Tunes Short Quotes

Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby. Marvin droned, Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see in infrared, How I hate the night. He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse. Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night.

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life.

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future? One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.

A million years is a short time - the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet's time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth.

It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.

The fair-haired man was one of those people in whose character there is at first sight a certain obstinacy. Before you can open your mouth, they are already prepared to argue and, it seems, will never agree to anything that is clearly contrary to their way of thinking, will never call a stupid thing smart, and in particular will never dance to another man's tune; but it always ends up that there is a certain softness in their character, that they will agree precisely to what they had rejected, will call a stupid thing smart, and will then go off dancing their best to another man's tune - in short, starts out well, ends in hell.

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a reindeer-the flying kind. I spent a couple years galloping around looking for lichen and fantasizing about boy reindeer. Then one day I saw Peter Pan and my reindeer phase was over. I didn't understand the allure of not growing up, because every little girl got boobs and go steady. I did understand that a flying Peter Pan was better than a flying reindeer. Mary Lou had seen Peter Pan too, but Mary Lou's ambition was to be Wendy, so Mary Lou and I made a good pair. On most any day we could be seen holding hands, running through the neighborhood singing, "I can fly! I can fly!" If we'd been older this probably would have started rumors. The Peter Pan stage was actually pretty short-lived because a few months into Peter Pan I discovered Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman couldn't fly, but she had big, fat bulging boobs crammed into a sexy Wondersuit. Barbie was firmly entrenched as role model in the burg, but Wonder Woman gave her a good run for her money. Not only did Wonder Woman spill over her Wondercups but she also kicked serious ass. If I had to name the single most influential person in my life it would have to be Wonder Woman. All during my teens and early twenties I wanted to be a rock star. The fact that I can't play a musical instrument or carry a tune did nothing to diminish the fantasy. During my more realistic moments I wanted to be a rock star's girlfriend.

I took my bottle and went to my bedroom. I undressed down to my shorts and went to bed. Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. I took my choice. I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

Whatever happens naturally is always right, there is no question about it. It is just that your short-term goals and objectives may not be in tune with what is happening, so you struggle with it. But in the real sense, it cannot be wrong. It always moves in the right direction because Nature does not decide things with thoughts and emotion. It just decides things as per your tendencies. This is not a thought. With thought, you can always make a mistake

Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over. This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored--a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of insturments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.

You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stored up to make it through the telling of the tale. It's short. I am monstrously fat. I am a glutton. My wife was disgusted and repulsed. She gave me six months to lose one hundred pounds. I joined Weight Watchers . . . see it there, right across the street, that gaunt storefront? This afternoon was the big six-month weigh-in. So to speak. I had gained almost seventy pounds in the six months. An errant Snickers bar fell out of the cuff of my pants and rolled against my wife's foot as I stepped on the scale. The scale over there across the street is truly an ingenious device. One preprograms the desired new weight into it, and if one has achieved or gone below that new low weight, the scale bursts into recorded whistles and cheers and some lively marching-band tune. Apparently, tiny flags protrude from the top and wave mechanically back and forth. A failure--see for instance mine--results in a flatulent dirge of disappointed and contemptuous tuba. To the strains of the latter my wife left, the establishment, me, on the arm of a svelte yogurt distributor whom I am even now planning to crush, financially speaking, first thing tomorrow morning. Ms. Beadsman, you will find an eclair on the floor to the left of your chair. Could you perhaps manipulate it onto this plate with minimal chocolate loss and pass it to me.

Da problem with today’s songwriters is, dey’re just ripping off what I did years ago. “Send In da Clowns”? I wrote da same tune back in 1910 under the title “Send Up Some Towels.

Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

Your master will bestow that experience shortly. Your body is not tuned just yet. As a small lamp cannot withstand excessive electrical voltage, so your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as if every cell were on fire.

I’ve found that refactoring helps me write fast software. It slows the software in the short term while I’m refactoring, but it makes the software easier to tune during optimization. I end up well ahead.

10 ways to raise a wild child. Not everyone wants to raise wild, free thinking children. But for those of you who do, here's my tips: 1. Create safe space for them to be outside for a least an hour a day. Preferable barefoot & muddy. 2. Provide them with toys made of natural materials. Silks, wood, wool, etc...Toys that encourage them to use their imagination. If you're looking for ideas, Google: 'Waldorf Toys'. Avoid noisy plastic toys. Yea, maybe they'll learn their alphabet from the talking toys, but at the expense of their own unique thoughts. Plastic toys that talk and iPads in cribs should be illegal. Seriously! 3. Limit screen time. If you think you can manage video game time and your kids will be the rare ones that don't get addicted, then go for it. I'm not that good so we just avoid them completely. There's no cable in our house and no video games. The result is that my kids like being outside cause it's boring inside...hah! Best plan ever! No kid is going to remember that great day of video games or TV. Send them outside! 4. Feed them foods that support life. Fluoride free water, GMO free organic foods, snacks free of harsh preservatives and refined sugars. Good oils that support healthy brain development. Eat to live! 5. Don't helicopter parent. Stay connected and tuned into their needs and safety, but don't hover. Kids like adults need space to roam and explore without the constant voice of an adult telling them what to do. Give them freedom! 6. Read to them. Kids don't do what they are told, they do what they see. If you're on your phone all the time, they will likely be doing the same thing some day. If you're reading, writing and creating your art (painting, cooking...whatever your art is) they will likely want to join you. It's like Emilie Buchwald said, "Children become readers in the laps of their parents (or guardians)." - it's so true! 7. Let them speak their truth. Don't assume that because they are young that you know more than them. They were born into a different time than you. Give them room to respectfully speak their mind and not feel like you're going to attack them. You'll be surprised what you might learn. 8. Freedom to learn. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, but damn, if you can, do it! Our current schools system is far from the best ever. Our kids deserve better. We simply can't expect our children to all learn the same things in the same way. Not every kid is the same. The current system does not support the unique gifts of our children. How can they with so many kids in one classroom. It's no fault of the teachers, they are doing the best they can. Too many kids and not enough parent involvement. If you send your kids to school and expect they are getting all they need, you are sadly mistaken. Don't let the public school system raise your kids, it's not their job, it's yours! 9. Skip the fear based parenting tactics. It may work short term. But the long term results will be devastating to the child's ability to be open and truthful with you. Children need guidance, but scaring them into listening is just lazy. Find new ways to get through to your kids. Be creative! 10. There's no perfect way to be a parent, but there's a million ways to be a good one. Just because every other parent is doing it, doesn't mean it's right for you and your child. Don't let other people's opinions and judgments influence how you're going to treat your kid. Be brave enough to question everything until you find what works for you. Don't be lazy! Fight your urge to be passive about the things that matter. Don't give up on your kid. This is the most important work you'll ever do. Give it everything you have.

Mountain Girl tries to concentrate, but the words swim like great waves of... The words swim by and she hears the sound but it is like her cerebral cortex is tuned out to the content of it. Her mind keeps rolling and spinning over another set of data, always the same. Like — the eternal desperate calculation. In short, Mountain Girl is pregnant.

Your name is Do Kyungsoo. You have short-term memory loss, antesomething amnesia, so you won’t remember what happened last night. But let me help you out. Last night I put my head on this pillow and my arms around your waist. My name’s Kim Jongin. I call you hyung. Yesterday you loved me. Today you’ll love me again. This is where you undressed me. This is where I undressed you. And here I pushed you up against the wall and kissed you really hard (approximately, it was kind of dark) and we thought we should have sex. Here you sat, dangling your legs. I put my palm on your kneecap and you bent forward and kissed me first. We talked about ballet. You hummed a tune and my fingers did an arabresque here, grand jeté onto the floor, fouetté en tourant and then sissonne on the back of your hand. Pas de valse fast up your arm and you smiled. I leaned on this and read your green sticky notes while you went around cleaning up invisible messes. It came to me that all the green looks like grass, and grass is boring without daisies. So I hope you like yellow? And here’s Kim Jongin. Say hello to me?

Not every day is awful. Not every day is good. Despite the way the hours pass, I’m living like I should. Not every day is all wrong. Not every day is right. At least I’m not a spider trying to scamper out of sight. Not every day is ideal. Not every day is bad. At any rate I have my senses, even if they’re mad. Not every day is happy. Not every day is glum. When melancholy drags me down, a simple tune I hum. Not every day I smile. Not every day I frown. With effort, I can take a scowl and turn it upside down. Not every day is crazy. Not every day is sane. If consequence nips at my heels I don’t pass on the blame. Not every day is giddy. Not every day is blah. Yet I can still appreciate a giggle and guffaw. Not every day is timid. Not every day is proud. I may not be a dragon, but I roar about as loud. Not every day has rainbows. Not every day has rain. Despite the fact I’m stiff and sore, I’m not in chronic pain. On every day the sun shines, so every night I pray that I might see the morning light and live another day.

As with Jakobson, I queried Poston as to the source of Manson's philosophy. Scientology, the Bible, and the Beatles. These three were the only ones he knew. A peculiar triumvirate. Yet by now I was beginning to suspect the existence of at least a fourth influence. The old magazines I'd found at Barker, Gregg's mention that Charlie claimed to have read Nietzsche and that he believed in a master race, pus the emergence of a startling number of disturbing parallels between Manson and the leader of the Third Reich, led me to ask Poston: "Did Manson ever say anything about Hitler?" Poston's reply was short and incredibly chilling. A. "He said that Hitler was a tuned-in guy who had leveled the karma of the Jews.

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests… I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable). Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork. Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius… I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known. First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit

It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.

She had, in a few short words, utterly defiled, defamed and defaced the finely tuned social order that was the bedrock of the Collective.

I almost wrote lyrics for this tune, but realized that lyrics were somehow, mysteriously, implied. It is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Short, whose vitality and love of laughter made elegies easy but grief doubly hard.

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a “soundless music”. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.

Merrill Hartweiss scales a rocky incline toward Renna. The noon sun bakes the hillside as Merrill's boots dig into the broiling sands. Yet another gypsy tune enters his head. It starts off slowly. A lone guitar, its strings strummed with the lustful passion of a young man brushing his fingertips softly against the breasts of his lover. Another guitar joins, like a second hand, exploring her hot flesh, stroking the side of her bare abdomen, and gradually moving upward toward her chest. Then, a female voice joins the guitars; it is slightly raspy, yet sultry; filled with a fiery allure. The guitars pick up in intensity and tempo. There is a rhythmic clapping now, in synchronization with the strumming. The man has entered his lover. Sweat begins to form on Merrill's forehead, then quickly turns to vapor, dissipating into the blistering heat from the sunlight reflecting off the sands. Steady clapping, louder still. The tempo quickens, progressively and with a vigorous intensity. The man arches his back, cresting then falling; cresting, arching, rising and falling deeper again and again into his lover. The clapping, now faster, still rhythmic, but so much more intense. The guitars keep pace with increasing ferocity. In the woman's voice, short, quick breaths form words as she cries out her lover's name from deep within the throes of a forbidden love

It was beginning to get late in the afternoon. On the edge of the earth, the sun slowly diminished. An unexpected calmness dropped in the atmosphere. In one short life, this drama would end. And that would be the end of it all; those, who suffered the worst, were the ones most deluded by the notion that this life was forever. Oh, how calm? How peacefully the River Murma flowed today? A mere twitter of a bird in the heavy groves, the shepherd’s distant tune caught in the flute wafted through the air. There appeared to be no grimy crimes threatening such delightful sensations of undulated serenity. The night forest illuminated by fireflies everywhere. Lights sparkled, as they flew ubiquitous around the slim, tall trees and the heavy bushes of the blue forest.

Think constantly how many doctors have died, after knitting their brows over their own patients how many astrologers, after predicting the deaths of others, as if death were something important; how many philosophers, after endless deliberation on death or immortality; how many heroes, after the many others they killed; how many tyrants, after using their power over men’s lives with monstrous insolence, as if they themselves were immortal. Think too how many whole cities have died – Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, innumerable others. Go over now all those you have known yourself, one after the other: one man follows a friend’s funeral and is then laid out himself, then another follows him – and all in a brief space of time. The conclusion of this? You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth.

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive and about 1 per cent of the dancing static you see9 is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

-Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever 'truer.' The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. -The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to 'landscape' the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) -Symmetry demands an actual + virtualfuture, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. -Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future? -One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of 'now' likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future. -Proposition: I am in love with Luisa Ray.

All through those splendid years of travel Pons was as happy as was possible to a man with a great soul, a sensitive nature, and a face so ugly that any “success with the fair” (to use the stereotyped formula of 1809) was out of the question; the realities of life always fell short of the ideals which Pons created for himself; the world without was not in tune with the soul within, but Pons had made up his mind to the dissonance.

What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations. The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction. Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do. Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”) Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.” No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study. We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate. I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements. Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity. Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold. If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true. No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written. It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness. Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive. I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.

One does not need education to be intelligent, and these men might be short on what educated men use in the way of information, but their wits were sharp, their minds were alert, they were prepared to move, to change, to adapt at the slightest need. “All about them were conditions and circumstances to which they must adjust, attack by Indians or outlaw trappers was an ever-present danger, they lived on the very knife-edge of reality, and when this is so, the mind becomes a beautifully tuned instrument.

People love it when you criticise some things which they do not believe in, practices which are contrary to what they practice or contrary views. They call you objective and truthful But immediately you start disagreeing with their views, criticising their beliefs, expressing contrary views against what they support, they call you foul names, say you are not a child of God, ask who you are to judge. Listen and listen good, I love writing and I write based on inspiration and experience. I don't just write, I write to capture the minds of my readers and to spark reaction. I welcome contrary views, I love you opposing my stance cos in the process I learn some things from you. Don't get mad at me for expressing myself via writing. I love putting things down. Learn to tolerate my views and counter me when you don't agree. Stop holding grudges and developing unnecessary hatred. Life is too short to be closed minded and inclined. Life is too short for me to idolize anybody. I can't always be dancing to your tunes, you also have to dance to mine.

If handing over tasks to others activates your difficulties in tolerating uncertainty, talk to yourself kindly about your feelings. Acknowledge that keeping a tight grip on the reins in every aspect of your life helps you feel secure but also acknowledge when that’s wearing you out. Notice if being very controlling is one of those behavioral patterns that helps you feel less anxious in the short term but makes you feel more anxious in the long term. Being excessively controlling is one of those “the more you do it, the more you need to do it” anxiety patterns.

People often develop routines or rituals to try to keep a lid on their anxiety. These can range from avoiding “forbidden foods,” to going to only certain places or doing only certain activities with someone else, to washing their hands for a minimum number of seconds. Again, these routines help relieve anxiety in the short term but increase it in the long term, and suck away self-confidence. The goods new is that cognitive behavioral strategies are very effective for preventing anxiety from spiraling out of control and fear for reversing this process once it has occurred.

in a sense to harmonize—at every eighth place along the scale. Slightly unwisely, for this was an idea whose time had not quite yet come, Newlands called it the Law of Octaves and likened the arrangement to the octaves on a piano keyboard. Perhaps there was something in Newlands’s manner of presentation, but the idea was considered fundamentally preposterous and widely mocked. At gatherings, droller members of the audience would sometimes ask him if he could get his elements to play them a little tune. Discouraged, Newlands gave up pushing the idea and soon dropped from view altogether.

He puts his hands up against the wall above his head like he’s gonna be frisked by the police. He appears to be lookin’ down at his sticks and berries and I’m thinkin’ that fella is gonna wet himself. Nothin’ is happenin’ and I’m beginin’ to wonder if he has a medical problem. All of a sudden, he starts singin’. Except, he ain’t singin’ words, or hummin a tune. He’s just sort of starts singing a tune like cowboys do in movies when they are alone on the prairie. Next thing I know, I hear his water works start up. Now at this point I think it must be his way with dealin’ of relievin’ himself at the urinal, except this fella keeps singin’ while lookin’ down at himself.

The sense of loss these women express is a yearning for the feminine, a longing for a sense of home within their own bodies and community. Most women today have spent their early and mid-adulthood developing and fine-tuning qualities that have always been considered masculine, including skills in logical, direct linear thinking, analyzing, and setting short-range goals. Women who brought emotions into the workplace were quickly told they did not belong there. Although many companies are now training upper management in a more feminine or “Beta-style” mode of leadership, which values feelings, intuition, and relationship, many women complain of undervaluing the feminine part of themselves.

You are 100 percent responsible for all you experience. What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. The concept of personal responsibility goes beyond what you say, do, and think. It includes what others say, do, and think that shows up in your life. If you take complete responsibility for all that appears in your life, then when someone surfaces with a problem, then it is your problem, too.This ties in to principle three, which states you can heal whatever comes your way. In short, you can’t blame anyone or anything for your current reality.All you can do is take responsibility for it, which means accept it, own it, and love it.The more you heal what comes up, the more you get in tune with the source.5.

I say this—after six million years of evolution, is there anything else more in tune with the planet than the human body? We grow muscles to withstand fourteen pounds of air pressure per square inch at sea level. We develop senses to detect changes in wind patterns and know when a storm is approaching. We can hear threatening footsteps approaching and feel the stares of an angry ex-girlfriend as her eyes burn a hole in our back. We have millions of nerve endings in our skin to feel our environment. In short, we evolve. We become more in tune with the world, like birds that use the Earth’s magnetic field to help guide them on their long migration or mammals that can feel winter coming and prepare for hibernation. So when my body tells me there’s a spirit present, I trust it.

Trying to Eliminate Anxiety Can Cause More Anxiety When anxiety becomes a major problem for someone, it’s usually because the person has become stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle where the things he or she does to reduce anxiety in the short term cause it to multiply in the long term. Let me explain how this works. Let’s take someone who gets panic attacks. Because these are so unpleasant, the person logically avoids situations that might trigger an attack. The person might start out avoiding a few situations, such as public speaking or going to the mall on weekends. Paradoxically, the more the person avoids particular situations, the more their anxiety about having another panic attack increases. An increasing number of situations start to trigger their anxiety. The person starts to avoid more and more. The problem snowballs. Avoiding things due to anxiety is termed avoidance coping. It’s one of the main mechanisms that causes anxiety to grow and persist.

Asia so degraded, so corrupted by the colonial era and by its own crowdedness that it can only choose between depravity and the puritan orgy of communIsm. The women of Thailand are so beautiful that they have become the hostesses of the Western world, sought after and desired everywhere for their grace, which is that of a submissive and affectionate femininity of nubile slaves - now dressed by Dior - an astounding sexual come-on in a gaze which looks you straight in the eye and a potential acquiescence to your every whim. In short, the fulfilment of Western man's dreams. Thai women seem spontaneously to embody the sexuality of the Arabian Nights, like the Nubian slaves in ancient Rome. Thai men, on the other hand, seem sad and forlorn; their physiques are not in tune with world chic, while their women's are privileged to be the currently fashionable form of ethnic beauty. What is left for these men but to assist in the universal promotion of their women for high-class prostitution?

Once you have a short list of your top five strengths, try referring to this list when you have a problem you need to overcome. For example, if your strength is resourcefulness, then remember this strength when you need to solve a problem. To increase your psychological flexibility, try applying your strengths in new ways compared to how you’d usually apply them. For example, if you’d usually apply your resourcefulness to figuring out how to do a task yourself, try using your resourcefulness to find someone you could outsource that work to. If you’d usually apply your strength of conscientiousness to doing a task extremely thoroughly, try applying your conscientiousness to limiting the amount of time and energy you invest in the task and sticking to that limit. Experiment: List your top five strengths as a person. Since you’re free to revise your list at any points (it’s yours after all), don’t get too perfectionist about it. Once you have your list, identify a task you currently need to do. How could you apply one of your top five strengths to approach that task in a new way?

In short, the observer is choked with observations. Only to prevent us from being submerged by chaos, nature and society between them have arranged a system of classification which is simplicity itself; stalls, boxes, amphitheatre, gallery. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty remains—one has to choose. For though I have no wish to be Queen of England or only for a moment—I would willingly sit beside her; I would hear the Prime Minister's gossip; the countess whisper, and share her memories of halls and gardens; the massive fronts of the respectable conceal after all their secret code; or why so impermeable? And then, doffing one's own headpiece, how strange to assume for a moment some one's—any one's—to be a man of valour who has ruled the Empire; to refer while Brangaena sings to the fragments of Sophocles, or see in a flash, as the shepherd pipes his tune, bridges and aqueducts. But no—we must choose. Never was there a harsher necessity! or one which entails greater pain, more certain disaster; for wherever I seat myself, I die in exile: Whittaker in his lodging-house; Lady Charles at the Manor.

Here’s how to do it: First, sit down, get comfortable, and close your eyes. Make sure you’re in a position where you can freely expand your lungs. Wim suggests doing this practice right after waking up since your stomach is still empty. Warm up by inhaling deeply and drawing the breath in until you feel a slight pressure. Hold the breath for a moment before exhaling completely, pushing the air out as much as you can. Hold the exhalation for as long as you can, and then repeat this fifteen times. Next, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in short, powerful bursts, as if you’re blowing up a balloon. Pull in your belly when you’re exhaling and let it expand when you inhale. Do this about thirty times, using a steady pace, until you feel that your body is saturated with oxygen. You may feel light-headed or tingly, or you may experience a surge of energy that’s literally electric. Try to get a sense of which parts of your body are overflowing with energy and which ones are lacking it—and where there are blockages between these two extremes. As you continue breathing, send the breath to those blockages. When you’re done, take one more big breath in, filling your lungs to maximum capacity, and then push all of the air out. Hold this for as long as you can and try to feel the oxygen spreading around your body. When you can’t hold it anymore, inhale fully and feel your chest expanding. Hold it again, sending energy where your body needs it. Bonus points if you do what Wim had me do when we demonstrated this technique onstage at our Bulletproof conference—as you are holding your lungs empty, count how many push-ups you can do before you have to breathe again. I got to twenty! It seems impossible, but you can do it, and that short bit of low oxygen forces your body to better deal with lower-oxygen environments. I recommend you research Wim’s work and watch one of his many videos online demonstrating his breathing technique. I don’t think it works as well as mechanically filtering oxygen out of the air you breathe, but the Wim Hof technique is absolutely free, totally portable, and Wim is capable of things I could never do! His breathing method helps your body adapt to bursts of oxygen and puts you more in tune with the way your body uses your breath to create energy. It also makes you more resilient to cold temperatures, but there is evidence that cold temperatures themselves are good for your mitochondria.

Although anxiety can sometimes seem like a flaw, it’s actually an evolutionary advantage, a hypervigilance system that causes us to pause and scan the environment. Feeling anxious triggers us to start looking out for potential threats. If you detect a potential danger, it’s not supposed to be easy for you to stop thinking about that threat. While that’s great when you’re a caveman worried about protecting your family, it’s not as great when you’re an employee convinced you’re getting fired. For many of us who suffer from anxiety, our anxiety alarms fire too often when there isn’t a good reason to be excessively cautious. Why does this happen? We may have more sensitive anxiety systems. Or we may have been doing things to decrease our anxiety in the short term, such as avoiding things that make us feel anxious, that have actually increased it in the long term. Having some false anxiety alarms—where you see threats that don’t exist or worry about things that don’t eventuate—isn’t a defect in your system. Think of it in caveman terms: In a life-and-death sense, failing to notice a real threat (termed a false negative) is more of a problem than registering a potential danger that doesn’t happen (termed a false positive). Therefore, having some false anxiety alarms is a built-in part of the system, to err on the side of caution.

Extract from 'Quixotic Ambitions': The crowd stared at Katy expectantly. She looked at them - old women in black, exhausted young women with pasty-faced children, youths in jeans and leather blousons chewing gum. She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she blurted out her short speech, thanking the people of Shkrapova for their welcome and promising that if she won the referendum she would work for the good of Maloslavia. There was some half-hearted applause and an old lady hobbled up to her, knelt down with difficulty, and kissed the hem of her skirt. She looked at Katy with tears rolling down her face and gabbled something excitedly. Dimitar translated: ‘She says that she remembers the reign of your grandfather and that God has sent you to Maloslavia.’ Katy was embarrassed but she smiled at the woman and helped her to her feet. At this moment the People’s Struggle Pioneers appeared on the scene, waving their banners and shouting ‘Doloy Manaheeyoo! Popnikov President!’ Police had been stationed at strategic points and quickly dispersed the demonstrators without any display of violence, but the angry cries of ‘Down with the monarchy!’ had a depressing effect on the entertainment that had been planned; only a few people remained to watch it. A group of children aged between ten and twelve ran into the square and performed a series of dances accompanied by an accordian. They stamped their feet and clapped their hands frequently and occasionally collided with one another when they forgot their next move. The girls wore embroidered blouses, stiffly pleated skirts and scarlet boots and the boys were in baggy linen shirts and trousers, the legs of which were bound with leather thongs. Their enthusiasm compensated for their mistakes and they were loudly applauded. The male voice choir which followed consisted of twelve young men who sang complicated polyphonic melodies with a high, curiously nasal tenor line accompanied by an unusually deep droning bass. Some of their songs were the cries of despair of a people who had suffered under Turkish occupation; others were lively dance tunes for feast days and festivals. They were definitely an acquired taste and Katy, who was beginning to feel hungry, longed for them to come to an end. At last, at two o’clock, the performance finished and trestle tables were set up in the square. Dishes of various salads, hors-d’oeuvres and oriental pastries appeared, along with casks of beer and bottles of the local red wine. The people who had disappeared during the brief demonstration came back and started piling food on to paper plates. A few of the People’s Struggle Pioneers also showed up again and mingled with the crowd, greedily eating anything that took their fancy.

Wait… wait!” he shouted. “Just tell me what you want to know!” The brute seized Reid’s head in his large hands and gripped it tightly, forcing him still. The interrogator chose a tool—a thin-bladed scalpel. “Please don’t… please don’t…” Reid’s breath came in short gasps. He was nearly hyperventilating. “Shh,” said the interrogator calmly. “You will want to remain still. I would not want to cut off your ear. At least, not by accident.” Reid screamed as the blade sliced into the skin behind his ear, but the brute held him still. Every muscle in his limbs went taut. A strange sound reached his ears—a soft melody. The interrogator was singing a tune in Arabic as he cut into Reid’s head. He dropped the bloody scalpel into the tray as Reid hissed shallow breaths through his teeth. Then the interrogator reached for a pair of needle-nose pliers. “I’m afraid that was just the beginning,” he whispered in Reid’s ear. “This next part will actually hurt.” The pliers gripped something in Reid’s head—was it his bone?—and the interrogator tugged. Reid screamed in agony as white-hot pain shot through his brain, pulsing out into nerve endings. His arms trembled. His feet slapped against the floor. The pain crescendoed until Reid thought he couldn’t possibly take any more. Blood pounded in his ears, and his own screams sounded as if they were far away. Then the procedure lamp dimmed, and the edges of his vision darkened as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Define Your Options When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don’t concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you’ve recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point: --Giving the employee more time --Shifting the employee’s responsibilities to simpler jobs --Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task --Having another employee work with the individual --Firing the employee Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you’re less likely to end up making a choice. Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you’re currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how to have more social contact in her life. Note: If the word best is causing you to jump into perfectionism/frozen mode, write any three to six options.

Housman would not have appealed so deeply to the people who were young in 1920 if it had not been for another strain in him, and that was his blasphemous, antinomian, "cynical" strain. The fight that always occurs between the generations was exceptionally bitter at the end of the Great War; this was partly due to the war itself, and partly it was an indirect result of the Russian Revolution, but an intellectual struggle was in any case due at about that date. Owing probably to the ease and security of life in England, which even the war hardly disturbed, many people whose ideas were formed in the 'eighties or earlier had carried them quite unmodified into the nineteen-twenties. Meanwhile, so far as the younger generation was concerned, the official beliefs were dissolving like sand-castles. The slump in religious belief, for instance, was spectacular. For several years the old—young antagonism took on a quality of real hatred. What was left of the war generation had crept out of the massacre to find their elders still bellowing the slogans of 1914, and a slightly younger generation of boys were writhing under dirty-minded celibate schoolmasters. It was to these that Housman appealed, with his implied sexual revolt and his personal grievance against God. He was patriotic, it was true, but in a harmless old-fashioned way, to the tune of red coats and "God save the Queen" rather than steel helmets and "Hang the Kaiser." And he was satisfyingly anti-Christian—he stood for a kind of bitter, defiant paganism, a conviction that life is short and the gods are against you, which exactly fitted the prevailing mood of the young; and all in charming fragile verse that was composed almost entirely of words of one syllable.

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction - in short, belief - grows ever “truer.” The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to “landscape” the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up - a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows - the actual past - from another such simulacrum - the actual future? One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each “shell” (the present) encased inside a nest of “shells” (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of “now” likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future. Proposition: I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey.

The fragility of the US economy had nearly destroyed him. It wasn't enough that Citadel's walls were as strong and impenetrable as the name implied; the economy itself needed to be just as solid. Over the next decade, he endeavored to place Citadel at the center of the equity markets, using his company's superiority in math and technology to tie trading to information flow. Citadel Securities, the trading and market-making division of his company, which he'd founded back in 2003, grew by leaps and bounds as he took advantage of his 'algorithmic'-driven abilities to read 'ahead of the market.' Because he could predict where trades were heading faster and better than anyone else, he could outcompete larger banks for trading volume, offering better rates while still capturing immense profits on the spreads between buys and sells. In 2005, the SEC had passed regulations that forced brokers to seek out middlemen like Citadel who could provide the most savings to their customers; in part because of this move by the SEC, Ken's outfit was able to grow into the most effective, and thus dominant, middleman for trading — and especially for retail traders, who were proliferating in tune to the numerous online brokerages sprouting up in the decade after 2008. Citadel Securities reached scale before the bigger banks even knew what had hit them; and once Citadel was at scale, it became impossible for anyone else to compete. Citadel's efficiency, and its ability to make billions off the minute spreads between bids and asks — multiplied by millions upon millions of trades — made companies like Robinhood, with its zero fees, possible. Citadel could profit by being the most efficient and cheapest market maker on the Street. Robinhood could profit by offering zero fees to its users. And the retail traders, on their couches and in their kitchens and in their dorm rooms, profited because they could now trade stocks with the same tools as their Wall Street counterparts.

We can in theory assume three extremes of human life, and consider them as elements of actual human life. Firstly, powerful and vehement willing, the great passions (Raja-Guna); it appears in great historical characters, and is described in the epic and the drama. It can also show itself, however, in the small world, for the size of the objects is here measured only according to the degree in which they excite the will, not to their external relations. Then secondly, pure knowing, the comprehension of the Ideas, conditioned by freeing knowledge from the service of the will: the life of the genius (Sattva-Guna). Thirdly and lastly, the greatest lethargy of the will and also of the knowledge attached to it, namely empty longing, life-benumbing boredom (Tama-Guna). The life of the individual, far from remaining fixed in one of these extremes, touches them only rarely, and is often only a weak and wavering approximation to one side or the other, a needy desiring of trifling objects, always recurring and thus running away from boredom. It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.

OTHER RELAXATION TECHNIQUES There are many other stress management techniques that can help you to “bring yourself down” quickly when you are highly stressed. You can use them before a situation where anticipation raises tensions that do not automatically subside after a few minutes. You also can use them during an interaction or when a surprise threatens to escalate your stress out of control. Or use them after an encounter has raised your stress level, if it is not subsiding naturally. Mental Imagery You experimented with mental imagery in the previous chapter on goal-setting. The use of mental imagery also can be an effective tool for anxiety control. Think of it as a new application of skills you already have: memory and imagination. When I asked you earlier to recall how many windows there are in your bedroom, you used imagery to retrieve the information. Mentally, you went into the room, looked from wall to wall, and counted. That process is mental imagery. From a relaxation perspective, your nervous system cannot distinguish between reality and imagery. Material passed from the body to the senses, whether real or imagined, is processed the same way. Therefore, imagery can play an important role in inducing internal self-regulation and relaxation. If there is a particular image—such as the warm, sandy beach of the previous exercise, a cool forest clearing covered with a blanket of pine needles, or even a clear blue sky—that represents relaxation to you, it would be valuable for you to be able to tune in to it whenever stress threatens to interfere with your life. Be sure to conjure up the reactions of all five senses: Imagine the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of your surroundings. Mental gateways are a valuable part of the relaxation exercise we just went through. And it is important to be aware that your nervous system—which is what overreacts in a stressful situation—cannot distinguish between reality and imagination. Here’s how to use mental imagery to create a mental getaway: (a) Choose a favorite place, a pleasant, relaxing setting that you have enjoyed in the past or one you would enjoy visiting in the future. (b) Close your eyes and think about the scene. Use your senses of hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch to develop the scene. Put yourself there. If your mind wanders a bit, that’s okay. You’ll drift back to the scene after a short while.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth-faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation. And

At some point I tried willing things along, mentally focusing on a rapid delivery. That didn't work. I got up to walk around-walking is supposed to help you progress-then quickly got back in the chair. “Argh!!!!!” I groaned. And other stuff. The way I saw it, my baby should have been out by now, shaking hands with his dad and passing around cigars to the nurses. But he apparently had other plans. Labor continued very slowly. Very slowly. We were in that room for eighteen hours. That was a lot of contractions. And a lot of PG versions of curse words, along with the X-rated kind. I may have invented a whole new language. Somewhere around the twelve-hour mark, Chris asked if I’d mind if he changed the music, since our songs had been playing on repeat for what surely seemed like a millennium. “Sure,” I said. He switched to the radio and found a country station. That lasted a song or two. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I need Enya. I’m tuned in to it, and it calms me…ohhhhh!” “Okay. No problem,” he said calmly, though not quite cheerfully. I’m sure it was torture. Chris would take short breaks, walking out into the waiting room where both sides of our family were waiting to welcome their first grandchild and nephew. He’d look at his dad and give a little nod. “She’s okay,” he told everyone. Then he’d wipe a little tear away from his eye and walk back to me. Chris said later that watching me give birth was probably the most powerless feeling he’d ever had. He knew I was in pain and yet couldn’t do a whit about it. “It’s like watching your wife get stabbed and not being able to do anything to help.” But when he came into the room with me, his eyes were clear and he seemed confident and even upbeat. It was the thing he did when talking to me from the combat zone, all over again: he wasn’t about to do anything that would make me worry. I, on the other hand, made no secret of what I was feeling. An alien watermelon was ripping my insides out. And it hurt. Whoooh! Suddenly one of the contractions peaked way beyond where the others had been. Bubba had finally decided it was time to say hello to the world. I grabbed the side rail on the bed and struggled to remain conscious, if not exactly calm. Part of me was thinking, You should remember this, Taya. This is natural childbirth. This is beautiful. This is what God intended. You should enjoy this precious moment and remember it always. Another part of me was telling that part to shut the bleep up. I begged for mercy-for painkillers.

Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself. And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.

NOTE: Practice your most effective relaxation techniques before you begin these exercises (refer to Chapter 6 if necessary). People are better able to concentrate when they are relaxed. Listening -Pay attention to the sounds coming from outside: from the street, from above in the air, from as far away as possible. Then focus on one sound only. -Pay attention to the sounds coming from a nearby room—the kitchen, living room, etc. Identify each one, then focus on a single sound. -Pay attention to the sounds coming from the room you are in: the windows, the electrical appliances. Then focus on one sound only. -Listen to your breathing. -Hear a short tune and attempt to re-create it. -Listen to a sound, such as a ringing doorbell, a knock on the door, a telephone ringing, or a siren. How does it make you feel? -Listen to a voice on the telephone. Really focus on it. -Listen to the voices of family members, colleagues, or fellow students, paying close attention to their intonation, pacing, and accent. What mood are they conveying? Looking -Look around the room and differentiate colors or patterns, such as straight lines, circles, and squares. -Look at the architecture of the room. Now close your eyes. Can you describe it? Could you draw it? -Look at one object in the room: chair, desk, chest of drawers, whatever. Close your eyes and try to picture the shape, the material, and the colors. -Notice any changes in your environment at home, at school, or in your workplace. -Look at magazine photos and try to guess what emotions the subjects’ expressions show. -Observe the effect of light around you. How does it change shapes? Expressions? Moods? Touching -When shaking a person’s hand, notice the temperature of the hand. Then notice the temperature of your own hand. -Hold an object in your hands, such as a cup of coffee, a brick, a tennis ball, or anything else that is available. Then put it down. Close your eyes and remember the shape, size, and texture of the object. -Feel different objects and then, with your eyes closed, touch them again. Be aware of how the sensations change. -Explore different textures and surfaces with your eyes first open and then closed. Smelling and Tasting -Be aware of the smells around you; come up with words to describe them. -Try to remember the taste of a special meal that you enjoyed in the past. Use words to describe the flavors—not just the names of the dishes. -Search your memory for important smells or tastes. -Think of places with a strong tie to smell. These sensory exercises are an excellent way to boost your awareness and increase your ability to concentrate. What is learned in the fullest way—using all five senses—is unlikely to be forgotten. As you learn concentration, you will find that you are able to be more in tune with what is going on around you in a social situation, which in turn allows you to interact more fully.

He had a rough idea where he was going, since Rylann had previously mentioned that she lived in Roscoe Village. At the stoplight at Belmont Avenue, he pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts. The beauty of text messaging, he realized, was in its simplicity. He didn’t have to try to explain things, nor did he have to attempt to parse through all the banter in an attempt to figure out what she might be thinking. Instead, he could keep things short and sweet. I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU. He hit send. To kill time while he waited for her response, he drove in the direction of his sister’s wine shop, figuring he could always drop in and harass Jordan about something. This time, however, she beat him to the punch. “So who’s the brunette bombshell?” Jordan asked as soon as he walked into the shop and took a seat at the main bar. Damn. He’d forgotten about the stupid Scene and Heard column. Kyle helped himself to a cracker and some Brie cheese sitting on the bar. “I’m going to say…Angelina Jolie. Actually, no—Megan Fox.” “Megan Fox is, like, twenty-five.” “And this is a problem why, exactly?” Jordan slapped his hand as he reached for more crackers. “Those are for customers.” She put her hand on her hip. “You know, after reading the Scene and Heard column, I’d kind of hoped it was Rylann they were talking about. And that maybe, just maybe, my ne’er-do-well twin had decided to stop playing around and finally pursue a woman of quality.” He stole another cracker. “Now, that would be something.” She shook her head. “Why do I bother? You know, one day you’re going to wake up and…” Kyle’s cell phone buzzed, and he tuned out the rest of Jordan’s lecture—he could probably repeat the whole thing word for word by now—as he checked the incoming message. It was from Rylann, her response as short and sweet as his original text. 3418 CORNELIA, #3. He had her address. With a smile, he looked up and interrupted his sister. “That’s great, Jordo. Hey, by any chance do you have any bottles of that India Ink cabernet lying around?” She stopped midrant and stared at him. “I’m sure I do. Why, what made you think of that?” Then her face broke into a wide grin. “Wait a second…that was the wine Rylann talked about when she was here. She said it was one of her favorites.” “Did she? Funny coincidence.” Jordan put her hand over her heart. “Oh my God, you’re trying to impress her. That is so cute.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kyle scoffed. “I just thought, since I’ve heard such good things about the wine, that I would give it a shot.” Jordan gave him a look, cutting through all the bullshit. “Kyle. She’s going to love it.” Okay, whatever. Maybe he was trying to impress Rylann a little. “You don’t think it’s too much? Like I’m trying too hard?” Jordan put her hand over her heart again. “Oh. It’s like watching Bambi take his first steps.” “Jordo…” he growled warningly. With a smile, she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “It’s perfect. Trust me.

I did Barbie’s dream as a one-off thing, but I found it haunting me; I kept having an image in my head of Martin Tenbones getting killed in real New York. Still, that would’ve been the end of it...except, by a wild coincidence, a short time later I received a postcard from Jonathan Carroll. He wrote that he’d been following my graphic novel Signal to Noise—which was being serialized in The Face magazine at the time—and he was finding a number of very scary similarities between my story and his as yet unpublished novel, A Child Across the Sky. He concluded, “We’re like two radio sets tuned to the same goofy channel.” I wrote back and said, “I think you’re right. What’s more, I abandoned a whole storyline after reading Bones of the Moon, but I keep thinking I ought to return to it.” Jonathan then sent me a wonderful letter with this advice: “Go to it, man. Ezra Pound said that every story has already been written. The purpose of a good writer is to write it new. I would very much like to see a Gaiman approach to that kind of story.” With that encouragement, I began creating A Game of You.

but at least it was a home for animals. Whistling a cheerful tune, Joe hurried back to the girls. Nobody would guess that they were sisters. Amy, who was the eldest, had long brown hair and blue eyes, while Sarah had short blonde hair and green eyes. “What lazy bones you two are,” Joe said as he sat down beside his sisters.

Ironically enough, when we returned to the zoo, the Dr. Dolittle cameo almost came true. We had to transfer a big female crocodile named Toolakea to another enclosure. Steve geared up for the move as he always did. “Don’t think about catching Toolakea,” he instructed his crew, me included, before we ever got near to the enclosure. “If you’re concentrating on catching her, she’ll know it. We’ll never get a top-jaw rope on. Crocs know when they’re being hunted.” For millions of years, wild animals have evolved to use every sense to tune into the world around them. Steve understood that their survival depended on it. So as I approached the enclosure, I thought of mowing the lawn, or doing the croc show, or picking hibiscus flowers to feed the lizards. Anything but catching Toolakea. It went like clockwork. Steve top-jaw-roped Toolakea, and we all jumped her. He decided that since she was only a little more than nine feet long, we would be able to just lift her over the fence and carry her to her other enclosure. Steve never built his enclosures with gates. He knew that sooner or later, someone could make a mistake and not latch a gate properly. We had to be masters at fence jumping. He picked up Toolakea around her shoulders with her neck held firmly against his upper arm. This would protect his face if she started struggling. The rest of us backed him up and helped to lift Toolakea over the fence. All of a sudden she exploded, twisting and writhing in everyone’s arms. “Down, down, down,” Steve shouted. That was our signal to pin the crocodile again before picking her up. Not everyone reacted quickly enough. As Steve moved to the ground, the people on the tail were still standing up. That afforded Toolakea the opportunity to twist her head around and grab hold of Steve’s thigh. The big female croc sank her teeth deep into his flesh. I never realized it until later. Steve didn’t flinch. He settled the crocodile on the ground, keeping her eyes covered to quiet her down. We lifted her again. This time she cleared the fence easily. I noticed the blood trickling down Steve’s leg. We got to the other enclosure before I asked what had happened, and he showed me. There were a dozen tears in the fabric of his khaki shorts. A half dozen of Toolakea’s teeth had gotten through to his flesh, putting a number of puncture holes in his upper thigh. As usual, Steve didn’t bother with the wound. He cleaned it out and carried on, but even after his leg had healed, he couldn’t feel the temperature accurately on his leg. Once, about a month after the incident, I got a drink out of the fridge and rested it on his thigh. “I can feel something there,” he said. “Hot or cold?” I quizzed. “I don’t know,” he said. The croc-torn khaki shorts he wore that day made an amazing souvenir for a lucky sponsor of the zoo. People who donated a certain amount of money to our conservation efforts received a bonus in return: one of Steve’s uniforms and a photograph of him in it. Steve was very proud to include his khakis with teeth holes in them as the gift for a generous supporter.

If the gospel lacks correspondence to reality, why is it that the majority of believers never comes to terms with this? As I expressed in my opening chapter, I am convinced it is not due to a lack of intelligence. Nor is it due to a lack of goodness or noble intentions on the part of most believers. Rather, from the perspective of one who has escaped the finely tuned clutches of the Christian machinery designed to keep me in the fold, I see it primarily as a lack of courage, at least for those who have encountered good reasons for doubting. I, like most believers, experienced serious doubts as a young Christian, but I lacked the courage to pit my reservations against the authority of the church and against its fallible, humanly authored scriptures, finding it safer to submit to the supremely well-crafted, guilt-inducing tactics of apologists who assured me that all the fault lay with me and not with the divinely inspired Bible. I capitulated and managed to hold my doubts at bay for over a decade longer while serving God on the mission field. Many if not most of you have faced similar questions and misgivings about the Bible and the Christian faith, even if not to the same extent. You might be like me during my initial short-lived crises of faith: I could not bring myself to face with courage the possibility that life might not have any cosmic Meaning; that there might be no higher power to guide, protect, and provide for me; that justice might not prevail in the long run; that I might no longer be able to hold sinners accountable with the words, "Thus says the Lord"; that life ends at the grave; or that I might have followed and lead others to follow a grand mistake. I lacked the courage to face my church, family, and friends whom I feared would look upon me as a reprobate. I lacked the courage to think for myself—to accept that the virtues of humility and meekness must not be used as an excuse for failing to challenge entrenched ideas that lack sufficient evidence. In short, I preferred to squelch the seed of doubt and label it as sin rather than as healthy, critical thinking, lest it flower and make life unbearable. That I viewed my incipient doubt and disbelief as sin was no accident: the church has a powerful vested interest in keeping believers in the fold, and it will not let them go without a fight. My courage-squelching guilt or angst was the result of a concerted effort developed over the centuries to make me feel like a depraved worm, a proud and willful rebel, a traitor, a God-hater, and an enemy of all that is good. I was programmed to consider that I would be better off if I were to commit adultery or murder than if I were to abandon the one who created me and redeemed me. Without Christ I would be worse than a good-for-nothing, and, like the traitor Judas, it would have been better for me had I never been born. No wonder most believers never muster the courage to break free from this cage!

Anxiety does not exist to control you. You exist to control it. It is, as I said, a simple fact of life that can be managed. In fact, used properly, it can actually give you an extra boost by heightening your energy and awareness. If you have social anxiety about such things as giving a presentation, speaking up at a meeting, attending a social gathering, initiating plans, developing intimacy in friendships and dating, then learning to manage your anxiety will help. This book will teach you how to channel your anxiety—not how to eliminate it. The twelve chapters delineate a five-step program that essentially works like this: Step I: Identify your anxiety symptoms and recognize the ways in which they interfere with your life. Your social fears prevent you from doing things you would like to do (pursue friendships, date, achieve career success). Pinpointing your stress responses and noting what causes them give you the information you need to move on to Step 2. Step 2: Set short- and long-term social goals. Having identified the situations you have trouble confronting, you can identify immediate goals to work toward, and start to form a vision of your ideal social self. Goal-setting is a valuable way of letting your imagination offer a reward for your hard work. Next, you will begin to learn skills that can make your dream a reality. Step 3: Learn stress management and self-awareness. The techniques outlined in this book will allow you to control your anxiety response and tune in to your own desires and strong points, giving you more to share as you become more comfortable interacting. With your anxiety in check and your self-awareness guiding you toward fulfillment, anxiety becomes positive energy and will be the base of your self-empowerment. Now you are ready to polish your social skills. Step 4: Learn or refine social skills. Your fear has diminished, making it possible to refine social skills and enhance your interactive productivity, which will make the difference between social success and failure. Good conversation, active listening, an awareness of what behavior is appropriate—all of these skills will add to your overall social ability and self-empowerment. Step 5: Expand and refine your social network. At this point, you are ready to roll. You understand your anxiety, your stress is manageable, and you have learned the finer points of interacting in a positive, productive manner. The final step is to use your community’s resources to create, expand, or refine your social network to best meet your interactive goals. No matter who you are, you can improve your social network to better suit your needs. From here, anything is possible!

How to tune your sixth sense and use it to improve your life

Protein engineering has moved from a wary adventure on the part of a few pioneering groups in the 1980s to a routine tool used around the world today on a vast range of targets, and with immense power for fine-tuning the properties of enzymes and other proteins for practical applications. In particular, enzyme catalysis has at last gained widespread acceptance as a tool for chemistry, and, because enzyme catalysis avoids the need for high temperatures and pressures and toxic waste streams, it has become the basis of what is now generally known as ‘green chemistry’. One recent indicator of this remarkable shift in the relationship between enzymology and mainstream chemistry was the share in the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Professor Frances Arnold at Caltech who has in recent years pioneered major advances in the methodology for efficient development of novel biocatalysts.

entertaining. I saw some Ramona in my freckled, skinny self. As a member of the Boy-Haters’ Club of America, I especially enjoyed laughing along as she chased Davy around the playground in Ramona the Pest. I didn’t think of myself as a pest, per se, but I did my fair share of terrorizing boys when the moment called for it. The moment often did call for it, since I was a true and loyal member of the BHCA. We met sporadically, whenever we were near the clubhouse, which was more often than you might think since it was an hour away. Our clubhouse was in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, on the second floor, behind an exhibit about dinosaurs. A set of carpeted steps led up to a large window with spectacular views that made it the ideal location for our meetings. There were two items on our agenda, and we had already done the first—singing the namesake song. My father wrote it, and the tune’s not very specific; it is most closely related to the opening for a local news show. Because it was so short we often sang it multiple times, as we did that day, the quality of our performances going down with each repetition. Once we’d settled down from that, it was time for the second half of our club business.

Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place). Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward Voice till you learn to recognize it. Stop trying to compete with others. Give yourself to God and then be what and who you are without regard to what others think. Reduce your interests to a few. Don't try to know what will be of no service to you. Avoid the digest type of mind—short bits of unrelated facts, cute stories and bright sayings. Learn to pray inwardly every moment. After a while you can do this even while you work. Practice candor, childlike honesty, humility. Pray for a single eye. Read less, but read more of what is important to your inner life. Never let your mind remain scattered for very long. Call home your roving thoughts. Gaze on Christ with the eyes of your soul. Practice spiritual concentration.

Who are we, the people who have ADHD? We are the problem kid who drives his parents crazy by being totally disorganized, unable to follow through on anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task; the one who is forever interrupting, making excuses for work not done, and generally functioning far below potential in most areas. We are the kid who gets daily lectures on how we’re squandering our talent, wasting the golden opportunity that our innate ability gives us to do well, and failing to make good use of all that our parents have provided. We are also sometimes the talented executive who keeps falling short due to missed deadlines, forgotten obligations, social faux pas, and blown opportunities. Too often we are the addicts, the misfits, the unemployed, and the criminals who are just one diagnosis and treatment plan away from turning it all around. We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure. But then, we can also make good. Can we ever! We are the seemingly tuned-out meeting participant who comes out of nowhere to provide the fresh idea that saves the day. Frequently, we are the “underachieving” child whose talent blooms with the right kind of help and finds incredible success after a checkered educational record. We are the contenders and the winners. We are also imaginative and dynamic teachers, preachers, circus clowns, and stand-up comics, Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, inventors, tinkerers, and trend setters. Among us there are self-made millionaires and billionaires; Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners; Academy, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy award winners; topflight trial attorneys, brain surgeons, traders on the commodities exchange, and investment bankers. And we are often entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.

He explained to Steve that there was an important difference in the digital media value chain as well. In physical retail, Amazon operated at the middle of the value chain. We added value by sourcing and aggregating a vast selection of goods, tens of millions of them, on a single website and delivering them quickly and cheaply to customers. To win in digital, because those physical retail value adds were not advantages, we needed to identify other parts of the value chain where we could differentiate and serve customers well. Jeff told Steve that this meant moving out of the middle and venturing to either end of the value chain. On one end was content, where the value creators were book authors, filmmakers, TV producers, publishers, musicians, record companies, and movie studios. On the other end was distribution and consumption of content. In digital, that meant focusing on applications and devices consumers used to read, watch, or listen to content, as Apple had already done with iTunes and the iPod. We all took note of what Apple had achieved in digital music in a short period of time and sought to apply those learnings to our long-term product vision.

short, tomorrow’s lawyers will need to be more in tune with tomorrow’s clients. In contrast, when meeting with their clients today, many partners of law firms are said to broadcast and pontificate instead of listening to what is actually on the minds of those they are serving. In other words, many law firms lack empathy. They fail to put themselves in their clients’ shoes and see the business from the clients’ perspective. It is often claimed that, because they do not pause to listen, firms cannot distinguish between those occasions when a client wants quick, rough-and-ready guidance as opposed to detailed and exhaustive legal analysis. This lack of empathy and inability to listen could be deeply prejudicial to long-term relationships between firms and clients in the future.

Let’s say there was a slight shortage of liquidity (cash) in the system and the fed funds rate was trading a little high at 5.3125% (5 5/16%), instead of the target rate of 5.25%. The Fed would enter the market, announce an operation, and borrow securities from the market. By taking securities out of the market, it put cash into the market. Securities come out and cash goes in. Now, let’s say the fed funds rate was trading at 5.1875% (5 3/16%) with the same target rate of 5.25%. The Fed would execute the opposite transaction. Because there was a little excess liquidity in the system, they would loan securities into the market, taking cash out. These Open Market Operations are more fine-tuning of overnight rates, but there were plenty of times when the actual fed funds rate deviated from the target rate by much more than a sixteenth.

There are people gossiping on patios and balconies, enjoying the sunshine. Friends sit on benches, bees buzz around bushes, light breezes play tunes with ice cubes. Chris finds the whole thing deeply infuriating. He’s a wind-and-rain guy, a turn-up-the-collar-on-your-overcoat man. If Chris had his way he would hibernate for the summer. He has not worn shorts since 1987.

51. Do you have a really hard time tolerating frustration? 52. Are you restless without “action” in your life? 53. Do you have a hard time reading a book all the way through? 54. Do you regularly break rules or minor laws rather than put up with the frustration of obeying them? 55. Are you beset by irrational worries? 56. Do you frequently make letter or number reversals? 57. Have you been the driver and at fault in more than four car accidents? 58. Do you handle money erratically? 59. Are you a gung-ho, go-for-it sort of person? 60. Do you find that structure and routine are both rare in your life and soothing when you find them? 61. Have you been divorced more than once? 62. Do you struggle to maintain self-esteem? 63. Do you have poor hand-eye coordination? 64. As a kid, were you a bit of a klutz at sports? 65. Have you changed jobs a lot? 66. Are you a maverick? 67. Are memos virtually impossible for you to read or write? 68. Do you find it almost impossible to keep an updated address book, phone book, or Rolodex? 69. Are you the life of the party one day and hangdog the next? 70. Given an unexpected chunk of free time, do you often find that you don’t use it well or get depressed during it? 71. Are you more creative or imaginative than most people? 72. Is paying attention or staying tuned in a chronic problem for you? 73. Do you work best in short spurts? 74. Do you let the bank balance your checkbook? 75. Are you usually eager to try something new?

Shocks and Joys" The biggest shocks in life were: That freedom is a lie Choosing chains carefully is more important than chasing illusions… That family and relatives are but a hit or miss biological coincidence… That life isn’t short as they claim for those who understand the game… That there is no friend in need, but indeed, need is the only constant friend… The biggest joys in life were: The smell of a freshly baked loaf of bread A sip of water The depth of a word The taste of a fresh fig The silence and tunes of nature The unexpected scent of a rose that tickles the nose after having fallen in the abyss of despair… [Original poem published in Arabic on March 9, 2023 at ahewar.org]

Iran has launched nuclear-tipped missiles at Israel. It’s been reported that some of those that were launched, exploded shortly after being fired, while others have reportedly gone way off target. One missile seems to have accidently nuked the city of Mosul in Iraq, killing thousands of that cities’ citizens. Some of the missiles seemed to have been duds and fell harmlessly to the ground near the borders of Israel, but none of them have breached Israel’s border. We have yet to hear a reaction from the Israeli government, so stay tuned for more updates. We now return to your regularly scheduled program.

The optimal duration forO2max intervals for marathoners is approximately 2 to 6 minutes. Intervals in this range are long enough so you accumulate a substantial amount of time at 95 to 100 percent ofO2max during each interval but short enough so you can maintain the optimal-intensity range throughout the workout. Intervals for marathoners should generally be between 800 and 1,600 meters. The training schedules in this book include some workouts of 600-meter repeats during weeks when your top priority lies elsewhere, such as when the week also calls for a tune-up race.

Many years ago I saw a short film sequence of a little girl. She was wearing a pretty dress as she skipped down a narrow cobbled lane. The people around smiled fondly as she passed. The grainy, black-and-white image did nothing to detract from the happy scene, and the light, summery music gave a feeling of well-being. The audience’s attention was focused entirely on the child. Then the identical film was shown again, but this time with sinister music playing. There was a gasp from the audience. For the first time, every person in the room noticed an unsmiling man standing at the mouth of a dark alley, smoking a cigarette and watching the girl. In spite of already knowing the ending, there was a sigh of relief when the child was reunited with her mother. Same film. Different music. For some people, life is like that. They filter out the positive and focus on the negative. They make assumptions about what somebody else is thinking, and believe only in the worst possible outcome. They are listening to a sinister tune. Is this you? If so, change the music, and focus on the positive. Listen to a happy tune, and see if the man skulking in the doorway disappears from view. “Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” William James

Children at this age learn best by experiencing through their senses. Their attention spans are too short to sit through lengthy instruction. They have not yet developed the reasoning skills to benefit from lecture, and while their language skills are developing, they are nowhere near the point where they can learn entirely from printed instruction. This leaves the wide world of their senses. This is how we learn and adapt, as infants, and young children are still very much still tuned into these natural instincts.

There were a great many other such tableaux. As Martial had predicted, bears featured prominently in most of them. A temple thief was made to reenact the role of the robber Laureolus, made famous by the ancient plays of Ennius and Naevius; he was nailed to a cross and then subjected to the attack of the bears. A freedman who had killed his former master was made to put on a Greek chlamys and go walking though a stage forest populated by cavorting satyrs and nymphs, like Orpheus lost in the woods; when one of the satyrs played a shrill tune on his pipes, the trees dispersed and the man was subject to an attack by bears. An arsonist was made to strap on wings in imitation of Daedalus, ascend a high platform, and then leap off; the wings actually carried him aloft for a short distance, a remarkable sight, until he plunged into an enclosure full of bears and was torn to pieces.

I’ll be hanged if I can understand how it concerns Evolution to get us out of a mere scrape.” “Out of all kinds of scrapes, my dear Brumm, Evolution has the power to deliver us. There is no conceivable scrape which is not a link in the great chain—in Chance, which is the empirical name for Evolution, and bears the same relation to it that alchemy bears to chemistry, and astrology to astronomy. And the last little scrape of all, death, is simply the charming means Evolution takes to get us out of the great big scrape, life. You will never be happy, my dear friend, until you submit to the Evolutionary will. If it were not so amusing, nothing would be more insufferable than the unanimity and persistency with which all men and kindreds and nations shout up into space, ‘What a scrape were in!’ It is the first thing the child says in its inarticulate way with the first breath of air it is able to employ. ‘Oh, what a scrape to be sure!’ And it is the last thing the man feels on his death-bed. And you will find that all the books and newspapers and music in the world are only expositions and sermons and fugues and variations on the one theme. ‘Oh, what a scrape!’ Now, it is my mission to change the world’s tune. I mean to teach it that scrape, luck, chance, is law, is Evolution, is the soul of the universe; and having brought man’s will into accord with the Evolutionary will, in a very short time it will come about that children will laugh with their first breath, as much as to say, ‘ What a delightful thing it is to come into the world.’ And on their death-beds men will cry, ‘How refreshing and noble it is to pass away,’ while all the books and newspapers and music of the world will cease to be a mere complaint, will cease—altogether, the books and newspapers, perhaps, and only glad music remain.

In many important ways the book really was an attack on McKinsey thinking, on the idea that the secrets of success could be found in an analytical framework or in a new corporate structure. It was an attack on the rationalist idea that businesses were machines that could be fine-tuned. The work of Peters and Waterman served to remind managers about first principles in business: If they didn’t listen to their customers or employees, then the rest was irrelevant. If the strategy revolution was forcing companies to look outward more than they ever had before, what Excellence did was force that gaze right back inside again. And it wasn’t talking only about financial management. It was also talking about how you treated the people who worked for you. It was, in short, the first great manifesto of the idea of corporate culture.

Estonian students, sitting in a café, impervious to the sparkling weather out of doors, impervious to the far roar of the world. It would not be so bad, if the café had an atmosphere of its own, if it could encourage the growth of an Estonian Boheme, throughout these winter months. But it has nothing of the sort. It is only a shabby reproduction of that indescribably vacuous institution: the typical northern-European café, where heavy red draperies shut out the healthy light of day; where coffee and cake is served on little tables with sticky imitation-marble tops and paper-napkins, where bored traveling salesmen read the daily papers and look at the women; where women sit patiently, by themselves, hoping to appear mysterious and romantic through their anonymity, hoping someday to encounter the shadowy Prince Charming, as he is encountered in fiction magazines; where a second-rate orchestra scrapes out tunes to which nobody listens—in short, where there is not even the lure of intoxication and vice and despair, but only sickening pretension, dullness, boredom, and stale air.

Eternal Power! Eternal Power, whose high abode Becomes the grandeur of a God: Infinite lengths beyond the bounds Where stars revolve their little rounds: Thee while the first archangel sings, He hides his face behind his wings: And ranks of shining thrones around Fall worshipping, and spread the ground. Lord, what shall earth and ashes do? We would adore our Maker too; From sin and dust to Thee we cry, The Great, the Holy, and the High. Earth, from afar, hath heard Thy fame, And worms have learn’d to lisp Thy Name; But O! the glories of Thy mind Leave all our soaring thoughts behind. God is in heaven, and men below: Be short our tunes; our words be few: A solemn reverence checks our songs, And praise sits silent on our tongues. —Issac Watts, 1674-1748

Once upon a time, there lived a man who had a terrible passion for baked beans. He loved them, but they always had an embarrassing and somewhat lively reaction on him. One day he met a girl and fell in love. When it was apparent that they would marry, he thought to himself 'She'll never go for me carrying on like that,' so he made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans, and shortly after that they got married.      A few months later, on the way home from work, his car broke down and since they lived in the country, he called his wife and told her he would be late because he had to walk. On his way home, he passed a small cafe and the wonderful aroma of baked beans overwhelmed him. Since he still had several miles to walk he figured he could walk off any ill affects before he got home. So he went in and ordered, and before leaving had three extra-large helpings of baked beans. All the way home he farted. He 'putted' down one hill and 'putt-putted' up the next. By the time he arrived home he felt reasonably safe.      His wife met him at the door and seemed somewhat excited. She exclaimed, 'Darling, I have the most wonderful surprise for you for dinner tonight!' She put a blindfold on him, and led him to his chair at the head of the table and made him promise not to peek. At this point he was beginning to feel another one coming on. Just as she was about to remove the blindfold, the telephone rang. She again made him promise not to peek until she returned, and she went to answer the phone.       While she was gone, he seized the opportunity. He shifted his weight to one leg and let go. It was not only loud, but *ripe* as a rotten egg.        He had a hard time breathing, so he felt for his napkin and fanned the air about him. He had just started to feel better, when another urge came on. He raised his leg and 'rrriiiipppp!' It sounded like a diesel engine revving, and smelled worse. To keep from gagging, he tried fanning his arms a while, hoping the smell would dissipate. Things had just about returned to normal when he felt another urge coming. He shifted his weight to his other leg and let go. This was a real blue ribbon winner; the windows rattled, the dishes on the table shook and a minute later the flowers on the table were dead. While keeping an ear tuned in on the conversation in the hallway, and keeping his promise of staying blindfolded, he carried on like this for the next ten minutes, farting and fanning them each time with his napkin.      When he heard the 'phone farewells' (indicating the end of his loneliness and freedom) he neatly laid his napkin on his lap and folded his hands on top of it. Smiling contentedly, he was the picture of innocence when his wife walked in. Apologizing for taking so long, she asked if he had peeked at the dinner. After assuring her he had not, she removed the blindfold and yelled, 'Surprise!'      To his shock and horror, there were twelve dinner guests seated around the table for his surprise birthday party.

It was her concern and commitment to a friend which last year involved her in perhaps the most emotional period of her life. For five months she secretly helped to care for Adrian Ward-Jackson who had discovered that he was suffering from AIDS. It was a time of laughter, joy and much sorrow as Adrian, a prominent figure in the world of art, ballet and opera, gradually succumbed to his illness. A man of great charisma and energy, Adrian initially found it difficult to come to terms with his fate when in the mid-1980s he was diagnosed as HIV positive. His word as deputy chairman of the Aids Crisis Trust, where he first met the Princess, had made him fully aware of the reality of the disease. Finally he broke the news in 1987 to his great friend Angela Serota, a dancer with the Royal Ballet until a leg injury cut short her career and now prominent in promoting dance and ballet. For much of the time, Angela, a woman of serenity and calm practicality, nursed Adrian, always with the support of her two teenage daughters. He was well enough to receive a CBE at Buckingham Palace in March 1991 for his work in the arts--he was a governor of the Royal Ballet, chairman of the Contemporary Arts Society and a director of the Theatre Museum Association--and it was at a celebratory lunch held at the Tate Gallery that Angela first met the Princess. In April 1991 Adrian’s condition deteriorated and he was confined to his Mayfair apartment where Angela was in almost constant attendance. It was from that time that Diana made regular visits, once even brining her children Princes Willian and Harry. From that time Angela and the Princess began to forge a supportive bond as they cared for their friend. Angela recalls: “I thought she was utterly beautiful in a very profound way. She has an inner spirit which shines forth though there was also a sense of pervasive unhappiness about her. I remember loving the way she never wanted me to be formal.” When Diana brought the boys to see her friends, a reflection of her firmly held belief that her role as mother is to bring them up in a way that equips them for every aspect of life and death, Angela saw in William a boy much older and more sensitive than his years. She recalls: “He had a mature view of illness, a perspective which showed awareness of love and commitment.” At first Angela kept in the background, leaving Diana alone in Adrian’s room where they chatted about mutual friends and other aspects of life. Often she brought Angela, whom she calls “Dame A”, a gift of flowers or similar token. She recalls: “Adrian loved to hear about her day-to-day work and he loved too the social side of life. She made him laugh but there was always the perfect degree of understanding, care and solicitude. This is the point about her, she is not just a decorative figurehead who floats around on a cloud of perfume.” The mood in Mount Street was invariably joyous, that sense of happiness that understands about pain. As Angela says: “I don’t see death as sad or depressing. It was a great journey he was going on. The Princess was very much in tune with that spirit. She also loved coming for herself, it was an intense experience. At the same time Adrian was revitalized by the healing quality of her presence.” Angela read from a number of works by St. Francis of Assisi, Kahil Gibran and the Bible as well as giving Adrian frequent aromatherapy treatments. A high spot was a telephone call from Mother Teresa of Calcutta who also sent a medallion via Indian friends. At his funeral they passed Diana a letter from Mother Teresa saying how much she was looking forward to meeting her when she visited India. Unfortunately Mother Teresa was ill at that time so the Princess made a special journey to Rome where she was recuperating. Nonetheless that affectionate note meant a great deal to the Princess.

One evening she can be immensely mature, discussing death and the after-life with George Carey, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the next night giggling away at a bridge party. “Sometimes she is possessed by a different spirit in response to breaking free from the yoke of responsibility that binds her,” observed Rory Scott who still sees the Princess socially. As her brother says: “She has done very well to keep her sense of humour, that is what relaxes people around her. She is not at all stuffy and will make a joke happily either about herself or about something ridiculous which everyone has noticed but is too embarrassed to talk about.” Royal tours, these outdated exercises in stultifying boredom and ancient ceremonial, are rich seams for her finely tuned sense of the ridiculous. After a day watching native dancers in unbearable humidity or sipping a cup of some foul-tasting liquid, she often telephones her friends to regale them with the latest absurdities. “The things I do for England,” is her favourite phrase. She was particularly tickled when she asked the Pope about his “wounds” during a private audience in the Vatican shortly after he had been shot. He thought she was talking about her “womb” and congratulated her on her impending new arrival. While her instinct and intuition are finely honed, “she understands the essence of people, what a person is about rather than who they are,” says her friend Angela Serota--Diana recognizes that her intellectual hinterland needs development. The girl who left school without an “O” level to her name now harbours a quiet ambition to study psychology and mental health. “Anything to do with people,” she says.

The first rule in any kind of coaching is that the coach has to engage in deep listening. Which means that the coach must relate to the context in which the “other” is reasoning—they must “tune in” to where the other is coming from. In short, perhaps the basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mind-set, the framework of the other. That’s not easy, as I needn’t tell you for most of us, thinking that we have tuned into the other person, usually we are listening most intently to ourselves.

Look through the heavy pine forest and see a fire glowing. Beside it sits a bear of a man, knife in one hand, a clay bowl on the ground in front of him. It has been a long time since he last shed blood for his Gods. Tonight would satisfy them a little while longer. The screech of a doomed animal is cut short and the bowl fills with its steaming blood. He puts it on a flat stone by the fire. He cuts his scarred wrist to let his own blood drip into the warming mixture. For many days he has thrown his runes and has had no clear sight. He has marked each one with his blood and still they reveal nothing. A tune starts deep in his gut. It stretches and twists like an unborn child, travelling up like a snake through his chest, setting his bones to shake. He grinds his jaw shut to keep it from escaping as it creeps up his throat. His lips start to vibrate with the tune as it tries to push its way out. The man is well learned in the ways of the song and knows how to control it. The bowl is steaming heavily and he leans over it to breathe in the blood fumes that will give his visions. This man’s name is Vasilli and he is trying to find his brother.

The sisters' voices were almost identical, laughing mezzos tuned in childhood to the same pitch and timbre. To the ear, they were twins; to the eye, nothing alike. Emily was tall and slender with her hair cropped short. She wore a pinstriped suit, elegant slacks, tiny, expensive glasses. She was an MBA, not a programmer, and it showed. Magnified by her glasses, her hazel eyes were clever, guarded, and also extremely beautiful. Her features were delicate, her fingers long and tapered. She scarcely allowed her back to touch her chair, while Jess curled up with her legs tucked under her. Jess was small and whimsical. Her face and mouth were wider than Emily's, her cheeks rounder, her eyes greener and more generous. She had more of the sun and sea in her, more freckles, more gold in her brown hair. She would smile at anyone, and laugh and joke and sing. She wore jeans and sweaters from Mars Mercantile, and her hair... who knew when she'd cut it last?

The truth about the universe (here) is infinitely stranger, and infinitely more grand: it lies in the Laws of Physics that have come to know Themselves through humanity. Our destiny and purpose are encoded in the fine structure constant, and the value of the density omega. The human race - in whatever form, robot or organic - will keep on advancing for the next ten billion years, until we can give rise to the hyperintelligence which will cause the finely tuned Big Bang required to bring us into existence. If we don't die out in the next few millenia. In which case, other intelligent creatures will perform the task. It doesn't matter who carries the torch. Exactly. None of it matters. Why should I care what a civilisation of post-humans, robots, or aliens, might or might not do ten billion years from now? What does any of this grandiose shit have to do with me?

Friends sit on benches, bees buzz around bushes, light breezes play tunes with ice cubes. Chris finds the whole thing deeply infuriating. He’s a wind-and-rain guy, a turn-up-the-collar-on-your-overcoat man. If Chris had his way he would hibernate for the summer. He has not worn shorts since 1987.

EFFECTS The effects can be categorized into three parts: Inner connection For the rest of our life, an inward link to Reiki is created. With regular use, it will deepen. But if you haven't used Reiki for a while, don't worry. Even if you haven't been practicing it for many years and then suddenly feel it might be handy, just think about it, and it's going to be there. It may lay unconscious, so it can always be invoked. Healing hands and intuition Shortly after the tuning, we seem to have a feeling in our hands. It is experienced as intense warmth for many, tingling, or pulsating for others. Many people feel nothing about themselves and only understand they have soothing hands through the support they get when they position them on another human. Occasionally, after a tuning, Reiki can' turn on' itself. You may be seated on the underground and suddenly feel an intense heat settling on your lap with your paws. There's nothing to think about just enjoy what's happening. At that point, you definitely need Reiki. Many students are surprised by the increase in their intuitive skills. They become more aware of the feelings of other people and may even feel the events of the future. They tap into the universe's interconnectedness. A 21-day clearing process An attunement ends an inner cleansing process that is often most evident in the first three weeks (and thus called the 21-day clearing process). It can last as long as a few months in some cases, in many others, just a week. It's a good inner declutter, but the severity can vary. Some students have to use the bathroom more often (flushing out toxins); others have to relive their lives completely, encounter emotions, personality habits, visions, and experiences that are often as toxic as chemicals. But they can handle them now.

After all, people previously invoked God to explain all sorts of natural phenomena we later explained, and each time God had to retreat further back into the unknown. Today God is often found retreating to lighting the blue touch-paper that started the universe going or fine-tuning its fundamental forces. Such a God is fast running out of places to refuge.

It is rather remarkable that the whole apparatus of nucleosynthesis, generation of long-lived radioactive elements, and the chemical constants that determine the freezing point of water and the properties of the silicate weathering reactions have conspired to permit the operation of the silicate weathering thermostat. The ‘anthropic’ principle would state that of all possible Universes, things have worked out this way because a Universe has to have something near these characteristics in order to allow us to be here to notice such things. A less anthropic—and probably more humble—view is that we evolved to take advantage of this particular characteristic of our Universe, and that other forms of life could evolve to make use of other geochemically stabilized habitats.