Unusual Positive Quotes

You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

You do not want to help us,” Will said to Magnus. “You do not want to position yourself as an enemy of Mortmain’s.” “Well, can you blame him?” Woolsey rose in a whirl of yellow silk. “What could you possibly have to offer that would make the risk worth it to him?” “I will give you anything,” said Tessa in a low voice that Will felt in his bones. “Anything at all, if you can help us help Jem.” Magnus gripped a handful of his black hair. “God, the two of you. I can make inquiries. Track down some of the more unusual shipping routes. Old Molly —” “I’ve been to her,” Will said. “Something’s frightened her so badly she won’t even crawl out of her grave.” Woolsey snorted. “And that doesn’t tell you anything, little Shadowhunter? Is it really worth all this, just to stretch your friend’s life out another few months, another year? He will die anyway. And the sooner he dies, the sooner you can have his fiancée, the one you’re in love with.” He cut his amused gaze toward Tessa. “Really you ought to be counting down the days till he expires with great eagerness.

Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before. I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume and attitude towards them. So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me. What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to. an ex patient of C. G. Jung (Alchemical Studies, pg 47)

What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives.

At the last moment, the fish and I exchange a troubled glance. The murrel seems to be demanding an explanation. Alas, I am in no position to start justifying the unusual treatment. What comes next is a new experience for both the fish and me.

Whenever one person in a family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy and positive, it’s not unusual for other members in this system to do everything they can to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis.

Personally, I didn't take a single photograph while I was there, but that's not all that unusual for me. I suppose my aversion to snapping pictures may have something to do with shaky hands and blurry results, but there's another reason: The act of lifting up the camera and positioning it between me and the object of my interest separates me from the experience.

People who go to Disney who have magic in themselves experience magic there, just as people who go to the grocery store who have magic in themselves experience magic at the grocery store. The principle is simple: fun, joy, and happiness, are something we bring to life, not something life, circumstance, or situation bring to us. There are truly no magic kingdoms, only magic people. Fun, joy and happiness are choices, orientations, approaches, attitudes, a way of living in the world, not the world itself...

High performers whom exhibit tremendous self-control tend to be burden by their own competence. Studies indicate that being extraordinary competent can place a person under an unusual amount of stress because it raises other people’s expectation of them. The more task that an exemplary employee produces with a ‘go-getting personality’ while maintaining high quality relationships with peers and clients, the more an organization tends to underestimates their actual effort and the more it expects of them. Other people do not comprehend how difficult it is for a high performer to complete multifaceted tasks. They also tend to underestimate how much effort an enterprising person exerts who maintains a positive and pleasant attitude while completing difficult assignments.

All at once, in his dangerous position, Ćorkan felt himself separated from his companions. He was now like some gigantic monster above them. His first steps were slow and hesitating. His heavy clogs kept slipping on the stones covered with ice. It seemed to him that his legs were failing him, that the depths below attracted him irresistibly, that he must slip and fall, that he was already falling. But his unusual position and the nearness of great danger gave him strength and hitherto unknown powers. [...] Instead of walking, he began to dance, he himself did not know how, as free as if he had been on a wide green field and not on that narrow and icy edge. All of a sudden he felt himself light and skilful as a man sometimes in dreams. His heavy and exhausted body felt without weight. The drunken Ćorkan danced and floated above the depths as if on wings. [...] His dance bore him onward where his walk would never have borne him- No longer thinking of the danger of the possibility of a fall, he leapt from one leg to the other and sang with outstretched arms as accompanying himself on a drum.

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles. Hence, if a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.

I admire successful men and women who endured and overcome unusual circumstances to fulfill their dreams.

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining—what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world—what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke.

For centuries, no man, in verse has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original thing. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and, although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation.

Now it was the Germans who had to fall back to new defensive positions. Among the German soldiers who had fought throughout the retreat was Corporal Hitler. On August 4 he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, for ‘personal bravery and general merit’. This was an unusual decoration for a corporal. Hitler wore it for the rest of his life. The regimental adjutant who recommended him for it, Captain Hugo Guttman, was a Jew.

My position was terrible. I knew that I could find nothing in the way of rational knowledge except a denial of life; and in faith I could find nothing except a denial of reason, and this was even more impossible than a denial of life. According to rational knowledge, it followed that life is evil, and people know it. They do not have to live, yet they have lived and they do live, just as I myself had lived, even though I had known for a long time that life is meaningless and evil. Try as he might, Tolstoy could identify only four means of escaping from such thoughts. One was retreating into childlike ignorance of the problem. Another was pursuing mindless pleasure. The third was “continuing to drag out a life that is evil and meaningless, knowing beforehand that nothing can come of it.” He identified that particular form of escape with weakness: “The people in this category know that death is better than life, but they do not have the strength to act rationally and quickly put an end to the delusion by killing themselves….” Only the fourth and final mode of escape involved “strength and energy. It consists of destroying life, once one has realized that life is evil and meaningless.” Tolstoy relentlessly followed his thoughts: Only unusually strong and logically consistent people act in this manner. Having realized all the stupidity of the joke that is being played on us and seeing that the blessings of the dead are greater than those of the living and that it is better not to exist, they act and put an end to this stupid joke; and they use any means of doing it: a rope around the neck, water, a knife in the heart, a train.

Many aspects of positive schizotypy -magical thinking, paranoid ideation, and the tendency to form novel and unusual ideas and express them in idiosyncratic ways- can contribute to a compelling leader personality, often with religious or messianic overtones.

Reports of miracles are like positive test results for very unusual diseases. They must be treated with extreme caution, because however remote the possibility of error or deceit may seem, it may still be less remote than the possibility that a miracle has occurred.

Minerva drew unusual attention to herself on her very first evening, when she was revealed to be a Hatstall. After five and a half minutes, the Sorting Hat, which had been vacillating between the houses of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, placed Minerva in the latter. (In later years, this circumstance was a subject of gentle humour between Minerva and her colleague Filius Flitwick, over whom the Sorting Hat suffered the same confusion, but reached the opposite conclusion. The two Heads of House were amused to think that they might, but for those crucial moments in their youths, have exchanged positions).

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

In fact, even fleeting feelings of delight can lead to dramatic increases in creativity. After watching a short, humorous video — Beeman uses a clip of Robin Williams doing standup — subjects have significantly more epiphanies, at least when compared with those who were shown scary or boring videos. Because positive moods allow us to relax, we focus less on the troubling world and more on these remote associations. Another ideal moment for insights, according to Beeman and John Kounios, is the early morning, shortly after waking up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active.

Sir, you have used your birth and prospective position to get yourself an unusual degree of attention and comfort-I do not complain-dare not! Who am I to question the customs of our society, or indeed the laws of nature? In a sentence, you have exercised the privileges of your position. I am asking you to shoulder its responsibilities.

Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this," and with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain, and as I opened the parlour door, cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice. The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I do not believe he had enough force left in his body. "Now, Bill, sit where you are," said the beggar. "If I can't see, I can hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand. Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right." We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain's, which closed upon it instantly. "And now that's done," said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance. It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather our senses, but at length, and about at the same moment, I released his wrist, which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand and looked sharply into the palm. "Ten o'clock!" he cried. "Six hours. We'll do them yet," and he sprang to his feet. Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole height face foremost to the floor. I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain. The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curious thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart. 4 The Sea-chest I LOST no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man's money—if he had any—was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our captain's shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, Black Dog and the blind beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in payment of the dead man's debts. The captain's order to mount at once and ride for Doctor Livesey would have left my mother alone and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarms. The neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlour floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog. The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his appearance and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound—nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood.

Whenever one person in a family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy and positive, it’s not unusual for other members in this system to do everything they can to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis. If an addict stops drinking, for instance, family members often unconsciously sabotage that person’s recovery, because in order to regain homeostasis in the system, somebody has to fill the role of the troubled person. And who wants that role? Sometimes people even resist positive changes in their friends: Why are you going to the gym so much? Why can’t you stay out late—you don’t need more sleep! Why are you working so hard for that promotion? You’re no fun anymore!

Yes’m, he came to the front door.” There was a moment’s awkwardness. Everyone was at a loss to know how to deal with such an unusual occurrence, and even Emily, who knew who should come to the front door, who should go to the side door, and who to the back, looked a trifle flustered. My aunt, who was a gentle soul, I think felt honestly embarrassed that anyone should put himself in such a false position;

Traces of historical associations can long outlast actual contact. In the dense, subtropical forests from India across to the South China Sea, venomous snakes are common, and there is always an advantage in pretending to be something dangerous. The slow loris, a weird, nocturnal primate, has a number of unusual features that, taken together, seem to be mimicking spectacled cobras. They move in a sinuous, serpentine way through the branches, always smooth and slow. When threatened, they raise their arms up behind their head, shiver and hiss, their wide, round eyes closely resembling the markings on the inside of the spectacled cobra’s hood. Even more remarkably, when in this position, the loris has access to glands in its armpit which, when combined with saliva, can produce a venom capable of causing anaphylactic shock in humans. In behaviour, colour and even bite, the primate has come to resemble the snake, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Today, the ranges of the loris and cobras do not overlap, but climate reconstructions reaching back tens of thousands of years suggest that once they would have been similar. It is possible that the loris is an outdated imitation artist, stuck in an evolutionary rut, compelled by instinct to act out an impression of something neither it nor its audience has ever seen.

Miss Mapp had experienced a cruel disappointment last night, though the triumph of this morning had done something to soothe it, for Major Benjy's window had certainly been lit up to a very late hour, and so it was clear that he had not been able, twice in succession, to tear himself away from his diaries, or whatever else detained him, and go to bed at a proper time. Captain Puffin, however, had not sat up late; indeed he must have gone to bed quite unusually early, for his window was dark by half-past nine. To-night, again the position was reversed, and it seemed that Major Benjy was "good" and Captain Puffin was "bad". On the whole, then, there was cause for thankfulness, and as she added a tin of biscuits and two jars of Bovril to her prudent stores, she found herself a conscious sceptic about those Roman roads. Diaries (perhaps) were a little different, for egoism was a more potent force than archæology, and for her part she now definitely believed that Roman roads spelt some form of drink. She was sorry to believe it, but it was her duty to believe something of the kind, and she really did not know what else to believe. She did not go so far as mentally to accuse him of drunkenness, but considering the way he absorbed red-currant fool, it was clear that he was no foe to alcohol and probably watered the Roman roads with it.

Beautiful, long, loose hair was a rarity, an indication of a woman's position, her status, the sign of a free woman, a woman who belonged to herself. The sign of an unusual woman – because "normal" maidens wore their hair in plaits, "normal" married women hid theirs beneath a caul or a coif. Women of high birth, including queens, curled their hair and styled it. Warriors cut it short. Only druids and magicians – and whores – wore their hair naturally so as to emphasise their independence and freedom.

The formerly absolute distinction between time and eternity in Christian thought--between nunc movens with its beginning and end, and nunc stans, the perfect possession of endless life--acquired a third intermediate order based on this peculiar betwixt-and-between position of angels. But like the Principle of Complementarity, this concord-fiction soon proved that it had uses outside its immediate context, angelology. Because it served as a means of talking about certain aspects of human experience, it was humanized. It helped one to think about the sense, men sometimes have of participating in some order of duration other than that of the nunc movens--of being able, as it were, to do all that angels can. Such are those moments which Augustine calls the moments of the soul's attentiveness; less grandly, they are moments of what psychologists call 'temporal integration.' When Augustine recited his psalm he found in it a figure for the integration of past, present, and future which defies successive time. He discovered what is now erroneously referred to as 'spatial form.' He was anticipating what we know of the relation between books and St. Thomas's third order of duration--for in the kind of time known by books a moment has endless perspectives of reality. We feel, in Thomas Mann's words, that 'in their beginning exists their middle and their end, their past invades the present, and even the most extreme attention to the present is invaded by concern for the future.' The concept of aevum provides a way of talking about this unusual variety of duration-neither temporal nor eternal, but, as Aquinas said, participating in both the temporal and the eternal. It does not abolish time or spatialize it; it co-exists with time, and is a mode in which things can be perpetual without being eternal. We've seen that the concept of aevum grew out of a need to answer certain specific Averroistic doctrines concerning origins. But it appeared quite soon that this medium inter aeternitatem et tempus had human uses. It contains beings (angels) with freedom of choice and immutable substance, in a creation which is in other respects determined. Although these beings are out of time, their acts have a before and an after. Aevum, you might say, is the time-order of novels. Characters in novels are independent of time and succession, but may and usually do seem to operate in time and succession; the aevum co-exists with temporal events at the moment of occurrence, being, it was said, like a stick in a river. Brabant believed that Bergson inherited the notion through Spinoza's duratio, and if this is so there is an historical link between the aevum and Proust; furthermore this durée réelle is, I think, the real sense of modern 'spatial form,' which is a figure for the aevum.

Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle.

On the same convoy were two marine “snuffies,” or combat correspondents, Steve Berntson and Dale Dye. Both were marine sergeants with unusual jobs. They were “military journalists,” or, rather, public relations reporters in the field charged with writing stories about their fellow marines. They were assigned to the Information Services Office (ISO) and covered the war the same way as civilian journalists but with a mandate to stress the positive. They had a license to go anywhere and do anything that could be turned into a story, so they were far more widely traveled than most marines, and they had a great deal more independence.

They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. 'Fine day,' he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow. 'We were driving to-day and we thought it rather cold,' said Griselda. 'Deuced cold,' said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie. 'This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,' said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; 'so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.' 'Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,' said his lordship. 'I like this sort of thing--no trouble, you know.' 'No; that is the charm of it: isn't it? no trouble or fuss, or parade. That's what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts--what we call conversation.' 'Aw, yes, exactly.' 'Not in eating and drinking together--eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.' 'I like a good dinner all the same,' said Lord Dumbello. 'Oh, yes, of course--of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?' 'A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,' said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation. 'An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating -- can we?' 'No,' said Lord Dumbello, 'not always.' And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.

Nearly two decades later, on his final day in office, President Clinton had issued Rich a highly unusual pardon. It was unusual because the pardon was given to a fugitive, which was, to my knowledge, unprecedented. It was also unusual, and suspicious, because it had not gone through the normal review process at the Department of Justice. The pardon had only been seen by then–Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who, without seeking input from the prosecutors or agents who knew the case, cryptically told the White House he was “neutral, leaning positive.” The New York Times editorial board called the pardon “a shocking abuse of federal power.

It was not just her unusual intellect and outsized personality that made Margaret seem to Waldo more manly than feminine, but also her anomalous position as a woman “of the bread-winning tribe” who earned her keep as a writer and public speaker, her rate of pay approaching his own. Margaret was Waldo’s female double, not his feminine muse, as Cary was now. Margaret felt this too; it was why she thought she would make a better man than he. And why she rarely looked at men “with common womanly eyes,” as she once wrote to George Davis, but rather with an eye to friendship—yet on her own more womanly terms. If Waldo wished she would befriend him as a brother, she willed him to befriend her as a sister. The disjunction perplexed and saddened them both.

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reach the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

There will always be such people,” answers Willy, unusually earnest and thoughtful, “but don’t forget us; we are here too. And there’s a lot of people think as we do. Most of them, probably. Ever since then—you know, since Ludwig and Albert—all sorts of things have been going around in my head, and I’ve come to the conclusion that everybody can do something in his own way, even though he may have nothing but a turnip for a head. My holidays are over next week, and I’ll have to go back to the village as a schoolteacher again. And, you know, I’m positively glad of it. I mean to teach my youngsters what their Fatherland really is. Their homeland, that is, not a political party. Their homeland is trees, fields, earth, none of your fulsome catchwords. I’ve considered it all on and off a long time, and I’ve decided that we’re old enough now to do some sort of a job. And that’s mine. It’s not big, I admit. But sufficient for me—and I’m no Goethe, of course.

REGULARLY ATTEND AN ANNUAL security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The only thing unusual about the November 2016 meeting was that it occurred just after the U.S. presidential election, and most of the formal and informal conversations among the conferees were about what to expect from the President-elect, Donald Trump. The subject was causing consternation among the governments, military, and intelligentsia of the West, including ours. I spent most of my time in Halifax reassuring friends that the United States government consists of more than the White House. Congress and, I hoped, the people the new President would appoint to senior national security positions would provide continuity in U.S. foreign policy, compensate for the lack of experience in the Oval Office, and restrain the occupant from impulsively reacting to world events. Saturday evening, when the day’s presentations were finished, a retired British diplomat, who had served as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Russia during

One possible motive in the murder was an article Litvinenko wrote claiming Putin was a pedophile. The article said: After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin? Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute… Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him [having] sex with some underage boys.

The octopus, although an invertebrate—with no thalamus or cortex to speak of—behaves in ways that utterly belie its primitive label. It has around 500 million neurons, not too far from the numbers in a cat. But the octopus brain is decidedly unusual, with an exceptionally parallel architecture—almost always a positive quality when you are talking about brains. The majority of octopus neurons are to be found not in its brain, but in its arms. In effect, if you include the neuronal bundles in its limbs, the octopus has nine semi-independent brains, making it unique in the animal kingdom. The octopus is also a genius among ocean creatures. It has highly developed memory and attentional systems. In nature, this allows these invertebrates to take on a wide range of shapes to mimic other animals, rocks, or even plants. In the lab, octopuses can distinguish shapes and colors, navigate through a maze, open a jar with a screw-on lid, and even learn by observing the behavior of another octopus—an ability thought previously only to exist in highly social animals.

I am absolutely positive they’re wrong.” “Why?” “Because you belong to me, that’s why.” She swept out her free hand. “We’re perfect for each other. I love you. Why do you need arcanematch.com? What’s that woman they claim they found for you got that I don’t have?” The dangerous energy that had swirled around him shifted with disconcerting abruptness into sensual hunger. “Interesting question,” he said. “The answer is nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. She’s got absolutely nothing that I don’t have. Don’t bother to set up a date with her because there will be three of us there and I don’t think she’s going to feel real comfortable chatting with me, do you?” “Don’t know,” he said. “It would certainly make for an unusual first date.” “Skip the snappy repartee. I am dead serious, Jake Salter Jones.” His mouth tweaked up at the corners. Heat burned in his eyes. “About me?” “About you. And me. We’re a match. Can’t you see that?” “Yes.” “What’s more, there’s no frickin’ way those arcanematch.com people could have found anyone who will love you more than I do.

There's history books you haven't read," Harry said quietly. "There's books you haven't read yet, Hermione, and they might give you a sense of perspective. A few centuries earlier - I think it was definitely still around in the seventeenth century - it was a popular village entertainment to take a wicker basket, or a bundle, with a dozen live cats in it, and -" "Stop," she said. "- roast it over a bonfire. Just a regular celebration. Good clean fun. And I'll give them this, it was cleaner fun than burning women they thought were witches. Because the way people are built, Hermione, the way people are built to feel inside -" Harry put a hand over his own heart, in the anatomically correct position, then paused and moved his hand up to point toward his head at around the ear level, "- is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise. So, no, it does not indicate that Draco Malfoy was inhuman or even unusually evil, if he grew up believing that it was fun to hurt his enemies -

lack, or loutish and crass kollective is a program dedicated to the proposition that vulgarity and bad taste are an inalienable right. the lackies, as they are sometimes called, meet if they feel like it at program headquarters, which is known as La Gaucherie. La Gaucherie is densely furnished with seven thousand always-in-operation console color televisions, nine hundred constantly blaring quadrophonic stereos, shag rugs in six hundred and seventy-eight decorator colors, and am eclectic mix of Mediterranean-style dining room sets, fun sofas, interesting wall hangings, and modular seating systems. These members not otherwise occupied practicing the electric guitar or writing articles for Playgirl sit around in unduly comfortable positions expressing their honest feelings and opinions in loud tones of voice. Male lackies are encouraged to leave unbuttoned the first five buttons of their shirts unless they have unusually pale skin and hairy chests, in which case they are required to do so. Female members are encouraged to encourage them. Both sexes participate in a form of meditation that consists of breathing deeply of musk oil while wearing synthetic fabrics. The eventual goal of this discipline is to reach the state of mind known as Los Angeles.

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him—and I didn’t know how potent that part might be—that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him. 10. INTERROGATIONS IT WAS VERY HARD, IN THE MORNING, TO ARGUE WITH THE PART of me that was sure last night was a dream. Logic wasn’t on my side, or common sense. I clung to the parts I couldn’t have imagined—like his smell. I was sure I could never have dreamed that up on my own. It was foggy and dark outside my window, absolutely perfect. He had no reason not to be in school today. I dressed in my heavy clothes, remembering I didn’t have a jacket. Further proof that my memory was real. When I got downstairs, Charlie was gone again—I was running later than I’d realized. I swallowed a granola bar in three bites, chased it down with milk straight from the carton, and then hurried out the door. Hopefully the rain would hold off until I could find Jessica. It was unusually foggy; the air was almost smoky with it. The mist was ice cold where it clung to the exposed skin on my face and neck. I couldn’t wait to get the heat going in my truck. It was such a thick fog that I was a few feet down the driveway before I realized there was a car

news?” “What news?” “I have my own name. From now, I am Slug!”, the tortoise boasted with joy. “And when I become a grown-up, my name will be ‘Slug On Time’.” And the tortoise, from his own position of significance, pushed his head out farther than usual from his shell. “Hedgehog, please tell us, why the beaver has such an unusual name, ‘Snivel’. Isn’t it offensive for him?” “Not at all. Why do you consider it offensive? His nose is always wet and it seems that snivels are flowing from it. The children’s noses are wet and, on the contrary, the beaver children’s noses are dry if they are ill. Beavers are rarely ill as they evenly tempered and, moreover, their skin is warm. These are facts, brother!” “You are so clever, hedgehog!” the tortoise Slug exclaimed. At that moment, a little fox came upon them and they all began to chat. Their talk lasted for a long time as the beasts had not seen each other for a quite a long time. For an entire year they had been studying in theirs schools; the fox had been studying in fox’s school, the hedgehog had been studying in hedgehog’s school, and the tortoise, of course, had been studying in tortoise’s school. They are taught how to obtain food in the schools, even when each beast eats different food. Also, they are taught how to seek shelter from bad weather, how to build houses and, of course, how to be polite and kind. Slug looked up and said: “Friends, do you know why the sky is blue?

For one, mad instant, she thought he planned to kiss her, but instead, he ducked under her chin and nuzzled against her shoulder at the site where her pulse pounded so furiously. A shiver of excitement tore through her, and she swallowed a baffled squeal that could have been either delight or indignation. His lips were heated and soft, and he tenderly kissed against her nape then, to her astonishment, he licked across her skin. She jumped then twirled away, only to end up facing the mirror, with him behind her, and she assessed the two of them, evaluating the differences: his tall to her short, bronzed to fair, brawn to lean. Boldly, he settled his hands on her hips and snuggled her backside against him, and she was assailed by an array of unique anatomical impressions. As though she'd been searching for this man all her life and had finally found him, she ignited with sensation, every pore alert and animated, and her nipples tightened painfully, poking at the towel. The knave immediately noticed how they'd peaked. "I can't wait to have my mouth on you." The declaration kindled cryptic messages, and restlessly, she scrambled to flee---from the unusual fleshly perturbation and from him---but because of their positions, he merely nestled her close and flexed against her. His groin stroked across her bottom in a manner she'd never presumed a man might attempt with a woman. There was a solid ridge along his abdomen that dug into her buttocks, and her traitorous body reacted by squirming to get nearer to it. He appreciated her participation and gripped her firmly, flexing again.

Imagine the following experiment, performed by the developmental psychologist Grazyna Kochanska. A kind woman hands a toy to a toddler, explaining that the child should be very careful because it’s one of the woman’s favorites. The child solemnly nods assent and begins to play with the toy. Soon afterward, it breaks dramatically in two, having been rigged to do so. The woman looks upset and cries, “Oh my!” Then she waits to see what the child does next. Some children, it turns out, feel a lot more guilty about their (supposed) transgression than others. They look away, hug themselves, stammer out confessions, hide their faces. And it’s the kids we might call the most sensitive, the most high-reactive, the ones who are likely to be introverts who feel the guiltiest. Being unusually sensitive to all experience, both positive and negative, they seem to feel both the sorrow of the woman whose toy is broken and the anxiety of having done something bad. (In case you’re wondering, the woman in the experiments quickly returned to the room with the toy “fixed” and reassurances that the child had done nothing wrong.) In our culture, guilt is a tainted word, but it’s probably one of the building blocks of conscience. The anxiety these highly sensitive toddlers feel upon apparently breaking the toy gives them the motivation to avoid harming someone’s plaything the next time. By age four, according to Kochanska, these same kids are less likely than their peers to cheat or break rules, even when they think they can’t be caught. And by six or seven, they’re more likely to be described by their parents as having high levels of moral traits such as empathy. They also have fewer behavioral problems in general.

My Voice by Paul Stephen Lynch Why was I born? What is my purpose here on this earth? Is there more out there after this life ends? At some point we all ask ourselves these questions. I can tell you with absolute certainty that for me, the answer to all three of these questions is… “I don’t know”. However, what I do know is that while I am here I am meant to learn from my mistakes, to grow through my pain, and to evolve. What will I be changed into? Again, I do not know. Perhaps I will become someone who is more courageous, more charitable, more peaceful, more dignified, more honest and more loving. I am very hopeful but nothing in life is guaranteed. Although, I have discovered that speaking from my heart and telling my truth is an integral part of my transformation. It is my voice. In those times in my life when I have experienced great pain – sadness, loss, conflict or depression – those have been the times that have brought me closest to this transformation. I recently realized that pain is one of the few things that seems to really get my attention and that I have spent a lot of my time just coasting down life’s path. Perhaps this is the reason why I seem to grow the most during the hard times, even though it often takes all the energy I can muster just to get through them. Quite a few years ago, while I was visiting a friend who was dying from AIDS, I saw a tapestry on the hospital wall that read: The Chinese word for “crisis” has two characters. One stands for danger; the other for opportunity. The times in my life that have been the most difficult have quite often proven to be my best opportunities for growth; to get closer to becoming the person I am meant to be. Of course, this doesn’t mean that painful circumstances ~ like HIV and AIDS ~ are good things or that they are in any way “all for the best” ~ or, that they even make any kind of sense. It just means that I know that there is always the possibility that something positive can ultimately come out of that which is incredibly bad. However, change does not happen in seclusion and I will likely need help from friends, family, teachers and even from people I do not know at all For me to continue moving closer to becoming the person I was born to be, I first needed to accept who I am. For me, that was relatively easy (easy does not mean painless mind you) and it happened at the unusually young age of twelve. The second step to transforming my life means I need to tell others the truth about who I am. I have been doing this ever since my personal acceptance occurred. As a result, I have learned that there will always be those people who cannot be trusted with the truth. There are also those who will simply never be able to understand my truth no matter what anyone says to them. However, others will hear the truth very clearly, understand it completely, and even care greatly. Moreover, I can hear, I understand, and I care. I have also learned that there are times when it is better to be silent. Sometimes words are just not necessary… Like when I am sharing with someone who already knows my heart. And then there are times when words are pointless… like when I have already spoken my truth to someone, yet they are simply not capable of hearing what it is that I am saying. This is when I need to find other ears. Sometimes, a silent sign of love is the best way, or even the only way that I can express myself. However, at those times, my silence is a choice that I am making. It is not being forced on me by fear or shame… and I will never let it be because… it is MY voice!

In all your travels around Alagaësia, with Angela and without, you’ve never found anything that might explain this mystery? Or even just something that might be of use against Galbatorix.” I found you, didn’t I? “That’s not funny,” growled Eragon. “Blast it, you have to know something more.” I do not. “Think, then! If I can’t find some sort of help against Galbatorix, we’ll lose, Solembum. We’ll lose, and most of the Varden, including the werecats, will die.” Solembum hissed again. What do you expect of me, Eragon? I cannot invent help where none exists. Read the book. “We’ll be at Urû’baen before I can finish it. The book might as well not exist.” Solembum’s ears flattened again. That is not my fault. “I don’t care if it is. I just want a way to keep us from ending up dead or enslaved. Think! You have to know something else!” Solembum uttered a low, warbling growl. I do not. And-- “You have to, or we’re doomed!” Even as Eragon uttered the words, he saw a change come over the werecat. Solembum’s ears swiveled until they were upright, his whiskers relaxed, and his gaze softened, losing its hard-edged brilliance. At the same time, the werecat’s mind grew unusually empty, as if his consciousness had been stilled or removed. Eragon froze, uncertain. Then he felt Solembum say, with thoughts that were as flat and colorless as a pool of water beneath a wintry, cloud-ridden sky: Chapter forty-seven. Page three. Start with the second passage thereon. Solembum’s gaze sharpened, and his ears returned to their previous position. What? he said with obvious irritation. Why are you gaping at me like that? “What did you just say?” I said that I do not know anything else. And that-- “No, no, the other thing, about the chapter and page.” Do not toy with me. I said no such thing. “You did.” Solembum studied him for several seconds. Then, with thoughts that were overly calm, he said, Tell me exactly what you heard, Dragon Rider. So, Eragon repeated the words as closely as he could. When he finished, the werecat was silent for a while. I have no memory of that, he said. “What do you think it means?” It means that we should look and see what’s on page three of chapter forty-seven.

Positive arguments for the natural possibility of absent qualia have not been as prevalent as arguments for inverted qualia, but they have been made. The most detailed presentation of these arguments is given by Block (1978). These arguments almost always have the same form. They consist in the exhibition of a realization of our functional organization in some unusual medium, combined with an appeal to intuition. It is pointed out, for example, that the organization of our brain might be simulated by the people of China or even mirrored in the economy of Bolivia. If we got every person in China to simulate a neuron (we would need to multiply the population by ten or one hundred, but no matter), and equipped them with radio links to simulate synaptic connections, then the functional organization would be there. But surely, says the argument, this baroque system would not be conscious! There is a certain intuitive force to this argument. Many people have a strong feeling that a system like this is simply the wrong sort of thing to have a conscious experience. Such a “group mind” would seem to be the stuff of a science-fiction tale, rather than the kind of thing that could really exist. But there is only an intuitive force. This certainly falls far short of a knockdown argument. Many have pointed out that while it may be intuitively implausible that such a system should give rise to experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience! Whoever would have thought that this hunk of gray matter would be the sort of thing that could produce vivid subjective experiences? And yet it does. Of course this does not show that a nation's population could produce a mind, but it is a strong counter to the intuitive argument that it would not. . . . Once we realize how tightly a specification of functional organization constrains the structure of a system, it becomes less implausible that even the population of China could support conscious experience if organized appropriately. If we take our image of the population, speed it up by a factor of a million or so, and shrink it into an area the size of a head, we are left with something that looks a lot like a brain, except that it has homunculi—tiny people—where a brain would have neurons. On the face of it, there is not much reason to suppose that neurons should do any better a job than homunculi in supporting experience.

In 2009, Kahneman and Klein took the unusual step of coauthoring a paper in which they laid out their views and sought common ground. And they found it. Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform. The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. In golf or chess, a ball or piece is moved according to rules and within defined boundaries, a consequence is quickly apparent, and similar challenges occur repeatedly. Drive a golf ball, and it either goes too far or not far enough; it slices, hooks, or flies straight. The player observes what happened, attempts to correct the error, tries again, and repeats for years. That is the very definition of deliberate practice, the type identified with both the ten-thousand-hours rule and the rush to early specialization in technical training. The learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better. Kahneman was focused on the flip side of kind learning environments; Hogarth called them “wicked.” In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. Hogarth noted a famous New York City physician renowned for his skill as a diagnostician. The man’s particular specialty was typhoid fever, and he examined patients for it by feeling around their tongues with his hands. Again and again, his testing yielded a positive diagnosis before the patient displayed a single symptom. And over and over, his diagnosis turned out to be correct. As another physician later pointed out, “He was a more productive carrier, using only his hands, than Typhoid Mary.” Repetitive success, it turned out, taught him the worst possible lesson. Few learning environments are that wicked, but it doesn’t take much to throw experienced pros off course. Expert firefighters, when faced with a new situation, like a fire in a skyscraper, can find themselves suddenly deprived of the intuition formed in years of house fires, and prone to poor decisions. With a change of the status quo, chess masters too can find that the skill they took years to build is suddenly obsolete.

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

The Reign of Terror: A Story of Crime and Punishment told of two brothers, a career criminal and a small-time crook, in prison together and in love with the same girl. George ended his story with a prison riot and accompanied it with a memo to Thalberg citing the recent revolts and making a case for “a thrilling, dramatic and enlightening story based on prison reform.” --- Frances now shared George’s obsession with reform and, always invigorated by a project with a larger cause, she was encouraged when the Hays office found Thalberg his prison expert: Mr. P. W. Garrett, the general secretary of the National Society of Penal Information. Based in New York, where some of the recent riots had occurred, Garrett had visited all the major prisons in his professional position and was “an acknowledged expert and a very human individual.” He agreed to come to California to work with Frances for several weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for a total of kr 4,470.62 plus expenses. Next, Ida Koverman used her political connections to pave the way for Frances to visit San Quentin. Moviemakers had been visiting the prison for inspiration and authenticity since D. W. Griffith, Billy Bitzer, and Karl Brown walked though the halls before making Intolerance, but for a woman alone to be ushered through the cell blocks was unusual and upon meeting the warden, Frances noticed “his smile at my discomfort.” Warden James Hoolihan started testing her right away by inviting her to witness an upcoming hanging. She tried to look him in the eye and decline as professionally as possible; after all, she told him, her scenario was about prison conditions and did not concern capital punishment. Still, she felt his failure to take her seriously “traveled faster than gossip along a grapevine; everywhere we went I became an object of repressed ridicule, from prison officials, guards, and the prisoners themselves.” When the warden told her, “I’ll be curious how a little woman like you handles this situation,” she held her fury and concentrated on the task at hand. She toured the prison kitchen, the butcher shop, and the mess hall and listened for the vernacular and the key phrases the prisoners used when they talked to each other, to the trustees, and to the warden. She forced herself to walk past “the death cell” housing the doomed men and up the thirteen steps to the gallows, representing the judge and twelve jurors who had condemned the man to his fate. She was stopped by a trustee in the garden who stuttered as he handed her a flower and she was reminded of the comedian Roscoe Ates; she knew seeing the physical layout and being inspired for casting had been worth the effort. --- Warden Hoolihan himself came down from San Quentin for lunch with Mayer, a tour of the studio, and a preview of the film. Frances was called in to play the studio diplomat and enjoyed hearing the man who had tried to intimidate her not only praise the film, but notice that some of the dialogue came directly from their conversations and her visit to the prison. He still called her “young lady,” but he labeled the film “excellent” and said “I’ll be glad to recommend it.” ---- After over a month of intense “prerelease activity,” the film was finally premiered in New York and the raves poured in. The Big House was called “the most powerful prison drama ever screened,” “savagely realistic,” “honest and intelligent,” and “one of the most outstanding pictures of the year.

WATERMELON COOKIES Preheat oven to 325 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 package (.16-ounce) watermelon (or any other flavor) Kool-Aid powder (Don’t get the kind with sugar or sugar substitute added.) 1 and ⅔ cup white (granulated) sugar 1 and ½ cups softened butter (2 and ½ sticks, 10 ounces) 2 large eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 3 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ½ cup white (granulated) sugar in a bowl Hannah’s 1st Note: When Brandi makes these cookies, she rolls them out on a floured board and uses cookie cutters. Rolled cookies take more time than other types of cookies, so Lisa and I modified Brandi’s recipe for use at The Cookie Jar. Mix the watermelon Kool-Aid with the granulated sugar. Add the softened butter and mix until it’s nice and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix well. Mix in the salt and the baking soda. Make sure they’re well incorporated. Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition. Spray cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. You can also use parchment paper if you prefer. Roll dough balls one inch in diameter with your hands. (We use a 2-teaspoon cookie scooper at The Cookie Jar.) Roll the cookie balls in the bowl of white sugar and place them on the cookie sheet, 12 to a standard-size sheet. Bake the Watermelon Cookies at 325 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes (mine took 11 minutes) or until they’re just beginning to turn golden around the edges. Don’t overbake. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for no more than a minute, and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Yield: Approximately 6 dozen pretty and unusual cookies that kids will adore, especially if you tell them that they’re made with Kool-Aid. Hannah’s 2nd Note: Brandi’s mother baked these cookies to send to school on birthdays. She

BLUEBERRY CRUNCH COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   1 cup melted butter (2 sticks, 1/2 pound) 2 cups white (granulated) sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla 1/2 teaspoon salt 1½ teaspoons baking soda 2 large eggs, beaten (just whip them up with a fork) 2½ cups flour (no need to sift—pack it down when you measure it) 1 cup dried sweetened blueberries (other dried fruit will also work if you cut it in blueberry-sized pieces) 2 cups GROUND dry oatmeal (measure before grinding)   Hannah’s 1st Note: Mixing this dough is much easier with an electric mixer, but you can also do it by hand.   Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl for 1 minute on HIGH. Add the white sugar and mix it in thoroughly.   Add the vanilla, salt, and the baking soda. Mix it in well.   When the mixture has cooled to room temperature, stir in the beaten eggs. When they are fully incorporated, add 197 the flour in half-cup increments, stirring after each addition.   Mix in the dried blueberries.   Prepare your oatmeal. (Use Quaker if you have it—the cardboard canister is useful for all sorts of things.) Measure out two cups and place them in the bowl of a food processor or a blender, chopping with the steel blade until the oatmeal is the consistency of coarse sand. (Just in case you’re wondering, the ground oatmeal is the ingredient that makes the cookies crunchy.)   Add the ground oatmeal to your bowl, and mix it in thoroughly. The resulting cookie dough will be quite stiff.   Roll walnut-sized dough balls with your hands, and place them on a greased cookie sheet, 12 balls to a standard-size sheet. (If the dough is too sticky to roll, place the bowl in the refrigerator for thirty minutes and try again.) Squish the dough balls down a bit with your impeccably clean palm (or a metal spatula if you’d rather).   Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown on top. (Mine took 11 minutes.) Cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, and then remove the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.   Yield: 6 to 7 dozen unusual and tasty cookies, depending on cookie size.   Hannah’s 2nd Note: These cookies freeze well if you stack them on foil (like rolling coins) and roll them, tucking in the ends. Just place the rolls of cookies in a freezer bag,

In short, then, state companies have most of the assets, fill oligopolistic and thus profitable economic positions, receive virtually all bank credit (and at preferential rates), represent most of the stock market capitalisation and generate most of the profit. Private enterprises constitute most of the companies, provide most of the jobs, dominate exports, represent over two-thirds of economic activity and drive the economy. When analysed, this presents a rather unusual picture and demonstrates why there is a strong lobby against further economic reform.

diminution of US government capacity that it is difficult to even know where to begin. Admitting the limits of American power, particularly the “hard power” of the US military and intelligence community, is also not a popular pastime. A politician would need to be unusually brave to publicly focus on the day after an act of nuclear terrorism instead of the days before. Accepting nuclear terrorism is an unacceptable position, his opponents would surely retort.

When no answer came after the second letter to Ostwald, Hermann Einstein took it upon himself, without his son’s knowledge, to make an unusual and awkward effort, suffused with heart-wrenching emotion, to prevail upon Ostwald himself: Please forgive a father who is so bold as to turn to you, esteemed Herr Professor, in the interest of his son. Albert is 22 years old, he studied at the Zurich Polytechnic for four years, and he passed his exam with flying colors last summer. Since then he has been trying unsuccessfully to get a position as a teaching assistant, which would enable him to continue his education in physics. All those in a position to judge praise his talents; I can assure you that he is extraordinarily studious and diligent and clings with great love to his science. He therefore feels profoundly unhappy about his current lack of a job, and he becomes more and more convinced that he has gone off the tracks with his career. In addition, he is oppressed by the thought that he is a burden on us, people of modest means. Since it is you whom my son seems to admire and esteem more than any other scholar in physics, it is you to whom I have taken the liberty of turning with the humble request to read his paper and to write to him, if possible, a few words of encouragement, so that he might recover his joy in living and working. If, in addition, you could secure him an assistant’s position, my gratitude would know no bounds. I beg you to forgive me for my impudence in writing you, and my son does not know anything about my unusual step.25

In the late 1990s, Parachute was the market leader with more than 50 per cent market share. Fresh from its success in taking market share in toothpaste away from Colgate using Pepsodent, HUL entered the coconut oil category to take on Marico. Dadiseth, the then chairman of HUL, had warned Mariwala to sell Marico to HUL or face dire consequences. Mariwala decided to take on the challenge. Even the capital markets believed that Marico stood no chance against the might of HUL which resulted in Marico’s price-to-earnings ratio dipping to as low as 7x, as against 13x during its listing in 1996. As part of its plans to take on Marico, HUL relaunched Nihar in 1998, acquired Cococare from Redcon and positioned both brands as price challengers to Parachute. In addition, HUL also increased advertising and promotion spends for its brands. In one quarter in FY2000, HUL’s advertising and promotional (A&P) spend on coconut oil alone was an amount which was almost equivalent to Marico’s full year A&P budget (around Rs 30 crore). As Milind Sarwate, former CFO of Marico, recalls, ‘Marico’s response was typically entrepreneurial and desi. We quickly realized that we have our key resource engine under threat. So, we re-prioritized and focused entirely on Parachute. We gave the project a war flavour. For example, the business conference on this issue saw Mariconians dressed as soldiers. The project was called operation Parachute ki Kasam. The leadership galvanized the whole team. It was exhilarating as the team realized the gravity of the situation and sprang into action. We were able to recover lost ground and turn the tables, so much so that eventually Marico acquired the aggressor brand, Nihar.’ Marico retaliated by relaunching Parachute: (a) with a new packaging; (b) with a new tag line highlighting its purity (Shuddhata ki Seal—or the seal of purity); (c) by widening its distribution; and (d) by launching an internal sales force initiative. Within twelve months, Parachute regained its lost share, thus limiting HUL’s growth. Despite several relaunches, Nihar failed against Parachute. Eventually, HUL dropped the brand Nihar off its power brand list before selling it off to Marico in 2006. Since then, Parachute has been the undisputed leader in the coconut oil category. This leadership has ensured that when one visits the hair oil section in a retail store, about 80 per cent of the shelves are occupied by Marico-branded hair oil.

Realizing I ought to be circulating as well, I turned--and found myself confronted by the Marquis of Shevraeth. “My dear Countess,” he said with a grand bow. “Please bolster my declining prestige by joining me in this dance.” Declining prestige? I thought, then out loud I said, “It’s a tartelande. From back then.” “Which I studied up on all last week,” he said, offering his arm. I took it and flushed right up to my pearl-lined headdress. Though we had spoken often, of late, at various parties, this was the first time we had danced together since Savona’s ball, my second night at Athanarel. As we joined the circle I sneaked a glance at Elenet. She was dancing with one of the ambassadors. A snap of drums and a lilting tweet caused everyone to take position, hands high, right foot pointed. The musicians reeled out a merry tune to which we dipped and turned and stepped in patterns round one another and those behind and beside us. In between measures I stole looks at my partner, bracing for some annihilating comment about my red face, but he seemed preoccupied as we paced our way through the dance. The Renselaeuses, completely separate from Remalna five hundred years before, had dressed differently, just as they had spoken a different language. In keeping, Shevraeth wore a long tunic that was more like a robe, colored a sky blue, with black and white embroidery down the front and along the wide sleeves. It was flattering to his tall, slender form. His hair was tied back with a diamond-and-nightstar clasp, and a bluefire gem glittered in his ear. We turned and touched hands, and I realized he had broken his reverie and was looking at me somewhat quizzically. I had been caught staring. I said with as careless a smile as I could muster, “I’ll wager you’re the most comfortable of the men here tonight.” “Those tight waistcoats do look uncomfortable, but I rather like the baldrics,” he said, surveying my brother, whom the movement of the dance had placed just across from us. At that moment Bran made a wrong turn in the dance, paused to laugh at himself, then hopped back into position and went on. Perhaps emboldened by his heedless example, or inspired by the unusual yet pleasing music, more of the people on the periphery who had obviously not had the time, or the money, or the notion of learning the dances that went along with the personas and the clothes, were moving out to join. At first tentative, with nervously gripped fans and tense shoulders here and there betraying how little accustomed to making public mistakes they were, the courtiers slowly relaxed. After six or seven dances, when faces were flushed and fans plied in earnest, the first of my mime groups came out to enact an old folktale. The guests willingly became an audience, dropping onto waiting cushions. And so the evening went. There was an atmosphere of expectation, of pleasure, of relaxed rules as the past joined the present, rendering both slightly unreal. I did not dance again but once, and that with Savona, who insisted that I join Shevraeth and Elenet in a set. Despite his joking remarks from time to time, the Marquis seemed more absent than merry, and Elenet moved, as always, with impervious serenity and reserve. Afterward the four of us went our ways, for Shevraeth did not dance again with Elenet. I know, because I watched.

Tesla applied for a patent on an electrical coil that is the most likely candidate for a non mechanical successor of his energy extractor. This is his “Coil for Electro magnets,” patent #512,340. It is a curious design, unlike an ordinary coil made by turning wire on a tube form, this one uses two wires laid next to each other on a form but with the end of the first one connected to the beginning of the second one. In the patent Tesla explains that this double coil will store many times the energy of a conventional coil.   The patent, however, gives no hint of what might have been its more unusual capability. In an article for Century Magazine, Tesla compares extracting energy from the environment to the work of other scientists who were, at that time, learning to condense atmospheric gases into liquids. In particular, he cited the work of a Dr. Karl Linde who had discovered what Tesla described as a self-cooling method for liquefying air. As Tesla said, “This was the only experimental proof which I was still wanting that energy was obtainable from the medium in the manner contemplated by me.” What ties the Linde work with Tesla's electromagnet coil is that both of them used a double path for the material they were working with. Linde had a compressor to pump the air to a high pressure, let the pressure fall as it traveled through a tube, and then used that cooled air to reduce the temperature of the incoming air by having it travel back up the first tube through a second tube enclosing the first. The already cooled air added to the cooling process of the machine and quickly condensed the gases to a liquid. Tesla's intent was to condense the energy trapped between the earth and its upper atmosphere and to turn it into an electric current. He pictured the sun as an immense ball of electricity, positively charged with a potential of some 200 billion volts. The Earth, on the other hand, is charged with negative electricity. The tremendous electrical force between these two bodies constituted, at least in part, what he called cosmic-energy. It varied from night to day and from season to season but it is always present. Tesla's patents for electrical generators and motors were granted in the late 1880's. During the 1890's the large electric power industry, in the form of Westinghouse and General Electric, came into being. With tens of millions of dollars invested in plants and equipment, the industry was not about to abandon a very profitable ten-year-old technology for yet another new one. Tesla saw that profits could be made from the self-acting generator, but somewhere along the line, it was pointed out to him, the negative impact the device would have on the newly emerging technological revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the end of his article in Century he wrote: “I worked for a long time fully convinced that the practical realization of the method of obtaining energy from the sun would be of incalculable industrial value, but the continued study of the subject revealed the fact that while it will be commercially profitable if my expectations are well founded, it will not be so to an extraordinary degree.

When he got a good look at her, though, he found himself in the unusual position of having completely lost the ability to speak. Millie’s curly hair was tied back with a ribbon, making her appear remarkably young, while also lending her a rather flirty attitude. His gaze traveled from her hair to her face, and he felt his breath catch in his throat when he took note of the paleness of her skin, the panic in her eyes, and the slight trembling of her lips. A scratch marred her cheek, and as his gaze drifted down her person to make certain she wasn’t injured anywhere else, he blinked and blinked again. “Are you wearing . . . pants?” “Well, yes,” she said, right before she sent him the smallest of grins. The grin hit him like a fist to the stomach, and right there and then, in the midst of the tree, he finally realized what it was about his life that had changed. He, Everett Mulberry, one of society’s highest members, was attracted to Miss Millie Longfellow, the . . . nanny. It was completely unacceptable, ridiculous even, and almost seemed like a story Jane Austen would have penned. In fact . . . him being attracted to Millie was remarkably similar to the Pride and Prejudice story he hadn’t picked up for a day or two. And he realized now that he certainly wasn’t going to finish because . . . if Mr. Darcy did indeed end up with Miss Elizabeth, well, it was a silly fairy tale, plain and simple. He didn’t believe in fairy tales, even if Oliver seemed to have experienced one, but . . . no—he would not allow himself to think in that direction. The question that remained now, though, was how was he going to overcome this attraction—if that’s what he was actually feeling—for Millie? She

ANXIOUS CONTRACTIONS Life is movement. It’s dynamic and pulsating like a swift moving river. To be in a contented and happy state is to be in a state of flow where your thoughts and feelings follow a natural current and there is no inner friction or need to check in on your anxiety every five minutes. When you feel in flow, your body feels light and your mind becomes spontaneous and joyful. Anxiety and fear are the total opposite. They’re the contractions of life. When we get scared, we contract in fear. Our bodies become stiff and our minds become fearful and rigid. If we hold that contracted state, we eventually cut ourselves off from life. We lose flexibility. We lose our flow. We can think of this a bit like pulling a muscle. When a muscle is overused and tired, its cells run out of energy and fluid. This can lead to a sudden and forceful contraction, such as a cramp. This contraction is painful and scary as it comes without warning. In the same way, we can be living our lives with a lot of stress and exhaustion, similar to holding a muscle in an unusual position for too long. If we fail to notice and take care of this situation, we can experience an intense and sudden moment of anxiety or even panic. I call this an “anxious contraction,” and it can feel quite painful. Learning how to respond correctly to this anxious contraction is crucial and determines how quickly we release it. Anxious contractions happen to almost everyone at some point in their lives. We suddenly feel overwhelmed with anxiety as our body experiences all manner of intense sensations, such as a pounding heart or a tight chest or a dizzy sensation. Our anxiety level then is maybe an 8 or 9 out of 10. We recoil in fear and spiral into a downward loop of more fear and anxiety. Some might say they had a spontaneous panic attack while others might describe the feeling as being very “on edge.”   THE ANXIETY LOOP It’s at this point in time where people get split into those that develop an anxiety disorder and those that don’t. The real deciding factor is whether a person gets caught in the “anxiety loop” or not. The anxiety loop is a mental trap, a vicious cycle of fearing fear. Instead of ignoring anxious thoughts or bodily sensations, the person becomes acutely aware and paranoid of them. “What if I lose control and do something crazy?” “What if those sensations come back again while I’m in a meeting?” “What if it’s a sign of a serious health problem?” This trap is akin to quicksand. Our immediate response is to struggle hard to free ourselves, but it’s the wrong response. The more we struggle, the deeper we sink. Anxiety is such a simple but costly trap to fall into. All your additional worry and stress make the problem worse, fueling more anxiety and creating a vicious cycle or loop. It’s like spilling gasoline onto a bonfire: the more you fear the bodily sensations, the more intense they feel. I’ve seen so many carefree people go from feeling fine one day to becoming fearful of everyday situations simply because they had one bad panic attack and then got stuck in this anxious loop of fearing fear. But there is great hope. As strange as it sounds, the greatest obstacle to healing your anxiety is you. You’re the cure. Your body wants to heal your anxiety as much as you do.

I’ve never been inside a gaming club before. It will be a novel experience.” “They won’t let you inside. You’re a lady. And even if they did allow it, I wouldn’t.” Lowering her hand, Amelia glanced at him in surprise. It was rare that Merripen forbade her to do anything. In fact, this may have been the first time. She found it annoying. Considering that her brother’s life might be at stake, she was hardly going to quibble over social niceties. Besides, she was curious to see what was inside the privileged masculine retreat. As long as she was doomed to remain a spinster, she might as well enjoy the small freedoms that came with it. “Neither will they let you inside,” she pointed out. “You’re a Roma.” “As it happens, the manager of the club is also a Roma.” That was unusual. Extraordinary, even. Gypsies were known as thieves and tricksters. For one of the Rom to be entrusted with the accounting of cash and credit, not to mention arbitrating controversies at the gambling tables, was nothing short of amazing. “He must be a rather remarkable individual to have assumed such a position,” Amelia said. “Very well, I will allow you to accompany me inside Jenner’s. It’s possible your presence will induce him to be more forthcoming.” “Thank you.” Merripen’s voice was so dry one could have struck a match off it.

Rules for the Use and Arrangement of Words The following rules for the use and arrangement of words will be found helpful in securing clearness and force. 1. Use words in their proper sense. 2. Avoid useless circumlocution and "fine writing." 3. Avoid exaggerations. 4. Be careful in the use of not ... and, any, but, only, not ... or, that. 5. Be careful in the use of ambiguous words, e. g., certain. 6. Be careful in the use of he, it, they, these, etc. 7. Report a speech in the first person where necessary to avoid ambiguity. 8. Use the third person where the exact words of the speaker are not intended to be given. 9. When you use a participle implying when, while, though, or that, show clearly by the context what is implied. 10. When using the relative pronoun, use who or which, if the meaning is and he or and it, for he or for it. 11. Do not use and which for which. 12. Repeat the antecedent before the relative where the non-repetition causes any ambiguity. 13. Use particular for general terms. Avoid abstract nouns. 14. Avoid verbal nouns where verbs can be used. 15. Use particular persons instead of a class. 16. Do not confuse metaphor. 17. Do not mix metaphor with literal statement. 18. Do not use poetic metaphor to illustrate a prosaic subject. 19. Emphatic words must stand in emphatic positions; i. e., for the most part, at the beginning or the end of the sentence. 20. Unemphatic words must, as a rule, be kept from the end. 21. The Subject, if unusually emphatic, should often be transferred from the beginning of the sentence. 22. The object is sometimes placed before the verb for emphasis. 23. Where several words are emphatic make it clear which is the most emphatic. Emphasis can sometimes be given by adding an epithet, or an intensifying word. 24. Words should be as near as possible to the words with which they are grammatically connected. 25. Adverbs should be placed next to the words they are intended to qualify. 26. Only; the strict rule is that only should be placed before the word it affects. 27. When not only precedes but also see that each is followed by the same part of speech. 28. At least, always, and other adverbial adjuncts sometimes produce ambiguity. 29. Nouns should be placed near the nouns that they define. 30. Pronouns should follow the nouns to which they refer without the intervention of any other noun. 31. Clauses that are grammatically connected should be kept as close together as possible. Avoid parentheses. 32. In conditional sentences the antecedent or "if-clauses" must be kept distinct from the consequent clauses. 33. Dependent clauses preceded by that should be kept distinct from those that are independent. 34. Where there are several infinitives those that are dependent on the same word must be kept distinct from those that are not. 35. In a sentence with if, when, though, etc. put the "if-clause" first. 36. Repeat the subject where its omission would cause obscurity or ambiguity. 37. Repeat a preposition after an intervening conjunction especially if a verb and an object also intervene. 38. Repeat conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and pronominal adjectives. 39. Repeat verbs after the conjunctions than, as, etc. 40. Repeat the subject, or some other emphatic word, or a summary of what has been said, if the sentence is so long that it is difficult to keep the thread of meaning unbroken. 41. Clearness is increased when the beginning of the sentence prepares the way for the middle and the middle for the end, the whole forming a kind of ascent. This ascent is called "climax." 42. When the thought is expected to ascend but descends, feebleness, and sometimes confusion, is the result. The descent is called "bathos." 43. A new construction should not be introduced unexpectedly.

This fear of the upheld mirror in the hand of genius extends to the teaching profession and perhaps to the primary and secondary school teacher most of all. The teacher occupies a particularly anomalous and exposed position in a society subject to rapid change or threatened by exterior enemies. Society is never totally sure of what it wants of its educators. It wants, first of all, the inculcation of custom, tradition, and all that socializes the child into the good citizen. In the lower grades the demand for conformity is likely to be intense. The child himself, as well as the teacher, is frequently under the surveillance of critical, if not opinionated, parents. Secondly, however, society wants the child to absorb new learning which will simultaneously benefit that society and enhance the individual's prospects of success. Thus the teacher, in some degree, stands as interpreter and disseminator of the cultural mutations introduced by the individual genius into society. Some of the fear, the projected guilt feelings, of those who do not wish to look into the mirrors held up to them by men of the Hawthorne stamp of genius, falls upon us. Moving among innovators of ideas as we do, sifting and judging them daily, something of the suspicion with which the mass of mankind still tends to regard its own cultural creators falls upon the teacher who plays a role of great significance in this process of cultural diffusion. He is, to a degree, placed in a paradoxical position. He is expected both to be the guardian of stability and the exponent of societal change. Since all persons do not accept new ideas at the same rate, it is impossible for the educator to please the entire society even if he remains abjectly servile. This is particularly true in a dynamic and rapidly changing era like the present. Moreover, the true teacher has another allegiance than that to parents alone. More than any other class· in society, teachers mold the future in the minds of the young. They transmit to them the aspirations of great thinkers of which their parents may have only the faintest notions. The teacher is often the first to discover the talented and unusual scholar. How he handles and encourages, or discourages, such a child may make all the difference in the world to that child's future- and to the world. Perhaps he can induce in stubborn parents the conviction that their child is unusual and should be encouraged in his studies. If the teacher is sufficiently judicious, he may even be able to help a child over the teetering planks of a broken home and a bad neighborhood. It is just here, however--in our search for what we might call the able, all-purpose, success-modeled student--that I feel it so necessary not to lose sight of those darker, more uncertain, late-maturing, sometimes painfully abstracted youths who may represent the Darwins, Thoreaus, and Hawthornes of the next generation.

Looking ahead at continuing transition needs The lives of adoptive parents and children are always in transition. Helping adopted children connect their beginnings to their present lives with us doesn’t end with the transition at placement. Parents need to deal with adoption related issues over and over again as their children reach new levels of cognitive and language development. Sometime between the ages of 24 and 36 months, many children will begin correcting Mom or Dad if they make a mistake or forget part of their Lifestory. Shortly thereafter children begin to fill in factual names, places, and events when invited to share in the story telling. Preschoolers’ reasoning is very limited and most do not sense anything unusual about being adopted. My three-and-a-half-year-old adopted nephew announced proudly, “I’m adopted.” He then added, “And there’s a kitty growing in my tummy.” Children spontaneously announce to the store clerk such things as, “My mommy came to get me in a big airplane” or “I’m from Peru!” At this age, parents should continue to build the factual foundation that will help full comprehension later on and instill a sense of pride and positive feelings about adoption.

Can you describe for me the tastes that you experienced as you said those words?" "Certainly. Mashed peas, dried apples, wine gum, weak tea, butter unsalted, Walkers crisps..."Mr. Roland replied. What I was experiencing at that moment wasn't an out-of-body experience. It was an in-another-body experience. Everything but this man and me had faded into darkness. He and I were at the two ends of a brightly lit tunnel. We were point A and point B. The tunnel was the most direct, straight-line route between the two points. I had never experienced recognition in this pure, undiluted form. It was a mirroring. It was a fact. It was a cord pulled taut between us. Most of all, it was no longer a secret. I don't remember getting up, but I must have. I do remember kneeling in front of the TV. I touched the image of Mr. Roland's face as his words jumped, swerved, coalesced, attacked, and revealed. As the interview continued, he became more comfortable with the interviewer, and his facial tics and rapid blinking lessened. He masked what he couldn't control by taking long sips from a glass of water (or perhaps the clear liquid was gin). He also turned his head slightly and coughed into his left hand, which provided him with a second or two of privacy. It soon became clear to Mr. Roland and to me that the interviewer wanted him to perform for the camera. After each question-and-answer exchange, the interviewer would ask him for the tastes of her words and then his. Mr. Roland was oddly obliging, much more so than I would have been in his position. I soon realized that his pool of experiential flavors, in other words his actual food intake, was very British and that he didn't venture far from home for his gastronomical needs. "Curry fries" was the most unusual taste that this piano tuner from Manchester listed. The word "employment" triggered it, he told the interviewer. I said "employment" aloud and tasted olives from a can, which meant I tasted more can than olives. I felt more than a tinge of envy.

It was Viktor who answered him. “Closer? Yes. Close? Not so much. We’ve got lots of power and fuel, but the translation drive needs to be completely reset. It takes time for it to stabilize.” He folded his arms, considering their options. “Let’s just translate as soon as we can, okay? Otherwise, I might have to arrange to meet you somewhere.” He didn’t really want to leave the Slipwing behind, but— “Might I remind you that we still have considerable work to do before you are in a position to use the Archetype to its full potential?” a pleasant voice said. “I’m well aware of that, believe me.” Sentinel, the AI that effectively ran the Archetype, had been oddly quiet for a bit, which was unusual given their connection. “Hey, is something bothering you?” Dash asked. “I do not understand the question.” “Bothering you, as in, is there something you don’t like?” “I know what you mean. I am uncertain how to proceed in this line of questioning, as you are the first human to whom I have been mentally bonded, and your tendencies are not entirely known to me.” “We’re getting to know each other. Some humans used to call that a honeymoon.” “This has nothing to do with astronomy or insects, I can assure you,” Sentinel said. “It was a tradition among humans who—actually, nevermind. Do you think I’m lollygagging?” “Lollygagging is not a term I know. Is it related to candy?” “No. The use of time. Like dawdling.” “Dawdling is a term I know. It is—" “Wasting time,” Dash said. “In other words, you’re getting impatient, or at least as impatient as a machine presence can be. You have a purpose, and it’s not being fulfilled when the tools—like me—are finally in place.” Which was ironic for a two hundred thousand year

If Democrats were just unusually good at discovering the truth, that would explain why Democrats converge on one set of logically unrelated beliefs, but it wouldn’t explain why Republicans (or non-Democrats in general) converge on the opposite beliefs. We’d instead expect that Republicans would tend to have randomly distributed and disparate beliefs about most of these topics. We’d expect Democrats’ beliefs to be positively correlated with one another, but Republicans’ beliefs would have few or no positive correlations. We’d expect Democrats’ beliefs to form a cluster, but not Republicans’ beliefs. I suppose the Democrat objector might respond it’s not just that Democrats are unusually good at discovering the truth, but that Republicans are unusually inclined to form false beliefs. (Some of my academic colleagues, who are unrepentant hooligans, will laugh here and say, yes, that’s precisely it.) It’s possible that this is true. But the evidence speaks against it. If we knew that one party had high-information voters while the other had low-information ones, that fact would tend to support the hypothetical Democrat’s argument. Yet while the average Republican is slightly better informed than the average Democrat, the differences in knowledge are not staggering.

The power in a sincere compliment is enormous. There is nothing that makes people feel more special than to have their finer traits noted and appreciated. You can compliment someone on a new hairstyle, an item of clothing, a piece of jewelry, or physical appearance. However, not all compliments are created equal. A good compliment acknowledges the object of admiration: - That’s a nice sweater you’re wearing, or What an unusual tie. An excellent, top-of-the-line compliment goes beyond that to give conversation material by expounding on why you like the item. For instance, you might elaborate on the sweater by saying, - I love your sweater. That shade really enhances the color of your eyes. You can turn your appreciation of a good-looking tie into a more powerful compliment by saying, - That’s a great tie. Its unusual design really sets it apart, I always enjoy it when men make fashion statements with their ties.

Post Malone Open Carries Gun While Buying Hoverboard in Utah Wal Mart There's long history of firearms in the hip-hop industry. Most of it is only for the show, although some of this history includes violent undertones. In actuality, many rappers legally take on an everyday basis. This includes Article Malone, who carried while buying at a Utah Walmart a week to the rapper.The Walmart article received a lot more than 1000 opinions. A massive majority were positive in him shopping at Walmart and using an open carry pistol. Not everybody agreed. Some seemed to consider the concept of carrying out a gun to become juvenile. Utah law allows open transport, if the individual has a permit. The gun has to be carried with just two steps necessary for firing: racking the slide along with pulling on the trigger.Response to Create Malone Open Carrying There's absolutely not any way of knowing if Malone has a license for Utah. Approximately 22 per cent of state residents have licenses. Utah recognizes permits for all 50 states, so he may have one from somewhere else. He owns homes in California and Utah, therefore he might have permits for either one. Malone creates a advocate for your responsible use of guns.One particular reason he supports gun rights is the same as many other gun owners in the nation. He considers"the globe will shit," and wishes to be more prepared if something happens. He actually showed off part of the collection during a meeting with Spin. At exactly the exact same time he clarified he could be right into alternative news and conspiracy theories. The writer believed the set to be"disconcerting," seemingly not understanding that a lot of Americans possess firearms and hold a number of the exact beliefs. It might seem unusual but was normal within the Utah wal mart.A UTAH Wal-mart GOT A NICE SURPRISE WHEN RAPPER POST MALONE VISITED TO BUY A HOVERBOARD, ALL WHILE BEING AN ADVOCATE OF Open-carry WITH A PISTOL ON HIS HIP.The shop actually published a photograph of Malone with a Walmart employee and depriving him . While there, he purchased a hoverboard, and spent a few minutes posing for pictures and conversing with fans. And with that visit, Malone had a pistol within a holster. Our friends at Ballistic Magazine confirm that the pistol appears to function as described as a ZEV OZ9.Malone, whose name is Austin Richard Post, is a long time owner of firearms. Section of this might be because while he was born in New York, he was raised in Texas. Over time, media outlets have been told by him regarding his service of the Second Amendment. One of the tattoos, actually, is that a snake.

where Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist most famous for having designed the “shock therapy” reforms applied to the former Soviet Union, had a live-on-video-link session in which he startled everyone by presenting what careful journalists might describe as an “unusually candid” assessment of those in charge of America’s financial institutions. Sachs’s testimony is especially valuable because, as he kept emphasizing, many of these people were quite up front with him because they assumed (not entirely without reason) that he was on their side: Look, I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now . . . I know them. These are the people I have lunch with. And I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as pathological. [These people] have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients; they have no responsibility to counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent. They genuinely believe they have a God-given right to take as much money as they possibly can in any way that they can get it, legal or otherwise. If you look at the campaign contributions, which I happened to do yesterday for another purpose, the financial markets are the number one campaign contributors in the US system now. We have a corrupt politics to the core . . . both parties are up to their necks in this. But what it’s led to is this sense of impunity that is really stunning, and you feel it on the individual level right now. And it’s very, very unhealthy, I have waited for four years . . . five years now to see one figure on Wall Street speak in a moral language. And I’ve have not seen it once.20 So there you have it. If Sachs was right—and honestly, who is in a better position to know?—then at the commanding heights of the financial system, we’re not actually talking about bullshit jobs. We’re not even talking about people who have come to believe their own propagandists. Really we’re just talking about a bunch of crooks.

Know the pelvis like your sock drawer on a dark night at midnight and you’ll know what birth position will make room in the pelvis. When something unusual happens, you’ll be better equipped to make unique adaptations to restore birth to nature’s flow.

He watched me grieve and he didn’t try to make things more comfortable by interrupting or analyzing the issue. He let me tell the story in whatever way I needed to say" "Of course, there are times when something just isn't right between therapists, and patient, when the therapist's countertransference is getting in the way. One sign: having negative feelings about the patient". "Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something very similar to what everyone else in these patients' life feels." "If you expect an hour of sympathetic head nodding, you've come to the wrong place. Therapist will be supportive, but our support is for your growth, not for our low opinion of your partner (our role is to understand your perspective but not necessarily endorse it)" "A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, to stare back at it and say "oh isn’t that interesting? Now what instead of turning away?" "The therapist explained that often-different parts of ourselves want different things and if we silence the parts we find unacceptable they'll find other ways to be heard." "So many of our destructive behaviors take root in an emotional void, an emptiness that calls out of something to fill it." "Whenever one person in the family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy or positive, it's not unusual for other members in this family to do everything they can do to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis." "Once we know what we are feeling we can make choices about where we want to go with them. But if we push them away the second they appear, often we end up veering off in the wrong direction, getting lost yet again in the land of chaos." "I know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from coming, or ensure that Ill always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. Therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknown yourself- let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are, so that you aren’t trap by them, so that you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life." "The noonday demon: "The opposite of depression isn't happiness but vitality" "We marry our unfinished business" "Babies can die from lack of touch, and so can adults (adults who are touched regularly live longer). There is even a name for this condition: skin hunger" "What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person's type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity, It is not coincidence that people who had angry parents, often end up choosing angry partners.

Dickey on Capote This small childlike individual, this self-styled, self-made, self-taught country boy—what did he teach himself? To concentrate: to close out, and close in: to close with. His writing came, first, from a great and very real interest in many things and people, and then from a peculiar frozen detachment that he practiced as one might practice the piano, or a foot position in ballet. Cultivated in this manner, his powers of absorption in a subject became very nearly absolute, and his memory was already remarkable, particularly in its re-creation of small details. He possessed to an unusual degree this ability to encapsulate himself with his subject, whatever or whoever it might be, so that nothing else existed except him and the other; and then he, himself, would begin to fade away and words would appear in his place: words concerning the subject, as though it were dictating itself.

How New York has fallen off during the last forty years! Its intellect and culture have been diluted and swamped by a great flood-tide of material wealth … men whose bank accounts are all they rely on for social position and influence.

The thought may seem remarkable, but perhaps not so much so as it would at first. First of all, there was never anything unusual about the Baron's sex life, even if it may tickle one's curiosity when presented in so balanced a fashion, and there is certainly nothing unique about the case. On the contrary, I would like to intimate that I have never, especially in artistic circles, met an individual who could be called psychically monosexual through and through. Our manliness-with all due respect-does not preclude a certain amount of femininity, thank God; it would be a great pity if it were otherwise. This 'second phase', then, which is so prevalent in the Baron's psychosexual makeup, this balanced perception of the feminine side of his nature, only seems special when studied in a superficial way. It should rather be seen as something entirely natural and normal. For if within an utterly male body with clearly defined male sexual feelings a soul is contained - I use the word in an abstract sense in order to get my point across more easily and directly - a soul, I say, which is animated by feminine feelings, generally speaking these feelings won't be strong enough to vanquish the natural restraints that stand in the way of an outspoken male-male bonding. The instinct remains focused on the female, and even when it finds itself in a feminine position vis-a-vis the soul, the apparent ambivalent result is only seeming. The masculine yearning for the female body basically remains, even when it finds itself flooded by feminine feelings, and the ostensible homosexuality is merely a mask. I do not consider Baron von Friedel's case to be anything more than an exceptionally clear-cut textbook case describing a phenomenon I have, for my part, seen often enough, if hardly ever in such pronounced form. "The Death Of Baron Jesus Maria Von Friedel

An unusual illustration of this false paradigm comes from a 2009 New York Times article called "The No-Stats All-Star" about Shane Battier, formerly of the NBA championship team Miami Heat. Battier was considered by many inside the NBA as, at best, a replaceable cog in the machine of his team. When you google Battier you get lots of shots of the back of his head, seemingly mucking up the shot as the camera tries to focus on all-stars like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. Interestingly, nearly every team he played on had the magical ability to win. When he was on the court, his teammates got better, and his opponents got worse. It was said, "Battier seems to help the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways, with a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. They call him Lego, because when he's on the court, all the pieces fit together."5 Battier's definitive strength of quietly assisting his team wasn't a power position, so despite his amazing talent he wasn't thought of as an "all-star." If you aren't putting points up on the board, racing up the curve, or leaping from one tall curve to the next, by Western cultural norms, you are second best, a polite euphemism for "loser.

It is not unusual for people to believe that their way is the best way—that they are right and everyone else is out-of-sync or mistaken. The divine irony is that since we are better at being ourselves, how can we expect others to be less like themselves to fulfill our expectations? We cannot change who we are wired to be and neither can others.

our investigation led us to discover was that at the peak of the battle the Jewish soldiers owed their success less to their courage than to the sudden arrival of a most unusual ally: a swarm of bees, infuriated by the smell of gunpowder, descended on the helpless Arab legionnaires and forced them to abandon their dominating position above the monastery.

Medical Warning: Talk to your doctor before beginning a John Locke series, as studies have shown them to be habit-forming and highly addictive. Do not read Locke if you suffer from high blood pressure or other heart-related issues, as readers often experience mood swings, increased pulses, elevated heart rates, and have reported unexpected shifts in body position that take them to the edge of their seats. Do not drive or use machinery while reading Locke novels. Locke novels are not for everyone, and may cause serious reactions including insomnia, night terrors, and uncontrollable, maniacal laughter. Tell your doctor right away if you have these, or if you experience unusual changes in your behavior including increased sexual urges, palpitations, or prolonged erections. Common side effects include confusion, hysteria, and trouble swallowing a given premise. Do not drink alcohol while reading Locke novels, though those with a history of drug or alcohol abuse may be more prone to understanding the material. Adverse reactions to Locke novels include nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, severe itching, rectal bleeding, purple spots under the skin, and Jimmy Legs. In extreme cases, readers have reported laughing so hard they not only shit their pants, but other’s pants, as well. Upon completing a Locke series be prepared to experience symptoms of withdrawal, including fear, anger, extreme sadness, and moderate to severe depression. Ask your doctor today if John Locke novels are right for you!

It may be said at once that it any case no blame whatever attaches to the persons responsible for the framing of these charges, who are placed in a most difficult position by the appellant's unfortunate act. It is a principle of the English law that a person who appears in a police court has done something undesirable, and citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offenses, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable. " Is It a Free Country?

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?) What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.) What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

Oddly, so very oddly, God chooses to reveal His heart through the tainted reality of our sinful inner world. For example, He allows the psalmist to portray His anger in terms of a drunk who has just awakened with a hangover and is unleashing his rage (Psalm 78:65). What are we to learn about God through this startling picture? Does it imply that God is somehow sinful? Of course not. It implies that He reveals His heart through the multifaceted images in His Word that draw from our life experience. Language that speaks of God in what we would consider negative emotional terms reveals the mysterious humility of God: He speaks to us in ways that are sometimes shocking, disruptive, and highly charged. Why such an apparently negative focus in this book on anger, fear, jealousy, despair, contempt, and shame? In part, it is an attempt to show these emotions as far more positive and necessary to life than we normally assume. But even more important, it is an effort to open our vision to perceive the unusual heart of God. God feels anger, fear, jealousy, despair, contempt, and shame—and all of these emotions reveal something about His character. Most gloriously, each one points to the scandalous wonder of the Cross.

The award of an integrated circuit patent to Noyce evoked consternation, but not outright panic, at Texas Instruments. Kilby and his lawyers, after all, were veterans of the patent game; they knew that some applications move through the Patent Office faster than others, and that it is not particularly unusual for the second version of an invention to be the first patented. This happens so often, in fact, that the government has a special procedure—called an interference proceeding—and a special board—the Board of Patent Interferences—to consider the claims of inventors who find themselves in Kilby’s position. The basic rule governing an interference is that priority prevails—that is, whichever inventor can prove to have had the idea first gets the patent.

There is yet another feature of normal old age, the most positive of all, which likewise has its macrocosmic equivalent, in virtue of which our times are unique. it is sometimes said of spiritual men and women at the end of their lives that hey have 'one foot already in Paradise'. This is not meant to deny that death is a sudden break, a rupture of continuity. It cannot but be so, for it has to transform mortal old age into immortal youth. None the less, hagiography teaches us that the last days of sanctified souls can be remarkably luminous and transparent. Nor is it unusual that the imminence of death should bring with it special graces, such as visions, in foretaste of what is to come. The mellowing of spirituality, which is the highest aspect of old age in itself, is thus crowned with an illumination which belongs more to youth than to age; and it is to this synthesis, or more precisely to its macrocosmic counter-part, that the title of our chapter refers; for analogously, in the macrocosm, the nearness of the new Golden Age cannot fail to make itself mysteriously felt befoe the end of the old cycle; and, as we shall see later, such an anticipation has been predicted in various parts of the glove. We have here, in this junction of ending with beginning, yet another reason, perhaps the most powerful of all, why 'the last shall be first'.

Daily news reports of various crimes actually affirm and support the humanistic insistence that humans are essentially good. It is, paradoxically, the fact that we read of horrific things in the news on a daily basis that bolsters an abiding faith in humanity. Indeed, there is no greater evidence for the veracity of humanism than the daily news. How so? Simple: it is because the news reports on what is rare, what is unusual, what is out of the ordinary. That’s why murder and rape are headlines: because they are notable exceptions to otherwise decent, everyday human behavior. If humanity were naturally, intrinsically evil—if people’s default position were bad, immoral, unethical—then the newspaper would look very different. It would be replete with shocking, unbelievable headlines such as: ...“Couple Takes Morning Walk Every Day Around Their Neighborhood Without Incident!” … But we don’t see such headlines, because they are the mundane, all-too-expected stuff of cooperative, communal, daily human life.

Murray apparently didn’t want Zoe to get into deeper trouble, so he came to her aid. He cocked his head back and yodeled at the top of his lungs. It was worse than I could have ever imagined. Fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard had nothing on Murray’s yodeling. Paul Lee screamed in horror and curled into the fetal position again. Erica only made it a few syllables before yelling, “Stop!” Thankfully, Murray stopped. Blessed silence fell back over the room. “I owe you an apology,” Erica told Zoe. “That ought to be banned by the Geneva Conventions as cruel and unusual punishment.” She looked to Murray. “If you ever so much as think about yodeling again, I’ll forcibly remove your voice box with my bare hands.

We need more of his kind,” she thought. “Women and men who are pure leaders. People who influence not through the strength of a large title and by the threat of a big position but via the power of their characters, the nobility of their expertise, the compassion in their hearts and by their unusual dedication to leaving everyone they meet better than they found them. Leaders run less by the selfish addictions of the ego and more by the selfless dictates of our greater wisdom.

Starting today, declare your devotion to remembering the sublime soul, brave warrior and undefeatable creator that your natural wisdom is calling on you to be. The trials of your past have skillfully served to reinvent you into one who is tougher, more aware of the powers that make you special and more grateful for the basic blessings of a life beautifully lived—splendid health, a happy family, a job that fulfils and a hopeful heart. These apparent difficulties have actually been the stepping stones for your current and future victories. The former limits that have shackled you and the “failures” that have hurt you have been necessary for the realization of your mastery. All is unfolding for your benefit. You truly are favored. Oh yes, whether you accept this or not, you are a lion, not a sheep. A leader, never a victim. A person worthy of exceptional accomplishment, uplifting adventure, flawless contentment and the self-respect that, over time, rises steeply into a reservoir of self-love that no one and no thing can ever conquer. You are a mighty force of nature and a dynamic producer, not a slumbering casualty caught flat-footed in a world of degrading mediocrity, dehumanizing complaint, compliance and entitlement. And with steadfast commitment and regular effort, you will evolve into an idealist, an unusual artist and a potent exceptionalist. A genuine world-changer, in your own most honest and excellent way. So be not a cynic, critic and naysayer. For doubters are degenerated dreamers. And average is absolutely unworthy of you. Today, and for each day that follows of your uniquely glorious, brilliantly luminous and most-helpful-to-many life, stand fiercely in the limitless freedom to shape your future, materialize your ambitions and magnify your contributions in high esteem of your dreams, enthusiasms and dedications. Insulate your cheerfulness, polish your prowess and inspire all witnesses fortunate enough to watch your good example of how a great human being can behave. We will watch your growth, applaud your gifts, appreciate your valor and admire your eventual immortality. As you remain within the hearts of many.

Given the obvious “will to power” (as Friedrich Nietzsche called it) of the human race, the enormous energy put into its expression, the early emergence of hierarchies among children, and the childlike devastation of grown men who tumble from the top, I’m puzzled by the taboo with which our society surrounds this issue. Most psychology textbooks do not even mention power and dominance, except in relation to abusive relationships. Everyone seems in denial. In one study on the power motive, corporate managers were asked about their relationship with power. They did acknowledge the existence of a lust for power, but never applied it to themselves. They rather enjoyed responsibility, prestige, and authority. The power grabbers were other men. Political candidates are equally reluctant. They sell themselves as public servants, only in it to fix the economy or improve education. Have you ever heard a candidate admit he wants power? Obviously, the word “servant” is doublespeak: does anyone believe that it’s only for our sake that they join the mudslinging of modern democracy? Do the candidates themselves believe this? What an unusual sacrifice that would be. It’s refreshing to work with chimpanzees: they are the honest politicians we all long for. When political philosopher Thomas Hobbes postulated an insuppressible power drive, he was right on target for both humans and apes. Observing how blatantly chimpanzees jockey for position, one will look in vain for ulterior motives and expedient promises. I was not prepared for this when, as a young student, I began to follow the dramas among the Arnhem chimpanzees from an observation window overlooking their island. In those days, students were supposed to be antiestablishment, and my shoulder-long hair proved it. We considered power evil and ambition ridiculous. Yet my observations of the apes forced me to open my mind to seeing power relations not as something bad but as something ingrained. Perhaps inequality was not to be dismissed as simply the product of capitalism. It seemed to go deeper than that. Nowadays, this may seem banal, but in the 1970s human behavior was seen as totally flexible: not natural but cultural. If we really wanted to, people believed, we could rid ourselves of archaic tendencies like sexual jealousy, gender roles, material ownership, and, yes, the desire to dominate. Unaware of this revolutionary call, my chimpanzees demonstrated the same archaic tendencies, but without a trace of cognitive dissonance. They were jealous, sexist, and possessive, plain and simple. I didn’t know then that I’d be working with them for the rest of my life or that I would never again have the luxury of sitting on a wooden stool and watching them for thousands of hours. It was the most revelatory time of my life. I became so engrossed that I began trying to imagine what made my apes decide on this or that action. I started dreaming of them at night and, most significant, I started seeing the people around me in a different light.

The fates that may befall those at the top are an inevitable part of the power drive. Apart from the risk of injury or death, being in a position of power is stressful. This can be demonstrated by measuring cortisol, a stress hormone in the blood. It is no easy task to do so in wild animals, but Robert Sapolsky has been darting male baboons on the African plains for years. Among these highly competitive primates, cortisol levels depend on how good an individual is at managing social tensions. As in humans, this turns out to be matter of personality. Some dominant males have high stress levels simply because they cannot tell the difference between a serious challenge by another male and neutral behavior that they shouldn’t worry about. They are jumpy and paranoid. After all, if a rival walks by, it could be just because he needs to go from A to B, not because he wants to be a nuisance. When the hierarchy is in flux, misunderstandings accumulate, wrecking the nerves of males near the top. Since stress compromises the immune system, it’s not unusual for high-ranking primates to develop the ulcers and heart attacks also common in corporate CEOs.

First, let us take a quick pass of the 11 questions. Some of them might seem trite or useless at first glance. . . . But lo! Things are not always what they appear. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?) What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.) What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

I find myself in the unusual position of accepting an invitation before it has been extended.

On the road to Paris, he noticed something unusual: the men he passed did not tip their hats in deference to his position. For most of us, the process of growing up entails discovering the limits of our own, individual significance. But few people can pinpoint with precision the exact moment of that humbling realization. For Lafayette, it was seared into his memory.

For two decades, Valero lived with a series of Yanomami families, marrying twice, and eventually achieving a position of some importance in her community. Pinker briefly cites the account Valero later gave of her own life, where she describes the brutality of a Yanomami raid.26 What he neglects to mention is that in 1956 she abandoned the Yanomami to seek her natal family and live again in ‘Western civilization,’ only to find herself in a state of occasional hunger and constant dejection and loneliness. After a while, given the ability to make a fully informed decision, Helena Valero decided she preferred life among the Yanomami, and returned to live with them.27 Her story is by no means unusual. The colonial history of North and South America is full of accounts of settlers, captured or adopted by indigenous societies, being given the choice of where they wished to stay and almost invariably choosing to stay with the latter.28 This even applied to abducted children. Confronted again with their biological parents, most would run back to their adoptive kin for protection.29 By contrast, Amerindians incorporated into European society by adoption or marriage, including those who – unlike the unfortunate Helena Valero – enjoyed considerable wealth and schooling, almost invariably did just the opposite: either escaping at the earliest opportunity, or – having tried their best to adjust, and ultimately failed – returning to indigenous society to live out their last days.

They say, “In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king.” This does beg the question, “In the Land of the Blind, how do they know who’s got one eye?” In a mysterious world unseen to the eyes of man and undetectable by the global positioning systems of his technology, a most unusual army is being raised in utmost secrecy. Their mission? To rid the earth of all who are not their kind. Their kind? The blind.

As you’ll read in these stories, almost to a person these subjects were highly intelligent and educated people of science. But it wasn’t until after their NDE experience did they fully begin to understand the power of the super-conscious mind and its existence outside the human brain. The super-conscious mind is the source of all pure creativity. It is the super-conscious mind that is functioning at the creation of anything that is completely new in the universe. The super-conscious mind is tapped into and used by all the great inventors, writers, artists and composers of history on a regular basis, right up to the present day. Every great work of art or creativity is infused with super-conscious energy. Your super-conscious mind can access every piece of information stored in your conscious and subconscious minds. It can also access data and ideas outside your own experience, because it actually lies outside your human mind. This is why it is called a form of universal intelligence. You will often get ideas that come to you from far beyond you. It is not unusual for two people separated by thousands of miles of distance to come up with the same idea at the same time. When you are well-attuned to another person, such as your spouse or mate, you will often have thoughts identical to him or her at the same time during the day, and you will only find out that you had reached the same conclusion when you compare notes hours later. This is an example of your super-conscious mind at work. Sometimes when you are with other positive, goal-oriented people, your combined super-conscious minds will form a higher mind that you can all tap into. This is why, when you are involved in a conversation or listening to a lecture, ideas and inspirations will often leap into your mind that have no direct connection to what is being discussed. But those ideas and inspirations may be exactly what you need at that moment to move you forward on your journey. Because of your super-conscious powers, virtually anything that you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis, you can have. Emerson wrote, “A man becomes what he thinks about, most of the time.” Earl Nightingale wrote, “You become what you think about.” In the Bible it says that, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.” And this law of sowing and reaping refers to mental states; to your thoughts. Of course, there is a potential danger in the use of your super-conscious mind. It is like fire - a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. If you use it improperly, and think negative, fearful thoughts, your super-conscious mind will accept your thoughts as a command and go to work to materialize them into your reality.

I’m Jay Powers, the circulating nurse”; “I’m Zhi Xiong, the anesthesiologist”—that sort of thing. It felt kind of hokey to me, and I wondered how much difference this step could really make. But it turned out to have been carefully devised. There have been psychology studies in various fields backing up what should have been self-evident—people who don’t know one another’s names don’t work together nearly as well as those who do. And Brian Sexton, the Johns Hopkins psychologist, had done studies showing the same in operating rooms. In one, he and his research team buttonholed surgical staff members outside their operating rooms and asked them two questions: how would they rate the level of communications during the operation they had just finished and what were the names of the other staff members on the team? The researchers learned that about half the time the staff did not know one another’s names. When they did, however, the communications ratings jumped significantly. The investigators at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere had also observed that when nurses were given a chance to say their names and mention concerns at the beginning of a case, they were more likely to note problems and offer solutions. The researchers called it an “activation phenomenon.” Giving people a chance to say something at the start seemed to activate their sense of participation and responsibility and their willingness to speak up. These were limited studies and hardly definitive. But the initial results were enticing. Nothing had ever been shown to improve the ability of surgeons to broadly reduce harm to patients aside from experience and specialized training. Yet here, in three separate cities, teams had tried out these unusual checklists, and each had found a positive effect. At Johns Hopkins, researchers specifically measured their checklist’s effect on teamwork. Eleven surgeons had agreed to try it in their cases—seven general surgeons, two plastic surgeons, and two neurosurgeons. After three months, the number of team members in their operations reporting that they “functioned as a well-coordinated team” leapt from 68 percent to 92 percent. At the Kaiser hospitals in Southern California, researchers had tested their checklist for six months in thirty-five hundred operations. During that time, they found that their staff’s average rating of the teamwork climate improved from “good” to “outstanding.” Employee satisfaction rose 19 percent. The rate of OR nurse turnover—the proportion leaving their jobs each year—dropped from 23 percent to 7 percent. And the checklist appeared to have caught numerous near errors. In

coming together, more than anything I’d ever experienced before. This was her. My best friend. “There’s no coming back from this.” She panted, “I know.” I positioned my knee a little higher, causing her leg to incline with mine. Her breathing spiked, and I knew I was hitting her g-spot better from the angle. My face hovered above hers as we caught our breath, trying to find a rhythm. It was effortless, the two of us coming together. My thrusts became harder and rougher, her body responded perfectly with mine. Our hips moved like we were made for each other. I lapped at her breasts, unable to get enough of her. “Leo,” she breathed out, and I swear my cock got harder. I moved back up to her face, and our mouths parted, we both panted profusely. I felt myself starting to come unhinged which was very unusual for me. Fuck me. Don’t come so fast, Leo. Think about baseball, about football, about anything other than how incredible she felt throbbing on the head of your cock. “Fuck, you feel good. How do you feel this good?” “I’m almost there,” she breathlessly gasped. “Mmm…” I groaned, her pussy gripping onto my dick. “If you do that again, I’m going to come.” “What happened to ladies first?” “No one feels like you, Lala. Jesus, it’s like your pussy was made for me.” Mila apparently liked dirty talk, in less than a second, she exploded around my shaft. Long. Hard. Utterly mind-blowing. Climaxing all the way down to my balls and taking me right over with her. I shook with my release and passionately kissed her. From her neck. To her breasts. Back up to her lips.