Unlikely Source Quotes

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are my source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life. I'm still hoping that perhaps someday I'll learn how to use willpower like a real person, but until that very unlikely day, I will confidently battle toward adequacy, wielding my crude skill set of fear and shame.

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been... one of the primary sources of progress.

Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite." But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while? That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.

Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic fluid; it surrounds and protects me. It’s also stable, ever-available and something I can control - that is, I can reach for it whenever I want. I can also choose music that reflects my mood, or if I want, helps to soothe it…music-seeking offers excitement and tension that I can immediately resolve and a reward I can immediately attain - unlike other tensions in my life and other desired rewards. Music is a source of beauty and meaning outside myself that I can claim as my own without exploring how, in my life, I keep from directly experiencing those qualities. Addiction, in this sense, is the lazy man’s path to transcendence.

I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.

Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.

They do not learn, fixed in their ways as they are. You are naïve to think otherwise. It’s an illness, Assassin, for which there is but one cure.’ ‘You’re wrong. And that’s why you must be put to rest.’ ‘Am I not unlike those precious books you seek to save? A source of knowledge with which you disagree? Yet you’re rather quick to steal my life.’ ‘A small sacrifice to save many. It is necessary.

My parents taught me that the provable, tangible, verifiable things were sacred, that sometimes the most astonishing ideas are clearly profound, but when they get labeled as "facts", we lose sight of their beauty. It doesn't have to be this way. Science is the source of so much insight worthy of ecstatic celebration.

...I love dandelions. They make me feel like sunshine itself, and you will always see some creature resting on an open bloom, if you have a little patience to wait. This vital source for all emerging pollinators is a blast of uplifting yellow to brighten even the greyest of days. It stands tall and proud, unlike all the others opening and swaying in the breeze. The odd one out.

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unlikely sources.

Even as flawed human beings inevitably corrupt and obscure the natural monotheistic order, all hope is not lost. Just as inevitably, prophets emerge to issue bold calls to restore a nurturing relationship with the Divine. As the Qur’an explains, “Humanity was of one faith, then they transgressed against each other, so the Loving Divine sends the prophets as guides” (2:213). The English term “prophet” suggests someone foretelling the future, yet Semitic prophets are more focused on recovering a precious heritage in order to chart a better future. The Nabi, the Semitic term for prophet, describes an unlikely source of water bubbling up in an unexpected location, like a desert spring. The Nabi is rarely a prominent elite, but rather an unlikely leader who selflessly connects with divine truth that inexorably bubbles up inside.

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.

God’, by definition, cannot be an extra item in the universe (a very big one) to be known, and so controlled, by human intellect, will, or imagination. God is, rather, that without which there would be nothing at all; God is the source and sustainer of all being, and, as such, the dizzying mystery encountered in the act of contemplation as precisely the ‘blanking’ of the human ambition to knowledge, control, and mastery. To know God is unlike any other knowledge; indeed, it is more truly to be known, and so transformed.

God gave humanity many healing tools, and they exist far beyond circumstances. Some of them are traditionally spiritual: prayer, communion, sanctuary, Scripture. The sacraments have always brought us back home to God. But so many others are tactile, physical, of soil and earth, flesh and blood. Some are covert operators of grace, unlikely sources of joy, like a beautiful piece of art, a song, a perfectly told story around a dinner table, a pool party with friends and margaritas. These also count, they matter, they are to be consumed and enjoyed with gusto, despite suffering, even in the midst of suffering. God gives us both Good News and good times, and neither cancels out the other. What a wonderful world, what a wonderful life, what a wonderful God.

Once someone’s source of motivation is self-actualization, his drive to perform has no limit. Thus, its most important characteristic is that unlike other sources of motivation, which extinguish themselves after the needs are fulfilled, self-actualization continues to motivate people to ever higher levels of performance.

Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke at about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out onto the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in an indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack's plantations; closer at hand and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds that he preferred to nightjars, but it was not they that had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years. Like many other sailors Jack Aubrey had long dreamed of lying in his warm bed all night long; yet although he could now do so with a clear conscience he often rose at unChristian hours, particularly if he were moved by strong emotion, and crept from his bedroom in a watch-coat, to walk about the house or into the stables or to pace the bowling-green. Sometimes he took his fiddle with him. He was in fact a better player than Stephen, and now that he was using his precious Guarnieri rather than a robust sea-going fiddle the difference was still more evident: but the Guarnieri did not account for the whole of it, nor anything like. Jack certainly concealed his excellence when they were playing together, keeping to Stephen's mediocre level: this had become perfectly clear when Stephen's hands were at last recovered from the thumb-screws and other implements applied by French counter-intelligence officers in Minorca; but on reflexion Stephen thought it had been the case much earlier, since quite apart from his delicacy at that period, Jack hated showing away. Now, in the warm night, there was no one to be comforted, kept in countenance, no one could scorn him for virtuosity, and he could let himself go entirely; and as the grave and subtle music wound on and on, Stephen once more contemplated on the apparent contradiction between the big, cheerful, florid sea-officer whom most people liked on sight but who would have never been described as subtle or capable of subtlety by any one of them (except perhaps his surviving opponents in battle) and the intricate, reflective music he was now creating. So utterly unlike his limited vocabulary in words, at times verging upon the inarticulate. 'My hands have now regained the moderate ability they possessed before I was captured,' observed Maturin, 'but his have gone on to a point I never thought he could reach: his hands and his mind. I am amazed. In his own way he is the secret man of the world.

The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley’s mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over space—has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction—has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn’t understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists—not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire—unlike pleasure—is a source of suffering, pain and hatred.

(Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term 'middle class'. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle classes were the inheritors of the enlightenment, the creators of the welfare state, the intellectual elite and the source of all culture. Where they got this idea, it's hard to say.)

But at that moment—the moment of realization that life as I’d been living it would have to end—I felt devastation unlike any I’d ever known. The barrenness was indescribable. The emptiness that opened up in me seemed to stretch on forever; I could see no end to it, could find no source of comfort in it, could not imagine any way out.

The sensation wasn't repellent, though she had believed somewhere it would be. Someone had left her with that impression, but, whoever they were, they were wrong. It was ... mesmerizing. She could sense the length of him against her buttocks as well as a kind of heaviness, a substantive presence. He was changing right there under her, growing longer and thicker, information she acquired through the unlikely source of her bum, while he kissed her mouth.

The Allatians believe that they have a writing system superior to all others. Unlike books written in alphabets, syllabaries, or logograms, an Allatian book captures not only words, but also the writer’s tone, voice, inflection, emphasis, intonation, rhythm. It is simultaneously a score and a recording. A speech sounds like a speech, a lament a lament, and a story re-creates perfectly the teller’s breathless excitement. For the Allatians, reading is literally hearing the voice of the past. But there is a cost to the beauty of the Allatian book. Because the act of reading requires physical contact with the soft, malleable surface, each time a text is read, it is also damaged and some aspects of the original irretrievably lost. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer’s voice, and are thus shunned. In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies.

Now: unlike ourselves, the Father of Jesus loves men and women, not for what He finds in them, but for what lies within Himself. It is not because men and women are good that He loves them, nor only good men and women that He loves. It is because He is so unutterably good that He loves all persons, good and evil. ... He loves the loveless, the unloving, the unlovable. He does not detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with His favor. In fact, He does not respond at all. The Father of Jesus is a source. He acts; He does not react. He initiates love. He is love without motive.

It is no surprise that the only woman in antiquity who could be the subject of a full-length biography is Cleopatra. Yet, unlike Alexander, whom she rivals as the theme of romance and legend, Cleopatra is known to us through overwhelmingly hostile sources. The reward of the ‘good’ woman in Rome was likely to be praise in stereotyped phrases; in Athens she won oblivion.

By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: Why do you think so many people believe in texts written thousands of years ago? And why does it seem the more supernatural, unprovable, improbable, and ancient the source of these texts, the more people believe them?” “Humans need reassurance,” Wakely wrote back. “They need to know others survived the hard times. And, unlike other species, which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice. You know how we say, ‘People never learn?’ It’s because they never do. But religious texts try to keep them on track.

Growing up in our home, there was no conflict between science and spirituality. My parents taught me that nature as revealed by science was a source of great, stirring pleasure. Logic, evidence, and proof did not detract from the feeling that something was transcendent—quite the opposite. It was the source of its magnificence.

Once we give ourselves permission to open up and play with lots of potential ideas and possibilities, creativity rewards us, enabling us to spot opportunities in unlikely places. It means we can sense when to take a chance and when to question or pursue something. It helps us hone a strong intuition, giving us the flexibility to recognize possibilities that might bypass us otherwise.

Very little trade has moved between China and India over the centuries, and that is unlikely to change soon. Of course the border is really the Tibetan–Indian border – and that is precisely why China has always wanted to control it. This is the geopolitics of fear. If China did not control Tibet, it would always be possible that India might attempt to do so. This would give India the commanding heights of the Tibetan Plateau and a base from which to push into the Chinese heartland, as well as control of the Tibetan sources of three of China’s great rivers, the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong, which is why Tibet is known as ‘China’s Water Tower’. China, a country with approximately the same volume of water usage as the USA, but with a population five times as large, will clearly not allow that. It matters not whether India wants to cut off China’s river supply, only that it would have the power to do so. For centuries China has tried to ensure that it could never happen.

Analogising architecture with ethics helps us to discern that there is unlikely ever to be a single source of beauty in a building, just as no one quality can ever underpin excellence in a person.

As the spectacular triumphs of technology mounted, something else was happening: old sources of belief came under siege. Nietzsche announced that God was dead. Darwin didn’t go as far but did make it clear that, if we were children of God, we had come to be so through a much longer and less dignified route than we had imagined, and that in the process we had picked up some strange and unseemly relatives. Marx argued that history had its own agenda and was taking us where it must, irrespective of our wishes. Freud taught that we had no understanding of our deepest needs and could not trust our traditional ways of reasoning to uncover them. John Watson, the founder of behaviorism, showed that free will was an illusion and that our behavior, in the end, was not unlike that of pigeons. And Einstein and his colleagues told us that there were no absolute means of judging anything in any case, that everything was relative. The thrust of a century of scholarship had the effect of making us lose confidence in our belief systems and therefore in ourselves. Amid the conceptual debris, there remained one sure thing to believe in—technology.

Henry yearned to instill in the students a delight in knowledge as much as he wanted to drill them in a particular subject. Vividly he explained one of his favorite themes, the seasons—their source in the tilt and rotation of the Earth and its revolution around the sun, their relationship to the changing lives of animals and people throughout the year, their parade of strikingly different forms of beauty. Such talks made learning seem central to the enjoyment of life rather than some kind of adornment—and, Henry hoped, it set a tone for the school day. Henry

Unlike their heathen neighbors, the Jews do not have a multiplicity of temples scattered across the land. There is only one cultic center, one unique source for the divine presence, one singular place and no other where a Jew can commune with the living God. Judea is, for all intents and purposes, a temple-state. The very term “theocracy” was coined specifically to describe Jerusalem. “Some people have entrusted the supreme political powers to monarchies,” wrote the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, “others to oligarchies, yet others to the masses [democracy]. Our lawgiver [God], however, was attracted by none of these forms of polity, but gave to his constitution the form of what—if a forced expression be permitted—may be termed a ‘theocracy’ [theokratia], placing all sovereignty and authority in the hands of God.” Think

The only way to truly stop a pandemic, it has been suggested, is to stamp it out at its source.2380 Once it starts, as noted the editorial board of the journal of the Canadian Medical Association, “School closure, quarantine, travel restrictions and so on are unlikely to be more effective than a garden hose in a forest fire.

Importantly, Haemophilus are what are called fastidious bacteria, meaning they need an iron source to grow, and unlike most other bacteria, they usually get it from the hemoglobin in our blood to which iron is bonded (giving blood its red color). Protecting the blood cells through the use of something like sida is crucial in treating this kind of infection.

Unlike Descartes, who had proved the existence of the self, God and the natural world in that order, Newton began with an attempt to explain the physical universe, with God as an essential part of the system. In Newton’s physics, nature was entirely passive: God was the sole source of activity. Thus, as in Aristotle, God was simply a continuation of the natural, physical order.

Over the seven years that I chipped away at this topic, I found hoarding to be a historically intricate lattice of worry about the unsuitable roles that household furnishings, mass-produced whatnots, curiosa, keepsakes, and clutter play in our daily lives. The majority of these apprehensions over the stuff of normal life originated in the twentieth century, and they are not so far removed from other cultural anxieties. As much as a hoard might be about depression and impulsivity and loss and misplaced stacks of paper, it is also about fears of working-class blacks in 1930s Harlem, post-1960s New Christian Right literatures, and emerging models of appropriate aging in the 1940s and 1950s. Though neglected in the current rhetoric of chronic savers, these unlikely sources each fed into definitions of HD.

voracious reader, and it dawned on her that a corporate job in Tampa or Jacksonville was not, in fact, the be-all and end-all. Something lay beyond that point. Florence had haunted the library, desperate for glimpses of lives unlike her own. She had a penchant for stories about glamorous, doomed women like Anna Karenina and Isabel Archer. Soon, however, her fascination shifted from the women in the stories to the women who wrote them. She devoured the diaries of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, who were far more glamorous and doomed than any of their characters. But without a doubt, Florence’s Bible was Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Admittedly, she spent more time scrolling through photos of Joan Didion in her sunglasses and Corvette Stingray than actually reading her, but the lesson stuck. All she had to do was become a writer, and her alienation would magically transform into evidence of brilliance rather than a source of shame. When she looked into the future, she saw herself at a beautiful desk next to a window, typing her next great book. She could never quite see the words on the screen, but she knew they were brilliant and would prove once and for all that she was special. Everyone would know the name Florence Darrow. And who’d trade that for a condo?

By digging up the buried tradition of women scholars, Akram has prepared the ground for radical social change. For Muslims, the Islamic past is not just a source of interest for historians but a blueprint for the present. Precedent, not innovation guides the devout on how to live and behave. So Akram's discovery of these women scholars isn't simply an interesting bit of long-buried history, but a quietly eloquent argument for changing the status quo.

If we lack new sources of glucose, the brain’s preferred fuel, the liver converts our fat into ketone bodies, as an alternative energy source that can sustain us for a very long time, depending on the extent of our fat stores. (Unlike muscle or liver, the brain itself does not store energy.) When our fat runs out, we will begin to consume our own muscle tissue, then our other organs, and even bone, all in order to keep the brain running at all costs. The brain is the last thing to shut off.

There is absolutely nothing divine about the Shariah and in no way can it possibly be considered fixed and infallible. The argument that the Shariah derives its divine nature from its first and primary source, the Quran, falls flat when one recognizes that the Quran, unlike the Torah, is not a book of laws. The Quran is God’s direct self-revelation to humanity. Certainly, it contains the moral framework for living a holy and righteous life as a Muslim. But it was never meant to function as a legal code, which is precisely why scholars had to rely so heavily on extra-Quranic sources like ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogy), istislah (which refers to the common good of the people), and ijtihad (independent juristic reasoning)—all of them, by definition, reliant on human judgment and historical context—in order to construct the Shariah in the first place. To say the Shariah is divine because the Quran is divine is akin to arguing that water and wine are the same, since water is a primary ingredient in wine.

In any case, Klossowski, mentioned again during Acéphale's sessional meeting of 25 July 1938, would later return to his opposition between Nietzsche and Bataille in a lecture given in 1941 at the end of a retreat in a Dominican monastery, 'Le Corps du néant', later printed in the first edition of his book Sade my Neighbour (1947) and which Bataille later told him he 'does not like'. Here Klossowski recapitulated the two stages in the evolution of Nietzsche's thought outlined in Löwith's essay 'Nietzsche and the doctrine of the Eternal Return', which he had reviewed in Acéphale 2: 1. Liberation from the Christian YOU MUST to achieve the I WANT of supra-nihilism; 2. Liberation from the I WANT to attain the I AM of superhumanity in the eternal return. It is precisely in this 'cyclical movement', according to Klossowski, that man 'takes on the immeasurable responsibility of the death of God'. Furthermore, he associates Bataille's negation of God with the negation of utility upon which the notion of expenditure was founded, and hence the source of his 'absolute political nihilism'. His conclusion, however, was a little more ambiguous: 'In his desire to relive the Nietzschean experience of the death of God [...] he did not have the privilege [...] of suffering Nietzsche's punishment: the delirium that transfigures the executioner into a victim [...] To be guilty or not to be, that is his dilemma. His acephality expresses only the unease of a guilt in which conscience has become alienated because he has put faith to sleep: and this is to experience God in the manner of demons, as St. Augustine said'. Unlike Nietzsche. who 'accused himself' of causing the death of God 'in the name of all men' and paid for his guilt with madness, unlike Kirillov, the nihilist in Dostoyevsky's Demons who chose to commit suicide so as to kill men's fear of death and thus kill God himself, Bataille shows us this frightful torment of not being able to make his guilt real and so attain that state of responsibility that gives knowledge of the path to absolution.

One can distinguish several types of inspiration, which intergrade, as all things do in this fluid and interesting world of ours, while yielding gracefully to a semblance of classification. A prefatory glow, not unlike some benign variety of the aura before an epileptic attack, is something the artist learns to perceive very early in life. This feeling of tickly well-being branches through him like the red and the blue in the picture of a skinned man under Circulation. As it spreads, it banishes all awareness of physical discomfort — youth’s toothache as well as the neuralgia of old age. The beauty of it is that, while completely intelligible (as if it were connected with a known gland or led to an expected climax), it has neither source nor object. It expands, glows, and subsides without revealing its secret. In the meantime, however, a window has opened, an auroral wind has blown, every exposed nerve has tingled. Presently all dissolves: the familiar worries are back and the eyebrow redescribes its arc of pain; but the artist knows he is ready.

There were, however, major differences between the respective upsurges of cooperativism in the 1880s and the 1960s, centered around the fact that the earlier one was part of a broad-based labor movement, unlike the later. Thus, the skilled and semi-skilled cooperators during the 1870s and 1880s explicitly used cooperatives as a way to guarantee employment, and arguably they were more ambitious, with their revolutionary hopes for a cooperative commonwealth. Their ideology, of course, was not the educated middle-class countercultural and anti-authoritarian one of the 1960s’ youth movements but “laborist,” “producerist,” devoted to the Jeffersonian ideal of a republic of free laborers, mostly artisans and craftsmen. Some scholars have argued that this fact proves the Knights of Labor were “backward-looking” rather than truly revolutionary—that the future lay in mass production, not skilled labor or artisanry168—but this criticism seems partly off the mark. It is true that the Knights were hostile to mechanization, just as workers have been in the era of the AFL-CIO, because in both cases it threatened to put them out of a job or to result in the lowering of wages and the deskilling of work. If this aversion to the degradation and mechanization of work is reactionary, so be it. But it is also a source of such revolutionary demands as democratization of production relations, cooperative organization of the economy, public ownership of industry, destruction of the capitalist class and its frequent tool the state, and other hopes cherished by millions of workers in the late nineteenth century.

I told mom that she was confusing happiness with pleasure. That's common today. A trip to the video arcade may be a source of pleasure, but it will not give lasting and enduring happiness. This mother's son derives pleasure from playing video games, but playing video games in an online world is unlikely to be a source of real fulfillment. The pleasure derived from a video game may last for weeks or even months. But it will not last many years, in my firsthand observation Of many young men over the past two decades. The boy either moves on to something else, or the happiness undergoes a silent and malignant transformation into addiction. The hallmark of addiction is decreasing pleasure over time. Tolerance develops. Playing the game becomes compulsive, almost involuntary. It no longer gives the thrill and pleasure it once did. But the addict can no longer find pleasure in anything else. Pleasure is not the same thing as happiness. The gratification Of desire yields pleasure, not lasting happiness. Happiness comes from fulfillment, from living up to your potential, which means more than playing online video games.

So do red and processed meats actually cause cancer or not? We don’t know, and we will probably never get a more definitive answer, because a clinical trial testing this proposition is unlikely ever to be done. Confusion reigns. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my neck out and assert that a risk ratio of 1.17 is so minimal that it might not matter that much whether you eat red/processed meats versus some other protein source, like chicken. Clearly, this particular study is very far from providing a definitive answer to the question of whether red meat is “safe” to eat. Yet people have been fighting about it for years.

Consider the fact that we care deeply about what happens to the world after we die. If self-interests were the primary source of meaning in life, then it wouldn’t matter to people if an hour after their death everyone they know were to be wiped from the face of the earth. Yet, it matters greatly to most people. We feel that such an occurrence would make our lives meaningless. The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater; a family, a community, a society. If you don’t, mortality is only a horror, but if you do, it is not. Loyalty, said Royce, solves the paradox of our ordinary existence, by showing us outside of ourselves the cause which is to be served, and inside of ourselves, the will which delights to do this service, and is not thwarted, but enriched and expressed in such service… Above the level of self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they suggest the existence in people of a transcendent desire to see and help other beings achieve their potential. As our time winds down, we all seek comfort in simple pleasures; companionship, everyday routines, the taste of good food, the warmth of sunlight on our faces. We become less interested in the awards of achieving and accumulating and more interested in the rewards of simply being. Yet, while we may feel less ambitious, we also have become concerned for our legacy, and we have a deep need to identify purposes outside ourselves that make living feel meaningful and worthwhile. In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all of its moments, which after all is mostly nothing much, plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments; the ones where something happens. Measurements of people’s minute by minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self, which is absorbed in the moment, your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery, but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out.

According to Shaivism, anupaya may also be reached by entering into the infinite blissfulness of the Self through the powerful experiences of sensual pleasures. This practice is designed to help the practitioner reach the highest levels by accelerating their progress through the sakta and sambhava upayas. These carefully guarded doctrines of Tantric sadhana are the basis for certain practices, like the use of the five makaras (hrdaya) mentioned earlier. The experience of a powerful sensual pleasure quickly removes a person’s dullness or indifference. It awakens in them the hidden nature and source of blissfulness and starts its inner vibration. Abhinavagupta says that only those people who are awakened to their own inner vitality can truly be said to have a heart (hrdaya). They are known as sahrdaya (connoisseurs). Those uninfluenced by this type of experiences are said to be heartless. In his words: “It is explained thus—The heart of a person, shedding of its attitude of indifference while listening to the sweet sounds of a song or while feeling the delightful touch of something like sandalpaste, immediately starts a wonderful vibratory movement. (This) is called ananda-sakti and because of its presence the person concerned is considered to have a heart (in their body) (Tantraloka, III.209-10). People who do not become one (with such blissful experiences), and who do not feel their physical body being merged into it, are said to be heartless because their consciousness itself remains immersed (in the gross body) (ibid., III.24).” The philosopher Jayaratha addresses this topic as well when he quotes a verse from a work by an author named Parasastabhutipada: “The worship to be performed by advanced aspirants consists of strengthening their position in the basic state of (infinite and blissful pure consciousness), on the occasions of the experiences of all such delightful objects which are to be seen here as having sweet and beautiful forms (Tantraloka, II.219).” These authors are pointing out that if people participate in pleasurable experiences with that special sharp alertness known as avadhana, they will become oblivious to the limitations of their usual body-consciousness and their pure consciousness will be fully illumined. According to Vijnanabhairava: “A Shiva yogin, having directed his attention to the inner bliss which arises on the occasion of some immense joy, or on seeing a close relative after a long time, should immerse his mind in that bliss and become one with it (Vijnanabhairava, 71). A yogin should fix his mind on each phenomenon which brings satisfaction (because) his own state of infinite bliss arises therein (ibid., 74).” In summary, Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophy that embraces life in its totality. Unlike puritanical systems it does not shy away from the pleasant and aesthetically pleasing aspects of life as somehow being unspiritual or contaminated. On the contrary, great importance has been placed on the aesthetic quality of spiritual practice in Kashmir Shaivism. In fact, recognizing and celebrating the aesthetic aspect of the Absolute is one of the central principles of this philosophy. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 124–125.

The promise of Plath's work was that a woman could de-fang the charges of hysteria by owning them. Unlike Solanas, who seemingly never saw herself as flawed or sick, or Wollstonecraft and Bronte, who swept their flaws under the carpet so as not to compromise themselves, or even Jacobs, who was honest, but played a delicate game of apologizing for "sins" that were not her fault so as to reach her audience, Plath took her own flaws as her subject, and thereby made them the source of her authority. By detailing her own overabundant inner life, no matter how huge and frightening it was -- her sexuality, her suicidality, her broken relationships, her anger at the world or at men -- she could, in some crucial way, own that part of her story, simply because she chose to tell it. And, if she could do this, other women could do it, too.

Support for Miller’s concerns came from an unlikely source in the person of Matt Taibbi, a veteran journalist who had written two best-selling anti-Trump books. In an article published five days after Miller’s interview and titled “We’re in a Permanent Coup,” he warned of the threat to America’s democratic order posed by the deep-state conspiracy: “The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped. “My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.”213 This warning from Taibbi was echoed by another liberal critic of Trump—Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. In a talk show appearance on New York’s AM 970 radio on Sunday, November 10, 2019, Dershowitz said, “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whether you’re from New York or the middle of the country, you should be frightened by efforts to try to create crimes out of nothing. . . . It reminds me of what Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB, said to Stalin. He said, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime,’ by which he really meant, ‘I’ll make up the crime.’ And so the Democrats are now making up crimes.

cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and anonymous online markets such as the Silk Road. Digital cryptocurrencies provide an individual with an array of benefits unlike anything the market actor has ever experienced. They provide a means by which one may transfer wealth securely, anonymously, and with virtually zero transaction costs. Naturally, this allows one to safely avoid taxes in the course of a transaction as there is no means by which said transaction may be traced backed to him. More importantly however, the use of such digital currencies normalizes the idea of using private currencies to the general public. The State's status as the sole producer of money is one of its greatest sources of legitimacy and power; thus, the proliferation and expanding use of private currencies constitute effective means by which State rule may be peacefully undermined.

To counter all these biases, both in my readers, and in myself, I try to move my estimates in the following directions. I try to be less confident, to expect typical outcomes to be more ordinary, but also to expect more deviations from typical outcomes. I try to rely more on ordinary methods, sources, and assumptions, and also more on statistics or related systems and events. I expect bigger deviations from traditional images of the future, but also rely less on strange, exotic, unlikely-seeming, and hypothetical possibilities. Looking backward, future folk should see their world as changing less from their past than we might see looking forward. Seen up close and honestly, I expect the future usually to look like most places: mundane, uninspiring, and morally ambiguous, with grand hopes and justifications often masking lives of quiet desperation. Of course, lives of quiet desperation can still be worth living.

Often, in my experience, the impression of beauty is created by a single aspect of a woman and from that aspect beauty appears to spread outward through every part of them, rendering them beautiful in their entirety. Sometimes such beauty comes from a smile. Sometimes from a lovely pair of eyes. Sometimes from an attitude, or form of movement, or a sentiment of goodness or happiness which reveals itself in a single expression. Sometimes it is the curve of a body from which beauty spreads, sometimes a tone of skin, or a river of glossy hair that catches the light and seems to shine like silk. Yet were that aspect to be removed and not replaced by something else, so too would the beauty it had brought to light disappear. Less often, beauty comes from several sources in the same person, all working together to increase the impression of overall beauty. If one of these aspects were to disappear, unlike a man, the woman would remain beautiful, though changed.

So it came to pass that humans are forever conflicted by their prehistory of multilevel selection. They are suspended in unstable and constantly changing positions between the two extreme forces that created us. We are unlikely to yield completely to either force as the ideal solution to our social and political turmoil. To give in completely to the instinctual urgings born from individual selection would be to dissolve society. At the opposite extreme, to surrender to the urgings born from group selection would turn us into angelic robots--the outsized equivalent of ants. The external conflict is not God's test of humanity. It is not a machination of Satan. It is just the way things worked out. The conflict might be the only way in the entire Universe that human-level intelligence and social organization can evolve. We will find a way eventually to live with our inborn turmoil, and perhaps find pleasure in viewing it as the primary source of our creativity.

the sociologist Sun Liping from Beijing’s Tsinghua University identified three techniques for “mind control.”33 One central technique is the control of news sources: “The meal you cook can never be better than the rice you cook it with.” The system successfully blocks information from outside and replaces it with “patriotic education.” Hence, for example, the ubiquitous narrative in which China’s “special national circumstances” have made the country into a unique place unlike anywhere else in the world, and which requires the Party to rule in the precise way China’s subjects are currently experiencing. Second, the system starts building the parameters for your thought when you’re very young, changing the way in which you ask questions and steering you into predetermined channels. Once you have swallowed and internalized what the Party has fed you, says Sun Liping, you can’t even ask certain questions: they lie outside your realm of experience and powers of imagination. And third, the system inspires the kind of fear that suppresses awkward questions: “If you don’t swallow all this, you’ll be punished.

As their white blood cell counts collapsed, infection crawled across the skin of the young operators and firemen: Thick black blisters of herpes simplex encrusted their lips and the inside of their mouths. Candida rendered their gums red and lacy, and the skin peeled back, leaving them the color of raw meat. Painful ulcers developed on their arms, legs, and torsos, where they had been burned by beta particles. Unlike thermal burns caused by heat alone, which heal slowly over time, radiation burns grow gradually worse—so their external beta burns expanded outward in waves from wherever radioactive material had touched them and ate into the tissue below. The men’s body hair and eyebrows fell out, and their skin darkened—first red, then purple, before finally it became a papery brown-black and curled away in sheets. Inside their bodies, the gamma radiation ate away the lining of their intestines and corroded their lungs. Anatoly Kurguz, who had fought to close the airlock door to the reactor hall in the moments after the explosion and was enveloped in steam and dust, had so much cesium inside his body that he became a dangerous source of radiation. He

I have never ceased to be fascinated by feminine beauty. In a man, beauty, if it exists, is usually simple; a complete harmony of physical qualities and behaviour all acting together as a whole. The slightest flaw causes it to disappear. In women, beauty is more complex. Often, in my experience, the impression of beauty is created by a single aspect of a woman and from that aspect beauty appears to spread outward through every part of them, rendering them beautiful in their entirety. Sometimes such beauty comes from a smile. Sometimes from a lovely pair of eyes. Sometimes from an attitude, or a form of movement, or a sentiment of goodness or happiness which reveals itself in a single expression. Sometimes it is the curve of a body from which beauty spreads, sometimes a tone of skin, or a river of glossy hair that catches the light and seems to shine like silk. Yet were that aspect removed and not replaced by something else, so too would the beauty it had brought to light disappear. Less often, beauty comes from several sources in the same person, all working together to increase the impression of overall beauty. If one of these aspects were to disappear, unlike a man, the woman would remain beautiful, though changed.

Why do you think so many people believe in texts written thousands of years ago? And why does it seem the more supernatural, unprovable, improbable, and ancient the source of these texts, the more people believe them?” “Humans need reassurance,” Wakely wrote back. “They need to know others survived the hard times. And, unlike other species, which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice. You know how we say, ‘People never learn?’ It’s because they never do. But religious texts try to keep them on track.” “But isn’t there more solace in science?” Calvin responded. “In things we can prove and therefore work to improve? I just don’t understand how anyone thinks anything written ages ago by drunk people is even remotely believable. And I’m not making a moral judgment here: those people had to drink, the water was bad. Still, I ask myself how their wild stories—bushes burning, bread dropping from heaven—seem reasonable, especially when compared to evidence-based science. There isn’t a person alive who would opt for Rasputin’s bloodletting techniques over the cutting-edge therapies at Sloan Kettering. And yet so many insist we believe these stories and then have the audacity to insist others believe them, too.

On the other hand, lived consciously, the goddess Inanna in her role as suffering, exiled feminine provides an image of the deity who can, perhaps, carry the suffering and redemption of modern women. Closer to many of us than the Church's Christ, she suggests an archetypal pattern which can give meaning to women's quest, one which may supplant the Christian myth for those unable to relate to a masculine God. Inanna's suffering, disrobing, humiliation, flagellation and death, the stations of her descent, her ¨crucifixion¨ on the underworld peg, and her resurrection, all prefigure Christ's passion and represent perhaps the first known archetypal image of the dying divinity whose sacrifice redeems the wasteland earth. Not for humankind's sins did Inanna sacrifice herself, but for earth's need for life and renewal. She is concerned more with life than with good and evil. Nonetheless, her descent and return provide a model for our own psychological-spiritual journeys. And unlike Christ's story, where the destructive acts perpetrated on the savior were the product of mere human malice and fear—and thus capable of establishing a pattern of human revenge and scapegoating—in the Sumerian poem they are shown to have a transpersonal source. The goddess destroys, just as the goddess may redeem.¨

Monoïmos … thinks that there is some such Man as Oceanus, of whom the poet speaks somewhat as follows: Oceanus, the origin of gods and of men.134 Putting this into other words, he says that the Man is All, the source of the universe, unbegotten, incorruptible, everlasting; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten and capable of suffering, and whose birth is outside time, neither willed nor predetermined … This Man is a single Monad, uncompounded [and] indivisible, [yet] compounded [and] divisible; loving and at peace with all things [yet] warring with all things and at war with itself in all things; unlike and like [itself], as it were a musical harmony containing all things … showing forth all things and giving birth to all things. It is its own mother, its own father, the two immortal names. The emblem of the perfect Man, says Monoïmos, is the jot or tittle.135 This one tittle is the uncompounded, simple, unmixed Monad, having its composition from nothing whatsoever, yet composed of many forms, of many parts. That single, indivisible jot is the many-faced, thousand-eyed and thousand-named, the jot of the iota. This is the emblem of that perfect and indivisible Man. … The Son of the Man is the one iota, the one jot flowing from on high, full and filling all things, containing in himself everything that is in the Man, the Father of the Son of Man.136

The history of another country, one Americans don’t much like comparing themselves with, illustrates the grave dangers of yoking political ideology to dubious science. In the 1930s under Joseph Stalin, the quack “scientist” Trofim Lysenko, who promoted himself through party newspapers rather than rigorous experiments, rose to prominence and took control of Soviet biological, medical, and agricultural research for several decades. Lysenko used his power to prosecute an ideologically driven crusade against the theory of genetics, which he denounced as a bourgeois affront to socialism. In short, his political presuppositions led him to embrace bogus scientific claims. In the purges that followed, many of Lysenko’s scientist critics lost their jobs and suffered imprisonment and even execution. By 1948 Lysenko had convinced Stalin to ban the study of genetics. Soviet science suffered immeasurable damage from the machinations of Lysenko and his henchmen, and the term “Lysenkoism” has since come to signify the suppression of, or refusal to acknowledge, science for ideological reasons. In a democracy like our own, Lysenkoism is unlikely to take such a menacing, totalitarian form. Nevertheless, the threat we face from conservative abuse of science—to informed policymaking, to democratic discourse, and to knowledge itself—is palpably real. And as the modern Right and the Bush administration flex their muscles and continue to battle against reliable, mainstream conclusions and sources of information, this threat is growing.

As I understand things,’ Cotillion replied, ‘once these dragons did what K’rul asked of them, they were compelled to return to Starvald Demelain. As the sources of sorcery, they could not be permitted to interfere or remain active across the realms, lest sorcery cease to be predictable, which in turn would feed Chaos – the eternal enemy in this grand scheme. But the Soletaken proved a problem. They possessed the blood of Tiam, and with it the vast power of the Eleint. Yet, they could travel as they pleased. They could interfere, and they did. For obvious reasons. Scabandari was originally Edur, and so he became their champion—’ ‘After murdering the royal line of the Edur!’ Eloth said in a hiss. ‘After spilling draconean blood in the heart of Kurald Emurlahn! After opening the first, fatal wound upon that warren! What did he think gates were?’ ‘The Tiste Andii for Anomandaris,’ Cotillion continued. ‘Tiste Liosan for Osserc. The T’lan Imass for Olar Ethil. These connections and the loyalties born of them are obvious. Draconus is more of a mystery, of course, since he has been gone a long time—’ ‘The most reviled of them all!’ Eloth shrieked, the voice filling Cotillion’s skull so that he winced. Stepping back, he raised a hand. ‘Spare me, please. I am not really interested in all that, to be honest. Apart from discovering if there was enmity between Eleint and Soletaken. It seems there is, with the possible exception of Silanah—’ ‘Seduced by Anomandaris’s charms,’ snapped Eloth. ‘And Olar Ethil’s endless pleadings…’ ‘To bring fire to the world of the Imass,’ Cotillion said. ‘For that is her aspect, is it not? Thyr?’ Ampelas observed, ‘He is not so uncomprehending as you believed, Kalse.’ ‘Then again,’ Cotillion continued, ‘you too claim Thyr, Eloth. Ah, that was clever of K’rul, forcing you to share power.’ ‘Unlike Tiam,’ Ampelas said, ‘when we’re killed we stay dead.

The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. Passion is divine fire: it enlivens and makes holy; it gives light and yields inspiration. Passion is generous because it’s not ego-driven; addiction is self-centred. Passion gives and enriches; addiction is a thief. Passion is a source of truth and enlightenment; addictive behaviours lead you into darkness. You’re more alive when you are passionate, and you triumph whether or not you attain your goal. But an addiction requires a specific outcome that feeds the ego; without that outcome, the ego feels empty and deprived. A consuming passion that you are helpless to resist, no matter what the consequences, is an addiction. You may even devote your entire life to a passion, but if it’s truly a passion and not an addiction, you’ll do so with freedom, joy and a full assertion of your truest self and values. In addiction, there’s no joy, freedom or assertion. The addict lurks shame-faced in the shadowy corners of her own existence. I glimpse shame in the eyes of my addicted patients in the Downtown Eastside and, in their shame, I see mirrored my own. Addiction is passion’s dark simulacrum and, to the naïve observer, its perfect mimic. It resembles passion in its urgency and in the promise of fulfillment, but its gifts are illusory. It’s a black hole. The more you offer it, the more it demands. Unlike passion, its alchemy does not create new elements from old. It only degrades what it touches and turns it into something less, something cheaper. Am I happier after one of my self-indulgent sprees? Like a miser, in my mind I recount and catalogue my recent purchases — a furtive Scrooge, hunched over and rubbing his hands together with acquisitive glee, his heart growing ever colder. In the wake of a buying binge, I am not a satisfied man. Addiction is centrifugal. It sucks energy from you, creating a vacuum of inertia. A passion energizes you and enriches your relationships. It empowers you and gives strength to others. Passion creates; addiction consumes — first the self and then the others within its orbit.

We may need to consider a little abstinence from our automatic, reflexive responses of being helpful to others. For some of us, doing this may feel very threatening; to identify our addictions of helpfulness is to challenge the ways we habitually express love – it comes close to challenging our love itself. . . . Let us go back for a moment and look at that tiny, perhaps almost nonexistent space between feeling a person’s pain and doing something in response to it. It is not easy to just be with the pain of another, to feel it as your own. No wonder we are likely to jump into our habitual responses so quickly. As soon as we start doing something for or to the suffering person, we can minimize the bare agony of feeling that person’s pain. It is like that everywhere; our addicted doings act as minor anaesthesia. . . . Sometimes, perhaps often, taking the space will feel like an absence of response. We may fear the person will think we don’t care because we are not immediately hopping like popcorn to do something helpful. And sometimes the response that is authentically invited will never appear overtly helpful. Perhaps we are just invited to pray, silently in the background, or just to be present without saying a word or offering even a touch. Sometimes love even invites us to leave a person alone. Such responses are not too good for our egos; the suffering person is unlikely to come and thank us for our lack of involvement. But love does not ask for credit, nor does it permit ego-gratification as the motive for response. Authentic loving responsiveness calls for a kind of fasting from being helpful. Real helpfulness requires a relinquishment of our caretaking reflexes. It demands not only that we stay present with the un-anaesthetized pain of the person or situation, but that we also risk appearing to be uncaring. It further asks us to be unknowing. Right there in the centre of a situation that screams for action, we must admit that we really don’t know what to do. Finally, it invites us to turn our consciousness toward the exact point where our hearts are already looking: to the source of love. There, and only there, is the wellspring of authentic responsiveness found.

I might disagree with them, but accept that they have some purpose to play in God’s larger plan, Then Iluvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that he smiled; and he lifted up his left hand, and a new theme began amid the storm, like and yet unlike to the former theme, and it gathered power and had new beauty. But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of the Ainur were dismayed and sang no longer, and Melkor had the mastery. Then again Ilu´ vatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Iluvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. In the midst of this strife, whereat the halls of Iluvatar shook and a tremor ran out into the silences yet unmoved, Ilu´ vatar arose a third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Iluvatar, the Music ceased. Then Ilu´ vatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’ Then the Ainur were afraid, and they did not yet comprehend the words that were said to them; and Melkor was filled with shame, of which came secret anger. But Iluvatar arose in splendour, and he went forth from the fair regions that he had made for the Ainur; and the Ainur followed him.

I magine a civilization here on earth that exists covertly inside and alongside of those we know about, with access to the most advanced technologies, technologies straight off the drawing boards of Hollywood production companies and special effects artists, a civilization with nearly bottomless sources of funding, staging events for the gullible, torturing others and driving them into mental and emotional breakdown, and waging a covert war with its own members using its own “apocalyptic technologies,” and masking that war behind the perfect plausible deniability: mother nature. This breakaway civilization, moreover, has its own ideology, and its own dubious “morality”, as was evidenced by its first real incarnation: Nazi Germany. Unlike Nazi Germany, or for that matter, civilizations in general, it has no “core area” where it is centered; it comprises not one nation, but many; its peoples are drawn from all groups and languages, for it speaks but one language, the language of power. It is, in part, the resurrection of Atlantis, and in part, like a bad nightmare version of superhero comic books, with the villains, and not the superheroes, possessing all the superhuman powers and technologies. If the idea of such a breakaway civilization sounds fanciful or even absurd, then hold on, because this book attempts to outline its components, structure, and initial postwar history.

An essayist, unlike a fiction writer, needs to establish their objective reliability, equitable sincerity, intellectual integrity and maintain their authoritative trustworthiness because they are an acknowledged reporter of true events and relating or applying the ideas and principles of their sources.

Josephine!" A stentorian bellow shook the candles in their sconces. Unconsciously, Amy grabbed Richard’s arm, looking about anxiously for the source of the roar. About the room, people went on chatting as before. "Steady there." Richard patted the delicate hand clutching the material of his coat. "It’s just the First Consul." Snatching her hand away as though his coat were made of live coals, Amy snapped, "You would know." "Josephine!" The dreadful noise repeated itself, cutting off any further remarks. Out of an adjoining room charged a blur of red velvet, closely followed by the scurrying form of a young man. Amy sidestepped just in time, swaying on her slippers to avoid toppling into Lord Richard. The red velvet came to an abrupt stop beside Mme Bonaparte’s chair. "Oh. Visitors." Once still, the red velvet resolved into a man of slightly less than medium height, clad in a long red velvet coat with breeches that must once have been white, but which now bore assorted stains that proclaimed as clearly as a menu what the wearer had eaten for supper. "I do wish you wouldn’t shout so, Bonaparte." Mme Bonaparte lifted one white hand and touched him gently on the cheek. Bonaparte grabbed her hand and planted a resounding kiss on the palm. "How else am I to make myself heard?" Affectionately tweaking one of her curls, he demanded, "Well? Who is it tonight?" "We have some visitors from England, sir,"his stepdaughter responded. "I should like to present…" Hortense began listing their names. Bonaparte stood, legs slightly apart, eyes hooded with apparent boredom, and one arm thrust into the opposite side of his jacket, as though in a sling. Bonaparte inclined his head, looked down at his wife, and demanded, "Are we done yet?" Thwap! Everyone within earshot jumped at the sound of Miss Gwen’s reticule connecting with Bonaparte’s arm. "Sir! Take that hand out of your jacket! It is rude and it ruins your posture. A man of your diminutive stature needs to stand up straight." Something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from Lord Richard’s lips, but when Amy glanced sharply up at him, his expression was studiedly bland. A dangerous hush fell over the room. Flirtations in the far corners of the room were abandoned. Business deals were dropped. The non-English speakers among the assemblage tugged at the sleeves of those who had the language, and instant translations began to be whispered about the room – suitably embellished, of course. "It’s an assassination attempt!" a woman next to Amy cried dramatically, swooning back into the arms of an officer who looked as though he didn’t quite know what to do with her, but would really be happiest just dropping her. "No, it’s not, it’s just Miss Gwen," Amy tried to explain. Meanwhile, Miss Gwen was advancing on Bonaparte, backing him up so that he was nearly sitting on Josephine’s lap. "While we are speaking, sir, this habit you have of barging into other people’s countries without invitation – it is most rude. I will not have it! You should apologise to the Italians and the Dutch at the first opportunity!" "Mais zee Italians, zey invited me!" Bonaparte exclaimed indignantly. Miss Gwen cast Bonaparte the severe look of a governess listening to substandard excuses from a wayward child. "That may well be," she pronounced in a tone that implied she thought it highly unlikely. "But your behaviour upon entering their country was inexcusable! If you were to be invited to someone’s home for a weekend, sirrah, would you reorganise their domestic arrangements and seize the artwork from their walls? Would you countenance any guest who behaved so? I thought not." Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England. "So much for the Peace of Amiens!" she started to whisper to Jane, but Jane was no longer beside her.

Run until you can’t run anymore. Then run some more. Find a new source of energy and will. Then run even faster. Other

This is quite unlikely to happen to Linux,

The present threat is not based on conflicting ideas about America's basic principles. It is based on several serious problems that stem from the dramatic and fundamental change in the way we communicate among ourselves. Our challenge now is to understand that change and see those problems for what they are. Consider the rules by which our present public forum now operates and how different they are from the norms our Founders knew during the age of print. Today's massive flows of information are largely only in one direction. The world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience". Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: It is accessible in only one direction. There is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation. Television stations and networks are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by citizens. So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is much less of an exchange of ideas in television's domain because of the imposing barriers to entry that exclude contributions from most citizens.

The age of territory was driven by acquisition. Leaders of nations sought to increase their nation’s power by gaining territory—mostly through force. Accumulated military prowess by one drove would-be victims to arm. War was thus inevitable. Lost lives and wasted resources were its currency. And always, one side’s gain was the other’s loss. Today, the importance of land as the primary source of human livelihood has diminished, giving way to science instead. Unlike territory, science has no borders or flags. Science can’t be conquered by tanks or defended by fighter jets. It has no limitations. A nation can increase its scientific achievement without taking anything from somebody else. In fact, great scientific achievement by one nation lifts the fortunes of all nations. It is the first time in history that we can win, without making anyone lose. In the age of science, the traditional power of states and leaders is declining. Rather than politicians, it is innovators that drive the global economy and wield the most influence. The young leaders who created Facebook and Google have sparked a revolution without killing one person. The globalized economy affects every state, yet no single state is powerful enough to determine outcomes. We are participating in the birth of a new world.

Blue Mage: Few on the disk still remember the art of Primordial Magic. Your understanding and mastery of it will increase. As long as you have access to a focus and attunement through an animal companion or a personal, internal source, you may replicate magic used by beasts or spirits of the disk. As a Primordial Sorcerer, you can modify spells you’re intimate with as well. Unlike a traditional mage, runes will have no effect on your spells. Instinct and primal understanding will rule them.

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common -- not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to see them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits... Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health -- and create profitable diseases and dependencies -- by failing to see the direction connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.

How are Sprints different from just dividing a goal into phases? Unlike phases, which are not ends in themselves, Sprints are independent, self-contained projects—thus the outcome is, let’s hope, a source of satisfaction, information, and motivation to keep going (or, as happened with my stop-motion animation project, a helpful cue to let this particular goal go). One author and entrepreneur, for example, was curious about podcasting. It was something he knew little about. Rather than dedicating himself to becoming a podcaster, he set out to do six episodes with his friend Kevin Rose. That experiment turned into The Tim Ferriss Show, the number one business podcast on iTunes, with

Why would White Texans be more obstreperous than other White southerners? It has been suggested that this was because, unlike other Southern states, Texas had not been defeated militarily. They had won the last battle of the Civil War. That the state had been its own Republic, within the living memory of many Texans, also set them apart from the other Confederates. The very thing that has been seen as a source of strength and pride for latter-day Texans, may have fueled a stubbornness that prevented the state from moving ahead at this crucial moment. [p. 131]

When Flury looked at the plants under a confocal microscope, which shines lasers that make the fluorescent dye in the plastics glow, he found particles had attached to the roots but hadn't penetrated them. So this is worrisome in that plastics might be accumulating around the roots we eat-carrots, sweet potatoes, radishes but it's good news in that neither a fibrous nor taproot system seemed to uptake plastic into the plant itself, unlike how crops readily soak up nutrients like nitrogen and iron. "The plant has probably an incentive to take up an iron particle, whereas a plastic particle will not be used by the plant," says Flury. This contradicts previous lab studies on wheat and other crops, like beans and onions and lettuce, showing that roots do take up plastics. Over at ETH Zürich, analytical chemist Denise Mitrano took a different tack, tagging nanoplastics not with fluorescence but with the rare metal palladium. And instead of growing wheat in agar, she grew it hydroponically, exposing the growing plants to the "doped" particles. She could then track the nanoplastics as the wheat plants took them up into their roots and shoots. "We didn't let the wheat go to grains, so we don't know if the nanoplastic would eventually get into the food source, but it did go up further into the plant," says Mitrano. However, she didn't see any big changes in the physiology of the plants, like growth rate or chlorophyl production. "But we did see that it changed the root structure a bit and the cellular structure in the root, which would indicate that the plant was still under stress.

That said, let’s talk about the 1933-1970 period itself. This period of “peak state” was real, but in overstated form it has become the basis for books like Mazzucato’s Entrepreneurial State — which I disagree with, and which Mingardi and McCloskey have rebutted at length in the Myth of the Entrepreneurial State. Here’s why I disagree with the thesis of the Entrepreneurial State: The name itself is oxymoronic. As macroeconomists never tire of telling us, governments aren’t households, because unlike actual entrepreneurs the state can seize funds and print money. So there is no financial risk, and hence nothing of “entrepreneurship” in the entrepreneurial state. The book doesn’t consider the fact that most math/physics/etc was invented prior to the founding of NSF, and therefore doesn’t need NSF to exist. It further doesn’t acknowledge that it was possible to do science and technology before the massive centralized state, through the distributed model of the “gentleman scientist,” and that this model is returning in the form of open source and (now) decentralized science. It doesn’t take into account the waxing and waning of centralized state capacity due to technology. It doesn’t contend with the state-caused slowdown in physical world innovation that happened during the post-1970 period, which Thiel, Cowen, and J Storrs Hall have all documented.

Among athletes, the unlikely source is the stathead who’s spent time in uniform, satisfying Sarason’s condition that the ideal go-between be embedded in the community, “rendering some kind of service within the schools, requiring that in some way they become part of the school.” These rare birds of baseball, fluent in front office and dipped in dugout wisdom, are “perfect conduits to get a message from high theoretical guys down to guys who are just used to grinding it out on the baseball field,” San Diego Padres manager Andy Green said in 2017. “Unless that message gets translated where a guy speaks both languages, it usually ends up falling on deaf ears. It can be the perfect game plan laid out by the front office, but if it doesn’t run through one of those conduits, it tends to, one, not be understood, or two, not be implemented at all or maybe even spurned altogether.

When you’re doing your own online research, you have to take note when your sources are copying other sources. When you find the wholesale lifting of texts, you should be worried, since it suggests that the research underlying the document hasn’t been checked carefully. Copying like that is the mark of a lazy researcher; don’t trust that article (but perhaps look around for the original). As I do my research, I’ll sometimes notice when particular phrases (especially clever and curious turns of language) keep reappearing as I read. Those are the sentences (or sentence fragments) you want to double check. One hint is to look for those repeated phrases. As you check for duplication, you don’t want to check for duplicate titles. But a well-chosen phrase (that is, one that’s central to the argument, and long enough to be unlikely to happen by accident) can be a useful way to see how far that article has spread. People often choose to copy rather than rewrite the central idea of an article.

of the church in the distance, for which Millet used the church of Chailly-en-Bière in the Île-de-France as a model. Moments before, they had been busy at work harvesting their modest potato field, as shown by the pathetically small basket at their feet. Though it fetched only a small sum at the Salon of 1860, the work became wildly popular in the 1870s and eventually would be one of the most widely replicated images of the nineteenth century. Originally purchased for one thousand francs, it fetched as much as half a million francs just thirty years later, as a result of a bidding war between the Louvre and the American Art Association. Fig. 47. Jean-François Millet, The Angelus, 1859 While some interpreted The Angelus as a religious work, as an expression of simple and humble piety, others saw it as a socialist statement, in which Millet was supposed to have paid homage to the growing worker movement in France. It is unlikely that Millet intended either; as he later said, the picture was inspired by a childhood memory in which “my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed.” Dalí was fascinated by the picture. Like Vincent van Gogh, he used it as inspiration for his own work, including a series of paintings in the early 1930s entitled The Architectural Angelus of Millet and Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of the Conical Anamorphoses. He explained his fascination with the Angelus in an essay entitled “The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus,” in which he revealed that “In June 1932 appears in my mind all of a sudden, without any recent recollection nor any conscious association that lends itself to an immediate explanation, the image of Millet’s L’Angelus.” It made a strong impression on him, he continues, because for him it is “the most enigmatic, the most dense, and the richest in unconscious thoughts ever to have existed.” Fig. 48. Salvador Dalí, Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus, c. 1934 In fact, the painting did not strike Dalí as a rural image of devotion at all but as a source of great inner disquiet and a perfect example of what the paranoiac-critical process could discern that others didn’t. What he saw was a man “who stands hypnotized—and destroyed—by the mother. He seems to me to take on the attitude of the

A word must be said about the secrecy of intelligence documents. Secret documents often have a special aura because they may provide an insider’s view of events or reveal actions that have never been made public. But secrecy does not inoculate them against inaccuracy and they are only as factual as the reporting and sourcing that went into them. Whenever possible, therefore, I have attempted to independently confirm events described in the intelligence documents. The fact that these documents have been kept secret for all these years, however, does tell us one important thing: it is highly unlikely the drafters of the intelligence reports were manipulating facts or crafting lies to deceive the public.

Sometimes enjoyment came from the most unlikely sources.

Americans, even fairly knowledgeable ones, are prey to what might be called the fallacy of insufficient cynicism. Muckraking investigative journalists, now and then exceptions to this rule, lack the patience of the scholar, are completely dependent on their sources, and do not usually understand the minds of politicians in high places. Thus I. F. Stone hinted that Dulles might have been involved in a conspiracy with MacArthur and Chiang to provoke war in Korea, and a gaggle of critics descend on this ridiculous conspiracy theory. It is, indeed unlikely that Dulles was anything more than Acheon’s messenger in June 1950. But he and Acheson were structurally reconstituting a political economy that was a deadly threat to Korean revolutionaries. And conspiracies do exist, even if Foster Dulles was an implausible participant (his countenance was almost as unlikely as Sir John Pratt’s).

seems that modern society has devised other forms of dharma that help to keep violence at bay. Stefano Tomelleri, using Durkheim’s concept of social distance, sees the division of labour as a means of coping with mimetic rivalry through the creation of social distance.12 This is also reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which is a tool to control human behaviour, preventing any form of horizontal communication, meaning any mimetic activity, through an external source of control.13 In both cases the aim is the eradication of violence. How could you envisage a contemporary social order that, although acknowledging the constant presence of violence, tries to cope with it? The division of labour, unlike the caste system, leaves room for the individual, at least in principle. The market may force one to make some choices instead of others, but it is not proper to speak about capitalism, as the Marxists did, in terms of rigidity of social stratification. The division of labour has experienced important changes in the recent years, and I am not sure that I can give a definite explanation to account for this phenomenon. Certainly the organization of labour is particularly relevant for the stability of North American society. When people refer to the so-called ‘American dream’, they certainly exaggerate and overestimate its nature, but it is not entirely deceptive either. If one looks at the nouveaux riches of Silicon Valley, it is true that many of them are really self-made men, and a good percentage are immigrants, mostly from India or China. So, I am not sure I would agree completely that division of labour keeps mimetic rivalry under control, but at the same time it is a very complex subject. There is unquestionably more social mobility in the United States than in Europe. However, we live in a world in which social mobility, although experiencing phases of inhibition and local rigidity, is constantly increasing. Structural injustice, although still present, has been gradually ironed out by Christian ethics, and the market itself asks for a wider circulation of ‘human capital’.

not like her grandmother at all. This was a family of volcanic emotions; in another instance of the strong feelings that convulsed it, Weir named her house in Katonah Villa Diana. After the miserable summer of 1917, Diana spent vacations with her grandmother while Emily and Alexandra went back out West. Her grandmother’s household at Katonah provided another source of comfort in the farm animals, especially the horses, which did not have the power to hurt, unlike human beings. “My grandmother had a huge farm horse in the country outside of Katonah. . . . After lunch I’d run off, get on the horse. . . . I’d sit there all afternoon, perfectly happy. It would get hot, the flies would buzz. . . . That’s all I wanted—just to be with the steam and the smell of that divine horse. Horses smell much better than people—I can tell you that.” In

Everything around you is touched by oil. Plastics are petroleum products. Foodstuffs and transportation of the foodstuffs, and everything else, are dependent on oil, and, ridiculously, our nation is dependent on foreign oil. Many Americans don’t realize that our government, unlike other countries’ governments, prohibits the sale of our domestic oil on the open market. That outdated export ban needs to end. Also needing to end is the bureaucratic prohibition on drilling for our own safe, reliable energy sources. Alaskans have been fighting for the right to drill on our state’s northern shore for decades. The vast majority see the government’s refusal to permit exploration and drilling as a nonsensical federal overreach. Tapping a tiny portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—two thousand acres out of nineteen million uninhabited, frozen acres—would give us access to billions of barrels of oil that can be safely extracted and give a huge boost to our economy and energy independence. Oil in the ground is useless. Oil in the hands of American entrepreneurs and job creators means new products, lower prices, and improved national security.

ALMOST EVERYTHING MUSLIMS know about Muhammad comes to them orally, rarely from primary sources. Unlike Christians learning about Jesus from the Bible, the Quran has very little to say about Muhammad. Whether in the East or the West, Muslims usually only hear stories about him.

Wanting to thank him for his gifts, she left the tent to find her husband. He was in the middle of the camp, with knights all around him. She paused as she saw him there. He was again garbed as a black-robed monk, but he had taken time to shave this morning. There was no sign of the sword she knew he had strapped to his hips and she could barely catch a glimpse of his mail-covered leggings beneath it. He was handsome, her prince. More so than any man in the group. He, Phantom, Ioan, Lutian, and three men she knew not at all were standing in a circle as they discussed some matter. Her heart light, she approached her husband from behind. Ioan was speaking. “You know, Abbot, I hear wormwood helps with that problem.” He held his hand up and crooked his finger down as if it were suddenly limp. All the men save Christian laughed, while Christian glared murderously at Lutian. “Look to the good of it,” Phantom said as he sobered. He appeared to be imparting grave advice to her husband. “I hear all men have trouble from time to time with their sexual performance. Mind you, I have no personal experience with that, but…” His voice trailed off as he looked past Christian to see Adara glowering at him. Struggling not to strangle the men who mocked him, Christian turned to see what had disturbed Phantom to find Adara standing behind him. His groin jerked awake at the vision she made in her finery. She was beautiful. The gown fit even better than he had hoped. Unlike her peasant garb, this one laced in the front and at the sides, pulling the cloth into a perfect fit that showed every lush curve of her body. The only thing that sparkled more than her jewels were her brown eyes. “Thank you,” she said softly before she kissed his cheek. “I had a most wondrous night.” Christian was too dumbstruck by his lust to even respond. Lutian bristled at her actions and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was jealous. “Nay. Tell me this isn’t so. Why are you kissing him, my queen? It was me. Me. I’m the one who told him what to do. He had no idea how to please you. None. He was lost and confused when he sought me out. He didn’t even know how to do the most basic thing. It was me, all me.” Every man there gaped at Lutian’s words. “Christ’s toes, Christian,” Ioan said in disbelief. “Are you a monk in truth? Don’t tell me you had to take advice from the fool on how to please a woman? You should have come to me. At least I know what I’m doing.” “You can’t be a virgin,” Phantom said. “What about that Norman tart in Hexham? Surely you did more than talk to her when the two of you vanished to her room?” “Nay,” another knight said. “I saw him drunk in Calais with two women.” “Aye,” another knight began. “I was with him in London when he vanished for three days with a widowed countess.” Christian ground his teeth as this conversation quickly degenerated, while Lutian continued to take credit for instructing him on how to please Adara. Lutian still held Adara’s attention. “I’m the one who got him—” Enraged, Christian lunged for the source of his current humiliation. “Christian!” Adara snapped as he seized her fool. “Don’t hurt Lutian.” He wanted to do much more than hurt the fool. He wanted to tear the man’s head from his shoulders. Growling in frustration, he let the fool go. “Thank you, my queen.” “’Tis my place to hurt him.” She glared at her fool and smacked him on his arm. “I fully intend to take this up with you later.” She walked over to Ioan. “And for your information, my lord…” She lifted his hand and put his index and middle finger upright. “I assure you that there is nothing wrong with Christian’s technique or prowess.

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

Here are descriptions of the five customer segments: Innovators are technology enthusiasts who pride themselves on being familiar with the latest and greatest innovation. They enjoy fiddling with new products and exploring their intricacies. They are more willing to use an unpolished product that may have some shortcomings or tradeoffs, and are fine with the fact that many of these products will ultimately fail. Early Adopters are visionaries who want to exploit new innovations to gain an advantage over the status quo. Unlike innovators, their interest in being first is not driven by an intrinsic love of technology but rather the opportunity to gain an edge. The Early Majority are pragmatists that have no interest in technology for its own sake. These individuals adopt new products only after a proven track record of delivering value. Because they are more risk averse than the first two segments, they feel more comfortable having strong references from trusted sources and tend to buy from the leading company in the product category. The Late Majority are risk-averse conservatives who are doubtful that innovations will deliver value and only adopt them when pressured to do so, for example, for financial reasons, due to competitive threats, or for fear of being reliant on an older, dying technology that will no longer be supported. Laggards are skeptics who are very wary of innovation. They hate change and have a bias for criticizing new technologies even after they have become mainstream.

Enthusiasm brings an enormous empowerment into what you do, so that all those who have not accessed that power would look upon “your” achievements in awe and may equate them with who you are. You, however, know the truth that Jesus pointed to when he said, “I can of my own self do nothing.”3 Unlike egoic wanting, which creates opposition in direct proportion to the intensity of its wanting, enthusiasm never opposes. It is non-confrontational. Its activity does not create winners and losers. It is based on inclusion, not exclusion, of others. It does not need to use and manipulate people, because it is the power of creation itself and so does not need to take energy from some secondary source.

Unlike many superheroes who have an inherently superhuman ability or others who use external weapons and technology, Marvel Comics’ Iron Man has an electromagnetic power source implanted in his chest as part of a medical procedure to save his life. The device has so much power to spare that it allows him to deploy a suit of armor that protects him and affords him additional superhuman abilities. Iron Man is unique in that he is a regular human being transformed and saved from death by a foreign power source placed within him that not only saves his life

The difficulty with this interpretation is of course that unlike near contemporary societies such as Egypt and ‘Babylon’ we have no historical, literary sources confirming knowledge of phi or indeed Pi in megalithic Britain. Lack of such direct evidence closes many minds. However there is much other evidence written into the stones themselves across the country if we consider the careful work of Professor Thom and others

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And still my research continued. Foreign diplomatic sources informed me that, in spite of his stated rejection of any containment of an Iranian bomb, Obama would settle for capping Iran’s ability to make a bomb within one year—the so-called threshold capacity. Other analysts claimed the president regarded Iran as an ascendant and logical power—unlike the feckless, disunited Arabs and those troublemaking Israelis—that could assist in resolving other regional conflicts. I first heard this theory at Georgetown back in 2008, in conversations with think tankers and former State Department officials. They also believed that Iran’s radical Islam was merely an expression of interests and fears that the United States could, with sufficient goodwill, meet and allay. Such ideas initially struck me as absurd. After all, even irrational regimes such as Nazi Germany could take rational steps to reach fanatical goals. But Obama, himself, now began describing Iran’s behavior as “strategic” and “not impulsive.” The ayatollahs, he told Jeffrey Goldberg, “have their worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits….[They] are not North Korea.” Suddenly, it seemed plausible that an America freed of its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and anxious to retreat from the region could view Iran as a dependable ally. The only hurdle remained that pesky nuclear program.

Lentil-Mushroom Burgers For any reluctant vegan who worries that nothing will ever replace the taste or texture of a juicy beef patty, consider the lentil burger. It might not matter so much that lentils are an excellent source of protein, that they are one of the fastest-cooking legumes, or that they are consumed in large quantities all over Europe, Asia, and Africa (even Idaho!). What will impress you is how tender, juicy, and “meaty” they taste. I grew up grilling over campfires, and I know burgers. These are as delicious as they come. Sometimes I’ll even take a few patties with me on long training runs and races.        1 cup dried green lentils (2¼ cups cooked)      2¼ cups water      1 teaspoon dried parsley      ¼ teaspoon black pepper      3 garlic cloves, minced      1¼ cups finely chopped onion      ¾ cup finely chopped walnuts      2 cups fine bread crumbs (see Note)      ½ cup ground flax seed (flax seed meal)      3 cups finely chopped mushrooms   1½ cups destemmed, finely chopped kale, spinach, or winter greens      2 tablespoons coconut oil or olive oil      3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar      2 tablespoons Dijon mustard      2 tablespoons nutritional yeast      1 teaspoon sea salt      ½ teaspoon black pepper      ½ teaspoon paprika   In a small pot, bring the lentils, water, parsley, 1 garlic clove, and ¼ cup of the onion to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 35 to 40 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the lentils are soft. While the lentils are cooking, combine the walnuts, bread crumbs, and flax seed in a bowl. Add the nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and paprika and mix well. Sauté the remaining onion, remaining garlic, the mushrooms, and greens in the oil for 8 to 10 minutes, then set aside. Remove the lentils from the heat, add the vinegar and mustard, and mash with a potato masher or wooden spoon to a thick paste. In a large mixing bowl, combine the lentils, sautéed veggies, and bread crumb mixtures, and mix well. Cool in the refrigerator for 15 to 30 minutes or more. Using your hands, form burger patties to your desired size and place on waxed paper. Lightly fry in a seasoned skillet, broil, or grill until lightly browned and crisp, 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Extra uncooked patties can be frozen on wax paper in plastic bags or wrapped individually in aluminum foil, making for a quick dinner or wholesome burger for the next barbecue.   MAKES A DOZEN 4-INCH DIAMETER BURGERS   NOTE: To make the bread crumbs, you’ll need about half of a loaf of day-old bread (I use Ezekiel 4:9). Slice the bread, then tear or cut into 2- to 3-inch pieces and chop in a food processor for 1 to 2 minutes, until a fine crumb results. The walnuts can also be chopped in the food processor with the bread.  

resistant fiber Resistant fiber is the new kid on the block. It is a unique type of starch that is digested, but only many hours later and only by the good bacteria. Also known as resistant starch, this fiber contains calories, but the majority of its calories are not usable and therefore cannot cause weight gain. Resistant fiber is remarkable since it creates little or no insulin response, unlike any other carbohydrate. In fact, it can even produce less of an insulin response than many non-carbohydrate foods like meat, poultry, and eggs. For this reason, many of the low-carb breakfasts on the Adrenal Reset Diet include foods high in resistant fiber. BEST SOURCES: Boiled potatoes, cannellini beans, navy beans, great northern beans, and unripe bananas.

2012 Continuation of Andy’s Correspondence   Since I’m on the topic of Oneness, I had many heated debates on this subject with your ex-tutor, Alain Dubois. Unlike our material world, which is dependent on pairs of opposites, I believe that the place we originated from is devoid of dichotomies. In this other world, the concepts of up and down are void. The same applies to death and life. There is no north or south, no male or female, no right or wrong. In our current existence, we think in dichotomies and identify ourselves using opposites; we are opinionated about what we like, what tastes good, what feels good, and so on. These polar opposites express what we have liked and disliked among our experiences. Since we reside in a world of contrasts and contrast requires more than one element, the idea of Oneness is almost impossible to grasp. Therefore, we are constantly dwelling in a world of twoness. How then is it possible for humans to grasp the idea of oneness in the realm of nonbeing we occupied before we came into beingness? A fine example would be this: we don’t think of our fingers, legs, arms, toes, and eyes as separate entities from our person. Even though they have their unique qualities and character, we don’t refer to our fingers as being separate from ourselves. All these seemingly separate parts are a part of the whole, or oneness, we refer to as ‘self.’ We, the Source or God, were one before we manifested in this world. Therefore, the concept of Oneness means discarding all ideas of separation from anything and anyone. One of the ways we can simulate Oneness is through silence - where there are no names and no things. In the silence, we can feel our connection to everyone and everything: to the Tao, the Oneness that keeps universal order, where form is created from nothingness and vice versa. Young, take a moment to imagine that you are free of all labels, separation, and judgments about our world and the life inhabiting it; you’ll then begin to understand Oneness. The Source of being is an energy field where anger or resentment toward anyone or anything are obsolete, since everyone and everything is Spirit. You are this Spirit: the Source/the God. The meaning of life will be revealed to you by easing into the silence, and you can find it without having to leave your body through death. You will be able to return to the Oneness and Nothingness while in physical form. Peace and your life’s purpose will flow easily through you when you are close to your original nature. I’m sure you are already aware of this without me carrying on about the Oneness of Being. I’ll rest at this juncture and I look forward to your response. Yours truly, Andy

What human beings have done in the past, the enormous range in ways of living and possible actions, is a source both of hope and despair. How fascinating it is to consider this variety in human events. We can draw hope from it in the sense that if things have been different in the past, perhaps we’re in a position to make them a little different today. When I say “usefulness”, I don’t mean that history offers us models that we can apply – the details of different situations are too unlike each other. History offers us ideas, points of views, perspectives, landmarks, indices – possibilities.

Gardeners celebrate variety, unlikeness, spontaneity. They understand that an abundance of styles is in the interest of vitality. The more complex the organic content of the soil, for example-that is, the more numerous its sources of change-the more vigorous its liveliness. Growth promotes growth.