Tricky Questions Quotes

O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer." "The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?" "Life!" urged Fook. "The Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!" they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky," he said finally. "But can you do it?" Again, a significant pause. "Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it." "There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement. "Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it." ... Fook glanced impatiently at his watch. “How long?” he said. “Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought. Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other. “Seven and a half million years...!” they cried in chorus. “Yes,” declaimed Deep Thought, “I said I’d have to think about it, didn’t I?" [Seven and a half million years later.... Fook and Lunkwill are long gone, but their descendents continue what they started] "We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great question of Life....!" "The Universe...!" said Loonquawl. "And Everything...!" "Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture. "I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!" There was a moment's expectant pause while panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel. "Good Morning," said Deep Thought at last. "Er..good morning, O Deep Thought" said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have...er, that is..." "An Answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes, I have." The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. "There really is one?" breathed Phouchg. "There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought. "To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and everything?" "Yes." Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children. "And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonsuawl. "I am." "Now?" "Now," said Deep Thought. They both licked their dry lips. "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought. "that you're going to like it." "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" "Now?" inquired Deep Thought. "Yes! Now..." "All right," said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable. "You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..." "Yes..!" "Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought. "Yes...!" "Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes...!" "Is..." "Yes...!!!...?" "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Often the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of. What are you running from? What are you waiting for?

Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.

Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake, but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach or your teacher, because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the six hundred guys think about giving up, and joining with the other side? I mean, valley of death that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage it's tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you're doing something. I mean any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason for you either do something or you don't. It's who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honor. And maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too.

Quantum mechanics holds that matter may not be as innocent of mind as the materialist would have us believe. For example, a subatomic particle can exist simultaneously in multiple locations, is pure possibility, until it is measured—that is, perceived by a mind. Only then and not a moment sooner does it drop into reality as we know it: acquire fixed coordinates in time and space. The implication here is that matter might not exist as such in the absence of a perceiving subject. Needless to say, this raises some tricky questions for a materialist understanding of consciousness. The ground underfoot may be much less solid than we think.

X-Plane tells us that flight on Mars is difficult, but not impossible. NASA knows this, and has considered surveying Mars by airplane. The tricky thing is that with so little atmosphere, to get any lift, you have to go fast.

Of course, the tricky thing about these little questions was that, once I started asking them, it was hard to stop.

Asking good questions is hard because it requires you to see past the easy answers and to focus instead on the difficult, the tricky, the mysterious, the awkward, and sometimes the painful.

I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!

—Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.

We have laws in our country that tell us not to murder or steal and we have police that enforce them. The question is whether you personally need the police to watch you. If they disappeared would you begin killing and thieving because you know no one will come after you, or will you carry on not doing it because it is what you actually believe is right?

I walked away with the cheerful step of a police officer who’s just made a tricky ethical question somebody else’s problem.

One spiritual writer has observed that human beings are born with two diseases: life, from which we die; and hope, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is built into the structure of our personalities, into the depths of our unconscious; it plagues us to the very moment of our death. The critical question is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the imprint of reality.

As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart’s Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love – I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing. I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there’s no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell – and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you’ll frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren’t so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose to write a certain kind of narrative either in isolation or inspired by their fellows, holding any one of them accountable for the total outcome would be like trying to blame an avalanche on a single snowflake. Certainly, we may point at those with the greatest (arguable) influence or expostulate about creative domino effects, but as with the drop that breaks the levee, it is impossible to try and isolate the point at which a cluster of stories became a culture of stories – or, for that matter, to hold one particular narrative accountable for the whole.

X-Plane tells us that flight on Mars is difficult, but not impossible. NASA knows this, and has considered surveying Mars by airplane. The tricky thing is that with so little atmosphere, to get any lift, you have to go fast. You need to approach Mach 1 just to get off the ground, and once you get moving, you have so much inertia that it’s hard to change course—if you turn, your plane rotates, but keeps moving in the original direction. The X-Plane author compared piloting Martian aircraft to flying a supersonic ocean liner.

Fawcett also shared with me a passion for words and we would trawl the dictionary together and simply howl and wriggle with delight at the existence of such splendours as ‘strobile’ and ‘magniloquent’, daring and double-daring each other to use them to masters in lessons without giggling. ‘Strobile’ was a tricky one to insert naturally into conversation, since it means a kind of fir-cone, but magniloquent I did manage. I, being I, went always that little bit too far of course. There was one master who had berated me in a lesson for some tautology or other. He, as what human being wouldn’t when confronted with a lippy verbal show-off like me, delighted in seizing on opportunities to put me down. He was not, however, an English teacher, nor was he necessarily the brightest man in the world. ‘So, Fry. “A lemon yellow colour” is precipitated in your test tube is it? I think you will find, Fry, that we all know that lemons are yellow and that yellow is a colour. Try not to use thee words where one will do. Hm?’ I smarted under this, but got my revenge a week or so later. ‘Well, Fry? It’s a simple enough question. What is titration?’ ‘Well, sir…, it’s a process whereby…’ ‘Come on, come on. Either you know or you don’t.’ ‘Sorry sir, I am anxious to avoid pleonasm, but I think…’ ‘Anxious to avoid what?’ ‘Pleonasm, sir.’ ‘And what do you mean by that?’ ‘I’m sorry, sir. I meant that I had no wish to be sesquipedalian.’ ‘What?’ ‘Sesquipedalian, sir.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I allowed a note of confusion and bewilderment to enter my voice. ‘I didn’t want to be sesquipedalian, sir! You know, pleonastic.’ ‘Look, if you’ve got something to say to me, say it. What is this pleonastic nonsense?’ ‘It means sir, using more words in a sentence than are necessary. I was anxious to avoid being tautologous, repetitive or superfluous.’ ‘Well why on earth didn’t you say so?’ ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll remember in future, sir.’ I stood up and turned round to face the whole form, my hand on my heart. ‘I solemnly promise in future to help sir out by using seven words where one will do. I solemnly promise to be as pleonastic, prolix and sesquipedalian as he could possibly wish.’ It is a mark of the man’s fundamental good nature that he didn’t whip out a knife there and then, slit my throat from ear to ear and trample on my body in hobnailed boots. The look he gave me showed that he came damned close to considering the idea.

The world of tricky-tacky boxes, defined social behaviour, untrammeled egotism, sexism and material acquisitiveness, all powered by insecurity that passes for security, is rarely cajoled, least of all questioned. Much of the magic of of life space contrast has passed out of North American life.

The Weakest Link was a huge success, thanks to the simple device of letting Anne Robinson tell the contestants they were rubbish and stupid. Trouble is, they weren’t rubbish and stupid – the questions were often genuinely tricky. What we really want is a quiz show in which authentic dimwits have their efforts mercilessly pilloried – a version of Family Fortunes in which millions of viewers can phone a special number to collectively heckle the idiocy of everyone participating, with the resulting cacophonic abuse relayed live in the studio. Or maybe just an edition of Wheel of Fortune where John Leslie finally snaps and cracks a simpleton in the face with a broom.

Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake, but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach or your teacher, because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the six hundred guys think about giving up, and joining with the other side? I mean, valley of death that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage it's tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you're doing something. I mean any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason for you either do something or you don't. It's who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honor. And maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too.

Imagine you were asked in a maths paper at junior school, 'Which would you prefer, a shilling or two sixpences?' and you answered, 'Two sixpences,' because thinking of the two tiny silver coins jingling together in your pocket made you feel good and you loved those cute little sixpences. But when the test paper was returned you saw a big red cross through your answer, and that night your mother explained to you that it was a trick question, two sixpences and a shilling were worth the same amount – which you knew, but you'd still prefer two sixpences. It wasn't that you were stupid, you just saw things from a different angle. Sixpences had character, shillings didn't. And you felt richer with two sixpences because there were two coins, not just one. But despite all these explanations, you were still wrong and you kept getting tripped up by these trick questions over and over again, in exams, in relationships, friendships, jobs and interviews. In fact, these misreadings of situations happened so often that you started to view the world as a tricksy and untruthful place. Then you noticed that the people who saw the tricks behind the questions were popular and always at the top of the class. Baffled by life and its unseen rules, you began to doubt everything around you. You felt you had to approach all of life as a trick, just to get it right a few times.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. You won't delight a man by complimenting him on the efforts by which he has become intelligent or generous. On the other hand, he will beam if you admire his natural generosity. Inversely, if you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you. During the counsel's speech, this is the moment he will choose to weep. Yet there is no credit in being honest or intelligent by birth. Just as one is surely no more responsible for being a criminal by nature than for being a criminal by circumstance. But those rascals want grace, that is irresponsibility, and they shamelessly allege the justifications of nature of the excuses of circumstances, even if they are contradictory. The essentially thing is that they should be innocent, that their virtues, by grace of birth, should not be questioned and that their misdeeds, born of a momentary misfortune, should never be more than provisional. As I told you, it's a matter of dodging judgement. Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one's nature simultaneously admired and excused, they all strive to be rich. Why? Did you ever ask yourself? For power, of course. But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgement, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-plated automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins. Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that's always worth taking.

Mr. Rudolph reaches out and lifts the flower out of its vase. "To a flower, this photograph means nothing. So when you ask what is the meaning of life, there can be no answer that will apply to everyone and everything. What is a photograph, or a sunset, to a flower? We all bring our own perceptions, needs, and experiences to everything we do. We will all interpret an event, or a sunset, differently." He pauses, and I am trying to keep up with him. "Basically," I (Jeremy) say slowly, concentrating on my words. "What you're saying is that it's all relative. The meaning of the sunset, or of life itself, is different for everyone?" Exactly," he says. ... As we head slowly into the big room, I turn to him and ask, "But even if the sunset has different meanings for everyone, it still has meaning, right?" "That's a tricky question to answer," Mr. Rudolph says, stopping to replace the frame back on the wall. "That sunset will still shine just as surely, just as colorfully, whether it is shining on a wedding or a war. So it would seem that the sunset itself doesn't have inherent meaning; it is just doing its job. If the sunset doesn't have meaning apart from what we give it, does a rock? Or a fish? Or life itself? But just because a park bench, for instance, doesn't have meaning, that doesn't mean it doesn't have worth." ... We have reached the door now, and I'm not sure I'm any closer to understanding what's in the box. My shoulders sag. "Maybe this will help clear things up," Mr. Rudolph says. "You need to be sure of the question you are asking. Sometimes people think they are looking for the meaning of life, when really they are looking for an understanding of why they are here. What their purpose is, the purpose of life in general. And that is a much easier question to answer that the meaning of life." Lizzy is already halfway out the door. "It is?" I ask, pulling her back in by the sleeve. ... "You are the same as the lamp, the chair, the flower," Mr. Rudolph explains. "All you have to do is be the most authentic you that you can be. Find out who you really are, find out why you are here, and you will find your purpose. And with it, the meaning of life.

We can spend our lives fretting about our deaths, or we can use our brief time to sink deeper into the experience of being human, for all it entails. The good, the tricky, the impermanent. We can acknowledge our death will one day come and use that knowledge to create a life so whole, so honest, so juicy, that it is worth leaving. I have seen over and over human beings' personal reckonings in the final moments of life. It begs the question: What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully? Without our deaths, none of it would matter. There would be no context for what we do. When we live in relationship to our mortality, it adds direction to our actions, truth to our words, rapture to our experience, authenticity to our being, and maybe pounds to our hips. We can make choices that resonate with the core of our being, free from societal expectations and the judgment of others. While our lives and choices may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, they are not. With the dizzying serendipity that must occur for us to be born, the fact that we live is a miracle.

A Conversation with the Author What was your inspiration for The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle? Inspiration is a flash-of-lightning kind of word. What happens to me is more like sediment building. I love time travel, Agatha Christie, and the eighties classic Quantum Leap, and over time a book emerged from that beautiful quagmire. Truthfully, having the idea was the easy part, keeping track of all the moving parts was the difficulty. Which character was the most interesting to write, and in which host do you feel Aiden truly flourishes? Lord Cecil Ravencourt, by miles. He occupies the section of the book where the character has to grapple with the time travel elements, the body swapping elements, and the murder itself. I wanted my most intelligent character for that task, but I thought it would be great to hamper him in some way, as well. Interestingly, I wanted to make him really loathsome—which is why he’s a banker. And yet, for some reason, I ended up quite liking him, and feeding a few laudable qualities into his personality. I think Derby ended up getting a double dose of loathsome instead. Other than that, it’s just really nice seeing the evolution of his relationship with Cunningham. Is there a moral lesson to Aiden’s story or any conclusion you hope the reader walks away with as they turn the final page? Don’t be a dick! Kind, funny, intelligent, and generous people are behind every good thing that’s ever happened to me. Everybody else you just have to put up with. Like dandruff. Or sunburn. Don’t be sunburn, people. In one hundred years, do you believe there will be something similar to Blackheath, and would you support such a system? Yes, and not exactly. Our prison system is barbaric, but some people deserve it. That’s the tricky part of pinning your flag to the left or right of the moral spectrum. I think the current system is unsustainable, and I think personality adjustment and mental prisons are dangerous, achievable technology somebody will abuse. They could also solve a lot of problems. Would you trust your government with it? I suppose that’s the question. The book is so contained, and we don’t get to see the place that Aiden is escaping to! Did you map that out, and is there anything you can share about the society beyond Blackheath’s walls? It’s autocratic, technologically advanced, but they still haven’t overcome our human weaknesses. You can get everywhere in an hour, but television’s still overrun with reality shows, basically. Imagine the society that could create something as hateful as Annabelle Caulker.

This felt like a golden opportunity to alert Dan to some non-negotiables I had regarding men. "Bear with me," I told Dan. "This is going to be a long list. I don't like strong scents, so that kind of prohibits waking up next to someone of the opposite sex, or any sex, really. I'm extremely sensitive to smell. I have a problem with smelling anyone's breath. I'm not the kind of person who can get past that. I get turned off very easily. It could be anything. It could be finding out they have a cat, or seeing their apartment, or they could love room temperature water...Feet are tricky. That's why I like to lead with them. When I meet a guy I like, I take out a foot and show him what he'll be dealing with if things go any further. Put your worse foot forward. That's how I like to start a conversation. And then, when they're gracious enough to tolerate me and my feet, God forbid they have a weird foot or a double-decker toe - I can't deal with it...Also, I have too many questionable habits that no man would be cool with, and by the way, if there was a guy that was cool with them, I'm not sure I'd be interested in him..I can get icked out so easily. I'm aware this behavior is unreasonable and immature, and I'd like it to stop. I don't want to get turned off so easily, but I just don't know how to get past a bad pair of shoes, or...male jewelry.

Kershaw had long ago realized, apparently, that dealing with Brits was tricky. You had to listen to what a Brit was saying - which was invariably that he thought XYZ was a terrific idea and he hoped it went very well for you - while at the same time paying heed to the greasy, nauseous suspicion you had that, although every word and phrase indicated approval, somehow the sum of the whole was that you'd have to be a mental pygmy to come up with this plan and a complete fucking idiot to pursue it. After six years working with the Brits in various theatres he'd come to the conclusion that they didn't do it on purpose. The thing was, Brits actually thought that subtext was plain text. To a Brit, the modern English language was vested with hundreds of years of unbroken history and cultural nuance, so that every single word had a host of implications depending on who said it to whom, when, and how. British soldiers, for example, gave entire reports to their commanders by the way they said 'good morning, sir' and then had to spend half an hour telling them the detail, which was why the Brits always looked bored in briefings. They could sense the trajectory of the conversation, knew the bad news was coming now and the good news now and that there was a question on the end which needed thinking about. With a bit of work they could deduce the question, too, but they always waited politely for it to be asked so that no one felt rushed.

You are people on earth. You are not alone here, and that means you owe the other people on earth certain things. What you owe them, more or less, is to live by rules they wouldn’t reject as unfair (assuming they’re decent, reasonable people). (...) If you feel like those people could reasonably reject your idea for what to do, maybe don’t do it. Maybe do something else. Or you can try this: You can think to yourself, before you do something, “Would it be okay if everyone did this? What would the world be like if every single person were allowed to do whatever I’m about to do?” If that world seems twisted, or unfair, or nonsensical, you should probably do something else. Or: Think about what you’re about to do, and imagine the result. Think of how many people will be happy, and how many sad, and how happy or sad they’ll be. Think about how soon they’ll be sad or happy, and for how long they’ll be sad or happy. Try to total it all up in your mind, and think about whether what you’re about to do will result in more total sadness or happiness. This one is tricky, but sometimes it’s the best way to find an answer. And while you’re here on earth, think about the parts of people you love—their kindness, generosity, loyalty, courage, determination, mildness. Aim yourselves at the exact right amount of those qualities, as best you can—not too much, not too little. And know that you’re going to get it wrong. You’ll try to be mild, let’s say, and you won’t be mild enough, then you’ll overcompensate and become too mild, and that’ll keep happening, and it’ll annoy people, and that will sting. But hopefully, by trying over and over, you’ll get closer and closer to getting it right. The trying is important. Keep trying.

So what’s the computational power of a human brain measured in the bits and FLOPS from chapter 2?*4 This is a delightfully tricky question, and the answer depends dramatically on how we ask it: • Question 1: How many FLOPS are needed to simulate a brain? • Question 2: How many FLOPS are needed for human intelligence? • Question 3: How many FLOPS can a human brain perform? There have been lots of papers published on question 1, and they typically give answers in the ballpark of a hundred petaFLOPS, i.e., 1017 FLOPS.58 That’s about the same computational power as the Sunway TaihuLight (figure 3.7), the world’s fastest supercomputer in 2016, which cost about $300 million.

At Mara’s questioning look he nocked an arrow and nodded. She turned back to face the boar, her eyes intense and focused. This would be a tricky shot. He leaned back and felt the tension strain his arms as he pulled the string. He aimed and released, exhaling a long breath. The arrow sped straight at the boar. It was a good shot, but the arrow caught a thicket's branch and droned off past the creature. Damned! How could he miss?

Often, the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of. What are you running from? What are you waiting for?” ― Sanhita Baruah

REACH” PRINCIPLES • Respect for the unknown • Ethics in our use of precognition • Accuracy of our precognitive skills • Compassion for ourselves and others • Honesty in all our dealings How to truly practise the REACH principles How can James or anyone in an unsupportive environment practise the REACH principles? It’s an important question to ask – not just for James, but for anyone who has already run into disorientation or destabilization as a result of their spontaneous precognitive abilities. We have heard from some of these people, and they tend to be desperate to control their abilities so they do not feel like “freaks” at the mercy of their gift. As we explore what James could do, we are also exploring what anyone could do to turn their relationship with precognition in a positive direction if they feel it has become disorientating for them. The first change would be to take a thorough inventory of your relationships – are they supportive of who you are and the gifts you have to offer? If not, the first change you need to make is to find one or two people whom you trust, and talk with them in confidence about your practice of controlled precognition. Tell them about your intention to be a Positive Precog and share with them what that means to you. Tell them why it is important to you to try out your gifts in this area. This will be a different conversation for each person, but the basic idea is that you need a few people in your life who accept and love you for who you are, especially when who you are is someone who has something controversial to offer. If precognition is a big part of your life, you need to tell them about that. You can expect three responses – scepticism (from science-minded people who haven’t read the literature about precognition or don’t believe it), concern (from people who fear you are messing with things you don’t understand), and support (from people who are open enough to support what you are interested in). Dealing with scepticism is easy – don’t try to convince anyone. Just let them know that controlled precognition is important to you, you feel that it is likely to be real, and you would like their support in trying this out. If they don’t support you, move on to the next person. Concern is a little tricky, because anyone concerned about you is already in your corner, so that’s a start. But if their concern is so great that they can’t be supportive, consider thanking them and moving on to the next person. Your goal is not to find someone who agrees with you about precognition, but someone who is supportive of you pursuing controlled precognition responsibly.

company is making a lot of money. Second, and more important, it would take a lot of the focus off of our company, and considering what we’ll be doing behind the scenes, we don’t need a lot of attention. The fact that Wally has found a hidden basement to put his real R&D lab in means we are less likely to be exposed, but the last thing we need is a lot of reporters trying to learn our secrets, and even worse would be the problem of industrial espionage. If we make it clear that we will license the technology, there’s not really going to be any point in anyone trying to steal it from us.” Allison nodded. “Okay, I see your points. What about patents? All of the stuff is patentable, right?” “It is, and I’ve already worked with one of the best patent attorneys in the world to get them filed on a global basis. It cost almost two million dollars altogether, but our corporation now holds patents on these designs and functions in every country. That was actually a little tricky, because some of the other appliance manufacturers have been working on some similar devices for a while, but we found loopholes that let us claim many of the functions entirely as our own. We did have to refer to some prior art, so there will be a relatively small amount of royalties to pay out each year.” “As long as we are protected,” Allison said. “Now, fill me in on my job here. What am I supposed to be doing?” “As COO, your job is to oversee our business operations, which includes reporting back to Noah on any issues or developments. I’ll actually handle most of that for you, but I want to brief you at least a couple times a week on what’s happening with the business. That way, if you find yourself in a position of having to answer questions, you’ll know what to say.” Allison grinned and looked at Noah. “Sounds like you have it all figured out,” she said. “This is actually a brilliant idea, Noah. Setting up a business like this to cover activities is very smart. It will also give us a way to receive payments for our services.” “Payments?” Noah asked. “I set this up so that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting a budget from the government.” Allison’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t think we’re going to work for free, do you? Every time we handle a mission, there will be a payment of half a million dollars. That’s the deal I worked out with

It also got a boost from a new online “Fit Finder” quiz, which replaced the smartphone sizing app in 2016. Because the app was tricky to use and was available only for iPhone owners, lead designer Ra’el Cohen worked with ThirdLove’s data team to develop a detailed questionnaire that was as accurate as the app in determining a customer’s size. It walked website visitors through a series of questions about their current bra—the maker, the size, the fit of the cup (cups gape a little … cups overflow a lot), band, and straps. And it asked them to select, from a series of drawings of different-shaped breasts, which pair most resembled theirs. Among the nine options: Asymmetric (one breast is larger than the other), Bell (slimmer at the top, fuller at the bottom), East West (nipples point outward, in opposite directions). By 2018, eleven million women had taken the Fit Finder quiz,

The question of begetting is not simply 'to decide whether or not life is worth bringing into existence', but rather, what it means to make that decision on behalf of another person; to decide whether it can be justified to bring a wholly new and unknown life into existence; and whether it is worth the overwhelming risks that existence might involve. It would be an entirely different matter if it were solely our own risk to take; if it were only our own opinion of life we were considering. The reason why begetting is such a tricky question is precisely that we are risking something, everything, on the life of another person. If this is not somehow a problem for us, then what is?

Here are a few verbs that come to my mind, listed roughly in descending order of emotionality and sentience: agonize, exult, suffer, enjoy, desire, listen, hear, taste, perceive, notice, consider, reason, argue, claim, believe, remember, forget, know, calculate, utter, register, react, bounce, turn, move, stop. I won’t claim that my extremely short list of verbs is impeccably ordered; I simply threw it together in an attempt to show that there is unquestionably a spectrum, a set of shades of gray, concerning words that do and that do not suggest the presence of feelings behind the scenes. The tricky question then is: Which of these verbs (and comparable adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, etc.) would we be willing to apply to Dave’s zombie twin in Universe Z? Is there some precise cutoff line beyond which certain words are disallowed? Who would determine that cutoff line?

his attention to jerk up in a quick second. He stopped and searched around trying to spot the source. There, beyond a patch of Elderberry, something fat and filthy waddled down a muddy path. His heart pounded and jumped at the sight. This was it. Tensing his muscles, he bent low, stalking after the animal. He glanced at Mara, and sent her a victorious grin. It was a big, burly boar. He followed after the tromping creative until it reached the stream and grunted at a wallow surrounded by a circle of mossy rocks, finally settling into the mud. This was his first chance at hunting a boar. But when he really got a good look at the fat beast a jolt of fear shot through him. Those are some massive tusks, he thought. But by now Mara had already nocked an arrow. Their plan all along had been to weaken the boar at range and switch to spears and daggers to stop its advance. Seemed like a bloody stupid plan now staring at the powerful creature. Part of the plan always included dragging the boar back to Mother’s kitchen for a fine roast. And seeing Father’s proud eyes as he said, “You’re a fine hunter, son.” An unlikely dream. At Mara’s questioning look he quickly nocked an arrow and nodded at her. She turned back to face the boar, but her eyes remained wary and fearful. This would be a tricky shot. He leaned to the side and felt the tension strain his arms as he pulled the string back, aimed, and released the arrow straight at the boar. It was a good shot, but the arrow caught a thicket's branch and droned off past the creature. Damned! How could he miss? The boar jerked its head up and glared at Talis. He barely had a second to think before the beast sloshed in the stream, bounding towards him. He ducked as Mara’s arrow flew past him and slammed into the boar's chest. Why was he just stupidly standing instead of

In the world of information science, the tricky question of where to put things is known as the “ontology problem.

What Is Linguistic Style? Everything that is said must be said in a certain way—in a certain tone of voice, at a certain rate of speed, and with a certain degree of loudness. Whereas often we consciously consider what to say before speaking, we rarely think about how to say it, unless the situation is obviously loaded—for example, a job interview or a tricky performance review. Linguistic style refers to a person’s characteristic speaking pattern. It includes such features as directness or indirectness, pacing and pausing, word choice, and the use of such elements as jokes, figures of speech, stories, questions, and apologies. In other words, linguistic style is a set of culturally learned signals by which we not only communicate what we mean but also interpret others’ meaning and evaluate one another as people.

Asking good questions is hard because it requires you to see past the easy answers and to focus instead on the difficult, the tricky, the mysterious, the awkward, and sometimes the painful. But

I’ve heard the most interesting rumors regarding you and the oh-so-dishy Mr. Haverstein,” Millie said. “I don’t believe dishy is a real word” was all Lucetta could think to respond. Millie waved that away with a flick of her dainty wrist. “I can’t be expected to know all the right words, Lucetta, and you’re stalling.” Lucetta blew out a breath, stirring the bubbles. “What have you heard?” “That you and Mr. Haverstein were caught in a most interesting situation in a storage room of all places, that he tried to save you from drowning twice in his, uh, moat from what I’ve been told, and . . . that he did save you once from a mad goat by the name of Geoffrey. I’ve also heard that you seem to enjoy his company, so much so that there’s been talk of marriage—but you rejected the marriage idea because of mysterious happenings occurring at Ravenwood.” “Bram didn’t save me from drowning twice. He almost caused me to drown both of those times.” “Again . . . stalling.” Tracing a finger through the bubbles, Lucetta took a second to gather her thoughts. “He’s explained away practically all the mysteries surrounding him, which has allowed me to come to the conclusion he’s not insane.” Millie’s eyes turned the size of saucers. “You had reason to doubt his sanity?” “He maintains a dungeon and has a castle where suits of armor go strolling about in the middle of the night—what else was I to conclude?” “A . . . dungeon?” “Yes, but I can’t explain that in any further detail, since the dungeon is part of a rather large secret that Bram has yet to divulge to anyone except his staff—and now me, of course.” Millie settled back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Fair enough, but . . . tell me this, how do you feel about the man, especially since his sanity is no longer in question?” “That’s a little tricky to answer.” Millie sent her a look that had exasperation stamped all over it. “It is not. And since you’re the one who insisted Harriet and I dwell on exactly what our feelings were for Oliver and Everett just a few months back, I’m going to extend you the same courtesy. So . . . feelings—yours for Mr. Haverstein—what are they?” “He, uh . . . did mention that he’d like to court me.” “Court you?” “Yes, you know, call on me, take me for drives, bring me flowers, and . . . well . . . court me.” “That’s incredibly romantic.” “Well, yes, it is, but . . .” “You don’t want to be courted because you see that as a weakness of being female.” “What?” Millie rolled her eyes. “Lucetta, you and I have been friends for a very long time, and while you never talk about yourself much—as in ever—it’s always been clear to me and Harriet that you’ve got this attitude, if you will, about being a female. It’s one of the reasons I believe you’ve held yourself so distant from any gentleman who has ever shown an interest in you. And, it’s why you’re incredibly wary of men like Bram Haverstein, who clearly—and this is without me even knowing that much about him—is an old-fashioned man, one who enjoys swooping in and saving the damsel in distress.” “There’s that romance novel lover I’ve been missing.” Millie sat forward. “You know I’m right.” “So

It was worse than she’d expected. “None?” she asked. “No fresh boot prints anywhere around the perimeter of the house,” Sheriff Coughlin confirmed. “It was windy last night. Maybe the drifting snow filled in the prints?” Even before she finished speaking, the sheriff was shaking his head. “With the warm temperatures we’ve been having, the snow is either frozen or wet and heavy. If someone had walked through that yard last night, there would’ve been prints.” Daisy hid her wince at his words, even though they hit as hard as an elbow to the gut, and struggled to keep her voice firm. “There was someone walking around the outside of that house last night, Sheriff. I don’t know why there aren’t any boot prints, but I definitely saw someone.” He was giving her that look again, but it was worse, because she saw a thread of pity mixed in with the condescension. “Have you given more thought to starting therapy again?” The question surprised her. “Not really. What does that have to do…?” As comprehension dawned, a surge of rage shoved out her bewilderment. “I didn’t imagine that I saw someone last night. There really was a person there, looking in the side window.” All her protest did was increase the pity in his expression. “It must get lonely here by yourself.” “I’m not making things up to get attention!” Her voice had gotten shrill, so she took a deep breath. “I even said there was no need for you to get involved. I only suggested one of the on-duty deputies drive past to scare away the kid.” “Ms. Little.” His tone made it clear that impatience had drowned out any feelings of sympathy. “Physical evidence doesn’t lie. No one was in that yard last night.” “I know what I saw.” The sheriff took a step closer. Daisy hated how she had to crane her neck back to look at him. It made her feel so small and vulnerable. “Do you really?” he asked. “Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Even people without your issues misinterpret what they see all the time. The brain is a tricky thing.” Daisy set her jaw as she stared back at the sheriff, fighting the urge to step back, to retreat from the man looming over her. There had been someone there, footprints or no footprints. She couldn’t start doubting what she’d witnessed the night before. If she did, then that meant she’d gone from mildly, can’t-leave-the-house crazy, to the kind of crazy that involved hallucinations, medications, and institutionalization. There had to be some other explanation, because she wasn’t going to accept that. Not when her life was getting so much better. She could tell by looking at his expression that she wasn’t going to convince Coughlin of anything. “Thank you for checking on it, Sheriff. I promise not to bother you again.” Although he kept his face impassive, his eyes narrowed slightly. “If you…see anything else, Ms. Little, please call me.” That wasn’t going to happen, especially when he put that meaningful pause in front of “see” that just screamed “delusional.” Trying to mask her true feelings, she plastered on a smile and turned her body toward the door in a not-so-subtle hint for him to leave. “Of course.” Apparently, she needed some lessons in deception, since the sheriff frowned, unconvinced. Daisy met his eyes with as much calmness as she could muster, dropping the fake smile because she could feel it shifting into manic territory. She’d lost enough credibility with the sheriff as it was. The silence stretched until Daisy wanted to run away and hide in a closet, but she managed to continue holding his gaze. The memory of Chris telling her about the sheriff using his “going to confession” stare-down on suspects helped her to stay quiet. Finally, Coughlin turned toward the door. Daisy barely managed to keep her sigh of relief silent. “Ms. Little,” he said with a short nod, which she returned. “Sheriff.” Only when he was through the doorway with the door locked behind him did Daisy’s knees start to shake.

                 Water. If the teaser worked, you guessed milk. 

Summary of Rule #3 Rules #1 and #2 laid the foundation for my new thinking on how people end up loving what they do. Rule #1 dismissed the passion hypothesis, which says that you have to first figure out your true calling and then find a job to match. Rule #2 replaced this idea with career capital theory, which argues that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable, and if you want these in your working life, you must first build up rare and valuable skills to offer in return. I call these skills “career capital,” and in Rule #2 I dived into the details of how to acquire it. The obvious next question is how to invest this capital once you have it. Rule #3 explored one answer to this question by arguing that gaining control over what you do and how you do it is incredibly important. This trait shows up so often in the lives of people who love what they do that I’ve taken to calling it the dream-job elixir. Investing your capital in control, however, turns out to be tricky. There are two traps that commonly snare people in their pursuit of this trait. The first control trap notes that it’s dangerous to try to gain more control without enough capital to back it up. The second control trap notes that once you have the capital to back up a bid for more control, you’re still not out of the woods. This capital makes you valuable enough to your employer that they will likely now fight to keep you on a more traditional path. They realize that gaining more control is good for you but not for their bottom line. The control traps put you in a difficult situation. Let’s say you have an idea for pursuing more control in your career and you’re encountering resistance. How can you tell if this resistance is useful (for example, it’s helping you avoid the first control trap) or something to ignore (for example, it’s the result of the second control trap)? To help navigate this control conundrum, I turned to Derek Sivers. Derek is a successful entrepreneur who has lived a life dedicated to control. I asked him his advice for sifting through potential control-boosting pursuits and he responded with a simple rule: “Do what people are willing to pay for.” This isn’t about making money (Derek, for example, is more or less indifferent to money, having given away to charity the millions he made from selling his first company). Instead, it’s about using money as a “neutral indicator of value”—a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit. I called this the law of financial viability, and concluded that it’s a critical tool for navigating your own acquisition of control. This holds whether you are pondering an entrepreneurial venture or a new role within an established company. Unless people are willing to pay you, it’s not an idea you’re ready to go after.

                 First, think of the color of clouds. Next think of the color of snow. Last, think of the color of the moon. Now, what do cows drink? GO

Together we'll make magic... Who had conjured whom? She seemed to remember Oliver suggesting this once before, but she hadn't really appreciated the importance of his question. Was she the dream? Was Nao the one writing her into being? Agency is a tricky business, Muriel had said. Ruth had always felt substantial enough, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was as absent as her name indicated, a homeless and ghostly composite of words that the girl had assembled. She'd never had any cause to doubt her senses. Her empirical experience of herself, seemed trustworthy enough, but now in the dark, at four in the morning, she wasn't so sure.

The lunch menu consisted of a seafood appetizer, creamy chicken in a pastry shell, and a green salad--none of which was really kids’ food. Patrick and Caroline toyed silently with their seafood and managed a few obligatory bites. I noticed Diana’s eyes twinkling with amusement as she watched them. I had to admit “Patrick and Caroline aren’t especially fond of shellfish.” When the chicken was served, Caroline didn’t know how to serve herself and cast an imploring look at me that said, “Oh, help! What do I do, Mom?” Before I could react, Diana, so attuned to children, jumped up and came over to serve Caroline and cut up her chicken. I was speechless at her rapid, sympathetic response. Caroline thanked her, then gazed at her in adoration for the rest of the meal. She was in heaven! Dessert was tricky and delicious--ice cream in a slippery chocolate shell. This time two people served all of us, so my children would not have to struggle for themselves. During lunch, Diana made a point of asking Patrick and Caroline about their travels, their schools, and their hobbies. Patrick’s responses were very polite, but tended to be rather subdued and brief. I wanted him to sound a bit more animated. I resisted the urge to give him a sharp kick under the table. Caroline was more talkative. Diana seemed to enjoy my lively, spunky daughter. My children behaved themselves beautifully amidst the unaccustomed formality and luxury. My years of daily training paid off. They answered questions politely, sat up straight in their chairs, and even chewed with their mouths closed. I thought of my mother-in-law’s claim, “You can take those children anywhere.” Their lunch with the Princess of Wales certainly proved her point. I was very proud of them.

And allowing oneself to remain vulnerable to disease remains a legal privilege today. Dictionaries aside, what it means to have a conscience may be no more clear to us now than it was in 1898. We do recognize when it is lacking—she has no conscience, we say. But what exactly is missing? I put this question to my sister, who teaches ethics at a Jesuit college and is a member of the North American Kant Society. “It’s tricky,” she says. “In the eighteenth century, Kant wrote that we have a duty to ourselves to examine our conscience. This implies that it’s not transparent, that it must be scrutinized and deciphered. Kant thought of conscience as an inner judge and used the metaphor of a courtroom to explain its operation. In the courtroom of conscience, the self is both judge and judged.” I ask her if this means our conscience emerges from thought and is a product of our minds. “It’s an evolving concept,” she says. “It may have once been more closely associated with the emotions, but we still say we feel a pang of conscience—it involves a unity of thought and feeling.” Kant, she tells me, called the inner judge a “scrutinizer of hearts.” “The part that’s tricky,” my sister says, “is how you discern between a sense of discomfort and what your conscience is telling you.” This question remains with me, and I am disturbed by the possibility that I could mistake the call of my conscience for something else. I ask a former professor of mine, a novelist who teaches the Old Testament as literature, how one recognizes one’s own conscience. She looks at me sternly and says, “It’s a very distinct feeling. I don’t think one’s conscience is easily confused with any other feeling.

Right. So that original adaptive and protective memory is still there. It hasn’t gone away.” “But he doesn’t need it anymore,” Sally said. “It’s actually making his life miserable. Can’t he just unlearn it?” “That is a great question,” I said. “The tricky part is that not all of these combat-related memories are in parts of the brain Mike can consciously control. Let me try to explain this a bit.” I pulled out a piece of paper and drew an upside-down triangle and three lines dividing it into four parts. It was the first time I’d represented the brain that way. Thirty-five years later, we still use this basic model to help teach about the brain, stress, and trauma.

Holiness, I have just this morning received the report of the medical faculty of the University of Paris, written at the command of our noble King Philip. A most learned group of physicians and astrologers have put their considerable intellect to the task of solving this very tricky question. They are of the opinion that this pestilence was ordained by a most unusual celestial occurrence. Almighty God set the planet Saturn, a stubborn yet quite impatient body, in near perfect alignment with the bawdy and jocular Jupiter, normally a rather unremarkable conjunction; their paths intersected in the heavenly area known to be under the influence of Aquarius. This heavenly meeting has in the past produced some unusual events, such as small floods, poor crops, and the like.

Do the best you can, until you know better, and crucially when you know better, do better.

So we need to be willing to get it wrong or admit when we've reached the limit of our knowledge but at the same time we do need to try to find some kind of sensible response.

We all start out as blank canvases but soon our par. ents unconsciously begin to mould us. Their fears, opinions and version of truth become ours. This is why it sometimes feels like perspectives aren't moving at all. That out-of-date comment from your mate about a gay person is shocking, but often it's not their voice you're really hearing; it's a lingering generational hangover.

When I was a kid, I wish I had known that; it's hard to find time to read, jump in the sea and climb trees when you're a grown-up, so do as much as you can now! Romantic love takes everyday work and there is no Prince Charming galloping over the horizon. All the little things you find funny about yourself are beautiful and unique and loveable.

When I was a kid, I wish I had known that; just because someone wasn't kind to me, it didn't mean I was a bad person.

The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.

When I was a kid, I wish I had known that. I already had a perfect life; it was one without worry or stress and every day I woke up only thinking of that one. Too many people spend their lives sacrificing their health to gain money, when at the end of their lives they would give every penny back to regain their health, live a simple life, see the world and make many people smile along the way.

you need to let go of.” I open my eyes and draw a cleansing breath. “I’ll try, but regret is tricky.” Her smile dims. “It is. It can hollow you out and steal years from your life. It’s also useless. It’s done. The question now is where to go from here.” “Well…I suppose we have two choices.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. You won’t delight a man by complimenting him on the efforts by which he has become intelligent or generous. On the other hand, he will beam if you admire his natural generosity. Inversely, if you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you. During the counsel’s speech, this is the moment he will choose to weep. Yet there is no credit in being honest or intelligent by birth. Just as one is surely no more responsible for being a criminal by nature than for being a criminal by circumstance. But those rascals want grace, that is irresponsibility, and they shamelessly allege the justifications of nature or the excuses of circumstances, even if they are contradictory. The essential thing is that they should be innocent, that their virtues, by grace of birth, should not be questioned and that their misdeeds, born of a momentary misfortune, should never be more than provisional. As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment. Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they all strive to be rich. Why? Did you ever ask yourself? For power, of course. But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-plated automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins. Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking. Above

are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. You won’t delight a man by complimenting him on the efforts by which he has become intelligent or generous. On the other hand, he will beam if you admire his natural generosity. Inversely, if you tell a criminal that his crime is not due to his nature or his character but to unfortunate circumstances, he will be extravagantly grateful to you. During the counsel’s speech, this is the moment he will choose to weep. Yet there is no credit in being honest or intelligent by birth. Just as one is surely no more responsible for being a criminal by nature than for being a criminal by circumstance. But those rascals want grace, that is irresponsibility, and they shamelessly allege the justifications of nature or the excuses of circumstances, even if they are contradictory. The essential thing is that they should be innocent, that their virtues, by grace of birth, should not be questioned and that their misdeeds, born of a momentary misfortune, should never be more than provisional. As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment. Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they all strive to be rich. Why? Did you ever ask yourself? For power, of course. But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-plated automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins. Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking. Above all, don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be sincere with them. They merely hope you will encourage them in the good opinion they have of themselves by providing them with the additional assurance they will find in your promise of sincerity. How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It’s a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness. Therefore, if you are in that situation, don’t hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection.

Whaddya want?” “That question, right there . . .” She clucks her tongue. “That is a tricky bitch, that question. What I want, what I want, whoo. Yeah. I want what every woman wants. Respect. Peace on Earth. Equality and justice. I want for nobody to give a shit that I don’t shave my armpits. For good men to carry me around on a palanquin made of the bones of bad men. Mostly, I just wanna be left alone. To find somewhere at the ends of the Earth where I can go sit, be it a beach or a mountain, and stare out upon the horizon, where no one will bother me.

One is that counting microstates and comparing their numbers becomes tricky if a theory has infinitely many microstates, and that’s the case for all continuous-field theories. It is possible to define entropy in those cases, but whether it’s still a meaningful quantity is questionable. It’s generally a bad idea to compare infinity to infinity, because the outcome depends on just how you define the comparison, so any conclusion you draw from such an exercise becomes physically ambiguous.

At his many talks and conferences, john powell,* the head of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, likes to tell the story of a pastor who, hearing that he ought to build bridges with people who are very different from him, asked powell a tricky question. “john, are you saying I should bridge with the devil?” powell’s response to the pastor always gets a laugh or two: “Maybe don’t start there.

goose,

Thanks to a documentary series on Netflix, I knew that nachos were called nachos because of their inventor's name (Ignacio, nicknamed Nacho). Croissants originated in Australia, not France, a tricky question that knocked all the other teams down... except for Bennett. Thanks to a paper I'd written in college on the history of the celebrity chef, I knew that the first TV celebrity chef was Fanny Cradock in England, not Julia Child, which three of the other teams thought. Not Bennett, of course. I wondered how he knew about Fanny. She wasn't exactly a household name. At least, not here. If I asked him, he'd probably expound upon a teenage trip to England, where he'd visited the former set. The first food eaten in space? Applesauce. The first sushi restaurant in New York City? Nippon.

Nowhere in all this elaborate brain circuitry, alas, is there the equivalent of the chip found in a five-dollar calculator. This deficiency can make learning that terrible quartet—“Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,” as Lewis Carroll burlesqued them—a chore. It’s not so bad at first. Our number sense endows us with a crude feel for addition, so that, even before schooling, children can find simple recipes for adding numbers. If asked to compute 2 + 4, for example, a child might start with the first number and then count upward by the second number: “two, three is one, four is two, five is three, six is four, six.” But multiplication is another matter. It is an “unnatural practice,” Dehaene is fond of saying, and the reason is that our brains are wired the wrong way. Neither intuition nor counting is of much use, and multiplication facts must be stored in the brain verbally, as strings of words. The list of arithmetical facts to be memorized may be short, but it is fiendishly tricky: the same numbers occur over and over, in different orders, with partial overlaps and irrelevant rhymes. (Bilinguals, it has been found, revert to the language they used in school when doing multiplication.) The human memory, unlike that of a computer, has evolved to be associative, which makes it ill-suited to arithmetic, where bits of knowledge must be kept from interfering with one another: if you’re trying to retrieve the result of multiplying 7 X 6, the reflex activation of 7 + 6 and 7 X 5 can be disastrous. So multiplication is a double terror: not only is it remote from our intuitive sense of number; it has to be internalized in a form that clashes with the evolved organization of our memory. The result is that when adults multiply single-digit numbers they make mistakes ten to fifteen per cent of the time. For the hardest problems, like 7 X 8, the error rate can exceed twenty-five per cent. Our inbuilt ineptness when it comes to more complex mathematical processes has led Dehaene to question why we insist on drilling procedures like long division into our children at all. There is, after all, an alternative: the electronic calculator. “Give a calculator to a five-year-old, and you will teach him how to make friends with numbers instead of despising them,” he has written. By removing the need to spend hundreds of hours memorizing boring procedures, he says, calculators can free children to concentrate on the meaning of these procedures, which is neglected under the educational status quo.

Backpacking with my family in Teton wilderness, I am recurrently struck by the question of footing. With each step, the foot has to come down somewhere. Climbing or descending over boulder fields, steep inclines, on and off trails, our feet make split-second decisions for us about where and how to come down, what angle, how much pressure, heel or toe, rotated or straight. The kids don’t ever ask: “Daddy, where do I put my feet? Should I step on this rock or that one?” They just do it, and I’ve noticed that they find a way—they choose where to put their feet at each step, and it’s not simply where I put mine. What this says to me is that our feet find their own way. Watching my own, I am amazed at how many different places and ways I might put my foot down with each step, and how out of this unfolding momentary potential, the foot ultimately commits to one way, executes with full weight on it (or less if it’s a hazardous situation), and then lets go as the next foot makes its choice and I move forward. All this occurs virtually without thinking, except at the occasional tricky spots where thought and experience do come into play and I might have to give my youngest child, Serena, a hand. But that is the exception, not the rule. Ordinarily we are not looking at our feet and thinking about each step. We are looking out, ahead on the trail, and our brain, taking it all in, makes split-second decisions for us that put the foot down in a way that conforms to the needs of the terrain underfoot in that moment.

secretly dissolved mescaline in coffee or alcohol and began an innocuous conversation with the unsuspecting test subjects. After thirty to sixty minutes a change took place. The alkaloid had passed into the bloodstream via the mucous membrane of the stomach. The experimental subjects who were “opened up” by the drug were now informed that in this special zone where the interrogation was taking place Plötner had direct access to their soul. He suggested they should tell him everything of their own free will or something terrible would happen. The perfidious strategy worked: “When the mescaline took effect, the investigating person could extract even the most intimate secrets from the prisoner if the questions were asked skillfully. They even reported voluntarily on erotic and sexual matters. . . . Mental reservations ceased to exist. Emotions of hatred and revenge could always be brought to light. Tricky questions were not seen through, so that an assumption of guilt could easily be produced from the answer.”39 Plötner could not finish his series of tests. The Americans liberated the camp and confiscated his documents. It was a treasure trove for the U.S. Secret Service. Under the leadership of Charles Savage and the Harvard medic Henry K. Beecher, the experiments were continued under the code name Project Chatter and other rubrics at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Washington, DC.

I’ve never bought into that “You Just Know” notion. Love is a tricky thing. Sometimes it feels like an undeniable force that hits between the eyes and doesn’t let up. Other times, it’s malleable, questionable. It’s truth hidden in and amongst external obstacles and internal circumstances that’ve formed who you are, what you expect in the world, and how you can accept love. Oh, to say the least, it’s complicated. And if a mind’s abuzz with pressure and deadlines and “What if this and that,” I imagine love’s truth would be a near-impossible thing to feel. I wonder if, when all’s quiet in your mind, you’ll find your answer. — Aunt Josephine

Databases of this type are interrogated in a language called SQL. You send them commands like the one shown here to interact with their stored information. Understanding how to manipulate these databases is subtle. The example command, for example, creates a “view”: a virtual database table that pulls together data from multiple existing tables, and that can then be addressed by the SQL commands like a standard table. When to create views and how to do so well is a tricky question, one of many that you must understand and master to tease reasonable results out of real-world databases.

my shoulder. She dropped her knees and let her feet hit the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so upset.” Her entire demeanor changed. One quick nod from her father, and Aubrey’s tears dried up. Just how much had he overheard? How much had Aubrey told him before I got here? “Fine,” I said. “I’ll try and think of someone I might have seen after I left the park,” she said. “I’m sure there’s someone,” Dan chimed in. “She hasn’t been sleeping since all this started. You understand.” “I do,” I said rising. “But you both need to understand how serious this is. I need complete honesty. No surprises. I can’t sugarcoat things. I’m not your enemy. Whatever you think you have to protect, it can’t be from me. I need to know it all.” “You do,” Dan said. Aubrey folded herself against her father as he wrapped his arms around her. She looked so small. “I’m going to need access to your medical records, your school records. You made a phone call to a friend of yours earlier in the night. Who was that?” Dan and Aubrey exchanged a glance. “Kaitlyn,” she said. “Kaitlyn Taylor. She’s my best friend. I swear I don’t remember what we talked about.” “Fine,” I said. “I’m going to talk to her too. I’m waiting on the medical examiner’s report on Coach D. We’ll have more to talk about when that gets back. In the meantime, anything I ask for, you need to get it for me. No questions. No arguments. This is the rest of your life we’re talking about, Aubrey. Not your mom’s. Not your dad’s. Yours. Do you understand?” She nodded but dropped her head again. “Good,” I said. “I need to be one step ahead of the prosecution at all times. Is there anything in those records I just mentioned that’s going to make me unhappy?” “Aubrey was seeing a therapist a little while back,” Dan said. “Your basic teenage drama.” Aubrey didn’t make eye contact with me. Teenage drama, my ass, I thought. Something was going on with this girl. Something tricky enough that Larry Drazdowski was bothered by it. And I was starting to believe with all my heart her father was at the center of it. Chapter 8 Someone was lying. Someone was always lying. In Aubrey’s case, it was more a lie of omission. And her father was a problem. Instinct told me he’d been coaching her all along. She still trusted

Describing music is tricky. I’m not convinced that you can describe it like, say, a painting or a novel. While those are both experiences that produce feelings, they do so through the window of the eyes. The image we see—either images or words on a page—enters our eyes, travels through our intellect, where we make some sort of sense of it, and then routes through our emotions. The process is one of intellect and understanding first, emotions and feelings second. In my experience, music doesn’t work that way. Music enters us through the ears, where it makes a beeline to the grid of our emotions. Then it routes through to our intellect where we might “make some sense” of it. Music is felt on one level, and understood or processed on another. This doesn’t mean you can’t use your intellect to describe it . . . but I question whether the words we use can really do the job. It’s like describing the smell of the number 9. Music is meant to be experienced, not described.

My first rule is not to say or do anything too gender-specific, and to just let the stranger in question continue believing I am whatever gender they assume me to be, the catch being, of course, that I am quite often not certain just which gender box I should continue to help them make me fit into. This can get tricky quickly.

This is tricky business. What’s the difference between seeing that harm has been done and blaming? Perhaps it is that rather than point the finger of blame, we raise questions: “How can I communicate? How can I help the harm that has been done unravel itself? How can I help others find their own wisdom, kindness, and sense of humor?” That’s a much greater challenge than blaming and hating and acting out. How can we help? The way that we can help is by making friends with our own feelings of hatred, bewilderment, and so forth. Then we can accept them in others. With this practice you begin to realize that you’re capable of playing all the parts. It’s not just “them”; it’s “us” and “them.

Ah,” said Jake. “Very tricky, Jenna. The answer, of course, is ‘diner.’ ‘Fiend’ is the word you would get if you took away one letter—‘r’ in this instance—but didn’t rearrange the letters. ‘Diner’ fulfills both criteria specified in the question.

Why are you here, Nora?' the woman asked, in heavily accented English. A tricky question, when you didn't know where 'here' was.