” process—is a false move. The pain is inescapable, and resistance as a defense only makes it worse; the whole system is jarred by the shock. Seeing the impossibility of this course, it must act according to its nature—remain stable and absorb.

Throughout this process, connective tissue plays multiple roles—one of the most important being a shock absorber.

More than any other location in your muscular system, the MTJ acts as a shock absorber and spring during explosive movements.

In one sense the House of Commons is the most unrepresentative of representative assemblies. It is an elaborate conspiracy to prevent the real clash of opinion which exists outside from finding an appropriate echo within its walls. It is a social shock absorber placed between privilege and the pressure of popular discontent. The new Member’s first experience of this is when he learns that passionate feelings must never find expression in forthright speech...The classic Parliamentary style of speech is understatement. It is a style unsuited to the representative of working people because it slurs and mutes the deep antagonisms which exist in society.

Before Antoine could absorb this shock, he heard a rumor that Purcell planned to sell him and his wife to Manuel Lacey, a slave trader from St. Louis. The rumor hardened into fact. Lacey took Antoine and his wife straight to the slave market in New Orleans and sold them as slaves for life. Antoine managed to obtain an audience with Manuel Juan de Salcedo, the last Spanish governor of Louisiana, who served until the territory was transferred to France on November 30, 1803. After Antoine showed the governor his freedom papers from Cuba, the governor, usually portrayed as a corrupt official who tried to squeeze profits from his post, did the right thing. He released Joseph Antoine and his wife from the sale. However, they feared that, under the law, Antoine’s wife would remain a slave until the two of them had served out the full fifteen-year terms of their indenture.

And when Valentine let the last tender melody fade up into the stars, he put his hands in his lap and hoped it was good enough for the woman he loved. He shifted to straddle the piano bench and wrapped his arms around Ellen’s waist. She curled up against his chest and held on to him as if she were drowning. “Damn you, Val Windham,” she breathed against his neck. “Damn you, damn you. All summer…” She stopped and drew in a shaking sob. He listened, his soul calm enough to absorb any reaction, as long as she was in his arms. “All summer,” she went on, “you climbed around on the roofs and in the trees, hanging bat houses, mucking stalls, wrecking your hands, when you can… My God, Valentine. My God.” She was shocked, Val got that much, but he wasn’t sure what the rest of her reaction was. “I have listened to you,” Ellen said earnestly. Not, I have listened to you play, or I have listened to your music. I have listened to you.

Mother Nature is not a living being, but she is a biogeophysical, rationally functioning, complex system of oceans, atmosphere, forests, rivers, soils, plants, and animals that has evolved on Planet Earth since the first hints of life emerged. She has survived the worst of times and thrived in the best of them for nearly four billion years by learning to absorb endless shocks, climate changes, surprises, and even an asteroid or two. That alone makes Mother Nature an important mentor.

This is the M74 assault weapon. Developed during the war, in about 2025, near as we could tell, it is by far the most advanced infantry weapon ever made. The weapon itself is incredibly impressive, but it is the platform that really makes it incredible. It fires a .202 caliber round that has a small bundle of titanium flechettes imbedded in soft lead and jacketed in a copper alloy. While the caliber sounds small, the Muzzle velocity is fifty eight hundred feet per second, which gives it more kinetic energy than the rounds you fired with your M1.” He handed Jack one of the rounds. It looked like just a bullet, not an entire round. “When the round hits a target, the lead mushrooms like the ammo you are used to, but the flechettes spread out and continue on, tearing through just about any kind of armor you can imagine. Soft targets just cause the flechettes to sprawl through the body and cause maximum damage. The ammunition magazine holds two hundred rounds and weighs less than the twenty round magazine of the M14. The casing is only three quarters of an inch long and the entire round is a little over an inch. It uses a chemical that burns eight times faster than gunpowder and expands over fifteen times more. The reason the round is so small is because the chemical propellant is solid and doesn’t need a shell. It is completely consumed when firing, so nothing to eject. The gun uses a hybrid closed bolt system that completely contains the explosion, routing the excess energy to power the action, and even to help counter the recoil.” “Fifty eight hundred feet per second? Even a bullet that small needs a heck of a lot of energy to get moving that fast. This thing must kick like a mule.” “Actually, the action on the weapon uses a shock absorber filled with a magnetic fluid that changes viscosity depending on what the fire rate is set to. If you fire a single round, it softens up to make recoil almost nonexistent. If you go automatic, it stiffens up to increase the cyclic rate. The weapon itself is made of composite carbon fiber and titanium alloys, with a frictionless surface in the barrel and on all moving components. It’s a bitch to clean because each piece is like wet ice, but it almost never needs cleaning because nothing will stick to any part that matters.” He

Some' paintings are considered heretical," she said irritably. "Ah, but that isn't the fault of the painting. It's the prejudice of the viewer. For instance, isn't the fault of your 'dress' that when you turn it looks like a pond rippling beneath a full moon at midnight. Or that you resemble a naiad rising from the depths in it. It is the opinion of this particular viewer." Her head went back in shock. And instead of casting her eyes down bashfully again, or fluttering her lashes in coy confusion or responding with a mumbled thank-you... she locked her eyes with his. Her eyes were so soft. Like the hearts of pansies. But they were also surprisingly intensely searching, and he thought he could feel them probing his soul. Sorting through impressions. Hot color swept her cheekbones as she absorbed the impact of this observation. She was attempting to decode it. So she wasn't immune to the compliment. She simply didn't trust it. In truth, he hadn't fully expected to say it himself. Where on earth had it come from? This was what unnerved him. And to think he'd once thought her face ordinary.

Her eyes flew open, however, as she felt a gentle touch at the edge of her jaw. Rohan’s fingers were nudging her face upward, his thumb brushing the tip of her chin. The unexpected intimacy sent a little shock through her. His flame-bright gaze had seized hers again. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit overprotective, chasing your grown brother across London? He’s not doing anything all that unusual. Most young lords in his position would behave the same.” “You don’t know him,” Amelia said, sounding shaken to her own ears. She knew she should pull away from his warm fingers, but her body remained perversely still, absorbing the pleasure of his touch. “It’s far from usual behavior for him. He’s in trouble. He—” She broke off. Rohan let a gentle fingertip follow the shining trail of her bonnet ribbon to the place where it tied beneath her chin. “What kind of trouble?

set myself the task of starting with a blank sheet of paper and asking not what it means to be a “conservative” or a “liberal” today (frankly, who cares?) but rather how we maximize the resilience and self-propulsion of every citizen and community in America—that is, their ability to both absorb shocks and keep progressing in this age of accelerations. It is a different approach to politics—a necessary one, I believe—and it yields a political agenda unlike anything on offer in America today.

Ellie! No!” He rushed to her. “God, no! You can’t be leaving me! Don’t!” He grabbed her face and covered her mouth in a hard, desperate kiss. Her eyes flew open in stunned disbelief; she stopped breathing. He released her mouth but not her face, which he held in his hands, his fingers threaded into her hair. “You can’t go, Ellie, you can’t. Don’t you know how much I love you? God, I’d be nothing without you. I never thought I’d get to feel like this again, but you brought me back to life. You took the loneliness away and brought laughter back into my life. Ellie, you’re everything to me—I can’t make it without you. If you leave, I don’t know what I’ll—” She just stared at him, a slight smile on her face. “Really? You don’t say.” “Listen, I know I’m not a good romantic, I know that. I realized just a little while ago that I—Oh, hell, I told you how responsible I was, not how much you light up my life. I told you about my vow and how I could stick to it, not how life without you would be all gray and sad and awful. I didn’t tell you everything you mean to me. I promised myself I’d take care of that tonight, for sure. I was almost too late.” “Tell me now,” she said. “Now?” he asked, dropping his hands from her face. “Right now,” she insisted. “But I haven’t prepared!” “I know. That’s the whole idea,” she said. “I’m listening.” He cleared his throat. “Ellie. Dammit, you saved my life. I was a wallowing, pathetic, self-pitying—” He stopped talking at the sound of her soft laughter. “You’re not supposed to laugh at my attempts to be romantic.” “Noah, that wasn’t romantic. That made me wonder what I ever saw in you. Start over.” He grabbed her face in his hands again. “I want to be with you forever. I want to lie beside you every night, holding you close, whispering to you that I love you more than anything in the world, that you turned my whole world upside down just when it needed to be turned upside down. I want to make forever promises to you out loud, in front of God, and I want you to promise to be my woman, my wife, my one and only love, my best friend and my conscience. You’re never easy, Ellie, but you’re sure never boring…” “I don’t know about that last part,” she commented. “God, I love you so much. If I lost you, I don’t know what I’d do. I’d go after you, that’s what I’d do. I’d find a way to get you back. You know we’re perfect together. I know you feel it because I can feel you feel it.” He grinned roguishly. “We sure fit together perfect, don’t you think? You told me you loved me—tell me again.” “I love you, Noah. I tried not to. I usually screw up love situations. But, apparently, we have that in common.” She grinned. “A good start.” “You won’t leave me?” “Why would I leave you? I adore you. And unless I’m completely stupid, you just asked me to marry you.” “I did. We should give the kids some time to get used to the idea. And we should find a house that can hold us, but as soon as we can work out the details, we should get married.” “Okay,” she said. “Am I late for rehearsal?” “We were waiting for you,” he explained. “Then Walt said he saw you struggling with luggage and thought maybe you weren’t coming, that you were leaving.” She laughed a bit. “Noah, these are Vanni’s hand-me-downs. I thought I had time to unpack them before the rehearsal.” He was shocked silent for a moment, absorbing this, then he grabbed her and kissed her hard. And he said, “I have a feeling I bit off more than I can chew with you.” “No question about that, Your Holiness.” *

For most of the past two decades the central goal of energy pricing has been to reduce volatility. Policymakers want to ensure that businesses face a predictable environment, with relatively stable prices for electricity and fuels; in a more predictable environment, businesses are more likely to make large-scale capital investments. The government’s main tools in achieving this stability are state-run firms that convert raw fuel into usable energy: power-generating firms and oil refiners. When fuel prices are high, these companies suffer depressed profits or even losses, because they cannot pass on the full cost increase to their customers. But when prices are low, their profits soar, because they are not required to pass on their full cost savings either. These industries can be thought of as “shock absorbers” that enable the economic car to drive relatively smoothly even when the road is full of potholes.

Biker George says that laughter is like a shock absorber on your bike that softens & minimizes the bumps of life.

no amount of time was enough to absorb the shock of such a loss. People just found – somehow – a way to adapt; their bodies continued to function, yet their minds would never exist in the same way again. Life went on, but lives stopped.

K gave talks in the usual places in India between October and March ’64. There is a particularly memorable passage in the fourth talk4 he gave in Bombay on February 16: I am going to describe a scene that took place [at Rajghat]. It actually happened. We [meaning himself] were sitting on the bank of a river, very wide, of an evening. The crows were coming back from across the river, and the moon was just coming over the trees. And there was a man sitting beside us. He was a sanyasi. He did not notice the water and the moon on the water. He did not notice the song of that village man, he did not notice the crows coming back; he was so absorbed in his own problem. And he began to talk quietly with a tremendous sense of sorrow. He was a lustful man, he said, brutal in his demands, never satisfied, always demanding, asking, pushing, driving; and he was striving and he was driven for many years to conquer it. And at last he did the most brutal thing to himself; and from that day he was no longer a man. And as you listened you felt an extraordinary sorrow, a tremendous shock, that a man in search of God could mutilate himself for ever. He had lost all feeling, all sense of beauty. All that he was concerned with was to reach God. He tortured himself, butchered himself, destroyed himself, in order to find that thing which he called God. And as it got dark, the stars came out full, wide, with immense space; and he was totally unaware. And most of us live that way. We have brutalized ourselves through different ways, so completely. We have formed ideas, we live with formulas. All our actions, all our feelings, all our activities are shaped, controlled, subjugated, dominated by the formulas which society, the saints, the religious, the experiences that's one has had, have established. These formulas shape our lives, our activity, our being.

YULCHON is a specialized manufacturer of Cold-Drawn Carbon Steel Tubes (DOM Tube) for steering column, rack and pinion steering gears, propeller shaft, gas cylinder, gas spring, hydraulic cylinder, tubes for shock absorber, bush in automotive industry and shaped tube in furniture or construction industry. Since its founding in 1986, we have made steady efforts of technology development and product quality improvement. As a result, we currently export products to USA, Australia, Europe, South-East Asia, China, Middle East etc. and try to expand markets to the rest of the world. We always try to meet customer’s satisfaction with stable quality, on time delivery and competitive price. Our aim is to be the best DOM manufacturer in the world. More here ycpipe.com

Laughter is to life what shock absorbers are to automobiles. It won't take the potholes out of the road, but it sure makes the ride smoother.

Once their gaze turned back toward Europe, the puzzle dissolved: West Germany was the obvious equivalent and, indeed, a splendid candidate for the role of the global plan’s European shock-absorbing pillar—certainly not Britain.

Free,' Wing protested, shaking himself as if to throw off his own shock in order to protect Darsey. She sensed his anger at any blame being attached to her and it made her cringe with guilt. She had done this to him and she deserved to be blamed. Horror rose in her, pushing its way past shock and carrying her voice with it. 'I crippled you. I stole your frond,' she choked, still struggling to absorb what had happened. 'I'm so sorry. It's all my fault-' Her mind was almost screaming, much louder than her words, but she didn't understand why Free staggered back and Wing's remaining frond furled tight, to tuck hard against his throat. It was only when he hurled the row of seats between them and gripped her by the arms that she became aware of his distress 'Darse, calm,' he ordered, releasing her, but mentally underlining his demand until the thoughts roaring through all their minds grew quieter. However, despite being muted, they were still there, running frantically fast from Darsey's head to her frond. 'Calm,' Wing instructed more soothingly and then frowned at the words he could still sense. 'None such,' he denied vehemently. 'I don't hate you. Not ever and you're not the...the alien in some monster movie. And you don't eat your mates.' He paused and raised an eyebrow at her. 'Do you?

When my first attempt failed, fear brought into me a shock... I gave a smile, only to realize that my shock was gone. A smile is a shock absorber!

his way of thinking, the spreading of risk could actually exacerbate the consequences of otherwise isolated problems—a view not shared by his original boss at the Fed, Alan Greenspan. “These changes appear to have made the financial system able to absorb more easily a broader array of shocks, but they have not eliminated risk,” he said in a speech in 2006. “They have not ended the tendency of markets to occasional periods of mania and panic. They have not eliminated the possibility of failure of a major financial intermediary. And they cannot fully insulate the broader financial system from the effects of such a failure.” Geithner understood that the Wall Street boom would eventually falter, and he knew from his experience in Japan that it was not likely to end well. Of course, he had no way of knowing precisely how or when that would happen, and no amount of studying or preparation could have equipped him to deal with the events that began in early March 2008.

Warming up not only reduces the risk of injury, it also prepares the nervous system for action, sends fresh, shock-absorbing synovial fluid around the joints, and focuses the mind for the harder work to come.

The harsh dimness that follows loss isn’t static, but charged with the energy of immanent change. Hurt, I was left with a choice: wallow and stay in the dark, or seek light and fight to reach it. These two paths emerged. I had this choice to make. Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. I saw that this mountain valley, haunted by senseless murders, darker, had absorbed unthinkable violence and turned it into mesmerizing light. My rape became my catalyst. Rape gave me cause to flee the muteness – forced me into making a bold and forceful change. I chose to fight to find a way to leave to seek my own strength and beauty. I was searching to find the way to make light.

Juliet?" Charles whispered, his stunned brain trying to absorb what he was seeing and sort it out into something he could understand . . . trying to reason why she was still pregnant when she should've delivered the baby months and months ago . . . trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle that made absolutely no sense.  "Juliet, will you not come and greet me?" As though for approval, she glanced toward Gareth, who had also risen and now stood almost protectively beside her.  And as Charles's confused and uncomprehending gaze went from Gareth's hand, which now supported Juliet's elbow, to his fiancée's swollen belly and finally, to the high chair drawn up beside her which contained a toddler whose curling hair was as bright a gold as Charles's own, he began to understand. It felt as though God had slammed a fist into his stomach. "No," he murmured, shaking his head in denial and stepping backward, his gaze still fixed on Juliet's gently rounded abdomen.  Involuntarily, his fists clenched and he was suddenly afraid that he was going to call out Gareth, his own brother, right here in front of everyone, for what he had done to her.  "No, I . . . this cannot be —" And then Lucien was there, his hand like a vise on Charles's arm as he firmly turned him around and began dragging him out of the room.  Charles resisted, trying to twist his head around, unable to take his disbelieving stare from Juliet's belly, from her face, from her eyes, which met and held his in a silent plea for forgiveness, but Lucien only tightened his grip and pulled him away from the table.  Away from the others. Out the door, which he shut behind him. "Now you know why I did not want you to charge unannounced into this house," he said quietly, as Charles walked a little distance away and leaned his brow against his forearm, and his forearm against the cold stone wall.  There he remained, head bent, totally undone by the confusion and despair of his discovery.  "I am not angry with you, and there is nothing to forgive.  But since you were unaware of the situation, and Juliet is obviously in a delicate condition, you can be sure that I would do everything in my power to protect you both from shock and upset.  I am sorry that you had to learn of things this way." When Charles made no move to acknowledge him, he turned to Amy.  "Who are you?" Amy had stepped up beside Charles, who stood with head bent, shoulders quaking.  "My name's Amy Leighton," she answered.  "I'm a friend of your brother's." "How close a friend are you?" "Well, that's hard to say, really, because —" "She's the only person in this bloody world who hasn't betrayed me!

I want to fuck a bicycle. I want Callisto to take the bicycle apart so I can fuck it. Fuck the frame. Fuck the pedals. Fuck the handlebars. Fuck the front wheel. Fuck the back wheel. Fuck the sprockets. Fuck the spoke. Fuck the saddle. Fuck the seat post. Fuck the hub. Fuck the rim. Fuck the shock absorber. Fuck the front brakes. Fuck the valve. Fuck the cogset. Fuck the head tube…. I want you to get me a bicycle pump that will last. Don’t get it at Walmart. I want to fuck it. Fuck it so that I am pumped and pumping and bloated and floaty, and while I am fucking that bicycle pump, I can feel the gasses in my body compress. Pump and fuck.

Following up the butt strike, your weapon is now at your left shoulder, held in rifle grip with the right hand palm-down at the handle of the weapon and the left hand palm-up maybe one third to one half the distance up the stick. To execute the rap, bring the right hand in toward the right hip while the left hand pushes the barrel end outward into the opponent's face. The weapon retraces the path it originally took from middle guard to the left shoulder, only in reverse. In practice you will find that the left elbow acts like a shock absorber, causing the end of the stick to snap back. Redirect this rebound up to your right shoulder, while letting your left hand slide down to bat grip. Follow through with an overight strike. Practice these three moves in sequence: underight butt, overleft rap, overight strike from bat grip. Your weapon will trace a 'V,' moving from one shoulder to another. Slam I have also seen this technique referred to as a “bar strike” because you are striking with the portion of the stick between the hands, which is like a bar. The slam is typically performed with the hands palm down in staff grip, equidistant from the ends, and thrown so that the stick is horizontal. Realize, though, that the slam can be thrown with multiple grips in multiple orientations. From the middle guard, throw the stick forward and diagonally, parallel to your adversary, striking him in the chest. Don't just shove the opponent, but aim for an explosive strike that knocks him back on impact. If the attacker crouches and lunges in to tackle, jam the portion of the stick between your hands into the juncture of the opponent's right shoulder and neck.

But this time, if and when discontented Americans like Amy and Sarah do reengage with democracy, it’s by no means clear that they will vote to stick with the capitalism part of the American model. The 1970s represented the first protracted stumble after the recovery from the Great Depression, with two oil-price shocks and a nasty recession mid-decade. Had recovery from those challenges been as strong as that in the late 1930s and 1940s, no doubt faith in the system would once again have been vindicated. Instead, as the data shows, the post-1970s decades have been, for Americans like Amy and Sarah, a slow drip feed of disappointment and frustration. In this environment, a more sinister narrative about capitalism has been taking root. Capitalism is no longer unambiguously about everybody working hard and getting ahead—it is about the benefit of overall economic growth flowing so disproportionately to rich people that there just isn’t enough left for average Americans to consistently advance. If the little that does trickle down isn’t enough to keep Amy and Sarah afloat, then sooner or later they will wonder why they trust the management of the economy to Wall Street CEOs and Beltway politicians and policy wonks. And then they will surely reengage with the democratic part of the US system—probably with dramatic and potentially harmful results. To be sure, it is always tempting to look for a clear, easily identified whipping boy—a bad president, an atrocious piece of legislation, callous Wall Street, venal hedge funds, the unfettered internet, runaway globalization, or self-absorbed millennials. While no one of these can be held responsible for the yawning inequality of the US economy and the alienation that it engenders, many actors have played a role. It has taken almost half a century of both Democratic and Republican presidents and houses of Congress to get us to the current point. And if numerous actors are in part responsible, then we have to ask—given all that the data shows—whether there may be a fundamental structural problem with democratic capitalism. If so, can we fix it?

Yes. It was OK. Diljá isn’t as terrible as you think,’ he said, and Særós wondered if he was the family’s shock absorber, the one who would always go the extra distance to keep everyone happy.

I told him to watch out,' the Roach says. .... 'But would he listen? I'd have ordered him, if not for the little matter of him being the High King.' 'Cardan sent you?' I ask. 'Not exactly,' says the Roach, moving the light so that I can see the person with him, the one I elbowed. The High King of Elfhame in plain brown wool, a cloak on his back of a fabric so dark it seems to absorb light, leaf blade in the scabbard on his hip. He wears no crown on his brow, no rings on his fingers, nor gold point limning his cheekbones. He looks every inch a spy from the Court of Shadows, down to the sneaky smile pulling at a corner of his beautiful mouth. Looking at him, I feel a little light-headed from some combination of shock and disbelief. 'You shouldn't be here.' 'I said that, too,' the Roach goes on. 'Really, I miss the days when you were in charge. High Kings shouldn't be gallivanting around like common ruffians.' Cardan laughs. 'What about uncommon ruffians?' I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and his laugh gutters out. The Roach turns his gaze to the ceiling. I am abruptly aware that I am in a nightgown Oriana lent me, one that is entirely too diaphanous.

Without warning a rush of sensation assaulted Daniel’s mind and body. He felt as if he’d been caught up in powerful arms, held against a body of light and cloud, absorbed by it. He was flooded by a hungry desire and an awareness of heat and strength. His breath came out in a gasp of pleasure and shock. At first he thought it must be Shem, giving in to the urge for contact, but nothing about this entity was redolent of Shemyaza. Neither was it a ghost. He could sense, however, that it was male; a tall Grigori, eager with need. Daniel opened his eyes and the air was full of blue sparks. He felt he was suspended a foot above the bed, gripped by invisible arms.

Though the back sufferer isn't aware of it, it is generally known by students of the spine that the last intervertebral disc, between the fifth lumbar vertebra and the sacrum, is more or less degenerated in most people by the age of twenty. Discs are structures located between the bodies of spinal bones to take up the shock. They are firmly attached to the vertebral bodies above and below, and in no way can they "slip." Enclosed by a tough, fibrous outer shell, there is a thick fluid inside, which is what absorbs the shock. The discs at the lower end and in the neck, because of all the activity in those locations, begin to wear out at an early age, some by the age of twenty, as stated. (page 118)

Traveling in France in 1899, Edward attended a bicycle race and observed that a spring attached to the front fork helped stabilize the winning cycle. He and his father bought the patent rights, and Edward developed the concept into the shock absorber, soon to become standard on every car. Edward went on to invent brakes, jacks, and other auto components, all of which were produced at the Hartford Suspension Company’s plant in Jersey City, adjacent to Great Atlantic & Pacific’s headquarters.