Some Bad Chapter Quotes

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

I'd like to give every young teacher some good news. Teaching is a very easy job. Administrators will tell you what to do. You'll be given books and told chapters to assign the children. Veteran teachers will show you the correct way to fill out forms and have your classes line up. And here's some more good news. If you do all of these things badly, they let you keep doing it. You can go home at three o'clock every day. You get about three months off a year. Teaching is a great gig. However, if you care about what you're doing, it's one of the toughest jobs around.

My dearest friend Abigail, These probably could be the last words I write to you and I may not live long enough to see your response but I truly have lived long enough to live forever in the hearts of my friends. I thought a lot about what I should write to you. I thought of giving you blessings and wishes for things of great value to happen to you in future; I thought of appreciating you for being the way you are; I thought to give sweet and lovely compliments for everything about you; I thought to write something in praise of your poems and prose; and I thought of extending my gratitude for being one of the very few sincerest friends I have ever had. But that is what all friends do and they only qualify to remain as a part of the bunch of our loosely connected memories and that's not what I can choose to be, I cannot choose to be lost somewhere in your memories. So I thought of something through which I hope you will remember me for a very long time. I decided to share some part of my story, of what led me here, the part we both have had in common. A past, which changed us and our perception of the world. A past, which shaped our future into an unknown yet exciting opportunity to revisit the lost thoughts and to break free from the libido of our lost dreams. A past, which questioned our whole past. My dear, when the moment of my past struck me, in its highest demonised form, I felt dead, like a dead-man walking in flesh without a soul, who had no reason to live any more. I no longer saw any meaning of life but then I saw no reason to die as well. I travelled to far away lands, running away from friends, family and everyone else and I confined myself to my thoughts, to my feelings and to myself. Hours, days, weeks and months passed and I waited for a moment of magic to happen, a turn of destiny, but nothing happened, nothing ever happens. I waited and I counted each moment of it, thinking about every moment of my life, the good and the bad ones. I then saw how powerful yet weak, bright yet dark, beautiful yet ugly, joyous yet grievous; is a one single moment. One moment makes the difference. Just a one moment. Such appears to be the extreme and undisputed power of a single moment. We live in a world of appearance, Abigail, where the reality lies beyond the appearances, and this is also only what appears to be such powerful when in actuality it is not. I realised that the power of the moment is not in the moment itself. The power, actually, is in us. Every single one of us has the power to make and shape our own moments. It is us who by feeling joyful, celebrate for a moment of success; and it is also us who by feeling saddened, cry and mourn over our losses. I, with all my heart and mind, now embrace this power which lies within us. I wish life offers you more time to make use of this power. Remember, we are our own griefs, my dear, we are our own happinesses and we are our own remedies. Take care! Love, Francis. Title: Letter to Abigail Scene: "Death-bed" Chapter: The Road To Awe

I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God “sends” illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. “What did I do to deserve this?” is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is “If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?” As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.

Bad things will happen to the finest of people Sometimes their heart is hung high on a steeple And even while it sits there as if on display Some uncaring person will add more dismay

To justify democracy takes more work: we have to explain why some people should have the right to impose bad decisions on others. In particular, as I will show in later chapters, to justify democracy, we’ll need to explain why it’s legitimate to impose incompetently made decisions on innocent people.

If you have read this far in the chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans - and I certainly hope you have not - then you know we have reached the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history, and so you know the end is near, even though this chapter is so lengthy that you might never reach the end of it. But perhaps you do not yet know what the end really means. "The end" is a phrase which refers to the completion of a story, or the final moment of some accomplishment, such as a secret errand, or a great deal of research, and indeed this thirteenth volume marks the completion of my investigation into the Baudelaire case, which required much research, a great many secret errands, and the accomplishments of a number of my comrades, from a trolley driver to a botanical hybridization expert, with many, many typewriter repairpeople in between. But it cannot be said that The End contains the end of the Baudelaires' story, any more than The Bad Beginning contained its beginning. The children's story began long before that terrible day on Briny Beach, but there would have to be another volume to chronicle when the Baudelaires were born, and when their parents married, and who was playing the violin in the candlelit restaurant when the Baudelaire parents first laid eyes on one another, and what was hidden inside that violin, and the childhood of the man who orphaned the girl who put it there, and even then it could not be said that the Baudelaires' story had not begun, because you would still need to know about a certain tea party held in a penthouse suite, and the baker who made the scones served at the tea party, and the baker's assistant who smuggled the secret ingredient into the scone batter through a very narrow drainpipe, and how a crafty volunteer created the illusion of a fire in the kitchen simply by wearing a certain dress and jumping around, and even then the beginning of the story would be as far away as the shipwreck that leftthe Baudelaire parents as castaways on the coastal shelf is far away from the outrigger on which the islanders would depart. One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end, as all of the world's stories are as jumbled as the items in the arboretum, with their details and secrets all heaped together so that the whole story, from beginning to end, depends on how you look at it. We might even say that the world is always in medias res - a Latin phrase which means "in the midst of things" or "in the middle of a narrative" - and that it is impossible to solve any mystery, or find the root of any trouble, and so The End is really the middle of the story, as many people in this history will live long past the close of Chapter Thirteen, or even the beginning of the story, as a new child arrives in the world at the chapter's close. But one cannot sit in the midst of things forever. Eventually one must face that the end is near, and the end of The End is quite near indeed, so if I were you I would not read the end of The End, as it contains the end of a notorious villain but also the end of a brave and noble sibling, and the end of the colonists' stay on the island, as they sail off the end of the coastal shelf. The end of The End contains all these ends, and that does not depend on how you look at it, so it might be best for you to stop looking at The End before the end of The End arrives, and to stop reading The End before you read the end, as the stories that end in The End that began in The Bad Beginning are beginning to end now.

There are no happy endings in real life. A person's story doesn't suddenly end when something good happens. If you get married, that's not a happy ending. It's the happy beginning of your next chapter together. Ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief. Grief is the price we pay for love. But along the way, there are some precious moments of happiness. And it's those fleeting moments that make life worth living.

My humble...I don't drink...' 'A shame! What about a game of dice, then? Or do have some other favourite game? Dominoes? Cards? 'I don't play games,' the already weary barman responded. 'Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's something noce nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! Chapter 18

Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I think I must have invented him.’ I know all I want to about your child,’ Chauvin said harshly. Anne Desbaresdes moaned again, louder than before. Again she put her hand on the table. His eyes followed her movement and finally, painfully, he understood and lifted his own leaden hand and placed it on hers. Their hands were so cold they were touching only in intention, an illusion, in order for this to be fulfilled, for the sole reason that it should be fulfilled, none other, it was no longer possible. And yet, with their hands frozen in this funereal pose, Anne Desbaresdes stopped moaning. One last time,’ she begged, ‘tell me about it one last time.’ Chauvin hesitated, his eyes somewhere else, still fixed on the back wall. Then he decided to tell her about it as if it were a memory. He had never dreamed, before meeting her, that he would one day want anything so badly.’ And she acquiesced completely?’ Wonderfully.’ Anne Desbaresdes looked at Chauvin absently. Her voice became thin, almost childlike. I'd like to understand why his desire to have it happen one day was so wonderful?’ Chauvin still avoided looking at her. Her voice was steady, wooden, the voice of a deaf person. There's no use trying to understand. It's beyond understanding.’ You mean there are some things like that that can't be gone into?’ I think so.’ Anne Desbaresdes' expression became dull, almost stupid. Her lips had turned pale, they were gray and trembled as though she were on the verge of tears. She does nothing t try and stop him?’ she whispered. No. Have a little more wine.’ She sipped her wine. He also drank, and his lips on the glass were also trembling. Time,’ he said Does it take a long time, a very long time?’ Yes, a very long time. But I don't know anything.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Like you, I don't know anything. Nothing at all.’ Anne Desbaresdes forced back her tears. Her voice was normal, momentarily awake. She will never speak again,’ she said.

In fact, the messages actually seemed to increase drug use. Kids aged twelve and a half to eighteen who saw the ads were actually more likely to smoke marijuana. Why? Because it made drug use more public. Think about observability and social proof. Before seeing the message, some kids might never have thought about taking drugs. Others might have considered it but have been wary about doing the wrong thing. But anti-drug ads often say two things simultaneously. They say that drugs are bad, but they also say that other people are doing them. And as we’ve discussed throughout this chapter, the more others seem to be doing something, the more likely people are to think that thing is right or normal and what they should be doing as well.

Every time it starts to get cool, I mean in the middle of autim, I start gettin nutty ideas like I was thinkin about what was forein and diffrent, like for exsample how I'd like to turn into a swallow and get away and fly to countrys where it gets hot, or be an ant so's I could get deep into a cave and eat the stuff I stored away durin the summer or be a snake like what they got in the zoO, the ones they keep lockt up in glass cages thats heated so's they don't get stiff from the cold, which is what happens to poor human beans who cant buy no close cause the price is to high, and cant keep warm cause theys no keroseen, no coal, no wood, no fule oil and besides theys no loot, cause when you go around with bocoo bread you can go into any bar and get some sneaky pete that can be real warmin, even tho it aint good to overdo it cause if you overdos it it gets to be a bad habbit and bad habbits is bad for your body just like they is for youre selfrespeck, and when you start goin downhill cause your actin bad in everythin, they aint nobody or nothin can stop you from endin up a stinkin piece of human garbidge and they never gone give you a hand to haul you up outen the dirty muck you rollin around in, not even if you was a eaglE when you was young and could fly up and over the highest hills, but when you get old you like a highflyin bomber thats lost its moral engines and fall down outen the sky. I jes hope what I been writin down hear do somebody some good so he take a good look at how he livin and he dont be sorry when it too late and everythin is gone down the drain cause it his own fault. -- Caser Bruto, What I Would Like to Be If I Wasn't What I Am (Chapter: "A St. Bernard Dog")

This is a chapter on God, I guess. Truth be told, the whole book is. Not much in my life makes any sense outside of God. Certainly, a place like Homeboy Industries is all folly and bad business unless the core of the endeavor seeks to imitate the kind of God one ought to believe in. In the end, I am helpless to explain why anyone would accompany those on the margins were it not for some anchored belief that the Ground of all Being thought this was a good idea.

... people with a secure attachment style view their partners' well-being as their responsibility. As long as they have reason to believe their partner is in some sort of trouble, they'll continue to back him or her. Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, in their book Attachment in Adulthood, show that people with a secure attachment style are more likely than others to forgive their partner for wrongdoing. They explain this as a complex combination of cognitive and emotional abilities: "Forgiveness requires difficult regulatory maneuvers . . . understanding a transgressor's needs and motives, and making generous attributions and appraisals concerning the transgressor's traits and hurtful actions . . . Secure people are likely to offer relatively benign explanations of their partners' hurtful actions and be inclined to forgive the partner." Also, as we've seen previously in this chapter, secure people just naturally dwell less on the negative and can turn off upsetting emotions without becoming defensively distant. The good news is that people with a secure attachment style have healthy instincts and usually catch on very early that someone is not cut out to be their partner. The bad news is that when secure people do, on occasion, enter into a negative relationship, they might not know when to call it quits--especially if it's a long-term, committed relationship in which they feel responsible for their partner's happiness.

being picked on, was very painful, but it made me a better person. It instilled in me a lifelong hatred for bullies and sympathy for their victims. Some of the most satisfying work I did as a prosecutor, in fact, was putting bullies of all kinds in jail, freeing good people from their tyranny. After my experience in college, I was never going to surrender to the group again simply because it was easy. And I was going to make sure my life had some meaning, because I’d already seen how fleeting life could be. CHAPTER 4 MEANING I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. —HERMANN HESSE I HAVE WORKED with great men over the years, but two of my most important teachers about life and leadership were women. In 1993, after my work on the Gambino trial ended, I kept my promise to Patrice and we moved our family to Richmond, a place where we had few

Sometime in the fifties I remember seeing On the Waterfront in the movies with Mary and thinking that I’m at least as bad as that Marlon Brando character and that some day I’d like to get in union work. The Teamsters gave me good job security at Food Fair. They could only fire you if they caught you stealing. Let me put it another way, they could only fire you if they caught you stealing and they could prove it. • chapter eight • Russell Bufalino In 1957 the mob came out of the closet. It came out unwillingly, but out it came. Before 1957 reasonable men could differ over whether an organized network of gangsters existed in America. For years FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had assured America that no such organization existed, and he deployed the FBI’s greatest resources to investigate suspected Communists. But as a result of the publicity foisted on the mob in 1957, even Hoover came on board. The organization was dubbed “La Cosa Nostra,” meaning “this thing of ours,” a term heard on government wiretaps. Ironically,

So engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of which I have given in my earlier chapters. Indeed I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason.

I’ve concluded there are four chapters missing from the working Bibles of all too many Christians, and these missing chapters are not some obscure ceremonial texts or dusty corners of the royal chronicles. Instead, they are the very bookends of Scripture: the first two chapters of Genesis and the last two chapters of Revelation. And to miss these chapters—the first two about the creation, the second two about the new creation—is to miss the whole point of the biblical story. When these chapters drop out of our functional Bibles, our understanding of culture, power and salvation itself is badly weakened.

No book is a chapter, and no chapter tells the whole story. The same is true in our lives: no mistake defines who we are. God sees our mistakes in light of the grace that will turn them into stories of redemption. We’re not in the first chapter, and most of us aren’t in the last one. We’re somewhere in the middle. Hope makes our lives page-turners. Every good story has some unexpected twists, and even the best hero might lose her way for a few chapters. Don’t worry about it. God is writing more chapters. He has the power to turn the story around with us. Don’t let one bad chapter (or five) convince you that you know your whole story. You’re in one of those middle chapters. There are more to come.

Learning grammar can be viewed as a game that a little boy plays with his father. Daddy talks, the boy listens — perhaps disobeys — and Daddy talks some more. All the while the boy is trying to figure out the grammar that can generate the sentences in Daddy's speech. The boy might occasionally talk back, but there is no guarantee that Daddy will pay any attention. Not that he is a bad father: recall from Chapter 5 that in some cultures, adults do not interact with children until they are socially and linguistically adept. To fully understand the game of language learning, then, Daddy can be assumed only as a rather passive participant. The goal of the game is to learn Daddy's grammar within some finite amount of time: nobody learns forever.

This individual, who, either in his own person or in that of some member of his family, seemed to be always in trouble (which in that place meant Newgate), called to announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on suspicion of shoplifting. As he imparted this melancholy circumstance to Wemmick, Mr Jaggers standing magisterially before the fire and taking no share in the proceedings, Mike’s eye happened to twinkle with a tear. ‘What are you about?’ demanded Wemmick, with the utmost indignation. ‘What do you come snivelling here for?’ ‘I did’t go to do it, Mr Wemmick.’ ‘You did,’ said Wemmick. ‘How dare you? You’re not in a fit state to come here, if you can’t come here without spluttering like a bad pen. What do you mean by it?’ ‘A man can’t help his feelings, Mr Wemmick,’ pleaded Mike. ‘His what?’ demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. ‘Say that again!’ ‘Now, look here my man,’ said Mr Jaggers, advancing a step, and pointing to the door. ‘Get out of this office. I’ll have no feelings here. Get out.’ ‘It serves you right,’ said Wemmick. ‘Get out.’ So the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr Jaggers and Wemmick appeared to have re-established their good understanding, and went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if they had just had lunch. Chapter Thirteen From Little Britain, I went, with my cheque in my pocket, to Miss Skiffins’s brother, the accountant; and Miss Skiffins’s brother, the accountant, going straight to Clarriker’s and bringing Clarriker to me, I had the great satisfaction of concluding that arrangement.

Everyone internalizes their parents’ voices; it’s how we’re socialized. And while some people end up with a supportive, friendly, problem-solving inner commentary, many hear only angry, critical, or contemptuous voices. The unrelenting presence of these negative messages can do more damage than the parent him- or herself. Therefore, you need to interrupt these voices in the act of making you feel bad so that you can separate your self-worth from their critical evaluations. The goal is to recognize the voice as something imported that isn’t part of your true self, so that it no longer feels like a natural part of your own thinking. One way of doing so is to use the maturity awareness approach in chapter 8 to relate to those negative voices inside your head just as you’d use that approach with a parent.

As if all the stories of the contamination of the scientific literature, the waste, the corrosive effect on trust and even the deaths aren’t bad enough, here’s that terrifying thought again: these are just the ones we know about. Could it be that the fraudsters we haven’t caught are smarter, more cunning and more dangerous than any of those covered in this chapter? Many scientific fraudsters, after all, are exposed not by data sleuths or by scanning papers for faked images, but by whistleblowers who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to spot something suspect. It’s overwhelmingly likely that some fraudsters exist who have evaded such detection, who have concealed their misdeeds more effectively and produced fake science that doesn’t raise any questions. It’s entirely possible that we’ll never find them.

Chapter 20 we will explore in far greater depth how to avoid brainwashing and how to distinguish reality from fiction. Here I would like to offer two simple rules of thumb. First, if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product. Suppose a shady billionaire offered you the following deal: “I will pay you $30 a month, and in exchange you will allow me to brainwash you for an hour every day, installing in your mind whichever political and commercial biases I want.” Would you take the deal? Few sane people would. So the shady billionaire offers a slightly different deal: “You will allow me to brainwash you for one hour every day, and in exchange, I will not charge you anything for this service.” Now the deal suddenly sounds tempting to hundreds of millions of people. Don’t follow their example. The second rule of thumb is that if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature. And by scientific literature I mean peer-reviewed articles, books published by well-known academic publishers, and the writings of professors from reputable institutions. Science obviously has its limitations, and it has gotten many things wrong in the past. Nevertheless, the scientific community has been our most reliable source of knowledge for centuries. If you think the scientific community is wrong about something, that’s certainly possible, but at least know the scientific theories you are rejecting, and provide some empirical evidence to support your claim. Scientists, for their part, need to be far more engaged with current public debates. Scientists should not be afraid of making their voices heard when the debate wanders into their field of expertise, be it medicine or history. Of course, it is extremely important to go on doing academic research and to publish the results in scientific journals that only a few experts read. But it is equally important to communicate the latest scientific theories to the general public through popular science books, and even through the skillful use of art and fiction. Does that mean scientists should start writing science fiction? That is actually not such a bad idea. Art plays a key role in shaping people’s views of the world, and in the twenty-first century science fiction is arguably the most important genre of all, for it shapes how most people understand things such as AI, bioengineering, and climate change. We certainly need good science, but from a political perspective, a good science-fiction movie is worth far more than an article in Science or Nature.

Like God, you hover above the page staring down on a small town. Outside a window some scenery loafs in a sleepy hammock of pastoral prose and here is a mongrel loping and here is a train approaching the station in three long sentences and here are the people in galoshes waiting. But you know this story about the galoshes is really About Your Life, so, like a diver climbing over the side of a boat and down into the ocean, you climb, sentence by sentence, into this story on this page. You have been expecting yourself as a woman who purrs by in a dress by Patou, and a porter manacled to the luggage, and a man stalking across the page like a black cloud in a bad mood. These are your fellow travelers and you are a face behind or inside these faces, a heartbeat in the volley of these heartbeats, as you choose, out of all the journeys, the journey of a man with a mustache scented faintly with Prince Albert. "He must be a secret sensualist," you think and your awareness drifts to his trench coat, worn, softened, and flabby, a coat with a lobotomy, just as the train pulls into the station. No, you would prefer another stop in a later chapter where the climate is affable and sleek. But the passengers are disembarking, and you did not choose to be in the story of the woman in the white dress which is as cool and evil as a glass of radioactive milk. You did not choose to be in the story of the matron whose bosom is like the prow of a ship and who is launched toward lunch at the Hotel Pierre, or even the story of the dog-on-a-leash, even though this is now your story: the story of the person-who-had-to-take-the-train-and-walk- the-dark-road described hurriedly by someone sitting at the tavern so you could discover it, although you knew all along the road would be there, you, who have been hovering above this page, holding the book in your hands, like God, reading.

So, absent the chance to make every job applicant work as hard as a college applicant, is there some quick, clever, cheap way of weeding out bad employees before they are hired? Zappos has come up with one such trick. You will recall from the last chapter that Zappos, the online shoe store, has a variety of unorthodox ideas about how a business can be run. You may also recall that its customer-service reps are central to the firm’s success. So even though the job might pay only $11 an hour, Zappos wants to know that each new employee is fully committed to the company’s ethos. That’s where “The Offer” comes in. When new employees are in the onboarding period—they’ve already been screened, offered a job, and completed a few weeks of training—Zappos offers them a chance to quit. Even better, quitters will be paid for their training time and also get a bonus representing their first month’s salary—roughly $2,000—just for quitting! All they have to do is go through an exit interview and surrender their eligibility to be rehired at Zappos. Doesn’t that sound nuts? What kind of company would offer a new employee $2,000 to not work? A clever company. “It’s really putting the employee in the position of ‘Do you care more about money or do you care more about this culture and the company?’ ” says Tony Hsieh, the company’s CEO. “And if they care more about the easy money, then we probably aren’t the right fit for them.” Hsieh figured that any worker who would take the easy $2,000 was the kind of worker who would end up costing Zappos a lot more in the long run. By one industry estimate, it costs an average of roughly $4,000 to replace a single employee, and one recent survey of 2,500 companies found that a single bad hire can cost more than $25,000 in lost productivity, lower morale, and the like. So Zappos decided to pay a measly $2,000 up front and let the bad hires weed themselves out before they took root. As of this writing, fewer than 1 percent of new hires at Zappos accept “The Offer.

We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives. You think that the loss of your fortune or current position will be devastating, but you are probably wrong. More likely, you will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes. You may feel a sting, but it will not be as bad as you expect. This kind of misprediction may have a purpose: to motivate us to perform important acts (like buying new cars or getting rich) and to prevent us from taking certain unnecessary risks. And it is part of a more general problem: we humans are supposed to fool ourselves a little bit here and there. According to Trivers’s theory of self-deception, this is supposed to orient us favorably toward the future. But self-deception is not a desirable feature outside of its natural domain. It prevents us from taking some unnecessary risks—but we saw in Chapter 6 how it does not as readily cover a spate of modern risks that we do not fear because they are not vivid, such as investment risks, environmental dangers, or long-term security.

Because Assagioli understood the importance of being grounded in the world, he would treat the ‘whole’ person, initially using his training in psychoanalysis to locate hidden blocks in the personality. As we shall see in the chapter on Subpersonalities many of the blockages are developed in early childhood. This is not necessarily because parents are inherently bad but because they were emotionally handicapped in some way, performing their actions unconsciously as, perhaps, their own parents had done. Rather than blaming our ancestral lineage for being emotionally unaware, we need to remind ourselves that before the early 19th century there was very little opportunity to concentrate on psychological issues as the often physically onerous way of life did not leave room for this. The physical work of earning a living, putting bread on the table and caring for big families where there was little money available, took its toll on the body. Initially, it was only the wealthy and upper classes who had the money and time to explore the deeper issues of the unconscious.

Similarly, we can all agree that science's entitlement to advise us on moral values is problematic, to say the least. but does Gould really want to cede to religion the right to tell us what is good and what is bad? The fact that is has nothing else to contribute to human wisdom is no reason to hand religion a free license to tell us what to do. Which religion, anyway? The one in which we happen to have been brought up? To which chapter, then, of which book of the Bible should we turn - for they are far from unanimous and some of them are odious by any reasonable standards. How many literalists have read enough of the Bible to know that the death penalty is prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the sabbath and for cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy and Leviticus (as all enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do we then decide which of religion's moral values to accept? Or should we pick and choose among all the world's religions until we find one whose moral teaching suits us? If so, again we must ask, by what criterion do we choose? And if we have independent criteria for choosing among religious moralities, why not cut out the religion?

The bad news is, everyone looks great on paper and in interviews, but everyone also looks exactly the same. People have figured out how to present themselves as competent, qualified managers who won’t make waves and who won’t make mistakes—but nobody is able to say, “I’ve got ideas that are really new and different!” People are afraid to present themselves as innovators, and consequently innovation itself has become a lost art. This is a problem for American business. But it’s also a golden opportunity for anyone who values originality and knows how to put it to work. You can instantly set yourself apart from the crowd by focusing on what you’ll do right instead of what you won’t do wrong. To do that, you’ll need insight about your strengths and weaknesses, and intelligence about how to maximize your contribution. But most of all you’ll need inspiration—the power to create energy and excitement by what you say, how you look, and above all, what you do. Those are some of the topics we’ll be talking about in this chapter. As a first step toward making yourself unforgettable to others, consider how you see yourself in your own eyes. Image is built upon self-perception. If your self-perception is out of sync with the way you want to be perceived, you will have a hard time making a positive impression—especially if you’re not even fully aware of the problem. This happens to many people. For some reason, we tend to think less of ourselves than we’d like. We also tend to have a lower opinion of ourselves than other people have of us. It

February 21 Christ’s Ambassadors We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.—2 Corinthians 5:20 Pretend you are the only Christian left on planet earth. God is depending on you to reach people for Christ. Will you make a good ambassador? Will people want to follow Christ because of the way you live? Ouch! That hits me right between the eyes. I can think of many times in my life that I set a bad example. I know God must have been sorely disappointed in me. Thank goodness he forgives and forgives and forgives some more. How do we hurt our witness for Christ? When we find fault with the church service we show that we are attending for the wrong reason. When we stay at home on Sunday morning we are sending a strong signal that worshiping and praising God are not top priorities in our lives. Have you heard this before? Let someone else do that job. There are plenty of people in our church. They always ask me. Do ambassadors act this way? We sometimes talk about hypocrites in the church. How easy it is to point the finger toward someone else. How many times do we fail as ambassadors for Christ by judging others? We’ve heard it said, “Your life is like an open book People are reading it every day.” Lost people get their concept of Christianity through your life. Does your book have the following chapters: Whining, Telling Half Truths, General Griping, Lack of Self-discipline, Having a Pity Party and My Glass is Always Half Empty? We have been given the ministry of ambassadorship. Our mission is to tell the world what Jesus did for us. One way we do that is through our lives. Dear Father, help our light to shine before men. Like 2 Philippians 2:15 challenges us, help us to “become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which we shine like stars in the universe.

This is an empirical claim: Look closely enough at your own mind in the present moment, and you will discover that the self is an illusion. The problem with a claim of this kind, however, is that one can’t borrow another person’s contemplative tools to test it. To see how the feeling of “I” is a product of thought—indeed, to even appreciate how distracted by thought you tend to be in the first place—you have to build your own contemplative tools. Unfortunately, this leads many people to dismiss the project out of hand: They look inside, notice nothing of interest, and conclude that introspection is a dead end. But just imagine where astronomy would be if, centuries after Galileo, a person were still obliged to build his own telescope before he could even judge whether astronomy was a legitimate field of inquiry. It wouldn’t make the sky any less worthy of investigation, but astronomy’s development as a science would become immensely more difficult. A few pharmacological shortcuts exist—and I discuss some of them in a later chapter—but generally speaking, we must build our own telescopes to judge the empirical claims of contemplatives. Judging their metaphysical claims is another matter; many of them can be dismissed as bad science or bad philosophy after merely thinking about them. But to determine whether certain experiences are possible—and if possible, desirable—and to see how these states of mind relate to the conventional sense of self, we have to be able to use our attention in the requisite ways. Primarily, that means learning to recognize thoughts as thoughts—as transient appearances in consciousness—and to no longer be distracted by them, if only for short periods of time. This may sound simple enough, but actually accomplishing it can take a lot of work. Unfortunately, it is not work that the Western intellectual tradition knows much about. LOST

[D]espite what our intuition tells us, changes in the world’s population are not generally neutral. They are either a good thing or a bad thing. But it is uncertain even what form a correct theory of the value of population would take. In the area of population, we are radically uncertain. We do not know what value to set on changes in the world’s population. If the population shrinks as a result of climate change, we do not know how to evaluate that change. Yet we have reason to think that changes in population may be one of the most morally significant effects of climate change. The small chance of catastrophe may be a major component in the expected value of harm caused by climate change, and the loss of population may be a major component of the badness of catastrophe. How should we cope with this new, radical sort of uncertainty? Uncertainty was the subject of chapter 7. That chapter came up with a definitive answer: we should apply expected value theory. Is that not the right answer now? Sadly it is not, because our new sort of uncertainty is particularly intractable. In most cases of uncertainty about value, expected value theory simply cannot be applied. When an event leads to uncertain results, expected value theory requires us first to assign a value to each of the possible results it may lead to. Then it requires us to calculate the weighted average value of the results, weighted by their probabilities. This gives us the event’s expected value, which we should use in our decision-making. Now we are uncertain about how to value the results of an event, rather than about what the results will be. To keep things simple, let us set aside the ordinary sort of uncertainty by assuming that we know for sure what the results of the event will be. For instance, suppose we know that a catastrophe will have the effect of halving the world’s population. Our problem is that various different moral theories of value evaluate this effect differently. How might we try to apply expected value theory to this catastrophe? We can start by evaluating the effect according to each of the different theories of value separately; there is no difficulty in principle there. We next need to assign probabilities to each of the theories; no doubt that will be difficult, but let us assume we can do it somehow. We then encounter the fundamental difficulty. Each different theory will value the change in population according to its own units of value, and those units may be incomparable with one another. Consequently, we cannot form a weighted average of them. For example, one theory of value is total utilitarianism. This theory values the collapse of population as the loss of the total well-being that will result from it. Its unit of value is well-being. Another theory is average utilitarianism. It values the collapse of population as the change of average well-being that will result from it. Its unit of value is well-being per person. We cannot take a sensible average of some amount of well-being and some amount of well-being per person. It would be like trying to take an average of a distance, whose unit is kilometers, and a speed, whose unit is kilometers per hour. Most theories of value will be incomparable in this way. Expected value theory is therefore rarely able to help with uncertainty about value. So we face a particularly intractable problem of uncertainty, which prevents us from working out what we should do. Yet we have to act; climate change will not wait while we sort ourselves out. What should we do, then, seeing as we do not know what we should do? This too is a question for moral philosophy. Even the question is paradoxical: it is asking for an answer while at the same time acknowledging that no one knows the answer. How to pose the question correctly but unparadoxically is itself a problem for moral philosophy.

A farmer had a beautiful, powerful horse that was the envy of his neighbors in the community. One day the horse jumped the fence and ran away. The farmer's neighbors were quick to come over and offer their regrets over the farmer's loss of such a horse. He simply shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Then one day the horse came back to the farm along with five magnificent wild horses. The farmer and his son corralled the horses to train them for work on the farm. When they saw the horses, the neighbors rushed over to admire the horses and marvel at the farmer's good fortune. In response to their comments, he just shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” A few days later, the farmer's son was training one of the new horses and fell off and severely broke his leg. After several months, it became clear that the son would never walk normally again. The neighbors came by to offer their condolences over the son's infirmity. The farmer shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Then war came to the kingdom and all of the young, able-bodied males were conscripted for the king's army, likely to never return home again. Because of his broken leg, the farmer's son was left at home. The neighbors, with much grief at their own losses, came by to comment on the farmer's good fortune in keeping his son. The farmer simply replied, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Of course, the point of the story is you never know how things are going to play out over the long run, so why spend a lot of energy on mulling over whether any particular outcome is good or bad? Things can and will change. I think the reason Diane and I use “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” as a catch phrase is that our experience with my multiple sclerosis has taught us to suspend judgment on what could happen or is likely to happen in life. It's taught us both to be more mindful—aware and intentional—about how we live our lives. In this final chapter of the book, I want to share some of those mindfulness lessons I've learned from MS in the hope that they'll be useful to you on your journey.

How much would you say? Take a pencil and use this empty page to scribble, sketch, and do some calculations. The answer is on the next page, but I strongly encourage you to have fun and try it out for yourself first. Scribble, sketch, and have fun! I hope you did try to solve it yourself, because learning is so much more fulfilling when it is interactive. If you did not, too bad for you. ☹ In truth, the bacteria have only filled 3.125% of the glass. But how can this be? Well it is simple. If they double every minute, and they fill the entire glass in 60 minutes, then they will have filled half the glass the minute before 60 (or 50% after 59 minutes), half of that the minute before 59 (or 25% after 58 minutes), and so on. Table 3.1 summary of the last 10 minutes, starting from the end.  Time Elapsed    Amount Filled  60 minutes   100 .000%   59 minutes   50 .000%   58 minutes   25 .000%   57 minutes   12. 500%   56 minutes   6. 250%   55 minutes   3. 125%   54 minutes   1. 563%   53 minutes   0. 781%   52 minutes   0. 391%   51 minutes   0. 195%     Table 3.1: Exponential growth of bacteria in a bottle over the last 10 minutes. It all makes sense now, right? Suddenly it becomes clear, even obvious. Who could not get this? It is so simple, right? Apparently, it is not. The most common replies I get are between 50% and 90%. Even college graduates typically get it wrong. And let?s not talk about politicians. We will come back to this in the Appendix, with some real-world examples. For now, I think it is safe to say that we all understand what steady growth means. Let’s now see how this applies to our main focus in the next chapter: information technology.

I want them to come get us right now.” The little girl drew her mouth down in a pout. “I’m all dirty and hungry. I’m cold too.” “Poor little princess,” her brother mocked. “I’ve got something you can eat.” Kobie’s smile brightened before he dashed across the small clearing to retrieve his backpack. “Just how long are we going to be stuck here?” Wade demanded. He took a step toward the others who were gathered around the fire, then coughed as a wave of thick smoke hit him. “I have important business in Chicago.” “Oh yeah, real important,” Bryan sneered. “You’re just afraid your girlfriend might find someone else before you get back.” “Bryan!” Chelsea spoke in a warning voice. Wade took a step toward his son, his fists clenched and fury showing on his face. Web shifted his weight, prepared to intercede should Wade attempt to strike his son. “Look! M&Ms!” Kobie stepped between the combatants, waving a large package of the candy-coated chocolate pieces over his head, oblivious to the confrontation between Bryan and Wade. He hurried to Rachel’s side. “My grandma gave them to me, but you can have some.” “Perhaps you can share with everyone,” Shalise said. “I think we’re all hungry.” “And thirsty,” Emily added. “Don’t you think it’s ironic that we spent all that time and effort escaping water, and now we don’t have any to drink?” “Actually we do.” It was Cassie’s turn to retrieve her backpack. From its depths she produced a plastic bottle of water and three granola bars, which she quartered and passed around. The tiny squares of breakfast bars and a handful of candy were soon washed down with a squirt of water from the plastic bottle. Web listened for more planes as he munched on his share of the meager rations. Occasionally he caught the drone of the small plane that had flown over earlier, but it seemed to be concentrating its attention on the other side of the main canyon. He wished he could communicate with the sheriff or the pilot of that plane, but his radio and supplies had been left behind in his cruiser. He wouldn’t even have been able to light a fire last night if Bryan hadn’t slipped him a cigarette lighter when his mother wasn’t looking. Gage walked up beside him.“How bad is the slide?” the younger man asked. Web knew he was referring to the slide blocking the trail out of the canyon. “There’s no way we can cross it.” “And there’s no way a chopper can set down here.” Gage answered back, gesturing at the small clearing where they sat dwarfed by towering pines. “By now the water will have receded a great deal, but it will be days before we’ll be able to walk out.” Gage hadn’t heard Cassie approach, but he nodded his head at her words, acknowledging that her judgment was correct. “That means we’ve got to find a spot where the rescuers can reach us.” Gage stared thoughtfully at the steep mountain towering above them. “There is a place . . .” Gage paused and Web turned to him, anxious to hear what he might suggest that could possibly lead them out of this nightmare. CHAPTER 5 Shalise sat beside Chelsea Timmerman on one of the logs near the fire pit. They changed position each time a fickle breeze shifted the plume

So here is a principal difference that I am offering between my understanding of what happens in organisations and many of the conventional books on management. I am suggesting that what happens between people every day at work, whether it is perceived to have gone well or badly, is more important for thinking about how to work better together than trying to develop a new tool or framework. I am encouraging managers and consultants to pay attention to the kinds of interaction in which they find themselves caught, including noticing the strong feelings that often get evoked at work including in themselves as managers, as a helpful way of thinking about how they might continue to participate. In doing so, they will be uncovering of some taken for granted ideas about the management of organisation as a means of opening them up to further questioning. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, this is a method to encourage managers and consultants to think about what they are doing, to become reflexive about how they interact with others. I am doing so in the belief that it offers an understanding and methods more appropriate for coming to terms with the complexity of situations that face managers and staff in the day-to-day practice of their work. In other words, instead of encouraging managers and consultants to think of an organisation as a thing that they can act upon and change from one state to another, rather they think of themselves as co-participants, perhaps powerful ones, in the ongoing web of relationships to which they are contributing. To reflect upon how they are contributing, and how their contribution is reflected back to them by the reactions of others, and what happens as a result is important data to take into account when deciding what to do next.

Depression, sexual troubles, anxiety, loneliness, and guilt are the main problems that drive consumers into the recovery movement. Explaining such adult troubles as being caused by victimization during childhood does not accomplish much. Compare “wounded child” as an explanation to some of the other ways you might explain your problems: “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” or “sexually dysfunctional.” “Wounded child” is a more permanent explanation; “depressive” is less permanent. As we saw in the first section of this book, depression, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction—unlike being a wounded child—are all eminently treatable. “Wounded child” is also more pervasive in its destructive effects: “Toxic” is the colorful word used to describe its pervasiveness. “Depression,” “anxiety,” and “sexually dysfunctional” are all narrower, less damning labels, and this, in fact, is part of the reason why treatment works. So “wounded child” (unless you believe in catharsis cures) leads to more helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity than the alternatives. But it is less personal—your parents did it to you—than “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” and “sexually dysfunctional.” Impersonal explanations of bad events raise self-esteem more than personal ones. Therefore “wounded child” is better for raising your self-esteem and for lowering your guilt. Self-esteem has become very important to Americans in the last two decades. Our public schools are supposed to nurture the self-esteem of our children, our churches are supposed to minister to the self-esteem of their congregants, and the recovery movement is supposed to restore the self-esteem of victims. Attaining self-esteem, while undeniably important, is a goal that I have reservations about. I think it is an overinflated idea, and my opinion was formed by my work with depressed people. Depressed people, you will recall, have four kinds of problems: behavioral—they are passive, indecisive, and helpless; emotional—they are sad; bodily—their sleeping, eating, and sex are disrupted; cognitive—they think life is hopeless and that they are worthless. Only the second half of this last symptom amounts to low self-esteem. I have come to believe that lack of self-esteem is the least important of these woes. Once a depressed person becomes active and hopeful, self-esteem always improves. Bolstering self-esteem without changing hopelessness or passivity, however, accomplishes nothing. To put it exactly, I believe that low self-esteem is an epiphenomenon, a mere reflection that your commerce with the world is going badly. It has no power in itself. What needs improving is not self-esteem but your commerce with the world. So the one advantage of labeling yourself a victim—raised self-esteem—is minimal, particularly since victimhood raises self-esteem at the cost of greater hopelessness and passivity, and therefore worsens commerce with the world. This is indeed my main worry about the recovery movement. Young Americans right now are in an epidemic of depression. I have speculated on the causes in the last chapter of my book Learned Optimism, and I will not repeat my conjectures here. Young people are easy pickings for anything that makes them feel better—even temporarily. The recovery movement capitalizes on this epidemic. When it works, it raises self-esteem and lowers guilt, but at the expense of our blaming others for our troubles. Never mind the fact that those we blame did not in fact cause our troubles. Never mind the fact that thinking of ourselves as victims induces helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity. Never mind that there are more effective treatments available elsewhere.

Thanks. So will you finish that?” “I doubt it. I’ll give any book a hundred pages, and if by then the writer can’t hold my attention I’ll put it away. There are too many good books I want to read to waste time with a bad one.” “Same here, but my limit is fifty pages. I’ve never understood people who grind through a book they don’t really like, determined to finish it for some unknown reason. Tessa was like that. She would toss a book after the first chapter, then pick it up and grumble and growl for four hundred pages until the bitter end. Never understood that.

Another way to understand the difference between equality and equity is to realize that addressing equity issues strikes at the source of the problem rather than dealing with the symptoms, one by one. Our attachment to the myth of meritocracy—which is the notion that companies are structured to reward only the most talented and determined individuals15—is increasingly being viewed as out of touch because it doesn’t acknowledge our very real differences, and how much harder the journey up the ladder, or even onto the ladder, is for some. An insightful article by author Amy Sun makes this clear: Treating everyone exactly the same actually is not fair. What equal treatment does do is erase our differences and promote privilege. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Equality is treating everyone the same.16 Surrounding Yourself with a Trusted Few If you’ve recognized some of yourself in this chapter, you’re likely feeling motivated to take a closer look at your potential to be a more inclusive leader. Similarly, if you want to support your colleagues in their journey out of Unawareness, this chapter has likely provided many points of entry to transformational conversations. It’s important to note that this stage of your journey might be somewhat private. If you realize you haven’t given certain people a fair chance, you might not want to broadcast that to your colleagues. (Not only would this be damaging to your reputation, it could also make other people feel bad.) But as you become aware of your biases, you’ll start to understand how you can do things differently to better support others. It is a learning process, and it helps to have support from people you trust. When you’re ready, seek out conversations with a trusted few who can help you find your balance, your vocabulary, and begin to identify new skills.

You're fucking with a bad one You want it you can have some Mic's back son Captain of the ship Lift the anchor Tried to write me off But I'm on a different chapter They don't understand I got another plan Think I'm gone I just keep coming back Like cancer (uh!) I'm fucking active (ooh!) When you hear them ad lib's It's gang shit And again, the man again You're mad again I went missing like Madeleine They thought I'd never rap again But how about, no Bow down hoe Sticking 'round, in your house With the fucking liquor out The only competition Is the man that's in the mirror now Dealing with a different Kind of spirit in my lyrics I'mma fly away Kill the entire game I know you felt some type of way I'll lay them flowers by your idols graves

When one looks at the numbers, the situation becomes even more perplexing. The effect of lambda grows steadily with respect to the familiar Newtonian force of gravity as the Universe gets bigger. If it is only recently becoming the dominant force, after billions of years of expansion of the Universe, it must have started out enormously smaller than the Newtonian force. The distance of that final minimum energy level in Figure 8.14 from the zero line in order to explain the value of lambda inferred from the supernova observations is bizarre: roughly 10^-120 - that is, 1 divided by 10 followed by 119 zeros! This is the smallest number ever encountered in science. Why is it not zero? How can the minimum level be tuned so precisely? If it were 10 followed by just 117 zeros, then the galaxies could not form. Extraordinary fine tuning is needed to explain such extreme numbers. Extraordinary fine tuning is needed to explain such extreme numbers. And, if this were not bad enough, the vacuum seems to have its own defence mechanism to prevent us finding easy answers to this problem. Even if inflation does have some magical property which we have so far missed that would set the vacuum energy exactly to zero when inflation ends, it would not stay like that. As the Universe keeps on expanding and cooling it passes through several temperatures at which the breaking of a symmetry occurs in a potential landscape, rather like that which occurs in the example of the magnet that we saw at the beginning of the chapter. Every time this happens, a new contribution to the vaccum energy is liberated and contributes to a new lambda term that is always vastly bigger than our observation allows. And, by 'vastly bigger' here, we don't just mean that it is a few times bigger than the value inferred from observations, so that in the future some small correction to the calculations, or change in the trend of the observations, might make theory and observation fit hand in glove. We are talking about an overestimate by a factor of about 10 followed by 120 zeros! You can't get much more wrong than that.

We have to be careful, however, to distinguish between evidence and artifacts. The testimony of an eyewitness can be properly viewed as evidence, but anything added to the account after the fact should be viewed with caution as a possible artifact (something that exists in the text when it shouldn’t). The Gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts, but you may be surprised to find that there are a few added textual artifacts nestled in with the evidential statements. It appears that scribes, in copying the texts over the years, added lines to the narrative that were not there at the time of the original writing. Let me give you an example. Most of us are familiar with the biblical story in the gospel of John in which Jesus was presented with a woman who had been accused of committing adultery (John 8:1–11). The Jewish men who brought the woman to Jesus wanted her to be stoned, but Jesus refused to condemn her and told the men, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the men leave, Jesus tells the woman, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” This story is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. Too bad that it appears to be an artifact. While the story may, in fact, be absolutely true, the earliest copies of John’s gospel recovered over the centuries fail to contain any part of it. The last verse of chapter 7 and the first eleven verses of chapter 8 are missing in the oldest manuscripts available to us. The story doesn’t appear until it is discovered in later copies of John’s gospel, centuries after the life of Jesus on earth. In fact, some ancient biblical manuscripts place it in a different location in John’s gospel. Some ancient copies of the Bible even place it in the gospel of Luke. While there is much about the story that seems consistent with Jesus’s character and teaching, most scholars do not believe it was part of John’s original account. It is a biblical artifact, and it is identified as such in nearly every modern translation of the Bible (where it is typically noted in the margin or bracketed to separate it from the reliable account).

At the same time, code like that of the prior section may push the complexity envelope more than it should — and, frankly, tends to disproportionately pique the interest of those holding the darker and misguided assumption that code obfuscation somehow implies talent. Because such tools tend to appeal to some people more than they probably should, I need to be clear about their scope here. This book demonstrates advanced comprehensions to teach, but in the real world, using complicated and tricky code where not warranted is both bad engineering and bad software citizenship. To repurpose a line from the first chapter: programming is not about being clever and obscure — it’s about how clearly your program communicates its purpose. Or, to quote from Python’s import this motto: Simple is better than complex.

If you want to establish a habit of going for a walk every day, make it easy for yourself! Schedule your walk at the same time every day. Set an exact amount of time you want to spend walking (e.g., 5, 15, 30, or 45 minutes). Then, be sure to get your shoes ready before your scheduled time, lay out your clothes, and have a water bottle ready. This will make it much easier to convince yourself to go – all you need to do is change, and you’re out the door. Prepping the pain points that require effort reduces friction and, therefore, resistance. If you stack these habits with some existing habits that form the structure of your day (discussed in chapter six) they are even more likely to become automatic. This process of removing potential obstacles before performing a new habit is called addition by subtraction. Humans are biologically addicted to convenience. Remember the primal cravings that drive

Otis told her of his woes, and Morgan listened quietly, sipping her coffee, absorbing some of his pain. She finally asked the same questions Brooks had. Was it temporary? Had he been to the doctor? What could it be? Otis told her it could be many things and that he hadn’t had it checked out yet. Morgan said, “You’re scared. I’ve been through it when I had cancer. I knew something was wrong. My body felt off. But I didn’t want to go to the doctor and justify it. I felt like if I kept it to myself, it might go away. Or at least I could enjoy a few more days without having to deal with any bad news. But you know what? This could be a new chapter in your life, and if you’re putting off finding out what’s going on, you could be making it worse. Your body is asking for your help right now, and you’re ignoring it.” “I’m not ignoring—” “Shh, Otis. Can’t you listen for once in your life? Let an old lady speak her mind.” “I know a thing or two about dying. Now, you might get it checked out, and it’s nothing. A quick remedy and you’re all fixed up. In that case, you’re wasting a whole lot of good life, hell, this whole harvest, worrying for no reason. Let’s say there is something wrong. What if it’s one of those things better to catch early on? What if it’s something treatable? What if you could be healing by now?” She threw her finger in the air. “Okay, and worst-case. What if the doctor tells you you’re dying? Don’t you want to know that? Don’t you have better things to do in your final days than running around naked barking like a dog?” Otis laughed and his face reddened. “You wouldn’t understand.

Finally he said, “What did you spend so much time talking about with Ila? If you weren’t dancing with that long-legged fellow, you were talking to her like it was some kind of secret.” “Ila was giving me advice on being a woman,” Egwene replied absently. He began laughing, and she gave him a hooded, dangerous look that he failed to see. “Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are.” “That,” Egwene said, “is probably why you make such a bad job of it.” Up ahead, Elyas cackled loudly. CHAPTER

Running countries and running households, Muslim women are stepping up and taking control as architects of our lives and leaders of our communities. The women in this chapter are making waves as some of the first Muslim women politicians and heads of state in their countries. Having lived through bad governance and incompetent leadership—all the way from community boards to federal governments—Muslim women are through with having rules dictated to us. Brazen, imperfect, and energized, Muslim women are taking charge.

a leap month could also be decreed before Nisan if the crops had been delayed by exceptionally bad weather (since the firstfruits of barley had to be ready for presentation in the temple on Nisan 16), or if the lambs were too young. Think of the power this gave the Sanhedrin. I have many times wished for the ability to decree an extra month as I approached a deadline. However, there is no power without responsibility, and think of the criticism that would be heaped on the Sanhedrin if they decreed an extra month unnecessarily so that the barley was then over-ripe, and the harvest was lost. ... Unfortunately we possess no historical records of the proclamation of leap months in the period AD 26–36. It is therefore possible that in some years Nisan was one month later than given in the tables in this chapter because of exceptionally severe weather. Waddington has repeated his series of calculations assuming that a leap month was proclaimed in each year in the period AD 26–36 because of bad weather. The calculations, given in our Nature paper, show that in the period AD 26–36, if Nisan was one month later, Nisan 14 would not fall on a Friday in any year, and Nisan 15 would only fall on a Friday in AD 34 (April 23). Thus we have fully taken into account in our calculations the possibility of leap years.

Because unconscious thoughts and muscle movements originate outside of conscious awareness, he argued, they feel alien and are readily interpreted as originating with spirits or other entities.19 The unconscious, as an “other” inside, is, when you think about it, really a very “occult” idea. Freud’s “hermeneutics of suspicion”20 naturally invited a suspicious rationalist skepticism in return. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, for one, could not abide an unconscious formation in the psyche. To him, it smacked of bad faith, inauthenticity, the failure to take responsibility for our actions. For instance, he pointed out the contradiction inherent in the idea of a “censor” in the mind that could be aware enough of what it was censoring to form a judgment yet also be completely alien to our conscious experience. The “resistance” that impedes patients from developing self-insight implies a similar non-aware awareness: “the patient shows defiance, refuses to speak, gives fantastic accounts of his dreams, sometimes even removes himself completely from the psychoanalytic treatment. It is a fair question to ask what part of himself can resist.”21 There is no unconscious, Sartre argued, just the avoidance of responsibility. Claims of an unconscious mind that could only be explored through a highly subjective process of interpretation also offended the philosopher of science Karl Popper, one of Freud’s harshest critics. How would you test claims about an unconscious? Psychoanalysis is not a science, Popper contended, not only because its claims cannot be falsified but also because the clinical situation, with suggestible patients in a kind of trance-like thrall to their doctor, is an echo chamber—a machine for producing evidence in support of its premises (the usual meaning of “self-fulfilling prophecy”).22 Although 20th-century psychological science and neuroscience rejected Freud (and ignored Freud’s contemporaries in psychical research), it ultimately came around to embracing some notion of an unconscious—or what came to be called “implicit processing”—as a domain of cognitive functioning that is hypersensitive to subliminal signals and much quicker at making inferences and judgments than the conscious mind. Abundant experimental evidence shows implicit processing’s overriding dominance over anything like conscious will. A large school of thought, much of it inspired by Benjamin Libet’s work described in the preceding chapter, holds that we are mere spectators of our lives and that conscious will is an illusion, a kind of overlay. If the unconscious was for Freud the submerged majority of the iceberg, for some contemporary cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, it is all submerged—the tip is a mirage. We are unaware of the bulk of what seems to occur in our heads—there is thinking, sensing, and feeling that is not thought, sensed, or felt, and our non-experience of this huge domain is much more than a matter of bad faith (although there is that also). As with Freud’s unconscious, you can only probe the implicit domain indirectly, obliquely, via tools and paradigms such as priming tasks, like the ones Daryl Bem inverted in some of his “feeling the future” experiments.

And this deflation of rivals is no closer to the truth than the self-inflation that is also high on the agenda for that particular conversation. But the deflation is heartfelt; we tend to believe the bad publicity we give rivals, the better to spread it. The Buddha seems to have seen this dynamic clearly. A scripture attributed to him reads: The senses’ evidence, And works, inspire such scorn For others, and such smug Conviction he is right, That all his rivals rank As “sorry, brainless fools.” So what do we do about all this? If our mind keeps getting seized by different modules, and each module carries with it different illusions, how do we change the situation? The answer isn’t simple, but what should already be clear is that getting more control over the situation may have something to do with feelings. A link between feelings and illusion was somewhat apparent back in chapter 3, when I noted that some feelings are in one sense or another “false,” so getting some critical distance from them can clarify things. But the case against being enthralled by our feelings only grows when you realize that their connection to illusion can be described in a second way. Feelings don’t just bring specific, fleeting illusions; they can usher in a whole mind-set and so alter for some time a range of perceptions and proclivities, for better or worse.

It’s no wonder we are anxious and feel boundaries are only acceptable and legitimate if the other person agrees with and respects them. In other words, instead of stating our boundaries and ending the sentence with a period, we tag on a question. “You good with that?” “Okay?” “Does that work?” “This is understandable, right?” “You see where I’m coming from, yes?” Posing a boundary as a question opens us up to be questioned, debated, and disrespected. If a boundary is presented with doubt, it won’t be effectively carried out. Now, add on top of that the weird notion that if we are Christians, then we are absolutely obligated to sacrifice what’s best for us in the name of laying down our lives for others. (See here for some specific scriptures that have been wrongly used to make people feel guilty about their boundaries.) Where did we get the idea that we aren’t allowed to say no, have limitations, or be unwilling to tolerate other people’s bad behavior? If we are filtering our thoughts of boundaries through wrong perceptions, it’s no wonder many of us find boundaries not just challenging but pretty close to impossible. Here’s why: We aren’t sure who we really are. We aren’t sure what we really need. We aren’t sure that if others walked away from us, we’d be okay. We’ll get to what we need in the next chapter, but for now let’s take an honest look at an important question. Who are you?

A month or two after Jobs’s death, some of Greg’s colleagues in the engineering department began to notice that Elizabeth was borrowing behaviors and management techniques described in Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple founder. They were all reading the book too and could pinpoint which chapter she was on based on which period of Jobs’s career she was impersonating.

for the rest of the night. Other than to refuel with holiday leftovers. “Would you still love me if I told you I didn’t know what tasted better, Christmas leftovers or you?” Jana cocked her eyebrow with a sexy smile on her face. Damn, she was beautiful. “No but I will be mad unless you do some very thorough research and come up with a satisfying answer…” I grinned. This Christmas was unlike any of the others Jana and I had spent together. This time we had two little boys, a bigger family and we’d faced our biggest threat yet and come out on top. “If it’s for the sake of research, consider me in babe.” And I spent the rest of the night doing science. Between the gorgeous legs of my beautiful wife. I was pretty sure in that moment, life for the Reckless Bastard’s couldn’t get any better. Merry friggin’ Christmas to us! * * * * If you think the Reckless Bastards are spicy bad boys, they’re nothing compared to the steam in my next series Reckless MC Opey, TX Chapter where Gunnar and Maisie move to Texas! There’s also a sneak peek on the next page.   Don’t wait — grab your copy today!  Copyright © 2019 KB Winters and BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Published By: BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Chapter One Gunnar “We’re gonna be cowboys!” Maisie had been singing that song since we got on the interstate and left Nevada and the only family we’d had in the world behind. For good. Cross was my oldest friend, and I’d miss him the most, even though I knew we’d never lose touch. I’d miss Jag too, even Golden Boy and Max. The prospects were cool, but I had no attachment to them. Though I gave him a lot of shit, I knew I’d even miss Stitch. A little. It didn’t matter that the last year had been filled with more shit than gold, or that I was leaving Vegas in the dust, we were all closer for the hell we’d been through. But still, I was leaving. Maisie and I’d been on the road for a couple of days. Traveling with a small child took a long damn time. Between bathroom breaks and snack times we’d be lucky to make it to Opey by the end of the month. Lucky for me, Maisie had her mind set on us becoming cowboys, complete with ten gallon hats, spurs and chaps, so she hadn’t shed one tear, yet. It wasn’t something I’d been hoping for but I was waiting patiently for reality to sink in and the uncontrollable sobs that had a way of breaking a grown man’s heart. “You’re not a boy,” I told her and smiled through the rear view mirror. “Hard to be a cowboy if you’re not even a boy.” Maisie grinned, a full row of bright white baby teeth shining back at me right along with sapphire blue eyes and hair so black it looked to be painted on with ink. “I’m gonna be a cowgirl then! A cowgirl!” She went on and on for what felt like forever, in only the way that a four year old could, about all the cool cowgirl stuff she’d have. “Boots and a pony too!” “A pony? You can’t even tie your shoes or clean up your toys and you want a pony?” She nodded in that exaggerated way little kids did. “I’ll learn,” she said with the certainty of a know it all teenager, a thought that terrified the hell out of me. “You’ll help me, Gunny!” Her words brought a smile to my face even though I hated that fucking nickname she’d picked up from a woman I refused to think about ever again. I’d help Maisie because that’s what family did. Hell, she was the reason I’d uprooted my entire fucking life and headed to the great unknown wilds of Texas. To give Maisie a normal life or as close to normal as I was capable of giving her. “I’ll always help you, Squirt.” “I know. Love you Gunny!” “Love you too, Cowgirl.” I winked in the mirror and her face lit up with happiness. It was the pure joy on her face, putting a bloom in her cheeks that convinced me this was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to move to Texas, and I didn’t want to live on a goddamn ranch, but that was my future. The property was already bought and paid for with my name

There’s a time and a place for confidence, but your army (confidence) can’t march too far forward of your supply lines (expertise) or you’ll be caught without what you’ll need in order to win the war. There’s a healthy stretching that always pulls you forward, but you have to know enough about your field of impact. Crafting a positioning should tend toward the honest and boring side of this balance. Start by detailing your successful experience, and you can define that in two ways. As you list these instances, concentrate where you’ve been effective on behalf of a client and also made money yourself. I suppose you could add the element of where you’ve enjoyed the work, too, but the truth is that you’re not likely to even list these instances unless that happens to be true. So concentrate on impact and revenue. Eliminate any where both weren’t true. Don’t worry too much about recency, either. Prospects aren’t going to write you off if a particular demonstration of your expertise is more than three years old, for instance. They don’t look that deeply at the claims you make, and you, the expert, are far tougher on yourself than they will be. As we talked about in Foundation Chapter B, you’re attempting to craft a positioning where you are less interchangeable so that withholding your expertise carries some meaning. Think of the options as a spectrum, with the right side depicting a completely undifferentiated firm (I’m an accountant) and the left side depicting the most focused firm you could imagine (I’m an accountant who works with U.S.-based multi-location casual dining brands). At the beginning of this exercise, you are toward the right, wanting to move toward the left and be more differentiated than you are now. You’re aiming for fewer competitors so that your expertise supports a price premium in your work. As you march from right to left, you want to make a complete journey and make really smart positioning decisions. As you work out the intricacies of the positioning journey, there are two forces that slow your progress: one good and one bad.

1.          They were perfect… initially. We’ve discussed this one, but it’s worth mentioning again. A narcissist wants you to believe they’re totally into you and put you on a pedestal. Once they have you, though, they stop trying as hard and you end up being the one working to keep them. 2.          Others don’t see the narcissist the way you do. It’s hard enough to see it yourself, but when those around you, especially their friends and family, make excuses for them, you start doubting yourself even more. Stick to what you see. 3.          They’re making you look bad. In order to maintain their facade of perfection, they make you look like a bad person. Usually this involves spreading rumors, criticizing you behind your back, or creating lies you supposedly told. The worst part is that when you try rectifying the situation, or laying the blame where it should belong, the narcissist uses your defense to back their own lies. It’s frustrating because the generous, wonderful person they displayed initially is what those around you still see, even if you see them for who they really are. 4.          You feel symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. The toxic person may have caused you to worry about not acting the way you’re expected to, or that you haven’t done something right or good enough. In making this person your entire world, you may lose sleep, have no interest in things you used to or have developed a, “What’s the point?” attitude. You essentially absorb all of the negative talk and treatment so deeply, you believe it all. This is a dangerous mindset to be in so if you feel you’re going any steps down this path, seek outside help as soon as possible. 5.          You have unexplained physical ailments. It’s not surprising that when you internalize a great deal of negativity, you begin to feel unwell. Some common symptoms that aren’t related to any ongoing condition might be: changes in appetite, stomach issues, body aches, insomnia, and fatigue. These are typical bodily responses to stress, but if they intensify or become chronic, see a physician as soon as you can. 6.          You feel alone. Also a common symptom of abuse. If things are really wrong, the narcissist may have isolated you from friends or family either by things they’ve done themselves or by making you believe no one is there for you. 7.          You freeze. When you emotionally remove yourself from the abuse, you’re freezing. It’s a coping mechanism to reduce the intensity of the way you’re being treated by numbing out the pain. 8.          You don’t trust yourself even with simple decisions. When your self-esteem has been crushed through devaluing and criticism, it’s no wonder you can’t make decisions. If you’re also being gaslighted, it adds another layer of self-doubt. 9.          You can’t make boundaries. The narcissist doesn’t have any, nor do they respect them, which is why it’s difficult to keep them away even after you’ve managed to get away. Setting boundaries will be discussed in greater detail in an upcoming chapter. 10.    You lost touch with the real you. The person you become when with a narcissistic abuser is very different from the person you were before you got involved with them. They’ve turned you into who they want you to be, making you feel lost and insecure with no sense of true purpose. 11.    You never feel like you do anything right. We touched on this briefly above, but this is one of the main signs of narcissistic abuse. Looking at the big picture, you may be constantly blamed when things go wrong even when it isn’t your fault. You may do something exactly the way they tell you to, but they still find fault with the results. It’s similar to how a Private feels never knowing when the Drill Sergeant will find fault in their efforts. 12.    You walk on eggshells. This happens when you try avoiding any sort of conflict, maltreatment or backlash by going above and beyond to make the abuser happy.

A Tidy and Organized Home… Makes you feel calm. You can relax and unwind in a tidy home. There is space to do things, and you know where everything is. When you walk into a hotel room, you immediately feel a sense of peace because the environment is tidy and organized. Makes you feel healthy. Dust and mold accumulate in messes. Are you always coughing and sneezing? Do you suffer from allergies? It’s probably because you are breathing in all the dirt in your home. Give your home a spring clean and your health issues will improve. Makes you feel in control. How does it feel when you know where everything is? Clutter prevents positive energy from flowing through your home. Remember, energy attaches itself to objects, and negative energy is attracted to mess, which creates exhaustion, stagnation, and exasperation. What does it feel like when negative energy is stuck in your body? You want to lie in bed and shut the world away because everything becomes more difficult and you can’t explain why. Here is how decluttering your house will unlock blocked streams of positive energy: You will become more vibrant. Once you create harmony and order in your home, you will feel more radiant and present. Like acupuncture, which removes imbalances and blockages from the body to create more wellness and dynamism, clearing clutter removes imbalances and blockages from your personal space. When you venture through spaces that have been set ablaze with fresh energy, you are captured by inspiration, and the most attractive parts of your personality come to life. You will get rid of bad habits and introduce good ones. All bad habits have triggers. Do you lie on your bed to watch TV instead of sitting on the couch because you can’t be bothered to fold the laundry that has piled up over the past six months? Or because the bed represents sleep, and when you come home from work and get into bed, you are going to fall asleep instead of doing those important tasks on your to-do list. Once you tidy the couch, coming home from work will allow you to sit on it to watch your favorite TV program but get up once it’s finished and do what you need to do. You will improve your problem-solving skills. When your home has been opened up with a clear space, it’s easier to focus, which provides you with a fresh perspective on your problems. You will sleep better. Are you always tired no matter how much sleep you get? That’s because negative energy is stuck under your bed amongst all that junk you’ve stuffed under there. Once you tidy up your bedroom, you will find that positive energy can flow freely around your room making it easier for you to have a deep and restful sleep. You will have more time. Mess delays you. An untidy house means you are always losing things. You can’t find a shoe, a sock, or your keys, so you waste time searching for them, which makes you late for work or social gatherings. When you declutter your home, you could save about an hour a day because you will no longer need to dig through a stack of items to find things. Your intuition will be stronger. A clear space creates a sense of certainty and clarity. You know where everything is, so you have peace of mind. When you have peace of mind, you can focus on being in the present moment. When you need to make important decisions, you will find it easier to do so. It might take some time to give your home a deep clean, but you won’t be sorry for it once it’s done. Chapter 5: How To Become an Assertive Empath The word assertive means “having or showing a confident and forceful personality.

Even the bestselling books have some mediocre chapters. A few bad years don’t mean our life story is over.

(What has happened thus far to Benny is unfair and sad. We’ve all endured too much unfairness and sadness in our lives; exposing ourselves to more of the same in stories like this could be healing, but it might also risk opening new psychological wounds. Therefore, be assured that while more unfairness will ensue, Benny is too nice and sweet-tempered to be undone by it. The sadness will diminish as the chapters unfold, though some events will require a handkerchief.

DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Selective Attention Exercise 1: In what areas of your life do you focus on the negative rather than the positive? Write down three positive affirmations about that area of your life. Make 10 copies. Place one in your wallet. Tape others to your refrigerator, bathroom mirror, computer monitor, video screen, car dashboard, and other places you can’t avoid noticing them. Practice repeating the positive affirmations the second you catch yourself focusing on the negative. Journaling Exercise: Write down a list of personality flaws that you’d like to change. Create a reminder in your online calendar for 1 year from now, reminding you to check today’s date in your journal. Next year, you might be surprised to see how much some have shifted after a year of meditation. Emotional Contagion Practice: Put the power of emotional contagion to work for you. Make a list of the happiest people you know, and make a plan to get together with at least four of them in the coming month. Selective Attention Exercise 2: Whenever you hear a bad news story that upsets you, do a web search for contradictory evidence (e.g., “Good news about . . .”). This will put the bad news in context. Field Effects Exercise: Look at the Insight Timer app each day you meditate and notice how many other people are meditating worldwide. It’s usually hundreds of thousands. This reminds you that you are not alone.

DIVORCE ABROAD When a couple can be divorced in more than one country serious legal problems can develop. British nationals who live abroad can decide whether to be divorced at home or abroad. What matters is where it makes most sense for them to be divorced, and they should work out which jurisdiction is equally fair to both parties. One of the factors that will determine where the divorce takes place is who puts a petition in first. This will carry some weight when everything else is finely balanced. So if there is jurisdiction in Britain and another country and you would be better off in Britain, start proceedings quickly. But if the English courts would favour the husband more than the wife, a judge would be likely to tell them to use the jurisdiction that would be fairest to both. It creates a bad impression on a judge if you, as petitioner, have deliberately opted for the jurisdiction most favourable to you. One English woman, who had lived in France and was married to a Frenchman, decided to file her petition in the UK. Her husband was able to have the proceedings stopped completely, however, because the judge believed that justice would be served better in France. An American couple who were married in Italy but had lived in the UK for six years and wanted to divorce could have their case heard in any of the three countries. They could go to the States because they were still domiciled there (in the sense that that was where they came from and where they were both likely to die), but they could also use the English or Italian courts because in the first instance this would their country of residence and in the second this would be where their assets were. However, even if they had lived in Britain for a few years, if most of their assets were still in Italy it would be more sensible for the divorce to take place there. Under Moslem law a man divorces his wife simply by saying ‘I divorce you’ three times, and his liability to his wife is only five gold coins. That is patently unfair for a British woman or, say, an Iranian or an Iraqi living in Britain. While the British courts accept the divorce, it does not preclude the woman from gaining some settlement from her husband’s assets in Britain, provided, of course, he has not taken everything he owns out of the country. British courts can make orders for financial provision when a divorce or separation has taken place abroad, provided permission has been granted by a High Court judge. The judge will only give the go-ahead if he or she considers that the circumstances warrant it – if, for example, the person making the application now lives in Britain. When a divorce takes place abroad, provided that it was recognized the country which granted it, it will always be recognized in the UK. This is not always the case in reverse: if a couple were married in a Catholic country (which does not recognize divorce) and they came to live in the UK and subsequently divorce there, UK legislation would only cover them, their dependants and assets in the UK. We pointed out in Chapter 8 that when assets are held abroad, UK courts have only limited powers to make a husband transfer a share if his assets to his wife, or vice versa, particularly when the money is tied up in the Middle or Far East.

However unsophisticated a feeling disgust may seem like, it actually entails a kind of metaphysics: a sense that some things are deeply impure and emit an invisible aura of badness, creating a dread zone. Pascal Boyer has suggested that disgust — our “contagion inference system”—may thus energize notions of ritual pollution that figure in many religions. (Recall the sin that so peeved the sea goddess in chapter 1: failing to throw out items contaminated by proximity to a miscarriage.) There is another feature of the human mind that may be involved in religious experience and that, like the “contagion inference system,” is a way of taking account of causality without thinking consciously about it. In fact, it entered our lineage so long before consciously rational thought that it exists in all mammals. It is called “associative learning.” If a dog burns itself on rocks that surround a dying campfire, it will thereafter avoid such rocks. What is going on in the dog’s mind is hard to say, but it probably isn’t extended reflection on the causal link between fires and hot rocks, or between hot rocks and singed fur. Presumably the dog has just acquired something like a fear of those rocks, a fear that leads it to behave as if it understood the connection between rocks around dying campfires and singed fur. I once tried to walk a golden retriever past an intersection where, weeks earlier, she had been hit by a car. As we approached the intersection, she walked more and more slowly and warily until finally she came to a halt and started desperately resisting attempts to move her farther. It was as if, in her mind, the intersection was giving off a kind of spooky aura, and the closer she got to it, the stronger the aura felt.

Consider the question posed at the beginning of this book’s penultimate chapter: how much do parents really matter? The data have by now made it clear that parents matter a great deal in some regards (most of which have been long determined by the time a child is born) and not at all in others (the ones we obsess about). You can’t blame parents for trying to do something — anything — to help their child succeed, even if it’s something as irrelevant as giving him a high-end first name. But there is also a huge random effect that rains down on even the best parenting efforts. If you are in any way typical, you have known some intelligent and devoted parents whose child went badly off the rails. You may have also known of the opposite instance, where a child succeeds despite his parents’ worst intentions and habits. Recall for a moment the two boys, one white and one black, who were described in chapter 5. The white boy who grew up outside Chicago had smart, solid, encouraging, loving parents who stressed education and family. The black boy from Daytona Beach was abandoned by his mother, was beaten by his father, and had become a full-fledged gangster by his teens. So what became of the two boys? The second child, now twenty-eight years old, is Roland G. Fryer Jr., the Harvard economist studying black underachievement. The white child also made it to Harvard. But soon after, things went badly for him. His name is Ted Kaczynski.

conquered heaven when the time was bad for the devas, who waited to reattack until the time became propitious for them. When the time was propitious for the devas, Bali advised his asuras to desist until time turned again in their favor. Though little solid evidence exists for any of these speculative interpretations of the story of Bali and Vamana, we can gain through them some of the mythic savor of the deva-asura struggle, a contest that is as eternal as the seasonal shifting of the stars in the sky. Above all this celestial competition reside the Seven Rishis, and above them sits the Pole Star, who is known as Dhruva (The Firm, Fixed One). Chapter 22 of the Brahmanda Purana explains how, presided over by Dhruva and inspired by the celestial air known as the Pravaha Vayu, the sun takes up water and the moon showers it down in a torrential current which flows through celestial conduits called nadis. The sun provides heat to the world, and the moon provides coolness. It is no coincidence that this macrocosmic cycle is replicated within the human body, where the “sun” and “moon” are also nadis, ethereal vessels (much like the

PARTY POOPER I, Theresa Marie “Tessie” Finley, hereby confess that on the night of October 17th, 1959, instead of keeping my ears to the ground and my eyes peeled for suspicious goings-on in our neighborhood, the way I swore to do on the Holy Bible, I screwed up really bad. For cripessakes, any president of a blackmail and detecting society worth their salt would’ve at least poked their head outta their bedroom window at 12: 07 a.m. to see who was hollering their head off in the cemetery behind their house, “I’m warning you! Watch yourself! You’re treading on dangerous ground!” But what did I do? I acted like some dumb schmoe who doesn’t know the score. According to Chapter One in what has to be the best book ever written on the subject, Modern Detection, a private investigator is never supposed to “assume” they know something without having proof and they’re also never supposed to “let emotions cloud their judgment.” But the minute I heard that hollering over at Holy Cross, I’m ashamed to say, instead of really listening to the voice barging through our bedroom window so I could figure out who it was—I am an ace at that sort of thing—I right away “assumed” that it was Mr. Howard Howard, because every once in a while (mostly after he’s been hitting the schnapps bottle), he staggers over to the cemetery in the wee hours to collapse in a heap on his wife’s grave to bawl his eyes out and threaten God that He better give his Mrs. back ASAP or else. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I also let my emotions cloud my judgment, because Mr. Howard Howard and me, we have that in common. I could be an expert witness on sad

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.

But history tells us that, in the early stage of their development, virtually all successful countries used some mixture of protection, subsidies and regulation in order to develop their economies. The history of the successful developing countries that I discussed in chapter 1 shows that. Furthermore, the history of today's rich countries also confirms it, as I have discussed in this chapter. Unfortunately, another lesson of history is that rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves succesfully used in the past. Even the newest member of the club of rich countries, my native Korea, has not been an exception to this pattern. Despite once having been one of the most protectionist countries in the world, it now advocates steep cuts in industrial tariffs, if not total free trade, in the WTO. Despite once having been the world piracy capital, it gets upset that the Chinese and the Vietnamese are producing pirate CDs of Korean pop music and pirate DVDs of Korean movies. Worse, these Korean free-marketeers are often the same people who, not so long ago, actually drafted and implemented interventionist, protectionist policies in their earlier jobs. Most of them probably learned their free market economics from pirate-copied rock and roll music and watching pirate-copied videos of Hollywood films in their spare time.

I can safely say that the origin of every single disease is genetic. Our genes are the code to everything in our bodies, good and bad. Without genes, there would be no cancer. Without genes, there would be no obesity, diabetes or heart disease. And without genes, there would be no life. This might explain why we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to figure out which gene causes which disease and how we can silence the dangerous genes. This also explains why some perfectly healthy young women have had their breasts removed simply because they were found to carry genes that are linked to breast cancer. Much of this focus on genes, however, misses a simple but crucial point: not all genes are fully expressed all the time. If they aren't activated, or expressed, they remain biochemically dormant. Dormant genes do not have any effect on our health. This is obvious to most scientists, and many laypeople, but the significance of this idea is seldom understood. What happens to cause some genes to remain dormant, and others to express themselves? The answer: environment, especially diet. As we saw in chapter three, the genes that cause cancer were profoundly impacted by the consumption of protein. So while we can say that genes are crucial to every biological process, we have some very convincing evidence that gene expression is far more important, and gene expression is controlled by environment, especially nutrition.

Sometimes you hear people say: "Those Apaches were bad." I don't know. They are peaceful people today, doing a good job with their livestock. In the early days they did cause the Pimas, and others, some trouble. We had plenty from our farms and those Apaches only had what they could hunt over their wild mountains. Sometimes they would come down and raid us and we fought them back away from our settlements and then left them alone. They never tried to drive us off our land and away from our homes. We never tried to drive them out of their own country. But the white man did. If you were an Apache what do you think you would have done? (from chapter "The Apache Wars")

Whites may be surprised by the strength of black voter solidarity. Chris Bell, a white Democratic congressman from Texas, was redistricted into a largely black area and promptly crushed in the 2004 Democratic primary by the former head of the Houston chapter of the NAACP. He felt betrayed: He said he had spent his entire career “fighting for diversity, championing diversity,” and was dismayed that “many people do not want to look past the color of your skin.” This only demonstrated how little Mr. Bell understood blacks. As Bishop Paul Morton of the St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church in New Orleans said of black voters, “I’ve talked to some people who say, ‘I don’t care how bad the black is, he’s better than any white.’” Many blacks also expect all blacks to vote the same way. Jesse Jackson criticized Alabama congressman Artur Davis for voting against Mr. Obama’s signature medical insurance legislation, saying, “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Racial consciousness explains why President Barack Obama drew support even from blacks who ordinarily vote Republican. No fewer than 87 percent of blacks who identified themselves as conservatives said they would vote for him. In the three states that track party registration by race—Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina—blacks were dropping off the Republican rolls in record numbers and rallying to the Democrats. As one GOP black explained during the primaries, “Most black Republicans who support John McCain won’t tell you this, but if Barack Obama is the nominee for the Democratic ticket, they will go into the voting booth in November and vote for Obama.” “Among black conservatives, they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him [Obama] in November,” said black conservative radio host Armstrong Williams. During the campaign, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown said, “I think most white politicians do not understand that the race pride we [blacks] all have trumps everything else.

The book is written by “Lord Timothy Dexter, First in the East, First in the West, and the Greatest Philosopher in the Western World.” If you ever write a memoir, please make up a fun little egotistical description of yourself for your title page. Be bold about it. The book details Timothy’s life in his own somewhat incoherent way. It was written entirely without punctuation. When it was pointed out that the greatest philosopher in the Western world would probably use at least some punctuation (since it was, thank God, no longer the sixteenth century), in the second edition (there were ultimately eight printings) Dexter added a page of punctuation at the end, so readers could insert the marks wherever they liked or, as he claimed, “I put in A Nuf here and they may pepper and salt it as they plese.” If I was really committed to following Dexter’s teaching, I’d have written this chapter without punctuation and just presented you with this page.

Luck plays such an overpowering role in some lives that the thoughtful person must ask: ‘Why have I been cursed with bad luck while another is blessed with so much good luck?’ Believe me, the fortunate person who receives the favorable breaks also wonders about his favored situation. In my case, I have no explanation. I was hardworking; I had a tough character; I was a good student; and I acknowledged the leadership of my superiors. But no amount of hard work or high standard of behavior could have brought the many good things that happened to me; pure chance dictated most of them. The only generalization I can offer is that in an irrational world if a prudent course has been followed, you make yourself eligible to capitalize on luck if it happens to strike. If you have not made yourself eligible, you may never be aware that luck is at hand. By all this I mean: learn typing, master math, learn to draft a convincing letter, broaden the mind, and do not evade challenges. Making oneself eligible to seize the breaks if and when they come is the only sensible strategy I know. Be prepared to make full use of any stroke of luck, and even if it never comes, the preparation in itself will be a worthy effort.” —Chapter VIII, “Writing”, page 289

In psychology, the process Caro used to create his forecast is known as “anchoring and adjustment.”[6] Your estimate starts with some fixed point, twelve chapters of three weeks each in Caro’s case. That’s the “anchor.” Then you slide the figure up or down as seems reasonable, to one year for Caro. That’s “adjustment.” Caro was exactly right to call his thinking “naïve but perhaps not unnatural” because, as abundant research shows, anchoring and adjustment, particularly when immediate experience is used as the anchor, is a natural way of thinking. It’s likely that most people in Caro’s position, with his specific experience, would have made a forecast the same way and come up with a similar result. But basing forecasting on anchoring and adjustment is tricky. As psychologists have shown in countless experiments, final estimates made this way are biased toward the anchor, so a low anchor produces a lower estimate than a high anchor does. That means the quality of the anchor is critical. Use a good anchor, and you greatly improve your chance of making a good forecast; use a bad anchor, get a bad forecast.

A second and more radical response opens up when you reject the “speech is violence” view: you can use your opponents’ ideas and arguments to make yourself stronger. The progressive activist Van Jones (who was President Barack Obama’s green jobs advisor) endorsed this view in February of 2017 in a conversation at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Politics. When Democratic strategist David Axelrod asked Jones about how progressive students should react when people they find ideologically offensive (such as someone associated with the Trump administration) are invited to speak on campus, Jones began by noting the distinction we described in chapter 1 between physical and emotional “safety”: There are two ideas about safe spaces: One is a very good idea and one is a terrible idea. The idea of being physically safe on a campus—not being subjected to sexual harassment and physical abuse, or being targeted specifically, personally, for some kind of hate speech—“you are an n-word,” or whatever—I am perfectly fine with that. But there’s another view that is now I think ascendant, which I think is just a horrible view, which is that “I need to be safe ideologically. I need to be safe emotionally. I just need to feel good all the time, and if someone says something that I don’t like, that’s a problem for everybody else, including the [university] administration.”90 Jones then delivered some of the best advice for college students we have ever heard. He rejected the Untruth of Fragility and turned safetyism on its head: I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.