Swing Related Quotes

Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.

And I became fixated, too, upon Katharine Hepburn’s famous Fred and Ginger theory: He gives her class, she gives him sex. Was this a general rule? Did all friendships—all relations—involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power?

[W]hile the use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers and LEDIs may not necessarily reduce the number of civilian casualties, they have been largely accepted as the humane alternative to deadly force because they make the use of force appear far less dramatic and violent than it has in the past. Contrast, for instance, the image of police officers beating Rodney King with billy clubs as opposed to police officers continually shocking a person with a taser. Both are severe forms of abuse. However, because the act of pushing a button is far less dramatic and visually arresting than swinging a billy club, it can come across as much more humane to the general public. This, of course, draws much less media coverage and, thus, less bad public relations for the police.

Being bold and adventurous and being sad and cautious seem like opposite personality types. However, these two paths to addiction are actually not mutually exclusive. The third way involves having both kinds of traits, where people alternatively fear and desire novelty and behavior swings from being impulsive and rash to being compulsive, fear driven, and stuck in rigid patterns. This is where some of the contradictions that have long confounded the study of addiction come into play—namely, some aspects seem precisely planned out, while others are obviously related to lack of restraint. My own story spirals around this paradoxical situation: I was driven enough to excel academically and fundamentally scared of change and of other people—yet I was also reckless enough to sell cocaine and shoot heroin.

Did all friendships—all relations—involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power?

Cheetah Legs would like you to come push him. I repeat, Cheetah Legs needs a push.” “Are you on a swing?” he asks, like this sounds like a ludicrous thing for me to do as I wait for them to stagger over here.

It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period. When at last Sophia came through the swing doors our meeting seemed completely unreal. She was wearing black, and that, in some curious way, startled me! Most other women were wearing black, but I got it into my head that it was definitely mourning—and it surprised me that Sophia should be the kind of person who did wear black—even for a near relative.

Uncounted generations will trample heedlessly upon our tombs. What is the use of living if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? … Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on – swinging bravely forward along the grand high road – and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.48

Uncounted generations will trample heedlessly upon our tombs. What is the use of living if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? … Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on – swinging bravely forward along the grand high road – and already behind the

1)    The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3)    He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4)    He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7)    He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14)   He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17)   He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

Shame is often related to the just world belief, that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. And while it makes sense that parents and schools and religious institutions would want to teach us that good things come to us when we're good and bad things will happen if we're bad, this belief bears little resemblance to the real world. Most of us are not "good" people or "bad people," we are flawed, complex beings struggling to do the best we can in a complicated, messy world.

Had she been able to listen to her body, the true Virginia would certainly have spoken up. In order to do so, however, she needed someone to say to her: “Open your eyes! They didn’t protect you when you were in danger of losing your health and your mind, and now they refuse to see what has been done to you. How can you love them so much after all that?” No one offered that kind of support. Nor can anyone stand up to that kind of abuse alone, not even Virginia Woolf. Malcolm Ingram, the noted lecturer in psychological medicine, believed that Woolf’s “mental illness” had nothing to do with her childhood experiences, and her illness was genetically inherited from her family. Here is his opinion as quoted on the Virginia Woolf Web site: As a child she was sexually abused, but the extent and duration is difficult to establish. At worst she may have been sexually harassed and abused from the age of twelve to twenty-one by her [half-]brother George Duckworth, [fourteen] years her senior, and sexually exploited as early as six by her other [half-] brother… It is unlikely that the sexual abuse and her manic-depressive illness are related. However tempting it may be to relate the two, it must be more likely that, whatever her upbringing, her family history and genetic makeup were the determining factors in her mood swings rather than her unhappy childhood [italics added]. More relevant in her childhood experience is the long history of bereavements that punctuated her adolescence and precipitated her first depressions.3 Ingram’s text goes against my own interpretation and ignores a large volume of literature that deals with trauma and the effects of childhood abuse. Here we see how people minimize the importance of information that might cause pain or discomfort—such as childhood abuse—and blame psychiatric disorders on family history instead. Woolf must have felt keen frustration when seemingly intelligent and well-educated people attributed her condition to her mental history, denying the effects of significant childhood experiences. In the eyes of many she remained a woman possessed by “madness.” Nevertheless, the key to her condition lay tantalizingly close to the surface, so easily attainable, and yet neglected. I think that Woolf’s suicide could have been prevented if she had had an enlightened witness with whom she could have shared her feelings about the horrors inflicted on her at such an early age. But there was no one to turn to, and she considered Freud to be the expert on psychic disorders. Here she made a tragic mistake. His writings cast her into a state of severe uncertainty, and she preferred to despair of her own self rather than doubt the great father figure Sigmund Freud, who represented, as did her family, the system of values upheld by society, especially at the time.   UNFORTUNATELY,

The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing— México, está muy contento, Dando gracias a millares… —and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez… —empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de

Thermoneutrality”: A hallmark of modern industrial life is spending most of our time indoors at relatively consistent ambient temperatures, a concept we’ll refer to as thermoneutrality. Interestingly, experiencing swings in temperature is great for mitochondrial function, as cold stimulates the body to generate more warmth by increasing mitochondrial activity and stimulates more ATP generation and use. Heat exposure has been shown to activate heat shock proteins (HSPs) within cells, which can protect mitochondria from damage and help to maintain their function. HSPs can also stimulate the production of new mitochondria and improve their efficiency in producing ATP.

Myth #3: Fasting Causes Low Blood Sugar Sometimes people worry that blood sugar will fall very low during fasting and they will become shaky and sweaty. Luckily, this does not actually happen. Blood sugar level is tightly monitored by the body, and there are multiple mechanisms to keep it in the proper range. During fasting, our body begins by breaking down glycogen (remember, that’s the glucose in short-term storage) in the liver to provide glucose. This happens every night as you sleep to keep blood sugars normal as you fast overnight. FASTING ALL-STARS AMY BERGER People who engage in fasting for religious or spiritual purposes often report feelings of extreme clear-headedness and physical and emotional well-being. Some even feel a sense of euphoria. They usually attribute this to achieving some kind of spiritual enlightenment, but the truth is much more down-to-earth and scientific than that: it’s the ketones! Ketones are a “superfood” for the brain. When the body and brain are fueled primarily by fatty acids and ketones, respectively, the “brain fog,” mood swings, and emotional instability that are caused by wild fluctuations in blood sugar become a thing of the past and clear thinking is the new normal. If you fast for longer than twenty-four to thirty-six hours, glycogen stores become depleted. The liver now can manufacture new glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis, using the glycerol that’s a by-product of the breakdown of fat. This means that we do not need to eat glucose for our blood glucose levels to remain normal. A related myth is that brain cells can only use glucose for energy. This is incorrect. Human brains, unique amongst animals, can also use ketone bodies—particles that are produced when fat is metabolized—as a fuel source. This allows us to function optimally even when food is not readily available. Ketones provide the majority of the energy we need. Consider the consequences if glucose were absolutely necessary for brain function. After twenty-four hours without food, glucose stored in our bodies in the form of glycogen is depleted. At that point, we’d become blubbering idiots as our brains shut down. In the Paleolithic era, our intellect was our only advantage against wild animals with their sharp claws, sharp fangs, and bulging muscles. Without it, humans would have become extinct long ago. When glucose is not available, the body begins to burn fat and produce ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed the brain cells. Up to 75 percent of the brain’s energy requirements can be met by ketones. Of course, that means that glucose still provides 25 percent of the brain’s energy requirements. So does this mean that we have to eat for our brains to function?

In 2019, however, there is nothing left from that: the revolution- ary advent of social media has now reached its full swing, and 100 percent of all deeds, thoughts, deals, and acts in our lives are public. Social media’s almightiness has brought about many things, but the main one is transparency. Total transparency everywhere and for everyone. As a result, social media have shaken up the PR industry beyond recognition. In fact, social media have caused the first and only real PR revolution in the industry’s more than 100 years of history. Regardless of how the PR business may have developed over the years, we always used to be a transmission, a sort of bridge, between our clients and their clients.

OBAMA’S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS critics boiled over during a lengthy trip to Asia in the spring of 2014. In the region, the trip was seen as another carefully designed U.S. effort to counter China. We’d go to Japan, to bring them into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—weaving together twelve Asia Pacific economies into one framework of trade rules, environmental protections, and labor rights. We’d go to South Korea and discuss ways to increase pressure on North Korea. We’d go to Malaysia, something of a swing state in Southeast Asia, which we were bringing closer through TPP. And we’d end in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that was mired in territorial disputes with China over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea.

Nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover. She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain. Unfortunately for all hopes of creating heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. There's no natural selection for happiness as such - a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents get carried on to the next generation. Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner of later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations. (...) Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Some air-conditioning systems are set at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete (...) incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may. (...) Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to the set point.

In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all the information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is part of the reason why the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy. However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse. If you concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, disregarding all privacy concerns, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. For example, if an authoritarian government orders all its citizens to have their DNA scanned and to share all their medical data with some central authority, it would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data is strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century – the attempt to concentrate all information in one place – might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century.

In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all the information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is part of the reason why the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy. “However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse. If you concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, disregarding all privacy concerns, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. For example, if an authoritarian government orders all its citizens to have their DNA scanned and to share all their medical data with some central authority, it would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data is strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century – the attempt to concentrate all information in one place – might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century.

Criteria for Diagnosing Borderline Personality Disorder 1. Frantic efforts to avoid being or feeling abandoned by loved ones. 2. Instability in relationships, including a tendency to idealize and then become disillusioned with relationships. 3. Problems with an unstable sense of self, self-image, or identity. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas (other than suicidal behavior) that are potentially damaging, such as excessive spending, risky sex, substance abuse, or binge eating. 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, including thoughts, attempts, or threats of suicide, as well as intentional self-harm that may or may not be life-threatening. 6. Mood swings, including intense negative mood, irritability, and anxiety. Moods usually last a few hours and rarely more than a few days. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 8. Problems controlling intense anger and angry behavior. 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociation.

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science. If the question of the nothing unfolded here has actually questioned us, then we have not simply brought metaphysics before us in an extrinsic manner. Nor have we merely been "transposed" to it. We cannot be transposed there at all, because insofar as we exist we are always there already. "For by nature, my friend, man's mind dwells in philosophy" (Plato, Phaedrus, 279a). So long as man exists, philosophizing of some sort occurs. Philosophy―what we call philosophy―is metaphysics getting under way, in which philosophy comes to itself and to its explicit tasks. Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which he is wont to go cringing; and finally, that we let the sweep of our suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: 'Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?'" ―from_What is Metaphysics?_

The stars in their courses fought against her! External opposition one could cut through or get round; but this deep spiritual unease in the loved one’s soul, that — ah! that — one could not reach; and the unreachable could not be pushed away, cut through, or circumvented. She looked up at the stars that fought against her. Did the ancients really believe that, or was it, with them, as with her, just a manner of speaking? Did those bright wheeling jewels on the indigo velvet of all space really concern themselves with little men, the lives and loves of human insects, who, born from an embrace, met and clung and died and became dust? Those candescent worlds, circled by little offsplit planets — were their names taken in vain, or were they really in their motions and their relative positions the writing on the wall for men to read? No! That was only human self-importance! To his small wheel man bound the Universe. Swing low, sweet chariots! But they didn’t! Man swung with them — in space. . . . .

How do you know if you’re in an infatuation? Here are the neurological markers according to Dr. Helen Fisher, a preeminent biological anthropologist who has written on the topic: • The lover focuses on the beloved’s better traits and overlooks or minimizes flaws. • Infatuated people exhibit extreme energy, hyperactivity, sleeplessness, impulsivity, euphoria, and mood swings. • One or both of the partners develops a goal-oriented fixation on winning the beloved. • Relational passion is heightened, not weakened, by adversity; the more the relationship is attacked, the more the passion grows. • The lovers become emotionally dependent on the relationship. • Partners reorder their daily priorities to remain in contact as much as humanly possible, and they even experience separation anxiety when apart. • Empathy is so powerful that many report they would “die for their beloved.” • An infatuated person thinks about their lover to an obsessive degree. • Sexual desire is intense, and the relationship becomes marked by extreme possessiveness.

Nonviolence became a cultural ideal for Hindus precisely because it holds out the last hope of a cure, all the more desirable since unattainable, for a civilization that has, like most, always suffered from chronic and terminal violence. Non-violence is an ideal propped up against the cultural reality of violence. Classical Hindu India was violent in ways both shared with all cultures and unique to its particular time and place, in its politics (war being the raison d’être of every king); in its religious practices (animal sacrifice, ascetic self-torture, fire walking, swinging from hooks in the flesh of the back, and so forth); in its criminal law (impaling on stakes and the amputation of limbs being prescribed punishments for relatively minor offenses); in its hells (cunningly and sadistically contrived to make the punishment fit the crime); and, perhaps at the very heart of it all, in its climate, with its unendurable heat and unpredictable monsoons. Hindu sages dreamed of nonviolence as people who live all their lives in the desert dream of oases.

Factors Influencing Us as Empaths There are a number of factors affecting how we pick up energy from other people: ● Receiving Our sensitivity as receivers will factor into how much energy we pick up. ● Sending Some people transmit their energy more strongly than others, and the depth of the emotions that they are experiencing will also turn up the volume that they are sending out. ● Awareness The unaware person may be just as sensitive as the aware person. The latter will understand why they have mood swings; the former will not. ● Bloodline Blood relatives will affect us regardless of where in the world we are and whether we are thinking about them or not. The link between sender and receiver is often stronger where there is a blood connection. Often, empath children may process the emotions of their parents or siblings long into adulthood. ● Emotional Connection Friends and acquaintances will impact us primarily based on the strength of the emotional connection we have to them, largely without regard to physical proximity. The stronger the emotional connection is, the less important the physical proximity is. Having worked from home for many years with teams spread all over the country, I have picked up energy from managers and teammates regardless of location. ● Physical Proximity Neighbors and strangers will influence us based on physical proximity. This is true for the people living in our neighborhood and the strangers we brush up against in the shopping mall.

I was 18 wen I started driving I was 18 the first time I was pulled over. It was 2 AM on a Saturday The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror, he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon, and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house. Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man who brings a gun to a food fight. He called me son and I thought to myself, that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy," He asks for my license and registration, wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood, if the car is stolen, if I have any drugs and most days, I know how to grab my voice by the handle and swing it like a hammer. But instead, I picked it up like a shard of glass. Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully because I know that this much melanin and that uniform is a plotline to a film that can easily end with a chalk outline baptism, me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags. Once, a friend of a friend asked me why there aren't more black people in the X Games and I said, "You don't get it." Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades. Jim Crow may have left the nest, but our streets are still covered with its feathers. Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line between a traffic stop and the cemetery, it's the way my body tenses up when I hear a police siren in a song, it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me, it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't. I don't need to go volcano surfing. Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer drives right past without pulling me over and I realize I'm going to make it home safe. This time.

According to this view the present state of our warring capacities would not be a state of culture, but only a stage on the way. Opinions will, of course, be divided about this, for by culture one man will understand a state of collective culture, while another will regard this state merely as civilization8 and will expect of culture the sterner demands of individual development. Schiller is, however, mistaken when he allies himself exclusively with the second standpoint and contrasts our collective culture unfavourably with that of the individual Greek, since he overlooks the defectiveness of the civilization of that time, which makes the unlimited validity of that culture very questionable. Hence no culture is ever really complete, for it always swings towards one side or the other. Sometimes the cultural ideal is extraverted, and the chief value then lies with the object and man’s relation to it: sometimes it is introverted, and the chief value lies with subject and his relation to the idea. In the former case, culture takes on a collective character, in the latter an individual one. It is therefore easy to understand how under the influence of Christianity, whose principle is Christian love (and by counter-association, also its counterpart, the violation of individuality), a collective culture came about in which the individual is liable to be swallowed up because individual values are depreciated on principle. Hence there arose in the age of the German classicists that extraordinary yearning for the ancient world which for them was a symbol of individual culture, and on that account was for the most part very much overvalued and often grossly idealized. Not a few attempts were even made to imitate or recapture the spirit of Greece, attempts which nowadays appear to us somewhat silly, but must none the less be appreciated as forerunners of an individual culture.

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science. If the question of the nothing unfolded here has actually questioned us, then we have not simply brought metaphysics before us in an extrinsic manner. Nor have we merely been "transposed" to it. We cannot be transposed there at all, because insofar as we exist we are always there already. "For by nature, my friend, man's mind dwells in philosophy" (Plato, Phaedrus, 279a). So long as man exists, philosophizing of some sort occurs. Philosophy―what we call philosophy―is metaphysics getting under way, in which philosophy comes to itself and to its explicit tasks. Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which he is wont to go cringing; and finally, that we let the sweep of our suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: 'Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?" ―from_What is Metaphysics?_

A few hours later, Jane came out of her boudoir to find her husband in his dressing gown, stretched out across the bed reading the newspaper and idly petting their spaniel Little Archer, a pup from Mrs. Patch’s brood. Seizing the moment, Little Archer leapt off the bed and into her dressing room, where he could chew up slippers to his heart’s content. Dom, however, didn’t even look up as she entered. “They’re calling this the most elegant coronation in history.” He snorted. “I noticed there’s no mention of its being the most interminable.” “Dom,” she purred as she closed the dog into the dressing room for the moment. “All that pomp and circumstance is so tedious.” Still reading, he turned the page of the newspaper. “Ravenswood told me that King William is determined to make sure that parliamentary reform is enacted.” She walked languidly forward. “Dom.” He snapped the paper to straighten it. “It’s about bloody time. I should think--” “Dom!” she practically shouted. “Hmm?” He glanced up, then frowned. “Why are you wearing your coronation robe?” “I was cold,” she said with a teasing smile. She let the robe fall open. “Since I have nothing on underneath.” Dom stared, then gulped. Unsurprisingly, his staff jerked instantly to attention. “If you’re trying to torture me,” he said hoarsely, “you’re doing a good job of it.” She sashayed toward the bed, letting the velvet and ermine robe swing about her. “No torture intended.” She put one knee on the bed. “Dr. Worth said I may resume relations with my husband whenever I am ready.” He blinked, then rose to his knees and seized her about the waist. “May I assume that you’re ready?” he rasped as he brushed a kiss to her cheek. “You have no idea.” She met his mouth with hers. They kissed a long moment, a hot, heavenly kiss that reminded her of how very talented her husband was at this aspect of marriage. She untied his dressing gown and shoved it off his shoulders. He had just finished tearing off his drawers when she shoved him down onto the bed. His eyes lit up as she hovered over him. “Ah, so it’s to be like that, my wicked little seductress?” “Oh, yes.” She grinned at him. “I do so enjoy having a viscount fall before me.” She started to remove her robe, but he stayed her with his hand. “Don’t.” He raked her with a heated glance. “Next session of parliament, I’ll endure the boredom of the endless speeches by imagining you seducing me in all your pomp and circumstance.” “My pomp is nothing to yours, my love,” she murmured as she caught his rampant flesh in her hand. “Yours is quite…er…pompous.” “That’s what happens if the viscount falls.” He thrust against her hand. “His pomp always rises.” And as she laughed, they created a pomp and circumstance all their own.

Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. •       You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. •       If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. •       This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. •       Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.

There are many types of teachers out there from many traditions. Some are very ordinary and some seem to radiate spirituality from every pore. Some are nice, some are indifferent, and some may seem like sergeants in boot camp. Some stress reliance on one’s own efforts, others stress reliance on the grace of the guru. Some are very available and accessible, and some may live far away, grant few interviews, or have so many students vying for their time that you may rarely get a chance to talk with them. Some seem to embody the highest ideals of the perfected spiritual life in their every waking moment, while others may have many noticeable quirks, faults and failings. Some live by rigid moral codes, while others may push the boundaries of social conventions and mores. Some may be very old, and some may be very young. Some may require strict commitments and obedience, while others may hardly seem to care what we do at all. Some may advocate very specific practices, stating that their way is the only way or the best way, while others may draw from many traditions or be open to your doing so. Some may point out our successes, while others may dwell on our failures. Some may stress renunciation or even ordination into a monastic order, while others seem relentlessly engaged with “the world.” Some charge a bundle for their teachings, while others give theirs freely. Some like scholarship and the lingo of meditation, while others may never use or even openly despise these formal terms and conceptual frameworks. Some teachers may be more like friends or equals that just want to help us learn something they happened to be good at, while others may be all into the hierarchy, status and role of being a teacher. Some teachers will speak openly about attainments, and some may not. Some teachers are remarkably predictable in their manner and teaching style, while others swing wide in strange and unpredictable ways. Some may seem very tranquil and mild mannered, while others may seem outrageous or rambunctious. Some may seem extremely humble and unimposing, while others may seem particularly arrogant and presumptuous. Some are charismatic, while others may be distinctly lacking in social skills. Some may readily give us extensive advice, and some just listen and nod. Some seem the living embodiment of love, and others may piss us off on a regular basis. Some teachers may instantly click with us, while others just leave us cold. Some teachers may be willing to teach us, and some may not. So far as I can tell, none of these are related in any way to their meditation ability or the depths of their understanding. That is, don’t judge a meditation teacher by their cover. What is important is that their style and personality inspire us to practice well, to live the life we want to live, to find what it is we wish to find, to understand what we wish to understand. Some of us may wander for a long time before we find a good fit. Some of us will turn to books for guidance, reading and practicing without the advantages or hassles of teachers. Some of us may seem to click with a practice or teacher, try to follow it for years and yet get nowhere. Others seem to fly regardless. One of the most interesting things about reality is that we get to test it out. One way or another, we will get to see what works for us and what doesn’t, what happens when we do certain practices or follow the advice of certain teachers, as well as what happens when we don’t.

Thus I repudiate facility. I recommend a certain manner of thinking which courts difficulty; I value effort above everything. How could certain people have mistaken my meaning? To say nothing of the kind of person who would insist that my “intuition” was instinct or feeling. Not one line of what I have written could lend itself to such an interpretation. And in everything I have written there is assurance to the contrary: my intuition is reflection. But because I called attention to the mobility at the base of things, it has been claimed that I encouraged a sort of relaxing of the mind. And because the permanence of substance was, in my eyes, a continuity of change, it has been said that my doctrine was a justification of instability. One might just as well imagine that the bacteriologist recommends microbic diseases to us when he shows us microbes everywhere, or that the physicist prescribes the exercise of swinging when he reduces natural phenomena to oscillations. A principle of explanation is one thing, a maxim of conduct is another. One could almost say that the philosopher who finds mobility everywhere is the only one who cannot recommend it, since he sees it as inevitable, since he discovers it in what people have agreed to call immobility. But the truth is that in spite of the fact that he views stability as a complexity of change or as a particular aspect of change, in spite of the fact that in some way he resolves stability into change he will none the less, like everybody else, distinguish stability and change. And for him, as for everyone, will arise the question of knowing to what extent it is the special appearance called stability, to what extent it is change pure and simple that he must recommend to human societies. His analysis of change leaves this question intact. If he has any common sense at all, he, like everyone else, will consider necessary a permanence of what is. He will say that institutions should furnish a relatively invariable framework for the diversity and mobility of individual designs. And he will understand perhaps better than other people the role of these institutions. Do they not continue in the domain of action, in laying down imperatives, the work of stabilization that the senses and the understanding accomplish in the realm of knowledge when they condense into perception the oscillations of matter, and into concepts, the constant flow of things? No doubt, in the rigid framework of institutions, sustained by that very rigidity, society evolves.

As a team, then, the Golgis and the spindles produce a sensory impression that is very different in kind than the impressions of color, texture, odor, or sound produced by our more conscious sense. Instead of measuring any of these surface qualities, the muscle and tendon organs assess the pure mass of an object. Now mass is an invisible thing. We have only to contemplate the surprises offered by a tennis ball filled with lead, or a large “rock” made of styrofoam in a movie studio, to remind ourselves how easily deceived our other sense organs can be with regard to mass. Mass has nothing to do with surface qualities; it is the measure of an object’s resistance to movement, and I can have no idea of its value until I am actively engaged in moving the object. Nor are the sensory cues relating to mass at all constant with regard to the object. They vary continually, as a function of inertia, according to the speed with which I move the object, or the relative suddenness with which I attempt to change the direction of movement or stop the object. A five pound bucket “feels” much heavier if I swing it rapidly in a circle over my head—that is, I have to brace myself much more forcefully in order to resist its pull. It is the precise value of this resistance which is measured by the Golgi tendon organs, and when their information is correlated with the spindles’ measurement of the exact speed and distance of movement, I can arrive at an accurate estimate of mass, that invisible yet crucial property of all matter.

Empirical logic achieved a signal triumph in the Old Testament, where survivals from the early proto-logical stage are very few and far between. With it man reached a point where his best judgments about his relation to God, his fellow men and the world, were in most respects not appreciably inferior to ours. In fundamental ethical and spiritual matters we have not progressed at all beyond the empirico-logical world of the Old Testament or the unrivalled fusion of proto-logical intuition, 64 [see Coomaraswamy, Review of Religion, 1942, p. 138, paragraph 3] empirico-logical wisdom and logical deduction which we find in the New Testament. In fact a very large section of modern religion, literature and art actually represents a pronounced retrogression when compared with the Old Testament. For example, astrology, spiritism and kindred divagations, which have become religion to tens of millions of Europeans and Americans, are only the outgrowth of proto-logical interpretation of nature, fed by empirico-logical data and covered with a spurious shell of Aristotelian logic and scientific induction. Plastic and graphic art has swung violently away from logical perspective and perceptual accuracy, and has plunged into primordial depths of conceptual drawing and intuitive imagery. While it cannot be denied that this swing from classical art to conceptual and impressionistic art has yielded some valuable results, it is also true that it represents a very extreme retrogression into the proto-logical past. Much of the poetry, drama and fiction which has been written during the past half-century is also a reversion from classical and logical standards of morality and beauty into primitive savagery or pathological abnormality. Some of it has reached such paralogical levels of sophistication that it has lost all power to furnish any standards at all to a generation which has deliberately tried to abandon its entire heritage from the past. All systematic attempts to discredit inherited sexual morality, to substitute dream-states for reflection, and to replace logical writing by jargon, are retreats into the jungle from which man emerged through long and painful millennia of disillusionment. With the same brains and affective reactions as those which our ancestors possessed two thousand years ago, increasing sophistication has not been able to teach us any sounder fundamental principles of life than were known at that time. . . . Unless we can continue along the pathway of personal morality and spiritual growth which was marked out for civilized man by the founders of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, more than two thousand years ago, our superior skill in modifying and even in transforming the material world about us can lead only to repeated disasters, each more terrible than its predecessor. (Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 5th Ed. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 31-33.)

All of the above blocks our growth and development in the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of our being. But we have a desire to contact and know our True Self. We learn that “quick fixes” such as compulsive behaviors will allow us to glimpse our True Self and will let off some of the tension. However, if the compulsive behavior is destructive to us or to others, we may feel shame and a resulting lower self-esteem. At this point we may begin to feel more and more out of control and we try to compensate by the need to control even more. We may end up deluded and hurt and often project our pain onto others. Our tension has now built to such an extent that we may develop stress-related illness manifested by aches and pains and often by dysfunction of one or more body organs. We are now in an advanced state of co-dependence, and may progressively deteriorate so that we experience one or more of extreme mood swings, difficulty with intimate relationships and chronic unhappiness. For those who are attempting to recover from alcoholism, another chemical dependence, or another condition or illness, this advanced state of co-dependence may seriously interfere. The development of co-dependence may thus be summarized as follows:

I can’t swing right now. I’m obviously very busy doing nothing. And catching up on the chores I’ve spent the past three weeks putting off. I’m just a busy little bee today.

When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.

A recent Danish study that investigated using kettlebell swings to reduce back pain, started desk workers who suffered work related back pain with 17.5 pound (8 kg.) kettlebells for women and 26.5 pound (12 kg.) for men. Your prime purchase goal for a kettlebell is one that enables your 90-second, 54-swing sessions. The 54 swing target is a goal that you approach slowly. Many people will find a 20 pound (8kg.) weight satisfactory for their 54 swings. As you are building up your time swinging from 30 seconds, to 60 seconds, to 90 seconds(about 18, 36 and 54 swings), your repetitions are more important than the weight. Work your way up to more weight and to more swings. Eventually, a weight of about 20% of your body weight provides a reasonable but challenging lift. A 150 pound man or woman would be swinging a 30 pound (13.6 kg.).

The sole result of that murderous doctrine was to remove morality from life. You grew up to believe that moral laws bear no relation to the job of living, except as an impediment and threat, that man’s existence is an amoral jungle where anything goes and anything works. And in that fog of switching definitions which descends upon a frozen mind, you have forgotten that the evils damned by your creed were the virtues required for living, and you have come to believe that actual evils are the practical means of existence. Forgetting that the impractical ‘good’ was self-sacrifice, you believe that self-esteem is impractical; forgetting that the practical ‘evil’ was production, you believe that robbery is practical. “Swinging like a helpless branch in the wind of an uncharted moral wilderness, you dare not fully to be evil or fully to live. When you are honest, you feel the resentment of a sucker; when you cheat, you feel terror and shame. When you are happy, your joy is diluted by guilt; when you suffer, your pain is augmented by the feeling that pain is your natural state. You pity the men you admire, you believe they are doomed to fail; you envy the men you hate, you believe they are the masters of existence. You feel disarmed when you come up against a scoundrel: you believe that evil is bound to win, since the moral is the impotent, the impractical.

It says Come don the veil of the type and token. Come learn to love what’s hidden inside. To hold and cherish. The almost unbelievably thick-ankled. The kyphotic and lordotic. The irremediably cellulitic. It says Progress Not Perfection. It says Never Perfection. The fatally pulchritudinous: Welcome. The Actaeonizing, side by side with the Medusoid. The papuled, the macular, the albinic. Medusas and odalisques both: Come find common ground. All meeting rooms windowless. That’s in ital: all meeting rooms windowless.’ Plus the music she’s cued for this inflectionless reading is weirdly compelling. You can never predict what it will be, but over time some kind of pattern emerges, a trend or rhythm. Tonight’s background fits, somehow, as she reads. There’s not any real forwardness to it. You don’t sense it’s straining to get anywhere. The thing it makes you see as she reads is something heavy swinging slowly at the end of a long rope. It’s minor-key enough to be eerie against the empty lilt of the voice and the clinks of tines and china as Mario’s relations eat turkey salad and steamed crosiers and drink lager and milk and vin blanc from Hull over behind the plants bathed in purple light.

Simile, with its relatives, is as essential to Homer as formula. It has been more frequently noticed, but even more seriously misunderstood. Simile in Homer is not decoration; it is dynamic invention, and because of this no successor has been able to swing it in the same grand manner.

Alone. Because the extended family had disappeared into the ether after her parents died, leaving her the sole relative still swinging around on that particular branch of the tree.

folks. Chronic systemic inflammation plays a key role in more than just age-related diseases. Inflammation contributes to a long list of conditions that you may be dealing with right now. Like asthma, allergies, acne, eczema and other skin conditions, depression, ADHD, and mood swings. Do we have your attention now? EXERCISE AND RECOVERY Chronic systemic inflammation affects your physical fitness, whether you play a sport, are

How much any of those factors is present in your swing is entirely dependent on the length of your backswing. Indeed, if you are like most people, you will be short of horizontal—and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are on plane. There is no rule that says you have to get the club all the way back to horizontal. Besides, the length of your arc is not how long your backswing is relative to horizontal; it is measured by the distance that the clubhead travels throughout the swing, so you can still have a big arc without getting all the way back to horizontal.

relatively wide stance—about the width of my shoulders between my heels—and gradually narrow it as the clubs shorten and the swing force decreases, to probably only 6 inches with the wedge. I effect this narrowing simply by moving the right foot closer to the left. In that way I maintain a constant relationship of the ball to my left heel. As I narrow my stance, I also “open” it by setting my left foot

I hope you are well in health, spirit and life. I don’t know how to begin reconnecting, as it’s been so long since we parted. Are you happily ‘married’? If so, I am delighted to know you are in safe hands. I’m sure your beloved takes loving care of you. Albert, my lover for the past 8 years, died 17 months ago after a long battle with AIDs-related illnesses. Mourning for his loss threw me to near depression for several months. But I’m blessed that I’m healthy and back in full swing regaining my life. As you are well aware, we Bahriji boys are very resilient to life’s many challenges. :)

The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing.

We were quiet for a minute. I wanted him to continue. “Although sexually I swing both ways, I prefer males to females. I can relate to a male companion more easily. I have a girlfriend in Manila, but she is naive and very needy. I like the Oasis School because I get to have practical carnal training with some of the females from the girl's school. They are in the same situation as we are; they have been taught how to please men sexually.

Chronic systemic inflammation plays a key role in more than just age-related diseases. Inflammation contributes to a long list of conditions that you may be dealing with right now. Like asthma, allergies, acne, eczema and other skin conditions, depression, ADHD, and mood swings. Do

In the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) relates the fable of six men of Indostan who went to see an elephant, though all of them were blind. Those who haven’t read the poem will learn that the first blind man felt the broad side of the elephant and thought the elephant “to be very like a wall.” The second, feeling the tusk, cried out, “No, the elephant is like a spear.” Holding the squirming trunk with both hands, the third said, “You are both wrong. The elephant is like a snake.” The fourth blind man, feeling the elephant’s knee, declared, “Fools, the elephant is clearly like a tree.” Caressing the ear, the fifth said, “Did you say tree? The elephant resembles most like a fan.” Surprised at all these, the sixth man, seizing the swinging tail, said, “Are you all crazy? Anyone can see the elephant is like a rope.” Like the blind men, people have formed their own perspective on Hinduism from their experience. While some say it is a mystic religion with endless contradictions, others declare Hinduism is about karma and cycles of reincarnation. “Hinduism has millions of gods, many with multiple limbs.

Anslinger was the U.S. government’s “expert witness” advocating the Tax Act. In his testimonies between the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Subcommittee, as well as to Congress, Anslinger produced the following as “factual statements”: “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” “Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.” “I believe in some cases one cigarette might develop a homicidal mania, probably to kill his brother.” “…but all the experts agree that the continued use leads to insanity. There are many cases of insanity.” “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.

Medical Warning: Talk to your doctor before beginning a John Locke series, as studies have shown them to be habit-forming and highly addictive. Do not read Locke if you suffer from high blood pressure or other heart-related issues, as readers often experience mood swings, increased pulses, elevated heart rates, and have reported unexpected shifts in body position that take them to the edge of their seats. Do not drive or use machinery while reading Locke novels. Locke novels are not for everyone, and may cause serious reactions including insomnia, night terrors, and uncontrollable, maniacal laughter. Tell your doctor right away if you have these, or if you experience unusual changes in your behavior including increased sexual urges, palpitations, or prolonged erections. Common side effects include confusion, hysteria, and trouble swallowing a given premise. Do not drink alcohol while reading Locke novels, though those with a history of drug or alcohol abuse may be more prone to understanding the material. Adverse reactions to Locke novels include nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, severe itching, rectal bleeding, purple spots under the skin, and Jimmy Legs. In extreme cases, readers have reported laughing so hard they not only shit their pants, but other’s pants, as well. Upon completing a Locke series be prepared to experience symptoms of withdrawal, including fear, anger, extreme sadness, and moderate to severe depression. Ask your doctor today if John Locke novels are right for you!

The offshore north wind built to a gale force. My poor dogs. They would hit a wind-polished spot, loose traction, and literally get rolled into a knot, requiring a frustrating untangling, under something lessthan good picnic conditions. Other times, away would go the sled skidding sideways, with me firmly attached, until it struck an immoveable drift or a crusted snow patch, and over I went, taking the entire team with me, ending, one time, a half block off the trail. Wha, storm. What an experience. Blinding and, at times, breath-sucking Dangerous, scary, but exciting and exhilarating at the same time. One remembrance I have kept—all these years—is thankfulness for the relatively mild temperature at the time. And another is an absolute, set-it-in-concrete admiration for my dogs. In the course of many untangles I rearranged my front end. Genghis, my old faithful, went in front with Kiana. Bandit was placed back in swing. We went. In spite of roll! overs, roll-ups, wraparounds, and tangles, we went. And even when a couple of males—Kuchik and Casper—repeatedly attempted to dive behind snowdrifts, out of the punishing tempest, we went. How gratifying it was to witness my years of training pay off. Uncounted hours: back on Kenai Lake and Resurrection River flats, driving this never-say-die team head-on into fiendish, violent snowstorms.

We unsealed the jails first, Folks showed up swinging bolt cutters to liberate their lawless relatives into a world different from the society out of which they were exiled. Because no one stood guard any more. No longer could anyone be exiled from anywhere. All banks closed down. Their silent, towering buildings became mausoleums, having been worshiped long enough.

He cannot express himself with balance. He swings wildly from one extreme to another as he tries to relate successfully to his world.

When I get to the kitchen, preparations are in full swing. My mom tends to the Cullen skink, which is a thick haddock soup. Nan works on the tatties, herring, and black pudding. My job is the clootie dumpling— essentially, flour, bread crumbs, dried fruit, suet, sugar, spices and milk, all wrapped up and baked in a clootie, or cloth. We work harmoniously as we have been preparing this meal together for close to three decades. My

We like to present a particular appearance to the world, one that highlights our strengths. When in love, however, opposite traits often come to the fore. A person who is normally strong and independent can suddenly become rather helpless, dependent, and hysterical. A nurturing, empathetic person can suddenly become tyrannical, demanding, and self-absorbed. As adults we feel relatively mature and practical, but in love we can suddenly regress to behavior that can only be seen as childish. We experience fears and insecurities that are greatly exaggerated. We feel terror at the thought of being abandoned, like a baby who has been left alone for a few minutes. We have wild mood swings—from love to hate, from trust to paranoia. Normally we like to imagine that we are good judges of other people’s character. Once infatuated or in love, however, we mistake the narcissist for a genius, the suffocator for a nurturer, the slacker for the exciting rebel, the control freak for the protector. Others can often see the truth and try to disabuse us of our fantasies, but we won’t listen. And what is worse, we will often continue to make the same types of mistaken judgments again and again.

New York is a blue state because its urban population is larger than its rural population. Ohio is the quintessential purple state—one that swings back and forth—because none of its major cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—are especially large, so it lacks the urban population base for Democrats to win regularly. Tennessee is red because its cities—Nashville and Memphis—are relatively small, and the rest of the state is rural.

If I understood how much love I have within me, I wouldn’t be attempting to play the fixer. I would be out there, swinging around people who value and appreciate themselves and radiating my love to them. I would be in reciprocating relations; I would be encountering restorative and fulfilling love because I would be conscious of the goddess I am.

Where the Port-Royal Grammars of the seventeenth century (see below) proposed universal linguistic categories on the basis of those found in the Classical languages, the North American Descriptivists of the twentieth century celebrated linguistic relativity, i.e. the view that each language conceptualizes the world in its own way. The pendulum was to swing back in favour of universalism with the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957 (see Chapter 8), heralding the emergence of the generative paradigm, which started from the belief that human beings are innately equipped to learn language, and that therefore at an underlying level all languages must be structurally similar.

It’s no secret that kettlebells were standard equipment for Eastern Bloc strength athletes and old time strongmen—they are excellent for swings, laterals, rowing and a variety of throwing-related movements.

Particle theory explains that all matter is made of many small particles that are always moving. There are particles in solids, liquids, and gases, and all of them continually vibrate, in varying directions, speeds, and intensities.17 Particles can only interact with matter by transferring energy. Waves are the counterpart to particles. There are three ways to regard waves: •​A disturbance in a medium through which energy is transferred from one particle within the medium to another, without making a change in the medium. •​A picture of this disturbance over time. •​A single cycle representing this disturbance. Waves have a constructive influence on matter when they superimpose or interact by creating other waves. They have a destructive influence when reflected waves cancel each other out. Scientists used to believe that particles were different from waves, but this is not always true, as you will see in the definition of wave-particle duality in this section. Waves, or particles operating in wave mode, oscillate, or swing between two points in a rhythmic motion. These oscillations create fields, which can in turn create more fields. For instance, oscillating charged electrons form an electrical field, which generates a magnetic field, which in turn creates an electrical field. Superposition in relation to waves means that a field can create effects in other objects, and in turn be affected itself. Imagine that a field stimulates oscillations in an atom. In turn, this atom makes its own waves and fields. This new movement can force a change in the wave that started it all. This principle allows us to combine waves; the result is the superposition. We can also subtract waves from each other. Energy healing often involves the conscious or inadvertent addition or subtraction of waves. In addition, this principle helps explain the influence of music, which often involves combining two or more frequencies to form a chord or another harmonic. A harmonic is an important concept in healing, as each person operates at a unique harmonic or set of frequencies. A harmonic is defined as an integer multiple of a fundamental frequency. This means that a fundamental tone generates higher-frequency tones called overtones. These shorter, faster waves oscillate between two ends of a string or air column. As these reflected waves interact, the frequencies of wavelengths that do not divide into even proportions are suppressed, and the remaining vibrations are called the harmonics. Energy healing is often a matter of suppressing the “bad tones” and lifting the “good tones.” But all healing starts with oscillation, which is the basis of frequency. Frequency is the periodic speed at which something vibrates. It is measured in hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. Vibration occurs when something is moving back and forth. More formally, it is defined as a continuing period oscillation relative to a fixed point—or one full oscillation.

Consider some of the other examples of sleep-related thoughts that you listed above. Work through these thoughts in a similar way, identifying the emotional reaction, associated thoughts, and actions that have occurred in the setting of insomnia. After reviewing these patterns, it becomes possible to identify false beliefs and begin to restructure this thinking to aid sleep. Substituting more evidence-based thoughts when these negative thoughts recur can shut down their recurrence. False Beliefs Interfere with Normal Sleep The mind is not rational in a state of sleep deprivation. Logic suffers in the emotional swings of fitful sleep. Flights

Last is the power of stories over statistics. “Housing prices in relation to median incomes are now above their historic average and typically mean revert” is a statistic. “Jim just made $500,000 flipping homes and can now retire early and his wife thinks he’s amazing” is a story. And it’s way more persuasive in the moment. It’s hard to compute, but it’s how the world works. In the next chapter, we’ll look at life’s guaranteed ability to swing from one absurdity to the next.

Right after church, my great Aunt Theresa comes to visit. She drives one of those long white Cadillacs which is so old that I can hear the muffler long before I spot the car. Whenever it sounds like a log truck is tearing down our drive, nine times out of ten it’s my great Aunt Theresa. Out of all of Grandpa’s sisters, she is the only one I can remember. Not because she always stores a pinch of snuff between her cheek and gum and not because a puff of brown dust escapes her mouth every time she speaks. It’s because my great Aunt Theresa is a twiddler. She’s constantly twiddling with something—a strand of hair, her nails, an earlobe, a sock, the bottom of her shoe. But in the past five years, she’s developed a new twiddling habit—trailing her fingers up and down pillowcase fabric. In fact, she stores pillowcases everywhere, like in the trunk of her car or in the oversized purse always swinging from her hip. Where most people can’t go five minutes without their phone, Aunt Theresa can’t go five minutes without her pillowcase.

The “Chinese question” found its answer at the national level, in the debate over a California-led plan for Chinese exclusion. In reconstructing the United States, California was emerging as the regional swing vote, just as the state’s enfranchised settlers became single-issue voters. The transcontinental railroad solidified the state’s membership in the Union, which was far from a given considering how often the territory had changed hands in the previous few decades as well as its continual political instability and foreign interference in Mexico, not to mention the temporary sundering of the United States itself. California’s Unionist majority helped repair that split, cutting off the Confederacy’s western tendency. But Unionist didn’t necessarily mean faithfully devoted to principles of abolition democracy and the spirit of the slave revolution. The race-based exclusion of Chinese from the country flew in the face of Reconstruction and the black-led attempt to create a pluralist, racially equal nation. But that seeming contradiction was no contradiction at all for California’s white Jacksonians, because they maintained a consistent position in favor of free white labor and free white labor only. As for the regionally aligned party duopoly, California’s vote swung against the South during the war, but it could swing back. Federal civil rights legislation meant to force the ex-Confederate states to integrate also applied to settler California’s relations with the Chinese, which left the southern and western delegations looking for a solution to their linked nonwhite labor problems. If former slaves and their children were able to escape not just their commodity status but also their working role in the regional economy, southern planters threatened to bring in Chinese laborers to replace them, just as planters had in the West Indies. That would blow the exclusion plan out of the water, which gave California an incentive to compromise with the South. These two racist blocs came to an agreement that permanently set the direction of the modern American project: They agreed to cede the South to the Confederate redeemers and exclude the Chinese.

10 Things You Should Always Discuss with Your Gynecologist – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Your gynecologist is your partner in women’s health, and open communication is key to receiving the best care. From reproductive health to general well-being, here are 10 crucial topics you should always discuss with your gynecologist. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider reaching out to the Best Female Gynecologist in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert care. 1. Menstrual Irregularities Don’t dismiss irregular periods as a minor issue. They could be indicative of underlying conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), thyroid disorders, or hormonal imbalances. 2. Contraception Discuss your contraception options to find the one that best suits your needs and lifestyle. Your gynecologist can provide guidance on various birth control methods, from pills to intrauterine devices (IUDs). 3. Pregnancy Planning If you’re planning to start a family, consult your gynecologist for preconception advice. This can help you prepare your body and address any potential risks or concerns. 4. Sexual Health Openly discuss any concerns related to sexual health, including pain during intercourse, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), or changes in sexual desire. Your gynecologist can provide guidance and offer solutions. 5. Menopause and Perimenopause If you’re in your 40s or approaching menopause, discuss perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, and changes in menstrual patterns. Your gynecologist can recommend treatments to manage these changes. 6. Family History Share your family’s medical history, especially if there are instances of gynecological conditions, such as ovarian or breast cancer. This information is vital for early detection and prevention. 7. Breast Health Talk to your gynecologist about breast health, including breast self-exams and recommended mammograms. Regular breast checks are essential for early detection of breast cancer. 8. Pelvic Pain Don’t ignore persistent pelvic pain. It can signal a range of issues, including endometriosis, fibroids, or ovarian cysts. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial. 9. Urinary Issues Frequent urination, urinary incontinence, or pain during urination should be discussed. These symptoms can be linked to urinary tract infections or pelvic floor disorders. 10. Mental Health Your gynecologist is there to address your overall well-being. If you’re experiencing mood swings, anxiety, or depression, it’s important to discuss these mental health concerns. Your gynecologist can offer guidance or refer you to specialists if needed. In conclusion, your gynecologist is your go-to resource for women’s health, addressing a wide spectrum of issues. Open and honest communication is essential to ensure you receive the best care and support. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider consulting the Best Gynecologist Obstetricians in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert guidance. Your health is a priority, and discussing these important topics with your gynecologist is a proactive step toward a healthier, happier you

She had gone past the bakery shop again the next afternoon. The windows had been smashed, the front door had apparently been broken in, because it was boarded up. There were messages chalked on the sidewalk in front of the store. They all said the same thing: "White man, don't come back." She was surprised to see that there were men still standing around, on the nearest corners, across the street. Their faces were turned toward the store. They weren't talking. They were just standing with their hands in their pockets—waiting. Two police cars with their engines running were drawn up in front of the store. There were two cops right in front of the door, swinging nightsticks. She walked past, thinking that it was like a war that hadn't got off to a start yet, though both sides were piling up ammunition and reserves and were now waiting for anything, any little excuse, a gesture, a word, a sudden loud noise—and pouf! it would start. Lutie moved uneasily on the bed. She pulled the robe more tightly around her. All of these streets were filled with violence, she thought. You turned a corner, walked through a block, and you came on it suddenly, unexpectedly.

As a result, I would not try to copy the left heal motion of Jack Nicklaus.  If your body flexibility does not allow you to make a full rotation on your backswing without raising your left heal, then by all means, raise your left heal a little.  If you make this small adjustment, be careful not to allow your heal raise to change your spine angle.  What I mean by this clarification is you cannot allow raising your left heal to force your left shoulder higher in relation to your right shoulder.  This changes the angle of your spine during the swing, which is absolutely something you want to avoid.  Not only do you want to avoid changing your spine angle from a ball striking consistency stand point, you also want to avoid changing your spine angle to keep yourself from injuring your back.  Your body has no trouble rotating around the axis the spine creates.  If you start changing this spine angle as you swing, you begin to put pressure on different parts of your spine.  The changing angle redirects the motion around your spine from a circular motion that is free of compression to a motion driving the force of your rotation into compressing your discs.  Do yourself and your body a favor, and do not try and change your spine angle throughout your swing.  Golf should be enjoyed and be pain-free.  Tiger Woods is the most glaring example of this problem.  Tiger always dropped his head as he rotated into his downswing.  Effectively, Tiger was changing his spine angle during the second part of his swing.  Over time, this changing spine angle and the force with which Tiger rotated into his golf shots created a tremendous amount of pressure on his back.  Four back surgeries later, he has been forced to change his swing to keep his spine angle neutral.  Fortunately, if you are using your body to create the rotational movement of your swing and your arms to create the vertical motion of your swing, you will not need to think about your spine angle.

Typically, the big cycle in the capital markets, along with cycles in wealth, values, and class divisions, drive the political left/right cycle because these create the motivations for political change. When capital markets and economies are booming, wealth gaps typically increase. While some societies succeed at striking a relatively sensible and steady balance between left and right, more frequently we see cyclical swings between norms. These swings typically occur throughout empires’ rises and declines, in roughly 10-year cycles. The big economic crises that mark the end of the Big Cycle often herald revolutions. For more, see the addendum to this chapter.

The Provider Several crows were lined up along the ridge of a quite ordinary house. 'These ridge poles are a good idea,' said a young one. 'Who dreamed it up?' 'This place of rest is a fortuitous gift from the moon,' said a raven who was mixing with the hoi polloi today. 'The moon is a relative of the roc, a distant cousin of mine. Believe me,' he said, stretching his wings out to their full advantage and pushing the crows at the end off balance, so several leaped into the wind and cried, 'caw' . . . 'it depends on your original stock. I've got a piece of the roc.' The moon rose spectral and drained, a gossamer imprint of her nighttime self, a reminder of crystal fracture, the load of swinging primitive stones, the ancient hairy arms with slingshots. A sudden explosion and the sky was defined with flapping and cawing. 'What was that?' cried the young one who was addicted to awe. 'Who knows?' replied the raven. 'Often the moon demands a sacrifice. As a close relative, it is now my duty to go and eat the meat. For it is said, nothing is wasted; nothing is without purpose.' And the raven rose and flew toward the hunters.

many of our mood swings are related to how we interpret what happens. If we look closely at our mood swings, we’ll notice that something always sets them off. We carry around a subjective reality that is continually triggering our emotional reactions.

Why are you walking so fast, if I may ask? Do you want to make it all the way to Holland today?” “Can you get to Holland from here?” “Well, first you have to go to Mombach where they grow asparagus. Do your relatives live there?” “Farther on.” “In Budenheim? In Heidesheim? Are they farmers?” “In a way.” “In a way,” Pikestail repeated. George wondered, Should I try to shake him off? But how the devil am I going to do that? No, it’s always better when there are two of you. Then you’re more a part of the landscape. They passed the little swing bridge across Flosshafen.

I turn to my second-favorite victim. “Karsyn, push me since no one else will!” “Alright, sure,” Karsyn says, which really should have raised red flags in my brain, but sometimes I think my brain is broken. What does raise red flags is when Karsyn grabs the swing and yanks it back super quickly, and I realize that I’m about to go for the ride of my life. “I’m just joking! Save me! Marcus, save me!” I cry.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party. Dad never became rich, and I’ve been told some blame fell upon my mom for failing to help him climb the career ladder. Instead of standing by her man, she acquired hippie habits, wore dashikis, and was a lousy teammate at cocktail parties.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party.

Here, Veblen’s iconoclasm showed its range, as he simultaneously exposed modern corporations as hives of swarming parasites, derided marginalism for disingenuously sanitizing these infested sites by rebranding nonproductivity as productivity, and attacked economists for failing to situate themselves historically. On Veblen’s account, the business enterprise was no more immune from historical change than any other economic institution. As the controlling force in modern civilization, the business enterprise too would necessarily undergo “natural decay” and prove “transitory.” Where history was heading next, however, Veblen felt he could not say, because no teleology was steering the evolutionary process as a whole, only (as he had said before) the “discretionary action of the human agents,” whose institutionally shaped choices were still unformed. Nevertheless, limiting himself to the “calculable future”—to what, in light of existing scientific knowledge, seemed probable in the near term—Veblen pointed to two contrasting possibilities, both beyond the ken of productivity theories. One alternative was militarization and war—barbarism redux. According to Veblen, the business enterprise, as its grows, spills over national boundaries and fosters the expansion of a world market in which “the business men of one nation are pitted against those of another and swing“the forces of the state, legislative, diplomatic, and military, against one another in the strategic game of pecuniary advantage.” As this game intensifies, competing nations rush (said Veblen presciently) to amass military hardware that can easily fall under the control of political leaders who embrace aggressive international policies and “warlike aims, achievements, [and] spectacles.” Unchecked, these developments could, he believed, demolish “those cultural features that distinguish modern times from what went before, including a decline of the business enterprise itself.” (In his later writings from the World War I period, Veblen returned to these issues.) The second future possibility was socialism, which interested Veblen (for the time being) not only as an institutional alternative to the business enterprise but also as a way of economic thinking that nullified the productivity theory of distribution. In cycling back to the phenomenon of socialism, which he had bracketed in The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen zeroed in on men and women who held industrial occupations, in which he observed a growing dissatisfaction with the bedrock institutions of the modern age. This discontent was socially concentrated, found not so much among laborers who were “mechanical auxiliaries”—manual extensions—“of the machine process“ but “among those industrial classes who are required to comprehend and guide the processes.” These classes consist of “the higher ranks of skilled mechanics and [of people] who stand in an engineering or supervisory ”“relation to the processes.” Carrying out these jobs, with their distinctive task requirements, inculcates “iconoclastic habits of thought,” which draw men and women into trade unions and, as a next step, “into something else, which may be called socialism, for want of a better term.” This phrasing was vague even for Veblen, but he felt hamstrung because “there was little agreement among socialists as to a programme for the future,” at least aside from provisions almost “entirely negative.

I sat down to prepare a new presentation. It was time for me to get my thinking and my teaching straight. The simplicity principle was my lodestar and salvation. At the next team practice I decided to concentrate on the three factors I thought were most important. “It’s all about the three Hs: Hands, Hips, and Head.” Hands: how you grip the bat with your hands and where you hold your hands in relation to your torso. Hips: how you orient your hips toward the pitcher and swivel them as you swing. Head: how you keep your eyes on the ball all the time, from watching it in the pitcher’s hand to trying to see it touch your bat.

In the absence of either a widely accepted theory of language learning or a solid empirical base for classroom practice, teachers and learners have always been, and will always be, vulnerable to drastic pendulum swings of fashion, the coming and going of various unconventional and unlamented "Wonder Methods" being an obvious recent example. The sad truth is that after at least 2,000 years, most language teaching takes place on a wing and a prayer - sometimes successfully, but often a relative failure.

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.