Without Volunteers Quotes

No problem," Gale replies. "I wake up ten times a night anyway." "To make sure Katniss is still here?" asks Peeta. "Something like that,"... "That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her." "Well, WE never have,"... "She loves you, you know," says Peeta. "She as good as told me after they whipped you." "Don't believe it,"Gale answers. "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell...well she never kissed me like that." "It was just part of the show," Peeta tells him, although there's an edge of doubt in his voice. "No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." There's a long pause. "I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then." "You couldn't," says Peeta. "She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." ... "I wonder how she'll make up her mind." "Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without

The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell…well she never kissed me like that…I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then…I guess it’s Katniss’ problem. Who to choose…Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without.

Yes, of course we could all use some help. There isn't a person alive without a need. So don't ask the silly question, just figure out how you're going to help and do it!

Have - have you got an appointment?' he said. 'I don't know,' said Carrot. 'Have we got an appointment?' 'I've got an iron ball with spikes on,' Nobby volunteered. 'That's a morningstar, Nobby.' 'Is it?' 'Yes,' said Carrot. 'An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two, isn't it, Mr-?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Boffo, sir. But-' 'So if you could perhaps run along and tell Dr Whiteface we're here with an iron ball with spi- What am I saying? I mean, without an appointment to see him? Please? Thank you.

Explain: the evolution of the heart and compassion is what is missing technically. Humans have proceeded to technological advances before without heart balance, without heart evolution. And it has been disastrous. So we are here to evolve heart first until the heart is aligned with this knowledge.

It is better to do little things with love than big things without love.

if one of us is going to volunteer to run into a terrifying abyss of darkness and death, then it goes without saying that we all will.

Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do

In the trenches of the First World War, English men came to love one another decently, without shame or make-believe, under the easy likelihoods of their sudden deaths, and to find in the faces of other young men evidence of otherworldly visits, some poor hope that may have helped redeem even mud, shit, the decaying pieces of human meat... It was the end of the world, it was total revolution (though not quite in the way Walter Rathenau had announced): every day thousands of the aristocracy new and old, still haloed in their ideas of right and wrong, went to the loud guillotine of Flanders, run day in and out, on and on, by no visible hands, certainly not those of the people - an English class was being decimated, the ones who'd volunteered were dying for those who'd known something and hadn't, and despite it all, despite knowing, some of them, of the betrayal, while Europe died meanly in its own wastes, men loved. But the life-cry of that love has long since hissed away into no more than this idle and bitchy faggotry. In this latest War, death was no enemy, but a collaborator. Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal afterthought now, and the real and only fucking is done on paper...

I… uh… couldn’t have… uh–” he cleared his throat– “gotten through all of this without you. You know that, right?” “Of course I know that.” She eyed him and wrinkled her nose at him. “Although, with your sunny disposition, I can’t imagine why you didn’t have people lining up to volunteer to take care of you.

As it is, I guess I find "Jack and Diane" a little disgusting. As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not at home doing their homework? Why aren't they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn't that loitering? I wish there was a song called "Nguyen & Ari," a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents with the franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in the lobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteer work at his grandmother's old-age home, and they meet after school at Princeton Review. They help each other study for the SATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of studying, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hearing the news that they both got into their top college choices. This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that's a song I'd request at Johnny Rockets!

Without acquainting me with the language or the literature or the oral family histories which my ancestors had loved, they volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism.

Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn’t about manners; it’s about a methodology of controlling the conversation. Polite white people who respond to calls for respect, for getting boots off necks with demand for decorum, aren’t interested in resistance or disruption. They are interested in control. They replicate the manners of Jim Crow America, demanding deference and obedience; they want the polite facade instead of disruption. They insist that they know best what should be done when attempting to battle and defeat bias, but in actuality they’re just happy to be useless. They are obstacles to freedom who feel no remorse, who provide no valuable insight, because ultimately, they are content to get in the way. They’re oppression tourists, virtue-signaling volunteers who are really just here to get what they can and block the way, so no others can pass without meeting whatever arbitrary standards they create. And if you get enough of them in one place, they can prevent any real progress from occurring while they reap the benefits of straddling white supremacy and being woke. They have less power than they think, than anyone realizes, but like any small predator, they manage to be flashy enough to be seen.

If I could teach aspiring managers only one concept, without question I would pick accumulating personal credibility. Credibility is something we earn. How? It’s amassed by successfully accomplishing tasks we’re assigned or which we volunteer to perform.

green-tinted with chlorophyll from crying. “Percy,” she sniffled. “I was just asking about Grover. I know something’s happened. He wouldn’t stay gone this long if he wasn’t in trouble. I was hoping that Leneus—” “I told you!” the satyr protested. “You are a better off without that traitor.” Juniper stamped her foot. “He is not a traitor! He’s the bravest satyr ever, and I want to know where he is!” “WOOF!” Leneus’s knees started knocking. “I . . . I won’t answer questions with this hellhound sniffing my tail!” Nico looked like he was trying to not crack up. “I’ll walk the dog,” he volunteered.

There was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice; that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being puts one in the role of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach; yet, for the same master, he would have gladly gone to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifice of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one Victim.

That churchgoers do the lion's share of the charitable work in our communities is simply untrue. They get credit for it because they do a better job of tying the good works they do to their creed. But according to a 1998 study, 82% of volunteerism by churchgoers falls under the rubric of "church maintenance" activities -- volunteerism entirely within, and for the benefit of, the church building and immediate church community. As a result of this siphoning of volunteer energy into the care and feeding of churches themselves, most of the volunteering that happens out in the larger community -- from AIDS hospices to food shelves to international aid workers to those feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and caring for the elderly -- comes from the category of "unchurched" volunteers.

See how her expression changes when she looks at you? It's the love light shining from within...Lucky we are when we're seen through the light of love, be it shining in the eyes of human or beast. Some folks go all their days without ever seeing it directed at them. It's a splendid, special look. Cherish it. - Mr. Morrison, Humane Society volunteer

It’s an interesting moment when you realize the impact you’ve had on someone’s life without ever knowing it.

There’s enough pain and suffering in this world, without us volunteering to unnecessarily endure more. Through dispassionate self-observation we can learn much from the experiences that brought us to where we are at this very moment, and we can share that learning with others, as I’m doing with you. How we approach suffering and how we choose to endure it from this moment on is entirely up to us.

Rea­sons Why I Loved Be­ing With Jen I love what a good friend you are. You’re re­ally en­gaged with the lives of the peo­ple you love. You or­ga­nize lovely ex­pe­ri­ences for them. You make an ef­fort with them, you’re pa­tient with them, even when they’re side­tracked by their chil­dren and can’t pri­or­i­tize you in the way you pri­or­i­tize them. You’ve got a gen­er­ous heart and it ex­tends to peo­ple you’ve never even met, whereas I think that ev­ery­one is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but re­ally I was jeal­ous that you al­ways thought the best of peo­ple. You are a bit too anx­ious about be­ing seen to be a good per­son and you def­i­nitely go a bit over­board with your left-wing pol­i­tics to prove a point to ev­ery­one. But I know you re­ally do care. I know you’d sign pe­ti­tions and help peo­ple in need and vol­un­teer at the home­less shel­ter at Christ­mas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us. I love how quickly you read books and how ab­sorbed you get in a good story. I love watch­ing you lie on the sofa read­ing one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other gal­axy. I love that you’re al­ways try­ing to im­prove your­self. Whether it’s running marathons or set­ting your­self chal­lenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to ther­apy ev­ery week. You work hard to be­come a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. I think I prob­a­bly didn’t make my ad­mi­ra­tion for this known and in­stead it came off as ir­ri­ta­tion, which I don’t re­ally feel at all. I love how ded­i­cated you are to your fam­ily, even when they’re an­noy­ing you. Your loy­alty to them wound me up some­times, but it’s only be­cause I wish I came from a big fam­ily. I love that you al­ways know what to say in con­ver­sa­tion. You ask the right ques­tions and you know ex­actly when to talk and when to lis­ten. Ev­ery­one loves talk­ing to you be­cause you make ev­ery­one feel im­por­tant. I love your style. I know you think I prob­a­bly never no­ticed what you were wear­ing or how you did your hair, but I loved see­ing how you get ready, sit­ting in front of the full-length mir­ror in our bed­room while you did your make-up, even though there was a mir­ror on the dress­ing ta­ble. I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in No­vem­ber and that you’d pick up spi­ders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not. I love how free you are. You’re a very free per­son, and I never gave you the sat­is­fac­tion of say­ing it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you be­cause of your bor­ing, high-pres­sure job and your stuffy up­bring­ing, but I know what an ad­ven­turer you are un­der­neath all that. I love that you got drunk at Jack­son’s chris­ten­ing and you al­ways wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never com­plained about get­ting up early to go to work with a hang­over. Other than Avi, you are the per­son I’ve had the most fun with in my life. And even though I gave you a hard time for al­ways try­ing to for al­ways try­ing to im­press your dad, I ac­tu­ally found it very adorable be­cause it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to any­where in his­tory, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beau­ti­ful and clever and funny you are. That you are spec­tac­u­lar even with­out all your sports trophies and mu­sic cer­tifi­cates and in­cred­i­ble grades and Ox­ford ac­cep­tance. I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked my­self, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of my­self, ei­ther. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental. I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.

In 1988, a cave explorer named Véronique Le Guen volunteered for an extreme experiment: to live alone in an underground cavern in southern France without a clock for one hundred and eleven days, monitored by scientists who wished to study the human body's natural rhythms in the absence of time cues. For a while, she settled into a pattern of thirty hours awake and twenty hours asleep. She described herself as being "psychologically completely out of phase, where I no longer know what my values are or what is my purpose in life." When she returned to society, her husband later noted, she seemed to have an emptiness inside her that she was unable to fully express. "While I was alone in my cave I was my own judge," she said. "You are your own most severe judge. You must never lie or all is lost. The strongest sentiment I brought out of the cave is that in my life I will never tolerate lying." A little more than a year later, Le Guen swallowed an overdose of barbiturates and lay down in her car in Paris, a suicide at age thirty-three.

Tom looked at St. Vincent. “I assume the editor at the Chronicle refused to divulge the writer’s identity?” St. Vincent looked rueful. “Categorically. I’ll have to find a way to pry it out of him without bringing the entire British press to his defense.” “Yes,” Tom mused, tapping his lower lip with a fingertip, “they tend to be so touchy about protecting their sources.” “Trenear,” Lord Ripon said through gritted teeth, “will you kindly throw him out?” “I’ll see myself out,” Tom said casually. He turned as if to leave, and paused as if something had just occurred to him. “Although … as your friend, Trenear, I find it disappointing that you haven’t asked about my day. It makes me feel as if you don’t care.” Before Devon could respond, Pandora jumped in. “I will,” she volunteered eagerly. “How was your day, Mr. Severin?” Tom sent her a brief grin. “Busy. After six tedious hours of business negotiations, I paid a call to the chief editor of the London Chronicle.” St. Vincent lifted his brows. “After I’d already met with him?” Trying to look repentant, Tom replied, “I know you said not to. But I had a bit of leverage you didn’t.” “Oh?” “I told him the paper’s owner would dismiss him and toss him out on the pavement if he didn’t name the anonymous writer.” St. Vincent stared at him quizzically. “You bluffed?” “No, that is what the business negotiations were about. I’m the new owner. And while the chief editor happens to be a staunch advocate for freedom of the press, he’s also a staunch supporter of not losing his job.” “You just bought the London Chronicle,” Devon said slowly, to make certain he hadn’t misheard. “Today.” “No one could do that in less than a day,” Ripon sneered. Winterborne smiled slightly. “He could,” he said, with a nod toward Tom. “I did,” Tom confirmed, picking idly at a bit of lint on his cuff. “All it took was a preliminary purchase agreement and some earnest money.

They don’t even visit the dying anymore. Their argument being that if someone is dying, there’s no point interrupting a good game of golf, and they’d best just get on with dying. However, they do give you a helpline number for an organisation called ‘Dying To Help You Out.’ A volunteer talks you through the process of dying alone without medical attention: “feeling a bit chilled are you, love, don’t fret, it’s just your lifeblood congealing in your veins, you’ll be gone any second now, hang on pet, I’ve got a corpse on line nine, if I don’t get back before you peg it, have a nice afterlife,” and then they bugger of leaving you with Robbie Williams singing Angels.

The work I do is not exactly respectable. But I want to explain how it works without any of the negatives associated with my infamous clients. I’ll show how I manipulated the media for a good cause. A friend of mine recently used some of my advice on trading up the chain for the benefit of the charity he runs. This friend needed to raise money to cover the costs of a community art project, and chose to do it through Kickstarter, the crowdsourced fund-raising platform. With just a few days’ work, he turned an obscure cause into a popular Internet meme and raised nearly ten thousand dollars to expand the charity internationally. Following my instructions, he made a YouTube video for the Kickstarter page showing off his charity’s work. Not a video of the charity’s best work, or even its most important work, but the work that exaggerated certain elements aimed at helping the video spread. (In this case, two or three examples in exotic locations that actually had the least amount of community benefit.) Next, he wrote a short article for a small local blog in Brooklyn and embedded the video. This site was chosen because its stories were often used or picked up by the New York section of the Huffington Post. As expected, the Huffington Post did bite, and ultimately featured the story as local news in both New York City and Los Angeles. Following my advice, he sent an e-mail from a fake address with these links to a reporter at CBS in Los Angeles, who then did a television piece on it—using mostly clips from my friend’s heavily edited video. In anticipation of all of this he’d been active on a channel of the social news site Reddit (where users vote on stories and topics they like) during the weeks leading up to his campaign launch in order to build up some connections on the site. When the CBS News piece came out and the video was up, he was ready to post it all on Reddit. It made the front page almost immediately. This score on Reddit (now bolstered by other press as well) put the story on the radar of what I call the major “cool stuff” blogs—sites like BoingBoing, Laughing Squid, FFFFOUND!, and others—since they get post ideas from Reddit. From this final burst of coverage, money began pouring in, as did volunteers, recognition, and new ideas. With no advertising budget, no publicist, and no experience, his little video did nearly a half million views, and funded his project for the next two years. It went from nothing to something. This may have all been for charity, but it still raises a critical question: What exactly happened? How was it so easy for him to manipulate the media, even for a good cause? He turned one exaggerated amateur video into a news story that was written about independently by dozens of outlets in dozens of markets and did millions of media impressions. It even registered nationally. He had created and then manipulated this attention entirely by himself.

He said there was great pain,' the man muttered. 'I asked How long? He said For ever. The wound heals around him, you see. She couldn't command, you see. Not for something like that. He volunteered—' The man's throat closed up, then. He spun away, bolted through the gangway and out of sight. 'Clanless,' Heboric said from the forecastle. 'As good as useless. Existence without meaning…' Gesler kicked one of the severed heads across the deck. Its uneven thumping was loud in the still air. 'Who still wants to live for ever?" he growled, then spat.

the evolution of the heart and compassion is what is missing technically. Humans have proceeded to technological advances before without heart balance, without heart evolution. And it has been disastrous. So we are here to evolve heart first until the heart is aligned with this knowledge.

Did you consider when you went headlong into a war like this,’ Kitchener asked the cabinet, ‘that you were without an army? Did you not realize the war was likely to last for years and require tens of thousands of soldiers?’ He was soon permitted to ask for volunteers among the male adult population.

Yes. I know all about soul-wraiths.” Ramsey frowned. “How did you avoid them in the past?” “Set a perimeter of energized diaman crystal. That will keep them at bay.” Hel smiled without humor. “I have the diaman crystal in my saddle pack. I lack a sexual partner to energize them. I had intended to return with a magistra but a magister will work as well. Care to volunteer?” “Only if I top,” Ramsey snapped. “You’d have to kill me first,” returned Hel. “With pleasure.” Steffania took a breath. Ram cut her off. “No. I don’t share you, Vixen.” Fear of the unknown almost froze Adonia’s tongue, but she was the obvious answer. She could do this, and the opportunity might never present itself again. “I’ll be your partner.

If the adoption of ploughing increased a village's population from a hundred to 110, which ten people would have volunteered to starve so that the others could go back to the good old time? There was no going back. The trap snapped shut. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have take demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad.

I think we must only a few of us go," Laurence said, low. "I will take a few volunteers - " "Oh, the devil you will!" Granby exclaimed furiously. "No, this time I damned well put my foot down, Laurence. Send you off to go scrambling about in that warren with no notion where you are going, and nothing more likely than running into a dozen guards round every corner; I should like to see myself do it. I am not going back to England to tell them I sat about twiddling my thumbs whilst you got yourself cut to pieces. Temeraire, you are not to let him go, do you hear me? He is sure to be killed; I give you my word." "If the party are sure to be killed, I am not going to let anyone go!" Temeraire said, in high alarm, and sat up sharp, quite prepared to physically hold anyone back who made an attempt to leave. "Temeraire, this is plain exaggeration," Laurence said. "Mr. Granby, you overstate the case, and you overstep your bounds." "Well, I don't," Granby said defiantly. "I have bit my tongue a dozen times over, because I know it is wretched hard to sit about watching and you haven't been trained up to it, but you are a captain, and you must be more careful of your neck. It isn't only your own but the Corps' affair if you snuff it, and mine too." "If I may," Tharkay said quietly, interrupting when Laurence would have remonstrated further with Granby, "I will go; alone I am reasonably sure I can find a way to the eggs, without rousing any alarm, and then I can return and guide the rest of the party there." "Tharkay," Laurence said, "this is no service you owe us; I would not order even a man under oath of arms to undertake it, without he were willing." "But I am willing," Tharkay gave his faint half-smile, "and more likely to come back whole from it than anyone else here." "At the cost of running thrice the risk, going and coming back and going again," Laurence said, "with a fresh chance of running into the guards every time through." "So it is very dangerous, then," Temeraire said, overhearing to too much purpose, and pricking up his ruff further. "You are not to go, at all, Granby is quite right; and neither is anyone else." "Oh, Hell," Laurence said, under his breath. "It seems there is very little alternative to my going," Tharkay said. "Not you either!" Temeraire contradicted, to Tharkay's startlement, and settled down as mulish as a dragon could look; and Granby had folded his arms and wore an expression very similar. Laurence had ordinarily very little inclination to profanity, but he was sorely tempted on this occasion. An appeal to Temeraire's reason might sway him to allow a party to make the attempt, if he could be persuaded to accept the risk as necessary for the gain, like a battle; but he would surely balk at seeing Laurence go, and Laurence had not the least intention of sending men on so deadly an enterprise if he were not going himself, Corps rules be damned.

Cultural criticism always attacks the mass media. I don't think that makes sense. We should look more closely at the work of deformation that starts deeper down, especially because it involves so much demoralization. Something gets destroyed there that should not be destroyed under any circumstances - THE AWARENESS THAT KNOWLEDGE IS BORN OUT OF EUPHORIA AND THAT INTELLIGENCE IS A RELATIONSHIP OF THE HAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS WITH ITSELF. And that intelligence partly consists in the ability to find our own ways of overcoming the boredom that develops in an under-used brain. Across society as a whole, the most disturbing symptom is that people are no longer ambitious enough to plumb the limits of understanding within themselves. INTELLIGENCE IS THE LAST UTOPIAN POTENTIAL. THE ONLY TERRA INCOGNITA HUMANKIND STILL OWNS ARE THE GALAXIES OF THE BRAIN, THE MILKY WAYS OF INTELLIGENCE. And there is hardly any any convincing space travel in them. Incidentally, this internal astronautics is the only alternative to a consumerist perspective. It is the only thing that could explain to people in the future that their intelligence space is so immense that they can experiment with themselves for millennia without becoming exhausted. The really good news is that there is something breathtakingly great that is called intelligence and is uncharted. ARE YOU WILLING TO VOLUNTEER ?

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered why blood relatives were given such importance in people’s lives. The genetic lottery, which no one volunteered to play, spit you out wherever it did, without regard to compatibility, and yet somehow you were supposed to imbue that accident of procreation with all kinds of emotional weight and significance—simply because your parents managed to help you stay alive until you could get the fuck out of their house.

There's almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists' youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don't have a monopoly on doing good. I'm sure that there are many agnostics and atheists out there slinging mashed potatoes at other soup kitchens. I know the world is full of selfless secular gropus like Doctors without Borders. But I've got to say: It's a lot easier to do good if you put your faith in a book that requires you to do good.

Can you drive it?" "No. I can't drive a stick at all. It's why I took Andy's car and not one of yours." "Oh people, for goodness' sake...move over." Choo Co La Tah pushed past Jess to take the driver's seat. Curious about that, she slid over to make room for the ancient. Jess hesitated. "Do you know what you're doing?" Choo Co La Tah gave him a withering glare. "Not at all. But I figured smoeone needed to learn and no on else was volunteering. Step in and get situated. Time is of the essence." Abigail's heart pounded. "I hope he's joking about that." If not, it would be a very short trip. Ren changed into his crow form before he took flight. Jess and Sasha climbed in, then moved to the compartment behind the seat. A pall hung over all of them while Choo Co La Tah adjusted the seat and mirrors. By all means, please take your time. Not like they were all about to die or anything... She couldn't speak as she watched their enemies rapidly closing the distance between them. This was by far the scariest thing she'd seen. Unlike the wasps and scorpions, this horde could think and adapt. They even had opposable thumbs. Whole different ball game. Choo Co La Tah shifted into gear. Or at least he tried. The truck made a fierce grinding sound that caused jess to screw his face up as it lurched violently and shook like a dog coming in from the rain. "You sure you odn't want me to try?" Jess offered. Choo Co La Tah waved him away. "I'm a little rusty. Just give me a second to get used to it again." Abigail swallowed hard. "How long has it been?" Choo Co La Tah eashed off the clutch and they shuddred forward at the most impressive speed of two whole miles an hour. About the same speed as a limping turtle. "Hmm, probably sometime around nineteen hundred and..." They all waited with bated breath while he ground his way through more gears. With every shift, the engine audibly protested his skills. Silently, so did she. The truck was really moving along now. They reached a staggering fifteen miles an hour. At this rate, they might be able to overtake a loaded school bus... by tomorrow. Or at the very least, the day after that. "...must have been the summer of...hmm...let me think a moment. Fifty-three. Yes, that was it. 1953. The year they came out with color teles. It was a good year as I recall. Same year Bill Gates was born." The look on Jess's and Sasha's faces would have made her laugh if she wasn't every bit as horrified. Oh my God, who put him behind the wheel? Sasha visibly cringed as he saw how close their pursuers were to their bumper. "Should I get out and push?" Jess cursed under his breath as he saw them, too. "I'd get out and run at this point. I think you'd go faster." Choo Co La Tah took their comments in stride. "Now, now, gentlemen. All is well. See, I'm getting better." He finally made a gear without the truck spazzing or the gears grinding.

But no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude. We will always want more. We need more. We are carrying the weight of caregiving and addiction, chronic pain and uncertain diagnosis, struggling teenagers and kids with learning disabilities, mental illness and abusive relationships. A grandmother has been sheltering without a visitor for months, and a friend's business closed its doors. Doctors, nurses, and frontline workers are acting as levees, feeling each surge of the disease crash against them. My former students, now serving as pastors and chaplains, are in hospitals giving last rites in hazmat suits. They volunteer to be the last person to hold his hand. To smooth her hair. The truth if the pandemic is the truth of all suffering: that it is unjustly distributed. Who bears the brunt? The homeless and the prisoners. The elderly and the children. The sick and the uninsured. Immigrants and people needing social services. People of color and LGBTQ people. The burdens of ordinary evils— descriminations, brutality, predatory lending, illegal evictions, and medical exploitation— roll back on the vulnerable like a heavy stone. All of us struggle against the constraints places on our bodies, our commitments, our ambitions, and our resources, even as we're saddled with inflated expectations of invincibility. This is the strange cruelty of suffering in America, its insistence that everything is still possible.

Being Myself, Whether People Accept Me or Not • When I state my thoughts clearly and politely, without malice, I won’t try to control how people take it. • I won’t give more energy than I really have. • Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel. • I won’t volunteer for something if I think I’ll resent it later. • If someone says something I find offensive, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint. I won’t try to change the other person’s mind; I just won’t let the statement go unremarked upon.

Hallie didn't believe she was invulnerable. She was never one of those daredevil types; she knew she could get hurt. What I think she meant was that she was lucky to be on her way to Nicaragua. It was the slowest thing to sink into my head, how happy she was. Happy to be leaving. We'd had one time of perfect togetherness in our adult lives, the year when we were both in college in Tucson-her first year, my last-and living together for the first time away from Doc Homer. That winter I'd wanted to fail a subject just so I could hang back, stay there with her, the two of us walking around the drafty house in sweatshirts and wool socks and understanding each other precisely. Bringing each other cups of tea without having to ask. So I stayed on in Tucson for medical school, instead of going to Boston as I'd planned, and met Carlo in Parasitology. Hallie, around the same time, befriended some people who ran a safehouse for Central American refugees. After that we'd have strangers in our kitchen every time of night, kids scared senseless, people with all kinds of damage. Our life was never again idyllic. I should have seen it coming. Once she and I had gone to see a documentary on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was these Americans who volunteered without our government's blessing to fight against Franco and Hitler in the Spanish Civil War. At that point in U.S. history fascism was only maybe wrong, whereas communism was definitely. When we came home from the movie Hallie cried. Not because of the people who gave up life and limb only to lose Spain to Franco, and not for the ones who came back and were harassed for the rest of their lives for being Reds. The tragedy for Hallie was that there might never be a cause worth risking everything for in our lifetime. She was nineteen years old then, and as she lay blowing her nose and sobbing on my bed she told me this. That there were no real causes left. Now she had one-she was off to Nicaragua, a revolution of co-op farms and literacy crusades-and so I guess she was lucky. Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one really gets the chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact way they wish for it to be altered.

If you are a North American Christian, the reality of our society’s vast wealth presents you with an enormous responsibility, for throughout the Scriptures God’s people are commanded to show compassion to the poor. In fact, doing so is simply part of our job description as followers of Jesus Christ (Matt. 25:31–46). While the biblical call to care for the poor transcends time and place, passages such as 1 John 3:17 should weigh particularly heavy on the minds and hearts of North American Christians: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” Of course, there is no “one-size-fits-all” recipe for how each Christian should respond to this biblical mandate. Some are called to pursue poverty alleviation as a career, while others are called to do so as volunteers. Some are called to engage in hands-on, relational ministry, while others are better suited to support frontline workers through financial donations, prayer, and other types of support. Each Christian has a unique set of gifts, callings, and responsibilities that influence the scope and manner in which to fulfill the biblical mandate to help the poor.

Is motherhood really optional when you’re a perfectly normal woman married to a perfectly normal man? When I was in college, I took on a volunteer position at a literacy organization and tutored teen mothers. It was hard work and tended to be disheartening, as the young women seldom earned their diplomas. My supervisor said to me over espresso and croissants, “Have a baby and save the race!” He was smiling, but he wasn’t kidding. “If girls like this are having all the kids, and girls like you stay childless and fancy-free, what’s going to happen to us as a people?” Without thinking, I promised to do my part.

Two decades ago the federal government invited 150,000 men and women to participate in an experiment of screening for cancer in four organs: prostate, lung, colon, and ovary. The volunteers were less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise, had higher socioeconomic status, and fewer medical problems than members of the general population. Those are the kinds of people who seek preventive intervention. Of course, they are going to do better. Had the study not been randomized, the investigators might have concluded that screening was the best thing since sliced bread. Regardless of which group they were randomly assigned to, the participants had substantially lower death rates than the general population—for all cancers (even those other than prostate, lung, colon, and ovary), for heart disease, and for injury. In other words, the volunteers were healthier than average. With randomization, the study showed that only one of the four screenings (for colon cancer) was beneficial. Without it, the study might have concluded that prostate cancer screening not only lowered the risk of death from prostate cancer but also deaths from leukemia, heart attack, and car accidents (although you would hope someone would raise the biological plausibility criterion here).

He had suddenly felt that wealth, and power, and life - all that people arrange and preserve with such care - all this, if it is worth anything, is only so because of the pleasure with which one can abandon it all. It was that feeling on account of which a volunteer recruit drinks up his last kopeck, a man on a drunken binge smashes mirrors and windows without any apparent reason and knowing it will cost him his last penny; that feeling on account of which a man does (in the banal sense) insane things, as if testing his personal power and strength, claiming the presence of a higher judgement over life, which stands outside human conventions.

AUTHOR’S NOTE Dear reader: This story was inspired by an event that happened when I was eight years old. At the time, I was living in upstate New York. It was winter, and my dad and his best friend, “Uncle Bob,” decided to take my older brother, me, and Uncle Bob’s two boys for a hike in the Adirondacks. When we left that morning, the weather was crisp and clear, but somewhere near the top of the trail, the temperature dropped abruptly, the sky opened, and we found ourselves caught in a torrential, freezing blizzard. My dad and Uncle Bob were worried we wouldn’t make it down. We weren’t dressed for that kind of cold, and we were hours from the base. Using a rock, Uncle Bob broke the window of an abandoned hunting cabin to get us out of the storm. My dad volunteered to run down for help, leaving my brother Jeff and me to wait with Uncle Bob and his boys. My recollection of the hours we spent waiting for help to arrive is somewhat vague except for my visceral memory of the cold: my body shivering uncontrollably and my mind unable to think straight. The four of us kids sat on a wooden bench that stretched the length of the small cabin, and Uncle Bob knelt on the floor in front of us. I remember his boys being scared and crying and Uncle Bob talking a lot, telling them it was going to be okay and that “Uncle Jerry” would be back soon. As he soothed their fear, he moved back and forth between them, removing their gloves and boots and rubbing each of their hands and feet in turn. Jeff and I sat beside them, silent. I took my cue from my brother. He didn’t complain, so neither did I. Perhaps this is why Uncle Bob never thought to rub our fingers and toes. Perhaps he didn’t realize we, too, were suffering. It’s a generous view, one that as an adult with children of my own I have a hard time accepting. Had the situation been reversed, my dad never would have ignored Uncle Bob’s sons. He might even have tended to them more than he did his own kids, knowing how scared they would have been being there without their parents. Near dusk, a rescue jeep arrived, and we were shuttled down the mountain to waiting paramedics. Uncle Bob’s boys were fine—cold and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. I was diagnosed with frostnip on my fingers, which it turned out was not so bad. It hurt as my hands were warmed back to life, but as soon as the circulation was restored, I was fine. Jeff, on the other hand, had first-degree frostbite. His gloves needed to be cut from his fingers, and the skin beneath was chafed, white, and blistered. It was horrible to see, and I remember thinking how much it must have hurt, the damage so much worse than my own. No one, including my parents, ever asked Jeff or me what happened in the cabin or questioned why we were injured and Uncle Bob’s boys were not, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen continued to be my parents’ best friends. This past winter, I went skiing with my two children, and as we rode the chairlift, my memory of that day returned. I was struck by how callous and uncaring Uncle Bob, a man I’d known my whole life and who I believed loved us, had been and also how unashamed he was after. I remember him laughing with the sheriff, like the whole thing was this great big adventure that had fortunately turned out okay. I think he even viewed himself as sort of a hero, boasting about how he’d broken the window and about his smart thinking to lead us to the cabin in the first place. When he got home, he probably told Karen about rubbing their sons’ hands and feet and about how he’d consoled them and never let them get scared. I looked at my own children beside me, and a shudder ran down my spine as I thought about all the times I had entrusted them to other people in the same way my dad had entrusted us to Uncle Bob, counting on the same naive presumption that a tacit agreement existed for my children to be cared for equally to their own.

As Naomi Gerstel...told the New York Times, 'It's the unmarried, with or without kids, who are more likely to take care of other people...It's not having children that isolates people. It's marriage.' Never-married women in particular are far more likely to be politically active, signing petitions, volunteering time, and attending rallies. Eric Klinenberg has argued that people who live alone are more likely to attend lectures and be out in the world, while married adults tend to focus their energies within their own homes, perhaps volunteering for their own children's schools, but not necessarily for organizations that do not benefit themselves or their kin.

A 2020 clinical trial by Ethan Weiss and colleagues found no weight loss or cardiometabolic benefits in a group of 116 volunteers on a 16/8 eating pattern. Two similar studies also found minimal benefit. One other study did find that shifting the eating window to early in the day, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., actually did result in lower twenty-four-hour glucose levels, reduced glucose excursions, and lower insulin levels compared to controls. So perhaps an early-day feeding window could be effective, but in my view sixteen hours without food simply isn’t long enough to activate autophagy or inhibit chronic mTOR elevation, or engage any of the other longer-term benefits of fasting that we would want to obtain. Another

Being Willing to Ask for Help • I’ll ask for help whenever I need to. • I’ll remind myself that if I need something, most people will be glad to help if they can. • I’ll use clear, intimate communication to ask for what I want, explaining my feelings and the reasons for my request. • I’ll trust that most people will listen if I ask them to. Being Myself, Whether People Accept Me or Not • When I state my thoughts clearly and politely, without malice, I won’t try to control how people take it. • I won’t give more energy than I really have. • Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel. • I won’t volunteer for something if I think I’ll resent it later. • If someone says something I find offensive, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint. I won’t try to change the other person’s mind; I just won’t let the statement go unremarked upon. Sustaining and Appreciating Emotional Connections • I’ll make a point of keeping in touch with special people I care about and returning their calls or electronic messages. • I’ll think of myself as a strong person who deserves to give and receive help from my community of friends. • Even when people aren’t saying the “right” thing, I’ll tune in to whether they’re trying to help me. If their effort makes me feel emotionally nurtured, I’ll express my gratitude. • When I’m irritated with someone, I’ll think about what I want to say that could improve our relationship. I’ll wait until I cool off and then ask if the other person is willing to listen to my feelings. Having Reasonable Expectations for Myself • I’ll keep in mind that being perfect isn’t always necessary. I’ll get stuff done rather than obsess over getting things done perfectly. • When I get tired, I’ll rest or do something different. My level of physical energy will tell me when I’ve been doing too much. I won’t wait for an accident or illness to make me stop. • When I make a mistake, I’ll chalk it up to being human. Even if I think I’ve anticipated everything, there will be outcomes I don’t expect. • I’ll remember that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and for expressing their needs clearly. Beyond common courtesy, it isn’t up to me to guess what others want.

Every time Ian’s amber gaze flickered to her, her heart began to pound. Whenever he wasn’t looking she found her gaze straying to his mouth, remembering the way those lips had felt locked to hers yesterday. He raised a wineglass to his lips, and she looked at the long, strong fingers that had slid with such aching tenderness over her cheek and twined in her hair. Two years ago she’d fallen under his spell; she was wiser now. She knew he was a libertine, and even so her heart rebelled against believing it. Yesterday, in his arms, she’d felt as if she was special to him-as if he not only wanted her close but needed her there. Very vain, Elizabeth, she warned herself severely, and very foolish. Skilled libertines and accomplished flirts probably made every woman feel that she was specila. No doubt they kissed a woman with demanding passion one moment and then, when the passion was over, forgot she was alive. As she’d heard long ago, a libertine pretended violet interest in his quarry, then dropped her without compunction the instant that interest waned-exactly as Ian had done now. That was not a comforting thought, and Elizabeth was sorely in need of comfort as twilight deepened into night and supper dragged on, with Ian seemingly oblivious to her existence. Finally the meal was finished; she was about to volunteer to clear the table when she glanced at Ian and watched in paralyzed surprise as his gaze roved over her cheek and jaw, then shifted to her mouth, lingering there. Abruptly he looked away, and Elizabeth stood up to clear the table.

And exactly how old are you, MacRieve?” “Twelve hundred, give or take.” She glanced back at him, as though gauging if he was jesting. When he raised his brows, she said, “Great Hekate, you’re a relic. Don’t you have a museum exhibit to be in somewhere?” He ignored her comments. “Another mystery—I dinna find a razor in your bag, but your legs and under your arms are smooth.” “I was lasered,” she said, then added, “I can hear your frown, Father Time,” surprising him because he was. She didn’t explain more, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Makes a man recall where else you’re so well groomed.” She shivered from a mere murmur in her ear. “I’m lookin’ forward tae touchin’ you there again.” “Ha! Why would you think that I would ever let you?” “I happen to ken that you’re a lusty one. And I’ve taken away your wee alternative. Tossed it into a river.” As she gasped, he said, “Took me a minute to figure out what it was—a minute more to believe you actually had it. Then imagining you using it? Had me in such a state, I could scarcely run without tripping over my own feet.” “You’re trying to embarrass me again. Give it up. I’m not going to be ashamed because I’m like every other girl my age.” “I doona want you to be ashamed—never in matters like that. And I ken you’re to turn immortal soon, know the need must be overwhelming. In fact, most females get confused by all their new lustiness,” he said. “Best to have a firm hand to guide them into immortal sex.” “And I’ll just bet that you’re happy to volunteer.” Making his tone aggrieved, he sighed, “If I must . . .

Studies of the effects of education confirm that educated people really are more enlightened. They are less racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and authoritarian. They place a higher value on imagination, independence, and free speech. They are more likely to vote, volunteer, express political views, and belong to civic associations such as unions, political parties, and religious and community organizations. They are also likelier to trust their fellow citizens, a prime ingredient of the precious elixir called social capital which gives people the confidence to contract, invest, and obey the law without fearing that they are chumps who will be shafted by everyone else. For all these reasons, the growth of education and its first dividend, literacy is a flagship of human progress.

Pierce Hutton gave him a highly amused smile as they went over updated security information from the oil rig in the Caspian Sea. “So you’ve finally decided to do something about Cecily,” Peirce murmured. “It’s about time. I was beginning to get used to that permanent scowl.” Tate glanced at him wryly. “I thought I was doing a great job of keeping her at arm’s length. She’s pregnant, now, of course,” he volunteered. The older man chuckled helplessly. “So much for keeping her at arm’s length. When’s the wedding?” Tate’s smile faded. “That’s premature. She ran. I finally tracked her down, but now I have to convince her that I want to get married without having her think it’s only because of the baby.” “I don’t envy you the job,” Pierce replied, his black eyes twinkling. “I had my own rocky road to marriage, if you recall.” “How’s the baby these days?” he asked. Pierce laughed with wholehearted delight. “We watch him instead of television. I never expected fatherhood to make such changes in me, in my life.” He shook his head, with a faraway look claiming his eyes. “Sometimes I’m afraid it’s all a dream and I’ll wake up alone.” He shifted, embarrassed. “You can have the time off. But who’s going to handle your job while you’re gone?” “I thought I’d get you to put Colby Lane on the payroll.” He held up his hand when Pierce looked thunderous. “He’s stopped drinking,” he hold him. “Cecily got him into therapy. He’s not the man he was.” “You’re sure of that?” Pierce wanted to know. Tate smiled. “I’m sure. “Okay. But if he ever throws a punch at me again, he’ll be smiling on the inside of his mouth!” Tate chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll give him a call before I leave town.

Remapping occurs regularly throughout the brain in the absence of injury. My favorite examples concern musicians, who have larger auditory cortical representation of musical sounds than do nonmusicians, particularly for the sound of their own instrument, as well as for detecting pitch in speech; the younger the person begins being a musician, the stronger the remapping.15 Such remapping does not require decades of practice, as shown in beautiful work by Alvaro Pascual-Leone at Harvard.16 Nonmusician volunteers learned a five-finger exercise on the piano, which they practiced for two hours a day. Within a few days the amount of motor cortex devoted to the movement of that hand expanded, but the expansion lasted less than a day without further practice. This expansion was probably “Hebbian” in nature, meaning preexisting connections transiently strengthened after repeated use.

Here’s the thing, people: We have some serious problems. The lights are off. And it seems like that’s affecting the water flow in part of town. So, no baths or showers, okay? But the situation is that we think Caine is short of food, which means he’s not going to be able to hold out very long at the power plant.” “How long?” someone yelled. Sam shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Why can’t you get him to leave?” “Because I can’t, that’s why,” Sam snapped, letting some of his anger show. “Because I’m not Superman, all right? Look, he’s inside the plant. The walls are thick. He has guns, he has Jack, he has Drake, and he has his own powers. I can’t get him out of there without getting some of our people killed. Anybody want to volunteer for that?" Silence. “Yeah, I thought so. I can’t get you people to show up and pick melons, let alone throw down with Drake.” “That’s your job,” Zil said. “Oh, I see,” Sam said. The resentment he’d held in now came boiling to the surface. “It’s my job to pick the fruit, and collect the trash, and ration the food, and catch Hunter, and stop Caine, and settle every stupid little fight, and make sure kids get a visit from the Tooth Fairy. What’s your job, Zil? Oh, right: you spray hateful graffiti. Thanks for taking care of that, I don’t know how we’d ever manage without you.” “Sam…,” Astrid said, just loud enough for him to hear. A warning. Too late. He was going to say what needed saying. “And the rest of you. How many of you have done a single, lousy thing in the last two weeks aside from sitting around playing Xbox or watching movies? “Let me explain something to you people. I’m not your parents. I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. I’m a kid, just like all of you. I don’t happen to have any magic ability to make food suddenly appear. I can’t just snap my fingers and make all your problems go away. I’m just a kid.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he had crossed the line. He had said the fateful words so many had used as an excuse before him. How many hundreds of times had he heard, “I’m just a kid.” But now he seemed unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “Look, I have an eighth-grade education. Just because I have powers doesn’t mean I’m Dumbledore or George Washington or Martin Luther King. Until all this happened I was just a B student. All I wanted to do was surf. I wanted to grow up to be Dru Adler or Kelly Slater, just, you know, a really good surfer.” The crowd was dead quiet now. Of course they were quiet, some still-functioning part of his mind thought bitterly, it’s entertaining watching someone melt down in public. “I’m doing the best I can,” Sam said. “I lost people today…I…I screwed up. I should have figured out Caine might go after the power plant.” Silence. “I’m doing the best I can.” No one said a word. Sam refused to meet Astrid’s eyes. If he saw pity there, he would fall apart completely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot.

[There is] no direct relationship between IQ and economic opportunity. In the supposed interests of fairness and “social justice”, the natural relationship has been all but obliterated. Consider the first necessity of employment, filling out a job application. A generic job application does not ask for information on IQ. If such information is volunteered, this is likely to be interpreted as boastful exaggeration, narcissism, excessive entitlement, exceptionalism [...] and/or a lack of team spirit. None of these interpretations is likely to get you hired. Instead, the application contains questions about job experience and educational background, neither of which necessarily has anything to do with IQ. Universities are in business for profit; they are run like companies, seek as many paying clients as they can get, and therefore routinely accept people with lukewarm IQ’s, especially if they fill a slot in some quota system (in which case they will often be allowed to stay despite substandard performance). Regarding the quotas themselves, these may in fact turn the tables, advantaging members of groups with lower mean IQ’s than other groups [...] sometimes, people with lower IQ’s are expressly advantaged in more ways than one. These days, most decent jobs require a college education. Academia has worked relentlessly to bring this about, as it gains money and power by monopolizing the employment market across the spectrum. Because there is a glut of college-educated applicants for high-paying jobs, there is usually no need for an employer to deviate from general policy and hire an applicant with no degree. What about the civil service? While the civil service was once mostly open to people without college educations, this is no longer the case, and quotas make a very big difference in who gets hired. Back when I was in the New York job market, “minorities” (actually, worldwide majorities) were being spotted 30 (thirty) points on the civil service exam; for example, a Black person with a score as low as 70 was hired ahead of a White person with a score of 100. Obviously, any prior positive correlation between IQ and civil service employment has been reversed. Add to this the fact that many people, including employers, resent or feel threatened by intelligent people [...] and the IQ-parameterized employment function is no longer what it was once cracked up to be. If you doubt it, just look at the people running things these days. They may run a little above average, but you’d better not be expecting to find any Aristotles or Newtons among them. Intelligence has been replaced in the job market with an increasingly poor substitute, possession of a college degree, and given that education has steadily given way to indoctrination and socialization as academic priorities, it would be naive to suppose that this is not dragging down the overall efficiency of society. In short, there are presently many highly intelligent people working very “dumb” jobs, and conversely, many less intelligent people working jobs that would once have been filled by their intellectual superiors. Those sad stories about physics PhD’s flipping burgers at McDonald's are no longer so exceptional. Sorry, folks, but this is not your grandfather’s meritocracy any more.

Take the common Buddhist practice of “noting,” for example: practitioners learn to label their worries and feelings with a simple tag like “thinking” or “anger,” taking note of them mindfully without engaging them directly. In a 2007 study, the UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman showed thirty volunteers fear-provoking images and then asked them to note their feelings (“I feel afraid”) as he monitored their brain activity. Upon seeing the unpleasant images, the subjects’ amygdalae lit up at first, but the labeling process soon sparked activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, damping activity in the amygdala. Lieberman believes this mindful noting—the simple act of putting our feelings into words—helps the brain disambiguate our emotions and provide a level of detachment from them. “One of the ways labeling is useful is in talking with other people,” he told me. “If you can get someone to talk about their feelings, it’ll end up being beneficial to them in ways they may not realize.” (Writing about how we feel in a journal serves the same purpose; it helps us sort out emotions, like anxiety, on a deeper subconscious level.)

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days. Surprisingly, the least effective way to spread germs (according to yet another study) is kissing. It proved almost wholly ineffective among volunteers at the University of Wisconsin who had been successfully infected with cold virus. Sneezes and coughs weren’t much better. The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs is physically by touch. A survey of subway trains in Boston found that metal poles are a fairly hostile environment for microbes. Where microbes thrive is in the fabrics on seats and on plastic handgrips. The most efficient method of transfer for germs, it seems, is a combination of folding money and nasal mucus. A study in Switzerland in 2008 found that flu virus can survive on paper money for two and a half weeks if it is accompanied by a microdot of snot. Without snot, most cold viruses could survive on folding money for no more than a few hours.

Men should not sleep on beds; they shall sleep wherever their tired knees gave up. We are stars! And stars produce heat! Let that never translate to a boring life. There is one object in the universe that eats up more light than any other design and that is a mattress that loves you too much. Things can kill without being crafty. The bedsheets are warm and kind and yet their comfort has killed more man than any murderous hand in history. A star that knows it is a star looks like a person who is always in transformation, figuring things out, exploring identities, and making a mess. They brush their hair back and rub their eyes. A heart in debate. A tongue that agreed on humor. Tired feet. A juggled mind. He might be a police officer turned trapeze artist turned pilot. A father who is also a volunteer, a brother, a warrior, a companion, a neighbor, a rival, and a student. We can see sweat leave our pores and so grow discouraged that we cannot see the progress of internal efforts. But do not be disheartened. Our souls do sweat. It just looks a lot like mundane life incidents that break us, such as the first step of the morning or simply walking home again.

You should be!” “But we’re not,” Sophie insisted. “So please don’t blame yourself. And please don’t leave. You can make any other changes you want to my security. Just . . . not that. I promise, I’ll follow any rules you want me to. I’ll even promise I won’t sneak off without you.” Alden huffed a small laugh. “You should take that deal, Sandor. It’s the bargain of the century.” “Seriously,” Grady agreed. “Can I get in on that?” Sophie shook her head. “It’s just for Sandor—and it doesn’t apply to any replacement bodyguards. In fact, I’ll go out of my way to make their job impossible.” “No, you won’t,” Sandor told her. “You’re much too smart to resort to such reckless behavior.” Sophie’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure about that? You’ve seen how much time I spend with Keefe.” “I’ll give her some pointers, too,” Tam volunteered. “I picked up lots of tricks at Exillium.” “And I have lots of prank elixirs,” Dex added. “How many weeks do you think the new guard would last before they’d run screaming back to Gildingham?” Tam wondered. “I doubt they’d last days,” Sophie told him. “Especially if Keefe and Ro join in the torment.” Sandor’s sigh had a definite snarl. “I’m trying to help—can’t you see that?

I sign in on the form and hand the clipboard back to the volunteer manning the desk. The young man’s brows rise in recognition of my name. “Mr. Pierce!” He stands from his seat and sticks out his hand to shake mine. “I didn’t expect it would be you representing Pierce Industries. I thought you’d send someone.” I shake his hand, out of politeness, then force a stiff smile. “Surprise.” God, I hate small talk. Especially from this twenty-two year old ass-kisser who likely hopes this interaction will earn him employment at my company. I’m afraid it’s not that easy to even get an interview. He lowers his focus to the nametags on the table, searching for the one with the Pierce Industries logo. He hands it to me, and I pocket it. I refuse to wear it. I’m easily enough recognized without advertising it. The man—nothing more than a boy, really—seems disappointed. Whether it’s because I’m not as charismatic or charming as he’d imagined or because I dismissed the damn nametag, I can’t be certain. Frankly, I don’t give a shit. Once upon a time, his emotions would have elicited more interest from me. Now, they’re barely a blip on my radar. I’ll never understand them. No point in wasting my time trying. His smile

to be open and straightforward about their needs for attention in a social setting. It is equally rare for members of a group in American culture to honestly and openly express needs that might be in conflict with that individual’s needs. This value of not just honestly but also openly fully revealing the true feelings and needs present in the group is vital for it’s members to feel emotional safe. It is also vital to keeping the group energy up and for giving the feedback that allows it’s members to know themselves, where they stand in relation to others and for spiritual/psychological growth. Usually group members will simply not object to an individual’s request to take the floor—but then act out in a passive-aggressive manner, by making noise or jokes, or looking at their watches. Sometimes they will take the even more violent and insidious action of going brain-dead while pasting a jack-o’-lantern smile on their faces. Often when someone asks to read something or play a song in a social setting, the response is a polite, lifeless “That would be nice.” In this case, N.I.C.E. means “No Integrity or Congruence Expressed” or “Not Into Communicating Emotion.” So while the sharer is exposing his or her vulnerable creation, others are talking, whispering to each other, or sitting looking like they are waiting for the dental assistant to tell them to come on back. No wonder it’s so scary to ask for people’s attention. In “nice” cultures, you are probably not going to get a straight, open answer. People let themselves be oppressed by someone’s request—and then blame that someone for not being psychic enough to know that “Yes” meant “No.” When were we ever taught to negotiate our needs in relation to a group of people? In a classroom? Never! The teacher is expected to take all the responsibility for controlling who gets heard, about what, and for how long. There is no real opportunity to learn how to nonviolently negotiate for the floor. The only way I was able to pirate away a little of the group’s attention in the school I attended was through adolescent antics like making myself fart to get a few giggles, or asking the teacher questions like, “Why do they call them hemorrhoids and not asteroids?” or “If a number two pencil is so popular, why is it still number two,” or “What is another word for thesaurus?” Some educational psychologists say that western culture schools are designed to socialize children into what is really a caste system disguised as a democracy. And in once sense it is probably good preparation for the lack of true democratic dynamics in our culture’s daily living. I can remember several bosses in my past reminding me “This is not a democracy, this is a job.” I remember many experiences in social groups, church groups, and volunteer organizations in which the person with the loudest voice, most shaming language, or outstanding skills for guilting others, controlled the direction of the group. Other times the pain and chaos of the group discussion becomes so great that people start begging for a tyrant to take charge. Many times people become so frustrated, confused and anxious that they would prefer the order that oppression brings to the struggle that goes on in groups without “democracy skills.” I have much different experiences in groups I work with in Europe and in certain intentional communities such as the Lost Valley Educational Center in Eugene, Oregon, where the majority of people have learned “democracy skills.” I can not remember one job, school, church group, volunteer organization or town meeting in mainstream America where “democracy skills” were taught or practiced.

Where do you go to make friends when you’re an adult? No, honestly, I’m asking, where do you do this? There are no more late-night study sessions or university social events. And while meeting friends at work is the obvious answer, your options are very limited if you don’t click with your colleagues or if you’re self-employed. (Also, if you’re only friends with people at work, who do you complain about your colleagues too?) I don’t volunteer. I don’t participate in organised religion. I don’t play team sports. Where do selfish, godless, lazy people go to make friends? That’s where I need to be. Nearly all of my closest friends have been assigned to me: either via seating chats at school, university room-mates, or desk buddies at work. After taking stock, I realise that most of my friends were forced to sit one metre away from me for several hours at a time. I’ve never actively reached out to make a new friend who wasn’t within touching distance. With no helpful administrators, just how do we go about making friends as adults? Is it possible to cultivate that intense closeness without the heady combination of naivety, endless hours of free time on hand and lack of youthful inhibitions? Or is that lost for ever after we hit thirty?

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days.

[Wilford] Woodruff met with three members of the Young family: Elder [Brigham] Young [Jr.]; his brother, Major Willard Young; and their nephew, Captain Richard W. Young. . . . 'The apostle was chastised for speaking without authorization and was told not to oppose the enlistment of Mormon volunteers.' . . . That same day, the First Presidency sent out several other letters that explained the Church's stance on members enlisting in the armed services. First, a letter was sent to Governor Heber M. Wells. In that letter, the presidency explained that the Church was against war and that its responsibility was to proclaim peace. Yet in the current circumstances they also felt it their duty to support the war effort. Next, President George Q. Cannon wrote a letter to all of the stake presidents of the Church. President Cannon instructed these leaders not to impede the work of recruitment among their members. Conversely, they were to encourage the enlistment of Latter-day Saint soldiers for the conflict. By sending their message out on several fronts, Church members no longer had to guess at the Church's position on the war. . . . Once the Church had put forward its stance on the war, members of the Church joined the army in great numbers. . . . The Church demonstrated in a remarkable way that service in the military during wartime was in the veins of its people. To all fair observers, it was clear that Latter-day Saints could be counted on to stand by their nation. Since then, the Church has never looked back.

O that today you would hearken to his voice! —Psalm 95:7 (RSV) MARIA, INSPIRATION BEHIND HOLY ANGELS HOME Maria was nine in 1965 when I first wrote about her, a bright, little girl with an impish smile. Born hydrocephalic, without legs, a “vegetable” who could not survive, she’d dumbfounded experts and become the inspiration behind a home for infants with multiple handicaps. Now I was back at Holy Angels in North Carolina to celebrate Maria’s fiftieth birthday. I had to trot to keep up with Maria’s motorized wheelchair through a maze of new buildings, home now for adults as well as infants. At each stop, Maria introduced me to staff and volunteers who simply exuded joy. And yet the people they were caring for had such cruel limitations! How could everyone seem so happy, I asked, working day after day with people who’ll never speak, never hold a spoon, never sit up alone? “None of us would be happy,” Maria said, “if we looked way off into the future like that.” Here, she explained, they looked for what God was doing in each life, just that one day. “That’s where God is for all of us, you know. Just in what’s happening right now.” How intently one would learn to look, I thought, to spot the little victories. In my life too…. What if I memorized just the first stanza of Millay’s “Renascence”? What if I understood just one more function on my iPhone? What if just one morning I didn’t comment about my husband’s snoring? “Thank you, Maria,” I said as we hugged good-bye, “for showing me the God of the little victories.” Through what small victory, Father, will You show me Yourself today? —Elizabeth Sherrill Digging Deeper: Ps 118:24; Mt 6:34

And then I saw him speak. Years later, after writing dozens upon dozens of presidential speeches, it would become impossible to listen to rhetoric without editing it in my head. On that historic Iowa evening, Obama began with a proclamation: “They said this day would never come.” Rereading those words today, I have questions. Who were “they,” exactly? Did they really say “never”? Because if they thought an antiwar candidate with a robust fund-raising operation could never win a divided three-way Democratic caucus, particularly with John Edwards eating into Hillary Clinton’s natural base of support among working-class whites, then they didn’t know what they were talking about. All this analysis would come later, though, along with stress-induced insomnia and an account at the Navy Mess. At the time, I was spellbound. The senator continued: “At this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said you couldn’t do.” He spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed. Barack Obama spoke for the next twelve minutes, and except for a brief moment when the landing gear popped out and I thought we were going to die, I was riveted. He told us we were one people. I nodded knowingly at the gentleman in the middle seat. He told us he would expand health care by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. I was certain it would happen as he described. He looked out at a sea of organizers and volunteers. “You did this,” he told them, “because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

Back in 2015, a volunteer group called Bitnation set up something called the Blockchain Emergency ID. There’s not a lot of data on the project now, BE-ID - used public-key cryptography to generate unique IDs for people without their documents. People could verify their relations, that these people belonged to their family, and so on. It was a very modern way of maintaining an ID; secure, fast, and easy to use. Using the Bitcoin blockchain, the group published all these IDs on to a globally distributed public ledger, spread across the computers of every single Bitcoin user online - hundreds of thousands of users, in those times. Once published, no government could undo it; the identities would float around in the recesses of the Internet. As long as the network remained alive, every person's identity would remain intact, forever floating as bits and bytes between the nations: no single country, government or company could ever deny them this. “That was, and I don't say this often, the fucking bomb,” said Common, In one fell swoop, identities were taken outside government control. BE-ID, progressing in stages, became the refugees' gateway to social assistance and financial services. First it became compliant with UN guidelines. Then it was linked to a VISA card. And thus out of the Syrian war was something that looked like it could solve global identification forever. Experts wrote on its potential. No more passports. No more national IDs. Sounds familiar? Yes, that’s the United Nations Identity in a nutshell. Julius Common’s first hit - the global identity revolution that he sold first to the UN, and then to almost every government in the world - was conceived of when he was a teenager.

So much changes when you get an education! You unlearn dangerous superstitions, such as that leaders rule by divine right, or that people who don’t look like you are less than human. You learn that there are other cultures that are as tied to their ways of life as you are to yours, and for no better or worse reason. You learn that charismatic saviors have led their countries to disaster. You learn that your own convictions, no matter how heartfelt or popular, may be mistaken. You learn that there are better and worse ways to live, and that other people and other cultures may know things that you don’t. Not least, you learn that there are ways of resolving conflicts without violence. All these epiphanies militate against knuckling under the rule of an autocrat or joining a crusade to subdue and kill your neighbors. Of course, none of this wisdom is guaranteed, particularly when authorities promulgate their own dogmas, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories—and, in a backhanded compliment to the power of knowledge, stifle the people and ideas that might discredit them. Studies of the effects of education confirm that educated people really are more enlightened. They are less racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and authoritarian.10 They place a higher value on imagination, independence, and free speech.11 They are more likely to vote, volunteer, express political views, and belong to civic associations such as unions, political parties, and religious and community organizations.12 They are also likelier to trust their fellow citizens—a prime ingredient of the precious elixir called social capital which gives people the confidence to contract, invest, and obey the law without fearing that they are chumps who will be shafted by everyone else.13 For all these reasons, the growth of education—and its first dividend, literacy—is a flagship of human progress.

Our faith in victory had been unquestioning, its opposite, defeat, had no currency among us. Victory was possible, that was all. It would be easy or difficult, quick or prolonged, but it would be victory. So here came the disturbing Hoosier, displaying the other side of the coin, showing us defeat. It shook us. And it was from this moment that we dated the feeling of what is called expendability. All armies have expendable items, that is, a part or unit the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole. In some ordeals, a man might consider his finger expendable, but not his hand, or in extremity his arm but not his heart. There are expendable items which may be lost or destroyed in the field either in peace or in war without their owner being required to replace them. A rifle is so expendable or a cartridge belt. So are men. Men are the most expendable of all. Hunger, the jungle, the Japanese, not one nor all of these could be quite as corrosive as the feeling of expendability. This was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt, that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice, that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being expended puts one in the roll of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach yet, for the same master he would have gone gladly to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifices of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one victim. If we were to be victims, we were as firmly secured to our role as Isaac bound to the faggots. No day passed without extenuating it.

Neuroimaging studies show the PFC reining in more emotional brain regions in the name of doing (or thinking) the right thing. Stick a volunteer in a brain scanner and flash up pictures of faces. And in a depressing, well-replicated finding, flash up the face of someone of another race and in about 75 percent of subjects, there is activation of the amygdala, the brain region central to fear, anxiety, and aggression.[*] In under a tenth of a second.[*] And then the PFC does the harder thing. In most of those subjects, a few seconds after the amygdala activates, the PFC kicks in, turning off the amygdala. It’s a delayed frontocortical voice—“Don’t think that way. That’s not who I am.” And who are the folks in which the PFC doesn’t muzzle the amygdala? People whose racism is avowedly, unapologetically explicit—“That is who I am.”[13] In another experimental paradigm, a subject in a brain scanner plays an online game with two other people—each is represented by a symbol on the screen, forming a triangle. They toss a virtual ball around—the subject presses one of two buttons, determining which of the two symbols the ball is tossed to; the other two toss it to each other, toss it back to the subject. This goes on for a while, everyone having a fine time, and then, oh no, the other two people stop tossing the ball to the subject. It’s the middle-school nightmare: “They know I’m a dork.” The amygdala rapidly activates, along with the insular cortex, a region associated with disgust and distress. And then, after a delay, the PFC inhibits these other regions—“Get this in perspective; this is just a stupid game.” In a subset of individuals, however, the PFC doesn’t activate as much, and the amygdala and insular cortex just keep going, as the subject feels more subjective distress. Who are these impaired individuals? Teenagers—the PFC isn’t up to the task yet of dismissing social ostracism as meaningless. There you have it.[*]

My mother made me into the type of person who is at ease standing in the middle of moving traffic, the type of person who ends up having more adventures and making more mistakes. Mum never stopped encouraging me to try, fail and take risks. I kept pushing myself to do unconventional things because I liked the reaction I got from her when I told her what I'd done. Mum's response to all my exploits was to applaud them. Great, you're living your life, and not the usual life prescribed for a woman either. Well done! Thanks to her, unlike most girls at the time, I grew up regarding recklessness, risk-taking and failure as laudable pursuits. Mum did the same for Vida by giving her a pound every time she put herself forward. If Vida raised her hand at school and volunteered to go to an old people's home to sing, or recited a poem in assembly, or joined a club, Mum wrote it down in a little notebook. Vida also kept a tally of everything she'd tried to do since she last saw her grandmother and would burst out with it all when they met up again. She didn't get a pound if she won a prize or did something well or achieved good marks in an exam, and there was no big fuss or attention if she failed at anything. She was only rewarded for trying. That was the goal. This was when Vida was between the ages of seven and fifteen, the years a girl is most self-conscious about her voice, her looks and fitting in, when she doesn't want to stand out from the crowd or draw attention to herself. Vida was a passive child – she isn't passive now. I was very self-conscious when I was young, wouldn't raise my voice above a whisper or look an adult in the eye until I was thirteen, but without me realizing it Mum taught me to grab life, wrestle it to the ground and make it work for me. She never squashed any thoughts or ideas I had, no matter how unorthodox or out of reach they were. She didn't care what I looked like either. I started experimenting with my clothes aged eleven, wearing top hats, curtains as cloaks, jeans torn to pieces, bare feet in the streets, 1930s gowns, bells around my neck, and all she ever said was, 'I wish I had a camera.

BULGARIA had more cause than any other of the Balkan countries to be grateful to Nazi Germany, because of the considerable territorial aggrandizement she received at the expense of Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Greece. And yet Bulgaria was not grateful, neither her government nor her people were soft enough to make a policy of “ruthless toughness” workable. This showed not only on the Jewish question. The Bulgarian monarchy had no reason to be worried about the native Fascist movement, the Ratnizi, because it was numerically small and politically without influence, and the Parliament remained a highly respected body, which worked smoothly with the King. Hence, they dared refuse to declare war on Russia and never even sent a token expeditionary force of “volunteers” to the Eastern front. But most surprising of all, in the belt of mixed populations where anti-Semitism was rampant among all ethnic groups and had become official governmental policy long before Hitler’s arrival, the Bulgarians had no “understanding of the Jewish problem” whatever. It is true that the Bulgarian Army had agreed to have all the Jews—they numbered about fifteen thousand—deported from the newly annexed territories, which were under military government and whose population was anti-Semitic; but it is doubtful that they knew what “resettlement in the East” actually signified. Somewhat earlier, in January, 1941, the government had also agreed to introduce some anti-Jewish legislation, but that, from the Nazi viewpoint, was simply ridiculous: some six thousand able-bodied men were mobilized for work; all baptized Jews, regardless of the date of their conversion, were exempted, with the result that an epidemic of conversions broke out; five thousand more Jews—out of a total of approximately fifty thousand—received special privileges; and for Jewish physicians and businessmen a numerus clausus was introduced that was rather high, since it was based on the percentage of Jews in the cities, rather than in the country at large. When these measures had been put into effect, Bulgarian government officials declared publicly that things were now stabilized to everybody’s satisfaction. Clearly, the Nazis would not only have to enlighten them about the requirements for a “solution of the Jewish problem,” but also to teach them that legal stability and a totalitarian movement could not be reconciled.

So,” I cleared my throat, unable to tolerate his moans of pleasure and praise any longer, “uh, what are your plans for the weekend?” “The weekend?” He sounded a bit dazed. “Yes. This weekend. What do you have planned? Planning on busting up any parties?” I asked lightly, not wanting him to know that I was unaccountably breathless. I moved to his other knee and discarded the towel. “Ha. No. Not unless those wankers down the hall give me a reason to.” Removing his arms from his face, Bryan’s voice was thick, gravelly as he responded, “I, uh, have some furniture to assemble.” “Really?” Surprised, I stilled and stared at the line of his jaw. The creases around his mouth—when he held perfectly still—made him look mature and distinguished. Actually, they made him even more classically handsome, if that was even possible. “Yes. Really. Two IKEA bookshelves.” I slid my hands lower, behind his ankle, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “That’s it?” “No.” He sighed, hesitated, then added, “I need to stop by the hardware store. The tap in my bathroom is leaking and one of the drawer handles in the kitchen is missing a screw. I just repainted the guest room, so I have to take the excess paint cans to the chemical disposal place; it’s only open on Saturdays before noon. And then I promised my mam I’d take her to dinner.” My mouth parted slightly because the oddest thing happened as he rattled off his list of chores. It turned me on. Even more so than running my palms over his luscious legs. That’s right. His list of adult tasks made my heart flutter. I rolled my lips between my teeth, not wanting to blurt that I also needed to go to the hardware store over the weekend. As a treat to myself, I was planning to organize Patrick’s closet and wanted to install shelves above the clothes rack. Truly, Sean’s penchant for buying my son designer suits and ties was completely out of hand. Without some reorganization, I would run out of space. That’s right. Organizing closets was something I loved to do. I couldn’t get enough of those home and garden shows, especially Tiny Houses, because I adored clever uses for small spaces. I was just freaky enough to admit my passion for storage and organization. But back to Bryan and his moans of pleasure, adult chores, and luscious legs. I would not think about Bryan Leech adulting. I would not think about him walking into the hardware store in his sensible shoes and plain gray T-shirt—that would of course pull tightly over his impressive pectoral muscles—and then peruse the aisles for . . . a screw. I. Would. Not. Ignoring the spark of kinship, I set to work on his knee, again counting to distract myself. It worked until he volunteered, “I’d like to install some shelves in my closet, but that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off. I’d do just about anything to get someone to help me organize my closet.” He chuckled. I’d like to organize your closet. I fought a groan, biting my lip as I removed my hands, turned from his body, and rinsed them under the faucet. “We’re, uh, finished for today.

College students were instructed to sit by themselves for up to fifteen minutes in a sparsely furnished, unadorned room and “entertain themselves with their thoughts.” They were allowed to think about whatever they liked, the only rules being that they should remain in their seat and stay awake. Before they entered the room they were obliged to surrender any means of distraction they had about their person, such as cell phones, books, or writing materials. Afterward, they were asked to rate the experience on various scales. Unsurprisingly, a majority reported that they found it difficult to concentrate and their minds had wandered, with around half saying they didn’t enjoy the experience. A subsequent experiment, however, revealed that many found being left alone in an empty room with nothing to occupy their minds so unpleasant (this is, after all, what makes solitary confinement such a harsh punishment in prisons) that they would rather give themselves electric shocks. In the first part of this experiment, the volunteers were asked to rate the unpleasantness of a shock delivered via electrodes attached to their ankle and say whether they would pay a small amount of money to avoid having to experience it again. In the second part, during which they were left alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes, they were presented with the opportunity to zap themselves once again. Amazingly, among those who had said they would pay to avoid a repeat experience, 67 percent of the men (12 out of 18) and 25 percent of the women (6 out of 24) opted to shock themselves at least once. One of the women gave herself nine electric shocks. One of the men subjected himself to no fewer than 190 shocks, though he was considered exceptional—a statistical “outlier”—and his results were excluded from the final analysis. In their report for the journal Science, the researchers write, “What is striking is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.” This goes a long way toward explaining why many people initially find it so hard to meditate, because to sit quietly with your eyes closed is to invite the mind to wander here, there, and everywhere. In a sense, that is the whole point: we are simply learning to notice when this has happened. So the frustrating realization that your thoughts have been straying—yet again—is a sign of progress rather than failure. Only by noticing the way thoughts ricochet about inside our heads like ball bearings in a pinball machine can we learn to observe them dispassionately and simply let them come to rest, resisting the urge to pull back the mental plunger and fire off more of them. One of the benefits of meditation is that one develops the ability to quiet the mind at will. “Without such training,” the psychologists conclude drily in their paper, “people prefer doing to thinking, even if what they are doing is so unpleasant they would normally pay to avoid it. The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself.

ISIS was forced out of all its occupied territory in Syria and Iraq, though thousands of ISIS fighters are still present in both countries. Last April, Assad again used sarin gas, this time in Idlib Province, and Russia again used its veto to protect its client from condemnation and sanction by the U.N. Security Council. President Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on the Syrian airfield where the planes that delivered the sarin were based. It was a minimal attack, but better than nothing. A week before, I had condemned statements by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had explicitly declined to maintain what had been the official U.S. position that a settlement of the Syrian civil war had to include Assad’s removal from power. “Once again, U.S. policy in Syria is being presented piecemeal in press statements,” I complained, “without any definition of success, let alone a realistic plan to achieve it.” As this book goes to the publisher, there are reports of a clash between U.S. forces in eastern Syria and Russian “volunteers,” in which hundreds of Russians were said to have been killed. If true, it’s a dangerous turn of events, but one caused entirely by Putin’s reckless conduct in the world, allowed if not encouraged by the repeated failures of the U.S. and the West to act with resolve to prevent his assaults against our interests and values. In President Obama’s last year in office, at his invitation, he and I spent a half hour or so alone, discussing very frankly what I considered his policy failures, and he believed had been sound and necessary decisions. Much of that conversation concerned Syria. No minds were changed in the encounter, but I appreciated his candor as I hoped he appreciated mine, and I respected the sincerity of his convictions. Yet I still believe his approach to world leadership, however thoughtful and well intentioned, was negligent, and encouraged our allies to find ways to live without us, and our adversaries to try to fill the vacuums our negligence created. And those trends continue in reaction to the thoughtless America First ideology of his successor. There are senior officials in government who are trying to mitigate those effects. But I worry that we are at a turning point, a hinge of history, and the decisions made in the last ten years and the decisions made tomorrow might be closing the door on the era of the American-led world order. I hope not, and it certainly isn’t too late to reverse that direction. But my time in that fight has concluded. I have nothing but hope left to invest in the work of others to make the future better than the past. As of today, as the Syrian war continues, more than 400,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians. More than five million have fled the country and more than six million have been displaced internally. A hundred years from now, Syria will likely be remembered as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the twenty-first century, and an example of human savagery at its most extreme. But it will be remembered, too, for the invincibility of human decency and the longing for freedom and justice evident in the courage and selflessness of the White Helmets and the soldiers fighting for their country’s freedom from tyranny and terrorists. In that noblest of human conditions is the eternal promise of the Arab Spring, which was engulfed in flames and drowned in blood, but will, like all springs, come again.

He said there was great pain,' the man muttered. 'I asked How long? He said For ever. The wound heals around him, you see. She couldn't command, you see. Not for something like that. He volunteered—' The man's throat closed up, then. He spun away, bolted through the gangway and out of sight. 'Clanless,' Heboric said from the forecastle. 'As good as useless. Existence without meaning…' Gesler kicked one of the severed heads across the deck. Its uneven thumping was loud in the still air. 'Who still wants to live for ever?" he growled, then spat.

They came in two teams, leapfrogging out of the city, Isaacs and Ireland in a plain Toyota van and Shapiro and Littell in a four-wheel-drive Subaru. Greg Isaacs got out of the lead car about twenty-five yards from the big gate and immediately started through the thick woods up the mountain. At thirty-eight he was in the best physical shape of the four CIA legmen, so he’d been volunteered for this part of the mission. The others waited on the main road, one car well above the gate, the other retreating to the highway at the bottom of the valley about four miles away. Isaacs carried a powerful pair of binoculars, a sound amplifier with a small parabolic pickup dish, and a walkie-talkie. The first hundred yards were relatively easy, but then the slope sharply steepened, and until he finally made it to the crest of the defile Isaacs wasn’t sure he could do it without mountain-climbing equipment. At the top he found himself at one end of a long ledge, the mountains rising in the back and a sheer cliff plunging five or six hundred feet in the front. A big house was perched at the edge of the dropoff about two hundred yards away. Isaacs raised his binoculars and saw McGarvey seated with another man on a veranda. Isaacs keyed his walkie-talkie. “I have him.

So I was privileged to see the last rites of the Bokononist faith. We made an effort to find someone among the soldiers and the household staff who would admit that he knew the rites and would give them to "Papa". We got no volunteers. That was hardly surprising, with a hook and an oubliette so near. So Dr. von Koenigswald said that he would have a go at the job. He had never administered the rites before, but he had seen Julian Castle do it hundreds of times. "Are you a Bokononist?" I asked him. "I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies." "Will this bother you as a scientist," I inquired, "to go through a ritual like this?" "I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing." And he climbed into the golden boat with "Papa". He sat in the stern. Cramped quarters obliged him to have the golden tiller under one arm. He wore sandals without socks, and he took these off. And then he rolled back the covers at the foot of the bed, exposing "Papa's" bare feet. He put the soles of his feet against "Papa's" feet, assuming the classical position for boko-maru. "Gott mate mutt," crooned Dr. von Koenigswald. "Dyot meet mat," echoed "Papa" Monzano. "God made mud," was what they'd said, each in his own dialect. I will here abandon the dialects of the litany. "God got lonesome," said Von Koenigswald. "God got lonesome." "So God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" - "So God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" "'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'" - "'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'" "And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around." - "And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around." "Lucky me; lucky mud." "Lucky me, lucky mud." Tears were streaming down "Papa's" cheeks. "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done." - "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done." "Nice going, God!" "Nice going, God!" "Papa" said it with all his heart. "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have." - "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have." "I feel very unimportant compared to You." - "I feel very unimportant compared to You." "The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around." - "The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around." "I got so much, and most mud got so little." - "I got so much, and most mud got so little." "Deng you vore da on-oh!" cried Von Koenigswald. "Tz-yenk voo vore lo yon-yo!" wheezed "Papa". What they had said was, "Thank you for the honor!" "Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep." - "Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep." "What memories for mud to have!" - "What memories for mud to have!" "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!" - "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!" "I loved everything I saw!" - "I loved everything I saw!" "Good night." - "Good night." "I will go to heaven now." - "I will go to heaven now." "I can hardly wait..." - "I can hardly wait..." "To find out for certain what my wampeter was..." - "To find out for certain what my wampeter was..." "And who was in my karass..." - "And who was in my karass..." "And all the good things our karass did for you." - "And all the good things our karass did for you." "Amen." - "Amen.

Does a smiling, rain-soaked volunteer take the place of the Holy Spirit in convicting someone of their sin? Not a chance.

We can build the greatest volunteer team in the world, but if the hellos and handshakes come only from those wearing name tags but not those in the pews, we have failed.

Look quickly,” said Infidel. “Now that you’ve got your powers back, the course is clear. I’ll go to Hell to rescue Stagger. You and the Romers go to Commonground and stop Tempest and Hush.” “Excuse me,” said Rigger, calling down from the deck of the Circus. “Did you just volunteer us to fight two primal dragons without asking if we agreed to the plan?” “We both know you’ll agree to the plan,” said Infidel. “Well, yes,” said Rigger. “But it would have been nice to be consulted before you start barking out orders.” “She’s

He drew closer. "You look like someone I've met before." I ignored him; being chatted up at the bus stop was nothing new. He persisted. "Do you go to Christ Ministries?" He looked like a typical nice guy. It's a pity he didn't know that I hadn't been in a relationship in six years and had no intention of changing that. Men didn't appeal to me anymore. They couldn't be trusted. "You think you're special, but you're not even beautiful," he finally volunteered. Getting abused was nothing new. "You'll die without a man." [24]

On November 2, 1899, eight members of the United States Navy were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism and service beyond the call of duty. On the night of June 2, 1898, they had volunteered to scuttle the collier USS Merrimac, with the intention of blocking the entry channel to Santiago de Cuba. On orders of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, who was in command, their intention was to trap Spanish Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the harbor. Getting the USS Merrimac underway, the eight men navigated the ship towards a predetermined location where sinking her would seal the port. Their course knowingly took them within the range of the Spanish ships and the shore batteries. The sailors were well aware of the danger this put them into, however they put their mission first. Once the Spanish gunners saw what was happening, they realized what the Americans were up to and started firing their heavy artillery from an extremely close range. The channel leading into Santiago is narrow, preventing the ship from taking any evasive action. The American sailors were like fish in a barrel and the Spanish gunners were relentless. In short order, the heavy shelling from the Spanish shore batteries disabled the rudder of the Merrimac and caused the ship to sink prematurely. The USS Merrimac went down without achieving its objective of obstructing navigation and sealing the port. ‎Fête du Canada or Canada Day is the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the Canadian Constitution Act. This weekend Americans also celebrate the United States’, July 4, 1776 birthday, making this time perfect to celebrate George Fredrick Phillips heroic action. Phillips was one of the men mentioned in the story above of the USS Merrimac. He was born on March 8, 1862, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and joined the United States Navy in March 1898 in Galveston, Texas. Phillips became a Machinist First Class and displayed extraordinary heroism throughout the Spanish bombardment during their operation. He was discharged from the Navy in August 1903, and died a year later at the age of 42 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His body was returned to Canada where he was interred with honors at the Fernhill Cemetery in his hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick.

improv and child rearing are not so different. Both are jobs that people volunteer for and complain about endlessly, and they bore everyone around them as they talk about the process.

Denied the status of belligerents, the Volunteers knew that they fought in the likelihood of execution if captured under arms, or even without them, depending on whose hands they fell into.

I showed it to my mother, and after she finished reading, I burst out, “I feel so pure and so clean—I feel all emptied out,” just those words, without any embarrassment at all, and she said eagerly, “Oh no, I would think you would feel all filled up,” and I laughed, and didn’t volunteer information of that kind again, because after all it wasn’t necessary to tell your mother everything. A kind of stinginess, it seems to me now. “Is it ADD?” she asks me. “Your father gave you all ADD, you know.” Sensing that this is not entirely fair, she adds graciously, “And then I gave you ADD as well.” “Maybe,” I say, laughing again. It was true I always had trouble listening and remembering, trouble hearing people when they explained simple facts to me. When I read, my head seemed to go diagonal, and I swore I saw things in the sentences—not what I was supposed to see. When I read the words “moonlit swim,” I saw the moonlight slicked all over the bare skin. The word “sunshine” had a washed look, with the sweep of a rag in the middle of it. The word “violinist” was a fig cut in half. “String quartet” was a cat’s cradle held between two hands. “Penniless

I betrayed her.” She touched her tarnished belt buckle. “Margaret said she never wanted to see me again. She and I shared the same social circle, and we both adored the Library. But for her, it was a labor of love—she’d volunteered selflessly, giving without getting a centime in return.” “How could you leave?” “If I’d stayed, she would have lost everything, most especially the place she called home. I loved the Library, but I loved Margaret more. Too ashamed to tell friends and family the truth, too afraid of the consequences, I married Buck and left France without saying farewell. I’ve never seen my brother’s grave and hope my parents were able to claim his body.” She took a deep breath. “I ran. And until you, I’ve never told anyone.

And I’ve started volunteering with a nonprofit group that asks survivors of rape and assault to go into schools, prisons, and colleges, and tell their stories. To girls—but, equally as important, to boys. It’s terrifying. I go once a month without fail, and I have to stop on the drive home every single time to throw up by the side of the road. But I do it anyway. I do it because I believe that human connection is the only thing that will save us. I do it because I believe we learn empathy when we listen to other people’s stories and feel their pain with them. I do it because I know for certain that our world has an empathy problem with women, and this is one brave thing I can do to help fix it.

It would be easy for me to ignore these factors and claim myself to be a ‘self-made’ man, but in reality there is no such thing. Countless teachers and community activists gave me the tools for navigating life’s roadmap; football coaches taught me to play and kept me out of trouble. I am not saying that my own hard work, discipline and sacrifice have played no role in my life’s outcomes; that would be absurd. But I am saying that even these characteristics were nourished with help, support and encouragement from others, and that without this support – much of it from volunteers – it’s inconceivable that I would be where I am today.

(Or as Swami Satchidananda once said, “We’re born fine until we define ourselves, and then we use these definitions to see how we are different rather than how we are alike. So now we must refine ourselves.”) Our participants were people who would not have had a lot to do with each other except for the fact that they had all volunteered for an unusual research project. At first it seemed like the only thing they had in common was that they all had heart disease.

According to technologist David Rosenthal, speculation on cryptocurrencies is the engine that drives Web3—that it can’t work without it. “[A] permissionless blockchain requires a cryptocurrency to function, and this cryptocurrency requires speculation to function,” he said in a talk at Stanford in early 2022.4 Basically, he’s describing a pyramid scheme: Blockchains need to give people something in exchange for volunteering computing power, and cryptocurrencies fill that role—but the system works only if other people are willing to buy them believing that they’ll be worth more in the future. Stephen Diehl, a technologist and vocal critic of Web3, floridly dismissed blockchain as “a one-trick pony whose only application is creating censorship-resistant crypto investment schemes, an invention whose negative externalities and capacity for harm vastly outweigh any possible uses.

Look it, Jack. While I appreciate the sentiment, we’re already pressed for time. You know our fundraiser’s just around the corner and getting her ready for sale’ll be a huge time zapper for us. And in the end, she’ll just be uprooted again.” “Let’s talk about this later. For now, let’s just get her settled in, fed and watered.” Mrs. M huffed slowly and rubbed her temple with the heel of her hand, as if already feeling the exhaustion of the job just by looking at the mare. “Okay, you girls, walk ’em both to the back barn and put ’em in the two empty stalls. Water them and throw them some hay. We’ll look at ’em later. When you’re done, can you finish cleaning the stalls in the main barn?” “Yes, ma’am.” Without even really thinking it through, a sense of urgency forced me to say, “Um, Mrs. M? If you wouldn’t mind, can I take her on as a project horse? You said she’d be a huge time zapper for you, time that you don’t have. I can take care of her, clean her up, as well as train her to ride and follow commands. Problem solved. Pretty please?” She sighed with her lips scrunched, hopefully seriously considering it. Even though I knew that was gonna be a monstrous job, I was so quick to volunteer because I honestly felt like I was the only one who truly got this horse and saw her potential. Everyone else just saw a headache and a big mess. She was counting on me, and I couldn’t let her down. “Maybe she’ll end up being an excellent addition to the program. You think?” “Oh, I really don’t think we can use her here, sweetie,” she mewed like I was so dumb and silly for even suggesting it.

Servants are renowned for oral longevity. Their goal is to suck on the penis for as long as they can possibly endure. The average amount of time a servant will commit to oral practice is a minimum of forty-five minutes per session. Once they have committed to oral practice and without interruption from their volunteer, they might allow intercourse to happen afterward. True Cock Worshipers have no rules against having sex with their volunteers, but they will always attempt to have an experience first with the sub-deity.

Take the pressure off by looking at dating as a great way to get to know new people and to have new experiences rather than expecting every man you meet to wife you up by the third date. Maintain your own identity, lifestyle, hobbies, and plans, and let dating complement that lifestyle instead of supplement it. You are single, and you know what single also means? Free. Free to travel, free to volunteer for charity organizations you believe in, free to take salsa lessons, free to splurge on that designer bag you found on Poshmark. When you have your own full, busy life, you’re less likely to look for your value in the swipe. Hit the pause button on the frantic search for Mr. Right and just let yourself have some fun with Mr. Right Now! Not every person you date is going to be marriage material. Not every person you date is going to be “the one,” or even in the running to be “the one.” But every person you date is going to make you a little bit better at dating. A little more relaxed. A little more open to love. A little more certain about exactly what you’re looking for. People are sent into our lives to teach us things we need to learn about ourselves . . . so look at dating as setting out a welcome mat for all sorts of little messengers who each have something new to show you about you.

Samaritan's Path by Stewart Stafford On a solo trek on a dusty road, A volunteer picked up my load, Heavy things of weight and idea, Hoisted aloft, a relaxing panacea. We ran the clock down without ennui, With songs, jokes, and inflated history, Scenery and animals to comment upon, Stones kicked as the sun still shone. In dusk's bowing light, a reticent parting, A trip over, happy memories restarting, With a last handshake, wave, and smile, We headed for home on the closing mile. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

I have continued to view people who work for me as volunteers. It isn’t that they’ve agreed to work without pay. “I’m aware that you’re all here, on the most basic level, to pay the rent,” I tell new hires. “Just as you need a job, I need people to take orders accurately, and to cook wonderful food.” Then I remind them that if they’re as talented at what they do as we believe they are, they could have gotten a job at any of 200 other very good restaurants for the same pay. “You could all be doing what you do anywhere else,” I say. “But you chose to be with us. You have volunteered to be on our team, and we owe it to you to provide you with much more than just a paycheck in return. We want you to feel certain you have made a wise choice in joining our company.

Some readers have asked me how I could manage to commit myself for such a long time to not one, but a number of missions – volunteer work, studies, hiking and writing – without burning out. The thing is, I wasn’t really planning to. If I had, I wouldn’t have lasted long. I was just going to have fun doing all these things, for as long as I wanted, and that, ironically, was key to not burning out.

She sucked in a jagged breath. “It’s a bit of a story.” “I have the time. Tell me.” Without further preamble, Catherine launched into a tale that made my jaw tighten and fists clench. This dick, her purported friend, had gotten her to sink her savings into a house far too expensive to make sense as an investment. Had he done his own research instead of listening to some random person volunteering with them, he would have known that. On top of the ill-advised investment, the ex had hired shoddy people to do the work, and when Catherine couldn’t pay, they’d upped their shoddiness and stripped her house bare. Liam was lucky he was on another continent. He showed his face around me anytime soon, the violence thrumming in my veins wouldn’t be contained. “Who the fuck does that to their friend?” I seethed. “I know.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “Who the fuck does that to the mother of their child?” “I know, Elliot.

Joan was also a faithful volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen. "I was there without fail every Monday night," she said. She was mobbed on her first visit, and was busy signing autographs when President Bette Davis walked in. "Hello, Joan!" said Bette. "We need you desperately, in the kitchen. There are dishes to be washed." "A

We can get the task done without being paid.

When volunteers looked at a black-and-white picture of a banana, tests showed they saw it as slightly yellow—even though in fact it was purely gray. The researchers demonstrated this by asking the volunteers to adjust the background on a screen until it was the same color as the banana shape. Without realizing it, the volunteers selected a background with a slight yellow tinge. They had such a strong presumption that the banana would be yellow that their brains decided it actually was.6