The Length Of A String Quotes

Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme…. There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America. When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence.

The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.

... and so, perhaps, the length didn't matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

He presented it with a length of string and passed on to the statue of Corrupted Endeavor to await the arrival of Autumn.

Weird. I rang it three times.” – Nekoda “There might be something with out condo.” ‘Other than the fact that it lived under a perpetual dismal cloud and was infested with roaches the size of his fist. It was probably over a hellmouth, too, that didn’t allot for any kind of reception other than two cans joined by a length string.’ – Nick

Sometimes we must allow our locked-and-tethered inner demon a short glimpse beyond the bars,” thought Mario, “lest we forget the full extent of our virtue. One’s power does not reside in the length of their demon’s claw, but in the strength of its manacle. The unleashed demon is worthless, lest it’s controlled.

So many words get lost. They leave the mough and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglassI'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme... There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard my everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance two people using a string was often small; somtimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of the string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to pressshells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America. When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the wastness, the telephone was invented. Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever for, is conduct a person's silence.

If, after fifteen years of chaos and fear, the world had seen enough strings—short and long and every measure in between—to know that any length was possible, and so, perhaps, the length didn’t matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

[33]* In the seventh month, when the heat is dreadful, everything in the building is kept open all through the night, and it’s delightful to wake on moonlit nights and lie there looking out. Dark nights too are delightful, and as for the sight of the moon at dawn, words cannot describe the loveliness. Picture her lying there, on a fresh new mat 1 placed near the outer edge of the gleaming wooden aisle-room floor, the low standing curtain pushed to the back of the room in a quite unseemly way. 2 It should normally be placed at the outer edge, but perhaps she’s concerned about being seen from within. Her lover must have already left. She is lying asleep, a robe drawn up over her head 3 – it is pale greyish-violet with deep violet inner lining, the outer surface a little faded, or perhaps it is a stiffish robe of rich gleaming damask. Beneath this, she is wearing a clove-tan or yellow gossamer-silk shift, and the long strings of her unlined scarlet skirted trousers trailing undone from below the hem of her clothing tell us that she must have fallen asleep with trousers still untied after her lover departed. The soft luxury of hair that lies piled in waves beside her speaks of its wonderful length.

Sune has always been more interested in the length of the string than the size of the balloon.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?

(The string is extremely tiny, at the Planck length of 10 ^-33 cm, a billion billion times smaller than a proton, so all subatomic particles appear pointlike.) If we were to pluck this string, the vibration would change; the electron might turn into a neutrino. Pluck it again and it might turn into a quark. In fact, if you plucked it hard enough, it could turn into any of the known subatomic particles. Strings can interact by splitting and rejoining, thus creating the interactions we see among electrons and protons in atoms. In this way, through string theory, we can reproduce all the laws of atomic and nuclear physics. The "melodies" that can be written on strings correspond to the laws of chemistry. The universe can now be viewed as a vast symphony of strings.

And so I make my way across the room steadily, carefully. Hands shaking, I pull the string, lifting my blinds. They rise slowly, drawing more moonlight into the room with every inch And there he is, crouched low on the roof. Same leather jacket. The hair is his, the cheekbones, the perfect nose . . . the eyes: dark and mysterious . . . full of secrets. . . . My heart flutters, body light. I reach out to touch him, thinking he might disappear, my fingers disrupted by the windowpane. On the other side, Parker lifts his hand and mouths: “Hi.” I mouth “Hi” back. He holds up a single finger, signalling me to hold on. He picks up a spiral-bound notebook and flips open the cover, turning the first page to me. I recognize his neat, block print instantly: bold, black Sharpie. I know this is unexpected . . . , I read. He flips the page. . . . and strange . . . I lift an eyebrow. . . . but please hear read me out. He flips to the next page. I know I told you I never lied . . . . . . but that was (obviously) the biggest lie of all. The truth is: I’m a liar. I lied. I lied to myself . . . . . . and to you. Parker watches as I read. Our eyes meet, and he flips the page. But only because I had to. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you, Jaden . . . . . . but it happened anyway. I clear my throat, and swallow hard, but it’s squeezed shut again, tight. And it gets worse. Not only am I a liar . . . I’m selfish. Selfish enough to want it all. And I know if I don’t have you . . . I hold my breath, waiting. . . . I don’t have anything. He turns another page, and I read: I’m not Parker . . . . . . and I’m not going to give up . . . . . . until I can prove to you . . . . . . that you are the only thing that matters. He flips to the next page. So keep sending me away . . . . . . but I’ll just keep coming back to you. Again . . . He flips to the next page. . . . and again . . . And the next: . . . and again. Goose bumps rise to the surface of my skin. I shiver, hugging myself tightly. And if you can ever find it in your (heart) to forgive me . . . There’s a big, black “heart” symbol where the word should be. I will do everything it takes to make it up to you. He closes the notebook and tosses it beside him. It lands on the roof with a dull thwack. Then, lifting his index finger, he draws an X across his chest. Cross my heart. I stifle the happy laugh welling inside, hiding the smile as I reach for the metal latch to unlock my window. I slowly, carefully, raise the sash. A burst of fresh honeysuckles saturates the balmy, midnight air, sickeningly sweet, filling the room. I close my eyes, breathing it in, as a thousand sleepless nights melt, slipping away. I gather the lavender satin of my dress in my hand, climb through the open window, and stand tall on the roof, feeling the height, the warmth of the shingles beneath my bare feet, facing Parker. He touches the length of the scar on my forehead with his cool finger, tucks my hair behind my ear, traces the edge of my face with the back of his hand. My eyes close. “You know you’re beautiful? Even when you cry?” He smiles, holding my face in his hands, smearing the tears away with his thumbs. I breathe in, lungs shuddering. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, black eyes sincere. I swallow. “I know why you had to.” “Doesn’t make it right.” “Doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, shaking my head. The moon hangs suspended in the sky, stars twinkling overhead, as he leans down and kisses me softly, lips meeting mine, familiar—lips I imagined, dreamed about, memorized a mil ion hours ago. Then he wraps his arms around me, pulling me into him, quelling every doubt and fear and uncertainty in this one, perfect moment.

It was this philosophy that had Harvey taking the hovercraft Sagan had stolen, mounting it, and, after a few moments to glean the fundamentals of navigating it, rocketing on it toward the door of the Obin mess hall. As Harvey approached, the door to the mess hall opened inward; some Obin heading to duty after dinner. Harvey grinned a mad grin, gunned the hovercraft, and then braked it just enough (he hoped) to jam that fucking alien right back into the room. It worked perfectly. The Obin had enough time for a surprised squawk before the hovercraft’s gun struck it square in the chest, punching backward like it was a toy on a string, hurling down nearly the entire length of the hall. The other Obin in the room looked up while Harvey’s victim pinwheeled to the ground, then turned their multiple eyes toward the doorway, Harvey, and the hovercraft with its big gun poking right into the room. “Hello, boys!” Harvey said in a big, booming voice. “The 2nd Platoon sends its regards!” And with that, he jammed down the “fire” button on the gun and set to work. Things got messy real fast after that. It was just fucking beautiful. Harvey loved his job.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches. Imagine a modern American publisher confronted with the Old Testament as a new manuscript submitted to him for the first time. It is not difficult to think what his comments would be, for example, on the genealogies. 'My dear sir,' he would say, 'this chapter lacks pep; you can't expect your reader to be interested in a mere string of proper names of persons about whom you tell so little. You have begun your story, I admit, in fine style, and at first I was very favourably impressed, but you have altogether too much wish to tell it all. Pick out the highlights, take out the superfluous matter, and bring me back your manuscript when you have reduced it to a reasonable length.' So the modern publisher would speak, knowing the modern reader's fear of boredom.

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee.--We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed.

Some ultimately felt grateful for the boxes, for the chance to say goodbye, to never regret the last words uttered. Others found comfort in the strings’ uncanny power, enabling them to believe that the lives of their short-string loved ones were not, in fact, cut short. They were just as long as they were meant to be, since the moment they were born and the length of their string was seemingly determined. It made losing them somehow easier to accept, trusting that nothing could have changed the ending, that their deaths did not hinge upon any particular decisions they made, what they did or didn’t do. Because of the strings, there was no need to wonder what might have happened if they had lived in a different city, or eaten different foods, or driven a different route home. The loss still hurt, of course, still didn’t make sense, but it was almost a relief not to be hounded by what-ifs.

Who?” “Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’ I’m no god and I’ll contend no longer. Let it go, Pete, and go your way. Maybe the world will last our time and, if not, there’s nothing that can be done anyway. I’m sorry, Pete. You fought the good fight, but you lost, and I’m through.” It worked perfectly. The Obin had enough time for a surprised squawk before the hovercraft’s gun struck it square in the chest, punching backward like it was a toy on a string, hurling down nearly the entire length of the hall. The other Obin in the room looked up while Harvey’s victim pinwheeled to the ground, then turned their multiple eyes toward the doorway, Harvey, and the hovercraft with its big gun poking right into the room. “Hello, boys!” Harvey said in a big, booming voice. “The 2nd Platoon sends its regards!” And with that, he jammed down the “fire” button on the gun and set to work. Things got messy real fast after that. It was just fucking beautiful. Harvey loved his job.

One field Faraday studied was the electric field. This is not a number but a vector, which we may visualize as an arrow and which can vary its direction and length. Imagine such an arrow at each point of space. Imagine that the ends of the arrows at nearby points are attached to one another ny rubber bands. If I pull on one, it pulls on the ones nearby. The arrows are also influenced by electric charges. The effect of the influence is that the arrows will arrange themselves so that they point to nearby negative charges and away from positive charges.

Every ward is full of doctors and nurses repeatedly honking a word into phone handsets in progressively posher voices. 'Theatre... thurta... thartaaaaah.' It's like an am-dam production of 'Gosford Park'. When you eventually manage to get switchboard's satanic robot to understand a word you've said, it's inevitably the wrong one. Today it would have been more efficient to get through to a radiologist with a couple of yoghurt pots and a length of string. 'Radiology.' 'Transferring you to Audiology. Or say: Cancel.' 'CANCEL!' 'Putting you through to the Cancer Ward.

Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or timbrel, with an ass's skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly.

Indeed, as string theory was understood better, it became clear that the gauge interactions naturally emerged from it. But even more than this, during their period of exile from the mainstream, the string theorists realized that their theory naturally gave rise to an interaction that had all of the hallmarks of the gravitational force. In order to get the force to come out with the right strength, all they had to do was fix the length of the string to be about the Planck length. Thus, string theory had the potential to unify all of physics in a simple framework, in which all phenomena arise from the motion and vibrations of fundamental one-dimensional strings.

Through the archway, and up the hill, I feel it surging, and drop to my knees. A string of black smoke wafts out of my mouth, as a long slender form starts to crawl out of my gaping maw. My eyes water as it slides and pulls and slowly works its way out of me, trying not to bite down, struggling to breathe. And in the glow of the moon the serpent finally weaves its muscled form out of me, a diamond pattern running down its length, crisscrossed threads of silver, a flicker of its tongue, and an angry hiss permeating the night. As it slithers into the underbrush—ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet long—the last of it to disappear are three razor sharp needles sticking out of its tail. (End of Chapter Two.)

And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression — felt it approaching — yet not quite be mine — and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression... I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine — in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people... I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.

This unification of forces and motion has a simple consequence. In a particle theory, you can freely add all kinds of forces, so there is nothing to prevent a proliferation of constants describing the workings of each force. But in string theory, there can be only two fundamental constants. One, called the string tension, describes how much energy is contained per unit-length of string. The other, called the string coupling constant, is a number denoting the probability of a string breakdown into two strings, thus giving rise to a force; as it is a probability, it is a simple number, without units. All the other constants in physics must be related to these two numbers. For example, Newton's gravitational constant turns out to be related to the product of their values.

I remember." I nod. Wanting to say: I remember everything-all of it-the question is: Do you? But instead, I stare down at my feet, smiling stupidly. Everything I do around him is stupid. Some Seeker I've turned out to be. Attempting to redeem myself,say something normal,not let on that I already know he's employed here-thanks to the raven who allowed me to spy on him earlier,I say, "So,I guess you hang out here a lot then?" He pushes a hand through his hair, as his eyes-the color of aquamarines-glide down the length of me.And damn if I can't feel their trajectory. It's like showering in a stream of warm, molten honey-dripping from the top of my forehead all the way down to my feet. "I guess you could say that," he says,voicelow and deep. "More than most, anyway." He waves a damp towel, tugs on the string of his apron, and I blush in reply. The sight of it reminding me of what I saw in the alleyway-watching him lean against the wall,his face so soft anddreamy I longed to touch him-kiss him-like I did in the dream. I study him closely,seeking traces of recognition, remembrance-some small token of evidence to assure me that, as odd as it seems,that kiss in the cave was as real as it felt-but coming up empty. "So,how long have you worked here?" I ask, returning to the topic at hand. My gaze drifting over the black V-necked T-shirt skimming the sinuous line of his body-telling myself it's all part of my reconnaissance,my need to gather as uch information as I can about him and his kin. But knowing that's not really it.The truth is,I like looking at him, being near him. "I guess you could say somewhere between too long and not long enough-depending on the state of my wallet." His laugh is good-natured and easy-the kid that starts at the belly and trips all the way up. "It's pretty much the only decent game in town." He shrugs. "One way or another,you end up working for the Richters,and believe me, this is one of the better gigs." I peer at him closely,remembering what Cade said when I was here via the raven. How he referred to him by another name. "You're not a Richter?" I ask,holding my breath in my cheeks.Despite what Paloma told me, I need to hear it from him,confirm that he doesn't identify with their clan. "I go by Whitefeather," he says,gaze steady and serious. "I was raised by my mom,didn't even know the Richters when I was a kid." Despite getting the answer I wanted, I frown in return. His being a Richter was a good reason to avoid him-without it,I'm out of excuses. "Is that okay?" He dips his head toward mine,his mouth tugging at the side. "You seem a little upset by the news." I shake my head,break free of my reverie, and say, "No-not at all. Believe me,it's more like a relief." I meet his gaze,seeing the way it narrows in question. "Guess I'm not a big fan of your brother," I add,watching as he throws his head back and laughs,the sight of that long,glorious column of neck forcing me to look away,it's too much to take. "If it makes you feel any better, most of the time I'd have to agree." He returns to me,the warmth of his gaze solely reponsible for the wave of comfort that flows through me.

She retrieved the beads she had dropped from under the sewing tables, and strung them again. She made and painted more beads, added the slimerod cores she had dried, the seed pods of this plant, tufts of long hair from cows’ tails caught in brush… she wasn’t sure what she was making, only that she liked the patterns of chunky things and thin ones, color and texture and line. When she put the construction on her body, she realized it needed a bit more here — another length of beads — and something else there to balance the weight and keep it from slipping off her shoulders. She looked in the mirror. Odd how seldom she’d done that, not since before the other landing. She had not wanted to see her expression; she had been afraid that she might frighten herself. But now the figure in the mirror hardly looked human. She stared. She felt the same — mostly the same — and in the mirror her own face scowled at her, the familiar scowl with which she had always greeted her mirror-self. Her eyebrows were thinner and whiter; her white hair a tousled bush of silver. But the inner self that had been so intent on stringing beads and feathers and wool and cows’ hair and seedpods, that had been so sure where to lace this string to that, and how to hang the tassels — that self had not imagined how she would look in anything but the old drab workshirts and skirts and bonnets of earlier years. Indecent, the old voice said. Amazing, the new voice said, with approval. Her body was old, wrinkled, sagging, splotched with the wear-marks of nearly eighty years… but hanging on it in weblike patterns were the brilliant colors and textures of her creation.

One of the first problems to be faced at Niagara was how to get a wire over the gorge and its violent river. Ellet solved that nicely by offering five dollars to the first American boy to fly a kite over to the Canadian side. The prize was won by young Homer Walsh, who would tell the story for the rest of his days. Once the kite string was across, a succession of heavier cords and ropes was pulled over, and in a short time the first length of wire went on its way. After that, when the initial cable had been completed, Ellet decided to demonstrate his faith in it in a fashion people would not forget. He had an iron basket made up big enough to hold him and attached it to the cable with pulleys. Then stepping inside, on a morning in March 1848, he pulled himself over the gorge and back again, all in no more than fifteen minutes’ time, and to the great excitement of crowds gathered along both rims.

I have again been asked to explain how one can "become a Daoists..." with all of the sad things happening in our world today, Laozi and Zhuangzi give words of advice, tho not necessarily to become a Daoist priest or priestess... " So many foreigners who want to become “Religious Daoists” 道教的道师 （道士） do not realize that they must not only receive a transmission of a Lu 籙 register which identifies their Daoist school, and learn as well how to sing the ritual melodies, play the flute, stringed instruments, drums, and sacred dance steps, required to be an ordained and functioning Daoist priest or priestess. This process usually takes 10 years or more of daily discipleship and practice, to accomplish. There are 86 schools and genre of Daoist rituals listed in the Baiyun Guan Gazeteer, 白雲觀志, which was edited by Oyanagi Sensei, in Tokyo, 1928, and again in 1934, and re-published by Baiyun Guan in Beijing, available in their book shop to purchase. Some of the schools, such as the Quanzhen Longmen 全真龙门orders, allow their rituals and Lu registers to be learned by a number of worthy disciples or monks; others, such as the Zhengyi, Qingwei, Pole Star, and Shangqing 正一，清微，北极，上请 registers may only be taught in their fullness to one son and/or one disciple, each generation. Each of the schools also have an identifying poem, from 20 or 40 character in length, or in the case of monastic orders (who pass on the registers to many disciples), longer poems up to 100 characters, which identify the generation of transmission from master to disciple. The Daoist who receives a Lu register (給籙元科, pronounced "Ji Lu Yuanke"), must use the character from the poem given to him by his or her master, when composing biao 表 memorials, shuwen 梳文 rescripts, and other documents, sent to the spirits of the 3 realms (heaven, earth, water /underworld). The rituals and documents are ineffective unless the correct characters and talismanic signature are used. The registers are not given to those who simply practice martial artists, Chinese medicine, and especially never shown to scholars. The punishment for revealing them to the unworthy is quite severe, for those who take payment for Lu transmission, or teaching how to perform the Jinlu Jiao and Huanglu Zhai 金籙醮，黃籙齋 科儀 keyi rituals, music, drum, sacred dance steps. Tang dynasty Tangwen 唐文 pronunciation must also be used when addressing the highest Daoist spirits, i.e., the 3 Pure Ones and 5 Emperors 三请五帝. In order to learn the rituals and receive a Lu transmission, it requires at least 10 years of daily practice with a master, by taking part in the Jiao and Zhai rituals, as an acolyte, cantor, or procession leader. Note that a proper use of Daoist ritual also includes learning Inner Alchemy, ie inner contemplative Daoist meditation, the visualization of spirits, where to implant them in the body, and how to summon them forth during ritual. The woman Daoist master Wei Huacun’s Huangting Neijing, 黃庭內經 to learn the esoteric names of the internalized Daoist spirits. Readers must be warned never to go to Longhu Shan, where a huge sum is charged to foreigners ($5000 to $9000) to receive a falsified document, called a "license" to be a Daoist! The first steps to true Daoist practice, Daoist Master Zhuang insisted to his disciples, is to read and follow the Laozi Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi Neipian, on a daily basis. Laozi Ch 66, "the ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it is the lowest", and Ch 67, "my 3 most precious things: compassion for all, frugal living for myself, respect all others and never put anyone down" are the basis for all Daoist practice. The words of Zhuangzi, Ch 7, are also deeply meaningful: "Yin and Yang were 2 little children who loved to play inside Hundun (ie Taiji, gestating Dao). They felt sorry because Hundun did not have eyes, or eats, or other senses. So everyday they drilled one hole, ie 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, one mouth; and on the 7th day, Hundun died.

three tiers to the heart: physical, ethereal, Eternal with each one being more spiritual and subtle the physical heart a little brain with over 40,000 neurons it sends and receives by electromagnetic field operations it's got its own nervous system that senses and remembers making decisions and giving directions to other centers emitting enfolded energetic organizational patterns information, that is—communicative interactions detected outside the body by magnetometers and other people for heart coherence listen to Pärt's “Spiegel im Spiegel” valid are chakras and acupuncture meridians meditate on the heart chakra to see what this means energy meridians are strings of polarized crystalline water bioelectric signals transmitted in connective tissue matter information is sent along these lengths of collagen proteins molecules of structured water allowing the transfer of protons crystal water wires inside protein pathways with acupuncture points being junctures in the maze the protons, then, are what have been referred to as “chi” a current flowing, much like electrical circuitry

And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression — felt it approaching — yet not quite be mine — and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused, within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine — in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven... in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.

More Activities to Develop Sensory-Motor Skills Sensory processing is the foundation for fine-motor skills, motor planning, and bilateral coordination. All these skills improve as the child tries the following activities that integrate the sensations. FINE-MOTOR SKILLS Flour Sifting—Spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and provide flour, scoop, and sifter. (A turn handle is easier to manipulate than a squeeze handle, but both develop fine-motor muscles in the hands.) Let the child scoop and sift. Stringing and Lacing—Provide shoelaces, lengths of yarn on plastic needles, or pipe cleaners, and buttons, macaroni, cereal “Os,” beads, spools, paper clips, and jingle bells. Making bracelets and necklaces develops eye-hand coordination, tactile discrimination, and bilateral coordination. Egg Carton Collections—The child may enjoy sorting shells, pinecones, pebbles, nuts, beans, beads, buttons, bottle caps, and other found objects and organizing them in the individual egg compartments. Household Tools—Picking up cereal pieces with tweezers; stretching rubber bands over a box to make a “guitar”; hanging napkins, doll clothes, and paper towels with clothespins; and smashing egg cartons with a mallet are activities that strengthen many skills.

The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still. In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat. Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis. Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener. A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls. People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone. Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica. Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment. The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet. The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless. The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers. The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out. And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis. He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him. The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out: ‘Monsieur Bouvet!

In his Dialogue "Timaeus" Plato had a demiurge to create the globe-shaped world according to musical laws, including the human soul. Fifteen hundred years later, that still found an echo in the Renaissance. And in those days the architects realized that the musical harmonies had spatial expressions -- namely, the relationships of the length of strings, and spatial relationships were precisely their only concerns. Because both the world and the body and soul were composed according to musical harmonies by the demiurge architect, both the macrocosm and the microcosm, they must therefore be guided in their own architectural designs by the laws of music.

Pulling off my cover-up, chucking it on the stone flags, I dive in, the shock of the cool water on my overheated skin exactly what I need to stop me thinking. I do a length underwater as fast as I can, and when I come up, gasping and shaking my head, I realize that everyone’s staring at me. “Wow,” Evan says, looking over his guitar, which is propped on his lap as he sits cross-legged on a towel. “You in a race with the Invisible Man?” I giggle at this image. “Violet,” he sings, strumming a chord. “Running a race with a serious face--so did you win? Or was it him? Don’t forget, Vio-let--Dive in!” He ends on a high falsetto note, grinning at me. “That doesn’t make much sense,” he adds. “But hey, at least I rhymed your name.” “Violet’s pretty easy,” I say, propping my arms on the edge of the pool and smiling back at him. “Regret, forget, net, jet, yet, set, bet--” “Try Evan,” he suggests. “Apart from numbers and heaven, which gets old very quickly, there’s practically nothing.” “Numbers? Oh! Eleven…seven…” I furrow my brow. “Devon,” Kelly calls over. “That’s a county in England.” “Leaven,” I add. “You do it to bread.” Evan’s expression is comical, his blue eyes stretched as wide as they’ll go as he plucks a string and, in a singsong nursery-rhyme voice, intones: “From the age of seven to eleven Before he tragically went to heaven Evan leavened bread in Devon.” He throws his hands wide. “See? Not much to work with.

He had his back to Cass, his face resting against a carved cherub as he absentmindedly plucked various strings. Cass stared, watching the movement of his neck and back and shoulders: pieces of motion that were discrete, yet interconnected. She remembered his words from the graveyard. The human form, it’s a symphony. Tiny interlocking movements that join together in song. “It’s about time,” he said, without turning around. He turned slowly, then. The blue eyes. The crooked grin. Cass started to greet him, but her voice stuck in her throat. She reached out for the curlicue bottom of the stairway banister, gripping the bronze for a second, reminding herself that there were no feelings. No. Feelings. She flicked her eyes back up at him, felt her lips forming a smile independent of any command by her brain. Falco cocked an eyebrow. “A beautiful woman who doesn’t speak. Every man’s dream.” “I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” Cass shot back. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight.” Or ever. “I’d thought you might have learned that with me, you must expect the unexpected.” Falco got up from his seat in front of Agnese’s harp, and it was Cass’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Falco was wearing a flowing white chemise overlaid with an embroidered black and silver doublet and knee-length breeches. His hair still curled forward toward his face, but it looked sleeker than usual, as if he had attempted to tame it with some kind of paste. “Why are you dressed like that?” she asked. “Are you going to Mass?” Not likely since Falco professed not to even believe in God.

Are you Mr. Bronson? We've come to teach you your manners.” Zachary flashed a grin at Holly. “I didn't realize when we struck our bargain that I was getting two of you.” Cautiously Rose reached up for her mother's gloved hand. “Is this where we're going to live, Mama? Is there a room for me?” Zachary sat on his haunches and stared into the little girl's face with a smile. “I believe a room right next to your mother's has been prepared for you,” he told her. His gaze fell to the mass of sparkling objects in Rose's hands. “What is that, Miss Rose?” “My button string.” The child let some of the length fall to the ground, displaying a line of carefully strung buttons… picture buttons etched with flowers, fruit or butterflies, ones made of molded black glass and a few of painted enamel and paper. “This one is my perfume button,” Rose said proudly, fingering a large one with velvet backing. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled deeply. “Mama puts her perfume on it for me, to make it smell nice.” As Rose extended it toward him, Zachary ducked his head and detected a faint flowery fragrance that he recognized instantly. “Yes,” he said softly, glancing up at Lady Holly's blushing face. “That smells just like your mama.” “Rose,” Holly said, clearly perturbed, “come with me—ladies do not remain talking on the drive-” “I don't have any buttons like that,” Rose told Zachary, ignoring her mother's words as she stared at one of the large solid gold buttons that adorned his coat. Gazing in the direction of the child's dainty finger, Zachary saw that a miniature hunting landscape was engraved on the surface of his top button. He had never looked closely enough to notice before. “Allow me the honor of adding to your collection, Miss Rose,” he said, reaching inside his coat to extract a small silver folding knife. Deftly he cut the threads holding the button to his coat and handed the object to the excited little girl. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Bronson,” Rose exclaimed. “Thank you!

The educational environment of children should encourage them to continue to explore the open-ended connections between their experiences, and to be receptive to new interconnections and interpretations of theories and explanations that they have either learned or developed. An oft-repeated story illustrates the deadening effect of thinking in terms of narrowly defined fields.16 A high school physics student was given the following problem on an examination: “Suppose you were in a tall building, and had a sensitive barometer in your possession. How would you use it to find the height of the building?” As anyone who has studied introductory physics will instantly recognize, the instructor was looking for the answer he had prepared his students to give—namely, measure the barometric pressure at the bottom and the top of the building, and calculate the height of the building, using the formula that relates the drop in barometric pressure to the increase in elevation going from the ground to the top of the building. The student in question, a very bright and highly independent soul, found it demeaning to provide an answer that he thought was trivially easy. Instead, he answered, “You can do it several ways. One is to drop the barometer from the top of the building and measure how long it takes to hit the ground [thus illustrating that he knew the relationship between height, distance, and time in gravitational free fall, another piece of ‘physics’]. Another is to attach the barometer to a long string, lower it to the ground, and measure the length of the string [no longer ‘physics,’ but rather ‘carpentry’].” The answer, of course, was declared wrong. The student objected strenuously and brought a storm of protest to bear on the examiner—who then agreed to repeat the same question and give the student an opportunity to provide the “correct” answer. The student, no more inclined to be compliant than before, answered, “I would go to the superintendent of the building and offer to give him the barometer as a gift if he would tell me how high his building is [now we have entered ‘economics’].” Leaving

If you give it an index that is greater than or equal to the length of the string, it returns the empty string.

This sense of awe goes way back in the history of mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras felt it around 550 BCE when he and his disciples discovered that music was governed by the ratios of whole numbers. For instance, imagine plucking a guitar string. As the string vibrates, it emits a certain note. Now put your finger on a fret exactly halfway up the string and pluck it again. The vibrating part of the string is now half as long as it used to be—a ratio of 1 to 2—and it sounds precisely an octave higher than the original note (the musical distance from one do to the next in the do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do scale). If instead the vibrating string is ⅔ of its original length, the note it makes goes up by a fifth (the interval from do to sol; think of the first two notes of the Stars Wars theme). And if the vibrating part is ¾ as long as it was before, the note goes up by a fourth (the interval between the first two notes of “Here Comes the Bride”). The ancient Greek musicians knew about the melodic concepts of octaves, fourths, and fifths and considered them beautiful. This unexpected link between music (the harmony of this world) and numbers (the harmony of an imagined world) led the Pythagoreans to the mystical belief that all is number. They are said to have believed that even the planets in their orbits made music, the music of the spheres.

Hey.” A lopsided smirk offers chagrin as he turns my way. “Sorry about that,” he says, and I’m struck by how much I’ve missed his voice. He opens the door and unfolds himself from the tiny car, and then I realize how much I’ve missed him. “You made it.” It’s tough to keep my emotions in check, but I know I need to. “You look tired.” “I took the long way home.” And just like that, he reaches out and pulls me into a hug. Not a shoulder hug, but the real thing, the kind you give to someone you thought of while you were away. I’m surprised at first. I wasn’t expecting…well…that. I was prepared for more of the uncertain off-and-on awkward dance we usually do. Friends…or two people who want something more? We’re never quite sure. But this feels different. I slip my arms under his and hang on. “Tough few days?” I whisper, and he rests his chin on my head. I listen to his heartbeat, feel the sultry warmth of skin against skin. My gaze lingers on the tangle of wisteria vines and crape myrtle branches hiding the ancient structures of Goswood Grove’s once spectacular gardens, concealing whatever secrets they know. “Tough few days all around, it sounds like,” Nathan says finally. “We should go in.” But he hangs on a minute longer. We part slowly, and the next step suddenly seems uncharted. I don’t know how to catalog it. One moment, we’re as natural as breathing. The next, we’re at arm’s length—or retreating to our separate safety zones. He stops halfway across the porch, turns, widens his stance a little like he’s about to pick up something heavy. Crossing his arms, he tilts his head and looks at me, one eye squeezing almost shut. “What are we to each other?” I stand there a moment with my mouth agape before words dribble out in a halting string. “In…in…what way?” I’m terrified, that’s why I don’t give a straight answer. Relationships require truth telling, and that requires risk. An old, insecure part of me says, You’re damaged goods, Benny Silva. Someone like Nathan would never understand. He’ll never see you in the same way again. “Just like it sounds,” he says. “I missed you, Benny, and I promised myself I’d just put it out there this time. Because…well…you’re hard to read.” “I’m hard to read?” Nathan has been largely a mystery I’ve pieced together in fragments. “Me?” He doesn’t fall for the turnabout, or he ignores it. “So, Benny Silva, are we…friends or are we…” The sentence shifts in the wind, unfinished—a fill-in-the-blank question. Those are harder than multiple-choice. “Friends…” I search for the right answer, one not too presumptuous, but accurate. “Going somewhere…at our own pace? I hope.” I feel naked standing there. Scared. Vulnerable. And potentially unworthy of his investment in me. I can’t make the same mistake I’ve made before. There are things he needs to know. It’s only fair, but this isn’t the right moment for it, or the right place. He braces his hands on his hips, lets his head rock forward, exhales a breath he seems to have been holding. “Okay,” he says with a note of approval. His cheek twitches, one corner of his mouth rising. I think he might be blushing a little. “I’ll take that.” “Me, too,” I agree.

I realize that, here on earth, not everyone was meant to stay in our lives for extended lengths of time. I have to remind myself of that because basically I want everyone I care for to always be a part of my string of pearls. Some folks just breeze through; others settle in for a season and then move on; a few hunker down for the long haul. Those who settle in for a lifetime do so not necessarily because they are braver, more loving, or ever more loyal, but because they were meant to. It was part of the plan. So those who have left us must also be considered part of the ultimate plan.

2. If these figures express units of string lengths, then Anu is, with 60 units, the longest string, the bass note. Sin is one octave below Ištar and one above Anu. The ratios of string lengths are thus in reciprocal relation to the ratios of frequencies. It seems appropriate at this point to introduce the musical cent or centième since it is the most tangible unit of tonometry. The conversion of ratios into musical cents consists in multiplying the log to base 10 of the quotient of the division between the denominator and numerator of the ratio by the constant 3986.314. This method produces a scale composed of 1200 units in which equal semitones measure 100 cents. Thus, 1/1 = 0 cents; 2/1= 1200 cents, the octave; 9/8 = 204 cents, the Pythagorean tone; 3/4 = 498, the just fourth; 2/3 = 702, the just fifth, etc. From this we see that the gods’ respective numbers are contained in the span of the top octave. Anu, Enlil, Ea and Sin provide with the tonal infrastructure for the Babylonian scale as shown below: SIN EA ENLIL ANU 0 498 884 1200 Fundamental Fourth Sixth Octave Anu/Enlil 60/50 = 6/5 = 316 = just minor third Enlil/Ea 50/40 = 5/4 = 386 = just major third Ea/Sin 40/30 = 4/3 = 498 = just fourth Sin/Šamaš 30/20 = 3/2 = 702 = just fifth Šamaš/Bel 20/10 = 2/1 = 1200 = octave.

Expanded Consciousness may be considered in terms of "Nodal Synchrony" [Nodal: intersection pathways. Synchrony: occurring simultaneously] and in most cases considered in terms of harmonics [at a fixed interval, produced by vibration of a string, column of air, etc. in an exact fraction of its length] where they vibrate together using similar carrier waves [a high-frequency electromagnetic wave modulated in amplitude or frequency to convey a signal].

I drove back to Hollywood feeling like a short length of chewed string. It was too early to eat, and too hot. I turned on the fan in my office. It didn't make the air any cooler, just a little more lively.

Because it’s only when we stop clinging on to the plans we’ve made that we step on to the middle way – the way of the unknown. We call this the sacred path of the warrior.’ He must notice the uncertainty in my expression because he reaches into a pocket beneath his robes and brings out a length of fine red string.

Pythagoras, in particular, was fascinated by the geometric proportions found throughout the natural world. Before Pythagoras, there is little evidence that musicians tuned their instruments using any particular system or scales. It's understood that Pythagoras experimented with a monochord, a single-stringed instrument with a moving bridge, to identify the way that plucking a string of various lengths creates particular musical notes. The proportions that he identified to be most harmonious happened to match the proportions of animal and plant growth (which we'll investigate later in this book). His observations were the foundation of the Western scale of music. This is a great example of isolating natural elements and combining them into a new art from. So magical seeming were his discoveries to conservative authorities that he feared for his life and started a secret society to study nature's mysteries more deeply.

I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place but also a state of mind, and the word audience was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning 24 hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance.

Calling to Measure It’s an obsession now, this matching And measuring, comparing, for instance, The coral-violet of the inner lip Of a queen conch to the last rim of dusk On the purple-flowering raspberry To the pure indigo of the bird-voiced Tree frog’s twittering tongue, then converting The result to an accepted standard Of rose-scarlet gradations. It’s difficult to say which is greater- The brevity of the elk’s frosty bellow Or the moments of fog sun-lifted Through fragrances of blue spruce Or the fading flavor in one spoonful Of warm chocolate rum. I mark out space by ten peas Strung on a string. The pane perimeter Of my window, for instance, is twenty-eight Lengths, twelve lengths over. Seventy pea-strings stretch from bed To door, Four go round my neck. My longing for you is more painful Than the six-times folding, doubling And doubling, of a coyote’s Most piercing cry, more inconsolable Than a whole night of moonlight blinded By thunderclouds, more constant Than black at the center of a cavern Stone below leagues of granite. I gauge my cold by the depth Of stillness in the pod heart of a frozen Wren. I time my breath by the faltering Leaves of aspen in wind. I count the circles Of my dizziness by the spreading rings Of rain-lassos on the pond, by the repeating Bell chimes of the corridor clock, By the one unending ring of the horizon. Where is the tablet, where the rule, where The steel weights, the balance, the book, Properly to make measure of a loss So grand and deep I can spread and stitch it To every visible star I name- Arcturus, Spica, Vega, Regulus- in this dark Surrounding dark surrounding dark?

We should wait for the moon to rise,” she said, “before we go down to the camp.” “And what,” he murmured, “will we do while we wait?” She brought his fingers to her lips so that he could feel her smile. His hand traveled the length of her braid and toyed with the leather string that bound it. He untied the knot. The sound of it coming undone was as soft as a breath. He unraveled her hair, and brought her close.

strings’. These say that the frequency of a stretched string is inversely proportional to its length, directly proportional to the square root of its tension, and inversely proportional to the square root of the linear density.

As Cosmic Vibration, all things are one; but when Cosmic Vibration becomes frozen into matter, it becomes many--including man's body, which is a part of this variously divided matter.* (*footnote: Recent advances in what theoretical physicists call 'superstring theory' are leading science toward an understanding of the vibratory nature of creation. Brian Greene, Ph.D., professor of physics at Cornell and Columbia Universities, writes in The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (New York: Vintage Books, 2000): 'During the last thirty years of his life, Albert Einstein sought relentlessly for a so-called unified field theory--a theory capable of describing nature's forces within a single, all-encompassing, coherent framework...Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, proponents of string theory claim that the threads of this elusive unified tapestry finally have been revealed...' 'The theory suggests that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the universe,' Professor Greene writes, and tells us that 'the length of a typical string loop is...about a hundred billion billion (1020) times smaller than an atomic nucleus.')

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

Roger and I constructed the tape loop for ‘Money’ in our home studios and then took it in to Abbey Road. I had drilled holes in old pennies and then threaded them on to strings; they gave one sound on the loop of seven. Roger had recorded coins swirling around in the mixing bowl Judy used for her pottery, the tearing paper effect was created very simply in front of a microphone and the faithful sound library supplied the cash registers. Each sound was first measured out on the tape with a ruler before being cut to the same length and then carefully spliced together.

I keep visualising time as a length of string, with a flame burning at one end that represents the present, where we can act and be most alive. The ashes are the past, the intact string is the future. The string splits every time something happens. The dead are ashes: they still exist and never leave us. I can feel the string descending, still blazing in parts, but mostly it is crisp and brown and stretched out ahead.

Flower of life: A figure composed of evenly-spaced, overlapping circles creating a flower-like pattern. Images of the Platonic solids and other sacred geometrical figures can be discerned within its pattern. FIGURE 3.14 FLOWER OF LIFE The Platonic solids: Five three-dimensional solid shapes, each containing all congruent angles and sides. If circumscribed with a sphere, all vertices would touch the edge of that sphere. Linked by Plato to the four primary elements and heaven. FIGURE 3.15 PENTACHORON The applications of these shapes to music are important to sound healing theory. The ancients have always professed a belief in the “music of the spheres,” a vibrational ordering to the universe. Pythagorus is famous for interconnecting geometry and math to music. He determined that stopping a string halfway along its length created an octave; a ratio of three to two resulted in a fifth; and a ratio of four to three produced a fourth. These ratios were seen as forming harmonics that could restore a disharmonic body—or heal. Hans Jenny furthered this work through the study of cymatics, discussed later in this chapter, and the contemporary sound healer and author Jonathan Goldman considers the proportions of the body to relate to the golden mean, with ratios in relation to the major sixth (3:5) and the minor sixth (5:8).100 Geometry also seems to serve as an “interdimensional glue,” according to a relatively new theory called causal dynamical triangulation (CDT), which portrays the walls of time—and of the different dimensions—as triangulated. According to CDT, time-space is divided into tiny triangulated pieces, with the building block being a pentachoron. A pentachoron is made of five tetrahedral cells and a triangle combined with a tetrahedron. Each simple, triangulated piece is geometrically flat, but they are “glued together” to create curved time-spaces. This theory allows the transfer of energy from one dimension to another, but unlike many other time-space theories, this one makes certain that a cause precedes an event and also showcases the geometric nature of reality.101 The creation of geometry figures at macro- and microlevels can perhaps be explained by the notion called spin, first introduced in Chapter 1. Everything spins, the term spin describing the rotation of an object or particle around its own axis. Orbital spin references the spinning of an object around another object, such as the moon around the earth. Both types of spin are measured by angular momentum, a combination of mass, the distance from the center of travel, and speed. Spinning particles create forms where they “touch” in space.

A tiny heart floats in a yellowing liquid, somehow still beating. Next to it, a bowl filled with Yoyos, the strings dirty, crusted with brown stains, a meaty smell lifting off of the faded toys. In a large glass mason jar there is nothing but hair—long blonde strands, several puffs of dark, curly tightness, and brown clippings in a number of lengths, all mixed together. (The Caged Bird Sings in a Darkness of Its Own Creation)

I will love you not just for your wit and talent and beauty, but simply because you are you, with no strings attached. I love you for who you are deep in your soul, not for the colour of your eyes or the length of your legs or the size of your cheque book".

The Blue Moon Wish Spell The “Blue Moon” is when there are 2 full moons in one month, it is in the horoscopic symbol of Pisces. To see the dates for the blue moon click here. It illuminates intuition, creativity, and compassion.  This is the time that you should start thinking about all your wishes and intentions. As a practitioner of witchcraft, you should make sure that you perform this ritual since such an astrological opportunity only occurs “once in a Blue Moon”.  Requirements a quartz crystal a cinnamon stick A blue pen a blue candle a sheet of parchment paper 3 safety pins a glass  of spring water or wine A piece silver cord or string, of a length of 24 inches a square of blue cloth Vial of success potion (not mandatory) 1 book of matches On the day before of the Blue Moon, collect all the above items and then set a specific time for performing the spell without any distractions.  Quietly sit down with all your items as listed above and place them before you on a table.  Shut your eyes and bring your mind to silence, after that, concentrate on your breathing.  The moment you feel clear and grounded, you can open your eyes and start the spell. While lighting the candle, think of 3 things that you would like to occur by the year’s end. You can also wish for something that takes place once in a blue moon. (rarely) Pat success oil on your, wrists, temple and your neck for a boost in case you have some. Envision one particular wish coming true while holding the quartz crystal in your hands. Vision yourself doing the thing you are wishing for, or clearly see something that you wish for happen before you. Pick your pen and paper up and start writing down your wishes as you keenly visualize them. Note them down in their order of importance to you.   After you note down the three wishes on your piece of parchment, separately tear them out Attach each of your wishes to the square piece of cloth using a safety pin Place the cinnamon stick in the middle of the cloth and then inwardly fold the sides of the cloth. After that, roll it up. Tightly seal your projections by wrapping the string around the cloth nine times and after that, tie steadily with a knot. Take your wishes and walk outside with them while holding the libation of your choice. Look up to the sky or the moon.  Lift up your glass and say the following words; “On this eve of the Blue Moon, out my intents go. I request they be received, and it is so” Place the cloth containing your wishes in a concealed place where you are the only one who can see it often all the way through the coming few months as a reminder to the wishes you have made.

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

The mining process for bitcoin is a continual cycle of hashing a few pieces of data together in pursuit of an output that meets a predetermined difficulty level, mainly the number of 0s that the output starts with. We call this output the golden hash. Recall that a hash function takes data—for example the text in this sentence—and hashes it into a fixed-length string of alphanumeric digits. While the output of a hash function is always of fixed length, the characters within it are unpredictable, and therefore changing one piece of data in the input can drastically change the output. It’s called a golden hash because it bestows the privilege of that miner’s block of transactions being appended to Bitcoin’s blockchain. As a reward, that miner gets paid in a coinbase transaction, which is the first transaction in the block. Currently, that transaction delivers 12.5 bitcoin to the lucky miner.

I was looking up my name,” I told her. “Did you know that Imani means faith in Swahili? ” I watched Mom’s face to see if her eyebrows would go up or down. It was like I was in science class, recording the color change of a piece of litmus paper. The result was better than I could have hoped: One eyebrow up! “Really?” Mom said, sounding genuinely interested. “Your Hebrew name means faith too. They must come from the same root.

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

There are some paintings in this room. Come see." The hallway was a mirror image of the one upstairs, following the length of the E, but this floor was more luxurious, with more golden wood on the walls. "Here," he said and pushed open a creaky door to reveal a room as lush and surprising in all the rot as a blooming bougainvillea in a desert. Time and ruin showed here, too, but even so, the colors were visible- patterns and embroidery and exuberant fabrics. Paintings of a dozen sizes crowded together on the walls, the frames thick with dust and strings of cobwebs, paintings of peacocks and tropical landscapes and portraits of exotic people- a sultan in a harem, a tall dark-skinned woman with dark eyes as mysterious as a deep lake, a tiger lolling on a carpet amid a crowd of beautiful women.

They had escaped only a short distance when they heard a soft thunk, followed by a string of cursing. In Wallachian. “Lada,” Radu whispered. Mehmed put a finger to his lips, and they crept forward with exaggerated stealth. Lada stood in the middle of a small clearing, her back to them, a quiver of arrows next to her. She had marked out targets on a tree some distance away, ambitious even for a practiced bowman. She pulled back the bowstring, then released it. The arrow flew wide of the tree, landing two arm lengths away. She stomped her foot, berating herself in meaner, more foul terms than any Radu had ever heard. Mehmed could not understand what she was saying, could not hear the hatred and recrimination Lada spat out on her own head. Radu could, though, and he wondered when his sister had decided that nothing less than perfection was acceptable. He stood, wanting to go to her, to hug her, to tell her that it was okay. She still had time to learn, and she was good at so many other things. He wanted her to stop saying those horrible things, to stop thinking them.

In the sixth century B.C., the Greek scholar and philosopher Pythagoras decided to try and make things easier for everyone by standardizing, or at least dissecting, musical tuning. He had already discovered the relationship between pitch frequencies and lengths of string and had defined what an octave was, so he figured standardizing tuning was the next logical step. He divided a circle into 12 equal sections, like a clock. The result of his experimentation eventually became known as the Circle of Fifths, which is still used today. Each of the 12 points around the circle was assigned a pitch value, which roughly corresponds to the present system of an octave with 12 half steps. Western music theorists have since updated Pythagoras’s Circle of Fifths to what you see in Figure 8-1.

green olive tapenade makes about 3 cups 2 roasted red bell peppers, peeled and finely diced (see Chapter 1) 1 cup pitted and chopped green Cerignola olives 2 anchovy fillets, drained and crushed 2 tablespoons drained capers, rinsed and smashed 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley Freshly ground black pepper Kosher salt 1 In a nonreactive glass or ceramic mixing bowl, combine the bell peppers, olives, anchovies, capers, and vinegar. Add the olive oil and parsley and about 1 teaspoon of black pepper and stir gently to mix well. Season to taste with salt. 2 Cover and refrigerate for up to 7 days. homemade giardiniera makes about 6 cups 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 bay leaf Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes Pinch of dried oregano 2 cups apple cider vinegar 1 cup white wine vinegar 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 fennel bulb, trimmed of fronds, diced 1 large red onion, diced 1 celery rib, diced 1 large carrot, peeled and diced 1 large red bell pepper, ribs removed, diced 1 large yellow bell pepper, ribs removed, diced 1 jalapeño pepper, halved and seeded 1 cup cauliflower florets 1 cup pitted and halved Queen green olives or other large green olives 3 pickled peperoncini, sliced (see Note) 1 fresh sprig thyme 1 cup extra virgin olive oil 1 In a small, dry skillet set over medium-high heat, toast the black pepper, bay leaf, red pepper, and oregano for about 1 minute, or until fragrant. Slide from the pan to a plate and allow to cool. 2 Lay a 5-to 6-inch square of cheesecloth on a work surface. When the herbs are cool, pile them in the center. Gather the corners together and tie with a length of string to make an herb sachet. 3 In a large pot, heat 2 cups of water and the cider vinegar, wine vinegar, sugar, salt, and herb sachet over high heat and bring to a boil. 4 Add the fennel, onion, celery, carrot, bell peppers, jalapeño, and cauliflower. Let the liquid return to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the firmer vegetables (carrots, peppers, cauliflower) are al dente. 5 Remove from the heat and let cool. When the mixture is cool, add the olives, peperoncini, and thyme. Stir to mix, and then stir in the olive oil. Use right away or cover and refrigerate for up to 1 month.

We don’t know how, and we don’t know why, but it would appear that the length of your string does, in fact, correlate with the expected length of your life.

A string of multicolored Christmas lights roped around the length of the yard, and Ryan Adams played in the background.

The Trinity is a mathematical absurdity in the context of a god limited in his operations to just the four dimensions of length, width, height, and time. Then I share with them the evidence from general relativity, the big bang, and string theory for the existence of six more dimensions besides the four we humans experience.

the length of one’s string did not, in fact, equate with the time left to live, as some had initially posited. The measure of the string held instead the full measure of one’s life. From the beginning until the end.

Others found comfort in the strings’ uncanny power, enabling them to believe that the lives of their short-string loved ones were not, in fact, cut short. They were just as long as they were meant to be, since the moment they were born and the length of their string was seemingly determined. It made losing them somehow easier to accept, trusting that nothing could have changed the ending, that their deaths did not hinge upon any particular decisions they made, what they did or didn’t do. Because of the strings, there was no need to wonder what might have happened if they had lived in a different city, or eaten different foods, or driven a different route home.

to know that any length was possible, and so, perhaps, the length didn’t matter. That the beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle had always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.