Similar Sounding Words For Quotes

Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine. Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.

Life is Beautiful? Beyond all the vicissitudes that are presented to us on this short path within this wild planet, we can say that life is beautiful. No one can ever deny that experiencing the whirlwind of emotions inside this body is a marvel, we grow with these life experiences, we strengthen ourselves and stimulate our feelings every day, in this race where the goal is imminent death sometimes we are winners and many other times we lose and the darkness surprises us and our heart is disconnected from this reality halfway and connects us to the server of the matrix once more, debugging and updating our database, erasing all those experiences within this caracara of flesh and blood, waiting to return to earth again. "Life is beautiful gentlemen" is cruel and has unfair behavior about people who looked like a bundle of light and left this platform for no apparent reason, but its nature is not similar to our consciousness and feelings, she has a script for each of us because it was programmed that way, the architects of the game of life they know perfectly well that you must experiment with all the feelings, all the emotions and evolve to go to the next levels. You can't take a quantum leap and get through the game on your own. inventing a heaven and a hell in order to transcend, that comes from our fears of our imagination not knowing what life has in store for us after life is a dilemma "rather said" the best kept secret of those who control us day by day. We are born, we grow up, we are indoctrinated in the classrooms and in the jobs, we pay our taxes, we reproduce, we enjoy the material goods that it offers us the system the marketing of disinformation, Then we get old, get sick and die. I don't like this story! It looks like a parody of Noam Chomsky, Let's go back to the beautiful description of beautiful life, it sounds better! Let's find meaning in all the nonsense that life offers us, 'Cause one way or another we're doomed to imagine that everything will be fine until the end of matter. It is almost always like that. Sometimes life becomes a real nightmare. A heartbreaking horror that we find impossible to overcome. As we grow up, we learn to know the dark side of life. The terrors that lurk in the shadows, the dangers lurking around every corner. We realize that reality is much harsher and ruthless than we ever imagined. And in those moments, when life becomes a real hell, we can do nothing but cling to our own existence, summon all our might and fight with all our might so as not to be dragged into the abyss. But sometimes, even fighting with all our might is not enough. Sometimes fate is cruel and takes away everything we care about, leaving us with nothing but pain and hopelessness. And in that moment, when all seems lost, we realize the terrible truth: life is a death trap, a macabre game in which we are doomed to lose. And so, as we sink deeper and deeper into the abyss, while the shadows envelop us and terror paralyzes us, we remember the words that once seemed to us so hopeful: life is beautiful. A cruel and heartless lie, that leads us directly to the tragic end that death always awaits us.

One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give, and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now, quite plainly natural gifts carry with them a similar danger. If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. “Why drag God into it?” you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex or dipsomania or nervousness or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap, and between ourselves, you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing, and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until one day, the natural goodness lets them down, and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are rich in this sense to enter the kingdom.

Since that time, I've had many similar moments, and I can never hear the words "family" and "home" without feeling that they sound strange, never simply hear them and let them go. When I stop to examine them, though, the words seem hollow, seem to rattle at my feet like empty cans.

I think that its out very differences that make us a perfect match," he said, and his jaw moved under his fingertips. "You'd die of boredom with Thomas within a year. If I found a lady with a temper similar to mine, we'd tear each other apart within months. You and I, though, we're like bread and butter." She snorted. "That's romantic." "Hush," he said, his voice quivering with laughter, but also with an undertone of gravity. She cradled his jaw as he said, "Bread and butter. The bread provides stability for the butter; the butter gives taste to the bread. Together they're perfect." Her eye brows drew together. "I'm the bread, aren't I?" "Sometimes." His voice was a thread of rumbled sound, low and ominous. She could feel his words as they drifted over her palm. "And sometimes I'm the bread and you're the butter. But we go together--you understand that, don't you?

I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?

Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision dissects, as Merleau-Ponty has observed (1961). Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, I must move my eyes around from one part to another. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every directions at once; I am at the center of my auditory world, which envelopes me, establishing me at a kind of core of sensation and existence... You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound. There is no way to immerse yourself similarly in sight. By contrast with vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart. The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together. Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness. The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside. Everyone who says 'I' means something different by it from what every other person means. What is 'I' to me is only 'you' to you... In a primary oral culture, where the word has its existence only in sound... the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings' feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous in psychic life.

I have a feeling," Harry said finally, "that we're coming at this from the wrong angle. There's a tale I once heard about some students who came into a physics class, and the teacher showed them a large metal plate near a fire. She ordered them to feel the metal plate, and they felt that the metal nearer the fire was cooler, and the metal further away was warmer. And she said, write down your guess for why this happens. So some students wrote down 'because of how the metal conducts heat', and some students wrote down 'because of how the air moves', and no one said 'this just seems impossible', and the real answer was that before the students came into the room, the teacher turned the plate around." "Interesting," said Professor Quirrell. "That does sound similar. Is there a moral?" "That your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality," said Harry. "If you're equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge. The students thought they could use words like 'because of heat conduction' to explain anything, even a metal plate being cooler on the side nearer the fire. So they didn't notice how confused they were, and that meant they couldn't be more confused by falsehood than by truth. If you tell me that the centaurs were under the Imperius Curse, I still have the feeling of something being not quite right. I notice that I'm still confused even after hearing your explanation.

How does it happen, thought Ciri, what can it be ascribed to, that in all worlds, places and times, in all languages and dialects that one word always sounds comprehensible? And always similar? "Yes. I must ride to my mamma. My mamma is waiting for me.

It was a wartime story, goodies versus baddies, lots of explosions and shooting. The Germans always shouted 'Aiiieeee!' as they died. Atkins wondered what he would choose, confronted with similar circumstances. 'Aiiieeee!' seemed to him to lack the necessary gravitas and originality, as well as sounding a bit, well, German. But then who knew what might come to mind, in those final moments?

The tendency for “like to attract like” that is seen throughout nature, inanimate objects, and human behavior is what is often referred to as the “Law of Resonance.” Resonance is the magical energetic phenomenon that attracts us to similar things in our lives. The word “resonance” is derived from the Latin word “resonantia,” which means “echo,” or from the root “resonare” — to “sound again.

Words, like money, are tokens of value. They represent meaning, therefore, and just as money, their representative value goes up and down. The French word 'etonnant' was used by Bossuet with a terrible weight of meaning which it has lost to-day. A similar thing can be observed with the English word 'awful.' Some nations constitutionally tend to understate, others to overstate. What the British Tommy called an unhealthy place could only be described by an Italian soldier by means of a rich vocabulary aided with an exuberant mimicry. Nations that understate keep their word-currency sound. Nations that overstate suffer from inflation in their language.

One word the translators were able to figure out was that “Mum” meant “adult or caregiver,” just as similar sounds mean mother in almost every known human language, since the “mm” sound is the first one babies learn to make while suckling.

Guilt is imperative if we are to create and sustain a decent code of ethics and a sound moral compass. Guilt can help us to listen to our conscience, enhance empathy, and therefore have fulfilling relationships. Without guilt, we would live in an extremely dark world. However, misplaced guilt often triggers us to be over-apologetic and people-please. Many people repeat the word ‘sorry’ without needing to, while still others feel guilty for their very own existence. Emotionally wounded, shame-based people often feel that they are constantly ‘getting in the way’. This stems from a sense of feeling unlovable. To ask for one’s own needs to be met often results in a feeling of guilt. I call this misplaced guilt. Similarly, a person may feel guilty even if they have been abused or harmed by others. Misplaced guilt or excessive guilt stifles people’s chances to live happily and peacefully.

Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects? I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice? Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters have differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters, and what we find there usually develops into some sort of sideline. The accountant may also be a photographer. The astronomer may collect coins. The school-teacher may do gravestone rubbings in charcoal. The sludge caught in the mind's filter, the stuff that refuses to go through, frequently becomes each person's private obsession. In civilized society we have an unspoken agreement to call our obsessions “hobbies.” Sometimes the hobby can become a full-time job. The accountant may discover that he can make enough money to support his family taking pictures; the schoolteacher may become enough of an expert on grave rubbings to go on the lecture circuit. And there are some professions which begin as hobbies and remain hobbies even after the practitioner is able to earn his living by pursuing his hobby; but because “hobby” is such a bumpy, common-sounding little word, we also have an unspoken agreement that we will call our professional hobbies “the arts.” Painting. Sculpture. Composing. Singing. Acting. The playing of a musical instrument. Writing. Enough books have been written on these seven subjects alone to sink a fleet of luxury liners. And the only thing we seem to be able to agree upon about them is this: that those who practice these arts honestly would continue to practice them even if they were not paid for their efforts; even if their efforts were criticized or even reviled; even on pain of imprisonment or death. To me, that seems to be a pretty fair definition of obsessional behavior. It applies to the plain hobbies as well as the fancy ones we call “the arts”; gun collectors sport bumper stickers reading YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN ONLY WHEN YOU PRY MY COLD DEAD FINGERS FROM IT, and in the suburbs of Boston, housewives who discovered political activism during the busing furor often sported similar stickers reading YOU'LL TAKE ME TO PRISON BEFORE YOU TAKE MY CHILDREN OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD on the back bumpers of their station wagons. Similarly, if coin collecting were outlawed tomorrow, the astronomer very likely wouldn't turn in his steel pennies and buffalo nickels; he'd wrap them carefully in plastic, sink them to the bottom of his toilet tank, and gloat over them after midnight.

Here is the confession once made by a patient to Brierre de Boismont, which perfectly describes the condition: 'I am employed in a business house. I perform my regular duties satisfactorily but like an automaton, and when spoken to, the words sound to me as though echoing in a void. My greatest torment is the thought of suicide, from which I am never free. I have been the victim of this impulse for a year; at first it was insignificant; then for about the last two months it has pursued me everywhere, yet I have no reason to kill myself. . . . My health is good; no one in my family has been similarly afflicted; I have had no financial losses, my income is adequate and permits me the pleasures of people of my age.

[A] people needs to understand what freedom is. We Americans are fortunate that the Founders and their generation possessed that understanding. They knew that freedom, per se, is not enough. They knew that freedom must be limited to be preserved. This paradox is difficult for many students to grasp. Young people generally think freedom means authority figures leaving them alone so they can "do their own thing." That's part of what it means to be free, but true freedom involves much, much more. As understood by our Founders and by the best minds of the young republic, true freedom is always conditioned by morality. John Adams wrote, "I would define liberty as a power to do as we would be done by." In other words, freedom is not the power to do what one can, but what one ought. Duty always accompanies liberty. Tocqueville similarly observed, "No free communities ever existed without morals." The best minds concur: there must be borders: freedom must be limited to be preserved. What kinds of limits are we talking about? * The moral limits of right and wrong, which we did not invent but owe largely to our Judeo-Christian heritage. * Intellectual limits imposed by sound reasoning. Again, we did not invent these but are in debt largely to Greco-Roman civilization, from the pre-Socratic philosophers forward. * Political limits such as the rule of law, inalienable rights, and representative institutions, which we inherited primarily from the British. * Legal limits of the natural and common law, which we also owe to our Western heritage. * Certain social limits, which are extremely important to the survival of freedom. These are the habits of our hearts--good manners, kindness, decency, and willingness to put others first, among other things--which are learned in our homes and places of worship, at school and in team sports, and in other social settings. All these limits complement each other and make a good society possible. But they cannot be taken for granted. It takes intellectual and moral leadership to make the case that such limits are important. Our Founders did that. To an exceptional degree, their words tutored succeeding generations in the ways of liberty. It is to America's everlasting credit that our Founders got freedom right.

I immediately correct him. ‘The word is not idiot but illeist. Illeist is a person who talks in the third person, whereas an idiot just talks; though they sound similar, they cannot be used in place of each other.’ Shrugging his shoulders and giving me a goofy grin, he retorts, ‘I don’t know what an illeist is but I know an idiot when I see one.’ The baby immediately stops playing with her tea set, looks up and says, ‘Where idiot? Show me!

I don’t mean to compare myself to a couple of artists I unreservedly admire—Miles Davis and Ray Charles—but I would like to think that some of the people who liked my book responded to it in a way similar to the way they respond when Miles and Ray are blowing. These artists, in their very different ways, sing a kind of universal blues, they speak of something far beyond their charts, graphs, statistics, they are telling us something about what it is like to be alive. It is not self-pity which one hears in them, but compassion. And perhaps this is the place for me to say that I really do not, at the very bottom of my own mind, compare myself to other writers. I think I really helplessly model myself on jazz musicians and try to write the way they sound. I am not an intellectual, not in the dreary sense that word is used today, and do not want to be: I am aiming at what Henry James called “perception at the pitch of passion.

Suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room. Winning a way past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him. There was something so pantherlike in the movement, something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming. The first to act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the house. As the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eyeteeth long and pointed. But the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain. His expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him. It was a pity that we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to do. I did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything. Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. The blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back saved him. A second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his heart. As it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold fell out. The expression of the Count's face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another stroke. Instinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left hand. I felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us. It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and hellish rage, which came over the Count's face. His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound. The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area below. Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the "ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging. We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground. He, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door. There he turned and spoke to us. "You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!" With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind him. A door beyond opened and shut. The first of us to speak was the Professor. Realizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall. "We have learnt something… much! Notwithstanding his brave words, he fears us. He fears time, he fears want! For if not, why he hurry so? His very tone betray him, or my ears deceive. Why take that money? You follow quick. You are hunters of the wild beast, and understand it so. For me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he returns.

The sun glanced off a long, wicked looking knife in the Comanche's grip. At least Cash wouldn't have long to mourn. The other Indians held similar weapons, but they hung back as their leader knelt next to Sullivan. He muttered something, low and guttural, a single syllable that sounded like an insult, then picked up a lock of Sullivan's hair. The knife descended toward his scalp. "No!" Reese shouted. "Me." The Comanche paused and stared at him with a spark of interest, almost admiration. But that couldn't be since the Indian had no idea what Reese was saying. He continued to try anyway. "Me first." He struggled, wishing he could use his hands to point at himself. "Shut the hell up, Reese," Sullivan said. "What possible difference does it make who they kill first?" "Who knows what might happen. While they're working on me, anyone could show up and save the rest of you." "In that case, me first," Cash drawled. "Me." "No. Yo primero!" "Kid, I'm the only one without a wife and far too many children. No one would miss me." "I would." The words were punctuated by the distinct sound of a rifle being cocked. All eyes turned toward the man who had appeared at the edge of the clearing. Cash's sigh of relief was in direct contrast to the sneer in his voice. "About damn time, Rev. We've been waitin' on you.

Returning to my own example, it’s a similar commitment that enables me to succeed with fixed scheduling. I, too, am incredibly cautious about my use of the most dangerous word in one’s productivity vocabulary: “yes.” It takes a lot to convince me to agree to something that yields shallow work. If you ask for my involvement in university business that’s not absolutely necessary, I might respond with a defense I learned from the department chair who hired me: “Talk to me after tenure.” Another tactic that works well for me is to be clear in my refusal but ambiguous in my explanation for the refusal. The key is to avoid providing enough specificity about the excuse that the requester has the opportunity to defuse it. If, for example, I turn down a time-consuming speaking invitation with the excuse that I have other trips scheduled for around the same time, I don’t provide details—which might leave the requester the ability to suggest a way to fit his or her event into my existing obligations—but instead just say, “Sounds interesting, but I can’t make it due to schedule conflicts.” In turning down obligations, I also resist the urge to offer a consolation prize that ends up devouring almost as much of my schedule (e.g., “Sorry I can’t join your committee, but I’m happy to take a look at some of your proposals as they come together and offer my thoughts”). A clean break is best.

Although all new talkers say names, use similar sounds, and prefer nouns more than other parts of speech, the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies from place to place (Waxman et al., 2013). For example, by 18 months, Englishspeaking infants speak far more nouns than verbs compared to Chinese or Korean infants. Why? One explanation goes back to the language itself. The Chinese and Korean languages are “verb-friendly” in that verbs are placed at the beginning or end of sentences. That facilitates learning. By contrast, English verbs occur anywhere in a sentence, and their forms change in illogical ways (e.g., go, gone, will go, went). This irregularity may make English verbs harder to learn, although the fact that English verbs often have distinctive suffixes (-ing, -ed) and helper words (was, did, had) may make it easier (Waxman et al., 2013).

The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.

The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate

This region concentrates our learned knowledge of letter strings, to such an extent that it can be considered as our brain’s “letter box.” It is this brain area, for instance, that allows us to recognize a word regardless of its size, position, font, or cAsE, whether UPPERCASE or lowercase.39 In any literate person, this region, which is located in the same spot in all of us (give or take a few millimeters), serves a dual role: it first identifies a string of learned characters, and then, through its direct connections to language areas,40 it allows those characters to be quickly translated into sound and meaning. What would happen if we scanned an illiterate child or adult as she progressively learned to read? If the theory is correct, then we should literally see her visual cortex reorganize. The neuronal recycling theory predicts that reading should invade an area of the cortex normally devoted to a similar function and repurpose it to this novel task. In the case of reading, we expect a competition with the preexisting function of the visual cortex, which is to recognize all sorts of objects, bodies, faces, plants, and places.

What tempts you, Pippa?" "I-" She hesitated. "I care a great deal for meringue." He laughed, the sound bigger and bolder than she expected. "It's true." "No doubt you do. But you may have meringue anytime you like." He stood back and indicated that she should enter the carriage. She ignored the silent command, eager to make her point. "Not so. If the cook has not made it, I cannot eat it." A smile played on his lips. "Ever-practical Pippa. If you want it, you can find it. That's my point. Surely, somewhere in London, someone will take pity upon you and satisfy your craving for meringue." Her brow furrowed. "Therefore, I am not tempted by it?" "No. You desire it. But that's not the same thing. Desire is easy. It's as simple as you wish to have meringue, and meringue is procured." He waved a hand toward the interior of the carriage but did not offer to help her up. "In." She ascended another step before turning back. The additional height brought them eye to eye. "I don't understand. What is temptation, then?" "Temptation..." He hesitated, and she found herself leaning forward, eager for this curious, unsettling lesson. "Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment." The words were low and dark and full of truth, and they hovered in the silence for a long moment, an undeniable invitation. He was close, protecting her from toppling off the block, the heat of him wrapping around her despite the cold. "It makes you ache," he whispered, and she watched the curve of his lips in the darkness. "You'll make any promise, swear any oath. For one... perfect... unsoiled taste." Oh, my. Pippa exhaled, long and reedy, nerves screaming, thoughts muddled. She closed her eyes, swallowed, forced herself back, away from him and the way he... tempted her. Why was he so calm and cool and utterly in control? Why was he not riddled with similar... feelings? He was a very frustrating man. She sighed. "That must be a tremendous meringue." A beat followed the silly, stupid words... words she wished she could take back. How ridiculous. And then he chuckled, teeth flashing in the darkness. "Indeed," he said, the words thicker and more gravelly than before.

Oh, my son loves Japan!" she says, her voice soaring. "He's been studying Japanese, all by himself, and he went there recently actually for the first time, and he said he just felt immediately at home there, you know really comfortable. I mean with him it's mostly the, the, the-" My brain silently fills in the next word: anime. "The animation and so on, you know he's really into technology. I mean he's only seventeen, you know so who knows what is going to happen. But it does seem like, you know, a real thing for him." "Right," I say, and I nod. "That's great." Sometimes at times like these, what fills my head is the things I do not and could not ever say. For example: "You have no idea how many stories I've heard exactly like that one!" Or: "You know, even though I'm generally reluctant to admit the existence of 'types' among people, I'm often shocked by the parallels that exist between the kind of young men who like anime and all things Japanese, to the extent that I sometimes struggle to believe that a group of people with such intensely similar interests are in fact individuals." Certainly I do not say: "And what would you like to bet that he ends up marrying a Japanese woman and becomes an academic teaching the world about Japanese culture while she gives up her job to bring up his children?" But even if these things flicker through my mind, I'm not anywhere near as rageful as any of that makes me sound. In fact, if anything, what I feel in this particular moment is something like envy, for this son of hers that I've never met, I understand that taking refuge in Japan and being shielded from the demands of full adulthood is a privilege offered to predominantly white, educated, Anglophone men, because they are deemed the most desirable that the world has to offer; that it feeds off power relations that date back to the American occupation and beyond, and which hew closely to the colonial paradigm even if there are important differences (and even if Japan also has a history of colonialism of its own to reckon with); and that even leaving all of this aside, this Peter Pan status is not something I am interested in. And yet I can't help but look at the sort of person who feels "immediately" comfortable in Japan and wish that I had felt like that, only because it might validate the way I've dedicated a lot of my life to the country, but because the security of that sensation in itself feels like something I would love to experience.

In 1861, just a year after Gage’s death, this view was further cemented through the work of Pierre Paul Broca, a physician in Paris who documented a patient who appeared normal except that he had a severe speech deficit. The patient could understand and comprehend speech perfectly, but he could utter only one sound, the word “tan.” After the patient died, Dr. Broca confirmed during the autopsy that the patient suffered from a lesion in his left temporal lobe, a region of the brain near his left ear. Dr. Broca would later confirm twelve similar cases of patients with damage to this specific area of the brain. Today patients who have damage to the temporal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, are said to suffer from Broca’s aphasia. (In general, patients with this disorder can understand speech but cannot say anything, or else they drop many words when speaking.) Soon afterward, in 1874, German physician Carl Wernicke described patients who suffered from the opposite problem. They could articulate clearly, but they could not understand written or spoken speech. Often these patients could speak fluently with correct grammar and syntax, but with nonsensical words and meaningless jargon. Sadly, these patients often didn’t know they were spouting gibberish. Wernicke confirmed after performing autopsies that these patients had suffered damage to a slightly different area of the left temporal lobe.

All words have to be coined by a wordsmith at some point in the mists of history. The wordsmith had an idea to get across and needed a sound to express it. In principle, any sound would have done - basic principle of linguistics is that the relation of a sound to a meaning is arbitrary - so the first coiner of a term from for a political affiliation, for instance, could have used glorg or schmendrick or mcgillicuddy. But people are poor at conjuring sounds out of the blue, and they probably wanted to ease their listeners understanding of the coinage rather than having to define it or illustrate it with examples. So they reached for a metaphor that reminded them of the idea and they hoped would evoke a similar idea in the minds of their listeners, such as band or bond for a political affiliation. The metaphorical hint allowed the listeners to cotton on to the meaning more quickly than if they had had to rely on context alone, giving the word an advantage in the Darwinian competition among neologisms […] The word spread and became endemic to the community, adding to the language’s stock of apparent metaphors. But then it came to be used often enough, and in enough contexts, the speakers kicked the ladder away, and today people think not a whit about the metaphorical referent. It persists as a semantic fossil, a curiosity to amuse etymologists and wordwatchers [stet], but with no more resonance in our minds than any other string of vowels and consonants.

Chelsea was something else. Like an unstoppable force of nature. Similar to a hurricane or a tornado. Or a pit bull. Violet admired that about her. And, in this instance, Chelsea had proven to be nothing less than formidable. So when Jay had mentioned earlier in the week that they might be able to go to the movies over the weekend, Chelsea held him to it. A time and a place were chosen. And word spread. And, somehow, Chelsea managed to unravel it all. She still wanted the Saturday night plans; she just didn’t want the crowd that came with them. She’d decided it should be more of a “double date.” With Mike. Except Mike would never see it coming. By the time the bell rang at the end of lunch on Friday, everyone had agreed to meet up for the seven o’clock showing the next night. But when they split up to go to their classes, Chelsea set her own plan into motion. She began to separate the others from the pack and, one by one, they all fell. She started with Andrew Lauthner. Poor Andrew didn’t know what hit him. “Hey, Andy, did you hear?” From the look on his face, he didn’t hear anything other than that Chelsea-his Chelsea-was talking to him. Out of the blue. Violet needed to get to class, but she was dying to see what Chelsea had up her sleeve, so she stuck it out instead. “What?” His huge frozen grin looked like it had been plastered there and dried overnight. Chelsea’s expression was apologetic, something that may have actually been difficult for her to pull off. “The movie’s been canceled. Plans are off.” She stuck out her lower lip in a disappointed pout. “But I thought…” He seemed confused. So was Violet. “…didn’t we just make the plans at lunch?” he asked. “I know.” Chelsea managed to sound as surprised as he did. “But you know how Jay is, always talking out of his ass. He forgot to mention that he has to work tomorrow night and can’t make it.” She looked at Violet and said, again apologetically, “Sorry you had to hear that, Vi.” Violet just stood there gaping and thinking that she should deny what Chelsea was saying, but she wasn’t even sure where to start. She knew Jules would have done it. Where was Jules when she needed her? “What about everyone else?” Andrew asked, still clinging to hope. Chelsea shrugged and placed a sympathetic hand on Andrew’s arm. “Nope. No one else can make it either. Mike’s got family plans. Jules has a date. Claire has to study. And Violet here is grounded.” She draped an arm around Violet’s shoulder. “Right, Vi?” Violet was saved from having to answer, since Andrew didn’t seem to need one. Apparently, if Chelsea said it, it was the gospel truth. But the pathetic look on his face made Violet want to hug him right then and there. "Oh," he finally said. And then, "Well, maybe next time." "Yeah. Sure. Of course," Chelsea called over her shoulder, already dragging Violet away from the painful scene. "Geez, Chels, break his heart, why don't you? Why didn't you just say you have some rare disease or something?" Violet made a face at her friend. "Not cool." Chelsea scoffed. "He'll be fine. Besides, if I said 'disease,' he would have made me some chicken soup and offered to give me a sponge bath or something." She wrinkled her nose. "Eww." The rest of the afternoon went pretty much the same way, with a few escalations: Family obligations. Big tests to study for. House arrests. Chelsea made excuses to nearly everyone who'd planned on going, including Clair. She was relentless. By Saturday night, it was just the four of them...Violet, Jay, Chelsea, and, of course, Mike. It was everything Chelsea had dreamed of, everything she'd worked for.

Ultimately, what does it mean to be ignoble? — Words are sound signals for ideas, but ideas are more or less firm image signs for sensations which return frequently and occur together, for groups of sensations. To understand each other, it is not yet sufficient that people use the same words; they must also use the same words for the same form of inner experiences; in the end they must hold their experience in common with each other. That’s why human beings belonging to a single people understand each other better among themselves than associations of different peoples, even when they use the same language; or rather, when human beings have lived together for a long time under similar conditions (climate, soil, danger, needs, work), then something arises out of that which “understands itself” — a people ... The assessments of value in a man reveal something about the structure of his soul and where it looks for its conditions of life, its essential needs. Now, assume that need has always brought together only such people as could indicate with similar signs similar requirements and similar experiences, then it generally turns out that the easy ability to communicate need, that is, in the last analysis, familiarity with only average and common experiences, must have been the most powerful of all the forces which have so far determined things among human beings. People who are more similar and more ordinary have been and always are at an advantage; the more exceptional, more refined, rarer, and more difficult to understand easily remain isolated; in their isolation they are subject to accidents and rarely propagate themselves. People have to summon up huge counter-forces to check this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile [advance into similarity], the further development of human beings into what’s similar, ordinary, average, herd-like — into what’s common.

come to call “ideograms.” An ideogram is often a pictorial character that refers not to the visible entity that it explicitly pictures but to some quality or other phenomenon readily associated with that entity. Thus—to invent a simple example—a stylized image of a jaguar with its feet off the ground might come to signify “speed.” For the Chinese, even today, a stylized image of the sun and moon together signifies “brightness”; similarly, the word for “east” is invoked by a stylized image of the sun rising behind a tree.5 The efficacy of these pictorially derived systems necessarily entails a shift of sensory participation away from the voices and gestures of the surrounding landscape toward our own human-made images. However, the glyphs which constitute the bulk of these ancient scripts continually remind the reading body of its inherence in a more-than-human field of meanings. As signatures not only of the human form but of other animals, trees, sun, moon, and landforms, they continually refer our senses beyond the strictly human sphere.6 Yet even a host of pictograms and related ideograms will not suffice for certain terms that exist in the local discourse. Such terms may refer to phenomena that lack any precise visual association. Consider, for example, the English word “belief.” How might we signify this term in a pictographic, or ideographic, manner? An image of a phantasmagorical monster, perhaps, or one of a person in prayer. Yet no such ideogram would communicate the term as readily and precisely as the simple image of a bumblebee, followed by the figure of a leaf. We could, that is, resort to a visual pun, to images of things that have nothing overtly to do with belief but which, when named in sequence, carry the same sound as the spoken term “belief” (“bee-leaf”). And indeed, such pictographic puns, or rebuses, came to be employed early on by scribes in ancient China and in Mesoamerica as well as in the Middle East, to record certain terms that were especially amorphous or resistant to visual representation. Thus, for instance, the Sumerian word ti, which means

Aa – pronounced as ah, as in father Bb – pronounced as bay Cc – Generally, its French pronunciation is say. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the situation. If this letter comes before I and E, it must be pronounced as the English S (similar to how C in the word center is pronounced). If it comes before A, O, and U, its pronunciation must be the same as c in cat. Dd – pronounced as day, or similar to D in the word dog Ee – must sound like euh, similar to the emphasis of U in the word burp Ff – sounds like eff, similar to how F is pronounced in the word fog Gg – As a general rule, this letter is pronounced as jhay. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the word. If this letter is found before the vowels A, O, and U, it must sound like the g in the word get. On the other hand, if it’s placed before I and E, the pronunciation must be similar to the S in the word measure. Hh – While this letter generally sounds as ash and is found in French written words, it is ALWAYS silent, even if the word begins with this letter. However, H has two kinds in the French language that are useful in writing. In non-aspirated H (or H muet), the letter H is treated as a vowel and the word requires either liaisons or contractions (other rules will be discussed in a later section). On the other hand, in an aspirated H (or H aspiré), the word is treated is a consonant and will not require liaisons or contractions. To determine which words are aspirated or not so that words can be spelled and pronounced correctly, French dictionaries place an asterisk (or any other symbol) on words starting with an H to indicate that they are aspirated. Ii – sounds like ee, or similar to how the letters ea in the word team is pronounced Jj – pronounced as ghee, and sounds like the S in the word measure Kk – sounds like kah, and is pronounced like the K in the word kite Ll – a straightforward el pronunciation, similar to L in the word lemon Mm – simply pronounced as emm, from M in the word minute Nn – similar to N in the word note, as it sounds like enn Oo – This letter can be pronounced as the O in the word nose, or can also sound similar to the U in nut. Pp – pronounced as pay, or similar to the letter P in the word pen Qq – sounds like ku, or how the K in kite is pronounced Rr – must sound like you’re saying air. To do this correctly in French, you must try to force air as if it’s going to the back of your throat. Your tongue must be near the position where you gargle, but the letter must sound softly. Ss – Generally, it must sound like ess. However, the pronunciation might change depending on the word. If the word begins with an S or has 2 S’s, it must sound like the S in sister. However, if the word only has one S, it must sound like the Z in the word amazing. Tt – pronounced as tay, just like t in the word top Uu – To pronounce this properly, you must say the letter E as how it is said in English while making sure that your lips follow the position like you’re saying “oo”. Vv – pronounced as vay, and sounds like the V in violin. Ww – pronounced as dubla-vay as the general rule. However, this may be changed depending on the word. It can sound like V in the word violin, or as W in the word water. Xx – sounds like eeks, and can be pronounced either like gz (as how the word exit is said) or as ks (when the word socks is said). Yy – pronounced as ee-grehk, or similar to ea in leak. Zz – sounds as zed, or like the letter Z in zebra

Exodus 3:13–15 God’s Name God’s statement “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14) is essentially in answer to the question, “What is your name?” God’s initial answer seems evasive. He is hinting at the real answer, though, since the Hebrew words for “I am” sound a bit like “Yahweh,” the name finally revealed in Ex 3:15 (“the LORD”). Two aspects of how divine names were utilized in ancient Egypt may relate to this revelation of God’s name. First, ancient Egyptians believed in a close relationship between the name of a deity and the deity itself—i.e., the name of a god could reveal part of the essential nature of that god. In Egyptian texts that refer to different but important names for the same deity, the names are often associated with particular actions or characteristics, and the words used tend to sound similar to the names with which they are associated. One can say there is wordplay between the action or characteristic and the name. For example, one text says, “You are complete [km] and great [wr] in your name of Bitter Lake [Km wr] . . . See you are great and round [šn] in (your name of) Ocean [Šn wr].” One can discern a similar wordplay at work in Ex 3:14. The action God refers to is that of being or existing. The wordplay consists in that the statement “I AM” comes from the Hebrew consonants h-y-h, while the name in Ex 3:15 contains the consonants y-h-w-h. Both words come from the same verbal root, and the linguistic connection would be immediately clear to an ancient listener or reader. It is not that God’s name is actually “I am” but that “Yahweh” reveals something about the essence of who God is—an essence that relates to the concept of being and to the idea of one who brings others into being. A second aspect of divine names in Egypt may be relevant. Deities sometimes had secret names, and special power was granted to those who knew them. Certain Egyptian magical texts (e.g., the Harris Magical Papyrus) give instructions on how to use the words of a god and thereby wield a degree of that god’s power.

Some Consequences of the Made Thing The End. Above these words the sky closes. It closes by turning white. Not The white of all clouds or being within a cloud. White of worldless light. The End. Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent. Crushed grass the hooves galloped through Or is it the binder’s glue? Some silence never not real finally can be Heard. Silence before the first words. Precedent chaos. Or marrow work. Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak. Like those scholars of pure water Who rode through mountains and meadows To drink from each fresh spring a glass And then with brush and ink wrote poems On the differences of sameness, You too feel yourself taste the silent page Of the end and the silent page of beginning. They taste so much of whiteness never more White than white that’s been lost. You have some sense of the book Altering, page sewn secretly next to page, Last page stitched to first. O, earth— It rolls around the solar scroll Turning nothing into years and years into Nothing. At The End you’re a witness to this work That wears the witness away. And who are you Anyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover, Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade. Something similar gathers in you. Another way of saying I in a poem— Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the end That I am just a distance from myself. And so are you. That same distance.

HMMs are at the heart of speech-recognition systems like Siri. In speech recognition, the hidden states are written words, the observations are the sounds spoken to Siri, and the goal is to infer the words from the sounds. The model has two components: the probability of the next word given the current one, as in a Markov chain, and the probability of hearing various sounds given the word being pronounced. (How exactly to do the inference is a fascinating problem that we’ll turn to after the next section.) Siri aside, you use an HMM every time you talk on your cell phone. That’s because your words get sent over the air as a stream of bits, and the bits get corrupted in transit. The HMM then figures out the intended bits (hidden state) from the ones received (observations), which it should be able to do as long as not too many bits got mangled. HMMs are also a favorite tool of computational biologists. A protein is a sequence of amino acids, and DNA is a sequence of bases. If we want to predict, for example, how a protein will fold into a 3-D shape, we can treat the amino acids as the observations and the type of fold at each point as the hidden state. Similarly, we can use an HMM to identify the sites in DNA where gene transcription is initiated and many other properties.

Not to be confused with Der Flügel, which is an earlier form of the baby grand piano, the Flugelhorn is a wind instrument akin to the trumpet, but has a wider, conical bore. It is actually a descendant of the valved bugle, which had been developed from a hunting horn known in eighteenth-century Germany as a Flügelhorn. This valved instrument is similar to the B♭pitch of many trumpets and cornets and was actually inspired by the eighteenth-century saxhorn on which the flugelhorn is modeled. The German word Flügel means wing and in the early part of the 18th century Germany the leader or Führer of the hunt was known as a Flügelmeister who issued his orders of the hunt with, you guessed it, a Flügelhorn. Some modern flugelhorns feature a fourth valve that adds a lower range and extends the instrument's abilities, however some players use the fourth valve in place of the first and third valve combination making the instrument somewhat sharper and more confusing. The tone range is "fatter" and usually regarded as more “mellow” and “darker” than the trumpet or cornet. The sound of the flugelhorn has been described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn and is a standard member of the British-style brass band. Joe Bishop an American jazz musician and composer, not to be confused with Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack, was a member of the Woody Herman band and was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn.

These four devotees prayed to the Lord that although they might go to hell because they had cursed devotees, they might not forget the service of the Lord. The transcendental loving service of the Lord is performed in three ways – with the body, with the mind and with words. Here the sages pray that their words may always be engaged in glorifying the Supreme Lord. One may speak very nicely with ornamental language or one may be expert at controlled grammatical presentation, but if one’s words are not engaged in the service of the Lord, they have no flavor and no actual use. The example is given here of tulasī leaves. The tulasī leaf is very useful even from the medicinal or antiseptic point of view. It is considered sacred and is offered to the lotus feet of the Lord. The tulasī leaf has numerous good qualities, but if it were not offered to the lotus feet of the Lord, tulasī could not be of much value or importance. Similarly, one may speak very nicely from the rhetorical or grammatical point of view, which may be very much appreciated by a materialistic audience, but if one’s words are not offered to the service of the Lord, they are useless. The holes of the ears are very small and can be filled with any insignificant sound, so how can they receive as great a vibration as the glorification of the Lord? The answer is that the holes of the ears are like the sky. As the sky can never be filled up, the quality of the ear is such that one may go on pouring in vibrations of various kinds, yet it is capable of receiving more and more vibrations. A devotee is not afraid of going to hell if he has the opportunity to hear the glories of the Lord constantly. This is the advantage of chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. One may be put in any condition, but God gives him the prerogative to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. In any condition of life, if one goes on chanting he will never be unhappy.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a grasshopper gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the grasshopper that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a praying mantis gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the praying mantis that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! FW 3.15-17 n. Onomatopoeia for the sound of thunder. This is the first of 10 thunder words in Finnegans Wake, it and eight others having 100 letters and the 10th having 101 letters, making 1,001 letters that suggest the Arabian Nights or, in Wakese, “this scherzarade of one’s thousand and one nightinesses.” As a numerical palindrome, 1001 suggests the circular system of Vico and the Wake’s never-ending, never-beginning stylistic structure. In Vico’s system, the Divine Age is the first of three ages in which humanity hears the voice of God in thunder and, driven by fear (“the fright of light”) to hide in caves, pray “Loud, hear us!” “Who in the name of thunder’d ever belevin you were that bolt?” In keeping with this theme, the first thunder word is made up of many words similar to thunder in various languages: “kamminarro” (Japanese kaminari); “tuonn” (Italian tuono); “bronnto” (Greek Bronte); “thurnuk” (Gaelic tornach); “awnska” (Swedish aska); “tonner” (French tonnerre and Latin tonare); “tova” (Portuguese trovao); and “ton” (Old Rumanian tun).

In the “revelation” scene (Who forged the signatures? and do we really see a self-incrimination here?) the clock’s ticking, of course, convinces the naive that what we see has transpired in real time. It probably actually results from Welles’ conspiracy with the sound mixer. You can create a similar “revelation” scene by taking ten or twelve close-ups from half a year of filming, putting in a sound track with a tick-tock clock, and then just using your imagination to make the opening and closing dialogue seem to refer to each other. All the close-ups in between will then appear as reactions to the two lines of dialogue which can come from a scene, or two scenes, having no real link to the spoken words.

Different series, similar feeling. Malazan, Deadhouse Gates “Aye, Icarium. Such are memories in full flood. We are not simple creatures. You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.” A stubborn tone was evident as Icarium muttered, “A burden I would accept nonetheless.” “Let me offer some advice. Do not say that to Mappo, unless you wish to further break his heart.” The Trell’s blood was a thunder coursing through him, his chest aching with a breath held overlong. “I do not understand,” Icarium said quietly after a time, “but I would never do that, lass.” Mappo let the air loose, slowly, struggling to control himself. He felt tears run crooked tracks from the corners of his eyes. “I do not understand.” This time, the words were a whisper. “Yet you wish to.” There was no reply to that. A minute passed, then there came to Mappo sounds of movement. “Here, Icarium,” Apsalar said, “dry those eyes. Jhag never weep.

Does What I Think Really Matter? Ronnie Littleton Pause for just a moment and try to not think. Keep trying. It appears to be impossible to stop thinking, doesn’t it? Thinking is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. Not only that, our thoughts actually shape who we are, what we believe, what we do, and how we treat others. If our thoughts are this powerful, it seems obvious that we should avoid incorrect thoughts, for incorrect thoughts will lead to problems as we make decisions and form opinions based on bad information. On the other hand, correct thoughts will lead to good outcomes. This is why the Apostle Paul commands believers to transform their thinking (Rm 12:2). George Washington, our first president, became ill in 1799. One of the treatments prescribed for his illness was bloodletting—cutting open a vein to allow a specific amount of blood to flow out. Bloodletting was a fairly common practice at the time. It was believed that bad blood was the cause of fever, and that by letting some out, the fever would be relieved. We now know that this was not just incorrect thinking, it was dangerous. A wrong belief led to a wrong practice that may have actually hastened Washington’s death. The treatment was intended to heal, but was actually harmful. The physician who treated Washington had a good motive for his actions, and no doubt his course of treatment would have been supported by his medical colleagues; good motives and consensus of opinion, however, cannot make up for bad ideas. Since our ideas, opinions, and feelings have a big impact on what we do, and since they may be mistaken even if they match what everyone around us believes, where can we turn to know for certain what is right? One thing we can do is train ourselves to think logically. Logic is the study of reasoning principles—in other words, how we make valid inferences. In many cases it allows us to identify where our thinking has gone wrong and where we have bought into beliefs that are false. Nothing that is true can be illogical, so the use of logic is a filter for untruth. Logic and truth are not the same things, however. Think of logic as the plastic container that holds the milk in your refrigerator. The milk represents truth (a belief that corresponds to reality). If the plastic jug is full of holes, it could never hold the milk. On the other hand, if the container is sound, it will hold the milk. Now, just because the milk jug is valid does not necessarily mean that it has any milk in it, or that the milk is okay to drink. In a similar way, you can be a very logical person and yet miss the truth because of biases or inadequate information. In such cases, your wrong ideas may lead to bad consequences, such as wrong beliefs about God. Thus, we must always think logically and consult the sure source of ultimate truth: the Bible. Since what you think matters now and forever, you cannot afford to do otherwise.

The Viking invasions began as smash-and-grab raids to take as much as possible and go, but some groups decided to settle down and make a new life on the land they claimed. Their language was similar enough to Old English that they could communicate with the Anglo-Saxons without too much difficulty, and over time their own way of speaking mixed into the surrounding language, leaving vocabulary and expressions behind that don’t quite fit the rest of the pattern at the old Germanic layer. Much of the Scandinavian influence in English is so well absorbed that it doesn’t cause any weirdness. For example, there was a sequence in Germanic that became a ‘sk’ sound in Scandinavian and a ‘sh’ sound in English. When we mixed some Scandinavian words into English, we got some doubles like skirt and shirt, but we don’t even think of those as the same word, so the intrusion is unnoticeable.

You know, the original name for a merhorse was 'hippocampus,' but that fell out of favor because it's the same word as a part of the brain. Also, it sounds too much like hippopotamus, which isn't a similar animal at all." She had never seen a hippopotamus, though she'd read about them. "Did you know that hippopotamus secrete a red oil that keeps their skin dry and protects them from the sun?

We need to think of ways to creatively, lovingly meet their needs while still honoring God with appropriate boundaries on behaviors. This means speaking in a gentle voice, using soft eyes and loving words, and empathizing with their feelings first before going into how they should handle a similar moment in the future. If they’re not ready to talk right away, we may just need to sit nearby, waiting for calm to return, reminding them that they’re safe and we’re there. Calm isn’t always easy to find, for kids or for parents. It can be hugely challenging to regulate our own emotions in the thick of difficult parenting, and sometimes we may sound aggressive or unloving without even realizing it. I struggle to keep my cool when we’re running late and a child’s misbehavior derails my agenda. Realizing that’s a hard time for me has helped, but still I have to remind myself that the people in front of me are more important than the clock ticking on my wrist.

Similarly, you should never give a clock as a wedding present, because the word for “clock” zhōng  sounds the same as the word for “end” zhōng , which might suggest the end of the relationship. And at Chinese New Year, you should hang the banner with the symbol for fú  or “good fortune” upside down beside your doorway, because the word dào means both “to arrive” and “upside down”. Hence hanging good fortune (fú)  upside down (dào) also means good fortune (fú)  will arrive (dào) at your doorstep in the coming year.

Mrs. Malaprop. Her name comes from French “Mal à propos,” meaning inappropriate. Her grave fault was the tendency to substitute a similar-sounding word for the word that she intended to use. “Make no delusions to the past,” she said, in The Rivals (1775), and “I have interceded another letter from the fellow.” “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile,” she said, and, “If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs.

Only recently, the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. As

Sir,     We could not believe wur ears when we conceived the diary the other day in what Tom Shields appeared to disride the Glasgow patwah. After all, us Glaswegians are already impaled with the burden of wur enthic indentification because, admittedly, some of us do not metriculate wur words properly and are at times, theref our, slightly incomprehensive. For too long Scottish people in general, and Glasgow people in particular, has been subjugatit to the debilitating situation in which they are not understood by the English, or that they are told that they do not sound Scottish (from which Francie and me has often suffered), which is rich coming from people whose accents have to be seen to be believed.     It is oblivious to me that very few of wur Scottish cultyers ever gets past Beattock (and that goes fur the trains as well, by the way). A particular example is found in wur own profession. For many years our Scottish performers, even in the depth of their popularity, never got the chance to do their stuff south of Wentford because they were told that they were not understandable. Those who has made it across the border have did so only because they were prepared to use infected accents.     So what does the future hold for us? Is it to be like the well-known Bibulous stories of Moses that our great Scottish tribe has to suffer similar ante-seminal feelings for all maternity?     Only time will tell.         Yours,         Francie and Josie, Coocaddens.

The words she had spoken to Gordon could have sounded more like a threat than the warning she had intended. And he already thought it was possible that she had killed Keith. Or so he had pretended. “You're wrong,” she said. “I did need you.” “Why,” he asked, tipping his head to one side. “Would you like me to kill him for you instead. Is that why you're keeping me around, after all?” It wasn't an offer. Nor was it a joke. He meant to ask if she would like him to murder Gordon instead of doing it herself. He had suggested something similar before in order to provoke a rise from her, and in retaliation for making him admit he was capable of it. This time he was deadly serious; he really thought she wanted Gordon dead. Cammie flashed him a look of stark and painful disbelief before she whirled from him. She stumbled as she pounded up the steps and across the porch. It took her the third try to put her key into the lock. She pushed inside, slamming the heavy door behind her. She need not have hurried. Reid did not come after her. When she looked out the window, there was no one there. He was gone.

If you are determined to be an effective shield, start by working on yourself. Great bosses avoid burdening their people. They invent, borrow, and implement ways to reduce the mental and emotional load they heap on followers. In particular, meetings are notorious time and energy suckers. Yes, some are necessary, but too many bosses run them in ways that disrespect people’s time and dignity – especially self-absorbed bosses bent on self-glorification. If you want to grab power and don’t care much about your people, make sure you arrive a little late to most meetings. Plus, every now and then, show up very late, or – better yet – send word after everyone has gathered that, alas, you must cancel the meeting because something more pressing has come up. After all, if you are a very important person, the little people need to accept their inferior social standing. Sound familiar? Using arrival times to display and grab power is an ancient trick. This move was used by elders, or ‘Big Men’, in primitive tribes to gain and reinforce status. An ethnography of the Merina tribe in Madagascar found that jostling for status among elders meant that gatherings routinely started three or four hours late. Elders used young boys to spy on each other and played a waiting game that dragged on for hours. Each elder worked to maximize the impression that the moment he arrived, the meeting started. If he arrived early and the meeting didn’t start right away, it signaled that he wasn’t the alpha male. If he arrived late and the meeting had started without him, it also signaled that he wasn’t the most prestigious elder. I’ve seen similar power plays in academia. I was once on a committee led by a prestigious faculty member who always arrived at least ten minutes late, often twenty minutes. He also cancelled two meetings after the rest of the five-person committee had gathered. I tracked the time I wasted waiting for this jerk, which totaled over a half day during a six-month stretch.

So, you’re in love with the Smith girl?” Ben stumbled at his father’s question that was really more of a statement. “No. Not at all.” He forced a short laugh. “Of course I’m not in love with Susanna Smith.” “Well, you certainly fooled me tonight.” “I cannot deny I’m attracted to Susanna,” he admitted. “Who wouldn’t be? She’s intelligent, witty, and interesting.” “She sounds like the perfect match for you.” He wanted to agree. Susanna was everything Hannah was not. He thought about her more than he should. And even in her grandfather’s study earlier, he’d felt a pull toward her that was unbearably strong and difficult to resist. He knew he needed to control himself better around Susanna. Surely he would have less trouble with his attraction once he was finally engaged to Hannah. “I’m in the process of trying to propose marriage to Hannah Quincy.” His father plodded forward without missing a step. “Then you love Miss Quincy?” Did he love Hannah? Ben shook his head. “Sometimes there are factors more important than love.” “Then you are in love with her wealth rather than her person?” Ben wanted to rebut his father’s words—similar to those of Parson Wibird from earlier in the day—but something about his father’s bluntness kept him from doing so. “Hannah Quincy will give me what I currently lack, namely the status and approval of my peers.” His father was silent for a long moment, the steady scraping of their boots against the dirt road reminding Ben of the steadiness of the man by his side. He was a deacon of the church and had been the selectman of the town for years. There was not a nobler or more respected man among the community. “There’s more than one way to earn the approval of your peers.” His father spoke slowly as if weighing his words carefully. “And often the best way is through strength of character.

Soon after that, Eno briefly joined a group called the Scratch Orchestra, led by the late British avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew. There was one Cardew piece that would be a formative experience for Eno—a piece known as “Paragraph 7,” part of a larger Cardew masterwork called The Great Learning. Explaining “Paragraph 7” could easily take up a book of its own. “Paragraph 7”’s score is designed to be performed by a group of singers, and it can be done by anyone, trained or untrained. The words are from a text by Confucius, broken up into 24 short chunks, each of which has a number. There are only a few simple rules. The number tells the singer how many times to repeat that chunk of text; an additional number tells each singer how many times to repeat it loudly or softly. Each singer chooses a note with which to sing each chunk—any note—with the caveats to not hit the same note twice in a row, and to try to match notes with a note sung by someone else in the group. Each note is held “for the length of a breath,” and each singer goes through the text at his own pace. Despite the seeming vagueness of the score’s few instructions, the piece sounds very similar—and very beautiful—each time it is performed. It starts out in discord, but rapidly and predictably resolves into a tranquil pool of sound. “Paragraph 7,” and 1960s tape loop pieces like Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain,” sparked Eno’s fascination with music that wasn’t obsessively organized from the start, but instead grew and mutated in intriguing ways from a limited set of initial constraints. “Paragraph 7” also reinforced Eno’s interest in music compositions that seemed to have the capacity to regulate themselves; the idea of a self-regulating system was at the very heart of cybernetics. Another appealing facet of “Paragraph 7” for Eno was that it was both process and product—an elegant and endlessly beguiling process that yielded a lush, calming result. Some of Cage’s pieces, and other process-driven pieces by other avant-gardists, embraced process to the point of extreme fetishism, and the resulting product could be jarring or painful to listen to. “Paragraph 7,” meanwhile, was easier on the ears—a shimmering cloud of sonics. In an essay titled “Generating and Organizing Variety in the Arts,” published in Studio International in 1976, a 28-year-old Eno connected his interest in “Paragraph 7” to his interest in cybernetics. He attempted to analyze how the design of the score’s few instructions naturally reduced the “variety” of possible inputs, leading to a remarkably consistent output. In the essay, Eno also wrote about algorithms—a cutting-edge concept for an electronic-music composer to be writing about, in an era when typewriters, not computers, were still en vogue. (In 1976, on the other side of the Atlantic, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were busy building a primitive personal computer in a garage that they called the Apple I.) Eno also talked about the related concept of a “heuristic,” using managerial-cybernetics champion Stafford Beer’s definition. “To use Beer’s example: If you wish to tell someone how to reach the top of a mountain that is shrouded in mist, the heuristic ‘keep going up’ will get him there,” Eno wrote. Eno connected Beer’s concept of a “heuristic” to music. Brecht’s Fluxus scores, for instance, could be described as heuristics.

Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense. As Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 "qi"). Their English equivalents—"four," "seven"—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits. It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and five- teen. But we don't. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty and sixty, which sound like the words they are related to (four and six). But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound like five and three and two, but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the "decade" first and the unit number second (twentyone, twenty-two), whereas for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two- tens-four and so on. That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach forty until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills. The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-yearold to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tensseven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. "The Asian system is transparent," says Karen Fuson, a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied Asian-Western differences. "I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there's a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it's sensible. For fractions, we say three-fifths. The Chinese is literally 'out of five parts, take three.' That's telling you conceptually

Manage Your Team’s Collective Time Time management is a group endeavor. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ILLUSTRATION: JAMES JOYCE by Leslie Perlow | 1461 words Most professionals approach time management the wrong way. People who fall behind at work are seen to be personally failing—just as people who give up on diet or exercise plans are seen to be lacking self-control or discipline. In response, countless time management experts focus on individual habits, much as self-help coaches do. They offer advice about such things as keeping better to-do lists, not checking e-mail incessantly, and not procrastinating. Of course, we could all do a better job managing our time. But in the modern workplace, with its emphasis on connectivity and collaboration, the real problem is not how individuals manage their own time. It’s how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. Here is where the true opportunity for productivity gains lies. Nearly a decade ago I began working with a team at the Boston Consulting Group to implement what may sound like a modest innovation: persuading each member to designate and spend one weeknight out of the office and completely unplugged from work. The intervention was aimed at improving quality of life in an industry that’s notorious for long hours and a 24/7 culture. The early returns were positive; the initiative was expanded to four teams of consultants, and then to 10. The results, which I described in a 2009 HBR article, “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required,” and in a 2012 book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone , were profound. Consultants on teams with mandatory time off had higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance, and they felt they were learning more on the job. It’s no surprise, then, that BCG has continued to expand the program: As of this spring, it has been implemented on thousands of teams in 77 offices in 40 countries. During the five years since I first reported on this work, I have introduced similar time-based interventions at a range of companies—and I have come to appreciate the true power of those interventions. They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. They are more productive and efficient. Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they’ll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. CREATING “ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY” DAYS One of the insights driving this work is the realization that many teams stick to tried-and-true processes that, although familiar, are often inefficient. Even companies that create innovative products rarely innovate when it comes to process. This realization came to the fore when I studied three teams of software engineers working for the same company in different cultural contexts. The teams had the same assignments and produced the same amount of work, but they used very different methods. One, in Shenzen, had a hub-and-spokes org chart—a project manager maintained control and assigned the work. Another, in Bangalore, was self-managed and specialized, and it assigned work according to technical expertise. The third, in Budapest, had the strongest sense of being a team; its members were the most versatile and interchangeable. Although, as noted, the end products were the same, the teams’ varying approaches yielded different results. For example, the hub-and-spokes team worked fewer hours than the others, while the most versatile team had much greater flexibility and control over its schedule. The teams were completely unaware that their counterparts elsewhere in the world were managing their work differently. My research provide

How to tell a scary story Even before the birth of horror movies, people already used horror stories to entertain and scare people. The ability to scare people through stories is considered a rare and special talent. Not all storytellers are able to successfully frighten their audience. ●       Voice. Your voice can be an invaluable tool in telling scary stories. The tone of your voice will make it easier for the audience to feel scared. ●       Do your homework. Search for the scariest stories you can find and make a list of them. The more realistic they are, the better. ●       Choose new if possible. The latest stories are great choices since everyone can relate to them. Urban legends can also work, but some of your audience may have already heard the story. ●       Localize it. Change the setting of the story to make it seem like the story took place where you are telling it. You can also tie the story to a local resident. Horror stories about a person’s locality can have a different impact. ●       Don’t overdramatize.  Avoid using words that you do not often use. As a general rule, you have to make it sound like the story makes you uncomfortable inside. ●       Change the setting. You can change the setting of the story to make it similar to the one you’re in. For example, if your town has a local abandoned factory, you can use that as the main setting of your story. Ideally, when your listeners see the factory, they will be reminded of your scary story.

Line 10: The fact that the inhabitants of the Netherworld are said to be clad in feather garments is perhaps due to the belief that after death, a person's soul turned into a spirit or a ghost, whose nature was wind-like, as well as bird-like. The Mesopotamians believed in the body (*pagru*) and the soul. the latter being referred to by two words: GIDIM = *et.emmu*, meaning "spirit of the dead," "ghost;" and AN.ZAG.GAR(.RA)/LIL2 = *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu*, meaning "soul," "ghost," "phantom." Living beings (humans and animals) also had ZI (*napis\/tu*) "life, vigor, breath," which was associated with the throat or neck. As breath and coming from one's throat, ZI was understood as moving air, i.e., wind-like. ZI (*napis\/tu*) was the animating life force, which could be shortened or prolonged. For instance...Inanna grants "long life (zi-su\-ud-g~a/l) under him (=the king) in the palace. At one's death, when the soul/spirit released itself from the body, both *et.emmu* and *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* descended to the Netherworld, but when the body ceased to exist, so did the *et.emmu*, leaving only the *zaqi_gu*. Those souls that were denied access to the Netherworld for whatever reason, such as improper buriel or violent or premature death, roamed as harmful ghosts. Those souls who had attained peace were occasionally allowed to visit their families, to offer help or give instructions to their still living relatives. As it was only the *et.emmu* that was able to have influence on the affairs of the living relatives, special care was taken to preserve the remains of the familial dead. According to CAD [The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago] the Sumerian equivalent of *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* was li/l, which referred to a "phantom," "ghost," "haunting spirit" as in lu/-li/l-la/ [or] *lilu^* or in ki-sikil-li/l - la/ {or] *lili_tu*. the usual translation for the word li/l, however, is "wind," and li/l is equated with the word *s\/a_ru* (wind) in lexical lists. As the lexical lists equate wind (*s\/a_ru* and ghost (*zaqi_qu*) their association with each other cannot be unfounded. Moreover, *zaqi_qu* derives from the same root as the verb *za^qu*, "to blow," and the noun *zi_qu*, "breeze." According to J. Scurlock, *zaqi_qu* is a sexless, wind-like emanation, probably a bird-like phantom, able to fly through small apertures, and as such, became associated with dreaming, as it was able to leave the sleeping body. The wind-like appearance of the soul is also attested in the Gilgamesh Epic XII 83-84, where Enkidu is able to ascend from the Netherworld through a hole in the ground: "[Gilgamesh] opened a hole in the Netherworld, the *utukku* (ghost) of Enkidu came forthfrom the underworld as a *zaqi_qu." The soul's bird-like appearance is referred to in Tablet VII 183-184, where Enkidu visits the Netherworld in a dream. Prior to his descent, he is changed into a dove, and his hands are changed into wings. - State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts Volume VI: The Neo-Assyrian Myth of Istar's Descent and Resurrection {In this quote I haven't been able to copy some words exactly. I've put Assyrian words( normally in italics) between *asterisks*. The names of signs in Sumerian cuneiform (wedge-shaped writing) are normally in CAPITALS with a number slightly below the line after it if there's more than one reading for that sign. Assyriologists use marks above or below individual letters to aid pronunciation- I've put whatever I can do similar after the letter. E.g. *et.emmu" normally has the dot under the "t" to indicate a sibilant or buzzy sound, so it sounds something like "etzzemmoo." *zaqi_qu* normally has the line (macron) over the "i" to indicate a long vowel, so it sounds like "zaqeeqoo." *napis\/tu* normally has a small "v" over the s to make a sh sound, ="napishtu".}

not in any of their plans. What a crushing heartbreak it must have been. Is the word providence still in the back of your mind? God is about to “shake things up” even more! When Esther’s year of preparations is complete, she is told that it is at last her turn to see the king — rather, for the king to see her. Now when the turn came for Esther the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his daughter, to go in to the king, she requested nothing but what Hegai the king’s eunuch, the custodian of the women, advised. Esther 2:15 In addition to beauty preparations and diet, surely Esther has received instruction concerning protocol as well. She is aware of the fact that she will be allowed to carry one small item with her when she is received by the king. Remember, Esther has continued throughout this year to be faithful to Mordecai’s instructions and careful upbringing as well as submitting herself to Hegai’s authority. Esther is a young woman who is accustomed to being under authority; she recognizes the importance of sound advice. Esther receives counsel from Hegai, and takes with her only what he suggests to her. Who would be better than Hegai to advise her in how to make a pleasing first impression with King Ahasuerus? Hegai was in charge in preparing these women; he must have had a good idea of Ahasuerus’ likes and dislikes. During this year of preparation, Esther has most likely recognized Hegai’s important role. She goes to him for advice as to what to take with her, and it serves her well. It is not recorded that any other woman sought Hegai’s advice — perhaps it was mentioned because it was peculiar only to Esther. This shows us one more aspect of Esther’s personality: she is not threatened by the gifts in other people. Esther has submitted herself to God’s will, and recognizes that God is placing people around her who are potentially a help to her, if she is humble enough to recognize and receive advice from someone else. She recognizes that Hegai’s knowledge can help her. One more thought for today: do not over look the important difference between Esther’s asking for advice, and King Ahasuerus’ asking for advice. Remember in chapter one, when Ahasuerus sought after advice, he went to people in a very similar situation or even beneath him. Remember Memucan and the other princes? How could men who did not even live with the queen or know her well have any idea how to handle her? In Esther 2:15, we have an example of Esther being able to discern wisely her situation — there were times to keep to herself, and also times to ask for help. When Esther sought advice, she sought it from a good source. Just as it made all the difference in the world for Esther, it will make all the difference in the world for you.   Take a moment to thank God for the people in your life whose advice and character are an encouragement and help to you. Pray that He will cause you to be someone whose encouragement will be a blessing to others this week!

Do you actually hear confessions in your church, Father, actual spoken confessions? For that matter, does any priest anymore, at least as the movies depict them, the little lattice between confessor and penitent, its delicate chiaroscuro screening the priest's profile and veiling the lips of the sinner? Surely Freud himself, when he positioned himself behind and out of sight of his recumbent patients, sought a similar partial anonymity. How we analysts must envy you, your belief in redress, in the promise of absolution and redemption. How clean the words sound compared to our own impure remedies: recollection, interpretation, speculation, suggestion. Strange, isn't it, how we have both sealed ourselves in small, half-lit chambers, both in the service of gods who share nothing but the name of Love.

Displaying Warmth and Empathy Warmth means showing that you care about another person. Empathy is the capacity to share another person’s experience, to “put yourself in his shoes,” as the saying goes. Some ways to express warmth and empathy: 1. Use verbal and nonverbal signals to encourage the person to continue. 2. If the situation arises, describe experiences you’ve had that are similar to those of the other person, and explain that you can understand how he or she feels. 3. Use the person’s name during the conversation (a person’s own name is the sweetest sound in the world to him or her). 4. Become genuinely interested in other people, and show it. 5. Make the other person feel important. Displaying warmth and empathy is a way of truly demonstrating to another that you value him or her, and is often the source of a person’s immediate positive feeling toward you. In the words of psychologist William James, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Conveying warmth and empathy, combined with being a good conversationalist, will help you to show appreciation for another person.

["As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change." (Bg. 2.13)] In these two lines, Kṛṣṇa solves the whole biological problem. That is knowledge. Minimum words, maximum solution. Volumes of books expounding nonsense have no meaning. Materialistic scientists are like croaking frogs: ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka. [Śrīla Prabhupāda imitates the sound of a croaking frog, and the others laugh.] The frogs are thinking, "Oh, we are talking very nicely," but the result is that the snake finds them and says, "Oh, here is a nice frog!" [Śrīla Prabhupāda imitates the sound of a snake eating a frog.] Bup! Finished. When death comes, everything is finished. The materialistic scientists are croaking-ka-ka-ka-but when death comes, their scientific industry is finished.

Cellular Renewal Researchers believe that when you practice intermittent fasting, your cells undergo a small amount of stress, which seems to continually recharge the cellular defenses against molecular damage and builds your resistance to disease. Although the word stress sounds like a negative, taxing the body is beneficial in much the same way as exercising stresses your muscles and heart. As long as you allow your body time to recover, it will grow stronger. There is a lot of similarity between how your body responds to the stress of physical activity and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.

Newark." It sounded so tantalizingly close to "New York," and maybe, some assumed, was the way northerners, clipping their words as they did, pronounced New York. It was confusing to have their destination preceded directly by a city with such a similar name and with an identically named station. And as they had been riding for as many as twenty-four hours and were nervous about missing their stop, some got off prematurely, and, it is said, that is how Newark gained a good portion of its black population, those arriving in Newark by accident and deciding to stay.

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.

larynx (pp. 352–354), and (2) smaller intrinsic muscles that control tension in the glottal vocal folds or that open and close the glottis. These smaller muscles insert on the thyroid, arytenoid, and corniculate cartilages. The opening or closing of the glottis involves rotational movements of the arytenoid cartilages. When you swallow, both sets of muscles work together to prevent food or drink from entering the glottis. Food is crushed and chewed into a pasty mass, known as a bolus, before being swallowed. Muscles of the neck and pharynx then elevate the larynx, bending the epiglottis over the glottis, so that the bolus can glide across the epiglottis rather than falling into the larynx. While this movement is under way, the glottis is closed. Foods or liquids that touch the vestibular folds or glottis trigger the coughing reflex. In a cough, the glottis is kept closed while the chest and abdominal muscles contract, compressing the lungs. When the glottis is opened suddenly, a blast of air from the trachea ejects material that blocks the entrance to the glottis. Sound Production How do you produce sounds? Air passing through your open glottis vibrates its vocal folds and produces sound waves. The pitch of the sound depends on the diameter, length, and tension in your vocal folds. The diameter and length are directly related to the size of your larynx. You control the tension by contracting voluntary muscles that reposition the arytenoid cartilages relative to the thyroid cartilage. When the distance increases, your vocal folds tense and the pitch rises. When the distance decreases, your vocal folds relax and the pitch falls. Children have slender, short vocal folds, so their voices tend to be high pitched. At puberty, the larynx of males enlarges much more than that of females. The vocal cords of an adult male are thicker and longer, so they produce lower tones than those of an adult female. Sound production at the larynx is called phonation (fo.-NA .-shun; phone, voice). Phonation is one part of speech production. Clear speech also requires articulation, the modification of those sounds by voluntary movements of other structures, such as the tongue, teeth, and lips to form words. In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, the quality of the sound produced does not depend solely on the nature of the vibrating string. Rather, the entire instrument becomes involved as the walls vibrate and the composite sound echoes within the hollow body. Similar amplification and resonance take place within your pharynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses. The combination gives you the particular and distinctive sound of your voice. That sound changes when you have a sinus infection and your nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are filled with mucus rather than air.

There is a phenomenon known as “paradoxical undressing” that affects those dying of hypothermia. Freezing to death, people tear off their clothing as they’re overcome by imaginary heat. Lost in blizzards , on snowy mountains, in frozen forests, their bodies become convinced that they’re burning, not freezing. Honestly, I’m so shy that I find most contact with people deeply unsettling, but songs - the alive kind in the air, injected with evil from the Doghouse - mean that I’m burning with sound, not frozen with fear. ’Cause they’re my way down to where we all are. I didn’t ask ask to go down to where we all are, but as it turns out, I’m a member of a deeply social species in which the only truths worth speaking are the most naked. In other words, I had planned on wearing all my clothes into these freezing woods - songs ask me to wear none. But way beyond stripping off clothes, the musical kind of paradoxical undressing strips you down to your bones. And as it turns out, we all have pretty fucking similar bones. Who knew?

A word might begin as a mere stream of sounds to the infant, just one part of the whole statistical learning package, but it quickly becomes more than that. It becomes an invitation for the infant to create similarities among diverse instances. A word tells the infant, “Do you see all these objects that look different physically? They have an equivalence that is mental.” That equivalence is the basis for a goal-based concept.

To me, this sounds like a real-life version of a story—the title of which is often translated as “The Useless Tree”—from the Zhuangzi, a collection of writings attributed Zhuang Zhou, a fourth-century Chinese philosopher. The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree (in one version, a serrate oak, a similar-looking relative to our coast live oak) of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?” The tree balks at the distinction between usefulness and worth, made by a man who only sees trees as potential timber: “What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”5 It’s easy for me to imagine these words being spoken by Old Survivor to the nineteenth-century loggers who casually passed it over, less than a century before we began realizing what we’d lost.

Can we believe that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16)? Here is why I think we can. It is remarkable in composition. Composed over sixteen centuries by forty authors. Begun by Moses in Arabia and finished by John on Patmos. Penned by kings in palaces, shepherds in tents, and prisoners in prisons. Would it be possible for forty writers, writing in three different languages and several different countries, separated by as much as sixteen hundred years, to produce a book of singular theme unless behind them there was one mind and one designer? It is remarkable in durability. It is the single most published book in history. Translated into at least twelve hundred languages.17 Bibles have been burned by governments and banished from courtrooms, but God’s Word endures. The death knell has been sounded a hundred times, but God’s Word continues. It is remarkable in prophecy. More than three hundred fulfilled prophecies about the life of Christ,18 were all written at least four hundred years before he was born. Imagine if something similar occurred today. If we found a book written in 1900 that prophesied two world wars, a depression, an atomic bomb, and the assassinations of a president and a civil rights leader, wouldn’t we trust it? Glory Days

For example, 1etters that looked similar miqht be switcheb out for each other; one word might be substituted for another won that sounded the same when read; words might skipped; words or letters might be be doubled; even whole sections might be skipped when the same word was used a few lines apart.

It's not that he won't talk, though, is it?" After all, Cal had tentatively answered when she'd shown a willingness to wait. "It's more that he needs to know that you value his words." "Yeah." "I think I've been impatient with him. I'll do better." "That's not only on you." Zac doesn't sound tense or tired anymore, only thoughtful. "He could probably try harder too. I think you'll be surprised how similar you are at the root once you get to know him better. You both love very fiercely. He does it by being there and giving whatever's needed, and you fight and bully and murder anything in the way, and on the surface it seems like there's nothing that's the same, but the motivation is." She smiles and kisses his hand. "That's something to build on, at least.

Dialogue is a way of talking between two or more people or things, but it can also be experienced through understanding symbols and events and books. Symbols are things that stand for something else, such as words, images, gestures, or sounds. Events are things that happen, such as actions, situations, or changes. Symbols and events can communicate meaning, feelings, or ideas, just like dialogue can. For example, when you see a red light, you know that it means stop, and when you hear a bell, you know that it means school is over. These are symbols that tell you something without words. Similarly, when you see someone smile, you know that they are happy, and when you see someone cry, you know that they are sad. These are events that show you something without words. By understanding symbols and events, you can have a dialogue with yourself, with others, or with the world, even if you don't speak or hear. Books can use symbols and events to create dialogue between the author and the reader, or between the characters and the reader. For example, in The Catcher in the Rye, the author uses the symbol of the red hunting hat to show the main character's desire for individuality and protection, and the event of visiting the museum to show his fear of change and adulthood. These symbols and events create a dialogue between the author and the reader, who can interpret their meanings and relate them to their own experiences.

In general, the chakra system branched into two sections: the Vedic and the Tantric (now alive within Ayurvedic medicine and Tantric yoga, for example). The term tantra comes from two words: tanoti, or to expand; and trayati, or to liberate. Tantra therefore means “to extend knowledge that liberates.” Tantra is a life practice based on teachings about the chakras, kundalini, hatha yoga, astronomy, astrology, and the worship of many Hindu gods and goddesses. Tantric yoga originates in pre-Aryan India, around 3000 to 2500 BC. Many other varieties of Tantric yoga or spirituality have arisen from it, including Tantric Buddhism. Each system derived from Tantric yoga has a unique view on the chakras and their related gods, cosmology, and symbols. The history of chakras, as complex as it sounds so far, is even more complicated. The chakra system is intertwined with—and maybe even created by—several different cultures. Although usually associated with India, Tantric yoga was also practiced by the Dravidians, who originated from Ethiopia, as is revealed in the many similarities between predynastic Egyptian and African practices and ancient Indian Tantric beliefs.6 For example, numerous Hindu deities are rooted in “India’s black civilizations, which is why they are often depicted as black.”7 Some historians point out that early Egyptians were greatly affected by African beliefs,8 and in turn influenced Greek, Jewish, and, later, Islamic and Christian thought, in addition to the Indian Hindu.9 Other cultures also exchanged chakra ideas. Many practices of the early Essenes, a religio-spiritual community dwelling in Palestine in the second century BC through the second century AD, mirrored those of early India.10 The Sufis—Islamic mystics—also employed a system of energy centers, although it involved four centers.11 The Sufis also borrowed the kundalini process from Tantric yoga, as did certain Asian Indian and American Indian groups.12 As we shall see, the Maya Indians of Mexico, the Inca Indians of Peru, and the Cherokee Indians of North America each have their own chakra method. The Maya believe that they actually taught the Hindu the chakra system. The chakra system was brought to the West in yet another roundabout way. It was first thoroughly outlined in the text Sat-Chakra-Nirupana, written by an Indian yogi in the sixteenth century. Arthur Avalon then delivered chakra knowledge to Western culture in his book The Serpent Power, first published in 1919. Avalon drew heavily upon the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana as well as another text, Pakaka-Pancaka. His presentation was preceded by Theosophic Practica, a book written in 1696 by Johann Georg Gichtel, a student of Jakob Bohme, who refers to inner force centers that align with Eastern chakra doctrines.13 Today, many esoteric professionals rely on Anodea Judith's interpretation of Avalon’s work, to which she has added additional information about the psychological aspects of the chakras.

Once there was a single consciousness that unified everything. Within this consciousness were two beings: Shiva, the infinite supreme consciousness, and Shakti, the eternal supreme consciousness. Shiva represents time, and Shakti, space. Here is the yang of Oriental medicine, cloaked in the Shiva figure, and the yin shown within the Shakti. These two beings separated, creating a distinction between matter and consciousness within the universe—and within the children of the universe, including people. Shakti lies within us all, coiled within our root chakra in the guise of a serpent. In this form, she is the Kundalini Shakti, the “power at rest.”15 She only becomes manifest, however, when she moves—and that is her ultimate goal, to rise through the denseness of the body until she can rejoin her great love, Shiva, who resides in the seventh chakra. When unified, the two create through supreme consciousness. Shakti is not just an ethereal being. She is seen as the cause of prana, or life force. She has sound and form; she is composed of alphabet characters, or mantras. When Shiva and Shakti join, they create nada (pure cosmic sound) and maha bindu (the supreme truth that underlies all manifestation). What does this mean for the initiate who fuses these two beings—these two parts of him- or herself? The graduate is freed from the confines of the physical body. Innate powers—mystical, magical abilities—awaken. Moreover, the soul is freed from the wheel of life that forces reincarnation. Science tells a similar story, using different words. According to recent studies, the entire world can be reduced to frequency and vibration. As we saw in Part III, we are all composed of the L-fields and T-fields that form unified frequencies. We are all made of the “male” and the “female,” the electrical and the magnetic. If we can achieve the balance and blending of each, then there is harmony, and within that harmony, healing. To follow the path of kundalini is not “only” to achieve an enlightened state of mind. It is to heal the mind, soul, spirit—and body.

Here the Lord himself admits that the satan incited him to act against Job (2:3). The story begins when the satan appears as an angel, a “son of God” (ben ’elōhīm), a term that, in Hebrew idiom, often means “one of the divine beings.” Here this angel, the satan, comes with the rest of the heavenly host on the day appointed for them to “present themselves before the Lord.” When the Lord asks whence he comes, the satan answers, “From roaming on the earth, and walking up and down on it.” Here the storyteller plays on the similarity between the sound of the Hebrew satan and shût, the Hebrew word “to roam,” suggesting that the satan’s special role in the heavenly court is that of a kind of roving intelligence agent, like those whom many Jews of the time would have known—and detested—from the king of Persia’s elaborate system of secret police and intelligence officers. Known as “the king’s eye” or “the king’s ear,” these agents roamed the empire looking for signs of disloyalty among the people.

From here, this author found that the Hebrew pronunciation in both Strong's and The Hebrew-English Dictionary is baw-bel'. The stress is on the second syllable with the short a sound. It is the same Hebrew word for both Babel and Babylon, the latter empire. The Greek equivalent is Babulwn (bab-oo-lone'). The Greek yields a short a sound similar to the second pronunciation (ba-bel) in Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and this Greek influence may be why the second pronunciation gained popularity.

The chain shift appears to have been triggered by a change in realization of the /i:/ vowel in words like bite and side, which would once have been pronounced [bi:tə] and [si:də], but diphthongized to [əI], and later [aI] similar developments affected the back vowel /u:/ in, for example, house [hu:sə], and mouse [mu:sə], which diphthongized to [əɷ] (and later [aɷ]) This left a space in the area formerly occupied by /u:/ and /i:/, into which the vowels immediately below them, i.e. half-close /e:/ and /o:/ of beet and boot respectively, could move. This is called a drag chain effect, in that a movement in one position frees up space into which other vowels may move, but the converse push chain effects appear also to have been involved in GVS. The open front vowel /a:/ of mate ([ma:tə]) shifted initially to [æ:] and then to [ε:], forcing the vowel in the existing [ε:] set (e.g. beat) to move up into the /e:/ position. Similar developments affected long back vowels. The overall effect of these changes from a systemic point of view has been to maximize available space for vowel oppositions in the vocal tract, without changing the overall number of oppositions available. A consequence is the rather chaotic mismatch between sound and grapheme which we witness in English spelling.

To get a sense of their exchange, you should know a little about how the system functioned, or rather how it still does, because in this particular matter, I believe that little to nothing has changed. The peasant who cannot write, and needs something written, goes looking for a person who knows the art, and chooses someone, as best he can, from among members of his own class, since he is intimidated by others or doesn’t trust them. He explains the background, with some degree of order and clarity, and in the same fashion, he dictates what needs to be put down on paper. The writer, in equal parts understanding and misunderstanding, offers some advice, proposes a few changes, and says, “Leave it to me.” He picks up his pen, puts down the other person’s thoughts in written form as best he can, corrects them, improves them, emphasizes some parts, and softens or leaves out others, depending on what he thinks sounds best; because—there’s no escaping it—a man who knows more than others does not want to be a tool in their hands. When he delves into their business, he wants to do things slightly in his own way. Still, the writer does not always manage to say everything he means. Sometimes he even ends up saying the opposite; the same thing also happens to me when I write for the press. When a letter composed in such a manner reaches the addressee, who, like the sender, is also unschooled in the ABC’s, he or she must turn to another learned man of similar status to read and explain the message. Questions over interpretation arise since the recipient, who is familiar with the background, claims that certain words mean one thing, while the reader, based on his experience with composition, claims that they mean something else. In the end, the one who cannot write must submit to the one who can and entrust him with the reply; a reply that, following the pattern of the previous letter, is subject to the same style of interpretation. And if, moreover, the subject of the correspondence is a little delicate, and involves secret matters that should be indecipherable to a third person if the letter happens to go astray; and if, in this regard, there is also a deliberate intention not to say things clearly, then, no matter how brief the correspondence, the two parties will end up understanding each other as well as two medieval scholars might have, in the olden days, after debating the meaning of Aristotle’s entelechy for four hours (I have shied away from using a more modern example to avoid getting my ears boxed!).

Oh, my son loves Japan!" she says, her voice soaring. "He's been studying Japanese, all by himself, and he went there recently actually for the first time, and he said he just felt immediately at home there, you know really comfortable. I mean with him it's mostly the, the, the-" My brain silently fills in the next word: anime. "The animation and so on, you know he's really into technology. I mean he's only seventeen, you so who knows what is going to happen. But it does seem like, you know, a real thing for him." "Right," I say, and I nod. "That's great." Sometimes at times like these, what fills my head is the things I do not and could not ever say. For example: "You have no idea how many stories I've heard exactly like that one!" Or: "You know, even though I'm generally reluctant to admit the existence of 'types" among people, I'm often shocked by the parallels that exist between the kind of young men who like anime and all things Japanese, to the extent that I sometimes struggle to believe that a group of people with such intensely similar interests are in fact individuals." Certainly I do not say: "And what would you like to bet that he ends up marrying a Japanese woman and becomes an academic teaching the world about Japanese culture while she gives up her job to bring up his children?" But even if these things flicker through my mind, I'm not anywhere near as rageful as any of that makes me sound. In fact, if anything, what I feel in this particular moment is something like envy, for this son of hers that I've never met, I understand that taking refuge in Japan and being shielded from the demands of full adulthood is a privilege offered to predominantly white, educated, Anglophone men, because they are deemed the most desirable that the world has to offer; that it feeds off power relations that date back to the American occupation and beyond, and which hew closely to the colonial paradigm even if there are important differences (and even if Japan also has a history of colonialism of its own to reckon with); and that even leaving all of this aside, this Peter Pan status is not something I am interested in. And yet I can't help but look at the sort of person who feels "immediately" comfortable in Japan and wish that I had felt like that, only because it might validate the way I've dedicated a lot of my life to the country, but because the security of that sensation in itself feels like something I would love to experience.

Oh, my son loves Japan!" she says, her voice soaring. "He's been studying Japanese, all by himself, and he went there recently actually for the first time, and he said he just felt immediately at home there, you know really comfortable. I mean with him it's mostly the, the, the-" My brain silently fills in the next word: anime. "The animation and so on, you know he's really into technology. I mean he's only seventeen, you know so who knows what is going to happen. But it does seem like, you know, a real thing for him." "Right," I say, and I nod. "That's great." Sometimes at times like these, what fills my head is the things I do not and could not ever say. For example: "You have no idea how many stories I've heard exactly like that one!" Or: "You know, even though I'm generally reluctant to admit the existence of 'types" among people, I'm often shocked by the parallels that exist between the kind of young men who like anime and all things Japanese, to the extent that I sometimes struggle to believe that a group of people with such intensely similar interests are in fact individuals." Certainly I do not say: "And what would you like to bet that he ends up marrying a Japanese woman and becomes an academic teaching the world about Japanese culture while she gives up her job to bring up his children?" But even if these things flicker through my mind, I'm not anywhere near as rageful as any of that makes me sound. In fact, if anything, what I feel in this particular moment is something like envy, for this son of hers that I've never met, I understand that taking refuge in Japan and being shielded from the demands of full adulthood is a privilege offered to predominantly white, educated, Anglophone men, because they are deemed the most desirable that the world has to offer; that it feeds off power relations that date back to the American occupation and beyond, and which hew closely to the colonial paradigm even if there are important differences (and even if Japan also has a history of colonialism of its own to reckon with); and that even leaving all of this aside, this Peter Pan status is not something I am interested in. And yet I can't help but look at the sort of person who feels "immediately" comfortable in Japan and wish that I had felt like that, only because it might validate the way I've dedicated a lot of my life to the country, but because the security of that sensation in itself feels like something I would love to experience.

To me, this sounds like a real-life version of a story—the title of which is often translated as “The Useless Tree”—from the Zhuangzi, a collection of writings attributed Zhuang Zhou, a fourth-century Chinese philosopher. The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree (in one version, a serrate oak, a similar-looking relative to our coast live oak) of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?” The tree balks at the distinction between usefulness and worth, made by a man who only sees trees as potential timber: “What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”5 It’s easy for me to imagine these words being spoken by Old Survivor to the nineteenth-century loggers who casually passed it over, less than a century before

Million and billion sounded similar, and the words were used interchangeably in colloquial conversations, but the enormous difference became blindingly obvious in context. A million seconds was about twelve days, whereas a billion seconds was nearly thirty-two years.

Writer Miroslav Volf explains this more poetically. We experience time, he says, the way we hear a beautiful note from cello. It may sound like a single pitch, but in reality it is a complete tone, including other voices from the string’s half-length, eighth-length, and so on. “It is similar with the music of our lives,” says Volf. “At any given time we do not hear only the simple, solitary tone of the present; rather, in that present resonate many sounds of past actualities and future possibilities. This is how our present acquires depth.” In other words, our present-day lives are constantly echoing those of others. (p. 113)

The dogma of the group is promoted as scientifically incontestable—in fact, truer than anything any human being has ever experienced. Resistance is not just immoral; it is illogical and unscientific. In order to support this notion, language is constricted by what Lifton calls the “thought-terminating cliché.” “The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed,” he writes. “These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” For instance, the Chinese Communists dismissed the quest for individual expression and the exploration of alternative ideas as examples of “bourgeois mentality.” In Scientology, terms such as “Suppressive Person” and “Potential Trouble Source” play a similar role of declaring allegiance to the group and pushing discussion off the table. The Chinese Communists divided the world into the “people” (the peasantry, the petite bourgeoisie) and the “reactionaries” or “lackeys of imperialism” (landlords and capitalists), who were essentially non-people. In a similar manner, Hubbard distinguished between Scientologists and “wogs.” The word is a derogatory artifact of British imperialism, when it was used to describe dark-skinned peoples, especially South Asians. Hubbard appropriated the slur, which he said stood for “worthy Oriental gentleman.” To him, a wog represented “a common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety humanoid”—an individual who is not present as a spirit. Those who are within the group are made to strive for a condition of perfection that is unattainable—the ideal Communist state, for instance, or the clearing of the planet by Scientology.

Nitrogen can be a knight Monroe can be a man rowing Washington can be by a washing machine Armstrong can be by a strong arm The main idea behind word substitution is coming up with a picture (or series of linked pictures) that sounds similar enough to remind you of the original word.

Although making decisions by testing God with fleeces is generally a bad idea, sometimes it can look similar to setting reasonable goals. For example, suppose you are considering running a marathon. But you decide that you won’t sign up for the 26.2 mile race unless you first lose fifteen pounds and finish a half-marathon. In a way this sounds like laying out a fleece, but it is really just prudence and good goal setting. Humble goals and loosely held plans are good. Expecting God to do tricks for us is bad. Don’t pray: “God, if You want me to go out on this date, then make my professors cancel all their assignments for the weekend. If You don’t do that, I’ll just tell Josh that it wasn’t the Lord’s will that we go out.” The whole fleece approach to life is dangerously close to violating Jesus’ admonition, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7). Now, I know Gideon asked God for some special dew. But there are good reasons to think Gideon’s request is not a normative example. For starters, Gideon didn’t have a Bible. More than likely, he didn’t have a single page of God’s inspired Word of his own. More importantly, the book of Judges generally does not provide a good example of much of anything. When the theme of the book is “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), we should think twice before copying whatever practices or attitudes we find in its chapters. Gideon’s request was probably an indication of cowardice and unbelief more than faithful, wise decision making.

Writer Miroslav Volf explains this more poetically. We experience time, he says, the way we hear a beautiful note from cello. It may sound like a single pitch, but in reality it is a complete tone, including other voices from the string’s half-length, eighth-length, and so on. “It is similar with the music of our lives,” says Volf. “At any given time we do not year only the simple, solitary tone of the present; rather, in that present resonate many sounds of past actualities and future possibilities. This is how our present acquires depth.” In other words, our present-day lives are constantly echoing those of others. (p. 113)

The demon is the mental shadow-side archetype. What it shows is that the lifeblood of Raktabija has the power to give birth to thousands of Raktabijas, just like the thinking of the soul. Similarly, thoughts from the mind seem to sprout more and more thoughts as soon as they appear to land. Even if one in meditation cuts them off, more will sprout. It requires the power of Shakti Kundalini to spring the mind, dispatch the demon. Kali comes in in this great mythical tale and cuts the demon's head off. Before it could hit the fertile ground of existence she drank all her blood. In other words, out of all the thoughts, desires, and delusions that plague the seeker and prevent the seeker from knowing pure union, Kali Kundalini takes the life energy. Kali, as She's chopping the heads off, is symbolically slashing through the soul, removing all the emotions that will give birth to slavery and illusion over and over again. She absorbs them into herself; in other words, She frees from those bound forms the life-force, the Shakti. The formation is all forms. She alone has the power to dissolve all forms, to free from them the soul, the life. Kali wears a fifty-skull garland all around her neck. In addition, these fifty skulls reflect the Sanskrit alphabet's fifty letters— the sounds and forms that make up thought, which are the basis of all life. She's the one who sucks the life-force out of them so we can be safe from them, as well as the one who gave them birth to begin with. Taking refuge in Kali takes refuge in that inherent ability to cut off the heads of the very modes of thought, behaviors, values and all of the mind's restricting mechanisms that trap us in illusion. When free, She brings us back into unity with the Infinite — as does Kali with her husband Shiva. Even a myth of this kind, which may seem so bizarre and gruesome to the ignorant, has profound significance for our sadhana, revealing moment by moment what is involved in our spiritual practice. When you do japa, the ritual of mantra repeating, of Om Kali Ma, her mantra, you bring your mind back to Kali again and again. You can do this practice right now, or you can sit for meditation the next time. Close your eyes and dissolve Om Kali Ma, Om Kali Ma, Om Kali Ma with every thought. Kali's story shows that with every repeat of Om Kali Ma, this glorious phenomenon occurs. She cuts off all the emotions, all the deluded ideas, all the bound behaviors and perceptions that might have filled the mind as the pulse of mantra. Keeping the mind in the mantra refuge means holding the mind in a sacred place that is safe from all the modes of thought with which the mind might have developed its own slavery. Every repetition of mantra is a movement of Kali's sword clearing and opening that spaciousness of awareness, freeing our energy and consciousness so we can experience the fullness of who and what we are in each moment.

Gordon decided to try something similar with a group of twelve students who frequently got into trouble. He created a technology squad, giving them responsibility for the school’s expensive computerized lighting and sound systems. He bought them black outfits emblazoned with the words “Tech Squad” and their names spelled out in glow-in-the-dark letters. The kids had no preexisting technology skills, but they learned how to use the boards and move giant mechanical curtains. “At my last graduation at the middle school, the tech teacher called in sick,” Gordon recalled. “I called the Tech Squad, and this tiny, eleven-year-old sixth grader said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Gordon, we’ve got your back.’” His mother later came to the school in tears and shared that after years of hating school, he now ate, slept, and dreamed about it. None of the kids were referred to the main office after they joined the squad. Gordon told me, “Their chests got bigger and they became heroes among the kids instead of the class clowns.” Find that one thing that gives your child a sense of purpose, whether it’s singing, running, volunteering, peer mentoring, or creative writing. Kids who feel competent are more resistant to peer pressure.

Anyway, you do understand that a single class only has a single party, right?” “Right.” “But Ōyama says he wants to make it two.” “Right.” “And if you compare the two, Ōyama makes his own sound very similar but ultimately his will only pursue reforms within that permitted sphere. Therefore, this will weaken the sole, actually existing working-class party, and divert its strength in a reformist direction. . . . In other words, it will perform the reactionary role of a dissolutionist factional act.

But in a more remunerative area?” “Definitely. I’m expecting to net a thousand dollars a word for what I’m doing this afternoon.” “A thousand—” Warren Jukes let out a laugh, making a sound similar to the yelp of a startled terrier. “Well, I don’t know what you’re up to, Jim, but let me wish you the best of luck with it. I’ll tell you one thing. I’m damned glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” Trevathan looked again at what he’d written. “I’ve got a gun. Please fill this paper sack with thirty thousand dollars in used tens and twenties and fifties or I’ll be forced to blow your stupid head off.” “Oh, I’ve still got my sense of humor,” he said. “Know what I’m going to do, Warren? I’m going to laugh all the way to the bank.” The End

Around the world, people who studied parenting usually divided the various styles into four basic categories: Authoritarian parents were strict disciplinarians, the “because I said so” parents. Permissive parents tended to be indulgent and averse to conflict. They acted more like friends than parents. In some studies, permissive parents tended to be wealthier and more educated than other parents. Neglectful parents were just how they sounded: emotionally distant and often absent. They were also more likely to live in poverty. Then there was the fourth option: Authoritative. The word was like a mash up of authoritarian and permissive. These parents inhabited the sweet spot between the two: they were warm, responsive, and close to their kids, but, as their children got older, they gave them freedom to explore and to fail and to make their own choices. Throughout their kids’ upbringing, authoritative parents also had clear, bright limits, rules they did not negotiate. “We’re socialized to believe that warmth and strictness are opposites,” Doug Lemov writes in his book Teach Like a Champion. “The fact is, the degree to which you are warm has no bearing on the degree to which you are strict, and vice versa.” Parents and teachers who manage to be both warm and strict seem to strike a resonance with children, gaining their trust along with their respect. When researcher Jelani Mandara at Northwestern University studied 4,754 U.S. teenagers and their parents, he found that kids with authoritative parents had higher academic achievement levels, fewer symptoms of depression, and fewer problems with aggression, disobedience, and other antisocial behaviors. Other studies have found similar benefits. Authoritative parents trained their kids to be resilient, and it seemed to work.

Mate, I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I don’t think anyone even knows my name. I’ve already slipped three spots down the batting order. I’ve got no idea what the lyrics to the club song are. And every time I get a hit at training, I hear the faint sound of blokes whispering that one word under their breath: “Yuck.” What am I doing wrong?’ I began, nervously. Nuggsy paused, took a long swig of his Reschs schooner, and reclined languidly into his seat. He scratched his bald head for a moment, seemingly in deep thought, before embarking on the long-winded response that would indeed shape my cricketing future. ‘Listen, bud. You’re a grade cricketer now. And it’s time you learned a little bit about what that means. This isn’t club cricket, “Shires” cricket, or that stupid school shit that you wasted your time on for all those years. This is grade cricket: the highest level of amateur cricket in the world,’ he said with pride. Just for those who don’t already know, I should quickly provide a bit of background on the grade cricket competition. Grade cricket (or ‘Premier cricket’, as it is known in some states/territories) is the level directly below the state competition.  Despite this close proximity to the professional arena, it is nonetheless an amateur competition. Sure, one or two first graders might get paid a little bit under the table, but everyone else must pay a registration fee in order to play. Normally, each club has four to five grades — first grade being the strongest; fifth grade the weakest. Those in first grade enjoy a status that the fifth graders can only dream about. Being a first grader is like being a celebrity to 50 blokes whose names you’ll never know — or never even need to know — unless you end up playing with them after a severe run of poor form (or a serious disciplinary breach). The rest of the club — seconds, thirds, and fourth grade — is basically an assortment of talented youngsters and ageing desperates. The common denominator between the young and old brigade is that they were all once told they were ‘good enough to play for Australia’. In many cases, it was the first and last compliment they ever received — and the reason why they’re still playing. In all cases, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to them. The ultimate grade cricketer, therefore, will possess the perfect balance of good and not good enough that will haunt them for all of their playing days. All this of course, is something that can only be learned with experience. At this early stage in my grade cricket career, I considered these young players to be ‘cool’ and the older players worthy of my respect. Nuggsy tilted his head to one side as he lit up a cigarette. He took a deep drag, holding it in for what seemed like hours, before launching his head back to expel a thick plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Listen, great man,’ he began. ‘Success in grade cricket has nothing to do with skill, ability, or even results. It’s all about the social ladder, bud. You’ve got the big dogs up top, the peasants down the bottom, and everyone in between is just trying to stay relevant,’ he offered. In many ways, grade cricket social hierarchy bears great similarity to the feudal systems that first appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe — something I’d learned a bit about at high school. As I remembered, kings and monarchs sat at the top, enjoying their pick of the land, women and food. They were the ones who established the rules that everyone had to live under. The barons leased their land from the king; the knights leased their land from the barons; and the knights granted the lowly peasants their land.  The peasants were not allowed to marry, nor could they even leave the manor without permission. Basically, they were the fifth graders of the 8-12th Century.