Target Hit Quotes

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.

Lissa and I had been friends ever since kindergarten, when our teacher had paired us up together for writing lessons. Forcing five-year-olds to spell Vasilisa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hathaway was beyond cruel, and we’d—or rather, I’d—responded appropriately. I’d chucked my book at out teacher and called her a fascist bastard. I hadn’t known what those words meant, but I’d known how to hit a moving target. Lissa and I had been inseparable ever since.

Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.

And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years.

A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.

You can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it is.

I spent the rest of my day in someone else’s story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs. I felt like a circus knife thrower’s target. If I held my mind immobile, I might avoid being hit by the blades whizzing by my head.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

You have had a dream for so many years. Let today be the day you make a plan for it. Just think about how much more likely you are to hit your target when you finally aim at it.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target

That was how she saw the storyteller for the last time - in an absolutely silent world, in a staircase. He'd hit his target. When she fell into darkness, she knew that she would never see him again. She'd love him to the very end.

Everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you'll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of a mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what's a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination-our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life's next peak.

This is a miserable world", says the Sergeant. "Human life, Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target --misfortune is always firing at it, and always hitting the mark".

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

Talent hits a target that no one else can hit,” wrote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. “Genius hits a target no one else can see.

I threw the baseball I held after all. Not hard and it didn’t even hit him but it almost did. His eyes went wide with surprise. “So you weren’t really offering me a target?” He gave a small laugh. “I didn’t think you’d take me up on it.

Stepping back, Anika smiled at her prisoners and clicked open the Zippo. Its flame hopped to life. Wasting no time, she underhand-tossed the lighter through the air. It hit the middle of its target, and the banner exploded into flames. 

Said in reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target others cannot even see.

Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined.

Storm gave the gun to Elora so that she could practice the reload. He moved behind her to make sure her form was correct. The first two shots missed altogether. One hit a target in the crotch-two targets away from where she was aiming. By the fourth round she was managing to hit her target...in the crotch. Ram said, "I'm beginnin' to sense a very disturbin' pattern here.

Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember―the enemy's gate is down. If you step through your own door like you're out for a stroll, you're a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.

There's no bright side," Phineas objected. "The man's got no gonads." "But she hit the target," Carlos said. "The man has got no gonads," Phineas repeated forcefully. "It was an accident." Caitlyn set her gun on the counter. "I was aiming for his chest." "You blew his pecker to Connecticut," Phineas muttered. She grinned. "I think you have issues, Phineas. It was only a paper pecker.

I was raised for a kind of slaughter. But I grew into a huntress instead. One who always hits her target. No matter what.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Jazz tells Lucy to relax and tries to kick her under the table. I know this because she kicks me instead. "Aim more to the left," I tell her, and she has another go. "Farther left," I say, and enjoy watching her hit the target a couple of times.

It was something... the way a person's life picked up speed, the way a life was like a bullet aimed at one final target, impossible to slow or turn aside, and like the bullet, you were ignorant of what you were going to hit, would never know anything except the rush and the impact.

Stop thinking of yourself as a victim. You were a target that is now no longer being hit.

I spent the rest of my day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs. I felt like a circus knife thrower's target. If I held my mind immobile, I might avoid being hit by the blades whizzing by my head. From time to time I fell asleep, but was immediately awakened by the dark, tortured dreams that, once I awoke, dissolved without a trace.

And I suppose all the wishes come true,” Minya said, sarcastic. “Of course not, silly girl,” Suheyla retorted. She had not grown up in an era of optimism, but that didn’t mean they’d lived without dreams. “Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.

I want to make my mark,' he says. But what target, I wonder, are you going to hit?

The greatest missile in the world is useless...unless it's targeted. A torpedo is adrift unless it has someplace to go. An arrow is pointless unless it hits something. So it's important for kids—for everyone, even if you fail at first—to target something and head in that direction. With all your might.

When society gives censors wide and vague powers they never confine themselves to deserving targets. They are not snipers, but machine-gunners. Allow them to fire at will, and they will hit anything that moves.

you will never be able to hit a target that you cannot see. People spend their whole lives dreaming of becoming happier, living with more vitality and having an abundance of passion. Yet they do not see the importance of taking even ten minutes a month to write out their goals and to think deeply about the meaning of their lives, their Dharma

Lissa and I had been best friends ever since kindergarden, when our teacher had paired us together for writing lessons. Forcing five-year-olds to spell "Vasilisa Dragomir" and "Rosemarie Hathaway" was beyond cruel and we'd -or rather, I'd- responded appropriately. I'd chucked my book at our teacher and called her a fascist bastard. I hadn't known what those words meant, but I'd known how to hit a moving target.

You might not hit the target or win the stuffed dog, you might lose your money and look like a fool. You don’t get the surge without the risk. Well. Religion works the same way. The only difference is that it’s more amazing than even Chick or the twins. And it’s a whole lot scarier than the Roll-a-plane or the Screamer, or any simp twister. This scare stuff laps over into the hope department too. The hope you get from religion is a three-ring, all-star hope because the risk is outrageous. Bad! Well, I’m working on it. I’ve got the amazing part down. And the scary bits are a snap. But I’ve got to come up with a hope.

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyses you is fear of making a mistake. If you have made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time.

I fire again and again, and none of the bullets come close. "Statistically speaking," the Erudite boy next to me-his name is Will-says, grinning at me, "you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident." He is blond, with shaggy hair and a crease between his eyebrows. "Is that so," I say without inflection. "Yeah," he says. "I think you're actually defying nature." I grit my teeth and turn toward the target, resolving to at least stand still. If I can't muster the first task they give us,how will I ever make it through stage one? I squeeze the trigger,hard, and this time I'm ready for the recoil.It makes my hand jump back,but my feet stay planted.A bullet hole appears at the edge of the target,and I raise an eyebrow at Will. "So you see,I'm right.The stats don't lie," he says. I smile a little.

As she was working out the calculations in her head, she forgot to really worry about all the physical things that were getting in the way--the balancing of the bow, the aiming, the fear she wasn't going to get it right--and suddenly it all just clicked. She felt it come into sudden, sharp focus, like a spotlight had suddenly focused on her, and she let go of the arrow. That instant, she knew it would hit the target. She let the bow rock gracefully forward on the balance point, watching the arrow, and it smacked into the exact center of her crudely drawn paper circle. Physics. She loved physics. Shane arrived just as she put the arrow into the center, and slowed down, staring from the target to Claire, standing straight and tall, bow still held loosely in one hand and ready to shoot again. "You look so hot right now," he said.

I think when you have big dreams you attract other big dreamers.

IF YOU GO TO WORK ON YOUR GOALS, YOUR GOALS WILL GO TO WORK ON YOU.

WHEN YOU ARE IN CONFLICT WITH SOMEONE, THERE IS ONE FACTOR THAT CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DAMAGING YOUR RELATIONSHIP AND DEEPENING IT. THAT FACTOR IS ATTITUDE.” —William James

For the Stoics, however, the near impossibility of becoming a sage is not a problem. They talk about sages primarily so they will have a model to guide them in their practice of Stoicism. The sage is a target for them to aim at, even though they will probably fail to hit it. The sage, in other words, is to Stoicism as Buddha is to Buddhism. Most Buddhists can never hope to become as enlightened as Buddha, but nevertheless, reflecting on Buddha's perfection can help them gain a degree of enlightenment.

The following ten throws went a variety of places. I never hit the target, but I was getting closer. Isabella was laughing so hard she wrote "Please stop can't breathe" in the dirt with her finger.

In a curious failure of comprehension, I looked alertly about me for possible targets for all this artillery fire, not, apparently, realizing that it was actually ourselves that the enemy gunners were trying for all they were worth to hit.

There's a choice, when you know your fate's to be hunted and gobbled up and used. You can give in like it's inevitable or you can turn the tables. I was raised for a kind of slaughter. But I grew into a huntress instead. One who always hits her target. No matter what.

I am shocked both that I hurt him and that my shoe hit him, because I do throw like the proverbial girl. I hurl stuff around secure in the knowledge I’ll miss my target.

Keep your eyes on the prize for you cant hit an unseen target but don't forget to pay the price

Wishes don't justcome true. They're only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bulls-eye yourself.

I think I’m getting a notion of how to do this. O.K., a carnival works because people pay to feel amazed and scared. They can nibble around a midway getting amazed here and scared there, or both. And do you know what else? Hope. Hope they’ll win a prize, break the jackpot, meet a girl, hit a bull’s-eye in front of their buddies. In a carnival you call it luck or chance, but it’s the same as hope. Now hope is a good feeling that needs risk to work. How good it is depends on how big the risk is if what you hope doesn’t happen. You hope your old auntie croaks and leaves you a carload of shekels, but she might leave them to her cat. You might not hit the target or win the stuffed dog, you might lose your money and look like a fool. You don’t get the surge without the risk. Well. Religion works the same way. The only difference is that it’s more amazing than even Chick or the twins. And it’s a whole lot scarier than the Roll-a-plane or the Screamer, or any simp twister. This scare stuff laps over into the hope department too. The hope you get from religion is a three-ring, all-star hope because the risk is outrageous. Bad! Well, I’m working on it. I’ve got the amazing part down. And the scary bits are a snap. But I’ve got to come up with a hope.

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

He was hitting on you, however.” “Reflex, not targeted.” “Agreed, which is why he lives.

Human life, Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target—misfortune is always firing at it, and always hitting the mark.

The Archer had always been so sure of himself and what he could do. He'd never been given a task he could not complete. There was no beast he could not track, no target he could not hit. He could shoot an apple from the hand of a friend at a thousand paces away- while it was being tossed in the air. He was a legend, he was the Archer, and he would have sacrificed it all to save her.

I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what targets I had been ceaselessly aiming at.

...Were you in the military?" "Are you kidding me? I was in high school." "High school," he said quietly. "You’re American. And a civilian?" "Uh, yes. An American civilian." "Lovely. A straight answer. Keep it up. Did somebody train you?" "No, nobody trained me. Unless you count the Rhode Island child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Why?" Malachi held up his hand and ticked off the reasons with his fingers. "You stole a Guard's weapon. If I'm not mistaken, it belonged to a Gate Guard. Which means you managed to do it on your way into the city. You escaped Amid even after he had you in hand. You slashed his leg in just the right place, preventing him from chasing you. Under extreme duress, injured and cornered, you threw a knife and hit a target-" "It's not like I hit something vital.

You know, if you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

External goals cannot hit internal targets.

That's emails for ya: sometimes they're like an arrow that hits so deep in the target, you can't pull it out.

IF YOU GO TO WORK ON YOUR PLAN, YOUR PLAN WILL GO TO WORK ON YOU. WHATEVER GOOD THINGS WE BUILD, END UP BUILDING US.” —Jim Rohn

TargetControlSystem hit me with everything it had. It told me I would never take the ship. I told it. "Okay you keep the ship. I'll take the planet.

Every man has been called to produce a certain number of products within the time allocated to him to live on earth and failure to hit the target would mean a wasted life.

Wishes don't just come true. They're only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bulls-eye yourself.

You can’t hit a target you can’t see. You can’t accomplish wonderful things with your life if you have no idea of what they are. You must first become absolutely clear about what you want if you are serious about unlocking the extraordinary power that lies within you. Every

To be truly rich includes not only financial freedom but developing rich, meaningful relationships, enriching your health, and enjoying a rich balance between your career and your personal life.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cleverly made this point in 1819: “A person of talent hits a target that no one else can hit; a person of genius hits a target that no one else can see.

Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind! You can be a Master even if every shot does not hit. The hits on the target is only an outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state. There are different grades of mastery, and only when you have made the last grade will you be sure of not missing the goal.

grew up with guns and I needed them. Most people don’t. All these high-capacity guns flashed by the nutcakes? They’re a disaster. If I had my way, there’d be no guns but single-shot hunting rifles and single-shot shotguns. You could do all the target shooting you want with those. You could hunt to your heart’s content. Of course, you’d actually have to learn how to hunt or how to hit a target, and most of those dimwits don’t want to be bothered.

Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Toward that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed, and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling. How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through—I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to the other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had already worn itself away. So I didn’t have to fight as hard. I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and I called it my target. And I ran. And when I finally hit that ceiling, it just exploded into dust. Like that.

THE RESULTS OF YOUR BAD HABITS USUALLY DON’T SHOW UP UNTIL MUCH LATER IN LIFE

All of the results you are currently experiencing in your life are absolutely perfect for you. This includes your career, personal relationships and financial status.

Every writer should know their target. Aim for the heart ~ hit that and all which follows is sheer ecstasy.

Thank you, Jesus, for blindness that every once in a great while allows one of us to hit the target.

The world responds to those who ask—Lisa

You cannot hit two targets with one arrow. If your thoughts stray, you miss your enemies’ heart. Mind and arrow must become one.

How does a person ever tell? All he can do is inscribe strokes on a page and hope that at least some of those arrows will hit their targets....

A beginner should not hold two arrows,' his teacher told him. 'You will be careless with the first, knowing you have a second. You must always be determined to hit the target with the single arrow you shoot, and have no thought beyond this.

Clementine nudges my shoulder. “I firmly believe you could hit eleven out of ten targets, with only nine bullets.” I snort-laugh. “What?” she says. “It’s true. I also believe you could cut a knife with butter.” This time, everyone snort-laughs.

He'd already planned on checking out the house for her, but what he hadn't planned on was her hooking her hand around the back of his belt and urging him forward like a human shield. Now, there were times in Dylan's life when he hadn't minded women using his body, but they'd always been naked a the time. He didn't know how he felt about being used as a target so Hope could run like hell if anything hit him first. -Dylan

Lightning struck five feet away. Becca screamed. Then lightning hit the other end of the bridge, almost directly hitting the Guide. Chris froze. Another bolt, five feet off. The man darted back, away from the bridge, fighting to keep his footing in the wind. Another bolt. And another. Lightning rained from the sky, targeting their enemy. The Guide ran. "Yeah," growled a voice from behind them. "Watch that fucker run now.

Douglas Adams amusingly satirized computer addiction of exactly the kind that hit me. The target of his satire was the programmer who had a particular problem X, which needed solving. He could have written a program in five minutes to solve X and then got on and used his solution. But instead of just doing that, he spent days and weeks writing a more general program that could be used by anybody at any time to solve all similar problems of the general class of X. The fascination lies in the generality and in the purveying of an aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly product for the benefit of a population of hypothetical and very probably non-existent users – not in actually finding the answer to the particular problem X.

Looking back at the recent history of the world, I find it amazing how far civilization has retrogressed so quickly. As recently as World War I—granted the rules were violated at times—we had a set of rules of warfare in which armies didn’t make war against civilians: Soldiers fought soldiers. Then came World War II and Hitler’s philosophy of total war, which meant the bombing not only of soldiers but of factories that produced their rifles, and, if surrounding communities were also hit, that was to be accepted; then, as the war progressed, it became common for the combatants simply to attack civilians as part of military strategy. By the time the 1980s rolled around, we were placing our entire faith in a weapon whose fundamental target was the civilian population.

Lissa and I had been best friends ever since kindergarten, when our teacher had paired us together for writing lessons. Forcing five-year-olds to spell Vasilisa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hathaway was beyond cruel, and we'd—or rather, I'd—responded appropriately. I'd chucked my book at our teacher and called her a fascist bastard. I hadn't known what those words meant, but I'd known how to hit a moving target. Lissa and I had been inseparable ever since. " - Rose Hathaway

Your beast come out?” the King said. “Nah, I sneezed.” Black brows lifted over the wraparounds. “Really? I didn’t know your nose had that kind of firepower.” “It doesn’t,” V answered as he took out a hand-rolled. “He had an oopsie.” “Do you need gun practice—” “You would have sneezed, too,” Rhage interrupted the King. “And no, I don’t need to go to the range. Well, unless Lassiter has a target on his ass—” “I’ll volunteer the angel right here, right now.” V parked it on the far side of the desk. “And can I be the one with the stapler, pinning the tail on his donkey? ’Cuz I’ll tell you right now, I’ma hit that Stanley until the thing jams.

As part of that administrative process, Butler decided to look at every single target in the SIOP, and for weeks he carefully scrutinized the thousands of desired ground zeros. He found bridges and railways and roads in the middle of nowhere targeted with multiple warheads, to assure their destruction. Hundreds of nuclear warheads would hit Moscow—dozens of them aimed at a single radar installation outside the city. During his previous job working for the Joint Chiefs, Butler had dealt with targeting issues and the damage criteria for nuclear weapons. He was hardly naive. But the days and weeks spent going through the SIOP, page by page, deeply affected him. For more than forty years, efforts to tame the SIOP, to limit it, reduce it, make it appear logical and reasonable, had failed. “With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life,” General Butler later recalled. “I came to fully appreciate the truth . . . we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.

IT TAKES A LOT OF LIFE EXPERIENCE TO SEE WHY SOME RELATIONSHIPS LAST AND OTHERS DO NOT. BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT FOR A CRISIS TO GET AN IDEA OF A PARTICULAR RELATIONSHIP. OUR BEHAVIOR IN LITTLE EVERYDAY INCIDENTS TELLS US A GREAT DEAL.” —Eknath Easwaran

First, if we have not set up the target, it cannot be hit by an arrow. This is to say that each time we retaliate with aggressive words and actions, we are strengthening the habit of anger. As long as we do this, without doubt, plenty of arrows will come our way. We will become increasingly irritated by the reactions of others. However, each time we are provoked, we are given a chance to do something different. We can strengthen old habits by setting up the target or we can weaken them by holding our seat.

There was this one day, though, that I saw another side of Amanda. When someone pisses her off, she can get bitchy as hell.” Clara patted her knee. “Everyone gets moody from time to time. What you need to keep in mind is that it is probably not about you, and there is no reason for you to get upset. The best thing you can do is to get out of the line of fire. You don’t want to get hit just because you are there and make an easy target.

Shift your goals from the external to the internal: repeat to yourself that your objective is not to hit the target, but to deliver the best shot of which you are capable

Life doesn’t just happen to you. It’s all about choices and how you respond to every situation.

SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE HAVE SUCCESSFUL HABITS Unsuccessful People Don’t!

A GOAL IS THE ONGOING PURSUIT OF A WORTHY OBJECTIVE UNTIL ACCOMPLISHED.

If you don't have a target-you'll never know if you have a hit or a miss!

Talented people hit targets no one else can hit. Ambitious people aim to hit targets no one else can see.

What is the deal with my age? Do you fuckers need a sixth man to help you hit targets out there, or do you need a sixth man for bingo night at the retirement home?

A BRILLIANT IDEA WITHOUT ACTION IS LIKE ROGER FEDERER 2 PLAYING TENNIS WITHOUT A RACQUET!

I ONLY WANT TO HIT MY TARGETS IF THE AIMING AND THE HITTING BOTH FEEL GOOD.

A GOAL THAT IS NOT MEASURABLE IS JUST WISHFUL THINKING.

Every accomplishment is just a stepping-stone to the next challenge; as soon as they’ve hit their target, they’re already stalking their next conquest.

The heart is an arrow. It needs a target to know where to hit.

There is no target that you place in front of you cannot hit

you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident.

Aim and hit the target of excellence, with constant practice. Make success happen, by working to be the best at what you do.

Practice is the golden bullet for hitting the target of excellence.

In the classic Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel’s teacher urged him always to take his next shot unburdened by previous failures to hit the target; as he improved, his teacher urged him not to be influenced by his successes either, to stay in the present moment.

When an archer misses the mark he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull’s-eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim, improve yourself.

She stood in profile across the green, her back straight, her stance that of some long ago warrior maiden. As he walked toward her, Miss Greaves drew back her bow briskly, aiming a tad high to account for the wind, and let her arrow fly. Before it had hit the target, she’d notched another and shot it. A third followed just as rapidly. He glanced to the target. All three of her arrows were clustered together at the center of the red circle. Miss Greaves, who “did not shoot,” was a better shot than all the other ladies—and probably the men as well. He glanced from the target to her and saw that she stared back, proud and unsmiling. Artemis. She was named for the goddess of the hunt—a goddess who had slain without remorse her only admirer.

What I failed to realize at the time is that when we try to resist feeling something painful, we often protract the very pain we’re trying to avoid. Doing so is a prescription for continued suffering. There’s also something about the action of searching that blocks us from what we seek. The constant looking outside of ourselves can keep us from knowing when we hit the target. Something valuable can be going on inside us, but if we’re not tuning in, we can miss it.

As the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said—as quoted by Della more often than Liv cared to count—“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Prophets are focused and like praying the plans and purposes of God. Prophets don’t want to just pray about anything and everything. Prophets want to “zero in” on what God wants to do. They want to hit the “bull’s-eye.” Prophets are focused on the will of God in a situation. If you want to hit the target, ask a prophet to pray.

In the real world, bullets that miss their targets keep traveling until they hit something. They fly through windows, and into the bodies of bystanders. And even successfully killing a bad guy creates blowback, sets off a whole chain of consequences that are impossible to predict. Guns always represent a failure of negotiation.

Have you heard of the Monte Carlo method? Ah, it’s a computer algorithm often used for calculating the area of irregular shapes. Specifically, the software puts the figure of interest in a figure of known area, such as a circle, and randomly strikes it with many tiny balls, never targeting the same spot twice. After a large number of balls, the proportion of balls that fall within the irregular shape compared to the total number of balls used to hit the circle will yield the area of the shape. Of course, the smaller the balls used, the more accurate the result.

Each of us has an innate, human desire to be challenged. We are driven by it, and we often learn from our experiences to set a target and hit it. Even if we don’t reach our intended goal or destination, we gain strength in trying.

But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyzes you is fear of making a mistake. If you ave made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time. If you never take a risk, you will never know what changes you need to make. Each arrow leaves a memory in your heart, and it is the sum of those memories that will make you shoot better and better.

You can't attack the giants in your life, if you are not aiming to strike and hit the target. You can't run a race in vain, if you have no plans to win or finish it. Start, strive and aim high...never give up. Your best is yet to come!

Brian asked, “How did you learn to think so big at CAA?” I reminded him that Airbnb had consistently thought big: it hadn’t been at all content with its original business of renting out air mattresses on floors. Then I added that one way to conceptualize how to think in business is a martial-arts precept: “If you aim at the target, you lose all your power. You have to hit through the target to really smash it.” To get where you want to go, you have to set out to go even further.

A smile flickered on my lips as I ground three cloves in my mortar, to ward off hostile spirits, along with three drops of vodka to cleanse and disarm, three koliuka blossoms to hit my target, and three roots each of hawkweed and weeper grass, to subdue and frighten.

I slammed the door shut before we had a cold buffet in the front corridor. The shouts grew louder, denied their target. If I had better aim I'd have opened the door and tossed it all right back at them. But with my luck I'd hit the sleeping baby or an innocent old grandmother out for her morning constitution. And then we'd be dragged through the streets for certain. Dread uncurled in the pit of my stomach. "Is that cabbage?" Colin asked, coming out of the dining room. Listening to the raised voices, he reached for the doorknob, frowning. I caught his hand. "Don't." "Whyever not?" I raised an eyebrow. "You'll get a rotted meat tart in the eye for your trouble,that's why.

Lia eyed me. She eyed Michael. She eyed Dean. “Honestly,” she said, “I doubt that anyone is as happy as Cassie is at this exact moment.” I was getting better at ignoring Lia’s suggestive little digs, but this one hit its target, dead center. Squished in between Michael and Dean, I blushed. I was not going to go there—and I wasn’t going to let Lia ruin this. A grim expression on his face, Dean stood and marched toward Lia. For a moment, I thought he might say something to her about spoiling the moment, but he didn’t. He just picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Hey!” Lia protested. Dean grinned and threw her onto the sofa with Michael and me and then resumed his perch on the edge of the couch like nothing had happened. Lia scowled, and Michael poked her cheek. “Admit it,” he said again. “You’re just as happy as we are.” Lia tossed her hair over her shoulder and stared straight ahead, refusing to look any of us in the eye. “A little girl is going home,” she said. “Because of us. Of course I’m as happy as you are.” “Given individual differences in serotonin levels, the probability that any four people would be experiencing identical levels of happiness simultaneously is quite—” “Sloane,” Michael said, without bothering to turn around. “If you don’t finish that sentence, there’s a cup of fresh ground coffee in your future.” “My immediate future?” Sloane asked suspiciously. Michael had a long history of blocking her consumption of caffeine. Without a word, Michael, Lia, and I all turned to look at Dean. He got the message, stood up, and strode toward Sloane, giving her the exact same treatment he’d given Lia. When Dean tossed Sloane gently on top of me, I giggled and almost toppled onto the floor, but Lia grabbed hold of my collar. We did it, I thought, as Michael, Lia, Sloane, and I elbowed for room and Dean stared on from his position, just outside the fray.

Charles Lindbergh’s achievement in finding his way alone from Long Island to an airfield outside Paris deserves a moment’s consideration. Maintaining your bearings by means of dead reckoning means taking close note of compass headings, speed of travel, time elapsed since the last calculation, and any deviations from the prescribed route induced by drifting. Some measure of the difficulty is shown by the fact that the Byrd expedition the following month—despite having a dedicated navigator and radio operator, as well as pilot and copilot—missed their expected landfall by two hundred miles, were often only vaguely aware of where they were, and mistook a lighthouse on the Normandy coast for the lights of Paris. Lindbergh by contrast hit all his targets exactly—Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, Cap de la Hague in France, Le Bourget in Paris—and did so while making the calculations on his lap while flying an unstable plane.

I watch people play golf in silence. Even after they hit I remain quiet, because my commentary won't help the ball roll into the hole, but it will saturate the air with unwanted pressure. Spoken words are like direct energy weapons, and I don't deploy them at an unarmed target.

The Government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last 'good' war. ... Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the Thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith's first LENSMAN space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of things they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proved how on target our approach was.' 'Oh my God... said Jonathan, his mouth stalling the open position. 'Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you *see* what we've accomplished? In something under half a decade we've programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what we tell them to buy. Music, movies, whole lifestyles. And they hate who we tell them to. ... It's simple to make our audiences slaver for blood; that past hasn't changed since the days of the Colosseum. We've conditioned a whole population to live on the rim of Apocalypse and love it. They want to kill the enemy, tear his heart out, go to war so their gas bills will go down! They're all primed for just that sort of denouemment, ti satisfy their need for linear storytelling in the fictions that have become their lives! The system perpetuates itself. Our own guinea pigs pay us money to keep the mechanisms grinding away. If you don't believe that, just check out last year's big hit movies... then try to tell me the target demographic audience isn't waiting for marching orders. ("Incident On A Rainy Night In Beverly Hills")

Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking for, or having. We must see, but to see, we must aim, so we are always aiming. Our minds are built on the hunting-and-gathering platforms of our bodies. To hunt is to specify a target, track it, and throw at it. To gather is to specify and to grasp. We fling stones, and spears, and boomerangs. We toss balls through hoops, and hit pucks into nets, and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull’s-eyes. We launch projectiles at targets with bows, guns, rifles and rockets. We hurl insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. We succeed when we score a goal or hit a target. We fail, or sin, when we do not (as the word sin means to miss the mark70). We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.

Hamartia was originally an archery term, and it meant to miss the mark or target. There are many ways that a target can be missed. Frequently, in my clinical practice—and in my personal life—I observed that people did not get what they needed (or, equally importantly perhaps, what they wanted) because they never made it clear to themselves or others what that was. It is impossible to hit a target, after all, unless you aim at it. In keeping with this: People are more commonly upset by what they did not even try to do than by the errors they actively committed while engaging with the world.

For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weekly active user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earnings reports. However, you can hit those numbers and still overlook deeper, harder-to-measure problems that threaten the durability of your business.

Tactics programmed for the SIOP are in two principal categories,” the head of the Joint Chiefs later explained, “the penetration phase and the delivery phase.” SAC would attack the Soviet Union “front-to-rear,” hitting air defenses along the border first, then penetrating more deeply into the nation’s interior and destroying targets along the way, a tactic called “bomb as you go.” Great Britain’s strategic weapons were controlled by the SIOP, as well. The Royal Air Force showed little interest in SAC’s ideas about counterforce. The British philosophy of strategic bombing had changed little since the Second World War, and the RAF’s Bomber Command wanted to use its nuclear weapons solely for city busting. The SIOP respected the British preference, asking Bomber Command to destroy three air bases, six air defense targets, and forty-eight cities.

Let’s say that you have committed to running every day for two weeks, and at the end of those two weeks, you “reward” yourself with a massage. I would say, “Good for you!” because we all could benefit from more massages. But I would also say that your massage wasn’t a reward. It was an incentive. The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. The timing of the reward matters. Scientists learned decades ago that rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milli-seconds afterward. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit. Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two. The neurochemical reaction that you are trying to hack is not only time dependent, it’s also highly individualized. What causes one person to feel good may not work for everyone. Your boss may love the smell of coffee. When she enters a coffee shop and inhales, she feels good. And her immediate feeling builds her habit of visiting the coffee shop. But your coworker might not like the way coffee smells. His brain won’t react in the same way. A real reward — something that will actually create a habit — is a much narrower target to hit than most people think. I

It takes me five rounds to hit the middle of the target, and when I do, a rush of energy goes through me. I am awake, my eyes wide open, my hands warm.

DECISIVENESS SEPARATES GREAT LEADERS FROM DREAMERS AND TALKERS.

A HABIT IS A CABLE; WE WEAVE A THREAD EACH DAY, AND AT LAST WE CANNOT BREAK IT.” —Horace Mann

Is Russian artillery,” he says. “Mostly hits right target. Mostly.

Achieving success is like hitting a moving target. Both require accuracy, the ability to counteract external factors and adjusting the sight when necessary.

The war keeps taking pieces of me anyway. Makes the rest of me harder to hit.

The more belief and confidence we feel toward achieving our goal, the higher the probability of our making the changes required to hit our targets.

Mercy kicked out a leg and spun, hitting her target--her favorite tree. She called it Riley, having been driven to kick it after their first real meeting.

three basic tests. First, your idea has to be big enough to justify devoting your life to it. Make sure it has the potential to be huge. Second, it should be unique. When people see what you are offering, they should say to themselves, “My gosh, I need this. I’ve been waiting for this. This really appeals to me.” Without that “aha!” you are wasting your time. Third, your timing must be right. The world actually doesn’t like pioneers, so if you are too early, your risk of failure is high. The market you are targeting should be lifting off with enough momentum to help make you successful. If you pass these three tests, you will have a business with the potential to be big, that offers something unique, and is hitting the market at the right time. Then you have to be ready for the pain. No entrepreneur anticipates or wants pain, but pain is the reality of starting something new. It is unavoidable

It is very hard to break armored infantry groups without artillery or machines,” Darrow explained as if detailing how to clean a rifle. “So you don’t target them. You target their psyche. You target their groupthink. “First you send in a man like Sev or Valdir with their best ghouls—that’s what we call them. If you can’t plant the ghouls ahead of time, they should sneak deep as possible into the enemy ranks before hunkering down. “Then you kill a scout on the outskirts. Badly. The more screaming the better. That’ll draw curiosity and a heavy squad. The squad will investigate. If you can, make them disappear in silence. You want the rest of them using their imagination. You want the commander wondering if he should send another squad, maybe even a century. “Then you confirm their worst fear. Give them a death chant—we carry recordings when we don’t have Obsidians. You want anticipation. You want them preparing to face a known fear, physically, mentally. That’s when your ghouls awaken and start killing the command chain. “Then you have your main force close in silence at a fast pace and hit them as hard as you possibly can. Groups can hold a line together. Groups will make last stands. But alone, rarely. It’s very hard for the human mind to accept dying alone. No matter their number, if you summon enough chaos they will feel alone. Especially with anonymity, especially in the dark. Once the first breaks, the rest will feel like they have permission to follow.

Bombs Away!" he yelled, swooping low over StregaSchloss. He saw little figures on the ground fleeing from the large green projectile that was speeding their way. "And a direct hit, if I'm not mistaken," he observed to himself. With a tremendous slapping sound, Ffup's digestive overload landed on a human target. There was a scream, a ghastly choking sound, and then silence.

Zig Ziglar says, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” I love how Zig cuts right to the heart of the matter. If you don’t have a target, if you don’t have a goal in mind, then you’ll never get where you want to go. Most people take a “Ready-Fire-Aim” approach to budgeting. They get the money, spend the money, and then wonder why they don’t have any money. It’s crazy!

It is the astonishing speed with which ballistic missile submarines can launch nuclear weapons, and hit multiple targets nearly simultaneously, that makes them the handmaidens of the apocalypse.

I have to think of this as a mental exercise, not a physical exercise. So I spend the first few minutes practicing without a knife, finding the right stance, learning the right arm motion. Eric paces too quickly behind us. “I think the Stiff’s taken too many hits to the head!” remarks Peter, a few people down. “Hey, Stiff! Remember what a knife is?” Ignoring him, I practice the throw again with a knife in hand but don’t release it. I shut out Eric’s pacing, and Peter’s jeering, and the nagging feeling that Four is staring at me, and throw the knife. It spins end over end, slamming into the board. The blade doesn’t stick, but I’m the first person to hit the target. I smirk as Peter misses again. I can’t help myself. “Hey, Peter,” I say. “Remember what a target is?

Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?” he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. “He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents it was a setup.” Violet laughed. “Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots.” She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers. Jay laughed too, shaking his head. “You’re so cold-hearted,” he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. “How’s he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshmen and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?” “I don’t see you driving anything but your mom’s car yet. At least he has a bike,” she said, turning on him now. He pushed her again. “Hey!” he tried to defend himself. “I’m still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths.” They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other didn’t. “Right!” Violet protested. “Have you seen my car?” This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch. “Poor little rich girl!” Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down. She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded “dead leg” by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet’s side. “Oh, yeah. Weren’t you the one”—she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage—“who got to go to Hawaii . . .” She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. “. . . for spring break . . . last . . .” And then he startled to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: “YEAR?!” That was how her aunt and uncle found them.

You know how to shoot when all the circumstances are favourable, but if you are on dangerous ground, you cannot hit the target. The archer cannot always choose the battlefield, so start your training again and be prepared for unfavourable situations. Continue in the way of the bow, for it is a whole life’s journey, but remember that a good, accurate shot is very different from one made with peace in your soul.

Within a year or two, however, a couple of the first things I wrote – ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ – really hit their target. I’d like to thank the British public library system: that was my training ground, that’s where I learned to throw those verbal grenades. I wasn’t just throwing bricks through shop windows as a voice of rebellion, I was throwing words where they really mattered. Words count.

There was nothing green left; artillery had denuded and scarred every inch of ground. Tiny flares glowed and disappeared. Shrapnel burst with bluish white puffs. Jets of flamethrowers flickered and here and there new explosions stirred up the rubble. While I watched, an American observation plane droned over the Japanese lines, spotting targets for the U.S. warships lying offshore. Suddenly the little plane was hit by flak and disintegrated. The carnage below continued without pause. Here I was safe, but tomorrow I would be there. In that instant I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.

The Battle of Good and Evil Polytheism gave birth not merely to monotheist religions, but also to dualistic ones. Dualistic religions espouse the existence of two opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes that evil is an independent power, neither created by the good God, nor subordinate to it. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between these two forces, and that everything that happens in the world is part of the struggle. Dualism is a very attractive world view because it has a short and simple answer to the famous Problem of Evil, one of the fundamental concerns of human thought. ‘Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Monotheists have to practise intellectual gymnastics to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God allows so much suffering in the world. One well-known explanation is that this is God’s way of allowing for human free will. Were there no evil, humans could not choose between good and evil, and hence there would be no free will. This, however, is a non-intuitive answer that immediately raises a host of new questions. Freedom of will allows humans to choose evil. Many indeed choose evil and, according to the standard monotheist account, this choice must bring divine punishment in its wake. If God knew in advance that a particular person would use her free will to choose evil, and that as a result she would be punished for this by eternal tortures in hell, why did God create her? Theologians have written countless books to answer such questions. Some find the answers convincing. Some don’t. What’s undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil. For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen even to good people because the world is not governed single-handedly by a good God. There is an independent evil power loose in the world. The evil power does bad things. Dualism has its own drawbacks. While solving the Problem of Evil, it is unnerved by the Problem of Order. If the world was created by a single God, it’s clear why it is such an orderly place, where everything obeys the same laws. But if Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? Two rival states can fight one another because both obey the same laws of physics. A missile launched from Pakistan can hit targets in India because gravity works the same way in both countries. When Good and Evil fight, what common laws do they obey, and who decreed these laws? So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. Dualistic

I love the name of it.  Makes me feel hopeful.  I want it over my mantle.”   I paused in what I was doing, my eyes scanning over the photos title, Second Chances.   He was smiling, I could hear it in his voice, when he added, “And I could tell it was your favorite when you showed it to me.  I figure I have a better chance of getting you to come back to my house, if I fill it with the things you love.”   He’d hit his target with the opening salvo.  That second part was just overkill.

Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing. To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic). So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Vulnerability is usually attacked, not with fists but with shaming. Many children learn quickly to cover up any signs of weakness, sensitivity, and fragility, as well as alarm, fear, eagerness, neediness, or even curiosity. Above all, they must never disclose that the teasing has hit its mark. Carl Jung explained that we tend to attack in others what we are most uncomfortable with in ourselves. When vulnerability is the enemy, it is attacked wherever it is perceived, even in a best friend. Signs of alarm may provoke verbal taunts such as “fraidy cat” or “chicken.” Tears evoke ridicule. Expressions of curiosity can precipitate the rolling of eyes and accusations of being weird or nerdy. Manifestations of tenderness can result in incessant teasing. Revealing that something caused hurt or really caring about something is risky around someone uncomfortable with his vulnerability. In the company of the desensitized, any show of emotional openness is likely to be targeted. The vulnerability engendered by peer orientation can be overwhelming even when children are not hurting one another. This vulnerability is built into the highly insecure nature of peer-oriented relationships. Vulnerability does not have to do only with what is happening but with what could happen — with the inherent insecurity of attachment. What we have, we can lose, and the greater the value of what we have, the greater the potential loss. We may be able to achieve closeness in a relationship, but we cannot secure it in the sense of holding on to it — not like securing a rope or a boat or a fixed interest-bearing government bond. One has very little control over what happens in a relationship, whether we will still be wanted and loved tomorrow. Although the possibility of loss is present in any relationship, we parents strive to give our children what they are constitutionally unable to give to one another: a connection that is not based on their pleasing us, making us feel good, or reciprocating in any way. In other words, we offer our children precisely what is missing in peer attachments: unconditional acceptance.

Think with me here … everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you'll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of a mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what's a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination — our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life's next peak.

Sera loaded the new ammunition and held up the gun. “I bet I can hit closer to the bulls-eye than you can.” Her victory came to him on a flash, right down to the cute little dance he was sure was last popular in the nineties. “Sucker bet, sunshine. Never wager with a precog.” “So cheat.” She grinned. “You haven’t even hear the terms yet. If you win, I’ll let you buy me a pretty dress and take me out for a fancy dinner.” “And if I lose?” “I get a cheap bar, beer, and hot wings, and dirty sex in the bathroom.” Julio cleared his throat, took the gun from her and winked. “Like I said, sucker bet.” “Uh-huh.” As she stepped behind him, she trailed her fingers up his arm. “I’m bad news, mister. I hope you can handle me.” “I’ll try.” He lined up a shot, squeezed the trigger and snorted when the bullet went wide. “I told you I suck at this.” She laughed and retrieved the gun to line up her shot with adorable concentration that furrowed her brows. Her shot wasn’t perfect, but it winged the target, and her victory dance was just as cute as it had been in his vision.

The eye in this city acquires an autonomy similar to that of a tear. The only difference is that it doesn't sever itself from the body but subordinates it totally. After a while - on the third or fourth day here- the body starts to regard itself as merely the eye's carrier, as a kind of submarine to its now dilating, now squinting periscope. Of course, for all its targets, its explosions are invariably self-inflicted: it's own heart, or else your mind, that sinks; the eye pops up to the surface. This, of course, owes to local topography, to the streets - narrow, meandering like eels - that finally bring you to a flounder of a campo with a cathedral in the middle of it, barnacled with saints and flaunting its Medusa-like cupolas. No matter what you set out for as you leave the house here, you are bound to get lost in these long, coiling lanes and passageways that beguile you to see them through to follow them to their elusive end, which usually hits water, so that you can't even call it a cul-de-sac. On the map this city looks like two grilled fish sharing a plate, or perhaps like two nearly overlapping lobster claws ( Pasternak compared it to a swollen croissant); but it has no north, south, east, or west; the only direction it has is sideways. It surrounds you like frozen seaweed, and the more you dart and dash about trying to get your bearings, the more you get lost. The yellow arrow signs at intersections are not much help either, for they, too, curve. In fact, they don't so much help you as kelp you. And in the fluently flapping hand of the native whom you stop to ask for directions, the eye, oblivious to his sputtering, A destra, a sinistra, dritto, dritto, readily discerns a fish.

Even in former days, Korea was known as the 'hermit kingdom' for its stubborn resistance to outsiders. And if you wanted to create a totally isolated and hermetic society, northern Korea in the years after the 1953 'armistice' would have been the place to start. It was bounded on two sides by the sea, and to the south by the impregnable and uncrossable DMZ, which divided it from South Korea. Its northern frontier consisted of a long stretch of China and a short stretch of Siberia; in other words its only contiguous neighbors were Mao and Stalin. (The next-nearest neighbor was Japan, historic enemy of the Koreans and the cruel colonial occupier until 1945.) Add to that the fact that almost every work of man had been reduced to shards by the Korean War. Air-force general Curtis LeMay later boasted that 'we burned down every town in North Korea,' and that he grounded his bombers only when there were no more targets to hit anywhere north of the 38th parallel. Pyongyang was an ashen moonscape. It was Year Zero. Kim Il Sung could create a laboratory, with controlled conditions, where he alone would be the engineer of the human soul.

If you spend too much time working on your weaknesses, all you end up with is a lot of strong weaknesses!” This doesn’t give you a competitive edge in the marketplace or position you to be wealthy. It just keeps you average. In fact, it’s an absolute insult to your integrity to major in

Anyway,” the agent said abruptly. “I just . . . wanted you to know that I’m sorry for everything. I want to help you and the rest of the Order in any way I can, so if there is anything you need, you know where I am.” “Chase,” Dante said as the male turned to leave the room. “Apology accepted, man. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I haven’t been fair to you either. Despite our differences, know that I respect you. The Agency lost a good one the day they cut you loose.” Chase’s smile was crooked as he acknowledged the praise with a short nod. Dante cleared his throat. “And about that offer of help . . .” “Name it.” “Tess was walking a dog when the Rogues attacked her tonight. Ugly little mutt, not good for much more than a foot-warmer, but it’s special to her. Actually, it was a gift from me, more or less. Anyway, the dog was running loose on its leash when I saw it a block or so away from Ben Sullivan’s place.” “You want me to go retrieve a wayward canine, is that where this is heading?” “Well, you did say anything, didn’t you?” “So I did.” Chase chuckled. “All right. I will.” Dante dug his keys to his Porsche out of his pocket and tossed them to the other vampire. As Chase turned to be on his way again, Dante added, “The little beast answers to the name Harvard, by the way.” “Harvard,” Chase drawled, shaking his head and throwing a smirk in Dante’s direction. “I don’t suppose that’s a coincidence.” Dante shrugged. “Good to see that Ivy League pedigree of yours comes in handy for something.” “Jesus Christ, warrior. You really were busting my ass since the minute I came on board, weren’t you?” “Hey, by all comparisons, I was kind. Do yourself a favor and don’t look too closely at Niko’s shooting target, unless you’re very secure about your manhood.” “Assholes,” Chase muttered, but there was only humor in his tone. “Sit tight, and I’ll be back in a few with your mutt. Anything else you’re gonna hit me up for now that I opened my big yap about wanting to get square with you?” “Actually, there might be something else,” Dante replied, his thoughts going sober when he considered Tess and any kind of future that might be deserving of her. “But we can talk about that when you get back, yeah?” Chase nodded, catching on to the turn in mood. “Yeah. Sure we can.

But what are we going to do?" Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress. "The others are all waiting outside." "Why don't we give him a medal?" Colonel Korn proposed. "For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?" "For goung around twice," Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile. "After all, I suppose it did take a lot of courage to go over the target a second time with no other planes around to divert the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.

Once they were sitting at the kitchen table opposite each other. To his right and to her left was a window. Furious at something he drew his right hand across his body and lashed out. Half way there at full speed he realized it was a window he would be hitting and breaked. For a fraction of a second hid open palm touched the glass, beginning simultaneously to draw back. The window scarred and crumpled slowly two floors down. His hand miraculously uncut. It had acted exactly like a whip violating the target and still free, retreating from the outline of a star. She was delighted by the performance. Surprised he examined his fingers. [p.16]

He really ought to remember. . . . The airburst, if it happens, will be in visual range. Abstractions, math, models are fine, but when you’re down to it and everybody’s hollering for a fix, this is what you do: you go and sit exactly on the target with indifferent shallow trenches for shelter, and you watch it in the silent fire-bloom of its last few seconds, and see what you will see. Chances are astronomically against a perfect hit, of course, that is why one is safest at the center of the target area. Rockets are supposed to be like artillery shells, they disperse about the aiming point in a giant ellipse—the Ellipse of Uncertainty. But

river shots or nearby mountains. Oh, yes, Dallas—we destroy Dallas spaceport and should catch some ships; were six there last time I checked. Won’t kill any people unless they insist on standing on target; Dallas is perfect place to bomb; that spaceport is big and flat and empty, yet maybe ten million people will see us hit it.

The last shot wasn’t bad,” he said, dropping the subject of the duel. “However, the target is the twig, not the leaves. The end of the twig,” he added. “You must have missed the twig yourself,” she pointed out, lifting the gun and aiming it carefully, “since it’s still there.” “True, but it’s shorter than it was when I started.” Elizabeth momentarily forgot what she was doing as she stared at him in disbelief and amazement. “Do you mean you’ve been clipping the end off it?” “A bit at a time,” he said, concentrating on her next shot. She hit another leaf on the twig and handed the gun back to him. “You’re not bad,” he complimented. She was an outstanding shot, and his smile said he knew it as he handed her a freshly loaded gun. Elizabeth shook her head. “I’d rather see you try it.” “You doubt my word?” “Let’s merely say I’m a little skeptical.” Taking the gun, Ian raised it in a swift arc, and without pausing to aim, he fired. Two inches of twig spun away and fell to the ground. Elizabeth was so impressed she laughed aloud. “Do you know,” she exclaimed with an admiring smile, “I didn’t entirely believe until this moment that you really meant to shoot the tassel off Robert’s boot!” He sent her an amused glance as he reloaded and handed her the gun. “At the time I was sorely tempted to aim for something more vulnerable.

I cleaned my gun every day, and it was now paying off. The whole time my platoon sergeant made sure I stayed on target and helped direct me. I recall the sensation of him grabbing my leg to get my attention and pointing towards more targets. I remember walking my tracers into a bad guy’s gun, as he was doing the same to me, the rounds were so close I could feel the heat of the bullets on my neck, but I got him first. Some of the guys who saw it thought I was hit and were grabbing me trying to dress my non-existent wounds when we made it out of the kill zone. I also recall shooting a structure down along with the men inside it not more than 20 feet from me. The close proximity of their muzzle flashes startled me.

The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then be deemed justifiable. And when the time arrives for these hits to be carried out, you’re not going to see a C.I.A. agent with a suit & tie, and a badge that says "C.I.A." walk up to someone, and pull the trigger. What they will do is out-source to local police departments in the region of their target, and to employ those that look like the target of interest to infiltrate the workings in order to set up the environment for the eventual assassination (character, physical/incarceration, exile) to take place.

Both sisters knew the story well. For the past sixteen years, starting in 1940, someone had been planting pipe bombs around New York City, in subway stations, department stores, theaters, even Grand Central Terminal. The newspapers called the culprit the Big Apple Bomber, and so far, a dozen people had been injured, some seriously. The very first bomb was planted in a toolbox at a Met Power compound on Sixty-Fourth Street, with a note reading Met Power crooks—this is for you. That one hadn’t gone off. But since then, the bomber had expanded his reach and his skill, setting off explosions in well-populated places like the Port Authority and Penn Station, sometimes repeating the same target years later. And now he’d hit the library. Even worse, the madman’s pace was picking up.

The flipper bat was quite a breakthrough because it gave the player a true means of exercising and developing skill. You could aim at targets now, rather than in the old days when you popped the ball up and just shook the shit out of the table and hoped that it went in the right hole or hit the right thing. The use of the flipper bat is probably the greatest breakthrough ever in pinball. —Eddie

Send it and end it, kid.” Court would fire, sending a boat-tail round across fields and lakes, over cabins and farms, and, more often than not, much more often than not, he’d hit his target, thereby ending the “threat.” He’d send it, and he’d end it. He thought back to those days, the fundamentals of the craft, and he fought again to remain calm. He forced himself not to feel any emotion at all. Any increase in heart rate, fluctuation in breathing, new sweating on his skin that could cause reflex muscle contractions. Anything different with his body at the moment he fired would affect his shot. It could send the round out of the barrel one hundredth of an inch from where he wanted the muzzle positioned for firing, but translated out across 1.81 miles, the round would end up several feet off target.

If you just keep on doing the same things that you’ve always done, what will your lifestyle be like five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now? What words will describe your future financial picture if you don’t make any changes? What about your health, relationships and the amount of time you have off for fun? Will you be enjoying a lot more freedom or still be working too many hours a week? AVOID

One day a man's son was run over by a car and he was killed and all mangled up. The father couldn't go on living, he felt ill, he cried all day, he went to a wizard and gave him all his money to bring his son back to life. The wizard said: "Go home and wait. Your son will return tonight." The father waited, but the son did not come home, so in the end he went to bed. He was just falling asleep when he heard footsteps in the kitchen. He got up feeling very happy and saw his son, he was all mangle up and had one arm missing and his head was split open, with the brains running out and he said he hated him because he'd left him in the middle of the road to go with women and it was his fault he was dead.' 'So?' 'So the father got some petrol and set fire to him.' 'I don't blame him.' I threw and finally hit the target. 'Point!' 'Four-two.

The Confederate Air Force planes carried gear that when flown close to a cell phone tower allowed those on board to log in passively and see a real-time record of every phone making a call. Task force personnel could then search for numbers in which they were interested, and the database would tell them if those phones were in use, and if so, where. “We’d pinpoint the location, we’d go hit the target,” said an operator. The cell phone tower info might guide the task force to a particular city block. At that point, the operators would use an “electronic divining rod,” a handheld paddlelike sensor that could be programmed to detect a specific phone and would beep increasingly loudly as it got closer to the device.22 The divining rod could even detect a phone that had been turned off, although not one with the battery and SIM card removed.

Recall from chapter 2 that any tendency toward violence must have evolved in a world in which everyone else was evolving the same tendency. (As Richard Dawkins put it, a living thing differs from a rock or a river because it is inclined to hit back.) That means that the first move toward harming a fellow human simultaneously accomplishes two things: 1. It increases the chance that the target will come to harm. 2. It gives the target an overriding goal of harming you before you harm him. Even if you prevail by killing him, you will have given his kin the goal of killing you in revenge. It stands to reason that initiating serious aggression in a symmetrical standoff is something a Darwinian creature must consider very, very carefully—a reticence experienced as anxiety or paralysis. Discretion is the better part of valor; compassion has nothing to do with it.

But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical military parlance, reflecting the ever more precise and technically removed means of killing, the 'enemy' becomes the 'target'. But for the soldiers who personally 'engage' these 'targets', these objects are colloquially 'slotted', 'dropped', 'hit', 'fragged', 'sawn in half', 'smashed' or just plain 'shot'. Then the soldier will have achieved the noun of a 'kill'. The author's supposition is that such words are used by the soldier in combat as an attempt to mentally dissociate himself from the reality of his actions, so he can continue to operate as a soldier - and perhaps, when all is finally said and done, as a human being back home.

Consider just a few of the expressions that fall under the umbrella ARGUMENT IS WAR, collected by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson. Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I've never won an argument with her. You don't agree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. She shot down all of my arguments. Or the many variations of LOVE IS A JOURNEY: Our relationship has hit a dead-end street. It's stalled; we can't keep going the way we've been going. Look how far we've come. It's been a long, bumpy road. We can't turn back now. We're at a crossroads. We may have to go our separate ways. The relationship isn't going anywhere. We're spinning our wheels. Our relationship is off the track. Our marriage is on the rocks. I'm thinking of bailing out.

I'd encourage [you] to think big and be delusional when setting goals. Yes, delusional. The biggest mistake that I made with my first business was I didn't think big enough. I limited my success by just focusing on a small geographic area and focusing on hitting small sales targets. Now when I set my goals, I make sure that they are ridiculous. I prefer to work extremely hard and fall short on my ridiculous goals than to achieve mediocre goals.

So what can you do? Shift your goals from the external to the internal: repeat to yourself that your objective is not to hit the target, but to deliver the best shot of which you are capable; it is not to get the job promotion, but to be the most deserving candidate for it; it is not for someone else to love you, but to be the most loving person you can be. If you redirect your attention and desires in this fashion, you will be happy and serene.

Who are you? Who are the players, the management team? What’s your expertise and track record? Have any of you succeeded in doing this before? Who are your advisors and what are their credentials? #2. What is it? What is your product or service? Even if it’s complex, this explanation must be easily understandable. Do you have any intellectual property rights, such as patents, that will provide some measure of exclusivity? #3. Where are you? What’s the status of your venture? Do you have a working prototype or has anyone tested your product or idea? What benchmarks have you already hit? #4. Where are you going? What’s your goal? What milestones will you attain along the way to achieving that goal? #5. Who wants it? Who’s your target market? What’s the problem being solved? Where’s the PAIN? What itch are you scratching? #6. How many people will want it? What’s your potential market size?

I must say, you aren’t being very mature or very consistent!” His dark brows snapped together as their truce began to disintegrate. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Elizabeth bridled, looking at him like the haughty, disdainful young aristocrat she was born to be. “It means,” she informed him, making a monumental effort to speak clearly and coolly, “that you have no right to act as if I did something evil, when in truth you yourself regarded it as nothing but a-a meaningless dalliance. You said as much, so there’s no point in denying it!” He finished loading the gun before he spoke. In contrast to his grim expression, his voice was perfectly bland. “My memory apparently isn’t as good as yours. To whom did I say that?” “My brother, for one,” she said, impatient with his pretense. “Ah, yes, the honorable Robert,” he replied, putting sarcastic emphasis on the word “honorable.” He turned to the target and fired, but the shot was wide of the mark. “You didn’t even hit the right tree,” Elizabeth said in surprise. “I thought you said you were going to clean the guns,” she added when he began methodically sliding them into leather cases, his expression preoccupied. He looked up at her, but she had the feeling he’d almost forgotten she was there. “I’ve decided to do it tomorrow instead.” Ian went into the house, automatically putting the guns back on the mantel; then he wandered over to the table, frowning thoughtfully as he reached for the bottle of Madeira and poured some into his glass. He told himself it made no difference how she might have felt when her brother told her that falsehood. For one thing, she was already engaged at the time, and, by her own admission, she’d regarded their relationship as a flirtation. Her pride might have suffered a richly deserved blow, but nothing worse than that.

I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb. Tris’s fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion. If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could. “It doesn’t shoot real bullets,” I say, “but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you’ll be using. It feels real, anyway.” Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he’s afraid it will shatter in his hands. I laugh. “First lesson: Don’t be afraid of it. Grab it. You’ve held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot.” “That was just lucky,” Caleb says, turning the gun over and over to see it from every angle. His tongue pushes into his cheek like he’s solving a problem. “Not the result of skill.” “Lucky is better than unlucky,” I say. “We can work on skill now.” I glance at Tris. She grins at me, then leans in to whisper something to Christina. “Are you here to help or what, Stiff?” I say. I hear myself speaking in the voice I cultivated as an initiation instructor, but this time I use it in jest. “You could use some practice with that right arm, if I recall correctly. You too, Christina.” Tris makes a face at me, then she and Christina cross the room to get their own weapons. “Okay, now face the target and turn the safety off,” I say. There is a target across the room, more sophisticated, than the wooden-board target in the Dauntless training rooms. It has three rings in three different colors, green, yellow, and red, so it’s easier to tell where the bullets it. “Let me see how you would naturally shoot.” He lifts up the gun with one hand, squares off his feet and shoulders to the target like he’s about to lift something heavy, and fires. The gun jerks back and up, firing the bullet near the ceiling. I cover my mouth with my hand to disguise my smile. “There’s no need to giggle,” Caleb says irritably. “Book learning doesn’t teach you everything, does it?” Christina says. “You have to hold it with both hands. It doesn’t look as cool, but neither does attacking the ceiling.” “I wasn’t trying to look cool!” Christina stands, her legs slightly uneven, and lifts both arms. She stares the target for a moment, then fires. The training bullet hits the outer circle of the target and bounces off, rolling on the floor. It leaves a circle of light on the target, marking the impact site. I wish I’d had this technology during initiation training. “Oh, good,” I say. “You hit the air around your target’s body. How useful.” “I’m a little rusty,” Christina admits, grinning.

The London Blitz. Feller recounts that during the Blitz in World War II, Londoners noticed that a few sections of the city were hit by German V-2 rockets many times, while others were not hit at all. They were convinced that the rockets were targeting particular kinds of neighborhoods. But when statisticians divided a map of London into small squares and counted the bomb strikes, they found that the strikes followed the distribution of a Poisson process—the bombs, in other words, were falling at random.

I’ve already mentioned how the LeT raiders at Mumbai nested within the urban metabolism of the two megacities—Karachi and Mumbai—that formed the launching pad and target for their raid. They slipped out of Karachi under cover of the harbor’s dense maritime traffic, blended into the flow of local cargo and fishing fleets, then slipped into Mumbai by nesting within the illicit networks of smuggling, trade flow, and movement of people, exploiting the presence of informal settlements with little government presence (in effect, feral subdistricts) close to the urban core of the giant coastal city. Once ashore, the teams dispersed and blended into the flow of the city’s densest area as they moved toward diversionary targets (taxis, the railway station, a café, a hospital) that had been carefully selected precisely to disrupt the city’s flow, draw off Indian counterterrorism forces, and hamper an effective response, before they hit main targets that had been chosen for sustained local and international media effect.

I quietly walk to my room, and keeping the door open, I pick up my cello settling it between my knees. The tips of my left hand press down on the fingerboard, while my right hand saws the bow across the strings. The notes hit the air and I shut my eyes, urging them to find their target. I want them to surround my mom and her dad, but I also want the notes to glue them together, reattach their bond. I know it can happen, and so when my calluses become useless, I keep playing. When my arm protests with fatigue, I keep playing. I keep playing because I believe.

I stepped to the tank's edge, leaned in, and concentrated on keeping my eyes open. Which fish would be the shooter? The fish were all facing me, but one in particular seemed to be staring directly at my left eye, like a hunter targeting his prey. Wham! The water hit my pupil with such force that I jerked back …. Laughing, I wiped my left eye but stayed by the tank, my left hand resting on its edge. Another fish quickly seized the opportunity to blast the diamond in my engagement ring, while a third targeted the red carnelian stone in my earring, and yet another shot my right eye.

For bonobos, a turbocharged sexuality utterly divorced from reproduction is a central feature of social interaction and group cohesion. Anthropologist Marvin Harris argues that bonobos get a “reproductive payoff that compensates them for their wasteful approach to hitting the ovulatory target.” The payoff is “a more intense form of social cooperation between males and females” leading to “a more intensely cooperative social group, a more secure milieu for rearing infants, and hence a higher degree of reproductive success for sexier males and females.”3 The bonobo’s promiscuity, in other words, confers significant evolutionary benefits on the apes.

The theory of the long tail as popularized by Chris Anderson in his book of the same name is that our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of major hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. 5

Along the same lines, seeking balance by checking in with ourselves after a day of serving the greater good allows us to examine our cup properly. It’s said that you cannot pour from an empty cup. So when serving others, remember to keep your cup full and to be intentional about what you fill your cup with. Stay connected to what positively pours into you, restores you, and helps you to gauge and honor your day-to-day progress. This is daily grace that we can give to ourselves. In the quiet of the morning, set high vibrational intentions for yourself, and as you bring your day to an end, reflect and practice self-examination. And if you didn’t hit the day’s target, allow grace to step in. The next day is a divine gift to set your intentions and go for it again.

In 1969 the Khmer Rouge numbered only about 4,000. By 1975 their numbers were enough to defeat the government forces. Their victory was greatly helped by the American attack on Cambodia, which was carried out as an extension of the Vietnam War. In 1970 a military coup led by Lon Nol, possibly with American support, overthrew the government of Prince Sihanouk, and American and South Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia. One estimate is that 600,000 people, nearly 10 per cent of the Cambodian population, were killed in this extension of the war. Another estimate puts the deaths from the American bombing at 1000,000 peasants. From 1972 to 1973, the quantity of bombs dropped on Cambodia was well over three times that dropped on Japan in the Second World War. The decision to bomb was taken by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and was originally justified on the grounds that North Vietnamese bases had been set up in Cambodia. The intention (according to a later defence by Kissinger’s aide, Peter W. Rodman) was to target only places with few Cambodians: ‘From the Joint Chiefs’ memorandum of April 9, 1969, the White House selected as targets only six base areas minimally populated by civilians. The target areas were given the codenames BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, SUPPER, SNACK, and DESSERT; the overall programme was given the name MENU.’ Rodman makes the point that SUPPER, for instance, had troop concentrations, anti-aircraft, artillery, rocket and mortar positions, together with other military targets. Even if relatively few Cambodians were killed by the unpleasantly names items on the MENU, each of them was a person leading a life in a country not at war with the United States. And, as the bombing continued, these relative restraints were loosened. To these political decisions, physical and psychological distance made their familiar contribution. Roger Morris, a member of Kissinger’s staff, later described the deadened human responses: Though they spoke of terrible human suffering reality was sealed off by their trite, lifeless vernacular: 'capabilities', 'objectives', 'our chips', 'giveaway'. It was a matter, too, of culture and style. They spoke with the cool, deliberate detachment of men who believe the banishment of feeling renders them wise and, more important, credible to other men… They neither understood the foreign policy they were dealing with, nor were deeply moved by the bloodshed and suffering they administered to their stereo-types. On the ground the stereotypes were replaced by people. In the villages hit by bombs and napalm, peasants were wounded or killed, often being burnt to death. Those who left alive took refuge in the forests. One Western ob-server commented, ‘it is difficult to imagine the intensity of their hatred to-wards those who are destroying their villages and property’. A raid killed twenty people in the village of Chalong. Afterwards seventy people from Chalong joined the Khmer Rouge. Prince Sihanouk said that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger created the Khmer Rouge by expanding the war into Cambodia.

Similarly, the computers used to run the software on the ground for the mission were borrowed from a previous mission. These machines were so out of date that Bowman had to shop on eBay to find replacement parts to get the machines working. As systems have gone obsolete, JPL no longer uses the software, but Bowman told me that the people on her team continue to use software built by JPL in the 1990s, because they are familiar with it. She said, “Instead of upgrading to the next thing we decided that it was working just fine for us and we would stay on the platform.” They have developed so much over such a long period of time with the old software that they don’t want to switch to a newer system. They must adapt to using these outdated systems for the latest scientific work. Working within these constraints may seem limiting. However, building tools with specific constraints—from outdated technologies and low bitrate radio antennas—can enlighten us. For example, as scientists started to explore what they could learn from the wait times while communicating with deep space probes, they discovered that the time lag was extraordinarily useful information. Wait times, they realized, constitute an essential component for locating a probe in space, calculating its trajectory, and accurately locating a target like Pluto in space. There is no GPS for spacecraft (they aren’t on the globe, after all), so scientists had to find a way to locate the spacecraft in the vast expanse. Before 1960, the location of planets and objects in deep space was established through astronomical observation, placing an object like Pluto against a background of stars to determine its position.15 In 1961, an experiment at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California used radar to more accurately define an “astronomical unit” and help measure distances in space much more accurately.16 NASA used this new data as part of creating the trajectories for missions in the following years. Using the data from radio signals across a wide range of missions over the decades, the Deep Space Network maintained an ongoing database that helped further refine the definition of an astronomical unit—a kind of longitudinal study of space distances that now allows missions like New Horizons to create accurate flight trajectories. The Deep Space Network continued to find inventive ways of using the time lag of radio waves to locate objects in space, ultimately finding that certain ways of waiting for a downlink signal from the spacecraft were less accurate than others. It turned to using the antennas from multiple locations, such as Goldstone in California and the antennas in Canberra, Australia, or Madrid, Spain, to time how long the signal took to hit these different locations on Earth. The time it takes to receive these signals from the spacecraft works as a way to locate the probes as they are journeying to their destination. Latency—or the different time lag of receiving radio signals on different locations of Earth—is the key way that deep space objects are located as they journey through space. This discovery was made possible during the wait times for communicating with these craft alongside the decades of data gathered from each space mission. Without the constraint of waiting, the notion of using time as a locating feature wouldn’t have been possible.

The physical technique is important,” I say. “But it’s mostly a mental game, which is lucky for you, because you know how to play those. You don’t just practice the shooting, you also practice the focus. And then, when you’re in a situation where you’re fighting for your life, the focus will be so ingrained that it will happen naturally.” “I didn’t know the Dauntless were so interested in training the brain,” Caleb says. “Can I see you try it, Tris? I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you shoot something without a bullet wound in your shoulder.” Tris smiles a little and faces the target. When I first saw her shoot during Dauntless training, she looked awkward, birdlike. But her thin, fragile form has become slim but muscular, and when she holds the gun, it looks easy. She squints one eye a little, shifts her weight, and fires. Her bullet strays from the target’s center, but only by inches. Obviously impressed, Caleb raises his eyebrows. “Don’t look so surprised!” Tris says. “Sorry,” he says. “I just…you used to be so clumsy, remember? I don’t know how I missed that you weren’t like that anymore.” Tris shrugs, but when she looks away, her cheeks are flushed and she looks pleased. Christina shoots again, and this time hits the target closer to the middle. I step back to let Caleb practice, and watch Tris fire again, watch the straight lines of her body as she lifts the gun, and how steady she is when it goes off. I touch her shoulder and lean in close to her ear. “Remember during training, how the gun almost hit you in the face?” She nods, smirking. “Remember during training, when I did this?” I say, and I reach around her to press my hand to her stomach. She sucks in a breath. “I’m not likely to forget that anytime soon,” she mutters. She twists around and draws my face toward hers, her fingertips on my chin. We kiss, and I hear Christina say something about it, but for the first time, I don’t care at all.

Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?" he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. "He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents that it was a setup." Violet laughed. "Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots." She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers. Jay laughed too, shaking his head. "You're so cold-hearted," he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. "How's he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshman and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?" "I don't see you driving anything but your mom's car yet. At least he has a bike," she said, turning on him now. He pushed her again. "Hey!" he tried to defend himself. "I'm still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths." They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other one didn't. "Right!" Violet protested. "Have you seen my car?" This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch. "Poor little rich girl!" Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down. She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded "dead leg" by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet's side. "Oh, yeah. Weren't you the one"-she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage-"who got to go to Hawaii..." She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. "...For spring break...last..." And then he started to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: "...YEAR?!" That was how her aunt and uncle found them. Violet never heard the key in the dead bolt, or the sound of the door opening up. And Jay was just as ignorant of their arrival as she was. So when they were caught like that, in a mass of tangled limbs, with Jay's face just inches from hers, as she giggled and squirmed against him, it should have meant they were going to get in trouble. And if it had been any other teenage boy and girl, they would have. But it wasn't another couple. It was Violet and Jay...and this was business as usual for the two of them. Even her aunt and uncle knew that there was no possibility they were doing anything they shouldn't. The only reprimand they got was her aunt shushing them to keep it down before they woke the kids. After Jay left, Violet took the thirty dollars that her uncle gave her and headed out. As she drove home, she tried to ignore the feelings of frustration she had about the way her aunt and uncle had reacted-or rather hadn't reaction-to finding her and Jay together on the couch. For some reason it made her feel worse to know that even the grown-ups around them didn't think there was a chance they could ever be a real couple.

All the women, white or black or brown, who woke up like this, who came before me in this town. Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Toward that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed, and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling. How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through—I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to the other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had already worn itself away. So I didn’t have to fight as hard. I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and I called it my target. And I ran. And when I finally hit that ceiling, it just exploded into dust. Like that. My sisters who went before me had already handled it. No cuts. No bruises. No bleeding. Making it through the glass ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman’s footprints. I just hit at exactly the right time in exactly the right spot. So I’m breaking my family’s rule today. This is a trophy for participation. And I am beyond honored and proud to receive it. Because this? Was a group effort. Thank you to all the women in this room. Thank you to all the women who never made it into this room. And thank you to all the women who will hopefully fill a room one hundred times this size when we are all gone. You are all an inspiration.

At the same time, surveillance will change the very nature of insurance. Insurance is an industry, traditionally, that draws on the majority of the community to respond to the needs of an unfortunate minority. In the villages we lived in centuries ago, families, religious groups, and neighbors helped look after each other when fire, accident, or illness struck. In the market economy, we outsource this care to insurance companies, which keep a portion of the money for themselves and call it profit. As insurance companies learn more about us, they’ll be able to pinpoint those who appear to be the riskiest customers and then either drive their rates to the stratosphere or, where legal, deny them coverage. This is a far cry from insurance’s original purpose, which is to help society balance its risk. In a targeted world, we no longer pay the average. Instead, we’re saddled with anticipated costs. Instead of smoothing out life’s bumps, insurance companies will demand payment for those bumps in advance. This undermines the point of insurance, and the hits will fall especially hard on those who can least afford them.

For dualists, it’s easy to explain evil. Bad things happen even to good people because the world is not governed single-handedly by a good God. There is an independent evil power loose in the world. The evil power does bad things. Dualism has its own drawbacks. While solving the Problem of Evil, it is unnerved by the Problem of Order. If the world was created by a single God, it’s clear why it is such an orderly place, where everything obeys the same laws. But if Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? Two rival states can fight one another because both obey the same laws of physics. A missile launched from Pakistan can hit targets in India because gravity works the same way in both countries. When Good and Evil fight, what common laws do they obey, and who decreed these laws? So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

You may find this hard to believe, Mr. Pinter," she went on defensively, "but some men enjoy my company. They consider me easy to talk to." A ghost of a smile touched his handsome face. "You're right. I do find that hard to believe." Arrogant wretch. "All the same, there are three men who might consider marrying me, and I could use your help in securing them." She hated having to ask him for that, but he was necessary to her plan. She just needed one good offer of marriage, one impressive offer that would show Gran she was capable of gaining a decent husband. Gran didn't believe she could, or she wouldn't be holding to that blasted ultimatum. If Celia could prove her wrong, Gran might allow her to choose a husband in her own good time. And if that plan didn't work, Celia would at least have a man she could marry to fulfill Gran's terms. "So you've finally decided to meet Mrs. Plumtree's demands," he said, his expression unreadable. She wasn't about to let him in on her secret plan. Oliver might have employed him, but she was sure Mr. Pinter also spied for Gran. He would run right off and tell her. "It's not as if I have a choice." Bitterness crept into her tone. "In less than two months, if I remain unmarried, my siblings will be cut off. I can't do that to them, no matter how much I resent Gran's meddling." Something that looked oddly like sympathy flickered in his gaze. "Don't you want to marry?" "Of course I want to marry. Doesn't every woman?" "You've shown little interest in it before," he said skeptically. That's because men had shown little interest in her. Oh, Gab's friends loved to stand about with her at balls and discuss the latest developments in cartridges, but they rarely asked her to dance, and if they did, it was only to consult her on rifles. She'd tried flirting, but she was terrible at it. It seemed so...false. So did men's compliments, the few that there were. It was easier to laugh them off than to figure out which ones were genuine, easier to pretend to be one of the lads. She secretly wished she could find a man she could love, who would ignore the scandals attached to he family's name and indulge her hobby of target shooting. One who could shoot as well as she, since she could never respect a man who couldn't hit what he aimed at. I'll bet Mr. Pinter knows his way around a rifle.

As we pulled up at the big school gates, I saw tears rolling down my dad’s face. I felt confused as to what part of nature or love thought this was a good idea. My instinct certainly didn’t; but what did I know? I was only eight. So I embarked on this mission called boarding school. And how do you prepare for that one? In truth, I found it really hard; there were some great moments like building dens in the snow in winter, or getting chosen for the tennis team, or earning a naval button, but on the whole it was a survival exercise in learning to cope. Coping with fear was the big one. The fear of being left and the fear of being bullied--both of which were very real. What I learned was that I couldn’t manage either of those things very well on my own. It wasn’t anything to do with the school itself, in fact the headmaster and teachers were almost invariably kind, well-meaning and good people, but that sadly didn’t make surviving it much easier. I was learning very young that if I were to survive this place then I had to find some coping mechanisms. My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, as a way to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you want is to be at home. I missed my mum and dad terribly, and on the occasional night where I felt this worst, I remember trying to muffle my tears in my pillow while the rest of the dormitory slept. In fact I was not alone in doing this. Almost everyone cried, but we all learned to hide it, and those who didn’t were the ones who got bullied. As a kid, you can only cry so much before you run out of tears and learn to get tough. I meet lots of folks nowadays who say how great boarding school is as a way of toughening kids up. That feels a bit back-to-front to me. I was much tougher before school. I had learned to love the outdoors and to understand the wild, and how to push myself. When I hit school, suddenly all I felt was fear. Fear forces you to look tough on the outside but makes you weak on the inside. This was the opposite of all I had ever known as a kid growing up. I had been shown by my dad that it was good to be fun, cozy, homely--but then as tough as boots when needed. At prep school I was unlearning this lesson and adopting new ways to survive. And age eight, I didn’t always pick them so well.

for later. Keep it safe. If the child has collapsed into a tantrum in a place where he might hurt himself, move him to an area where he will be safe—an open, carpeted area, away from the glass coffee table. A child in the midst of a tantrum often flails, grabs for things to throw, or reaches for people to hit. Keep the child away from everything, including your body.       Sometimes very young children feel totally out of control and will need you to contain them. Sit on the floor and gently but firmly hold your child’s back to your front, on the floor between your legs, both arms crossed in front of him. This is not an angry hold, but rather one that says I am keeping you safe. Soon (or maybe not so soon!) he will stop resisting you, relax a bit, and take it down a notch to crying. This hold should not become a physical battle. It is, instead, a form of support and safety that you provide for your child. Do not leave the child alone. There are those who believe in sending the child to his room to have the meltdown. I believe the child is better served by your not abandoning him to his out-of-control feelings and behavior. Stay close by. Even though you are not talking to him, he knows you are there, and your presence is comforting. He might command you to “Go away” or “Leave me alone,” but he doesn’t mean it. Sit in a chair across the room and pick up a magazine. If the child is holding on to your leg, try to ignore it. In fact, try to ignore him altogether as best as you can. You can say: “You are really angry right now. I will wait until you are done.” Or, “Let me know when you are done.”       If the child is trying to hurt you, hit you, or grab at you, stand up and step away. Tell him: “I will not let you hurt me. Let me know when you are done, and we can talk.”       When you are standing, your legs are the only target he can reach. He’ll wrap his arms around your calves in a death grip. Ignore it. It will end eventually, I promise. The End Save. You can usually tell when the tantrum is winding down. When you hear and see that your child is starting to come back down to earth—his crying has calmed to sobs, his breaths are broken and quick, he is sniffling a bit—it is a good time to step in and accompany him on his journey back. Scoop him up and say something diverting, like: “C’mon, Sam, let’s go see if there are any squirrels outside.” By this point, most children are ready to be saved. They just don’t know how to do so gracefully. A paradigm shift offers the child the chance to reenter the world and save face.

The nudge movement spawned by Thaler and Sunstein has been spectacularly successful around the globe. A 2017 review in the Economist described how policy makers were beginning to embrace insights from behavioral science: In 2009 Barack Obama appointed Mr Sunstein as head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The following year Mr Thaler advised Britain’s government when it established BIT, which quickly became known as the “nudge unit”. If BIT did not save the government at least ten times its running cost (£500,000 a year), it was to be shut down after two years. Not only did BIT stay open, saving about 20 times its running cost, but it marked the start of a global trend. Now many governments are turning to nudges to save money and do better. In 2014 the White House opened the Social and Behavioural Sciences Team. A report that year by Mark Whitehead of Aberystwyth University counted 51 countries in which “centrally directed policy initiatives” were influenced by behavioural sciences. Nonprofit organisations such as Ideas42, set up in 2008 at Harvard University, help run dozens of nudge-style trials and programmes around the world. In 2015 the World Bank set up a group that is now applying behavioural sciences in 52 poor countries. The UN is turning to nudging to help hit the “sustainable development goals”, a list of targets it has set for 2030.32

The erosion of trust in public school systems has had catastrophic consequences, and will take decades to put right. As we’ve seen, attempts to make schools ‘more accountable’ for their test scores leave teachers torn between what psychologist Barry Schwartz calls ‘doing the right thing and doing the required thing’. The right thing is to teach students through personalised, flexible methods, according to their needs, interests and aspirations; the required thing is to ‘turnaround’ test scores, by ‘teaching to the test’ or, worse, ‘gaming’ the system.  Successive US federal administrations have sought to improve school standards through high accountability. The pressure this puts upon schools at risk of closure and teachers – with test scores linked to pay rates – is intense. During 2011/12 a series of allegations emerged of inner-city schools in New York, Washington DC, Atlanta and Philadelphia ‘cheating’ on student test scores in order to hit accountability targets. Undoubtedly a case of fear producing wrong figures. The result of doing the required thing, above the right thing, is what Schwartz describes as a ‘de-moral-ised’ profession. The double tragedy is that, in addition to the pressure put on teachers – 50 percent of new teachers in the US leave the profession within their first five years – there’s growing evidence that the over-reliance on standardised testing fails to improve academic learning anyway.

Dear Curses and Blessings, How could there be two in one? I never knew a person could be cursed and blessed. There’s no such thing as having both. There no such thing as taking sides when it comes to blessings and curses—I always thought that a person had to pick one. I would never have made the decision to be cursed. It was given to me. Well... Kace and I apparently have been the chosen ones. We’ve been the main target. When curses shot their arrows, they hit the bullseye faithfully, without fail. Why couldn’t we have been the chosen ones for bountiful blessings? It is a blessing that Kace is alive, but it is a curse that he was in danger. My emotions are a waterfall of never-ending thoughts of what is going to happen next. Kace has so many tubes in him—it is like he is being smothered, dissolving in webs of lies one after another. The same lies that my mother told him—she told me when I was younger. I am sure she told him she would keep him safe. I am more than sure she told the judge she had changed. Kace was coiled in a web of lies. Now he is coiled in wires to survive. Our lives are surrounded by many curses, but I know there must be a couple of blessings to be spared. Please. I am begging you to show us some mercy. I will accept our blessings even if they are thrown at us like breadcrumbs. I will fall to my knees and scramble to pick them up one by one. When will mine and Kace’s lives be gentle as a flowing stream without any worries? Right now, I have to pack my feelings and tears away. Cruses and blessings, please think about what I said.

When Oliver called time a few moments later, she’d beaten them all. But she’d beaten Mr. Pinter by only one bird. “It appears, Lady Celia, that you’ve won a new rifle,” the duke said graciously. “No,” she answered. They all stared at her. “It doesn’t seem sporting to win a challenge only because one of my opponents had a faulty firearm. Which we provided to him, by the way.” “Don’t worry,” Mr. Pinter drawled. “I won’t hold the fault firearm against you and your brothers.” “That’s not the point. This should be fair, and it isn’t.” “Then we’ll move forward,” Oliver said, “and let the servants flush the grouse again. Pinter can take one more shot. That’s probably all that the misfire delayed him by. If he misses, then you’ve won squarely. If he hits his target then it’s a tie, and we’ll decide a tie breaker.” “That seems fair.” She glanced over at Mr. Pinter. “What do you say, sir?” “Whatever my lady wishes.” His eyes met hers in a heated glance. She had the unsettling feeling that he referred to more than just the shooting. “Well, then,” she said lightly. “Let’s get on with it.” The beaters headed forward to flush the grouse, but either because of where the grouse had last settled or because of the beaters’ position, the birds rose farther away than was practical. “Damn it all,” Gabe uttered. “He won’t make a shot from here.” “You can ignore this one, and we’ll have them flushed again,” Celia said. But Mr. Pinter raised his gun to follow their flight. With a flash and the repugnant smell of black powder igniting, the gun fired and white smoke filled the air. She saw a bird fall. No, not one bird. He’d hit two birds with an impossible shot. Her breath lodged in her throat. She’d hit two with one shot a few times, due to how they clustered and how well the birdshot scattered, but to do it at such a distance… She glanced at him, astonished. No one had ever beaten her-and certainly not with such an amazing shot. Mr. Pinter gazed at her steadily as he handed off the gun to a servant. “It appears that I’ve won, my lady.” Her mouth went dry. “It does indeed.” Gabe hooted pleased at having escaped buying her a rifle. The duke and the viscount scowled, while Devonmont just looked amused as usual. All of that fell away as Mr. Pinter’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Well done, Pinter,” Oliver said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You obviously more than earned a kiss.” For a moment, raw hunger flickered in his eyes. Then it was as if a veil descended over his face, for his features turned blank. He walked up to her, bent his head… And kissed her on the forehead. Hot color flooded her cheeks. How dared he kiss her last night as if she were a woman, and then treat her like a child in front of her suitors! Or worse, a woman beneath his notice! “Thank heavens that’s done,” she said loftily, trying to retain some dignity. The men all laughed-except Mr. Pinter, who watched her with a shuttered expression. As the other gentleman crowded round to congratulate him on his fine shot, she plotted. She would make him answer for every remark, every embarrassment of this day, as soon as she had the chance to get him alone. Because no man made a fool of her and got away with it.

Speaking of shooting, my lady,” Mr. Pinter said as he came around the table, “I looked over your pistol as you requested. Everything seems to be in order.” Removing it from his coat pocket, he handed it to her, a hint of humor in his gaze. As several pair of male eyes fixed on her, she colored. To hide her embarrassment, she made a great show of examining her gun. He’d cleaned it thoroughly, which she grudgingly admitted was rather nice of him. “What a cunning little weapon,” the viscount said and reached for it. “May I?” She handed him the pistol. “How tiny it is,” he exclaimed. “It’s a lady’s pocket pistol,” she told him as he examined it. Oliver frowned at her. “When did you acquire a pocket pistol, Celia?” “A little while ago,” she said blithely. Gabe grinned. “You may not know this, Basto, but my sister is something of a sharpshooter. I daresay she has a bigger collection of guns than Oliver.” “Not bigger,” she said. “Finer perhaps, but I’m choosy about my firearms.” “She has beaten us all at some time or another at target shooting,” the duke said dryly. “The lady could probably hit a fly at fifty paces.” “Don’t be silly,” she said with a grin. “A beetle perhaps, but not a fly.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she could have kicked herself. Females did not boast of their shooting-not if they wanted to snag husbands. “You should come shooting with us,” Oliver said. “Why not?” The last thing she needed was to beat her suitors at shooting. The viscount in particular would take it very ill. She suspected that Portuguese men preferred their women to be wilting flowers. “No thank you,” she said. “Target shooting is one thing, but I don’t like hunting birds.” “Suit yourself,” Gabe said, clearly happy to make it a gentlemen-only outing, though he knew perfectly well that hunting birds didn’t bother her. “Come now, Lady Celia,” Lord Devonmont said. “You were eating partridges at supper last night. How can you quibble about shooting birds?” “If she doesn’t want to go, let her stay,” Gabe put in. “It’s not shooting birds she has an objection to,” Mr. Pinter said in a taunting voice. “Her ladyship just can’t hit a moving target.” She bit back a hot retort. Don’t scare off the suitors. “That’s ridiculous, Pinter,” Gabe said. “I’ve seen Celia-ow! What the devil, Oliver? You stepped on my foot!” “Sorry, old chap, you were in the way,” Oliver said as he went to the table. “I think Pinter’s right, though. Celia can’t hit a moving target.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she protested, “I most certainly can hit a moving target! Just because I choose not to for the sake of the poor, helpless birds-“ “Convenient, isn’t it, her sudden dislike of shooting ‘poor, helpless birds’?” Mr. Pinter said with a smug glance at Lord Devonmont. “Convenient, indeed,” Lord Devonmont agreed. “But not surprising. Women don’t have the same ability to follow a bird in flight that a man-“ “That’s nonsense, and you know it!” Celia jumped to her feet. “I can shoot a pigeon or a grouse on the wing as well as any man here.” “Sounds like a challenge to me,” Oliver said. “What do you think, Pinter?” “A definite challenge, sir.” Mr. Pinter was staring at her with what looked like satisfaction. Blast it all, had that been his purpose-to goad her into it? Oh, what did it matter? She couldn’t let a claim like this or Lord Devonmont’s stand. “Fine. I’ll join you gentlemen for the shooting.” “Then I propose that whoever bags the most birds gets to kiss the lady,” Lord Devonmont said with a gleam in his eye. “That’s not much of a prize for me,” Gabe grumbled. She planted her hands on her hips. “And what if I bag the most birds?” “Then you get to shoot whomever you wish,” Mr. Pinter drawled. As the others laughed, Celia glared at him. He was certainly enjoying himself, the wretch. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. Pinter. That person would most likely be you.

Jackson gaped at her, wondering how this had all turned so terrible wrong. But he knew how. The woman was clearly daft. Bedlam-witted. And trying to drive him in the same direction. "You can't be serious. Since when do you know anything about investigating people?" She planted her hands on her hips. "You won't do it, so I must." God save him, she was the most infuriating, maddening-"How do you propose to manage that?" She shrugged. "Ask them questions, I suppose. The house party for Oliver's birthday is next week. Lord Devonmont is already coming, and it will be easy to convince Gran to invite my other two. Once they're here, I could try sneaking into their rooms and listening in on their conversations or perhaps bribing their servants-" "You've lost your bloody mind," he hissed. Only after she lifted an eyebrow did he realize he'd cursed so foully in front of her. But the woman would turn a sane man into a blithering idiot! The thought of her wandering in and out of men's bedchambers, risking her virtue and her reputation, made his blood run cold. "You don't seem to understand," she said in a clipped tone, as if speaking to a child. "I have to catch a husband somehow. I need help, and I've nowhere else to turn. Minerva is rarely here, and Gran's matchmaking efforts are as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even if my brothers and their wives could do that sort of work, they're preoccupied with their own affairs. That leaves you, who seem to think that suitors drop from the skies at my whim. If I can't even entice you to help me for money, then I'll have to manage on my own." Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Hell and blazes, she was liable to attempt such an idiotic thing, too. She had some fool notion she was invincible. That's why she spent her time shooting at targets with her brother's friends, blithely unconcerned that her rifle might misfire or a stray bullet hit her by mistake. The wench did as she pleased, and the men in her family let her. Someone had to curb her insanity, and it looked as if it would have to be him. "All right!" he called out. "I'll do it." She halted but didn't turn around. "You'll find out what I need in order to snag one of my choices as a husband?" "Yes." "Even if it means being a trifle underhanded?" He gritted his teeth. This would be pure torture. The underhandedness didn't bother him; he'd be as underhanded as necessary to get rid of those damned suitors. But he'd have to be around the too-tempting wench a great deal, if only to make sure the bastards didn't compromise her. Well, he'd just have to find something to send her running the other way. She wanted facts? By thunder, he'd give her enough damning facts to blacken her suitors thoroughly. Then what? If you know of some eligible gentleman you can strong-arm into courting me, then by all means, tell me. I'm open to suggestions. All right, so he had no one to suggest. But he couldn't let her marry any of her ridiculous choices. They would make her miserable-he was sure of it. He must make her see that she was courting disaster. Then he'd find someone more eligible for her. Somehow. She faced him. "Well?" "Yes," he said, suppressing a curse. "I'll do whatever you want." A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "That I'd like to see." When he scowled, she added hastily, "But thank you. Truly. And I'm happy to pay you extra for your efforts, as I said." He stiffened. "No need." "Nonsense," she said firmly. "It will be worth it to have your discretion." His scowl deepened. "My clients always have my discretion.